A single development in the Arab world currently represents one of the most profound threats to the contemporary Middle East. I was once a pioneer of this development, and I term it the "privatisation of jihad". Unless countered, it will continue to harm both the processes of reform and of future peacemaking in the region.
The "privatisation of jihad" is the transfer of monopolised military activities from the state to individuals. It is a kind of vigilantism; previously, jihad had been an affair of the state, and not of its citizens. Nation states may well be a modern construct, but even in their precursors jihad was a prerogative of pre-modern states, and not their individual subjects.
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