African Jihad

Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin, the Ash-Shabab movement in the Horn of Africa, and the ever-reconfirming Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AKIM) faction that is spreading from West African Mali into neighbouring states. The development of radical Islamist movements in sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades has alarmed both the local population and the international community. The book provides insight into the historical and social origins of jihadist groups in the Sahel, a region that has grown in strategic importance in recent years, especially for Europe. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos refutes the established idea of African jihad as part of a homogeneous "terrorist international" coordinated from the Middle East. Drawing on religious, historical and political science arguments, it presents the exclusively local (not global) and political (not religious) nature of the goals of African Islamist movements and the reasons for their radicalisation in recent years.