Mediating Islamic State| Islamic State: Politics by Other Means?

Abstract

In this article, I examine the ways in which Islamic State deploys neoliberal concepts of justice, security, and equality against the West. I analyze how the militant group weaponizes these concepts in three different ways. First, I look at how Islamic State uses these concepts in its recruitment strategy to appeal to a sense of victimhood that is represented by Islam but is not limited to Muslims. Second, I argue that the militant group is not questioning the premises of these terms or their meaning, but is critiquing the hypocritical ways they are being applied arbitrarily and the ambivalence of the West in applying them. Third, I examine how Islamic State is at the same time the result of and a reproduction of the precarity of living under neoliberalism.