Al-Qaeda (57 page)

2
. Hiro,
War Without End
, p. 121.

3
. Al-Rasheed,
A History of Saudi Arabia
, p. 10.

4
. Cooley,
Unholy Wars
, p. 117.

5
. Interview with bin Laden family member, London, July 2001. Phone interview with Saudi business associate in Riyadh, February 2002.

6
. Interview with bin Laden family member, London, July 2001.

7
. Mary Anne Weaver, ‘The Real bin Laden’,
New Yorker
, 24 January 2001.

8
. Interview with bin Laden family member, London, September 2002; Jane Mayer, ‘The House of bin Laden’,
New Yorker
, 12 November 2001.

9
. Bin Laden gave this date to Jamal Isma’il of al-Jazeera in an interview aired 10 June 1999.

10
.
www.pbs.org
. The document appears to have come from Saudi or Kuwaiti intelligence sources.

11
. Sam Lister, ‘Bin Laden was the Perfect Pupil, says his Old Teacher’,
The Times
, 22 September 2001.

12
. Interview with friend of bin Laden family, London, June 2001. Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the former Saudi Ambassador to London, has estimated bin Laden’s fortune at not more than $30m. Jason Burke, ‘Fight to the Death’,
The Observer
, 27 October 2001.

13
. Fandy,
Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent
, p. 27.

14
. Interview with bin Laden family member, September 2002.

15
. Interview with former bin Laden family retainer. See also Burke, ‘Fight to the Death’,
The Observer
, 27 October 2001.

16
. Interviews with friends of bin Laden family, London, 2001, 2002. Pictures apparently showing bin Laden on holiday in Sweden or Britain are unreliable. He may have spent short periods on holiday in Europe but this is unlikely.

17
. Bin Laden interview with al-Jazeera, broadcast 10 June 1999.

18
. Kepel,
Jihad
, p. 314.

19
. The opening verse of the Qur’an, the
fatahah
: ‘Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray.’ Also, verse 6 (cattle):153, ‘This is My path, straight so do you follow it and follow not lest they separate you from this path.’

20
. Ruthven,
A Fury for God
, p. 73.

21
. Quoted in Esposito,
Unholy War
, p. 52.

22
. Biographical details from the Jamaat Islami website,
http://www.jamaat.org/overview/founder.html
. Such denial of the ulema’s monopoly on religious authority has been a hallmark of both Muslim revivalist movements and modern political Islamism. It is also worth remembering what a feature such anticlericalism has been in Christian religious revivalist movements, particularly those of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe. Martin Luther’s ‘justification by faith alone’ (i.e. without the intercession of the clergy) is only the most obvious example of many.

23
. The division is rooted in pure practicalities. In the absence of a true Islamic society run by truly virtuous men, the best the umma could hope for was to be ruled in accordance with the Shariat. It was in fact better to suffer a bad ruler than to risk
fitna
, or division, and disorder by opposing him. The key concept here is
zulm
, or tyranny. It is not when a leader rules unrepresentatively or undemocratically that he should be opposed but when he rules unjustly.

24
. Ruthven,
A Fury for God
, pp. 68–9.

25
. Kepel,
Jihad
, p. 34.

26
. Ruthven,
A Fury for God
, p. 95.

27
. Ibid., pp. 76–8.

28
. Esposito,
Unholy War
, p. 57.

29
. Qutb,
Milestones
, p. 119.

30
. Ibid., p. 5.

31
. Ibid., p. 6.

32
. Ibid., p. 13.

33
. Ibid., p. 8.

34
. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

35
. Ibid., pp. 21–2, 25.

36
. Ibid., p. 25.

37
. Ibid., p. 9.

38
. Ibid., p. 16.

39
. Ibid., p. 7.

40
. When the Prophet Mohammed accepted the leadership of the people of Medina, the power of several tribal leaders was reduced. They outwardly accepted Islam to preserve their status but inwardly detested Mohammed and his message. They eventually abandoned Mohammed on the battlefield when he was already heavily outnumbered. They are the hypocrites or
munafiqeen
.

41
. Interview with bin Laden family member, London, July 2002.

4: Mujahideen

1
. Cooley,
Unholy Wars
, p. 43.

2
. Interview with
al-Quds al-Arabi
, 1993.

3
. Interviews with senior Islamic leaders in Peshawar, June 2002.

4
. Interviews with former associates of bin Laden, mujahideen, neighbours, Peshawar, 1998–2001.

5
. Interview with Ahmed Zaidan, editor of
al-Jihad
from 1986, Islamabad; also Zaidan,
The Afghan Arabs
, pp. 36–50.

6
. Weaver, ‘The Real bin Laden’.

7
. Interview with former Algerian fighter, Algiers, August 2001.

8
. Multiple interviews with former fighters, Peshawar, 1998; Jordan, 2001; Mullah Majjed Ismael, Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, August 2002.

9
. Interview with former mujahideen commander, Peshawar, 1998.

10
. Multiple interviews with former associates, mujahideen, neighbours, Peshawar, 1998–2001.

11
. Interviews with former associates, Peshawar, 2001, 2002.

12
. Interview with Hameed Gul, director general of ISI, 1987–9, Rawalpindi, May 2002. Saudi airlines offered a 75 per cent discount on (one-way) flights to Pakistan for aspirant Arab mujahideen, and though the bulk of non-US funds went to the Afghan fighting groups or was disbursed for proselytization and relief work, some did fund the Arab volunteers; interview with former mujahideen, Peshawar, November 2001.

13
. Interesting discussions of international reactions to the Iranian Revolution can be found in Martin,
Creating an Islamic State
, Chapter IX, pp. 188–96; and Esposito (ed.),
The Iranian Revolution
.

14
. Rubin,
The Political Fragmentation of Afghanistan
, pp. 180–81.

15
. Multiple interviews with former mujahideen commanders, Afghan journalists who covered the war, Peshawar, 1998–2002.

16
. Milton Bearden, ‘Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires’,
Foreign Affairs
, November/December 2001.

17
. Interview with Algerian mujahideen, Algiers, August 2001.

18
. Interview with Mohammed Din Mohammed, former Hizb-e-Islami (Khalis) deputy leader, Peshawar, October 2001.

19
. Michael Barry,
Le Royaume d’Insolence
, quoted in Rubin,
The Political Fragmentation of Afghanistan
, p. 38.

20
. Dupree,
Afghanistan
, p. 104.

21
. In much of southwest Asia, as in the rest of the Islamic world, leaders within the mystic Sufi branch of Islam, possibly named after the woollen cloak worn by some of its earliest practitioners, are venerated as a source of blessing and holiness. Salafi and Wahhabis see this as
shirk
, or polytheism, and an appalling deviation from the true path.

22
. Marsden,
Taliban
, p. 32 and interview with the author, July 2002. Multiple interviews with Afghan mujahideen, politicians including Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi (August 1998), Afghanistan and Pakistan, 1998–2002.

23
. Rashid,
Taliban
, p. 13.

24
. Magnus and Naby,
Mullah
,
Marx and Mujahed
, p. 215.

25
. Rubin,
The Political Fragmentation of Afghanistan
, p. 71.

26
. Ibid., p. 70.

27
. Ibid., p. 76.

28
. Roy,
The Failure of Political Islam
, pp. 110, 118.

29
. Rubin,
The Political Fragmentation of Afghanistan
, p. 93. Also, interview with engineer Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai Ittehad-e-Islami deputy, Kabul, November 2003.

30
. Interview with senior aide of Qazi Hussein Ahmed, Islamabad, May 2002; profile of Qazi Hussein Ahmed, Jamaat Islami website.