Jihad Joe (3 page)

Within a few short weeks of the embassy disaster, a group of several hundred armed militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam, in the middle of the annual Hajj pilgrimage. The Saudis were already tense. Khomeini—a Shi'ite Muslim—had inspired an exciting new fervor for Islamic revival that threatened the Saudi-Sunni dominance of Islam around the world.
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When news broke that militants had seized the Grand Mosque, many in both Saudi Arabia and the West assumed the attack must be the work of Iran, but it quickly became clear that the threat was homegrown. Most of the militants were from Saudi Arabia, but the group included Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Yemenis, Iraqis, Sudanese … and at least two African Americans.
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The Americans had been brought to Saudi Arabia through one of the exchange programs specifically targeting African American Muslims. One American was killed during the siege, Faqur Abdur-Rahman, about whom little is
known except his name.
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The second was captured by the Saudis after French commandos stormed the mosque on the government's behalf. He was later released and repatriated. The name of the second American remains unknown.
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The story was covered up by both the Saudis and the United States. At the beginning of the two-week siege, the Iranian government fired off a scathing accusation that the United States was behind the assault. Rumors of American involvement sparked rioting and a mob attack on the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Any credible evidence that Americans had been involved in the attack—even acting on their own initiative—would have dramatically escalated the situation.

The militants, led by a radical Saudi named Juhayman Al Otaibi, were a motley crew of messianic believers trying to act out a prophecy regarding the Islamic version of Armageddon, which included the start of an apocalyptic war against Christians and Jews. Otaibi's writings had a strident anti-Western, anti-Christian tone, and they condemned the Saudi regime as well for a perceived failure to enforce the original traditions of the Prophet Mohammed.
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In some ways, Otaibi's message foreshadowed the thinking of the not-yetimagined al Qaeda. The parallel may be the result of both groups following similar traditions and sources, but there may be more to it. Otaibi's group preached on the grounds where Osama bin Laden attended college, at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, and the group's members were known in bin Laden's social circle.
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Otaibi's followers were not the first terrorists or even the first jihadist-terrorists, but they were the vanguard of the modern age of terrorism, foreshadowing what would follow in both tactics and message.

The third event of the winter of 1979 would spread an evolving, radicalized vision of Islam on the wind like a puff of breath dispersing dandelion spores.

At the end of December, a few days before the Mecca siege ended, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Muslim world was infuriated by the invasion, and within weeks, the Saudis were calling on Islamic nations to unify their efforts to support the country's Muslim freedom fighters, known as the mujahideen.

From the Saudi perspective, the invasion couldn't have come at a better moment. For years, the Saudis had bought into their own mythology, coming to see the kingdom as a perfected Islamic state where crime, radicalism, and evil in general could hold no sway.

That assumption had been undermined in the most dramatic way possible, with an assault on the country's most precious asset—its religious credibility. The Saudis were not merely the masters of the Grand Mosque; they were its protectors, and they had failed spectacularly.

In the aftermath, the leaders of the security apparatus took a hard look at what they had wrought and began to worry that it could happen again. One possible solution would have been to steer their religious program into a more moderate zone. Instead, they took a quicker and easier route: if the kingdom was plagued with angry, religiously fervent young men, the kingdom would simply send them away … to Afghanistan.

The Saudi decision to support the Afghan mujahideen was based on a complex stew of foreign and domestic concerns and was supported by both the political and religious establishments. The American decision to do the same was a much simpler Cold War calculation. As National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told President Carter, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”
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Cold warrior Ronald Reagan would up the ante. Calling the mujahideen “freedom fighters,” he embarked on a campaign of support that included covert arms and training. The State Department's United States Information Agency produced hours of propaganda films promoting the mujahideen and their struggle, which the videos sometimes referred to as “jihad.” The videos even showed mujahideen operations against the Russians, a style of presentation that jihadists would soon emulate.

One American government video showed Afghan children in school being indoctrinated into the jihadist lifestyle. Ironically, those children would reach prime fighting age just in time for U.S. forces to arrive twenty years later, and they would remember the lessons that the United States had forgotten.

VOICEOVER: In the towns and the camps of the 3 million [Afghan refugees] is a generation born with this national holy war burning in their hearts and minds. Their own number is in the hundreds of thousands, and they all learn one thing more important to them than these word drills. The Afghan has never been conquered. Afghanistan can be destroyed, but the Afghan will never submit.

CHILD: Right now, of ten brothers, only two brothers are left. And they have gone to jihad.

VOICEOVER: How many sisters?

CHILD: I had three sisters, and all three are dead.

VOICEOVER: When you grow up, what will you do?

CHILD: I will go on jihad.
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The Reagan administration also turned a blind eye to a parade of fire-breathing Islamic clerics and Afghan fighters who toured the United States seeking support from Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The Virginia-based World Anti-Communist League, a right-wing organization, sponsored mujahideen leaders on tours of the United States and helped provide money and aid supplies.
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Delegates from the Anti-Communist League met with top officials from the Muslim World League at a summit in Malaysia just one month after the Soviet invasion and agreed on a “joint effort … to combat all atheistic cults and movements.”
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The fight against communism made for strange bedfellows. Mujahideen leaders would sometimes share the podium with Nicaraguan contras at WACL events, cheered on by the future leaders of right-wing, antigovernment militia groups.
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Support from the American Muslim community ultimately proved to be more significant. During the course of the Afghanistan war, the Muslim World League and its American affiliates sent emissaries to encourage contributions, financial and otherwise, to the Afghanistan jihad. The most persuasive of these speakers was the man in charge of coordinating all the Arab volunteers who traveled to Afghanistan as volunteer fighters: Abdullah Azzam.

Azzam was a Palestinian Islamic scholar who had made a new home in Saudi Arabia, teaching in the universities there and studying in Egypt, where political and religious forces also fostered such committed jihadist thinkers as the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and a young firebrand named Ayman Al Zawahiri.
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Even before the Afghanistan war broke out, Azzam was a familiar figure to American Muslims, having traveled during the late 1970s to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he met with MWL-linked figures associated with the Muslim Students Association.
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On at least one trip, Azzam was accompanied by one of his young college students from Saudi Arabia named Osama bin Laden.
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After the invasion, with financing from the MWL, Azzam set up shop in Pakistan, first in Islamabad and later in Peshawar, where he coordinated the flow of money and volunteers into Afghanistan. The volunteer fighters, known as Arab Afghans, came from all over the world but especially from Saudi Arabia. During the war, Azzam and other prominent clerics traveled to raise money and invite Muslims to join the fight in person. They recruited from all walks of life but especially valued volunteers with military experience. In the early phase of the jihadist movement, many experienced soldiers came from Egypt.

America was one of Azzam's favorite destinations. During the 1980s, as the jihad against the Soviets heated up, Azzam set up outposts around the United States under the banner of the Al Kifah Refugee Services Center, starting in Brooklyn and then expanding into Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Tucson. The function of the centers was to recruit Americans for the jihad and to ensure that they had the right connections to meet up with the Afghan mujahideen once they got to Pakistan. Azzam spoke in Arabic, which was translated into English in real time for the benefit of American converts.
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No one kept track of how many Americans answered the call, and no one in or out of the U.S. government would venture a guess on the record. More than 30 documented cases were examined for this book. Based on court records and intelligence documents, a conservative estimate might be that a minimum of 150 American citizens and legal residents went to fight the Soviets. The reality is probably much higher, but any estimate (including mine) should be treated with great skepticism.

The Brooklyn center was located at the Al Farook Mosque on Atlantic Avenue, home to a loose collection of angry young (and not-so-young) men who gathered to focus their rage through a religious filter and receive guidance about where, how, and at whom to unleash rough justice. They learned from a number of teachers.

“There are so many miracles like this, I can talk about miracles ten hours, if you want,” said Tamim Adnani, a popular speaker who was fluent in English and one of Azzam's top deputies in Afghanistan.

Adnani told tales of American journalists who had been moved to abandon their posts, convert to Islam, and join the mujahideen at the sight of Muslim martyrs. Russians would lay down their arms and surrender to the mujahideen without a shot being fired. The bodies of martyred mujahideen did not decay.

He explained to his audience that it was good to come and fight the Russians but even better to stay and see the struggle through to the creation of an Islamic state in Afghanistan. And after Afghanistan, he vowed, then on to Moscow and Palestine. “Nothing but jihad … Even after liberation of Afghanistan, even after the Islamic government, [the mujahideen] will not stop.”
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Another frequent headliner was Omar Abdel Rahman, the firebrand Egyptian cleric who would figure significantly in the American jihad movement during the 1990s. Rahman's speeches tended to emphasize Islam first, last, and in the middle. Stern and alarmist, his appeal to join the mujahideen relied heavily on ideology and his interpretation of Islam. Rahman was blind, so he had no tales of combat to share, but he had traveled to Afghanistan anyway to show his support, an effort that was viewed as heroic.
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Yet Abdullah Azzam stood head and shoulders over the rest. At least dozens and as many as hundreds of Muslims living in America heard his call and were moved to action. Azzam toured the world propounding the jihad in Afghanistan, leveraging his scholarly credentials to argue for the legitimacy of the Afghan jihad as an act of defense against outside aggression. He also wrote books and produced videos exhorting Muslims to the cause. Although he frequently invoked the struggle of the Palestinians against the Israelis, most of his energy and direct efforts were reserved for Afghanistan. It was easier to get there and fight, thanks in no small part to the covert helping hand provided by the United States and the generous financing of the Saudi government.

Although one can find arguments in favor of offensive jihad (that is, attempting to conquer non-Muslims without provocation), most jihadist ideologues find it easier to persuade audiences of the need for defensive jihad, which allows Muslims to conduct war in certain circumstances. In Afghanistan few could argue against the right of Muslims to fight the Soviets. Azzam's 1984 book,
Defense of Muslim Lands
, lays out some of this rationale.

Defensive Jihad: This is expelling the
Kuffar
[infidels] from our land, and it is
Fard Ayn
, [Arabic for] a compulsory duty upon all. It is the most important of all the compulsory duties and arises in the following condition: if the
Kuf
far
enter a land of the Muslims.

We have to concentrate our efforts on Afghanistan and Palestine now, because they have become our foremost problems. Moreover, our occupying
enemies are very deceptive and execute programs to extend their power in these regions. The people of Afghanistan are renowned for their strength and pride. It seems as if the Glorified and Exalted prepared the mountains and the land there especially for jihad.
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Azzam advanced the same line of thought in his lectures, often with stirring effect.

In situations like Afghanistan and Palestine, [the scholars] have all ruled that jihad becomes an individual obligation, that if the enemy enters a Muslim land by as much as a hand span, jihad becomes the personal duty of every Muslim man and woman in that territory. [ … ] And if the people of that land are incapable, or negligent, or lazy, or refrain, the individual obligation expands in a circular fashion to include those nearest to them. And if they are also negligent, or lazy, or refrain, and so on, until the entire earth is included in the individual obligation. [ … ] All of [the scholars] stated this fundamental, that the individual obligation becomes, in this situation, like prayer and fasting—an obligation which cannot be abandoned.
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