Rejectionist Islamism in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Abstract This article contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of Islamist mobilization in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the late 1980s, several African societies have witnessed significant Islamist violence. Against this background, the article provides a typology of rejectionist Islamism, a strain of Islamism that has left a major imprint both on East and West African settings. While rejectionist Islamist groups share as their common denominator the explicit negation of the nation state's legitimacy, they can be differentiated according to whether they violently challenge the state and are willing to participate in mainstream civil society. Thus, in this article I present four different types of rejectionist Islamism: ‘isolationism’, ‘militant isolationism’, ‘participatory rejectionism’ and ‘militant participatory rejectionism’. Examining rejectionist groups from four African countries, I demonstrate my typology's capacity for facilitating a fine-grained assessment of individual group trajectories over time. Finally, I present findings on the determinants of the violent radicalization of rejectionist Islamist groups.