Sawt al-Jihad: New Indoctrination of Qa`idat al-JihadBy Reuven Paz*
(PRISM Series of Global Jihad, No. 8)
Introduction
The Salafist-Jihadist groups of Qa`idat al-Jihad and its affiliated groups, who adhere to and practice the worldview of global Jihad, have been ideologically developed by doctrines derived from a combination between the Egyptian Jihad, Saudi neo-Tawhid, and the globalization of Jihad, espoused by the Palestinian Dr. Abdallah Azzam in Afghanistan. Following the death of Azzam in November 1989, and the end of the anti-Soviet campaign of Jihad in Afghanistan, a younger generation of ideologues took its place. This new generation took over in two waves. First, alongside the rise of the Taliban and the Islamist conflicts in the Balkans in the first half of the 1990s; later on, alongside the organized terrorism of Qa`idat al-Jihad since the mid-1990s. This entire period has been accompanied by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the rise of the Islamic element within it, although Hamas is clearly affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad with Iran and Hizballah. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has contributed to global Jihad not only through the Palestinian Abdallah Azzam, but also through two of his most important Palestinian successors – Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in Jordan, and Omar Abu Qutadah in London.
An important additional development to note here was the gradual drying of the Jihadist ideological sources in Egypt. Sayyed Qutb, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, or Abd al-Qader Abd al-Aziz, are mentioned from time to time. Yet, it seems that only Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s deputy, kept his place in the first row of these ideologues, despite his lack of an official Islamic education. No younger or new generation of Egyptian Islamist ideologues or scholars, exists that could influence or contribute to the present developments of Global Jihad.
This reality left the door open for a large group of younger Saudi Islamists eager to assume an increasingly growing important role in developing the present and future trend of Salafist Jihad. Many of them were students and disciples of the older groups of Wahhabi clerics and scholars, who could not come to terms with the American presence on Saudi soil. In recent years they radicalized their positions and began backing up the positions of Qa`idat al-Jihad, including political violence against the United States, Western culture, and in recent years the Saudi royal regime, while providing Islamic legitimacy for these actions. The severe conflict between the younger generation of the Saudi Islamist opposition and the Saudi clerics of the Islamic Wahhabi establishment, which developed alongside the rise of Qa`idat al-Jihad, turned into an open one following the death in 1999 of Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz. For many years Sheikh Ibn Baz, who managed to block the rise of the rivalry into the open, had been respected by various groups within the Wahhabi movement. For about four years after his death, the Islamist opposition was growing, without any real reaction of the government or the weak Islamic establishment. The turning point seems to have been in May 2003, after the suicide bombings in Riyadh that led to the firm and aggressive campaign of the government to block the rise of the Islamist radical opposition.
The battle is to some extent fought on the Internet, at least on the part of the opposition and has also produced books and articles through which the opposition is attempting to sharpen its ideological weapons and tactics. An interesting large book was recently circulated on the Internet, primarily through one of the most important web sites of the Jihadi Salafiyyah, Manbar al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, of the Palestinian/Jordanian scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. The book is entitled Osama bin Laden: Mujaddid al-Zaman wa-qahir al-Amrikan (Bin Laden: The Reformer of our Times and Defeater of the Americans), by the Saudi scholar Abu Jandal al-Azdi. <1> In 460 pages this book raises Bin Laden to a new level of a reformer or reviver, attributes that in modern Islamic history have been bestowed only on very few scholars, such as Hasan al-Bana the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or Abu al-A`la al-Mawdudi in India and Pakistan.
Mujaddid in Islam was usually kept for those persons who revived the true spirit of Islamic faith and helped the Muslims see the authentic teachings of their religion without the encumbrance of social and cultural habits and ideas. In our times, where the variety of trends, movements, and doctrines, is intensively growing, such terms might be meaningless for the vast majority of the Muslim world. The use of this term with regard to Bin Laden however, is significant to his followers, since it functions as part of a growing personality cult around al-Qa`idah’s leader. Not even Sayyid Qutb, who might have deserved this title from the followers of the Egyptian Jihad, has enjoyed this title. Bin Laden, who is neither a cleric nor an Islamic scholar at all, enjoys this admiration at least by his Saudi sympathizers.
The shift to Saudi scholars as the main indoctrinators of Global Jihad also reflects the shift of the activity of Qa`idat al-Jihad in relation to the Arabian Peninsula. Since the suicide operation against the USS Cole in November 2000, terrorist operations have occurred with growing severity in Yemen, Hadramaut, Kuwait, and have reached at least a temporary peak in May 2003, with the suicide attack in Riyadh. “The sick man of Najd” as we could describe the present Saudi regime – a phrase taken from the European view of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th Century – is perceived by the Islamist opposition in the Kingdom as a kind of gift. In their view it might lead to an “Iranian style” revolution in under the nose of the American administration and its problematic occupation of Iraq. In any case, for many of the Islamist youngsters in the Islamist Internet forums this shift is another sign of the coming salvation, about which they tend to talk in apocalyptic terms. The hopes that they have thus lost in Egypt, Algeria, and the Sudan, have been replaced by the circumstances within the Saudi Kingdom.
39 ways for Jihad
To consolidate the indoctrination of Global Jihad by new generation of scholars, Qa`idat al-Jihad has recently attempted to resume its official web site, Al-Neda’, which had been closed since April 2003. The web site <2> represents an institute called The Center for Islamic Studies and Research, and is widely considered, both by observers and supporters of Qa`idat al-Jihad, to be its official organ. In early June 2003, the Saudi security forces managed to kill a young Saudi cleric by the name of Sheikh Yousef al-Ayiri. He was killed during the campaign against Saudi extremist Islamist elements, suspected in connections to the suicide bombings in Riyadh on 12 May 2003, in which 16 scholars and operatives have been killed so far, and dozens have been arrested so far.
Following the killing of Al-Ayiri, followers of Al-Qa`idah started to publish much information about him, and he thus became known as “the man behind Al-Neda’.” Furthermore, thousands of Islamist youngsters now admire him as the scholar who wrote many of the unsigned articles published by Al-Neda’. A new web site including his articles was recently opened for his memory. <3>
In early August 2003, Al-Neda’ published a new book titled 39 wasilah li-khidmat al-Jihad wal-musharakah fihi – “39 Ways in the Service of Jihad and Taking Part in it,” by the Saudi scholar Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Salem. <4>
The book is not very different from other similar works written in the past. It is reminiscent of the well-known comprehensive work on Jihad of the Muslim Brotherhood, written by Sa`id Hawwa in the 1970s.<5> Yet, the sources of 39 Ways are quite different, and the author relies primarily on scholars that are identified with Global Jihad in general, and Saudis in particular.<6> One of the names he frequently mentioned in the book was the recently deceased Sheikh Yousef al-Ayiri, whose reputation as a Jihadi-Salafi scholar has been known only to a small group of followers in Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States.
Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Jihad)
Another attempt to expand the ideological legitimacy of the culture of Global Jihad by Saudi supporters of Qa`idat al-Jihad was recently made by Al-Qa`idah’s Center for Islamic Studies and Research, which published a new virtual magazine – The Voice of Jihad – on the new version of their web site -- http://www.cybcity.com/image900/index.htm.<7> These attempts are made also in light of the increase of unrest in the Saudi Kingdom, led by the reformist oppositionist movement Al-Islah. The movement uses the unrest in Saudi Arabia unleashed by the suicide operations in Riyadh in May 2003, the Saudi harsh retaliation, and the American pressures on the government to promote some reforms in the Kingdom.
The new magazine, which is supposed to appear twice a month, focuses on the Jihad in Arabia by violence. The first issue contains the beginning of a series of articles about Sheikh Yousef al-Ayiri; as well as an interview with one of the 19 Saudis wanted after the May explosions in Riyadh. The two most important articles in The Voice of Jihad reflect the line of thought of the Salafi-Jihadi opposition. One is the editorial by Sheikh Naser al-Najdi, titled “Belief first: They are the heretics, the blood of each of them is the blood of a dog.” <8>
The article implicitly calls for the killing of every American:
My fighting brother,
Kill the heretic; kill whoever his blood is the blood of a dog; kill those that Almighty Allah has ordered you to kill….
Bush son of Bush… a dog son of a dog… his blood is that of a dog…
Shut your mouth and speak with your other mouth – the mouth of the defender against his attacker. Rhetoric might cause retreat.
The other and more important article follows the line of thought that prefers fighting to a political struggle for reforms, such as the one led during the past month by the Saudi Reformist movement Al-Islah, in the form of demonstrations. The author, Abu Abdallah al-Sa`di, argues with the reformers under the title “Explosion is not the way to reform.” <9>
Al-Sa`di insists on viewing the “explosions” as an integral part of Jihad. “This is the element that shook the armies of the Cross, and turned the life of the Jews into hell.” And he asks “Are the suicide operations merely explosions?” And he concludes:
Why should we be surprised? Our times require such amazement. If people are too afraid to respond to the call for Jihad what should they do when their scholars are planting in them the seeds of disgrace and irrigate them with humiliation and collapse. They cover it with disguise of “wisdom and tranquility… telling them “explosion is not the way for reform.”
Conclusion
The political circumstances and unrest that have been developed in Saudi Arabia in recent years, and especially in the past six months, have given an opportunity to the most radical Saudi Islamists not only to stand in the front line of Global Jihad, but to lead a violent and open struggle against a regime that in the past decade preferred to plant its head in the sand. The difficulties of the present Saudi government in adjusting itself and its political understanding to the changes of the recent decade turn Saudi Arabia and hence other countries in the Peninsula, into a hotbed of Islamist radicalism. Saudi financing, which directly or indirectly has poured billions of dollars to Islamists all over the world has irrigated a new generation of the most radical form of Jihadists to appear thus far.
Another phenomenon to note here is the fact that unlike the former generation of Saudi radical Islamists, whose roots were either in the Southern part of Arabia bordering Yemen, or the Western region of the Hijaz, the new generation comes from the heart of Wahhabism – Najd. These are not people from the margins of the Kingdom’s society, where opposition to the Wahhabis existed for many years. The younger generation comes from the Wahhabi homeland, and some of them from respected families or clans. Part of this opposition includes high-educated women acting behind the scenes. Most of them participate in the virtual support for Global Jihad, seeking cover behind the anonymity of the Internet. Others, however, have openly taken part in the demonstrations that were staged in several cities in recent weeks.
The primacy of Saudis in the operational field of Global Jihad and terrorism, as revealed in the September 11 attacks of 2001, has now extended to the fields of indoctrination and ideology. And while this change may have seemed rapid, it was not at all like that. It should also serve as a lesson for the United States to take a close look at what is going on with her opponents, but also her allies. Otherwise, the Iranian surprise of 1979 might repeat itself. In 1979 there were no PCs and Internet. Nowadays, the slightest change of Islamist radicalism spreads throughout the Muslim World within seconds.
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Reuven Paz is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and director of its Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM).
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1 See the book on-line in: www.almaqdese.com/r?c=2.2.05&I=15 See also a long interview with Al-Azdi published in the form of a book in the same web site – www.almaqdese.com/r?c=2.3&I=23
2 The present address of this web site is: http://www.cybcity.com/image900/index.htm
3 www.albatar.org The web site seems to be still under construction. One of the more important articles of his found on this web site, and which has not been published in Al-Neda’ is a severe attack on the Global Campaign against Aggression of Sheikh Safar al-Hawali and Sheikh Salman al-Awdah (www.maac.ws ). See on-line in:
http://www.albatar.org/pafile/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=11
4 See on-line in: http://www.cybcity.com/books/index.htm
5 Sa`id Hawwa, Jundallah: thaqafatan wa-akhlaqan (The army of Allah: Culture and characters) (Beirut, Dar al-kutub al-`ilmiyyah, 1979). In the 1980s he added another part, titled Jundallah: takhtitan (The army of Allah: planning).
6 A detailed analysis of the book will be published soon by PRISM.
7 See on-line in: http://www.cybcity.com/suondmag/index.htm
8 Innama hum al-Mushrikun…wa-innama damm ahadihim damm al-Kalb. The Dog is one of the most impure creatures in Islam. A true believer is not allowed even to touch a live dog.
9 Al-Tafjir laysa tariqan lil-Islah. This slogan was raised by some of the more radical Saudi Sheikhs who have moderated their tones towards the Saudi regime, following the suicide bombings in Riyadh. Among them are the two prominent scholars Safar al-Hawali and Salman al-`Awdah. |
