The Real War

The fact that there are so many people in the West who remain ignorant of the goals of the Jihadists is amazing. The literature is available for anyone to read, or in some cases listen to, in English. One of the titles on the internet is Constants on the Path of Jihad by Sheikh Yusuf Al-‘Uyayree, a Jihadist veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. You can download a copy as a fourteen-page, single-spaced, Word document or, if you prefer, you can listen to a reading of this call to global jihad in both Arabic and English at Google Video.

The author discusses the “constants” surrounding jihad. “The entire world is standing against one ritual in Islam, one ‘Ibadah in Islam, and that is Jihad,” Sheikh Yusuf Al-‘Uyayree writes. “They are mobilizing their religious strength, political strength, economical strength, media strength, cultural strength and popular strength to fight Jihad….”

To the Sheikh, Jihad is an endless struggle, one that “will continue until the Day of Judgment.” And if it is not temporally limited, neither is it geographical constricted to the Islamic world. His “third principle” is that “jihad is not tied to a land.” He writes:

After we brought forth the evidence to prove that the ‘Ibadah of Jihad is appropriate, for every time and age. We will now bring evidence to prove that Jihad is not dependent on a piece of Land. One of the false beliefs is that Jihad is attached to particular lands; this will lead to the discontinuity of Jihad, if Jihad stops in those places. So we have to establish an important principle, and that is Jihad is global. Border or barriers do not stop it; they do not stand in the way of Jihad. Jihad does not recognise borders that were drawn by a ruler on a map they are superficial borders. Muslims are in need of Jihad if he wants to convey the message of Allah.

And be assured that the author is not talking about an internal, personal jihad, although that is certainly an element of his equation. This veteran of several jihadist campaigns is discussing physical conflict—war. He asserts: “Eventually the destiny of this ummah, is victory in the battlefield. There are some hadith, which can only be interpreted to victory in the battlefield.” As an example, he cites: “And Islam will enter into every house….”

Constants on the Path to Jihad is fairly widley available online. I found one link posted by the "Moderator" of a forum on the website of the "Young Muslims of North America." Ckeck it out. You'll find some interesting discussions.

Posted by Mike Palmer at 23:22 | Permalink | Comments   

Osama bin Laden and other Islamists frequently claim that the United States is waging war against Islam. Since 9/11 there has been a certain traction to the claim since Americans are engaged in hostilities in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Throw in American support for Israel and you seemingly have the complete picture.

But the fact is that even before 9/11, before Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamists were leveling the same charge: that the United States was waging war against Islam. On what did they base their claims?

In 1996 Al-Khilafah Publications, an arm of Hizb-ut Tahrir, published “The American Campaign to Suppress Islam.” American motivations were simple: a fear of the revival of Islam as a force.

So the Kaafir West still recalls how Islam transformed Arabs from fighting tribes living at the margin of history into a civilised, distinguished Ummah, with a civilisation that illuminated the world, an Ummah which was able to become the master of the world in a short span of time and continued to be so for ten centuries spreading justice, security, high values and prosperity, in every place that the standard of the Khilafah was raised. Therefore the West fears that the Islamic Ummah would make a return again and destroy its influence and interests not over its land but over the whole globe. Upon America and the West realising this fact, the American campaign is directed primarily against the Islamic Ummah despite the fact that the campaign is on a world wide scale.

Note the absence of any reference to support for Israel. In fact, Israel is only mentioned once in the text in the context of United States policy toward the Soviet Union to gain Jews permission to emigrate.

But if Israel wasn’t an issue, and we had not yet gone into Afghanistan or Iraq, by what dastardly means was the United States waging its war against Islam? The pamphlet contains a chapter each on the American efforts to undermine Islam by spreading democracy, pluralism, human rights, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of ownership, personal freedom, and free market policies. You can read for yourself the details of how each of these concepts is, in the view of the Islamists, incompatible with, and a threat to, Islam.

These are the main slogans which America and the West call for in their global campaign to make the nations and peoples of the world embrace Capitalism. After explaining the corruption of the creed of this ideology, the corruption of the systems which emanate from it and after refuting its intellectual foundations (democracy, pluralism, human rights, and free market policies), and the clarification of their contradiction with Islam, it is forbidden for a Muslim even to think for a moment of accepting this ideology or to adopt anything from it. The American campaign undoubtedly targets the Muslim Ummah first and foremost because only the Muslim Ummah has an ideology capable of confronting and challenging Capitalism. The Kuffar know the history of the Muslim Ummah, which bears witness to what this Ummah can achieve when she applies its ideology and carries it as a message to mankind. . . .

[N]othing remains except for you to help by rejecting the Kufr [forbidden] of Capitalism, as well as all that it calls for of democracy, pluralism, human rights, and free market policies, and challenge all those who promote them. Your submission to Allah will not be complete unless you work with the sincere and aware Muslims to establish the Khilafah, the shield of the Muslim Ummah, from Kufr, division, mischief, and evil. . . .”

It is chic to scoff at remarks such as those made by President George Bush at a March 2003 press conference: “It [9/11] came upon us because there’s an enemy which hates America. They hate what we stand for. We love freedom and we’re not changing.” Many people in the West prefer self-recrimination, talk about Ward Churchill’s “roosting chickens,” or “blowback.” But the fact is that Islamists do hate what we stand for, as Hizb-ut Tahrir made clear in this 1996 publication still available on one of its websites.

Keep this in mind when you consider the “real war.” Perhaps you think that the United States should withdraw from the Middle East. Perhaps you think that we ought to abandon Israel. But are you willing to give up democracy, pluralism, human rights, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of ownership, personal freedom, and free market policies?

Posted by Mike Palmer at 12:42 | Permalink | Comments   

On 5 July 2005, on the eve of the homicide attacks against mass transit in London a year ago, the Islamic Research Forum released their report” “7/7 Unmasked: The Reality Behind the Events.” The “forum” consists of “various Islamic bodies and individuals including: Al-Ghurabaa, The Saviour Sect, The Society of Muslim Lawyers, The Shariah Court of the UK, The Muslim Youth Organisation, The Society of Muslim Students, Al-Khilafah magazine, Al-Sahwa magazine, The followers of Ahl us-Sunnah wal Jamma….”

The report follows the typical Jihadist line: the fault lies not with the perpetrators of the attacks, but with the Blair government for its intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq and its support for Israel. Various warnings went “unheeded,” among those the clear statement issued by “Sheikh Usaama Bin Laden himself” after the Madrid bombings. “The arrogance with which Tony Blair had led Britain into war against Muslims to enforce democracy and freedom over them with the use of B52 bombers and tanks,” the report concludes, “was the same arrogance which ultimately led to all the warnings being ignored and led to the blood of 100’s of Londoners being on his hands.” In short, British actions abroad justified British Muslims murdering their fellow British citizens in the tube or on buses.

I find it hard to believe that any rational person can believe this kind of crap. The same logic could lead one to argue that American citizens of German or Italian extraction would have been justified during World War II not only in opposing the US government (legitimate in a way), but also in murdering their fellow citizens by attacking the New York subway system.

The report’s line of reasoning also reminded me of the most infamous examples of perverted logic. On 30 January 1939 Adolf Hitler spoke to the German Reichstag to mark the sixth anniversary of his coming to power. By this point Hitler had demonstrated his international appetite and hatred of the Jews. Germany had gobbled up Austria and the Sudetenland. The Jews in the Reich had suffered dearly at the hands of Hitler’s government. In response to these German actions, the world was beginning to recognize, albeit slowly, the nature of the threat and to stiffen its resolve. Although Hitler got away with his march into Czechoslovakia in March, his attack against Poland in September ignited a European war. In other words, as Hitler spoke in January the proverbial clouds of war were gathering and even the Führer saw the storm approaching. His response was to threaten. He told the members of the Reichstag and the world:

In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! [my emphasis]

If historians followed the logic of the “Islamic Research Forum,” we would argue thus: Hitler warned what would happen if he was opposed and Europe plunged into war, therefore the destruction of European Jewry—the Holocaust—was not Hitler’s fault, nor the fault of those who actually killed Jews, but rather the responsibility of the Allied powers who resisted Germany. Churchill and Roosevelt were responsible, not Hitler. He'd warned them what he was going to do.

This is an example of flawed, perverted, logic issued in the name of Islam, and in the name of the Ummah—the nation of Islam. Fortunately, many Muslims do reject this kind of bogus analysis. Late last summer, CNN and The Weather Channel have aired thirty-second spots showing American Islamic leaders speaking out against such violence. The British bombings of last July were a catalyst for the effort. “With the bombings came a disturbing revelation: The suspects were home-grown British Muslims, from places like North Kensington, Notting Hill and Finsbury Park rather than Saudi Arabia or Egypt. They were the children of immigrants. American Muslim leaders say they now fear that their young people might also succumb to radical teachings. The leaders hope to combat that.”

This is the proverbial battle for the soul of Islam. It is one that only Muslims can ultimately win, or lose. But that does not mean that in the interim the non-Muslim world can, or should, do nothing but sit passively on the sidelines.

Posted by Mike Palmer at 17:17 | Permalink | Comments   

Osama Bin Laden warned Americans shortly after September 2001 that Muslims were “the Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life.” He was not the first to make such a fundamental miscalculation. Hanson W. Baldwin, the New York Times military editor, wrote of the Okinawa campaign of 1945 in his book Battles Lost and Won: Great Campaigns of World War 2:

human will in war is still in this mechanistic age a—and perhaps the—fundamental intangible which makes the difference between victory and defeat. The Japanese possessed the will to fight to a high degree, but it was built on a negative philosophy—a fatalistic will to die. At Okinawa the will to die and the will to live met in head-on conflict; in this instance the will to live—aided by far superior material—won. Yet is it well to remember that the will to live must, in war, have more than a selfish context, or men who are willing to die for a cause will defeat those who put life ahead of their cause. In the case of the Japanese the kamikaze represented more than a technique; it might be called a self-destructive urge, a death wish. And in the long role of history the sole reason’s for man’s persistence has been that the will to live has triumphed through the ages over the will to die.

The same will hold true in this struggle, whatever its length and vicissitudes. The only question is how long will it take and how many lives will be spent before the inevitable is realized. Yes, nature has insured that the will to live is superior to the will to die, but in 1945 Americans still had to weather the Kamikaze storm at Okinawa, obliterate any number of Japanese cities, prepare an invasion, insure Soviet entry into the war, and drop two atomic weapons. How far the West will have to go to win this present conflict will depend on how quickly and surely it goes about its work. Unfortunately, at present, the West is far from united—many refuse to even recognize the reality of the war—and support for the United States, for myriad reasons, is faltering. Does that mean that the West is losing? No, but it does mean that the jihadists will therefore continue to gain strength and legitimacy, which will insure that the struggle will persist, and as it continues reach new levels of brutality.

Posted by Mike Palmer at 11:46 | Permalink | Comments   

At noon on July 7, 2006, Londoners have been asked to observe two minutes of silence to commemorate the Jihadist bombings of a year-ago. Plans also call for an event at Regents Park in memory of the fifty-two people killed in the attacks.

How should good Muslims respond to these events? The brothers at my favorite Islamist site, al Ghurabaa’, have the answer.

Sins, we read, fall into two basic types. The worse sin is that of disbelief. All other sins fall into lesser categories. Whatever the faults of the four killers, and “perhaps” they were “terrorists,” at least “they were not disbelievers.” Accordingly, Muslims should “remember them not by mistakes and shortcomings, but rather by their good deeds.” The author, Mahmud Abdul Baari, continues: “We should ask Allah to reward them for all of their good deeds and should not join the Kuffar and the media when they will no doubt try to slur their character and put them down.”

And what of the victims and the moment of silence? Well, Muslims should keep in mind that:

those who died on 7th July 2005 with the greater sin of disbelief will never be our brothers. Furthermore, we must remember that as Muslims in UK, we must not join the Kuffar in their two minutes silence. That is because not only is imitation of the Kuffar Haram [forbidden], but it is not allowed to have any sympathy for the disbelievers whenever and however they are killed. Allah (swt) says,

“Do not feel sorry for disbelieving people.” [EMQ 5:68]

In fact, what is the big deal about deaths of 50 British Kuffar while we have hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and all over the world whose blood is on the hands of those same British Kuffar?! Verily, the blood of any Muslim (even sinners or terrorists) is dearer to Allah than the Ka’bah and all of its surrounding, let alone to be dearer to us than Kuffar whose home is in the hellfire! Indeed the feet of any one of those Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine and elsewhere are better than all of the victims of 7/7 and all of the non-Muslim survivors of 7/7 put together. Imam Shafi’i said,

“The toe of a single Muslim (even a sinner) is better than all of the disbelievers on the earth (put together).”

It's nice to know where I stand. I’ll be proud to be a Kuffar on 7/7!

Posted by Mike Palmer at 00:46 | Permalink | Comments   

The goals of radical Islamists are by no means secret. They are clearly stated in the West for all to read, and often in English. One of my favorites is the UK website of al Ghurabaa’. Al Ghurabaa’ epitomizes the Islamist, and the Jihadist, viewpoint in a totally unapologetic fashion. They make no secret of their global aim: “We work to establish the deen [subjugation] of Islam on the earth until the word of Allah (swt) reigns supreme.” And how is that goal to be achieved, given that the group rejects western electoral politics? They deny that they intend to pursue their aims through anything other than a peaceful manner, or that they support terrorism. Al Ghurabaa’ does not:

glorify any acts of terrorism, whether committed by individuals, organisations or nation states such as USA or UK, we do not wish anybody to emulate them or praise them and make expressly clear that that is not the intention of any of our articles or comments of our representatives. If anyone was to mistakenly get this impression then that is not our intention and we will do everything we can to clarify the misunderstanding. But can we accept such a statement at face value?

But if you dig a bit deeper on the site you’ll find an article entitled “The Lion Roars Again.” In the view of al Ghurabaa’: “One such lion of our Ummah is Sheikh Osama bin Laden,” described as a man who “has been honoured and dignified by the will of Allah. . . . His message is loud and clear for all to see and only the wise will listen and take heed, the foolish are those who ignore what is said and continue without taking any lessons.”

How can we explain this paean to Osama with al Ghurabaa’s claim that they neither support nor advocate terrorism? Are the members of the group nothing more than clumsy liars? The explanation is simple: they oppose terrorism and support bin Laden because they do not consider him a terrorist. To them, Osama is a jihadist, not a terrorist. And they are right. OBL is a jihadist and within the framework of Islamists, jihadists are not terrorists. Keep this in mind the next time you see a Muslim spokesperson denouncing terrorism in the media. They may actually support the actions, motives, and goals of Qaeda al-Jihad while simultaneously denouncing terrorism because they refuse to consider jihadists terrorists.

Posted by Mike Palmer at 16:22 | Permalink | Comments   

This morning, after digesting the news, I considered the crisis in Gaza following the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. I know that friends, colleagues at the university, and my students (I’m teaching this summer) are likely to ask me what I think, because they all know of my interest in the region. I was working through the myriad variables in an effort to reach some sort of rational conclusion when an old line, attributed to Abba Eban (once Israeli ambassador to the United States): “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” I do not mean to imply that I view the current situation as an opportunity. Far from it. Nevertheless, my consideration of the situation and the ultimate fate of Gilad Shalit quickly moved away from a line of rational thought, not that unusual when once studies the Middle East.

I asked myself: “In the present situation, what’s the worst thing Hamas could do, in reference to what would seem to be sensible conduct from a western perspective.” The conclusion came to me rather quickly: Hamas could torture young Shalit and then videotape him making some idiotic anti-Zionist statement, brutally slaughter the young man in Daniel Pearl fashion, and then post the videotape on the internet for all to see.

Am I predicting such an outcome? No. But I offer the scenario as a negative baseline. Should any other fate await the Israeli soldier, we will be able to judge how close-to-rational Hamas can behave as a government. And if the worst-case scenario does ultimately play itself out. . . .

Posted by Mike Palmer at 18:14 | Permalink | Comments