Knowing the enemy (part II)

Who is the enemy, and what is this thing called jihadism that everyone has been talking about? Jihadism is a modern word, not something from the Quran. Jihadis, or jihadists, call themselves salafi jihadi or salafiyya jihadiyya (-iyya in Arabic is equivalent to -ism). When I first saw the term in early 2002, I thought it perfectly described the people we’re fighting and that the ideal name for the conflict we’re involved in might be a war on jihadis, or war on jihadism. However, the root of jihadism is “jihad,” which is actually a good word within Islam.

Within Islam itself, da’wa means the call to Islam given by Mohammed: a call to turn away from false gods and to the worship of the one true god. Most Muslims today also think of it as missionary work, either in other countries or possibly in day-to-day conversations.

Jihadis have a very different view. Because they believe that the entire Islamic community has fallen away from God, their da’wa is aimed first and foremost at other Muslims, not the unbelieving world. Muslims who won’t answer that call must be killed. One group in Algeria actually calls itself the Salafist Group for Da’wa and Fighting. Ironically, then, many Muslims are giving money to charities the whole purpose of which is to turn them into jihadis. The money is not going off to convert the unbelievers, but is being aimed against them. This goes on quite a bit in the US.

It is vital to understand that the jihadis’ war is first and foremost against other Muslims, who are the majority of the victims. This war has ideological, political and military components.

Ideologically, the message is aimed almost entirely at other Muslims. In 1996, Bin Laden put out a “Declaration of war against the US” that was incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t spent several years reading Islamic theology, law and history. That declaration was aimed at other Muslims, to convince them to join up. The 1998 declaration, with its short bullet points, was aimed at the West.

Politically, the jihadis are creating a caliphate on the backs of other Muslims, forcing them to follow their vision of sharia. When the Taliban imposed its version of sharia, the people of Afghanistan and Muslims generally were far from happy with it, seeing it as counter to what they understood Islam to be. Fallujah was a religious city even before the Wahhabis showed up, but once that version of Islamic law was imposed on them, and after the Americans left in April 2004, the jihadis began cutting off people’s hands and beheading people. They haven’t been able to regain a foothold there because the citizens, having experienced life under that version of Islamic law, do not want it again.

Militarily, most of the people who have been killed by the jihadis have been Muslims. In Iraq, a few thousand Americans have been killed and tens of thousands of Muslim Iraqis. The jihadis don’t care if 50 Muslims are killed in a bombing that kills one American because to them, those Muslims aren’t Muslims. If you’re supporting the Americans, you’re collaborators and nonbelievers. The jihadis have been fighting a war with us, however. That’s the one we tend to take interest in.

Most of the ideas I’ve been discussing have to do with the jihadists that have signed up or began with Bin Laden and al-Qaida. The main difference between them and the rest of the jihadis is this first point on prioritizing who the enemies are going to be. Ninety percent of jihadis believe, based on a Quranic verse, in taking on the local enemies before any far enemy. In the early 1990s, when Bin Laden began to change his mind about who he should be focusing his attack on and became convinced that it was the US, he had no Quranic justification. So he had to go back to a 13th-century theologian named Ibn Tamiyya who argued for taking on the greater unbelief first. With Ibn Tamiyya as the justification, Bin Laden called the US the greater unbelief, the bigger enemy. Without US support, all those lesser enemies or near enemies, whether it’s Israel or the Saudi government, would collapse. Bin Laden did not win this argument with the rest of jihadis: hardly anyone signed up with him in his global jihad against the US, only four small groups. Otherwise, he was marginalized and still is today within the jihadi community.

As to war plans, to the jihadis, the only correct way of war is to follow the method of Mohammed, who had a specific, God-given plan. Within Islamic history there was one perfect moment of time and all of the rest of history is an attempt to recreate that. So this God-given plan is eternal and must always be followed. The jihadist version of Mohammed’s plan goes something like this: Mohammed started off in Mecca, gave da’wa to the residents there and was rejected. He attracted a tiny vanguard of believers, but mostly was rejected and reviled, forced to migrate to Medina. There he found welcomers (ansar) who took him in, sheltered him, and were convinced through his initially peaceful preaching that Islam was a good idea. Then he was permitted to carry out attacks to begin an external jihad against his enemies. Defensive attacks became offensive raids, winning over more and more territory and more and more supporters, and eventually Mecca fell almost without a fight.

This explains much about Bin Laden’s life. He began life in Mecca, where he had notions that people should follow him but no one did. He won a small group around him, but then was persecuted and forced to migrate first to Sudan and then to Afghanistan. Once there he tried to attract people and began carrying out attacks on those people in other places that had been oppressing him. He believes that eventually he’ll be able to return to Mecca, which will fall without a fight.

The basic ideas of jihadism come from three main sources. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th-century preacher, revived the definition of tawhid discussed earlier. He also believed that there were no believers left except for him. Accordingly, he would try to win people over by preaching, and if they wouldn’t listen, he was allowed to kill them. This encompasses most of what you need to know about jihadism. Notice that his jihad was not against unbelievers, but against other Muslims. One of the first things he did when he had enough followers was to gather them together and head off to Najaf, in what would become Iraq, and burn the shrines there. Hatred of the Shi’a is built into this ideology right from the start.

Hassan al-Banna (1906-49) had a very different notion of where this jihad should be focused. He agreed that one has to practice Islam correctly in order to truly worship God and that most of the world had fallen away from true Islam. But he believed in preaching to win over other Muslims, reserving violence for the occupiers. He founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which immediately began to take on the British occupation of Egypt. Unfortunately or fortunately, the British left peacefully before al-Banna could carry out his violence. But they put in place rulers who to the jihadis were agent rulers for the British Empire. Al-Banna turned to violence against these agent rulers. They assassinated him, but not before this notion had caught on. Off and on throughout the 1950s and 1960s Gamal Abdul Nasser and others had to suppress these militants, who would flee to other countries like Syria, Palestine and Saudi Arabia and start new organizations. Maintaining this notion of fighting the occupation is their main purpose in life.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt maintained this until 1966, when some thousand of their leaders were rounded up and executed and the group renounced violence. But every such movement has its splinter groups, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s disagreed with this renunciation of violence.

Sayyid Qutb, the most famous Muslim Brotherhood member, came to the US in 1948 to study in Greeley, Colorado, where he was so disgusted by the decadence and repulsed by the lives of Americans that he became a radical. Returning to Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was imprisoned.

While in prison he wrote a 30-volume commentary on the Quran, later condensed to a short manifesto called “Milestones Along the Way,” in which he reiterates that the main enemy is liberalism. Liberalism and democracy, he argued are a direct challenge to Islam as a way of life and the belief that God should be the only law-giver. Qutb was among those executed in 1966, but his brother Mohammed Qutb fled to Saudi Arabia and became a teacher; among his pupils was Bin Laden.

Let’s look briefly at some of the jihadist groups that evolved from these concepts. Today, Hamas is just a new name for the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. Notice how these groups evolve over time. They begin by attacking soldiers, government officials, and when that doesn’t achieve any results, they find justification to begin killing men, women and children. Likewise, the late Shamil Basayev’s people who carried out the 2004 Beslan school siege started off attacking Russian soldiers and government officials, then teachers, ordinary citizens and finally any Christians in Russia.

Al-Jihad was one of these splinter groups that didn’t agree with the Muslim Brotherhood’s renunciation of violence. They killed Anwar Sadat in 1981, and nothing changed. Who next — what about the tourists, who, they reasoned, were supporting the apostate ruler? So Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and Jihad Talaat al-Fath carried out a spectacular attack in Luxor in 1997, after which ten thousand members were rounded up and imprisoned. But seven years later they renounce violence, are let out of prison, and splinter groups immediately carried out attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh and the Sinai. One part of Gama’a al-Islamiyya argued that killing tourists doesn’t work, however, and they need to wipe out the real support for the Egyptian government: the US. This explains the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

Al-Qaida really began with this notion of the US as occupiers. Although they didn’t carry out the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, they obviously supported it. They began changing their minds about the right methodology in the mid-nineties looking to strike repeated blows at the US, who they now saw as the “greater unbelief.” After all, the US had left Beirut, Aden and Somalia. They thought that jihadis everywhere and the Islamic community would join them, and with an energized community, nobody would be able to stand in their way. But none of those things transpired. It took them about two years to adjust to that and try to devise another plan, which was to recreate Afghanistan in northern Pakistan and start over. They’ve now recreated their Islamic state in northern Pakistan, where they have 22 camps at last count. They’re turning out jihadis just like they did during the 1990s, and they’ve gotten a peace treaty signed with the Musharraf government, the likely duration of which may be measurable in months. Destroying this new Islamic proto-state will be a problem, since no one wants to invade the difficult terrain of ungoverned northern Pakistan. Al-Qaida has been trying to take over chaotic places like Somalia, Darfur and al-Anbar province, and this is a very frightening proposition.

There is one ray of hope. Atlanta writer Lee Harris has written about what he calls fantasy ideologies, such as Nazism, fascism, and communism. These are ideas and even states in some cases that are based on fantasies. When people try to put these fantasies into action, to create states based on them, those states may last for a while — I see the current conflict as a two-hundred year war — but eventually they will collapse under their own contradictions, or when they are challenged. They’re based on a false reading of human nature, of how the world works. The Taliban state could only survive as long as nobody took it on. So while in the short term I’m pessimistic about some of these issues, in the very long term I’m very optimistic about our chances for victory.

Everything I needed to know about Islam I learned on September 11, 2001.

I don't care about the fine details.

We are at WAR for our very existance as a culture and should comport ourselves accordingly.

We didn't care a lot about the details of the Japanese Bushido cult. We just knew it was either them or us, and we acted accordingly.

Unfortunately, we have no Harry Truman and no Douglass McArthur to do what needs to be done.

And here is why.

For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,
The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,
The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.
And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand:
In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.
For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

~ Isaiah 3:1-12

. .

Understanding Jihad
By Farida Khanam
Date: 4 July 2000
http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/insights/insight20000704a.html

In its literal sense jihad in Arabic simply means struggle - striving to one's utmost to further a worthy cause. There is a difference, however between the word, struggle and jihad. The word struggle does not connote the sense of reward or worship in the religious sense of the word. But when the word jihad became a part of Islamic terminology, the sense of reward or worship came to be associated with it, that is to say, if struggle is struggle in the simple sense of word, jihad means a struggle which is an act of worship, the engagement of which earns reward to the person concerned. As the Quran says: Strive for the cause of God as you ought to strive.(22:78)
In its literal sense jihad in Arabic simply means struggle - striving to one's utmost to further a worthy cause. As we say in English, "We must struggle against this prejudice".
It is a common human trait to work very hard in order to achieve some goal. There are words in every language including Arabic, to express this human quality. The word Jihad conveys this same sense of striving, that is, a great striving.

There is a difference, however between the word, struggle and jihad. The word "struggle" does not connote the sense of reward or worship in the religious sense of the word. But when the word jihad became a part of Islamic terminology, the sense of reward or worship came to be associated with it, that is to say, if struggle is struggle in the simple sense of word, jihad means a struggle which is an act of worship, the engagement of which earns reward to the person concerned. As the Quran says:

"Strive for the cause of God as you ought to strive." (22:78)

Jihad in the Dictionary
The root of the word jihad is judh, which means striving one's utmost. For instance we say in Arabic bazala juhduhu (I exerted my utmost struggle). Jihad or ijtihad thus means, striving one's utmost in any matter.

The word Jihad in the Quran
The word Jihad or its derivative has appeared in the Quran for four times in the same literal sense, as we find in the Arabic dictionary. At each place it has been used in the sense of effort and strength and not in the sense of war and fighting.

The first verse in the Quran in this connection is: "Say: 'If your father, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your tribes, the property you have acquired, the commerce in which you fear a decline, the homes in which you love, are dearer to you than God. His Apostle and the striving in his cause (Jihad fi sabilihii), then wait until God shall fulfill his decree. God does not guide the rebellious." (9:24)

In this verse of the Quran the Muslims are enjoined to extend their full support to the mission of the prophet, to the extent of making sacrifices. Here the phrase "jihad fisabilil lah" has appeared for helping the Prophet in his mission of dissemination of the message of Islam, and not for waging war.

Another verse of Quran says:

"Do not listen to the unbelievers, but strive with them strenuously with it (the Quran)" (22:52)

The word jihad is again clearly used for the mission of the Prophet . No other sense can be implied by the word jihad in this context of doing jihad with the Quran.

The word jihad has appeared in the Quran for the third time in chapter titled "Mumtahana" .

"If you have come out to strive in My Way and seek My Good pleasure." (60:1)

This verse was revealed shortly before the conquest of Mecca. The Prophet was preparing for the journey from Mudinah to Makkah. It was indeed a peaceful journey made for achieving peaceful results in the form of Hudaiybiya peace treaty. One incident makes it clear that it was a march of peace. For during this march one Muslim uttered these words aloud: "Today is the day of fighting". The Prophet responded immediately, saying that " No today is the day of mercy."

The fourth time the Quran has used this word in chapter 22:

"And strive in his cause as you ought to strive." (22:78)

Here too jihad is used for struggle for the cause of God's religion.

The word "Jihad" has nowhere been used in the Quran to mean in the sense of war in the sense of launching an offensive. It is used rather to mean struggle. For fighting and war another word called qital is used. Qital is to engage in war at the time of aggression on the part of the enemies. The qital or war is purely in self-defence in accordance in accordance with God's commandment also involves a struggle this came to be called jihad as well.

The command of war in Islam

There are certain verses in the Quran conveying the command to do battle (qital) 22:39. The first point in this connection is that the launching of an offensive by the believers is not totally forbidden. It is permissible with certain conditions. The Quran states:

"Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not be aggressive."(2:190)

This clearly shows that only defensive war is permitted in Islam. The believers are allowed to fight in self defence. Initiating hostility is not permitted for Muslims. The Quran says: "They were the first to attack you." (9:13)

What is to be noted is that even in the case of the offensive being launched by the other party, the believer's are not supposed to retaliate immediately. Instead, all efforts should be made to avert war. Only when avoidance has become impossible battle is the inevitably resorted to in defence.

This stand point is fully supported by the example of the Prophet.

The biographers of the Prophet have put the number of ghazwa (battle) at more than 80. This gives the impression that the Prophet of Islam in his 23 year Prophetic career waged four battles in a year. But this impression is entirely baseless. The truth is that in his entire Prophetic life , he engaged in war only on three occasions. All the other incidents described as ghazwa (war) were intact examples of avoidance of war, and not instances of involvement in battle.

For instance, in this books of Seerah (Biography) the incident of Al Ahzab is called a ghazwa (battle), where as truth is that on this occasion, the armed tribes of Arabia, twelve thousand in number, reached the borders of Madina for waging war, but the Prophet advised his Companions to dig a trench between them. This successfully prevented a battle from taking place. The same is the case of with all the other incidents called ghazwa.

The opponents of the Prophet repeatedly tried to get him embroiled in war, but on all such occasions, he managed to resort for some such strategy as averted the war, thus defusing the situation invariably.

There are only three instances of Muslims really entering the field of battle. Badr, Uhud and Hunayn. The events tell us that at all these occasions, war had become inevitable.

The prophet was compelled to encounter the aggressors in self-defence. Furthermore, these battles lasted only for half a day, each beginning from noon and ending with the setting of the sun.

Thus, it would be proper to say that the Prophet in his entire life-span had actively engaged in war for a total of a day and a half that is to say, the Prophet had observed the principle of non-violence throughout his 23-year Prophetic carrier, except one and a half days.

Another well-known instance of the Prophet's dislike for hostilities is the Hudaibiyyah peace treaty made by accepting, unilaterally, all the conditions of the enemy. In the case of the conquest of Mecca, he avoided battle altogether by making a rapid entry into the city with ten thousands Muslims - a number large enough to awe his enemies into submission. In this way, on all occasions, the Prophet endeavored to achieve his objectives by peaceful means.

This makes it quite clear that Muslims are not permitted to initiate hostilities. Except in cases where self-defence has become inevitable. The Quran in no circumstances gives permission for wanton violence.

In the past, when the sword was the only weapon of war, militancy did not lead to mass loss of life and property such as modern warfare brings in its wake. In former times, fighting was confined to the battlefield; the only sufferers were those engaged in the battle. But today, the spear and the sword have been replaced by megabombs and devastating long range missiles, so that killing and destruction take place on a horrendous scale. It is the entire human community which has now become the global arena of war. Even the air we breathe and the water we drink are left polluted in war's aftermath. Hence people find Islam outdated and irrelevant today precisely because of its militant interpretation.

What is needed is to discard the militant and political interpretation of Islam, and to adopt the original 'old' version of Islam based on peace, mercy and the love of mankind. The so called Muslim Fundamentalists have been exhorting their co-religionists to do battle all over the world. But the Quran says: "...and God calls to the home of peace." (10:25).

________________________________

Knowing the enemy (part I)
Islamdaily.net ^ | 11/22/06 | Mary Habeck
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742640/posts

Ideology

Jihadis are a small minority within the Islamist movement that believes violence must be used in order to create the perfect Islamic state. Within jihadism there are disagreements about at whom this violence should be aimed, how it should be carried out, what it will accomplish, and what the Islamic state law will look like when it is finally created. Here, I address those jihadis who agree with al-Qaida and affiliated groups on several important issues.

Only a very small minority of Muslims believe in violence and are willing to participate in it, which — in addition to great FBI work—explains why no attacks have been carried out in the US since 9/11, and why there have been few attacks in Europe or other places.

Jihadist ideology can be reduced to unusual definitions of four Islamic words (tawhid, jihad, caliphate and da’wa) and a few simple concepts. The jihadis believe, first, that they’re the only true Muslims in the world, the saved sect, the victorious party; that they’re the only ones going to Paradise. Second, they believe that hostile unbelievers control the world and have only one purpose in life, the destruction of Islam. In fact, according to several histories put together by jihadis, the entire purpose for the founding of America was to destroy Islam. Thus, thirdly, jihadis feel that war against the hostile unbelievers is permitted, because they’ve been attacked and aggressed against for at least ninety years, since the May 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement (which divided the Middle East into areas of influence for France, Great Britain and others). Bin Laden frequently references that agreement. Other jihadis have a more expansive vision of this war, believing it began either with the Crusades or fourteen hundred years ago or even with the creation of man. To them, history has been a constant fight between the believers and unbelievers, light and dark, truth and falsehood. Thus, for jihadis, all their wars have been defensive.

Finally, jihadis want to create an Islamic state for all the reasons that Islamists do — so that Islam will be correctly practiced, so that sharia law will be imposed, etc — but also to carry on this eternal war. Eternal war is the only foreign policy they envision for the caliphate, or Islamic state. When the war ends, it will be Judgment Day, the end of time. This is a dark, Manichean vision of the world.

As noted, the jihadis have very specific views of the concepts of tawhid, jihad, the Islamic state and da’wa.
(snip)

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