Abdel Bari Atwan: "ISIS Savagery Comes from Islamic History"

Abdel Bari Atwan
Video Clip

Abdel Bari Atwan, former editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi and current editor-in-chief of Al-Rai Al-Youm, gave a talk at the American University in Beirut titled, "ISIS Savagery Comes from Islamic History" (Memri, Clip No. 5299), and in a sense, he interviews his divided self, posing a position (which I've bold fonted), then responding to that position (which I've italicized):

I am surprised by people who say: "This blood soaked ideology [of ISIS] is alien to us. From where did they bring it? Islam is not blood soaked."

How can you say that Islam is not blood soaked?! This is very peculiar. In the days of the Abbasid Caliphate, Abu Al-Abbas Al-Saffah spread a carpet over people's skulls and had dinner . . . . [This] happened in our religion. The same is true of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Still, people ask: "Where did this ideology come from?"

Didn't the Wahhabi movement go to Karbala, where they killed thousands and desecrated the tomb of Hussein? They shattered tombs and almost destroyed the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad, when they took over Najd and Hijaz. They desecrated the tombs of all the companions of the Prophet.

Yet people say: "This is not Islamic ideology. The IS is neither Islamic nor a state. So why do they use savagery?"

In 2003, Abu Bakr Naji published the book Management of Savagery . . . . The period in which we are living is the stage of security chaos. This is the state of savagery. It is . . . [the Islamic State's] way of taking over the rule in this period of security chaos. This is what "management of savagery" means. They have been practicing savagery for a very simple reason: To strike fear in their enemy. They must sow fear among the enemy. It's all orchestrated. All organized.

[People talk] about (ISIS) not being Islamic.

I am not a religious source of authority, brother, but when the Sheik of Al-Azhar, who heads the moderate religious institution, refuses to accuse (ISIS) of heresy and says that they are Muslims - what more do we need? Some people disagree - and they are free to do so - but Al-Azhar is a moderate source of authority. The Sheik of Al-Azhar refused to accuse them of heresy, and said they are Muslims, and you expect 'Sheik' Abdel-Bari Atwan to pronounce them heretics?! It's a little difficult for me [to fathom].

In short, Abdel Bari Atwan reminds viewers that Islam is blood-soaked. To deny this is to deny history.

Failure of Open Source Warfare?

Islamic State of Iraq

Mismanaged Savagery?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Over at the Belmont Club, Richard Fernandez, who calls himself "Wretchard," makes a useful observation about the critical weakness of a "networked insurgency" like that of Iraq:

Much has been written about the supposed invincibility of the networked insurgency and less about its single most glaring weakness. Movements loosely held together only by a "shared narrative" and decentralized command structures are vulnerable, like most historical religions in their expansionary phase to schism and bitter infighting. After all, why should Osama Bin Laden's version of the Jihad be any better than anyone else's? Once prophecy becomes the basis of political discourse before long there will be a prophet on every street corner.

Wretchard makes this point in connection with his analysis on the failure of the insurgency calling itself "Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn," but better known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Wretchard is thinking of analysts such as Jamais Cascio, who earlier this year wrote an article, "The End of Conventional War" (May 6, 2007), for the online site Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. According to Cascio:

Few would dispute that the American military is, far and away, the most powerful conventional armed force on the planet, even as depleted as it is by the Iraq war. At the same time, few would dispute that this military force is, and by all signs will continue to be, insufficient to quell the insurgency in Iraq.

Cascio explains:

The reasons for this obsolescence are clear: conventional military forces appear to be unable to defeat a networked insurgency, which combines the information age's distributed communication and rapid learning with the traditional guerilla's invisibility (by being indistinguishable from the populace) and low support needs. It's not just the American experience in Iraq (and, not as widely discussed, Afghanistan) that tells us this; Israel's latest war in Lebanon leads us to the same conclusion, and even the Soviet Union's experience in Afghanistan and America's war in Vietnam underline this same point. Insurgencies have always been hard to defeat with conventional forces, but the "open source warfare" model, where tactics can be learned, tested and communicated both formally and informally across a distributed network of guerillas, poses an effectively impossible challenge for conventional militaries.

Based on this analysis, one would never have expected the defeat of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but that seems to be what has happened. That defeat did not occur through the US military's 'conventional' tactics but due to a combination of factors, including Al-Qaeda's 'mismanagement of savagery', Iraq's tribal politics, and the US military's technological advantage. Al-Qaeda, being led by outsiders, was never "indistinguishable from the populace," and as it alienated that same populace by its brutality, the Iraqi tribes drew on their most powerful resource, namely, group loyalty, to isolate the insurgents, who then had to face the American military's technological superiority.

What this means, I think, is that networked insurgencies will not work very well as a means of attaining power unless they are truly supported by a populace. Al-Qaeda failed in Iraq because its rigid Islamist ideology was never shared by the Iraqis, who rejected the fundamentalist Islam that Al-Qaeda tried to impose. So much for Abu Bakr Naji's "strategy for seizing territory (through fomenting chaos, i.e., 'savagery'), establishing Islamic law (Sharia), and using that base to expand the realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam) yet further."

What Wretchard calls the "glaring weakness" of a "networked insurgency" -- its vulnerability "to schism and bitter infighting" -- also applies to "open source" warfare generally, but this would appear to be a weakness mainly for networked groups attempting to take and hold territory.

Would the tendency toward schism be a weakness if the aim of networked Islamist terrorists is not primarily to take territory but to make terror?

Al Qaeda reads my blog!

Slytherin House Crest

"You knew I was a snake

when you took me in!"

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some folks say that blogging is bad for your health. Ted Olsen, writing for Christianity Today in an article ominously titled "The Death of Blogs" (9/25/2007), quotes Michael Parsons on the rigors of blogging:

"Good bloggers work like dogs," says Michael Parsons, editor of the tech site CNet.co.uk. "You can't expect readers to show up unless you show up. And the Internet never closes.... Every successful blogger I've come across is the same. Eat, sleep, and drink the work. No time out; no holidays."

As Olsen notes, "That's not a recipe for healthy living, especially if you're working a day job that's not paying you to blog."

Blogging about Islamists probably isn't a recipe for healthy living either, no matter what one's day job might be.

Recently, I posted an entry on "Islamists: Mismanagement of Savagery?" in which I noted Michael Totten's report that Al Qaeda's savagery in Iraq's large western, Anbar Province had turned the insurgent tribes there against Islamists and into cooperation with the American military.

This morning, I found the following comment by a certain 'Donald':

Very funny ! ! How could someone well educated like you still bleive U.S.A media ! ! Al Qaeda or ABU NAJI never said People couldn't shave or smoke. never did action for that. The most of what you said are from G Bush media witch is made for stupid American People.

My friend 'Donald' linked his name to "Jihad Watch," in irony (I suppose) since that site is antijihadist. Anyway, I replied:

'Donald', I don't know what a "G Bush media witch" is, but your entire comment sounds rather 'occult' and therefore hard to understand. Anyway, I was reading Michael Totten, not George Bush.

Not smoke or shave? The smoking ban was news to me in Totten's report, but the shaving ban wherever Islamists come to power is well-known.

Now, I don't know that my friend 'Donald' is really Al Qaeda, but he certainly sounds like an Islamist sympathizer. He's not an American, nor is he a native speaker of English despite the fact that he's based in the U.K. (and I have his IP address). He reached my site through a Google search for "Abu Bakr Naji," author of The Management of Savagery, an Al Qaeda blueprint for ruling over areas conquered through military jihad, and he spent 24 minutes (and one second, but who's counting?) reading my blog, even troubling himself to take five page views. That shows dedication and a desire to judge my blog on its merits rather than an impulse to react in outraged indignation.

Fifty points for Slytherin!

However, given the low quality of my friend's comment -- the conspiratorial worldview, the immature name-calling, the ungrounded claims -- I must, regrettably, deduct 60 points, thereby resulting in a 10-point loss for Slytherin.

Sorry about that, 'Mouthboy'...

Islamists: Mismanagement of Savagery?

Anbar Province

Al Qaeda's Mismanagement of Savagery?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some readers may recall my post of July 18, 2006, in which I discuss Abu Bakr Naji's plan for seizing territory and establishing Islamic law as a means of establishing the Caliphate.

In that post, I used a translation by William McCants (Fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) of Naji's text, The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which The Umma Will Pass.

Allow me to restate what Naji has written:

[The condition of a region of savagery] is more nebulous than chaos, in view of its corresponding historical precedents and the modern world and in light of wealth, greed, various forces, and human nature, and its form which we will discuss in this study. Before its submission to the administration [i.e., the management of savagery], the region of savagery will be in a situation resembling the situation of Afghanistan before the control of the Taliban, a region submitting to the law of the jungle in its primitive form, whose good people and even the wise among the evildoers yearn for someone to manage this savagery. (page 27)

This Hobbesian state is something that the Islamists themselves first bring about, after which -- as a sort of 'manufactured heroism' -- they provide order:

As for a detailed definition, it differs according to the goals and nature of the individuals in the administration. If we picture its initial form, we find that it consists of the management of peoples' needs with regard to the provision of food and medical treatment, preservation of security and justice among the people who live in the regions of savagery, securing the boarders [sic: "borders"] by means of groups that deter anyone who tries to assault the regions of savagery, as well as setting up defensive fortifications.

(The stage of) managing the people's needs with regard to food and medical treatment may advance to (the stage of) being responsible for offering services like education and so forth. And the preservation of security and securing the borders may advance to working to expand of the region of savagery. (page 26)

On of the things that one does to manage the savagery is:

- Establishing Sharia justice among the people who live in the regions of savagery (page 27)

How well does this 'manufactured heroism' work in practice? Not so well, apparently, as shown through this report by Michael Totten about Al Qaeda's experience in Iraq's Anbar Province:

Al Qaeda was initially welcomed by many Iraqis in Ramadi because they said they were there to fight the Americans. The spirit of resistance against foreign occupiers was strong. But the Iraqis got a lot more in the bargain than simply resistance....

"Market Street [the main street downtown] was completely controlled by Al Qaeda," [Marine] Lieutenant [Jonathan] Welch said. "They rolled down the streets, pointed guns at people, and said we are in charge. They had crazy requirements for the locals. They weren't allowed to cut their hair. Girls were banned from going to school. They couldn't shave or smoke. One guy defiantly lit a cigarette and they shot him four times"....

After Al Qaeda took over Ramadi, the local government was replaced with terrorists who only cared about fighting Americans and violently suppressing Iraqis. Al Qaeda was in charge, but it wouldn't be accurate to say they were the new government. None of the basic city government services functioned. There was no electricity, no running water, no telephone service, and no garbage collection. Every single local business closed down. The city could not have been any more broken....

In October of last year the tribal leaders in the province, including some who previously were against the Americans, formed a movement to reject the savagery Al Qaeda had brought to their region. Some of them were supremely unhappy with the American presence since fighting exploded in the province’s second largest city of Fallujah, but Al Qaeda proved to be even more sinister from their point of view. Al Qaeda did not come as advertised. They were militarily incapable of expelling the American Army and Marines. And they were worse oppressors than even Saddam Hussein. The leaders of Anbar Province saw little choice but to openly declare them enemies and do whatever it took to expunge them. They called their new movement Sahawa al Anbar, or the Anbar Awakening.

The struggle against Al Qaeda in Anbar is far from over, but what Totten's report shows is that the Islamist assumption about manufacturing their own heroism through establishing the savagery from which they then rescue people will not work.

People aren't as stupid as Islamist intellectuals like Abu Bakr Naji seem to think.