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John Rosenthal

Bio: John Rosenthal is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Islamic culture & Islamic extremism. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 3 publications receiving 7 citations.

Papers
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TL;DR: The authors analyzed a published collection of interviews of suspected members of al-Qaeda and fellow travelers in French prisons by social scientist Fared Khosrokhavar and found that the inmates interviewed were highly educated, well-traveled, and multilingual.
Abstract: Several French nationals or residents have fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the insurgency in Iraq Zacarias Moussaoui, the most famous French jihadist, is now serving a life sentence in an American prison for his connection to 9/11 In the following selection, John Rosenthal, who writes on European politics, analyzes a published collection of interviews of suspected members of al Qaeda and fellow travelers in French prisons by social scientist Fared Khosrokhavar Almost all these inmates were either born in France or were long-term residents of France who came originally from the Mahghreb, the North African area that had once been under French control French was either their native language or they spoke it fluently One theory challenged by Khosrokhavar is that jihadists are poor and uneducated As the research shows, “jihadists are largely recruited from relatively more privileged social strata in their countries of origin As a rule, the inmates interviewed are highly educated, well-traveled, and multilingual”

4 citations

Journal Article
Abstract: THE SO-CALLED ARAB Spring has ushered in many surprising changes, not the least of which is an apparent sea change in American foreign policy. The Muslim Brotherhood--hitherto regarded as the principal ideological incubator of Islamic extremism and shunned accordingly--has been rehabilitated by the present American administration. Long before the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi was elected Egyptian president in June, the administration was openly courting the organization. The first sign of the change came in the form of what seemed initially to be a bizarre gaffe. Speaking at congressional hearings in February zoi r, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper incongruously described the Brotherhood as "largely secular." But the gaffe soon proved to have been a harbinger of policy. Within a year, the American ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, John Kerry, were meeting with Brotherhood officials in Cairo. The contacts, in both Cairo and Washington, have gone on ever since. In this context, it is hardly surprising that many observers and especially those wary of the administration "reset" with the Brotherhood--would regard a recent book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson as, in effect, the book of the hour. Bearing the sensational title A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), Johnson's volume contains an even more sensational thesis: namely, that the U.S. had already gotten involved with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 9 cos and that the Brotherhood's leading representative in Europe at the time, Said Ramadan, was even a CIA asset! On Johnson's account, the CIA helped Ramadan to seize control of the "mosque in Munich" of the book's title. The claim is all the more sensational inasmuch as the mosque--or rather the Islamic association that sponsored its construction--would in the aftermath of 9/1i come to be linked to al Qaeda. It is not difficult to understand, then, why Johnson's book has been hailed as a "cautionary talc." And this it would be, were it not for the fact that the tale Johnson tells is not supported by the evidence. The whole basis of Johnson's narrative of American "collusion"--as he put it in the Fall tot r Middle East Quarterly with Ramadan and the Brotherhood is circumstantial evidence and conjecture Unnervingly, once introduced into the narrative, the conjecture is then elevated to the status of established fact. This procedure allows Johnson, for instance, to refer repeatedly to an American "plan" to install Ramadan as the head of the Munich mosque project, even though he has offered no proof that such a plan ever existed. Dangerous liaisons or casual contacts? MORE PROBLEMATICA ELY STILL, most of the circumstantial evidence points precisely to American disdain for Ramadan, not the "mutual attraction" that Johnson essentially conjures out of thin air Take, for instance, Ramadan's now famous September 1953 visit to the White House. A photograph documenting the visit is reproduced in a February 3, 2011 post by Johnson on the blog of the New York Review of Books. The picture shows a group of more than. twenty Muslim dignitaries crowded around President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Oval Office--among them, the then merely 1--year-old Muslim Brother Said Ramadan. The occasion for the photo-op was an international "Colloquium on Islamic Culture," which was cosponsored by Princeton University and the Library of Congress. The U.S. Information Agency and the State Department's International Information Agency were also involved. The apparently scholarly conference thus enjoyed U.S. government sponsorship. Johnson makes much of this fact, quoting darkly from a State Department memo that admits to ulterior motives. A passage from the same memo that is quoted by another source (to which we will come momentarily) specifies the ulterior motives in question: namely, "to create good will and to contribute to greater mutual understanding between the Muslim peoples and the United States. …

2 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a report about the winner of the competition for the reconstruction of Ground Zero in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, which was shown in a continuous loop as part of the exhibition Counterpoint: The Architecture of Daniel Libeskind at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Abstract: "AN ARCHITECT FROM Berlin has received the commission for the most spectacular and surely also the most delicate building project in the world," a news anchor announces. The "architect from Berlin" is Daniel Libeskind, and his commission is "to put something new in the place of the World Trade Center." There follow the well-known images of the World Trade towers imploding. "It was a murderous visitation as on September 11, 2001 the twin towers of the World Trade Center were reduced to rubble," the voiceover explains in distinctly religious tones: "The limitless drive upwards, the optimistic vitality of this city seemed broken. Now it has a new vision--thanks to Daniel Libeskind, the winner of the competition for the reconstruction of Ground Zero." The earlier scenes of destruction are replaced by images of glittering skyscrapers encircling a verdant field where happy families stroll--this is no mere reconstruction, it would seem, but the veritable resurrection of New York. "The decision was made unanimously by the jury," the voiceover continues. The report dates from February 27, 2003, and it comes from the German public television channel ZDF. It was recently shown in a continuous loop as part of the exhibition "Counterpoint: The Architecture of Daniel Libeskind" at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. But there is one problem with the report: As most New Yorkers will recall, the decision in favor of Libeskind was hardly unanimous. Indeed, on February 25, just two days before the announcement of the selection of the Libeskind design, the site planning committee of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the body specifically created to oversee the reconstruction of downtown Manhattan in the aftermath of 9-11, decided against the latter and in favor of the rival proposal from Raphael Vinoly and Frederic Schwartz's "THINK" architectural team. Despite a massive and sometimes sordid public relations effort by the Libeskind camp--including a campaign to get a prominent critic in the press fired and an apparent attempt to pad support for the Libeskind entry in two high-profile web-based polls--this choice seemed to reflect the tendency of public opinion, which the LMDC had been specifically tasked to canvas. Although neither of the two design competition finalists ever managed to generate much enthusiasm among New Yorkers, when, for instance, Jennifer Rainville of the local television news station NY1 reported from the opening of an LMDC-sponsored exhibition of the two models on February 4, she found a strong movement of support toward the THINK design and its lattice-work invocation of the old twin towers. Yet, belying repeated assurances about the "open" and "democratic" character of the process of deliberations on the future of Ground Zero, New York Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg chose to ignore the LMDC recommendation and go with the Libeskind design anyway. Why was there this misrepresentation in the ZDF report, and why was it allowed to stand in the Libeskind exhibition at Berlin's Jewish Museum when the curators surely were aware of the controversy surrounding the selection? To answer that question is to consider the exalted status enjoyed by Daniel Libeskind in contemporary German public discourse. It was his work in Germany, after all, that established Libeskind's "worldwide renown," as Jewish Museum director Michael Blumenthal has put it. In fact, up until now Libeskind has been known, first and foremost, as the designer of the Jewish Museum itself. Before winning the design competition for the latter, Libeskind's designs had been widely regarded as unbuildable. Still today, his resume of built designs includes only museums or museum extensions and an artist's studio on Mallorca. To reflect on the sources of Libeskind's German success might also help us understand how a supposed architectural "visionary" with no relevant experience in urban planning or skyscraper design should have been entrusted with devising the "master plan" for a massive complex of high-rise office buildings and pedestrian spaces upon which the revitalization of southern Manhattan and, to a certain extent, the future of New York itself will depend. …

1 citations


Cited by
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01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The authors argue that socio-economic disadvantage and political factors, such as the West's foreign policy with regard to the Muslim world, along with historical grievances, play a part in the development of Islamic radicalized collective action in Western Europe.
Abstract: textThis paper argues that both socio-economic disadvantage and political factors, such as the West’s foreign policy with regard to the Muslim world, along with historical grievances, play a part in the development of Islamic radicalized collective action in Western Europe. We emphasise the role of group identity based individual behaviour in organising collective action within radicalized Muslim groups. Inasmuch as culture plays any role at all in radicalization, it is because individuals feel an imperative to act on the basis of their Muslim identity, something to which different individuals will attach varying degrees of salience, depending on how they place their Muslim identity based actions in the scheme of their multiple identities. We also emphasize the role of the opportunistic politician, from the majority European community, in fomenting hatred for Muslims, which also produces a backlash from radicalized political Islam. We present comparative evidence on socio-economic, political and cultural disadvantage faced by Muslim minorities in five West European countries: Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

40 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: This paper conducted a large-scale quantitative and qualitative analysis of Italian Muslims' views on religiously framed violence and determined the presence of an "Islamist outlook" through data from hundreds of questionnaires and interviews/focus groups.
Abstract: This doctoral dissertation weighs in on Olivier Roy’s and Stuart Croft’s diverging positions on Islamist radicalisation. To Roy and those aligned with his arguments, the phenomenon in question is a worrisome matter and should be treated accordingly. Conversely, as per Stuart Croft and those in line with his theories, fear over Islamist radicalisation is socially and culturally constructed to securitise Muslims and advance specific agendas. Applied to the Italian scenario, which position is ultimately right? Is Islamist radicalisation in Italy a myth, or is it Rome’s worst nightmare? In a keen effort to contribute to the existing discussion, we completed one of the largest quantitative and qualitative analyses in the field exploring Italian Muslims’ views on religiously framed violence. Providing our definition of “Islamist radicalisation”, we determined the presence of an “Islamist outlook” through data from hundreds of questionnaires and interviews/focus groups. Though it is no nightmare, our findings show Italy cannot deem itself immune to prospects of Islamist radicalisation either, for Roy’s argument fits the Italian scenario best. As such, we tested a large number of models linking support for violence with various predictor parameters stemming from the most accredited theories on the drivers of radicalisation. No statistically significant support was found for theories proposing discrimination, economic disparity, outrage at Western foreign policy, oppression of Muslim, or any standard sociological variable, including gender and being a convert to Islam, as predictors. Similarly, neither “traumatic experiences” nor rational choice theory was supported by the data. By contrast, the most significant predictor variables relating to support for violence were taking offense against offenders of Islam and the endorsement of an Islamic, theocratic form of government (ideology). Social difficulties were fairly significant. Geography, “networks”, frustration, and uncertainty as for the wish to belong to Italian culture (identity crisis) were marginally significant.

20 citations

01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that increasing use of the Internet by terrorists makes it more difficult to determine whether or not individuals are truly lone wolves, and they apply this hypothesis to the complicated French case study of Mohamed Merah, whose lone wolf status is still disputed even a year after his attacks.
Abstract: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research would not have been possible without the support of many people. First, I'd like to thank Professor William Rose for his avid encouragement throughout the many evolutions of this project over the past three years. Also thanks to the individuals in France and Belgium whose gracious interviews proved invaluable to this research. Thanks to all the CISLA staff for guidance and direction, and to Ms. Barbara Delaney for facilitating my return research trip to France. Thank you to my parents, without whom my education at Connecticut College would not have been possible. Thank you Reed, for constant support and reassurance. And thank you to my friends for the countless nights in the Charles Chu Room that we thought would never end. Introduction This paper treats the question of the Internet and its influence on conventional theories of lone wolf terrorism. I argue that increasing use of the Internet by terrorists makes it more difficult to determine whether or not individuals are truly lone wolves. I apply this hypothesis to the complicated French case study of Mohamed Merah, whose lone wolf status is still disputed even a year after his attacks. This paper finds that the influence of the Internet has contaminated the traditional idea of a pure lone wolf, and thus multiple concepts must be defined to address the spectrum of behavior of lone individuals. I forward the terms " lone wolf " and " lone actor " to achieve this aim. These terms are then applied to the French case of Mohamed Merah, a complex case rife with misinformation and contradictory testimonies. This research is especially pertinent in the wake of the Boston marathon bombings, suspected at this writing to have been perpetrated by the Tsarnaev brothers who self-radicalized and may have acted alone. Fittingly, I conclude this paper with a brief discussion of this case and overarching theoretical and policy implications for both France and the United States. This research evolved since my sophomore year, when my original CISLA research proposal suggested study of the French counterterrorism policies against homegrown terrorism. Courses taken at Connecticut College – including GOV 494B Countering Terrorism and Insurgency, REL 304 Fundamentalisms, FRH 422 Black Blanc Beur and an independent study (FRH 491) in the French department – as well as courses taken while abroad at Sciences Po Paris – including War and Peace in the Global Village and Transnational …

8 citations

01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: For my grandparents. You are my inspiration. And for April. Thank you for being my partner in crime as mentioned in this paper. And for all the work that has been done to date in this area.
Abstract: For my grandparents. You are my inspiration. And for April. Thank you for being my partner in crime.

6 citations