The strategic split on the role of the ghazis — and an American response
Amir Taheri on the split among the leading theoreticians of Islamic terrorism, that is whether to focus attacks on the Dar al-Harb or the Dar al-Islam:
[T]hese groups, including those that hit London and Egypt this month, subscribe to the most radical version of the al Qaeda world-view. Within that worldview some theoreticians of terror argue in favor of a regional strategy. They want the Islamic “ghazis” (holy raiders) to focus on winning power in as many Muslim countries as possible before moving to a strategy of global conquest for Islam.
They have identified Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt as the most immediately vulnerable nations. Among supporters of that analysis one finds individuals and groups that, though ideological siblings, do not necessarily maintain organizational links. Pakistan’s principal Islamist figure, Fazlur Rahman; the Taliban’s “emir” Mullah Muhammad Omar; the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s No. 2; the Sudanese Islamist Hassan al-Turabi, and Yussuf Qaradawi, the Qatar-based preacher share this view.
But that analysis is opposed by other theoreticians of terror including bin Laden, Abu-Hamza al-Masri and Mullah Haqqani, who favor direct and spectacular attacks against the major “infidel” powers, especially the U.S. and Britain. Their argument is that the “infidel” can be terrorized into fleeing from the Muslim world, thus leaving the local regimes vulnerable to attacks by the “ghazis.” In this reading the immediate task of the “ghazis” is to force the United States and its allies to withdraw from the targeted regional states. The latest attacks in London and Sharm el-Sheikh were authored by those who share the strategy advocated by this second group of terrorist theoreticians.
This is clear from the code-names used by the groups that have claimed responsibility for the attacks. In the case of the London attacks the code-name used was Abu-Hufs al-Masri, the al Qaeda military chief of staff who was killed by the Allies when liberating Afghanistan. The Sharm el-Sheikh attacks have been claimed by a group using the code-name of the late Abdullah Azzam, a Saudi-Palestinian who became the godfather of “Arab Afghans” fighting the Red Army in the 1980s.
The groups behind the latest attacks in London and Sharm el-Sheikh are motivated neither by anger over the liberation of Iraq nor any sufferings caused by poverty and/or identity crisis. They have a clear, coldly calculated strategy aimed at changing the regional balance of power in their own favor, by driving the Western “infidels” out, so that they could seize control of several Muslim countries — some with immense oil resources. And that would be the first step toward putting Islam back on the path of world conquest for the first time since the Ottomans abandoned their siege of Vienna in the 16th century.
Any show of weakness by the West in meeting that challenge would only help clinch the current debate within the Islamist circles in favor of those who advocate the most radical terrorist options.
Normally this space is not an advocate of large-scale government intervention in the marketplace. However, given that the GDP of the Arab world (minus oil revenues) is less than Finland, wouldn’t it make sense to have an equivalent of the 1960’s space program to achieve total energy independence by 2020? Obviously that is not a panacea, but at a start it would dry up Wahabbi funding of, um, anything, and help further expose the dreadful economic consequences of living under sharia.
(Apollo 14: Alan Shepard by Edgar D. Mitchell, NASA)