Is Al-Qaeda Disintegrating?
Which way al-Qaeda? Trotsky or Che? The bitter ideological squabbles of Islamic jihadists are following in the footsteps of the philosophical arguments that fractured Communist comrades.
All is not well within the ranks of Al Qaeda, or so the media tells us.
Three major articles have appeared in the last week heralding a fracture at the theoretical-philosophical level of jihadism, which not only bodes well for the war on terror, but may signify a coming dam-break in the Islamic civil war. Of the three, the most interesting is a lengthy profile of Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, or “Dr. Fadl,” written by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker. (The other two ran in the New Republic and the Washington Post). Wright is the author of The Looming Tower, the best book on Al Qaeda and the gore-soaked path to 9/11, and so may be said to know quite a lot about our enemies, their tactics, and their changing states of mind.
As for Dr. Fadl, he was formerly Bin Laden’s philosopher-in-chief, and therefore not someone whose new opinions can be easily dismissed as those of a crackpot heretic. And what new opinions they are! Last year, Fadl began publishing excerpts of a tract called Rationalizing Jihad, a sort of Islamist Goodbye to All That, castigating Al Qaeda for its violent ways, its self-arrogation of religious authority, and – it’s almost impossible to write this in earnest – its fundamental discourtesy to infidels. Among the saner judgments one will find in the book are the following:
“There is nothing that invokes the anger of God and His wrath like the unwarranted spilling of blood and wrecking of property.”
“There is no such thing in Islam as the ends justifying the means.”
“God permitted peace treaties and cease-fires with the infidels, either in exchange for money or without it—all of this in order to protect Muslims, in contrast with those who push them into peril.”
“There is nothing in Sharia about killing Jews and Nazarenes, referred to by some as the Crusaders.”
“You cannot decide who is a Muslim or who is an unbeliever or who should be killed based on the color of his skin or hair or the language he speaks or because he wears Western fashion.”
“I say it is not honorable to reside with people—even if they were nonbelievers and not part of a treaty, if they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum with a decent life and other acts of kindness—and then betray them through killing and destruction. This was not in the manners and practices of the Prophet.”
Let aside whether or not Fadl’s humane interpretations of the Koran and Hadith withstand scrutiny, his citation of political asylum or visas as a way of underscoring the warm welcome Europe and America offers emigrant Muslims, or whether or not this text is even his own. (He has been incarcerated in Egypt’s Tora prison for the last two years, and so the natural suspicion among his usual readership is that he was coerced into lending his imprimatur to this about-face.) Fadl had formerly been the architect for takfir, the practice of determining who is and is not a “true” Muslim, which has been taken up with such lethal prejudice by Al Qaeda and its affiliates around the world (see Zarqawi’s old proclamations against the Shia of Iraq). So for such a theoretician to publicly renounce his most well known theory is indeed significant.
Though the real charm in Wright’s story is why Fadl authored Rationalizing Jihad: His first and most influential literary “masterpiece” had been molested by the vulgar pen of one Ayman al-Zawahiri, the “number two” of Al Qaeda.
Both men had been medical students together in Egypt in the late 1960’s, when they happened upon a fashionable new course of theocratic revolution. Fadl was the brains of the operation, as well as the hands (he was the more gifted surgeon), while Zawahiri provided the public relations and messianic zeal needed to recruit what was, at first, a local gang of jihadists set upon bringing down the Sadat regime.
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Michael Weiss is a New York-based writer. His blog is Snarksmith.
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17 Comments
1. Fran:Typical Muslim Al-Takiyya at work again, here!
“There is nothing that invokes the anger of God and His wrath like the unwarranted spilling of blood and wrecking of property.”
“There is no such thing in Islam as the ends justifying the means.”
“God permitted peace treaties and cease-fires with the infidels, either in exchange for money or without it—all of this in order to protect Muslims, in contrast with those who push them into peril.”
“There is nothing in Sharia about killing Jews and Nazarenes, referred to by some as the Crusaders.”
“You cannot decide who is a Muslim or who is an unbeliever or who should be killed based on the color of his skin or hair or the language he speaks or because he wears Western fashion.”
“I say it is not honorable to reside with people—even if they were nonbelievers and not part of a treaty, if they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum with a decent life and other acts of kindness—and then betray them through killing and destruction. This was not in the manners and practices of the Prophet.”
All of these edicts come from the old Koranic writings of Mohammed when he had not yet amassed a sufficient army to rape, kill and plunder under his command which he did about two years after promising to leave others in peace, a promise which he betrayed.
Also, we MUST remember that subsequent Koranic verses supercede those written previously which means the later verses command the rape, genocide and pillage of non-Muslims and their homelands.
Jun 1, 2008 - 11:26 am 2. Morton Doodslag:I’m of the opinion that Muslims, even those who don’t necessarily subscribe to the all-out Jihad which al Qaida represents, still pose a grave threat to the world. Even if the vast majority of Muslims abjure the extremest expressions of Islam, they still axiomatically embrace a supremacist war doctrine which will remain in perpetual to our own Western norms. Their gradual and deliberwte subversion of our society, when coupled with incremental birthratss and ongoing immigration means Jihad of all forms will continue to pollute and sicken the West.
In the analysis above I would quiblle with the notion that socialism so much “took hold” in feudal Russia, as the idea that serfs, long predisposed to follow the dictates of their “superiors”, simply made the most fertile medium in which the totalitarianism of Marxian dystopia would flourish. In this, the Muslims share a fundamental trait with the susceptible fodder of arussian serfdom for totalitarian and violent nightmares to take hold and flourish. Even here, however, Muslims will outdo their serfs counterparts as receptive to the worst strands of Islam. Their entire existence is founded on the mind manacles of a violent hatred based “religion” of conquest, looting, murder, and annihilation. The feudal Russian serfs was more acted upon than acting, whereas the Muslims, when they even “moderately” follow the dictates of Islam, are every one active participants in ongoing the ongoing Jihad to spread Islam and destroy all impediments to its eventual triumph on earth. Even Fadl’s seeming disavowal of al Qaida’s specific tactics preserves the protection of Muslims above all else - he only cares that Muslims have been harmed by Islamic nastiness and our retaliations. Fadl and most of his fellow Muslims clearly only worry about the wanton slaughter of infidels insomuchas we retaliate and kill Muslims in exchange. They still adhere to their Islam in any event.
Such schisms as that represented between Fadl and Dr. Z don’t represent any genuine “dam break” within the camp of Islam any more than they represent any evidence of any “civil war” within their hideous “ummah”. Such schisms are simply respites in the pace and fury of Islamic Jihad, which will persist as long as Islam is allowed to persist by us. Focusing on al Qaida is proper for now, but make no mistake: Jihad will not end when the last filth of al Qaida is exterminated.
Jun 1, 2008 - 12:40 pm 3. Fat Man:I think the Russian analogy needs to be used with great caution. First. There were a couple of generations separating Herzen, Tkachev and Lenin, and a lot of events. The 1904 Russia-Japan War, was followed by the first machinery of constitutional government.
Second, the Bolshevik takeover was not a “popular revolution”, it was a coup d’etat, perfected by the Red Army in the ensuing civil war, and by the secret police and the gulags during the remainder of its 70 years of misrule and oppression. It is doubtful that the Bolsheviks ever had more than a tiny handful of true followers — as opposed to those who wanted to be on the winning side.
The supervening event, that was random with respect to Russian History, and, which few historians argue was inevitable in European History, was the Great War (World War I to Americans). It led to the collapse of the Monarchy, and created the opening for the Bolsheviks. In some alternative universe where the war did not occur, or where Russia won quickly, the Tsarist government might have continued its evolution towards constitutional monarchy.
Another thing that should be noted is that A-Q seems to be its own antidote. Their ideology and practice really piss people off. It is possible that they could pull off a coup in an autocratic state, seize control of the repressive mechanism and stay in power, but every day it grows less likely.
Jun 1, 2008 - 7:21 pm 4. thenakedemperor:There are fracture lines here that could be beneficial. See more here:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20070920.aspx?comments=Y
Jun 2, 2008 - 4:22 am 5. ZEITGEIST:[...] AL QAEDA DISINTEGRATING? The bitter ideological squabbles of Islamic jihadists are following in the footsteps of the philosop… Confusion to the enemies of [...]
Jun 2, 2008 - 5:04 am 6. Michael Weiss:You’re right, Fat Man (I’ll never stop marveling at the clauses the Internet forces me to write), but I wasn’t comparing AQ to the 1917 event, only trying to show how a roughly unified radical movement — and most of the 19th c. Russian intelligents wanted the same outcome; it was strategy and tactics they debated furiously — can splinter and cleave, and very often over the same practical and ethical concerns. I wouldn’t push my analogy too far either. (There was far more to choose intellectually and morally in Lavrov than there ever will be in Dr. Fadl.) However, these internal divisions can and should be used to our own advantage in weakening Islamism, particularly if the Zawahirist strain only looks moribund and awaits another generation to take it up again.
Jun 2, 2008 - 7:36 am 7. Josh Strawn:Doodslag, chauvinism from the mouth of an idiot is a sad thing, but the one so often begets the other that mere logic makes it easier to swallow. Defeat ignorace, one imagines, and one defeats chauvinism. The same goes for the close relationship between ignorance and superstition, but you and the Christian physicist present a unique and depressing challenge to this logic, since you’re clearly not an idiot. But the more competently expressed the hatred or superstition, the more disturbing it becomes.
It seems that your flaw isn’t a lack of consumed information, but the selective assimilation of it. Michael’s piece rather clearly, and without requiring much interpretation or spin, demonstrates the power of internal schism and reform to begin the collapse of evil movements (though as Mike admits, we needn’t believe this is necessarily the beginning of the end). As in Iraq, a survey of the rest of the world shows that the primary forces fighting murderous Islamism are Muslims. With the Muslim population at over a billion people world wide (estimates range from 1.2-1.6), you’ve marked a rather large number of people out as a “grave threat.” By your logic, I suppose we should be fighting against the Kurds, most of whom are Sunni Muslims?
All monotheism in its original form, having come to into existence as it did during a time of perpetual conquest and tribal war, is a form of “war doctrine” which has never been stamped out by military force. It has been softened by a combination of rationalist critique and its own adherents’ eventual choice to force the tenets of religion to conform to peaceful, liberal society. Admittedly, this almost always too incomplete a procedure. But let us entertain for a moment what appears to be your prescription: the eradication of Islam from the Earth.
Islam is not a thing that exists like oxygen or poison ivy. Islam isn’t the sum of mosques, Qu’rans, prayer rugs, and shrines. Islam is a constellation of ideas that exists only in the minds of Muslims. That constellation, it is worth noting, takes different forms in the mind of almost every Muslim, many of whom identify with Islam primarily as a cultural ID, not a way of life. As such, the only way to eradicate Islam is to kill all Muslims whose minds house the varying incarnations if Islamic belief and thought. Is this what you prescribe? If so, your indignation means nothing and your politics differ little from our enemy. If it is not what you prescribe, then you should revisit the drawing board of ideas and come back when you’ve taken more care to comprehend your argument followed to its conclusion.
Jihad will not end with the last of Al-Qaeda, to be sure, but as your own hateful comments show, aggressive tribalism is not unique to Islam or to idiots. It can live in or outside the West, in or outside Islam, and can obviously–as many highly educated Islamists have already proven–not always be tempered by education.
The most silly and unfortunate thing about your insistence that “such schisms are simply respites in the pace and fury of Islamic Jihad” is that you insist on the robustness of the movement and the power of the enemy even as it is being shown up for the pathetic, defeatable, redneck movement that it is. If you were really interested in defeating the scourge of radicalism as opposed to Muslims themselves, then you would want to exploit the slouch in the radicals’ posture of power. Re-asserting their strength suggests that the specter of radical Islamism serves as a totemic and rather dubious rallying point for a far more sinister desire of yours.
Jun 2, 2008 - 8:46 am 8. Morton Doodslag:Dear Jack Strawn:
Your silly post barely warrants a response - I know you’re seething because I’ve dismembered one or two of your convoluted posts at this site in the past - I recognize the sting in your ad-hominem laden vitriol against me. In any event, you don’t seem to comprehend my point, and that is that expansionist Jihad will continue whether we defeat al Qaida or not. The pace and fury of Jihad hinges largely on the capacity of Muslims to wage Jihad, and opportunity. For this argument, I’m mainly concerned with Muslim insurrection within the Western edifice. Muslim presence in the West guarantees that Muslims will continue to have the critical opportunity to wage Jihad to spread Islam within our domains thereby subverting our society.
Unchecked unregulated Muslim immigration, matched with massive amounts of loot obtained through unearned oil revenues will guarantee their ability to continue Jihad. We are doing little to impede these mechanisms.
When/if we destroy al Qaida, or temporarily install weak quasi-democratic institutions in primary Islamic cesspools like Iraq or Afghanistan, their 1400 year ongoing Islamic Jihad will not be blunted. Rest assured that the full blown nightmares of what you label “Islamism”, (and I simply refer to as Islam) will eventually manifest if Islam remains intact. We see this everywhere that Islam exists today, from Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines, or “Palestine”. Muslims are not fighting the strands of radicalism — everywhere across the board they are succumbing to ever more viscious and purist manifestations of Islam.
At this juncture I’m not so interested in saving Muslims from the visciousness of their disgusting creed than I am interested in protecting us from being perpetually victimized subverted and slaughtered by them in our own (as yet) non-Muslim democratic homelands. Yet you continue to adduce the most sinister motives on my part. As I stated, your rambling post barely warrants a response, but I thought it might be productive for other readers to clarify what is right about my position in juxtaposition to what is wrong in your rambling post.
Jun 2, 2008 - 10:25 am 9. Bill Bradley:The Cold War is the key analogue for the current situation.
Pursue a policy of aggressive containment against the jihadists.
Who are far weaker than the Soviets.
And move forward.
Jun 2, 2008 - 12:15 pm 10. Bill Bradley:… By the way, in Lawrence Wright’s great book on the rise of Al Qaeda, he pointed up the striking incompetence of the Islamic jihadist movement.
Jun 2, 2008 - 12:17 pm 11. Don Meaker:Moshe Dayan on how to be a military genius:
Jun 2, 2008 - 7:15 pm 12. tanstaafl:“First, always fight Arabs.”
Linked above, it should be Required Reading
The Q/A section towards the end where al Zawahiri tries to justify violent jihad (he equates Clinton’s attack on the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan (one death) with 911) is just one example of the asinine depths to which al Z will go to justify himself.
Jun 3, 2008 - 6:05 am 13. Josh Strawn:Dood,
A tip: nobody responds to people unworthy of response or arguments that don’t merit being taken seriously. With that, I leave your “work” to speak for itself. It requires no further comment from me.
Jun 3, 2008 - 7:25 am 14. Josh Strawn:Dood,
You can learn a lot from people who respond to people that are supposedly unworthy of response or to arguments that supposedly don’t merit being taken seriously. I’ve only one reply to yours, and that is that it is uncontroversially erroneous to speak of Islam as a singular bounded entity and even more erroneous to speak, like a true Bolshevik, as if “Islam” is on a single, inevitable, chartable course in history. With that, I leave the rest of your “work” to speak for itself. It requires no further comment from me.
Jun 3, 2008 - 7:33 am 15. Dan:“arguments that supposedly don’t merit being taken seriously”
“even as it is being shown up for the pathetic, defeatable, redneck movement that it is”
Really??? this pathetic movement simultaneously hijacked 3 planes one day, and they coordinated that around the world from a shack in a goat village in Afghanistan of all places. They have a propaganda machine, al-jazerra, and websites and tech way beyond what I would call redneck.
Jun 4, 2008 - 7:31 am 16. Dan R.:And although this may be the end of just the beginning there are too few of these types of internal struggles within Islam being unearthed to make Westerners believe that some sort of change or revolution is coming. If these are the type of positive results that the US goverment is looking for within Islam as a whole, then this has been gained by going to fight them in Afghanistan and Iraq. So do not expect that to stop until Islam is more inline with the rest of the world religions, fine as beliefs but utterly ridiculous in practice. When the Arab street understands that then the world will be at peace until then the West is smart to be wary.
Well, well …. I guess maybe Bush isn’t such a total idiot after all. For all his shortcomigs, which are many, and for all of the things he and his people have screwed up, he’s kicked the ever-lovin’ s**t out of Al-Qaeda! Not only have their senior leaders been mostly killed or captured and their organization thoroughly demoralized, but muslims the world over are now turning away from them in droves.
Like Ronald Reagan against the Soviets, Bush saw clearly what the threat was, knew what needed to be done to defeat it, and set about doing it with the pedal to the metal.
Furthermore, he didn’t give a rat’s a$$ if the namby-pamby, limp-wristed liberals or their fawning allies in the media liked it or not.
Thank you, President Bush.
Jun 4, 2008 - 7:00 pm 17. Titanus:Philadelphia Inquirer: “Former Al Qaeda Say Saudis Financed Al Qaeda in Bosnia”
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/news_breaking/19425204.html
Wait but CNN said their was no Al-Qaeda in Bosnia. I have been telling folks in this forum for years that there always was a connection. In fact, I still think there is no such thing as Al-Qaeda as an organization. The fact is this is all an Islamic Jihad for conquest in Bosnia and in Afghanistan. Many came from all over the Islamic nations to fight against the Serbs in Bosnia. In fact, Clinton and Blair fought side by side with the Nazi Muslims. He dealt with Iran to send in arms to Bosnia.
The Clinton Legacy, feeling safer yet?
Talk about an unjust war, one to expand Islamic imperialism.
Jun 5, 2008 - 3:01 pm