Beatings and Bureaucracy: The Founding Memos of Al Qaeda

A new INTELWIRE e-book provides a candid glimpse at the origins of Al Qaeda in its own words.

"Beatings and Bureaucracy: The Founding Memos of Al Qaeda" offers the full text of 30 different Al Qaeda founding documents, most of which have never been published before, including notes from the meetings at which Al Qaeda was imagined and created, letters to and from Osama bin Laden and other key Al Qaeda figures, and detailed descriptions of conflicts between bin Laden's allies and the followers of his mentor, Abdullah Azzam.

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If there's enough interest in these documents, additional material will follow.

Several of the documents in this collection were written by American jihadist Mohamed Loay Bayazid, an Al Qaeda founder. For more about American jihadists, check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: Abdullah-Azzam, Al-Qaeda, American-Al-Qaeda, Benevolence-International-Foundation, Mohamed-Loay-Bayazid, Osama-Bin-Laden

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Larger than Death

We think of iconic figures as being larger than life, but within the world of Al Qaeda and its allies and supporters, fallen warriors take on a larger-than-death quality.

The U.S. has killed Osama bin Laden and Anwar Awalki, and now is the time to study the question: What happens when you decapitate al Qaeda figureheads?

Our strategy has been predicated on the assumption that we're better off with these figures dead than alive, and that's probably true. But it's also testable now. We can watch how the jihadi community processes these deaths and take lessons from what we see, in the weeks and months to come.

Consider the case of Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's mentor, who shepherded the foreign fighter community into the jihad against the Soviets and was involved in the founding of al Qaeda. Azzam was assassinated by a car bomb in 1989. There are only guesses about who was responsible, but suspects include the CIA, the Mossad, Jordanian intelligence and his own allies/rivals, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.

Azzam's been dead for more than 20 years, but he's still one of the most powerful radicalizing figures in the jihadist pantheon. I would love for the FBI to release a comparative study showing how many U.S.-based terrorists were arrested with Azzam's videos and writings on their computers as opposed to the works of Awlaki. I predict it's at least 50-50, and the advantage might well go to Azzam.

For instance, Roshonara Choudhry, a lone wolf terrorist who stabbed a British MP, cited both Awlaki and Azzam as having pushed her toward violence -- but said Azzam was the one who convinced her to act.

Long after his death, Azzam is revered for his role in the Afghan jihad. His lectures are available online, with English translations, and his books are widely available in English as well. Azzam was an effective and emotional speaker, and an educated scholar who ranks among the most important thinkers within the jihadist movement.

It's clear that Azzam's death did not detract from his power. On the one hand, the fact that he died may have prevented him from creating other, even more important works. On the other hand, his death prevented him from making mistakes and taking actions (such as joining al Qaeda terrorism) that might have diminished his stature.

Osama bin Laden and Anwar Awlaki have now been frozen in time. They will always be the people they are today, any improvement or diminishment of their stature is likely to be minimal, aside from a trickle of new information and unreleased works.

In bin Laden's case, death froze him at a point where his stature had diminished (rightfully or wrongly). His body of works -- audio, video and texts -- are competent but not (in my opinion) especially stirring from an emotional standpoint nor are they especially important in their intellectual content. They are, ultimately, political tracts tied to a certain time and place, and they may not age well.

Awlaki is a different story. Intellectually, he's only a shadow of Azzam. Awlaki's contributions to jihadist thought are negligible, his primary strength was interpreting the work of other ideologues in ways that made them relevant and emotionally resonant to English-speaking audiences. In that role, he was an unparalleled talent, and emotional resonance probably matters more in terms of keeping the flame alive after the body has passed.

Awlaki's personal life narrative may also make his death matter more. For bin Laden, frankly, there was really only one way that his story could end after September 11, and even his adherents accepted that. Awlaki's life story is more rounded and diverse, and his death is already seen as tragic by a wider audience, including people outside of extremist circles. That meme may spread over time and create new headaches for counterterrorism.

But all this is speculation. Now is the time to watch how different communities react to these events and to learn from what transpires. It may be tempting for analysts, after 10 long years and these landmark deaths, to call it a war and move on to other subjects.

Give it a little longer.

Video: J.M. Berger on Fox News discussing Awlaki's 'Larger than death' legacy

For more about Awlaki and Abdullah Azzam's role in radicalizing Americans, check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: Abdullah-Azzam, Al-Qaeda, Anwar-Awlaki, Jihad-Joe, Osama-Bin-Laden

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Awlaki Breaks Silence In New Issue Of Inspire, Builds Links To History Of Jihad

SUMMARY: American cleric and Al Qaeda leader Anwar Awlaki today issued his first communication since November. The statement is a religious ruling allowing Muslims to steal money from non-Muslims if the proceeds are used for jihad.

Awlaki's statement was published in the latest issue of Inspire Magazine, an English-language online publication that aims to radicalize Western Muslims. The magazine also features an article from American citizen jihadist Samir Khan, who produces the magazine on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based branch of the terrorist network.

The magazine suggests that American Muslims blow up apartment buildings using a technique designed by September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Click here for a large image suitable for broadcast. Mandatory credit for INTELWIRE.

ANALYSIS: Anwar Awlaki reappeared this morning for the first time since November with the cover story of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire Magazine, Issue 4. The new issue of Inspire reaches into the past, using past jihadist precedents in ways both subtle and overt to highlight AQAP's ideological and operational linkages to major figures such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Omar Abdel Rahman and Abdullah Azzam.

The latest issue features Awlaki's "ruling on dispossessing the disbelievers' wealth," which revives at some length an argument used by Omar Abdel Rahman and other jihadist clerics in the West during the 1980s and early 1990s to justify bank robberies if the proceeds are used for jihad. The ruling -- which authorizes taking infidels' money by "force or deception" -- could also be used to justify credit card fraud and other scams.

The article is a departure from AQAP's previously announced jihad to cripple Western economies in that Awlaki is primarily concerned with whether Muslims can use funds seized from non-Muslims rather than simply waging war against their economies.

Inspire's regular feature on homemade terrorist attacks includes an interesting article that revives a scheme invented by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and assigned to American Al Qaeda member Jose Padilla -- blowing up buildings by renting an apartment and filling it with combustible gas.

An article by American Al Qaeda member Samir Khan delves into the jihadist justifications of Abdullah Azzam, the father of the modern global jihad movement. Twenty years after his death, Azzam is still one of the most influential figures in jihad.

Khan's piece reviews several of Azzam's key themes, including the defense of historically Muslim lands under attack or occupation, but also expands this idea with Omar Abdel Rahman's definition of inadequate Muslim leaders as apostates who should be considered occupiers.

Khan also cites -- in his article and elsewhere in the magazine -- injunctions against spying on Muslims, which must be a sore subject for AQAP after its UPS bombing was thwarted by a Saudi turncoat.

Interestingly, Khan dials back on takfirism, arguing that takfir (excommunication from Islam, punishable by death) is not applicable to individual sinners but only to Muslim rulers who permit major sin under their rule. Another article in Inspire, discussing recent AQAP actions against the Shi'a Houthi movement in Yemen, takes great pains to specify which sects have been targeted and to specifically exclude members of the Zaydi Shi'a sect, in an apparent effort to avoid the appearance of all-out sectarian war most famously promulgated by Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq.

The issue also shed some light on the operational security around Khan and Awlaki, asking readers to bundle news stories into PDFs and compressed archives and e-mail them to Inspire's editors because, "due to security reasons, we do not log on to the net frequently." It's useful to know that attachments are Inspire's best friends.

For more about American jihadists, including Awlaki and Samir Khan, check out my new book, "Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go To War In The Name Of Islam," the first comprehensive look at the phenomenon of American jihadists from the 1970s to the present. The book is scheduled to be released in April/May 2011. Pre-orders are available now. For information about review copies or for media interviews on American jihadists, contact me here.

Labels: Abdullah-Azzam, Al-Qaeda-In-The-Arabian-Peninsula, Anwar-Awlaki, AQAP, Inspire-Magazine, Omar-Abdel-Rahman, Samir-Khan

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

More Ruminations about Al Qaeda's War on Scholarship

Aaron Zelin has an interesting and informative post over at al-Wasat that provides some very useful context to my recent post about the newest messages from Anwar Awlaki and Adam Gadahn.

My post analyzed a recent move by Al Qaeda's American shills to throw out any Islamic scholarship that potentially refutes Al Qaeda's positions on jihad in favor of truthiness -- following a gut feeling that military jihad in the form of killing Americans is simply right, or as Awlaki put it "obvious."

Awlaki openly argues that no scholarship is necessary to justify this conclusion; Gadahn argues that Al Qaeda has its own scholarship which supports jihad, but like McCarthy's oft-cited list of Communists in the State Department, you'll just have to take his word for it.

Aaron shows that there is a lot of historical context behind this move and that jihadists have historically thrown out scholarship that they don't agree with. I would tentatively argue that what's new(ish) here is an attack on the actual process of scholarship.

Of the examples Aaron cites, Hassan Al-Banna, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Muhammad Al Maqdisi all dispute the scholars who disagree with them, arguing that they are corrupt or simply wrong. That's a little different from what Awlaki is saying in his latest message, which is that scholarship is itself unnecessary -- a radical shift from a cleric who has in the past tried very hard to justify his own scholarly prowess.

Compare this to Abdullah Azzam, the father of the modern jihadist movement, who believed the conclusions of scholarship fully justified his position on jihad and bemoaned the lack of Islamic scholarship and education among the soldiers who came to Afghanistan. In "Join the Caravan," he wrote:

As for the juristic details of jihad, such as distribution of booty and treatment of prisoners of war, these matters have arisen in many regiments. Due to ignorance about them, however, they were forced to pass them on to an area in which there was a scholar or scholars who could give their decisions according to the Islamic law. You will become aware, on account of the profound signs left by the Arab youths of modest education (possibly not even surpassing secondary school), of the severe need for propagators, Imams, reciters of the Qur'an and religious scholars.

The final example Aaron cites is a particularly interesting one, from "The Neglected Duty" by Muhammad Faraj, which corresponds pretty closely to the position Awlaki just staked out:

So he who says that knowledge is Jihad must realize that what is fard [obligatory] is fighting … If a person wants to increase his knowledge … he could do so, because there are no restrictions on knowledge, which is available for everybody. But to delay Jihad because of seeking knowledge is an evidence of the one who has no evidence … However, we do not underestimate knowledge and scholars, rather we call for that. But we do not use it as evidence to abandon the obligations that Allah ordained.

While Faraj goes out of his way to say he's not underestimating scholarship, he's saying that thinking shouldn't get in the way of killing. Or, in American idiom, shoot first and ask questions later.

Rather than competing in the battlefield of ideas, Awlaki walks his readers through an argument that dismisses the entire debate and says that it is incumbent on individuals to accept the common-sense argument for jihad without regard for scholarship as a process, or finding consensus, another key process in Islam.

Fighting Satan does not require a jurisprudence. It does not require consulting. It does not need a prayer for the cause.

Gadahn says almost exactly the same thing in his recent message, emphasizing the supremacy of "common sense" over scholarship and learning:

I shall mention briefly here a number of obvious facts which young men recognize before old men and laymen recognize before Ulama [scholars]. [...] This is why anyone who wants to debate the legal basis for the contemporary Jihad must refute all those fatwas and reject all those proven consensus and not just make do with relying to one fatwa or Alim [scholar].

Gadahn, however, hedges his bets by explaining that the mujahideen have their own scholarly books of jurisprudence, which he may or may not disclose at a later date, assuming someone gets around to writing them.

In sum, I am reading these latest communiques as an attack on the process of scholarship itself, rather than on specific types of scholars, i.e., corrupt vs. pure, or modern vs. historical.

Will this initiative against scholarship per se (as opposed to fighting individual opinions) will take hold in Al Qaeda? We'll see. Back in the 1980s, I think you could get away with this, because there was much less emphasis on self-education about Islam. There was no Internet. Would-be jihadists were shaped by those who they met and learned from.

Today, the online pool of potential jihadists loves to endlessly dissect Islamic scholarship and pose as educated people themselves. You can find interminable, tedious arguments about fiqh, madhabs and precedents on almost every jihadist message board. This process helps harden extremist views for many of the participants. The lesson here? A little knowledge is a lot more dangerous than no knowledge.

On the other hand, the core argument used by Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups is more political than religious and is predicated on the assumption that Muslims are being victimized all over the world. This is the primary driver of jihadist recruitment; the religious arguments are a form of secondary reinforcement.

The approach Al Qaeda is beta-testing with these releases may attract more unstable people in the short term (a speciality of Awlaki's), but it's only going to accelerate the transformation of Al Qaeda's membership from soldiers to thugs, a shift that has been sapping the organization's effectiveness for some years now.

Labels: Abdullah-Azzam, Adam-Gadahn, Al-Qaeda, American-Al-Qaeda, Anwar-Awlaki, Ayman-Al-Zawahiri, Muhammad-Al-Maqdisi, Muhammad-Faraj, Osama-Bin-Laden

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink