‘Behead, burn, crucify, crush’: Theorizing the Islamic State’s public displays of violence
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066117714416 |
| Author | Simone Molin Friis |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117714416
European Journal of
International Relations
2018, Vol. 24(2) 243 –267
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1354066117714416
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
E
JR
I
‘Behead, burn, crucify, crush’:
Theorizing the Islamic State’s
public displays of violence
Simone Molin Friis
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
The militant group known as the Islamic State has become notorious for its public displays
of violence. Through slick high-definition videos showing beheadings, immolations and
other forms of choreographed executions, the Islamic State has repeatedly captured the
imagination of a global public and provoked vehement reactions. This article examines
the Islamic State’s public displays of violence. Contrary to the public constitution of the
Islamic State’s violence as an exceptional evil, the article argues that the group’s staging
of killings and mutilations is not an unprecedented phenomenon, but a contemporary
version of a distinct type of political violence that has been mobilized by various political
agents throughout centuries. However, what is new and significant about the Islamic
State’s choreographed executions is the public visibility of the acts and the global spectacle
that the group has created. Thus, if the Islamic State is introducing a new dynamic in
global politics, it is not a new form of violence or brutality, but rather a transformation
of how spectacles of violence unfold on the global stage. Subsequently, the article
highlights three dimensions of the Islamic State’s public displays of violence that have
facilitated the creation of the global spectacle: the Islamic State’s technological skills and
professional use of media (technology); the Islamic State’s mobilization of acts of violence
that transgress prevailing sensibilities (transgression); and the violent acts’ function as
not only a form of terror, but also an integral element of a state project and a visual
manifestation of an alternative political order (politics).
Keywords
Execution videos, imagery, Islamic State, political violence, power, spectacles
Corresponding author:
Simone Molin Friis, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353
Copenhagen K., Denmark.
Email: smf@ifs.ku.dk
714416EJT0010.1177/1354066117714416European Journal of International RelationsFriis
research-article2017
Article
244 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)
Introduction
I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in
the battlefield of the media. (Letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri (al-Qaeda) to Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi (al-Qaeda in Iraq) (Al-Zawahiri, 2005))
One of the most remarkable political phenomena of recent years has been the way in
which the militant group known as the Islamic State1 has captured the imagination of a
global public and positioned itself at the centre of contemporary security debates. With
astonishing speed, the Islamic State has gone from being dismissed as a ‘JV Team’2 by
then US President Barack Obama to being named a threat ‘beyond anything we have
seen’ (Department of Defense, 2014) and ‘unlike those we have dealt with before’
(House of Commons, 2014). Suddenly described as an ‘imminent threat’ (Department
of Defense, 2014), ‘a network of death’ (Obama, 2014a; House of Commons, 2014), a
‘cancer’ (Obama, 2014b) and an ‘ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless
evil’ (Kerry, 2014), the militant group quickly surpassed al-Qaeda as the main public
enemy and terrorist foe in many — particularly Western — states, prompting a US-led
international counterterrorism campaign aimed at ‘degrading and destroying’ the
Islamic State (Obama, 2014b).3
The Islamic State’s dramatic rise in the public consciousness has spurred a wave of
literature devoted to analysing the group. Scholars and experts have examined the origin
and evolution of the Islamic State, often focusing on how the group emerged from Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq during the chaotic years following the US-led inva-
sion and occupation of Iraq, as well as how the group exploited the rapidly escalating
conflict in Syria to seize large swathes of territory on both sides of the Iraqi–Syrian
border (Erslev Andersen, 2015; Hosken, 2015; Napoleoni, 2014; Stern and Berger,
2015). Others have conducted strategic assessments of the Islamic State’s military capa-
bilities (McFate, 2015) or explored the group’s relationship with other jihadist move-
ments (Crone, 2016; Zelin, 2014). Finally, a growing literature has focused on how the
Western counterterrorism strategies and policies adopted during the War on Terror failed
to address — if not directly facilitated — the issues and conditions that allowed the
Islamic State to emerge and spread (Kilcullen, 2016; Erslev Andersen, 2016).
However, the case of the Islamic State is significant not just because of the group’s
territorial conquests and organizational evolution. From a broader security perspective,
the case is also noteworthy because of the Islamic State’s ‘symbolic-expressive’ power
(Euben, forthcoming), and the global spectacle that the group has managed to create
through carefully choreographed public displays of violence. Although the rise of the
Islamic State is a multifaceted phenomenon, it hardly seems debatable that the group’s
tech-savvy use of violent imagery and professional staging of killings and mutilations
— what I term the Islamic State’s ‘public displays of violence’4 — have played a central
role in the group’s global campaign. As the Islamic State seized numerous social media
platforms and caught the attention of almost every international media institution during
the summer of 2014, distant audiences were continuously confronted with images of the
Islamic State’s advances in Iraq and Syria, including the group’s mass shootings of Iraqi
men and boys. During the autumn of 2014, screen-grabs from a number of beheading
To continue reading
Request your trial