(Extracts from a paper presented by the writer at a meeting of a Study Group on Terrorism of the Council on Security Co-operation Asia Pacific (CSCAP) held at Kuala Lumpur from August 8 to10,2005)
Al Qaeda is a revanchist organisation, which holds the West in general and the US in particular responsible for all the evils afflicting the Islamic world and for the decline of the political power of Islam since the end of the Ottoman Empire. It wants to avenge the wrongs allegedly committed against the Muslims since the end of the Ottoman Empire, re-write history and restore an Islamic Caliphate from which Western influence would be totally excluded. It is comparable to the Nazis of Germany in its revanchist ideas and actions. The Nazis blamed the rest of the Western world for the decline of Germany since the First World War and for all the evils afflicting Germany. They wanted to restore the pre-eminent position of Germany in theworld. If the world leaders of that time had said "Let us address the root causes of Nazism first, before we fight the Nazis and Adolf Hitler", wherewould the world be today? The call to address the root causes of the Al Qaeda today is as short-sighted as a call to first address the root causes of Nazism would have been in the early1940s
One could trace three ideological influences on the Al Qaeda. The first is that of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. The second is that of Abdullah Azam, a product of the Muslim Brotherhood, who fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan and died under mysterious circumstances in 1989. He was considered the mentor of Osama bin Laden. The third is that of the Wahabi-Deobandi clerics of Pakistan.
The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt by Hassan Al-Banna in 1928. It came into existence as a movement to protest against the abolition of the caliphate and a theocratic state by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey in 1924 and to roll backhistory, re-create the Caliphate and restore a theocratic state. Al-Banna virulently criticised Ataturk for separating "the state from religion in a country which was until recently the site of the Commander of the Faithful." He projected the abolition of the Caliphate and the introduction of secularist principles in the Islamic world as part of a Western, Christian conspiracy to distort and then destroy Islam. He called upon his followers to guard themselves against "a larger Western invasion which was armed and equipped with all [the] destructive influences of money, wealth, prestige, ostentation, power and means of propaganda."
Al-Banna lamented : " What calamity has made them (the Muslims) prefer this life to the thereafter ? What has made them . . . consider the way of struggle [sabil al-jihad] too rough and difficult?" He wrote in 1934: "It is a duty incumbent on every Muslim to struggle towards the aim of making every people Muslim and the whole world Islamic, so that the banner of Islam can flutter over the earth and the call of the Muezzin can resound in all the corners of the world."
Abdullah Azzam
Abdullah Azzam graduated in Sharia from the Sharia College of the Damascus University in 1966 and, in 1973 obtained a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from the al-Azhar University of Cairo. He then joined the jihad against Israel for some time and then taught in Saudi Arabia before going to Pakistan to teach at the International Islamic University at Islamabad. He then went to Afghanistan to join the jihad against the Soviet troops there. He propagated that the Muslims' tactics in conflicts with the non-Muslims ought to be "jihad and the rifle alone. NO negotiations, NO conferences and NO dialogue." He believed that the non-Muslims understood only the language of the jihad.
In an interview in 1999, Osama bin Laden said: "Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was not an individual, but an entire nation by himself. Muslim women have proven themselves incapable of giving birth to a man like him after he was killed."
The Wahabi-Deobandi clerics of Pakistan
The Wahabi-Deobandi clerics of Pakistan led and guided by the late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Binori madrasa of Karachi propagated that, firstly, the loyalty of the Muslims should be first to their religion and then only to the nation of which they are citizens and residents; secondly, that religious solidarity comes before national solidarity; thirdly, that the Muslims do not recognise national frontiers and have a right to go to any country where Muslims are in danger and wage a jihad; and fourthly, that Pakistan's atomic bomb is an Islamic bomb which Pakistan holds in trust for the entire Ummah. The Muslims have a religious right and obligation to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction (WMD), if necessary, to protect their religion. They consequently propagated that Pakistan should be prepared to share its nuclear capability and technology with other countries of the Islamic Ummah. They also projected Western concepts of a liberal democracy as anti-Islam because they said that sovereignty lies in the people. According to them, God is sovereign and not the people.
Al Qaeda: What is their Objective?
Influenced by these ideologies, the Al Qaeda headed by Osama bin Laden has the two-fold objective of avenging the historic wrongs allegedly committed by the West and the Christians against the Muslims since the end of the Ottoman Empire and restoring an Islamic Caliphate. It projects the West as ruthless and advocates the use of equally ruthless methods in its jihad against the West, with no holds barred. It projects its acts of jihadi terrorism against the West and those supporting it as justified acts of reprisals for wrongs allegedly committed against the Muslims. It advocates jihad not only against the Western (and Christian) nations, but also against Muslim nations, rulers and individuals perceived as co-operating with the West and the Christians. Hence, its attacks on the Shias and the Kurds of Iraq for allegedly co-operating with the US-led coalition; its massacre of the Hazara Shias of Balochistan in Pakistan for allegedly helping the US in its hunt for Osama bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri; its attempts to have President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan assassinated; and its repeated calls for the overthrow of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt.
The Al Qaeda looks upon the US as its principal enemy and the other Western Governments and Islamic States supporting the US as its secondary enemies. It seeks to demonise the US as the source of all the evils afflicting the Islamic world and as the only power standing in the way of its achieving its objectives. It advocates a relentless jihad against the US and its allies wherever possible in order to eradicate Western influence from the Islamic world as a prelude to the restoration of the Caliphate.
Does the conventional wisdom regarding the so-called root causes apply to theal-Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist organisations allied with it in theInternational Islamic Front (IIF)?
No, it does not. The conventional wisdom relating to terrorism attributes the rise of terrorism to political, economic and social factors such as perceptions of social injustice, violations of human rights, suppression of the democratic rights of the people, lack of economic development resulting in poverty and unemployment etc. It, therefore, holds that if these so-called root causes are addressed, terrorism will wither away.
Does this theory apply to the Al Qaeda? No, it does not. If this theory is correct, there should be no activities of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) in Malaysia and Singapore, the two most prosperous and progressive states of South-East Asia. There should be no Al Qaeda activities in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Turkey where there is greater prosperity than in many other countries of Asia and Africa. There should be no Al Qaeda activities in West Europe where there is economic prosperity, greater social justice and better observance of human rights than in many countries of Asia and Africa. There should have been less terrorism in Pakistan because of its impressive economic growth since 9/11, but its economic gains have had no impact on its jihadi terrorists.
The Al Qaeda is not fighting for democratic rights for the Muslims. On the contrary, it is fighting against the principles of liberal democracy on the ground that they are anti-Islam. It does not want to take the Muslims forward in time. Instead, it wants to take them backward to the days of the Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire. Its so-called root causes are to be found not in the political. economic and social conditions of today, but in the historical factors of the 1920s.
Would the world---Islamic as well as non-Islamic--be prepared to reverse 80 years of history to address the so-called root causes of the Al Qaeda? Definitely not.
