Radical Dreams

An in-depth investigation of the key actors in the Syrian revolution and jihad, featuring interviews with Syrian revolutionaries and Europeans who joined the jihad.

Following the Syrian population’s uprising against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in 2011, the regime’s brutal repression drove many revolutionaries to take up arms. The involvement of groups claiming political Islam, together with foreign interference, rendered the conflict increasingly opaque, culminating in the emergence of the Islamic State in 2014, which placed religion at the centre of a policy of terror. A small, misguided minority of young Europeans were drawn to join the revolution and carry out devastating suicide attacks in France and Belgium in 2015 and 2016. In seeking to make sense of these tragic events, ideological interpretations focusing on the ‘radicalisation’ of political Islam have often dominated public discourse. This is where the importance of this book lies: it draws on testimonies from key actors—Syrian revolutionaries and ‘jihad migrants’—collected by the author between 2015 and 2023 in the Middle East and Europe. The book explores how ordinary individuals experienced their commitments. These testimonies reveal the meaning they ascribed to their actions, from the initial peaceful mobilisation to revolutionary warfare. They illuminate the role of religious symbolism in the Syrian revolution and in the motives of approximately 2,500 young French and Belgian volunteers, largely from postcolonial immigrant backgrounds, who joined the revolution in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Originally published in French by Éditions La Découverte (© 2023) and very well-received in the French media, Leuven University Press is pleased to make the updated English edition available to the global reader, thanks to the collaboration with UM6P Press (University Mohammed VI Polytechnic Press) based in Ben Guerir, Morocco.

Translator: Steve Garner

Preface by Olivier Roy. Getting to the core of what motivated the francophone volunteers who joined jihadist groups in Syria

Introduction. Studying the Syrian revolution and the jihad of the Europeans involved

Chapter 1. Political and Media discourse on the jihad and the Syrian revolution

Chapter 2. Year 1 of the revolution, as narrated by its participants

Chapter 3. The regime’s repressive violence and the slide into armed struggle (2011-2012)

Chapter 4. The Free Zones: a forgotten utopia (2012-2014)

Chapter 5. The universalisation of the revolution: jihad and the uses of religion

Chapter 6. Revolutionary jihad versus neo-nationalist jihad: the Daesh era (2014-2017)

Chapter 7. Departure for jihad and welcome into the revolution

Chapter 8. The political wellsprings of millennialist and religious commitments

Chapter 9. Jihad vs revolution, the decisive ‘split’ of 2013

Chapter 10. Suicide bombings: violence and terrorist futures

Conclusion. The ever-present hopes of the Syrian revolution Epilogue. The Revolution vs. the State

Notes
References

Montassir Sakhi

Montassir Sakhi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UM6P in Morocco and a researcher affiliated to KU Leuven. His research focuses on the mobilisation in the Arab world since 2011, restrictive European policies on migrants, and the effects of these policies on populations in the southern Mediterranean.