While the Jihad goes back to the days of Mohammed himself, the jihadist movement is notably more modern. The single most important document it in its inception, from our point of view, is The America I Have Seen, by Sayyid Qutb. The document is a scathing moralist review of America in 1949, but we'll discuss it in more detail in part three. The Jihadist cause actually beings with the root of Qutb's cause: the Israel-Palestine issue.
"When we came here to appeal to England for our rights, the world helped England against the justice (sic). When we came here to appeal against Jews, the world helped the Jews against the justice. During the war between Arab and Jews, the world helped the Jews, too.” - Qutb, the University of Northern Colorado Literary Magazine. *a
Jihadism begins with Israel. As far as many are concerned, it can only end with Israel – the complete destruction of the Jewish state. The story, real or not, which jihadists buy and sell is that the Jews stole the land from rightful Arabs who were living there. Back during World War One, the British made promises to Jewish Zionists and Arab Nationalists. Naturally, these were made by different individuals and different arms of the government. This created “Palestine,” the British mandate following the Treaty of Versailles. Jews more or less flooded the new “country.*b” It took another world war for Britain to let go of its empire, and Palestine with it, but the Zionists' desire was eventually fulfilled. The details are a bit fuzzy in here, but the general belief is that the Muslims were kicked out en masse to refugee camps. Under the miserable conditions which continue today, they long for a chance to return to their rightful home. Now, the US was the first to recognize Isreal, probably because Jews control it – possibly just to play up a Jewish electorate for the next political race. And Israel survives only because of Western money.
But I said before jihadism was an idealist movement, mainly about internal religious reform, didn't I?*c Where's Israel come into that? What does this crooked and truncated idea of history tie in to it? When a disaster falls on someone, they have two choices: bitch about it but do nothing, or analyze what self-improvement is necessary to overcome the disaster. Well, Israel is the disaster which fell on the Arab -Muslim world, and the jihadists have the solution. Cue Kamal.
Kamal el-Said Habib is best known for his part in planning the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, in 1981. The organization he helped lead, Al-Jihad, had a simple goal “to decapitate Egypt's secular state...and replace it with an Islamic polity based exclusively on the shariah...”
He began as a college student, with big dreams of changing the Islamic world. Their general plan was something revolutionaries and anarchists have believed for centuries. Assassinating some key political figure will bring the masses to join your cause in an unstoppable sweeping change. Now, killing one person, however well protected, is a reachable goal. At least, in comparison to reforming the hearts of an entire nation. “we had big dreams,” Kamal said (55), “but few resources.”
Lebanon was a key part of their inspiration. A terrible, open civil war raged there in the middle 70s (while Gerges was growing up). “The ummah did nothing while Muslims were being persecuted by crusaders and Zionists,” Kamal said. Palestine and Lebanon, and the refuges... Of course they wanted to do something. Hicham Shihab (also al-Jama'a al-Islamiya)*f said “Our preachers and clerics often told us that Arabs would regain their glory only if they reclaimed Islam and established shariah.” Gerges also points out, “Though this is now largely forgotten, Christian fundamentalism [in Lebanon] is partially to blame for fueling Muslim militancy. Lebanon's Christians killed and pillaged in the name of the cross; their tactics were not lost on Hicham and Kamal's generation. Lebanon fell apart during those years.
Al-Jama'a al-Islamiya did succeed, after a fashion, because they managed to kill Nassar. But the volume of apparently random violence to ordinary people and tourists made them few public friends. At best, the people were neutral in the civil war. What's more, Kamal admits their revolutionary plans were not well thought-out: “Thank God, we did not win, because we would have constructed a state along the same authoritarian lines as the ones existing in the Muslim world. We had no vision or intellectual framework of what a state it or how it functions and how it should be administered, except that it should express and approximate the Islamic ideal.”*d
During those two decades a very real war civil war took place. Security forces arrested or killed a hundred thousand (*e) militants between 1979 and 1993. Most were tortured in prison. All were “re-educated.” Kamal, though, decided he had made an error in his methods. He still states (reasonably) that there was no route to peaceful transfer of power available. However, the goal of an Islamic society is best obtained by reaching the people. War is not the best way to do that; rather, the focus should be cultural. “our fanaticism stemmed from ignorance. Now we know better,” Hicham said.
While Kamal was locked away, the Jihad found a new battleground. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and the call continued to sound for decade. Its fairly well known that bid-Laden was a major go-between for America in this conflict, because the US financed Jihadists who fought the USSR. Now, Jihad and the US were never allies, but they made a battlefield partnership against communism – because capitalism, while still hated, was the lesser of two evils to the Jihadists.*g
Their eventual success created a battle-hardened core of dedicated fighters. Some of these would see action is other fronts, shuttled around by Al-Queda. Gerges interviewed one such soldier who fought in Yugoslavia and traveled to Mogadishu (although US was withdrawing when he arrived). Chechnya also had a foreign militant presence (125). When Hussein invaded Kuwait, bin Laden offered to turn this army against him. This is a very real force, an a potent one. While Kamal's generation largely turned away from conflict, the same things which inspired them continue to inspire new warriors. The call of a jihadist is to 'protect the Ummah.” Can that be accomplished without violent conflict with the West, or is this clash inevitable?
*a) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1253796
*b) country is in quotes. These mandates were close relatives of colonies, but made claimed to be destined for independence.
*c) yes, yes I did. Did you seriously check the footnotes for this one? “[Jihadists] represent religious, patriotic and cultural revival...”
*d) apologies for the block quote. p. 55
*e) well, I can't find the number, but according to an un-cited scribble in my notes, 100,000 – 200,000 were killed or arrested. That's not on level with Vietnam (350,000 Americans killed/wounded, assuming wounding replaces arrest for the count), but vastly exceeds, say, Afghanistan (<1000>
*f) basically “the Islamic group,” this is the name of Kamal's original organization.
*g) I think this the because communism is atheistic, and destroying private wealth would gravely injure the existing social structure, which is essentially tribal. It may simply be that the Russians were invaders and we were happy to give jihadists money to fight them, rather than an ideological choice.
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