Milestones on the Road to September 11th
Philosophers of the Islamic Revival from Al Afghani to Al Qaeda.
An overview of the main philosophers of the Egyptian strand of the Islamist movement with their important ideological innovations presented in a chronological progression to the present time. On September 12th 2001, “pundits, scholars and journalists” struggled to get to grips with the west’s “newest enemy” [1]. Insights were sought into the shaping, motivations, experiences and ideals of Osama Bin Laden and his Islamist fellow travelers. Despite a deeper understanding of the Muslim world than many of his fellow journalists, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman still grappled in the weeks after the attack to analyse the men who had become our latest bête noir. They prayed “only to the God of Hate”. They were “super-empowered angry men” driven by “pure hatred and nihilism” to create a “world-class evil” [2]. The sheer incomprehension of the western educated liberal elite was articulated by Friedman in his column of September 25th, 2001.
“What we know of these terrorists is that they were evil, educated and suicidal. That is a combination I have never seen before in a large group of people. People who are evil and educated don’t tend to be suicidal…people who are evil and suicidal don’t tend to be educated.”[3]
Hidden under all the hysterical denunciations of evil was a sheer puzzlement at what we had missed. Here, for the first time in centuries, was a political movement that had sprung, fully-formed, from the Muslim world. Unlike nationalism, socialism or liberalism, Islamic activism was their ideology, their creation. Despite the religious veneer this was a popular movement prompted in response to a century of socio-economic malaise, military inadequacy and political disillusionment in, particularly, the Arab world[4]. It spread through the institution “no Arab regime dares ban”, the mosque. Technological advances, from the cassette tape to the internet have spread the sermons, the pamphlets, the images and news that introduce to the masses the ideas and personalities that propel the movement’s dynamic[5].
Slowly we have begun to understand these personalities. The ideologists and figureheads of Islamic activism are certainly educated, many highly so. They are academics, poets, accomplished theologians, orators of great power. Evil? Most see themselves as forces for good; many have been radicalized and brutalized by state tyranny or conflict. As for Friedman’s third descriptor, suicidal? The word evokes the notion of a human in the grips of despair. These men aren’t powerless, they are powerful. They’re not suicidal, they just don’t fear death. The distinction is important. Their story is a long one, one that goes further back than the Soviet-Afghan war.
The grandfather of Islamism is arguably the 19th Century Islamic polemicist Sayyid Jamal ad Din Afghani. In sharp contrast to the modernizing trends in the Muslim world prompted by the power of industrialized Europe, Afghani argued that the answer to the Muslim world’s woes was pan-Islamic unity and a jihad supported by “modern science, technology and rational behaviour”[6]. Throughout the later part of the 19th Century this energetic figure traveled throughout the Muslim world warning of the depredations of the West and the danger to Islam from disunity and impiousness.
“Afghani initiated the partial transformation of Islam from a generally held religious faith into an ideology of political use in uniting Muslims against the West.”[7]
Syrian intellectual and journalist Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935), a “disciple”[8] of al-Afghani[9], was a passionate believer in the restoration of the Arab caliphate as a means of reviving and reunifying the umma and resisting the west and its ideas[10]. In his 1923 opus al-Khalifa he laid out his vision of a new and vibrant Islam, immersed in the ideals of the salaf[11] but open to the learning and values of the modern West, though only in an Islamic context[12]. This idea of a fully modernized Islamic state based on the Shariah was widely influential. Rida’s writings were disseminated throughout the Muslim world, especially through the magazine, Al-Manar (The Lighthouse), he published from Cairo[13]. Like his mentors Afghani and Abdu, he believed that Islam began to decline when the caliphate passed from the Arabs to the Turks[14] and sought to reaffirm the centrality of the Arab position within the faith[15]. His salafiyyah movement wouldn’t be a simple return to 7th Century Arabia though, his mujtahid being every bit as versed in international law, history and science as he was in Islamic jurisprudence[16]. While Rida has been seen as a great inspiration of Arab nationalism[17] he largely drew away from Egyptian nationalists in his later life, appalled by their violence and much of their secular thought. While he didn’t see himself as a fundamentalist, his goal being the marriage of Islam and modern Western culture[18], he seems to presage the ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ of today with their salafi ideals and Hewlett Packard laptops.
While Rida was largely pacifistic, the ideals in this regard began to give way to a more militant programme of social, political and violent action[19].
After World War I, while many Egyptian hopes were pinned on democratic nationalism[20], a non-secular alternative grew in al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, The Muslim Brotherhood. In 1928, at age 22, Hassan Al-Banna founded the Brotherhood to “propagate moral and political reforms through education and propaganda”[21]. European colonial control over Egyptian and Arab lands, the secular post-war constitution and the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 turned him against Western modernity and its attendant evils. He was greatly impressed with Wahhabist triumph in Arabia and worked to repeat this in his own land[22]. Though his movement initially appealed mainly to the poor and illiterate, it quickly expanded membership into every stratum of Egyptian life. The appeal of the movement was simple. Al-Banna called for an Islamic state based on the Qur’an[23], where the ruler was responsible to God and the people[24]. The Brotherhood started a programme of providing assistance to the poor and dispossessed[25], a tradition continued today by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The struggle against illiteracy, poverty stood beside the struggle for social order, the emancipation of Muslim lands and universal Muslim fraternity[26]. While it lacked a coherent political programme early on, it made up for this with tremendous levels of mass organisation and education, augmented by a paramilitary trained youth wing[27].
Considered more an organizer than an ideologue[28], he still contributed much to the written canon of the Islamist struggle. First there was the group’s founding manifesto which declared, “God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Koran our constitution, Jihad our way and dying for God’s cause our supreme objective”[29]. Al-Banna taught a more vociferous form of jihad, giving precedence to the external, minor jihad over the inner, greater jihad of the soul and indicated a belief in attacking Jews and Christians (the people of the book) as well as kufir[30]. In his piece “On Jihad” he laid out his interpretation of Qur’anic tradition quite plainly.
“In this Tradition, there is a clear indication of the obligation to fight the People of the Book…Jihad is not against polytheists alone, but against all who do not embrace Islam...Today the Muslims… are compelled to humble themselves before non-Muslims, and are ruled by unbelievers. Their lands have been trampled over…the rites of their religion have fallen into abeyance within their own domains... Hence it has become an individual obligation… on every Muslim to … engage in jihad...Know then that death is inevitable, and that it can only happen once. If you suffer it in the way of God, it will be your profit in this world, and your reward in the next[31].
This was initially the covert side of the movement, hidden by the huge and humble social movement. Eventually in the early 1940s a clandestine terror wing, al-Jihaz al-Sirri (The Secret Apparatus) emerged from the paramilitary youth wing[32]. They trained in law, first aid, and weaponry, and took an oath of allegiance in a darkened room swearing secrecy on a copy of the Qur’an and a pistol[33]. Mounting tensions between rival movements, irreconcilable differences in ideology and government repression led to outbreaks of violence. In response to an assassination and bombing campaign by the Brotherhood, the movement was banned, thousands were imprisoned and Al-Banna was assassinated[34].
Hassan Al-Banna left a monumental, if troubling, legacy to the Arab world. Should we examine the works of his followers Anwar Sadat or Sayyid Qutb, or those of his descendants Abed Faraj or Ayman Zawahiri? Al-Banna himself would see his legacy as The Brotherhood itself: “a salafiyyamessage, a Sunni way, a Sufi truth, a political organisation, an athletic group, an economic idea and a social idea,” [35].
A major figure influenced by Al-Banna was Pakistani journalist and politician Abu Ala Mawdudi[36]. Brought up in the Raj, the son of a lawyer and Sufi ascetic, Mawdudi, like many Indian Muslims, inherited a fear of the West and feeling of spiritual and material disenfranchisement after the collapse of the Mughal Empire in 1857. The disbandment of the Ottoman caliphate exasperated the feeling of Muslim besiegement in the young Mawdudi[37]. After decades of leadership and scholarship within the Indian Muslim community, in 1941 Mawdudi founded the political movementJamaat-e-Islami. He saw JI as a “counter-league” to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s secular nationalist Muslim League[38] and as a means of fighting the pervasive la dini (religionless) secularism[39].
Mawdudi had closely studied the Communist movement and particularly Lenin’s writings on party structure. His new party would have its own unique ideology but would be based on the structure and organisation of the Communists[40]. His Islam would be an ideology of revolution, as great as Nazism or Communism but different in one important aspect. Mawdudi believed that these other ideologies enslaved human beings whereas Islam “sought to free them from subjection to anything other than God”[41]. Mawdudi’s writings were translated from Urdu into Arabic and disseminated widely in the Middle East.
Islam is a revolutionary doctrine and system that overturns governments. It seeks to overturn the whole universal social order...and establish its structure anew...Islam seeks the world. It is not satisfied by a piece of land but demands the whole universe...Islamic Jihad is at the same time offensive and defensive...The Islamic party does not hesitate to utilize the means of war to implement its goal[42].
Like Al-Banna, Mawdudi had fixed on the revolutionary aspect of Jihad as a call to arms. He called for a global jihad, declaring this to be a central tenet of Islam. Unlike some of his predecessors, Mawdudi saw jihad less as a means of Muslim self-defence and more as a “revolutionary struggle to seize power for the good of all humanity”[43].
If you want to identify with the spirit of the Quran, you must practically involve yourself with the struggle to fulfill its mission. For the Quran is not a book of abstract theories and cold ideas… Nor is it merely a religious book like other religious books, whose meanings can be grasped in seminaries and oratories…it is a Book which contains a message, and invitation, which generates a movement... it impelled a quiet and pious man to abandon his life of solitude and confront the world that was living in rebellion against God…and pitted him in a grim struggle against the lords of disbelief, evil and inequity...this book showed its followers the ways to eradicate the old order and usher in the new.[44]
For the first time the concept of military jihad began to take central place in Islamic discourse[45]. The ideas of this Indian thinker formed the third point in what has been described as the triangulation of Islamic discourse. Along with Saudi Arabian Wahhabism and Egyptian thought from the Muslim Brotherhood, Mawdudi’s ideas dominated Islamic discussion in the 1950s, and still informs the ideology of Sunni Islamist militants to this day[46]. However Mawdudi still saw jahiliyyah, ignorance of God, as being a non-Muslim threat to be fought. The idea of jahiliyyah within the Muslim world was developed by the most important Islamic thinker and member of the Ikhwan, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb[47].
Described as the founder of Sunni fundamentalism[48], and the major “architect” and “strategist” of the contemporary Islamic revival[49], Qutb’s work is driven by his distress at what he saw as the growing distance between Islamic values and practices and life in the post-colonial Muslim states, especially Nasser’s Egypt[50]. A believer in conservative Islamic values, Qutb’s most radical writings were prompted by two key events in his life; a sojourn in the United states in the late 1940s and incarceration and torture in Nasser’s prisons beginning in 1955 until his execution in 1966[51].
Sent to the United States by the Egyptian Ministry of Education, Qutb was shocked by his experience of liberal Western life, particularly the general freedoms enjoyed by American women[52]. The State of Israel had just won its battle for existence by winning the first Arab-Israeli war. Qutb was shocked by the level of support he experienced in America for what he saw as a Jewish onslaught against Islam[53] and the attendant anti-Arab racism that went with it. On his return to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and began the fundamentalist activism that would lead to his death 15 years later.
Initially the revolutionary Free Officers who seized power in Egypt in July 1952 shared many of the ideals of the Muslim Brothers. In fact some officers like Anwar Sadat were actually members. Both groups wanted to rid Egypt of foreign influence, eliminate the power of the monarchy and landlords and end corruption in public life[54]. However the military led Revolutionary Command Council which propelled Colonel Nasser to power was essentially a secular nationalist movement which eventually led to clashes with the Islamist teachings of Qutb and the Brothers. After violent clashes and failed assassination attempts against Nasser, the Brotherhood was suppressed[55] and Qutb interned.
Qutb’s prison experience led him to pen Ma’alim fi’l Tariq, Milestones on the Way, after forty years still the most important “manual for Islamist martyrs”[56]. The torture and execution of Brothers under Nasser had shown Qutb that the Muslim world was riddled with “the evil values and cruelty ofjahiliyyah”[57]. Even though rulers like Nasser professed Islamic values, their secular actions really revealed them as apostates. It was every good Muslim’s duty to overthrow such a government, by violent means if necessary. Central to his thought was the idea of the supremacy of the rule of God.
“If we look at … modern ways of living, it becomes clear that the whole world is steeped inJahiliyyah … and all the marvelous material comforts and high-level inventions do not diminish this ignorance. This Jahiliyya is based on rebellion against God's sovereignty on earth: It transfers to man one of the greatest attributes of God, namely sovereignty, and makes some men lords over others…it takes the form of claiming that the right to create values… and to choose any way of life rests with men, without regard to what God has prescribed. The result of this rebellion against the authority of God is the oppression of His creatures”.[58]
Qutb clearly called for Islamic militancy and urged the creation of a Tali’ah or spearhead of believers who would lead the way in the war on jahiliyya[59]. This vanguard would take its example from the life of the Prophet, using jihad to turn back the tide of secularism and return society to the original values of Islam[60]. Until Qutb the Islamic movement had, by and large, worked to reform Muslim society from within. His ideas and martyrs death in 1966 caused a split in the Muslim Brotherhood and the wider Islamist movement. The mainstream returned to the non-violent opposition of figures like Rida. A “revolutionary clandestine sect” typified by Jamaat al-Islamiyya organised to propagate Qutb’s ideas by violent means. Organised in secret cells they plotted coups, espoused the segregation of Muslims and kuffir, fought for the implementation of sharia and viewed Muslim rulers as takfir, damned apostates[61].
Qutb’s thought played a key role in the emergence of the sahwa or ‘awakening’ movement, which came to prominence in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and blended Qutb’s ideas with a form of radicalWahhabist thinking professed by exiled Muslim Brothers from Egypt from the 1960s onward[62]. The Islamist lineage is complemented by Qutb’s brother Muhammad, who fled Egypt to Saudi Arabia, becoming a notable professor of Islamic studies. A prolific writer himself, Muhammad Qutb continues his brother’s concern for the state of Islam. In 1995 he wrote:
The Islamic community had been left in ruins. It had been weakened and divided into small nations. The seeds of internal conflict had been planned and nurtured. Every effort had been made to draw society far away from the essence of religion, keeping people in ignorance and luring them with worldly incentives. Attempts to reform within an Islamic framework are still being suppressed. Religious practicing Muslims have become outcasts in their own society.[63]
Like most of the Islamists, both Qutbs see Islam as the saviour of humanity from the despair caused by the failure of social, political and economic systems to bring justice or peace to man. They recognize that the struggle for the supremacy of Islam may be a long one.
How long will this take? It is not important. The reward for those who work towards that end is guaranteed by Him who created the heavens and the earth, and the result is in His hands. By the will Allah, Islam has survived its darkest hour. And by His will, it can again spread its light to every corner of the earth[64].
One man dedicated to spreading this light is Muhammad Qutb’s most famous student, one Osama Bin Laden[65].
1970s Egypt was a volatile place. The failure of the 1967 war with Israel was seen by many in the Muslim world as a defeat of secular Arab nationalism. Relentless repression of the Muslim Brotherhood radicalized many moderate Islamists. Other Islamic groups were receiving funding and encouragement as a counter to Soviet inspired left-wing activity. The decade was hurtling towards the key events in the new phase of the Islamic revival; Afghanistan, the assignation of President Sadat and the Iranian revolution. The two key ideologues of the period were both connected to Qutb.
Deeply inspired by Qutb, the key ideologue and founder[66] of Jamaat al-Jihad[67] or Al-Jihad was Abed al-Salem Faraj[68]. The electrician turned philosopher had written a privately circulated bookal-Faridah al Gha'ibah, "The Neglected Duty"[69] (often translated as “The Hidden Pillar”[70]).The ‘neglected’ duty was jihad, which Faraj narrowly defined as armed battle against apostates from the Islamic faith. The broader interpretation of jihad as spiritual resistance against evil was denounced as a "fabricated tradition" invented to "reduce the value of fighting with the Sword, so as to distract the Muslims from fighting the infidels and the hypocrites"[71]. A Muslims first duty was to liberate Jerusalem from the Jews, which couldn’t be properly achieved until they overthrew their “tartar rulers…who were all apostates from Islam, nourished at the table of colonialism, be it Crusader, communist or Zionist”[72]. Once this was achieved and their countries had been suitably Islamised then Muslims could return to their sacred duty of waging jihad against the rest of the world. This “belligerent” placing of jihad as one of the central pillars of Islam was innovative and was well received in many Egyptian circles[73].
In October 1981 Faraj took part in the successful assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat who had sealed his fate three years earlier with the Camp David agreement. Nasser’s successor had been proscribed as an evil prince by Al-Jihad. One of the assassins showed the metal of this hardened Islamism with his words after the attack.
“I have killed Pharaoh and I do not fear death.” [74]
Faraj and the other assassins suffered the same fate as Qutb. Spared this fate, but jailed none the less for his part in the plot, was Ayman al-Zawahiri[75], later doctor and adviser to Osama Bin Laden.
Abdullah Azzam was born in Palestine in 1941 and fought in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. An Islamic scholar, he earned a Ph.D. in Sharia law from the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo during which time he got to know the Qutb family. For most of the 1970s he taught Islamic law in universities in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, at one stage, like Muhammad Qutb, counting Osama Bin Laden as a student. In 1979 he moved to Pakistan to be close to the Afghan war and by the early 1980s had given up his teaching career to devote his considerable energies to the jihadi cause. In Islamist folklore Azzam is a figure of enormous importance.
“Abdullah Azzam was greatly influenced by the Jihad in Afghanistan and the Jihad was greatly influenced by him. To it he concentrated his full effort, that he ultimately became the most prominent figure in the Afghani Jihad, aside from the Afghan leaders. He spared no effort to promote the Afghan cause to the whole world, especially throughout the Muslim Ummah... He changed the minds of Muslims about Jihad in Afghanistan and presented the Jihad as it was; an Islamic cause which concerns all Muslims around the world. Due to his efforts, the Afghani Jihad became well known, in which Muslims from every part of the world came to fight”.[76]
In his writings Azzam spoke of the jihadi martyr in the familiar context of blood ritual and holy cleansing. As always there was at the core of the faith an elite group “who sacrifice their souls and their blood in order to bring victory to these convictions and ambitions”[77]. He saw the “manuscripts of history” as being inscribed with the blood, stories and examples of martyrs who had traversed the “blessed path of jihad” in order to further raise the Muslim banner[78]. Like his predecessors he believed in the centrality of jihad.
“If a piece of Muslim land the size of a hand span is infringed upon, then jihad becomes Fard Ayn (a global obligation) on every Muslim male and female, where the child shall march forward without the permission of its parents and the wife without permission of the husband”.[79]
In his best known work, Defence of the Muslim Lands, Azzam laid out his beliefs on suicide attack and the ‘collateral damage’ killing of Muslims in a manner we find familiar today. To Azzam jihad was built on “two main pillars. Patience which reveals bravery of the heart and generosity, by which one spends ones wealth and spirit. Yet, the sacrifice of ones person is the greatest generosity”. Azzam saw defensive jihad, the fight for Islamic lands, as too important a task to be restricted by worries over casualties from the Muslim populace. “If the Kuffar use Muslim captives as human shields in front of them in an advance to occupy a Muslim land, it remains an obligation to fight the Kuffar even if this leads to the killing of the Muslim captives”. This justification is an important tool in the Islamist armoury and helps them carry out bombing attacks like those in Iraq with a clear conscience.
Jihad against the kuffir came in two types, offensive and defensive jihad. He saw offensive jihad, attacking the enemy in their own land, as a way of terrorizing the unbelievers. He saw it as a duty of the Islamic ruler “to assemble and send out an army unit into the land of war once or twice every year. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the Muslim population to assist him… Jihad... is obligatory to perform with all available capabilities, until there remains only Muslims or people who submit to Islam”.
Ironically, for all his talk of righteous martyrdom, it appears that Azzam died at the hands of his own mujahideen colleagues in a dispute over the control of the finances of the Arab-Afghan movement[80]. Despite this Azzam exerts great ideological influence over the movement that became Al-Qaeda and is mentioned in the same breath as Qutb and the other theorists of violent jihad.
By stages the Islamic revivalists abandoned hope that any good would come from secular states and that only a righteous and Godly society guided by the Qur’an could save humanity from disaster. No compromise was possible. They believed that through determination and sacrifice they would triumph. The blood of the shaheed would help purify the faith and any kuffir destroyed in the process would only hasten the salvation[81]. The more their movement and their prophets were repressed, the more powerful their narrative became. Violence begat more violence.
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Our first step to countering the corrosive power of the jihadis is to stop caricaturing their leaders and prophets and start accepting them for what they are; capable and driven men, with deeply held beliefs, a feeling of victim-hood, a ready justification for the use of violence and a wide and eager audience for their simple form of revolution. We may not like to accept their existence but by doing so we remove any delusions that they might be a temporary problem for the West. They may well be around in some form for a long time to come. Time is merely an abstraction when you have God on your side.
Note
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[1] Irwin, Robert, “Is this the man who inspired Bin Laden?” In, The Guardian, Thursday November 1st, 2001, [on line] http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,584478,00.html. Accessed 1st September 2005. p.1.
[2] Friedman, Thomas, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World Before and After September 11, Penguin, London, 2003. pp.34-7.
[3] Friedman, pp.42.
[4] Mansfield, Peter, A History of the Middle East, 2nd Edition, Penguin, London, 2003. pp.377.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Akbar, M. J. The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity, Routledge, London, 2002. pp.132-4.
[7] Akbar, p.135.
[8] Mansfield, p.123.
[9] Armstrong, Karen, The Battle For God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Harper Collins, London, 2000. p.193.
[10] Ibid.
[11] The first generation of the Prophets followers. Smart, Ninian, The World’s Religions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, p.471.
[12] Armstrong, Battle, Pg 193.
[13] Smart, p.470.
[14] Mansfield, p.323.
[15] Smart, p. 470.
[16] Armstrong, Battle, p.193.
[17] Smart, p.470.
[18] Armstrong, Battle, p.193.
[19] Akbar, p.135.
[20] Smart, p.472.
[21] Ali, Tariq, The Clash of Fundamentalisms : Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, Verso, London, 2002, p.97.
[22] Ibid
[23] Mansfield, p.194.
[24] Thornton, Ted, A Biography of Hassan Al Banna, [on line]http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/hasan_al.htm. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[25] Wheatcroft, p.321.
[26] Armstrong, Battle, p.221.
[27] Mansfield, p.194.
[28] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/hasan_al.htm.
[29] Ali, p.97.
[30] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/hasan_al.htm.
[31] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/hasan_al.htm.
[32] Echoes of later groups like Al Qaeda, The Base. See, Armstrong, Battle, p.223.
[33] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/hasan_al.htm
[34] Ali, p.98.
[35] Muslim Brotherhood leaders quoted in, Ali, p.101.
[36] Thornton, Ted, A Biography of Abu Ala Mawdudi, [on line] http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/sayyid_abu.htm. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[37] Ali, pp.170-1.
[38] Ali, pp.174-5.
[39] Armstrong, pp.236-8.
[40] Ali, pp.174-5.
[41] Armstrong, p.238.
[42] Haddad, Yvonne, Islamists and the Challenge of Pluralism, Washington, D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, 1995, p.10 quoted inhttp://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/sayyid_abu.htm
[43] Armstrong, p.238.
[44] Mawdudi, Abu Ala, The Qur’anic Path, Lahore, 1979. Quoted in [on line]http://www.islaam.com/Article.aspx?id=36. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[45] Armstrong, p.239.
[46] Ali, p.176-7.
[47] Armstrong, pp.238-240.
[48] Armstrong, p.239.
[49] Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, Milestones by Sayyid Qutb: An Executive Summary, [on line]http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/milestones/freshlook.asp. Accessed 4th September 2005.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Lewis, Bernard, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, Random House, New York, 2003. pp.76-7.
[52] Encyclopedia of the Orient, Sayyid Qutb, [on line] http://i-cias.com/e.o/qutb_s.htm.
Accessed 4th September 2005.
[53] Lewis, p.78.
[54] Mansfield, pp.244-5.
[55] Lewis, p.77.
[56] Mansfield, p.379.
[57] Armstrong, p.240.
[58] Thornton, Ted, A Biography of Sayyid Qutb, [on line]http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/sayyid_qutb.htm. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[59] Thornton,http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/sayyid_qutb.htm
[60] Armstrong, pp.239-240.
[61] Mansfield, pp.379.
[62] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/sayyid_qutb.htm.
[63] Qutb, Muhammad, The Future is for Islam, Abdul Qasim Publishing House, Riyadh, 1995. Quoted in [on line] http://www.islaam.com/Article.aspx?id=317. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[64] Ibid
[65] Encyclopedia of the Orient, Sayyid Qutb, [on line] http://i-cias.com/e.o/qutb_s.htm.
Accessed 4th September 2005
[66] Wheatcroft, Andrew, Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam, Penguin, London, 2003. p.321.
[67] Society for the Holy War, a.k.a. Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Thornton, Ted, A Biography of Abed Faraj, [on line] http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/jihadorgan.htm
[68] Thornton, Ted, A Biography of Abed Faraj, [on line]http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/jihadorgan.htm. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[69] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/jihadorgan.htm
[70] Armstrong, Karen, Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World, Macmillan, London, 1988. p.279.
[71] Thornton, http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/jihadorgan.htm
[72] Muhammad Heikel’s Autumn of Fury quoted in Armstrong, Holy War, p.279.
[73] Armstrong, Holy War, P279.
[74] Wheatcroft, p.321.
[75] Council on Foreign Relations, “Jamaat al-Islamiyya” in, Terrorism: Q&A, [on line]http://www.cfrterrorism.org/groups/jamaat_print.html. Accessed 25 July 2005.
[76] Religioscope, “The Biography of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam (Shaheed)” in Defence of the Muslim Lands: The First Obligation After Iman. Quoted in [on line]http://www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_defence_2_intro.htm. Accessed 1st September 2005.
[77] Kohlman, Evan F. Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network, Berg, Oxford, 2004. p.3.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Religioscope.
[80] Kohlmann, p.11.
[81] Wheatcroft, p.322.Ustratos focus on the economic and geo-strategic analysis, security problems of the nations, economic development, the history of the world, the geopolitical conflicts and strategic issues in Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and their strategic problems. Tags:geopolitical, strategies, economies, war, military, armed, economic development, international relations, history, geography, environment, , NGO, alliances, European Union, flags, USA, United State of America
