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

Khattab was one of the most important figures in the international Jihadist Movement who in the 1980s was an associate of Osama bin Laden and a leader of the Islamic International Brigade which he established in 1998 with Shamil Basayev. [26] National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism ( START ), University of Maryland. See http://www.start.umd.edu/tops/terrorist_organization_profile.asp?id=4357 Later he would become the head of the Arab Mujahedeen in Chechnya (also known as Ansar in Chechnya ). As such he was involved in establishing training camps in southeastern Chechnya, “which trained unemployed young Chechen men and Muslims from throughout Russia for a jihad that was far greater in scope than originally envisioned by Chechnya’s nationalist leadership.” [27] START , op. cit.

The nasheed When will the Muslim ummah unite? was presented as being in the possession of the defendant in both video and audio format.

The video [28] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvrRLsXE5RI and accompanying voiceover is a highly compressed version of the key elements of the Jihadist Movement’s narrative. It opens by describing the 1924 dissolution of the Islamic Empire, the caliphate, as a catastrophe after which the West invaded Islamic territories and:

[P]ledged us to useless flags and brought the kuffar [ infidels ] to our lands.

Then the nasheed speaks of the Western culture of which the Muslims “became instant fans” and how they abandoned their religion “so Allah abandoned us.” It continues as follows:

So when we strayed from Islam a wake-up call we were handed.

And the troops of the devils in our nations quickly landed to colonize the Muslims

The worst amongst us were made to lead us

They too were oppressors and didn’t even feed us.

This is followed by:

The time is for Jihad and Salaam [ Peace ] to the believers who participate.

We stand humiliated until we rethink our aims

We are here to reestablish Islam on this Earth

So by the will of Allah let’s give Islam a rebirth

The video closes with a passage from the Koran (4:95):

Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home),

except those who are disabled,

and those who strive hard and fight in the cause of Allah

with their wealth and their lives.

Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight

with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).

Unto each, Allah has promised good (paradise),

but Allah has preferred those whose strive hard and fight ,

above those who sit (at home), by a huge reward .

The audio file The Man who went to Jannah [heaven] without Praying is a brief recounting of a tale in which a man is fatally wounded in battle. The significance of the story is that the man had never prayed to Allah or even fasted in the manner prescribed by the “Pillars of Islam.” Nevertheless, the story ends with the otherwise un-Islamic individual being rewarded with life in jannah, or heaven, because when asked before his death whether he fought “for the sake of Islam,” he answered, “Yes.” As such he qualified as a shaheed , a martyr of Islam, and is rewarded with entry into paradise.

The narrator concludes by noting that being a martyr to Islam “is the one deed that would guarantee a person the highest level of jannah without doing anything else.”

The last two files are the Rasool Allah Inspiring Words Of Truth! and Rasool Allah The Prophet Of Mercy And War!

The first is a harsh critique of the way Muslims currently live their lives and is a call for believers to understand the depth of their responsibilities as Muslims.

The speaker identifies the most frightening part of the Koran as the one which deals with Judgment Day, when all the actions of each person will be judged and all will be held accountable. In the last part of this first file, the audience is reminded that Mohammad said, “I am the one that will wipe the kuffar [infidel] from the face of this Earth.”

The second file has the same speaker talking over the sounds of battle quoting Mohammad again as saying: “I am the prophet of Jihad. I am the prophet of massacre,” and exhorting his audience not to follow the middle way, not to simply avoid that which is haram [forbidden] and at the same time take no action to establish the caliphate, since “Islam should dominate,” and it is the believer’s responsibility to be at the “forefront” of this effort and make it a reality.

Even if the Boston bombing had not occurred, or if the documents belonging to the defendant had been provided to me without any reference to his identity or any specific attack, my twenty-plus years of experience with terrorism, and the analysis of Jihadism in particular, would have immediately led me to the conclusion that these documents belong to an individual who identifies himself with the Global Jihadist Movement and who uses its ideology to justify terrorist violence.

The thousands of pages of jihadist documents supplied to me by the US Attorney’s Office represent a very extensive collection of key authors and works central to the Jihadist Movement. More important, the documents authored by the defendant himself, as well as the images, videos and audio tracks in his possession, provide first-hand evidence of his self-identification with the Jihadist Movement, with its objectives, and with the violent means for achieving these goals.

Since 9/11—and even before—there have been numerous attempts to identify the key ingredients of the radicalization process that lead to Jihadist violence. Despite the existence of important works such as Marc Sageman’s Understanding Terror Networks [29] Marc Sageman: Understanding Terror Networks , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. and the contribution made to the discussion by the NYPD report, Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat , [30] M. D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt: Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat , NYPD Intelligence Division, 2007. there is no one pattern to how a non-violent individual becomes a member of the Jihadist Movement willing to execute terrorist acts.

In the case of the Tsarnaevs, one can point to geopolitical events that may have contributed to the process of radicalization, or at least accelerated it, such as the success of Islamist forces in Syria or the renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, but the only tangible similarity between this incident and other acts of jihadist violence is the ideology shared by the perpetrators, the narrative of an Islam infected by Western influence and a loss of faith; the oppression of Muslims; the need to re-establish a theocratic system of governance; and action to punish the infidels and destroy their un-Islamic systems.

The narrative written in the boat where the defendant was apprehended after the bombing cannot be read in any way but as the testimony of an individual who has knowingly participated in terrorist acts because he subscribes to the ideology of Global Jihad and wishes to kill for this cause and so receive eternal rewards.

According to the documents provided and written by the defendant, his progress toward the religiously justified use of terrorist violence was not rapid or sudden but the result of several years of radicalization. This is supported by the open sentiments expressed in several of the high school papers he wrote.