Jihadism

Key influences

The term “jihadism” has been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Arab Umayyad Caliphate and the Ottoman empire, who extensively campaigned against non-Muslim nations in the name of jihad.^[10][11]

Islamic extremism dates back to the early history of Islam with the emergence of the Kharijites in the 7th century CE.^[49] The original schism between Kharijites, Sunnīs, and Shīʿas among Muslims was disputed over the political and religious succession to the guidance of the Muslim community (Ummah) after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.^[49] From their essentially political position, the Kharijites developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunnī and Shīʿa Muslims.^[49] Shīʿas believe ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib is the true successor to Muhammad, while Sunnīs consider Abu Bakr to hold that position. The Kharijites broke away from both the Shīʿas and the Sunnīs during the First Fitna (the first Islamic Civil War);^[49] they were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to takfīr (excommunication), whereby they declared both Sunnī and Shīʿa Muslims to be either infidels (kuffār) or false Muslims (munāfiḳūn), and therefore deemed them worthy of death for their perceived apostasy (ridda).^[49][50][51]

Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamist ideologue and a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was an influential promoter of the Pan-Islamist ideology during the 1960s.^[55] When he was executed by the Egyptian government under the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ayman al-Zawahiri formed Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an organization which seeks to replace the government with an Islamic state that would reflect Qutb's ideas about the Islamic revival that he yearned for.^[56] The Qutbist ideology has been influential among jihadist movements and Islamic terrorists who seek to overthrow secular governments, most notably Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri of al-Qaeda,^[52][53][54] as well as the Salafi-jihadi terrorist group ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh.^[57] Moreover, Qutb's books have been frequently been cited by Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.^{[58][59][60][61][62][63]}

Sayyid Qutb could be said to have founded the actual movement of radical Islam.^[8][54][55] Unlike the other Islamic thinkers who have been mentioned above, Qutb was not an apologist.^[8] He was a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a highly influential Islamist ideologue,^[8][54] and the first to articulate these anathemizing principles in his magnum opus Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān (In the shade of the Qurʾān) and his 1966 manifesto Maʿālim fīl-ṭarīq (Milestones), which lead to his execution by the Egyptian government.^[8][64] Other Salafi movements in the Middle East and North Africa and Salafi movements across the Muslim world adopted many of his Islamist principles.^[8][54]

According to Qutb, the Muslim community (Ummah) has been extinct for several centuries and it has also reverted to jahiliyah (the pre-Islamic age of ignorance) because those who call themselves Muslims have failed to follow the sharia law.^[8][54] In order to restore Islam, bring back its days of glory, and free the Muslims from the clasps of ignorance, Qutb proposed the shunning of modern society, establishing a vanguard which was modeled after the early Muslims, preaching, and bracing oneself for poverty or even bracing oneself for death in preparation for jihad against what he perceived was a jahili government/society, and the overthrow of them.^[8][54] Qutbism, the radical Islamist ideology which is derived from the ideas of Qutb,^[54] was denounced by many prominent Muslim scholars as well as by other members of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Islamic revivalism and Salafism (1990s to present)

According to Rudolph Peters, scholar of Islamic studies and the history of Islam, contemporary traditionalist Muslims "copy phrases of the classical works on fiqh" in their writings on jihad; Islamic modernists "emphasize the defensive aspect of jihad, regarding it as tantamount to bellum justum in modern international law; and the contemporary fundamentalists (Abul A'la Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, Abdullah Azzam, etc.) view it as a struggle for the expansion of Islam and the realization of Islamic ideals."^[65]

Some of the earlier Islamic scholars and theologians who had profound influence on Islamic fundamentalism and the ideology of contemporary jihadism include the medieval Muslim thinkers Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Kathir, and Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, alongside the modern Islamist ideologues Muhammad Rashid Rida, Sayyid Qutb, and Abul A'la Maududi.^{[7][15][21][66][67]} Jihad has been propagated in modern fundamentalism beginning in the late 19th century, an ideology that arose in the context of struggles against colonial powers in North Africa at that time, as in the Mahdist War in Sudan, and notably in the mid-20th century by Islamic revivalist authors such as Sayyid Qutb and Abul Ala Maududi.^[68]

The term jihadism (earlier Salafi jihadism) has arisen in the 2000s to refer to the contemporary jihadi movements, the development of which was in retrospect traced to developments of Salafism paired with the origins of al-Qaeda in the Soviet–Afghan War during the 1990s. Jihadism has been called an "offshoot" of Islamic revivalism of the 1960s and 1970s. The writings of Sayyid Qutb and Mohammed Abdul-Salam Farag provide inspiration. The Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) is said to have "amplified the jihadist tendency from a fringe phenomenon to a major force in the Muslim world."^[69] It served to produce foot soldiers, leadership and organization. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam provided propaganda for the Afghan cause. After the war, veteran jihadists returned to their home countries, and from there would disperse to other sites of conflict involving Muslim populations, such as Algeria, Bosnia, and Chechnya, creating a "transnational jihadist stream."^[70]

An explanation for jihadist willingness to kill civilians and self-professed Muslims on the grounds that they were actually apostates (takfīr) is the vastly reduced influence of the traditional diverse class of ulama, often highly educated Islamic jurists. In "the vast majority" of Muslim countries during the post-colonial world of the 1950s and 1960s, the private religious endowments (awqāf) that had supported the independence of Islamic scholars and jurists for centuries were taken over by the state. The jurists were made salaried employees and the nationalist rulers naturally encouraged their employees (and their employees' interpretations of Islam) to serve the rulers' interests. Inevitably, the jurists came to be seen by the Muslim public as doing this.^[71]

Into this vacuum of religious authority came aggressive proselytizing, funded by tens of billions of dollars of petroleum-export money from Saudi Arabia.^[72] The version of Islam being propagated (Saudi doctrine of Wahhabism) billed itself as a return to pristine, simple, straightforward Islam,^[73] not one school among many, and not interpreting Islamic law historically or contextually, but as the one, orthodox "straight path" of Islam.^[73] Unlike the traditional teachings of the jurists, who tolerated and even celebrated divergent opinions and schools of thought and kept extremism marginalized, Wahhabism had "extreme hostility" to "any sectarian divisions within Islam".^[73]

In Iraq, resentment amongst Sunnis over their marginalization after the fall of Ba'athist regime led to the rise of jihadist networks in the region, which resulted in the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq.^[74] De-Ba'athification policy initiated by the new government led to rise in support of jihadists and remnants of Iraqi Ba'athists started allying with al-Qaeda in their common fight against the United States.^[75] Iraq War journalist George Packer writes in The Assassins' Gate:

"The Iraq War proved some of the Bush administration's assertions false, and it made others self-fulfilling. One of these was the insistence on an operational link between Iraq and al-Qaeda... after the fall of the regime, the most potent ideological force behind the insurgency was Islam and its hostility to non-Islamic intruders. Some former Baathist officials even stopped drinking and took to prayer. The insurgency was called mukawama, or resistance, with overtones of religious legitimacy; its fighters became mujahideen, holy warriors; they proclaimed their mission to be jihad."^[76][77]

Originating in the Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, the organization (primarily under the Islamic State of Iraq name) affiliated itself with al-Qaeda in Iraq and fought alongside them during the 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency. The group later changed their name to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant for about a year,^[78][79] before declaring itself to be a worldwide caliphate,^[80][81] called simply the Islamic State.^[82] They are a transnational Salafi jihadist group and an unrecognised quasi-state. IS gained global prominence in 2014, when their militants conquered large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing civil war in Syria and the disintegrating local military forces of Iraq. By the end of 2015, their self-declared caliphate ruled an area with a population of about 12 million,^[83][84] where they enforced their extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.^[85] After a grinding conflict with American, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces, IS lost control of all their Middle Eastern territories by 2019, subsequently reverting to insurgency from remote hideouts while continuing their propaganda efforts. These efforts have garnered a significant following in northern and Sahelian Africa,^[86][87] where IS still controls a significant territory, and the war against the Islamic State continues.^[88][89]

Evolution of jihad

Some observers^[6][99][100] have noted the evolution in the rules of jihad—from the original "classical" doctrine to that of 21st-century Salafi jihadism.^[101] According to the legal historian Sadarat Kadri,^[99] during the last couple of centuries, incremental changes in Islamic legal doctrine (developed by Islamists who otherwise condemn any bid‘ah (innovation) in religion), have "normalized" what was once "unthinkable".^[99] "The very idea that Muslims might blow themselves up for God was unheard of before 1983, and it was not until the early 1990s that anyone anywhere had tried to justify killing innocent Muslims who were not on a battlefield."^[99]

The first or the "classical" doctrine of jihad which was developed towards the end of the 8th century, emphasized the "jihad of the sword" (jihad bil-saif) rather than the "jihad of the heart",^[102] but it contained many legal restrictions which were developed from interpretations of both the Quran and the Hadith, such as detailed rules involving "the initiation, the conduct, the termination" of jihad, the treatment of prisoners, the distribution of booty, etc. Unless there was a sudden attack on the Muslim community, jihad was not a "personal obligation" (fard ‘ayn); instead it was a "collective one" (fard al-kifaya),^[103] which had to be discharged "in the way of God" (fi sabil Allah),^[104] and it could only be directed by the caliph, "whose discretion over its conduct was all but absolute."^[104] (This was designed in part to avoid incidents like the Kharijia's jihad against and killing of Caliph Ali, since they deemed that he was no longer a Muslim).^[6] Martyrdom resulting from an attack on the enemy with no concern for your own safety was praiseworthy, but dying by your own hand (as opposed to the enemy's) merited a special place in Hell.^[105] The category of jihad which is considered to be a collective obligation is sometimes simplified as "offensive jihad" in Western texts.^[106]

Scholars like Abul Ala Maududi, Abdullah Azzam, Ruhollah Khomeini, leaders of al-Qaeda and others, believe that defensive global jihad is a personal obligation, which means that no caliph or Muslim head of state needs to declare it. Killing yourself in the process of killing the enemy is an act of Shuhada (martyrdom) and it brings you a special place in Heaven, not a special place in Hell; and the killing of Muslim bystanders (nevermind Non-Muslims), should not impede acts of jihad. Military and intelligent analyst Sebastian Gorka described the new interpretation of jihad as the "willful targeting of civilians by a non-state actor through unconventional means."^[107][100] Al-Qaeda's splinter groups and competitors, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, are thought to have been heavily influenced^{[101][108][109][110][111]} by a 2004 work on jihad entitled Management of Savagery (Idarat at-Tawahhush),^[101] written by Abu Bakr Naji^[101] and intended to provide a strategy to create a new Islamic caliphate by first destroying "vital economic and strategic targets" and terrifying the enemy with cruelty to break its will.^[112]

Islamic theologian Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir has been identified as one of the key theorists and ideologues behind modern jihadist violence.^{[101][113][114][115]} His theological and legal justifications influenced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda member and former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as several other jihadi terrorist groups, including ISIL and Boko Haram.^{[101][113][114][115]} Zarqawi used a 579-page manuscript of al-Muhajir's ideas at AQI training camps that were later deployed by ISIL, known in Arabic as Fiqh al-Dima and referred to in English as The Jurisprudence of Jihad or The Jurisprudence of Blood.^{[101][113][114][115][116]} The book has been described by counter-terrorism scholar Orwa Ajjoub as rationalizing and justifying "suicide operations, the mutilation of corpses, beheading, and the killing of children and non-combatants".^[101] The Guardian's journalist Mark Towsend, citing Salah al-Ansari of Quilliam, notes: "There is a startling lack of study and concern regarding this abhorrent and dangerous text [The Jurisprudence of Blood] in almost all Western and Arab scholarship".^[115] Charlie Winter of The Atlantic describes it as a "theological playbook used to justify the group's abhorrent acts".^[114] He states:

Ranging from ruminations on the merits of beheading, torturing, or burning prisoners to thoughts on assassination, siege warfare, and the use of biological weapons, Muhajir's intellectual legacy is a crucial component of the literary corpus of ISIS—and, indeed, whatever comes after it—a way to render practically anything permissible, provided, that is, it can be spun as beneficial to the jihad. [...] According to Muhajir, committing suicide to kill people is not only a theologically sound act, but a commendable one, too, something to be cherished and celebrated regardless of its outcome. [...] neither Zarqawi nor his inheritors have looked back, liberally using Muhajir's work to normalize the use of suicide tactics in the time since, such that they have become the single most important military and terrorist method—defensive or offensive—used by ISIS today. The way that Muhajir theorized it was simple—he offered up a theological fix that allows any who desire it to sidestep the Koranic injunctions against suicide.^[114]

Clinical psychologist Chris E. Stout also discusses the al Muhajir-inspired text in his essay, Terrorism, Political Violence, and Extremism (2017). He assesses that jihadists regard their actions as being "for the greater good"; that they are in a "weakened in the earth" situation that renders Islamic terrorism a valid means of solution.^[116]