"The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity"

AVACGIS Guest Lecture Series with Darryl Li

Wednesday, November 18, 2020 3:00 PM to 4:15 PM EST
Zoom Virtual Event

Darryl Li will talk about his book The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (Stanford University Press, 2019) and answer questions from the audience. This lecture will be moderated by Yasemin Ipek (Assistant Professor, Global Affairs Program at George Mason University) as a part of her class ANTH 308: Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East at GMU.

A short description of the book is provided below:

No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-called jihadists seem opposed to universalism itself. In a radical departure from conventional wisdom on the topic, The Universal Enemy argues that transnational jihadists are engaged in their own form of universalism: these fighters struggle to realize an Islamist vision directed at all of humanity, transcending racial and cultural difference.

Anthropologist and attorney Darryl Li reconceptualizes jihad as armed transnational solidarity under conditions of American empire, revisiting a pivotal moment after the Cold War when ethnic cleansing in the Balkans dominated global headlines. Muslim volunteers came from distant lands to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside their co-religionists, offering themselves as an alternative to the US-led international community. Li highlights the parallels and overlaps between transnational jihads and other universalisms such as the War on Terror, United Nations peacekeeping, and socialist Non-Alignment. Developed from more than a decade of research with former fighters in a half-dozen countries, The Universal Enemy explores the relationship between jihad and American empire to shed critical light on both.

Darryl Li is an assistant professor of anthropology and associate member of the law school at the University of Chicago.