Is Ayman al-Zawahiri Dead?

Cole Bunzel March 17, 2021

In November 2020, reports emerged on social media and in the Pakistani press that al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had recently died of natural causes, possibly in Afghanistan. Born in 1951, the Egyptian jihadi veteran has been at the helm of al-Qaida since Osama bin Ladin’s death in the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011. During this time he has been highly visible as the face of the organization, delivering numerous audio and video addresses and offering written guidance to its members and branches. While there have been periods when he was incommunicado and his fate uncertain, never before have rumors of his demise swirled with such intensity. The release last week of a new video featuring al-Zawahiri has only reinforced those rumors, raising questions about the future of al-Qaida’s leadership and its future as an organization.

The Wound of the Rohingya

The new video, released on March 12, 2021 and titled “The Rohingya Are the Wound of the Entire Umma,” is peculiar in several respects. First, though it is advertised as a video address by al-Zawahiri, he is not in fact the main speaker. That role is played by an unidentified narrator, who introduces the subject (the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and the world’s failure to do something about it) and provides the vast majority of the commentary. Al-Zawahiri’s voice can be heard (he does not actually appear in the video) on just six occasions, in snippets ranging from eleven seconds to a minute and a half. In total, he speaks for just three minutes and forty-five seconds in the nearly 22-minute video. While news coverages clippings take up a lot of this time, and that is normal in these sorts of videos, it is not normal for al-Zawahiri to play second fiddle to another speaker.

Al-Zawahiri, it seems, did at some point record an address on the subject of the Rohingya genocide. But the impression given by the video is that this was recorded so long ago that it needed trimming and repackaging in order not to seem dated and timeworn. In one of the six snippets, al-Zawahiri speaks of “the democratic government of Myanmar,” indicating that his recorded words are not recent. The narrator, by contrast, refers to “the military coup in Myanmar,” showing that at least he is up to date on current affairs. Al-Zawahiri’s words are indeed so general that they could have been recorded as long ago as 2017. Nothing in his three minutes and forty-five seconds offers anything remotely approaching proof of life.

In his last video, al-Zawahiri also did not refer to recent events. Released on September 11, 2020, this was a most unusual video for al-Qaida to put out on the anniversary of 9/11. Billed as the first installment of a series titled “Deal of the Century or Centuries of Campaigns?” its general subject is the Trump administration’s policies regarding Israel. At the beginning of the video, al-Zawahiri describes some of the Trump administration’s recent moves, such as relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as part of “the long-running struggle between the Muslims and the Crusaders.” Yet the bulk of his address takes the form of an extended refutation of an al-Jazeera documentary from July 2019 that asserted links between al-Qaida and Bahraini intelligence. Al-Zawahiri made no reference to anything more recent than that.

Another peculiarity of the Rohingya video, as pointed out by Wassim Nasr, is the omission of the phrase “may God preserve him” from its usual place after al-Zawahiri’s name, both in the announcement for the video and in the video itself. In jihadi media products, the words “may God preserve him” usually follow the name of a speaker/author who is alive, whereas the words “may God have mercy on him” usually follow the name of a speaker/author who is dead. The absence of either of these expressions here is striking, particularly in the context of rumors of al-Zawahiri’s death. The phraseology was also missing from al-Zawahiri’s “Deal of the Century” video. By contrast, “may God preserve him” followed al-Zawahiri’s name is his video from May 2020, as it did in nearly all of his videos from 2019. While occasionally al-Qaida has neglected to include the phrase in videos of al-Zawahiri in the past, to do so twice in a row under the current circumstances is to give the impression that he very well could be dead.

Jihadi reactions

Following the release of the video, supporters of the Islamic State trolled supporters of al-Qaida on Telegram, sometimes using the hashtag @where_is_al-Zawahiri (#أين_الظواهري). Sawt al-Zarqawi, a prominent commentator, urged those in the Islamic State camp to use the hashtag and to give the “apostate” al-Qaida lovers hell in retaliation for how they responded to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019. “Flog them and gloat over them,” he wrote, “as those accursed ones did before when they rejoiced and exulted in the martyrdom of Shaykh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, may God accept him … today the shoe is on the other foot.”

Another prominent supporter of the Islamic State, known as Baha’, called the video a failed attempt “to prove that al-Zawahiri is alive.” While the video was presented as being a new address by al-Zawahiri, he wrote, it obviously was not, and “even the supporters of al-Qaida recognized this time that it is an old production.” More discouraging for them still, he continued, was the absence of the phrase “may God preserve him,” an omission that “invites speculation.” In another post, Baha’ wrote that the video, rather than reassuring al-Qaida supporters about their emir’s status, instead had the effect of “fueling speculation about al-Zawahiri’s fate and the fate of al-Qaida in its entirety.”

Baha’s own take is that al-Zawahiri is long dead and that al-Qaida, for whatever reason, is trying to cover it up: “All of this muddling … confirms that which is already established, which is that al-Zawahiri died a long time ago. Foolish al-Qaida’s current efforts are akin to trying to cover up the sun with a sieve.” But al-Qaida may not be ready, he added, to announce the death of its leader. Alluding to the two-year period from 2014 to 2015 when al-Qaida urged its members to give bay‘a, or allegiance, to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as their supreme authority even though he had been dead since 2013, Baha’ quipped that “giving bay‘a to the dead is a registered al-Qaida trademark.”

The online supporters of al-Qaida, as Baha’ correctly noted, made no effort to convince themselves that al-Zawahiri’s video was new and that it furnished proof of life. To the contrary, some of them began to entertain the possibility that al-Zawahiri had died. In a post released the day after the video, Jallad al-Murji’a, one of the more outspoken pro-al-Qaida commentators on Telegram, praised al-Zawahiri as one of the giants of the jihadi movement while minimizing the significance of his possible death. Jihad is not about any particular leader or organization, he reminded his readers, and all of us, including al-Zawahiri, will one day die. “There will come a day when [al-Zawahiri] dies,” Jallad al-Murji’a wrote, “whether that is today or tomorrow, for death will afflict all of us.” In that event, al-Qaida “may pass through stages of weakness,” but in one form or another it will endure. This is because al-Qaida “is more than just an armed group; rather, it is an idea and methodology and creed that will not expire with the death of its adherents.” None of this, he said, was to affirm or deny the rumors of al-Zawahiri’s death, only to remind everyone that his death will eventually come and that the jihad will continue.

A similar sentiment was expressed by another pro-al-Qaida personality, Warith al-Qassam, who in a post informed al-Qaida’s unbelieving adversaries that the organization does not fight on behalf of any particular individual. “If for the sake of argument we accept your claims that the jihad will end with the death of our shaykh,” he wrote, “then the jihad would have ended more than fifteen years ago with the death of the Imam Abu ‘Abdallah [i.e., Osama bin Ladin].”

These kinds of statements do not constitute acknowledgment of al-Zawahiri’s death, but they do show that al-Qaida supporters are beginning at least to take seriously the idea that their leader has passed.

The Problem of succession

The possibility of al-Zawahiri’s death raises the question of who will succeed him. The process of choosing a successor could be a difficult one.

Several years ago, al-Qaida put in place a succession plan providing for an orderly transition, but it may be of little help today. The plan was detailed in a set of documents leaked by the Syrian-based jihadi al-Zubayr al-Ghazzi in the course of the dispute between Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the group of al-Qaida loyalists in Syria. The documents, from 2014, are the handwritten statements of six high-ranking members of al-Qaida pledging to honor the succession plan. The line of succession to al-Zawahiri is described as follows: First, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, then Abu Muhammad al-Masri, then Sayf al-‘Adl, then Nasir al-Wuhayshi, and then another person to be chosen by al-Qaida’s shura council. Out of the four men named here, three are now dead: Nasir al-Wuhayshi was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2015, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri was killed by the same means in Syria in 2017, and Abu Muhammad al-Masri was gunned down in Iran (most likely by Israeli agents) in 2020. That leaves Sayf al-‘Adl as the only surviving candidate, but his elevation could be complicated by the fact that he is living in Iran.

The six documents detailing the succession plan clearly state that for a candidate to be given bay‘a as emir he must be present in Khurasan (i.e., the Afghanistan-Pakistan region) or in one of al-Qaida’s branches. That would seem to rule out anyone living in Iran, including al-‘Adl, who is forbidden from leaving the country in accordance with the terms of a 2015 prisoner exchange deal. However, the deal with Iran was reached after these succession documents were written, leaving open the possibility that the restriction on his candidacy no longer applies. While the prisoner exchange deal forbade al-‘Adl from leaving Iran, it also enabled him to live a more normal life and to operate more freely. Thus he may feel perfectly comfortable claiming the mantle of al-Qaida’s global leadership. Even so, it would be problematic for ‘Adl to assume the emirship while still living in Iran, a country routinely described by al-Zawahiri as an enemy state and seen as such by the vast majority of al-Qaida’s supporters. Such a situation would almost certainly alienate al-Qaida’s support base of hardline Jihadi Salafis and possibly some of its commanders. So if al-‘Adl were indeed to succeed al-Zawahiri, he would be wise to do so discreetly—and to try to leave Iran for another safe location as soon as possible.

If al-‘Adl is disqualified, however, on the basis of his location, then perhaps the decision on a successor would fall to al-Qaida’s shura council. In that case the picture becomes more obscure. One possible candidate in this scenario is ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, al-Zawahiri’s Moroccan-born son-in-law who is in charge of al-Qaida’s main media platform, al-Sahab. But he too, according to the U.S. State Department, is based in Iran. Incidentally, al-Maghrebi is the author of one of the six pledges outlining the 2014 succession plan. Two of the other authors of these pledges, Abu Ziyad al-‘Iraqi and Abu Dujana al-Basha, are no longer alive. Perhaps one of the other three authors (Abu Hammam al-Sa‘idi, Salih ibn Sa‘id al-Ghamidi, and Abu ‘Amr al-Masri) is a possible candidate, but there seems to be no publicly available information about who or where they are.

Another complicating factor in the succession process is the Taliban’s ongoing negotations with the Afghan government and its hopes for a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, as is well known, has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Taliban and even presents itself as ultimately subservient to the Taliban leader. Yet in seeking to get the United States to agree to a military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban has sought to minimize the relationship with al-Qaida, going so far as to deny that any al-Qaida members are present in Afghanistan. That is of course false (in summer 2020 CENTCOM commander Kenneth McKenzie located al-Zawahiri in eastern Afghanistan, and in fall of last year Afghan special forces eliminated al-Qaida’s media chief in Ghazni Province), but the Taliban’s interest in making it seem that al-Qaida is of little significance could have an effect on succession.

The Taliban appears to have asked the al-Qaida central leadership to keep a low profile while it negotiates a U.S. exit. Hardly any al-Qaida videos have been released since the signing of the Doha accord in February 2020. So if al-Zawahiri were to have died, and especially if he died while living in Afghanistan, the Taliban might request that al-Qaida not announce it—and thus delay announcing a successor. That delay could grow into a long one, as the Biden administration may never agree to a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Three distinct possibilities

While al-Zawahiri’s death is not confirmed, all signs seem to be pointing in that direction. Even al-Qaida itself, by leaving out the words “may God preserve him” from its latest video, seems to be signaling that he could be dead. The first and most likely possibility, then, is that al-Zawahiri has died but that al-Qaida does not yet wish to confirm it, either because it is playing for time as it manages a succession or because the Taliban has asked it not to, or both—or perhaps for some other reason.

Yet if this is the case, the question remains why al-Qaida would put out the Rohingya video in the first place. What possible benefit is there in fueling speculation that al-Zawahiri is dead? Is the purpose to send a message to al-Qaida’s global membership that a transition may be underway? Perhaps that is so, but another explanation is also possible.

The second possibility is that al- Zawahiri is not dead but that al-Qaida wants us to think that he might be. In other words, al-Qaida is deliberately fostering ambiguity for some strategic purpose, perhaps because al-Qaida (in cooperation with the Taliban) wants to broadcast to the United States and the international community that al-Qaida is weak and fragile—and thus not worth sticking around in Afghanistan for. That, however, may be a bit too conspiratorial to countenance. As the saying goes, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.

That leads to the third possibility, which is that the al-Qaida leaders responsible for the group’s media production simply do not know if al-Zawahiri is dead or not. They have heard the rumors of his death but are just as in the dark as the rest of us. If this were true, it would account for the withholding of “may God preserve him” or “may God have mercy on him” from after al-Zawahiri’s name, but it would not account for the decision to release the video in the first place.

Whatever the case may be, al-Qaida’s supporters cannot be feeling very good about their organization right now. What is going on at the top of al-Qaida is not entirely clear, but it appears to be a symptom of a deeper dysfunction and existential crisis afflicting the group. Several of al-Qaida’s local affiliates are doing quite well today, but as a centralized organization al-Qaida has the look of a group in disarray. Over the past decade it has lost control of its affiliates in Iraq and Syria. It has lost numerous leaders in decapitation strikes or assassinations, and those who have survived appear powerless and constrained. Sayf al-‘Adl, the presumptive successor to al-Zawahiri, lives in a country that al-Qaida claims to be at war with. Other al-Qaida leaders live under the authority of a group, the Taliban, that seems interested in reigning it in (at least temporarily). Meanwhile, al-Qaida’s principal stated objective remains attacking the United States, though it has not succeeded in doing so on a large scale since 9/11. And while it is generally thought of as a Jihadi Salafi group, al-Qaida occasionally makes overtures to the Muslim Brotherhood, as it did in this most recent video. In short, there is a lot of dissonance here. Whether al-Zawahiri is dead or alive, al-Qaida has a lot of problems it needs to sort out. Any successor might find the challenge insurmountable.

Jihadi Reactions to the U.S.-Taliban Deal and Afghan Peace Talks

Cole Bunzel September 23, 2020

On September 12, 2020, the Taliban and the Afghan government began negotiations in Qatar over the political future of Afghanistan. In accordance with the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” signed by the United States and the Taliban on February 29, the negotiations are expected to produce “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire” between the warring Afghan parties, as well as an “agreement over the future political roadmap of Afghanistan.” In return for the Taliban’s participation in the negotiations and its guarantee that “Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies,” the United States agreed to withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan within fourteen months of the original agreement.

In the world of Sunni jihadism, the U.S.-Taliban deal and the associated peace talks have elicited a range of reactions, from celebration to condemnation. This divergence of views reflects the fractured state of the jihadi movement—or its “tri-polar” character—split as it is between the three poles of the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria. The cautiously optimistic views of certain jihadi scholars add another layer of complexity to the picture.

The Islamic State

The Islamic State, it will be recalled, considers the Taliban to be a movement that has abandoned Islam and taken up the cause of Afghan nationalism. Its media routinely portray the Taliban as a nationalist and polytheist group, one that is theologically flawed, tolerant of the Shia, and in bed with Pakistani intelligence. The Islamic State’s “Khorasan Province” has also fought with the Taliban on numerous occasions. It thus comes as no surprise that the Islamic State has represented the recent deal and negotiations as further evidence of the Taliban’s apostasy.

An early response came in the form of an editorial in the Islamic State’s al-Naba’ newsletter in mid-March in which the Taliban were condemned for taking the “Crusaders” (i.e., the Americans) as their “new allies.” Unlike the Taliban, the Islamic State, the editorial boasted, would not cease to attack the Americans in Afghanistan, citing a recent Islamic State attack on the Bagram Air Base. This was a message to the Crusaders, the editorial continued, that the Islamic State’s war on them would continue despite the peace agreement with the “apostate” Taliban, who would also continue to be targeted.

In a speech two months later, in May 2020, the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurashi, commented further on the U.S.-Taliban agreement, alleging a conspiracy between the two sides to destroy the Islamic State in Afghanistan. “The agreement regarding the withdrawal of the American military from Afghanistan,” he said, “is a cover for the standing alliance between the apostate Taliban militia and the Crusaders for fighting the Islamic State, and a basis for establishing a national government that brings together the apostates of the Taliban with the polytheist Rejectionists [i.e., Shia] and other apostate and unbelieving sects.” In al-Qurashi’s view, the deal was to be understood in light of the purported preexisting alliance between the United States and the Taliban to root out the “caliphate” in Afghanistan. What the Taliban sought was a “national government” in which it could share. The Islamic State, however, would stand in the way of all this, intent on fighting “the Crusaders and the apostates” until true Islamic rule is established throughout the land.

Al-Qaida

Al-Qaida has portrayed the agreement in an entirely different light. On March 12, the “general leadership” of the group released a statement hailing the U.S.-Taliban deal as a “great historical victory” for the Taliban, focusing on the agreed-to withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The Taliban, the statement argued, by remaining steadfast and true to their faith, have defeated and brought low an enemy of far greater size and strength. Theirs is thus a lesson to be heeded by all jihadis fighting oppression and occupation.

Noticeably absent from this statement, however, was any mention of the Taliban’s pledge regarding al-Qaida or the coming negotiations with the Afghan government. Al-Qaida proceeded as if none of that mattered. As it had in the past, it described the Taliban in terms of the future caliphate, as “the nucleus of the Islamic state that will rule by God’s pure law.”

Since 2014, al-Qaida has repeatedly portrayed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan—the Taliban’s official name—as the seat of the anticipated caliphate and the Taliban leader as the caliph-in-waiting. In July 2014, for instance, it released a newsletter renewing the bay‘a (i.e., pledge of allegiance) to Mullah Omar, affirming “that al-Qaeda and its branches in all locales are soldiers in his army acting under his victorious banner.” A few months later, when al-Qaida in the Islamic Subcontinent was announced, its leader emphasized that he had given bay‘a to both al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar. The next year, when it was discovered that Mullah Omar had actually been dead since 2013, al-Zawahiri released an audio message giving bay‘a to his successor, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur. The exercise was repeated for the next Taliban leader, Haybat Allah Akhundzadah, after Mullah Akhtar was killed in an airstrike in mid-2016. In both of these statements, al-Zawahiri indicated that everyone who gives bay‘a to the leader of al-Qaida has in effect given bay‘a to the leader of the Taliban, and that the latter bay‘a is to be understood as al-bay‘a al-‘uzma, or “the supreme bay‘a,” meaning the kind of bay‘a that one gives to a caliph. In 2017, when the subsidiary group of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam al-Muslimin, was proclaimed, its leader articulated three bay‘as—one to the leader of AQIM, one to al-Zawahiri, and one to Akhundzadah. In his speeches, al-Zawahiri has continued to emphasize the theme of al-Qaida’s bay‘a to Akhundzadah. The issue even played a role in the debate between al-Qaida and HTS, the former al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, over the latter’s decision to leave al-Qaida. In a speech in November 2017, al-Zawahiri condemned HTS’s move, saying: “O brothers. By God’s grace and favor you belong to a greater union than the union you have. You are in the Qa‘idat al-Jihad group that is pledged in bay‘a to the Islamic Emirate in an expansive jihadi confederation.” The argument did not persuade, however. In a response, HTS’s representative rejected the idea that the Syrian group had ever owed loyalty to the Taliban.

As all of this shows, the relationship with the Taliban is of central importance to al-Qaida. In its self-presentation, al-Qaida is little more than a global military unit in service to Akhundzadah, whom it sees as its quasi-caliph. It would thus be a pretty big blow to al-Qaida, in material and propaganda terms, if the Taliban were to cut all ties with the group. That is not what the text of the U.S.-Taliban agreement requires, though it comes fairly close. The agreement states that the Taliban “will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies, and will prevent them from recruiting, training, and fundraising and will not host them in accordance with the commitments in this agreement.” Threatening the United States and its allies is the raison d’être of al-Qaida, and the Taliban is supposed to be its supreme “host.” If the Taliban were to honor this pledge—and it has repeatedly said that it will—it would be embarrassing for al-Qaida.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

On September 13, the head of HTS’s Sharia committee, Abu ‘Abdallah al-Shami (aka ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun), issued a statement congratulating the Taliban on the start of negotiations with the Afghan government. “This great victory that the Muslims in Afghanistan have achieved,” the statement read, “brings us joy as it brings joy to every free and passionate Muslim.” The key to the Taliban’s success, according to al-Shami, in addition to its extraordinary perseverance in resisting the American occupiers, was its ability to translate military success into political gains, and to do so by maintaining a united front. The implication of al-Shami’s words was that the Taliban’s approach was a model for HTS. Recently, the more hardline jihadi factions in Syria have criticized HTS for seeking a monopoly on violence in the territory it controls. Such an approach, al-Shami seems to be saying, is vindicated by the experience of the Taliban.

Other voices within HTS made similar comments, some of them more explicit in presenting the Taliban as a model for HTS to follow. On September 14, another HTS Sharia official, Muzhir al-Ways, commented that “the Taliban’s example” was “inspiring for all,” the Taliban being “a model in jihad and a model in political activity, a model in methodology and approach and respect for religious knowledge and jurisprudence.” While “every theater has its particularities,” he added, and no one example ought to be emulated in its entirety, the case of the Taliban offered lessons worthy of consideration.

Supporters of al-Qaida were quick to respond that HTS and the Taliban were in fact nothing alike. “The matter of likening the Taliban to [HTS] is entirely invalid,” wrote Jallad al-Murji’a on Telegram. In another post he supported his claim by citing the example of HTS’s cooperation with “the secular Turkish army … which was a participant in the war on the Muslims in Afghanistan under the banner of America and the Crusader NATO alliance.” Another al-Qaida supporter would point out that HTS, in its cooperation with Turkey and Russia, has fallen victim to “the game of international politics.” This was quite contrary to the successful experience of the Taliban. “Do not be deceived,” he wrote, “by what you have done, and don’t take pride in your victories, from which we have seen only destruction and devastation.” “How great is the difference,” wrote another, “between humbling oneself before the unbelievers and humbling the unbelievers.”

In response to these sorts of comments, HTS supporter al-Ifriqi al-Muhajir took issue with this characterization of the Taliban’s policy as one of uncompromising jihadism. There were elements of the Taliban’s policy, he said, that these voices failed to appreciate. The Taliban were not even forthright about their relationship with al-Qaida. He quoted an excerpt from a letter by the al-Qaida ideologue ‘Atiyyat Allah al-Libi (d. 2011), who wrote as follows about the nature of the Taliban’s dealings with al-Qaida: “Of course, the Taliban’s policy is to avoid being seen with us or revealing any cooperation or agreement between us and them. That is for the purpose of averting international and regional pressure and out of consideration for regional dynamics. We defer to them in this regard.”

Scholarly reactions

The senior scholars of the jihadi movement, including the Palestinian-Jordanians Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini, have expressed both praise and concern for the Taliban’s recent doings. While deeply divided over the issue of HTS—Abu Qatada is generally supportive, al-Maqdisi fiercely opposed—the two men’s views on this subject are not so far apart.

Back in February, Abu Qatada heaped praise on the Taliban for signing the agreement with the United States. In a statement on Telegram, he wrote that “the Afghan situation” is “an important example” and one that “deserves to be studied.” While rejecting the idea that every jihadi group should follow the Taliban’s path “step by step,” he highlighted several admirable aspects of the Taliban’s approach. These included the Taliban’s commitment to “staying the course” on the battlefield, its strong connection to the society in which it operates, and its status as a scholarly movement, that is, as a “movement of scholars.” On September 13, Abu Qatada continued in this vein in another statement, praising the Taliban’s success in securing the release of thousands of prisoners. “This is a jihadi victory the like of which has not been seen in our modern history,” he wrote.

Yet with regard to the negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, he was much less enthusiastic. “The Taliban’s agreeing to sit down with the [Afghan] government is an American victory,” he wrote in the September 13 commentary. “This has to be acknowledged.” For Abu Qatada, this was a potentially troubling development, for any concession to the Afghan government from this point forward would strip the Taliban of its status as “a legitimate emirate for Afghanistan.” The worst possible outcome, in his view, would be for the Taliban to enter into a power-sharing arrangement. He held this possibility to be remote, however, hoping that the negotiations would continue only as a “tactic” for achieving the American withdrawal.

Al-Maqdisi was similarly boastful about the Taliban’s initial agreement with the United States. In late February, he wrote that it was only the Taliban’s unrelenting “will to fight” that had forced the United States to negotiate with them, and that this was a “clear lesson” for jihadis. It showed that “the solution is not in democracy and ballot boxes! Rather it is in jihad and ammunition boxes.”

The next day, on March 1, al-Maqdisi published an “open letter to the Taliban,” sounding a more critical and cautionary note. In the letter he objected to the open-ended nature of the Taliban’s agreement with the United States, including the clause regarding al-Qaida, arguing that a non-aggression pact with unbelievers should be for no more than ten years in keeping with prophetic practice. This was, in his view, no more than “a jurisprudential transgression.” It was certainly the Taliban’s right to restrict al-Qaida, he said, particularly as Mullah Omar had never given his blessing to the 9/11 attacks. But should the “peace agreement” with the United States lead to the abrogation of jihad, this would speak to a deeper, more theological problem with the Taliban. Al-Maqdisi further faulted the Taliban for giving thanks to Qatar, Pakistan, and China, among other countries, in a statement issued by its leader upon the signing of the agreement. Such expressions of gratitude to states whose rulers are at war with Islam, he wrote, leave one to wonder about possible changes in the Taliban’s methodology.

Particularly troubling, in his view, was the clause in the agreement stating that the United States and the Taliban “seek positive relations with each other and expect that the relations between the United States and the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government … will be positive.” Perhaps all of this, he speculated, is nothing more than “maneuvers and political steps to achieve important interests.” But like Abu Qatada, he was concerned about what would come once the Taliban and “the client Afghan government” actually sat down to negotiate. More recently, after the negotiations got under way in September, al-Maqdisi reiterated his concerns. “What worries me,” he wrote on Telegram on September 12, “is not the sitting down [at the negotiating table] in itself, but rather the results of the sitting down!” He would wait to pass judgment, however, until the results were clear and documented.

Another jihadi scholar, the London-based Egyptian Hani al-Siba‘i, who is close ideologically to al-Maqdisi, has been somewhat more upbeat in responding to the Taliban’s recent moves. He also has contributed a somewhat different take on the Taliban’s pledge regarding al-Qaida. In a sermon delivered in March, al-Siba‘i pointed out that the Taliban, to its credit, “did not dissociate from [al-Qaida] and did not hand them over [to the Americans].” The Taliban’s commitment in the agreement was in reality nothing new, since the Taliban were already forbidding al-Qaida from launching attacks on the United States from Afghan soil.

In a more recent sermon in mid-September, al-Siba‘i added a few comments on the matter of al-Qaida’s bay‘a to the Taliban leader. The bay‘a, he explained, is conditional. When al-Zawahiri gave bay‘a to Akhundzadah, he stipulated certain conditions, including that the Taliban adhere to the Sharia. Therefore, if the Taliban were to deviate from its current path, al-Qaida would be within its rights to withdraw the bay‘a. For al-Siba‘i, however, this was a worst-case scenario, and a remote one. Let us wait, he suggested, and see what happens. For as of now, the Taliban have conceded nothing.

No consensus, uncertain future

If one thing is clear from this motley of views concerning the Taliban’s deal with the United States and its negotiations with the Afghan government, it is that there is little consensus in the jihadi world on what the nature of the Taliban truly is. For the Islamic State, the Taliban is an ungodly movement ready and willing to renounce jihad and share power with the Afghan government. For al-Qaida, it is the future Islamic caliphate. And for HTS, it is a model of jihadi realpolitik. The scholars, for their part, wary as they are of where the negotiations will lead, reflect a deep uncertainty about the future of the Taliban. Their worst fear is that the Taliban will make peace with the Afghan government and shed its character as “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Their greatest hope is that the negotiations will turn out to be a time-saving ruse. They are not so hopeful, however, as to assume this outcome as a given.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Internal Conflict and Renewed Tensions with Hurras al-Deen

Tore Hamming February 15, 2019

On 1 February Abu al-Yaqzan al-Masri, a senior religious official (shar‘i) representing the hardliner wing within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), announced his defection from the group. Al-Masri’s decision came as a direct response to a recent interview with Abu Muhammed al-Julani, the amir of HTS, in which he gave his support to Turkey’s planned operations against the Kurds in northeast Syria. HTS’s rapprochement with Turkey has long been a sensitive issue causing problems both within the group and between HTS and al-Qaida-aligned figures. In a speech published on 5 February 2019, al-Qaida leader Ayman al Zawahiri reiterated his criticisms of HTS, albeit not mentioning the group explicitly.

Al-Masri, who allegedly was arrested by HTS following his defection, has long been a critical voice within HTS. As recently as 30 December 2018, he said in a videotaped sermon in Idlib that Turkey’s battle against the Kurdish YPG is “between a secular army and a secular, atheist party; a battle that is one episode in a long struggle between Turkish and Kurdish nationalists, in which Islam has no stake, and God’s word has no part.”But tensions in HTS over the issue of Turkey were already brewing back in September last year, when it was reported that al-Masri was objecting to the party line. Initially there were rumours that two other senior sheikhs, namely Abu Malik al-Tali and Abu Malik al-Shami, had also resigned, but those claims have since been refuted (see here).

Al-Masri’s defection was long in the making, prompted as it was by al-Julani’s rapprochement with Turkey. The defection is in itself a serious matter since al-Masri was a senior and extremely vocal shar‘i in HTS and rumoured to be heading al-Asa’ib al-Hamra’ (the Red Bands), an elite military force within the group. After migrating to Syria in 2013, he joined Ahrar al-Sham but later switched sides to HTS in September 2016. In the summer and fall of 2018, he was seen traveling to the battlefronts and publishing regular videos including a series called “short words from the land of jihad.” While it has been claimed that he was forced to resign, it appears more likely that the Egyptian could no longer tolerate the warm feelings between his amir and the Turks, who are apostates in the eyes of al-Masri. Back in September 2018, he delivered a sermon equating secularism with apostasy from Islam and explaining how Turkey is very much secular. Further attesting to his hardline approach in theology, al-Masri has also been one of the fiercest voices against rival Jihadi groups Nour al-Deen al-Zinki and Ahrar al-Sham for their close collaboration with Turkey.

The immediate reaction from HTS has been ambiguous. Al-Zubayr al-Ghazi, a senior HTS ideologue, called on al-Masri to remain in HTS despite his differences, saying that “the brotherhood of faith is greater than the brotherhood of groups and organizations” (fa-ukhuwwat al-iman a‘zam min ukhuwwat al-jama‘at wa-l-tanzimat). But for the group it was important to send a signal that going against the party line would not be tolerated. Hence, on the same day as al-Masri’s resignation, HTS published a ruling stating that no one is allowed to publish fatwas before they have been approved by the shariah council (also like to statement). Two days later, Abu Abdullah al-Shami, the head of HTS’s shariah council, sought to defend against al-Masri’s criticisms, writing that it is not HTS that is changing in shifting its position (meaning ideology), as the critics claim, but rather the strategic context is changing, requiring the group to navigate the changing environment. Reports of al-Masri’s detention notwithstanding, an HTS insider source told this author that the expectation inside HTS is that al-Masri will eventually return, although Hurras al-Deen might seem the logical choice on an ideological level as al-Masri’s future home.

Re-emergence of tensions between HTS and Hurras al-Deen

As if al-Masri’s defection and implicit criticism of HTS was not enough of a headache for the group, it came at a time when renewed debate between HTS and Hurras al-Deen was being kickstarted. To remind readers, Hurras al-Deen is mainly composed of former Jabhat al-Nusra members who defected either after al-Nusra rebranded to become Jabhat Fath al-Sham in July 2016 or after the creation of HTS in January 2017, which effectively completed the breaking of ties with al-Qaida. Since its establishment in February 2018, Hurras al-Deen has consistently been at odds with HTS, criticizing the group for breaking its pledge of allegiance (bay‘a) to al-Qaida, for diluting the religion and monotheism (tawhid), and for not handing over certain weapons of HTS to Hurras al-Deen that the latter claims are the property of al-Qaida.

The tensions between HTS and al-Qaida loyalists came to a head in spring 2017, when Sami al-Uraydi, a Syrian-based al-Qaida leader, published a series of extremely critical essays directed against his former comrades. The situation escalated further in the fall when HTS began to arrest some of the critics including senior figures like Uraydi, Abu Julaybib and Abu Khallad. But it was after the formal establishment of Hurras al-Deen in February 2018 as a new al-Qaida group in Syria that the tensions got out of control. On 5 May 2018, the first casualty was recorded when Abu Uqba al-Kurdi, a Hurras al-Deen shar‘i, was shot by HTS at a checkpoint in Abu Utba outside of Aleppo. The explanation coming from HTS’s Abu Malik al-Shami was that a car didn’t stop when it was asked to and thus was shot at. Only afterwards was it realized that the passenger was a member of Hurras al-Deen. The shooter was subsequently arrested. Hostilities would continue, however, and on 11 July Abu al-Miqdad al-Urduni was arrested by HTS on fraud accusations. Al-Urduni is not officially a member of Hurras al-Deen, but he is close to the group and a good friend of Uraydi’s. He remains imprisoned to this day. Around the same time, Hurras al-Deen started to complain that HTS was arresting its fighters and opposing its military attacks on the regime

The dispute re-emerged on 30 January when Hurras al-Deen amir Abu Hammam al-Shami and its chief shar‘i Sami al-Uraydi published a statement following a new round of meetings between HTS and the Hurras al-Deen leadership. Abu Hammam’s and Uraydi’s argument can be divided into two themes. First is that some of HTS’s weapons belong to al-Qaida, and since Hurras al-Deen now represents al-Qaida in Syria it is the rightful owner of the weapons. Second is the argument that HTS’s jihad is not on founded on correct aqida (creed) or manhaj (methodology). As a way to settle the issue, the two suggest that a group of ‘independent’ scholars of religion, namely Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi, Abu Qatada al-Filastini, Nail bin Ghazi, Tariq Abdelhaleem, Hani Sibai, and Sadiq al-Hashemi, review the case and issue a judgment.

As expected, HTS members wasted no time in responding. The first response came from al-Zubayr al-Ghazi, a shar‘i in HTS’s military wing, in an essay titled “Does the Hurras group have rights and arms with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham?” Al-Ghazi builds his argument around the case of Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, al-Zawahiri’s deceased deputy, who according to the author not only ruled that al-Nusra could cut ties with al-Qaida but also that everything in its possession (including weapons) should remain its property. Al-Ghazi threatens that HTS could at anytime publish al-Khayr’s written ruling. To prove that Abu al-Khayr was in fact al-Zawahiri’s deputy at the time, six letters from al-Qaida shura members were shared (here, here, here, here, here and here). HTS claims (through al-Ghazi) that in a meeting on 5 January 2018 between Abu Hammam and al-Julani with Sheikh Abu Abd al-Karim al-Masri (an al-Qaida shura council member) as the overseer, 16 clauses were decided upon, among them the ruling of Abu al-Khayr – before his death – that the possessions of Jabhat al-Nusra would become the possession of (first Jabhat Fath al-Sham and then) HTS. Al-Ghazi only mentions 10 of the clauses, of which Hurras al-Deen, he states, would eventually break six (1-4, 8 and 10). He goes on to explain that after the agreement was made between al-Julani and Abu Hamman, both went back to their respective groups for final approval, but Abu Hamman’s al-Qaida loyalists (this was before the formal establishment of Hurras al-Deen) would not accept it (according to Abu Abdullah al-Shami not a single of the 16 clauses were accepted) and as a result Abu Hammam even offered his resignation (which was not accepted). Abu Hammam then referred the issue to a group of scholars for them to decide the issue.

The scholars’ reaction

As soon as the statement by Abu Hammam and Uraydi was published, I reached out to al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada to ask how they would respond. Al-Maqdisi’s response left little doubt concerning his position on HTS. He answered that adjudication is not possible at the moment as HTS behaves like the Islamic State, and it is pointless since a potential judgement would never be implemented, whether it came from him or from Abu Qatada. Abu Qatada was more diplomatic in his response, saying that he awaited an invitation from both parties before he would intervene. In statements on their telegram channels, Abdelhaleem and Sibai conveyed similar arguments. Abdelhaleem wrote that ruling in this case is impossible because it would require both parties to accept the ruling, which could not be enforced, while Sibai was more diplomatic but essentially said the same.

Afterwards al-Maqdisi, Sibai, Abdelhaleem, al-Hashemi and Nail bin Ghazi all agreed to arbitration subject to acceptance by HTS. Abu Qatada, who recently has been perceived as moving closer to HTS, still has not responded directly to the invitation, but in typical Abu Qatada fashion he authored an ambiguous statement stressing that people should focus on good things rather than be sources of enmity. This aligns with his general efforts in the last two years to promote reconciliation rather than provoke conflict.

While the scholars nominated by Hurras al-Deen to judge appear overwhelmingly in favour of Abu Hammam and Uraydi, HTS has the support of the most important factions of foreign fighters (muhajireen) in Syria (see here and here). The fact that the Turkistani Islamic Party (TIP) continues to side with HTS is particularly important as there have been questions whether it would switch sides due to its historic relationship with al-Qaida.

On 4 February Abu al-Qassam (an al-Qaida shura council and Hurras al-Deen member who accompanied Abu al-Khayr from Iran to Syria in late 2015) and Abu Muhammed al-Sudani also weighed in. In a gentle tone they suggested that the issue should be solved through arbitration by the scholars. A similar suggestion was made by Abu Abdalrahman Mekki, who is affiliated with Hurras al-Deen.

Renewed debate between Abu Abdullah al-Shami and Sami al-Uraydi

Entering the fray next was Abu Abdullah al-Shami, the head of HTS’s shariah council and thus the highest religious authority in the group. Al-Shami is no stranger to verbal combat with al-Qaida and especially Sami al-Uraydi, whom he debated at length back in fall 2017 about the issue of allegiance to al-Qaida. As part of the latest controversy, he published a statement titled “Six Issues” in which he comments on six issues raised by Hurras al-Deen figures. On the matter of weapons, he makes the same argument as al-Ghazi, invoking the ruling of Abu al-Khayr to conclude that the weapons are the property of HTS and under no circumstance are to be given to Hurras al-Deen. Al-Shami concludes that the weapons issue has been settled from a legal (shar‘i) perspective, and thus HTS will not accept arbitration by the scholars of religion in the matter. Nonetheless, and almost comically, al-Shami notes that arbitration by the Salvation Government, the HTS-dominated government in Idlib, remains a possibility.

Another important point raised by al-Shami is the issue of a military council. In their statement from 30 January, Uraydi and Abu Hammam criticized HTS for proposing a multi-group military council to be led by a figure from Faylaq al-Sham, a Free Syrian Army- and Muslim Brotherhood-linked group. Al-Shami says that Hurras al-Deen makes a mistake in focusing too much on the proposed individual rather than considering the greater good that would be derived from such a military coalition. Interestingly, he draws a distinction between the Free Syrian Army and the National Army, consisting of Ahrar al-Sham and Nour al-Deen al-Zinki, arguing that the former is more legitimate than the latter (despite Ahrar and al-Zinki being jihadi groups). Al-Shami ends his statement by claiming that Hurras al-Deen is at fault for the conflict between the groups and that it should stop trying to recruit fighters from HTS.

As expected, al-Shami’s long-time foe Sami al-Uraydi could not let the former’s words pass without comment. In a response, Uraydi teases al-Shami for being inconsistent in his opinions from the days of al-Nusra to HTS, the ‘Six Issues’ being no exception. Uraydi even compares al-Shami to the Islamic State and its late spokesperson Abu Muhammed al-Adnani in that the Islamic State would not accept arbitration by an ‘independent’ group of scholars and instead al-Adnani challenged none other than al-Shami to a mubahala (mutual imprecation). Commenting on the specific issue of the rights to the weapons, Uraydi rejects the claims made by al-Shami and argues that Hurras al-Deen has evidence that refutes HTS’s argument that Abu al-Khayr had made a definitive judgement. HTS, it will be recalled, has said on several occasions (through al-Shami and al-Ghazi) that it has proof of Abu al-Khayr’s judgement. Uraydi rejects this. On the establishment of a group of scholars to arbitrate, Uraydi actually suggest combining the two proposals to satisfy both parties, meaning including judges from the Salvation Government and independent scholars.

On the matter of establishing a new military council, Uraydi shoots back saying that Hurras al-Deen already has a military coalition, namely ‘Incite the Believers’ which is made up of Hurras al-Deen, Ansar al-Islam and Jabhat Ansar al-Deen. Hence, there is no need for another military coalition especially not one against al-wala’ wa-l-bara’. Uraydi finishes his response with an implicit threat. The earlier position of the Islamic State on arbitration led to infighting between the mujahideen, and HTS should be extremely careful so that history does not repeat itself. Addressing the HTS fighters directly, Uraydi tells them that the disagreement is not with them but with the leadership of HTS, and that they simply want it to be resolved through legitimate arbitration.

De-escalation or infighting?

The exchanges between al-Shami and Uraydi left the relationship between the groups and their respective supporters in an extremely precarious state. Would the tensions be relaxed or would they escalate into infighting? On 7 February, Abu al-Qassam published a message aimed at deescalating tensions, urging the factions not to fight each other and to resolve their differences through legal judicial procedures (‘an tariq al-qada’ al-shar‘i). The same day, however, a fighter from HTS died from wounds resulting from an episode of infighting with Hurras al-Deen fighters in Aleppo countryside, bringing the tally of casualties from inter-group dispute to two. Hurras al-Deen quickly published its condolences and established a court to determine the fate of those who fired the bullet. One theory has it that it was HTS’s plan to manufacture a crisis between itself and Hurras al-Deen as part of al-Julani’s policy of rapprochement with Turkey and of establishing HTS as a moderate force. But this is probably to attribute too much cunning to the HTS leader.

As the infighting was beginning to become physical, on 10 February the two groups reached a deal concerning six issues to deescalate the conflict. The agreement stipulated that provocations in the media should come to a halt and that the issue of personnel and weaponry going from one group to the other should be settled. A committee to supervise the implementation of the agreement was created, the statement notes, though the names of its members were not given. Although the situation appears to be under control for the moment, one can be sure that Hurras al-Deen stands ready to take advantage of any further attempt by al-Julani to get closer to Turkey. In the event of more movement in that direction, more conflict will likely follow.

Messages to Arabia: Al-Qaida Attacks MBS and the Saudi Monarchy

Bernard Haykel January 24, 2019

Since the early 1990s, al-Qaida has routinely vilified the Saudi royal family and its government for being un-Islamic and illegitimate, describing the monarchy and the princes as apostates who should be attacked and toppled from power. The gist of al-Qaida’s condemnation of the Saudi rulers is that they are lackeys of the West who only pretend to be Muslim and therefore need to be fought and deposed. The Saudi royals have consistently undermined Islam from within and are delivering Islam’s wealth to the West—Arabia’s vast oil and gas reserves—at well below market value. Because of this, the Saudi dynasty’s real nature has to be revealed and the Saudi state destroyed. Every al-Qaida leader has vilified the Saudis in this way, from Usama bin Ladin to his son and putative heir, Hamza. The latter, in 2016, launched a six-part audio series seeking to expose the Saudi royal family’s history of “betrayal.” Anti-Saudi messaging is indeed a central element of al-Qaida’s propaganda, and al-Qaida does not conceal its ambition to seize control of Arabia’s spiritual and material resources.

The rise to power since 2015 in Saudi Arabia of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) has presented jihadis with a new target of opportunity and additional material with which to attack the kingdom. His social reforms, especially the relaxation of strict norms on women’s public behavior, the mixing of the sexes, and promoting live musical concerts have elicited the ire and condemnation of traditional elements in Saudi society, and the jihadis aim to capitalize on these sentiments.

Two recent messages from al-Qaida illustrate how the group is attempting to exploit the potential for disaffection occasioned by the rise of MBS. The first is a two-page issue of the group’s occasional newsletter, al-Nafir (“The Battle Call”), titled “al-Dir‘iyya from the Mission of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab to Formula E”; the second is a 23-minute audio address by al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called “The Zionists of the Arabian Peninsula.” Both were distributed on December 24, 2018 via Telegram by the media company al-Sahab, the same outlet that has produced most of al-Qaida’s messages since 9/11. The two adopt somewhat distinct arguments. The first message makes the case for a religious and theological condemnation of MBS, whereas the second, by al-Zawahiri, is more openly political and strategic in its analysis and prescriptions. Let us take each of the messages separately and offer an examination of their respective contents.

Dancing in al-Dir‘iyya

The December 2018 issue of al-Nafir—which claims to be a “consciousness awakening” publication (nashra taw‘awiyya)—is not the first to focus on MBS and Saudi Arabia. Previous issues have attacked the kingdom’s new counterterrorism initiatives as part of the “war on Islam” and ridiculed MBS’s pronouncements in favor of “moderate Islam” as tantamount to endorsing “American Islam.” The latest issue, however, is the most detailed in its condemnation of MBS’s social policies and the most exhortatory yet, concluding with an appeal for action.

The publication depicts MBS as the devil incarnate, labeling him the “Awaited Corrupter” (al-mufsid al-muntazar) and the Abraha of the Saudi family. The first name is a play on the name of the prophesied Islamic messianic figure, al-mahdi al-muntazar (“the awaited redeemer”), who will appear before the end times. The second moniker is a reference to the pre-Islamic Abyssinian Christian viceroy of Yemen who is alleged to have led a military expedition with elephants against Mecca in the year 570 with the aim of destroying the Ka‘ba (cf. Q. 105). (An earlier issue described him as “the Arabs’ Ataturk.”)

Interestingly, and not entirely in keeping with al-Qaida’s ideology, the tone of the piece is apocalyptic, warning that MBS’s liberalizing reforms, aimed at destroying Islam, are perhaps a harbinger of doomsday. MBS, according to the piece, is “spreading the symbols of Westernization, the rituals of secularism, and liberal values” in a conservative Muslim society in order to promote social corruption, deviance, and debauchery, especially among the young men and women who hail from the pure Arabian tribes of the Peninsula. In a reference to the dancing at several recent musical concerts in al-Dir‘iyya, the capital of the first Saudi-Wahhabi state, the author asks rhetorically whether the gyrations of the women’s backsides are indeed a sign of the imminence of Judgment Day, as predicted in one of the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. This is the hadith narrated on the authority of Abu Hurayra in which the Prophet says, “[One of the signs of] Judgment Day is the jiggling of the backsides of the women of the tribe of Daws around the shrine of Dhu al-Khalasa.”[1]

The piece goes on to criticize all of MBS’s social reforms, complaining of the appearance of uncovered women on Saudi television, mixed-sex singing parties, professional wrestling matches, and circus shows, as well as women’s driving and Formula E racing in al-Dir‘iyya, ground zero of the Wahhabi mission. All this is said to be intended by the government to spread depravity and vice and to cause people to abandon God’s religion. The public appearance and assertiveness of women are particularly galling for the author, as these echo the habits and practices of idolatrous and polytheistic pre-Islamic Arabia, the Jahiliyya. The document clearly intends to provoke the patriarchal and ultra-conservative attitudes of Arabian society in the hope of delegitimizing MBS’s regime, which is also described, for good measure, as inclined toward Zionism (mutasahyin). And while all this merriment and debauchery is taking place in Arabia, the piece adds, the innocent Muslims, whether in Syria, Myanmar, Xinjiang, or Gaza, are either being bombed by the Americans or Russians or being brutalized by autocrats like the Chinese or Burmese rulers.

The Saudi regime is also condemned for unjustly imprisoning and torturing Muslim scholars and preachers, a theme that al-Nafir has touched on before. In the September 2017 issue, for instance, which appeared shortly after the arrest of several high-profile Islamist scholars including Salman al-‘Awda, al-Qaida announced its support for the recently detained. Without mentioning any of them by name, it praised those scholars and preachers who have long operated in the “grey zones” of support for Islam. Similarly, nearly a year later, al-Nafir would laud the efforts of the Islamist scholar Safar al-Hawali, who was arrested in July 2018 following the release of his 3,000-page book that included stinging criticism of the Al Saud.

The prescription offered to al-Nafir’s readers is for the young men of belief to gather, plan, and organize to stop MBS’s “westernizing and liberalizing project,” which has established roots in the “land of faith and divine revelation.” They must also seek and engage the truthful scholars, who have not been imprisoned, as well as communicate with and solicit the advice of the global jihadi leadership. The recommendations are vague and most likely to be ineffectual, but at any rate the piece demonstrates a concerted effort by al-Qaida to stir the emotions of a religiously conservative society against MBS’s socially liberalizing policies, in particular those that accord greater agency to women as well as promote their increased visibility in public.

Zionists in Arabia

The second al-Qaida message, al-Zawahiri’s audio statement, aims to provide a more developed political and historical framing of MBS’s reforms, as well as to instruct Muslims in Arabia as to how to resist the Saudi government. In keeping with his roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Zawahiri offers a conspiratorial narrative to explain regional and global politics over the last century. His argument is that there is an unholy alliance that unites Crusaders (Britain and the United States), Zionists (Israel), and Safavid-Rejectionists (Iranians and Shiites) to destroy true Islam, by which he means Sunni Islam. This three-pronged alliance plots ceaselessly to weaken and attack Muslims and to pilfer their material resources. The Saudi ruling family, along with every other leader of a Sunni majority country (Egypt, the UAE, Yemen, etc.), are agents and enablers of this alliance. The message itself takes the form of a video featuring al-Zawahiri’s still image, with documentary-like clips that cut to highlight the points al-Zawahiri is making.

As the title of the message suggests, al-Zawahiri asserts that the Saudi ruling family, from the time of its founder King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud (r. 1902-1953) until MBS today, are concealed Zionists who pretend to be Muslims. They have ceaselessly plotted to destroy Islam in alliance, first with the British, and since WWII with the United States. Ibn Saud helped the British defeat the Ottoman caliphate, he says, which paved the way for the Zionists to establish the state of Israel in Palestine. Later, Ibn Saud’s children, as kings of Saudi Arabia, persisted in their betrayal by allowing America to steal Arabia’s wealth (i.e., the oil), establish military bases, and impose non-Islamic laws and rules. The late King Fahd, whom al-Zawahiri derisively nicknames Abu Rughal—an infamous traitor of pre-Islamic Arabia—not only offered Israel recognition with the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, but was also the one who invited the U.S. military into Arabia, where it remains t0 this day.

Al-Zawahiri’s condemnation of the Saudi rulers continues unabated and reaches a crescendo with his treatment of MBS, whom he accuses of fully revealing the “Zionist face” of the government in Riyadh. MBS, according to al-Zawahiri, not only spreads sin and debauchery, but also executes and imprisons religious scholars, whether they be openly sympathetic to al-Qaida or sycophants of his rule. More pernicious yet, MBS openly avers that Israel has the right to exist and that cooperation with it is necessary. Al-Zawahiri’s conspiratorial narrative, however, stretches credulity when he then asserts, without adducing any evidence, that the Americans have plotted with the Houthi rebels to achieve control over the government in Sanaa. This plotting, which also includes the United States conspiring with Iran, now means that Arabia has become completely dominated by America and “the Muslims in Arabia are besieged by the Shiites (al-hisar al-Rafidi) from the north, east and south.”

Given this parlous state of affairs, al-Zawahiri turns to his recommendations for the Muslims of Arabia. They must, according to him, do three things: emigrate (hijra), conduct jihad, and unite (ittihad). In terms of emigration, al-Zawahiri recommends that those who oppose the Saudi and American-Iranian conspiracy leave Arabia for the outposts of warfare (thughur al-jihad), likely meaning the areas under the control of al-Qaida, such as the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (In an earlier address, Hamza mentioned Yemen as an ideal destination for hijra.) It is only in such “free” regions that Muslims can properly confer, plan, and organize, whereas this is not possible under the tyrannical pressure of autocratic “idols” (tawaghit) such as MBS in Arabia, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayid in the UAE, and President Sisi in Egypt. Emigration furnishes the Muslim with the ability to imagine, the practical experience to learn, and the mobility to wage proper resistance, all of which are otherwise impossible. Al-Zawahiri proudly asserts that it was such advantages that permitted the “high state” of planning for the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida. As for jihad, it begins with educating and speaking the truth about the battle that the Muslim community is waging and the threats it faces. Jihad, however, must ultimately lead to warfare and martyrdom operations against God’s enemies: the Americans and the Zionists. Such attacks will be the downfall of the Saudis and the Emiratis. Unity, the final recommendation, is briefly mentioned as being necessary because all Muslims are being targeted and only if they are united can they hope to repel the aggression.

Al-Zawahiri ends his message with an aesthetically second-rate poem that recapitulates some of his main points and aims to spur his followers to action in defense of Islam. He appears to add this flourish to keep up with the tradition followed by Usama bin Ladin and other jihadis who often embellish their oratory with verse. Yet, as with so many of al-Zawahiri’s other messages, the effect is diminished by his lack of personal charisma and rhetorical skill.

Two audiences

It appears that there are two different audiences being addressed by al-Qaida’s recent releases. The first message seems to be aimed at Saudi Arabia’s conservative Salafis, or Wahhabis. The references to hadith, ritual purity, and the violation of Islamic morality, particularly in al-Dir‘iyya, are all intended to raise the ire of devout Wahhabis by highlighting the chasm that now separates MBS’s policies from the message of principled enmity toward practices of unbelief that characterized original Wahhabism. This is an audience that the propaganda of the Islamic State has often sought to target. Al-Zawahiri’s speech, by contrast, does not invoke creedal matters that would necessarily arouse the sentiments of Wahhabis. His conspiratorial analysis about global affairs, rooted in a view of the United States and Israel as the eternal enemies of the Islamic world, is meant to have pan-Islamic appeal.

In the final analysis, these messages should be seen as part of al-Qaida’s attempt to recapture a constituency for itself in Saudi Arabia, where it has not carried out an attack in years, as well as to stake its claim as the standard bearer of the Jihadi Salafi movement in light of the Islamic State’s rapid decline. That al-Qaida can project its message on multiple registers, creedal as well as geopolitical, is a testament to the protean nature of its ideology.

[1] The Dhu al-Khalasa was a Ka‘ba-like structure in which an idol was worshipped in pre-Islamic times, and is located in the region of Tabala in Asir in southwest Arabia. The Wahhabis are alleged to have destroyed what remained of this structure during the reign of King Abdulaziz (r. 1902-1953).

Abu al-Qassam: Zarqawi’s right-hand man who stayed loyal to al-Qaida

Tore Hamming November 20, 2017

Everywhere Abu Musab al-Zarqawi went, Abu al-Qassam was with him. Even to prison. Abu al-Qassam was al-Zarqawi’s childhood friend, later his companion and finally his deputy. After spending more than 10 years in Iranian captivity, he was released in March 2015, but despite the Islamic State claiming to be the heirs of al-Zarqawi, it is now with al-Qaida that Abu al-Qassam’s loyalty lies.

Originally from Ramallah, Abu al-Qassam grew up in Zarqa, just north of Jordan’s capital Amman. It was here, in one of the city’s mosques – most likely al-Hussein bin Ali Mosque – that he one day as a young man met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who eventually would become the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, the Islamic State’s predecessor. The two would go on to become close, even family.

He was born as Khalid Mustafa Khalifa al-Aruri in 1967, but it was as Abu al-Qassam or Abu Ashraf that he eventually became known in Jihadi circles. Little is known about his early years and the information available is conflicting. One story is that he worked for a Saudi organization, the IIRO, in 1991 before returning to Zarqa a year later. Perhaps it was then that he stumbled upon al-Zarqawi, one year his senior and who was back from Afghanistan after his first battlefield experience. Another account is that he in fact joined al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan. In any case, from 1993 the two were inseparable.

Like al-Zarqawi, Abu al-Qassam was imprisoned in Jordan on 29 March 1994 until March 1999 (another account is that Abu al-Qassam was released early as there was not enough evidence against him) in the ‘Bay‘at al-Imam’ case, referring to the group al-Zarqawi had established upon his return together with his mentor Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. As soon as they were released, however, it was not long before the two young Jordanians left for Afghanistan for a second time.

Zarqawi’s companion, deputy and brother-in-law

Upon arrival in Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi was approached by the senior al-Qaida member Saif al-Adl, who saw a great potential in the Jordanian. Al-Adl immediately wanted to start cooperation with al-Zarqawi, through logistical assistance and funding, but al-Zarqawi needed time to think it over. He had to consult with Abu al-Qassam. Some days later, Abu al-Qassam and Abdul Hadi Daghlas, Zarqawi’s other close companion, gave their blessing to Saif al-Adl’s proposal and from then on al-Qaida started to finance and support al-Zarqawi’s camp in Herat in western Afghanistan.

It was in Afghanistan at the camp in Herat that Abu al-Qassam married al-Zarqawi’s sister and assisted his emir in establishing a small Jihadi community, a mini society, that would lay the foundation for what is today known as the Islamic State. Abu al-Qassam not only acted as al-Zarqawi’s deputy but was also a commander at the camp. The two were so close that al-Maqdisi allegedly described Abu al-Qassam as al-Zarqawi’s shadow – everywhere he went, Abu al-Qassam went too.

The strikes against the US on 9/11 would eventually change that, however. In the aftermath of the attack, al-Zarqawi and his entourage were forced to flee in November 2001 as it became impossible to remain at the camp after the US invasion. But first the Jordanians had to go on a strenuous three-day trip to Kandahar to attend a meeting of high-ranking Jihadis that nearly cost their lives as the Americans bombed the building where the meeting was taking place. After intense battle in Kandahar and later in Tora Bora, al-Zarqawi’s group was forced to leave for Iran and it is likely that Abu al-Qassam was part of the group traveling to Iran at this point.

Whether Abu al-Qassam stayed on in Iran or followed al-Zarqawi to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2002 remains unknown, but it has been reported that he served as al-Zarqawi’s key liaison with Ansar al-Islam, the al-Qaida-affiliated group in Kurdistan that assisted with the relocation of al-Zarqawi’s group to Iraq. This work, however, probably took place in Iran and not in Kurdistan. Reportedly, Abu al-Qassam participated in an important meeting with people close to Mullah Krekar in August 2003 in Tehran, where it was agreed to set up training camps in Kurdistan. Interestingly, a Moroccan investigation into the March 2003 bombings in Casablanca claimed that Abu al-Qassam had helped finance the attack, thus indicating a role in the Iraq-based group’s external operations as well.

As is now well-known, the Iranian authorities were rather accommodating of Jihadi activities in their country and this was also the case with al-Zarqawi’s group, but for some reason this would suddenly change. Iranian police entered several hotels in Tehran, where al-Zarqawi’s people were known to reside, and it is likely that Abu al-Qassam was arrested as part of this crack down.

In Iranian prison, or house arrest, Abu al-Qassam would meet several familiar faces, among them Saif al-Adl, who had been responsible for the liaison between al-Qaida and al-Zarqawi’s group in Afghanistan. Several other senior al-Qaida figures and members of Usama bin Laden’s family were also in Iranian captivity.

Relocating to Syria

Abu al-Qassam spent approximately 12 years in prison before being released in March 2015 as part of a prisoner exchange deal. Besides Abu al-Qassam, four senior al-Qaida members were released, namely Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, Saif al-Adl and Sari Shihab. Initially there was doubt over the location of the five senior figures and even over how engaged they remained after so many years in prison. Al-Zarqawi’s death in 2006, while Abu al-Qassam was imprisoned, only raised questions regarding his dedication to Jihad. On several occasions, it was reported that the released al-Qaida senior members had relocated to Syria at the directive of Ayman al-Zawahiri to support Jabhat al-Nusra and the so-called Khorasan group. We now know that these reports were only partly true.

The first rumours surrounding Abu al-Qassam emerged in September 2015, saying that he had been chosen to lead a new al-Qaida group in Iraq (see here and here). This, however, was not correct and it is unlikely that Abu al-Qassam stayed long in Iraq if at all. Instead, we know that Abu al-Qassam relocated to northern Syria, but when exactly is unclear. A Jabhat al-Nusra supporter disclosed in September 2015 that a senior member released from Iranian house arrest had arrived in Syria on the orders to al-Zawahiri, but whether it was Abu al-Qassam or Abu al-Khayr is still a mystery.

Abu al-Qassam’s first appearance in Syria was reported in December 2015. This was at the same time as high-ranking Jabhat al-Nusra leaders Sami al-Uraydi and Iyad al-Tubaysi (aka Abu Julaybib) relocated from southern Syria to the north, possibly to meet up with Abu al-Qassam. According to al-Maqdisi, Abu al-Qassam joined the Coordination Committee in Syria (lajnat al-mutaba’a fi-l-Sham), which allegedly was responsible for the link between al-Qaida and its Syrian affiliate, although not under direct supervision of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It would take some time before Abu al-Qassam himself would confirm his presence in Syria, but that he did in early 2017 in an eulogy for Abu al-Khayr, al-Qaida’s deputy and his longtime friend from their time in Iran. In his statement, Abu al-Qassam praises his fallen friend, extends his blessings to al-Zawahiri and promises to work to keep the Syrian Jihad on the right path.

Abu al-Qassam is arguably a man of action rather than of writing. His closeness to Zarqawi could testify to that, but we can also take Abu al-Qassam at his word. He begins several of his writings by saying that he is not at ease with a pen in his hand and unlike many of his Jihadi colleagues not a fan of writing on the internet. That said, since the beginning of 2017 – and corresponding with Abu al-Khayr’s death – Abu al-Qassam has become increasingly active.

In May, in a brief analysis of the situation in Syria authored together with his friend Sami al-Uraydi (who posts Abu al-Qassam’s statements on his Telegram channel), Abu al-Qassam outlined the role of Iran, Russia and Turkey in Syria, noting that Turkey is broadening its influence in Idlib and that the mujahideen needs to adapt to the situation. The best way of fighting the enemy, he claimed, is to initiate a guerilla war, which he defines as the next stage (al-marhala al-muqbila) in the struggle. Uraydi, also a Jordanian, added that the Jihadis in Syria are critically affected by the ongoing confusion, referring to the Jihadi infighting and the split with al-Qaida, and emphasizes that this has to be resolved immediately.

The following month, Abu al-Qassam was forced to his keyboard once again. The war of words between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra and Jabhat Fath al-Sham, and his good friend and senior ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi were threatening the bond with al-Qaida sympathizers in Syria. Abu al-Qassam’s intervention, in which he argued that problems should be solved and not allowed to escalate and that al-Maqdisi should be respected despite one’s disagreement with him, was – as he promised Abu al-Khayr – an effort to safeguard al-Qaida’s Jihadi project in Syria.

Loyalty to al-Qaida

In early 2014, Abu al-Qassam was still imprisoned in Iran and could only witness the split between al-Qaida and the Islamic State and the ensuing fragmentation within the Jihadi environment from a distance. Ever since the rupture, the Islamic State has emphasized its ‘lineage’ from al-Zarqawi as a way to capitalize on his authority and legacy. According to the Islamic State itself, it is different from al-Qaida as it continued in the footsteps of its founder al-Zarqawi (and Usama bin Laden) while al-Qaida deviated after al-Zawahiri assumed control. Thus the Islamic State, and not al-Qaida, is the Zarqawist side in the intra-Jihadi civil war.

Is it surprising, then, that al-Zarqawi’s most loyal remaining companion chose to ally himself with al-Qaida and not the Islamic State after his release from prison? Initially it could be questioned whether Abu al-Qassam was still devoted to Jihad, and if so what group he remained loyal. This is no longer the case, however, as his recent involvement in the debate over the split between al-Qaida and its Syrian affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham attests.

Both Abu al-Qassam’s own testimony and that of Sami al-Uraydi give the impression that he is indeed an active player on the Jihadi scene and that this loyalty is unequivocally with al-Qaida and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In his statement, Abu al-Qassam explains how he initially sanctioned Jabhat al-Nusra’s desire to split from al-Qaida, but later reversed after he became familiar with the position of two of al-Zawahiri’s deputies (Abu Muhammad al-Masri and Saif al-Adl). As is now well-known, Jabhat al-Nusra went ahead and separated from al-Qaida against the will of the group’s senior leaders. The testimonies provide valuable insights into the dealings with such issues within Jihadi groups and not least the role played by Abu al-Qassam, who participated in several of the meetings that were held prior to the decision.

Of course, Abu al-Qassam’s closeness to al-Zarqawi and his later opposition to the Islamic State are not unique. Other people, such as Abu Julaybib, spent time in al-Zarqawi’s Herat camp and married one of al-Zarqawi’s sisters before eventually siding with Jabhat al-Nusra in its contest with the Islamic State. But the fact that Abu al-Qassam was Zarqawi’s very close friend and deputy, and now ranks as a senior al-Qaida member, can only be seen as a victory for al-Qaida.

While Abu al-Qassam’s exact role has not been revealed, it appears likely that he will try act as a unifying actor between the conflicting parties in the future. One recent example of such a role is his support to the scholarly peace initiative that was presented in late October, though so far this has produced no results.

Tore tweets at @torerhamming

What we learned from Sami al-Uraydi’s testimony concerning Abu Abdullah al-Shami

Tore Hamming October 24, 2017

Something is not right in the relationship between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and al-Qaida.

On 15 October, an announcement was posted on Sami al-Uraydi’s Telegram channel. “#Soon,” it said, “the series For God, then For History,” which was described as consisting of “testimonies on the split between Jabhat al-Nusra and Tanzim al-Qaida”. 50 minutes later the first such testimony was released and the war of words between al-Qaida and HTS had begun. In the coming six days, four further testimonies from Uraydi, and another from a close accomplice, followed and all with the same objective: to delegitimise leading HTS figures, namely Abu Abdullah al-Shami and Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani.

As readers of this site will know, this is not the first time that debate and controversy between HTS and al-Qaida-affiliated ideologues have disturbed the Jihadi scene. In late November last year, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi began his critique of what was then known as Jabhat Fath al-Shami (JFS) (see here and here). Al-Maqdisi critiqued the split from al-Qaida and argued that the JFS/HTS project had not achieved anything but the dilution of the Jihadi project in Sham (though he recently claimed that HTS is still the best group around in Syria). This quickly led al-Shami to respond to al-Maqdisi, asking him to stay quiet as his remarks did more harm than good. The feisty Jordanian ideologue, however, would not shut up. In the wake of al-Maqdisi’s criticism, his friend and loyal supporter, Sami al-Uraydi, continued along the same lines with several damaging statements from March onwards (see here), these coming shortly after he left HTS on 8 February 2017. (Note that, relative to the July 2016 JFS-al-Qaida split, this was rather late.)

The criticism in Uraydi’s new testimonies is thus not unprecedented. In fact, he has raised some of the same issues before. But for two reasons they are particularly noteworthy. The first is that the debate was set off by claims made in a personal conversation between al-Shami and an unknown person, apparently in response to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s latest speech, “We Shall Fight You Until There Is No More Persecution,” released on 4 October. In the speech, Zawahiri criticised the breaking of ties and called for unity (implicitly under the al-Qaida banner). Al-Shami’s conversation was not intended to reach the ‘public’ but for some reason it did—or at least it was read by a large enough number of people that al-Shami deemed it to be out in the open. However, the leaked conversation has not been easy to track down and thus it continues to be a mystery exactly what al-Shami said about al-Zawahiri. The second reason is that this is the first time Uraydi is writing openly and frankly about internal Jabhat al-Nusra-JFS-HTS affairs, and he brings a great deal of authority to bear when it comes to this. He was a leading shari’ in Nusra and a member of both the sharia and shura council in JFS. This implies that he is a person with critical insider knowledge of how the break between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida actually occurred. Abu Abdullah al-Shami, a sharia council and possibly shura council member of HTS, is a heavyweight himself and thus the debate poses a risk to the cohesion of the al-Qaida-sympathetic community within and related to Syria.

Cole Bunzel has already reported extensively on the debate between al-Shami and Uraydi, but Uraydi’s latest series deserves a bit more attention, not only because it is a scathing attack on former friends and allies but also because it offers insights into the process of breaking ties and identifies the actors involved.

Uraydi takes the stand

In Uraydi’s first testimony, released on 15 October, he begins by explaining that the reason why he has been silent until now is that he wanted to preserve the unity among the Jihadis. Yet the recent comments by Abdullah al-Shami regarding Zawahiri made it necessary for him to speak. According to Uraydi, al-Shami claimed that the break from al-Qaida was in fact legally authorised by al-Qaida itself, but for the former shari’ of Jabhat al-Nusra this was a plain lie.

For some reason, Uraydi begins the first episode by talking about the merger of several groups in late January 2017 that established HTS. Two weeks after its formation, Uraydi, accompanied by Abu al-Qassam al-Urduni (Khalid Mustafa Khalifa al-Aruri), among others, went to see Zawahiri’s deputy, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, to ask him about the new group. Abu al-Khayr told Uraydi and Abu al-Qassam that he did not know about this (Uraydi calls it “the complete breaking of ties”) except from the media and that he had not spoken to JFS/HTS officials for a month and a half. Uraydi goes on to ask rhetorically how the split from al-Qaida can be approved and legitimate if not even al-Zawahiri’s deputy knew about it beforehand.

One can be excused for being a bit confused at this point, as it is unclear exactly when Uraydi considers the break between the two groups to have happened. As will be seen in the second testimony, he does consider the establishment of JFS in July 2016 to be a split from al-Qaida, but apparently he saw this as the first step in a process in which the HTS merger of January 2017 was the final act. To conclude his first testimony, Uraydi asks another rhetorical question that will turn out to be a recurrent provocation: “What is the difference between what you have done and that which Baghdadi did, which we all rejected and denounced?”

The testimony put al-Shami in a delicate position. Shortly after Uraydi posted the first instalment on Telegram, al-Shami rushed to his keyboard, not to write his own words but to quote others’. In a cryptic manner he responded, quoting the late al-Qaida ideologue Abu Yahya al-Libi saying that Jihad is not about organisations or people. Such organisations are a means rather than an end.

Uraydi’s second testimony was released the day after, on 16 October. He relates that al-Zawahiri sent a letter to JFS leaders (meaning Jawlani) after the re-branding in July 2016 in which he ordered JFS to reverse its decision and re-establish ties with the al-Qaida organisation. Zawahiri informed Jawlani that a major decision such as breaking ones bay’ah (pledge) was not up to an amir (like Jawlani), Zawahiri’s deputy, or even Zawahiri himself. It was a matter for the al-Qaida shura council. After this letter, Zawahiri’s deputy Abu al-Khayr allegedly ceased giving his blessing to JFS after initially supporting the re-branding initiative (he had released an audio approving the re-branding before it took place).

It took only another day before Uraydi published his third testimony in the series. To shed more light on what happened he explains the initial attitude of Jawlani and al-Shami at the time of the break. On several occasions, according to Uraydi, the JFS leaders said that if Zawahiri were to reject the split, they would “listen and obey”. Abu al-Faraj al-Masri (Ahmad Salama Mabruk), an old friend of Zawahiri’s, agreed with them. Were al-Zawahiri not to approve the split, there would be “no debate”. After the arrival of Zawahiri’s letter calling the split a “sin” and “act of disobedience”, a meeting was organised on 3 October 2016, probably in Jisr al-Shughour. We know that al-Qassam and Mabruk were there, and likely also Abu al-Khayr, Jawlani and al-Shami. Back in July, Mabruk was seated next to Jawlani (with al-Shami being the third person) in the video announcing JFS, and so he was a central person in the process. But he was also loyal to his old comrade and leader and it seems certain that he would not have accepted defying al-Zawahiri’s order. Perhaps luckily for Jawlani and al-Shami, Mabruk was killed less than an hour later when leaving the meeting.

In his fourth testimony, released on 18 October, Uraydi goes on to provide more details about the actual content of Zawahiri’s private letter to the JFS leaders. According to Uraydi, Zawahiri reminded his correspondents of what he had said in public on the question of breaking ties, which was that the organizational link would never stand in the way of uniting the mujahidin in Syria, particularly in the event that they formed a “righteous Islamic government” in Syria (Uraydi emphasizes that Zawahiri said in Syria, not in Idlib). The breaking of ties could only happen after and not before the establishment of this righteous Islamic government, and even then it would be a matter for al-Qaida’s shura council to decide.

Abu al-Qassam intervenes

Uraydi’s fifth and last one came a bit later. He deliberately postponed it due to the release of another testimony, one by his friend Abu al-Qassam al-Urduni, whom Uraydi himself referred to in several of his own testimonies. Although his name may not sound familiar to many, Abu al-Qassam is certainly a Jihadi with pedigree. Like Uraydi, he is also Jordanian and he was a friend and companion of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s since growing up in Zarqa. Both men (Abu al-Qassam and Zarqawi) travelled to Afghanistan in 1989 and stayed there until 1993. In the years 1993 to 1999, both were incarcerated in a Jordanian prison, but after their release the two travelled once again to Afghanistan, where Abu al-Qassam became the commander of Zarqawi’s training camp near Herat. In fact, at some point Abu al-Qassam even married a sister of Zarqawi’s. When exactly this took place is unknown. Abu al-Qassam was later imprisoned in Iran until he being released in March 2015, relocating to Syria to join al-Qaida, not the Islamic State.

Abu al-Qassam begins his statement with a comment that probably resonates with many. Explaining that he does not like writing on the internet, he goes on to say that “the Sham arena makes people do what they hate”. Abu al-Qassam’s main objective is to lay out the position of Zawahiri’s three deputies Abu al-Khayr, Saif al-Adl and Abu Muhammad al-Masri, and since he spent several years with them imprisoned in Iran, no one is probably better situated to do just this. Abu al-Qassam confirms that both Saif al-Adl (former head of al-Qaida’s military council) and Abu Muhammad al-Masri (shura council member and senior operative) are living in Iran. However, contrary to al-Shami’s claim, they are no longer detained (since release in March 2015) but rather “they are forbidden from traveling … they move around and live their natural lives except for being allowed to travel”.

Al-Shami had apparently said, in his private conversation, that Abu al-Qassam originally accepted the breaking of ties between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida when it was presented to him by Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, but after discussing the matter with al-Adl and al-Masri changed his position and rejected the proposal. Abu al-Qassam confirms this and provides two reasons for his change of mind. The first was his view that Zawahiri should be consulted now that communication with the al-Qaeda leader was a realistic option. The second was that Zawahiri’s three deputies (Abu al-Khayr, Saif al-Adl and Abu Muhammad al-Masri) did not support the breaking of ties, and so neither would he. Extremely disappointed with al-Shami, Abu al-Qassam labels him a backstabber of his Jihadi brothers.

Uraydi resumes

Uraydi’s fifth instalment was finally released on 21 October. In it he offers his final attack on al-Shami. Quoting at length an interview that al-Shami had given in September 2015, he demonstrates that the pledge from Jabhat al-Nusra to al-Qaida was a shari’ contract, a legal pledge of allegiance that can only be dissolved when the group in Syria creates an actual Islamic state. Uraydi’s point here is that this stage was never reached, so to break ties with al-Qaida without the consent of al-Qaida’s leadership amounts to an act of disobedience (similar to Baghdadi’s disobedience to al-Qaida). Uraydi finishes his series by stressing the obligation of the Jihadis to ensure unity among their ranks. Al-Shami, if he gets the last word, would probably argue that Uraydi is causing more division than unity with his exhaustive attacks.

A risky undertaking

Like the split and ensuing conflict between al-Qaida and the Islamic State, the current conflict between leading HTS figures and senior AQ-affiliated ideologues risks having wider repercussions, dividing Jihadis who were previously on the same side. For instance, Uraydi’s testimonies have already infuriated several people on Telegram who are loyal to both al-Qaida and HTS, leading to further mutual recriminations.

On a more general note, Uraydi’s and Abu al-Qassam’s testimonies offer some interesting takeaways:

Relations between HTS and al-Qaida-loyal figures are certainly deteriorating, and Jihadis with a history of supporting al-Qaida but who have recently supported HTS now find themselves in a tricky situation. Should one support Jawlani or Zawahiri? The conflict has not escalated to a point where it is impossible to support both, but this could happen.
It seems there has been much more communication among senior Jihadi leaders in Syria than might be expected in this sensitive security context. Senior Jihadis seem to have been meeting on a regular basis as recently as early 2017.
Saif al-Adl and Abu Muhammad al-Masri are active and one of them (probably Masri) is now Zawahiri’s first deputy. It was previously unknown to what extent they were engaged in the Jihadi project after their release, but Abu al-Qassam’s testimony leaves no doubt concerning their current level of engagement. That is certainly a positive for al-Qaida.

The author would like to thank Cole Bunzel for his input to this article

Abandoning al-Qaida: Tahrir al-Sham and the Concerns of Sami al-‘Uraydi

Cole Bunzel May 12, 2017

The last few weeks have seen a widening of the rift in the jihadi world between proponents and critics of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the former al-Qaida affiliate in Syria originally known as Jabhat al-Nusra. As detailed in a previous post, this dispute centers on the group’s perceived deviation from the strict principles of jihadi salafism and its alleged abandonment of al-Qaida. Leading the charge has been Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the influential jihadi scholar in Jordan who has accused it of adopting a “diluted” methodology and of cutting ties with the parent group without the express permission of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Al-Maqdisi’s chief ideological ally in this venture has been the younger Sami al-‘Uraydi, a Jordanian ex-shari‘a official in Jabhat al-Nusra living somewhere in Syria. Unlike al-Maqdisi, al-‘Uraydi’ is a member of al-Qaida bound by a loyalty oath to Zawahiri, so naturally his critique has focused more on the purported betrayal of his master than has al-Maqdisi’s. His case lends further credence to the view that Zawahiri disapproved of Jabhat al-Nusra’s severing of links with al-Qaida back in July 2016.

Dr. Sami

According to a short biography and profile uploaded to his Telegram channel, Sami ibn Mahmud al-‘Uraydi was born in Amman, Jordan in 1973. He received a bachelor’s degree in shari‘a in 1994 and a master’s degree in hadith in 1997, both from the University of Jordan, then moved to Baghdad where he completed his Ph.D. in hadith in 2001 at the Islamic University in Baghdad. His dissertation was a study of the early Muslim scholar al-Nasa’i’s (d. 915) methodology for evaluating hadith transmitters. One of his teachers was the noted salafi scholar and hadith specialist Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d. 1999), who probably had something to do with this strong interest in hadith. His jihadi leanings seem to derive from an early association with the two senior jihadi scholars of Jordan, al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini.

Al-‘Uraydi’s activates between 2001 and the outbreak of the Syrian uprising are not covered, though it is known that he was arrested in 2006 on suspicion of belonging to an al-Qaida cell in Jordan. When the Syrian rebellion broke out, al-‘Uraydi migrated to the Daraa region along the Jordanian border where he joined Jabhat al-Nusra. He was appointed “general shari‘a official” (al-shar‘i al-‘amm) for the area, and in 2014 was promoted to the post of “general shari‘a official” for the entire group. This coincided with his appointment to the once-vaunted shari‘a council of al-Maqdisi’s website. In the south he grew close to several other jihadi hardliners from Jordan, including the overall commander for Daraa, Abu Julaybib al-Urduni (aka Abu Iyad al-Tubasi), a veteran al-Qaida member who was one of the founders of Jabhat al-Nusra and who previously fought alongside Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. In late 2015 it was reported that both men had relocated to northern Syria.

Following Jabhat al-Nusra’s rebranding as Jabhat Fath al-Sham in mid-2016, al-‘Uraydi lost his position as top scholar, though he remained a member of the shura and shari‘a councils. Meanwhile, several of his allies, including Abu Julaybib, left the group in protest of the breaking of ties with al-Qaida and the new policy of uniting with less ideologically pure Islamist groups. On August 23, 2016, Abu Julaybib announced his resignation in a series of tweets complaining about the influence of “the diluters.” He renewed his bay‘a (allegiance pledge) to Zawahiri, declaring his “total and absolute rejection” of the dissociation. Abu Julaybib’s resignation followed that of another senior Jordanian commander, Abu Khadija al-Urduni (aka Bilal Khuraysat), who later wrote in a letter to Tahrir al-Sham: “I have remained steadfast upon [my bay‘a]. You are the ones who changed and altered. I have kept my bay‘a to the Qaidat al-Jihad Organization from the first day I entered Syria. I don’t know you, while I know al-Qaida.”

For whatever reason, al-‘Uraydi stayed with the group until the formation of Tahrir al-Sham in late January 2017. On February 8, he and another leader confirmed their departure online, saying: “After Jabhat Fath al-Sham dissolved itself and merged into Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, we no longer have any organizational link to this new formation.” On the same day, al-‘Uraydi took his first shot at his former group. He wrote on Telegram: “Among the greatest forms of disobedience is disobedience to the mother organization; after it raised them as children, they disobeyed it when one of them started learning to speak.” This was in fact a reposting of a tweet from September 2015, the implied target having been the Islamic State. This time around the implied target—the disobedient child—was Tahrir al-Sham. It was the beginning of a line of subtle criticism that would grow in intensity over the next few months.

Indirect criticism

When al-Maqdisi embarked on his verbal assault on Tahrir al-Sham back in February, al-‘Uraydi was quick to lend support and soon was contributing written criticism of his own. His approach, however, has been much more oblique than al-Maqdisi’s.

The first contribution was a long essay in early March titled “Advice to the Mujahid in the Time of Afflictions,” which defined the current state of affairs (presumably in Syria) as one of “afflictions” (fitan) dividing Muslims and diverting their attention from the goal of implementing the shari‘a. Among the courses of action recommended were staying loyal to one’s group and obeying its authorities, along with outspoken condemnation of those who substitute God’s law with man-made law. These were veiled references to loyalty and obedience to al-Qaida and to condemning states such as Turkey and Qatar and the Islamist groups they support.

In early April, al-‘Uraydi took aim at groups in Syria adopting nationalist rhetoric and trying “to isolate themselves from the movements of global Sunni jihad,” a reference to Tahrir al-Sham and its attempt to distance itself from al-Qaida.

Another essay from early April, written in response to pressing questions from “many of the beloved brothers,” focused on the subject of bay‘a. Al-‘Uraydi wrote that “it is not allowed for a person or group to defect and break bay‘as without legal justification”; that bay‘as “are not to be invalidated or broken on account of fancies, illusions, whims, suppositions, legal tricks, deception, and misleading;” that “you must remain faithful to the bay‘a that you gave to your group and its overall emir”; and that “you are not allowed to break it until you have ascertained the facts clearly from the emir of the group himself with certainty.” Al-‘Uraydi twice quoted the following line from the al-Qaida scholar ‘Atiyyat Allah al-Libi (d. 2011): “It is incumbent on [one who has given bay‘a] to listen to and obey [the group]; it is not permitted for one to leave and create a new group.” Al-‘Uraydi was no doubt referring to Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida, and to the question of whether one’s bay‘a to Zawahiri (the “overall emir”) can be invalidated without the explicit consent of Zawahiri himself.

The most direct of these criticisms came in a Telegram post from April 20 accusing Tahrir al-Sham—though again not by name—of leaving al-Qaida just as the Islamic State had. Al-‘Uraydi stated: “We witnessed fierce criticism of Baghdadi and his group for their breaking the vow and the bay‘a in ways not legally allowed; they [i.e., critics of the Islamic State] described them in the harshest terms. Then today, when the very same action is taken by people and their supporters and fans, it becomes legal expediency and the welfare of the community.” The “people” mentioned here are the leaders of Tahrir al-Sham, which was obvious to its online supporters. One of these responded that “the analogy here between the two situations is false,” for Jabhat al-Nusra made “repeated requests” to dissolve its bay‘a whereas Baghdadi denied having one in the first place.

The matter of Abu al-Khayr

Fortunately, not everyone in al-‘Uraydi’s circle has written in code about Tahrir al-Sham’s departure from al-Qaida. Al-Maqdisi, it will be recalled, claimed in February that al-Qaida’s “leadership was not in agreement” with the decision to cut ties. Another jihadi thinker, Ahmad al-Hamdan, then relayed further information from al-Maqdisi, writing in English: “Communication with Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri was not possible due to security issues … The branch of Al-Qaida in Shaam which is Jabhatun Nusrah wants [read: wanted] to take immediate decision regarding breaking of its ties with Al Qaida for the sake of uniting with the rest of the other groups … They turned towards Abu Al-Khayr who … approved this step … After the split from Al Qaida took place, there occurred communication with Zawahiri and he very strongly refused this step.”

Abu al-Khayr is Ahmad Hasan Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, an Egyptian al-Qaida leader who served as Zawahiri’s deputy in Syria till his death in late February 2017 in a U.S. airstrike. It was Abu al-Khayr who, on July 28, 2016, put out the audio statement granting Jabhat al-Nusra permission to leave al-Qaida. Yet such permission, according to al-Maqdisi, was dependent on Zawahiri’s anticipated approval, which proved not forthcoming. When Zawahiri was informed of what had happened he sought to restore the status quo ante, but the leaders of his former affiliate balked. And so a superficial split became a real rupture—widened by the bad blood of perceived disobedience.

This story, it should be noted, is widely believed by the jihadis aligned with al-Maqdisi and al-‘Uraydi. “Everyone knows that the sage [i.e., Zawahiri] rejected the breaking of ties, which was carried out by deception and the violation of an oath,” said recently a certain “Dr. Abu Hamza,” a thinker whose messages are reposted by al-Maqdisi and al-‘Uraydi. As another put it even more recently: “We take issue with the fact that [Abu Muhammad] al-Jawlani invalidated the bay‘a and rejected Zawahiri’s command.”

A more detailed account of what transpired is provided by one Muhammad al-Gharib (aka “the heir of Zarqawi”), a Syria-based activist close to al-‘Uraydi and other former Jabhat al-Nusra officials. Statements from Abu Julaybib, Abu Khadija, and others are released via his Telegram channel, and his version of events appears to draw on these sources. In a brief defense of al-‘Uraydi and al-Maqdisi from late April 2017, al-Gharib wrote that Zawahiri “reprimanded” Abu al-Khayr for allowing Jabhat al-Nusra to go its own way. He went on to explain: “Shaykh Abu al-Khayr, may God have mercy on him, after his audio message … said, ‘Now I will bring the matter to the sage [i.e., Zawahiri]. I will not bless or agree upon anything without the sage’s decision.’” Abu al-Khayr then told “some of the brothers, ‘If the sage’s decision comes back [negative], I will retreat [i.e., withdraw permission].’” Some within Jabhat al-Nusra conditioned their support for the breaking of ties upon Zawahiri’s approval. When, “approximately two months later,” a letter from Zawahiri arrived rejecting the move, Abu al-Khayr “kept his word,” while Jawlani did not. Al-Gharib described this story as “well established,” or mutawatir, a word in hadith terminology indicating a narration conveyed by so many narrators as to be beyond dispute. (Rumor in Islamic State circles has it that Zawahiri’s letter has been viewed by al-‘Uraydi and al-Maqdisi.)

Whether every part of this account is to be believed or not, it is telling that those in the pro-Tahrir al-Sham column are not contesting the basic fact that Jabhat al-Nusra left al-Qaida on bad terms. They would prefer, so it seems, not to address the issue, but they may have no choice.

Zawahiri’s endorsement

On April 23, 2017, Zawahiri released an audio statement devoted to Syria that was taken by the supporters of al-‘Uraydi and al-Maqdisi as an endorsement of their position. In the short statement, Zawahiri warned the mujahidin in Syria against turning their jihad into “a nationalist war,” urged them to see themselves as part of the global jihad, and called for “reassessment and correction.” He further advised a strategy of “guerrilla warfare” as opposed to one of holding territory. Pressed for comment, al-‘Uraydi said the message was “as clear as the sun.”

Two days later, al-Qaida’s media agency published a new edition of al-‘Uraydi’s “Advice to the Mujahid in the Time of Afflictions” with an introduction by Zawahiri. This was likewise seen by the critics of Tahrir al-Sham as confirmation of their views. The introduction, which said nothing about Syria specifically, cited examples of how jihad had gone wrong as a result of seeking concessions and lusting for power.

Reconciliation?

In early May the London-based jihadi scholar Hani al-Siba‘i issued a statement calling on Zawahiri to broker a reconciliation between the two sides, citing “what happened in terms of the smoke surrounding the issue of the breaking of ties.” The appeal recalled al-Siba‘i’s request several years back that Zawahiri clear up the issue of the Islamic State’s historical connection to al-Qaida. In that case Zawahiri responded with a detailed answer. Perhaps such a reply concerning Tahrir al-Sham is in the offing, or perhaps not. It would be highly embarrassing for Zawahiri to admit that his al-Qaida affiliate disobeyed him, especially since he has accused the Islamic State of doing the same.

Apart from complaining, it remains unclear what the group of al-Qaida stalwarts in Syria intends to do. They do not appear to be on the verge of forming a new al-Qaida group—they are probably too small for that—but nor are they itching for reconciliation. Just yesterday, Tahrir al-Sham’s chief scholar released a three-page defense of his group’s methodology, insisting that the stage of “the one organization” and its “ideology” had passed and refuting the idea that this meant “a descent to concessions as some are wont to imagine.” With these words, commented a thinker in al-‘Uraydi’s circle, Tahrir al-Sham has rejected Zawahiri’s latest advice and “shut the door permanently on walking back the breaking of ties.” It is hard to imagine how al-Qaida’s leader could put an end to the cycle of mutual recriminations.

Diluting Jihad: Tahrir al-Sham and the Concerns of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi

Cole Bunzel March 29, 2017

It has been widely assumed in Western capitals that the latest incarnation of Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (née Jabhat al-Nusra), remains fundamentally unchanged. It may have publicly renounced ties to al-Qaida back in July 2016 and softened its rhetoric somewhat, so the thinking goes, but it has not transformed itself in any meaningful way. It is still al-Qaida through and through.

Don’t tell that, however, to Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the preeminent Jihadi-Salafi scholar living in Jordan who vehemently disputes all of the above. Indeed, the problem with this portrayal of Tahrir al-Sham is that it ignores the existence of a profound controversy in jihadi circles surrounding the nature of the group, which some argue has lost its way. According to these critics, al-Maqdisi chief among them, not only was the break with al-Qaida real as opposed to superficial, it was never actually endorsed by al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. What is more, since breaking with the mother organization, the group has sacrificed longstanding jihadi principles—such as the duty of excommunicating and separating from secularists and democrats—for the sake of broadening its appeal and pursuing unity with more nationalist-minded groups. In short, the jihad in Syria has been imperiled.

Al-Maqdisi is no stranger to internal jihadi controversies, as readers of Jihadica will well know. Historically his criticisms have centered on the extremist tendencies of the jihadi movement, most famously the excesses of Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi and the Islamic State. Here, however, his target is not extremism but rather laxity, or in his word “dilution” (tamyīʿ).

Syria’s rebels divided

Al-Maqdisi’s concerns should be viewed against the backdrop of recent developments in Syria’s rebel scene, which recently saw the emergence of Tahrir al-Sham out of Jabhat Fath al-Sham and the consolidation of its main rival, Harakat Ahrar al-Sham. As Aron Lund and Aymenn al-Tamimi have recently explained, the two groups, Jabhat Fath al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham, nearly came to blows in January 2017 when the former attacked several Western-aligned insurgent factions taking part in peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. The smaller groups sought protection by joining Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist militia with ties to Turkey and Qatar. In response, on January 28, Jabhat Fath al-Sham and four other hardline groups announced the formation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“The Committee for the Liberation of al-Sham”) as the new vehicle of Syria’s revolution and jihad. Abu Jabir Hashim al-Shaykh, a former Ahrar al-Sham hardliner, was named leader.

This reordering marked the end of nearly six months of failed initiatives aimed at uniting Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat Fath al-Sham. The latter had hoped, by splitting with al-Qaida in July 2016, to unify the armed opposition under its banner. But ideological and strategic differences between the two groups proved insurmountable.

Two particular points of contention are worth mentioning here, as al-Maqdisi refers to them frequently. The first is Turkey’s military intervention in the northern Aleppo countryside known as Euphrates Shield, which is aimed at beating back both the Islamic State and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Ahrar al-Sham has long been involved in the operation and even endorsed it in a fatwa. Jabhat Fath al-Sham, by contrast, prohibited its forces from participating, deeming coordination with the Turkish military to be unlawful “seeking of help” from foreigners. The second issue is the Astana conference that took place on January 23-24. While Ahrar al-Sham ultimately decided not to attend, it still publicly supported those groups that did. Jabhat Fath al-Sham, meanwhile, condemned the talks and urged all to keep away.

Jabhat Fath al-Sham is clearly the more ideologically pure group in this contest. But none of this was enough for al-Maqdisi.

Al-Maqdisi seeks clarity

Al-Maqdisi’s criticisms of what is now Tahrir al-Sham in fact go back to November 2016 when, writing on his Telegram channel, he regretted the group’s breaking of ties with al-Qaida. Having given his blessing to the break back in July, he now admitted that it failed to yield any benefit—it had not produced greater unity or lightened the international coalition’s bombing. If it worked to anyone’s advantage, he said, it was to that of “the diluters” (al-mumayyiʿa), those in the group willing to compromise on “the principles of the path (al-manhaj).”

The term “diluters,” meaning those who would water down strict monotheistic principles, has long formed a part of al-Maqdisi’s lexicon. In the context of Syria, he has mainly used it to denigrate groups that seem Western-oriented or not fully committed to implementing the sharia. But gradually he began to use the term in reference to certain elements in Jabhat Fath al-Sham, and with the announcement of Tahrir al-Sham his criticism became more pronounced.

On January 29, the day after the announcement, al-Maqdisi offered cautious support for the group. Certain people “worried at the growing influence of the diluters,” he wrote on Telegram, were asking his advice concerning giving allegiance to Tahrir al-Sham. While acknowledging their concerns, he urged them nonetheless to pledge fealty if only “to increase the influence of the supporters of the sharia.” But his apprehension was growing by the day. (Al-Maqdisi writes one or two essays daily.)

On January 30, he wrote: “My thinking is that the influence of the diluters, after the formation of the Committee [i.e., Tahrir al-Sham], is now growing greater!” And on February 2, he called on Tahrir al-Sham’s new leaders to reaffirm the soundness of their path, the strength of their monotheism, and their disavowal of foreign powers. Particularly, they were to clarify their stance on Euphrates Shield and Astana, as some of the new groups joining Tahrir al-Sham had been involved or not so opposed to these.

Two days later, al-Maqdisi repeated his call for “clarity”: “clarity that the objective is to implement the sharia, not the laws of men”; “clarity concerning your disavowal of wicked coalitions such as Euphrates Shield”; “clarity concerning your disavowal of conferences and conspiracies such as Astana”; “clarity concerning your views on…secular regimes providing foreign backing.” He emphasized that this appeal was on behalf of certain concerned members of the group with whom he was in contact. One of these, whom he quoted at length, complained of feeling sidelined and unable to trust the new leadership.

Tahrir al-Sham responds

On February 10, Tahrir al-Sham’s leading sharia official, Abu ‘Abdallah al-Shami (real name ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Utun), released a more than 20-page letter responding to al-Maqdisi. The latter’s criticisms, he said, were troubling to some in the group who held al-Maqdisi in esteem, and could even lead to defections. Evidently the old scholar still held some sway over Syria’s jihadis.

Al-Shami’s letter made a series of points, the first of which was that al-Maqdisi was ill-informed. For some reason he uncritically accepted the claims of individuals bearing personal grudges, when he ought to be communicating directly with the group. Al-Shami claimed to have made countless efforts to establish contact with al-Maqdisi, concluding that “he refused to communicate with us.” For this reason, it had been necessary to respond publicly.

The second point concerned terminology. Al-Shami objected to al-Maqdisi’s use of “diluters,” and its counterpoint “supporters of the sharia,” as imprecise and divisive. Throwing around vague accusations of “dilution,” he warned, implied excommunicating large numbers of fighters with different views on sensitive issues, such as the Islamic status of certain rulers. Al-Shami noted in particular the debate among Syria’s jihadis over whether Turkey’s Erdogan should be considered a Muslim or a heretic. Some, he explained, consider Erdogan, his government, and his military to be unbelievers, while others disagree or hold more nuanced views. Whatever the case, “those who do not excommunicate Erdogan are not necessarily diluters,” just as Usama bin Ladin was not necessarily a diluter for not excommunicating the Saudi government in his early years.

In his third point, al-Shami refuted the contention that Tahrir al-Sham was veering off the jihadi path. The group remained committed to “the same principles,” which included making the sharia supreme. It was also still strongly opposed to Euphrates Shield and Astana, though it was not going to declare the participants in either to be unbelievers. As for the issue of foreign backing, al-Shami argued, the group had never been against foreign support in theory. What it opposed was support with strings attached—namely, conditions inhibiting independence—and this it would continue to resist.

Al-Maqdisi holds firms

Four days later, a thoroughly unimpressed al-Maqdisi responded in turn, accusing al-Shami of failing to bring clarity to the important issues he had raised and making light of such important matters as the excommunication of secular rulers. Al-Maqdisi further charged al-Shami with not really trying to make contact with him and falsely questioning the reliability of his sources. All of this was an attempt to “cover up” the existence of a significant dissident faction in Tahrir al-Sham dissatisfied with the group’s trajectory. Some of these dissidents, al-Maqdisi said, had abandoned the group on the grounds that it had wrongly withdrawn allegiance from al-Qaida.

In this connection al-Maqdisi made an extraordinary revelation—if it is to be believed—as covered previously by Romain Caillet. He claimed that the breaking of ties with al-Qaida was not in fact approved by al-Qaida’s leadership. Back in July 2016, he explained, al-Shami communicated with him and several other scholars to win their support for the intended break. Al-Shami assured them that this step would be “superficial and nominal, not real,” and had the approval of “the majority of the deputies” of Zawahiri. In any event, if Zawahiri rejected it then Jabhat al-Nusra would “invalidate” the decision. Accordingly, al-Maqdisi tweeted his support for the move. Later, however, after “it was revealed” to him that he had been “deceived” by al-Shami, he deleted the post. The truth, al-Maqdisi asserted, was that al-Qaida’s “leadership was not in agreement” with the split: “After its rejection came to them [i.e., Jabhat al-Nusra’s leaders], they did not fulfill their promise to retreat from their superficial step, as they claimed and promised they would. Rather they stayed the course till they made it a real breaking of ties.”

This deception notwithstanding, al-Maqdisi affirmed that his greater concern was with Tahrir al-Sham’s “path” (manhaj), not its organizational affiliation. The one-time al-Qaida affiliate had remade itself into a revolutionary group—“liberation” (tahrir) having recently replaced the more Islamic “conquest” (fath)—and shown itself willing to embrace groups that wanted democracy, not sharia. This was a fact, he asserted, that al-Shami refused to acknowledge.

Abu Qatada’s intervention

On February 16, Abu Qatada al-Filastini, al-Maqdisi’s fellow jihadi scholar in Jordan, announced on Telegram that he had successfully intervened in the dispute between al-Maqdisi and al-Shami. The two had agreed to end the mutual recriminations. Al-Maqdisi’s daily criticism of Tahrir al-Sham would not ease up, but he did cease to engage in ad hominem attacks.

Abu Qatada’s peacemaking role was in keeping with his reputation as the relatively more moderate jihadi ideologue. Yet even he had been critical of Tahrir al-Sham, arguing that recent developments gave cause for concern. In a mid-February essay he expressed disappointment with Abu Jabir al-Shaykh’s first public statement as Tahrir al-Sham’s leader. Abu Jabir “was not clear” about what he stood for. Rather “his words were chosen in such a way as not to anger anyone or oppose anyone,” and this was worrying. “The speech he gave only increases the fearful in fear.”

By early March, however, Abu Qatada had changed his tone. In a rather self-critical fatwa posted to Telegram, he resigned himself to the fact that a new generation of jihadi leaders, one less ideologically rigid and less closed off to the larger Islamic community, was in the ascendant. “The jihadi current has long vacillated between partial openness and isolation,” he wrote, and the former tendency was beginning to make inroads—“the idea of the ideological group” was giving way to “a project of the Islamic community.” In his view, this had to be welcomed, though it meant the jihadi current was going to “splinter” further. “Believe me,” he said, “there are going to be more changes within the current.”

More than a name change

All this would suggest that Tahrir al-Sham is not just a new sign on an old al-Qaida building. Rather the new group is indicative of yet another tension in the jihadi movement that is only now coming to the surface. When al-Qaida in Iraq restyled itself the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, few were those who saw this to be more than a simple name change. But as is well known now, that was not the case. The Islamic State of Iraq marked the start of a new project not really guided by al-Qaida. Something similar appears to be afoot today in Syria, only in “diluted” form.

Zawahiri is Not the Loser People Think he is

Tore Hamming March 18, 2017

Al-Zawahiri will never become as charismatic and authoritative as Usama bin Laden, but less can do in times of great ordeal for al-Qaida as the Islamic State briefly overtook its position as the foremost Jihadi movement. Since 2015 Al-Zawahiri has proven to be a commanding and well-respected leader after a period when even his own within al-Qaida started to doubt and criticize him. Bin Laden himself was not always immune to criticism, but the critique of al-Zawahiri was nonetheless critical for the aging leader, who had been waiting for his chance to lead the movement for more than a decade. Some of this criticism, however, is misplaced or no longer applies.

Some, like the Jordanian scholar Hassan Abu Hanieh, have argued that al-Zawahiri does not control his affiliates as closely as al-Qaida Central used to. Perhaps this is true, but then again al-Qaida affiliates have always had quite some freedom of manoeuvre, thus fitting well with the original idea of being a vanguard rather than an actual organization. We know from public propaganda that differential-Qaida’s affiliates still see Zawahiri as the commanding authority. Affiliates in Yemen, Somalia and northern Africa continue to sing Zawahiri’s praises. Most recently the newly established Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wa-l-Muslimeen, or the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims, composed of the Malian groups Ansar al-Deen and Masina Liberation Front in addition to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb’s Saharan emirate, stayed loyal to Zawahiri. In the speech announcing the merger, its leader Iyad ag Ghaly said “On this blessed time we pledge allegiance to our honourable emirs and sheikhs Abu Mus’ab abd al Wadud (AQIM emir) and our wise sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri”.

Internal al-Qaeda correspondence between senior members also suggests that al-Zawahiri is still a respected leader. When the leader of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia confided to Zawahiri that he might join the Islamic State and reform it from within, he left the decision up to al-Zawahiri and other respected jihadist scholars (Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini). Similar respect for the Zawahiri is evident in a letter sent by the now late senior operative in Syria Muhsin al-Fadhli to Nasser al-Wuhayshi. Perhaps the best example, however, is when the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra (now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani in an interview broadcasted by Al Jazeera on 27 May 2015, explained that he had received orders from the al-Qaida leadership not to target the West and focus on the Syrian arena. Although Jawlani’s groups declared independence from al-Qaida, it is obvious that he is still remains in the fold of Zawahiri.

Further cementing Zawahiri’s position as number one in the hierarchy is the continuous reverence and praise he receives from senior ideologues affiliated with al-Qaida, who are extremely influential on the broader Jihadi masses. This was confirmed in a recent interview I conducted with Abu Qatada al-Filastini who confirmed Zawahiri is the sheikh to follow. In another interview with a student of Abu Qatada, I was told that Abu Qatada has stated that “if all people on earth go in one direction and Ayman al-Zawahiri goes in the other direction, I will follow the sheikh”.

Certainly, the initial passivity from al-Zawahiri in the immediate aftermath of the rise of the Islamic State was not a conscious move, but a sign of desperation as the al-Qaida leader did not know what to do. Along the way, however, he figured it out and his answer was to follow the strategic vision of a population-centric focus that was adopted by al-Qaida already before the conflict with the Islamic State started (and was mentioned as early as 2001 by al-Zawahiri himself). To follow the brutally violent, but nonetheless successful, approach of al-Baghdadi and his cadres was not the solution. This was a smart decision by al-Zawahiri as he now, a few years down the road, commands an al-Qaida that has probably never been stronger than it currently is.

The generational divide

Tore Hamming October 9, 2016

This is the third Q&A of the interview series with Ahmed Al Hamdan (@a7taker), a Jihadi-Salafi analyst and author of “Methodological Difference Between ISIS and Al Qaida“. Al Hamdan was a former friend of Turki bin Ali, and a student of Shaykh Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi under whom he studied and was given Ijazah, becoming one of his official students. Also, Shaykh Abu Qatada al Filistini wrote an introduction for his book when it was published in the Arabic language. The interview series contains contains five themes in total and will all be published on Jihadica.com. You can find the first Q&A here and the second here.

Tore Hamming:

One of the differences between IS and AQ is the generational divide; the veteran Jihadists in the camp of AQ and the younger generation being attracted by IS. Do you think this is still the case and, as IS is loosing momentum, what do you think will happen to the younger generation of Sunni Jihadists – will they abandon Jihad, seek refuge in AQ or try and establish a new group?

Ahmed Al Hamdan:

The answer to this question will be complex and overlapping. Yes, the majority of the youth are inclined towards the ISIS, and that is because the majority of the young people have a strong impulse and are drawn towards violence, and towards rushing for maximum revenge and killing and torture without carefully considering the benefits and harms which will come as a result of their actions. And these actions of theirs in many cases are not in accordance with the Shariah, rather they stem from that which satisfies them. Hence Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri warned Shaykh al Zarqawi about that and he said in his letter to him that O” ne of the most dangerous matters for the leaders is the enthusiasm of their supporters, especially the youth who are excited and burning to support the religion of Allah. So it is important that this enthusiasm is moulded with wisdom” .(1)

And Shaykh Usamah bin Ladin illustrated this point in a letter to Shaykh Abu Baseer al Wuhayshi saying “The enthusiasm of the youth is a necessary element to win the battles. However it should never be what determines the course of the war by making the leadership to run behind the enthusiasm of the youth. It is as the poet Al Mutanabi has said: “Thoughtfulness comes before the courage of the brave -This (thoughtfulness) comes first and that second”. (2)

So according to Al Qaeda, the matters are not measured by enthusiasm but rather by looking at what they result into.

It is not only myself who has noticed this matter that the youth mostly incline towards the one who speaks the harshest and the hardest. In fact even Shaykh al Maqdisi has said that “Many of the youth are lacking in education and upbringing due to them not sitting sufficiently in the gatherings of the scholars and due to their weakness in the knowledge of the manners of the Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and his noble companions and our righteous predecessors. Therefore there has spread among them sicknesses and diseases and bad manners, and they incline towards extremism which is mostly caused by ignorance and due to their assumption that the best path is the harshest path.” (3)

Previously the enthusiastic youth had no choice other than Al Qaeda. And their policy which we have just stated previously, did not allow them to unleash themselves as they wish, and so they were forced to go along with that policy and suppress this excessive desire. However now there is another outlet for the youth to do whatever sadistic things they want and to unleash themselves without thinking about any outcomes or consequences or without looking into the benefits or harm resulting from these actions. And hence many of the enthusiastic youth found their long desired objectives getting fulfilled in this group ISIS.

Secondly, many of the youth are new to the Jihadi experience and this is different from that of the elders who have lived through the previous Jihadi experiences and have seen the reasons for its failure and have seen that those same reasons are being repeated by the Islamic State. For example, antagonizing everyone and opening battle fronts with everyone and preferring to fight the Islamic groups more than fighting the enemies that are agreed upon by all, and extremism and breaking away from the Ummah, and other such things which have made them stay away from supporting this state so that it does not lead to them falling into those same mistakes again. The Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, has said “The believer is not stung from the same hole twice”(4), and this is contrary to this new generation who did not know anything about Jihad except from an audio speech or a video clip, and who did not live through the real experience in the field from which one can learn how to distinguish between the right and the wrong.

Another matter which causes ISIS to attract more youth than Al Qaeda, is the hugeness of their media campaign which is directed specifically towards the youth and their continuous communication with these youth, and we mean here the non-Arabic speakers. For example ISIS is keen to translate its publications and spread the statements made by the people of a specific country (such as England) and for directing their message to the youth in their country urging them to come (to them). Also the main official magazine of this group is published in English and they have opened a channel, Al Amaq News, which is also in the English language.

This group ISIS is very eager to make sure it attracts the youth. Perhaps they intensified their propaganda in English because it is a universal language understood by many nationalities. So they hit many birds with one stone. In contrast, there is a very huge shortage from the side of Al Qaeda in focusing on the call towards the youth to join them, and it has not translated its recent releases, and there would be no continuous and direct contact with them in the English language. And its magazines which are released in the English language are not regular, meaning two months may pass without an issue getting released. And this is what causes many of the youth to interact with those who are addressing them and who try to make events revolve around these youth.

On top of that which we have previously stated, the delay by Al Qaeda in responding (to the allegations of ISIS against it), by them hoping that the situation could be rectified through reconciliation, has led many of the youth into joining the ranks of the Islamic State. Then these people gradually went further to the point of being a partisan to their group at an early stage. Then they began to call their friends or those who have just been released from prisons to support or join the Islamic State. I myself, for example, when I was released from prison and I saw that most of my friends are supporting the ISIS, then I would mostly end up supporting them, and I would give priority to their statements for judging the events and matters in which there were disagreements in Shaam (Syria).

And another thing is that if ISIS loses momentum, then the existence of its old propaganda materials can still be effective for recruitment in the long term. For example, Shaykh Anwar al Awlaki was killed in the year 2012 and his words still recruit and inspire the people despite the Shaykh having departed 4 years ago. So the only solution for Al Qaeda is to use the existing cadres they have to match the efforts of ISIS in their media propaganda. Otherwise ISIS will be the only choice for one who wants to join the Jihad.

But there is another matter which may help Al Qaeda without them having to engage in daily media wars with ISIS. That is that a lot of Arabs and non-Arabs who joined ISIS after watching the videos released by ISIS which portrayed itself as the perfect ideal, when they entered it, they were shocked by the security controls. These security controls emerged at a later time after the Islamic state gained control over Raqqa and Sharqiyya, and after al Adnani announced that whoever wanted to split the ranks would have their heads split. So that resulted in a fear of leaving ISIS and the dissidents then participating in recording personal experiences in which they state the mistakes and the negative aspects of ISIS and then this becoming a strong obstacle in their recruitment and propaganda. So ISIS has taken preemptive steps amongst which is that it has restricted the role of many of the well-known people who pledged allegiance to it, such as Bin’ali, Dr. Sa’d al Hunaiti and Mahdi Zaydaan and others who had a heavy presence in the media, due to their fear that they may defect later on. And so the appearance of these personalities in the media almost became non-existent under ISIS. Their second step would be to bring forward the one who expresses doubt. And the existence of this doubt would lead to a preemptive attempt to find out which person may possibly defect so that they may deal with him early. And due to this doubt some actions of the members would sometimes be misinterpreted, and thus there would be abuse and exaggerations by wrongly interpreting some actions of the members in a way in which they were not intended. For example, one of the soldiers asked for a biography of Al Adnani and Baghdadi as they were the leaders of his state and he wanted to know more about them, and so he was accused of being a spy. This mania in their dealings has made many of the soldiers annoyed, especially since their loyalty comes under doubt. For this reason many have started wanting to leave because they find themselves living under a dictatorial regime. This is with regards to the youth. As for the young women, the matter which has made some of them to strive to leave is that they have been forcefully married. The young women who migrate to the land of the Khilafa without a guardian, she will not be left like this, rather she will be made to marry, and even if she is already married previously then she will be separated from her husband and made to marry again. Likewise the woman who migrates with her husband, if he gets killed, then she will be made to marry with or without her consent. And this has happened on many occasions with the women. And now I will leave the issue to the previous Amir of Jabhat al Nusrah in Albukamal to tell us some of what he has witnessed from the stories of those who have defected:

One of them sent to me an audio recording of the leader of the Muhajireen in Jabhat Fath al Sham ‘Abu Hajar At-Tunisi’ in which he said these words:

“I will narrate to you some of the stories of some of the women and men who have fled to me. Some of them are funny and some will make one cry, there are various types, and the stories are many. I will narrate one such story to you.

Two British women came to me, one of them is now in the custody of Jabhat. They had fled. They narrated to me that there was a large house there where they put the widowed women and those women who had fled from their parents after they had convinced them that their parents were Kuffar who are living in western countries and in the apostate states. So these women came and they put them in this house and they said to them “It is compulsory for you to marry. Not a single one would remain without being married, whether a widow or one who has come newly”.

And they said: “The house was very narrow. Some apartments were above others and there was difficulty in living, eating, drinking and using bathrooms because for every hundred women there were only two bathrooms”.

They said that there was an Iraqi woman with them who spoke English well, that is she was an Iraqi woman who was like Al Anbari in criminality and rudeness, and she would behave badly towards the women. She would bring men who would mostly be Iraqi leaders and she would choose the most beautiful of them and her face would be uncovered forcibly in front of them. And if he wanted to marry her she would be married to him. Marriage was mostly forced; otherwise they would have to sit in the house in difficulty until the woman would think to herself and say “I will get married… It is okay.” (5)

And these two women who fled did so about a year and a half ago when the situation was a little easier. They made an agreement with a Taxi driver and gave him money and he got them out. He moved them from place to place under the pretence that they were his wives. They arrived at a place and then I went and received them and brought them to my house. With me were my wife and her mother and sisters. It was extremely cold and they were shivering. They asked me about someone they knew who was married to a British sister whom they knew previously. And they also knew him. He used to live in Britain. I put them in my house with my wife, gave them food and drink and then took them to that brother.

They sat with the brother for some days and then they made Takfeer on him. And after they left, the brother told me “they made Takfeer on you also”. Of course, they were saying that ISIS is oppressive and criminal, and we thought that they had repented. However it became clear that they were Takfeeris and the brother said to me “they say you are a Kaafir.”..!

So I said “why did they say I am a Kaafir? What did I do?”

And he said to me “they said that you support the Zionists”

I said “How do I support the Zionists? Do I have a weapons factory?”

He said to me “No, it is because you bought “Pepsi” and one of them said “he is an apostate, him and his wife because they made us drink Pepsi” and the other said “only he is an apostate because he is the one who brought us Pepsi”.

As for the youth whom I took them out, one of them was imprisoned by Ahrar. And when the leader in Ahrar “Muhammad Najeeb” asked him,”What is your opinion about ISIS?”, he said “apostates”. So he started laughing and asked “how are they apostates?”

I had gone to take him out by virtue of having known him in Tunisia and I knew that he was a very simple and naive person. So I brought him out. And I once asked him “Do you consider Baghdadi as a Kaafir?”

He said “yes I consider him to be a Kaafir”.

So I said “why do you consider him to be a Kaafir?”

He said “He is from the 5 heads of the Tawaghit who call the people to worship them.”

So you would feel…, glory be to Allah…, that they are strange people. You would find him making Takfeer on all the people and having lost faith in all the people. And the first ones who they make Takfeer upon are ISIS…! And they believe that the most evil people on the face of the earth, even more evil than Israel are ISIS…!

Naturally more than 90% of them believe all the factions to be apostates and Kaafirs even though they act towards them with goodness and even though the Free Syrian Army who helped them to get out were good towards them.

Once I helped one of them to get out alongwith his family and he used to cry. And after he left the areas under ISIS, he remained for a period of three months in Azaz, meaning he remained 5 months in total before leaving. And one of the brothers told me that when he reached Turkey he said “There is a lot of good in Abu Hajr and many things, but he is still an apostate because he remains with Jabhat”. Glory be to God..! Strange minds…! I say that if the door is opened for them, not one of them would remain (in ISIS). There are now a very large number of defectors with Faylaq and with FSA, and only Allah knows how many. Hundreds, possibly thousands have left them, and if the door is opened not one would remain with them.

There even is a very large number of men and women who have spoken to me and who want to get out, and as it is known, whoever wants to leave and is caught, then the judgment upon him according to them is either prison or death, as they consider it as incitement against the Islamic state.

Their prisons are full and they have a large number of prisoners, the majority of whom are Muhajireen. There was a man there called Abu Harith at Tunisi who knew me and his friends left before him, and I sent him my number. But then when he wanted to leave, they caught him. And I later received the news that they killed him. One time two youth from Tunisia left them and one of them stayed with one of the youth for five days, and he stayed those five days without praying because his commitment in religion was only recent. And they were in Idlib smoking and would have a cup of coffee in their hands and be playing billiards as if they were hanging around in the capital of Tunisia. Then they went to Turkey and I heard that one of them went to Europe and he has a girlfriend who was an ISIS supporter, who also fled from there, and he went to be with her in Sweden.

Of course those of them who are not polluted with the perverted Takfeeri mentality are very few. One of them was a businessman from Tunisia who was not too old. He was 24 or 25 years of age. And he did not become polluted much by Takfeeri mentality. But on the other hand the majority of those who leave believe that ISIS are apostates, and some of them even make Takfeer on the one who does not make Takfeer on ISIS.

They have a very strange hopelessness and they no longer believe that there is Jihad.

There are a number of them who have gone to Sudan and a number of them went to Europe. And there are those who surrendered themselves and there is a very large number of them in Turkey. Naturally they make Takfeer on all the people and they say that as all the people are Kuffar, then it is better to remain with the Kuffar in Turkey than with the Kuffar in Syria or to go to another country.”

We come to know from the testimony of the brother that many of them abandoned Jihad for various reasons, whether that was due to increasing extremism which made all the groups disbelievers in his opinion (ie. disbelievers fighting against disbelievers), ‘so why should I fight?!’ Or due to his reaction when he saw the opposite of his idealised dreams which this defector had hoped for, that this would be the desired Islamic state under which we would lead a life of ease and comfort. But what he saw disappointed him and so his convictions got shattered and he lost hope and got frustrated and wanted to abandon everything and return back to where he was originally. And this has happened before, even with one of the greatest leaders of Al Qaeda, and that is Shaykh Athiyatullah al Libbi, if Allah had not kept him firm with the brothers who were with him. He said after he took part in the Algerian experience how the extremists in Algeria contributed to the corruption of the Jihad until it deteriorated and became weak. He said “I personally went through a difficult experience in Algeria and came through surviving by my skin, and I thought that there will be no Jihad in the foreseeable future in my life, and I was almost in despair and I was afflicted by sadness, worry, gloom and despondency and similar things which are difficult to describe…!! It was only that Allah had protected me by giving me some firmness and benefited me through the company of the brothers, and by being consoled with the people of previous experience and goodness.” (6).

And both of these are harmful to the Islamic State – if they returned back to their countries and gave their testimonies about what they went through, and if they spoke about the huge difference between the media and the reality. And this is especially so if the one who returns back or the one who defects is someone who is obeyed and has followers. This will cause many to re-examine themselves and change their path.

ISIS fears that Al Qaeda will be an alternative, and so it took another preemptive step, that is they considered it a priority to speak about it and attack it and to try to distort it. If you see the magazine “Dabiq” which belongs to ISIS, you would feel that Al Qaeda is targeted more than the Americans, the Rafidhah (Shi’a) and the Nusayris by the media propaganda of this group. So when you become filled with this propaganda whether it is based on truth or falsehood, then even if you split from ISIS, you will not join Al Qaeda. And this is the practical application of the theory

of the propaganda of lies as spoken about by Shaykh Abu Qatada in his audio series on globalization. He says, ‘A certain party will tell lies to their supporters and will continue lying to them until they reach the point where these lies take the place of certainty, and even if the truth is revealed to them after having reached this stage, then it will have no effect upon them as they have lived with the lie until they have reached the point of no return. This principle can be summed up in the saying of the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Gobbels “Lie and continue to lie until the people believe you”.

So we have 3 options:

Join Al Qaeda and resume the stage of Jihad
Abandon Jihad altogether and all that is related to it, and return to the stage that was prior to migration and prior to practicing the religion (And this is if the governments accept this, because sometimes you may want to make such a step but because you participated in Jihad, the governments will mostly throw you in prison when you return back to your country. And rather than live a new life your association with the Jihadi prisoners in prison will compel you to continue on the same path rather than give up.)
The formation of a new entity, independent of Al Qaeda which will attract all those who have lost faith in Al Qaeda and ISIS alike.

As for which will be the most chosen option, it is difficult to judge that for now.

Footnotes:

[1] Letter to Shaykh Abu Musab al Zarqawi, p. 14.

[2] Complete letters and directives of Shaykh Usama bin Ladin, p. 771.

[3] Answering the questioner on matters of new issues (1/16).

[4] “The believer is not stung from the same hole twice” Saheeh Muslim: 2998, Saheeh al Bukhari :6133.

[5] A long time ago I asked Shaykh al Maqdisi about women travelling to the Khilafa state after one of them asked me about this. And I wrote an article about that which is translated into English, and he sent this audio recording in which he says: “This is one of the calamities which we have advised them about, and they disregarded our advice. They have even taken their passports from them, and the widows from amongst them are married off by the will of the judge whenever their husbands are killed. They cram the women along with their children in crowded and neglected places like stables of animals, in large groups. One of them comes and proposes marriage to them and they accept it just to get out of this overcrowded and neglected place. The situation is very miserable. Many of them are regretful and wish that they were able to flee. Despite all that, there are still those who are naïve and leave their countries and go there. We have heard several misfortunes.

I have sought permission from Shaykh al Maqdisi before spreading this recording as well as the answer, and he agreed to it, and modified and added to the text. Both these recordings are exclusive and have not been published before.

[6] Answers to the Hisbah forum, p. 14.

Tore Hamming:

I will add in with a brief comment to the topic of the generational divide.

Joining the ‘hottest’ Jihadi outlet of the time has always been the choice of the youth. We know from the Sinjar records that in the time of al-Qaida in Iraq, the average age of people joining was between 24 and 25. From internal Islamic State documents, processed in the CTC’s “The Caliphate’s Global Workforce” we see an almost similar average age of people joining the Islamic State, with recruits being between 26 and 27.

The Islamic State has thus become the standard choice of the youth wanting to join a Jihadi project. It has provided the youth an outlet where they can channel their frustrations violently and especially their media machine has been of essential importance to attract people. The hope of al-Qaida is that although the Islamic State propaganda machine has been efficient in attracting people, then the experience of having witnessed the state from the inside will cause them to leave. However, the big question is then where will they go? Will they join al-Qaida, leave Jihad altogether or will a new movement see the light as the Islamic State is losing momentum?

At the moment, it is still too early to come up with an answer to the question. Al-Qaida will, of course, do its best to attract people who become disillusioned with the Islamic State project – both al-Zawahiri and al-Maqdisi have kept the door open for people to join al-Qaida. The al-Qaida leadership has been criticised for its ‘long and boring’ lectures, which were in contrast to the more aggressive rhetoric of Islamic State leaders. However, al-Qaida is currently experiencing renewed popularity. Al-Zawahiri is on a charm offensive in his recent video statements and a younger generation of al-Qaida sympathetic ideologues like Abdallah al-Muhaysini is helping to increase the cool-factor of the movement in the eyes of the younger generation.

A whole generation is currently growing up with violence as a normality. Some of them will eventually continue of the road of Jihad, but that they necessarily choose either the Islamic State or al-Qaida is not a certainty.

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