Monday December 18, 2006
Zakat and Jihad from the Words of the Master
There is an extensive campaign by CAIR and other Islamist groups to portray _jihad_ as a purely spiritual struggle a good Muslim wages to overcome personal evil. It is also a point made often by the "moderates" of the Muslim Brotherhood. This has led to confusion in policy and a fear of offending if one calls _jihad_ what it really is.
But as I have said repeatedly, just read what they say themselves to understand what the real agenda is. They tell us what they want to do, and yet we refuse to take them seriously by either understanding and knowing what they say, or acting to stop them.
A 1999 tome titled "Fiqh az-Zakat: A Comparative Study," by Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood leaves no ambiguity as to the nature of _jihad_. While often portrayed as a moderate, Qaradawi is one of the modern architects of the Islamist project to re-establish the Muslim Caliphate and then bring Allah's rule to the rest of the world.
In writing about the use of _zakat_, the 2.5 percent of every earning and transaction a Muslim is to give to the cause of Allah, Qaradawi writes: "The most honorable form of _jihad_ nowadays is fighting for the liberation of Muslim land from the domination of unbelievers, regardless of their religion or ideology. The communist and the capitalist, the Westerner and the Easterner, Christian, Jew, pagan or unbeliever, all are aggressors when they attack and occupy Muslim land. Fighting in defence of the home of Islam is obligatory until the enemy is driven away and Muslims are liberated."
This is not a secret document, but a book that Qaradawi published, and he defines the occupied lands: "Today Muslim land is occupied in Palestine, Kashmire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Chad, Somalia, Cyprus, Samarqand, Bukhara, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Albania and serveral other occupied countries. Declaring holy war to save these Muslim lands is an Islamic duty, and fighting for such purposes in those occupied territories is the Way of Allah for which _zakat_ must be spent."
That is pretty forthright. He offers this conclusion: "The most important form of _jihad_ today is serious, purposefully organized work to rebuild Islamic society and state and to implement the Islamic way of life in the political, cultural and economic domains. This is certainly most deserving of _zakat._ "
It seems clear. The money being gathered-to the tune of billions of dollars a year-is to liberate Muslim lands and establish a Muslim state (the Caliphate). The fact that al-Qaradawi is a leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood offers a clue to why the Brotherhood has taken such pains to build up a financial infrastructure that spans the globe, an infrastructure the intelligence community knows almost nothing about, and has shown little interest in understanding.
To me it is akin to someone telling me: "You live in a house my ancestors once lived in, and I am going to save my money buy a gun to come kill you and your family and retake my house. But I am also putting my money away so my entire family can then occupy your block, your town and your city."
And then I show no interest in what money the person has, how he earns it and how I can stop him because I decide that, even though he has shown a capacity to carry out violent action, he is not to be taken seriously.
Ignorance is not an excuse, especially since we have had five years to learn.
But as I have said repeatedly, just read what they say themselves to understand what the real agenda is. They tell us what they want to do, and yet we refuse to take them seriously by either understanding and knowing what they say, or acting to stop them.
A 1999 tome titled "Fiqh az-Zakat: A Comparative Study," by Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood leaves no ambiguity as to the nature of _jihad_. While often portrayed as a moderate, Qaradawi is one of the modern architects of the Islamist project to re-establish the Muslim Caliphate and then bring Allah's rule to the rest of the world.
In writing about the use of _zakat_, the 2.5 percent of every earning and transaction a Muslim is to give to the cause of Allah, Qaradawi writes: "The most honorable form of _jihad_ nowadays is fighting for the liberation of Muslim land from the domination of unbelievers, regardless of their religion or ideology. The communist and the capitalist, the Westerner and the Easterner, Christian, Jew, pagan or unbeliever, all are aggressors when they attack and occupy Muslim land. Fighting in defence of the home of Islam is obligatory until the enemy is driven away and Muslims are liberated."
This is not a secret document, but a book that Qaradawi published, and he defines the occupied lands: "Today Muslim land is occupied in Palestine, Kashmire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Chad, Somalia, Cyprus, Samarqand, Bukhara, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Albania and serveral other occupied countries. Declaring holy war to save these Muslim lands is an Islamic duty, and fighting for such purposes in those occupied territories is the Way of Allah for which _zakat_ must be spent."
That is pretty forthright. He offers this conclusion: "The most important form of _jihad_ today is serious, purposefully organized work to rebuild Islamic society and state and to implement the Islamic way of life in the political, cultural and economic domains. This is certainly most deserving of _zakat._ "
It seems clear. The money being gathered-to the tune of billions of dollars a year-is to liberate Muslim lands and establish a Muslim state (the Caliphate). The fact that al-Qaradawi is a leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood offers a clue to why the Brotherhood has taken such pains to build up a financial infrastructure that spans the globe, an infrastructure the intelligence community knows almost nothing about, and has shown little interest in understanding.
To me it is akin to someone telling me: "You live in a house my ancestors once lived in, and I am going to save my money buy a gun to come kill you and your family and retake my house. But I am also putting my money away so my entire family can then occupy your block, your town and your city."
And then I show no interest in what money the person has, how he earns it and how I can stop him because I decide that, even though he has shown a capacity to carry out violent action, he is not to be taken seriously.
Ignorance is not an excuse, especially since we have had five years to learn.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday December 18, 2006
More U.S. Action On Viktor Bout
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took the unusual step of redesignating arms trafficker Viktor Bout and some of his henchmenfor their activities in arms trafficking in the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo. The move was authorized by an Executive Order signed Friday by President Bush.
The designations coincide with the publication (with Steve Braun) of this Foreign Policy piece on Bout's network, a preview of our upcoming book.
Bout and one of his close associates, Sanjivan Ruprah, were already "Specially Designated Individuals" by the U.S. and on similar lists in the United Nations, for their support of the Liberian regime of Charles Taylor. Today's announcement includes, for the first time, Douglas Mpano and Dimitri Popov. Both worked for the Bout-associated Great Lakes Business Company and Compagnie Aerienne des Grands Lacs.
As a practical matter the new EO means only that Bout's activities have been further investigated and more evidence found of his bloody trade. It also means that, if for some reason his designation were revoked by one group, it would remain in effect because of the other designation.
The more interesting case is that of Sanjivan Ruprah, who, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, established contacts with the U.S. intelligence community and made the astounding offer to have Viktor Bout supply the Northern Alliance with millions of dollars of U.S. weapons and materiel to fight the Taliban. Bout had barely halted his flights to the Taliban when the offer was made, and he had sold a small fleet of aircraft to the fundamentalist regime.
Of course Ruprah and Bout stood to make many millions themselves in the process, as Bout subsequently did in flying for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no indication their preposterous plan was ever actually implemented, but it certainly got serious consideration up to fairly senior levels of the intelligence community food chain.
Bout's "Great Lakes" company was one of his premier companies left operating in Africa. Popov and Mpano were his long-time associates who helped run his endless supply of weapons to the various wars in the region.
It is a small step, but one worth taking, to further crimp, however moderately, Bout's ongoing operations.
The designations coincide with the publication (with Steve Braun) of this Foreign Policy piece on Bout's network, a preview of our upcoming book.
Bout and one of his close associates, Sanjivan Ruprah, were already "Specially Designated Individuals" by the U.S. and on similar lists in the United Nations, for their support of the Liberian regime of Charles Taylor. Today's announcement includes, for the first time, Douglas Mpano and Dimitri Popov. Both worked for the Bout-associated Great Lakes Business Company and Compagnie Aerienne des Grands Lacs.
As a practical matter the new EO means only that Bout's activities have been further investigated and more evidence found of his bloody trade. It also means that, if for some reason his designation were revoked by one group, it would remain in effect because of the other designation.
The more interesting case is that of Sanjivan Ruprah, who, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, established contacts with the U.S. intelligence community and made the astounding offer to have Viktor Bout supply the Northern Alliance with millions of dollars of U.S. weapons and materiel to fight the Taliban. Bout had barely halted his flights to the Taliban when the offer was made, and he had sold a small fleet of aircraft to the fundamentalist regime.
Of course Ruprah and Bout stood to make many millions themselves in the process, as Bout subsequently did in flying for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no indication their preposterous plan was ever actually implemented, but it certainly got serious consideration up to fairly senior levels of the intelligence community food chain.
Bout's "Great Lakes" company was one of his premier companies left operating in Africa. Popov and Mpano were his long-time associates who helped run his endless supply of weapons to the various wars in the region.
It is a small step, but one worth taking, to further crimp, however moderately, Bout's ongoing operations.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday December 18, 2006
After 12 Years, Some Small Progress in Hezbollah-Argentina Case
After 12 years of dogged work hindered by corrupt judges and investigators in their own ranks, Argentine prosecutors have finally reached the point of asking a federal judge to order the arrest of senior Iranian and Hezbollah officials for the 1994 car bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
This important step is unlikely to have any immediate impact on those seven people charged with having planned the attack, which killed 85 people and wounded 200 others. Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani still holds an official position within the government, former intellignece chief Ali Fallahijan and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati are protected, and the Hezbollah operatives who actually put it all together are not to be found.
Still, the statements of the prosecutors and their willingness to press forward are extremely important, as is the willingness to state clearly and concisely what the investigation has concluded:
"We deem it proven that the decision to carry out an attack July 18, 1994 on the AMIA (Argentine Jewish Mutual Association, a Jewish charities association headquarters in Buenos Aires) was made by the highest authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran which directed Hezbollah to carry out the attack," Argentine chief prosecutor Alberto Nisman said.
It is also a stark reminder that the reach of terrorist-sponsoring states (Iran) are aided and abetted by non-state actors (Hezbollah) operating from areas of state failure and black holes (the Tri-Border Area, where the attack was planned). This is a pattern that has been often repeated, from Sudan to Afghanistan to Syria, Libya and Iran.
It is unlikely, one Argentine investigator told me, that the attack could have been carried out without the Hezbollah presence in the TBA, where the organization has an infrastructure to collect money, protect individuals, and insure their safe infiltration and exfiltration.
Naming and shaming is never the same as arresting and prosecuting. But, within the limits of the prosecutors' ability, they have sought the truth about a terrorist attack, followed the leads, fired corrupt colleagues who muddled the investigation for years, and refused to indulge in political niceties of hiding the findings.
It is important to remember these events. Iran has not fundamentally changed is way of doing business, Hezbollah remains its long but informal arm and areas like the TBA not only exist but continue to expand. If we don't learn from these events we are sadly destined to repeat them.
This important step is unlikely to have any immediate impact on those seven people charged with having planned the attack, which killed 85 people and wounded 200 others. Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani still holds an official position within the government, former intellignece chief Ali Fallahijan and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati are protected, and the Hezbollah operatives who actually put it all together are not to be found.
Still, the statements of the prosecutors and their willingness to press forward are extremely important, as is the willingness to state clearly and concisely what the investigation has concluded:
"We deem it proven that the decision to carry out an attack July 18, 1994 on the AMIA (Argentine Jewish Mutual Association, a Jewish charities association headquarters in Buenos Aires) was made by the highest authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran which directed Hezbollah to carry out the attack," Argentine chief prosecutor Alberto Nisman said.
It is also a stark reminder that the reach of terrorist-sponsoring states (Iran) are aided and abetted by non-state actors (Hezbollah) operating from areas of state failure and black holes (the Tri-Border Area, where the attack was planned). This is a pattern that has been often repeated, from Sudan to Afghanistan to Syria, Libya and Iran.
It is unlikely, one Argentine investigator told me, that the attack could have been carried out without the Hezbollah presence in the TBA, where the organization has an infrastructure to collect money, protect individuals, and insure their safe infiltration and exfiltration.
Naming and shaming is never the same as arresting and prosecuting. But, within the limits of the prosecutors' ability, they have sought the truth about a terrorist attack, followed the leads, fired corrupt colleagues who muddled the investigation for years, and refused to indulge in political niceties of hiding the findings.
It is important to remember these events. Iran has not fundamentally changed is way of doing business, Hezbollah remains its long but informal arm and areas like the TBA not only exist but continue to expand. If we don't learn from these events we are sadly destined to repeat them.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday December 18, 2006
Knowing the Enemy, Understanding the Enemy
One of the greatest weaknesses five years after 9-11 is the striking inability of the political leadership and body politic to define and reach a consensus on who the Islamist enemy is and what the enemy wants. There is a striking lack of intellectual curiosity, or perhaps fear because of concerns about political correctness, that have blocked a serious discussion of what bin Laden and al Qaeda really think, what their real targets and objectives are and how that group fits into the broader Islamist project of converting the world to an Islamic state ruled by _sharia_ law.
Hence we have the absurd ridiculing in Newsweek magazine of President Bush's use of the word "caliphate" in discussing the Islamist project (and the even more absurd CAIR response that talking about the caliphate is anti-Islamic). We have the inability of senior people whose job it is to study and understand the Islamist project unable to identify the two major branches of Islam, never mind how they differ and what such divisions might mean.
The caliphate, from its historical signficance to the dream of its recreation, is perhaps the best way to understand how the different currents of Islamist thought relate to each other, support each other and form a coherent whole that embraces the Muslim Brotherhood to the historic al Qaeda.
I cannot do better than my friend Walid Phares on the Counterterrorism Blog in describing the history and signficance of the term. But what is most disturbing is that this is an issue at all. The Islamist project to recreate the caliphate is not a secret plot gleaned from suspicious methods of intelligence gathering that are subject to manipulation and political usage.
Rather, it is written and rewritten, as an intergral part of the Muslim Brotherhood strategy, al Qaeda, affiliated al Qaeda groups in Europe, by Islamists themselves. They provide the roadmap that they hope to follow, in official publications and in open conferences.
Not all who support the Islamist project support violence to bring it about, but support a more gradual political take over of different countries. Many, perhaps most, of the Islamist community, focus on the conditions in the Arab world and how to get rid of the corrupt, secular regimes there. But the Islamist project does specifically and clearly embrace the concept of re-establishing the caliphate at its time of greatest territorial conquest. From there, the war with the rest of the world will begin.
This is what I find so disturbing about this debate. It is intellectual laziness, not a lack of information, that has led to the paucity of understanding of what the Islamist project it.
The administration, from the beginning, has done an abysmal job of explaining this to the American people. The Democrats have not done any better in presenting an alternative view. Yet it is written out, and we quibble over using the very Islamist terms that the Islamists use to define their Islamist project. And listen when they tell us that those words make us anti-Islamic. Alice in Wonderland would feel right at home on this side of the looking glass.
Hence we have the absurd ridiculing in Newsweek magazine of President Bush's use of the word "caliphate" in discussing the Islamist project (and the even more absurd CAIR response that talking about the caliphate is anti-Islamic). We have the inability of senior people whose job it is to study and understand the Islamist project unable to identify the two major branches of Islam, never mind how they differ and what such divisions might mean.
The caliphate, from its historical signficance to the dream of its recreation, is perhaps the best way to understand how the different currents of Islamist thought relate to each other, support each other and form a coherent whole that embraces the Muslim Brotherhood to the historic al Qaeda.
I cannot do better than my friend Walid Phares on the Counterterrorism Blog in describing the history and signficance of the term. But what is most disturbing is that this is an issue at all. The Islamist project to recreate the caliphate is not a secret plot gleaned from suspicious methods of intelligence gathering that are subject to manipulation and political usage.
Rather, it is written and rewritten, as an intergral part of the Muslim Brotherhood strategy, al Qaeda, affiliated al Qaeda groups in Europe, by Islamists themselves. They provide the roadmap that they hope to follow, in official publications and in open conferences.
Not all who support the Islamist project support violence to bring it about, but support a more gradual political take over of different countries. Many, perhaps most, of the Islamist community, focus on the conditions in the Arab world and how to get rid of the corrupt, secular regimes there. But the Islamist project does specifically and clearly embrace the concept of re-establishing the caliphate at its time of greatest territorial conquest. From there, the war with the rest of the world will begin.
This is what I find so disturbing about this debate. It is intellectual laziness, not a lack of information, that has led to the paucity of understanding of what the Islamist project it.
The administration, from the beginning, has done an abysmal job of explaining this to the American people. The Democrats have not done any better in presenting an alternative view. Yet it is written out, and we quibble over using the very Islamist terms that the Islamists use to define their Islamist project. And listen when they tell us that those words make us anti-Islamic. Alice in Wonderland would feel right at home on this side of the looking glass.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday December 18, 2006
The Shi'ite-Sunni Divide and Escalating Violence
My friend Jeff Stein had a deeply disturbing op-ed piece in the New York Times a few days ago on the inability of senior law enforcement and intelligence officials, along with senior members of Congress-all dealing extensively with the Islamist terrorism issues-to tell Sunnis from Shi'ites.
Many could not say for certain if bin Laden and al Qaeda were Sunni, or whether Iran and Hezbollah were Shi'ite or which group the majority of Iraqis belong to.
He wasn't even asking basic theological differences, rather, just for a basic understanding of who was where on the chess board. This is akin to fighting a war against Christianity and not knowing, several years into the conflict, whether the Pope is Catholic or Protestant.
Before 9-11, what little most of us knew of Islam led us to believe it was all one big ball of wax with few differences of any importance. Hence the Clinton administration was willing to aid the most radical (Sunni) Islamists fighting in Bosnia, not understanding yet what _wahhabism_ was or the dangers it represented. There are countless other examples.
But, five years after 9-11, carried out by Sunni Islamists, and facing a possible nuclear threat for a Shi'ite Islamist state (Iran), while trying to rebuild a nation torn asunder by armed militias from both camps in Iraq, it would seem that such ignorance within the upper reaches of government is unforgiveable and perhaps the product of thinking that our enemy is 1) monolithic and 2) stupid.
This ignorance drastically reduces the ability to conceive of operations that could exploit the deep divisions and hatreds between the two groups and sects within each group. It also greatly reduces our chances of understanding the different enemies that exist with the possibility of developing a nuanced response geared not at "Muslims," but specific branches is radical Islamists that believe fundamentally different things, have different vulnerabilities and different points of access.
In the war in El Salvador in the 1980s, the United States never understood the differences within the FMLN, viewing it as a monolithic Marxist structure, rather than five organizations struggling with internal dissention on an ongoing basis. Senior U.S. officials acknowledged later they had no clear understanding of the differences within the guerrilla front and never seriously tried to exploit the schisms.
After the war senior FMLN commanders said that at least two of the factions, including one of the biggest, had sought overtures to the U.S. and would have been receptive to a separate peace, something that certainly would have shortened that war. But, despite fighting the FMLN for 10 years, it was never understood.
The same appears to be tragically true in the war against Islamists. There are books written on the differences between the two main groups of Islam and their different tendencies. It is impossible to understand Iraq without of why the different groups are killing each other, and factoring that into what the U.S. role could and should be. The same holds true for the entire region. History matters.
It would also greatly help to understand that the international Muslim Brotherhood is the one Islamic organization that can bridge the divide, and that ability is one of the great strengths and weaknesses of the organization. But we can't tell even the main players at this point, when the game is already well underway and has been for years.
Many could not say for certain if bin Laden and al Qaeda were Sunni, or whether Iran and Hezbollah were Shi'ite or which group the majority of Iraqis belong to.
He wasn't even asking basic theological differences, rather, just for a basic understanding of who was where on the chess board. This is akin to fighting a war against Christianity and not knowing, several years into the conflict, whether the Pope is Catholic or Protestant.
Before 9-11, what little most of us knew of Islam led us to believe it was all one big ball of wax with few differences of any importance. Hence the Clinton administration was willing to aid the most radical (Sunni) Islamists fighting in Bosnia, not understanding yet what _wahhabism_ was or the dangers it represented. There are countless other examples.
But, five years after 9-11, carried out by Sunni Islamists, and facing a possible nuclear threat for a Shi'ite Islamist state (Iran), while trying to rebuild a nation torn asunder by armed militias from both camps in Iraq, it would seem that such ignorance within the upper reaches of government is unforgiveable and perhaps the product of thinking that our enemy is 1) monolithic and 2) stupid.
This ignorance drastically reduces the ability to conceive of operations that could exploit the deep divisions and hatreds between the two groups and sects within each group. It also greatly reduces our chances of understanding the different enemies that exist with the possibility of developing a nuanced response geared not at "Muslims," but specific branches is radical Islamists that believe fundamentally different things, have different vulnerabilities and different points of access.
In the war in El Salvador in the 1980s, the United States never understood the differences within the FMLN, viewing it as a monolithic Marxist structure, rather than five organizations struggling with internal dissention on an ongoing basis. Senior U.S. officials acknowledged later they had no clear understanding of the differences within the guerrilla front and never seriously tried to exploit the schisms.
After the war senior FMLN commanders said that at least two of the factions, including one of the biggest, had sought overtures to the U.S. and would have been receptive to a separate peace, something that certainly would have shortened that war. But, despite fighting the FMLN for 10 years, it was never understood.
The same appears to be tragically true in the war against Islamists. There are books written on the differences between the two main groups of Islam and their different tendencies. It is impossible to understand Iraq without of why the different groups are killing each other, and factoring that into what the U.S. role could and should be. The same holds true for the entire region. History matters.
It would also greatly help to understand that the international Muslim Brotherhood is the one Islamic organization that can bridge the divide, and that ability is one of the great strengths and weaknesses of the organization. But we can't tell even the main players at this point, when the game is already well underway and has been for years.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH