Islam and Terrorism (16 page)

•   Our goal is to find out the most effective way to overturn and destroy any governments that do not completely comply with Islamic law, including existing Muslim countries.

•   We will establish a great Islamic nation that will stretch across the world. The only political system will be Islamic law.
¹

Serea felt that leaders of the Muslim world are corrupted because they enforce fasting and prayer but not jihad:

Many of the rulers of the Islamic world today are people of prayer. They have built mosques. They have reinforced fasting and prayer, and they do whatever it takes to have the appearance of good Muslims. Their ulterior motive is to gain popularity using the religious sincerity of the Muslims. Meanwhile they carefully keep true Islam away from the hearts of the people. They persecute anyone who stands for true Islam with physical violence. These rulers are infidels, and anyone who stands behind them or supports them is also an infidel.
²

Dr. Serea continued to complain about what he saw as the corruption of the existing Islamic governments by saying that Islam is one of the laws they use to govern the land when it should be the only law used to govern. Dr. Serea stated:

They are building mosques, but they are also building places of secular entertainment. They are broadcasting the Quran and also music and dancing. They give to charities and are also gambling. What is popular among these Muslims is only the worship part of Islam, and they leave out jihad, the heartbeat of Islam. These Muslims carefully read the Quran daily, and many of them cry in their prayers, but they do not go out and carry on the mission of Islam through jihad. These are hypocrite infidels. They are the shame of Islam.
³

Dr. Serea practiced what he preached. On April 19, 1974, Dr. Serea and his movement launched their offense against the Egyptian government. They invaded a military training institute in Cairo, hoping to establish a base from which to overturn the government.

The Egyptian authorities responded with great force and arrested him and all the members of his movement. In October 1975 the federal government of Egypt sentenced Dr. Serea and many of his followers to death; twenty-nine followers of the movement remained in prison.

Egypt and the Islamic world were just entering a new
episode of terrorism and radical Islamic groups. Even before Dr. Serea was sentenced, a new radical group was birthed in Egypt.

S
HOKRI
M
OUSTAFA

Al-Takfir wal-Hijra
(Repentance and Holy Flight) was the next militant group to carry on the goals of Dr. Serea. Its founder was Shokri Ahmad Moustafa, who was from the same region of Egypt as Sayyid Qutb. Born in 1942 Shokri Moustafa was only twenty-four years old when Qutb, the father of modern jihad, was hanged. He was thirty-three years of age when Dr. Serea was sentenced to death.

(Courtesy of Shorouk International, Cairo, Egypt)

Shokri Moustafa, put to death by the Egyptian government in 1977 for jihad activity.

Shokri Moustafa was clear on what his goals and priorities were. The following is what he stated before the Egyptian federal court in the session on November 7, 1977:

My greatest priority, for which I am willing to pay whatever price is required to accomplish it, is to see a true Islamic movement take off. I must find fertile ground to plant a great Islamic nation worldwide. I will revive Islam and bring it to its original state.

The danger that the Egyptian court faced with Moustafa was that he had a large number of members in his organization who would obey him at a moment’s notice. Moustafa said:

Each member of our movement would be willing to sacrifice his own life to fulfill the responsibility that Allah has put on our shoulders. That responsibility is to spread the message of Islam across the earth and reinforce it with the sword. My group of people will fight with me to the end to accomplish the great mission.

Shokri Moustafa kept a journal of poems in his own handwriting that the court used in his conviction. (Poetry is deeply ingrained in Islamic culture.) In Moustafa’s most popular journal
The Battle (El-Maalhamma)
we find the poem “Before the Flood,” which was written in 1967. In it Moustafa expressed his deep sorrow and frustration with the current Muslim existence. He told himself that he must prepare for the calling on his life and his mission, and in doing so he should prepare to meet Allah.

In another poem titled “Immigration” (“
El-Hejhera
”) we see his belief that everything on this earth is vanity and that he simply wants to accomplish his mission and leave this earth.

In another journal titled
Expectation (El-Tawaseemat)
he asked, “Where is the mother of the villages?” This is
what Mecca was called during the time of Islam. Mecca is the city where Muhammad was persecuted, so it is considered evil for doing that. Moustafa was saying that Egypt was the modern Mecca, the modern persecutor of Islam. He called Egypt the place that imports evil, blasphemy, and error. “It is the country of infidels,” he wrote.

Moustafa comforted himself by saying, “Just as Muhammad left Mecca and immigrated to Medina to establish the first Islamic nation, I too will mentally escape from Mecca to go to my Medina to begin again.”

From Egypt Moustafa planned to start an Islamic nation that would go all over the world. First he planned on winning many people from his home country, which would be the foundation for building a worldwide Islamic nation. From this new foundation he would export Islam to the world.

One of Moustafa’s most disturbing beliefs was that his quest to spread Islam would involve great tension between the East and the West, which would lead to a worldwide nuclear war.
⁴
He believed that most of the world would be destroyed during this war, but his followers would not be killed because they would hide in caves of remote, isolated mountains. After the desolation, his followers would emerge from the caves, inherit the earth, and rule it by the sword.

He believed that the use of the sword as a primary weapon, as it was in the time of Muhammad, would come back as a result of all modern technology and existing weapons being destroyed in a nuclear war.

M
OUSTAFA
’
S
D
EFENSE

Shokri Moustafa’s movement wanted to make Qutb’s philosophy a reality. The members of this organization
planned to start by living in complete isolation from the society of heathen. They were planning to work hard to increase their numbers and prepare for the point of power that would enable them to overturn the government and establish an Islamic nation. They believed their mission would be accomplished in two phases:

•   Phase I—The absolute destruction of the heathen world

•   Phase II—Muslims would inherit the earth and everything on it

During the prosecution of Moustafa, the Egyptian court asked him from what source he drew his philosophy. Moustafa replied, “It is from the clear-cut source of the Quran and Allah’s word. We don’t know anything, but Allah knows everything. We must learn only from Allah, and Allah only speaks from the Quran.” He based this on the Quranic verse:

Allah knows but you do not know.

—S
URAH
2:216, T
HE
N
OBLE
Q
URAN

Any books other than the Quran are not acceptable.

Moustafa explained that this was what Allah said, and he asked the Egyptian Islamic authority if they were going to reject what the Quran says.

Shokri Moustafa and his organization were on trial for the kidnap and murder of a professor at Al-Azhar University—Dr. Husein El-Thehaby, one of the icons of the university. He was targeted because he led a team of professors to condemn and stop Moustafa’s movement.
Moustafa considered him to be an enemy of Allah and one of the infidels who were taking the side of the government.

Addressing the Egyptian court, Moustafa said that because Dr. El-Thehaby sold out to the pressure of the Egyptian government and compromised Allah’s word to please man, they had carried out Allah’s judgment against this apostate infidel.

Shokri Moustafa’s movement gained more ground after a meeting between the Egyptian media and a new team from Al-Azhar University. Dr. Sayed El-Tawhel, a professor of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar, led this new team, which advised, “Don’t judge this group. They are sincere Muslims who just want to bring back the glory of Islam. We just need to sit down and talk with them.” This statement was to clarify the air in Egypt and stop the confusion about a media broadcast that said Moustafa’s organization was trying to spread a new Islam that was not based on the Quran.

The main Egyptian newspaper issued a statement from Dr. El-Tawhel, warning Al-Azhar University authorities not to issue any statements or judgments in the name of Islam against Moustafa. He called them to go back to the Quran and read it with new eyes; they would see that Moustafa’s group was made up of sincere Muslims loyal to the call of Islam. Dr. El-Tawhel commended Moustafa and his group, saying that his heart’s desire was to see more and more young people like them. He said that the Islamic world today needed people like them to lead it back to true Islam.
⁵

T
HE
E
XECUTION AND THE
B
OOK

Shokri Moustafa was sentenced to death. He left behind a radical group that did not believe in any kind of
submission, leadership, or respect for the existing government in Egypt or the rest of the world.

His death confirmed to them that these governments were heathen. They believed every word when he said that these governments were infidels and any one who submits to them would be just like them.

Moustafa left behind a book with all of his beliefs and philosophies. The book is called
The Leader (Al-Kalafa)
. The Egyptian government confiscated every single copy that they could find and burned them. The actions of the government increased the value of this book among the followers of Muslim radical groups, which to this day continue distributing his beliefs and teaching.

Moustafa’s new twist

This book was full of the mind-set of Qutb’s teaching. The only new twist that made Moustafa more dangerous than Qutb is that he wanted to start by attacking religious institutes, police, and military institutes. Moustafa explained that they should attack the religious institutes because they have submitted to the authority of a heathen government, which conflicts with Islamic law. He said to attack police and military institutes because they protect heathen governments and enforce their laws. The police and military
institutes are the powers that persecute, imprison, and kill true Muslims.

(Courtesy of Shorouk International, Cairo, Egypt)