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| Terror Networks |
| The new ideologues of al-Qaeda |
| 2003-11-23 |
| EFL The Salafist-Jihadist groups of Qaidat al-Jihad and its affiliated groups, who adhere to and practice the worldview of global Jihad, have been ideologically developed by doctrines derived from a combination between the Egyptian Jihad, Saudi neo-Tawhid, and the globalization of Jihad, espoused by the Palestinian Dr. Abdallah Azzam in Afghanistan. Following the death of Azzam in November 1989, and the end of the anti-Soviet campaign of Jihad in Afghanistan, a younger generation of ideologues took its place. This new generation took over in two waves. First, alongside the rise of the Taliban and the Islamist conflicts in the Balkans in the first half of the 1990s; later on, alongside the organized terrorism of Qaidat al-Jihad since the mid-1990s. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has contributed to global Jihad not only through the Palestinian Abdallah Azzam, but also through two of his most important Palestinian successors â Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in Jordan, and Omar Abu Qatadah in London. An important additional development to note here was the gradual drying of the Jihadist ideological sources in Egypt. Sayyed Qutb, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, or Abd al-Qader Abd al-Aziz, are mentioned from time to time. Yet, it seems that only Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Ladenâs deputy, kept his place in the first row of these ideologues, despite his lack of an official Islamic education. No younger or new generation of Egyptian Islamist ideologues or scholars, exists that could influence or contribute to the present developments of Global Jihad. This reality left the door open for a large group of younger Saudi Islamists eager to assume an increasingly growing important role in developing the present and future trend of Salafist Jihad. Many of them were students and disciples of the older groups of Wahhabi clerics and scholars, who could not come to terms with the American presence on Saudi soil. In recent years they radicalized their positions and began backing up the positions of Qaidat al-Jihad, including political violence against the United States, Western culture, and in recent years the Saudi royal regime, while providing Islamic legitimacy for these actions. The severe conflict between the younger generation of the Saudi Islamist opposition and the Saudi clerics of the Islamic Wahhabi establishment, which developed alongside the rise of Qaidat al-Jihad, turned into an open one following the death in 1999 of Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz. For many years Sheikh Ibn Baz, who managed to block the rise of the rivalry into the open, had been respected by various groups within the Wahhabi movement. The battle is to some extent fought on the Internet, at least on the part of the opposition and has also produced books and articles through which the opposition is attempting to sharpen its ideological weapons and tactics. An interesting large book was recently circulated on the Internet, primarily through one of the most important web sites of the Jihadi Salafiyyah, Manbar al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, of the Palestinian/Jordanian scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. The book is entitled Osama bin Laden: Mujaddid al-Zaman wa-qahir al-Amrikan (Bin Laden: The Reformer of our Times and Defeater of the Americans), by the Saudi scholar Abu Jandal al-Azdi. In 460 pages this book raises Bin Laden to a new level of a reformer or reviver, attributes that in modern Islamic history have been bestowed only on very few scholars, such as Hasan al-Bana the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi in India and Pakistan. The use of this term with regard to Bin Laden is significant to his followers, since it functions as part of a growing personality cult around al-Qaidaâs leader. Not even Sayyid Qutb, who might have deserved this title from the followers of the Egyptian Jihad, has enjoyed this title. Bin Laden, who is neither a cleric nor an Islamic scholar at all, enjoys this admiration at least by his Saudi sympathizers. To consolidate the indoctrination of Global Jihad by new generation of scholars, Qaidat al-Jihad has recently attempted to resume its official web site, Al-Neda, which had been closed since April 2003. The web site represents an institute called The Center for Islamic Studies and Research, and is widely considered, both by observers and supporters of Qaidat al-Jihad, to be its official organ. In early June 2003, the Saudi security forces managed to kill a young Saudi cleric by the name of Sheikh Yousef al-Ayyeri. He was killed during the campaign against Saudi extremist Islamist elements, suspected in connections to the suicide bombings in Riyadh on 12 May 2003, in which 16 scholars and operatives have been killed and dozens have been arrested so far. Following the killing of Al-Ayyeri, followers of Al-Qaida started to publish much information about him, and he thus became known as âthe man behind Al-Neda.â Furthermore, thousands of Islamist youngsters now admire him as the scholar who wrote many of the unsigned articles published by Al-Neda. The political circumstances and unrest that have been developed in Saudi Arabia in recent years, and especially in the past six months, have given an opportunity to the most radical Saudi Islamists not only to stand in the front line of Global Jihad, but to lead a violent and open struggle against a regime that in the past decade preferred to plant its head in the sand. Saudi financing, which directly or indirectly has poured billions of dollars to Islamists all over the world has irrigated a new generation of the most radical form of Jihadists to appear thus far. Another phenomenon to note here is the fact that unlike the former generation of Saudi radical Islamists, whose roots were either in the Southern part of Arabia bordering Yemen, or the Western region of the Hijaz, the new generation comes from the heart of Wahhabism — Najd. These are not people from the margins of the Kingdomâs society, where opposition to the Wahhabis existed for many years. The younger generation comes from the Wahhabi homeland, and some of them from respected families or clans. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |