Religious Foundations of the Last Instructions of 9/11

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans G. Kippenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Osama Bin Laden ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Present World ◽  
American Concept

An instruction manual consisting of four sheets in Arabic was found with three of the four teams that performed the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The writing conceived of the action as a raid (ghazwa), as we know it from early Islamic history. It instructed the teams how to perform the ghazwa correctly. Purifying their intentions by recitals, rituals, and bodily cleaning, they turn their attack into an act of worship. A part called the “second stage” anticipates the issue of assuring divine protection at the airport. Finally “a third stage” urges the teams to act in the plane according the practice of the Prophet and to achieve martyrdom. To understand the manual and its framing of the violence, six dimensions will be analyzed: (1) Arguments for and against the authenticity of the document are discussed. (2) The attack happened in the wake of a declaration of war by the “World Islamic Front for the Jihad against Jews and Crusaders” in 1998, signed by Osama bin Laden and leaders of other jihadist groups. (3) The message spread across the Internet and was accepted by various groups that regarded the situation of Islam as threatened, among them a group of young Muslim men in Hamburg. A network called al-Qaeda emerged. (4) The present world is dominated by the power of ignorance and hubris (jahiliyya). The manual prescribed an attack in terms of the raids (ghazwa) of the Prophet in Medina. (5) The manual presumes a particular communal form of organizing militant Muslims. (6) It celebrated militancy of Muslims and presupposed a fighter’s ethos in the diaspora. An argument is made that the American concept of terrorism as a manifestation of evil and immorality destined to be eradicated militarily by the United States and their allies ignores the secular character of conflict and accelerates the cycle of violence.

"Consider that it is a Raid on the Path of God": The Spiritual Manual of the Attackers of 9/11

Numen ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Kippenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Political Center ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Early Islamic

AbstractThe document found with three of the four cells responsible for the crimes of 9/11 is unique in providing specific information about how the Muslim suicide terrorists conceived of their action. The document shows that they found justification for violence by emulating the moment in early Islamic history when Muhammad cancelled contracts with non-Muslims and organized raids (ghazwa) against the Meccans in order to establish Islam as a political order. No statement in the Manual explicitly identifies the United States as the financial, military, and political center of today's paganism; rather, such identification is tacitly assumed, as was shown by the action itself. Instead, the Manual prescribes recitations, prayers and rituals by which each member of the four cells should prepare for the ghazwa, purify his intention and anticipate in his mind the successive stages of the struggle to come. Not the objective aim but the subjective intention is at the center of the Manual. The article places this type of justification of violence in the history of Islamic activism since the 1980s.

Researching American Muslims: A Case Study of Surveillance and Racialized State Control

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hajer Al-Faham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Control ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Selection Of

How does surveillance shape political science research in the United States? In comparative and international politics, there is a rich literature concerning the conduct of research amid conditions of conflict and state repression. As this literature locates “the field” in distant contexts “over there,” the United States continues to be saturated with various forms of state control. What this portends for American politics research has thus far been examined by a limited selection of scholars. Expanding on their insights, I situate “the field” in the United States and examine surveillance of American Muslims, an understudied case of racialized state control. Drawing on qualitative data from a case study of sixty-nine interviews with Arab and Black American Muslims, I argue that surveillance operated as a two-stage political mechanism that mapped onto research methodologically and substantively. In the first stage, surveillance reconfigured the researcher-researchee dynamic, hindered recruitment and access, and limited data-collection. In the second stage, surveillance colored the self-perceptions, political attitudes, and civic engagement of respondents, thereby indicating a political socialization unfolding among Muslims. The implications of this study suggest that researchers can mitigate against some, but not all, of the challenges presented by surveillance and concomitant forms of state control.

scholarly journals Til amerikanerne: I Guds, den Nåderike, den Barmhjertiges navn.

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (105) ◽  
pp. 40-51
Author(s):  
Osama Bin Laden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North American ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
North American Society ◽  
Patriot Act ◽  
Environmental Destruction ◽  
Osama Bin Laden ◽  
American Society

To the Americans:In this letter from 2002 Osama Bin Laden replies to unidentified American writers explaining why al-Qaeda is justified in attacking North American targets. The letter poses two questions: What are we fighting for? and What are we calling you to do, and what do we want from you? According to Bin Laden al-Qaeda is engaged in a fight responding to decades of Western aggression. Bin Laden presents a detailed account of the misdeeds that the United States are responsible for in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. The letter also denounces North American society as characterised by usury, debauchery, gambling, prostitution and environmental destruction. Finally Bin Laden provides the reader with a series of examples connected to the ‘war on terror’ where the United States does not live up to its own rhetoric: the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, the suspension of civil liberties in the Patriot Act and the rejection of the Kyoto Accords.

Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Byman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
Northwest China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
The World ◽  
Osama Bin Laden

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the entire world was introduced to Al Qaeda and its enigmatic leader, Osama bin Laden. But the organization that changed the face of terrorism forever and unleashed a whirlwind of counterterrorism activity and two major wars had been on the scene long before that eventful morning. In Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know, Daniel L. Byman, an eminent scholar of Middle East terrorism and international security who served on the 9/11 Commission, provides a sharp and concise overview of Al Qaeda, from its humble origins in the mountains of Afghanistan to the present, explaining its perseverance and adaptation since 9/11 and the limits of U.S. and allied counterterrorism efforts. The organization that would come to be known as Al Qaeda traces its roots to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Founded as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda achieved a degree of international notoriety with a series of spectacular attacks in the 1990s; however, it was the dramatic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 that truly launched Al Qaeda onto the global stage. The attacks endowed the organization with world-historical importance and provoked an overwhelming counterattack by the United States and other western countries. Within a year of 9/11, the core of Al Qaeda had been chased out of Afghanistan and into a variety of refuges across the Muslim world. Splinter groups and franchised offshoots were active in the 2000s in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen, but by early 2011, after more than a decade of relentless counterterrorism efforts by the United States and other Western military and intelligence services, most felt that Al Qaeda's moment had passed. With the death of Osama bin Laden in May of that year, many predicted that Al Qaeda was in its death throes. Shockingly, Al Qaeda has staged a remarkable comeback in the last few years. In almost every conflict in the Muslim world, from portions of the Xanjing region in northwest China to the African subcontinent, Al Qaeda franchises or like-minded groups have played a role. Al Qaeda's extreme Salafist ideology continues to appeal to radicalized Sunni Muslims throughout the world, and it has successfully altered its organizational structure so that it can both weather America's enduring full-spectrum assault and tailor its message to specific audiences. Authoritative and highly readable, Byman's account offers readers insightful and penetrating answers to the fundamental questions about Al Qaeda: who they are, where they came from, where they're going-and, perhaps most critically-what we can do about it.

scholarly journals Al-Qaeda’s New Orientation After the Death of Osama bin Laden

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-145
Author(s):  
Siti Fatimah ◽  
Yanuardi Syukur
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Osama Bin Laden

After the death of Osama Bin Laden and the declaration of the establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Al-Qaeda movement changed from being aggressive to being passive. The aggressiveness of the Al-Qaeda movement, for instance, was seen during the spectacular terror of 9/11, which was then followed by various actions carried out by followers in various parts of the world. However, Bin Laden's death and the rise of the ISIS group made Al-Qaeda look passive. This paper seeks to see the history of the Al-Qaeda movement to the dynamics that influence the movement’s choices. The author found that changing Al-Qaeda's orientation from aggressive to passive did not deny the existence of a consolidated movement that deliberately distanced itself from the anti-terrorism campaign carried out by the United States.

scholarly journals Major Powers’ Interest in Afghanistan and the Impact on Pakistan

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (II) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Ghulam Muhammad Nagra ◽  
Ghulam Mustafa ◽  
Muhammad Imran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Competing Interests ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Global Powers

Over the last four decades, the Afghan crisis has become a source of unease and turmoil in the region. It remained the cornerstone of the interests of regional as well as global powers. Moscow's mistake to intervene in Afghanistan revealed its unassailable vulnerability. After the disintegration of Soviet Union Kabul has again become the center of attention of 9/11 terror attacks and importance of US policy in the region. The United States' consistent set of interests and concerns in Afghanistan are in flux as well and many sanctuaries are deemed to be found in Pakistan from where militants can target US and its allies. Pakistan remained locked in the Afghan conflict and faced a threat of extremism and militancy in various forms. Further complicating the situation is what can only be described as rivalry among the regional powers particularly India, Iran, and Pakistan as they pursue their competing interests. The paper examines the concerns and interests of major powers in continuing conflict in Afghanistan.

Race, Ethnicity, and the War on Terror

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Welch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Domestic Terrorism ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Controls ◽  
New Policies

The unofficial War on Terror that began in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States expanded a wide range of formal social controls as well as more informal methods of punitive control that were disproportionately directed toward Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners, and those who were perceived to be. Although terrorism had been racialized long before 9/11, this event galvanized American support for sweeping new policies and practices that specifically targeted racial and ethnic minorities, particularly those who were immigrants. New agencies and prisons were created, individual rights and civil liberties were restricted, and acts of hate and discrimination against those who were racially, ethnically, and religiously stereotyped as potential terrorists increased. Although research shows that most domestic terrorism is not perpetrated by Muslims, Arabs, or those originating from the Middle East, the racialized stereotype of terrorists had a major impact on how the War on Terror was executed and how its implementation affected members of certain minority groups in the United States.

Al-Tawassuṭ wa-l I‘tidāl: The NU and Moderatism in Indonesian Islam

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 564-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Najib Burhani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The United States ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nahdlatul Ulama ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals

Abstract Moderate Islam is a paradox. In the United States, Muslim intellectuals and activists use this term with super caution and reservation, avoid it when possible. In contrast to that, their counterparts in Indonesia enthusiastically and proudly claim to be the champions of moderate Islam. The question is why those intellectuals and activists from the same religion but coming from different continent and type of country responded the idea of moderate Islam differently, if not contradistinctively. Given that this term is commonly used as a translation of Qur’anic term umma wasaṭ, it is also important to ask the meaning of this term in Islamic history, how Muslim exegetes throughout Islam history conceptualise umma wasaṭ? And finally, how Indonesian Muslims define moderatism after the 9/11 and what are the criteria of moderate Islam in their views? By analysing the concept of moderate Islam as adopted by the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Islamic movement in Indonesia, this article shows that the meaning moderate in Indonesia is more theological, while in the US it is more political. Moderate Islam in Indonesia is more related to the doctrine of Aswaja, while in the US this notion has more connection with George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror.’

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