“The Lapsed Abode of Unbelief”. The Takfīr Pendulum in Ǧihādī-Salafī Thought, Between the Caliphate and its West African Province

This paper reconstructs, in a parallel way, the continuous oscillations occurred in the
interpretation of the notion of takfīr (excommunication), respectively in Abū Bakr
al-Baġdādī’s Islamic State and in its West African province (the latter being in turn
an offshoot of the Nigerian group known as “Boko Haram”). The paper combines an
analysis of theological discourses as emerging from primary sources, with a sociological
reading of the processes of jihadist mobilization. It argues that the continuous
oscillations between more and less stringent interpretations of the same theological
doctrine, similarly observable in the center and the periphery of the Caliphate, are
the result of multiple discursive and strategic imperatives pulling the Ǧihādī-Salafī
leadership towards contrasting directions. The “lapsed abode of unbelief” – a notion
originally devised by a section of the Caliphate’s scholarly leadership in order to
halt the oscillation of the takfīr pendulum – was unable to create an ideological consensus
in the global Ǧihādī-Salafī community, showing the degree to which the latter
has come to be enmeshed in a complex entanglement between its discursive and
strategic needs.