Description
This paper challenges Western epistemic violence central to terrorism studies scholarship through critiquing the centrality of the English language and the perspectives, experiences, and challenges facing Western states. In doing so, this paper exposes attempts to actively obstruct non-Western approaches to knowledge and, through a systematic review of ten Arabic-language journals, presents the concerns of non-English scholarship on terrorism.
The canon of (critical) terrorism studies lacks sustained analysis of counterterrorism and the war on terror within Global South countries, despite the vast majority of terrorist and counterterrorist casualties continuing to occur outside the Western hemisphere. Hence, as a form of what Frantz Fanon called “epistemic disobedience”, this paper verifies the so-called “pernicious ignorance” of Eurocentric and English-speaking knowledge production which dominates the fields of terrorism and political violence studies. To resist the epistemic oppression of non-Western knowledge, this paper analyses non-English scholarship on terrorism in the Arabic-speaking world by surveying the ten leading academic and peer-reviewed journals in the Arabic language between 2001 and 2021 (Al-siyassa Al-dawleeya, Al-Moustakbal Al-arabi, Siyassat Arabia, Al-Demokrateeya, al-Majallah al-ʻArabīyah lil-Ulum al-siyasiyah, Mejalet al-diraasat al-dawlaya, Mejalet al-Ulum al-igtmaiya, Majalat Shiewon igtmaiya, Mejalet al-Ulum al-siyasiyah, al-Majallah al-ʻArabīyah lil-Dirāsāt al-Amnīyah). It explores the following: the main trends and debates in Arabic academia on terrorism and extremism; dominant theoretical frameworks and methodologies; the state of terrorism studies in the Middle East; the theoretical/ethical concerns of Arab scholars; and the legacy of the war on terror in the region.
