ISIS: The Terror Nation by Loretta Napoleoni

Author:Loretta Napoleoni [Napoleoni, Loretta]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Syria, Raqqa, ISIS, Syrian civil war, Islamic Phoenix, Damascus, Daesh, al-Assad, Middle East, War on Terror, Assad, Syrian war, ISIL, Islamic State, al-Baghdadi, Baghdadi, Islamist Phoenix
ISBN: 9781609807269
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2017-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Radical Salafism

The root causes of what we are witnessing today trace back to the extraordinary political event that Salafists regard as the ultimate betrayal: the acceptance by Arab statesmen of Israel as a political power on Muslim soil, in the ancient territory of the Caliphate.

Founded with similar motivations across the Arab world in the early 1990s by veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad organizations such as the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) in Algeria and the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army in Yemen, al Tawhid, the group of which Musab at Zarqawi was first a member, is a radical Salafist organization nearly identical to the others. All of these armed groups share the same objective: to ignite a revolutionary jihad throughout the Muslim world and oust pro-Western governments. This civil war, or fitna, would evict the existing Arab regimes, which Salafists regard as taghut (idolatrous).100 After joining the group in prison, al Zarqawi went on to become its emir. Thus, when he formed his armed organization in Iraq he chose the name al Tawhid al Jihad. That both al Zarqawi and al Baghdadi share the Salafist creed—al Baghdadi hailing from a religious Salafist family—was key to the compatibility of their visions of jihad.101

At its outset, however, during the second half of the nineteenth century, Salafism was not an anti-Western ideology. On the contrary, it was Arab admiration for the modernized West that gave birth to the movement. Fascinated by European development, Arab countries began to compare their socioeconomic and political conditions with those of Europe. This evaluation triggered a deep reflection on the crisis of the Ottoman Empire, the political power that controlled the Arab world at the time, and stimulated great interest in Western civilization. In the Arab world this process is known as al Nahda, literally, the “awakening” or “renaissance.” Produced by the interaction of Arab thinkers with Western revolutionary ideals, al Nahda marked the beginning of Arab modernization or, rather, of the will to modernize. In essence, the Arab world acknowledged the socioeconomic and political superiority of the parliamentary European states. Looking to the achievements of the old Continent, Arabs wanted to create a Muslim modernity in the new Arab states emerging from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire emulating Western political culture.102 This was a time in which the construction of the nation state greatly appealed to progressive Muslims.

Salafism, therefore, has always sought to modernize the Arab world, and it has identified the Ottoman Empire as the primary cause of the Arab failure to develop as Europe did. To overcome this obstacle, the Salafist doctrine called for all Muslims to go back to the purity of religion, to the origins of Islam and the teachings of the Prophet. In short, Salafism stressed the need to reconnect with one’s roots as a means of creating Arab identity, which would in turn provide the necessary strength to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire. This was essentially a process of spiritual purification, of cleansing, after centuries of political and economic domination.

Towards the

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