Ron Haleber
23-01-03, 11:37
Het gaat om een informatief artikel om aan de hand van Arabische bronnen inzicht te krijgen in de nieuwe vorm van de "wereldwijde jihaad" en het verband met de Europese ruimte. Het geeft er voorbeelden van hoe het motief van de "farao" actueel in kringen rond OBL wordt geïnterpreteerd...
Een dergelijk artikel is natuurlijk ten dienste van de Intelligence geschreven, maar dat ontneemt er zijn waarde niet aan zodat het in elk geval veel interessanter is dan al het simplistisch geneuzel, de prietpraat over jihaad in de Nederlandse media....
Het artikel werd mij toegezonden door de Marokkaanse socioloog Mohammed Boudoudou.
Wie weet kan één van onze jihaad-specialisten er zijn mening en kritiek over geven als uitgangspunt voor een interessante discussie...?
http://www.atimes.com
Middle East
Global jihad and the European arena By Reuven Paz
This presentation focuses on two elements: the phenomenon of global jihad and its implications on Europe and Muslim communities in Europe. In the international war against world terrorism, primarily the Islamist one, there have been many arrests, interrogations and investigations of terrorists or suspected terrorists and sympathizers, in Europe. They seemed so far to focus on the operational levels, but not enough on the cultural and social infrastructure of this phenomenon. Arresting terrorists or suspected as such is vital. Yet, the work is not completed if European countries such as Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Sweden or Poland are hosting radical Islamist websites for example, that feed on a daily basis, the radical messages of the supporters of the "Culture of global jihad." Intelligence and security services should, while fighting terrorism, concentrate also on gathering information that will supply them the better understanding of the ideological, cultural, educational, and social factors of this dangerous phenomenon, in order to counter it efficiently.
It is important also to distinguish here between the terms "Islamic" and "Islamist" in discussion of terrorism.
In general, Islamic movements are those that employ nonviolent means, however subversive, to restore the past - that is to found a single, unified Islamic state (Khilafah), whose sole constitution is the Islamic law (Sharia). Since there is no distinction in Islam between religion and politics, these groups recruit support through political efforts alongside their social-welfare and cultural activities, all of which they call Da'wah.
In contrast, Islamists direct all their efforts toward fulfilling the duty of jihad by violence and terror, which often necessitates excommunicating their Muslim rivals and the secular parts of Muslim society along with the non-Muslim world. These Islamist groups are the primary subject of this presentation.
The culture of global jihad
The term global jihad marks and reflects the solidarity of variety of movements, groups, and sometimes ad hoc groupings or cells, which act under a kind of ideological umbrella of radical interpretations of Islam. These interpretations are mainly a result of older developments in the Arab world since the early 1960s; the tendency to focus on easily adopted elements of Islam; A relative ignorance of principal elements of Orthodox Islam as a result of the spread of secularism; and above all – great difficulties in coping with the environment of Western modernization and its values, both in the West and in the Westernizing Arab societies.
It reflects also a process of consolidation of multi-national and various trends and doctrines in the past twenty years, and in several arenas in the Muslim world and the West. Such process took place since the early 1980s in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Kashmir, on one hand, and among Muslim communities in Europe and North America. It was a result of global changes such as the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Socialist camp of Eastern Europe; the renewal of old nationalist ideologies and conflicts; the shift of the center of gravity of the Islamist activity from the Arab world to the margins of the Middle East or to Europe, following the success of Arab governments to counter this radical phenomenon in their homelands; the liberal attitude of European governments and parts of their societies towards waves of Muslim immigrants on one hand, and towards social changes in existing Muslim communities, on the other; and the creation of central meeting points of Islamist radicals.
To the above elements we should add social, economic, and political factors, in the Arab and Muslim world and among Muslim communities in the West. These factors assisted in creating a closer solidarity between various scholars, groups, sympathizers, and circles of frustrated Islamic elements. This solidarity is primarily based upon deep hatred for a necessary enemy and kind of apocalyptic perceptions, which reflects the eternal fight between the Lord and the Devil, the good and wrong, or the light and darkness. Global jihad in recent years became therefore, a solidarity based upon narrow-minded interpretations of limited Islamic principles, and a sense of confrontation with a Western global conspiracy.
The solidarity is better consolidated due to various factors such as the rapid spread of communications, media, and above all the Internet. These means of globalization encourage the "brotherhood of the oppressed". Islamist interpretations, and sometimes misinterpretations, grant this brotherhood the religious justification for fighting this conspiracy in Islamic means and perceptions of jihad, even when this jihad is using what Western political culture calls terrorism. As long as this terrorism is facing "the devil, heresy, and the betrayal of secular Muslim societies and regimes, it is given more legitimacy by the process of constant demonizing of the enemy.
On the grounds of the aforementioned, it is interesting to see the Islamist view and definition of the global jihad movement, and the terms they use. The best possible definition has been written by Omar Abu Omar, alias Abu Qutadah , a Palestinian residing in London under political asylum since 1993, and one of the main ideologues of this phenomenon.
In an article titled "The comprehension of the civilizational view and the duty of jihad"(1) from his collection of "Articles between Two Doctrines" he wrote: "When we talk about the jihad movements in the Islamic world we mean those groups and organizations that were established in order to eliminate the evil (Taghutiyyah) heretic (Kafirah) regimes in the apostate countries (Bilad al-Riddah), and to revive the Islamic government that will gather the nation under the Islamic Caliphate."
But, the "true jihad" movements differ from the variety of other Islamic groups that act in the various Muslim countries and seek political legitimacy of the "heretic" regimes. In such case, the conflict between these last groups and the government is between a Muslim regime and its citizens, and not between "heretic and apostate state and a group that seeks to eliminate and change it".
Adds Abu Omar, "It is very important to note that the jihad movements are not those that carry weapons or believe only in using it. This is a mistaken view of many of the jihad youth. The jihad movement is the one that possesses the comprehensive civilizational view, that comes from the perception of true unity [of Allah] (Tawhid) on its both parts: the unity of serving (`Ibadah) and following (Ittiba`) the Lord. The one that has an historic dimension ... and future view of a world totally controlled by Islam.
Abu Omar suggested in 1994, a new term: the jihad movement of future hope (Al-Harakah al-Jihadiyyah al-Amal), which is: "A movement of Salafi worldview, perceptions, doctrines, and way; totally cleansed from any remains of the Sufi wrong doctrine; does not belong to any school or trend besides that of the Qur’an and Sunnah ... If we acknowledge that, we can see that the present jihad movements in the Islamic world have not reached these expectations of future hope, but they are in the right path ...
"What I mean is that these [jihadi] movements should open new arenas for the jihad outside their countries. Such a place could serve for preparations only, or, if there is hope for achieving the expected goal in a certain place – then, the jihad movement should view itself as one unit, since the nature of the conflict is of a battle. The commander is the one who can achieve this target, or benefit from the circumstances. The other [leaders] even if they were older and preceded him, should join this new hope and help him. They should serve as soldiers of the new commander ..."
A short period after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, a Palestinian Islamist scholar published a so-called research titled "The Great Koran predicts the destruction of the United States, and the drowning of the American army."(2) The West under the United Stated has moved in the author’s eyes, through a process of "Pharaohnization ," based on the Koranic story of Biblical origin of the Exodus of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and from the most vicious rule of Pharaoh, the symbol of evilness in Islamic eyes, and mainly the Egyptian groups.
The last ones, which are most dominant in the phenomenon of the global jihad, used this term to name the Egyptian presidents, Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. According to one of the Koranic verses (3), Pharaoh is the first of his kind, but others follow him in every generation, till the day of resurrection .
The present Pharaoh is the United States under President Bush. But, Pharaoh is not the only demon force that oppresses the Muslims today. There is Haman too, who is according to the Koran the commander of an army, such as Pharaoh. According to the author, "the two of them are two poles of evilness, oppression, and corruption. Therefore, no one should wonder if Haman in our days is the United Kingdom, such as Pharaoh is the United States. Haman is Great Britain, which shared with the United States the various kinds of torturing the Muslims, in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and the rest of the Muslim world."
And who is facing these evil powers? Qarun, one of the companions of Moses, who symbolizes the eternal truth (al-Haqq) while confronting the Evil (al-Batil). The one who represents these days the eternal truth is Sheikh Osama bin Laden." The conclusion is that the end of the United States is very close. George W Bush the second is Pharaoh of our times; such as Ramses the Second was the original Pharaoh. Since his term of presidency is going to end in 2003, the ultimate conclusion is that "the United States will not exist to see the year of 2004!" And, since the last Koranic chapter to mention Pharaoh is The Dawn (Al-Fajr), the ultimate conclusion is that "the destruction of the United States is going to be the dawn of the Muslim believers".
Western civilization might view such writings as nonsense. Yet, this kind of literature became popular in Islamic circles following the September attacks, the same as occurred in 1991, following the Gulf war against Iraq.
This booklet was the start of a series of books, articles, religious rulings, and other forms of writings, all without exception published in numerous websites over the Internet, and supply new meanings to the culture of global jihad and its violent conflict with the West. The most prominent of them so far, are two books that might use also as fatwah - Islamic rulings - for the supporters of global jihad. One is "The base of legitimacy for the destruction that occurred in America," by the Saudi radical scholar Abd al-Aziz bin Salih al-Jarbou, published in November 2001.(4)
The other one has been just recently published by the above-mentioned Palestinian radical scholar, Omar Abu Omar alias Abu Qutadah. The later, who formally "disappeared" from London in January 2002, was accused by the Spanish authorities as the political leader of al-Qaeda in Europe, following their investigations. He might be linked also to the arrests of the German authorities of a group of Al-Tawhid that might have been linked to the attack against the old Jewish synagogue in the island of Jerba in Tunisia in late April 2002, that led to the killing of 18 people, most of them German tourists.
The Fatwah, titled "The Islamic legal perception of the September 11 events", was placed in the end of April in one of the radical websites of the global jihad culture, and was the first sign from him after several months of silence. (5) His main motive in legally justifying the September attacks, is the perception of the war between the Muslims and the West as religious one: "And when we define it as a religious war, this is since the West does not want to let Islam exist in the form of a state and power. Yes, they always repeat that they are not against Islam, but what Islam is the one they support and not against? This is the false 'so-called moderate' Islam. The kind of Islam that accepts the submission to America and to the West, and is glad to live in accordance with their way of life. It grants America the legitimacy to spread its hegemony over the entire world, with no protest or resistance. Yes, they want the kind of Islam that approves the service of the American Muslim in the military forces, in order to fight another Muslim from the Muslim world. They want Islam that does not prohibit what Allah and the Prophet forbade, and the kind that does not deny their civilization, and their political, economic, and social values."
The conflict is, therefore, not just between this interpretation of Islam and Western culture, but also between the two different Islamic interpretations of culture and worldview. Hence, it is not only a threat to Western or European societies, but to Muslim communities in the West including Europe, as well.
Een dergelijk artikel is natuurlijk ten dienste van de Intelligence geschreven, maar dat ontneemt er zijn waarde niet aan zodat het in elk geval veel interessanter is dan al het simplistisch geneuzel, de prietpraat over jihaad in de Nederlandse media....
Het artikel werd mij toegezonden door de Marokkaanse socioloog Mohammed Boudoudou.
Wie weet kan één van onze jihaad-specialisten er zijn mening en kritiek over geven als uitgangspunt voor een interessante discussie...?
http://www.atimes.com
Middle East
Global jihad and the European arena By Reuven Paz
This presentation focuses on two elements: the phenomenon of global jihad and its implications on Europe and Muslim communities in Europe. In the international war against world terrorism, primarily the Islamist one, there have been many arrests, interrogations and investigations of terrorists or suspected terrorists and sympathizers, in Europe. They seemed so far to focus on the operational levels, but not enough on the cultural and social infrastructure of this phenomenon. Arresting terrorists or suspected as such is vital. Yet, the work is not completed if European countries such as Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Sweden or Poland are hosting radical Islamist websites for example, that feed on a daily basis, the radical messages of the supporters of the "Culture of global jihad." Intelligence and security services should, while fighting terrorism, concentrate also on gathering information that will supply them the better understanding of the ideological, cultural, educational, and social factors of this dangerous phenomenon, in order to counter it efficiently.
It is important also to distinguish here between the terms "Islamic" and "Islamist" in discussion of terrorism.
In general, Islamic movements are those that employ nonviolent means, however subversive, to restore the past - that is to found a single, unified Islamic state (Khilafah), whose sole constitution is the Islamic law (Sharia). Since there is no distinction in Islam between religion and politics, these groups recruit support through political efforts alongside their social-welfare and cultural activities, all of which they call Da'wah.
In contrast, Islamists direct all their efforts toward fulfilling the duty of jihad by violence and terror, which often necessitates excommunicating their Muslim rivals and the secular parts of Muslim society along with the non-Muslim world. These Islamist groups are the primary subject of this presentation.
The culture of global jihad
The term global jihad marks and reflects the solidarity of variety of movements, groups, and sometimes ad hoc groupings or cells, which act under a kind of ideological umbrella of radical interpretations of Islam. These interpretations are mainly a result of older developments in the Arab world since the early 1960s; the tendency to focus on easily adopted elements of Islam; A relative ignorance of principal elements of Orthodox Islam as a result of the spread of secularism; and above all – great difficulties in coping with the environment of Western modernization and its values, both in the West and in the Westernizing Arab societies.
It reflects also a process of consolidation of multi-national and various trends and doctrines in the past twenty years, and in several arenas in the Muslim world and the West. Such process took place since the early 1980s in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Kashmir, on one hand, and among Muslim communities in Europe and North America. It was a result of global changes such as the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Socialist camp of Eastern Europe; the renewal of old nationalist ideologies and conflicts; the shift of the center of gravity of the Islamist activity from the Arab world to the margins of the Middle East or to Europe, following the success of Arab governments to counter this radical phenomenon in their homelands; the liberal attitude of European governments and parts of their societies towards waves of Muslim immigrants on one hand, and towards social changes in existing Muslim communities, on the other; and the creation of central meeting points of Islamist radicals.
To the above elements we should add social, economic, and political factors, in the Arab and Muslim world and among Muslim communities in the West. These factors assisted in creating a closer solidarity between various scholars, groups, sympathizers, and circles of frustrated Islamic elements. This solidarity is primarily based upon deep hatred for a necessary enemy and kind of apocalyptic perceptions, which reflects the eternal fight between the Lord and the Devil, the good and wrong, or the light and darkness. Global jihad in recent years became therefore, a solidarity based upon narrow-minded interpretations of limited Islamic principles, and a sense of confrontation with a Western global conspiracy.
The solidarity is better consolidated due to various factors such as the rapid spread of communications, media, and above all the Internet. These means of globalization encourage the "brotherhood of the oppressed". Islamist interpretations, and sometimes misinterpretations, grant this brotherhood the religious justification for fighting this conspiracy in Islamic means and perceptions of jihad, even when this jihad is using what Western political culture calls terrorism. As long as this terrorism is facing "the devil, heresy, and the betrayal of secular Muslim societies and regimes, it is given more legitimacy by the process of constant demonizing of the enemy.
On the grounds of the aforementioned, it is interesting to see the Islamist view and definition of the global jihad movement, and the terms they use. The best possible definition has been written by Omar Abu Omar, alias Abu Qutadah , a Palestinian residing in London under political asylum since 1993, and one of the main ideologues of this phenomenon.
In an article titled "The comprehension of the civilizational view and the duty of jihad"(1) from his collection of "Articles between Two Doctrines" he wrote: "When we talk about the jihad movements in the Islamic world we mean those groups and organizations that were established in order to eliminate the evil (Taghutiyyah) heretic (Kafirah) regimes in the apostate countries (Bilad al-Riddah), and to revive the Islamic government that will gather the nation under the Islamic Caliphate."
But, the "true jihad" movements differ from the variety of other Islamic groups that act in the various Muslim countries and seek political legitimacy of the "heretic" regimes. In such case, the conflict between these last groups and the government is between a Muslim regime and its citizens, and not between "heretic and apostate state and a group that seeks to eliminate and change it".
Adds Abu Omar, "It is very important to note that the jihad movements are not those that carry weapons or believe only in using it. This is a mistaken view of many of the jihad youth. The jihad movement is the one that possesses the comprehensive civilizational view, that comes from the perception of true unity [of Allah] (Tawhid) on its both parts: the unity of serving (`Ibadah) and following (Ittiba`) the Lord. The one that has an historic dimension ... and future view of a world totally controlled by Islam.
Abu Omar suggested in 1994, a new term: the jihad movement of future hope (Al-Harakah al-Jihadiyyah al-Amal), which is: "A movement of Salafi worldview, perceptions, doctrines, and way; totally cleansed from any remains of the Sufi wrong doctrine; does not belong to any school or trend besides that of the Qur’an and Sunnah ... If we acknowledge that, we can see that the present jihad movements in the Islamic world have not reached these expectations of future hope, but they are in the right path ...
"What I mean is that these [jihadi] movements should open new arenas for the jihad outside their countries. Such a place could serve for preparations only, or, if there is hope for achieving the expected goal in a certain place – then, the jihad movement should view itself as one unit, since the nature of the conflict is of a battle. The commander is the one who can achieve this target, or benefit from the circumstances. The other [leaders] even if they were older and preceded him, should join this new hope and help him. They should serve as soldiers of the new commander ..."
A short period after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, a Palestinian Islamist scholar published a so-called research titled "The Great Koran predicts the destruction of the United States, and the drowning of the American army."(2) The West under the United Stated has moved in the author’s eyes, through a process of "Pharaohnization ," based on the Koranic story of Biblical origin of the Exodus of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and from the most vicious rule of Pharaoh, the symbol of evilness in Islamic eyes, and mainly the Egyptian groups.
The last ones, which are most dominant in the phenomenon of the global jihad, used this term to name the Egyptian presidents, Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. According to one of the Koranic verses (3), Pharaoh is the first of his kind, but others follow him in every generation, till the day of resurrection .
The present Pharaoh is the United States under President Bush. But, Pharaoh is not the only demon force that oppresses the Muslims today. There is Haman too, who is according to the Koran the commander of an army, such as Pharaoh. According to the author, "the two of them are two poles of evilness, oppression, and corruption. Therefore, no one should wonder if Haman in our days is the United Kingdom, such as Pharaoh is the United States. Haman is Great Britain, which shared with the United States the various kinds of torturing the Muslims, in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and the rest of the Muslim world."
And who is facing these evil powers? Qarun, one of the companions of Moses, who symbolizes the eternal truth (al-Haqq) while confronting the Evil (al-Batil). The one who represents these days the eternal truth is Sheikh Osama bin Laden." The conclusion is that the end of the United States is very close. George W Bush the second is Pharaoh of our times; such as Ramses the Second was the original Pharaoh. Since his term of presidency is going to end in 2003, the ultimate conclusion is that "the United States will not exist to see the year of 2004!" And, since the last Koranic chapter to mention Pharaoh is The Dawn (Al-Fajr), the ultimate conclusion is that "the destruction of the United States is going to be the dawn of the Muslim believers".
Western civilization might view such writings as nonsense. Yet, this kind of literature became popular in Islamic circles following the September attacks, the same as occurred in 1991, following the Gulf war against Iraq.
This booklet was the start of a series of books, articles, religious rulings, and other forms of writings, all without exception published in numerous websites over the Internet, and supply new meanings to the culture of global jihad and its violent conflict with the West. The most prominent of them so far, are two books that might use also as fatwah - Islamic rulings - for the supporters of global jihad. One is "The base of legitimacy for the destruction that occurred in America," by the Saudi radical scholar Abd al-Aziz bin Salih al-Jarbou, published in November 2001.(4)
The other one has been just recently published by the above-mentioned Palestinian radical scholar, Omar Abu Omar alias Abu Qutadah. The later, who formally "disappeared" from London in January 2002, was accused by the Spanish authorities as the political leader of al-Qaeda in Europe, following their investigations. He might be linked also to the arrests of the German authorities of a group of Al-Tawhid that might have been linked to the attack against the old Jewish synagogue in the island of Jerba in Tunisia in late April 2002, that led to the killing of 18 people, most of them German tourists.
The Fatwah, titled "The Islamic legal perception of the September 11 events", was placed in the end of April in one of the radical websites of the global jihad culture, and was the first sign from him after several months of silence. (5) His main motive in legally justifying the September attacks, is the perception of the war between the Muslims and the West as religious one: "And when we define it as a religious war, this is since the West does not want to let Islam exist in the form of a state and power. Yes, they always repeat that they are not against Islam, but what Islam is the one they support and not against? This is the false 'so-called moderate' Islam. The kind of Islam that accepts the submission to America and to the West, and is glad to live in accordance with their way of life. It grants America the legitimacy to spread its hegemony over the entire world, with no protest or resistance. Yes, they want the kind of Islam that approves the service of the American Muslim in the military forces, in order to fight another Muslim from the Muslim world. They want Islam that does not prohibit what Allah and the Prophet forbade, and the kind that does not deny their civilization, and their political, economic, and social values."
The conflict is, therefore, not just between this interpretation of Islam and Western culture, but also between the two different Islamic interpretations of culture and worldview. Hence, it is not only a threat to Western or European societies, but to Muslim communities in the West including Europe, as well.