It’s not about the organization, it’s the ideology.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
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al Qaeda does not purport to give direction only to its own members, or even that the directions it does impart are al Qaeda’s own directions. The network presumes to be guiding all Muslims toward what Islam compels. This is abundantly clear from Osama bin Laden’s infamous 1998 fatwa — “infamous” in the sense that it is often mentioned in press, although, to judge from today’s coverage and “expert” commentary, not much attention has been given to what it actually says. Here’s bin Laden (italics mine):
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is
an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is
possible to do it[.] … This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God,
“and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight
them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and
faith in God.”
The direction is to everyone. And he is not ordering that it be done because Osama says so, like the mafia does something because the don says so, or the army does something because the commanding officer says so. In bin Laden’s mind, he is merely the medium; the direction, he insists, comes from Allah. In fact, bin Laden plainly knows he is not enough of an authority figure to command terrorist attacks. He needs to cite scripture to convince Muslims that it is the ideology itself which announces these commands. Commands which this ideology compels every Muslim, not just every al Qaeda operative, to perform.
Nothing new here. Bin Laden is not a religious scholar. He does not have the status in Islam to issue fatwas. After the 9/11 attacks, he claimed the authority for the operation came from the scriptures. To the extent a fatwa was necessary, he pointed to Sheikh Abdel Rahman, a Koranic scholar who does have the required status. Here’s what the Blind Sheikh said in 1996 of Americans (again, the italics are mine):
Muslims everywhere [should] dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their
economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their
interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on
land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.
For the government and the media, it has long been an article of faith that we needn’t trouble ourselves with articles of faith … if the faith in question is Islam. The problem, we’re told — in defiance of reason and experience — is only these terrorist organizations, not their ideology. The organizations, of course, have never seen it that way. And they’re quite right: it has never been that way.
The majority of Muslims is not beholden to the various strains of jihadist ideology, especially at the juncture where word becomes deed. But the ideology indisputably springs from Islam. For that reason it has cachet and it has not been rejected out of hand even by the many faithful who regard it as an outdated, hyper-literal radicalism. And for that reason, a certain percentage of Muslims — hopefully at some point, an increasingly small percentage — will embrace it.
With modern weaponry, it doesn’t take a lot of terrorists or a lot of attacks to do a lot of damage. That was demonstrated on 9/11, but it has been true for a very long time. In a 1990 lecture in Denmark, the Blind Sheikh urged his followers that they could drive the mighty United States armed forces out of the Persian Gulf if ad hoc “Muslim battalions” would just “do five or six operations to the Americans in surprise attacks like the one that was done against them in Lebanon [i.e., Hezbollah’s 1983 attack on the Beirut barracks, killing 241 marines].” And as one of those arrested yesterday, Dritan Duka, is alleged to have put it, “We can do a lot of damage with seven people.”
My friend Bill Bennett likes to quote Hannah Arendt’s aphorism, “Nothing so inoculates a person against reality than the hold of ideology.” If we want to understand why we are at risk from cells in places like Cherry Hill which have no ties to known foreign terror groups, and if we want to learn what authentic, moderate Muslim reformers are up against, we need to open our eyes to what motivates jihadists. It is powerful, enduring and frightening because it is a doctrine, not an organization.
Pertinent Links:
1) Fort Dix Jihad: The Media Misses the Point
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