Is this the most successful release of a jihadist video ever?

Posted: 19th May 2014 by Nico Prucha in Ideological trends, Iraq, social media
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The release of the video Salil al-sawarim (SaS) by ISIS’s media department al-Furqan over the weekend demonstrated the sophistication of the jihadist use of social media to disseminate their video content. Al-Furqan’s sister department, al-I’tasimu had announced the release of the fourth instalment of Sas on Twitter on Saturday noon, March 17, 2014. A few hours later, it was published via al-I’tasimu’s high-profile Twitter account and the tier-one jihadist forums. The first three Salil al-sawarim videos had been very popular, high quality edited and showed a mix of extreme obscene violence and ideology at play.

This is the first part of the brief glimpse into the data collected on Twitter revolving around the  #صليل_الصوارم_الرابع Ali Fisher and Nico Prucha explore the data networks and outline in brief terms the ideological bearings at play. For a second post we will provide the readers with a more in depth analysis, outlining the context of this video in the jihadist virtual as well as the greater ideological cluster at play.

In the first twenty four hours after Sas (“The Clanging of the Swords”) was posted on YouTube the was viewed 56,998 times with an average user watching a little over 17 minutes of the hour long film. This means that collectively YouTube users spent the equivalent of 686 days watching this one video. It has subsequently been reposted a number of times on YouTube, and was published on other file sharing sites such as archive.org and links for download were broadcast via justpaste.it. It was published in different sizes and formats. A high-definition format, about one gigabyte in size, carries death and mayhem to the home and portable cinemas worldwide.

As of writing this post, the YouTube video has been viewed 124,704 times with 4,204 likes and 491 dislikes.

Delivering high levels of views in the first day after publication takes coordination across a range of social media channels. This briefing analyses that spread of information, and shows:

  • The volume of tweets about the video release.
  • An estimate of the size of the network which shared word of the video release.
  • The users most frequently mentioned in connection with the video.
  • The key actors in the Twitter network that allowed word of the video release to spread rapidly.
  • The platforms that users utilised to tweet.
  • The prominent languages used to spread word of the video release.

 

This shows:

  • Jihadist groups have become increasingly sophisticated in their use of social media and mobile technologies.
  • The release of the video on a Saturday may have been a deliberate strategy to pick the day when those employed to challenge or disrupt the propagation of information about the video were least likely to be available.
  • Information is shared through a resilient and dispersed network. This network has sufficient interconnection and redundancy to continue to operate despite the current level of account suspensions.

The video

In short the approximate one-hour long video is a mix of implementing ideological principles and executing framed enemies. The film starts with several ISIS Mujahideen who tear up their Kosovar passports and burn these. A ring leader outlines the principles of the true Islamic state citizenry in fluent Arabic – an element that was just recently broadcast in two al-Furqan videos where several international fighters tore up their passports to declare their identity and belonging to the Islamic State and not to some vassal or Crusader state entity. The opening of the video enforces the connection of Syria and Iraq: ISIS armed car convoys parading in cities such as Homs, Raqqa, switching to Fallujah where a drone, possibly an Parrot AR.Drone iPad controlled remote aircraft, is flown above the convoy, proving the audience with a 360 angle view of the city and the jihadi boots on the ground.

All operations in the video are allegedly in Iraq, in the notorious al-Anbar province, including the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah where the most severe attacks against the U.S. forces at the time occurred. Iraqi governmental officials are sought out at fake checkpoints and executed, off-duty soldiers are hunted down on the streets and killed for reasons varying from being an apostate of Sunni Islam to being a Shiite or of collaborating with the U.S. funded Sunni Sahwa councils at the time. ISIS, by these specific search-and-destroy missions claims to have insider information and conveys to the audience that all assassination operations are meticulously planned and carried out. Part of these cleansing operations include ISIS units searching the private houses of Iraqi governmental soldiers and officers, who often are visibly confused as ISIS dresses up just like legitimate governmental units. The surprised individuals are then tied up and shot, or beheaded, guilty based on TV-reports and uniforms etc. found in their house – a typical modus operandi often seen in this type of video.

Other parts of the video show how the element of repentance (tawba) is enforced on the local Sunni population of al-Anbar. This is a lesson learned that is already at play in Syria: why alienate the local Sunni people when they can be coerced into inclusion, forcing them to repent their former affiliation or sympathies with the local governments. ISIS gathered what appears to be several hundred men to mosques where preachers declare the Mujahideen are fighting for the Sunni people, demanding that those present dissociate themselves from worldly or Shiite rule etc. ISIS seeks to recruit and integrate by killing off individuals framed as responsible for grievances while empowering the ‘former victims’ by granting them forgiveness and a place among them.

 

Distribution

Word of the video release spread via Twitter with two distinct peaks in Tweeting. One peak occurred on the day of release (17th May) and a second during the following day (18th May).

Between the 17th May and 8am on the 19th May we observed a total of 32,313 tweets carrying the name of the video. There was an average of 807.825 tweets per hour, the median being 736.5.

Tweets contained a range of #tags in addition to the title of the video, the most common of which are shown below.

The first hash tag on the left is the Arabic reference to Salil_al-sawarim_four, followed by The_Islamic_State_in_Iraq_and al-Sham, and the al-Furqan Media department.

However, while all the prominent tags are in Arabic, not all the tweets were in Arabic. This demonstrates the reach of the video and shows that some multilingual users were proactively translating content allowing users to access the information in a range of languages.

Users were also using a range of different technologies through which to tweet but mobile technologies and particularly phones are dominant. The most common ways users tweeted about the video was an app on an Android mobile phone, (Twitter for Android) followed by an iPhone app, (Twitter for iPhone). The web and tablets are also important but to a lesser extent.

As the graph shows, word of the video on YouTube, and archive.org was spread using a range of different digital technologies, including mobile phones, desktop (web), and via other social media including Facebook. This last case emphasises the importance of understanding the jihadist social media phenomenon as a cross platform zeitgeist, as users were using Facebook to tweet about a video posted on YouTube.

Death from Above: Jihadist Virtual Networks Respond to Drone Strikes in Yemen

Posted: 15th May 2014 by Nico Prucha in al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, Operational Material, social media
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Following the recent airstrikes carried out against a convoy targeting al-Qaeda fighters in remote training camps in southern Yemen, Ali Fisher and Nico Prucha examine  how the tales of drone strikes and civilian suffering claimed to be the result have become a frequent narrative for jihadi statements, videos and on forums. Analyzing the way word of the strikes and announcements of the martyrs spread via Twitter we find that jihadist groups are using the impact of drone strikes to strengthen the cohesion of remaining fighters, celebrate the martyrs, and attempt to derive sympathy from a wider audience.

While the conversation, denoted by the Arabic hash tag for “martyrs of the American strike in Yemen” #شهداء_القصف_الأمريكي_باليمن)) was short-lived and quickly reached its peak when the majority of the martyrs had been announced. However, we also find that while a division between pro-ISIS and pro-AQ users can be identified, there is a shared positive opinion on AQAP and drone strikes in general, independent of the leaning of individual accounts towards ISIS or AQ Central.

Independent of the hash tag, AQAP’s media department issued two responses to the drone strikes end of April. The first response is a direct reply to the statements made by the Yemeni President Hadi, the other one is a commentary of AQAP commander Hamza al-Zinjibari; both documents were quickly translated into English and dispatched via Twitter and the ‘old media’ jihadi forums (here, here).

 

The Impact of Drone Strikes on Physical Networks – Limiting Online Jihadism?

The deaths of high ranking ideologues and leaders by missiles fired from unmanned aerial vehicles, that have in the past years become the operational backbone of the “war on terror”, have risen and seem to be the operational weapon of choice by military planners. With ideologues and media-valued activists such as U.S. citizens Anwar al-Awlaqi and his media operator Samir Khan killed in Yemen in 2011, or the targeted killing of the Libyans ‘Attiyatullah and Abu Yahya in 2012 in Pakistan only highlight prominent drone operations recently. Nevertheless, the extrajudicial killing of al-Awlaqi and Khan did not kill off the English jihadi magazine Inspire that had published a new edition in May 2012 under the title “winning on the ground.” This ninth edition (Winter 1433 / 2012) addressed its readers on the cover page, asking

“does the assassination of senior jihadi figures have any significance in validating Obama’s claims? After a decade of ferocious war, who is more entitled to security?”

It may be asserted that the U.S. operated drone program has similar affects on local populations as in Pakistan, although the degree differs from country to country. According to The Long War Journal, 354 drone strikes had taken place inside Pakistan and 95 bombing runs in Yemen. The impact of frequent or more regularly occurring drone strikes on the people on the ground is devastating and generates new grievances with innocents being either mistaken for legitimate targets or are nevertheless considered as acceptable collateral damage. A study on the impact of drone strikes in Pakistan is available here. The long-term side affects of drone warfare are open for debate, however, the tales of drone strikes and civilian suffering as a result of missile strikes have become a frequent narrative for jihadi videos and forums and are also addressed by scholars and journalists alike.

Killed civilians, mainly children, are pictured in jihadist propaganda material with the vow for revenge. The Shumukh al-Islam Forum in early May 2014 responded to the continuing drone activity inside Yemen that had recently killed a number of AQAP operatives. The administration of the forum via its media “workshop” (warsha) issued a forum thread showing several propaganda pictures and a video showing scores of killed people allegedly the result of drone strikes in Yemen. The “official account of warsha shumukh al-Islam for incitement” of the Shumukh al-Islam forum on Twitter is @warshshomokh1, which promoted both pictures and the video. The pictures in the forum thread relate the death of children to calls for revenge on a wider scale; other pictures visualized the close relationship of the U.S. and Yemeni government, in extremist reasoning defined as ‘one’ enemy, committed to the “war on Islam” likewise.

 

Drone Strikes in Yemen and the Response on Twitter

The posting of SSI in early May was the direct response to a drone strike that had killed about 40 AQAP members on April 21, 2014, as the New York Times reports. Shortly afterwards, on April 24, 2014, jihadi-linked accounts on Twitter started posting pictures and names of the alleged slain AQAP fighters. By using the hash tag #شهداء_القصف_الأمريكي_باليمن

All in all about 200 Tweets were issued from April 24 to April 27; all Tweets are in Arabic. The hash tag translated to “the martyrs of the American strike on Yemen.”

The distinctive feature of this Twitter network analysis is set on two key findings:

  1. a division between pro-ISIS and pro-AQ can be identified. The main underlining finding, however, is the common relation to the U.S. drone strikes in Yemen against AQAP, whereas most pro-ISIS media activists and followers nevertheless have high, if not higher, sympathies for AQAP. There is a shared opinion on AQAP and drone strikes, independent of the leaning of individual accounts towards ISIS or AQ Central.
  2. The hash tag referring to the drone strike was short-lived and quickly reached its peak when the majority of the martyrs had been announced on Twitter.

Four major hubs can be identified within this network on Twitter, with the respective accounts @_Glibeb, @AbuUsamh, @Adnan_Alawlaqi, and @al_khansaa2 as the most influential. These four major nodes are connected to each other by shared followers, who (re-) tweeted using the hash tag and by addressing accounts directly. Some of the interlinking accounts are further analyzed below.

 

Networking about 200 Tweets relating to the U.S. drone strike in Yemen the fatter the arrow the more often the source mentions the addressed account (click to enlarge and zoom in)

The biggest node in this network analysis is @Adnan_Alawlaqi, some of his followers are connected to the other three major nodes. By choosing “Alawlaqi”, the account claims a direct relationship to the Yemeni tribe and to the U.S.-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi who had been killed in a drone strike in 2011. For the avatar of this account Osma bin Laden has been chosen, the background picture shows “the martyr: Abu ‘l-Ghayth al-Shabwani”, a Yemeni AQAP fighter killed in a drone strike. For his web interface Twitter account, he has chosen the cover of the book “Why I Chose al-Qa’ida” which has been written by Abu Mus’ab, an AQAP affiliate who claimed being a member of al-Awlaq tribe. According to the book, Abu Mus’ab al-Awlaqi “was martyred in an American strike on Wadi Rafd in the Shabwa Province” in 2009. His full name is given as Muhammad ‘Umayr al-Kalawi al-‘Awlaqi. The foreword of the book has been written by AQAP chief Abu Basir (Nasir al-Wuhayshi), which evidently was finished shortly before the death of Abu Mus’ab. The about 80-page long book outlines in simple words and reasoning the motivation to have joined al-Qa’ida and serves as a guide to inspire and indoctrinate a non-Arabic audience. The English-language magazine Inspire has a regular section entitled “Why did I Choose Al Qaeda” where selected parts of the book are made available in English.

The most mentioned users in this data-set highlights the impact and importance of the major nodes, with @Adnan_Alawlaqi ranging at the top. @Qaadayaalumaa1 has been omitted in this analysis, although rank 4, it is not connected to the above network analysis. Instead, it is an independent sub-network that uses the same hash tag and shares similar content.

 A not connected network sharing same content on Twitter

 @Adnan_Alawlaqi has a little over 4,000 followers and issued more than 2,000 Tweets as of May 12, 2014. The account is primarily affiliated with “the organization of al-Qa’ida on the Arab Peninsula” and pictures from within Yemen and of drones are frequently published. It seems to be following the strict AQ conduct and has little to none connection to any ISIS related material.

Another major node in the network is @abuUsamh, as seen on the bottom right. According to his online profile, this is the account of Abu Usama al-Abini. His profile further states his clear favor of ISIS, hoping that

“the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham will remain and expand, by the will of God, #the lion cubs of jihad (#شبل_الجهاد) // my backup account is @abuusamh1.”

He refers to the “soldiers of Yemen” (jund al-Yemen) and lists his YouTube channel “greebe1.” His focus is also set on Yemen, but he approves and idealizes ISIS and their war in Syria as the future and considers them as an avant-garde that will soon arrive in Yemen as well. He has about 2,300 followers and issued 1,300 Tweets as of May 12, 2014.

@abuUsamh posted pictures of alleged victims of the April drone strike and provides further information. The name of the deceased seen here is given as “the Mujahid: Abu Tamim al-Qayfi (…) killed in the despicable American [missile] strike. Look at his smile!”

@abuUsamh is connected to @Adnan_Alawlaqi by three accounts, two of which also interlink to @_Glibeb. @Jeefsharp and @911Fahd interlink these two major nodes.

@_Glibeb refers to Jilbib al-Sharruri and has about 2,500 followers and issued close to 9,000 Tweets as of May 12, 2014. He too has a greater leaning towards ISIS and re-tweets and disseminates videos published by ISIS’s media channel al-Furqan:

“Special report on the civil service work by the Islamic State in Aleppo before ISIS was betrayed; preparing: Flour and bread – health care – electricity – overall services.” Two links are set in the Tweet, the first leads to YouTube where a sequence of the video Services provided for by the State of the ISIS series Rasa’il min ard al-malahem, part 14, is shown. The second link extends the civil aspect of ISIS by directing to a Facebook group.

Like most other Twitter accounts linked to this hash tag, @_Glibeb posts pictures of male victims of the airstrike with the impression that they indeed had been AQAP members. He may be of Yemini origin and possibly related to some of the deceased by tribal relations. The name “al-Sharruri” pops up frequently in Yemen and has also come to use among ISIS members in Syria. Abu Jandal al-Sharruri appeared in a video a while ago and the picture used to commemorate him on Twitter is a screen grab thereof.

The fourth most important node in this mini-network of approximately 200 Tweets is an account the reader of our work may already be acquainted with: @al_khansaa2. This account in this network is only linked via the account @aboyahay88 to the main node of @Adnan_Alawlaqi. The main objective, as for the others, is to document the martyrs of the drone strike and provide affirmative comments on pictures of killed AQAP members. All pictures issued within this particular hash tag are male, some are flashing weapons, and others are a screen grab from a jihadi video. One of the pictures shared by @al_khansaa2 is a typical Yemeni dressed man flashing his janbiyya ­ a specific type of dagger with a short curved blade that is worn on a belt. This is a sign of male hood and pride and very common on the streets in Yemen.

@aboyahay88, the account linking @al_khansaa2 to @Adnan_Alawlaqi also connects to two other nodes, @alabjani_21 and @Mooneer55. @aboyahay88, whose screen name is the sincere (الصديق) referring to Abu Bakr further states on his profile “We belong to God and to Him we shall return”, taken out of the Qur’an (2:156). This part of the Qur’an is often cited at funerals and generally expressed to sympathize with the deceased, emphasizing the conviction in the existence of the afterlife. Apart from this @aboyahay88 is a low-key and low profile node with only 438 followers and over 4,000 Tweets as of May 12, 2014. The majority of his shared pictures are Yemen related with some pictures apparently taken by a cell-phone, perhaps implying he has taken these himself. Other pictures are from ISIS accounts on Twitter. His Twitter account is linked to the open Facebook group al-Ta’ifa al-Mansura that has eleven members but no actions or shared material whatsoever. All eleven members are part of the jihadist cluster network and show related iconography.

@alabjani_21 is one of the more prolific Twitter accounts in this network, although not the biggest node in this particular network analysis. He has over 9,000 followers and Tweeted close to 17,000 times as of May 12, 2014. The chosen avatar is Ayman al-Zawahiri with both of hands held up towards the viewer – in a praying fashion, although it is clearly a screenshot of one of al-Zawahiri’s sermons televised by as-Sahab. @Mooneer55 in turn only has 787 followers but Tweet an impressive 11,700 times as of May 12, 2014. This account clearly aligns itself to ISIS with an avatar showing Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi and referencing “the book leading the right way” (kitab yahdi) and the “sword that assists” (sayyf yansur), as detailed in the chapter The ‘Arab Spring’ as a Renaissance for AQ Affiliates in a Historical Perspective.

Of greater interest are the two accounts linking the three nodes of @Adnan_Alawlaqi, @_Glibeb, @abuUsamh, which are:

@JeefSharp: This account is also in clear association to ISIS, stating in his profile,

“I pledge allegiance to the amir al-mu’mineen Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

He has a meager 185 followers and around 3,500 Tweets. The majority of these are retweets of ISIS related accounts and material, that is in parts also anti-Muslim Brotherhood who demand action instead of passive protests.

And @911Fahd: This account showcases the killed leader of the TTP, Hakim Allah Mehsud with an ISIS related avatar. He has a little over 1,000 followers and Tweeted an incredible 66,454 times as of May 12, 2014. The majority of his shared pictures are related to Iraq and ISIS but also include a picture of the Gaza-based Jund Allah and their leader Abu al-Nur al-Maqdisis – all of whom had been wiped out by their rival HAMAS in 2008. Like the above account, @911Fahd mainly retweets and is interlinked to high profile users such as @al_khansaa2 or @Adnan_Alawlaqi.

 

Conclusion

The analysis of this mini-dataset has shown that jihadist groups are framing the impact of drone strikes to strengthen the remaining fighters, celebrate the martyrs, and attempt to derive sympathy from a wider audience.
Drone strikes are a unifying issue, while a division between pro-ISIS and pro-AQ users is visible in terms of who they interact with, we did not find the same division in the content of 200 tweets which used this specific hash tag. On this specific issue, jihadist opinion appears to have been independent from individual allegiance to or sympathy for AQ or ISIS. While some pro-ISIS users openly wish for the emergence the Islamic State as a part of ISIS in Yemen, the pro-AQ accounts stuck to what al-Zawahiri had called for, unity among the Mujahideen. Other users simply admired the martyrs and sought to document and share as widely as possible reports of this ‘crusader’ attack.
This mini-dataset from Twitter has focused on two specific drone strikes in April 2014 in Yemen, but it is just one part of a wider cluster of jihadist content that has been exploding in terms of quantity and quality, particularly in relation to the war in Syria. In this wider context, drone strikes have impacted jihadist activity and ideology. For example, with the reality of drone warfare hitting jihadist groups hard in recent years, jihadist videos and ideological writings have adopted the theme of spies among the Mujahideen. A number of videos have emerged showcasing the confessions and subsequent execution of alleged spies. In addition, Abu Yahya al-Libi commemorated his friend and comrade Abu ‘l-Layth al-Libi after he was killed in a drone strike in 2008 and subsequently published a detailed book on shari’a law policy for jihadist groups a year later. Ironically, Abu Yahya was killed himself in Pakistan in a drone strike in June 2012 but his work has become an integral handbook for jihadist implementation of shari’a law in dealing with indicted Muslim spies among the ranks of the Mujahideen. It is often referenced in videos showing the execution of alleged spies in Yemen and Somalia. Through the combined analysis of the written and audio-visual layers, the way alleged Muslim spies are framed for jihadist propaganda can be assessed and tied into events such as this case study – the topic of a future post on Jihadica.

 

Conference Announcement on Religious Extremism in Syria

Posted: 11th April 2014 by Nico Prucha in Syria, terrorism, Western Analysts
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The University of Vienna, Near Eastern Department, initiated last February with the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI) the Syrian Engagement Project. The first conference was held in early February in Vienna where we sought to empower local Syrian political activists on the first day with a broader perspective on the second day, bringing together senior members of the Syrian opposition. For the first conference, we sought to provide a framework and a open floor for civil-society activists and the opposition to talk about their perspective and past experiences from a multitude of perspectives. TRI has recently published a conference report, available here.

As part of this series, a second conference will be held in Vienna on May 2, 2014. The theme of the second conference is, however, strictly related to security matters with the focus set on religious extremist groups in Syria, from both a Sunni and Shiite perspective. The conference Religious Extremism in Syria: A New Launching Pad for Global Terrorism? seeks to enable participants and speakers to engage in an open environment on how to deal with the implications of the turmoil in Syria.

The rise of confessional warfare and the effective recruitment of foreign fighters from the greater Middle East, Europe and beyond to join militant factions in Syria have implications far beyond the current conflict zones. The professional use of Social Media to attract young males for the cause and to raise funds has reached an unprecedented dimension that could perhaps transform Syria into a similar, if not worse, launching pad for global terrorism than Afghanistan. This one-day conference seeks to provide insight into a set of overlapping issues surrounding the Syrian conflict and its implications for Europe and the international community. The conference will bring together an interdisciplinary set of speakers to provide insight into extremist and other militant actors in the conflict and the implications for regional and international security.

The conference agenda with the speaker abstracts and bios is available as a pdf here.

Agenda:

09:00   Registration

09:30   Opening remarks, introductions, programme review, and administrative announcements by Nico Prucha

09:45   Tom Keatinge, Independent Analyst, “The Syrian Conflict and the Importance of Financing.”

10:15   Maura Conway, Dublin City University, “Assessing the Role of Social Media in the Syria Conflict.”

10:45   Tea and coffee break with oriental snacks

11:15   Joas Wagemakers, Radboud University Nijmegen, “Jordanian Salafis and the Syrian Conflict.”

11:45   Rüdiger Lohlker, University of Vienna, “True Romance: A New Paradigm for Jihadis in Syria and Beyond?”

12:15   Morning panel discussion

13:00   Lunch break

14:00   Nico Prucha, University of Vienna, “The Sectarian Divide in Syria as the Rationale of The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to Indoctrinate, Radicalize and Recruit Foreign Fighters”

14:30   Mahan Abedin, Dysart Consulting, “The Role of IRGC Qods Cops as Force Multiplier in the Syrian War.”

15:00   Tea and Coffee break with light snacks

15:30   Iranian Embassy Representative (Invited, TBC)

16:00   Syrian Embassy Representative (Invited, TBC)

16:30   Robert Wesley, Terrorism Research Initiative, “Why Egypt Matters in the Context of the Current Syrian Civil War.”

17:00   Afternoon panel discussion

18:00   Concluding Remarks and Farewell

Due to limited seating at the venue, registration for this event is mandatory. The Registration Fee for the Conference is 40 EUR/   per prospective attendee, which includes a light lunch of Middle Eastern food. To register, please purchase your ticket here:

http://bit.ly/1lUPDKN

Payment in cash at the venue is also possible.

For any issues regarding registration, please contact Nico Prucha (nico.prucha (at) univie.ac.at)

The Islamic State of Disunity: Jihadism Divided

Posted: 30th January 2014 by Cole Bunzel in Ideological trends, Islamic State of Iraq, Syria
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The rebel offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) in northern Syria, which broke out on January 3, 2014, has dramatically heightened tensions between Jihadi-Salafi thinkers. As noted previously, two tendencies predominate among jihadis insofar as the Syrian war is concerned: one favoring the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and cooperation with all rebel groups, and another favoring ISIS and its exclusionary political designs as the reborn Islamic state, or proto-caliphate.

On the ground at least, the uprising against ISIS has not for the most part opposed the more pragmatic JN backers to the more ideological ISIS devotees. Although driven violently out of Raqqa by the Islamic State in mid-January, JN has largely stood aloof during this confrontation. Rather those arrayed against ISIS—what one jihadi author has termed “the tripartite aggression”—consist of two upstart groups, the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front and the Mujahidin Army, and the Islamic Front (IF), an Islamist umbrella organization founded in November 2013. Nonetheless, the fighting has aggravated intra-jihadi tensions as the ongoing hostilities focus attention on ISIS’s unique claim to statehood and the inviolable sovereignty that this implies.

The Maskana prelude

It was an escalating dispute between ISIS and IF affiliates in December in the town of Maskana, located on the eastern outskirts of Aleppo, which precipitated the present crisis. The Islamic State’s refusal to submit the dispute to arbitration pushed its rivals over the edge. The same recalcitrance in the current conflict has forestalled any progress in reaching a solution.

On January 1, the Islamic Front announced that one of its revered commanders, Abu Rayyan of Ahrar al-Sham, had been brutally tortured and killed by ISIS in Maskana. Abu Rayyan had headed to the town to mediate the month-long conflict there, which had led to tens killed and many prisoners taken by each side. For weeks Ahrar al-Sham had asked ISIS to allow a third-party—“an independent shar’ia court”—to make an independent ruling on the conflict, but a response was never forthcoming. In mid-December a shari’a consultant (shar’i) of Ahrar al-Sham issued a stern warning to ISIS: “I call openly on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: restrain your soldiers and reconsider your policy. We are in one ship and will all drown if it sinks. May he perish who refuses to submit to the judgment of the shari’a!” Following the death of Abu Rayyan, the Islamic Front’s political committee issued a further warning: “We warn the Islamic State organization not to follow in its its regular manner by standing in the way of…an independent court.” In an interview five days later, the local leader of ISIS in Maskana, one Abu Dujana al-Kuwaiti, blamed the Islamic Front for instigating the current anti-ISIS uprising, seen as part of a larger “global conspiracy” aimed at uprooting the Islamic State.

Before the death of Abu Rayyan, the events in Maskana drew the attention of two prominent jihadi thinkers, the pro-JN Iyad Qunaybi (@EYADQUNAIBI), a Jordanian and U.S.-trained pharmacologist who served in prison with Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and Abu Humam al-Athari, a well-known Bahraini member of the pro-ISIS camp. Qunaybi condemned what he saw as the Islamic State’s refusal to answer requests for third-party arbitration. Addressing ISIS leaders, he wrote: “You command the people to submit to the ruling of God’s book…Then when you yourselves are called upon to do so, you say, ‘We have our own courts’… If the Islamic State organization only pays heed to itself, is its agenda really the agenda of the Islamic community?” Al-Athari responded with a refutation of Qunaybi’s “bizarre judgments.”[i] These he chalked up to Qunaybi’s irrelevant background in pharmacology. Qunaybi’s first mistake, said al-Athari, was his mischaracterization of the Islamic State as an “organization” (jama’a), as in reality it is a sovereign state (dawla). As such it cannot accept external legal supervision or mediation (except in coordination with an ISIS court), for that would “infringe on the right of the Muslim sovereign and his state.” Since the offensive against ISIS began, the question whether the Islamic State should accept arbitration has remained a central feature of the expanding intra-jihadi debate.

Initiatives

A series of initiatives has since called on the belligerent parties to authorize an independent tribunal to arbitrate the conflict. Predictably, ISIS has proved unwilling to accept any such thing.

The first initiative, presented by JN leader Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani in an audio message on January 7, proposed that a “legal commission” be formed by “all concerned parties” with a mandate to impose a solution. ISIS gave no public response to Jawlani, who in the same statement had blamed the Islamic State’s “wrongheaded policy” for “a large role in instigating the confrontation.” The pro-ISIS Abu Humam al-Athari, for his part, quickly came out with an aggressive refutation of Jawlani—“the renegade leader.” The real cause of rebel infighting in Syria, as he saw it, was not ISIS’s policy but rather Jawlani’s original defection from the ISIS ranks, a precedent for further revolt.

On January 19, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi presented a counter-initiative, essentially a plea for an unconditional ceasefire. In an audio statement he explained that his state was only fighting in self-defense, and so anyone who desisted from fighting would not be harmed.

Two days later a second initiatve was proposed by two jihadi thinkers of Egyptian origin, the London-based Hani al-Siba‘i and the Canadian-based Tariq ‘Abd al-Halim. While both have tended to favor JN over ISIS—they do not recognize ISIS as a state—their proposal praised Baghdadi’s ostensible offer of peace. Yet like Jawlani, they too premised their initiative on the formation of an independent shari‘a court empowered to issue a binding judgment. The result: no response.

The Siba‘i-‘Abd al-Halim gambit soon gave way to the so-called “Community Initiative” of prominent Saudi preacher ‘Abd Allah al-Muhaysani. The latter called on all concerned parties “to place the interest of the Islamic community ahead of the interest of the group.” Al-Muhaysani presented a detailed reconciliation plan again involving an independent tribunal of sorts. It required all parties to assent to the terms of the initiative within five days, which all but the Islamic State did (see here and here). At the last moment, as the initiative expired on January 27, ISIS published a statement informing that it would participate if all parties first agreed on what position to take on cooperating with the Syrian National Coalition, its Supreme Military Council, and the neighboring governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Since ISIS rejects cooperation with all of them (ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani has essentially hereticized them) while the other parties do not (even Jawlani has indicated a willingness to work with the Gulf countries) the statement served to preempt all discussion of mutual arbitration. In closing, ISIS reminded its adversaries that “the initiative of the commander of the believers”—that is, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s peace offering—remained on the table.

A pro-IF jihadi

While most jihadi thinkers have tended to support either ISIS or JN as the epitome of the jihadi movement in Syria, one prominent jihadi ideologue, the Syrian Abu Basir al-Tartusi, has instead favored the Islamic Front and particularly Ahrar al-Sham, accusing the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra of representing foreign interests. In mid-January, Abu Basir took his criticism of ISIS to another level, issuing a fatwa branding the Islamic State a band of “extremist Kharijites,” a reference to the violent exclusionary sect in early Islamic history. Among other things, he accused ISIS of unduly hereticizing other Muslim rebels in Syria, torturing its prisoners, targeting fellow Muslims with suicide tactics, and  exploiting the phrase “the Islamic State.” “Their state,” he wrote, “exists only in their imaginations and feeble minds.” Jihad against ISIS is thus warranted till such time as they desist from their “injustice, oppression, and aggression.” Some IF members, including the leadership of Liwa’ al-Islam and the Suqur al-Sham Brigades, have recently made similar remarks comparing ISIS to the Kharijites.

While Abu Basir’s stature in jihadi discourse has suffered since last year when he denounced Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Athari apparently found that this fatwa merited a detailed response. This he delivered in a booklet intended to explain “the difference between the men of the [Islamic] State and the Kharijites.” Its main argument is that the accusations brought against ISIS today—especially that of excessive hereticization (takfir)—were precisely those leveled against the first Saudi state inspired by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab.

Pro-JN jihadis

The jihadi thinkers favoring JN have not gone so far as to brand the Islamic State a group of Kharijites. Rather their critique consists in a rejection—sometimes subtle, sometimes not—of ISIS’s claim to constitute a state with unimpeachable sovereignty. Iyad Qunaybi is an example of a pro-JN jihadi who has been outspoken in this rejection. Those who used to make it more subtly have started to join him.

Whereas two months ago Abu Qatada al-Filastini and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the two best-known jihadi thinkers alive, erred on the side of subtlety in  criticizing ISIS, since the offensive started they have quite noticeably sharpened their tone. During a court hearing in Amman in mid-January, Abu Qatada called on al-Baghdadi to scrap the “Islamic State” name and fight under Jabhat al-Nusra’s banner. He thereafter made his views clearer in an open letter, advising ISIS members in Syria to join JN and pleading with Baghdadi to follow the orders of Ayman al-Zawahiri and retreat to Iraq. According to Abu Qatada, while it is unlawful for Muslims to fight ISIS, the causes of the war against it lie in its stubborn insistence on statehood and in its unwarranted killing of other Islamist groups’ members. In his letter he is pessimistic that the conflict can be peacefully resolved, noting that since it “refuses to accept arbitration” of disputes, the Islamic State will not likely lend “receptive ears” to any call for reconciliation. That seems a pretty accurate prognosis.

In a leaked message from mid-January, al-Maqdisi likewise voiced his frustration with ISIS’s stubbornness. Additionally, he chided fellow jihadi ideologues al-Athari and Abu al-Mundhir al-Shinqiti, both of whom have contributed extensively to his popular website, for lending their support to the Islamic State’s radical policies. “I hope,” he is reported to have said, “that my anger reaches them.” Subsequently, in an open letter online, he struck a more conciliatory tone, though still managing to ridicule the idea that any jihadi group had become something “like the caliphate.” Reportedly al-Maqdisi was supportive of al-Muhaysani’s “community initiative.”

Pro-ISIS jihadis

Apart from al-Athari, two other noteworthy exemplars of the pro-ISIS jihadi camp are the Mauritanian al-Shinqiti (named by al-Maqdisi) and the Jordanian ‘Umar Mahdi Zaydan. Recently, neither has exhibited much restraint in criticizing ideologues of the competing camp. In an essay from early January, al-Shinqiti took aim at the argument of some thinkers (including Abu Qatada and al-Maqdisi) that the Islamic State is not a “lawful emirate” but rather a mere “battlefield command.” “O you who have made war on the [Islamic] State with your fatwas,” he said, “you have created this state of division (fitna).” The proper course for all Muslim fighters in Syria, in his view, and the only way to avoid dissension, is that they give allegiance (bay‘a) to ISIS leader Baghdadi. In a mid-January audio address, Zaydan praised al-Athari and al-Shinqiti for defying “their shaykh” al-Maqdisi, “with whom they are associated” and to whose website they once contributed. Instead of heeding the wrongheaded opinion of their teacher, they had obeyed God and His messenger.

A deepening divide

The protests of the pro-JN camp, which includes those thinkers generally considered most influential within the jihadi movement at large, seem unable to shake the resolution of the partisans of the Islamic State. Over the last month the latter have only grown more resolute, even mustering the courage to refute their presumed elders. The Islamic State, which was meant to unify jihadis and expand their base of support, has in Syria created a stark division. As the ideological divide in jihadi discourse becomes more and more pronounced, the likelihood grows that the consequences for jihadi unity will be dire.

 

[i] According to unverifiable information from @wikibaghdady (on which see here), Abu Humam al-Athari is the pseudonym for Bahraini religious scholar Turki al-Bin’ali and has considerable ties to ISIS.

What role does the Palestinian question play in global jihad?

Posted: 17th December 2013 by Joas Wagemakers in AQ Central, Ideological trends, Israel, Palestinian Territories
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In policy circles as well as among both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activists, the question of whether, how and why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict plays a role in al-Qaida’s global jihad is hotly debated. The reason for this is clear: pro-Israeli politicians and activists obviously don’t want to conclude that American support for Israel, for example, causes people to become jihadis fighting the US, while people with a more pro-Palestinian point of view are often keen to point out that there is a correlation between the two, presumably hoping for a more even-handed American approach towards the conflict.

Research

Despite the fact that this question has often come up in debates, suprisingly little research has been done on the connection between transnational or global jihad on the one hand and the Palestinian question on the other. To address this issue, Jihadica alumnus Thomas Hegghammer and yours truly have edited a special issue of the journal Die Welt des Islams about this subject. It includes several articles as well as extra documents that will surely be of interest to Jihadica readers.

In the first article, Thomas and I address the question of “The Palestine effect“: what role do Palestinians and the Palestinian question play among global jihadis? Are Palestinians overrepresented among al-Qaida members or not? What role have Palestinian played in the global jihadi movement since its beginning? How has the Palestinian question developed from one seemingly monopolised by Arab nationalists to a cause championed by global Islamists? Does Palestinian suffering serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaida? You can read our answers here.

Palestinian Ideologues

The next four articles of our special issue are dedicated to one Palestinian jihad ideologue each. The first of these is written by Mark Sanagan, a PhD-candidate at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, on ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam. Mark’s article (“Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Martyr: Rethinking ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam“) deals with al-Qassam’s Palestinian identity during his lifetime (he was killed in 1935 by the British) and his Palestinian legacy thereafter. Click here to read this fascinating article.

Thomas has written an article about the second ideologue dealt with in this issue, ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam. As many readers of Jihadica will know, Thomas has done extensive research on this man’s life, which becomes quite clear in this article, in which he shows that ‘Azzam is probably the most Palestinian of the ideologues dealt with in this special issue. We’ll have to wait for Thomas’ book on ‘Azzam for some time, but while waiting his article – which you can read here – is a good alternative.

As befits someone who’s written a book and many articles about him already, I dedicated my paper to Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Palestinian identity. While I have often heard (at conferences, sometimes during field work and even in peer review reports) that al-Maqdisi’s Palestinianness is quite important to him, no serious research has been done on this issue so far and the people saying this don’t always seem to know what they’re talking about either. Luckily, this has changed with the publication of my article, which you can read here.

Finally, Petter Nesser of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo, Norway, has authored an article on the Palestinian identity of a radical ideologue who’s been in the news a lot lately: Abu Qatada al-Filastini. Although this man’s name actually means “the Palestinian”, thus suggesting that he may be quite aware (and perhaps even proud) of his national identity, Petter comes to some interesting conclusions about Abu Qatada’s loyalties and how he feels about his Palestinian background. You can read the article here.

Documents and Active Citation

One of the added features of our special issue of Die Welt des Islams is that we also included several translated documents that are related to the subject. Thomas has selected three texts by ‘Azzam about the Palestinian question (“The Defence of Muslim Lands“, “Hamas” and “Memories of Palestine“), which you can read here, here and here. I have chosen two texts by al-Maqdisi: one about his ideas on jihad and another on his criticism of Hamas (read them here and here). Petter added an interview with Abu Qatada and an article describing the latter’s explanation of why a jihad should be waged (see the full texts here and here). All of these documents help explain how these ideologues feel about the Palestinian question.

Finally, all authors of this issue have decided to engage in what is referred to as “Active Citation“. As many readers will know, the links to jihadi documents often break because websites are taken down. To prevent the publications to which we refer in the footnotes from disappearing or becoming hard to find, we have uploaded them to our dropboxes and have provided direct links to these documents. This is not only a sign of academic transparency, but it also ensures that readers will continue to be able to read these documents, even if the websites from which they originally came disappear. You can find the direct links to “The Palestine Effect” here and here. The direct links to Mark’s article on al-Qassam can be accessed here, while Thomas provides his links here. The links to the sources used in my article can be found here and Petter gives his here.

What all of this adds up to is a fascinating special issue of Die Welt des Islams on a subject that should be of interest to a broad spectrum of specialists, academics and policy makers. Anyone interested in global jihad, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and/or Islamist ideology cannot afford to miss it.

Caliphate Now: Jihadis Debate the Islamic State

Posted: 25th November 2013 by Cole Bunzel in Ideological trends, Islamic State of Iraq, Jihadi media, Syria
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Since the mid-November beheading in Aleppo of allied commander Muhammad Faris of Harakat Ahrar al-Sham, a barrage of negative media attention has afflicted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS). ISIS was concerned by its public image problem even before this signal mistake. In a September statement, Islamic State official spokesman Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani defended his emirate from a perceived media onslaught, thought to be led by “the unbelieving West” and its regional allies and aimed at discrediting ISIS: playing up its feuds with other mujahidin in Syria and playing down its battlefield accomplishments. Another campaign to discredit the Islamic State, however, cannot be attributed to Western origin. It arises from within the jihadi community itself.

In November the two most high-profile jihadi ideologues alive today issued searing critiques of ISIS and its emir, al-Baghdadi. Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filistini, imprisoned in Jordan in the Umm al-Lu‘lu‘ facility in Zarqa‘ and the Muwaqqar prison outside Amman, respectively, came out in quick succession against the underlying premise of the Islamic State: namely, that it constitutes the reemergence of the original Islamic state, or caliphate, and that its leader, who adopts the title amir al-mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful), is the putative head of this renascent caliphate. ISIS has argued that it cooperates with other mujahidin in Syria, which is true. Yet it also quite clearly aspires to absorbing them all within its state structure. (On the political ideology of ISIS, see here.)

Over the past year most jihadi literature seems to have supported ISIS and its implied caliphal claims (see here and here for previous analysis). The double-headed rebuke from al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada marks a departure from this praise chorus, possibly with painful consequences for the Islamic State.

Abu Qatada’s letter

Abu Qatada al-Filistini’s critique was the first to surface, appearing online on November 1. Born in 1960, Abu Qatada is a Jordanian of Palestinian background whose real name is ‘Umar ibn Mahmud Abu ‘Umar. Forcibly repatriated to Jordan in July 2013 after a decade-long detention in the United Kingdom, where he received asylum in 1994, he currently stands accused of supporting terrorist activities in his home country.

His short rebuke of ISIS and al-Baghdadi takes the form of an open letter to the mujahidin in Syria, advising them as a veteran jihadi and witness to countless battlefield gains squandered by infighting. The mistakes of “previous experiences,” he warns, ought to be heeded, for the current “disunity and disputation” among Syrian mujahidin “terrify and horrify every admirer.”

This division he attributes first of all to jihadi “leaders” enamored of power and leadership. The context suggests that he has al-Baghdadi foremost in mind. Challenging his title of amir al-mu’minin, Abu Qatada avers: “There exists no emir firmly established such that he should be treated as the caliph—or with similar names and titles.” Jihadi groups today are fighting to achieve strength for establishing “the Islamic state.” But no organization is yet worthy of that name. It is an error for mujahidin to fight for their organization “as if it is an end in itself and not a means [to an end].” In the harshest words of his letter, Abu Qatada accuses anyone who would call himself “caliph” or “amir al-mu’minin” of espousing Shi‘i political doctrine, wherein “commanders and leaders are seen as divinely appointed rather than chosen by human beings.”

Abu Qatada also attacks fellow jihadi ideologues for lending support to ISIS. Their fatwas, he says, reflect “naïveté and childishness,” and their authors are “elementary students” or “pretenders to religious knowledge.” By categorically supporting one side in Syria they make unity and reconciliation ever more difficult. Abu Qatada advises the formation of a “shari‘a elite” composed of learned religious scholars with authority to issue binding judgments on political disputes.

The “Zarqawi” wing responds

Five days after it was published, a leading jihadi ideologue in Jordan, the Irbid-based shaykh ‘Umar Mahdi Zaydan, issued a five-page rebuttal of Abu Qatada’s letter. While Zaydan is a lesser-name figure compared to Abu Qatada or al-Maqdisi, he has according to two recent media reports (see here and here) played a key ideological role in supporting ISIS against its jihadi detractors. A former acquaintance of both al-Maqdisi and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, Zaydan, about 40 years old, represents the latter’s more intransigent political tendency.

Jordanian researcher Mohammad Abu Rumman recently identified “two principal trends” in the jihadi movement in Jordan and Syria: “The first is the more pragmatic wing, represented by al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada; it adopts a position favorable to Jabhat al-Nusra, considering it a corrective to the path of al-Qa`ida in Iraq. The second trend is the extremist wing, represented by the followers of al-Zarqawi, or those who have been called neo-Zarqawis. One of their most prominent leaders is ‘Umar Mahdi [Zaydan], who has called publicly for allegiance to be given to the [Islamic] State [of Iraq and Sham] and al-Baghdadi.” In Jordan, Abu Rumman notes, the pragmatic wing of jihadism is the intellectually and culturally more powerful. The Zarqawi wing, however, has had more influence on the ground; far more Jordanians fight for ISIS than for Jabhat al-Nusra.

Zaydan’s rejoinder to Abu Qatada is entitled “Refuting the Statement of the One Who Considered the Islamic Caliphate a Part of the Shi‘i Religion.” According to Zaydan, Abu Qatada’s comparison of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham to the Sh’i imamate is offensive. This letter, he notes, despite its oblique language not specifying names or groups, is doubtless an attack on ISIS and al-Baghdadi: “a clear accusation against him, his leaders, and his soldiers of ignorance, capriciousness, and love of power.”

Abu Qatada goes wrong, according to Zaydan, by refusing to recognize the special significance of the Islamic State, which is not just one jihadi “group” among others. It is the reborn Islamic state. Quoting Osama bin Laden, Zaydan asserts that ISIS is an “imara shar‘iyya” (lawful emirate) or “imara kubra” (supreme command). It is not, as Abu Qatada claimed, an “imarat jihad” or “imarat harb” (battlefield command). Zaydan makes clear elsewhere that he views al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State as nothing else but “the Islamic Caliphate.”

Zaydan is clearly offended by Abu Qatada’s further claim, which is that ISIS’s supporters are invariably “childish and naïve.” Listing the names of twelve jihadi ideologues and their works supporting ISIS, Zaydan asks, “Are all of these naïve…and childish?” The list of supporters includes Abu al-Mundhir al-Shinqiti, Abu Sa‘d al-‘Amili, Abu Humam al-Athari, Abu al-Hasan al-Azdi, and Abu Ja‘far al-Hattab. (All of them have been discussed previously on Jihadica.)

In his conclusion, Zaydan suggests that al-Maqdisi, his former teacher, would agree that Abu Qatada chose an inappropriate time to “attack the mujahidin” of ISIS. Unfortunately, Zaydan was unaware that on November 5 al-Maqdisi too had authored a short rebuke of ISIS. (On al-Maqdisi, see here, and see Joas Wagemakers’s new book.)

Al-Maqdisi’s letter

Al-Maqdisi’s critique of ISIS appeared twelve days later on November 17 as a short memorandum to certain mujahidin in Syria soliciting his advice: “They informed me that they attach importance to my advice and are not heedless of my guidance; indeed they teach my books to their soldiers.” Calling for greater unity among the mujahidin in Syria, al-Maqdisi’s letter is more measured and less admonishing than Abu Qatada’s. It likewise denies, however, the Islamic State’s claim to emirate or proto-caliphate status.

Al-Maqdisi stresses “the clear difference between battlefield commands…and the politically capable [Islamic] state.” The path to proper Islamic statehood, he affirms, follows certain “stages” that lead to “political capability.” Skipping any of these stages—i.e., declaring a state prematurely as ISIS has done—is dangerous as it foments internal warfare. Addressing “our brothers in Jabhat al-Nusra and our brothers in the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham,” al-Maqdisi advises that they fight “under one banner and under one emir.” That emir is obviously not al-Baghdadi, for he also advises that before this they “seek unity under the aegis of a shura council.” In a more explicit rejection of al-Baghdadi’s status as emir, he emphasizes that Syria’s jihadi leadership ought to be of Syrian origin, the better to appeal to the Syrian people. Al-Baghdadi is of course Iraqi.

Al-Maqdisi ends his letter with an appeal to fellow jihadi scholars to support the banner of tawhid (unity) in Syria and not show partiality to one group or another. With these words he seems intent on curbing junior jihadi ideologues’ excitement over ISIS. The implication is that they should refrain from calls for bay‘a, or the pledge of allegiance, to be given to al-Baghdadi.

An enduring debate

The debate over the Islamic State’s readiness for statehood, or its “political capability” (tamkin), is by no means new. In 2006 the Islamic State of Iraq’s shari‘a council issued a 90-page document addressing just this issue. It noted that the original state of the Prophet Muhammad was founded on much less territory and with far less capability than the new Islamic state in Iraq.

This is just one of a number of points of contention over ISIS that has generated a daunting amount of disputatious literature. One jihadi author, claiming to represent Jabhat al-Nusra, recently produced several hundred pages of rebuttal to the three pro-ISIS works of Abu Humam al-Athari, Abu al-Hasan al-Azdi, and Abu Ja‘far al-Hattab (see here, here, and here). This in turn inspired a counter-refutation—a merciful 25 pages—by yet another pseudonymous author.

Until now the momentum in this debate has favored ISIS and al-Baghdadi, but the new contributions from Abu Qatada and al-Maqdisi may prove a serious obstacle in their advance. At the very least they highlight the stark divide in the jihadi movement today between supporters of a hardline, “caliphate now” strategy and those of more pragmatic mind.

A Little-Known Syrian Jihadi Magazine

Posted: 8th November 2013 by Joas Wagemakers in Jihadi media, propaganda, Syria
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In various previous posts, I have paid attention to the Syrian-British Jihadi-Salafi ideologue Abu Basir al-Tartusi, for example because of his criticism of other jihadis and his support for the Free Syrian Army at the expense of Jabhat al-Nusra. His position, differing somewhat from that of other major radical scholars, was interesting because it was more conciliatory towards non-Islamists and remnants of previous regimes and also because it was less dismissive of the widespread calls for democracy that the Arab Spring showed.

The Arab Spring also pulled Abu Basir out of the semi-isolation that he was in when he was still living in Britain. Since the early protests against the Syrian regime, he has been very active in promoting the downfall of President Bashar al-Asad, with an unprecedented amount of footage of his speeches, lessons, etc. appearing on YouTube. Part of this greater exposure in the media was a Facebook page that al-Tartusi had, called The Islamic Resistance to the Syrian Regime. This “Islamic Resistance” also published a magazine that I have not heard mentioned anywhere and that I also could not find on Aaron Zelin’s Jihadology website, which probably means it’s not very well-known. This post looks at the topics dealt with in this magazine.

Short-lived

The first thing that you notice about the magazine, entitled simply “The Magazine of the Islamic Resistance, is that publishing it must have been a rather short-lived affair. The entire magazine numbers only five issues (here, here, here, here and here), with the first one appearing in March/April 2012 and the latest one – despite the fact that it was supposed to be published every fortnight – in May 2013. Given the long time period between the different issues, one could argue that no. 5 is not the last one and that no. 6 has simply not been published yet, although it has been over six months since the last issue, so that does not seem likely.

The second thing that is striking about the magazine is the fact that Abu Basir plays a very prominent part in it. (Parts of) his articles feature regularly in the magazine’s pages and the back pages of issues 2-5 explicitly mention al-Tartusi’s website, as well as the aforementioned Facebook page of the Islamic Resistance to the Syrian Regime. The magazine as a whole often features material that has been published elsewhere before and is also quite thin (12 pages), thereby giving the impression that not too much work has been put into producing it. One could argue that such magazines are made under less than ideal circumstances, what with the country being embroiled in a civil war, but that has not stopped other jihadi magazines from looking rather slick.

Information, Encouragement and Defamation

The magazine’s contents are diverse, but can basically be summed up by the words information, encouragement and defamation. Particularly at first, the magazine sought to inform its readers by giving them a list of attacks perpetrated by the Free Syrian Army (no. 1, p. 3) or a story about the history of Dar’a (no. 1, p. 5). This continued by posting bits from Abu Basir’s “scrapbook of the revolution and the revolutionaries” (for more on this, see here), yet as time went by these became less and less informative and more and more crudely anti-regime.

As I recall from my research several years ago on Saudi jihadi magazines such as Sawt al-Jihad and Mu’askar al-Battar, both published by Al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (and about one of which Nico Prucha has written a very interesting book, by the way), one of the things the editors of such magazines try to do is to encourage their readers to continue the fighting, to keep the faith and not to lose hope. (Such behaviour is often seen among social movements trying to ensure the support of their followers.) This can be done by celebrating victories, showing progress that has been made or pointing to goals that have already been reached, for instance. In this magazine, such encouragement is found in singing the praises of the people who actually go out and fight in Syria (no. 2, p. 7), lauding Syria as a country worth fighting for (no. 2, p. 8) or calling on people to help free prisoners (no. 3, p. 10).

The most “encouraging” aspect of the magazine, particularly in the later issues, was undoubtedly the increasing number of rather graphic photographs of dead Syrian children and gruesome wounds suffered by the people hit in attacks. Perhaps such photographs were simply published to show what the regime had done, yet it is tempting to see them as implicit (or sometimes not so implicit) calls for revenge. This dovetails with the third thing the magazine tries to do, namely to defame the Syrian regime and its ‘Alawi beliefs. Perhaps the most frequent theme of articles in the magazines is the crimes of the Syrian regime, which is quite understandable, and the supposedly deviant nature of the ‘Alawites in general.

Epitome

Two things come to mind when flicking through the pages of these magazines: firstly, the increasing emphasis on defaming the regime and ‘Alawis seems to reflect the more and more radical nature of the Islamist groups fighting the Syrian regime; secondly, given the small number of issues published, the early demise of this magazine seems to mirror the fortunes of the Free Syrian Army and the moderate Islamist opposition that Abu Basir supported at the beginning. If recent reports are correct, these factions play a much smaller role than they did at the beginning, with groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) now calling the shots. As such, the magazine seems to be the epitome of the moderate Islamist opposition in Syria: it started out with plenty of ambition, but eventually seems to have been reduced to something small and relatively irrelevant.

The Islamic State of Disobedience: al-Baghdadi Triumphant

Posted: 5th October 2013 by Cole Bunzel in AQ Central, Islamic State of Iraq, Syria
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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), the leading jihadi fighting force in northern Syria, is often described as “an al-Qaeda group.” Its historical ties to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda Central (AQC) notwithstanding, this characterization is unhelpful and possibly misleading. The Islamic State, in its own conception, is no ordinary jihadi group; nor is it strictly beholden to al-Qaeda as such. Describing ISIS in this way, moreover, overlooks the dramatic rupture that has set in between the Islamic State and AQC over the past several months.

Today ISIS persists in a state of outright disobedience to its supposed seniors in AQC, Zawahiri among them. The following examines both the extent of this state of disobedience and the nature of the Islamic State itself that has given rise to it.

Anguished forums

Shumukh al-Islam, al-Qaeda’s semi-official online forum, signaled alarm last week over enduring tensions between ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), the al-Qaeda-aligned jihadi group in Syria that al-Baghdadi secretly organized in summer 2011 but now pledges allegiance (bay‘a) exclusively to Zawahiri. Evidently, ISIS and JN are engaged in a war for influence on the jihadi internet. In its very first Tweet, @shomokhalislam complained of being caught in the middle of this fight dividing the jihadi community: staunch supporters of ISIS and JN issuing demands to the forum to censor and delete rival content. Shumukh vowed to maintain a neutral stance in the dispute and, in the spirit of jihadi unity, threatened to terminate the account of any user casting aspersions on one side or the other. For more positive encouragement, it posted a doctored photo of JN and ISIS fighters standing together beside the caption, “Hand in hand…brothers in faith and religion.”

The Shumukh statement and threat owe much to the recent ascendancy in the Syrian jihad of ISIS and its much-vaunted emir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Joas Wagemakers recently noted the increasing level of jihadi support for al-Baghdadi, in both public displays of support worldwide and in jihadi ideological production (see here and here). All this reflects an intra-jihadi conflict opposing ISIS to both JN and AQC. While Syria’s jihadis on the ground may have achieved a modus vivendi in many areas (JN and ISIS fighters have been filmed playing tug-of-war in Aleppo), tensions in jihadi media remain pronounced.

A case decided

The Shumukh administrators are not the first jihadis to try to mediate the ISIS-JN dispute. To remind readers, this dispute broke out in April last year when al-Baghdadi, emir of the then-Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), declared JN to be a mere “extension” of ISI and henceforward dissolved. Simultaneously, he extended the Islamic State’s writ to Sham, or greater Syria, thus begetting the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS). When JN’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, rejected al-Baghdadi’s instruction to disband, Ayman al-Zawahiri stepped into the fray to “decide the case.”

In late May he issued a written directive, leaked to al-Jazeera, pronouncing against al-Baghdadi. The AQC emir annulled the Islamic State’s incorporation of Syria, ordering ISI and JN to remain separate entities observing separate jurisdictions—Iraq and Syria respectively.

Zawahiri, however, had overestimated the weight of his authority. From the Islamic State’s perspective, it was he, and not al-Baghdadi, who had overstepped his bounds.

2549 days and counting

The first thing one sees on many jihadi web forums (www.shamikh1.info/vb, www.alfidaa.org/vb/, www.alplatformmedia.com/vb/, among others) is a banner marking time passed since the Islamic State’s founding in 2006. Today the banner reads: “2549 days have passed since the announcement of the Islamic State and the umma’s forthcoming hope…and it will continue to persist by the will of God.” The symbolic centrality of the Islamic State across jihadi media goes some way in explaining the current outlook of the Islamic State qua a state—not a group—and its wide appeal among jihadis.

While it began as a purely Iraqi entity—announced on October 15, 2006 by a “council” of eight jihadi groups including the infamous al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia—the Islamic State has since its very beginning entertained a vision of limitless territorial expansion. In its founding statement, the state’s anonymous spokesman claimed to draw inspiration from the model of the original Islamic State (al-dawla al-islamiyya) founded in 622 by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, whence it became the capital of the caliphate and global Islamic empire.

This prophetic model has been a standard feature of the Islamic State’s propaganda and intellectual production. A 90-page document from 2006 explaining the state’s raison d’être, authored by a member of ISI’s Shari‘a Council, likewise portrayed ISI as “the new Islamic state”: “This state of Islam has arisen anew to strike down its roots in the region, as was the religion’s past one of strength and glory.” As to its claimed jurisdiction, the author wrote: “There exists no legal proof-text from the Qur’an or sunna stipulating a decreed limit to the territorial expanse on which the Islamic state ought to be erected.”

Zawahiri, for his part, spoke similarly of the Islamic State’s unique role as the proto-caliphate. In a 2009 question-and-answer forum he stated: “The State [i.e., ISI] is a step on the path to establishing the caliphate. It is superior to mujahid groups. These organizations [in Iraq] must give allegiance to the State, not vice versa.”

Problem child

Beyond public pronouncements, AQC and ISI do not seem to have ever enjoyed happy relations. The Abbottabad documents in fact indicate that AQC never approved of the Islamic State’s establishment and that a leadership-to-leadership relationship hardly ever existed. This is at least according to American al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, who in 2011 recommended that al-Qaeda publicly “sever its ties with the Islamic State of Iraq.” Gadahn feared that ISI’s engagement in sectarian violence had tarnished al-Qaeda’s reputation.

While AQC leaders did not follow his advice, ties between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were indeed to become practically severed—on the initiative, however, of the Islamic State.

Rupture

Some three weeks following Zawahiri’s leaked decree, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who in mid-2010 succeeded Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi as emir of the Islamic State with the latter’s death in an American bombing, signaled the rupture with AQC. In a seven-minute audio statement issued June 15, al-Baghdadi decried “the document attributed to Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri.” He declared defiantly: “The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham shall endure, so long as we have a vein that pulses and an eye that bats.” He added, in a nod to its expansionist nature, that “[the Islamic State] shall not retreat from any spot of land to which it has expanded, and it shall not diminish after enlarging.” Zawahiri’s was a “command at variance with the command of God,” unacceptable on account of “numerous legal and methodological objections.” The decision to defy Zawahiri, he said, was made not by him alone but rather in consultation with the Islamic State’s Shura Council and in accordance with the ruling of its Shari‘a Council.

Al-Baghdadi was firm yet respectful in this rejoinder. It was left to another ISIS leader, Islamic State “official spokesman” Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani, a Syrian, to sharpen the tone.

Ayman who?

The Syrian al-‘Adnani, in a follow-up audio message to al-Baghdadi’s, denounced Zawahiri’s edict more aggressively and systematically. “No one,” he thundered, “will stop us from aiding our brethren in Syria! No one will stop us from fighting the ‘Alawis and waging jihad in Syria! No one will stop us from remaining in Syria! Iraq and Syria will remain one theater, one front, one command!” “Car bombs,” he threatened, “will strike the shi‘a (rawafid), from Diyala to Beirut…and we will repel the ‘Alawis and Hizballah.”

Al-‘Adnani elaborated on seven “objections” to Zawahiri’s order. First, it was an order to commit a sin (ma‘siya) in the form of dividing the ranks of the mujahidin: splitting a united fighting force into an Iraqi and a Syrian force and thus weakening the community. Second, it affirmed the Sykes-Picot division of the Arab Middle East into artificial nation-states like “Iraq” and “Syria,” a division without basis in Islam. Third, it validated those “disobedient renegades” in the JN leadership who split, unlawfully, from the Islamic State by withdrawing bay’a from al-Baghdadi. Fourth, it set a precedent for other factions within the Islamic State to branch off and declare their independence. Fifth, Zawahiri’s judgment was made without properly consulting either party to the dispute, not to mention that the JN leadership’s testimony would be invalid on account of their sinning. Sixth, JN’s public rejection of al-Baghdadi’s ISIS announcement had gratified the enemies of the mujahidin and divided the community; this was not on par with the error Zawahiri attributed to the Islamic State of mistiming the announcement of its expansion to Syria. Seventh, Zawahiri was demanding that the mujahidin and their leadership withdraw from Syria at a time when all the mujahidin in the world were trying to join the fight there—a senseless demand.

The Islamic State, it would appear, does not recognize—at least for the moment—the higher authority of AQC. On July 29, the seventh anniversary of the Islamic State’s founding according to the Islamic calendar, al-‘Adnani issued yet another audio address reaffirming its expansionist doctrine in contravention of Zawahiri’s decree. “Our objective,” he averred, “is the formation of an Islamic state on the prophetic model that acknowledges no boundaries, distinguishes not between Arab and non-Arab, easterner and westerner, but on the basis of piety. Its loyalty is exclusively to God: it relies on only Him and fears Him alone.”

Bay‘a for al-Baghdadi

Apart from repudiating Zawahiri, ISIS’s recent media efforts have focused on promoting bay‘a, or the pledge of allegiance, to al-Baghdadi. In large measure this seems aimed at discrediting JN’s al-Jawlani, but it is also a more general effort to attract new Islamic State loyalists. One example of the effort is a widely publicized nashid (religiously sanctioned chant or anthem) calling on listeners to “close ranks and give allegiance to al-Baghdadi,” described as “our emir of Iraq and Sham.” Another item of interest is a short essay by a Syrian ISIS member explaining to readers “why I chose the State,” and why they should too. In short, the reason is that its leader dealt a severe blow to the Sykes-Picot division of the Middle East by expanding to Syria and that his Islamic State has the momentum to carry it to Jerusalem.

Even greater effort in promoting bay‘a for al-Baghdadi has come from beyond ISIS’s media organs in the form of lengthy treatises by big-name jihadi scholars like the Jordanian Abu Humam al-Athari. Joas Wagemakers has detailed al-Athari’s arguments, which center on al-Baghdadi’s peerless credentials as a scholar and warrior. Two other jihadi scholars worth noting here are the Tunisian Abu Ja‘far al-Hattab, a member of the Shari‘a Council of Ansar al-Shari‘a in Tunisia, and the more anonymous Abu al-Hasan al-Azdi, who appears connected to the Shumukh forum.

In his treatise, al-Hattab discusses at length the institution of bay‘a in Islamic law as a prelude to declaring invalid any bay‘a directed to JN leader al-Jawlani. The thrust of the argument is that al-Baghdadi had received bay‘a first and so al-Jawlani was outside his prerogative in receiving a competing bay’a. Moreover, because al-Jawlani had originally pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi as a member of ISI, his retraction of that pledge constituted a betrayal and a “grave sin.” The only legitimate bay‘a can be to al-Baghdadi.

In “Obligations for Joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham: Objections and Responses,” al-Azdi also stresses the gravity of al-Jawlani’s withdrawal of bay’a from al-Baghdadi. He summarizes his support for al-Baghdadi in a number of points: his eminent qualifications as emir, the legal inadmissibility of giving additional bay‘as, and the Islamic State’s evident superior strength compared with mujahid groups. Finally, al-Azdi argues, even if al-Baghdadi erred in declaring the expansion of the Islamic State to Syria, that State had become a reality that must be accepted in light of the harm that multiple bay‘as in Syria would do to jihadi unity.

Al-Baghdadi triumphant

To be sure, there are jihadi ideologues who have supported JN or taken a more neutral stance on the ISIS-AQC-JN debacle. Journalist Hussein Jamo has identified some of them. The momentum, however, both material and intellectual, appears to favor the Islamic State, al-Baghdadi, and his contempt for Zawahiri’s effort to restrain him.

The sudden ascendancy of al-Baghdadi marks a signal achievement for the defiantly reborn Islamic State. Contrary to popular perceptions, this achievement is in no way a triumph for AQC but rather comes at its expense. Al-Baghdadi, the rising standard-bearer of the jihadi ideology traditionally undergirding al-Qaeda, appears for the moment the triumphant leader of something quite distinct from an “al-Qaeda group.”

Al-Qaida Advises the Arab Spring: The Case for al-Baghdadi

Posted: 21st September 2013 by Joas Wagemakers in AQ in Iraq, AQ Leadership, Ideological trends, Islamic State of Iraq, Nusra Front, Syria
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The once fledgling Islamic State of Iraq has appeared to be going strong again since its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, merged it with the jihadi efforts in Syria to become the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Although this merger was apparently rejected by Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the leader of the Syrian Jabhat al-Nusra, at first, things now seem to be going smoothly. (See here for a recent report on Syria’s military opposition, by the way.)

Since the start of the ISIS in April of this year, much support for this state and al-Baghadi has been expressed among jihadis across the world. Not everybody seems to be convinced, however, and apparently some still see the need to criticise al-Baghdadi as a proper leader of the ISIS. For this reason, Abu Hummam Bakr b. ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Athari, one of the scholars who used to be on the Shari’a Council of the Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad (and in theory still is) but now just publishes random articles every now and then, has written a tract in which he makes the case for swearing fealty to al-Baghdadi. As such, it gives interesting insight into the question of leadership of an Islamic state.

The man

Al-Athari starts his case by singing the praises of al-Baghdadi’s background. First of all, he writes, Abu Bakr al-Qurashi al-Husayni al-Baghdadi is a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad himself. Although this does not guarantee in any way that jihadis will like you – just think of the Jordanian and Moroccan royal families, who also claim to descend from Muhammad – it does give honorary status to al-Baghadi, which al-Athari stresses by citing hadiths in which the Prophet’s family is lauded.

Apart from al-Baghdadi’s family background, he is also a scholar of Islam according to al-Athari, having obtained an MA-degree in Qur’anic studies and a PhD in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and having written a book on tawhid (the unity of God). This comination of Islamic knowledge and Prophetic descent makes him a special man indeed, al-Athari claims.

The mujahid

Al-Baghdadi’s qualities cannot just be found in his person, but also in his activities as a jihad fighter. He has taught at several mosques in Iraq, where he also served as an imam and preacher, al-Athari states, and he has led several jihadi groups. He is also a member of the Majlis al-Shura (consultation council) of the mujahidun and heads the shari’a and judicial councils of the Islamic State in Iraq.

Besides mentioning the many jobs al-Baghdadi has, al-Athari stresses that his leadership of ISIS was achieved through the pledge of fealty by the state’s Majlis al-Shura and the scholars in it, who agreed that al-Baghdadi should succeed the previous two leaders, Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, to become the new amir.

In his various capacities, al-Baghdadi has actively resisted the American invasion of his country “against his religion and his honour” and was instrumental in setting up and organising the Islamic State of Iraq, which was ruled on the basis of the Qur’an and the Sunna, al-Athari claims.

Throughout the period that preceded his leadership, al-Athari states, al-Baghdadi tried hard to listen to people, both young and old, in order to make Islamic rule pleasant for them. As such, he met with tribal representatives, jihadi groups and militias and called on all of them to pledge fealty to his predecessor.

The amir

Despite the man’s alleged abundant qualities, al-Athari dedicates several pages to “proving” that al-Baghdadi is indeed suitable for the job of amir. He lists ten conditions for leadership: the amir should be male, free, an adult, sound of mind, just, courageous, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe, knowledgeable and suitable to lead the umma and serve its interests. Suffice to say, al-Athari believes that al-Baghdadi fits all the criteria.

Al-Athari then asks whether someone can actually be a good amir if not all Muslims have pledged fealty to him. He answers in the negative, stating that only the scholars responsible for this, the ahl al-hall wa-l-’aqd, need to swear their loyalty to him and even they needn’t necessarily all agree on this. The idea that all members of the ahl al-hall wa-l-’aqd should give their pledge of fealty (bay’a) to the amir is a Mu’tazilite idea, al-Athari claims, and the notion of popular support is derived from the concept of democracy. It will come as no surprise that al-Athari rejects both.

The fact that scholars from areas conquered by the ISIS may not necessarily endorse al-Baghdadi’s rule is no problem, al-Athari writes. These areas were not ruled by the shari’a, so the fact that al-Baghdadi’s state controls them now is great in and of itself, but even if these areas had been under shari’a rule, the consensus of the scholars is that the new ruler should be obeyed. The idea that al-Baghdadi is unknown to people and that this may hamper his ability to rule is false, al-Athari states, since he is not unknown at all. Even if this were the case, however, this would pose no problem to his leadership because individual people obviously do not have to know the leader personally to follow his rule.

Al-Baghdadi’s incomplete rule over Iraq and his lack of agreement with scholars in Syria about ISIS do not impede his leadership abilities either, according to al-Athari. The Prophet Muhammad did not rule everywhere on the Arabian Peninsula either and his leadership was certainly not in doubt. As for the scholars in Syria, al-Athari claims that the amir does not necessarily have to consult them to be allowed to incorporate this area into his state.

The caliph?

Al-Baghdadi’s descent of the Prophet Muhammad, his scholarly credentials and his actions as a mujahid who clearly builds his activities on the consensus of scholars and tries to work with others are the reasons why al-Athari believes he is such a great leader. He refutes all arguments that one may have against al-Baghdadi’s leadership and calls on Muslims in both Iraq and Syria to follow his lead and unite. In fact, al-Athari states that “we ask God that the time will come in which we will see our shaykh sitting on the thrown of the caliph”.

Much of this praise seems rooted in the idea that is also found in the work of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the Shari’a Council he started – of which, as mentioned, al-Athari is nominally still a member – namely that jihad should be legitimate, effective and fruitful. In other words, it should consist of exactly the type of scholarly sanctioned, thoroughly considered and widely consolidated actions that al-Baghdadi apparently engages in. Al-Baghdadi seems to combine the qualities of a thinker with those of a fighter and, in a nutshell, therefore seems to be precisely the type of “philosopher jihadi”, to use Nelly Lahoud’s phrase, that scholars like al-Maqdisi and al-Athari are searching for.

Memo about Syria: Jihadis are people too

Posted: 6th September 2013 by Joas Wagemakers in foreign fighters, Ideological trends, Motivations, Syria
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Perhaps the most important reason mentioned by a lot of people why the United States should not bomb targets in Syria is that the possible downfall of President Bashar al-Asad’s regime may lead to a situation in which jihadis come to power, who may be even worse than the country’s current leader. Such fears are certainly justified. Yet we should also be careful not to exaggerate the threat that these men supposedly represent.  In this post, I look at a specific series of fatwas from the Shari’a Council of the Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad that deals with the problems and questions that potential jihadis have (these, these, these, these and these), which shows that jihadis – their sometimes radical views notwithstanding – can be quite human too.

Refusing parents

Many of the questions that Abu l-Mundhir al-Shinqiti, the shaykh who has long been the sole scholar on the Shari’a Council, has to answer deal with questions related to the classical jurisprudence (fiqh) of jihad that go back centuries: “Am I allowed to wage jihad if I am in debt?”, “I am able to do jihad. Does that mean I have to?” etc. One of the questions that also falls into this category is that of parental permission. Quite a few budding jihadis ask whether it is allowed to go to Syria if their parents refuse to let them go. According to the classical laws of Islam, parental permission is needed for someone to wage offensive jihad.

It is obviously easy to make fun of such questions (“I want to kill Nusayris but my mum won’t let me. What should I do?”). I believe this misses the point of why these jihadis ask such questions, however. They seem to be motivated primarily by a great concern for what is going on in Syria – and aren’t we all? – and want to take armed action to stop it, but are afraid they will violate Islamic law at the same time.

Some youngsters admit to lying to their parents about their true intentions when going abroad and wonder whether this is allowed. Others clearly don’t want to go to Syria and mention that their parents won’t permit them either, but apparently feel compelled to ask the shaykh anyway, perhaps hoping that he will excuse them from their jihadi duty. For similar reasons, several questioners ask if it is okay if they just donate money to the jihad, without actually going to Syria themselves. One potential fighter even asks al-Shinqiti to tell him what legitimate excuses exist that allow him to refrain from waging jihad.

Unfortunately for some of these hesitant youngsters, shaykh Abu l-Mundhir points out to them that the jihad against the al-Asad regime is a defensive one, meaning that it is an individual duty (fard ‘ala l-’ayn) for every able-bodied male Muslim. This, in turn, means that parental permission is not needed and that lying to them about this is permitted as well.

Family problems

Although al-Shinqiti comes across as someone whom one would perhaps not easily qualify as “a good family man”, he does take into account that problems at home may excuse one from waging jihad. Several questioners indicate that if they went to Syria, their parents would not be able to cope without them for financial reasons. Others state that their parents are old and need to be cared for, which these men will not be able to do from abroad. Still another questioner tells the shaykh that if he leaves for Syria to wage jihad, he fears his mother will die of grief and pain.

As mentioned, al-Shinqiti is somewhat more understanding of such problems. He encourages people to find others to take care of their parents and their (financial) needs, but also states that if this does not work the jihadis are allowed to stay home. He is less compromising with regard to marital problems – in the broadest sense of the word. One person wants to know if it is a sin to go off to Syria if it means leaving behind a sick child and a wife who is five months pregnant, a question that is posed several times in various forms. Another wants to wage jihad, but also wants to get married. Realising that he desires both, he asks al-Shinqiti what to do. There is even a person complaining that his family in his homeland have abandoned him financially, that he has no education and no job and that he wants to wage jihad, but that his wife starts crying every time the subject comes up.

Al-Shinqiti does not prove particularly helpful with regard to recalcitrant wives (“Try to go to the jihad together with your wife.”), but he does understand that spouses cannot simply be left to their own devices and therefore encourages the questioners to let them stay with their families if possible. He is much more accommodating, however, when it comes to the somewhat related problem of potential fighters wanting to finish their education. Some men point out that they study something that is useful to the jihad and that they themselves will also be of greater use if they are allowed to graduate. Abu l-Mundhir is quite forthcoming in this respect, allowing such youngsters to finish their studies, even if it means putting jihad on hold for the moment.

Attachment

Such expressions of doubt, hesitation and concern by jihadis obviously do not mean that we should dismiss fears about their goals and behaviour. The ideas of some of the men going to Syria are clearly problematic and there is indeed reason to fear sectarian strife and even all-out war between some of the various sects if the al-Asad regime should fall. The ideas about ‘Alawites expressed by some Jihadi-Salafi groups and scholars are quite explicit in this respect and do not bode well for the future.

At the same time, however, the fatwas mentioned above do show that those men wanting to join Jabhat al-Nusra and similar groups have plenty of other things on their mind besides jihad. In fact, quite a few fatwas betray their attachment to earthly things such as their families, their wives and children and even their careers. This, in turn – and without wanting to negate the real threat that some of these men may pose, means that they are  perhaps not the wide-eyed extremists hell-bent on world-wide jihad that some believe they are. In fact, they look surprisingly human in these fatwas and none more so than one questioner who asks:

“Is a mujahid who is killed fighting also considered a martyr if he is afraid to die?”

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