From Keywords to Discursive Legitimation: Representing 'kuffar' in the Jihadist Propaganda Magazines

The research in this paper was carried out as part of a research project funded by Swansea University and directed by professors Stuart Macdonald and Nuria Lorenzo-Dus. The project examined jihadist propaganda from different disciplinary perspectives, including Terrorism Studies and Linguistics. All available online publications of five jihadist magazines released between January 2009 and the end of June 2015 were collected. These publications are Jihad Recollections, Gaidi Mtaani, Inspire, Dabiq and Azan. To be included in the data set, publications had to be written in English and meet the project’s definition of a magazine (Macdonald et al., 2015). The reason this paper focuses on Dabiq and Inspire, produced by IS and Al-Qaeda, respectively, is that these two groups currently pose the biggest terrorist threat to the Western world. Terrorist groups are also often regarded as acting the same, especially if they follow a jihadist ideology. However, they might target different social groups and compete for recruits in fighting a common enemy – usually an out-group who does not share their ideology and faith. Comparative research within these groups is therefore most useful to understand their similarities and differences. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to contribute to the current academic debate about one of the main analytic tools in Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS): keywords; and (2) to show how IS and Al-Qaeda discursively construct “kuffar” in their propaganda magazines and legitimize this as a negative social identity. “Kuffar” is a derogatory term, which describes individuals on religious grounds, or lack thereof. Analyzing this term provides insights into the role of religion in jihadist ideologies, which is still heavily debated.