The Islamization of Morocco: Extremism is displacing moderation in the North African kingdom by Oliver Guitta

A little more than three years ago, Morocco experienced Islamic terrorism firsthand. On May 16, 2003, Casablanca was hit with four simultaneous attacks that left 45 people dead and hundreds injured. The attacks were perpetrated by Moroccan citizens who were members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (known by its French acronym, GICM).

Needless to say, the kingdom was stunned that its sons had turned violently against it. Now, the dismantling of another extensive Islamist cell in Morocco confirms that extremism is spreading inside what has long been viewed as one of the most moderate countries in the Arab world.

In a series of arrests over the past month, Moroccan authorities have seized 59 people and over 30 kilograms of TNT, more than was used in the 2003 attacks but of the same type. The alleged targets were political and military leaders, along with locations in Marrakesh, Morocco's premier tourist destination, the air force base of Salé, and the U.S. embassy in Rabat.

But the most troubling aspect of this cell by far is its membership. While the suicide bombers of 2003 came from the slums around Casa blanca, the newly arrested suspects are from all walks of life. They include five members of the military, three policemen, a Domestic Security officer, two imams, and four society women. Two of these women, the wives of Royal Air Morocco pilots, had volunteered for suicide missions in Iraq and Israel.

The cell leader, Hassan Khattab, who had spent two years in prison for his support for the 2003 terror attacks, had persuaded the women to finance local jihadi attacks because Morocco is the "ally of the Americans and the Zionists." Coincidentally, these four women had befriended Fatiha Hassani, the widow of the top Moroccan al Qaeda operative who was killed by Saudi forces in April 2005. The indictment accuses the cell members of "planning terrorist acts to overthrow the regime and install an Islamic caliphate."

The potential infiltration of the army by jihadists has clearly alarmed the authorities. As of August 31, they have eliminated compulsory military service in order to avoid giving free military training to potential terrorists. In addition, military officers and troops alike have been forbidden to perform Friday prayers in uniform.

Beyond the army, there are other clear signs of the rapid Islamization of Moroccan society. Nowhere is this more apparent than in women's dress. In just a few years, Moroccan women have gone from the miniskirt to the hijab. Interviewed in the French daily Le Monde a few months ago, a Moroccan high school teacher named Soukaina (she said she was afraid to use her last name) said that she no longer recognizes her country. Twenty years ago her high school had only one veiled teacher. Today everyone is veiled, teachers and students alike. Soukaina resigned more than a year ago under subtle pressure from Islamists, who wanted her to wear the hijab. She concluded: "It is only a matter of time until Islamists are leading the country."

Both in Morocco's big cities and in its villages, street vendors sell Islamist propaganda calling for jihad and the subjugation of women, spewing anti-Semitism and hatred of the West, on audio and video tapes, CDs and DVDs. One of the bestselling CDs is a rant by a salafi preacher named Abdellah Nihari, who teaches that "women are creatures of Satan" even when they are veiled. For him, women's liberation is to blame for every evil in society. Islamists also have their own freelance "religious police" who operate illegally, mostly on beaches, targeting unmarried couples for harassment, assault, and even, in a few cases in recent years, murder.

Another sign of Islamization can be found in opinion surveys of Moroccan youths. According to a January 2006 study by L'Economiste, 44 percent of Moroccans aged 16 to 29 think al Qaeda is not a terrorist organization, 38 percent "don't know," and a mere 18 percent consider it a terrorist group. Furthermore, a July 2006 landmark report ordered by the Ministry of Planning and entitled "Morocco 2030" revealed that lots of high school graduates dream of a liberated Palestine, the destruction of Israel, and the fall of the United States.

In such an environment it's only natural that the leading Islamist party--the PJD (Justice and Development party), closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood--has been gaining traction. Already the third largest party in parliament, the PJD is projected to win 47 percent of the vote in the 2007 parliamentary elections, according to a recent poll by the International Republican Institute. This would make it the largest party, and the king would be obliged to ask it to form a government.

The PJD is your classic double speak party, carefully presenting itself as a Moroccan version of the German Christian Democrats, the soul of moderation, in order to achieve broad appeal. But its program, history, and membership leave no doubt about its real intentions. In its unofficial newspaper, At-Tajdid (Renewal), the PJD reveals its true nature. The party pretends it has nothing to do with At-Tajdid, but the paper's editors and publishers are PJD leaders, several of them even members of parliament.

At-Tajdid routinely expresses ex trem ist views, especially on moral issues and foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel and the United States. For in stance, At-Tajdid explained the December 2004 tsunami by pointing out that the affected Asian countries were corrupt and were being punished by God for not following the true Islam. The magazine implied that Morocco might be next, for the same reason.

But most worrisome are the PJD/At-Tajdid links to terror. Right after the 2003 attacks, Moroccan police arrested the treasurer of the party in Kenitra for his alleged involvement in the plot. Indeed, at the time, most political parties and King Mohammed VI favored banning the PJD. It is widely asserted in the Moroccan press that the U.S. ambassador pressured the king to give up this idea.

Also, At-Tajdid's website has a permanent link to the Union of Good, an umbrella organization of Hamas-funding charities, five of which are listed by the United States as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities (SDGTs), and another two of which are accused of supporting al Qaeda.

Last, according to the Moroccan daily Al Ahdath Almaghribia, Hassan Khattab, the terror ringleader just arrested, was initiated into Islamism by PJD members including the director of At-Tajdid, Abdelilah Benkirane.

Considering all this, it is baffling that Mustafa Khalfi, editor in chief of At-Tajdid, was awarded a prestigious 2005/2006 Fulbright/American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship. This honor has afforded him the opportunity to work for congressman Jim McDermott of Washington, to take a course at Johns Hopkins University, and to be a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Similarly, the head of the PJD, Saad Eddine Othmani, recently visited Washington and met with members of Congress.

It's almost enough to make you think some in Washington are quietly positioning themselves for a PJD victory.

Beam Me Up: Apple's iTV Strategy is iChat on Steroids by Robert X. Cringely

An old magazine publisher friend of mine once explained why he liked his business so much. "Subscriptions," he said. "People pay for the entire year before we do anything. In what other business can you get those kind of terms from customers?"

Hold that thought.

For the last two weeks we've been discussing Apple's video download strategy and associated products, especially what Apple is calling for now its iTV video extender, which I have been calling the Video Express since I first wrote about it 18 months ago. It's evident from its High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector (and lack of an S-Video connector) that the iTV is intended to connect primarily to high definition televisions. Yet these were never mentioned in the product announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. In fact, the term HDTV was never used despite Jobs declaration that 2005 had been the "Year of HD."

So there is a lot about this product and the underlying services it will provide that Apple isn't saying. Of course Apple will eventually sell and rent HD movies over this device. Then why aren't they saying so?

The answer is more complex than you'd guess, and might be answered best by another question: Where are the Blu-ray high definition DVD drives in Apple's latest computers? Sony is selling computers with Blu-ray drives, why not Apple? Apple long ago pledged allegiance to Blu-ray over the rival HD-DVD. Certainly Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Pro, a double dual-core machine aimed straight at rich media creators, would have Blu-ray, wouldn't it?

One would think so, but I'm quite certain we won't see any Blu-ray drives in Apple computers until the iTunes Store has a deal to sell Sony films. There is a simple quid pro quo here, not just in the lack of Blu-ray drives, but also in the on-again, off-again nature of Sony camcorder sales in the Apple stores. Negotiations are continuing, sometimes in the marketplace itself.

Now what about that USB port on the back of each iTV box? Giving his tour of the gizmo last week, Jobs rushed right past the USB port. What could that port be for? It's not for a USB hard drive, that's for sure, because the key brain in this system is back in your Mac or PC and its very large hard drive. Nor will Apple (immediately) enable the iTV to act as a digital video recorder, because that might step on TV network toes before Apple is ready to do so. The USB port is clearly intended for an Apple iSight camera, a webcam to go with your HDTV. It's iChat for Grandma.

This is the heart of Apple's emerging communication strategy. I was tempted to write "voice-over-IP strategy," except that wouldn't have been correct. For Jobs, this particular road less traveled is about video conferencing, not voice. VoIP is not grand enough, not experiential. If eBay can dominate it, Apple doesn't want to be a part of it, and won't be. Jobs will be much happier enabling a smaller audience to do multi-person chats on their HDTVs.

VoIP is replacing a $20 phone with a $1,000 computer. What Apple has in mind is creating an entirely new form of computing experience, but this time -- because it will take place mainly on a TV and not on a computer -- many users may not think of it as a computing experience at all.

All of this comes together with Leopard, the next version of OS X, which will ship in January. iChat, which started back in 2003 as a simple real-time chat client to keep Macs from being frozen completely out of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), has grown a lot since then. iChat now has H.264 video support, and with Leopard it will integrate all the iLife (iPhoto, iCal, iMovie, etc.) functions into a system that can support remote users. So you'll not only be able to see and talk with Grandma, you'll be able to show her pictures and home movies. If Grandma's a corporate executive, you can show her a marketing presentation, too.

Moving these functions from the PC to the TV is a no-brainer from a conceptualization standpoint, if difficult technically. Videoconferencing from your computer is an alien act, while doing the same thing in front of your 65-inch widescreen is more like theater, and theater has been in our blood a lot longer than telephony.

While to some readers this may seem too subtle a distinction, what Jobs and Apple are trying to do is something fundamentally different than all their competitors. This HD strategy, for example, keeps us tied not to our desks but to our homes and offices. In a world where everything seems to be going mobile, this is an anti-mobile strategy. Where Microsoft is trying to follow its user out into the street, Apple is trying to lure its user back into the home for what is essentially a social activity conducted in a formerly antisocial setting. This is computing you'll never do by yourself.

As a wise friend of mine points out, "video is about sharing," it is a logical group experience, and perfectly in tune with Jobs' sensibilities.

And think of the bits and pieces Apple will be able to sell as a result -- Mac minis, iTV boxes, iSight cameras, eventually whole HDTVs with much of this technology already installed. Remember most people haven't yet bought an HDTV, meaning there is a huge opportunity for market leadership. Expect Apple's HDTVs to be optimized for this experience, which doesn't require much more than building in an iSight camera.

Don't forget that ubiquitous .Mac subscription, either. At $99 per year, .Mac is an expensive yet indispensable part of embracing the whole Mac experience, all without Apple having to provide any real bandwidth because iChat is based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) protocol. There's that subscription thing and how Apple intends to benefit from it: users have been grumbling about .Mac, but these new services will quiet them down until Apple has made a few billion more dollars.

What has to be especially satisfying about this plan for Apple is that there is literally no response even possible from its greatest competitor -- Microsoft. The level of technical sophistication and application integration required to make this work is beyond Microsoft within the next year or five years from now. So where Windows Vista will bring a variety of older Apple OS features to the PC desktop, Apple's Leopard will go far past the desktop metaphor altogether and introduce friggin' TELEPORTATION.

Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier once told me, "you can have enough money and you can have enough power, but you can never have enough EXPERIENCE." Jobs understands this better than almost anyone else and the pieces he's put together are all aimed at giving us an experience and allowing us to share that experience with others in a large and grand way.

Now let's extend this view a little bit further -- frankly further than Apple would even like us to do because it is in the middle of negotiations with most of the world's movie studios. What happens if I use my Mac mini/iTV/iSight/HDTV combo to invite Grandma for a virtual visit and she decides she wants to play for me some of her Benny Goodman records, after which we all sit down with the kids and watch a young Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet? Would either of those actions constitute a copyright violation? I don't think so.

But what if a dozen or 100 people get together virtually to do the same thing? Would THAT be a copyright violation? I still don't think so because it would be me watching you watching a movie -- exactly the subterfuge that allows characters in new movies to be watching old movies on TV without the production company having to pay royalties to the makers of those old movies. But someone is going to feel cheated, I'm sure. I just hope it isn't Grandma.

Somalia and the Concept of Territoriality for Islamists by Douglas Farah

The situation is going from bad to worse in Somalia, as the Islamist leaders become more and more like the Taliban and less and less the moderates they pretended to be. A population beaten down by years of abuse and civil war welcomes the initial stability and removal of armed groups. Then the hammer comes down. Nuns are assassinated. Theaters closed, radios censored, dress codes imposed.

This matters on more than just a humanitarian level or from the vantage point of a spreading conflict in a region that is fragile at best. It is important to understand that Islamists view the holding of a territory, virtually any territory, as vital to the re-establishment of the Caliphate. It does not really matter where the banner is raised. It is more important to raise the banner.

This was clear in Afghanistan, when Azzam, backed by many leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, agreed that the Afghan struggle took precedence over the Palestian struggle because it would give them an Islamist state. Lawrence Wright points this out in detail in “The Looming Tower.”

It was true later when many in al Qaeda viewed the biggest loss, resulting from the 9-11 attacks, as the loss of the head of the Caliphate. This is not an abstract concept to Islamists. While the Shi’ia have their state in Iran, the Sunni Salafists have only the debauched states of the Arab Gulf, corrupt, flacid and abased before foreign powers.

This is why Somalia matters on a more fundamental level in the war on Islamists and their allies. I have been in meetings where the Islamist triumph in Somalia is dismisseed as unimportant because Somalia has no vital natural resources and is not viewed as being of strategic consequence for the United States. Neither did Afghanistan in 1996, when the Taliban rolled in.

There are several things wrong with that argument, but the main one is this: The establishment of the beginnings of a Caliphate is a huge psychological and real victory for Islamists. It is, by their own admission, a vital goal in the struggle to destroy the West, an intermediate step necessary to set up the anihilation of the non-Islamic world.

Assuming it is nothing more than an unpleasant and unimportant struggle in the hinterlands, of no strategic interest, is a serious mistake, being made now. We made the same mistake in Afghanistan, when we didn’t know better. Now, they explain their strategy to us, and we still appear to have learned very little.

Strained, Army Looks to Guard for More Relief by Thom Shanker and Michael R. Gordon

Strains on the Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become so severe that Army officials say they may be forced to make greater use of the National Guard to provide enough troops for overseas deployments.

Senior Army officers have discussed that analysis — and described the possible need to use more members of the National Guard — with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s senior adviser on personnel, David S. C. Chu, according to Pentagon officials.

While no decision has been made to mobilize more Guard forces, and may not need to be before midterm elections, the prospect presents the Bush administration with a politically vexing problem: how, without expanding the Army, to balance the pressing need for troops in the field against promises to limit overseas deployments for the Guard.

The National Guard has a goal of allowing five years at home between foreign deployments so as not to disrupt the family life and careers of its citizen soldiers. But instead it has been sending units every three to four years, according to Guard officials.

The question of how to sustain the high level of forces abroad became more acute this week as General John P. Abizaid, the senior American commander in the Middle East, said that the number of troops in Iraq, currently at more than 140,000, could not be expected to drop until next spring at the very earliest.

That disclosure comes amid many signs of mounting strain on active Army units. So many are deployed or only recently returned from combat duty that only two or three combat brigades — perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops — are fully ready to respond in case of unexpected crises, according to a senior Army general.

An internal Army document that was provided to The New York Times notes that the demand for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has greatly exceeded past projections that predicted earlier troop reductions. According to the document, the Army needs $66.1 billion to make up for all of its equipment shortfalls. Referring to the units that are to deploy next to Iraq and Afghanistan, or are in training, the document shows a large question mark to indicate their limited readiness.

The Army had to offer generous new enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 to attract recruits into such dangerous jobs as operating convoys in Iraq. It was able to meet its active-duty enlistment goals this year with the addition of 1,000 new recruiters.

Enmeshed in negotiations with Bush administration officials over its spending request for next year, neither Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, nor any of his top Pentagon aides would agree to be interviewed about the personnel stresses they are confronting. But Army officials have shared their concerns with retired Army officers and members of Congress, and quietly distributed budget tallies, including the internal document on troop and equipment demands, to their supporters. Military officers and civilian Pentagon officials interviewed for this article would discuss the issues only on condition of anonymity.

An examination of the Army’s plan for deploying its force shows some of the ways it has been overextended.

In overhauling its structure, the active-duty Army is growing to 42 combat brigades. Army officials have said they want to establish a pattern in which an active brigade spends two years at home for each year it is deployed overseas.

But so many units are needed for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that combat brigades are generally spending only a year at home for each year they are deployed. Military analysts concluded that this has severely reduced the number of forces that are available for other contingencies.

“The continuing frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the U.S. Army so thin that there are few brigades ready to respond to crises elsewhere,” said Lynn Davis, a senior analyst in the Arroyo Center, a division of the RAND Corporation that does research for the Army.

Ms. Davis said that there was no quick fix for the limited number of troops. The longer-term solution, she said, was to rely more on the National Guard or to increase the number of Army brigades, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

Gordon R. Sullivan, the former Army chief of staff and president of the Association of the United States Army, said in an interview that the Army was simply too small for the many responsibilities it faced and should be expanded from about 500,000 in the active force to some 560,000. It also needs to make greater use of the National Guard, he said.

“The biggest challenge is manpower,” General Sullivan said.

Barry R. McCaffrey, the retired four-star Army general, also asserted that the armed forces needed to be expanded. “We cannot sustain the current national security policy with an Army, Marine Corps, Air Force lift capability and Special Operations forces of this size,” he added. “They are clearly inadequate.”

The pace of deployments and financing shortfalls, he said, had taken a toll of units in the active duty Army and the National Guard. “One third is completely ready to fight, and two-thirds are severely impaired,” he said.

Asked if it was true that only a handful of combat brigades not currently deployed were immediately ready for a crisis, a spokesman for the Army said he could not address specifics because the information was classified.

Mr. Rumsfeld has not favored substantially expanding the Army, concluding that such a step would draw money from programs he favors to overhaul the military and calculating that the high level of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will prove temporary. Congress, however, has mandated a temporary 30,000-soldier increase for the Army.

As for whether any decision on mobilizing more members of the Guard can be expected, Mr. Chu, the Pentagon’s chief personnel officer, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed on Army discussions about how to meet its needs.

But active commanders have highlighted the issue. At a recent conference at Fort Benning, Ga., Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the head of the Army’s Forces Command, which oversees training and mobilization for all Army forces in the continental United States, suggested that the service needed to make greater use of the National Guard if the United States was to pursue what the Bush administration has described as a “long war” against Islamic terrorists.

“If we are going to prosecute this long war, we need relatively unencumbered access to the citizen soldier formations,” General McNeill said.

The equivalent of several Guard brigades are deployed today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sinai, the Horn of Africa and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Sending more Guard units to Iraq is politically sensitive because of complaints from families and employers while the Guard and Reserve were used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004.

Restrictions on the use of the Guard are a matter of interpretation. Guard officials said that under President Bush’s current mobilization order, its members may not be called up if they have served for 24 consecutive months. But a conflicting Defense Department policy interprets the order as limiting the call-up of those who have tallied 24 months of total service, regardless of the length of time served consecutively. That view would put more Guard members off-limits for remobilization without a new order from the president.

If the military cannot deploy enough members of the Guard by following either interpretation of the rules, officials may be forced to propose that Mr. Rumsfeld advise President Bush of the need to sign a new mobilization order that would reset the clock for many Guard members who have already served overseas.

Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, the head of the Guard, said his forces would be prepared to meet current requirements and to send more forces if needed.

“Can I sustain that?” General Blum said. “I say the answer is, ‘Absolutely’ — if three things remain, three critical things.”

He said Guard members must continue to feel that what they are doing is important and that they have the support of the American people. Finally, he said, “We’ve got to give them some predictability or some kind of certainty so they can balance their civilian life, with their employers and their family, with their military service to the nation.”

Given the lengthy lead time required for calling up, training, equipping and deploying Guard forces, Pentagon officials said that if more Guard members were mobilized, it would probably be for a rotation that begins in 2008.

Even so, Pentagon and military officials said that it was unlikely that any decision on a Guard mobilization would be necessary for several months or even into next year, which would place any announcement beyond the November mid-term Congressional elections.

To take on a greater load in Iraq and remedy existing equipment shortfalls, the Guard needs $23 billion over five years, Guard officials say.

“There is no brigade in the United States Army active, Guard or reserve that is completely ready back at home,” General Blum said. “That is to ensure that every brigade overseas is completely ready. And by ready I mean completely equipped. Right now, the key to readiness of the total force is equipping it, resetting it and modernizing it. It is a function of time and money.”

The stress of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted senior Army officers to pass a colorful hand card around Capitol Hill explaining that it will take $17.1 billion in extra spending over the next year to repair and replace tanks, trucks, radios and other equipment for the total force. The card indicates that another $13 billion is needed each year for the following five years to fix and replace equipment.

One Army official said this week that the service is seeking about $138 billion for the next fiscal year, compared with the $112 budget request the Army submitted last year.

IEEE: Let's Start Over by Brad Smith

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has completed its investigation into the political wars being fought in the 802.20 working group and decided the best thing is to fire the committee's leadership, make the member's affiliations more evident and reconsider all past standards votes.

The IEEE Standards Board last June suspended the activities of the 802.20 working group until Oct. 1 because of complaints that the group had become "highly contentious" and was dominated by one faction. The group was working on a mobile broadband standard based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology and gave tentative approval to a draft standard last January. That standard had been proposed by Qualcomm and Kyocera and is viewed by many as a competitor for mobile WiMAX.

Qualcomm complained that Intel and other WiMAX proponents purposely stacked 802.20 meetings so that they could stall the standard. Some Intel employees involved in the working group protested the way the 802.20 standardization balloting was done. An Intel representative also complained that the group chairman, Jerry Upton, was a consultant for Qualcomm.

The IEEE Standards Board announced Tuesday that it will replace all 802.20 officers to eliminate any perception of bias. The working group's activities will remain suspended until new officers take over, which is expected to happen by Nov. 12.

The IEEE also said it will work with the new officers to ensure no one is able to dominate the working group's activities in the future. All ballot and ballot resolution groups that are part of the working group have also been dissolved and will be reconstituted. The IEEE's executive committee will decide when any standards balloting may resume and may base future voting on existing work or on alternative technologies.

Steve Mills, the IEEE Standards Board chairman, says the board wants to ensure that the 802.20 working group operates in accordance with "principles of fairness, openness and due process."

Qualcomm didn't comment on the IEEE's actions.

The Religious Foundations of Suicide Bombings by David Bukay

Suicide terrorism has been the scourge of the last quarter century. A suicide bomb attack on the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut compelled Ronald Reagan in 1983 to withdrawal peacekeepers from Beirut. Palestinian leaders deploy suicide bombers to force Israeli concessions, and Iraqi insurgents use suicide bombings to derail the new political order. Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the U.S.S. Cole in Aden in 2000 and, on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center and Pentagon. While some scholars argue there is no religious component to suicide bombing[1] -often citing Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, who are not Muslims- they are wrong. All Muslim suicide bombers justify their actions with their religion and, more specifically, with the concept of jihad.

What Is Jihad?

Muslim self-justification of suicide bombing lies in interpretation of jihad. While Western scholars of late argue that jihad refers primarily to internal struggle,[2] Islamic writings feature jihad as physical warfare.[3] Historian Bernard Lewis finds that

"the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists and traditionalists ... understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense."[4]

Islamic jurisprudence has distinguished four different ways in which a believer may fulfill jihad obligations:

1) with faith in his heart;
2) by preaching and proselytizing with his tongue;
3) by good deeds with his hands; and 4) by confronting unbelievers or enemies with the sword.[5]

In practice, the first three are part of the da'wa (missionary activity), actions that support jihad by the sword.[6]

Muslim theologians were explicit in the combination of nonviolent and violent jihad to spread Islam.[7] Jihad is central to the Muslim perception of the world, dividing it into dar al-Islam (abode of Islam) and dar al-harb (abode of war) which is destined to come under Islamic rule.[8] Jihad both purifies the dar al-Islam and is the tool to shrink and eradicate the dar al-harb. As a doctrine, the aim of jihad is clear: to establish God's rule on earth by compelling non-Muslims to embrace Islam, or to force them to accept second class status if not eradicate them altogether. Such an understanding constituted one of the main ideological bases of the dynasties that ruled the Islamic world from the late seventh century until Mongol hordes put an effective end to their control in the thirteenth century.

A comparison between the concept of martyrdom in Islam on one hand and in Judaism and Christianity on the other illustrates the emphasis on violent jihad within Islamic jurisprudence. In Islamic practice, the martyr is one killed in jihad. He is entitled to special status in paradise and on Judgment Day. In Judaism and Christianity, a martyr is someone who endures torture and death rather than renounce his or her belief.[9]

Jihad against Unbelievers

All four schools of Sunni Islam as well as mainstream Shi'ism consider idolatry (shirk), apostasy (irtidad), and hypocrisy (nifiq, munafaqah, or riya') to be capital offenses.[10] In each case, jihad is a means to counter such threats and assert the predominance of Islam.

There is little tolerance for idolaters within Islam: the first article of faith is the profession, la ilah illa-llah (there is no deity but God).[11] Muslim jurisprudence considers shirk to be the worst form of disbelief.[12] The Qur'an commands Muslims to kill those who commit shirk[13] and is replete with examples calling for jihad against idolaters. For example, sura (chapter) 9:5 reads, "When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters whenever you find them, and take them captive or besiege them."[14] Sura 8:39 reads, "So fight them so that sedition might end and obedience is wholly Allah's"; and sura 9:123 states, "Fight the unbelievers who are near to you, and let them find ruthlessness in you."[15] Muslims living under the rule of idolaters are obliged to fight their rulers.[16] The Qur'an likewise commands believers to conduct jihad against hypocrites,[17] seize them, and do away with them.[18] All infidels, unbelievers, and hypocrites-those who commit blasphemy or treason-are relegated to hell.[19]

Prominent Muslim scholars consider the general jihad declaration against the unbelievers to be crucial to Islamic success.[20] Those who sacrifice their material comfort and bodies for jihad win salvation.[21] By their sacrifice, they obtain all the pleasures of paradise, be they spiritual-the close presence of God-or material.[22] As an additional incentive, Muhammad promised those mujahideen who fight in a jihad war a reward of virgins in paradise.[23] Importantly, those conducting suicide bombings do not consider themselves dead but rather living with God. As sura 2:154 explains, "Do not think that those who are killed in the way of Allah are dead, for indeed they are alive, even though you are not aware."[24] Therefore the prohibition on suicide need not apply to bus bombers or other kamikaze jihadists. Martin Lings, a British scholar of Sufism, argues that this linkage between martyrdom and paradise was probably the most potent factor that Muhammad brought to the annals of warfare,[25] for it transformed the odds of war by offering a promise of immortality.[26]

Jihad in the Hadith

The Hadith collections, the second important source of Shari'a after the Qur'an, devote considerable attention to jihad, most often in terms of military action against non-believers. Indeed, most Islamic theologians in the classical period (750-1258 C.E.) understood this obligation to jihad as military.[27] There is a whole genre of hadith known as fada'il al-jihad (the merits of the holy war),[28] based on the nine-volume Hadith collection of Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari (810-70) and considered to be the most respected and authoritative collection. He dedicates almost one-third of his fourth volume on jihad as physical holy war against infidels. For example, he relates a hadith of Muhammad commenting that there are one hundred stages in paradise for those who fight for the way of God. [29] Only those who participate in jihad deserve paradise without any checks and reservations. To exemplify this notion, Bukhari relates a story of a woman asking Muhammad if her son, who was killed in the battle of Badr, is in paradise, and he replied that her son is in a higher paradise.[30]

Consistent with the Qur'an, these hadith generally demonstrate the necessity for Muslims to spare no means to spread Islam by force and strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of God. The main motif of jihad in the Hadith reinforces the concept that death on the battleground in the cause of God leads to paradise and receipt of a "sacred wedding" to black-eyed virgins.[31] From among 262 traditions that are mentioned by Abdallah Ibn al-Mubarak (736-97), a renowned Khorasani scholar who concentrated on jihad warfare as the most important method to Islamic success, thirteen reinforce the concept of virgins in paradise as a reward for martyrdom.[32]

The Hadith also emphasize the necessity for all believers, whenever called upon, to commit to a jihad war.[33] In one example, Bukhari cites Ibn 'Umar, one of the transmitters of accounts about the Prophet traditionally accepted by Muslims, who relates,

"Muhammad said: 'I have been ordered to fight against all the people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's messenger, and offer the prayers perfectly, and give the obligatory charity. So if they perform all that, then they save their lives and property from me and their reckoning will be done by Allah.'"[34]

And, in another, a transmitter narrated,

"O Allah, you know that there is nothing more beloved to me than to fight in your cause against those who disbelieved your messenger."[35]

Just as in the Qur'an, the Hadith give ample justification for those who would fight heterodox interpretations of Islam within their own society. Muslim jurists in four schools of law have agreed that the apostate should be given three days to repent and, if he did not, he was to be killed by believer's jihad.[36] Bukhari cites Abu Musa, another accepted transmitter, who related how

"a man embraced Islam and then reverted back to Judaism. Ibn al-Mu'azz, one of the Hadith story tellers, said:

'I will not sit down unless you kill him, as the verdict of Allah and his messenger.'"[37]

In another hadith, Ali bin Abu Talib, Muhammad's nephew and son-in-law, narrated,

"I heard the Prophet saying ... whenever you find the apostates, kill them, for there will be a reward on the Day of Resurrection."[38]

The Hadith are graphic about punishment for such apostates.

According to Anas bin Malik, an Arab thinker and theologian from Medina (d. 795) and founder of the Maliki School of Islamic jurisprudence,

"The Prophet ordered the apostates to have their hands and feet cut off. Then he ordered nails, which were heated and passed over their eyes, and they were left in the Harra [a rocky land in Medina], till they died."[39]

Not as theologically important and seldom cited by modern jihadists are the Assassins, a twelfth and thirteenth century Shi'ite movement which staged assassinations against prominent political leaders who did not share their ideas. While their actions do not directly affect the intellectual evolution of contemporary suicide bombers, their actions demonstrate precedent and the ability of theologians to interpret Islamic doctrine to justify suicide terrorism. As with today's terror masters, the group's founder Hasan al-Sabbah (d. 1124) promised its members paradise if they died in the course of their missions.[40]

Contemporary Jihad

Early interpretations of jihad contributed a theological framework which proponents of suicide bombing adopted. First was the idea that jihad was violent. It was a tool not only to purify the domains of Islam and purge the heterodox but also to defeat non-Muslims. Today, academics and scholars may argue that jihad is peaceful and represents internal struggle,[41] but they either obfuscate or misunderstand that for most Islamic theologians and as described in detail by Islamic historians,[42] the first three nonviolent components of jihad form a larger, more violent aggregate.

Those who argue that jihad is peaceful base their assertions almost entirely on Qur'anic verses from the Meccan period,[43] in which Muhammad and his band of followers were small and relatively weak and so prone to compromise.[44] Islamists, though, justify their violence with verses revealed to Muhammad after his December 623 expedition to Nakhlah.[45] Prominent classical scholars acknowledged the principle of nasikh wa-mansukh (abrogation) which placed greater emphasis on later Medinan verses of violence and jihad.[46] For contemporary Western scholars and journalists to down play Medinan verses suggests a critical misunderstanding of Qur'anic studies.

Many Islamists are unapologetic about violent jihad. They use Qur'anic interpretation to justify terrorism, suicide bombings, and beheadings.[47] They seek to emulate the aggressive jihad waged by Muhammad and his successors from 626 to 740 in their own struggle.[48] These are the Islamic apocalyptic terrorist groups of today who agree with the idea that jihad is so important that every believer must accept it as a compulsory duty, even when unbelievers have not started it.[49]

While some academics and commentators argue that jihad is restricted to religious wars, from an Islamic perspective, all wars against non-Muslims (or Muslims redefined by jihadists as non-Muslims) are religious. This is the reason why some Muslim scholars regard jihad as the sixth pillar of Islam, as it is in Shi'ite doctrine.[50] The most influential Islamist thinkers of the twentieth century -Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi (1903-79), Hasan al-Banna (1906-49), and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66)-have addressed the centrality of jihad at length.[51] Activists such as Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj, an Egyptian electrical engineer and a follower of Qutb, call it "the neglected duty,"[52] and interpret it to justify a fight against any ruler or government that does not adhere to the Shari'a.

Most recent jihadists have relied on Qutb to justify their own theories of violent jihad. 'Abdullah Yusuf 'Azzam (1941-89), a Palestinian who fled to Jordan after the Six-Day war, adopted many elements of both Ibn Taymiya, an early fourteenth century Islamic scholar who laid the philosophical groundwork for the Islamic fundamentalism adopted by Saudi Arabia centuries later, and Qutb to promote the belief in an inevitable clash of civilizations. He emphasized the necessity of violent revolution through jihad against both secular governments in majority Muslim states and against the West. He is credited with being the first Sunni Islamic figure to instill the Islamic community with a divine myth of invincibility of jihad and terrorism.[53]

'Azzam was a major intellectual influence upon Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.[54] In his book Knights under the Banner of the Prophet, bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, identified his organization's goals as da'wa and violent jihad against both an "internal enemy," i.e., existing Arab infidel regimes, and an "external enemy" in areas not controlled by Muslims. To Zawahiri, Muslims who accept Western values such as democracy and those who renounce jihad as a means to establish the Islamic state are infidels deserving of death. The Islamic nation, he maintained, would be established only through jihad for the sake of God, compulsory duty vested upon all the Islamic community. He believed that a "Crusader-Jewish" alliance would mobilize all its resources to counter Islamic power.[55]

Bin Laden embraced similar logic. Beginning in August 1996, he used verses from the Qur'an and the Hadith to argue that jihad was compulsory to expel non-Muslims and Westerners from Saudi Arabia.[56] On February 23, 1998, though, he expanded his jihad when, with Zawahiri at his side, he announced the creation of the International Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders.[57]

The writings of Qutb also influenced Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the late leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi peppered his speeches and declarations with verses from the Qur'an and Hadith to demonstrate God's promise of the inevitability of the creation of a pure Sunni Islamic state so long as Muslims fight jihad against the enemies of Islam by jihad. Zarqawi called jihad "the crest of the summit of Islam."[58]

Bin Laden granted Zarqawi permission to kill Iraqi security forces and Shi'ites in order to achieve a "state of truth" and uproot the "state of the lie."[59] Zarqawi did so with both car bombs and suicide bombers. On May 18, 2005, Zarqawi legitimized the killing of Muslims under the principle of overriding necessity and the victory of jihad.

"Islamic law states that the Islamic faith is more important than life, honor, and property,"

and the Shi'ites are worse than the Crusaders, he argued.[60] He declared both collateral killing of Muslims and murder of noncombatant non-Muslims legitimate[61] and, on September 14, 2005, declared jihad war on the Shi'ites.[62]

In the words of Rudolph Peters, an expert on contemporary Islam, the ultimate aim of jihad is the subjection of the non-believers and the eradication of non-belief.[63] Islamic law is the ultimate solution, and it has full answers to all possible situations and problems, present and future. This is why the fanatic Muslims of today-religious, ideologists, and practitioners-denounce all the existing political systems and demand their liquidation. The current Arab-Islamic system represents a "new age of ignorance" and the Western political systems are "the new Crusaderism," all doomed to extermination by jihad warfare.

Jihad becomes a binding duty on all Muslims as individuals. Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, an Indian Muslim expert on the Shi'ites who lives in the West, explained,

"There is no doubt that the Muslim jurists conceived jihad in the sense of engaging in a war to increase the Dar al-Islam as an integral part of Islamic faith ... with the essential aim of uprooting unbelief and preparing the way for a creation of Islamic order on earth."[64]

The violence of contemporary jihad was also apparent in the reaction of Islamists to cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Muslim rioters and Arab and Islamic governments seized upon the contention that it is against Islam to depict the Prophet Muhammad and to argue that the apostates and non-believers should be punished. Violence accompanied demonstrations in Europe and in Muslim countries. By far the greatest number of fatalities was in Nigeria, which is neither European nor Muslim. In London, protestors marched under banners reading, "Slay those who insult Islam," "Butcher those who mock Islam," "Behead those who insult Islam," "Exterminate those who slander Islam," "Massacre those who insult Islam," "Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer," "Europe take lessons from 9-11," "Europe you will pay. Your 9-11 is on its way," "Be prepared for the real holocaust," and "Islam will dominate the world."[65] To many jihadists, such threats are literal, not hyperbole. Suicide bombing becomes a legitimate technique to carry them out.

The Islamic Roots of Suicide Bombings

What is the connection between religious sources of over a millennium ago to the suicide bombings of today? There is a direct link between the jihadists of yesterday and contemporary jihadists. Many jihadists cite the works of Taqi al-din Ahmad Ibn Taymiya (1263-1328), an Islamic scholar born in Harran, in modern-day Turkey, who wrote extensively on the need for jihad and exalted it even above the Islamic obligations of fasting and pilgrimage (hajj).[66] He attacked many practices prevalent among Muslims of his time and favored a literal interpretation of the Qur'an. Modern jihadists have used his fatwas commanding Muslims to fight the Mongols as precedents legitimizing suicide bombing. Mawdudi, Banna, and Qutb have also developed Ibn Taymiya's philosophy,[67] writing extensively on jihad as the means to fight the re-emergence of the age of ignorance, with its tribal savagery and anarchy. They also suggested that the Islamic order can be maintained and protected, if not expanded, through violence.

In recent decades, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has embraced suicide bombings to lethal effect. Its 1987 charter shows its intellectual and theological justifications. It cites the Qur'an[68] to promote the idea of Muslim exclusivity and hadith from Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim calling for the murder of Jews to hasten the Day of Judgment. More recent exegesis also influenced Hamas. The charter cites Banna's call for Islam to obliterate Israel and is explicit about the violent nature of jihad: Article 13 argues that there is no solution to the Palestinian question but through jihad, and Article 15 declares the necessity to instill jihad in the heart of the Muslim nation.

The 9-11 suicide attacks sparked significant debate in the Islamic world about the merits of suicide attacks.[69] Sheikh Muhammad Sa'id al-Tantawi, head of Cairo's Al-Azhar, the most prestigious university for Sunni jurisprudence, declared that the Shari'a rejects all attempts on taking human life, and Sheikh Muhammad bin 'Abdallah al-Sabil, a member of the Saudi Council of Islamic Clerics and imam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, decried the suicide attacks on the basis that Islamic law forbids killing civilians, suicide, and protects Jews and Christians. But both Tantawi and Sabil sidestep the question of "martyrdom operations." Because preserving the life of dhimmis (Jews and Christians) is conditional to their acceptance of Muslim rule, suicide attacks upon Israelis or Jews and Christians outside majority Muslim countries may be permissible. Indeed, other Al-Azhar scholars, for example, 'Abd al-'Azim al-Mit'ani, say it is permissible to kill Israeli civilians in the cause of jihad.[70]

Today's Al-Qaeda splinter and successor groups and their fellow travelers use the writings of Ibn Taymiya and those influenced by him. The linkage is concrete. They often cite the same Qur'anic passages and hadith that justified the violent jihad of the seventh century. Religious clerics issue fatwas citing them. Perhaps the most prominent of these is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi,[71] who has built upon such interpretations to justify suicide bombing, other acts of terrorism, and the murder of civilians, all in the cause of jihad. He has called suicide bombing a supreme form of jihad for the sake of God and, therefore, religiously legitimate.[72] Those who object to his ideas he labels as agents of ignorance.[73] While he argues that the Qur'an does not allow attacks against the innocent,[74] his definition of innocence is so narrow as to obviate such assurances.

September 11 hijacker Muhammad Atta's last will and testament[75] shows how deep such interpretations of jihad have penetrated Muslim life as his verbiage and instructions for burial showed how he believed himself a good Muslim, even as he participated in an event which murdered almost 3,000 civilians.

Conclusion

Suicide bombing in the Muslim world cannot be separated from religion. Its perpetrators believe jihad to be synonymous with war and mandate Muslims to strike not only at non-Muslims but also at co-religionists deemed insufficiently loyal to their radical cause. The ideological basis of such an interpretation has deep roots in Islamic theology, but it came to prominence with the twentieth-century rise of Muslim Brotherhood theorists such as Banna and Qutb and was further developed by their successors. While much of the exegesis developed out of Sunni jurisprudence, the Islamic Republic in Iran encouraged the phenomenon. Many of Tehran's proxy groups embraced the tactic.

It is fashionable among Western analysts and academics to explain away suicide bombing with discussion of "root causes" that omit religion. Many cite a history of exploitation by Western powers, Israel's existence, government oppression, poverty, lack of education, and alienation as reasons why desperate individuals decide to blow themselves up to murder others. But attention to suicide bombers' own justifications suggest that, for them, Islam and its call for jihad is the primary motivation.

NOTES:

[1] See, for example, Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Bombing (New York: Random House, 2005).
[2] See, for example, John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 32-8.
[3] See, for example, Muhammad Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987-1988), vols. 7 and 8; Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), part 3; Muhammad Ibn Sa'd, Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir (New Delhi: Kitab Bahavan, 1981), vol. 2, which details all Muhammad's military expeditions; Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, Al-Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), vol. 1, p. 309, vol. 2, pp. 65-79, 220-1; Muhammad Ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), partly vol. 1, but mainly vol. 2; Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Misri, n.d.), includes many hadith, partly the same as those cited by Bukhari. For scholarly interpretation based on these exegetes, see Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
[4] Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 72.
[5] Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 2, p. 199.
[6] Muhammad Ayoub, "Jihad: A Source of Power and Framework of Authority in Islam," Bulletin of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 6 (1992); Firestone, Jihad, pp. 37, 84; Moulavi A. Cheragh, The Critical Exposition of Popular Jihad (Karachi: Karinsons, 1977), pp. 62-6, 51-5, 123-5.
[7] See, for example, Muhammad Ibn 'Isa al-Tirmidhi, Al-Jami 'as-Sahih, vol. 7 (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyah, 1992), p. 36.
[8] Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: John's Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 62-6; Cheragh, The Critical Exposition of Popular Jihad, pp. 163-76.
[9] Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 163. For the privileges of martyrs who fall in battle, see Eitan Kohlberg, The Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 9 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), s.v. "shahid." For specific examples, see Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 4, pp. 53, 72, 216; Muslim, Sahih, vol. 11, p. 2013.
[10] Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, pp. 29-30, 33, 84, 98, 135; Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyah, Al-'Ubudiyah fil-Islam (Cairo: Al-Matba'ah as-Salafiyah, 1987).
[11] Muhammad Ibraheem Surty, The Qur'anic Conception of al-Shirk (London: Luzac, 1982).
[12] Qur'an, 28:17, 31:13, 36:74, 37:158. All quotes of the Qur'an are from Ahmed Ali, Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
[13] Qur'an, 4:4.
[14] See, also, Qur'an, 2:193.
[15] See, also, Qur'an, 2:244.
[16] Qur'an, 22:39; 8:12; 8:60.
[17]'Ali ibn Muhammad al-Mawardi, Kitab al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyah (Beirut: Wilayat al-Dinn, 1996), pp. 30-1, 44-5, 50-1.
[18] Qur'an, 3:167-8; 4:82; 4: 88-91; 4:145; 9:12; 9:73; 66:9.
[19] Qur'an, 9:73; 47:12; 98:6.
[20] Abu Muhammad 'Abd al-Malik Ibn Hisham (d. 833), who edited Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad; Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad Ibn 'Umar al-Waqidi (d. 823), the author of Al-Maghazi, the Sirah, and the Early Islamic Conquests; Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Sa`d (d. 845), one of the earliest authorities on Muslim biography; Abu al-Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), one of the renowned Islamic theologians and philosophers; Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058) and Abu Muhammad 'Ali Ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) all reference the Qur'an, 2:216-217.
[21] Abdallah Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-Jihad (Beirut: Hammad, 1971), pp. 30-1, 37-46, 48-54, 59-61; Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 2, p. 149; vol. 4, pp. 19-22, 24-5, 39-40.
[22] Qur'an, 3:195; 9:72; 47:4-6, 15; 61:11-3.
[23] Qur'an, 44:51-4; 52:17-20; 55:47, 50, 52, 56, 70, 72; 56:22-4.
[24] See, also, Qur'an, 3:157-8, 169-171; 44:56.
[25] Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 1983), pp. 147-76.
[26] Subhash C. Inamdar, Muhammad and the Rise of Islam (Madison, Conn.: Psychological Press, 2001), pp. 222-3.
[27] Lewis, The Political Language of Islam, p. 72.
[28] See, for example, Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-Jihad.
[29] Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 2, p. 200.
[30] Ibid., p. 202.
[31] John MacDonald, "Islamic Eschatology VI-Paradise," Islamic Studies, 5 (1966): 352-60; Frantz Rosenthal, "Reflections on Love in Paradise," in John H. Marks and Robert M. Good, eds., Love and Death in the Ancient Near East (Guilford, Conn.: Four Quarters Publication Co., 1987), pp. 247-54.
[32] Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-Jihad, pp. 30-1, 37-46, 48-54, 59-61; Jane Idleman Smith and Yvone Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), pp. 31-61.
[33] Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 1, p. 26; vol. 4, p. 41, 44-5.
[34] Ibid., vol. 1, p. 25.
[35] Ibid., p. 101.
[36] Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 4, p. 261.
[37] Ibid., p. 107.
[38] Ibid., p. 108.
[39] Ibid., p. 261.
[40] For additional background on the Assassins, see Bernard Lewis, Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
[41] For example, Mahmoud Shaltut, Al-Qur'an wal-Qital (Cairo: Matba'at an-Nasr wal-Ittihad ash-Sharqi, 1948); John l. Esposito, What Everybody Needs to Know about Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Cheragh, The Critical Exposition of the Popular Jihad, pp. 16-27, 114-9.
[42] Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 7, pp. 17-21; Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 281-8; Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, pp. 175, 187.
[43] Qur'an, 20:130; 22:49; 38:15, 17; 43:88-9; 52:45, 48; 67:26.
[44] See discussion in Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 8, pp. 93-4, 98-9, 105, 112-3, 115, 118, 121-2, 124-7; Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 143, 145.
[45] 'Abd al-Malik Ibn Hisham, Al-Sirah an-Nabawiyah, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyah, 1997), pp. 601-4; Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 7, pp. 18-9.
[46] See, for example, Mawardi, Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah, pp. 60, 70, 76-7, 192, 200-2; Abu Muhammad Ali Ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, Kitab al-Jihad, vol. 3 (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1987), p. 68.
[47] Timothy Furnish, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 51-7.
[48] Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, pp. 62-81; Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 615-34; Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 17-29; Khalid Y. Blankinship, The End of the Jihad State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 11-22.
[49] E. Tyan, The Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1960), s.v. "djihad."
[50] Muhammad S.R. al-Buti, Al-Jihad fil-Islam (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1993); Mubarak, Kitab al-Jihad; Muhammad Ibn Hasan as-Shaybani, Kitab as-Siyar al-Kabir, in Majid Khadduri, comp., The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani's Siyar (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966).
[51] Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi, Hasan al-Banna, and Sayyid Qutb, Al-Jihad fil-Islam (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr and al-Ittihad al-Islami al-'Alami, 1969).
[52] Johannes J.G. Jansen, The Neglected Duty (New York: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 159-230.
[53] Abdallah 'Azzam, "Al-Qa'idah as-Sulbah," Al-Jihad, Apr. 1988, pp. 46-9.
[54] Uriya Shavit, "Al-Qaeda's Saudi Origins," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2006, pp. 3-13.
[55] Ayman al-Zawahiri, "Knights under the Prophet's Banner," Asharq al-Awsat (London), Dec. 2-10, 2001; Al-Jazeera, Sept. 1, 2005, Aug. 4, 2005, June 17, 2005, Nov. 29, 2004, in Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) TV Monitoring Project.
[56] The Washington Post, Aug. 23, 1998.
[57] Al-Quds al-Arabi (London), Feb. 23, 1998, May 14, 1998; interview, Time Magazine, Dec. 24, 1998; ABC News, Jan. 11, 1999; interview, Newsweek, Jan. 17, 1999.
[58] Asharq al-Awsat, July 13, 2004.
[59] "Osama bin Laden to the Iraqi People," MEMRI Special Dispatch, no. 837, Dec. 30, 2004.
[60] "Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi: Collateral Killing of Muslims Is Legitimate," MEMRI Special Dispatch, no. 917, June 7, 2005.
[61] Ibid.
[62] "Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq al-Zarqawi Declares 'Total War' on Shi'ites," MEMRI, no. 987, Sept. 16, 2005.
[63] Rudolph Peters, The Encyclopedia of Religions, vol. 8 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), s.v "jihad."
[64] Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, The Just Ruler in Shiite Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 106-7, 110-1.
[65] Associated Press, Feb. 3, 2006; Reuters, Feb. 3, 2006.
[66] See Ibn Taymiyah's fatwas in Ahmad A.M. Qasim and Muhammad A.A. Qasim, comps., Majmu' Fatawat Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah, vol. 9 (Riyadh: Matba'at al-Hukumah, 1996).
[67] Mawdudi, Banna, and Qutb, Al-Jihad fi Sabilillah.
[68] Qur'an, 3:109.
[69] Haim Malka, "Must Innocents Die? The Islamic Debate over Suicide Attacks," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2003, pp. 19-28.
[70] Ibid.
[71] The Economist, Feb. 13, 2003.
[72] Al-Rayah (Qatar), Apr. 25, 2001; "The Qaradawi Fatwas," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 78-80.
[73] Al-Istiqlal (Islamic Jihad, Gaza), Aug. 20, 1999.
[74] Qur'an, 5:32.
[75] Der Spiegel, Oct. 1, 2001.

New Chief Is Critical Of Barriers Within CIA by Walter Pincus

The CIA's new director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, told agency employees yesterday that their intelligence activities are too segmented, saying that operations officers who collect intelligence need to work more closely with the analysts who interpret what it means.

Four months after taking over, Hayden presented his strategic vision to a CIA workforce that has been battered by years of investigations into the failures of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs, as well as a reorganization that lowered the agency's status with the creation of a director of national intelligence.

"The collectors are over here and the analysts over there. We are too segmented, and thinking has been driven by focusing on their own piece of the action," Hayden said in an interview, in which he expanded on the remarks to his staff.

He said he has created a new "board of directors" inside the agency that will begin breaking down walls that have separated the Directorate of Operations, which is the clandestine service, and the Directorate of Intelligence, which is the analytic arm, and even the science and technology group, which comes up with new ideas. One result will be to limit much of the independence each directorate had in the past and centralize more authority with Hayden.

In the past, the CIA director was partially diverted from details of agency operations because, as director of central intelligence, he had to spend time as leader of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community. John D. Negroponte, as national intelligence director, now plays that role.

As part of his integration planning, Hayden wants to have new employees, no matter which career path they follow, spend more than the current day-and-a-half orientation period together learning about the agency.

"There could be a basic training period of up to two weeks," he said, before those destined for clandestine service head down to "the Farm" for six months' training at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, while analysts remain in the Washington area for courses in analytic tradecraft termed in the past "CIA 101" and "CIA 201."

Human intelligence expansion is another goal of Hayden's, as it has been for his two predecessors since the Sept. 11 attacks showed a lack of on-the-ground intelligence sources in the world of terrorism.

One facet of intelligence reorganization that works in the CIA's favor is that the agency now oversees the National Clandestine Service, coordinating all overseas spying activities whether carried on by the CIA, the Pentagon or the FBI.

Hayden said Clandestine Service leadership has begun setting uniform standards for human intelligence training so that case officers for all U.S. overseas spying efforts follow the same standards for vetting potential agents, writing reports and sharing information when appropriate.

For the analysts, Hayden said he plans to put more emphasis on "expertise and time on target and experience," along with "pushing analysts overseas." This continues efforts to reform past practices, in which promotions went to analysts who had served in different types of jobs instead of to those who developed deep expertise in one area. "That reward now could go to someone who has been looking at Iran for 14 years," Hayden said.

He also promised there will be a study of the trend of contracting out intelligence jobs with private firms. "We don't want to be a farm system for these new firms," Hayden said, noting that private companies sometimes lure away young officers and analysts once they have their security clearances and have completed a few years with the agency.

The Pope, Jihad, and “Dialogue” by Andrew G. Boston

The most important address commemorating 9/11/01 was delivered on 9/12/06, a day after the fifth anniversary of this cataclysmic act of jihad terrorism. It was not delivered by President Bush, and was not even pronounced in the United States. On September 12, 2006 at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture (“adding some allusions of the moment”) entitled, “Faith, Reason and the University”.

Despite his critique of modern reason, Benedict argued that he did not intend to promote a retrogression,

…back to the time before the Enlightenment and reject[ing] the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: We are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.

Christianity, the Pope maintained, was indelibly linked to reason and he contrasted this view with those who believe in spreading their faith by the sword. Benedict developed this argument by recounting the late 14th century “Dialogue Held With A Certain Persian, the Worthy Mouterizes, in Anakara of Galatia” between the Byzantine ruler Manuel II Paleologus, and a well-educated Muslim interlocutor. The crux of this part of his presentation, was the following:

Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. ‘God’, he [the Byzantine ruler] says, ‘is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death’....

However, it is Benedict’s discussion of the Byzantine ruler’s allusions to “…the theme of the jihad (holy war)”—Koran 2:256, “There is no compulsion in religion”, notwithstanding—that has unleashed a firestorm of condemnation and violence from Muslims across the world. Here are the words deemed so incendiary by both Muslim leaders, and the masses:

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the ‘Book’ and the ‘infidels’, he [Manuel II Paleologus] turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’

The historical context for these words—which were likely written by Manuel II Paleologus between 1391 and 1394—turns out be much more banal, albeit unknown to fulminating Muslims (here; here),and Islamic apologists of all ilks, especially the disingenuous Muslim (here; here) and hand-wringing non-Muslim promoters of empty “civilizational dialogue”.

When Manuel II composed the Dialogue (which Pope Benedict excerpted), the Byzantine ruler was little more than a glorified dhimmi vassal of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, forced to accompany the latter on a campaign through Anatolia. Earlier, Bayezid had compelled the Byzantines under Manuel II to submit to additional humiliations and impositions—heavier tribute, which was already onerous—as well as the establishment of a special quarter in Constantinople devoted to Turkish merchants, and the admission of an Ottoman kadi to arbitrate the affairs of these Muslims.

During the campaign he was conscripted to join, Manuel II witnessed with understandable melancholy the great metamorphosis—ethnic and toponymic—of formerly Byzantine Asia Minor. The devastation, and depopulation of these once flourishing regions was so extensive that often, Manuel could no longer tell where he was. The still recognizable Greek cities whose very names had been changed into something foreign became a source of particular grief. It was during this unhappy sojourn that Manuel II’s putative encounter with a Muslim theologian occurred, ostensibly in Ankara.

Manuel II’s Dialogue was one of the later outpourings of a vigorous Muslim-Christian polemic regarding Islam’s success, at (especially Byzantine) Christianity’s expense, which persisted during the 11th through 15th centuries, and even beyond. The Muslim advocates’ (particularly the Turks) most prominent argument was the indisputable evidence of Islam’s military triumphs over the Christians of Asia Minor (especially Anatolia, in modern Turkey). These jihad conquests were repeatedly advanced in the polemics of the Turks. The Christian rebuttal, in contrast, hinged upon the ethical precepts of Muhammad and the Koran. Christian interlocutors charged the Muslims with abiding a religion which both condoned the life of a “lascivious murderer”, and claimed to give such a life divine sanction.

Manuel, and generations of Christian interlocutors, argued that the “Christ-hating” barbarians could never overcome the “fortress of belief,” despite seizing lands and cities, extorting tribute and even conscripting rulers to perform humiliating services. Manuel II’s discussions with his Muslim counterpart simply conformed to this pattern of polemical exchanges, repeated often, over at least four centuries.

Returning to Pope Benedict’s now controversial lecture, even if one accepts an apologetic interpretation of Koran 2:256 as prohibiting forced conversion to Islam (see below), this verse was abrogated by the verses of jihad, for example 9:5, and many others in sura 9, as well as sura 8. Indeed Koran 9:5 alone is held to have abrogated (here, pp. 67-75 ) as many as 100 pacific (or seemingly pacific verses).

Koranic sources, in particular the timeless war proclamation (the Koran being the “uncreated word of Allah” for Muslims) on generic pagans (not simply Arabian pagans), Koran 9:5, offers pagans the stark “choice” of conversion or death:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

The idolatrous Hindus (and the same applies to enormous populations of pagans/animists wherever Muslim jihadist armies encountered them in history, including, sadly, contemporary Sudan), for example, were enslaved in vast numbers during the waves of jihad conquests that ravaged the Indian subcontinent for well over a half millennium (beginning at the outset of the 8th century C.E.). And the guiding principles of Islamic law regarding their fate —derived from Koran 9:5—were unequivocally coercive. Jihad slavery also contributed substantively to the growth of the Muslim population in India. K.S. Lal elucidates both of these points:

The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book – Christians and Jews… Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death… The fact was that the Muslim regime was giving [them] a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not immediately after captivity…slave taking in India was the most flourishing and successful [Muslim] missionary activity…Every Sultan, as [a] champion of Islam, considered it a political necessity to plant or raise [the] Muslim population all over India for the Islamization of the country and countering native resistance.

The late Rudi Paret was a seminal 20th century scholar of the Koran, and its exegesis. Paret’s considered analysis of Koran 2:256, puts this verse in the overall context of Koranic injunctions regarding pagans, specifically, and further concludes that 2:256 is a statement of resignation, not a prohibition on forced conversion.

After the community which the Prophet had established had extended its power over the whole of Arabia, the pagan Arabs were forcefully compelled to accept Islam stated more accurately, they had to choose either to accept Islam or death in battle against the superior power of the Muslims (cf. surahs 8:12; 47:4). This regulation was later sanctioned in Islamic law. All this stands in open contradiction to the alleged meaning of the Quranic statement, noted above: la ikraha fi d-dini. The idolaters (mushrikun) were clearly compelled to accept Islam – unless they preferred to let themselves be killed. [Note-Koran 9:5];

In view of these circumstances it makes sense to consider another meaning. Perhaps originally the statement la ikraha fi d-dini did not mean that in matters of religion one ought not to use compulsion against another but that one could not use compulsion against another (through the simple proclamation of religious truth).

Such coercion applies not only to “pagans”. Princeton scholar Patricia Crone makes the cogent argument that those of any faith may be forcibly converted during acts of jihad resulting in captivity (including, for example, the jihad kidnapping of the two Fox reporters, Centanni and Wiig). In her recent analysis of the origins and development of Islamic political thought, Dr. Crone makes an important nexus between the mass captivity and enslavement of non-Muslims during jihad campaigns, and the prominent role of coercion in these major modalities of Islamization. Following a successful jihad, she notes:

Male captives might be killed or enslaved, whatever their religious affiliation. People of the Book were not protected by Islamic law until they had accepted dhimma (Koran 9:29). Captives might also be given the choice between Islam and death, or they might pronounce the confession of faith of their own accord to avoid execution: jurists ruled that their change of status was to be accepted even though they had only converted out of fear.

An unapologetic view of Islamic history reveals that forced conversions to Islam are not exceptional—they have been the norm, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—for over 13 centuries.

Moreover, during jihad—even the jihad campaigns of the 20th century [i.e., the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I, the Moplah jihad in Southern India [1921], the jihad against the Assyrians of Iraq [early 1930s], the jihads against the Chinese of Indonesia and the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria in the 1960s, and the jihad against the Christians and Animists of the southern Sudan from 1983 to 2001], the dubious concept (see Paret, above) of “no compulsion” (Koran 2:256; which was cited with tragic irony during the Fox reporters “confessional”! ) , has always been meaningless.

A consistent practice was to enslave populations taken from outside the boundaries of the “Dar al Islam”, where Islamic rule (and Law) prevailed. Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves, including children (for example, the infamous devshirme system in Ottoman Turkey, which spanned three centuries and enslaved 500,000 to one million Balkan Christian adolescent males, forcibly converting them to Islam), were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased.

Two enduring and important mechanisms for this conversion were concubinage and the slave militias—practices still evident in the contemporary jihad waged by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against the southern Sudanese Christians and Animists . And Julia Duin reported in early 2002 that murderous jihad terror campaigns—including, prominently, forced conversions to Islam —continued to be waged against the Christians of Indonesia’s Moluccan Islands.

Recently, at the close of a compelling, thoroughly documented address (delivered April 2, 2006, at The Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida) entitled, “Islam and Western Democracies,” Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, posed four salient questions for his erstwhile Muslim interlocutors wishing to engage in meaningful interfaith dialogue:

1) Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? (see here, pp. 67-75 )

2) Is the program of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India ) to be resumed when possible?

3) Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Shari’a (Islamic religious) law? (see here)

4) Can we discuss Islamic history (here and here)—even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran (see here, here, here, and here)—without threats of violence?

Dr. Habib Malik, in an eloquent address delivered February 3, 2003 at the at the 27th annual Council for Christian Colleges and Universities Presidents Conference decried the platitudinous “least common denominators” paradigm which dominates what he aptly termed the contemporary “dialogue industry”:

We’re all three Abrahamic religions, we’re the three Middle Eastern monotheisms, the Isa of the Koran is really the same as the Jesus of the New Testament…. This is politicized dialogue. This is dialogue for the sake of dialogue. Philosophically speaking, this is what Kierkegaard called idle talk, snakke in Danish; what Heidegger called Gerede; what Sartre called bavardage. In other words, if this is dialogue, it’s pathetic… it needs to be transcended, and specifically to concentrate, to focus on the common ethical foundation for most religions can also be very misleading. Because when you get into the nitty-gritty, you find that even in what you supposed were common ethical foundations, there are vast differences, incompatibilities. Suicide bombers is one recent example. Condoned by major authoritative Muslim voices; completely unacceptable by Christianity.

Cardinal Pell’s unanswered questions highlight the predictable failure of the feckless “We’re all three Abrahamic religions”, “dialogue for the sake of dialogue” approach to both Muslim-Christian, and Muslim-Jewish dialogue.

Eschewing the comforting banalities of his predecessor, Benedict XVI has acknowledged that real dialogue, as opposed to bavardage, begins not by kissing the Koran, but reading it. Most importantly, he is impatient with an interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians limited to platitudes about “Abrahamic faiths”, which scrupulously avoids serious discussions of the living, sacralized Islamic institution of jihad war.

Until Muslims evidence a willingness to engage in such forthright discussions, Benedict appears to share Dr. Malik’s sobering conclusions from his February 2003 speech: “One certainly needs to be open at all times to learn from the Other, including to learn at times that the Other right now has nothing to teach me on a particular issue.”