Islam and Terrorism (14 page)
Here are some of their core beliefs:
• They believed that there is no law but God’s law. They declared many imams (prayer leaders or Muslim preachers) to be infidels, including some of Muhammad’s friends.
• They expected all Muslims to obey the call of jihad against rulers (Muslim or non-Muslim) who did not comply with the Quran. Anyone who did not participate in jihad was labeled an infidel.
• They believed in the right to kill children and women of infidels.
• They believed Muslims have the right to and control over women, children, and all material possessions of infidels.
• They made assassination, dishonesty, mistrust, and unfaithfulness a strong part of the Islamic faith.
Their beliefs have been demonstrated throughout the history of Islam.
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UICIDE
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ISSION BY
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UHAMMAD
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RANDSON
After Muawiya’s death in AD 680, his son Yazid assumed the leadership of the Islamic empire. As would be expected, he was not accepted by Ali’s son, al-Husayn, who was leader of the Shiites at this time.
Al-Husayn felt that he should be the next leader of the Islamic empire. Not only was his father Muhammad’s right arm and first cousin, but also his mother was Muhammad’s daughter.
Al-Husayn knew that he didn’t have enough people or weapons to defeat Yazid. However, he went to Iraq to fight him anyway. Al-Husayn was killed in a city called Kabala in the same year his father died.
The Shiites learned a new principle from the death of their leader.
PRINCIPLE: Fighting evil is a must; it does not matter if you win or you die. If you win, you will be honored by victory; if you die, you will be honored by God. Fighting evil is an honor either way.
Based on this belief, al-Husayn was a martyr of Islam. To this day he is held in high esteem and as a great example of self-sacrifice, especially among Shiite Muslims.
These beliefs give us a deeper understanding of why Muslims are willing to volunteer for suicidal attacks. They may not change much of the situation, but they get the opportunity to die as martyrs and heroes of Islam.
M
ARIJUANA
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ARRIORS
The name of this eleventh-century group is an Arabic description of people who smoke or eat hashish (derived from marijuana).
El-Hashashen
was a group of very religious Shiite Muslims who believed killing the enemy was an Islamic command to be martyred. This group was established in the eleventh century by a man named Hassan El-Sabaah.
Soldiers of this group used the drug hashish to get high before they went on suicide missions. While they were under the influence of the drugs, they visualized themselves in a garden with a many beautiful women. In their drug-altered states they got a little taste of what heaven would be like, so they rushed to do their jobs and get to the real thing.
This movement grew quickly and accomplished a great number of assassinations and murders all over Persia and Iraq. The members of this group assassinated many military leaders and government officials of the Sunni Muslims. In the beginning of the twelfth century the El-Hashashen movement almost spread over the entire Middle East region. Not one ruler or governor was safe from their harassment.
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AYMIYAH AND
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OLERANCE
At the beginning of the fourteenth century a powerful Sunni leader came on the scene—Ibn Taymiyah. Born in a Syrian city named Haran in 1263 (661 AH), he fought the Mongolian invasion of Syria (1299–1303). Ibn Taymiyah taught that Mongolian Muslims were not true Muslims and that his countrymen should not submit to their authority. He also declared that anyone who submitted
to them, helped them, or dealt with them was just like them—infidels. From this point on Ibn Taymiyah acted as if he were a military leader, declaring many Muslims to be infidels and attacking them.
Ibn Taymiyah established the mind-set of no tolerance. He reinforced principles that were also practiced centuries earlier.
PRINCIPLE: Muslims should resist, fight, and overturn any Islamic government that doesn’t govern the land according to the Islamic law only.
PRINCIPLE: Muslims should enforce jihad on anybody whose beliefs differ from Islam, especially Jews and Christians.
We have seen a great deal of Ibn Taymiyah’s influence for the last two centuries on most of the Islamic movements. Today’s terrorism is a result of this mind-set.
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AHHABI
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OVEMENT
Based on the same foundation that Ibn Taymiyah established, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) led the Wahhabi movement. This movement resisted, fought, and overturned the Turkish government. Abd al-Wahhab established a new 100 percent Islamic nation, which eventually became Saudi Arabia.
The royal family of Saudi Arabia in power today are the descendants of Abdul Aziz Bin Saud, the political leader who worked with Wahhab to establish the nation of Saudi Arabia. At the same time the Saudi government is also facing an el Kharij movement, those who would like to go
back to the original principles. Osama bin Laden was an example of someone from that group.
Ibn Taymiyah’s mind-set has influenced our world today in a great way. Many movements are now trying to overturn their governments and go back to the teaching of Muhammad with no tolerance or compromise. They are pursuing their mission with military force. History is definitely repeating itself.
S
UMMARY
Now that you have seen the historical roots of terrorism starting with Muhammad and going through the 1800s, we come to the man I refer to as the founding father of modern jihad. He was put to death by the government of Egypt for his teaching, and many of his books are banned in Egypt and other countries, including Libya and Iraq. Yet his influence lives on. His name is Sayyid Qutb.
THE FOUNDING FATHER OF MODERN JIHAD
Sayyid Qutb: From the Village to the Gallows
T
HE
1920
S
WERE
an exciting time in the history of many Middle Eastern countries. Many were finally liberated from the authority of the Europeans—some from the British, some from the French, some from the Italians, and some from the Turkish—or they were on their way to liberation. One of these countries was Egypt.
For first time in history Egypt had a president. The people of Egypt were finally starting to see the light of freedom again, many for the first time in their lifetimes.
Events in Turkey would soon propel Egypt toward Islamic fundamentalism. In 1924 the Turkish military leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established a thoroughly secular state in Turkey. In doing so, he overturned the Islamic succession system that had led the Islamic world for six hundred years. In effect he threw out the Muslim system and replaced it with a Westernized, military system.
Muslims reacted negatively to this, including Muslims in Egypt. In response a spiritual leader named Sheikh Hassan al-Banna started the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Egypt. This is what we will refer to as el Kharij all over again. His beliefs were a mixture of early el Kharij, El-Hashashen, and the mind-set of Ibn
Taymiyah. His goal for Egypt was to reapply the Islamic law and to reestablish an Islamic succession system.
(Courtesy of Sinai Publishing, Cairo, Egypt)
Sayyid Qutb, the “Martin Luther” of the modern jihad movement, put to death by the Egyptian government because of his book
Signs Along the Road.
The Muslim Brotherhood was very militant, aggressive and full of hatred toward the leadership of the country and anyone who would not comply with Islamic law. They used terrorist methods to shake up society and pursue their agenda of bringing back the original glory of Islam.
After Israel was established as a nation in 1948, radical fundamentalist groups flourished even more. The establishment of Israel marked the beginning of many wars between the Jews and the Arabs.
The fundamentalist groups created many cells of rebellious, hateful Muslims who were willing to die for their cause. Their animosity was not directed at the Jews alone. They taught their followers that the leaders of Egypt and the rest of the Arabic world were not true Muslims.
They aggressively taught that Islamic law should be applied with zero tolerance for government interference or for people of any other faith. These militant and extreme terrorist groups focused their activities on assassination. In their minds killing was the only way to make Islamic nations resubmit to the Quran and the Islamic law.
In 1948 the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Nokrashy Pasha. In 1949 they attempted the assassination of the new prime minister
of Egypt, Ibrahim Abdel Hadi, but instead they killed Supreme Court Judge Moustashar Ahmad El-Kazendari.
In this atmosphere an intelligent young Egyptian finished his degree and began a promising career in education. Sayyid Qutb, who was born in 1906 in Southern Egypt, was chosen by the government to come to the United States in 1948 to study special methods of education. After he returned to Egypt from his trip to the United States he joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
V
ISITING
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ATING
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!
This was Qutb’s first time ever outside of Egypt. He came back from America filled with both envy and hostility toward the United States. The following is a quote from a letter he sent to a friend while in the United States.
Nowhere else on earth could I find people that excel in education, knowledge, technology, business and civilization like the Americans. However, the American values, ethics and beliefs are below the standard of a human being.
When Qutb was in the United States, he spent time in Washington, DC, California, and Colorado. He was very impressed by America’s natural beauty, great size, educational institutions, and diversity of population. Yet he felt that America’s resources were wasted on materialism.
It seems to me that there is no relation between greatness of culture and greatness of the people that create this culture. It is obvious that Americans have focused all of their ingenuity on the production of materialism, but they don’t have much to offer as to what makes humans great.
He was disgusted with what he saw as a lack of religious conviction.
No one else in the world has built more churches than the Americans. . . . You will find Americans in church on Sundays, Christmas, Easter and special religious occasions, yet they are so empty and do not have a spiritual life. The last thing that an American would think about in everyday life is their religion.
Qutb was also angry because American influence had led the Muslim world astray from the ways of Islam.
Not only the non-Muslim world is pagan and heathen but also the existing Muslim world is so influenced by the rest of the world.
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