Global Jihad : The Future in the Face of Militant Islam
Published in the United States of America by Isaac Publishing
6729 Curran St
McLean
VA 22101
Copyright © 2007 Patrick Sookhdeo
Second Printing, November 2007
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopy or recording without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in brief quotations in written reviews.
ISBN 09787141-2-1 978-0-9787141-2-3
ISBN: 9780988593060
Printed in the United States of America
The jihad is the Islamic bellum justum and may be regarded as the very basis of Islam’s relationships with other nations.
Majid Khadduri1
Jihad is the signature tune of Islamic history.
M.J. Akbar2
God loves Muslims to be arrogant while fighting. It manifests that he is indifferent to the enemy and determined to vanquish him.
Abdullah Ghoshah3
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: I am commanded to fight with men till they testify that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and His Apostle, face our qiblah (direction of prayer), eat what we slaughter, and pray like us. When they do that, their life and property are unlawful for us except what is due to them. They will have the same rights as the Muslims have, and have the same responsibilities as the Muslims have. Narrated by Anas ibn Malik, Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Number 2635.
Foreword
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Some Causes Offered for Islamic Radicalism and Terrorism
2 Sources and their Interpretation
3 Qur’an, Hadith and Shari’a
4 Jihad and the Sacralising of Territory
5 The Theology of War and Empire-Building
6 Jihad, Eschatology and Messianism
7 The Practicalities of Jihad
8 The Islamic Concept of Peace
9 Taqiyya
10 History: Muhammad and his Successors
11 The Negative Impact of Islamic Jihad on Vanquished Populations
12 Violent Sects and Movements: Past and Present
13 The Motivation of Terrorists and Suicide Bombers
14 The Making of an Islamic Terrorist
15 Contemporary Muslim Debate on Jihad
16 Muslims Against Violence—Progressive Reformers
17 Responses to Islamic Terrorism
18 Conclusion
Appendix 1 Traditional Divisions in Islam
Appendix 2 Modern Trends in Islam
Appendix 3 Various Networks of Radical Islam
Appendix 4 “Bin Laden” Audiotape
Appendix 5 Editorial in Al-Masaa (2 February 2004)
Appendix 6 The Zarqawi Document
Appendix 7 Fighting Terrorism: Recommendations by Arab Reformists
Glossary
Bibliography
References and Notes
Index of Qur’an references
Index of Hadith references
Index
Qur’anic references are given as the surah (chapter) number followed by the number of the verse within the surah. All are from A. Yusuf Ali’s The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1975) unless otherwise stated. Verse numbers vary slightly between different translations of the Qur’an so if using another version it may be necessary to search in the verses just preceding or just following the number given here to find the verse cited.
I have long had misgivings about the phrase “global war on terror”. Terror defines only some of the tactics used, not the conflict as a whole, and in any case has always been a subjective term. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter, and my bomber-pilot may be your terror-flier. Moreover, it seems to me that the word struggle, with its notion of a long and obdurate (but sometimes low-key) conflict, fits the reality of the situation much better than war, too often seen as embodying a clash between armed forces. Call it what we will, though, I believe that Patrick Sookhdeo is absolutely right to see the struggle as being both global and long-term, and to identify the importance of militant Islam as its philosophical mainspring.
The real merit of his book is to make the ingredients of that militancy clear, particularly to members of a largely secularised society whose own toleration induces them to ignore or doubt the corrosive intensity of the beliefs of some others. The worldview and strategic objectives shaped by these beliefs are well set out in the pages that follow, and Dr Sookhdeo carefully explores the various meanings of jihad and warns of the way in which Islamist apocalyptic discourse is rife, especially on those internet sites which have such a great impact, particularly on the young.
One of the most serious problems confronting us is that our own strategic view is lamentably vague: we burble genially about things that we admire, like democratic values, free market economies or the rights of women, but find it hard to translate these general desiderata into practical policy. For instance, any meaningful policy in Afghanistan must address the issue of the poppy crop from its very inception, for it is an inescapable truth of counter-insurgency that armed force is never, by and of itself, more than part of the solution to a complex, multilayered problem. This has been clear to theorists and successful practitioners for at least a century, and it is disturbing to find simple truths belatedly rediscovered. Where no genuine strategy exists, we compensate, as far as we can, with tactical or technical excellence, as if we imagine that by winning a series of battles we must inevitably win the war as well. In practice the reverse is often true, for too often we score short-term successes by doing things that are likely to make our ultimate defeat more likely. For instance, whatever advantages may have been gleaned from Guantanamo will, in the long term (and this is a conflict in which the long term really matters) be submerged by the fact that the place’s very existence helps spawn a mass of radicalised young men eager to avenge injustices inflicted on their brothers. In the context of a conventional war against Saddam Hussein the entry of US tanks into Baghdad seemed the very icon of victory. Yet to thousands of Muslims, many of whom had neither affection for Saddam nor real quarrel with the West, it was a symbol of unspeakable humiliation. We are tactics-driven but somehow “strategy-lite”.
In contrast, our opponents are far less good at winning battles and engagements. In Iraq, for example, the rise of the suicide bomber paralleled the bloody defeat of militias, who shot a lot but hit a little, in dozens of small actions. If coalition forces make a premature withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan, it will not be because they have lost a modern Dien Bien Phu, some decisive clash that breaks their armies. It will be because their civilian populations, not persuaded that these are life and death struggles in which the real national interest is engaged, will have their confidence fatally eroded by a constant trickle of casualties which units in the field will find painful (for it is never pleasant to have valued comrades killed and wounded) but, in the context of the job they trained to do, tolerable. Failure will be strategic, not tactical. Had the Americans in Iraq displayed, three years ago, the acumen and cultural understanding they now exhibit, then things might be very different. However, I cannot imagine a would-be US president or British prime minister entering an election announcing that his (or, indeed, her) policy for Iraq is rather more of much the same.
In contrast, while our opponents have tactical weaknesses, they have enormous strategic strengths, and this book helps us understand why. Al Qa‘eda’s war aim is “complete victory over infidel powers and the establishment of the Islamic caliphate”. The war will be prosecuted by a “one thousand wound” policy which will pit Muslim patience and endurance against Western demands for quick solutions and easy answers. While recruits to conventional armed forces are motivated by a variety of motives, pay and pensions amongst them, recruits to Islamic militant groups “enter a world where their rage is directed, channelled and given a sense of purpose and an outlet”. Conventional armed forces are shackled by rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict. How can they not be, given the primacy of law in the societies which produce them, and the recognition that the effects of illegal action are often counter-productive? In contrast, one of Al-Qa‘eda’s training manuals justifies the torture or murder of hostages, using a version of Islamic teaching to justify itself.
Patrick Sookhdeo concludes that to gain ultimate victory over the Islamists will “require the exercise of the will and a right understanding of the situation.” “Do those engaged in such a task have the necessary will to achieve the end required,” he asks. “Do they properly understand what they are up against?” In most cases they do not. We believe that truths that seem so self-evident to us must be as appealing to others. Our cultural arrogance makes it hard for us to grasp the very real appeal of, say, a Sadrist militia in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan. We confuse tactics with strategy: current fascination with “exit strategy” from Iraq demonstrates all too clearly that we do not understand that strategy is not a short-term expedient. Lastly, we seem reluctant to explain to our own population, which lies in the very pit of our stomach for the fight, why the struggle matters to us. There is no such intellectual vacuum amongst our opponents.
This is not a struggle that will be won by counter-radicalism, by meeting crescent with cross. It will instead be won by clothing legitimate aspirations and values like tolerance and respect with real strategic shape, by emphasising that we have no quarrel with Muslims in general, but by straining every nerve – economic, diplomatic, psychological and military – to starve and isolate fundamentalist extremism, to guard against its baneful effects, and to deny it safe havens. Western nations with substantial Muslim minorities must be aware of the danger that, as another study has observed, “Valid criticism of Islam or Muslims is hindered by accusations of Islamophobia”. Some may see this book in precisely that light.
Tactics without strategy, warned Sun Tz
, is the noise before defeat. Patrick Sookhdeo’s book tells us much about our opponents’ strategy. We would do well to understand it, to recognise its attraction and its force, and to meet it with a strategy of our own. We will have no excuse for saying that we were not warned.
Richard Holmes
Richard Holmes is Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University. He has presented several BBC documentary series, and writes widely on military topics: his most recent book was Dusty Warriors: Modern Soldiers at War (HarperCollins 2006).
Radical Islam has declared war on the West. It is the manifestation of a theology that is rooted in classical Islam. Traditional Islam which, developing under colonial pressure, saw a break from violence, from the totality of shari‘a and from political activisim, is now gradually being subsumed into classical Islam. The challenge for the West is not to declare war on Islam the personal faith of the mainly peaceful majority of Muslim people, but rather to declare war on the Islamic theology, philosophy and ideology that motivate and sanction fanaticism, extremism, violence and terrorism.
Earlier this year I had a cup of tea with a Muslim Arab diplomat who was holidaying in London. He shared with me his feelings about Islam. He told me that he completely rejected the classical Islam embraced by modern Islamic extremists, particularly its violent aspects. He longed to see his faith transformed by reason, liberalised and endorsing a separation of religion and state. He wanted all Muslims to be able to function comfortably within a secular, plural society, indeed to embrace such a society. “Why don’t Western leaders work with liberal Muslims?” he asked, “Why do they always focus on conservative Muslims?” He confided to me how anxious he was about his teenage son living in the UK, who was being drawn towards Islamic extremism, and told me of the hours he had spent on the phone from the Middle East to the lad, trying to persuade him towards a liberal interpretation of Islam. “British people are like ostriches with their heads in the sand, oblivious to what is going on around them,” he said.
I was greatly struck by my conversation with this intelligent, warm and very worried man. Our discussion took place just as I was putting the final touches to this work, in which I seek to address the issue of violence – whether offensive or defensive – within the Islamic tradition. The mantra “Islam is peace” is heard so often in the West today, and yet this is true only in the sense of peace borne out of a religious war resulting in the submission of the enemy. To make the statement “Islam is peace” true in an objective sense, the majority of Muslims and their religious leaders must interpret their faith in the same liberal, rational and privatised way as does this diplomat.
At the moment this is a dangerous course for a Muslim to take. A 22-year-old Muslim called Abdelkareem Suleiman was given a four-year jail sentence in Egypt on February 22nd 2007 because of what he wrote in his blog about violence in Islam, both now and in the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.4 Commenting on anti-Christian riots which took place in Alexandria in October 2005, Suleiman wrote,
The Muslims have taken the mask off to show their true hateful face, and they have shown the world that they are at the top of their brutality, inhumanity and thievery.
Some may think that the action of Muslims does not represent Islam and has no relationship with the teachings of Islam that was brought by Mohammed fourteen centuries ago, but the truth is that their action is not different from the Islamic teachings in its original form.
In a mirror image of the attitudes of the diplomat and his son, this young man’s father has disowned him and called for his execution under Islamic law.
We live in depressing times, as leaders, both political and military, whether in the Islamic or the non-Islamic world, grapple with issues that seem to be insoluble. The apparent intractability of modern conflicts, in particular Iraq, can easily lead to despair. However, we can find hope not only in the Iraqi diplomat but also in countless other Muslims like him who seek the way of peace and reason. For this to be done, the Muslim world – its clerics, theologians, political leaders and umma – must rise up and engage in a radical reformation of Islam. This reformation will re-interpret the Qur’an so as to reject religious violence, will advocate a total separation of religion from state, and will argue for full equality of all citizens under a law based on international norms not on shari‘a. This will include the reinterpretation of the Medinan Qur’anic passages on violence, the rejection of the hadith and sunna as authoritative sources, and the adaptation of shari‘a from a public legal code to a personal code of conduct and morality.
The discussion on what term to use to describe the violence contained within the Islamic tradition is an ongoing one. Many people are at pains to distinguish “Islamist terrorism” from what they believe to be the unacceptable term “Islamic terrorism”. However this is really a meaningless distinction, for, as this work will seek to show, Islamism is simply the essence of classical Islam, and violence and terror are found within both of them. To understand this fully is to understand the multi-dimensional nature of jihad (struggle), which is spiritual, moral, economic, political and military. Although such terrorism is inspired by the major sources of Islam, this of course does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists. Furthermore there are some movements which seek to reinterpret these sources in a more peaceable way, leading to the rejection of violence. In this work both terms are used.
The scope of this work is limited in that it focuses principally on theology. Whilst it is recognised that theology is often formed in contexts, both past and present, this work will do no more than touch on the geo-political, economic, historical and other issues which form the background to present conflicts relatng to Islam. It is my hope that this work will contribute to the multi-faceted efforts of people of good will and of many faiths or no faith, all around the world, who are seeking to make sense of what is happening and to work for a world in which peace, stability and freedom can co-exist.
Patrick Sookhdeo, September 2007
I would like to express my gratitude to the many colleagues and friends whose advice and assistance have been invaluable to me in preparing this book. Outstanding amongst these are Ivar Hellberg of Cranfield University, Reuven Paz of PRISM, and David Zeidan of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. Numerous others have also contributed comments, corrections and help of many kinds. Responsibility for any remaining errors is, of course, mine alone.
The US defence establishment has recently rebranded its war on terrorism as a “long war”, reflecting a shift in strategic thinking.5 This is evident in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) of the US Department of Defense where the term “long war” is repeatedly used:
The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war… The Department of Defense conducted the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in the fourth year of a long war, a war that is irregular in its nature… The long war against terrorist networks extends far beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan and includes many operations characterized by irregular warfare – operations in which the enemy is not a regular military force of a nation-state.6
It is now clear that the war is not short-term and limited to specific battlefields like Afghanistan and Iraq, but is a long-term war being fought globally in many countries which will continue for many years to come.7 This new thinking includes a shift from a strategy of large-scale military operations to a rapid deployment of highly mobile counter-terrorism forces. The new strategy recognises that the war cannot be confined to its military aspects, but has political and ideological connotations and that the battles must be won in the realm of ideas as well as of arms. This ideological aspect has been taken up in a 2005 study by a NATO think-tank has recognised the role that Islamism has to play in this war.8
But the war on Islamic terrorism is just one aspect of a “long war” which has lasted 1400 years already. This is the history of Islamic expansion and pursuit of political dominance which are best expressed in the Islamic doctrine, institution and practice of jihad. Based on the models of Muhammad and the early Islamic state, jihad has determined the relations of Muslims to non-Muslims ever since, including the theory, ideology, rules and practicalities of waging war. The foreign policy of the Muslim state is linked to jihad which is the basis of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims.9
While modern Muslim apologetics tries to reinterpret jihad in purely defensive modes (in a moral sense as against evil in society and in a spiritual sense as the individual’s fight against temptation and personal sin), there is no doubt that in Islamic history jihad has normally been viewed, both in traditional Islamic law (shari‘a) and in Islamic practice, as the armed conflict against non-Muslims (and against heretical or apostate Muslims) permanently waged to ensure the victory of God’s chosen community and religion, the umma (the whole body of Muslims worldwide), over all polytheistic powers, peoples and lands.
Only under severe constraints, when non-Islamic power was overwhelming, could the jihad imperative be suppressed for a while, as under colonial rule. This concession derived from shari‘a principles of darura (necessity) and maslaha (public good) which permit the breaking of shari‘a principles when Muslims are weak and Islam is in danger. Such suspension of jihad however, is always temporary and jihad can be reactivated at any time if Muslim strength is deemed capable of changing the balance of power and reasserting Islamic dominance.
The late Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baz, then Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, at the request of the King, reluctantly issued a fatwa in 1990 related to the Gulf War of that year, declaring that it was legitimate for the Saudi ruler to invite non-Muslim troops to help defend the kingdom. It included the sentence:
Even though the Americans are, in the conservative religious view, equivalent to nonbelievers, as they are not Muslims, they deserve support because they are here to defend Islam.10
Contemporary apologists for Islam, both Western and Muslim, tend to ignore the long history of the violent jihadi expansion of Islam, sanitising it by using language that implies a peaceful expansion happily accepted by non-Muslims. No mention is made of the military invasions, battles, looting, destruction, enslavement of civilians, or mass migration of Arab tribes to settle on the best parts of the conquered territories. Such scholars sometimes assert that early Muslims who took a more aggressive stance on war were merely heterodox sects like the Khariji,11 who they argue were not part of mainstream Islam. Nevertheless the scholars’ own efforts to counter and argue away the classical Islamic teaching on war do seem by implication to acknowledge how widely accepted this doctrine has been for many centuries. It is still the benchmark against which all other teaching on war is compared.
Most Western societies have long accepted the secular paradigm that relegates religion to the margins of society. They have come to terms with the privatisation of religion and its removal from the political centre of power and the public debate on morals and society. Muslims, by contrast, are in the process of regaining their lost confidence after several centuries of colonialism, and have embarked on a strategy aimed at reintegrating faith and politics in accord with the classical tenets of Islam. This process is taking place not only in Muslim states but also in countries of the non-Muslim developing world and in Western states with Muslim minorities.
Pakistani Brigadier S.K. Malik strikingly illustrates this difference in attitude in a military text book for the Pakistani army. Brigadier Malik quotes Edward Meade Earle as follows: “War is not an act of God. It grows out of what people, statesmen and nations do or fail to do.” Malik then comments that “Meade’s thesis is fully representative of the traditional thinking on the subject. The Quranic view on war is, however, altogether different. According to the Book, the initiation of war is for the Cause of God.”12 He also describes the place of military strategy within what he calls the total strategy of jihad according to the Qur’an.
‘Jehad’, the Quranic concept of total strategy, demands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war while providing effective safeguards against being terror-stricken by the enemy.13
The foreword to Malik’s book is by General M. Zia-ul-Haq, then Chief of the Army Staff and later president of Pakistan, who also affirms the pivotal place of the Qur’anic concept of jihad in the late twentieth century Pakistani army.14
Of course there are many variants of Islam. Most Muslims want simply to live a peaceful life enjoying democratic freedoms and opportunities as well as economic wellbeing, caring little for traditional Islamic concepts and teachings. Some Muslims are sincerely working for democratic values and human rights. Some want to focus on personal faith led by reason, rather than the public power aspects of Islam. Furthermore it must not be forgotten that there is a peaceable tradition within Islam, albeit the concept of peace has been understood in a variety of ways in different places and at different times, sometimes as coexistence on equal terms, sometimes more as submission to a pax Islamica, exceptionally even a kind of pacifism (usually more pragmatic than principled). Also, Islam was considerably different from the classical model when under Western colonial control it lost its political power; it became principally a faith without its traditional ideological dimensions.
However, despite these variations, it is true that the majority opinion in Muslim states is very much impacted by traditional and Islamist15 concepts. Liberals in Muslim states are a minority, cowed by the vehement drive against them which includes physical violence and the threat of being legally labelled as apostates with all that entails. The limits of the possible in all contemporary Muslim countries are being determined by Islamist discourse, and most regimes submit to Islamist demands because of their fear of destabilisation and of delegitimisation. In the West, Muslim liberals have the freedom to express their views, but still face the ire of community leaderships heavily influenced by the power-centres in their countries of origin and by the resource-rich Wahhabi Saudis who fund much of their activity.
Much contemporary Muslim intellectual activity is aimed at masking the real intent of Islamist ideologues and movements behind a façade of fashionable Western leftist discourse. For many in the Western hard left, Westerners are reactionary oppressors while under-developed nations and minority groups in the West are oppressed victims. Western democracies are castigated as oppressive, racist and neo-colonial, while Islamists are praised as representing the revolt of the oppressed against their (Western) oppressors.
Radical Islamists, driven by a similar hatred of Western culture, especially its Judaeo-Christian basis and its liberal tradition, have forged a bizarre alliance with Western postmodern leftists and have appropriated their discourse as a way of gaining sympathy in the West and of camouflaging their real objectives.
Leftist intellectuals have functioned as the “Trojan horse” of Islamists in Europe and America - presenting a sanitised view of Islam; ignoring the excesses of its terrorist manifestations; concealing Islamism’s totalitarian, fascist and hate-filled ideologies; while reinforcing the Western guilt syndrome over past colonialism and imperialism and “politically correct” attitudes to Muslim minorities in the West as well as to Islam in general. They tend to attribute all the world’s problems to the West and ignore the deep fault lines in non-Western, including Islamic, societies and states. Their discourse encourages self-pity in non-Westerners and thus hinders progress in their societies, for conspiracy theories and scapegoating are used to justify their underdevelopment. This justification hampers any real effort at self-criticism and self-improvement.16
Many Western journalists, politicians and academics seem to have been intimidated by this discourse. Keen to support multiculturalism and fearful of being thought reactionary, illiberal, racist or Islamophobic, they repeat the view that stresses only Islam’s peaceful and harmonious aspects and either denies the intolerant, violent episodes or attributes them to a few marginalised heretical groups that have nothing to do with “true Islam”.17
Such a position is not held only by some leftist intellectuals and journalists, but is also used by politicians of many hues and by military strategists. In order to counter radical Islamist ideologies, they are arguing along the lines that jihadis “have hijacked Islam with their destructive interpretation of Islamic scripture”.18 Tony Blair, when Prime Minister of the UK, expressed a similar view of radical Islamists not belonging to true Islam:
The extremism is not the true voice of Islam. Neither is that voice necessarily to be found in those who are from one part only of Islamic thought, however assertively that voice makes itself heard. It is, as ever, to be found in the calm, but too often unheard beliefs of the many Muslims, millions of them the world over, including in Europe, who want what we all want: to be ourselves free and for others to be free also; who regard tolerance as a virtue and respect for the faith of others as part of our own faith. That is what this battle is about, within Islam and outside of it; it is a battle of values and progress; and therefore it is one we must win.19
Masked by the victim culture and discourse that seem to be merely seeking compensation for past wrongs and a respectable niche for Islam in the contemporary world, the real aim of Islamist movements is to emulate the early model of universal Muslim hegemony in politics and culture.
We aim to establish Allah’s religion in its entirety, in every soul and upon every inch of this earth, in every home, institution and society.20
Abul A‘la Mawdudi (Indian sub-continent, 1903-79), one of the fathers of modern Islamism, stated that:
The aim of Islam is to bring about a world revolution… the Muslim Party should not be content just with establishing the Islamic system of government in one territory, but should extend its sway as far as possible all around…if the Muslim Party commands enough resources, it will eliminate unislamic governments and establish the power of Islamic government in their place.21
This then is the ultimate goal of Islam: a worldwide Islamic government based on shari‘a.
While it is true that Western colonialism dominated the majority of Muslims for various periods of time until the middle of the twentieth century, most Muslim states have now been independent for decades. So it is remarkable that a world community of over 1.2 billion, comprising some 52 independent Muslim-majority states (having significant large minorities in over 40 other states), controlling more than half the world’s oil resources and constituting the largest voting bloc in the United Nations, continues to see itself as a victim of forces beyond its control.
Even the seemingly moderate former Prime Minister of economically successful Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, complained in his opening address at the 10th Summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia (October 16th 2003) that:
We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated… We are now 1.3 billion strong. We have the biggest oil reserve in the world. We have great wealth. We are not as ignorant as the Jahilliah [non-Muslims of pre-Islamic Arabia] who embraced Islam. We are familiar with the workings of the world’s economy and finances. We control 50 out of the 180 countries in the world. Our votes can make or break international organisations. Yet we seem more helpless than the small number of Jahilliah converts who accepted the Prophet as their leader. Why? Is it because of Allah’s will or is it because we have interpreted our religion wrongly, or failed to abide by the correct teachings of our religion, or done the wrong things?… Today we, the whole Muslim ummah are treated with contempt and dishonour. Our religion is denigrated. Our holy places desecrated. Our countries are occupied. Our people starved and killed. None of our countries are truly independent. We are under pressure to conform to our oppressors’ wishes about how we should behave, how we should govern our lands, how we should think even… There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people… The Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will forever be poor, backward and weak… It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews… We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them… We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.22
Some scholars see this attitude as having been formed in the earliest years of Islam when the Muslim community under Muhammad in Mecca was a persecuted minority group facing hostility from pagans, Christians and Jews. This persecution was short-lived and was soon brought to an end – indeed reversed - after Muhammad’s establishment of an Islamic state in Medina, the conquest of Mecca and the rapid Muslim expansion that followed, establishing a vast Muslim empire. Of course at first Muslims were a relatively small governing elite amongst larger indigenous Christian, Zoroastrian, Jewish (and later Hindu) populations, and may have feared the possibility of being overwhelmed by their non-Muslim subjects. The sense of insecurity seem to have been consecrated and preserved in perpetuity by being included in the holy canon of Islam (Qur’an, hadith and sira), which has such a formative effect on most Muslims. These feelings of victimhood have been redirected into feelings of rage against the West as the main cause of Muslim weakness and humiliation.23
In the modern era, Western imperialism and colonial control of most Muslim lands caused Muslim consternation as they sought to discover the roots of Muslim weakness. But Islamists also argue that another cause for the decline of Muslim power is what they consider the deviation of most Muslims from true original Islam. A result of this view is the labelling of all systems not based on Islam and shari‘a as evil, corrupt or apostate, thus meriting destruction and replacement by a true Islamic state.
Modern Islamists have developed a many-pronged approach to achieve their goal of worldwide Islamic government. The spiritual revival of individual Muslims and the Islamising of all Muslim societies and states are two important elements. Another element is the weakening of all non-Muslim societies and states by infiltrating their structures and institutions with a view to their gradual islamisation.
Radical Islamists hold that a valid method for achieving their aims is by jihad, which they understand in the traditional sense of military warfare. Indeed, traditionally jihad goes beyond mere warfare and can be described as a comprehensive religious, military, political and economic system. For in jihad religious doctrine motivates military aggression and political expansion. The economic wealth generated by the looting of newly conquered regions provides for the maintenance and expansion of the system.
Fathi Yakan, a Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leader and head of its affiliate in Lebanon, al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya, clearly states that the goal of contemporary jihad, which is not an intellectual debate but a real battle, is the establishment of the universal Islamic state implementing shari‘a:
The logic of confrontation in the present age, not to speak of the logic of Islam and the Shari’ah, dictate that the Islamic forces should be united in one struggle to strike at Jahiliyyah [ignorance, as in pre-Islamic times)] and establish a state which enforces the law of Allah and undertakes the role of guiding mankind… Moreover, the war between Islam and Jahiliyah is no more a merely intellectual debate but it has become a fierce, bloody struggle in the literal sense of these words.24
Jihad is at the heart of the Islamic system of dealing with non-Muslims, not only externally but also internally within the Islamic state. In the dhimma system, Jewish and Christian minorities living in Islamic states are protected from jihad but must in return accept the demeaning regulations imposed upon them, including the payment of the poll tax (jizya, conceived of as a payment for the privilege of being allowed to live in the Islamic state). Thus it could be said that dhimmis paid for their own humiliation and for the maintenance of the system that kept them in subservience. Any perceived failures by the dhimmi to obey the regulations were considered to release the Muslims from the constraints of the dhimmi pact i.e. to allow them to wage jihad against the dhimmis.
Yakan argues that the main duty of Islamic movements today is the breeding of jihad fighters who will join the various locations in the world where jihad is possible and promises success. The only consideration in this fight is the welfare of Islam, an argument that basically says that the end justifies the means:
The Islamic movement should be barracks producing mujahidin and heroes more than it should be an ideological institution spreading mere Islamic culture and concepts among the people… In this respect the basis from which the movement should emanate should be the welfare of Islam above any consideration, and wherever the welfare of Islam can be realised there must be a drive forward whatever sacrifices it may call for.25
Likewise Sheikh Muhammad Taher of the Leeds Grand Mosque, UK, who makes clear elsewhere his belief that jihad includes actual fighting, urges that Muslim youngsters, both male and female, should be brought up as jihad warriors:
One of the greatest lessons, dear brothers and sisters, is the Jihadi upbringing for the youth, and the role of the Mujahidat of the women, and the role of the virtues [sic] mother.26
These then are some of the religious motivations driving the modern revival of jihadi activities. It is such theological and ideological principles on which this book will primarily focus. It is recognised that there are many other causal factors which contribute to the long war, but, as this book will seek to show, the doctrinal underpinning is the real driving force.
It is instructive to compare Islam, and its basic ideological content, with Christianity, which has no such basis. When, at certain periods of history, Christianity became an ideology, power became central and with it violence. Most Christians in the West now rightly return back to the New Testament roots of their faith, and in making that return, as they have done at various times in history, they reject both power and violence in the cause of religion. The Reformation of the Western Church was an important factor in the growing move towards the separation of Church and state, but Islam has not (yet) undergone any such development.
The world’s second largest religion, with around 1.2 billion adherents, Islam is a complex faith consisting of a variety of often conflicting theological, sectarian, ethnic, linguistic, political and cultural elements. It is therefore difficult to generalise about the modern Islamic world. Any serious study of specific elements within Islam must include what a variety of Muslims say about these subjects as well as the observations of non-Muslim experts. Both Muslim and non-Muslim observers offer a variety of possible causes for the evident current radicalisation of many Muslims, and for the proliferation of militancy, radicalism, violence and terrorism within Muslim communities around the world.
Challenges facing the Muslim World
The contemporary Muslim world faces a series of challenges which can lead to feelings of resentment and victimisation. This is well described by Abu Sulayman, a Saudi scholar and founding member of the International Institute of Islamic Thought:
Internally weak, relatively backward, frustrated, conflict-ridden, suffering from internal tensions, and often controlled and abused by foreign powers, the Muslim world is in a state of crisis. For Muslims, all of modern history is a tragedy.27
Out of the top 40 most at risk states in the Failed State Index of 2006, 20 were from Muslim majority countries.28 This is a considerable number when it is remembered that there are in total 52 nations which have more than 50% Muslim populations. As Muhammad Ahsan, an independent researcher on globalisation and under-development related to the Muslim world, notes:
Whether it is an overall picture of human development, or these are its various components, e.g., education, human security, elimination of human deprivation and formation of human [capital], Muslim countries are much behind non-Muslim countries.29
The Western colonial period is still a source of bitterness for many Muslims and is often blamed for the troubles of contemporary Muslim societies. As Abu Sulayman states:
In Muslim countries it is customary to blame external powers and imperialism for all manner of ills.30
Khurshid Ahmad, a main leader of the Jama‘at-i Islami in Pakistan and a prominent politician and economist, argues that colonialism deprived Islam of its former glory and political power and hegemony:
For the Middle-East the Western colonial powers had a horrible plan. Pan-Arab nationalism and lust for power were the destructive instruments applied to snatch political freedom from the Middle-Eastern Muslim rulers. About a dozen powerless states under the European command emerged on world map as a result of Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) and Balfour Declaration (1917). As such, the plan was to divide Middle-East into pieces on one hand and on the other to create conditions facilitating creation of a Jewish state among Arabs. The machination ultimately bore fruit and Israel was established in the heart of Muslim ummah with due understanding among USA, UK and USSR with connivance of UN. This way, all those rulers, tribes and people who once enjoyed power, pelf [sic] and freedom were eliminated from world politics for ever. Muslims, who enjoyed world leadership status for more than 12 centuries, were thus deprived of this position for the first time in history. Except in a few semi-independent states (Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen and Arab Peninsula), the Muslim might and political authority - the symbols of Muslim ummah’s dignity - was totally eliminated from around the globe.31
Modern Western intervention, particularly in Iraq, reminds many Muslims of the imperial age and generally produces a hostile reaction, as Abid Ullah Jan, a Pakistani writer explains:
Any direct Western intervention in Muslim countries – even at the behest of the government in power – invariably creates a hostile reaction among the masses boosting the appeal of resistance movements.32
Some Muslims also interpret the colonial period as a time when Muslims were tempted to turn away from Islam through Western cultural, economic, political and Christian missionary influences. As Ayatollah Khomeini stated:
Then more than three centuries ago, came the evil colonists who found in the Muslim world their long sought object. To achieve their ambitions they laboured to create the conditions which would lead to the annihilation of Islam. Missionaries, Orientalists, the information media – all are in the service of the colonialist countries and all are guilty of distorting Islam in a way that has caused many Muslims to steer away from it and not to find their way back to it.33
Continued dependence on the West is seen as aggressive neocolonialism in which globalisation is but the latest of the tools used to perpetuate Western dominance and marginalise Islam. Tariq Ramadan, a leading popular European Islamic academic and thinker of Egyptian background, who promotes an independent European Islam, describes this mindset:
The temptation is high, in the heart of this reality, to blame the collapse on the Other, the exploiter, the rich, the West and no bones are ever made about, throughout the Arab and Islamic world, eliciting all the arguments available to “explain” the situation this way. From old political colonisation to the modern forms of economic control, from the divisions maintained to the cultural imperialism imposed, from governments to multinationals who dictate their will to dominate from their Western base, the causes are clear and the situation understood: Muslims are suffering from a multi-faceted form of oppression.34
While a few Muslim oil states are fabulously rich, at a global level the Muslim world faces severe poverty. Most majority Muslim countries are in the developing world and few of them show signs of the rising prosperity of India and China. Many Muslim countries have significant social and economic stratification, which leaves them with poor under classes.
Results of a survey of 15 Arab countries found that 32 million people suffer from malnutrition. This figure represents nearly 12% of the total population of the countries concerned. The same study found that even in some of the wealthiest Arab states, such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, certain population groups are not adequately nourished.35
Some Muslims highlight poverty and inequality as the main causes of radicalism and terrorism. President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia has said:
Aware that religion-masked extremism feeds on poverty, deprivation and ignorance, we have endeavored to tackle its roots socially, economically, culturally and educationally, and to address the conditions conducive to its emergence and propagation.36
Others point out that these problems are not unique to Muslims. As Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arab television, argues that:
The importance of improving living standards and increasing job opportunities are legitimate and valid requests that are completely independent of terrorism and such requests are not the dilemma of Arabs or Muslims alone.37
Timur Kuran, a lecturer on economics of Turkish background, King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California, refutes the theory that poverty is the main cause for Islamic radicalism:
Does it follow that poverty is responsible for whatever clash we observe between Islam and the West? Will the current tensions subside if measures are taken to uplift the Islamic world’s desperately poor sectors? While it would be comforting to believe that a quick-fix exists, it is doubtful that the problems will respond to economic incentives alone. After all, the hijackers of September 11 were not unemployable souls living at the margins of subsistence. Holding university degrees, some of them were perfectly capable of achieving prosperity through legitimate means. What motivated them was not material deprivation but an all-consuming ideology. They were not just Muslims but also Islamists pursuing goals they considered higher than life itself.38
It must be noted that many Muslim terrorists come from affluent and well educated middle class backgrounds and, therefore, the resentment and alienation they have felt cannot be explained by focussing upon their personal material deprivation.
Following the demise of communism, Islam emerged as the main force in the developing world strong enough to stand up to US-led capitalism and globalisation. Islamic political leaders express their protests in Islamic idiom that Muslim masses understand and respond to. Such movements are partly fuelled by the failure of all alternative ideologies and systems in the newly independent Muslim states to deliver development and prosperity. These failures nourish a culture of alienation and despair coupled with anti-Westernism in most Muslim states and societies. The Western far left has allied itself to the Islamist radicals, justifying their use of violence as a legitimate response to Western capitalist oppression.39 As Professor Fred Halliday, a British academic expert on the Middle East and on international relations, has argued:
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