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Global jihad and the European
arena
By Reuven Paz
This
presentation focuses on two elements: the phenomenon of
global jihad and its implications on Europe and Muslim
communities in Europe. In the international war against
world terrorism, primarily the Islamist one, there have
been many arrests, interrogations and investigations of
terrorists or suspected terrorists and sympathizers, in
Europe. They seemed so far to focus on the operational
levels, but not enough on the cultural and social
infrastructure of this phenomenon. Arresting terrorists
or suspected as such is vital. Yet, the work is not
completed if European countries such as Italy, the
United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Sweden or Poland are
hosting radical Islamist websites for example, that feed
on a daily basis, the radical messages of the supporters
of the "Culture of global jihad." Intelligence and
security services should, while fighting terrorism,
concentrate also on gathering information that will
supply them the better understanding of the ideological,
cultural, educational, and social factors of this
dangerous phenomenon, in order to counter it
efficiently.
It is important also to distinguish
here between the terms "Islamic" and "Islamist" in
discussion of terrorism. In general, Islamic movements
are those that employ nonviolent means, however
subversive, to restore the past - that is to found a
single, unified Islamic state (Khilafah), whose
sole constitution is the Islamic law (Sharia).
Since there is no distinction in Islam between religion
and politics, these groups recruit support through
political efforts alongside their social-welfare and
cultural activities, all of which they call
Da'wah. In contrast, Islamists direct all their
efforts toward fulfilling the duty of jihad by violence
and terror, which often necessitates excommunicating
their Muslim rivals and the secular parts of Muslim
society along with the non-Muslim world. These Islamist
groups are the primary subject of this presentation.
The culture of global jihad
The term
global jihad marks and reflects the solidarity of
variety of movements, groups, and sometimes ad hoc
groupings or cells, which act under a kind of
ideological umbrella of radical interpretations of
Islam. These interpretations are mainly a result of
older developments in the Arab world since the early
1960s; the tendency to focus on easily adopted elements
of Islam; A relative ignorance of principal elements of
Orthodox Islam as a result of the spread of secularism;
and above all – great difficulties in coping with the
environment of Western modernization and its values,
both in the West and in the Westernizing Arab societies.
It reflects also a process of consolidation of
multi-national and various trends and doctrines in the
past twenty years, and in several arenas in the Muslim
world and the West. Such process took place since the
early 1980s in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo,
Chechnya, and Kashmir, on one hand, and among Muslim
communities in Europe and North America. It was a result
of global changes such as the dismantling of the Soviet
Union and the Socialist camp of Eastern Europe; the
renewal of old nationalist ideologies and conflicts; the
shift of the center of gravity of the Islamist activity
from the Arab world to the margins of the Middle East or
to Europe, following the success of Arab governments to
counter this radical phenomenon in their homelands; the
liberal attitude of European governments and parts of
their societies towards waves of Muslim immigrants on
one hand, and towards social changes in existing Muslim
communities, on the other; and the creation of central
meeting points of Islamist radicals.
To the
above elements we should add social, economic, and
political factors, in the Arab and Muslim world and
among Muslim communities in the West. These factors
assisted in creating a closer solidarity between various
scholars, groups, sympathizers, and circles of
frustrated Islamic elements. This solidarity is
primarily based upon deep hatred for a necessary enemy
and kind of apocalyptic perceptions, which reflects the
eternal fight between the Lord and the Devil, the good
and wrong, or the light and darkness. Global jihad in
recent years became therefore, a solidarity based upon
narrow-minded interpretations of limited Islamic
principles, and a sense of confrontation with a Western
global conspiracy. The solidarity is better consolidated
due to various factors such as the rapid spread of
communications, media, and above all the Internet. These
means of globalization encourage the "brotherhood of the
oppressed". Islamist interpretations, and sometimes
misinterpretations, grant this brotherhood the religious
justification for fighting this conspiracy in Islamic
means and perceptions of jihad, even when this jihad is
using what Western political culture calls terrorism. As
long as this terrorism is facing "the devil, heresy, and
the betrayal of secular Muslim societies and regimes, it
is given more legitimacy by the process of constant
demonizing of the enemy.
On the grounds of the
aforementioned, it is interesting to see the Islamist
view and definition of the global jihad movement, and
the terms they use. The best possible definition has
been written by Omar Abu Omar, alias Abu Qutadah, a
Palestinian residing in London under political asylum
since 1993, and one of the main ideologues of this
phenomenon. In an article titled "The comprehension of
the civilizational view and the duty of jihad"(1) from
his collection of "Articles between Two Doctrines" he
wrote: "When we talk about the jihad movements in the
Islamic world we mean those groups and organizations
that were established in order to eliminate the evil
(Taghutiyyah) heretic (Kafirah) regimes in
the apostate countries (Bilad al-Riddah), and to
revive the Islamic government that will gather the
nation under the Islamic Caliphate."
But, the
"true jihad" movements differ from the variety of other
Islamic groups that act in the various Muslim countries
and seek political legitimacy of the "heretic" regimes.
In such case, the conflict between these last groups and
the government is between a Muslim regime and its
citizens, and not between "heretic and apostate state
and a group that seeks to eliminate and change it".
Adds Abu Omar, "It is very important to note
that the jihad movements are not those that carry
weapons or believe only in using it. This is a mistaken
view of many of the jihad youth. The jihad movement is
the one that possesses the comprehensive civilizational
view, that comes from the perception of true unity [of
Allah] (Tawhid) on its both parts: the unity of
serving (`Ibadah) and following (Ittiba`)
the Lord. The one that has an historic dimension ... and
future view of a world totally controlled by Islam.
Abu Omar suggested in 1994, a new term: the
jihad movement of future hope (Al-Harakah al-Jihadiyyah
al-Amal), which is: "A movement of Salafi worldview,
perceptions, doctrines, and way; totally cleansed from
any remains of the Sufi wrong doctrine; does not belong
to any school or trend besides that of the Qur’an and
Sunnah ... If we acknowledge that, we can see that the
present jihad movements in the Islamic world have not
reached these expectations of future hope, but they are
in the right path ...
"What I mean is that these
[jihadi] movements should open new arenas for the jihad
outside their countries. Such a place could serve for
preparations only, or, if there is hope for achieving
the expected goal in a certain place – then, the jihad
movement should view itself as one unit, since the
nature of the conflict is of a battle. The commander is
the one who can achieve this target, or benefit from the
circumstances. The other [leaders] even if they were
older and preceded him, should join this new hope and
help him. They should serve as soldiers of the new
commander ..."
A short period after the
September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, a
Palestinian Islamist scholar published a so-called
research titled "The Great Koran predicts the
destruction of the United States, and the drowning of
the American army."(2) The West under the United Stated
has moved in the author’s eyes, through a process of
"Pharaohnization," based on the Koranic story of
Biblical origin of the Exodus of the Children of Israel
from slavery in Egypt, and from the most vicious rule of
Pharaoh, the symbol of evilness in Islamic eyes, and
mainly the Egyptian groups. The last ones, which are
most dominant in the phenomenon of the global jihad,
used this term to name the Egyptian presidents, Nasser,
Sadat, and Mubarak. According to one of the Koranic
verses (3), Pharaoh is the first of his kind, but others
follow him in every generation, till the day of
resurrection. The present Pharaoh is the United States
under President Bush. But, Pharaoh is not the only demon
force that oppresses the Muslims today. There is Haman
too, who is according to the Koran the commander of an
army, such as Pharaoh. According to the author, "the two
of them are two poles of evilness, oppression, and
corruption. Therefore, no one should wonder if Haman in
our days is the United Kingdom, such as Pharaoh is the
United States. Haman is Great Britain, which shared with
the United States the various kinds of torturing the
Muslims, in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and the rest
of the Muslim world."
And who is facing these
evil powers? Qarun, one of the companions of Moses, who
symbolizes the eternal truth (al-Haqq) while
confronting the Evil (al-Batil). The one who
represents these days the eternal truth is Sheikh Osama
bin Laden." The conclusion is that the end of the United
States is very close. George W Bush the second is
Pharaoh of our times; such as Ramses the Second was the
original Pharaoh. Since his term of presidency is going
to end in 2003, the ultimate conclusion is that "the
United States will not exist to see the year of 2004!"
And, since the last Koranic chapter to mention Pharaoh
is The Dawn (Al-Fajr), the ultimate conclusion is
that "the destruction of the United States is going to
be the dawn of the Muslim believers".
Western
civilization might view such writings as nonsense. Yet,
this kind of literature became popular in Islamic
circles following the September attacks, the same as
occurred in 1991, following the Gulf war against Iraq.
This booklet was the start of a series of books,
articles, religious rulings, and other forms of
writings, all without exception published in numerous
websites over the Internet, and supply new meanings to
the culture of global jihad and its violent conflict
with the West. The most prominent of them so far, are
two books that might use also as fatwah - Islamic
rulings - for the supporters of global jihad. One is
"The base of legitimacy for the destruction that
occurred in America," by the Saudi radical scholar Abd
al-Aziz bin Salih al-Jarbou, published in November
2001.(4) The other one has been just recently published
by the above-mentioned Palestinian radical scholar, Omar
Abu Omar alias Abu Qutadah. The later, who formally
"disappeared" from London in January 2002, was accused
by the Spanish authorities as the political leader of
al-Qaeda in Europe, following their investigations. He
might be linked also to the arrests of the German
authorities of a group of Al-Tawhid that might have been
linked to the attack against the old Jewish synagogue in
the island of Jerba in Tunisia in late April 2002, that
led to the killing of 18 people, most of them German
tourists.
The Fatwah, titled "The Islamic legal
perception of the September 11 events", was placed in
the end of April in one of the radical websites of the
global jihad culture, and was the first sign from him
after several months of silence. (5) His main motive in
legally justifying the September attacks, is the
perception of the war between the Muslims and the West
as religious one: "And when we define it as a religious
war, this is since the West does not want to let Islam
exist in the form of a state and power. Yes, they always
repeat that they are not against Islam, but what Islam
is the one they support and not against? This is the
false 'so-called moderate' Islam. The kind of Islam that
accepts the submission to America and to the West, and
is glad to live in accordance with their way of life. It
grants America the legitimacy to spread its hegemony
over the entire world, with no protest or resistance.
Yes, they want the kind of Islam that approves the
service of the American Muslim in the military forces,
in order to fight another Muslim from the Muslim world.
They want Islam that does not prohibit what Allah and
the Prophet forbade, and the kind that does not deny
their civilization, and their political, economic, and
social values."
The conflict is, therefore, not
just between this interpretation of Islam and Western
culture, but also between the two different Islamic
interpretations of culture and worldview. Hence, it is
not only a threat to Western or European societies, but
to Muslim communities in the West including Europe, as
well.
The general culture of global jihad is not
unique to a certain state, language, or community, but
dedicated to create a global solidarity of anti-Western
and in most cases anti-Jewish atmosphere, based upon
religious apocalyptic grounds. Yet, there is a major
element to note here. That is the dominance of Arabs in
the culture of global jihad and hence issues related
firstly to the Arab world. Furthermore, even the
pro-al-Qaeda Islamist groups that act in the non-Arab
parts of the Muslim world, such as Indonesia, Malaysia,
Chechnya, west China or Pakistan, use mainly Arabic in
their messages, and even in their websites. This might
explain the ongoing perception of the Arab world as the
center of the global Islamist jihad by these groupings,
and the intensive relation to the ongoing developments
within this region, even during the fight for their
lives in Afghanistan. The Egyptian, Saudi, Algerian,
Palestinian, Yemeni and other Arab elements in this
culture of global jihad, cannot really release
themselves from the chains of the past conflicts in
their homelands. Hence, they tend to look forward to
renew these conflicts above every other goals and
interests. This element could be best viewed in the book
of the Egyptian physician Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri,
Knights under the Prophet’s banner, which was
published in 11 parts by the Saudi London-based paper
Al-Sharq al-Awsat in December 2001, and was at least
partly written after the September attacks. (6)
Al-Zawahiri, the deputy of Osama bin Laden and leader of
the Egyptian jihad group, reflects also the Egyptian
Islamist legacy in this phenomenon.
Muslim
radicalization in the West
New and larger bases
of Islamist radicalism and terrorism seem to be
developing in Muslim communities in Europe and North and
South America. They are based on the notion of the
culture of global jihad as a religious duty, aimed at a
perceived global conspiracy against Islam as a religion,
culture, and a way of life. Another cause is the
emerging doctrine of the non-territorial Islamic state.
This doctrine views Muslim communities as a kind
of loose-knit Islamic state, though without the
territorial and religious mission of reestablishing a
Khilafah. Islamic scholars in the United Kingdom
have long provided the impetus for this view by
emphasizing the cultural, economic, and political
consolidation of these Muslim communities. Furthermore,
the democratic and liberal environment of Western
countries fostered Islamic pluralism, giving free rein
to the activities of many different groups reflecting
many different trends of Islamic thought. Despite this
pluralism, however, many of these groups went on
carrying the fundamentalist banner of many of the
Islamic movements in their Arab and Muslim homelands.
Long before the establishment of groups like
al-Qaeda, Islamic and Islamist movements regularly spoke
of conspiracy against Islam and advocated attacks on the
United States, Israel, and Western culture. Anti-Western
and anti-Jewish feelings have long proliferated in the
Muslim world, even among groups and regimes. A major new
element that arose in the past decade, however, was the
Islamists’ success in translating the doctrine of global
jihad into efficient terrorist activity. This element
was made possible by their infiltration of Muslim
communities in the West, which provided them with
essential ideological and financial support.
Yet, Western-based support for Islamist groups,
which is so vital to their success worldwide, cannot be
fully understood without some analysis of the social and
psychological factors underlying the Islamic
sociopolitical renaissance in the Muslim world.
Over the past three decades, Islamic and
Islamist movements have been able to plant their notion
of global cultural war in Arab and Muslim societies,
convincing many in the region that Islam is under
attack. Thus, concepts synonymous in Western political
culture with terrorism - such as jihad, Takfir
(refutation), Istishhad (martyrdom, including by
suicide), and Shahid (martyr) - are now viewed by
many in the Islamic world as religious duties. The
central feeling among most Islamists - from those who
carry out terrorist acts to those who provide a
supportive atmosphere for such activity - is that of
being under siege. Thus, all means of self-defense are
justified in their eyes, particularly when these means
are granted religious legitimacy.
The
interaction in the West between Muslim immigrants from
various countries, cultures and ideologies, has greatly
facilitated the growth of the Khilafah doctrine.
Such interaction has promoted both solidarity and a
shared sense of a global threat to Islam and the
Muslims. These factors have in turn led to the doctrine
of the culture of global jihad and to the brotherhood
felt by its adherents. As the worldwide investigation of
the September 11 attacks and the al-Qaeda terrorist
network has shown, this new doctrine of brotherhood
resulted in a new operational development - the
establishment of multinational and multi-organizational
terrorist cells among Muslim immigrants in the West.
Apparently, some of these cells in Europe and the United
States were, just as responsible for planning and
carrying out these attacks as their commanders and
leaders in Afghanistan.
Terrorists of
alienation
Another emerging development among
Islamist groups is the radicalism brought on by social
ills and alienation - that is, terrorism motivated
primarily by elements such as xenophobia (both by and
against Muslims), growing unemployment, economic
circumstances, difficulties in coping with Western
modernization, the changing and dismantling of
traditional values and family ties, and so forth. For
example, in an unsigned 1991 article appearing in its
main journal, the Palestinian Hamas offered the
following introduction of sorts to the doctrine of
global jihad: "The whole world is persecuting you and
the satanic powers ambush you. The whole world is your
front, and do not exclude yourself from the
confrontation ... The life of misery [keeps] you from
the meaning of life and [turns] your life into death.
You live as a dead man ... We stand today in a
crossroad: life or death, but life without martyrdom
[is] death. Look for death and you are given life." (7)
This rhetoric would clearly appeal to those
already afflicted by a sense of hopelessness or
resentment. The implicit alienation in such statements
becomes all the more striking when one considers that
the September 11 hijackers lived in relative comfort in
the United States or Europe for long periods of time
before carrying out their operation, yet were apparently
undeterred from their plans. Of course, other groups of
immigrants are susceptible to social ills as well. Yet,
the growing Islamist activity among Muslim immigrants,
along with their shared notion of global struggle
against the West, have encouraged a more rapid spread of
radical doctrines among younger Muslim generations.
Furthermore, the profiles of many of the people
arrested in the West following the September 11 attack -
most on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda - are quite
different from those of the typical Arab extremists in
Afghanistan. The former are generally more educated and
familiar with Western culture. Yet, instead of using
this familiarity for personal benefits and for greater
integration with Western culture, as their fathers did
in the past, these "terrorists of alienation" hold on to
their hostility and exploit the weaknesses of the
societies in which they reside.
This process is
not new in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Many university
students and graduates tend to adopt radical Islamic
positions and fight the regimes of their homelands as a
result of their strong social awareness. In many cases
they view themselves as social elites who must sacrifice
themselves for the sake of their society. This sense
does not change when they live outside their homelands.
Their radical positions are also a result of various
radical Islamist trends that developed in the 1960s and
1970s. During this period, under the influence of the
Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, social justice became
the key criterion by which Islamists began to judge
their ruling elites and to accuse some of facilitating
Western culture’s conspiracy against Islam. Therefore,
some of these radicals did not necessarily fit what was
then the profile of the typical Islamist - that is, one
whose religious observation is total.
This sense
of social mission is equally visible among Islamists who
have left their homelands. Many such emigrants have
sought to preserve in entirety their homeland culture,
unlike previous generations, who did their best to adopt
the cultures of their new environments. This element has
in turn facilitated the globalization of the jihad. At
the root of this phenomenon lies the inability of many
Muslims to cope with the technological, cultural, or
economic aspects of Western modernization. Many of them
blame this failure on the secular cultures and
ideologies that have influenced various modern Middle
Eastern regimes; thus they look for salvation in a
return to the glorious past of Islam. Since orthodox
Islam is identified with Islamic establishments whose
source of power is these regimes, many Muslims now
support those who represent the opposite culture: the
radical activists who oppose the national state and its
interpretation of Islam.
Yet, aside from these
direct efforts of Islamist involvement to expand their
influence, their success in both the Muslim world and
the West is due to large part to what we have already
described as the "Islamic atmosphere" - that is, the
often indirect framework of support created by groups
that are not connected to political violence or
terrorism, some of whom even publicly condemn such
methods. These groups carry out the vast majority of
political, social, cultural and educational work in the
name of Islam, both in Muslim countries and among Muslim
communities in Europe and in the West. Therefore, they
preserve the Islamic atmosphere in which more extremist
and violent Islamist groups thrive; they serve as a
greenhouse of sorts of such radical groups and for the
growth of views that are hostile toward the West or
Western culture.
Furthermore, the social,
political, cultural, economic, educational, and
charitable infrastructure of some of these groups serve
in part as the main source of finance and support for
Islamic projects that are used also as a by-product for
the financing of Islamist terrorist groups. Since many
of their primary activities involve consolidating Muslim
communities in the West, these groups often set the
grounds, inadvertently or not, for massive fundraising,
political support, and even recruitment on the part of
Islamist movements. In many cases, Islamic social work
has become a form of social protest, against either
secular Muslim regimes or Western societies, and this
protest often facilitates the activity of Islamists.
Conclusion
Understanding the ideology
and practice of the culture of global jihad and its
movements is no longer simply a matter of looking at
individual groups that are attempting to topple regimes
in their homelands. Until recently, one could still
differentiate between such groups and other Islamic
trends, such as the various factions of the Muslim
Brotherhood, The Khilafah groups of the Islamic
Liberation Party, and the Salafiyyah groups in various
parts of the Muslim world. Yet, the changes that have
been wrought on the Islamic map over the past few
decades and during the post-September 11 anti-terrorism
campaign, may lead at least part of the next generation
of Muslims to seek more solidarity with the forces that
lead the culture of global jihad.
Therefore, the
brotherhood of global jihad must be viewed in new terms.
Instead of movements, groups, or organizations, we
should look for cells composed of multinational
Islamists. The present methods of countering the global
jihad might serve only to encourage another shift in its
geographical center. If in the past this center was
transferred from the Arab world to Afghanistan and
Central Asia, Western success in post-September 11
campaigns in those areas may lead to another shift: to
the heart of the West, to marginal regions (eg the
Philippines), or to both. Such a transfer would probably
force Islamists to adopt greater solidarity,
cooperation, and coordination, making terrorist cells
more likely to act in a somewhat unified manner even
without a common command. This solidarity could serve as
an alternative to a central base in Afghanistan or
elsewhere, even if bin Laden and other leading figures
of al-Qaeda are killed or imprisoned.
During the
Middle Ages and later periods, Muslims tended to view
the campaigns of Christian Crusaders as something akin
to their own jihad - that is, as a clearly spiritual
duty that did not distinguish between religion and
politics. The perception of the Crusader era as a
triumphant phase in Islamic history has been revived and
emphasized in the last few decades by Islamist
movements. When bin Laden named his front "World Islamic
Front for the Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders",
his meaning was clear to the entire Muslim World.
Furthermore, such language provided both his immediate
followers and wider Islamic circles with hope for a
better and victorious future. By exploiting feelings of
hatred developed mainly on social and economic grounds,
bin Laden succeeded in convincing many Muslims that
their future lay in terrorizing the West.
This
later phenomenon brings us to the root of the Islamist
violence, which might be more prominent in Europe than
in the Arab or Muslim world: the inability of many
Muslims to cope with Western modernization. Islamic
fundamentalism is in many ways a search for the glorious
past of Islam, in the middle ages. The radicalization of
this phenomenon lies in the pursuit of an immediate
renewal of this glorious past. The continuous sense of
retreat felt by many Muslims during the second half of
the twentieth century brought impatience that led to
violence. Over the past few years, the doctrine of
long-term social revolution - expounded by the Muslim
Brotherhood in the Arab World and by Jama'at-i-Islam in
India, Pakistan, and the non-Arab Muslim World - lost
much of its appeal for these Muslims. They were
searching for an immediate improvement in their social
conditions, and therefore readily adopted the notion of
jihad, of a clash between civilizations.
Thus,
unlike the secular, nationalist, radical, and anarchist
terrorism that was supported in the past by states like
Libya, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, East-Germany and
the Soviet Union, most of the Islamist jihad groups have
not been state-sponsored. For example, most of the
Egyptian Islamist terrorist groups has been independent
of such sponsorship, aside from the bit of logistical
assistance given to a few of them by Sudan. Similarly,
the Algerian Islamist terrorist groups have not been
sponsored by foreign states. Furthermore, since many of
these groups purposefully avoided and neglected
social-welfare activity, they could not enjoy the
generous financial support given mainly by Saudi Arabia
and other Gulf States to the various social-welfare
projects conducted by Islamic movements of the Muslim
Brotherhood school.
In this sense, Hamas is
unique - it is the only movement affiliated with the
Brotherhood that is intensely involved in both terrorism
and social activity. Given its social-welfare
infrastructure, and the fact that its terrorist activity
is directed so far only against Israel, as part of a
Palestinian national struggle, Hamas has gained the
support of several Arab states and wealthy individuals
including the Saudis. Yet, no one has called on the US
State Department to include those countries on the list
of states sponsoring terrorism. The Hamas model has been
imitated in recent years by Hizballah in Lebanon, which
sought not only material support for its fight against
the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, but also
social and political reinforcement from the Shi'ite
community in Lebanon and from Iran and Syria.
An
important consequence of the war against Islamist
terrorism might be a shift of terrorist activity back to
the Arab World and the Middle East, and hence closer to
Europe and Arab communities there. Despite the global
nature of the Islamist phenomenon in recent years, their
ideal remained the establishment of what they perceive
as the true Islamic state in the heart of the Muslim
world. Since the hard core of the global jihad movement
is composed primarily of Arab Islamists, the lost of the
Afghan base might bring them back to square one: their
homelands. Dr Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian right-hand of
Bin Laden, has set in his above-mentioned last book of
memoirs a new mode of activity for the Islamist groups,
which might be an outcome of the lesson that they
learned from their past failure in the Arab world: "The
jihad movement must come closer to the masses, defend
their honor, fend off injustice, and lead them to the
path of guidance and victory. It must step forward in
the arena of sacrifice and excel to get its message
across in a way that makes the right accessible to all
seekers and that makes access to the origin and facts of
religion simple and free of the complexities of
terminology and the intricacies of composition.
"The jihad movement must dedicate one of its
wings to work with the masses, preach, provide services
for the Muslim people, and share their concerns through
all available avenues for charity and educational work.
We must not leave a single area unoccupied. We must win
the people's confidence, respect, and affection. The
people will not love us unless they felt that we love
them, care about them, and are ready to defend them ..."
A possible return of the global jihad movements
to the homelands in the Arab world and the Middle East,
in addition to the unsolved Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, will continue to feed the theories of
conspiracy of the "Alliance of the Crusaders and the
Jews" and the continued tendency to blame the West for
any fault. The Palestinian cause might therefore, serve
as the center of gravity of the next phase of the
post-Afghanistan era of the global Islamist movements,
either in the Middle East, Central and South-East Asia,
or among Muslim communities in Europe and North America.
If to conclude, there are four essential lessons
the European community should learn and pay attention
to:
Much of the picture that was uncovered since
September 2001 could be revealed earlier through the
study of the writings, speeches and preaching by these
scholars and groups, during the 1990s.
Social developments and changes in communities of
immigrants are closely linked to the development of
anti-Western sentiments, and the adoption of radical
doctrines.
Internet websites has become in recent years the
best means of communications, propaganda and delivering
of radical messages in the most efficient way.
The present focus of the culture of global jihad
on the United States or the "alliance between the
Crusaders and the Jews" should not be misleading. The
composition of social frustration and freedom of
activity turns the European arena into a nonetheless
threatening phenomenon.
Notes
(1) Omar Abu Omar "Abu
Qatada al-Filastini", "Shumuliyat al-Ru'ya
al-Hadhariyyah wa-Fardiyyat al-Jihad", Maqalat Bayn
Minhajayn (Articles between two Doctrines). The book is
a collection of 98 articles he wrote in 1994, in which
he presented his worldview. There is no information
whether it has been published in hard copy. The articles
were available on-line in a former website of Abu Omar,
which was closed after September 2001, as well as on
other Islamist closed web sites. It is not available in
his present web site. The author possesses the whole
book in a downloaded version from his closed website.
(2) Sheikh Salah al-Din Abu Arafeh, Al-Qur'an
al-'Azim yunabbi' bi-damar al-Wilayat al-Muttahidah
wa-gharq al-Jaysh al-Amriki, Jerusalem, September 2001,
no publisher.
(3) Surat al-Zakhraf, 56.
(4) Abd al-'Aziz bin Salih al-Jarbou', Al-Ta’sil
limashrou'iyyat ma jara li-amrika min tadmir, 23/8/1422H
(10 November 2001). See on-line in www.almaqdese.com and
other similar websites. The website is of "The platform
of Tawhid and Jihad", of the radical
Jordanian-Palestinian Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.
Eighteen books and articles of Al-Maqdisi were found by
the German police in Hamburg, in the apartment of
Muhammad Atta who led the September attack in the United
States.
(5) Omar Abu Omar Abu Qutadah, Al-Ru'ya
al-Shar'iyyah li-ahdath 11 Aylul, April 2002. See
on-line in www.aloswa.org.
(6) Dr Ayman
al-Zawahiri, Fursan tahta rayat al-nabbi, Al-Sharq
al-Awsat, London, 2-12 December 2001.
(7) 'Ars
al-Shahadah, Filastin al-Muslimah, no. 9 (September
1991), p. 63.
Reuven Paz, Senior
Fellow with the Gloria Center, is the founder and
director of the Project for the Research of Radical
Islamism. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the
International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism
(ICT), and has published numerous articles in the fields
of Palestinian society and politics, the Israeli Arabs
and Palestinian and Arab Islamic movements, Islamic
movements and anti-Semitism, Islamist international
networks, and terrorist groups and Islamist terrorism. A
book, Tangled Web: International Islamist
Networking was published in the summer of 2002 by
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
This article is adapted from a presentation made
at the International Conference on Intelligence and
Terrorism, Priverno, Italy, May 2002.
Published
with permission of the Global
Research in International Affairs (GLORIA)
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