Knowing the Enemy by Mary Habeck

Author:Mary Habeck [Habeck, Mary R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-13069-0
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2006-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

7 From Mecca to Medina

FOLLOWING THE METHOD OF MUHAMMAD

We should step back now and examine the daunting task that the jihadis have set for themselves. Not only do they believe that the “attack” by the West and other unbelievers requires a violent response, but by declaring that offensive jihad is lawful, the extremists are in effect stating that the only resolution to their problems they will accept is a world ruled by their version of Islam. They must, therefore, defeat a stunning array of enemies: the West, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the “agent rulers,” and any Muslims who do not agree with their form of Islam—the so-called apostates, heretics, and hypocrites. This does not include the ongoing struggle against liberalism, democracy, nationalism, and other ideologies that are also targets for their war. In the absence of an uprising by the entire Islamic world, an event every jihadi fervently hopes will take place soon, extremist groups have had to prioritize their enemies, choosing which each one sees as most dangerous and which must be defeated first before moving on to the next. The result has been what, to the outside observer, might seem like random or even self-defeating attacks, as groups pursue contradictory goals without coordinating strikes with each other.

Yet behind the seeming randomness of the attacks carried out by jihadis are rational strategic choices that have as their basis consistent interpretations of the Qur’an, hadith, and the life of Muhammad. Some of this interpretive work was done by the main ideologues of the jihadist movement, including Ibn Taymiyya and Wahhab as well as al-Banna, Mawdudi, and Qutb. All proffered reasoned arguments about which enemy the true believers must fight and which can be left for the longer-term expansion of Islam, arguments that jihadist groups today have adopted as their own. Ibn Taymiyya, living at a time when the core of the Islamic world had fallen to the Mongols, saw the new rulers as pseudo-Muslims. Their unwillingness to implement the shari‘a took them outside the bounds of Islam, he argued, and they therefore had to be removed first, before returning to the offensive jihad against the other unbelievers. Wahhab, on the other hand, directed his violence against the Muslims of his day, arguing that they had become heretics through the adoption of Sufi rituals; by venerating sacred sites, saints, and graves; and other practices, such as celebrating birthdays, that he saw as heterodox. The ideologues of the twentieth century also chose different enemies as the most dangerous. Al-Banna argued that Muslims had to expel the British (and other colonizers) first, liberating all the Islamic lands, and then create a “true” Islamic state that would spread Islam. Mawdudi focused on a larger “revolutionary” war against unbelief and the unbelievers throughout the world. Qutb had perhaps the most detailed strategic vision and one that, as we shall see, would influence later jihadist groups deeply, arguing for a two-pronged attack on both the apostate agent-rulers and the unbelieving “Jewish-Crusaders.”

Despite the differences in

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