Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists by Scott Atran
Authors: Scott Atran
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Saudi monarchy or the Egyptian regime and establish a Salafi state. The suicide bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1988 and the USS Cole in 2000, as well as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, were intended to advance this goal.
But the jihadi movement today is no longer under the control of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization and is no longer primarily aimed at freeing Muslim homelands from perceived occupiers. It has become the speckled fight of small, self-organizing groups of mostly young men who dream of belonging to a revolutionary global Islamic movement that would dispense Islamic justice. For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists (ulema) has set down rules of interaction to cover almost any matter of trade, war, or peace between Dar al-Islam (The House of Islam, Land of Islam) and Dar al-Kufar (the House of Unbelief) or Dar al-Harb (the House of War). Always clearly grounded in passages from the Koran, these rules have contained lethal sanctions against apostates, idolaters, and those who challenge Muslim territorial dominance and the God-given right and duty to expand that dominance across the world.
Traditionally, however, there have been strong limits on using violence except when the House of Islam is under direct threat of physical attack. If there are no strong leaders and armies to defend, then it becomes a fard al-’ayn —a sacred duty incumbent upon every Muslim individual—to repel the infidel by any means necessary. According to Sayyid Qutb, “When they attack Dar al-Islam, it is fard al-’ayn, fard for every Muslim, woman or man, to fight.” 16 As Bin Laden and Zawahiri put it in a 1998 fatwa calling for “Jihad against Crusaders and Jews”:
Ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries…. On that basis, and in compliance with Allah’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order that their armies move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. 17
No mercy, no quarter. What the jihadi movement has done in the twenty-first century is to take such reasoning two steps further. First, because there is no pure Islamic state anywhere, then the whole world must be a House of War. Again, Qutb: “A Muslim has no country except that part of the world where the Sharia of God is established.” 18 Second, because Islam is under global attack by America and the forces of globalization, then the whole world is a global battlefield under the injunction of fard al-’ayn. “American Crusader interests are everywhere,” reiterated Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri in 2010 in the name of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: “Attack them and eliminate as many enemies as you can.” As the social movement has spread to the diaspora, it has become increasingly global in scope and apocalyptic in vision. That’s the bad news. But as it washes through the margins of societies, it has also become more scattered and disjointed—materially, psychologically, and philosophically. And that’s probably good news.
CHAPTER 7
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE: THE 9/11 HAMBURG GROUP AND
THE THREE WAVES OF JIHAD
There were two rams, one with horns and one without. The one with horns butted his head against the defenseless one. In the next world, Allah switched the horns from one ram to the other, so justice could prevail.
—SUBSTITUTE IMAM AT AL QUDS MOSQUE IN HAMBURG, WHERE
THE BOMBER PILOTS OF 9/11 PRAYED, TO MARC SAGEMAN
AND ME WHEN WE ASKED, “WHY DID THEY DO IT?”
A t a quarter to nine on the morning of September 11, 2001, Mohammed Atta, along with four other young men,
But the jihadi movement today is no longer under the control of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization and is no longer primarily aimed at freeing Muslim homelands from perceived occupiers. It has become the speckled fight of small, self-organizing groups of mostly young men who dream of belonging to a revolutionary global Islamic movement that would dispense Islamic justice. For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists (ulema) has set down rules of interaction to cover almost any matter of trade, war, or peace between Dar al-Islam (The House of Islam, Land of Islam) and Dar al-Kufar (the House of Unbelief) or Dar al-Harb (the House of War). Always clearly grounded in passages from the Koran, these rules have contained lethal sanctions against apostates, idolaters, and those who challenge Muslim territorial dominance and the God-given right and duty to expand that dominance across the world.
Traditionally, however, there have been strong limits on using violence except when the House of Islam is under direct threat of physical attack. If there are no strong leaders and armies to defend, then it becomes a fard al-’ayn —a sacred duty incumbent upon every Muslim individual—to repel the infidel by any means necessary. According to Sayyid Qutb, “When they attack Dar al-Islam, it is fard al-’ayn, fard for every Muslim, woman or man, to fight.” 16 As Bin Laden and Zawahiri put it in a 1998 fatwa calling for “Jihad against Crusaders and Jews”:
Ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries…. On that basis, and in compliance with Allah’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order that their armies move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. 17
No mercy, no quarter. What the jihadi movement has done in the twenty-first century is to take such reasoning two steps further. First, because there is no pure Islamic state anywhere, then the whole world must be a House of War. Again, Qutb: “A Muslim has no country except that part of the world where the Sharia of God is established.” 18 Second, because Islam is under global attack by America and the forces of globalization, then the whole world is a global battlefield under the injunction of fard al-’ayn. “American Crusader interests are everywhere,” reiterated Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri in 2010 in the name of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: “Attack them and eliminate as many enemies as you can.” As the social movement has spread to the diaspora, it has become increasingly global in scope and apocalyptic in vision. That’s the bad news. But as it washes through the margins of societies, it has also become more scattered and disjointed—materially, psychologically, and philosophically. And that’s probably good news.
CHAPTER 7
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE: THE 9/11 HAMBURG GROUP AND
THE THREE WAVES OF JIHAD
There were two rams, one with horns and one without. The one with horns butted his head against the defenseless one. In the next world, Allah switched the horns from one ram to the other, so justice could prevail.
—SUBSTITUTE IMAM AT AL QUDS MOSQUE IN HAMBURG, WHERE
THE BOMBER PILOTS OF 9/11 PRAYED, TO MARC SAGEMAN
AND ME WHEN WE ASKED, “WHY DID THEY DO IT?”
A t a quarter to nine on the morning of September 11, 2001, Mohammed Atta, along with four other young men,
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