Abstract

The insurgency that has grown in Iraq since the downfall of the regime of Saddam Hussein and Allied occupation in April 2003, has gripped the country in a spiral of lawlessness and anarchy.1 Despite the presence of over 150,000 Allied forces and the training of thousands of local Iraqi police and security forces, Iraq is still dominated by armed insurgents who are weakening and sabotaging post-war reconstruction in the areas of law and order, oil production, and road infrastructure. In this article I will contend that the most serious dimension of this insurgency is Islamic in manifestation and examine its importance not merely to the internal political dynamic of the country but the wider American objective of the war on terrorism and the discourses that surround it. These discourses include radical Islamism, contemporary facets of foreign occupation, and the Muslim prohibition to avoid civil conflict (fitna). In the latter part of the article I examine the dimensions of Islamist interpretation, support, and objective to the current insurgency. This includes analysis of both Sunni and Shi'a elements of insurgency that have arisen in the Iraqi context as well a wider explanation of Muslim revolt against perceived Western domination of the political, economic, and cultural landscape of contemporary Islamism and its resurgence in Iraq.