The Islamist mafias: a new perspective for the study of the crime terror nexus

The aim of this thesis is to introduce a new paradigm for the study of the crime terror nexus: the one of the “Islamist Mafias”. The “Islamist Mafias” are criminal organizations, which use violence and religion in order to achieve the enrichment of their members in terms of power and money. In the d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pollichieni, Luciano
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
English
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/64693/
Description
Summary:The aim of this thesis is to introduce a new paradigm for the study of the crime terror nexus: the one of the “Islamist Mafias”. The “Islamist Mafias” are criminal organizations, which use violence and religion in order to achieve the enrichment of their members in terms of power and money. In the development of this work, two case studies will be examined to introduce and illustrate this paradigm: the Sahelian Jihadi Groups and the Haqqani Network. This thesis will examine three specific research questions: a) is it possible for terrorist groups to evolve into organized criminal groups? b) If so, how do their main objectives change? c) In what ways does an Islamist Mafia exist? This research will fill two gaps in the current literature on the crime terror nexus. First, it will offer a new paradigm to overcome the profit vs ideology dichotomy that is still characterizing the studies on the subject. Second, focusing on the convergence phenomena on the crime terror continuum, it will offer a better explication about the evolutionary processes of terrorist groups along this.