{"id":6321,"date":"2013-08-09T10:35:29","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T17:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6321"},"modified":"2013-08-09T10:35:29","modified_gmt":"2013-08-09T17:35:29","slug":"the-return-of-al-qaeda-and-jihad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-return-of-al-qaeda-and-jihad\/","title":{"rendered":"The Return of Al Qaeda and Jihad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/frontpagemag.com\/2013\/raymond-ibrahim\/the-return-of-al-qaeda-and-jihad\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FrontpageMag+%28FrontPage+Magazine+%C2%BB+FrontPage%29\" target=\"_blank\">FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>With the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al-Qaeda has been vindicated and the terror-jihad exonerated, in the opinion of many Islamists, that is.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>According to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kimt.com\/2013\/08\/03\/al-qaida-leader-says-egypts-morsi-abandoned-jihad\/\">Associated Press<\/a>, in a new video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri \u201csaid the military coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi provides proof that Islamic rule cannot be established through democracy and urged the Islamist leader\u2019s followers to abandon the ballot box in favor of armed resistance [i.e., jihad].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In fact, in the Arabic video, Zawahiri gloats over two points that he has championed for decades despite widespread opposition: that the Brotherhood was foolish to engage in democracy and elections in the first place, and that the triumph of Islam can only be achieved through jihad.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, these two points go back to a long but internal debate between nonviolent Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, and violent jihadis, like al-Qaeda. While both groups pursue the same exact goals\u2014a Sharia-ruling caliphate followed by the subjugation of the \u201cinfidel\u201d world, according to Islamic teachings\u2014they follow different strategies.\u00a0 The Brotherhood has long argued that, because the Islamic world is militarily weaker than the West, now is not the time for an all-out jihad, but rather a time for infiltration and subversion, a time for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meforum.org\/2538\/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war\"><em>taqiyya<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.raymondibrahim.com\/from-the-arab-world\/how-circumstance-dictates-islamic-behavior\/\">short-lived promises<\/a>.\u00a0 Conversely, jihadis generally disavow pretense and diplomacy, opting for jihad alone.<\/p>\n<p>Since the 1960s in Egypt, Ayman Zawahiri was an outspoken proponent of jihad (see \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.raymondibrahim.com\/islam\/ayman-zawahiri-and-egypt-a-trip-through-time\/\">Ayman Zawahiri and Egypt: A Trip Through Time<\/a>\u00a0for a brief biography).\u00a0 In the early 1990s, he wrote an entire book titled\u00a0<em>Al Hissad Al Murr<\/em>, or \u201cThe Bitter Harvest,\u201d where he argued that the Brotherhood \u201ctakes advantage of the Muslim youths\u2019 fervor by bringing them into the fold only to store them in a refrigerator. Then, they steer their onetime passionate, Islamic zeal for\u00a0jihad\u00a0to conferences and elections\u2026. \u00a0And not only have the Brothers been idle from fulfilling their duty of fighting to the death, but they have gone as far as to describe the infidel governments as legitimate, and have joined ranks with them in the ignorant style of governing, that is, democracies, elections, and parliaments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even so, after the terror strikes of 9\/11, many became critical of al-Qaeda, whose actions were seen as setting back the Islamist agenda by creating more scrutiny and awareness in the West.\u00a0 The attacks further set off the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and gave many Arab governments\u2014including former President Mubarak\u2019s\u2014free reign to suppress all Islamists. As Montasser al-Zayyat, Zawahiri\u2019s biographer, wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The poorly conceived decision to launch the attacks of September 11 created many victims of a war of which they did not choose to be a part\u2026. Bin Laden and Zawahiri\u2019s behavior was met with a lot of criticism from many Islamists in Egypt and abroad\u2026. In the post-September 11 world, no countries can afford to be accused of harboring the enemies of the United States. No one ever imagined that a Western European country would extradite Islamists who live on its lands. Before that, Islamists had always thought that arriving in a European city and applying for political asylum was enough to acquire permanent resident status. After September 11, 2001, everything changed\u2026. Even the Muslim Brotherhood was affected by the American campaign, which targeted everything Islamic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If the West \u201ctargeted everything Islamic,\u201d\u00a0that was obviously short lived; for, from a different perspective, the post 9\/11 world has proven to be the heyday of the Muslim Brotherhood.\u00a0 For starters, many Islamists began to see the wisdom of the Muslim Brotherhood\u2019s strategy of publicly renouncing violence (jihad) and appropriating Western language and paradigms in an effort to infiltrate and subvert.<\/p>\n<p>And it certainly worked: the Brotherhood got what they wanted; their strategy of opting for elections and renouncing jihad, coupled with a highly sympathetic Obama administration, culminated with the Brotherhood leaving Egypt\u2019s prisons and filling the highest posts of government, beginning with the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>However, now that the Brotherhood and Morsi have been ousted, the jihadis\u2014chief among them Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaeda\u2014are in full \u201cwe told you so\u201d mode, renewing the argument that Islamic Sharia can never be established through infidel democracy, but rather only through jihad, long recognized as the only way to force people\u2014including Muslims themselves\u2014to comply with Allah\u2019s rule on earth.\u00a0 And it\u2019s becoming harder for nonviolent Islamists to argue otherwise, especially the now disgraced Brotherhood.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, among an increasing number of Islamists, al-Qaeda\u2019s\u00a0strategy\u2014jihad and terror\u2014has been justified and may well return in full force.\u00a0 Indeed, it\u2019s in this context that one must understand recent news that the U.S. \u201cordered the unprecedented closure of embassies in 19 countries across the Middle East and Africa,\u201d a decision\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/al-qaeda\/10224477\/US-embassy-closures-sparked-by-Ayman-al-Zawahiri-message.html\">sparked by Ayman Zawahiri\u2019s recent communiques<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>No doubt Western apologists will now argue that it\u2019s in the West\u2019s interest to support and make concessions to the Muslim Brotherhood, since the alternative will be a renewal in jihadi terror.\u00a0 However, aside from the fact that such an argument is tantamount to submitting to blackmail\u2014or that the resumption of jihad is just another reminder that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.raymondibrahim.com\/from-the-arab-world\/radical-cleric-swears-to-pop-americas-eye-if-moderate-morsi-threatened\/\">al-Qaeda and the Brotherhood are two faces of the same coin<\/a>\u2014is it not better to get the ugly truth out in the open\u00a0<em>now<\/em>, while the U.S. still has some power and influence, rather than later, when it will likely be even more infiltrated and handicapped?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine With the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al-Qaeda has been vindicated and the terror-jihad exonerated, in the opinion of many Islamists, that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[140,227,230],"tags":[1051,161,507,1017,239,139,1043],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1DX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6973,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/al-qaeda-the-defender-of-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":6321,"position":0},"title":"Al Qaeda: The Defender of Christians?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 Muslim persecution of Christians is the \u201cAchilles Heel\u201d of the global Islamic movement\u2019s image\u2014the surest way of exposing its supremacist and intolerant elements and one of the main reasons the major media and establishment rarely report or address it. 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