Authors: Jason Burke
As with the term ‘al-Qaeda’, ‘Islamic terrorism’ is a catch-all of dubious use in helping us comprehend the phenomenon, and address
the threat, confronting us. Like ‘al-Qaeda’ it is a useful shorthand, and is thus likely to be employed frequently and for the foreseeable future by journalists, policy-makers and security agencies alike. One very simple reason for this is that repeatedly writing ‘terrorist violence legitimized by a particular reading of Islam and conceived within a mythic religious narrative but rooted in a largely political project defined by local contingencies’ is simply impractical.
Some would argue that the thought and aims of bin Laden and his associates are exclusively religious and that ‘politics’ as commonly conceived is of little interest to them. However, a cursory glance at bin Laden’s statements in recent years shows this not to be the case. Bin Laden is an activist with a very clear sense of what he wants and how he hopes to achieve it. Those means may be far outside the norms of political activity as we usually understand it, but his agenda is a basically political one, though it is couched, of course, in religious language and imagery.
Bin Laden’s views grew out of a strong, and continuing, tradition of dissent in Saudi Arabia, his native land, and the Islamic world more generally. Since 1996, bin Laden has demanded, among other things, the withdrawal of American troops from Saudi Arabia, tax, currency and sanitation reform in the kingdom, the lifting of sanctions on Iraq and an end to what he calls the oppression of the Palestinian, the Chechen and the Kashmiri peoples. He has condemned America for its use of atomic bombs in the Second World War, for its continuing development of weapons of mass destruction, for alleged ‘human rights’ abuses and for its support of Israel. In early autumn 2002, associates of bin Laden posted a ‘letter to America’, apparently authored by him, on the internet. Among the reasons for branding America ‘the worst civilization ever’ was the charge that the US is ‘the biggest nation that destroys our natural surroundings and pollutes it with industrial waste’. ‘You then refuse to sign the KYOTO [
sic
] agreement, so that you can continue to profit from these industries, whilst leaving a world barely inhabitable for our children,’ it said.
1
In late 2001, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian activist who was a major influence on bin Laden’s political thinking, listed the ‘tools’ adopted by ‘the Western forces’ to fight Islam. They included:
(1) The United Nations. (2) The friendly rulers of the Muslim peoples. (3) The multinational corporations. (4) The international communications and data exchange systems. (5) The international news agencies and satellite media channels. (6) The international relief agencies.
2
The parallels with the favourite targets of secular activists on the far right or far left is obvious.
Some ‘Islamic terrorists’ share most of bin Laden’s aims, some share a few, some share none. The hundreds of groups, cells, movements, even individuals, lumped together under the rubric ‘Islamic terrorism’ is enormously diverse. Individuals, and groups, turn to terrorism for a variety of reasons, some of which, though not all, may be shared with others. The motivation of Mohammed Atta, who led the 11 September hijackers, and Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, may superficially seem similar. They both appear to be driven by a fanatical anti-Americanism based in a radical interpretation of Islam. Yet Yousef saw himself as a playboy terrorist, leered at women in the courtroom and was far from observant in his own religious practice. He saw his acts as a personal achievement. In contrast, Atta felt compelled to attack Western targets, much as he felt compelled to pray five times a day or avoid eating pork. He saw his actions as an unavoidable religious duty. Similarly, the motivations, tactics and worldviews of the Indonesian Lashkar Jihad, the Egyptian al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, the Bangladeshi Jihad Movement and the Pakistani/Kashmiri Jaish-e-Mohammed, though they share certain elements, are, as we shall see, very different. All these are Sunni Muslim groups. There are also hundreds of Shia groups. Branding them all ‘Islamic terrorists’ conceals the importance of local contingencies in the evolution of any group and hides the essentially political nature of their aim of creating a perfect, or at least a better, society, even if that society is one run on a religion basis. The anger of the Algerian GSPC, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or the Libyan Fighting Group may be misguided, unjustified and have horrific and morally abhorrent consequences, but the grievances that they are seeking to resolve are not in any way metaphysical. Their sense of grievance might be extreme but it is rooted in reality. In their manifestos
they refer to real events and real people and what are perceived to be real problems, as well as seventh-century battles and medieval thinkers. While bin Laden’s discourse may be based on an interpretation of Islamic history, his power is derived from playing on the current social, economic and political problems of the Muslim world.
3
Just because a lack of graduate employment, decent housing, social mobility, food, etc., is explained by an individual through reference to a religion does not make it a religious grievance. It remains a political grievance articulated with reference to a particular religious worldview. Other discourses, such as Marxist–Leninist dialectical materialism, can fulfil a similar function and indeed did throughout much of the Islamic world until relatively recently. At least one distinguished modern historian has referred to al-Qaeda as the extremist wing of a political religion, a term occasionally used to capture the nature of Nazism.
4
The influence of modern left-wing, and occasionally right-wing, language and thought on bin Laden, his associates and many other modern Islamic radicals is clear from their public statements.
Yet the political is seen within a mythic religious context, the strongest element of which is the idea of an ongoing ‘cosmic war’. Almost all terrorists consider themselves to be soldiers who are ‘at war’. American right-wingers use the greeting ‘RAHOWA’, which stands for ‘racial holy war’. Their tracts announce that they ‘believe there is a battle being fought this day between the children of darkness (today known as the Jews) and the children of light (God), the Aryan race’. Like most religious terrorists, they are convinced that a ‘cosmic war’ is underway around them. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic extremist terror group, say they too are ‘at war’. Meir Kahane’s Jewish extremists talk of war between Jews and Arabs.
5
In his 1998 fatwa, bin Laden announced that the American actions in the Middle East were ‘a clear declaration of war on God, His messenger and Muslims’. In 2003 a book published by a close aide of bin Laden stressed that the history of mankind was the story of ‘perpetual war between belief and unbelief’.
6
If the world is understood as dominated by a cosmic struggle between good and evil, all problems are explained. An individual can explain personal and communal suffering and humiliation. Even better, they can blame someone for both. A battle involves a clear and present
danger from an obvious enemy. Seeing the world as a battlefield enables an individual to deploy a whole series of mythical, cultural and religious references. This is hugely empowering. Those who take part in the cosmic struggle are holy warriors, proud, strong, deserving of respect and prestige.
Moreover, being at war both implies the possibility of victory and offers a vision of the means to achieve it. When the war is seen as cosmic, this triumph can be understood as the moment of social and personal transformation when an individual casts off all limitations. As the scholar and sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer comments: ‘To be without such images of war is almost to be without hope itself.’
7
The idea of a cosmic struggle is thus enormously attractive. Yet though it is clear that resources that enable such worldviews of cosmic struggle exist in all religions (and in revolutionary left-wing thought too) there are elements within Islam that are peculiarly powerful in this regard.
Islam is a more explicitly political religion than many others, and this makes its use to explain political grievances and, most importantly, to suggest a course of action to remedy any given situation far easier and far more potent. There are also other elements within Islam which, as we shall see, have been lent enormous power and significance by developments in entirely non-religious areas, such as technology.
Muslims believe that the Prophet Mohammed was picked by God or Allah to be His messenger to bring to the human race His final instructions on how to live in the material world. Mohammed, who lived in the Hijaz, now part of Saudi Arabia, between about 570 and 632
CE
, aurally received a text, known as the Qur’an, that was delivered as the word of God. The Qur’an is a ‘revealed text’ ‘sent down’ by God or Allah and is thus perfect, unchanging and unchangeable. Mohammed is the latest, and the last, in a series of prophets, who include Jesus and Moses, sent to bring the word of God to man. Alongside the Qur’an is the collection of narrative traditions that relate the behaviour and sayings, the example, of the Prophet, called the
sunna
. These texts are known as the
hadith
. The hadith were collected by Mohammed’s followers and compiled into collections after a long period of oral transmission by later Muslims, and are thus of varying authority and so are traditionally quoted with a description of their
provenance. The hadith, on the whole, are not ‘revealed’ but originate in the acts and sayings of Mohammed in his capacity as a human being, whereas the Qur’an is understood to be the direct words of God without any human input. Mohammed, though chosen by God to be His messenger, was very much a man. Muslims do not worship Mohammed or the Qur’an but Allah and Allah alone. Any suggestion that Mohammed, as distinct from God, can be worshipped will be seen by pious Muslims as detracting from the absolute primacy and unity of God. This theological principle of oneness or unity, known as
tauhid
, is a fundamental, and deeply political, concept. Many Muslims, including bin Laden, believe it should be given political expression through the eradication of divisions, national or other, among Muslims and the unification of the
umma
, or Muslim community.
Mohammed was a warrior, a merchant, a philosopher, a judge and a radical social reformer. The Meccan community in which he grew up was riddled with hierarchy, inequality, greed, violence, tribalism and factionalism. To him, this was symbolized by the polytheism practised locally. War and feuding were a constant among the Arabian tribes and left them vulnerable to the threat of the superpowers of the day, the Persians and the Byzantine Romans. Mohammed’s demand that God was the only recognizable authority was genuinely revolutionary, directly challenging the powerful tribal oligarchy that ruled Mecca. The fundamental message of the Qur’an was that the community on earth had strayed from God’s instructions over the years, and was now riven with social injustice and wrongdoing as a result. Unsurprisingly, the young Islamic community faced many powerful and well-armed enemies. These were eventually overcome and internal peace established. This, conservative Muslims believe, was as a result of Mohammed’s success in implementing Allah’s instructions. The nature of the society of these first Muslims, the forefathers or
salaf
, and the incredible expansion of the Islamic community throughout the Arabian peninsular and beyond towards the Maghreb and south and central Asia during the time of the Prophet and his immediate successors has been proof to devout Muslims ever since that following the instructions of Allah and the examples of the Prophet will ensure a just and peaceable society and the concomitant cultural, military and political superiority of the
Islamic world. The texts and the example of the first generations of believers thus provide an ideal, a reference point, against which can be compared, inevitably unfavourably, any given extant government, situation or ruler. They offer a vision of an ‘authentic’ and ‘true’ Islamic society, against which reality rarely stands much comparison. This is a political resource of enormous power. The core texts of the Qur’an and the hadith are thus ‘closed’, in that they are unchangeable, but also ‘open’, in that they are infinitely flexible, providing answers in principle to all questions of behaviour at all times. The former quality means they have an autonomy that prevents manipulation by anyone hoping for short-term gain in a specific local or political context, the latter means they can be made appropriate for all people in all situations.
8
This again means that Islam is always politically engaged, as it allows dissident movements in the Islamic world to appeal to the ‘purity’ of an, often imagined, earlier society or religio-political order, predicated on a ‘true’, authentic reading of the holy texts. There is thus an obvious religious answer, and prescribed programme for action, for any political grievance. If the corrupting elements are purged, the logic runs, a fair and just and happy society will be established.
To ensure their continued relevance in the real world, the Qur’an and the hadith need to be interpreted. Though some of their message is clear, much needs to be drawn out through a process of exegesis, particularly when looking for answers to elements that simply did not exist in seventh-century Arabia. This was recognized by Mohammed himself, who explicitly condoned reasoned argument, leading to a consensus ruling, over such issues. The process of interpreting the texts to provide guidance on an issue that is not ruled on directly by the Qur’an is known as
ijtihad
and, though Islam recognizes no clergy with intercessionary powers, a corps of specialized experts in such reasoning and the sciences associated with it emerged. They were known as
ulema
(singular
alim
), ‘the learned’.