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The Inevitable Defeat of Al Qaedas Islamist Jihad. By Paul Kamolnick, Ph.D., Associate Professor, East Tennessee State University August 17, 2007 Absence of historical and theological perspective, presence of a 24/7 news cycle and its focus on the defining daily moments across many fronts, and a generalized failure to characterize the present war in terms of worldviews and visions rather than tactics, prevents analysis of the longer-term prospects in the current War on Terrorism. Yet the long view is crucial, particularly if the outcome involves the stunning defeat of Al Qaeda and conversely, victory for the U.S.-led Coalition of the Willing and its courageous Modern Muslim allies. Though the anti-jihadi global coalition must remain on aggressive offense and above all else prevent the acquisition of WMD mass terror capability, it is my opinion that within a generation or two at most the re-declared Muslim global jihad will have failed in its overarching revolutionary goal of using violent means to overthrow existing states and permanently install puritanical totalitarian theocratic regimes. The reasons for this are rooted in the nature of the ideals professed, and means employed, by Al Qaedas leading jihadi theoretician and architect of the revolutionary Islamist jihadi international, Dr. Ayman Zawahari. I Zawaharis Kingdom of Ends, or true Islam is puritanical, dark, severe, stern, lifeless and medieval in flavor. It is ruled by a single righteous religious figure who correctly divines Allahs true intentions in the form of law and edict and involves the literal application of the most rigidly conceived monolatry ever imagined. Governed according to the strictest application of 7th century inerrantism and original intent doctrine, the closest to this utopia yet realized according to Al Qaeda has been life under the Taliban after their triumph in 1996 and before their ouster by the United States invasion in December 2001. Banned from this true Islam is any form of human energy not harnessed directly to the stern worship of an omnipotent Allah, including music, song, dance, birthdays, holidays, festivities, festivals, frolicking, leisure for leisures sake. Banned also is the presumed moral and social equality of the sexes. Banned also is any tolerance for any thoughts, behaviors, dispositions, or attitudes that are not strictly subordinated to the worship of Allah. Gone also, finally, is any form of electoral political institution. Contrast Zawahiris true Islam with that maintained by the vast majority of Muslims throughout the world. Muslim daily life is rooted in familial and kin relationships, customs and traditions, norms and folkways, and those jubilant celebrations that mark the life-cycle (birth rites of passage including puberty and the coming-of-age, marriage, education and occupational attainment, etc.) The god of the Muslim masses is a god who grants life, prosperity, love, health, happiness, gifts, and blessings to the prayerfully righteous and genuinely contrite. It is a god rooted in human need and the will to live of a species that organizes its ethics and very humanity around its capacities for flourishing and celebrating its powers. It is a forgiving, caring, merciful, and loving god. In short, the Allah that matters in human history and is kept alive in the billions with faith, is a humanistic god, a god of life, a god of mercy, and justice, and compassion. The life-denying, puritanical, anti-sensuous ethos of Zawahari are virtually absent from the Qur-an, with its focus on the glory of Allahs creation, and the rightful dispensation granted to humanity as Allahs earthly creation. To these Muslims, Zawaharis true Islam would be a hellish, perverse nightmare that obliterated all life flow, energy, flourishing, and celebration of Allahs creation. And for these Muslim parents, the education of childrendaughters and sons--concern for the future success of ones progeny, and the hopeful prospect of a world teaming with familial choices is the very opposite of Zawahiris fields without children, kites, song, dance, and celebration of lifes blessings. The radically conflicting conceptions of true Islam sketched above explain why when jihadi arch-puritans have managed to win short-term control of the statee.g. Afghanistan under the Taliban-they have been quickly overthrown through internal and worldwide political and military alliances. One has only to read Zawahiris Letter to Zarqawi to see how the lessons of Afghanistan were to be avoided in Iraq, for according to Zawahiri a key failure of the Taliban was a failure to build a popular, widespread base in the society that could successfully fight against internal and external enemies. Islamist jihadi putsch tactics will also fail since they are attempting to completely reorganize society on the basis of a vanguard top-down theory of revolutionary power. An immanent crisis of legitimacy, motivation, authority,

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and ultimately social control destines these putsch strategies, the latest being the Pakistani militarys crushing of the Red Mosque putsch, and the long-term repercussions of the Hamas take-over of the Gaza Strip. Finally, far from representing a threat and contrary to much general commentary, I believe that the twin bases of Islamthe Sunni Saudis and Shia Iranians-- will over time become two of the most important sources for moderating and ultimately eliminating global Islamist revolutionary jihad. The historical analogy here is the relation of Luther to the militantly anti-government Anabaptists whose permanent war against any authority whatsoever, even that of a Protestant-endorsed sovereign, was the object of a merciless religious counter-revolution that both eliminated the arch-counter modern revolt while installing a legitimate ruler whose rule was a definitely reasonable interpretation of New Testament demands and commandments, though not the abolition of all state authority as the Anabaptists demanded. Saudi Arabia is without question the mother load of puritanical, intolerant fundamentalist orthodoxy, but is also an absolute monarchy with very crucial links to the modern and Western worlds, and whose reformist trends over time (i.e. constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, civil society rights) are inevitable. Before Bin Ladens progeny have an opportunity to behead the Saudi family and the rising, modernizing elements within Saudi society, that society through the very existence of a very strong, authoritative, and decisive state, will have also further modernized its religious conceptions, particularly in relation to non-Muslims, the education and rights of females, and the role of strictly interpreted religious law in the lives of individual Saudis, without succumbing to disintegration and vulnerable to Al Qaeda penetration. Iran, though in the grips of the Khomeini-inspired clerical class of Mullahs and their SAinspired Revolutionary Guard, is a pro-Western highly educated land whose nation-state, Persian heritage, and Western appropriations are the very opposite of the Zawahiri blueprint for true Islam. Yes, Hamistan and some micro-satellite puritanical states may be won for Shia militant Islam, in the short run, but compared to the infectious wealth, peace, and prosperity soon to emerge in the West Bank, it will be like comparing North to South Korea, with the construction of a new Islamist wall a necessity to prevent a massive exodus. II Since Al Qaeda launched its jihad unofficially in the early 1990s, and officially in 1998, the world has now observed the various means used by Al Qaedas senior theoretician in order to attain his true Islam. His attack on democratic and popular sovereignty, and violently merciless waging of military jihad, are the two main arrows in his quiver. Zawahari insists that any and every form of representative government, including duly-elected democratic and republican forms, involve disloyalty to Allah since they elevate the sovereignty of Man above the sovereignty of Allah. Moreover, he proclaims the modern nationstate, the system of international relations and alliances, and any and every form of non-Quranic authority or institution, a worship of idols and Man above that of the sovereign majesty of Allah. The vast majority of Muslims, however, view Allahs majesty as having originated or at least as complementary to the major foundations of the modern world. For example, to live under God does not mean that one must abolish the modern nation-state, nation-state system, civil and criminal law codes, if these forms and institutions are consistent with the central ethical demands made on Muslims based on Quranic and other authorities. That Allah has permitted human beings to create and modify institutions that give expression to the ethical dimensions of his creation, and that do not violate central Quranic injunctions regarding how one is to relate ethically and socially, is one possible reconciliation of democratic legitimacy with Allahs sovereign authority. At first glance Islamism in general appears opposed per se to the notion of the nation-state and democratic and republican legitimation, but this is not the case. Islamism as a political movement need not reject the nation-state, though it rejects notions of the modern separation of the spiritual and secular spheres, the public-private split, the nation-state as a non-religious or amoral entity, the idea that religion is a matter for private conscience only rather than public morality and law, and finally, that the sacred should not have a major role to play in the lives of individuals, including their private, sexual, and married lives. In this respect, Islamism is merely a branch of a worldwide tree of religious fundamentalisms, the word fundamentalism itself having been coined during the very decade the Muslim brotherhood was founded (1920s) to refer to the counter-modern anti-Darwinian Protestant evangelicals who rejected Nietzsches prophecy that God had died, we had killed him, and that secularism and the marginalization of religion in

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public life and the public square were the inevitable fate of an increasingly secular, liberal, and libertarian world. Worldwide, various fundamentalist religious partiesIslamic, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist have continued to contest, and partially arrest or reform the modernization of their faiths and insist, often with scriptural and religious bona fides to their credit, that the modernizers do not in fact have the sacred texts and traditions on their side. Viewed this way, Islam like many other major faiths is in the midst of a long, perhaps intractable civil war between moderns and traditionalists, liberals and fundamentalists, reform and orthodox, and the battle is no longer one fought out in the privacy of ones soul, but in the cultural politics and political cultures of many nation-states. It is in this sense that non-violent Islamismone that presumes the nation-state, international nation-state system, and modernized visions of the goodappears to be the inescapable logic of democratizing movements in many Muslim lands where devout believers seek a far greater role for traditional Islam in the lives of the citizenry. Anyone who has witnessed the mobilization of Protestant evangelicals and conservative Catholics and other traditionalist religionists in the United States over the past three decades can attest to the power of the mobilized fundamentalist believer to alter the sociocultural landscape and contest radical libertarian interpretations while at the same time working largely within a framework that is certainly non-theocratic and in general modern in its orientation toward many of lifes processes, products, and governing institutions. III Radical dissent by the Muslim masses also exists over Al Qaedas and Zawaharis authority to wage, and methodology for waging global jihad. Zawahari and his theologically orthodox archconservative followers are correct that Islam contains obvious scriptural and doctrinal authority for the declaration and waging of a violent expansionist jihad. The Quran, the authoritative accounts of Muhammads jihad in the Ahadith, and the various schools of jurisprudence prescribe jihad as a fundamental religious duty. Assuming for the moment that one believes that this religious prescription is still binding, nevertheless rules of warfare are to be observed. For example, a call to convert to Islam must be issued three times; a bona fide Muslim authority must declare jihad; it must be waged according to certain rules, including generally the sparing of women, children, the elderly, and religiously devout monks; children below the age of consent require the consent of their parents before they may join; Muslims are proscribed from killing other Muslims, unless they are guilty of apostasy or conversion to another faith. Consider then the revulsion that must arise when Muslims learn that in the name of Allah and Islam young human beings become literally human bombs directed at innocent civilians, women, children, the elderly, and other Muslims not guilty of any religious violation. Consider the Muslim dissent from the view that Allah permits and rewards the hatefulness, violence, and moral evil motivating a person who will behead, blow up, burn, maim, cripple, and inflict massive casualties in marketplaces, schools, and hospitals. Offensive military expansionist jihad is literally prescribed in Islam. That is a fact. But it is also a fact, though one that is largely unuttered or unutterable, that jihad in this sense is no longer considered prescriptively binding by the worlds Muslim masses, nor apparently, by the vast majority of highly devout Muslim scholars and commentators. For the masses and for almost all modern and traditional Muslims, jihad is no longer the offensive violent expansion of Islam but the personal internal struggle waged by each morally challenged and vulnerable individual to cleanse ones soul or to perform righteous deeds. At most, jihad may be legitimately declared if ones freedom to worship Allah and practice Islam is denied or abridged by an occupying power. Most likely, however, offensive jihad is seen as a moment of historical Islam in its earliest phases but given the success of Islamic expansion, the end of the historical caliphate, the rise of modern conceptions of religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and freedom of worship, and most especially the rise of the modern nation-state, the prescription to create a non-nation state religious empire is no longer practically imagined as a necessary nor desirable ideal.

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A recent analyst referred to three major tendencies among Islamists: jihadis, separatists, and politicos. The jihadis preach offensive jihad through study and warfare and the overthrow of any nation-state not ruled by strict Islamic law; the separatists preach Islamic purity and sacred study, and generally avoid unholy political and cultural alliances required to win state power; the politicos are Islamists willing to forge alliances with other political actors and in the process compete in electoral attempts to win state power for Islam in the public and private sphere. If I am correct in the analysis above, the jihadis, at least in their present revolutionary, violent, expansionist pretensions in pursuit of their premodern puritanical visions, are in the process of being wiped out. Once vanquished, though, we face a fairly long future in which the purist anti-political Islamist separatists and the politically-oriented alliance builders will seek to realize various Islamist visions, though through non-violent means. The shifting of the war on terror to a genuine political, cultural, and ethical war over the modern conception of morality, the place of religion in public life, and current visions of living under God would be a welcome event indeed. Preventing the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by global Islamist jihadists, ennobling the debate over the modern politics of cultural morality, and cementing all alliances military, political, and otherwiseamong those committed to modernized visions of the good life and the legitimate tools for its realization, are key to the prospect of such. The fate of revolutionary jihad is only a matter of time, whereas the politics of culture, and the place of the sacred and religious in that culture, appears at the present moment to have vast stretches of time on its side.