Authors: J. M. Berger
Jihad Joe
J
IHAD
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IHAD
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AMERICANS WHO
GO TO WAR
IN THE
NAME OF ISLAM
J. M. Berger
Copyright © 2011 by J. M. Berger
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berger, J. M. (John M.)
   Jihad Joe : Americans who go to war in the name of Islam / J.M. Berger. â 1st ed.
        p. cm.
   Includes bibliographical references and index.
   ISBN 978-1-59797-693-0 (hbk. : alk. paper)
   1. TerroristsâRecruitingâUnited States. 2. TerrorismâReligious aspectsâIslam. 3. Religious militantsâUnited States. 4. Jihad. 5. Islamic fundamentalismâUnited States. 6. Qaida (Organization) I. Title.
   HV6432.B464 2011
   363.3250973âdc22
2010053161
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books, Inc.
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First Edition
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Introduction: The “New” Problem
12 The Future of American Jihad
The “New” Problem
In 1979 a motley band of several hundred extremists staged an armed takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site. It was an unprecedented heresy, and it marked the dawn of the modern age of terrorism.
They were mostly Saudis, but the terrorists included Egyptians, Sudanese, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Yemenis, and at least two Americans.
1
The siege took place during a period of violent change in the Islamic world, soon after the revolution that installed the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and just before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As many as six hundred followers of a Saudi named Juhayman Al Otaibi believed they had discovered the
mahdi
, an Islamic messiah figure embodied by Juhayman's cousin. They struck during the Hajj, Islam's most sacred pilgrimage, seizing the Grand Mosque and taking scores of hostages. For two weeks, Saudi Arabia was paralyzed by the siege, which eventually ended with a violent raid that left most of the terrorists dead and the historic mosque smoldering from its minarets.
2
Juhayman and a handful of his men were captured and publicly executed. One of his American followers was taken prisoner and then secretly whisked home. Weeks after the siege ended, the wife of the other American walked into the U.S. consulate in Jeddah to inform officials that her husband, Faqur Abdur-Rahman, had been killed during the takeover. Saudi police had showed her his picture. His body had been buried in a mass grave, along with everyone else who was killed while taking part in the attack. “She does not desire to attempt to recover her husband's remains,” a State Department official reported.
3
The Siege at Mecca was only the beginning. Thirty years later, after a highly visible series of incidents in 2009 and 2010, U.S. media outlets discovered a new reason to worry. Americans were “suddenly” signing up for violent jihad.
Yet the phenomenon is far from new. Since 1979 American citizens have repeatedly packed their bags, left wives and children behind, and traveled to distant lands in the name of military jihad, the armed struggle of Islam.
Their reasons are as varied as their backgroundsâsome travel to defend Muslims in peril, and some fight to establish the reign of Allah on earth. Some are channeling a personal rage that has little to do with religion. Others seek a community where they can belong.
Americans fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, and at least one American citizen was present at the founding of al Qaeda. Americans have gone to jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, and Yemen. Virtually every major terrorist attack against the United Statesâincluding 9/11âhas included Americans as willful accomplices.
While all major religions have rules that limit or justify war, a small but significant minority of Muslims believe that under the correct circumstances, war is a fundamental obligation for everyone who shares the religion of Islam. When war is carried out according to the rules, it is called military jihad or simply jihad.
“Jihad” is a word that has become contentious, with many Muslims arguing that it is most properly applied to a host of nonviolent activities, such as self-improvement or seeking justice. Although this argument applies in certain contexts, military jihadists do not make such qualifications when they call their work jihad.
“Whenever jihad is mentioned in the [Koran], it means the obligation to fight. It does not mean to fight with the pen or to write books or articles in the press, or to fight by holding lectures.” Those are the words of Abdullah Azzam, the spiritual and physical leader of the volunteer jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, who was speaking in Brooklyn in 1988.
4
This book will generally follow Azzam's usage, although it will also examine those who use the pen and the lectern to incite others to acts of physical jihad.
I acknowledge that there is a debate in the public square on this issue, but this book defines jihad as jihadists doâas the use of violence to achieve specific goals, usually either the defense of Muslims perceived to be in peril or the advancement of Islam's global position.
Although most religions include guidelines for war and civic defense, the rules of jihad are fundamental to the core texts of Islam. A small minority of Muslims even rate jihad as one of Islam's most basic obligations.
Throughout this book, I have put a premium on representing the voices of American jihadists and letting their own words explain their actions. This doesn't mean I accept everything they say as being sincere and legitimate. Far from itâthere are clear lies in some cases, distortions and misconceptions in others. But regardless of how imperfect these sources are, the words of American jihadists provide a window into their overt reasons for taking up arms and their moral context for the violence they inflict.
In many cases, however, these sources are strong. Some, of course, are statements given in interviews after an arrestâattempts to rationalize or justify violent acts in an effort to win a lighter sentence or to burnish a public image. Yet many of the quotes you will read in these pages were intended for Muslim audiences. Many are taken from surveillance tapes in which these Americans talked with their peers in unguarded moments. Such sources are invaluable windows into why Americans take up the banner of jihad.
What lies in their hearts only Allah knows. One can only work with the sources as they exist. To ignore the stated reasons that jihadists use to justify their actions is, at the least, foolish. To impose imagined reasons without examining the evidence is reckless.
Many labels exist for people who embrace a vision of global jihad or the dream of a world ruled by Islamic law, such as Salafis, Wahhabis, Deobandis, Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamists. For the most part, I have tried to downplay these labels, in part to spare the reader a barrage of unfamiliar and confusing technical terms whose meanings are often disputed.
One area where important definitions can get murky is the distinction between “terrorist” and “jihadist.” The two terms have become conflated in recent years, in part due to a deliberate and systematic rebranding of the word by Western diplomatic maneuvers and psychological operations. Here, I think an important distinction can be drawn. Not all jihadists are terrorists, but virtually all Muslim terrorists define their activities as jihad.
No definition of terrorism is universally accepted. For purposes of this book, terrorists are nongovernment actors who engage in violence against noncombatants in order to accomplish a political goal or amplify a message. Noncombatants include political leaders (such as Anwar Sadat) and military personnel not engaged in a conflict (for instance, the victims of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing). Terrorists may be supported by states, but they have a fundamental quality of independenceâor at least of disavowal and deniability.
Under this definition, John Wilkes Booth would be considered a terrorist, as would the Unabomber. The Third Reich would not be considered a terrorist organization, but American neo-Nazis would. The state of Israel is not a terrorist organization, regardless of one's views on the morality of its actions, but the Jewish Defense League was. The label is about describing context and behavior, not about assigning moral judgment. As it is used here, the word “terrorism” is not a moral qualifier or a tool for demonizing individuals or groups; it's an attempt to verbalize the fundamental difference between the actions of an established and recognized nation and what is essentially a vigilante mentality targeting noncombatants.
A key term in this book is “jihadist.” Generally, anyone characterized as a jihadist will fit into one of the following categories:
⢠Someone who travels abroad to fight in a foreign conflict specifically in the name of Islam.
⢠Someone who takes part in terrorist activities that are explicitly defined by the participants as a form of military jihad or that are explicitly motivated by jihadist ideology.
⢠Someone who actively finances, supports, advocates, or provides religious justification for explicit military jihad as described previously.
Not all jihadists are terrorists or even criminals. Not everyone profiled in this book is a terrorist or a criminal, although many are. The sample of people discussed in these pages is skewed toward terrorists because those cases are better documented and because, in the postâSeptember 11 environment, many American Muslims who took part in jihad but not in terrorism are understandably reluctant to draw attention to themselves. I can sympathize with their reasons, but I wish
I could have found more people who would step forward for this discussion in order to present a more balanced point of view. Anyone with this kind of history should feel free to contact meâthere will be other opportunities to tell those stories, and I think it's important.
A few other useful terms to consider:
Radicals
:
For purposes of this book, radicals are people or institutions that advocate an ideology with clear connections to nonstate violence, whether by justifying it or by providing rationalizations that are clear precursors to action.
Conservative and/or fundamentalist
:
Wherever possible, I prefer the former term to the latter. In discussing Muslim terrorism, the discussion of religious views and social mores is unavoidable. Muslims or people who adhere to forms of Islam described herein as conservative tend to be communities that strictly enforce such Islamic or Arab cultural practices as covering women's faces, banning music, or criminalizing homosexuality.