Darryl Li | University of Chicago (original) (raw)

Book by Darryl Li

Introduction available at https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=24702&i=Introduction.html No conte... more Introduction available at https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=24702&i=Introduction.html

No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-called jihadists seem opposed to universalism itself. In a radical departure from conventional wisdom on the topic, The Universal Enemy argues that transnational jihadists are engaged in their own form of universalism: these fighters struggle to realize an Islamist vision directed at all of humanity, transcending racial and cultural difference.

Anthropologist and attorney Darryl Li reconceptualizes jihad as armed transnational solidarity under conditions of American empire, revisiting a pivotal moment after the Cold War when ethnic cleansing in the Balkans dominated global headlines. Muslim volunteers came from distant lands to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside their co-religionists, offering themselves as an alternative to the US-led international community. Li highlights the parallels and overlaps between transnational jihads and other universalisms such as the War on Terror, United Nations peacekeeping, and socialist Non-Alignment. Developed from more than a decade of research with former fighters in a half-dozen countries, The Universal Enemy explores the relationship between jihad and American empire to shed critical light on both.

Articles in Academic Journals and Law Reviews by Darryl Li

London Review of International Law, 2024

Brief reflections from a forum on international law and Gaza: "a curious paradox has emerged. On ... more Brief reflections from a forum on international law and Gaza: "a curious paradox has emerged. On the one hand, there has been a revitalisation of international legal institutions, especially the ICJ and ICC, and the unprecedented global attention their proceedings have drawn. Yet at the same time, public criticism of Israel in the US is less defined—and delimited—by the language of international law than before, as greater attention shifts to the problems of Zionism itself. Does this make international law more relevant for Palestine or less? Perhaps the answer
is both."

American Anthropologist, 2024

Reflections on anthropology and the War on Terror

American Anthropologist, 2023

This article delineates a particular orientation to combining professional legal training and ant... more This article delineates a particular orientation to combining professional legal training and anthropological scholarship that I call ethnographic lawyering. Ethnographic lawyering takes legal form as an object of anthropological analysis, loosely inspired by the Marxist jurist Evgeny Pashukanis's theorization of law as a social relation. If ethnographic method in anthropology entails theorizing from the concepts and experiences of interlocutors, then ethnographic lawyering analytically centers the subjectivities, logics, and relationalities that legal form both presupposes and animates. Ethnographic lawyering brings to light the contingent lives of legal form. To demonstrate this method, the article uses the example of conspiracy in early US court cases involving Al Qaeda, informed by the author’s experiences as an attorney and anthropologist in litigation arising from the war on terror. An ethnographic lawyering approach illuminates how conspiracy’s distinct forms in criminal law, the law of evidence, and tort law each bring far-flung subjects, events, and actions together into reified entities even as they atomize and recombine social relations. This dynamic tension resembles the vertiginous nature of conspiracy theorizing in general.

AJIL Unbound, 2023

In 1922, the League of Nations inscribed the goal of establishing a settler colony in Palestine f... more In 1922, the League of Nations inscribed the goal of establishing a settler colony in Palestine for the Jewish people-in denial of the national self-determination of the Indigenous Arab population-in public international law. The Palestine Mandate juridically erased the national status of the Palestinian people by: (1) framing the Arabs as incapable of self-rule; (2) heightening the significance of establishing a Jewish national home; and (3) distinguishing Palestine from the other Class A mandates for possessing religious significance that exceeded the interests of any single national group. A century later, the still-unresolved "question" of Palestine remains central to struggles for anti-racism and anti-colonialism in international law. This essay revisits two flashpoints in the tangled history of Palestine and international law, where questions of race and racism have been central: first, ongoing debates over the regime and crime of apartheid; and second, the now-repudiated UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, recognizing Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. Both stories demonstrate the importance of understanding race and colonialism as conjoined concepts, neither of which can be properly understood in isolation from the other.

Transforming Anthropology, 2022

This article reckons with the figure of Blackness in the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, fr... more This article reckons with the figure of Blackness in the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, from captives who are racialized as both Muslim and Black to the invocations of racism and slavery in discourses incited by the prison. Broad continuities between the War on Terror and various forms of anti-Black state violence have long been observed by critical commentators, but this article aims to theorize these relationships with greater precision through the analytic of captivity. As a modality of racialization, captivity entails mobility across contexts as well as encounters of captivation through public narrative. This approach offers a distinctive vantage point on how the War on Terror's racialization of Muslims cross-cuts diverse geographies of Blackness, including in Muslim-majority societies. This essay follows the memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Mauritania) and Walid Muhammad al-Hajj (Sudan) and is informed by the author's experiences as an attorney and activist working to close the prison.

Anthropologie et Sociétés, 2021

Résumé Le djihad contemporain est souvent perçu soit comme la négation pure du concept de « souve... more Résumé
Le djihad contemporain est souvent perçu soit comme la négation pure du concept de « souveraineté de l’État », soit comme la recherche d’une version islamique de la souveraineté de l’État par la mise en oeuvre de la charia. Au contraire, cet article montre comment les djihads transnationaux en particulier mettent l’accent sur une logique de solidarité entre les communautés islamiques sans nécessairement rejeter en bloc l’autorité de l’État-nation. Il met au jour cette logique de solidarité sur le plan théorique au moyen d’une analyse de la théologie politique du théoricien du djihad palestinien ‘Abd Allah ‘Azzam, tant dans ses écrits juridiques que dans ceux portant sur les miracles dans le djihad en Afghanistan. C’est la solidarité, plutôt que la souveraineté, qui éclaire les difficultés et les dilemmes quotidiens des participants au djihad, comme le démontrent les débats entre les combattants du djihad arabes lors de la guerre de 1992-1995 en Bosnie-Herzégovine au sujet des règles islamiques régissant les mariages avec des femmes bosniaques.

Abstract
Contemporary jihad is often seen either as pure negation of the concept of state sovereignty, or it is understood as merely seeking an Islamic version of state sovereignty through implementation of shari’a. In contrast, this article shows how transnational jihads in particular emphasize a logic of solidarity between Muslim communities without necessarily rejecting nation-state authority altogether. It unearths this logic of solidarity at the theoretical level through an analysis of the political theology of the Palestinian jihad theoretician ‘Abd Allah ‘Azzam in both his juristic writings and his work on miracles in the jihad in Afghanistan. Solidarity rather than sovereignty illuminates everyday challenges and dilemmas of jihad participants as well, as demonstrated by debates among Arab jihad fighters in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina over Islamic law rules governing marriages to Bosnian women.

American Ethnologist, 2021

For decades Arab Muslims have engaged in pan-Islamic solidarity aid work in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I... more For decades Arab Muslims have engaged in pan-Islamic solidarity aid work in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In delivering aid from the Middle East to a European country, they disrupt the racial and civilizational hierarchies that structure most international relief work. Their experiences demonstrate the utility of a more capacious anthropological understanding of universalism. Rather than dismiss universalism as mere ideology or as a set of homogenizing processes, I highlight how universalist projects put into practice complex idioms that are notionally directed at all of humanity. Ethnographic attention to these relief workers’ material conditions reveals that they lack many of the privileges of the white, Western, and highly mobile protagonists of most ethnographies of aid. Moreover, it illuminates how spiritual practices coalesce with considerations of transnational mobility, class, and political action—considerations that are often neglected in anthropological work on Islamic piety. [universalism, solidarity, humanitarianism, charity, aid, Islam, pan-Islamism, Bosnia-Herzegovina]

كانت البوسنة والهرسك مستقرا لأعمال التضامن الإسلامية طوال عقود، وباعتبارها دولة أوروبية فقد أربك ذلك التراتبية العرقية والحضارية التي تأسست عليها أغلب أعمال الإغاثة الدولية. وقد أبانت تجربة كهذه عن جدوى المقاربة الأنثروبولوجية الأرحب لفكرة الكونية. لذا سأظهر كيف تُطبّق المشاريع العالمية المفاهيم النظرية المتوجهة للبشرية جمعاء على أرض الواقع بدلا من نبذ الكونية على اعتبار أنها مجرد أيديولوجية أو مجموعة من عمليات خلق التجانس. كما أن الملاحظة الإثنوغرافية للظروف المادية لعمال الإغاثة المسلمين تُظهر افتقادهم للكثير من امتيازات الناشطين البيض الغربيين المبرزين في معظم إثنوغرافيات الإغاثة. كما تتجلى الصلة الوثيقة بين الممارسات الروحية وبين اعتبارات الحراك العابر للحدود والطبقات والعمل السياسي، وهو ما تغفله عادة الكتابات الأنثروبولوجية حول التقوى الإسلامية. [الكونية، التضامن، الإنسانوية، العمل الخيري، الإغاثة، الإسلام، التضامن الإسلامي، البوسنة والهرسك]

UCLA Law Review, 2021

Taking note of the relatively limited accounts of race in contemporary international legal doctri... more Taking note of the relatively limited accounts of race in contemporary international legal doctrine, this Article posits a thought experiment: What would international legal theorizing look like not from the place of the metropole or the colony, but rather from the journey of the enslaved, from the barracoon to the hold of the slave ship to the plantation? For one possible answer, this Article turns to the work of the Jamaican thinker Sylvia Wynter to consider race in relation to international law in order to argue for the utility of replacing a formalist and state-based notion of universalism with a more open-ended and contestation oriented approach. Such a move would reframe international law’s “origin myth” about 1492 from a dyadic account of Western colonizers versus the colonized to a triangular encounter between Europeans, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved Africans. It would also pivot away from understandings of race as a generic form of invidious social differentiation to be managed solely by states as an internal matter to instead theorize legal regimes of racialization in connection with political economy as both distinct and conjoined.

Cultural Anthropology, May 2020

Dominant imaginaries of espionage presume that all states surveil their populations but that only... more Dominant imaginaries of espionage presume that all states surveil their populations but that only the powerful ones can play the “great game” of spying outside their borders. How, then, does a poor postcolonial state spy abroad? Drawing on an ethnography of Arab migrants and jihad fighters in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this essay suggests one answer: powerful states have their spies pose as diplomats, while weak ones exploit their diasporas. This realization takes one step toward demystifying and de-exceptionalizing state intelligence apparatuses and understanding them as socially embedded institutions.

Law & Social Inquiry, 2016

This article argues that jihads waged in recent decades by “foreign fighter” volunteers invoking ... more This article argues that jihads waged in recent decades by “foreign fighter” volunteers invoking a sense of global Islamic solidarity can be usefully understood as attempts to enact an alternative to the interventions of the “International Community.” Drawing from ethnographic and archival research on Arab volunteers who joined the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article highlights the challenges and dilemmas facing such jihad fighters as they maneuvered at the edges of diverse legal orders, including international and Islamic law. Jihad fighters appealed to a divine authority above the global nation-state order while at the same time rooting themselves in that order through affiliation with the sovereign and avowedly secular nation-state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This article demonstrates an innovative approach to law, violence, and Islam that critically situates states and nonstate actors in relation to one another in transnational perspective. [Honorable Mention, 2017 Law & Society Association Article Prize]

UCLA Law Review, Jan 2015

Long-running debates over military privatization overlook one important fact: The U.S. military’s... more Long-running debates over military privatization overlook one important fact: The U.S. military’s post-2001 contractor workforce is composed largely of migrants imported from impoverished countries. This Article argues that these Third Country National (TCN) workers—so called because they are neither American nor local—are bereft of the effective protections of American law, local regimes, or their home governments; moreover, their vulnerability is a feature, not a flaw, in how the U.S. projects global power today. TCN workers are an offshore captive labor force whose use allows the government to keep politically sensitive troop numbers and casualty figures artificially low while reducing dependence on local populations with suspect loyalties. Legislation to combat human trafficking has done little to remedy exploitation and abuse of TCN workers because of jurisdictional hurdles and the lack of robust labor rights protections. Substantive reform efforts should address the deeper issue at stake, namely that the government uses TCN workers to carry out a core state function—namely, the use of force—without a clear relationship of responsibility to them. Unlike with soldiers, the labor of TCN workers is not valorized as sacrifice and unlike mercenaries selling their services to the highest bidder, they are frequently indebted to the point of indenture.

Arab Studies Journal, 2012

This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghani... more This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghanistan in recent decades – reconciled their pan-Islamist commitments with the experience of doctrinal and cultural difference vis-à-vis Afghans. Previous approaches to transnational Islamist activism have tended to either uncritically assume a monolithic Muslim identity or posit a rigid dichotomy between fanatic “foreign fighters” and the relatively moderate “local Muslims” who they putatively seek to indoctrinate. Eschewing both types of reification, this article argues that pan-Islamist projects should not be understood as attempts to erase intra-Muslim differences, but rather as endeavors to process them. Afghan Arabs struggled to understand, evaluate, and respond to doctrinal and cultural differences in ways that often defied the conventional juxtaposition of radical Salafi Arabs versus moderate Sufi/Hanafi Afghans. Diverse longstanding discursive traditions in Islam – including discussions over miraculous events [karāmāt] and visitation of saints’ tombs [al-ziyāra] – provided common terms of reference that Arab activists and their Afghan counterparts could invoke to ensure that even contentious disputes could contribute to a shared project.

Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 2010

This Article argues that the ongoing U.S.-driven “Global War on Terror” stands apart from similar... more This Article argues that the ongoing U.S.-driven “Global War on Terror” stands apart from similar state campaigns in its special focus on confronting “foreign fighters” — armed, transnational, nonstate Islamists operating outside their home countries — in places where the United States is no less foreign. This global hunt for foreign fighters animates diverse attempts to exclude similarly “out-of-place” Muslim migrants and travelers from legal protection by reshaping laws and policies on interrogation, detention, immigration, and citizenship. Yet at the same time, certain other outsiders — namely the United States and its allies — enjoy various forms of exemption from local legal accountability. By juxtaposing the problems of extraordinary rendition and military contractor impunity in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina and post-invasion Iraq, this Article illustrates this braided logic of exclusion and exemption. Predating and likely to outlast other legacies of the Bush administration, this logical framework undermines the rule of law and other state-building efforts while occluding crucial normative questions surrounding the legitimacy of the exercise of U.S. global power. This Article examines legal structures in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq and their underlying premises to reframe post-Cold War debates about nation-building and post-9/11 arguments about the laws of war.

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2006

Chronically described as poor, overcrowded, and dangerous, the Gaza Strip exempliﬁes the longstan... more Chronically described as poor, overcrowded, and dangerous, the Gaza Strip exempliﬁes the longstanding Zionist “dilemma” of how to deal with dense concentrations of Palestinians who must not be granted equality but who cannot be removed or exterminated en masse. This article analyzes key Israeli policies toward the Gaza Strip—speciﬁcally, the use of closure, buffer zones, and air power—in the context of the Zionist movement’s broader geographic and demographic goals. It argues that the Gaza Strip can be usefully seen as a “laboratory” in which Israel ﬁne-tunes a dubious balance of maximum control and minimum responsibility, reﬁning techniques that are also suggestive of possible futures for the West Bank.

Journal of Genocide Research, Mar 2004

This enquiry, based in part on three months of fieldwork conducted in Rwanda in the summer of 200... more This enquiry, based in part on three months of fieldwork conducted in Rwanda in the summer of 2000, seeks to integrate the perspectives and experiences of radio listeners with broader considerations about the study of the Rwandan genocide and mass atrocity more generally. Specifically, I will argue that the question of RTLM’s role in the genocide can be elucidated through three aspects: ideologically, it played on existing dominant discourses in Rwandan public life for the purposes of encouraging listeners to participate in the killings; performatively, the station’s animateurs skilfully exploited the possibilities of the medium to create a dynamic relationship with and among listeners; and finally, RTLM helped the Rwandan state appropriate one of the most innocuous aspects of everyday life in the service of the genocide. Taken together, these three aspects make radio a useful prism through which one can approach the question of mass participation in a genocide that was diffuse, routinized, and intimate in nature.

Chapters in Edited Volumes by Darryl Li

Conspiracy/Theory, 2024

The national security state crafts an enormous volume of materials “connecting the dots” between ... more The national security state crafts an enormous volume of materials “connecting the dots” between seemingly unrelated events and people to identify and anatomize sources of threat. This essay traces the production and circulation of these forms of bureaucratic and judicial artifice, or national security fictions, which are the everyday currency of state-led conspiracy theorizing. The chapter takes up the example of documents seized by US soldiers in a raid on an Islamic charity, and it shows how, through the questionable use of these documents in a federal court case, they came to be widely cited as minutes of the founding meetings of al-Qa‘ida. The trajectory of these documents reveals how rules of evidence governing the use of hearsay can operate as a form of judicially supervised conspiracy theorization. This chapter sketches the citational afterlives of these documents, from a sprawling multibillion dollar lawsuit against Saudi Arabia to canonical histories of the rise of al-Qa‘ida.

Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence, and Media, 2023

This paper is an attempt to explain concisely and clearly why the concept of jihadism is not only... more This paper is an attempt to explain concisely and clearly why the concept of jihadism is not only analytically unhelpful, but politically invidious. Believers call many things jihad -- from personal struggles for self-improvement to armed violence -- and debate over the proper uses of the word. The concept of jihadism, however, attempts to designate only a subset of these many diverse activities. Not only does this exercise often involve dubious criteria dichotomies -- violence vs. non-violence, state vs. non-state activity -- it inevitably gives rise to an implicit residual category, namely invocations of jihad that are somehow not "jihadist." Moreover, the very act of delineating which invocations of jihad count as jihadism and which do not is an intervention into a debate among believers using criteria from outside the tradition. In this sense, it is also an exercise of secular power, and one that places believers in a trap of toxic authenticity whereby believers are subjected to unending and insatiable demands to condemn violence by other Muslims in order to prove their loyalty to dominant regimes.

In Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East, ed. Omnia El Shakry, University of Wisconsin Press., 2020

This article provides very basic background and methodological pointers for teaching on the Globa... more This article provides very basic background and methodological pointers for teaching on the Global War on Terror, al-Qa'ida, and contemporary transnational jihad practices. It appeared in an edited volume intended to help high school and college teachers prepare curricular and pedagogical materials pertaining to the modern Middle East.

In Ethnographies of U.S. Empire, ed. Carole McGranahan & John Collins, Duke University Press, 2018

Theories of sovereignty emphasizing states of exception, as elaborated by Giorgio Agamben and oth... more Theories of sovereignty emphasizing states of exception, as elaborated by Giorgio Agamben and others, have become a regular fixture in critiques of contemporary U.S. empire. By tracing the circulation of Muslim captives in the War on Terror from infamous sites of detention like Guantánamo Bay to lesser-known prisons around the world, this article argues for a plural notion of sovereignty instead. U.S. empire is not only about unilateralism and overreach, but depends crucially on upholding the sovereignty of client states to legitimize itself and outsource responsibilities to others. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in an immigration detention center outside Sarajevo, Bosnia and informed by experiences litigating Guantánamo habeas corpus petitions.

Introduction available at https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=24702&i=Introduction.html No conte... more Introduction available at https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=24702&i=Introduction.html

London Review of International Law, 2024

American Anthropologist, 2024

Reflections on anthropology and the War on Terror

American Anthropologist, 2023

AJIL Unbound, 2023

Transforming Anthropology, 2022

Anthropologie et Sociétés, 2021

American Ethnologist, 2021

UCLA Law Review, 2021

Cultural Anthropology, May 2020

Law & Social Inquiry, 2016

UCLA Law Review, Jan 2015

Arab Studies Journal, 2012

Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 2010

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2006

Journal of Genocide Research, Mar 2004

Conspiracy/Theory, 2024

Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence, and Media, 2023

In Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East, ed. Omnia El Shakry, University of Wisconsin Press., 2020

In Ethnographies of U.S. Empire, ed. Carole McGranahan & John Collins, Duke University Press, 2018

In Gaza as Metaphor, ed. Helga Tawil-Souri & Dina Matar, Hurst, 2016

[originally published in MERIP, 2008, under the title, "Disengagement and the Frontiers of Zionism]

In Gulf Charities and Islamic Philanthropy in the "Age of Terror" and Beyond, ed. Robert Lacey & Jonathan Benthall, Gerlach Press, 2014

in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, in... more in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any other information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

In Aborted State?: The UN Initiative and New Palestinian Junctures, ed. Noura Erakat & Mouin Rabbani, Tadween Publishing, 2013

In his provocative and lucid piece, 'Occupation Law and the One-State Reality,' Darryl Li illustr... more In his provocative and lucid piece, 'Occupation Law and the One-State Reality,' Darryl Li illustrates how occupation law fails to grasp the legal and geographical realities of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and may actually threaten to legitimize the racially segregated and oppressive regime that it currently masks. ... In this roundtable, five scholars respond to Li's article and Li responds in turn.

[originally published in Jadaliyya, 2011]

In Aborted State?: The UN Initiative and New Palestinian Junctures, ed. Noura Erakat & Mouin Rabbani, Tadween Publishing, 2013

For decades, the international law of occupation – a branch of the laws of war (or “international... more For decades, the international law of occupation – a branch of the laws of war (or “international humanitarian law”) – has played a major role in structuring debates around Israel/Palestine. As applied to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the law of occupation has provided a useful and globally shared set of criteria for analyzing Israel’s discriminatory and repressive policies, as well as certain Palestinian actions.

There is perhaps no legal document cited more frequently in debates on Israel/Palestine than the Fourth Geneva Convention, held up by many as a sacred pact of civilization enshrining basic standards of humanity in wartime. But as the impossibility of partition (the so-called “two-state solution”) as a viable way to end the conflict becomes ever-clearer, it is long past the time to grapple with how the law of occupation can also hamper collective thinking and action.

For over forty years, ten million people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea have lived under a single segregated political regime – the State of Israel. Occupation law is not merely an inadequate tool for analyzing this regime; it can also help legitimize the very spatial arrangements upon which it depends.

[originally published in Jadaliyya, 2011]

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2015

Below, in order of appearance, are Darryl Li’s translator’s preface, “A Note on Settler Colonialism,” illuminating and explicating the original study; Nina Seferović’s article, “The Herzegovinian Muslim Colony in Caesarea, Palestine,” and an appendix titled, “Balkan Migration to the Middle East.” A substantial section of endnotes follows, divided into three corresponding parts.

UChicago CMES Ventures Podcast, 2021

In this episode, Darryl Li discusses his new book, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the C... more In this episode, Darryl Li discusses his new book, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" with Michael Sells. They discuss the war in Bosnia, the involvement of foreign fighters in the conflict, and how this moment in modern history contributes to a fuller understanding of jihad. This episode was produced by Nora Kane. Audio here: https://voices.uchicago.edu/ventures/2021/02/15/jihad-in-bosnia/

Intercepted Podcast, 2020

IN THIS SPECIAL bonus episode of Intercepted, we take an in-depth look at one of the most consequ... more IN THIS SPECIAL bonus episode of Intercepted, we take an in-depth look at one of the most consequential eras of modern history: the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 as the Soviet Union crumbled. The Russian occupation of Afghanistan came to an end, thanks in no small part to the covert and overt involvement of the United States. Bill Clinton brought an end to 12 years of Republican rule, defeating former CIA director George H.W. Bush for the office of president. And with Clinton’s two terms in office came a new spin on U.S. militarism across the world: the notion of liberal so-called humanitarian intervention. The propaganda pitch was that the United States would use its military force as a sort of global police officer whose violent actions were wrapped in the justification that U.S. missiles, bombs, and troop deployments were serving a greater good. Nowhere was this more boldly asserted than in the wars in Yugoslavia, which stretched from the early 1990s all the way through 2008, when the U.S. officially recognized the independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo. The years that ushered in the declaration of the end of the Cold War would have a significant impact on global relations and war-making to this day.

University of Chicago scholar Darryl Li has written a meticulously documented book that seeks to understand the trends that emerged from this era, with a focus on putting into context the movement of foreign fighters from country to country. The book is called “The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity.” Li highlights the parallels between transnational jihadists, U.N. peacekeeping missions, and socialist nonalignment and examines the relationship between jihad and U.S. empire.

LeftEast, 2020

The Universal Enemy (Stanford University Press) has been the focus of a great deal of attention a... more The Universal Enemy (Stanford University Press) has been the focus of a great deal of attention and debate. This historical ethnography of jihad fighters in 1990s Bosnia touches on some of the central questions of our era, using the plural concept of "universalisms" to bring many of the historical forces in this conflict into conversation with one another. Drawing on the author's legal background and work as well as his anthropological training, the dense narrative connects Bosnia to the far-flung homes of the mujahideen, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, and to the carceral archipelago constructed by the US in its war on terror. Delving into the little-explored, everyday universalisms of Third World students and UN peacekeepers as well as jihad participants, Li demonstrates a wealth of empathy which can be as unsettling for radical readers as it is for liberals. Matan Kaminer of LeftEast and Dr. Li held the following exchange about the book and its lessons last month.

Allegra Lab, 2020

Since its publication in 2019, Darryl Li’s The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge ... more Since its publication in 2019, Darryl Li’s The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (Stanford University Press) has been the focus of a great deal of attention and debate. This historical ethnography of jihad fighters in 1990s Bosnia touches on some of the central questions of our era, using the plural concept of “universalisms” to bring many of the historical forces in this conflict into conversation with one another. Drawing on the author’s legal background and work as well as his anthropological training, the dense narrative connects Bosnia to the far-flung homes of the mujahideen, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, and to the carceral archipelago constructed by the US in its war on terror. Delving into the little-explored, everyday universalisms of Third World students and UN peacekeepers as well as jihad participants, Li demonstrates a wealth of empathy which can be as unsettling for radical readers as it is for liberals. Matan Kaminer of LeftEast and Dr. Li held the following exchange about the book and its lessons last month. The following is an abridged version of the conversation; the full piece has been published on LeftEast.

The Revealer, 2020

What is religious violence? What is jihad? Is jihad a useful way of understanding either religion... more What is religious violence? What is jihad? Is jihad a useful way of understanding either religion or violence?

As both an anthropologist and a lawyer, Darryl Li is able to offer rare insights into — and critiques of — these questions by focusing on the lives of real people. Published after more than a decade of research in a half-dozen countries and multiple languages, Li’s new book, The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (Stanford University Press, 2020), is an account of two competing forms of universalism — Islamist jihad and American empire — in the Balkans during the years following the Cold War. Asking questions about religion, violence, and politics, The Universal Enemy is a model of the best kind of anthropology of religion — work that is ethically and theoretically rigorous, innovative, and uncompromising. Li’s study is not just a sensitive and sharp portrayal of his subjects, it is an urgently useful example of how future anthropological work ought to be undertaken. I was honored that he was able to take time over the last few months to discuss the book with me and that I can share our conversation with you here.

The Immanent Frame, 2020

In this forum, leading scholars of global history, law, religion, anthropology, and politics disc... more In this forum, leading scholars of global history, law, religion, anthropology, and politics discuss Darryl Li’s recent book The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (Stanford University Press, 2019).

As author Darryl Li writes in his introductory essay for this forum: “In recent decades, no figure has incited as much discourse and elicited as little insight as the so-called ‘jihadi’—especially those traveling across borders to fight in the name of a global Muslim community. The Universal Enemy is, most concretely, an exploration of one such transnational jihad: the peregrination of several thousand Arabs and other Muslims who fought alongside their co-religionists in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It tells a story of how these combatants navigated national, racial, and doctrinal differences in service of a pan-Islamic vision, drawing on over a decade of ethnographic interviews and archival research in a half-dozen countries in Arabic, Bosnian, and several other languages.

Despite the ample commentary on ‘jihadism,’ The Universal Enemy aspires to model a different sensibility and set different standards in approaching the topic. Specifically, this is a book that seeks to break free from the gravitational pull of the national security mindset, studying adversaries of the state but with no desire to advise it. And, perhaps more directly relevant for many readers of The Immanent Frame, the book also eschews the defensiveness and apologia that characterize even much of the critical writing on Muslims and the War on Terror. It does this by refusing to reduce the category of jihad to mere violence and instead uses this particular jihad to think about universalism.”

Including contributions from Gil Anidjar, Cemil Aydın, Faisal Devji, Azeezah Kanji, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Mezna Qato, and Jothie Rajah. Edited by Mona Oraby and Iza Hussin.

Ottoman History Podcast, 2020

Listen at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/04/darryl-li.html In this episode, anthropol... more Listen at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/04/darryl-li.html

In this episode, anthropologist and lawyer Darryl Li discusses his new book The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity. Based on ethnographic and archival research, the work explores the Bosnian jihad, in which several thousand Muslim volunteers ventured to the area to fight in response to the mass atrocities against Muslims in the midst of the Bosnian War of 1992 to 1995. Through this lens, Li critically engages with many of the omnipresent yet unexamined concepts associated with Muslim mobility and jihad. Or, as he pithily put it, he aimed "to write a book about jihad that didn't suck." With this goal in mind, he offers a perspective on the Bosnian jihad on its own terms. Highlighting the jihad as a universalist project, he moreover reveals unexpected intersections, including everything from South-South legacies of the Non-Aligned Movement to Habsburg Neo-Moorish design confused for Ottoman architecture to Sufi-Salafi alliances. He also grapples with the long shadows cast on Muslim mobility by the US-created global network of prisons in the context of the Global War on Terror.

Third World Approaches to International Law Review, 2020

Darryl Li discusses his book, The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity... more Darryl Li discusses his book, The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (Stanford University Press, 2020) with John Reynolds of the TWAIL Review editorial collective. Also available at: https://twailr.com/jihad-universalism-and-international-law/

Jadaliyya New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) Series, Nov 14, 2019

Interview with Jadaliyya about "The Universal Enemy"; includes an excerpt from the introduction

TWAIL Review, 2020

Darryl Li discusses his book, 'The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarit... more Darryl Li discusses his book, 'The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity' (Stanford University Press, 2020) with John Reynolds of the TWAIL Review editorial collective.

Cultural Anthropology website, Jan 31, 2017

On Friday, January 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that temporarily bars the... more On Friday, January 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that temporarily bars the entry of refugees into the United States and bans citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen under any visa category. The order, which appears to have undergone minimal review before being placed into effect, was taken to apply to travelers who were already in the air when the order was signed. By Saturday, crowds of protesters were gathering at airports across the country and, on Saturday night, a federal judge called for a national stay on the order. It was initially unclear whether the Department of Homeland Security intended to comply with the stay, threatening to precipitate a constitutional crisis during the second week of the Trump administration.

Law & Political Economy Project, Mar 13, 2023

The D.C. Circuit appeals court heard arguments in January in a bizarre case: the Jewish National ... more The D.C. Circuit appeals court heard arguments in January in a bizarre case: the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is leading a lawsuit against the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a nation-wide coalition of groups advocating for Palestinian liberation, on accusations of supporting terrorism. The stakes for social movements are high: while governmental abuses in the name of fighting terrorism have long attracted criticism, far less attention has been paid to how private actors can also weaponize anti-terrorism law to harass political opponents.

A look at the political economy of terrorism tort litigation shows how this lawsuit is not merely an instance of terrorism laws potentially trampling human rights; it is also an aggressive assertion of a right to colonize, and to do so in peace and quiet.

Law & Political Economy Project, 2021

Balkan Insight, Nov 12, 2019

American Anthropologist website (Public Anthropologies), Oct 8, 2018

Commentary on Sustainable Development Goal #16 and on the "rule of law" in light of Brett Kavanau... more Commentary on Sustainable Development Goal #16 and on the "rule of law" in light of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Also available at http://www.americananthropologist.org/2018/10/08/the-gruel-of-law/

Border Criminologies blog, Oct 6, 2015

"...Bosnia’s border and immigration regime has been driven by two different external agendas. The... more "...Bosnia’s border and immigration regime has been driven by two different external agendas. The first is the EU’s desire to outsource and export migration control policies to states on its periphery seeking eventual accession. The second, more shadowy, is the US-led ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT), which relies on a complex transnational network of outsourced detention practices. These two agendas merge most starkly in the story of the prison’s first and longest-held detainee, Imad al-Husin, who was arrested and taken to Lukavica on this day seven years ago and remains deprived of liberty without clear legal basis despite winning a case in the European Court of Human Rights in 2012. He has taken to calling the facility ‘Bosnatanamo,’ in part because of the extensive use of secret evidence to justify detentions."

Middle East Report, Dec 2015

"What follows is an anti-primer of sorts on jihadism. Unlike innumerable works, it does not purpo... more "What follows is an anti-primer of sorts on jihadism. Unlike innumerable works, it does not purport to tell readers everything they need to know about the different groups whose exotic names and acronyms animate excited “national security” debates. Instead it is an attempt to help readers think through this issue beyond the fashionable threat of the day, to clarify what is and is not known so far, and to better weigh the issues at stake. ... The challenge is how to understand the distinctiveness of jihadi groups without lapsing into an all-too-often racialized exceptionalism. Letting racist flat-earthers and their more respectable counterparts set the terms of debate with questions like whether jihadis represent Islam or why they are so horrible only obscures this important task. Jihadi groups may have very different ideas of the good and may operate in forms unfamiliar to those who can only think of politics in terms of the state and its categories. But that does not render any less concrete the ideas and interests at stake in their antagonisms, nor does it make thinking clearly about them any less urgent."

Middle East Report, Jul 2015

Over the past 15 years, the United States has waged two major land wars in the greater Middle Eas... more Over the past 15 years, the United States has waged two major land wars in the greater Middle East with hundreds of thousands of ground troops. Shadowing these armies and rivaling them in size has been a labor force of private contractors. The security company once called Blackwater has played an outsize role in the wide-ranging debate about the privatization of war and attendant concerns of corruption, waste and human rights abuses. But this debate has also largely overlooked a crucial fact: While Blackwater was founded and largely staffed by retired US military personnel, the vast majority of the overseas contractor work force is not American.

Al Jazeera Balkans, Dec 20, 2012

El-Masrijev slučaj je samo dio većeg plana da se procesuiraju odgovorni za mučenja izvršena tokom... more El-Masrijev slučaj je samo dio većeg plana da se procesuiraju odgovorni za mučenja izvršena tokom rata protiv terora.

MERIP blog, Dec 13, 2012

By allowing surrogate countries to take the blame, America can conveniently forget about being re... more By allowing surrogate countries to take the blame, America can conveniently forget about being responsible for torture.

Reflections on jihad, migration, and Non-Alignment in ex-Yugoslavia

MERIP blog, Mar 26, 2014

Commentary on kinship and mobility in the trial of alleged al-Qa'ida spokesman Sulayman Abu Ghayth.

Anthropology News, Sep 2013

At Guantánamo, prisoners and migrant workers supporting the U.S. military share a common legal pr... more At Guantánamo, prisoners and migrant workers supporting the U.S. military share a common legal predicament -- they are not quite covered by the jurisdictions of their home countries, the U.S., or the local government (originally published on MERIP blog, June 28, 2013).

Balkan Insight, Feb 9, 2012

An op-ed on the European Court of Human Rights' handling of the the detention and deportation of ... more An op-ed on the European Court of Human Rights' handling of the the detention and deportation of Arab ex-combatants ("mujahidin") from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Middle East Report, Sep 2011

"Regarded from all directions as shadowy figures, the Afghan Arabs -- as well as the broader cate... more "Regarded from all directions as shadowy figures, the Afghan Arabs -- as well as the broader category of Muslim “foreign fighters” in other conflicts, such as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kashmir and Chechnya -- remain a kind of cipher, even ten years after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The armed transnational Islamist activists are alternately demonized as embodying the hydra-like jihadi threat; treated as mere US proxies gone awry; and ignored altogether."

Middle East Report, Sep 2011

This inset box, which accompanies the article "'Afghan Arabs,' Real and Imagined," highlights an ... more This inset box, which accompanies the article "'Afghan Arabs,' Real and Imagined," highlights an instance in which the 9/11 Commission Report plagiarized the research of a terrorism "expert" that was itself unreliable.

Jadliyya, 2011

لعقود ٍ خلت، لعب القانون الدولي للإحتلال – وهو يتفرع من قوانين الحرب (أو ما يسمى بالقانون الدولي ... more لعقود ٍ خلت، لعب القانون الدولي للإحتلال – وهو يتفرع من قوانين الحرب (أو ما يسمى بالقانون الدولي الإنساني) – دورا ً محوريا ً في صياغة الحوار حول إسرائيل/فلسطين. ووفقا ً لما هو معمول به في الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة، فإن قانون الإحتلال يوفر مجموعة من المعايير التي تخدم في تحليل سياسات اسرائيل القمعية والعنصرية، إضافة إلى بعض الممارسات الفلسطينية.

لعل الوثيقة الرسمية الأكثر إقتباسا ً في النقاشات حول إسرائيل/فلسطين هي معاهدة جنيف الرابعة التي يعتبرها الكثيرون إتفاقا ً مقدسا ً يكرس حدا ً أدنى من التعاطي الإنساني خلال الحروب. لكن مع إتضاح إستحالة التقسيم (ما يسمى بحل الدولتين) كسبيل ناجع لوضع حد ٍ للنزاع القائم، أصبح من الضروري فهم كيف يعرقل قانون الإحتلال التفكير والفعل الجماعيين.

SAMAR -- South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection, May 31, 2011

The Global War on Terror’s fixation on al-Qa‘ida as a roving band of "foreign fighters" allows th... more The Global War on Terror’s fixation on al-Qa‘ida as a roving band of "foreign fighters" allows the U.S. to claim that it is not fighting a war on Islam, but rather helping local Muslim populations rid themselves of narrow-minded interlopers seeking to impose a puritanical brand of the religion. This hunt for foreign fighters animates broader attempts to monitor and control Muslim diasporas outside the "west." At the same time, the legal impunity of other foreign fighters – namely, U.S. forces and their contractors – is pushed into the background.

MERIP blog, Apr 24, 2014

Comment on histories of military modernization projects by outsiders in Afghanistan -- Ottoman, S... more Comment on histories of military modernization projects by outsiders in Afghanistan -- Ottoman, Soviet, American.

MERIP blog, Nov 6, 2012

"Islamist militant" Hafiz Mohammed Saeed's surprising offer of humanitarian aid to the US after h... more "Islamist militant" Hafiz Mohammed Saeed's surprising offer of humanitarian aid to the US after hurricane Sandy raises serious questions about the relationship between violence and humanitarianism.

Slavic Review, 2023

The spectacular, if short-lived, rise of the self-declared Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)... more The spectacular, if short-lived, rise of the self-declared Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the previous decade prompted a voluminous body of commentary, much of it devoted to “foreign fighters”—the label placed on the tens of thousands of sojourners from dozens of countries who found themselves under ISIS rule or even fighting within its ranks. As the adjective “foreign” implies, the conversation is structured by a kind of methodological nationalism whereby nation-states are the primary unit of analysis, treated as either sources or destinations of foreign fighters. Although this perspective may obscure the inherently transnational experiences of their subjects, it provides a convenient rubric for organizing knowledge production: there are now case studies on nearly every country from which individuals have traveled and ended up in ISIS.

Anthropological Quarterly, 2020

I•CONnect: blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Aug 10, 2018

American Ethnologist, 2017

the trauma and deprivations of war-the self is violated. As we know well, war does really bad thi... more the trauma and deprivations of war-the self is violated. As we know well, war does really bad things to innocent, good people. The narratives in Dossa's book show us just what that looks like in war-ravaged landscapes and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, in places where one might presume a life of plenty will be had, but isn't (the first world economy of Canada, most obviously), or where traumas and bad memories might abate, but simply don't. What these women need most, it seems, is to be listened to and understood, not simply managed by bureaucrats who attend to a few basic needs. The irony of this is that the bureaucrats in question are servants of the first world powers that have waged war in Afghanistan (and here Canada stands in for the United States) and, hence, are the unacknowledged sources of these women's pain and suffering.

The New Inquiry, Mar 25, 2015

"Thirteen years after the spectacle of men arriving at Guantánamo first transfixed gazes around t... more "Thirteen years after the spectacle of men arriving at Guantánamo first transfixed gazes around the world, a literary voice has finally bypassed the shackles, blindfolds, and muzzles to reach us. A 466-page manuscript handwritten by detainee number 760, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, has finally been declassified after seven years of litigation and was published in January under the title Guantánamo Diary. ...

Ould Slahi’s memoir, however, is far too interesting and important to be left solely to the War on Terror’s liberal—and predominantly white—critics. Let us recognize Guantánamo Diary as something more: an extraordinary artifact of U.S. empire at the dawn of the 21st century, an empire that operates mostly through indirect control abroad while building a racialized carceral state of unprecedented proportions at home. Ould Slahi’s shackled peregrinations along some of that empire’s darker passages allow him to see his experience not as a rupture with U.S. history, but as part and parcel of it. “You’re holding me because your country is strong enough to be unjust,” he tells his captors. “And it’s not the first time you have kidnapped Africans and enslaved them.”"

www.thenewinquiry.com/essays/empire-records/

Expert opinion on foreign fighters in the Bosnian jihad prepared for U.S. v. Babar Ahmad and U.S.... more Expert opinion on foreign fighters in the Bosnian jihad prepared for U.S. v. Babar Ahmad and U.S. v. Syed Talha Ahsan, 04-cr-301, dkt. 163-1 (D.Conn. 2014).

This course will explore the theme of carcerality – through prisons, internment camps, slave plan... more This course will explore the theme of carcerality – through prisons, internment camps, slave plantations, native reservations, and other predicaments of confinement and control – with three interrelated goals in mind. We will use the lens of carcerality to revisit major questions in social theory around capitalism, race, gender, and sovereignty, through a variety of ethnographic,
historical, legal, and literary texts. Particular attention will be paid to analytically connecting and contrasting carceral complexes in imperial, post-colonial, and settler-colonial contexts. In the
final weeks of the course, we will revisit the “classic” texts of carcerality most often relied upon by anthropologists, namely the writings of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Antonio Gramsci, as well as the intellectual production of contemporary U.S. prisoners.

This seminar explores a central concern in the history of international law, namely the managemen... more This seminar explores a central concern in the history of international law, namely the management of racial and religious difference, both often coded in terms of “civilization.” International law has generally oscillated between two approaches: attempting to manage such differences as tolerable variations on universal themes on the one hand and using such differences to exclude categories of people wholesale from the ambit of law and its protections on the other. We will explore both dynamics by reading some classic debates as well as recent scholarship at the intersection of law and transnational history. In so doing, we will see how dilemmas over the management of difference have played an important role in shaping international law; how groups deemed marginal, backwards, or even inhuman have sought to
engage and define international law and the world system; and how such hierarchies and exclusions were transformed after decolonization ushered in a world order based on formally equal sovereign nation-states. This seminar will equip students with conceptual tools for analyzing and connecting seemingly disparate contemporary problems in international, transnational, and comparative law, as well as to train them in independent research methods.

UCLA Law Review, 2015

Long-running debates over military privatization overlook one important fact: The U.S. military's... more Long-running debates over military privatization overlook one important fact: The U.S. military's post-2001 contractor workforce is composed largely of migrants imported from impoverished countries. This Article argues that these Third Country National (TCN) workers-so called because they are neither American nor local-are bereft of the effective protections of American law, local regimes, or their home governments; moreover, their vulnerability is a feature, not a flaw, in how the U.S. projects global power today. TCN workers are an offshore captive labor force whose use allows the government to keep politically sensitive troop numbers and casualty figures artificially low while reducing dependence on local populations with suspect loyalties. Legislation to combat human trafficking has done little to remedy exploitation and abuse of TCN workers because of jurisdictional hurdles and the lack of robust labor rights protections. Substantive reform efforts should address the deeper issue at stake, namely that the government uses TCN workers to carry out a core state function-namely, the use of force-without a clear relationship of responsibility to them. Unlike with soldiers, the labor of TCN workers is not valorized as sacrifice and unlike mercenaries selling their services to the highest bidder, they are frequently indebted to the point of indenture.

Arab Studies Journal, Apr 1, 2012

This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghani... more This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghanistan in recent decades – reconciled their pan-Islamist commitments with the experience of doctrinal and cultural difference vis-a-vis Afghans. Previous approaches to transnational Islamist activism have tended to either uncritically assume a monolithic Muslim identity or posit a rigid dichotomy between fanatic “foreign fighters” and the relatively moderate “local Muslims” who they putatively seek to indoctrinate. Eschewing both types of reification, this article argues that pan-Islamist projects should not be understood as attempts to erase intra-Muslim differences, but rather as endeavors to process them. Afghan Arabs struggled to understand, evaluate, and respond to doctrinal and cultural differences in ways that often defied the conventional juxtaposition of radical Salafi Arabs versus moderate Sufi/Hanafi Afghans. Diverse longstanding discursive traditions in Islam – including discussions over miraculous events [karāmāt] and visitation of saints’ tombs [al-ziyāra] – provided common terms of reference that Arab activists and their Afghan counterparts could invoke to ensure that even contentious disputes could contribute to a shared project.

Gerlach Press, Mar 30, 2014

Transforming Anthropology, 2022

American Ethnologist, 2021

Political Theology, 2020

Widely praised, Darryl Li’s The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire and the Challenge of Solidarity ha... more Widely praised, Darryl Li’s The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire and the Challenge of Solidarity has also attracted its share of controversy. Faisal Devji, for instance, has suggested the book is deeply anachronistic, caught in an outmoded early War on Terror framing that actively occludes more local forms of meaning-making unfolding on the ground—if not exactly the sort of “jihadology” the book purportedly seeks to critique. I would argue that in order to understand the book and the controversies it has spawned, it is essential to first understand what the book is—and what it is not. Not a traditional ethnography, the book is better read as political theology that employs ethnographic techniques in novel, boundary-pushing ways. A lawyer as well as an anthropologist, Li makes clear from the beginning that a straightforward ethnography of jihad would be completely impractical in the current legal environment. Forget what ethnographers sometimes naïvely call “collaboration.” Li remarks early on that even innocent gestures like buying someone a coffee or sharing a ride could easily be construed as “material support for terrorism” today (37). Not to be deterred, Li travels the globe, moving from a Yale legal clinic representing Guantanamo detainees, across Europe and into the Middle East South Asia, and Southeast Asia in his quest to understand “jihad” and the wider moral panic and military response that has put the term at the heart of contemporary politics. The very impossibility of the task at hand is part of what makes the book so endlessly revealing—if at times frustrating. I found myself consistently reminded of the ethnographer Paul Dresch’s comment that, “what empiricist anthropology sees as obstacles are social facts”. What Li has is a fascinating legal case-study within the context of the broader political tumult of the early 21 century: a group of self-styled mujahideen who traveled to Bosnia, fought alongside NATO to defend Bosnia’s Muslims and were in many cases given Bosnian citizenship for their military service—only to be transformed into pariahs after the September 11 attacks, often stripped of their citizenship, and in some cases sent to Guantanamo Bay. It is very much a story of being caught between two worlds and two ascribed identities: from national heroes to national security threats. Clearly moved by their predicament, Li has worked tirelessly to reconstruct the history of their battalion, “the Katība”, and the larger world of Islamic solidarity work that drew these men to Bosnia and ultimately made them targets of theWar on Terror. As good a lawyer as he is an anthropologist, Li shows us the humanity of these men and the stark consequences many have already faced for their decisions. However, this is not some sort of special pleading and it’s important to note that there is no attempt to play down the fact that the war involved atrocities—or to polish the transcript for a skeptical audience. Talk of flying white horses and perfumed bodies whose fragrance foretells martyrdom should make clear that this is a very particular discursive space we have been invited into as readers. To fault a work like this

Cultural Anthropology, 2020

Anthropological Quarterly, 2020

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2015

Journal of Palestine Studies presents an original translation of a 1981 article by Yugoslav anthr... more Journal of Palestine Studies presents an original translation of a 1981 article by Yugoslav anthropologist Nina Seferović (1947-1991) on "Bushnaqs"-Palestinians whose ancestors hail from the territory of present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. Seferović describes the circumstances of the Bushnaqs' departure in the late nineteenth century; the distinct community they founded in the village of Caesarea near Haifa; and their assimilation into the Palestinian nation. This study is a contribution to the social history of Palestine that raises productive questions about the legacies of the Non-Aligned Movement and about the role of race and temporality in framing such categories as settler and native in the broader examination of settler colonialism. Below, in order of appearance, are Darryl Li's translator's preface, "A Note on Settler Colonialism," illuminating and explicating the original study; Nina Seferović's article, "The Herzegovinian Muslim Colony in Caesarea, Palestine," and an appendix titled, "Balkan Migration to the Middle East." A substantial section of endnotes follows, divided into three corresponding parts.

American Ethnologist, 2017

This paper investigates three main formats for reason-for-calling invitations in Italian telephon... more This paper investigates three main formats for reason-for-calling invitations in Italian telephone calls and shows that these invitation formats are designed to include an informing/descriptive component and a requesting component. These two elements are encoded and foregrounded differently in the design of each format, constructing diverse ways to name, refer to or describe the social occasion that recipients are invited to attend and different ways of requesting the invitees to state their commitment to participate. Our findings provide evidence that, by using one of the three formats, speakers are able to tailor the invitation to the different contextual conditions in which they and their recipients may be when the invitation is made, as well as to the circumstances of the social event, with the inviters often displaying caution in extending the invitation. This paper also investigates the types of constraints on the degree of commitment from the invitation recipient that each format entails, offering a contribution to study preference organization in first actions.

Law & Social Inquiry, 2015

This article argues that jihads waged in recent decades by “foreign fighter” volunteers invoking ... more This article argues that jihads waged in recent decades by “foreign fighter” volunteers invoking a sense of global Islamic solidarity can be usefully understood as attempts to enact an alternative to the interventions of the “International Community.” Drawing from ethnographic and archival research on Arab volunteers who joined the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, this article highlights the challenges and dilemmas facing such jihad fighters as they maneuvered at the edges of diverse legal orders, including international and Islamic law. Jihad fighters appealed to a divine authority above the global nation‐state order while at the same time rooting themselves in that order through affiliation with the sovereign and avowedly secular nation‐state of Bosnia‐Herzegovina. This article demonstrates an innovative approach to law, violence, and Islam that critically situates states and nonstate actors in relation to one another in transnational perspective.

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2015

The Journal of Palestine Studies presents an original translation of a 1981 article by Yugoslav a... more The Journal of Palestine Studies presents an original translation of a 1981 article by Yugoslav anthropologist Nina Seferović (1947–1991) on “Bushnaqs”—Palestinians whose ancestors hail from the territory of present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. Seferović describes the circumstances of the Bushnaqs’ departure in the late nineteenth century; the distinct community they founded in the village of Caesarea near Haifa; and their assimilation into the Palestinian nation. This study is a contribution to the social history of Palestine that raises productive questions about the legacies of the Non-Aligned Movement and about the role of race and temporality in framing such categories as settler and native in the broader examination of settler colonialism. Below, in order of appearance, are Darryl Li’s translator’s preface, “A Note on Settler Colonialism,” illuminating and explicating the original study; Nina Seferović’s article, “The Herzegovinian Muslim Colony in Caesarea, Palestine,” and an appendix titled, “Balkan Migration to the Middle East.” A substantial section of endnotes follows, divided into three corresponding parts.

Arab Studies Journal, Apr 1, 2012

This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghani... more This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghanistan in recent decades – reconciled their pan-Islamist commitments with the experience of doctrinal and cultural difference vis-a-vis Afghans. Previous approaches to transnational Islamist activism have tended to either uncritically assume a monolithic Muslim identity or posit a rigid dichotomy between fanatic “foreign fighters” and the relatively moderate “local Muslims” who they putatively seek to indoctrinate. Eschewing both types of reification, this article argues that pan-Islamist projects should not be understood as attempts to erase intra-Muslim differences, but rather as endeavors to process them. Afghan Arabs struggled to understand, evaluate, and respond to doctrinal and cultural differences in ways that often defied the conventional juxtaposition of radical Salafi Arabs versus moderate Sufi/Hanafi Afghans. Diverse longstanding discursive traditions in Islam – including discussions over miraculous events [karāmāt] and visitation of saints’ tombs [al-ziyāra] – provided common terms of reference that Arab activists and their Afghan counterparts could invoke to ensure that even contentious disputes could contribute to a shared project.

Student Scholarship Papers, 2009

This essay argues that the ongoing U.S.-driven "Global War on Terror" stands apart from similar s... more This essay argues that the ongoing U.S.-driven "Global War on Terror" stands apart from similar state campaigns in its special focus on confronting "foreign fighters"armed transnational non-state Islamists operating outside their home countries-in places where the U.S. is no less foreign. This global hunt for foreign fighters animates diverse attempts to exclude similarly "out of place" Muslim migrants and travelers from legal protection by reshaping laws and policies on interrogation, detention, immigration, and citizenship. Yet at the same time, certain other outsiders-namely the U.S. and its allies-enjoy various forms of exemption from local legal accountability. This essay illustrates this braided logic of exclusion and exemption by juxtaposing the problems of extraordinary rendition and military contractor impunity in both postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina and post-invasion Iraq. This framework-which predates and will likely outlast the Bush administration-undermines the rule of law and state-building efforts and occludes crucial questions surrounding the legitimacy of how U.S. global power is exercised. This essay employs treaties, Bosnian, Iraqi, and U.S. statutes, cases, and regulations to reframe post-Cold War debates about nation-building and post-9/11 arguments about the laws of war.

Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 2010

This Article argues that the ongoing US-driven Global War on Terror stands apart from similar s... more This Article argues that the ongoing US-driven Global War on Terror stands apart from similar state campaigns in its special focus on confronting foreign fightersarmed, transnational, non-state Islamists operating outside their home countriesin places where the United ...

Race, Palestine, and International Law , 2023

In 1922, the League of Nations inscribed the goal of establishing a settler colony in Palestine f... more In 1922, the League of Nations inscribed the goal of establishing a settler colony in Palestine for the Jewish people-in denial of the national self-determination of the Indigenous Arab population-in public international law. 1 The Palestine Mandate juridically erased the national status of the Palestinian people by: (1) framing the Arabs as incapable of self-rule; (2) heightening the significance of establishing a Jewish national home; and (3) distinguishing Palestine from the other Class A mandates for possessing religious significance that exceeded the interests of any single national group. A century later, the still-unresolved "question" of Palestine remains central to struggles for anti-racism and anti-colonialism in international law. This essay revisits two flashpoints in the tangled history of Palestine and international law, where questions of race and racism have been central: first, ongoing debates over the regime and crime of apartheid; and second, the now-repudiated UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, recognizing Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. Both stories demonstrate the importance of understanding race and colonialism as conjoined concepts, neither of which can be properly understood in isolation from the other.