Your Most Trusted Source of Foreign
News and Views About the United States
|
|
Your Most Trusted Source of Foreign
News and Views About the United States
|
By Victor Kocher, our Near East correspondent
Translated By Hartmut Lau
September 23, 2005
"Once the Sacred Months are past, (and they refuse to make peace) you may kill the idol worshipers when you encounter them, punish them, and resist every move they make." This and similar warlike verses from the Koran's 9th Sura, which originated in the Prophet Mohamed's difficult situation in exile from Medina, are repeatedly quoted in the al-Qaeda network's writings and announcements. An outstanding anthology, published by a group of researchers associated with Parisian [researcher, Dr.] Gilles Kepel, uses long extracts from their most important statements combined with each of their biographies to introduce al-Qaeda's four leading personalities, Osama bin Ladin, Aiman al-Zawahri, Abu Mussab al-Zarkawi and Abdullah Azzam. Kepel was assisted by Arabist Jean-Pierre Milelli and young political scientists Thomas Hegghammer, Stéphane Lacroix und Omar Saghi, all of whom specialize in Arab affairs.
ACCESS TO AN UNKNOWN WAY OF THINKING
The original Arabic texts, downloaded from the Internet, have been published in French translation. They are accompanied by an almost equally lengthy set of footnotes with historical and linguistic explanations. Even this eye-catching effort to explain al-Qaeda's jargon to Western readers shows how away far these people are from the Western thought; nevertheless, they have shaken Western thinking to its very foundation with their terrorist attacks. The commentaries and several glossaries at the back of the book make it a helpful introduction to and reference about the obscure world of al-Qaeda terrorists.
If we look at the pattern of the terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001 we get the impression that the al-Qaeda leadership has been successful in creating a new consciousness amongst young Muslims. According to the new ideology, the Muslim community (Umma) was being threatened by Western domination and Near East policies in a manner that demands that the young faithful offer their lives in its defense. Defense against infidels is conducted by means of murderous attacks directed at the heart of the American superpower and in the capitals of its Western allies.
AL-QAEDA MEANS 'THE BASE'
The Islamic legal scholar Abdullah Azzam,
who was born in Palestine near Jenin in 1941, was
the first to make a casus belli [cause
of action] for jihad out of the fact of foreign occupation of Muslim lands.
Appropriately, he dedicated himself to resistance against the Soviet occupiers
of
Soon the Egyptian doctor and jihadi leader Ayman al Zawahri also joined bin Ladin and Azzam. [See Video Below] Al Zawahri, born in 1951, systematically positioned his jihad cadres near the financially well-endowed Saudi. Zawahri also distinguished himself by writing battle texts such as Knights Under The Banner Of The Prophet. In 2001, in Loyalty and Betrayal, he took to the jihad extremists' chauvinistic ideological superiority to the peak. The text, with its innumerable quotations both from the Koran and from classical texts, resembles an obscure splitting of hairs over issues of Islamic law, but it nevertheless underlines the strict prohibition against alliances between "true believing Muslims" and those with other beliefs.
BIN LADIN'S INVESTMENT AND RETURNS
The prohibition against making friends
with non-believers, against giving them positions of responsibility, against
respecting their laws and against working with them in opposition to other
Muslims are included in Zawahri's rules. Such teachings, which border on
racism, led Zarkawi, the al-Qaeda chief in
Osama bin Laden first came to the forefront with his February 1988 "Declaration of an Islamic Front against the Jews and the Crusaders," in which he built a bridge connecting Egyptian jihad groups with Pakistani and Bangladeshi extremists. His "Declaration to the American People" of October 30, 2004 - two days before the presidential election - is also worth reading. Here, bin Laden, an experienced entrepreneur and businessman, develops his strategy of attrition and speaks to Americans using terms they are familiar with: "Because you are destroying our freedom, we do the same with yours."
Bin Laden comments on the effects of the
attacks against New York: "Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the September 11 operation,
while
DIVIDING THE WORLD IN TWO
In contrast to the insane teachings commonly imagined in the West, al-Qaeda texts and commentaries illuminate its leadership's great and methodical care in deriving from the Koran and Sunna (religious tradition) every Muslim's personal religious duty (fard ain) to perform jihad. The most militant Koranic verses are chosen as the basis of al-Qaeda thought. They are interpreted to show that the American military presence in the Near East and Washington's far-reaching influence on Arabic regimes are in contradiction to God's rules, which permit governance only in accordance with Islamic law. The basis for their indiscriminate terrorist massacres is a chauvinistic division of humanity into Muslim true believers and the entire rest of the world, the unbelievers, who have been declared to be enemies of God and of Muslims and thus are to be summarily deprived of all human rights.
Gilles Kepel, Jean-Pierre Milelli, Thomas Hegghammer: Al-Qaeda dans le texte. PUF, Paris 2005. 456 pages, 24.50 euros.
