The History of Jihadism in Europe and its Evolution, 1989-2021

Recent jihadist attacks have roiled a number of European Union countries and made newspaper headlines. Little attention, however, has been paid to the specific history of jihadism in Europe or to the social and political geography that its followers occupied as they joined jihadist movements in Syria and Iraq in the last decade. Their movement to the Middle East has generated valuable information for interpreting the phenomenon of jihadism, as a nexus of political, religious, ideological and socioeconomic factors. For instance, between 2012 and 2018, 90 percent of European jihadists in the Middle East hailed from six countries, each different in size, social fabric, politics and immigration history. They are: France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. This talk will present the European areas in which jihadism emerged, the genesis of this movement in the late 1980s and its evolution until today. It will illustrate that the war in Syria and Iraq as well as the implementation of ISIS's “Caliphate” project were an extension and culmination of similar dynamics to be found in Europe.