Religious Symbols of Al Qaeda
Foundational Islamic Beliefs of the International Terror Network
Salafi-Jihadist
Al-Qaeda is a transnational Salafi-jihadist movement operating almost exclusively under perceived religious authority. Their idealization of Salafism (aqida) “revolves around a strict adherence to the concept of tawhid (the oneness of God)[often misappropriated as ‘purity’] and ardent rejection of a role of human reason, logic, and desire.” This involves a pious devotion to passages in the Qur’an and Sunna, which outlay specific rules or shari’a, much like the dietary and social laws and customs of Judaism, in order to “identify the singular truth of God’s commands.” Salafists deny any truth but contained in the Qu’ran. As the Qu’ran deigns Allah as the supreme legislator, humans are prevented from institutional secularism or separation of church and state, as this suggests that human-made laws should trump “divine governance.” More importantly, anything expounded or created outside of the ideas or rules contained in the Qu’ran is “innovation,” a type of sin (bid’a) that is dangerous to a pure concept of tawhid because it reduces the influence of the Qu’ran and shari’a in one’s spiritual life. Modernization that reduces the religious aspect of daily life is a great bid’a to Salafists. Riba (usury) and shirk (idolatry) are also heavily imbued concepts in Salafism that delineate and corrupt the tawhid and are symbolized rotatively in a decadent or non-Muslim world. For Al Qaeda, usury is manifested in the capitalist system, and the infidels or Crusader-Zionists have all been guilty of a sort of idolatry in the modern world. Al Qaeda invokes its militant form of “struggle” or jihad against the forces that work against these set of principles.
The Concept of Jihad
Al Qaeda’s concept of jihad, which Talal Asad insists is a modern political conception, and to a greater extent, suicide, is premeditated by disruptions of the umma (Muslim nation or community) and the attainment of tawhid by the enemy Crusader-Zionist forces, and is tied to notions of shahid (gift). However, as Asad explains, “the Qu’ran incidentally–and perhaps significantly–doesn’t make explicit use of the word shahid to signify someone who dies in God’s cause. The verse most often cited is support of it (9:52) speaks of husnayayn, ‘the two best things,‘ a phrase conventionally interpreted as ‘either victory of death in God’s cause.’” The act of suicide in Al Qaeda cannot be thought of as a Christianized “martyrdom” in the fact that it entails a symbolic “gift to the umma” rather than a personal sacrifice, which gives the act a communal expression of devotion to Allah. Sacrifice in the English usage posits the value of life and holds it as sacred (therefore sacri-fice, or making holy), where shahid does not hold the earthly life as more important than Allah and gladly ‘gives’ itself as a way of expressing devotion, or attainment of the tawhid. Suicide is a heavy sin in Islam, but jihad that meets a husnayayn, or a choice between two intervening matters, victory or death, is viewed as a shahid. A suicide attacker, consequently, is never alone in her faith, but imbued with a sense of being part of something higher than herself. Muslims hold a sense of awareness in community which if seen in its pure form is something quite singular and humanistic. Al Qaeda is able to tap into that fecund sense of community when it recruits its members.
Selected Bibliography:
Asad,Talal. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 58.
Wicktorowicz, Quintan. “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29. 2006: 207-239
Osama Bin Laden, Islamic Soldier
|
Bin Laden poster
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Politics & Society
Latest Articles