Al Qaeda and Muslim Apostates
Peter Bergen has made an obvious but important point about Jihadism: its victims are often Muslims. That's not an accident, or even a matter of collateral damage.
In the Jihadist ideology, Western interlopers in the Middle East are "crusaders" determined to exterminate Islam, worthy of nothing but death. But worse yet are Muslims who do not join the battle, and particularly those who adopt Western customs and values like pluralism and equality for women. They are well down the road to apostasy, which, according to a radical strain of Islam, is generally a capital offense.
Since time immemorial, terrorists claiming to fight for the liberation of any national, ethnic or religious group have typically targeted members of their own group who collaborate with the enemy. It's a way to polarize the struggle while intimidating non-terrorists into accepting their leadership of the group.
Religious terrorists have often rationalized the wholesale murder of "lapsed" members of their own communities as an exercise in spiritual purification. As recently as the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Nationalist military leaders summarily executed (nominally Catholic) prisoners-of-war after priests heard their confessions, "saving" them from damnation and denying them the opportunity for further apostasy. I'm sure there have been similar twisted impulses in most other relgious traditions.
So there's nothing distinctive to Islam about targeting co-religionists along with "infidels" for violence and death. But it's happening now, and it needs to be understood and condemned for what it is.
Religious terrorists have often rationalized the wholesale murder of "lapsed" members of their own communities as an exercise in spiritual purification. As recently as the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Nationalist military leaders summarily executed (nominally Catholic) prisoners-of-war after priests heard their confessions, "saving" them from damnation and denying them the opportunity for further apostasy. I'm sure there have been similar twisted impulses in most other relgious traditions.
So there's nothing distinctive to Islam about targeting co-religionists along with "infidels" for violence and death. But it's happening now, and it needs to be understood and condemned for what it is.
Advertisement
Comments (10)
It's rather difficult reading, but a good source to understand this way of thinking, particularly the concept of the "new jahiliyya" (literally "ignorance," in the sense of the pre-Islamic "ignorance" of God's will), is Sayyid Qutb's Ma'alim fi-l-tariq (Milestones), which is available online in translation here.
It's important to keep in mind, though, that the view that a large number of Muslims should be considered apostates is still a relatively radical view, held by a small number of people and very much outside the mainstream, even among a lot of people who, for example, would see attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq as legitimate resistance.
July 13, 2005 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The tactic of terrorist groups executing those they consider collaborators is not limited to those groups with a religious ideology or agenda. Since at least the 1970s, the Provisional IRA, with a somewhat Marxist and hence anti-religious agenda, executed collaborators. They also shot or physically punished people in the community for crimes on the grounds that the alternative would be using the illegitimate, in their eyes, institutions of the constabulary and the courts. During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong used to amputate the arms of some villagers who had accepted innoculations from U.S. forces or agents of the South Vietnamese government.
I agree with Ed Kilgore that we need to understand these tactics for what they are. They are part of the conflict between almost any group that is waging a terrorist campaign or guerilla warfare and an enemy with an advantage in conventional military assets. Simply chalking it up as a feature of Islamic extremism is both too facile and inaccurate. Rather, they should lead us to what is the key to any such struggle, the battle for the sympathies of the vast bulk of the populace which will not commit terrorist or guerilla acts themselves but which may or may not side with them.
July 13, 2005 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iraqs former prime minister Allawi stated that civil war has begun or will soon begin. While questionable, it is plausible.
It is no secret that elements of the insurgency have been butchering Shia since the beginning. In the last few months the lauded restraint of the Shia has diminished and massacres go in the other direction. It has been reported that in the fundamentalist stronghold of Basra hundreds of Sunni have been murdered. Frequent complaint that the elite units of the new military are grabbing Sunni, torturing and kill them are heard.
From the insurgency's point of view civil war is ideal. For the Saddamites it offers the chance to force all Sunni to unite in a desperate battle for survival, a battle the old guard thinks they'll win. For the Jihadists the possibilities go further.
Murder of Sunni will inflame much of the Islamic world. The flow of volunteers from the outside will multiply as will funds. It will not be difficult to set off bombs in Lebanon to try and enflame the conflict. Iran will easily be drawn in.
The United States will be in a very tough position. To the extent it seals off borders and continues battling the insurgents it will be percieved as aiding the Shia, in the intensity of things claims that this is part of a plot to destroy true Islam will seem increasingly believable to populatons inclined towards conspiracy theory.
To the extent it trie to rein in the Shia it risks turning the elite units of it's new military against it. And the south is lightly occupied, angered Shia could play hell with logistics and the ability to mantain already strained forces.
The Kurds are almost guaranteed to take a few more steps towards independance and Turks already angered by the murder of Sunni are likely to be less patient. Already Russia and China are putting pressure on central Asian states to close the American bases. Fed by fears that the United States is overthrowing governments there has been at least some nodding on the part of these nations. A situation in which the United States is seen as allied against Sunnis and also as weak and unable to defend the places it puts troops means that we could lose major lines to Afghanistan. Which leaves Pakistan.
The thing all the insurgents have to do is keep picking at the wounds. They have years, we will grow wearier with each one. It seems that the potential for civil war is close and if the killing continues it is difficult to see that it can be reduced.
That the results could be apocalytic with the entire mideast inflamed, much of the reast of the Islamic world too. Perhaps oil supplies shattered as civil unrest and conflict with Iran sweep Saudi Arabia...
This may be farfetched, but it may not be. To me it seems more realistic than the model of change that motivated the administration to venture into this place.
July 13, 2005 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is an excellent discussion and one which I am thinking begins to deal with the real issues. I guess my immediate thought that we in America have many homegrown terrorists acting very similar. There are a lot of "gangs" on American streets in cities large and small. And somehow it all seems to have a certain historical perspective from which there might be similar lessons to be learned. Were the Native Americans seen as terrorists to the settlers during the manifest destiny era? It seems, on first thought, there might be some similarities here.
July 13, 2005 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Specifically the British suicide bombers remind me of the Columbine school shooters, albeit more deadly by virtue of being linked to the jihad.
July 13, 2005 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's an interesting article in the Washington Post in which the University of Chicago's Robert Pape says data shows that Islamic fundamentalism isn't the true nature of the problem:
"Suicide terrorism is not so much committed by religious fanatics looking for a quick trip to paradise as it is by a variety of secular and religious individuals who fear that their societies will be unalterably transformed by a religiously motivated occupier," says Pape, who was sought out last week by CNN and Fox in the wake of the London terrorist attacks.
The "presumed connection" between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism has fueled the U.S. foreign policy project of transforming Muslim societies into secular democracies, sometimes militarily, Pape notes. But "the sustained presence of heavy American combat forces in Muslim countries," he warns in the book, "is likely to increase the odds of the next 9/11."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/0 7/09/AR2005070901425.html
July 13, 2005 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a point I've been making here repeatedly -- attempting to "transform" the Middle East by trying to impose Western values by force is just going to drive more people toward the jihadi ideology.
We really need to drive home the point on how counterproductive this is. Unfortunately, the tradition of "American exceptionalism" gives us a major point of weakness in being able to understand this -- that others might not want such "liberation," but rather see it as a threat which has to be resisted by all means available.
July 13, 2005 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Point of information: all four recognized schools of Islamic jurisprudence maintain that apostacy should be punishable by death. It isn't a radical idea at all.
July 13, 2005 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm aware of that.
What is radical, though, is the belief that a large number of those who consider themselves Muslims should be considered apostates.
July 14, 2005 6:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I mean, they are (in a deluded way) media savay. If they were to go about killing nothing but foriegners, the locals would care less about them as they don't effect them at all.
The other part is the terror. That kind of chaos only heightens the power of those who in peaceful times are marginalized by a society. Who has use for thugs and goons in peacetime? It's during "war" that they can actually command some level of power as they are willing to do things most of us would never do.
July 14, 2005 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink