Sebastian Gorka - Why We Fight - Why We Fight - Defeating America's Enemies - With No Apologies

Azzam travelled the world with a message of fighting back against the persecution of Muslims, attracting Egyptians, Yemenis, Jordanians, and Saudis, among others, to come and join the “holy war” against the infidel invaders. One of the Saudi Arabians attracted to the cause, and who would later become Azzam’s deputy, was Osama bin Laden. It should be noted that of the jihadist texts found in the defendant’s possession, Azzam’s are the most numerous.

Azzam should be appreciated as the individual who most internationalized and popularized the modern conceptualization of Jihad. His 1979 fatwa, or religious decree, Defense of Muslim Lands , [8] http://www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_defence_1_table.htm . also in the possession of the Defendant, is a seminal jihadist document and remains so within the Global Jihadist Movement.

In it, Azzam states that Jihad , holy war, is now fard ’ayn , an individual and universal obligation of all believers. His logic for doing so is clear and his Ph.D. from Al Azhar gives the document the true weight of an official fatwa, or religious decree.

Azzam’s argument is that with the Soviet invasion of Muslim territory, and Muslim lives under threat from the infidel, Holy War is required. However an official response on behalf of the global Muslim community will not be automatically forthcoming given that President Ataturk of Turkey dissolved the caliphate in 1924. As a result of that decision there is no Islamic Empire or Emperor (caliph) left to declare a retaliatory war or to provide command authority for a military action against the infidel invaders. As a result, it is incumbent upon all Muslims to act individually in the name of Islam to protect the faith and their co-religionists.

Azzam is also very specific with the wording of his fatwa. He states that all Muslims, no matter where they live, rich or poor, must fulfill this religious obligation. One of the first to do so was Osama bin Laden, Azzam’s future deputy in the MAK who, when Azzam was assassinated ten years later in Pakistan, would inherit the whole organization and rename it al-Qaeda al Jihad , the Base for Holy War.

The last significant occurrence of 1979 came with the publication of a book on jihad by a general in the Pakistani armed forces. The Quranic Concept of War [9] https://www.yumpu.com/pt/document/view/7647367/malik-quranic-concept-of-war by Brigadier S. K. Malik is unlike any modern book by a Western military author and can be taken as a synthesis of Islamic military strategy and a religious justification of terrorist violence.

Endorsed by the then President of Pakistan, General Zia ul Haq, and the equivalent of the then attorney general of Pakistan, the text reinforces Azzam’s fatwa that Holy War is an obligation of all Muslims before going on to provide a three-part argument on what the purpose of war actually is and how it should be waged against the kuffar , or infidel.

The text opens with a repudiation of Western military thought as embodied in the foundational work of the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz’s groundbreaking text On War has as its theme the idea that war is simply “the continuation of politics by other means.” In other words, that war is a function of the modern nation-state whereby national interests are realized when other means, such as diplomacy or economic measures, fail.

In the first part of Malik’s work, this Western understanding of the purpose of war is completely rejected. Instead, the General writes that all wars may only serve one purpose, and this purpose alone: the realization of Allah’s sovereignty on the Earth .

Secondly, Malik also rejects the Western practice of looking for multiple “centers-of-gravity” or key vulnerabilities to attack within the enemy during wartime. Instead he states unequivocally that when fighting the enemies of Allah, one should not look for multiple targets such as command centers, resupply routes, or logistics hubs. According to Malik, there is only one target in the enemy that counts, and it isn’t even a physical one. According to The Quranic Concept of War , the only target in war that matters at all is the soul of the infidel. The believer must convert them to Islam or kill them.

The last portion of the jihadist text is the most pertinent to the current threat of jihadi terrorism and events such as the bombing of the Boston marathon. In it, Malik states that since the soul of the infidel is the only target that matters in war, the most effective mode of attack is terror . As a result, terrorism is the best tool to use against the non-Muslim, or infidel.

Based upon the works of al-Banna, Qutb, Azzam, and Malik, and the pronouncements of other jihadist strategists and writers to include Anwar al-Awlaki and Abu Muhammad Asim al-Maqdisi, which were also found in the Defendant’s possession, the objectives of the modern Global Jihadist Movement can be summarized as follows:

• To violently eradicate pagan ignorance of Allah ( jahalliyyah ) from the world.

• To eject foreign militaries and Western influences from Muslim lands ( Dar al Islam ).

• To destroy all un-Islamic political systems, especially Western democracies.

• To re-establish the theocratic empire of Islam, the caliphate.

The “true believer” must follow the way of al wala al barra . [10] For a detailed, and perhaps the best, explanation of al wara al barra see Stephen Ulph’s “Islamism and Totalitarianism: the Challenge of Comparison” in Katharine Gorka and Patrick Sookhdeo, eds., Fighting the Ideological War: from Communism to Islamism (McLean, Va.: Westminster Institute, 2012). He or she must reject those things which are un-Islamic and by his or her actions show loyalty to Allah. The nature of the acts taken in furtherance of Islam and for the good of Allah are bounded by the context of the believer. If they live in Dar al Islam, territory that is ruled by Islamic leaders and in accordance with sharia, they must defend that territory from un-Islamic infidel influence or they must travel to those places where their coreligionists are at war with the infidel, or to the heart of the enemy, as the al-Qaeda operatives did on September 11, 2001, and wreak havoc within the center of disbelief.

If the believer is living in Dar al-Harb —literally The House of War —they must chose between hijra or jihad They must emigrate to Muslim lands or destroy the un-Islamic system in which they find themselves.

In the case of the defendant, these elements were combined. His family background in Russia contained the elements of a Muslim community ruled and persecuted by an un-Islamic leadership—the infidel regime in Moscow—and at the personal level, with the move of the Tsarnaev family to the US, the defendant was in the position to have to choose between emigration to a Muslim land or jihad against the infidel state in which he lived.

If the latter is chosen, then the narrative of the Jihadist Movement is clear that the violent actions taken should include terrorist acts designed to maximize civilian casualties. [11] See the terrorist tradecraft sections of the al Qaeda magazine Inspire detailed below. The theme here is that the suffering of Muslims around the world at the hands of the infidel must be avenged through the suffering of those “punished” through terrorist attack. [12] See the discussion of the video and audio nasheeds (Islamic chants) found in the possession of the Defendant and discussed below, especially: When will the Muslim Ummah Unite?