October 2002

ESSAY

Islamists Abroad
The Global Jihad movement in the West

By Reuven Paz

Radical Islamists are forming a transnational movement

The development of new forms of Islamist movements and ideologies, often called the jihadist movement, has brought Middle Eastern doctrines and political groupings to other parts of the world, notably Europe. This factor was both made more visible and intensified by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America and subsequent events. Wide-ranging investigations uncovered a large infrastructure of radical Islamist terrorist cells, groups supporting violence, and sympathisers with these viewpoints.

For many decades, of course, Western ideas and organisations have been transferred to the Middle East, but now this process has become a two-way street. Those who study the Middle East must now also take into account events, leaders, organisations, and doctrines which have their feet solidly planted on European soil while their thoughts and actions are in large part aimed at Middle Eastern outcomes.

On one level, this new feature can be related to the familiar realm of exile politics. Many of these groupings are in fact created and influenced by individuals or political organisations which seek to have a direct influence on events in the Middle East. At the same time, though, there is an attempt to mobilise and shape the activities of European Muslims to make them a factor in the region’s political issues. These Middle Eastern activities range from the development of radical Islamist websites - now based in such countries as Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Poland to the development of entire political parties and intended "second fronts" in fighting Middle Eastern conflicts.

Equally, there is a question of how Muslim identity in Europe will relate to Middle Eastern issues. There are many factors involved in this process. A Muslim intelligentsia has slowly emerged to call for recognition of the Muslim presence, triggering debates in European public opinion. Coordination among Muslims in Europe is perhaps encouraged by the unification of Europe itself. Religious solidarity also bridges ethnic and national divisions among them. There is also, of course, a more moderate "liberal" Islam which parallels the historical trend of Christianity in Europe but its influence on Muslim publics in Europe seems relatively weak. The biggest-selling books in Islamic bookstores are those dealing with Islam’s fundamentals in accordance with Salafi (purifying and extremist re-interpretations of Islamic law) trends in the Arab world.

Three distinct but interrelated trends have an impact on European Muslims as they do on Middle Eastern Muslims. First, there is traditional Islam, which is accepted in some form or another by the relatively silent majority of Muslims. Second, there is the politicised doctrine of Islamic movements that seek a state governed by Islamic law (Shari’a). These groups recruit support through political efforts alongside social welfare and cultural activities. Finally, there is radical Islamism which demands fulfilment of violent jihad as a duty, rejecting rival interpretations and making war on governments even when their rulers are Muslims.

The Culture of Global Jihad

The term Global Jihad characterises the latest trend among Middle Eastern Islamist groups. While previously emphasis was usually put on revolutions within specific countries trying to overthrow their societies and regimes, priority was now to be put on a direct struggle against the United States, Israel, and at times European states.

Among the important elements inspiring this development were:

–The failure of revolutionary movements to attain victory through staging revolutions in different Arab states.

–Difficulties for both individuals and societies in coping with Western modernisation and its values, both for Muslims living in the West and those in Arab societies affected by it.

–Relative ignorance on the part of many young Muslims regarding elements of Islam as a result of spreading secularism. This allowed them to accept claims that certain heretical ideas were actually the only proper form of Islam.

–The growing transnational links among different parts of the Muslim world, both in the greater Middle East area and among intermingled Muslims in Europe. This is partly the product of improved Western technology, especially communications.

–A series of conflicts which seemed to pit Muslims against non-Muslims in such places outside the Arab world as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kashmir.

–The collapse of the Soviet bloc and discrediting of Communism and the renewal of old nationalist ideologies and conflicts.

–The failure of Arab nationalism to solve the problems of their societies or to win victories over foreign foes.

–The shift of the centre of gravity of Islamist activity from the Arab world to the margins of the Middle East or to Europe following the success of Arab governments in countering this radical phenomenon in their homelands.

–The liberal attitude of European governments which accepted Muslim immigrants or refugees and tolerated their religious and political activities without trying to impose on them a set of demands for assimilation or conformity.

In many ways, this new approach can be called a counter-globalisation in which Islam rather than Westernisation is to be the dominant force

One of the best definitions of Global Jihad was written by Omar Abu Omar, alias Abu Qutadah, a Palestinian living under the protection of political asylum in London since 1993 and one of the phenomenon’s main ideologues. The Jihad movements are "those groups and organisations that were established in order to eliminate the evil heretic regimes in the apostate countries and to revive the Islamic government that will gather the nation under the Islamic Caliphate."

In addition, Abu Omar claims true Jihad movements differ from other Islamic groups in Muslim countries that "seek political legitimacy of the ‘heretic’ regimes." They do not seek to reform the existing regimes but to eliminate them. Its vision is of a future "world totally controlled by Islam." The movements "should open new arenas for the Jihad outside their countries." This required unity to wage the battle under a single commander, whom all other leaders should serve.

A short while after the September 2001 attacks in the United States, a Palestinian Islamist scholar published a paper entitled, "The Great Qur’an predicts the destruction of the United States, and the drowning of the American army." The West under US leadership, has moved, says the author, through a process of "Pharaohisation," based on the Qur’anic story (of Biblical origin) of the evil Pharaoh. Egyptian Islamist groups at times referred to Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar al-Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak as the "Pharaoh." Thus, this terminology provides a useful symbol of the movement’s transformation of the enemy from an internal to a foreign foe.

The author writes that, according to one Qur’anic verse, Pharaoh was only the first of his kind, a series that would continue in each generation until the day of resurrection. The present Pharaoh is the United States. In combating this evil, the author continues, "The one who represents these days the eternal truth is Sheikh Osama bin Laden." The conclusion is that the end of the United States is very close. Indeed, "the United States will not exist to see the year of 2004!" This kind of literature became popular in Islamic circles following the September attacks.

This booklet was the start of a series of books, articles, religious rulings, and other forms of writings published primarily in numerous websites over the Internet. That source has become increasingly important in shaping the Jihadist movement. The most prominent of them have been two books that might serve also as fatwa - Islamic rulings - for the supporters of Global Jihad. One is "The base of legitimacy for the destruction that occurred in America," by the Saudi radical scholar Abd al-Aziz bin Salih al-Jarbou`, published in November 2001.

The other was by the above-mentioned Palestinian radical scholar, Omar Abu Omar, who dropped out of sight from London in January 2002, and following their investigations, was later accused by the Spanish authorities of being the political leader of al-Qa‘eda in Europe. In April 2002, Abu Qutadah’s fatwa, "The Islamic Legal Perception of the September 11th Events," was placed on one of the radical websites of the Global Jihad culture. His main motive in legally justifying the September attacks was to present them as part of a religious war between the Muslims and the West:

The conflict is therefore, not just between this interpretation of Islam and Western culture, but also between the two different Islamic worldviews. It is not only a threat to Western or European societies, but to Muslim communities in the West as well.

The general culture of a Global Jihad movement is not unique to a certain state, language, or community, though it has been dominated by Arab thinkers and activists. Even the pro al-Qaeda Islamist groups in non-Arab parts of the Muslim world -such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Chechnya, western China, or Pakistan–use mainly Arabic in their messages and even in their websites. Moreover, despite their conscious internationalism, the Egyptian, Saudi, Algerian, Palestinian, Yemeni, and other Arab elements in this culture of Global Jihad, cannot really release themselves from focusing on conflicts in their homelands. Global Jihad then, even for European-based groups, constantly becomes oriented toward Middle Eastern issues and struggles.

This factor is illustrated in the book by the Egyptian Islamist, regarded as the right-hand man of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The book Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner was at least partly written after the September attacks. Zawahiri, who is also the leader of the Egyptian Jihad group, argues that the Jihad movement is the best way of promoting a revolution within Egypt and for coping with that movement’s past failures.

The West as a base for Middle East Islamism

The effort to develop a Western base for Middle East Islamist groups, free from the repressive activities of Arab regimes, is rather ironic since the movement is based on the notion of Jihad as a religious duty, a war aimed at a perceived Global cultural conspiracy against Islam as a religion, culture, and way of life.

This interconnection is also furthered by an emerging doctrine of the "non-territorial Islamic state." This doctrine views Muslim communities as a kind of loose-knit Islamic state. Islamic scholars in the United Kingdom have long provided a basis for this view by emphasising the cultural, economic, and political consolidation of these Muslim communities.

Long before the establishment of groups like Al-Qaeda, Islamic and Islamist movements regularly spoke of a conspiracy against Islam and advocated attacks on the United States, Israel, and Western culture. Anti-Western and anti-Jewish feelings have long proliferated in the Muslim world. What has been new, however, was the new movement’s success in translating that doctrine into actual terrorist activity. The success of these efforts was, in turn, based on recruitment and preparation in European Muslim communities and by fund-raising among Muslims in the United States.

Islamist websites, like that of Britain's al-Muhajiroun, provide a rallying point for the Global Jihad movement

While only a small minority have joined or given direct support to violent Jihadist groups, what is equally significant is the ability of these ideas’ advocates to plant their notion of a global cultural war in Arab and Muslim societies, convincing many in the region that Islam is under attack. Thus, concepts synonymous in Western political culture with terrorism or political violence - such as Jihad, Takfir (refutation or excommunication), Istishhad (Martyrdom, including by suicide), and Shahid (Martyr) - are now viewed by many in the Islamic world as religious duties.

What is especially remarkable is that these concepts would not have been accepted, or were viewed quite differently, only a decade or so ago in Muslim societies and less than two decades ago in even Islamist circles. Today, the central feeling among most Islamists-from those who carry out terrorist acts to those who provide a supportive atmosphere for such activity - is that of being under siege. Thus, all means of self-defence are justified in their eyes, particularly when these means are granted religious legitimacy.

Rather than undermine such notions through experience with the realities of Western society and intentions, the interaction in the West between Muslim immigrants from various countries, cultures and ideologies, has greatly facilitated the growth of this doctrine. Such interaction has promoted both solidarity and a shared sense of a global threat to Islam and the Muslims. These factors have in turn led to the doctrine of the culture of Global Jihad and to the brotherhood felt by its adherents. As the worldwide investigation of the September 11 attacks and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network has shown, this new doctrine resulted in a new operational development - the establishment of multinational and multi-organisational militant and terrorist cells among Muslim immigrants in the West. Apparently, some of these cells in Europe were just as responsible for planning and carrying out terrorist attacks as their commanders and leaders in Afghanistan.

Terrorist of alienation

Another emerging development among Islamist groups is the radicalism brought on by social ills and alienation - that is, terrorism motivated primarily by elements such as xenophobia (both by and against Muslims), growing unemployment, economic circumstances, difficulties in coping with Western modernisation, the changing and dismantling of traditional values and family ties, and so forth. For example, in an unsigned 1991 article appearing in its main journal, the Palestinian Hamas offered the following introduction of sorts to the doctrine of Global Jihad:

This rhetoric would clearly appeal to those already afflicted by a sense of hopelessness or resentment. The implicit alienation in such statements becomes all the more striking when one considers that the September 11 hijackers lived in relative comfort in the United States or Europe for long periods of time before carrying out their operation, yet were apparently undeterred from their plans. Of course, other groups of immigrants are susceptible to social ills as well. Yet, the growing Islamist activity among Muslim immigrants, along with their shared notion of Global struggle against the West, have encouraged a more rapid spread of radical doctrines among younger Muslim generations, and mainly among those of Arab origin.

Furthermore, the profiles of many of the people arrested in the West following the September 11 attack - most on suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda are quite different from those of the typical Arab extremists in Afghanistan or Chechnya. The former are generally more educated and familiar with Western culture. Yet, instead of using this familiarity for personal benefit and for greater integration with Western culture - as the predecessors of this social type did in the past - these "terrorists of alienation" hold on to their hostility and exploit the weaknesses of the societies in which they reside.

This process is not new in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Some university students and graduates have always tended to adopt radical Islamic positions and fight the regimes of their homelands. In many cases they view themselves as social elites who must sacrifice themselves for the sake of their society. This sense does not change when they live outside their homelands.

Aside from these direct efforts of Islamist involvement to expand their influence, their success in both the Muslim world and the West is due to changes in what can be called the Islamic "atmosphere"-that is, the often indirect framework of support created by groups that are not connected to political violence or terrorism, some of whom even publicly condemn such methods. These groups, mostly of the school of the Muslim Brotherhood or Sufi groups, carry out the vast majority of political, social, cultural and educational work in the name of Islam, both in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in Europe and in the West. They may transmit attitudes and interpretations of Islam in which more extremist and violent Islamist groups thrive; they serve as a greenhouse of sorts for radical groups and for the growth of views hostile toward the West or Western culture.

A number of specific Middle Eastern religious scholars have paved the way for justifying the export of the Middle East to the West, and in particular of Islamist thinking to Muslim communities there. Hasan al-Turabi in Sudan and the Tunisian Rashed al-Ghanushi who lives in exile in London, led a line of thought accepting Arab and Muslim emigration to Europe. But they were determined to create, or recreate, those communities in their own ideological image. They rejected any idea of compromise with cultural or political Western values by the new communities.

In attempting to isolate Muslim groups in Europe from the majority population around them, these thinkers and movements not only indoctrinated them with Islamist views but also created new and radical interpretations of Islamic behaviour. These had appeal to some youngsters whose knowledge of traditional normative Islam was deficient precisely because they had grown up in non-Muslim societies.

An example for this new radical trend could use a recent fatwa of the Saudi radical scholar Abd al-Mun‘im Halimah Abu Basir on "The Rule of Seeking Political Asylum in the Infidel World." According to him "This question has occupied a growing number of Muslim youth, which hate the [idea of] living in Western countries" and fear "losing their religion and belief" there but must seek refuge there in order to save themselves "from killing and torture" by Arab regimes. Moreover, he continues, they know that "Islamic law orders immigration from the infidel world to the Islamic one." Yet he justifies such emigration: "Since there is no true Islamic country in our times that could secure Islamic life in safety... he is allowed in case of emergency to immigrate to the infidel world....But he should purify himself as much as possible from the heretic culture of that world."

Following the September attacks in the United States, Abu Basir, one of the leading scholars supporting the ideology of al-Qaeda, published a book of Islamic rulings on issues of immigration. Abu Basir uses the Islamic principle of "the necessities allow the prohibited." Just as Muslims can drink wine or eat pork in order to save them from starving, so they can immigrate to the Western "infidel countries" to save themselves. But he goes even further: immigration is allowed also "in order to enforce the Muslims and weaken the infidels. One of the goals of immigration is the revival of the duty of Jihad and enforcement of their power over the infidels. Immigration and Jihad go together. One is the consequence of the other and dependent upon it. The continuance of the one is dependent upon the continuance of the other."

Understanding the ideology and practice of the culture of Global Jihad and its movements is no longer simply a matter of looking at individual groups attempting to topple regimes in their homelands. The changes that have been wrought on the Islamic map over the past few decades and during the post-September 11 anti-terrorism campaign, may lead at least part of the next generation of Muslims to seek more solidarity with the forces that lead the culture of Global Jihad.

The apparent "headquarters" of the Global Jihad movement can shift from Afghanistan to somewhere else. If in the past this centre was transferred from the Arab world to Afghanistan and Central Asia, Western success in post-September 11 campaigns in those areas may lead to another shift: to the heart of the West, to marginal regions (e.g. the Philippines), or to both. But a search for such a central location detracts from an understanding of the relationship between this broad movement and those ideologues and groups in the Middle East which provide its basic justifications, support base, and often its recruits as well.

Historically, one could argue, anti-Western feeling in the Muslim Middle East has arisen from a failure to cope with the effects of Western modernisation. The growth of Western military power, economic systems, technology, new ideas, and organisational methods, often defeated Middle Eastern societies, throwing them on the defensive. In the current era, this situation continues, though often with a more important role for cultural products. Apparently, the West keeps advancing in power and even world hegemony, while the Arab and Muslim world - despite oil wealth and Arab nationalism - have been unable to respond effectively.

The continuous sense of retreat felt by many Muslims during the second half of the twentieth century brought impatience that led to violence. Over the past few years, the doctrine of long-term social revolution - expounded by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab World and by Jama‘at-I-Islam in India, Pakistan, and the non-Arab Muslim World - lost much of its appeal for these Muslims. They were searching for an immediate improvement in their social conditions and therefore readily adopted the notion of Jihad as a more effective-and unifying-response than revolutions in specific local countries.

Being opposed to the existing states, the Jihad movement is not generally speaking state-sponsored. Focusing on direct and immediate revolutionary activity, the movement’s main groups (or factions of other groups which support it) have purposefully avoided and neglected social welfare activity. To the extent that Hamas and Hezbollah are involved in this broader movement, they are exceptions on both of these points. Since their violence is directed mainly against Israel, they have attracted support from Arab states and from Iran. They have also engaged in extensive social welfare work to mobilise their respective constituencies.

Again, it should be emphasised that despite the shift of some Islamist groups to more global activity, their goal still remained the establishment of what they perceive as the true Islamic state in the heart of the Muslim world. Since the hardcore of the Global Jihad movement is composed primarily of Arab Islamists, the loss of the Afghan base might bring them back to square one: their homelands. This is what Zawahiri proposed in his book of memoirs summing up the experience of the Islamist movement since the 1980s. He wrote:

Consequently, a new topic for those researching the Middle East, as well as Europe, should be to examine these emerging leaders, movements, and doctrines in comparison and with regard to their interaction to Middle Eastern counterparts. This should include the development of these movements during the 1990s; the social evolution of the immigrant communities; and the growing role of internet websites as a central source and means of communication for radical Islamists.

While linked to problems of terrorism and threat evaluations, this study should be conducted on its own merits–without ideological preconceptions–in order to provide the most accurate possible picture of this new phenomenon as well as its links to the Middle East.

Dr Reuven Paz is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and director of its Project for the Research of Islamist Movements. A longer version of this article appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) published by GLORIA, at the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya. For a free Subscription to MERIA write to gloria@idc.ac.il.

Copyright © AIJAC 2002
Last Updated 2 October, 2002