Jihadist Ideological Conflict and Local Governance in Mali

In West Africa’s Sahel region, franchises of global jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda proliferate. So far, the dynamics of jihadist groups in the Sahel have predominantly been studied through analyses of the material and strategic dimensions of the struggle. Curiously, little attention has paid to how religiously-informed worldviews inform their expansion. Drawing on the concept of “epistemic worldviews”, this article explores how local leaders of al-Qaeda and Islamic State franchises frame their fight. It argues that transnational jihadist ideology matters; both for how different jihadist groups compete to mobilize new followers as well as for how they implement new models of jihadist governance. Contributing to ongoing debates about the transnationalization of jihad, the article shows that in the intra-jihadist contestation between the groups in Mali, global jihadist concepts are negotiated, contested, and constituted by the groups as they go along. Thereby global jihadist ideology comes to provide both a cause and an effect of contestations and conflicts between the expanding jihadist groups in the Sahel.