Paul Berman on Tariq Ramadan: Part 9

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

A Voice of Moderation?

(Image from BBC News)

Let's return from our detour to the main road, Paul Berman's investigation of Tariq Ramadan, where we'll discover that Yusuf al-Qaradawi has hitched a ride.

Berman begins a new section -- numbered 7 -- of his long essay by praising Ramadan's apparently sincere disavowal of violence:

It is true and it is wonderful that Ramadan has, on quite a few occasions, condemned any sort of terrorist violence. Better still, these condemnations seem consistent with Ramadan's larger program for the Muslim community in Europe, which ought to require many things, but nothing even remotely resembling a violent campaign. Anyway, the entire shape of Ramadan's career so far -- the energy he has expended on projecting his own ideas and personality onto the public stage in Western Europe and beyond, instead of conserving his time and strength for strictly Muslim audiences -- would make no sense at all, if the ultimate purpose was to mold his followers into some sort of force, capable of opening a violent breach in society. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 41)

If Ramadan is an Islamist intellectual, then he is not of the sort that we find in Abu Musab al-Suri or Abu Bakr Naji, both of whom are theoreticians of terror.

But given Ramadan's genealogy, both familial and intellectual, perhaps we'd do well to inquire a bit more closely into what Ramadan thinks about violence in the cause of Islam. Here, again, Berman leads the way:

Still, sometimes it is useful to inquire a little more closely into what anyone means by violence or terrorism. Bomb attacks on random crowds in the mass-transit systems of Madrid or London obviously count as terrorist acts. But what about bomb attacks on random bus-riders in Israel? ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 42)

Berman notes that in the introduction to Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity, Tariq Ramadan writes of his father Said Ramadan's rejection of violence, a principle consistent with Hassan al-Banna's rejection of violence. However, as Tariq Ramadan himself writes:

The only exception was Palestine. On this, the message of al-Banna was clear. Armed resistance was incumbent so that the plans of the terrorists of Irgun and of all Zionist colonizers would be faced up to. He had learnt from Hassan al-Banna, as he said it one day: "to put one's forehead on the ground." The real meaning of prayer being giving strength, in humility, to the meaning of an entire life. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 42)

On this point, Berman draws an apt observation:

So there is an exception. It is violence against Zionists -- against the plans of all Zionists and not just the Zionist extreme right wing, the Irgun (who were in fact terrorists, just as al-Banna says). But the peculiar note in that passage emanates from a single word, "incumbent" -- a word suggesting that anti-Zionist violence is obligatory. A duty, not just a tactic. Moreover, a duty linked with prayer, forehead on the ground. A duty that gives meaning to an entire life. A religious duty. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," pages 42-43)

As Berman explains, this sort of "ideological dogma that has led so many Palestinians to look on violence as a principle" (page 43) has prevented them from seeing violence as a mere tactic and thereby rendered them incapable of compromise.

On this point, our hitchhiking passenger Yusuf al-Qaradawi has an opinion. Berman explains:

There is something else in that word "incumbent," together with the forehead bowed in prayer. Tactics speak to a given circumstance, but religious duties address the universe. The notion of a religiously mandated violence, an obligatory violence, therefore opens a door, and it is hard to see what could prevent ever wilder yet equally pious obligations from ultimately pushing their way through the open space. Qutb's contribution to the notion of religious violence consisted largely of determining that Muslim "hypocrites," quite as much as Zionists or any other outright enemy of Islam, merited a violent resistance. This notion opened the door to mass killings of Muslims, in the name of Islam. And there is the example of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, by all accounts one of the great scholars of Sunni Islam, a man with a long and illustrious history in the Muslim Brotherhood who went on, after his emigration to Europe, to help found the European Council for Fatwa and Research -- all this, even apart from his other career, thanks to Al-Jazeera television, as the world's most visible expert on Islamic jurisprudence. It was Sheik al-Qaradawi who directed the funeral prayer at Said Ramadan's funeral in Cairo in 1995 -- as Tariq Ramadan proudly reports in The Roots of the Muslim Revival.

And yet Qaradawi is also the person who, in 2003, issued the most famous of the fatwas authorizing suicide terrorism by Palestinians. He issued the gruesome fatwa permitting women to commit suicide terrorism while, at the same time, giving women terrorists a dispensation from the normal obligation to conceal their hair under a hijab -- a bizarre touch on Qaradawi's part, underlining the ritualistic nature of these acts, and yet entirely in keeping with the sort of erudite matter that Qaradawi normally concerns himself with: say, whether women must keep to themselves when they are menstruating (a point that he rejects, on authority) or whether they may have intercourse with their husbands during that time (they may not, though other kinds of physical pleasure are permitted).

Among the religious authorities who stand behind the vogue for ritualized suicide terrorism in the Arab and Muslim world in the last few years, Qaradawi, drawing on his jurisprudential learning, does appear to be in the first rank -- which is not an argument for downplaying the historic role of Hassan al-Banna long ago. On the contrary, the elderly Qaradawi himself has invoked, in one of his sermons, the memory of al-Banna orating on the agreeable nature of death in the cause of God. As for Tariq Ramadan, he reveres Qaradawi above all other present-day Islamic scholars, and in one book after another he has left no room for doubt about his fealty. If anyone in the world offers a model of modern enlightened Islam, Ramadan plainly judges Qaradawi to be that person. Ramadan has contributed prefaces to two collections of Qaradawi's fatwas in their French editions, not to mention other books written by people with one or another sort of connection to the terrorist vogue -- these editions published by the Tawhid house in Lyon, which is Ramadan's publisher as well. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," pages 43-44)

This is the same Qaradawi who "favours female genital mutilation, wife-beating, the execution of homosexuals in Islamic states, the destruction of the Jewish people, the use of suicide bombs against innocent civilians and the blaming of rape victims who do not dress with sufficient modesty," as Peter Tatchell has noted in "An embrace that shames London" (New Statesman, January 24, 2005). But perhaps he has expressed these views in a soft-spoken, moderate, nonviolent manner.

One might also wish to ask Tariq Ramadan -- along with the far weightier Qaradawi -- why Israel constitutes an exception. Let me hazard a guess. The exception derives from the fact that Israel occupies Muslim land, territory that once was part of the domain of Islam, ruled by shariah, solidly Islamic.

But that is also true of Spain, as the Spanish have of late been reminded by Islamist manifestos that no longer mention the Spanish troops in Iraq, for these have been withdrawn, but which recall the lost glory of Islamic Spain and vow to fight the Spanish 'colonizers' by all means necessary, including terror.

Exceptions have such a dreadful way of becoming the norm.

Abu Musab al-Suri: An Islamist 'Trotsky'?

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

(Image from Wikipedia)

The jihadist theoretician al-Suri, about whom I've recently become aware, seems rather a complex individual, even contradictory.

In Craig Whitlock's article of May 23, 2006 in the Washington Post, "Architect of New War on the West: Writings Lay OutPost-9/11 Strategy of Isolated Cells Joined in Jihad," we find this depiction (page 2):

"He's very intelligent and powerful in making his arguments," said an Arab dissident who knew Nasar well and also spoke on condition of anonymity. "But he is also a very difficult man. His tough attitude created many, many enemies for him, even in jihadi circles."

With his pale white skin and red hair, Nasar physically blended into British society more easily than many Islamic fundamentalists. But he sometimes struggled to reconcile his beliefs with his surroundings.

Whitlock gives a couple of examples (page 3):

For instance, friends said, he was well educated on the finer points of Western classical music and enjoyed talking at dinner parties about composers. But he refused to actually listen to the music, for religious reasons. And while he rejected the authority of secular institutions, he once filed a libel lawsuit in a British court against the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat.

I can add my own of al-Suri's contradictions. According to Dr. Brynjar Lia: "The al-Qaida Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri: A Profile" (pdf, page 18):

[al-Suri] defines a long list of targets to be found in most any Western or Arab city. Despite the wide definition of legitimate targets, al-Suri strongly cautions against operations in which many ordinary Muslims, or non-hostile non-Muslims, are killed. Such attacks will play into the hands of the Crusaders [i.e., Western military forces] and undermine efforts at mobilising the Islamic umma [i.e., worldwide Muslim community] behind the jihadist call.

Yet, al-Suri also expressed harsh views (Whitlock, page 3) after the 9/11 attacks:

[al-Suri's] theories of war also called for the most deadly weapons possible. In Afghanistan, he worked with al-Qaeda leaders to train fighters in the use of "poisons and chemicals" at two camps near Jalalabad and Kabul, according to the State Department. After the Sept. 11 hijackings, Nasar [i.e., al-Suri] praised the attacks. But he said a better plan would have been to load the hijacked airplanes with weapons of mass destruction.

"Let the American people -- those who voted for killing, destruction, the looting of other nations' wealth, megalomania and the desire to control others -- be contaminated with radiation," he wrote. "We apologize for the radioactive fallout," he declared sarcastically.

Perhaps he later had second thoughts when the American reaction was to go on the offensive, invade Afghanistan, destroy al-Qaeda's bases there, depose the Taliban, and begin hunting down Islamist terrorists worldwide.

Abu Musab al-Suri reminds me of the Marxist Leon Trotsky, a brilliant strategic thinker who combined his ruthless, focused revolutionary views and practice with a broad, even sympathetic knowledge of Western history and culture, unlike many of the Russian Bolsheviks with whom he aligned himself.

More on Abu Mus'ab al-Suri: The Reason "Why"

March 2004 Madrid Train Bombings

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
(Image from Newseum)

In yesterday's post, I noted that the jihadist theoretician Abu Mus'ab al-Suri argues for a jihad of individualized terrorism against infidels, and I wondered about the purpose of such terrorism since it cannot conquer territory from the realm of war (Dar al-Harb) for the realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam).

The Norwegian scholar Dr. Brynjar Lia had noted that al-Suri writes of terrorism as a means of "resisting the occupation," to which, I had queried, "[B]ut the occupation of what? The world? Withdrawal from the world would be rather difficult." I then ended my entry by asking, "So ... what's the point of the terrorism?"

A possible answer comes from Craig Whitlock's article of May 23, 2006 in the Washington Post, "Architect of New War on the West: Writings Lay OutPost-9/11 Strategy of Isolated Cells Joined in Jihad," in which we learn:

Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement.

The Madrid bombing, in particular, have been interpreted as punishment for Spain's participation in the American-led Iraq War and postwar occupation, so this might be the sort of thing that al-Suri means by "resisting the occupation." If so, then his strategic advice was successful in this particular case, for Spain's conservatives (Partido Popular) lost the election, which brought into power the Socialists, who withdrew from Iraq.

Ultimately, this won't much help the Spanish to avoid terrorism, for as we've since learned, the 'occupation' includes the Spanish occupation of Andalusia, the part of Spain once ruled by Islam.

Anyway, I now understand some of the "why" behind al-Suri's Call for a Global Islamic Resistance.

Abu Mus'ab al-Suri's Call for a Global Islamic Resistance: Why?

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar

aka

Abu Mus'ab al-Suri

(The Intelligence Summit, Copyright © IHEC 2006)

Back in April of this year, a friend of mine, Greg Rhoades, emailed me an article by Dr Brynjar Lia: "The al-Qaida Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri: A Profile" (pdf). I finally found the time to read it yesterday, and it presents a fascinating portrait of the brilliant jihadist strategist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, better known by his pen name: Abu Mus'ab al-Suri.

A jihadist intellectual, al-Suri has written a history of recent jihadist groups around the world, a 1600-page tome, The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance (Da'wat al-muqawamah al-islamiyyah al-'alamiyyah), analyzing the weaknesses of these groups and proposing ways of overcoming these weaknesses.

In his text, al-Suri identified three types of jihadist warfare (cf. pp. 16-17 of Lia's article):

1. Tanzims (Organizations): secret, hierarchical, regionally based groups, e.g., Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

2. Open Fronts: large-scale insurgencies against an occupying power, e.g., Chechnya.

3. The Jihad of Individualized Terrorism, e.g., Ramzi_Yousef.

The tanzims, according to al-Suri, are outmoded because they can be so easily countered by attacking those states that provide sanctuary or by taking advantage of the weakness inherent in hierarchical organizations. The open fronts, as insurgencies, still have a role to play -- as the jihadist insurgency in Iraq shows -- especially for recruitment and gaining experience, but the real future of jihad, according to al-Suri, lies with the jihad of individualized terrorism. Jeffrey Cozzens, at Counterterrorism Blog, excerpts a passage from Lia's paper (p. 17):

Al-Suri's slogan is: nizam, la tanzim, 'System, not organisation'. In other words, there should be 'an operative system' or template, available anywhere for anybody, wishing to participate in the global jihad either on his own or with a small group of trusted associates, and there should not exist any 'organisation for operations'. Hence, the global jihadist movement should discourage any direct organisational bonds between the leadership and the operative units. Leadership should only be exercised through 'general guidance' and the operative leaders should exist only at the level of small cells. The glue in this highly decentralised movement is nothing else than 'a common aim, a common doctrinal program and a comprehensive (self-) educational program'.

The same goal of decentralisation is applied to financing and training. All cells should be self-sustained financially, with the possible exception of start-up money from jihadist activists termed 'cell builders'. The latter category include skilled jihadists whose primary task is to create new independent cells, without connecting them to any organisational structure. The 'cell builder' is an Achilles heel in the system, and various precautions are taken to minimize the risk associated with his role. He is supposed to disappear from the scene before any operative activity commences, either by going to another country, going completely underground, or participating in a martyrdom operation.

These cells need guidance, training, and money, which the cell builder supplies but which consitutes their weak point, as Lia notes above.

I want to note something else. Such a decentralized jihad cannot seek to increase the territory of the realm of Islam, which has traditionally been an aim of jihads, so what is its goal? Lia mentions al-Suri's concept of "resisting the occupation," but the occupation of what? The world? Withdrawal from the world would be rather difficult. That leaves conversion as a possible aim, but Lia doesn't speculate on this.

If the aim is to foment widespread terror, then the logic might be this: a terrorized population is already half in submission to "The God Terror." Yet, terrorism often has the opposite effect, steeling people's nerves against the terrorists, much as the wartime bombing of civilians has often raised morale and resistance. Moreover, "al-Suri strongly cautions against operations in which many ordinary Muslims, or non-hostile non-muslims, are killed" (Lia, p. 18).

So ... what's the point of the terrorism?