It might come as a surprise to many readers, but there have been several instances of jihadist disengagement from violence for several decades and many extremist Islamist groups have given up their campaign of violence for good. Since the 1980s, prominent jihadist organizations as Egypt’s Gamaah al-Islamiyah (GaI), Armée Islamique du Salut (AIS), Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and Tandheem al-Jihad (TaJ), etc. turned in their weapons and have either disbanded or opted to take the legal political and democratic course after undergoing a process of de-radicalization and moderation. In fact, the instances have been so numerous that various counter-terrorism experts have developed four different paradigms to try and explain how different types of Islamist actors have undergone ideological and behavioral moderation.
These theories are the ‘Inclusion-moderation’ hypothesis (as propounded by Jillian Schwedler in 2006), the ‘political learning’ hypothesis of Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mona El-Ghobashy’s study of ideational change and Janine Astrid Clark’s contrarian hypothesis against ideational change as a factor leading to organizational change. Some scholars like Asef Bayat have even contended that the Muslim world on the whole is already living in a post-Islamist and post-Jihadist phase in its history, which is obfuscated by the headline-grabbing activities of a handful of jihadist groups, which are desperate to revive a losing cause. He defines as post-Islamism as “political and social conditions where, following a phase of experimentation, a rethink about the Islamist project takes place, leading to emphasizing rights instead of duties, plurality instead of singular authoritative voice, historicity rather than fixed scripture, and the future instead of the past.”
In fact, post-Islamism is a widely used concept and has been used to explain the transformation of post-Khomeini Iran during the Rafsanjani presidency. Gilles Kepel in “Islamism Reconsidered,” (2000) used the term to note the rise of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami in Iran. Olivier Roy in “Le post-islamisme,” Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée (2012) sees as confirming his Failure of Political Islam thesis that that the Islamists’ ideology could not solve the problems of Muslim societies. Henri Lauzire, “Post-Islamism and the Religious Discourse of Abd al-Salam Yasin,” uses the concept to interpret the political thought of Abd al-Salam Yasin, Morocco’s prominent Islamist thinker and founder of its more conservative Islamist movement. Amel Boubekeur in “Post-Islamist Culture: A New Form of Mobilization?” (2007) examines the notion in cultural terms and as it applies to sociopolitical mobilization and validates its premise. Husnul Amin, From Islamism to Post-Islamism: A Study of a New Intellectual Discourse on Islam and Modernity in Pakistan (2010) has analyzed the issue with respect to certain significant post-Islamist religion-political currents within Pakistan and confirms it as a growing trend.
Omar Ashour’s 2009 work ‘The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements’ represents one of the most critical research on De-Radicalization in our times. In it, the scholar has even declared the advent of post-Jihadism in many Arab and Muslim societies, a process which began following the horrors of 9/11 itself. In recent times, Stratfor expert Kamran Bukhari and Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz have produced seminal work on the growing trend of post-Jihadism. The commentary on the ongoing disillusionment against Jihadist organizations in Indonesia by Julie Chernov Hwang further substantiates the post-Jihadist argument. This can be read at
http://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/co16139-jihadist-disengagement-from-violence-understanding-contributing-factors/#.V1pHFNR97Gg
In conclusion, although the trend against Jihadism in the Muslim world may arguably be gathering steam, there is no denying that the momentum picked up by the Jihadist juggernaut could not be upstaged by any incipient counter-movement in the near to medium term. The menace of Jihadism is and shall remain one of the foremost security hazards for the world, well into the foreseeable future.