Future Jihad #5

Future Jihad #1, #2, #3, #4

This continues my discusion of FUTURE JIHAD: Terrorist Strategies against America, by Walid Phares.

Continuing with Chapter Two, entitled "Who Are the Jihadists?" Walid recounts the establishing and flourishing of "the greatest superpower of all time," the caliphate of the ninth century which spanned three continents. With its devastating fall in the 11th century, with Christians to the West and Mongols to the East, a radicalization occurred thanks to Ibn Taymiya, a scholar and chronicler of the 13th century.

What did he radicalize? The definition of "infidels." He states directly, for the first time, that there can be no peace with infidels. And thus was born an Inquisitian-like movement in Islam that allowed the declaration of takfir, wherein the caliph, his appointee, and approved Muslim scholars could declare the "demonization" of infidels, including fellow Muslims like the Sunnis. "In simple terms, the takfir doctine was a weapon of incrimination against the enemies of the Islamic state."

What this means, according to Walid, is that "the introduction of jihadism and early salafism by Ibn Taymiya and others, when combined with the collapse of the Arab caliphate, put an abrupt end to the developing jurisprudence and replaced it with a discretionary power at the level of the caliph--in addition to the growing influence of the state clerics.

In other words, whereas in the West jurisprudence advanced political culture and scientific discoveries, that evolution was halted in Arab Muslim culture.

This froze them in the Middle Ages, unleashing "an eight-hundred-year-long" jihad movement.

"When Osama bin Laden travled to Afghanistan eight centuries later, he was executing the orders of Ibn Taymiya: fighting infidels, reestablishing the pure Islamic state, and laying the groundwork for the return of the caliphate." p. 56

"The doctrine of Ibn Yatmiya and the takfir and jihad currents never disappeared. The Dark Ages stretching from the burning of Baghdad in the thirteenth century and until the end of the Mameluk dynasty in the sicteenth saw the growth of intolerance and spread of raw jihadism....Surging from the rubble of the caliphate, a harsh and extremely radical dynasty--the Mameluk--extended its power from Egypt to Syria....this Sunni dynasty turned against all non-Sunni minorities--Shiite, Druse, Christians, and others--in the regions of its influence....The new order of the Middle East in the Dark Ages bears a sinister resemblemnce to the Afghan, Sudanese, and (albeit shiite) Iranian regimes of the twentieth century. What bin Laden and Zarqawi are killing for in the early twenty-first century, regular armies and states had applied as policies from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries." pp. 56-57

Again, anyone who thinks the current struggle has anything to do with current politics, oil, or mere American presence around the world is sadly deluded.

More in Future Jihad #6.