Post by peterd on Dec 21, 2007 14:22:27 GMT -8
On February 16, 2003, an Islamist website posted the contents of an audiocassette of a sermon by Osama bin Laden. The sermon naturally created an uproar in the media. Particular attention was paid to the last sentence, which was especially curious and somewhat alarming. In this sentence, bin Laden quoted a few lines from a poem:
"O Lord, when death arrives, let it not be upon a bier covered with green shrouds,
"Rather, let my grave be in the belly of an eagle, tranquil in the sky, among hovering eagles."
Various commentaries appeared in the media by experts in various fields – such as Middle East specialists, intelligence experts, experts on counter-terrorism, and so on – who proposed different interpretations. Some suggested that these words hinted at an imminent aerial attack, along the lines of 9/11, with the eagle symbolizing the hijacked airplane flown by suicide terrorists. Others maintained that the eagle symbolized not the attack itself but the target of the attack – not the aircraft, but the United States, whose emblem is an eagle. Some termed this sermon "bin Laden's testament" based on an apparent reference to the expressed desire for burial in "the belly of an eagle."
These interpretations, however, are way off the mark. When we at MEMRI translated the sermon in full, it became apparent that bin Laden was referring neither to an American eagle nor to a hijacked airplane. The poet quoted by bin Laden yearns to die a hero's death as a shahid (martyr) on the battlefield and to be consumed by an eagle, which would then bear him up to heaven, where he would reach the throne of Allah. The eighth-century Arab who authored the poem was a member of a fanatical militant sect of Islam.(17)
I have mentioned bin Laden’s sermon in order to highlight two central characteristics of modern jihadist Islam. The first is identification with the early generations of Islam, the first hundred years of its Islamic history. It is impossible to understand contemporary extremist Islam if one does not regard it as a religious movement whose members strive to follow the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in this early period of Islam. They believe that if they act out of faith and readiness for self-sacrifice, like the Islamic warriors of the Prophet's era, they will prevail over armies superior to them in both numbers and equipment. Early Islam – the era of Islam's far-reaching conquests – is the exemplary era of Islam and the source of their inspiration.
Another motif that runs through this part of bin Laden's sermon is death for the sake of Allah. This too is a prominent motif in jihadist Islam, which is manifest, for example, in the motto of the Hamas movement: “Allah is our goal, the Messenger our model, the Koran our constitution, jihad our path, and martyrdom for the sake of Allah our aspiration.” At an end-of-year ceremony in a Hamas kindergarten in Gaza, the children, dressed in camouflage uniform, enthusiastically chanted this slogan.(18)
Islamic zealots speak boastfully of their “love of death,” contrasting themselves with their enemies (in particular the Jews), who love life. In this context, they frequently quote the words spoken by the Muslim military commander Khaled bin Al-Walid to a Persian commander on the eve of the battle between the Muslim and the Persian armies: “I am bringing with me warriors who love death, while you love life.”(19)
REACTION TO THE DECLINE OF MUSLIM POWER
The engrained belief in Muslim superiority was seriously shaken during the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the Russians, and when various Muslim-ruled lands fell under non-Muslim rule: Algeria and Tunisia were conquered by the French, Egypt and Sudan by the British, and the majority of the Balkan countries achieved independence from the Ottomans. In World War I, the Ottoman Empire was totally defeated by Christian powers, and subsequently, in 1924, Turkey's reformist secular leader Kemal Ataturk abolished the Caliphate. To Muslim eyes, it appeared that history had deviated from its predestined course.(20)
It was the disturbing recognition that Muslim power was inferior to that of Europe, the West, or Christendom (however the "other side" is perceived) that shaped the outlook of modern Muslim intellectuals, both extremist and moderate. The question that faced, and that continues to face, Arab intellectuals and political leaders was how the Arab peoples, which constitute the heart of Islam both historically and ideologically, could regain their rightful place in history.
Ideological and political answers to this question are of two kinds. First, there are the answers proposed by the Islamist school of thought. The Islamists argued that the decline in Muslim power did not stem from any flaw in Islam, but rather from the fact that the Muslims had abandoned Islam. Their maxim was: "There is no fault in Islam; the flaw lies with the Muslims." According to them, when Muslims return to the original, pure Islam, all the ills of Muslim society will disappear, and the Muslim nation, led by the Arabs under the banner of Islam, will be in a position to fulfill its historical mission. They call to return to the Islam of the early generations, known in Arabic as al-salaf. This stream is therefore called "Salafi Islam." The Salafi stream is represented in the Arab world by two movements: The first is Wahhabism, founded by Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) in the middle of the 18th century, which is the dominant school of Islam in Saudi Arabia; the second is the Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 in Alexandria, Egypt, which today has branches in other Arab countries as well.
Answers of a different kind were proposed by the nationalist school of thought.(21) The concept of nationalism took root in the Arab world in general, and in Egypt in particular, in two different forms: local nationalism, defined by country, and pan-Arab nationalism, based on the unity of language and culture throughout the Arab world. In the contest between local, single-state nationalism and pan-Arab nationalism, the latter had a much stronger appeal, due to the close connection between Arab identity and Islam. The proponents of pan-Arabism believed that the unification of all Arabs would enable the Arab countries to regain their rightful place in history. The influence of pan-Arabism grew after World War II and peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. Gamal 'Abd Al-Nasser's Arab Socialism and the Ba'th movement were both based on the concept of pan-Arab nationalism as the foundation of the Arabs' collective identity. The ideological and political differences between the nationalists on the one hand and the Salafists on the other (both the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood) were vast.
Salafism – both that of the Wahhabis and that of the Muslim Brotherhood – derives its inspiration from the works of 14th-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya, who called to purge Islam of all impurities, stressing the centrality of jihad as a personal obligation of each and every Muslim in times when Islam is under threat. According to Ibn Taymiyya, a Muslim ruler who commits grave sins or applies alien laws (i.e., non-Islamic laws) is no better than an apostate (murtadd) and should be put to death. Hence, war against such rulers is a religious duty, namely jihad.(22)
The 1967 Six-Day War, bringing with it the collapse of the Nasserite vision, was a cataclysmic event for the Arabs: an utter defeat, which naturally had religious significance. As far as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists were concerned, the collapse of the Arab armies, although distressing, was understandable and even justified. In their eyes, it was the Arabs' punishment for having abandoned Islam, and it offered an opportunity for repentance and rectification. For the Muslim Brotherhood and the other Islamists, the 1967 military debacle – even more than the defeat of 1948 – proved the worthlessness of secular Arab nationalism, Nasserist and Ba'athist alike. The slogan "Islam is the solution" was now being proclaimed with greater force. But the way towards implementing this slogan in practice had not yet been found. The Islamists had great difficulty in living up to their own ideals when it came to jihad against the infidels inside and outside the Muslim world. It took unique historical circumstances to bring about the return of jihad.