ALM

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores how the masculinities that participants discussed as important in their lives prior to becoming Islamists are later mobilized in the ideology and activism of the extreme network. It sets out what the Islamist participants believe, with a focus on their understanding of doctrine, and how this positions them in relation to women, to gender and to jihad. While radical-right participants deemphasized adherence to any explicit “ideology,” ideology has an important status within the Islamist network. There is far more coherence around a particular gendered ideological position among al-Muhajiroun members and their network than there is for the radical-right participants: ideological knowledge endows status. This is accumulated via reading, but also learning by association with more experienced activists. This learning process is an induction into a particular gendered outlook, entailing the acceptance and propagation of explicitly gendered norms, and constituting a particular masculinity project.