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Why Jihadism Is in Retreat
(Wall Street Journal) Yaroslav Trofimov - The occasional terrorist acts flaring up around the world, often by self-radicalized Islamic State sympathizers, overshadow the broader trajectory of political Islam in the Middle East and beyond. "Jihadism and radicalism are in demise. And that's because they have never had a successful model to present to society, not once in the past 100 years," said Hemin Hawrami, former deputy parliament speaker of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. The ideology of modern political Islam emerged with the Muslim Brotherhood's founding in 1928. It sought a utopian new world, aspiring to overthrow the global order or, at a minimum, the contemporary Muslim nation-states. The dream of a pan-Islamic caliphate fueled transnational jihadist networks. Now, this wave is receding. The Islamists that have managed to gain power proclaim their desire to go local, instead of worldwide holy war. To them, the nation-state is something to be developed, not erased. "There is a retreat from the transnational utopian element, both on the violent level and on the political level, the level of the caliphate," said Turkish scholar of Islamist politics Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Part of this transformation is the direct result of American-led wars overseas: Many Islamist leaders realized that transnational ambitions carry an unacceptable cost.