SALAFI Jihadi ideologies are a thing of the 20th century; a deviation from 1400 years of knowledge tradition in Islam gave birth to global Jihad, which manifested in the terrorism of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. An Egyptian scholar, Sayyid Kutb, propagated that the world had returned to the dark age before the advent of Islam and that an individual Muslim should achieve such excellence that rulers, judiciary and police become irrelevant for the implementation of Shariah laws. Kutb was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood; he was declared heretic by Jamia Al-Azhar as his idealism for a stateless society was against the traditions of the four guided caliphs in Islam. On August 29, 1966, he was hanged to death after a trial found him guilty of a rebellion to overthrow the government in Egypt. However, his violent extremist narratives continue to inspire terrorism around the world.
Another member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Dr. Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian theologian, became a proponent of the participation of Arab fighters in Jihad against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Dr. Azzam was facilitated by the American government for this purpose, and he is the ideologue who radicalised Saudi millionaire Usama bin Laden (UBL) for funding Arab fighters in Afghanistan. But after the Soviet Union left, the civil war in Afghanistan demoralised him. In this situation, his favourable stance for Ahmad Shah Massoud annoyed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his thrive for shifting the focus of Arab fighters to Palestine perturbed UBL and Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri as well. In the midst of these disagreements, Dr. Azzam was assassinated in a bomb blast in Peshawar on November 24, 1989. The leads in the investigations into his killing pointed towards UBL and Dr. Al-Zawahiri, besides some international actors. Undoubtedly, the elimination of Abdullah Azzam benefited UBL the most, as he became the undisputed leader of Arab militants in the world.
UBL was not well-versed in religious education as he was a graduate in business administration and civil engineering; therefore, he depended on the works of Sayyid Kutb and the Fatwas of Abdullah Azzam for the ideological underpinnings of Global Jihad. He moved to Afghanistan in 1996, where he took the oath of allegiance to Mullah Omar, a marriage of convenience between Salafi Jihadi ideology and the Hanafi Deobandi Taliban. UBL’s radical ideas materialised in the formal creation of Al-Qaeda and terrorist activities culminated in the deadly 9/11 attacks in America. America and the international community responded with Operation Enduring Freedom. The Afghan Taliban’s government was devastated in 2001; the war against terrorism shattered Al-Qaeda; and UBL became a fugitive militant leader.
Usama bin Laden was eliminated in 2011, and Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri became the chief of Al-Qaeda. Dr. Zawahiri was an Egyptian eye surgeon, and he was believed to have uneasy relations with millionaire UBL as a junior partner due to his limited fortunes. Despite the fact that Zawahiri was a well-known militant figure of core Al-Qaeda, he was not able to exert control over various Al-Qaeda branches, franchises and affiliates as he lacked charisma. Dr. Zawahiri’s woes were compounded by many factors, but weak leadership and concessions in winning more militants and affiliates were the main contributors to this situation. So, Al-Qaeda became the victim of its own franchises and affiliates under the slain Al-Zawahiri.
The personality conflict between Al-Zawahiri and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, devastated Al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri disavowed his ties with Al-Baghdadi because he had provoked internal fighting in Al-Qaeda, in which thousands of militants were killed in Iraq and Syria. In response, Al-Baghdadi became the self-proclaimed caliph, a deviation from Al-Qaeda’s ideology to create suitable conditions for the return of the Islamic caliphate in the first place. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) became very violent towards Al-Qaeda and its propaganda campaign against the core leadership of Al-Qaeda was even more deadly. ISIS made scathing criticism of Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda, and its various branches and affiliates.
Al-Qaeda’s online magazines and militant forums were consumed by the propaganda war against Al-Baghdadi as well. Its propaganda campaign was dedicated to justifying Al-Qaeda’s actions as legitimate while rejecting the practices of ISIS.
As ISIS propagated that the majority of Taliban are even not pure Muslims, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also produced a booklet to refute slain Al-Baghdadi’s claim of the Caliphate in order to defend the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda. However, some commanders of the TTP and many militants joined ISIS as well. Militants’ deadly propaganda and turf wars demonstrate that Al-Qaeda, ISIS, TTP and ISKP are ideologically hollow and completely wrong. Their sympathisers must open their eyes and realise that terrorist groups are not an option to address the grievances of Muslims. In fact, these disgruntled groups have become a problem for each other owing to personality conflicts, personal grudges, and ideological contradictions.
—The writer is MPhil in IR from Quaid-e-Azam University, and occasionally contributes to the national press on issues of violent extremism and militancy.
views expressed are writer’s own.
