Month: March 2011

As-Saḥāb Media presents a new video series: "A Mujāhid's Diary #1"

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

UPDATE 5/3 8:39 PM: Here is an English translation of the below video message:
 

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UPDATE 4/20 10:52 AM: Here is an Urdu translation of the below video:


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NOTE: The below video features Abū Qandahār az-Zarqāwī (Haytham bin Muḥammad al-Khayāṭ) a Jordanian global jihadist who is another example of an online jihadist joining the battlefield and “martyring” himself. Zarqāwī died this past December joining the infamous Abū Dujānah al-Khurāsānī (Humām al-Balawī), who conducted the CIA Khost attack and is viewed as the model for online jihadists turned battlefield “martyr.” For more on Zarqāwī and his death see here.
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New statement from Jamā'at Anṣār al-Sunnah: "For Our Ummah To Identify the Way of the Offenders"

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

NOTE: The below statement condemns the arrest of Abū al-Walid al-Maqdisī by HAMAS, the leader of Jamā’at Tawḥīd wal-Jihād Fī Filasṭīn, another Palestinian global jihadist group. Jamā’at Tawḥīd wal-Jihād Fī Filasṭīn has already released a statement about this which you can see here. Here are some of Abū al-Walid al-Maqdisī most recent works that have been posted on this site:

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Jamā’at Anṣār al-Sunnah — “For Our Ummah To Identify the Way of the Offenders”
[scribd id=50412878 key=key-13u4qup7owau6jmawgym mode=list]

New statement from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: "West Admits, Afghanistan Has No Military Solution"

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin


West,  the  force behind  the decade-long occupation of Afghanistan and civilian casualties; the cause of sufferings and tragedies,  at last, has  come around to accept that Afghanistan has no military solution. This is in a time that more than 150,000 foreign troops are stationing in Afghanistan, maintaining their occupation of national independence and sovereignty of the Afghans.
Michel Steiner, Chief of UN Contact Group, revealed this in a meeting of the Contact Group in Jedda, Saudi Arabia last week. He was participating in the meeting on invitation of the Islamic Conference. He said,  the issue and problems of Afghanistan could not be solved through the war and   will not make it possible for the Afghans to reach the blessing of security and prosperity. He added,  political means of solution should be sought to end the war. Similarly, the Islamic conference declared at the end of the meeting that the decade-long war had  tremendously added to the sufferings and problems of the Afghans. Therefore, it was necessary to put an end to the military approach and seek means of political solution.
High ranking representatives of about 40 regional countries including those from the West participated in the recent meeting of the Contact Group. They  have expressed their disenchantment with the current war of Afghanistan in a time that a few days ago, Germany and Britain opined  that the war of Afghanistan was worthless. They showed their support for talks with the Islamic Emirate.
Last Week, some media outlets reported that US President Obama had approved a resolution which reaffirms an earlier withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan, citing the annual war expenditure of $100 billion as a  cause  for the step. This is because the tremendous outlay weighs down heavily  on the shoulders of the American people and   they are not able to bear it any more. America and her Allies’ resentments as regards the war of Afghanistan and emphasis on political solutions come at a time that the invaders used various poisonous, heavy and banned weapons against people of our country during the past decade. They continued their dreadful trend  of torturing, fettering and detaining (innocent people)  during the period and   suppressed  the throat of religious and national values of the Afghans.
The essential question now arises,  while the Contact Group, the Islamic Conference including the West consider the war of Afghanistan as a worthless and fruitless war,  then why they hesitate to single out   those  who started the war of Afghanistan, killed,  handicapped and displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans  as the culprits and disclose the identity of  those  who  are responsible. Still more,  why they have been continuing   the unjustified and deadly war for one decade. Those who call this war worthless should also simultaneously call for trial of the callous planners of the war and  that they should pay proper compensations to the Afghans because,  in the first place,  they were those who began the war on mere pretexts and have been prolonging it till this very day.
Observers believe,  the American and Western rulers who cover up their crimes in Afghanistan and seek an alternative way of solution do not seem to have any remorse about their belligerent policies, but, contrarily, their people and economic foundation do not allow them to keep up the current pace of war expenditure in Afghanistan  relentlessly, or continue losing their countrymen.
We think, if the  Contact Group, the Islamic Conference and other circles really want to bring  the current war in Afghanistan to an end,  then the  solution is very clear and feasible–  they should withdraw 150, 000 foreign forces from Afghanistan unconditionally and pave the way for establishment of an Islamic System on the basis of the Islamic and national aspirations of the Afghans.

New issue of Academic Journals released: "Die Welt des Islams" and "Terrorism and Political Violence"

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

Below is the epitome of — if you do not mind me saying — academic porn. Here are some articles from both publications that interested me:

At the beginning of the 1980s, the idea of armed jihād against Israel was not only promoted by renegades from the Muslim Brothers in the Gaza strip, but also by former Maoists of Fatah in Lebanon. After the pull-out of most PLO-fighters from Beirut in 1982, a group around its spokesman Munīr Shafīq formed the Brigades of Islamic Jihad which were subsequently responsible for attacks in Israel. In a posthumously published booklet, two activists explained their reasons for their turn from Maoism to Islamism. The following article exposes the activists’ trajectory and the stages of their ideological and religious conversion. According to their own narration, the former Maoists at first came to the conviction that Islam was a factor for mass mobilization and then individually adopted Islam to become practising Muslims.

This article problematizes the general assumption about the inherent anti-Sufi tendency of the Salafiyya by looking closely at the thought of the Syrian Salafi thinker Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī. The primary text analysed in this article is a brief chapter of Qāsimī’s book Dalā’il al-tawhīd, entitled Butlān al-hulūl wa-l-ittihād (The Invalidity of Incarnation and Union). Here Qāsimī discusses the notions of hulūl (incarnation) and ittihād (union), and defends the idea of wahdat al-wujūd (unity of being) attributed to the shaykh akbar Ibn ‘Arabī which led Qāsimī to stand up against the shaykh al-islām Ibn Taymiyya who accused Ibn ‘Arabī of being a heretic. This article discusses Qāsimī’s defense of Ibn ‘Arabī within a broader context of the Salafi approach to Sufism. In this context, the case of Qāsimī presents us with an insight that the Salafis took a more nuanced position than is sometimes supposed. We will conclude with a brief reflection on how we could situate Qāsimī’s view of Ibn ‘Arabī within the ongoing debate about the relationship between the Salafiyya and Sufism in more recent scholarship.

Publication Cover

The article explores ideological fault lines among Sunni Muslim militants (jihadists) in Europe since the mid-1990s. It argues there have been disputes among the militants about whether to prioritize local struggles or Al Qaeda’s global war, and about the legitimacy of launching terrorist attacks in European states offering political asylum to Muslims. It concludes that Europe’s militants have become more ideologically unified in conjunction with the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Mohammed drawings, seeing European countries as legitimate and prioritized targets, and identifying with Al Qaeda.

The aim of this article is to analyse terrorism and the phenomena linked to it in East Central Europe. In comparison with a number of other regions of today’s world, this area can currently seem to be a relatively “terrorism-free zone.” Although the number of terrorist attacks committed in this territory is insignificant, this does not mean that the risk of terrorism is entirely negligible in the region. This text explains some historical determinants of the current situation and describes the consequences both of regime change in the countries in question and of their foreign policy decisions after 1989. I also analyse the importance of East Central Europe as a logistical space for international terrorism (weapons procurement, stays of terrorists, etc.). I characterise the threats of Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorism in connection with the pro-American and pro-Israeli policies of East Central European countries, especially after 9/11, assess the risks posed by the domestic extremist scenes in those countries that have a relationship with terrorism, and take notice of the accusations of terrorism that have been voiced in international politics. On the basis of this data, I then provide an overview of the importance of East Central Europe for the contemporary study of terrorism.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has positioned itself at the vanguard of a media revolution in which terrorist groups both create and frame news events to an unprecedented extent. Through the publication of its e-magazine Sada al-Malahim(The Echo of Epic Battles), the organization has sought to mobilize both Yemeni and non-Yemeni Muslim, Arabic-speaking audiences to carry out violent jihad. This article utilizes the concept of collective action frames to analyze Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s media output, identifying the organization’s grievance narratives, ideological justifications for violent actions, and means to strengthen its credibility among its intended audiences.

The current age of technology, mass communication, and globalization makes networks analysis an especially useful tool for understanding cell-based terrorism. Some concepts from traditional networks analysis may be especially relevant. The Strength of Weak Ties hypothesis (SWT) is particularly promising and will be used here to demonstrate the usability of traditional networks analysis for studying modern terrorism. The findings suggest that the strength of weak terrorist ties may improve Al Qaeda’s operational capabilities despite the group’s decentralization following the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan beginning in 2001.

Australian interests have been considered viable targets for Islamist terrorists since at least 2001, and Australians have suffered from attacks in Bali in 2002 and 2005, and Jakarta in 2004 and 2009. Moreover, Australian citizens have been involved in militant Islamist networks since the late 1980s, and similar to other Western countries in recent years there have been examples of “home-grown” plots to carry out domestic terrorist attacks. This article seeks to clarify the nature of the contemporary security threat within Australia by analysing the involvement of Australian citizens and residents in Islamist terrorism, both at home and abroad. The results build upon previous research findings revealing that while the profile of Australian jihadis is unique in terms of its exact manifestation, there is overall conformity with generally observed trends in Islamist terrorism in other Western countries.