The Full Circle of Terror. Concerning the Paradoxical Relation between the Islamic State and the Westphalian Order.

Abstract

As the Islamic State has risen to declare itself the sole legitimate state of the world, politicians and academics alike struggle to define the nature of this organization. Is it a state? Is it a terrorist organization? Is it something in between, or even something completely different? The few times that academics have tried to solve this problem they treated IS as the odd one out, using the standards of our current world system as supposedly objective frames to compose our perception of the Islamic State. This method often resulted in an unsatisfying definition that barely captures the unique relation between the Islamic State and the rest of the international order. I argue that a different approach is needed to successfully describe the relation between the Islamic State and the contemporary international order. This paper offers such a new approach by bringing the rise of nationalism during the ‘long 19th century’ into the equation. When these two cases are brought together a certain paradox arises that provides crucial insights on the relation between radical, world-changing ideas and the political status quo of a particular international society. I maintain that only with these new insights a truly well-rounded perception of the Islamic State can finally be presented. Following the introduction of the first chapter, chapter II kicks off by setting up the frameworks of the international order by using Daniel Philpott’s book Revolutions in Sovereignty, a work that highlights the role of ideas in the political realm while simultaneously offering multiple models on the functioning of the international order. Then, in chapters III and IV, the cases of nationalism and IS are examined and placed within the models of the second chapter. These results are then combined in the fifth chapter where I introduce the concept of the ‘Anti-Nation-State’ as a new description for the Islamic State, one that perfectly embodies the paradoxical relation between the organization and the Westphalian order.