Documenting the Global Jihad

I highly recommend Mark Stout’s latest analysis of a new jihadi strategic study entitled “The Vision of the Jihaadi Movement”.

In the first part of this series on a book describing what every jihadi ought to know, we saw that the authors of the book, the Shari’a Council of the Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad in Gaza, initially seemed to give a purely religious description of things but quickly moved on to the political relevance of what they were saying. In a response to this post, one reader stated that their words were “just a rehash of Qutb”. He has a good point. In Qutb’s famous Milestones (Ma’alim fi l-Tariq), the author does indeed point out that those who fail to rule according to the shari’a and use man-made laws instead are claiming God’s sovereignty (hakimiyya), thereby turning themselves into gods or idols (tawaghit), just like we saw in the previous post. The scholars of the Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad go further, however, and show that they have much more detailed ideas than Qutb ever wrote down about such issues, as we will see below.

Judgement and Legislation

Unlike Qutb, the book dealt with in this post gives a much more detailed description of “un-Islamic” rules, laws and legislation and what judging “according to what God has sent down” (Q. 5: 44, an important verse for Qutb and other Islamists) means and distinguishes between “judgment” and “legislation”. The authors point out that, whereas a wrong judgment can be made for several reasons and therefore does not automatically amount to unbelief (kufr) of the person responsible for it, the term “legislation” denotes a system of laws that - when applied in the service of anyone or anything other than God - means that its legislator is placed outside Islam.

After discussing the exact definition of “legislation” and several other issues, the scholars move on to one of the major questions related to the issue of “un-Islamic” legislation: when can something be called “major unbelief” (kufr akbar) and when is it simply “minor unbelief” (kufr asghar)? The difference between the two is that the former places the culprit outside Islam, while the latter merely entails that he is guilty of something awful but not so bad as to expel him from the religion altogether. Perhaps not surprisingly, the list of legislative sins that amount to “major unbelief” is much longer than the list of “minor unbelief” categories. Although the discussion is more detailed and nuanced than can be discussed here, most forms of “major unbelief” entail that the legislator shows that he actually believes “man-made laws” to be superior to the Islamic shari’a, which is a blatant form of kufr. While other Muslim scholars often state that one cannot possibly know a person’s real intentions, that one should therefore be extremely careful in ascribing “un-Islamic” motives to rulers and legislators and that, subsequently, the application of the label “major unbelief” to sinful acts should be highly limited, the authors have different ideas. They contend that certain actions betray a ruler’s true beliefs, making it possible for others to determine whether his “man-made laws” are simply mistakes or are actually forms of unbelief. One example of this (mentioned on p. 81 of the book), is when rulers exchange the shari’a for an entirely different system of laws. This, according to the authors, makes it obvious that the legislator doesn’t want to have anything to do with the shari’a anymore, which constitutes a form of “major unbelief”.

Overthrow the rulers, unless…

The authors’ conclusion of this discussion on different types of kufr is that the rulers of our day and age are guilty of acts of unbelief and apostasy (ridda) because they, among other things, supposedly apply legislation on the basis of “other than what God has revealed” (bi-ghayr ma anazala llah), use constitutions and adhere to international law. This, in turn, means that they may be overthrown. The authors, however, set two conditions for overthrowing the rulers, of which especially the second one is interesting. The first condition tells the reader that the ruler must be guilty of clear (major) unbelief that can be proven. The second condition, however, states that overthrowing the ruler should “cause the strength that enables the Muslims to overthrow [the ruler] to increase”. In other words, the authors seem to point out that radicals wanting to topple a regime should not do so unless they will actually be strengthened by it and replace the “infidel” president or king by “a Muslim ruler who governs them according to the Qur’an and the Sunna”. This apparently excludes simply killing a president or king, since such random actions are unlikely to create an Islamic state. The authors do state, however, that if Muslims’ power is increased by toppling a ruler, they really have no other choice than to do so.

The Imamate

Quite conveniently, the authors also provide an alternative to the regimes that ought to be overthrown: the imamate (Islamic leadership). Quoting the great Ibn Khaldun to point out the difference between Islamic leadership and ordinary kingship, they state that the imamate is meant to establish Islam by spreading, propagating and defending it on the one hand and applying it through the application of the shari’a on the other. The imam himself (i.e. the leader of the Muslims, not to be confused with a prayer leader in a mosque) also needs to fit a certain profile: he should be a Muslim who has come of age, should be in his right mind, must be knowledgeable of the shari’a and he should also be just, among other things. He also has duties and enjoys certain rights, among them the right to be obeyed and advised.

Possibly in order to complete the picture, the authors also include the possibility that the imam himself is overthrown, which may be done if he is guilty of the major unbelief mentioned before, and list the conditions under which this may be done. Although the authors list four different groups willing to overthrow the rulers, of which only one would do so justifiably, they nevertheless leave open the possibility that even the imam himself may not be up to scratch. This brings us to the option of declaring the ruler to be an unbeliever (kafir), i.e. the issue of excommunication (takfir), which will be discussed next time.

To be continued…

I grew up in the far north of Norway, hundreds of kilometers above the Arctic Circle. As you might expect, my research interests and arctic origin do not intersect very often. Last time was back in 2004 when a plane on the way from my home town Narvik to Bodø was nearly brought down by an axe-swinging Algerian Islamist.

Last Saturday, however, the local newspaper in the nearby city of Tromsø – where I have spent many a drunken night in my youth – broke a remarkable story (hat tip: Tore Bjørgo). It was about Andrew Ibrahim Wenham, a British-Australian convert to Islam who has been living in Tromsø since 2002. The 46-year old Wenham is a respected leader in the local Muslim community and the founding director of the local Alnor mosque.  He is married to a Norwegian convert from Tromsø and leads a quiet existence. However, as the newspaper Nordlys uncovered, Wenham has a somewhat murky past.

In the late 1990s, Andrew Wenham - aka Abu Ismail - was part of a network of Jemaah Islamiyah supporters in Australia. In 1999 he attended a JI training camp in Mindanao and even spent two days alone with JI leader Hambali in Kuala Lumpur. Wenham was friends with Jack Roche, who was arrested in Australia in 2002 for plotting terrorist attacks on behalf of al-Qaida. In April 2000, when Roche returned to Perth after training in al-Qaida camps and meeting Osama bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Wenham greeted Roche at the airport and drove him home.  Wenham’s name appeared several times in the trial against Roche. However, by the time of the 2004 trial, nobody knew what had become of Wenham. In mid-2001 he had left for Yemen, where his trail went cold. Australian terrorism expert Sally Neighbour tells Nordlys that she tried in vain to locate Wenham while researching her book In the Shadow of Swords. Little did she know that Abu Ismail had retreated to the Arctic.

Confronted with the evidence gathered by Nordlys, Wenham confirmed all the details of this story. In an open-hearted newspaper interview, he insists he did not know that his friends in Perth had terrorist connections. He says he went to the Mindanao camp for the adventure and that he did not know who Hambali was. At their Kuala Lumpur meeting, Wenham had the sense that Hambali was assessing him, but the two did not stay in touch. In the spring of 2000, Wenham learned from John Bennett (another convert and member of the Perth network) that Jack Roche was planning to bomb an embassy and assassinate a Jewish leader in Australia. Wenham says he was shocked and told the local imam about the plans, whereupon the imam became furious and called a meeting to dissuade the young men. At this point Wenham decided to break with his friends. In mid-2001 he and his wife Sandra left Australia for Yemen, where they spent 10 months before moving to Tromsø, Sandra’s home town.

Wenham is not a terrorist or an al-Qaida sleeper agent. If he had al-Qaida sympathies, he would have acted on them by now, or at least left a trail of suspicious behaviour or political statements. Wenham’s past activities must be viewed in proper context. His radical dealings occurred before 9/11, before Jemaah Islamiya had carried out any major international terrorist attacks, and before Hambali had risen to fame as a leading al-Qaida associate. Wenham’s departure to Yemen also occurred before the War on Terror, which suggests it was not an attempt to hide an al-Qaida connection. His subsequent silence about his past is obviously somewhat foolish, but perfectly understandable. In the witch-hunt that followed 9/11, many Muslims in the West had their lives ruined for less serious sins than Wenham’s. Andrew Wenham was lucky; had he stayed in Australia he would probably have been sucked into the Roche investigation, and had he gone to America instead of Norway in 2001, he might well have been in prison today.

Wenham’s story is a classic case of socially driven radicalization - what Marc Sageman calls the “bunch-of-guys” phenomenon. Wenham’s arrived in Perth in 1997 shortly after converting to Islam. As a new immigrant and fresh convert, he was on the lookout for new friends. He met fellow convert John Bennett, who introduced him to, well, a bunch of guys in the local Muslim community. The fifteen men socialized extensively; they played paintball together and took religious lessons. A couple of people in the group, the so-called “Ayub brothers”, had connections with Jemaah Islamiyah. After a while, the Ayub brothers suggested to their paintball buddies that they attend a real military training camp in Mindanao. Wenham accepted; “it was like a kind of adventure”, he now says.

As with other youth drawn into radicalism through friends, Wenham’s ideological commitment probably did not run very deep. If he was ideologically committed to anything, it was most likely to a form of “classical jihadism”, i.e. conventional warfare in confined theatres of war where Muslims fight non-Muslim occupying armies. In any case, Wenham broke with his jihadi friends in 2001 and has not done or said anything since to suggest he has radical leanings.

In the interview, Wenham now says he is scared that the latest revelations might cause trouble for his family and damage the reputation of his Tromsø mosque. Unfortunately, his concerns are partly justified. The story has broken at a time when local politicians are debating whether to allow the building a large mosque in Tromsø, to be paid for with a USD 3,3 million gift from a Saudi businessman. The Saudi connection has already made the project controversial, and the Wenham story is not going to help. Let us at least hope Wenham does not suffer too much personally for mistakes made in his youth. Wenham has been an examplary citizen during his time in Tromsø. I wish I could say the same about myself.

The second issue of the English-language jihadi magazine Inspire is out. Dina Temple-Raston, Jarret Brachman and Memri have already made some initial observations, but I’ll throw in my own for what they’re worth. 

For a start, the second issue confirms that the magazine is produced out of Yemen by Samir Khan, the online propagandist who was based in the United States until October 2009. As with the first issue, the magazine contains a mix of original material and reprints of older texts by Bin Ladin, Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri and others. Most of the new stuff is ostensibly written by Samir Khan himself, but there are a couple of new pieces by al-Awlaki as well. There are also numerous quotes from Western media, including several about the first issue of Inspire. 

Three things in the magazine struck me as noteworthy. First is the account by Samir Khan himself about the reasons and details of his move to Yemen (pp. 45-49).  The piece is interesting because we don’t have that many autobiographical texts by this notorious jihadi media mogul. By his own account he is in hiding in Yemen. He must have some kind of communication link with the AQAP organization, because the magazine includes pictures from the field and interviews with AQAP members. At the same time, Inspire contains less original material than AQAP’s Arabic-language magazine Sada al-Malahim, which suggests he is further removed from the organization than his colleagues over at Sada al-Malahim.

Second is the article by Anwar al-Awlaki criticizing “the Mardin Declaration”, a statement issued in April 2010 by a group of moderate clerics who had gathered in the city of Mardin to reinterpret a famous fatwa on jihad by Ibn Taymiyya (pp. 33-40).  The fact that al-Awlaki chooses to engage in this particular debate is very interesting because it suggests he and others in al-Qaida are concerned about these types of theological initiatives.

Third and most interesting is the set of articles that give specific operational advice to prospective activists based in the West (p. 51ff). There are suggestions for low-cost operations in the US soil, such as shooting sprees in restaurants catering for government workers (such as in Washington DC), and using trucks to mow down pedestrians on crowded streets. The latter tactic can be further refined, Khan suggests, by welding sharp blades to the front of the truck so as to create “the ultimate mowing machine.”

Perhaps most interesting are the advice on how to avoid detection:

• Do not travel abroad for jihad – act on US soil instead.
• Do not use mobile phones and the Internet for any jihad-related communication – if you have to, use coded language and encryption tools.
• If you are clean stay clean – do not interact with other activists.
• Do not access jihadi websites – get your jihadi propaganda fix from anti-jihadi monitoring sites such as MEMRI and SITE.

Obviously, someone who follows these guidelines is going to be extremely difficult to catch. The question is how many people are ready to act in this way. Khan’s strategy presupposes that individuals can aquire the motivation to die for the cause almost in a vacuum. However, in most historical cases, individuals only acquired this motivation after interacting with other radicals, going abroad for jihad, or accessing jihadi propaganda - all of which are activities discouraged by Samir Khan. Of course there have been exceptions, such as the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hassan, but even he was not completely “clean”, as evidenced by his email correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaki. Decentralized jihad is indeed a scary concept, but it does not necessarily work.

Several days ago, it was reported that Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the Jordanian radical Islamist ideologue and former mentor of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, had been arrested again on 17 September. The news was quickly confirmed on his website and also picked up by Jordanian newspapers (see here, for example). It seems that the Jordanian Security Services had asked him to come to their offices, from which he apparently did not return. While this description of how it happened may well be correct (al-Maqdisi is said to have been summoned to their offices before without returning), the obvious question is why he was re-arrested.

Millat Ibrahim

Several newspaper articles mention that the Saudi authorities were angry about al-Maqdisi’s book Millat Ibrahim and that this somehow led to his arrest. Although this book was a clear indictment of Muslim governments for their perceived failure to apply Islamic law and Saudi Arabia is indeed mentioned a few times in the book, it seems unlikely that Millat Ibrahim caused al-Maqdisi’s arrest since that book was written in 1984 (and not 1982, as some articles state). Moreover, I doubt whether the Jordanian Security Services are at Riyadh’s beck and call and would simply arrest al-Maqdisi if they don’t have a reason of their own to do so.

The mentioning of Millat Ibrahim (The Religion of Abraham) in several articles may actually be a misunderstanding. While the original book by that title is more than twenty-five years old, al-Maqdisi recently released a document called Millat Ibrahim: Limadha Tukhifuhum? (Millat Ibrahim: Why does it Frighten Them?). In this treatise, al-Maqdisi compares the leaders of Saudi Arabia with the literary antihero Don Quixote, who keeps failing in his quest and always blames outside factors but never himself. This is similar to what Saudi rulers do, al-Maqdisi claims, when they criticise his book Millat Ibrahim while failing to realise what their real problem is, namely that the book merely cites Saudi Wahhabi scholars without saying anything new. If Saudi rulers really object to the book Millat Ibrahim, al-Maqdisi states, they actually object to their own Wahhabi tradition, which clearly shows that the state has deviated from the teachings of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab and his followers. This unwillingness to face the facts and admit that they are infidels according to the religious underpinnings of their own state, al-Maqdisi maintains, is the real reason the Saudis are frightened by his book Millat Ibrahim.

One can argue over whether al-Maqdisi has really simply quoted the (Wahhabi) sources or has added and introduced ideas of his own that are not necessarily supported by the Wahhabi tradition, a topic I have discussed elsewhere. Al-Maqdisi nevertheless hits a sore point by referring to this subject since his writings (and particularly his book Millat Ibrahim) are indeed full of references to Saudi Wahhabi authors and he certainly makes it look as if the greatest adherents to Saudi Arabia’s own religious tradition would surely accuse the country of apostasy if they were still alive. If Saudi Arabia is indeed in any way involved in al-Maqdisi’s arrest, it is much more likely it was this recent reminder of the Kingdom’s alleged hypocrisy, not the original Millat Ibrahim, which precipitated his incarceration.

Deradicalisation?

Whatever the actual involvement of Saudi Arabia may be, al-Maqdisi’s recent arrest is probably best understood through the prism of Jordanian politics. As a radical scholar who has enjoyed a relatively free existence for the past two years, al-Maqdisi must be something of an irritant to the country’s security services. The fact that he has not been in prison for a long time and that his website is as accessible as ever obviously raises the question whether he might possibly be used by the Jordanian authorities for some purpose. Considering the fact that al-Maqdisi wrote several books and treatises in which he criticised what he calls “extremist” expressions of jihad and takfir (excommunication), one would be justified in thinking that the Jordanian authorities are quietly grooming him as a tool to deradicalise jihadist youngsters. While one cannot be 100% sure about these things, I believe this is probably not the case.

Firstly, al-Maqdisi has continued to write radical treatises even while criticising others who were even more radical. He has never stopped calling the leaders of the Muslim world “infidels” and “apostates”, for instance, and one may wonder whether the Jordanian authorities would want a man who holds these views to “deradicalise” their youngsters. Secondly, al-Maqdisi has spent considerable time in prison but was released every time because no evidence linking him directly to any crime or terrorist activity could be presented against him. In fact, human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch have frequently and explicitly protested the treatment al-Maqdisi received in Jordanian prison (see here, for example). The fact that Jordan has kept al-Maqdisi imprisoned for longer periods of time on several occassions but has encountered international protests every time, which in the end also caused him to be released again each time, may mean that the Jordanian authorities feel they have more or less exhausted the option of simply keeping al-Maqdisi permanently locked up for no reason. This could explain why al-Maqdisi has mostly lived in relative freedom for the past two years. Thirdly, it is not entirely correct to state that al-Maqdisi has been completely free since his release from prison in March 2008. Since then, he has reportedly been under house arrest (though certainly not all the time) and was even arrested for a  traffic violation some time ago. This suggests that the Jordanian authorities may not have him imprisoned but are nevertheless keeping him in their sights.

All of this means that al-Maqdisi’s recent arrest was most probably not, as reports have suggested, caused by sudden Saudi ire over Millat Ibrahim but - if Saudi Arabia was indeed involved - more likely over his sarcastic reminder that “the land of the two holy places” supposedly cannot even live up to its own Wahhabi credentials. In any case, the Jordanian authorities are probably keeping al-Maqdisi on a tight leash and may have used the release of his recent treatise as an excuse to arrest him in order to show him who’s boss again. As it’s been two years since al-Maqdisi’s latest long-time incarceration, the security services may well have felt that it was about time to arrest him again. All the better if it pleased a powerful neighbour in the process.

The Quilliam Foundation, a London based think tank, has released a very interesting new report by Muhammad Ali Musawi titled Cheering for Osama: How Jihadis Use Discussion Forums. It is one of the best introductions to the world of online jihadism that I have seen. It also points out some recent forum trends that should interest more seasoned observers.

Throughout the years, the number of jihadi writings has grown enormously. Nowadays, books and fatwas on any given subject related to jihadi thought can easily be found and downloaded from the internet. As a service to those who can’t see the forest for the trees anymore or to those people who simply want a brief overview of what every budding jihadi theorist should know, the Shari’a Council of the Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad in Gaza (not to be confused with the Shari’a Council of the Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, on which I wrote previously) produced what can be described as a crash course in jihadi theory some time ago. The book, entitled The Gift of the Unifiers on the Most Important Issues of the Basics of Islam (also available here), describes the theoretical underpinnings of jihadis’ animosity towards Muslim states and their policies in a mere 273 pages. This post is the first of a series in which I discuss this book.

Taghut

The book starts by focusing on one of the central terms of jihadi discourse, namely taghut (pl. tawaghit). Traditionally used to refer to idols, the authors of this book describe it as something that makes you cross the proper boundary of worship and obedience. In other words, a taghut is anything “one appeals to (yatahakamuna ilayhi) besides God and his Messenger or worships besides God”. The authors go on to state that “every human being needs to disbelieve in all types of taghut because that is the precondition of Islam”, which should be expressed by one’s heart, tongue and limbs (i.e. actions).

So far so good, one might think. The authors, however, continue by listing three types of taghut and this is where their true intentions become clear. Besides mentioning actual idols and other objects of what can clearly be described as worship, they also name “the idol of judgment” as a type of taghut. This category encompasses “the rulers, princes, kings, ministers, deputies, heads of tribes and judges [...] if they do not judge by what God has revealed”. The idea is that following another type of legislation besides the shari’a amounts to accepting another legislator apart from God. Since God is believed to have the sole right to legislate, allowing another person to do this effectively means that one permits someone else to do part of God’s job, thus treating him/her like God. This way, the authors imply, a legislator is turned into another god, an idol. The concept of taghut thus gives these scholars the tools to equate political rulers and their governments with idols, making them fair game for the jihad they advocate.

The authors list the most important idols that tend to be “worshipped”. Interestingly, while Satan is mentioned first as the one who “calls [people] to worship [others] besides God”, “the despotic ruler who changes the rule of God” and “the one who rules on the basis of something other than what God has revealed” are listed as numbers 2 and 3, even before actual idols that people worship, which indicates how important politics and politicians are to the authors. Other tawaghit include lusts, magicians, (non-Islamic) laws and legislation, the nation and all other religions besides Islam. It speaks for itself that the authors believe that people who do “worship” such idols cannot be seen as Muslims but should be labelled “helpers of the idols” (ansar al-tawaghit) and excommunicated as infidels, for which they offer several pages of “evidence” from the Qur’an and the Sunna (the example of the Prophet Muhammad). While they certainly present many verses that condemn polytheism, these only seem to focus on the actual worship of concrete idols, not political rulers. The clever part of their reasoning is, however, that because the authors have just equated “un-Islamic” rulers with idols, they can bring down the full weight of the Qur’an and the Sunna on these political leaders every time those sources mention the word “taghut” unfavourably.

The authors subsequently analyse whether the wives and children of these political tawaghit or their helpers may also be seen as infidels. Their answer to this question is that It depends on whether or not they are aware of their husbands’ and fathers’ unbelief. If they know and agree, they are infidels too; if they don’t, they are excused. The Shari’a Council also points out that not everyone who works for a taghut is automatically an unbeliever. Economic jobs for the government, for example, or making deliveries are not necessarily forms of unbelief (kufr) but should be seen as forbidden (haram).

Democracy

A special chapter is dedicated to the concept of democracy. Because democracies are ultimately ruled by the people, the latter become the source of legislation instead of God, turning the people themselves into idols. The authors are clearly against democracy and list their grievances about that system, including freedom of conscience, the right to become an apostate, freedom of expression, equality and other things that the authors consider incompatible with Islam. Interestingly, the authors also compare the concept of democracy with the Arabic shura (consultation). While some Muslim scholars have argued that shura is a pre-modern, Qur’anic and therefore authentically Islamic form of democracy, the writers of this book disagree, primarily because the (nominal) head of a shura is God, while this is not the case in a democracy.

Because democracy is so awful according to the Shari’a Council, the authors claim that it is a taghut that actually hurts and damages Islam. They state that it pervades Muslim rule and gives unbelievers power over Muslims. This is also why the authors reject setting up one’s own political party or entering parliament. Although these scholars leave themselves some room to be able to deny that all politicians are inbelievers, they are pretty sweeping in their judgement, allowing only MPs who are willing to ignore and actively disavow the constitution and other “un-Islamic” legislation to run for parliament, which basically excludes most if not all of them.

Secularism

Another taghut the authors pay special attention to is secularism. Although not as strong a trend in the Arab world as a century or so ago, the writers apparently still feel the need to spend some time on this subject. They see the “worship” of the idol of secularism as responsible for moral decay in the Muslim world’s educational facilities, believe it hampers the spread of Islam’s message, leads to the persecution of Islamic preachers and, interestingly, leads to the cancellation of the duty to perform jihad.

Although this duty of jihad is not mentioned very often throughout the book, it is clear that the condemnation of political rulers in the strongest Islamic terms possible is expressed in order to show the governments’ illegitimacy and justify fighting against them. What other ways the authors of this book use to achieve the same goal will be dealt with in the next parts of this series.

To be continued…

Apologies to our readers for the recent two-month hiatus. I had an extremely hectic summer which included an intercontinental house move and lots of other complications. Jihadica is now back in business, although posting will probably be somewhat irregular.

Of all the jihadis we’ve seen in recent years, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi must rank as one of the most violent. Nicknamed “the slaughtering sheikh” (al-shaykh al-dhabbah) by fellow militants, he is widely held responsible for killing hundreds of Shiites in Iraq and personally beheading the American hostage Nicolas Berg. It would therefore be interesting to know what went on in the mind of this man, who was killed in an American attack in 2006.

While several publications have tried to show us the man behind the myth, it would be even better if we could get a glimpse of what al-Zarqawi thought in his pre-Iraq years. Well, the time has come. About a week ago, a jihadi website posted a notebook allegedly used by al-Zarqawi while imprisoned in Jordan in the 1990s. The link on the website (the eleventh title from the top) is called Safahat min Daftar al-Shaykh Abi Mus’ab al-Zarqawi (Pages from Shaykh Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s Notebook) and leads to an .exe file that actually allows you to flick through the man’s writings.

Some Jihadica readers may remember that Will McCants discussed this document two years ago (on 22 June 2008 to be exact). At the time, however, only a few pages were available and the links to the rest of the document didn’t work (or at least don’t work anymore). Some readers may also be familiar with the Jordanian journalist Fu’ad Husayn and his book Al-Zarqawi: Al-Jil al-Thani li-l-Qa’ida (Al-Zarqawi: The Second Generation of al-Qa’ida, available in English here), which also only showed a few of the notebook’s pages on pp. 21-23. Now, however, the full 77-page document is available in its original form, including even the blank pages.

Authenticity and timing

The document seems to be authentic. As Will noted at the time, the notebook is dedicated to several people, including Umm Qudama and Abu Qudama, who are respectively al-Zarqawi’s sister and brother-in-law, and al-Zarqawi was indeed in prison in 1998, when the document is said to have been written. This information could, of course, easily have been known by others but there is a third reason to believe this document is indeed the real deal. As mentioned, Will discussed some of these pages before when they appeared on a jihadi forum and so did the book by Fu’ad Husayn, who told me he had received the notes directly from al-Zarqawi’s family. Now that they appear on another jihadi website, it seems unlikely that three different sources keep recycling different pages of a notebook that was never written by al-Zarqawi, although one cannot be entirely sure of course.

As to why this document was posted now, one can only guess. The notebook wasn’t written or discovered recently and, considering al-Zarqawi has been dead for four years, nothing of interest seems to have happened to him that caused the document’s publication. Moreover, if it was posted on the website to commemorate some kind of anniversary (his death, his birth, his release from prison etc.), it would presumably have been announced with quite a bit of fanfare but it wasn’t. The most likely reason it was posted a week ago is that the website it appeared on, tawhed.ws, has posted several collections of jihadi writings as e-books over the past few weeks. These include Ayman al-Zawahiri’s writings, for example, but also those of Mustafa Abu l-Yazid. The posting of al-Zarqawi’s notebook may thus be part of a general effort by the people behind the website to release collections of writings, even of those that have been in their possession for a long time.

Religious texts

In any case, and as Will noted at the time, this is a great source for academics studying the backgrounds and inner workings of terrorists. Although this blog post is not the place for an in-depth analysis of the content, we can surely take a quick glance. The document is filled with religious texts that deal with various topics. There is Qur’anic exegesis, for example on p. 8, where al-Zarqawi cites the explanation of the verse “and be not as those who say, ‘We hear,’ and they hear not” (Q. 8: 21) by the mediaeval exegete al-Qurtubi (d. 1273), and on p. 20, by Ibn Kathir (1300-1373). It also contains several texts apparently copied from books by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292-1350), for example on pp. 9-11 and 15-16. Although Ibn al-Qayyim is generally a favourite among radical Muslims for his uncompromising and strict views on various issues - like his teacher Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) - the fact that he was persecuted and imprisoned because of his ideas may also have inspired al-Zarqawi.

Dedication

While the notebook does not have a single topic or message, most of the texts mentioned seem somehow related to what I would call “dedication” to the cause. The passage explained by al-Qurtubi mentioned above seems to serve as a reminder to stay pious and focused, for example. Al-Zarqawi also discusses jihad (p. 12) and cites a hadith (tradition on the life of Muhammad) about not having to fear if one trusts in God (p. 13). He continues by mentioning the various types of consolation to the believers (p. 15). Al-Zarqawi sometimes also writes short pieces that he seems to have made up himself. One of them (p. 25) mentions the close connection one should maintain with God, while one should break with the tawaghit (idols, used here probably to refer to “un-Islamic” rulers). The rest of the notebook is similarly filled with poems, religious texts and exhortations to remain patient and to keep one’s faith.

What all this adds up to is a collection of short pieces that seems to portray a man dedicated to his faith who uses religious texts to get him through the tough times he is facing. Considering the fact that he was in prison when he wrote this and would go on to become one of the world’s best-known jihadis, this makes a lot of sense, of course. I will leave it to others to decipher all of the notebook, which contains a lot of blank pages after p. 34 but also shows some nice drawings (for example on pp. 70-71). It should be clear, however, that any scholar seriously dealing with al-Zarqawi cannot afford to ignore this source.

In the previous two parts of this short series (here and here), we saw that the Jordanian radical ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and his website, Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, have been closely involved in efforts to support the mujahidun in the Caucasus by offering advice, translating books into Russian and encouraging and praising their efforts. We still don’t know why this is the case, however. In this final part of the series, we will try to answer that question.

The Shari’a Committee

To understand why al-Maqdisi and his website are so interested in the mujahidun in the Caucasus, we need to go back a few years to an interview that al-Maqdisi gave to the Jordanian newspaper Al-‘Arab al-Yawm, which was published on 5 July 2005. As regular Jihadica readers know, al-Maqdisi used his week-long release from prison in that year to criticise his former pupil Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and to scold other jihadis for their – in his view – extremist and sometimes plain stupid actions in conflicts that they could never win anyway. He also mentioned that he wanted to set up a committee of religious scholars that could guide jihadi youngsters all over the world by giving them advice and fatwas. Although this latter piece of information was not widely reported at the time and was not acted upon by al-Maqdisi - he was quickly rearrested in 2005 and not released until 2008 - it is nevertheless highly interesting because he seems to have realised this goal of setting up such a committee in 2009.

Since September last year, Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad has had a forum on which readers can ask al-Maqdisi and ten other scholars all kinds of questions related to Islam. Although many of these questions (collected in ten volumes so far) are about issues that have nothing to do with jihad, such as wearing trousers (vol. 5, p. 25) or determining the first day of Ramadan (vol. 2, pp. 5-6), many of them do deal with fighting and violence. Considering the context given above (i.e. that this forum was perhaps partly meant to prevent young jihadis from using too much violence), it is not surprising that several of these fatwas actually discourage questioners from using force. A question on Hamas’ Qassam Brigades in the Gaza Strip is answered with the advice to radical jihadis to remain patient and not to seek any confrontation with Hamas (vol. 1, pp. 1-2), notwithstanding the Shari’a Council’s strong disagreements with that movement. Another reply to a Belgian group called Shariah4Belgium advises that group’s members to support jihad elsewhere, but to refrain from using violence in their own country because of their weakness there.

So what is the Minbar doing in Moscow then?

The Minbar’s communique about the subway bombings in Moscow earlier this year, its interest in the Caucasus and its efforts to translate certain books into Russian should probably be seen as part of this wider plan by al-Maqdisi and certain like-minded scholars to support and encourage mujahidun who try to wage a “clean” jihad and to advise others on how to do that. In fact, if one were to take a look at the communique with which this series started as well as al-Maqdisi’s epistle about the Islamic Emirate in the Caucasus, it is striking that so much of these texts is spent praising the mujahidun for their eagerness to obtain knowledge, their supposed purity of arms, the situation in which they allegedly had no other choice than to use violence, their correct choice of victims etc., while hardly any attention is paid to their military prowess. The praise, in other words, seems to be caused not by the mujahidun’s firepower but by their careful and considered use of violence and appears to be directed not just at the mujahidun in the Caucasus but also at other aspiring jihadis as if to tell them: “Take a good look guys, this is how you wage a proper jihad.”

The Shari’a Committee is only less than a year old and consists of relatively unknown scholars (apart from al-Maqdisi) and it remains to be seen whether its fatwas actually have the kind of influence that its authors want them to have. Still, throughout the past year, several new scholars have been added to the committee - sometimes with much fanfare - and if others (perhaps Abu Basir al-Tartusi?) join too, al-Maqdisi’s and the Minbar’s efforts to stem the extremist tides of unlimited violence could pay off and have the potential to become an influential ideological force.