Reflections on a looming success
The New Yorker and The New Republic have both recently run long pieces on the declining support for terror tactics among jihadis. While these are in part deepening moral qualms, the underlying problem is clearly that terror tactics are simply not working and are alienating ordinary Muslims. In the words of the TNR piece there is a dawning recognition among Muslims that the ideological virus that unleashed September 11 and the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid is the same virus now wreaking havoc in the Muslim world. And not merely the Muslim world; one former English jihadi was appalled by the July 2005 attacks on London: "I was devastated by the attack," he says. "My feeling was, how dare they attack my city."
This is a debate being carried on in Islamic terms. Al Qaeda - as is clear from its own texts - justifies itself to fellow Muslims wholly in Islamic terms. This is part of a wider pattern, which The New Yorker article brings out particularly well. Consider a key jihadi text: “The Essential Guide for Preparation” appeared in 1988, as the Afghan jihad was winding down. It quickly became one of the most important texts in the jihadis’ training.
The “Guide” begins with the premise that jihad is the natural state of Islam. Muslims must always be in conflict with nonbelievers, Fadl asserts, resorting to peace only in moments of abject weakness. Because jihad is, above all, a religious exercise, there are divine rewards to be gained. He who gives money for jihad will be compensated in Heaven, but not as much as the person who acts. The greatest prize goes to the martyr. Every able-bodied believer is obligated to engage in jihad, since most Muslim countries are ruled by infidels who must be forcibly removed, in order to bring about an Islamic state.
Within its texts, al-Qaeda bitterly opposes any notion of peaceful co-existence with the West. Again, part of a wider pattern. Thus “Dr Fadl” argued that Muslims have a duty to wage jihad against such leaders; those who submit to an infidel ruler are themselves infidels, and doomed to damnation. The same punishment awaits those who participate in democratic elections. “I say to Muslims in all candor that secular, nationalist democracy opposes your religion and your doctrine, and in submitting to it you leave God’s book behind,” he writes. Those who labor in government, the police, and the courts are infidels, as is anyone who works for peaceful change; religious war, not political reform, is the sole mandate. Democracy is an offence against the sovereignty of Allah.
Indeed, the Islamists have been waging a war against modernity going back decades: members of the Muslim Brotherhood took part in arson that destroyed some seven hundred and fifty buildings-mainly night clubs, theatres, hotels, and restaurants-in downtown Cairo in 1952, an attack that marked the end of the liberal, progressive, cosmopolitan direction that Egypt might have chosen.
Islam is a different civilisation, with different presumptions. Thus, in “secular” Egypt there is the Dar al-Iftah, a government agency charged with issuing religious edicts-some five thousand fatwas a week.
But the jihadis now have to confront the failure of their efforts. Despite his previous call for jihad against unjust Muslim rulers, Fadl now says that such rulers can be fought only if they are unbelievers, and even then only to the extent that the battle will improve the situation of Muslims. Obviously, that has not been the case in Egypt or most other Islamic countries, where increased repression has been the usual result of armed insurgency.
The most obvious failure being 9/11, which far from leading to the US withdrawing from the Middle East, has meant it is far more entangled there - fighting two ground wars, having overthrown two Middle Eastern regimes.
Faced with this widespread intellectual revolt, which clearly has wider resonance in the Muslim world, al-Qaeda’s theorist Zawahiri had responded with both moral-religious arguments (the jihad as al-Qaeda is prosecuting it is a moral and religious imperative) and that actually it is winning: “The Islamic mujahid movement was not defeated, by the grace of God; indeed, because of its patience, steadfastness, and thoughtfulness, it is headed toward victory,” he writes. He cites the strikes on 9/11 and the ongoing battles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, which he says are wearing America down.
Needless to say, an Obama Administration that immediately started withdrawing troops would give credence to Zawahiri’s claims. Just as the pull-outs from Lebanon and Somalia fed both bin Laden and Saddam’s belief in American weakness.
It is also useless to pretend that the jihadi, including al-Qaeda, are not reflecting patterns deeply embedded in Islam: Zawahiri’s argument demonstrates why Islam is so vulnerable to radicalization. It is a religion that was born in conflict, and in its long history it has developed a reservoir of opinions and precedents that are supposed to govern the behavior of Muslims toward their enemies. … such proofs of the rightfulness of jihad, or taking captives, or slaughtering the enemy are easily found in the commentaries of scholars, the rulings of Sharia courts, the volumes of the Prophet’s sayings, and the Koran itself.
Jihad-as-aggression is a perennial in Islamic history, particularly in Africa. Osama bin Laden is the mad mullah of the global village and he gain credence if he looks effective.
Not that the choices are exactly easy ones. Western policy suffers a perennial problem due to the fraught nature of Middle Eastern politics - being close to a Middle Eastern regime tends to make you hated by its people. As Lawrence Wright notes in his New Yorker piece, I was living there when Nasser died, in 1970. At that time, there were no diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Egypt, and there were only a few hundred Americans in the country, but the Egyptian people loved America and what it stood for. When I visited the country in 2002, a few months after 9/11, I found the situation utterly reversed. The U.S. and Egyptian governments were close, but the Egyptian people were alienated and angry. Hence the democratisation push, trying to get regimes which are genuinely grounded in popular concerns and support - which immediately runs into problems that it naturally undermines “friendly” regimes.
Such regimes can also find conflict useful. “Dr Fadl” is completely correct when he declares that “the Palestinian cause has, for some time, been a grape leaf used by the bankrupt leaders to cover their own faults.” The Syrian regime (a Shi’a minority ruling over a Sunni majority, so it is “secular”) in particular would have far less leverage if it were not from its role in feeding conflict.
A particular virtue of both magazine pieces is that they take patterns within Islam seriously, rather than just mining them for Western ideological talking points. And the patterns of believers seriously. Egypt’s Grand Mufti makes an important point when he says “Our experience with such people is that it is very difficult to move them two or three degrees from where they are,” he said. “It’s easier to move from terrorism to extremism or from extremism to rigidity. We have not come across the person who can be moved all the way from terrorism to a normal life.”
Things have to be understood in their actual context, not their pretend one. As Wright notes, The Red Army Faction went out of business when the Berlin Wall came down and it lost its sanctuary in East Germany. I can remember when whether the Soviet bloc was supporting terrorism was a controversial point, a debate with very similar fault-lines as now - between those who saw terrorism as an “understandable” response to Western iniquities (the familiar “yes, but” move of “yes terrorism is wrong, but …”) and those who saw it as a criminal pathology supported by hostile regimes.
One can see a constant tendency among Western progressivists to see Iraq as Vietnam redux, and the Vietnam narrative presumes a losing war. (And one where defeat had no direct consequences to the US.) Hence a certain inflexibility on Iraq, a refusal to take success as an answer.
Indeed, the debate among jihadis is, in some ways, much more morally serious than that among Western progressivists. The jihadis see terror as something fellow jihadis do; as a tactical choice that is not working and killing lots of innocents. Their debate is more morally serious because they (naturally) accept Muslim moral agency.
Since the moral orientation of Western progressivists is so thoroughly focused on critiquing their own society, jihadi terror-bombing becomes a Western (particularly American) sin, something the US gets blamed for. (Conversely, the US gets no credit for the success in Kurdistan.) Moral agency becomes a Western (particularly American) monopoly, with the jihadis infantilised into mere programmed “responders”. The reductio of this mindset being the attempts to claim that 9/11 was an American conspiracy (or a Zionist one, if one is Hezbollah, for example). Claims that drive al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri into a frenzy: Zawahiri said indignantly, “The objective behind this lie is to deny that the Sunnis have heroes who harm America as no one has harmed it throughout its history.”
Which is fundamental problem with so much “anti-war” commentary and agitation in the West. The only context it is really responding to is a Western one and the world is bigger than that. It is a dangerous and arrogant form of ignorant parochialism to think otherwise.
This is a debate being carried on in Islamic terms. Al Qaeda - as is clear from its own texts - justifies itself to fellow Muslims wholly in Islamic terms. This is part of a wider pattern, which The New Yorker article brings out particularly well. Consider a key jihadi text: “The Essential Guide for Preparation” appeared in 1988, as the Afghan jihad was winding down. It quickly became one of the most important texts in the jihadis’ training.
The “Guide” begins with the premise that jihad is the natural state of Islam. Muslims must always be in conflict with nonbelievers, Fadl asserts, resorting to peace only in moments of abject weakness. Because jihad is, above all, a religious exercise, there are divine rewards to be gained. He who gives money for jihad will be compensated in Heaven, but not as much as the person who acts. The greatest prize goes to the martyr. Every able-bodied believer is obligated to engage in jihad, since most Muslim countries are ruled by infidels who must be forcibly removed, in order to bring about an Islamic state.
Within its texts, al-Qaeda bitterly opposes any notion of peaceful co-existence with the West. Again, part of a wider pattern. Thus “Dr Fadl” argued that Muslims have a duty to wage jihad against such leaders; those who submit to an infidel ruler are themselves infidels, and doomed to damnation. The same punishment awaits those who participate in democratic elections. “I say to Muslims in all candor that secular, nationalist democracy opposes your religion and your doctrine, and in submitting to it you leave God’s book behind,” he writes. Those who labor in government, the police, and the courts are infidels, as is anyone who works for peaceful change; religious war, not political reform, is the sole mandate. Democracy is an offence against the sovereignty of Allah.
Indeed, the Islamists have been waging a war against modernity going back decades: members of the Muslim Brotherhood took part in arson that destroyed some seven hundred and fifty buildings-mainly night clubs, theatres, hotels, and restaurants-in downtown Cairo in 1952, an attack that marked the end of the liberal, progressive, cosmopolitan direction that Egypt might have chosen.
Islam is a different civilisation, with different presumptions. Thus, in “secular” Egypt there is the Dar al-Iftah, a government agency charged with issuing religious edicts-some five thousand fatwas a week.
But the jihadis now have to confront the failure of their efforts. Despite his previous call for jihad against unjust Muslim rulers, Fadl now says that such rulers can be fought only if they are unbelievers, and even then only to the extent that the battle will improve the situation of Muslims. Obviously, that has not been the case in Egypt or most other Islamic countries, where increased repression has been the usual result of armed insurgency.
The most obvious failure being 9/11, which far from leading to the US withdrawing from the Middle East, has meant it is far more entangled there - fighting two ground wars, having overthrown two Middle Eastern regimes.
Faced with this widespread intellectual revolt, which clearly has wider resonance in the Muslim world, al-Qaeda’s theorist Zawahiri had responded with both moral-religious arguments (the jihad as al-Qaeda is prosecuting it is a moral and religious imperative) and that actually it is winning: “The Islamic mujahid movement was not defeated, by the grace of God; indeed, because of its patience, steadfastness, and thoughtfulness, it is headed toward victory,” he writes. He cites the strikes on 9/11 and the ongoing battles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, which he says are wearing America down.
Needless to say, an Obama Administration that immediately started withdrawing troops would give credence to Zawahiri’s claims. Just as the pull-outs from Lebanon and Somalia fed both bin Laden and Saddam’s belief in American weakness.
It is also useless to pretend that the jihadi, including al-Qaeda, are not reflecting patterns deeply embedded in Islam: Zawahiri’s argument demonstrates why Islam is so vulnerable to radicalization. It is a religion that was born in conflict, and in its long history it has developed a reservoir of opinions and precedents that are supposed to govern the behavior of Muslims toward their enemies. … such proofs of the rightfulness of jihad, or taking captives, or slaughtering the enemy are easily found in the commentaries of scholars, the rulings of Sharia courts, the volumes of the Prophet’s sayings, and the Koran itself.
Jihad-as-aggression is a perennial in Islamic history, particularly in Africa. Osama bin Laden is the mad mullah of the global village and he gain credence if he looks effective.
Not that the choices are exactly easy ones. Western policy suffers a perennial problem due to the fraught nature of Middle Eastern politics - being close to a Middle Eastern regime tends to make you hated by its people. As Lawrence Wright notes in his New Yorker piece, I was living there when Nasser died, in 1970. At that time, there were no diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Egypt, and there were only a few hundred Americans in the country, but the Egyptian people loved America and what it stood for. When I visited the country in 2002, a few months after 9/11, I found the situation utterly reversed. The U.S. and Egyptian governments were close, but the Egyptian people were alienated and angry. Hence the democratisation push, trying to get regimes which are genuinely grounded in popular concerns and support - which immediately runs into problems that it naturally undermines “friendly” regimes.
Such regimes can also find conflict useful. “Dr Fadl” is completely correct when he declares that “the Palestinian cause has, for some time, been a grape leaf used by the bankrupt leaders to cover their own faults.” The Syrian regime (a Shi’a minority ruling over a Sunni majority, so it is “secular”) in particular would have far less leverage if it were not from its role in feeding conflict.
A particular virtue of both magazine pieces is that they take patterns within Islam seriously, rather than just mining them for Western ideological talking points. And the patterns of believers seriously. Egypt’s Grand Mufti makes an important point when he says “Our experience with such people is that it is very difficult to move them two or three degrees from where they are,” he said. “It’s easier to move from terrorism to extremism or from extremism to rigidity. We have not come across the person who can be moved all the way from terrorism to a normal life.”
Things have to be understood in their actual context, not their pretend one. As Wright notes, The Red Army Faction went out of business when the Berlin Wall came down and it lost its sanctuary in East Germany. I can remember when whether the Soviet bloc was supporting terrorism was a controversial point, a debate with very similar fault-lines as now - between those who saw terrorism as an “understandable” response to Western iniquities (the familiar “yes, but” move of “yes terrorism is wrong, but …”) and those who saw it as a criminal pathology supported by hostile regimes.
One can see a constant tendency among Western progressivists to see Iraq as Vietnam redux, and the Vietnam narrative presumes a losing war. (And one where defeat had no direct consequences to the US.) Hence a certain inflexibility on Iraq, a refusal to take success as an answer.
Indeed, the debate among jihadis is, in some ways, much more morally serious than that among Western progressivists. The jihadis see terror as something fellow jihadis do; as a tactical choice that is not working and killing lots of innocents. Their debate is more morally serious because they (naturally) accept Muslim moral agency.
Since the moral orientation of Western progressivists is so thoroughly focused on critiquing their own society, jihadi terror-bombing becomes a Western (particularly American) sin, something the US gets blamed for. (Conversely, the US gets no credit for the success in Kurdistan.) Moral agency becomes a Western (particularly American) monopoly, with the jihadis infantilised into mere programmed “responders”. The reductio of this mindset being the attempts to claim that 9/11 was an American conspiracy (or a Zionist one, if one is Hezbollah, for example). Claims that drive al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri into a frenzy: Zawahiri said indignantly, “The objective behind this lie is to deny that the Sunnis have heroes who harm America as no one has harmed it throughout its history.”
Which is fundamental problem with so much “anti-war” commentary and agitation in the West. The only context it is really responding to is a Western one and the world is bigger than that. It is a dangerous and arrogant form of ignorant parochialism to think otherwise.