The Role of Ideology in the Roots of al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda, headed long by Osama bin Laden (OBL), has convincingly emerged as the most powerful and ideologically motivated organization with objectives to politically spread worldwide itself and its ideological stance in the post-cold war period. Though it was nurtured by the West through CIA and ISI, and fostered by Arab volunteers to stem out the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan, it later turned its guns towards the US and US-backed regimes in the Muslim countries on the pretext they were serving the cause of infidels who deserved elimination. The infiltration of Takfiri doctrine, once formulated by Ibn Taymiyya, during Mongol invasion of Mesopotamia, made the Salafism-inspired militant activists of AQ to indulge into and justify their terrorist activities against non-combatant civilians. An attempt has been made here to trace the roots and dynamics of the philosophical thought that gradually drove AQ to what it is now known as the most dreadful outfit, both for the West and the Muslim world.

Strategic Studies, 2016

Danial Byman‟s latest book, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Global Jihadist Movement: What everyone needs to know, comes at a crucial juncture in time when new terrorist outfits have been evolving out of the old ones. This piece of writing by Daniel Byman qualifies more as a handbook on Al Qaeda than an analytical attempt to ascertain how the terrorist organisations have developed over time. It may as well have been a detailed presentation of facts and figures if it were not for the author‟s personal but biased take on certain matters. It starts with a historical account of the pre 9/11 world and evolution of Al Qaeda long before that. In this section, the author explains how 9/11 was instrumental in bringing Al Qaeda from the periphery of global politics to its white hot centre. The author takes the readers back to the era of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to him, this time around, Al Qaeda was slowly establishing its organisational structure which was upgraded with time. But the only thing more effective than the concrete structure of the organisation was the idea behind its very existence. An idea that made a small band of people powerful enough to terrorise the world was the real ideology of this organisation. However, this premise is based on a false assumption as these organisations are not merely composed of a few adulterated minds and wrongly interpreted religious notions. The truth, which the author completely ignores, is that there has been substantial evidence which points to the bigger powers that have funded such organisations.

AbSTRACT The Islamic State was founded following its separation from al-Qaeda, and has since become a current issue after the Paris attacks. Studies can be found in the literature discussing the similarities and differences between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. However, in this paper, these similarities and differences are examined according to different aspects, such as their perspectives of global jihad, ideology , practices of instrumentalising jihad, definitions of primary and secondary enemies , human factors, methods of using media, and economic resources. Through this analysis, the topic is studied in a deeper way. The ideology adopted by these two organisations is investigated by mentioning the intellectual origins of global jihad and the sources of Salafism. Then the similarities and differences between Islamic State and al-Qaeda are explored. It is determined that there are not important differences in global ideology and global jihad, but they differ regarding their economic resources and how they use media.

European Journal of Political Science Studies, 2019

Since the terrorist attack on 9/11 in the United States, the world sees a superfluity of contributions to the academic debate on the shifting character of terrorism. Huntington argued the new actors in international conflicts are no longer nation-states but civilization. He defines this concept as the highest cultural grouping of people (…) defined both by common objective elements (language, history, religion, customs, institutions) and by the subjective self-identification of people. ISIS is the latest version of terrorism has all of the characteristics of a state without international recognition and legitimacy. From 15 May 2010 to October 26, 2019, ISIS had been led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who spent five years in American captivity in the Bucca prison in Iraq. On 5 July 2014, he declared himself as the first caliph of a newly created Islamic Caliphate, known as the Islamic State. Within a short period, ISIS captured a large part of Iraq and Syria and then Baghdadi proclaimed himself with the acronym "Caliph Ibrahim." Current research intends to evaluate the ideology of ISIS and tries to find out the factors that influenced Muslim youths around the world to join the group. The study has applied a qualitative research methodology by collecting data from content review; this includes books, scholarly articles, newspapers, and periodicals. For the reason that statistics would probably not be the answer to understanding beliefs and ideologies, qualitative data would better serve the purpose of this paper. The information will be largely dependent on an examination of scholarly sources that have provided analysis on jihadism in Islam as well as the political situation in Iraq and Syria that had led to the rapid rise of ISIS. The paper concludes by arguing that the extremist ideology of ISIS is a synthesis of counter-terror policy implications and the group's ideology was rejected by Muslim scholars around the world.

2011

In recent years, Al-Qaeda has suffered a number of setbacks, but has also successfully spawned an expansionist global jihadist movement that will survive the death of Osama bin Laden. This article describes how the multifaceted threat posed by global jihadism has evolved over the last decade. It first recounts some of the more salient examples of Al-Qaeda's post-9/11 strategic, ideological, and structural adaptations, and then offers a balance sheet of Al-Qaeda's contemporary strengths and weaknesses. Al-Qaeda continues to enable the violence of others, orient that violence towards the United States and its allies in a distributed game of attrition warfare, and foster a dichotomous "us versus them" narrative between the Muslim world and the rest of the international community. Despite this overarching consistency, Al-Qaeda shepherds a different phenomenon than it did ten years ago. The aggregation of the movement's strategic, ideological, and structural adaptations has fundamentally changed the nature of the jihadist threat to the West. This evolved threat is not inherently more dangerous, as counterterrorism efforts today focus on and disrupt capability earlier and more consistently than prior to September 2001. This multifaceted global jihad will, however, continue to produce greater numbers of attacks in more locations, from a more diverse cadre of individuals spanning a wider ideological spectrum.

Politics and Religion, 2011

Theological Academia, 2023

The Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan has generally pleased jihadist groups around the world. The Islamic Emirate was re-established in Afghanistan by the Taliban after the end of the 20-year US occupation when the last US soldier left Kabul on August 30th, 2021. That was seen as a complete "victory" day for many Sunni Jihadist groups around the world. However, it is feared that the Taliban's success will usher in a new era of jihadism in the Middle East and Central Asia. It is feared that more radical organizations inspired by the Taliban will rise against the existing governments in these regions, overthrow them, and rule these countries in line with their ideology. It is also feared that jihadist groups will seek to come to the fore with large-scale global attacks, with al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates expected to pose the biggest threat in this regard. This is because while the Taliban has a regional influence as a structure with territorial sovereignty over Afghanistan and its surroundings, Al-Qaeda and ISIS have defined their sphere of influence on a global scale, and thus have defined their area of struggle as the whole world. However, other sub-jihadist organizations affiliated with these two organizations, which operate regionally, can act on a country and regional basis. Although these groups have weakened in recent years, they are still active. In general, what all three organizations have in common is that they adopt a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam. Accordingly, these organizations, which believe that Islam has moved away from its essence and principles of faith, want Islam to be lived as it was when it first emerged and to interpret Islamic rules purely without adapting them to today's conditions. In other words, they aim to implement a political, economic, and social order based on Islamic rules and principles and want pure Islam to be practiced in all areas of life. They claim that the salvation of humanity can only be achieved by making Islam dominant in all areas of life and that man-made ideologies cause inequality and injustice among people. For this reason, all three organizations believe that social and political life cannot be separated from religious issues and therefore justify using violence for the sake of faith. This is also an essential duty for “true Muslims”. On the other hand, these organizations have a negative belief that those who do not fight for this purpose are “bad Muslims”. In other words, all three organizations see taking over political life as necessary to achieve Islamic life or to make the rules of Islam prevail. On the other hand, these three organizations differ in terms of ideology and methodology to achieve this goal. This study systematically examines the ideological and methodological similarities and differences of these three jihadist organizations and how they differ from each other.

2010

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2004

This article examines the nature of religious terrorism, principally with reference to al-Qaeda. It argues that a distinction must be made between the ultimate aims and the immediate objectives of ‘religious’ terrorists, and that while the ultimate aims will be religiously formulated, the immediate objectives will often be found to be almost purely political. This distinction is illustrated with reference to such premodern religious terrorists as the Assassins and Zealots. Immediate objectives, are for many purposes more important than ultimate aims. Although the immediate objectives of al-Qaeda on 9=11 cannot be established with certainty, it is highly probably that the intention was to provoke a response from the US that would have a radicalizing impact on al-Qaeda’s constituency. Reference to public opinion in the Middle East, especially in Egypt, shows that this is indeed what has happened. Such an impact is a purely political objective, familiar to historians of terrorism from at least the time of Errico Malatesta and the ‘propaganda of the deed’ in the 1870s. While no direct link between Malatesta and al-Qaeda exists, al-Qaeda was certainly in contact with contemporary theories that Malatesta would have recognized, and seems to have applied them. Even though its immediate objectives are political rather than religious, al-Qaeda is a distinctively Islamic group. Not only is its chosen constituency a confessional one, but al-Qaeda also uses—and when necessary adapts—well-known Islamic religious concepts to motivate its operatives, ranging from conceptions of duty to conceptions of ascetic devotion. This is demonstrated with reference to the ‘Last Night’ document of 9=11. The conclusion is that terrorism which can be understood in political terms is susceptible to political remedies.