Pakistan, previously a strategic backyard of the Afghan resistance
against Russia, was the country most affected by the new wave of
the Islamism. Islamic seminaries in Pakistan were traditional, but
the new Islamic trends reared a different generation of students who
had been given the opportunity to fight against the Soviets and so
were fully blooded. These students became the faculty of the Islamic
seminaries and turned the seminaries from seats of Islamic learning
into ultra-radical Islamic nests. One example is the Jamiatul Islamia,
Binori Town, in Karachi. The Binori Town seminary had always been
considered one of the most respected seats of Islamic learning of the
Deoband school of thought. It had produced several leading Islamic
jurists and scholars. However, in the 1990s the seminary became
associated with the ultra-radical Islamic thought process. This was
not because it had altered its syllabus, but because some of students
from there had gone to fight against the USSR in Afghanistan and
accepted the influences of students from more radical seminaries
present there. Many of these students later became teachers in the
Binori Town seminary and influenced the minds of their students
accordingly. For instance, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai joined the
Binori Town seminary as teacher and changed the dynamics of the
seminary, turning it into a Jihadi hotspot. After his assassination
in 2004, the Binori Town seminary once again became a seat of
learning rather than a Jihadi breeding ground. The Jamia Farooqia
in Karachi, another top Islamic seminary, recorded an identical
history, as did the Akora Khattak seminary in the north and other
larger or smaller Islamic seminaries around the country.
By 1994, Afghan students in the Islamic seminaries had taken
a firm stand against Afghan warlords and their vandalism in
Afghanistan. By 1996 they had raised the flag of the Islamic
Emirates of Afghanistan. This upped the radicalization of Islamic
seminaries and mosque networks in Pakistan. However, all these
developments from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s did not neces-
sarily directly benefit Al-Qaeda, albeit they were there for them to
manipulate. Pakistan’s military establishment was quick to act, and
vied for the control over the Afghan Taliban (student militia) and
its government in Kabul.
Pakistan’s military establishment then built bridges with Islamic
seminaries, while the ISI assigned special cells to control Jihadi
organizations and streamline their activities exclusively for its
“bleed India” plan. Pakistan’s establishment declared Afghanistan
to be its “strategic depth” zone, and established training centers
for Kashmiri separatist groups to implement its national security
agenda.
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein regime, Iran’s Islamic government, the
Syrian government, and the Saudi monarchy all developed close
ties with Palestinian Islamists such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The
nexus of Islamic groups and the Muslim countries’ ruling elites, and
their strategy and designs from the developments since the Afghan
Jihad against Soviet Russia, were seen by Al-Qaeda as narrow
strategic gains by the ruling regimes of the Muslim majority states
to consolidate their hold. That situation necessitated a strategy that
would separate all the newly propped-up Islamic factions from
statecraft and bring them under Al-Qaeda. Takfeer (declaring them
apostate) was the best way in which to serve this cause. From the
mid-1990s carefully crafted literature was published and circulated.
The basis of this new literature was classical Islamic concepts
based on Quranic teachings, the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings
and practices, and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad’s
companions. The verdicts and opinions of Muslim academics and
jurists over the last 1,400 years were also taken into account. The
literature applied these concepts to contemporary issues of the post-
Ottoman Caliphate era, analyzing the secular democratization of
the Muslim world, the personal pursuits of monarchial regimes, and
their doctrines on the foreign policy front.
Interestingly, and contrary to the literature promoted by the
Islamic movements in the twentieth century, whose target audience
was the educated urban youths of the Muslim society, Al-Qaeda’s
target audience was not the commoner but the cadre of society
that already practiced Islam. Al-Qaeda worked to convince these
Islamists of the heresy of contemporary beliefs and systems and
the prevalent foreign policies in the Muslim world, and incite them
to revolt against their rulers. At the same time, this new literature
did not aim to promote basic monotheist values in tune with the
ritualistic perspectives of Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahhab, the
Muslim scholar from Arabian Peninsula and ideologue of the House
of Saud who helped found the Saudi dynasty. Instead, the new
literature developed, combined the ideas of Muhammad Bin Abdul
Wahhab with the thoughts of Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), a Muslim
academic, reformist, and the leader of resistance against the Tartar
invasion, in a broader political context.
A natural characteristic of the Islamic resistance is that its strategy
and struggle have always been interlinked with ideological writings.
During the Ottoman decline, Muslim intellectuals like Muhammad
Abdahu of Egypt, Syed Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and Dr Muhammad
Iqbal from India, worked for the promotion of pan-Islamism which
gave birth to new Islamic movements. The literature they produced
indirectly turned the cycles of the events after 50 years of struggle
to shape the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Afghan Jihad, and the
Mecca uprising.
Similarly, after the decline of the Mughals in South Asia, the
writing of Shah Waliullah (1703–1762) had analyzed the causes for
the social and political decline of the Muslims in South Asia, and
now provided a strong base for Syed Ahmad Brelvi’s revival of the
Jihadi movement against the Sikh dynasty in the Muslim majority
regions of Pakistan’s Punjab and former North West Frontier
Province (now Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa).
Shah Ismail (Syed Ahmad Brelvi’s lieutenant, the grandson of
Shah Waliullah, and the ideologue of the movement) wrote his book,
Taqwiyat-ul-Iman, before the battle against the Sikh dynasty. The
book redefined the Islamic faith, culture, and traditions, creating
considerable controversy in a section of the Muslim society at the
time it was written. There was a special reason for writing this book:
the Muslims of India had always been considered as foreign invaders
from Central Asia. Their indigenization and acceptance began
during the Mughal era at the time of the Emperor Akbar. A newly
evolved Hindustani language, Urdu, was introduced beside Persian.
Urdu was influenced by local languages such as Sanskrit. Similarly
Muslims became influenced by the Hindu and Sikh cultures. This
influence penetrated the orders of Muslim minorities, and rituals like
the qawali (religious song), which was similar to the Hindu bhajans
(devotional music), became part of Muslim tradition. The lines of
demarcation in thought and culture between the Muslims and the
other inhabitants of India became thin.
Shah Ismail, the ideologue of the Tehrik-e-Mujahadeen, had to
create ground among the Muslims to fight against the Sikhs. In his
book Taqwiyat-ul-Iman he redefined the faith, negated all the influ-
ences which had permeated from Hindu society, and tried to explain
to the Muslims of India how different they were from Indian society
at large. This feeling of distinctiveness has always been necessary
to pitch one nation against the other. Shah Ismail accomplished
this mission by stressing Muslim monotheism in polytheist Hindu
India. Through this strategy he was able to persuade thousands of
irregulars who went to Punjab to fight against the Sikh dynasty.
In pursuit of similar objectives, Al-Qaeda was no different from
past Jihadi movements. Syed Qutb’s literature provided a base for
Al-Qaeda, but before it could initiate its struggle, the flashpoint
of which was 9/11, its ideologues redefined faith. The situation,
however, was different from the time of Brelvi’s movement. The
Mughal Empire was close to collapse at the time – its writ virtually
non-existent. Al-Qaeda operates in the middle of strong states. It
follows, therefore, that Al-Qaeda would employ the tougher tactics
of Ibn Taymiyya, a Muslim academic of the thirteenth century who
was the ideologue and the commander of the Muslim resistance
against the Mongols. Tayamiyya also redefined faith even as he
emphasized the monotheist values of Islam to bring Islamic distinc-
tiveness under the spotlight against Mongol traditions, to inspire
Muslims to fight the Mongol occupation of Baghdad.
Initially Al-Qaeda made use of Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahhab’s
literature with its emphasis on Islam’s monotheist values. But there
was a flaw in Wahhab’s writing, in that while it provided some
basic themes like the concepts of wala wal bara (the benchmark for
friendships and foes – in the context of alliances and treaties with
non-Muslims), Wahhab was the ideologue of the House of Saud
which fought against the Muslim Ottoman caliphate. Nobody could
ignore that fact that Wahhab was used against the Ottoman Empire
to incite the Muslim masses against Sufi-oriented Islam, which he
thought close to polytheism. Thus Wahhab, perhaps unintentionally,
facilitated the fall of the Caliphate and paved the way for colonial
rule. Al-Qaeda thus felt the need for a different form of text which
would document Islam’s monotheist distinction from modern secular
and/or polytheistic orders of democracy and monarchy to promote
its dialectic in the battle against the West.
This redefinition of the Islamic faith began after the collapse of
the communist regime in Afghanistan. The new literature docu-
mented the distinctiveness of monotheist values against polytheism
as well as the secular Western political order. It aimed at drawing
Muslims away from the Western cultural ethos and values. As a
result, polarization was imminent in those Muslim societies which
had been seriously influenced by the West. By the time of 9/11,
which marked the beginning of the war, the foundations of an ideo-
logical perspective for Islamic renaissance had already built through
new Al-Qaeda literature.
9/11 created friction around the globe and initially divided the
world into two camps: those who were with the United States
and those who were anti-American. This divide impacted Muslim
societies where the ruling classes were still close to the West, and
after this defining moment, the Muslim ruling classes and the broad
masses stood divided. In the coming years Al-Qaeda worked to
sharpen this divide to pave the way for revolts in Muslim societies
in order to weaken the support of Muslim establishments for the US
war against Al-Qaeda.
On the strategic front, Al-Qaeda had successfully stung the
United States with 9/11. The United States invaded Afghanistan and,
according to Al-Qaeda, the trap was sprung. However, the strategy
would have failed had Al-Qaeda not explored the dialectic of events
beyond 9/11 which was to reinforce the ideological divide in Muslim
societies. It embarked on this mission by enlisting the services of
Islamic-minded officers in the armed forces and influential clerics
in the religious parties and religious schools in Muslim countries.
It then looked to gather resources to launch a long war against the
United States in Afghanistan.
Academics associated with Al-Qaeda-authored literature laid
down the rules of faith and heresy for a Muslim, but there were
other brains at work on the dialectical front. Al-Qaeda aimed
at creating a Muslim backlash against the anticipated Western
retaliation to the 9/11 attack, but was equally cognizant of the fact
that even in the Muslim world, there would be divided reactions,
because of the political, military, and economic dependency of
Muslim regimes on the West. In countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Pakistan, and Kuwait, this became a flagrant reality. Thus there
was never any belief in the Al-Qaeda camp that once the United
States reacted to 9/11, pro-Western Muslim regimes would be able
to remain “non-aligned.” Al-Qaeda was 100 percent sure that once
Washington decided on war against Al-Qaeda, the ruling regimes
in the Muslim world would have no option but to align themselves
with Washington.
The 9/11 attacks were organized for a particular purpose: to
provoke the United States and bring it into the Afghan trap. A
Muslim backlash was certain to follow, and eventually this would
lead to a direct confrontation between the West and the Muslim
world. Al-Qaeda also understood that bringing the US war machine
into the vastness of the hostile Afghan mountain wilderness was
an imperative. But it was equally aware that this would not signal
victory. Victory against the West required a long struggle, planning,
and a winning war strategy. This in turn would require resources,
but all the known resources were under the control of the West-
aligned Muslim regimes. Therefore the second most important
objective of Al-Qaeda’s strategy in the wake of the 9/11 attack and
the retaliation to it was to discredit the ruling Muslim regimes by
bringing up the contradictions inherent in their political alliances
with the West.
Once these Muslim regimes’ real allegiance towards the West
was exposed, takfeer would be the weapon Al-Qaeda employed to
isolate them from the Muslim masses. Sympathetic sections of the
armed forces, religious parties, and Islamic seminaries would then
be activated against the ruling elites and more easily moved to join
forces with Al-Qaeda in its fight against the West globally.
Takfeer also aimed at gathering in and employing all of the
Muslim world’s resources against the Western occupation forces.
But Al-Qaeda well understood that it would be a slow and tedious
process, and a long-term academic exercise, to topple the ruling
regimes in Muslim majority states. Still the goal was clearly to
bring about Islamic revolution and pave the way for the revival of
the Muslim Caliphate to orchestrate the global Jihad. The struggle
for the revival of the global Muslim Caliphate that ran from the
1920s to the 1970s was the first phase of an ideological movement
to purge Western thought from Muslim minds. However, by the
1970s Islamic revival movements in Muslim countries had started
to succumb to the persuasion of Western “democracy.” Earlier, the
ideologue of the Islamic movements, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, had
declared democracy the best vehicle for Islamization. He felt that
once the Islamic forces seized power through the electoral process,
they would make fundamental changes in the constitution to enforce
Islam, leaving only Islamists to participate in politics. Thus secular
democracy would purged from the system. The Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt subscribed to a similar thought process in the 1970s.
The siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1970 ended this,
and revived the ideas of khuruj (revolt against the deviant Muslim
ruler). This finally matured in 1980s and 1990s in the camps of the
militants of Afghanistan, where the sum of the post-Caliphate-era
dialectic was put to the test.
In the Introduction and Chapter 3 of this book I narrated the
ideological developments in Arab militants’ camps during their
fighting against Soviet Russia in the 1980s. I also mentioned the
Egyptian camp. The Egyptian camp comprised those who were both
politically and ideologically motivated. Though most had belonged
to the Muslim Brotherhood, they disagreed with that organization
for its insistence on trying to change society through the democratic
processes and elections. The Afghan Jihad served to bind the like-
minded, many of them doctors and engineers. Others were former
personnel of the Egyptian Army associated with various under-
ground Egyptian movements like the Islamic Jihad of al-Zawahiri
(now Osama bin Laden’s deputy). As mentioned earlier, this group
had been responsible for the assassination of President Sadat in 1981
after he had signed the peace deal with Israel at Camp David. All
were agreed on a single point: the reason for the fall of the Arab
nation was the United States and puppet governments in the Middle
East. This Egyptian camp was in the hands of al-Zawahiri. After
isha prayers those assembled would sit and discuss contemporary
issues in the Arab world. It bears repeating that one of the messages
the leaders drummed home was that members should invest their
resources in the armies of Muslim countries, and ideologically
motivate the best brains to be found there.
In the mid-1990s, when then Afghan President Professor
Burhanuddin Rabbani and his powerful minister of defense, Ahmed
Shah Masoud, allowed Osama bin Laden to move from Sudan to
Afghanistan, the Egyptian camp drew in several of its better strate-
gists from across the world to Afghanistan. There they ran maaskars
(training camps), studied, and taught strategy for the future fight.
By the time the Taliban had emerged as a force in Afghanistan in
the mid-1990s, the Egyptian camp had settled on their strategy,
underscoring the following two points:
- to speak out against corrupt and despotic Muslim governments
and make them targets, as this would destroy their image in the
eyes of the common people - to focus on the role of the United States, which was to
support Israel and tyrannical Middle Eastern countries, and make
everyone aware of this fact.
However, identical ideas had been projected by the Muslim
Brotherhood earlier. The Arab militants in Afghanistan were reading
Syed Qutb’s literature, with his book Milestone featuring foremost.
(Syed Qutb was an ideologue of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
who was executed by Nasser’s regime in 1966 for writing rebellious
literature including Milestone.) Also strongly featured were the
books authored by Wahhab.
Wahhab’s writings were still the basic source of monotheist Islamic
thinking, and while the militants argued that Muslim regimes like
the one in Saudi Arabia were not abiding by the rules he had laid
down for an Islamic state, the bigger problem was that Wahhab’s
books were written during the period of the Ottoman Empire and
were thus less likely to be effective in the twentieth century.
Similarly, Syed Qutb’s literature was a fair foundation for revo-
lutionary ideas, but the militants felt that a redefinition of Islamic
thought through new writings was required to spell out more clearly
the distinctions between Islamic and unIslamic policies. This would
then be presented as the benchmark for future friendships and
enmities, to negate through takfeer the existing Muslim regimes’
practices of friendship with the West and enable the new construct
to complement Al-Qaeda’s strategy as and when the time of an
inevitable split in ideas materialized.
After the defeat of the USSR in Afghanistan, the Arab fighters
looked for the leading role in the Muslim world. They started
compiling their thoughts, and ideas and books like Qawaid
Al-Takfeer (Rules of expulsion from Islam) were published in
1994.