JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION

8/2/06

Zawahiri: Internationalizing Jihad, Uniting Muslims and Trumping Saudi Clerics

Michael Scheuer

Ayman al-Zawahiri's July 27 statement on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict
deftly advanced al-Qaeda's own interests, as well as al-Qaeda's goal
of putting the world's multiple ongoing Islamic insurgencies into the
context of a single, Shiite-and-Sunni struggle against "the
Zionist-Crusader aggression." The struggles in Palestine, Lebanon,
Iraq and Afghanistan are all connected, al-Zawahiri said, and "the
whole world is an open field for us. As they attack us everywhere, we
will attack them everywhere". For the first time, al-Zawahiri went a
step further, by urging that "all oppressed and wronged people in the
world, the victims of Western oppressive civilization led by America:
Stand by Muslims in the face of this injustice which humanity has
never witnessed before".

Al-Zawahiri's statement focused on themes that have dominated
al-Qaeda's rhetoric since Osama bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war.
First, al-Zawahiri claimed that the conflict in Lebanon underscored
the fact that Muslim blood is worthless in the West's eyes. "Nobody
cared about 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons," al-Zawahiri said,
"while the world went into an uproar after three Israeli soldiers were
captured". On this issue, al-Zawahiri seems to have caught the Muslim
world's mood. Writing in Jeddah's Arab News, for example, Lubna
Hussain wrote on July 28 that the war "in Lebanon once again provides
us in the Arab world a superfluous, all too frequent and unnecessary
reminder that our blood is cheap...The return of two Israeli soldiers
equate to the deaths of hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians".

Second, al-Zawahiri cited the Levant conflict as yet another instance
where the ruling Arab regimes are unable to protect their nationals
against Israel and the United States. "O my Muslim nation,"
al-Zawahiri said, "it has become known to you without doubt that the
governments of the Arab and Muslim states…are paralyzed and defeatist
and you are left in the field alone". Referring to the Arab League's
denunciation of Hezbollah's hostage-taking and Saudi King Abdullah's
condemnation of Hezbollah's "uncalculated adventures" [6], al-Zawahiri
told Muslims that the regimes had combined their impotence with being
"involved in collusions" with the United States and Israel. In this
vein, al-Zawahiri's words blended tellingly with those of many other
critics of the Arab regimes, which, by week's end, caused the Saudi
king to backpedal and announce that "if the option of peace fails as a
result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be
war".

Third, al-Zawahiri strove to portray the Islamist insurgencies in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine as parts of a single jihad
meant to drive the United States and its allies from the Middle East
and all Islamic territory. "The war with Israel is not about a treaty,
a cease-fire agreement, Sykes-Picot borders, national zeal or disputed
borders," al-Zawahiri explained. "It is rather a jihad for the sake of
God until the religion of God is established. It is jihad for the
liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine, as well as every land that
was a home for Islam, from Andalusia to Iraq". Specifically,
al-Zawahiri said that the insurgency in Iraq was the key to liberating
Palestine, citing the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's claim that, "we are
fighting in Iraq, while our eyes are on Jerusalem". Encapsulating bin
Laden's stubborn insistence that a successful Islamist insurgency
requires a geographically contiguous safe haven for basing and
operational staging, al-Zawahiri reminded his listeners that "Iraq is
characterized with its proximity to Palestine. The Muslims must
support its mujahideen so that a mujahid Islamic emirate can be
established there [Iraq] which can, with the will of God, move jihad
to the borders of Palestine. Then the mujahideen inside and outside
Palestine can unite and the great conquest will arrive, God willing".

Al-Zawahiri went on to claim that "the shells and missiles that tear
apart the bodies of Muslims in Gaza and Lebanon are not purely
Israeli. Rather, they come from and are financed by all countries of
the Crusader alliance." The target of the U.S.-led coalition,
al-Zawahiri argued, is the whole Muslim world, and so the mujahideen
must unite and "target the interests of all the countries that took
part in the aggression against Muslims in Chechnya, Kashmir,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. According to the Sharia, all
these governments and people are fighting the Muslims".

Fourth, and finally, al-Zawahiri took advantage of the unexpected war
in the Levant to advance the effort bin Laden began after al-Zarqawi's
death to reassert al-Qaeda's longstanding position that Sunni vs.
Shiite conflict must be subordinated to building a united Islamist
movement to drive the United States from the Middle East and to
destroy Israel and the apostate Muslim regimes. Speaking to all
Muslims, al-Zawahiri said, "We cannot just stand idly by while we see
all these shells fall on our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon. We must
target Jewish and American interests everywhere." Al-Zawahiri then
said that Muslims can find the models for such action in Islamic
history, invoking the examples of courage and resistance set by the
first Caliphs and the companions of the Prophet. In listing these
names, al-Zawahiri underscored the need for sectarian unity by
including—apparently for the first time in al-Qaeda's history—the
names of Ali and Husyan, two of the most revered Shiite leaders and
heroes. Not forgetting al-Qaeda's need to continue reducing its
anti-Shiite reputation in Iraq, al-Zawahiri called on all Iraqi
Muslims—not just Shiites—to cease their cooperation with Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki's regime and the U.S.-led coalition. "Perhaps,
the events of the Crusader-Zionist aggression on Muslims [in Lebanon
and Gaza]," al-Zawahiri said, "may push the traitors in Iraq to end
their disgrace and treason and stop justifying and supporting the
U.S.-Crusader presence in Iraq".

Al-Zawahiri fully supported the activities and Islamic virtue of
Shiite Hezbollah, in what is a daring departure from al-Qaeda's
traditional practice of not saying much about Hezbollah beyond
praising its 1980s attacks on U.S. forces. Besides this effort to work
toward sectarian cooperation, al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda took the risk
of alienating some of their Sunni supporters and benefactors in Saudi
Arabia by defying the official Saudi religious establishment. On July
22, the ultra-conservative Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammad Bin-Abdallah
al-Habadan backed Saudi King Abdullah's initial condemnation of
Hezbollah, demanding that Sunnis not support Hezbollah in terms that
made al-Qaeda sound absolutely ecumenical. "It is not imperative that
anyone who happens to be the enemy of the Jewish state should be
considered our [the Sunnis] friend," al-Habadan declared. "As the
Jewish state is our enemy, also people who have declared the
companions of the Prophet, may God's peace and prayers be upon him, as
infidels, and are creating mayhem in today's Iraq against the Sunnis
are our enemies, too. The latter [Shiites] are not less of a threat
against the nations than the Jews themselves…[Events in Lebanon are]
nothing but a war between two antagonistic evils".

On the day of al-Zawahiri's message, the Saudi clerical establishment
again thundered out another vitriolic anti-Shiite message. The
Shiites, said Dr. Muhammad al-Abdah, adhere to Ayatollah Khomeini's
"fallacy, hatred and fanaticism" and are "a barrier in the way of the
Sunni tide."

Al-Qaeda has long condemned and derided the Saudi clerical
establishment as "the sultan's scholars," but had not previously taken
them on over such a fundamental theological question as the
Sunni-Shiite divide. As the saying goes, though, "He who dares, wins."
Beginning on the evening of July 27, the outside-Saudi Arabia cavalry
of Sunni scholars arrived and explicitly and implicitly supported
al-Qaeda's position. "We believe that this speech [al-Zawahiri's]
contains new and very important meanings," said Faysal al-Mawali,
secretary general of the Islamic Group of Lebanon, a leading Sunni
organization. "This new attitude [of al-Qaeda] represented by the call
for a large-scale alliance involving all the oppressed in the world
means, of course, an alliance between the Sunnis and the Shiites, in
particular, against the Zionist aggression and the U.S. tyranny. We
also consider this to be a very important and advanced step".

Then, on July 28 and July 30, several Sunni heavyweights delivered the
coup de grace to the Saudi clerics, and implicitly approved al-Qaeda's
non-sectarian approach to war-fighting. The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr.
Ali Gomaa, said that Israeli actions in Lebanon are "injustice itself"
and that "Hezbollah is defending its country and what it is doing is
not terrorism." Then, Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood publicly and
specifically rejected the rulings of the Saudi sheikhs which
prohibited Sunni support for the Lebanese Shiites. Finally, Dr. Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, one of the Islamic world's most influential and televised
scholars, condemned the Saudi clerics' rulings as "fanaticism" and
derided the fear of "some Arab regimes" that is apparent in their
belief that "Israel is an invincible state." Al-Qaradawi played down
Sunni-Shiite differences, hailed Hezbollah's resistance as a "noble
act" and—echoing al-Zawahiri—said that "It is the duty of Muslims
around the world to support the Lebanese resistance."

Overall, bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda have taken full advantage
of the unexpected opportunity provided by the Israel-Hezbollah
conflict. In an al-Sahab video of unprecedented quality—al-Zawahiri
was made to appear as if he was in a professionally lit
studio—al-Qaeda's deputy chief effectively explained the
inter-connectedness of all Islamic insurgencies, focused Muslims
worldwide on the "Zionist-Crusader" threat and brushed aside arguments
that Shiites and Sunnis must not cooperate in resisting that threat.
In doing so, al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda provided Muslims with an
international context in which to view the Levant war through their
own words, as well as by leveraging the blessings of Hezbollah by
prominent Sunni scholars—which blew the usually unquestioned Saudi
scholars out of the water—and exploiting an environment in which
Muslims worldwide are watching real-time coverage of the carnage in
Lebanon.

Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's
Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is now a Senior Fellow
at The Jamestown Foundation.