ji·had·ica

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).

On the Bin Nayif Assassination Attempt

Thomas Hegghammer August 28, 2009

Yesterday there was an assassination attempt on the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Muhammad Bin Nayif. An unidentified wanted militant, pretending to surrender to authorities, blew himself up as he was being searched. The blast occurred in Bin Nayif’s private office in Jidda, close enough to the Prince himself for the latter to be lightly wounded (although no wounds were visible his subsequent TV appearance).

The attack is obviously noteworthy, not least because it is the first confirmed jihadi assassination attempt on a senior prince in Saudi history. There have been rumours of such attempts in the past, but none have ever been confirmed. This shows that al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP) is definitely after the royal family, and the incident underlines the QAP’s ideological turn to a more revolutionary direction. Their campaign started off in 2003 focusing exclusively on Western targets, but has gradually shifted to include more and more regime targets.

It is also worrying that there are still militants with access to explosives and bomb-making expertise. It remains to be seen whether the attacker had many local helpers and whether he had links to the QAP headquarters in Yemen. If he did, it would be more serious.

Having said all this, I don’t think the incident itself tells us very much at all about QAP’s operational capability or Saudi regime stability. This was essentially a stupid security slip-up, whereby the bomber was allowed to get deep into the building without any security inspection. I would be very surprised if this happened again.

To understand how this could occur, one needs to understand Muhammad Bin Nayif’s role in the Saudi counterterrorism apparatus. In addition to being the top CT official, he is also the main contact point between the state and the radical Islamist community. He is the one that militants go to see when they want to surrender. He has been doing personal behind-the-scenes liaison work with the jihadi community since at least the late 1990s. He has made a point of always being personally accessible to militants wanting to talk. And he has a reputation in the Islamist community (outside of al-Qaida) for discretion, kindness and financial generosity.

Bin Nayif has received hundreds of jihadis in his office in this way, and by all accounts there have never been any security problems.  I suspect that over time, this made the Prince and his staff overconfident about their security. In this particular case, the fact that it was 11.30 at night during a popular Ramadan reception probably made security even more lax. The bottom line is that it didn’t take operational genius or a high-ranking mole get close to the Prince.

By the way, media are referring to an al-Qaida claim of responsibility reported by SITE, but neither I nor Greg over at Waq al-Waq have been able to find it on the forums this morning.

PS Apologies for my long absence from jihadica. Family vacations, house moves and paper deadlines have made blogging difficult. I am now back at work, but I will be contributing infrequently this fall for reasons I will explain later.

Last Man Standing

Thomas Hegghammer July 3, 2009

I promised you more on Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil, the Saudi author of the article on Obama being more dangerous than Bush. The reason I find al-Julayyil interesting is that he is among the last remaining Saudi sheikhs to play an active ideological role for the jihadi movement.

Back in the good old days of the early 2000s, there was a whole community of Saudi jihad scholars: Hamud al-Shu’aybi, Nasir al-Fahd, Ali al-Khudayr, Abd al-Rahman al-Jarbu’, Sulayman al-Alwan and many others (who all feature prominently in my forthcoming book). Around 2002 these guys were churning out pro-al-Qaida fatwas faster than you could say “al-wala’ wa’l-bara’”. But then came the 2003 terrorism campaign in Saudi Arabia, and most of them were sent to the cooler. This is why you have not heard from many radical Saudi clerics in the past five years. This is also why I have been arguing in the past years that the golden age of Saudi Arabia as an exporter of pro-al-Qaida theological treatises is largely over. While I think the argument generally holds, Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil is now forcing me to qualify this claim.

So who is this person? According to his website, Abd al-Aziz bin Nasir bin Sa’d al-Julayyil grew up in Riyadh and studied pharmacology. He directed an Islamist publishing house called Dar Tayba li’l-Nashr wa’l-Tawzi’ for twenty years before becoming the director of their department of religious knowledge (‘ilm). He does not seem to have a formal religious education, but has studied privately under Abdallah bin Jibrin and Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak. Al-Julayyil is the author of at least ten books and studies, as well as hundreds of articles and fatwas on a variety of theological and political issues.

Al-Julayyil was always a slightly more moderate figure than the abovementioned scholars that I have called “the Shu’aybi school”. Stephane Lacroix tells me al-Julayyil was closer to the Sahwa (the centrist mainstream of Saudi Islamism), more specifically its “Sururi“ branch (named after Muhammad Surur Zayn al-Abidin). Indeed al-Julayyil does not (yet) have his own entry on the online reference library for jihadi literature, Minbar al-Tawhid, which suggests he is not part of the canon of jihadi ideologues.

Still, his hardline views on international political issues place him on the radical end of the Sahwist spectrum. In the heated political atmosphere of 2002 Saudi Arabia, al-Julayyil displayed sympathies toward the Shu’aybi school. He notably endorsed a statement by Nasir al-Fahd in June 2002 which lambasted Sahwist icons Salman al-Awda and Safar al-Hawali for signing the declaration entitled “How we can coexist”, which had been the conciliatory gesture in response to the statement by US intellectuals entitled “What we are fighting for”.

Al-Julayyil became famous in the jihadi community with his 2005 book “Jihadi Education in the Light of the Qur’an and the Sunna”, which has been widely disseminated on the forums. More recently, Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil’s writings have surfaced in online jihadi magazines. His Obama article in the Taliban-affiliated al-Sumud is the least noteworthy, given that support for the Taliban – as opposed to al-Qaida – is not very controversial in Saudi Arabia. (Stéphane told me mainstream Sahwhists such as Nasir al-Umar have publicly praised the Taliban in recent years). More interesting is al-Julayyil’s appearance in Sada al-Jihad, a magazine, which is ideologically much closer to al-Qaida’s anti-western global jihadism.

Admittedly, al-Julayyil probably does not take commissions directly from these magazines; instead he posts his articles on his website, and then magazine editors reproduce them.  Moreover, none of what al-Julayyil is saying is particularly radical by global jihadi standards or by the standards of the Shu’aybi school in 2002.

But in 2009 he stands out as perhaps the most radical voice in the non-clandestine Saudi Islamist movement. And even if he is not directly in touch with editors of Sada al-Jihad, he operates one of the most radical personal websites of any Saudi sheikh. Finally, the very fact that Sada al-Jihad is printing al-Julayyil’s work – and not that of other Saudi sheikhs – suggests his role differs from that of other Sahwists.

Importantly, there is uncertainty as to whether or not al-Julayyil is in prison. On the one hand, his website lists his Burayda office address and phone number, as well as his lecture schedule (every Friday evening in the Prince Nayif Mosque (!) in al-Suwaydi in Riyadh). On the other hand, forum messages strongly suggest he is, or recently was, in prison.  When some of his articles were posted on Faluja and on his website in May, many readers’ comments included the expression “May God secure his release”, which is the standard phrase used of imprisoned mujahidin or ulama.

All this leaves two crucial questions unanswered: Is al-Julayyil in prison? And how is he able to write what he writes when other Saudi sheikhs are not? If any of you (Saud? Nawaf? Bernard? Stephane?) have more insights on this, I would love to know.

Obama is more Dangerous than Bush

Thomas Hegghammer June 29, 2009

This is the title of the main story in the July issue of al-Sumud, the Arabic-language magazine of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The 56-page magazine has several articles devoted to Obama and the Cairo speech, and the front page features a particularly unflattering picture of the US president. But it is the lead article which I find the most interesting, because it confirms that jihadis feel threatened by Obama in their fight for Muslim hearts and minds.

The two-page article (pp-18-19) is written by the Saudi sheikh Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil and is actually taken from the latter’s website, which says the text was written on 17 May 2009.

Al-Julayyil starts off by saying he was motivated to write this article after observing a lot of optimism among Muslims over the arrival of the new US administration. He says he realises  many will react to the headline, for how can the Satanic Bush, who invaded Muslim countries and whose planes and tanks killed Muslim children, be less dangerous than Obama, who has declared he is not at war with Islam?

The first reason, he writes, is that Bush’s follies actually benefited Muslims by inflicting significant damage to America. The most important fruit of Bush’s policies was the wake-up call it produced among Muslims in terms of realising the true nature of their enemy, reviving the creed of loyalty toward Muslims and dissociation from infidels, and raising the flag of jihad in several battlefields. Another benefit of the Bush era was the infamy suffered by America on the world stage and the demise of its false discourse on human rights; in the world’s eyes America itself became a proponent of oppression and a threat to human rights. Add to this the American economic and military decline.

All this happened because God duped Bush and made him act in the interest of Muslims. When the Americans realised what was going on, they tried to address their mistakes and improve their image. So they brought Obama, with his sly policies and his attempts to deceive the world, especially the Muslim world, with his professed love for peace and criticism of the policies of his predecessor. And many Muslims were duped by his sweet-talk and pinned their hopes on this man to lift the oppression from them. This is extremely dangerous, al-Julayyil argues, because it is weakening their enmity toward America and makes them more positively inclined toward her future policies. It is numbing them, reducing their hatred toward infidels, and making them stop fighting. There is great danger here for the creed of loyalty and dissociation (al-wala’ wa’l-bara’). The improvement of America’s image is not in the interest of Muslims; rather it is in their interest that the decline continue and that the drivers of [America’s] destruction and fragmentation multiply.

Second, American policies will not change. It is a mistake to believe that a single individual can change US policy, because it is institutionalised, with its own targets, centres and planners. Bush and Obama are two faces of the same coin.

Third, the only thing that has changed in America are the methods employed to getting to the same old ends. The American-Crusader aggression against Muslim countries and the support for the Jewish state has not changed since Obama took office. Meanwhile, Obama has been in the media cajoling the Muslim world. He has denounced the use of banned weapons against civilians in Gaza massacre, yet he originally gave them these weapons; he has declared before AIPAC that Jerusalem is the eternal and united capital of Israel; he has stepped up the missile campaign against civilians in Pakistan; and increased troop levels in Afghanistan. So what compassion does this infidel criminal declare with these acts and intentions?

Al-Julayyil concludes: So beware of this cunning Satan, for he is more dangerous than the foolish Satan.

The author of this article is not a pro-Obama campaigner, but a hardline Saudi sheikh who has spent time in prison for his anti-American views and association with people like Nasir al-Fahd. At the same time, the view expressed in the article is not a completely marginal one, as evidenced by the responses on al-Julayyil’s website.

There are some interesting things to say about al-Julayyil and his recent activities, but I will save that for my next post.

Jihadi reactions to Obama

Thomas Hegghammer June 4, 2009

We have heard Bin Ladin and Zawahiri’s comments, and Marc Lynch and others will tell us how the Arab mainstream reacted. But what are the grassroot jihadis saying about Obama’s Mideast tour in general and his Cairo speech in particular?

Let me begin by lowering your expectations. For a start, we should not expect to see any positive reactions to Obama’s initiative, for anybody thus inclined would not be on the forums in the first place. Second, there is no tradition among jihadi strategists or pundits for parsing presidential speeches. They might pick up on a phrase (like Bush’s reference to a “crusade”) and use it for their own purposes. But generally these guys don’t listen to what America says – they watch what she does.

I should also add that Faloja, the main jihadi forum, has been down since this morning (as has Shuraa), so our ability to gage the reactions to the Obama’s speech is limited. Fortunately I surveyed Faloja for Obama-related material yesterday, and Shumukh, the no.2 forum, is up today, so we have something to work with.

Overall, there is quite a bit of chatter about the Obama tour, and four types of postings recur. First are the political messages which denounce the visit and present it as further evidence that Egyptian and Saudi governments and ulama have submitted to American dominance. “In honour of Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia”, one member reposted the classic bookThe evident proofs of the infidelity of the Saudi state (1990) by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Other posts circulate the pictures of Saudi and American flags side by side. Yet others claimed Egyptians are suffering as a result of Obama visit, because the security barriers in Cairo “confined 18 million Egyptians to their homes” and because the Sultan Hasan mosque had to be closed for security reasons.

In a widely diffused and entertaining post, a contributor named “Abu al-Bashar” describes a daydream about Egyptian Salafi Ulama confronting Obama. The text is written like a short skit which goes something like this (loosely translated):
“Here are our ulama from Egypt: Sheikhs Yasir al-Barhami, Muhammad Hussain Ya’qub, Ahmad al-Sisi, Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni, Tal’at Zahran, Muhammad Hasan, Muhammad Ismail al-Muqaddam and Mahmud al-Misri. They hear about Obama’s visit to Egypt and decide to convene a meeting in which the following conversation takes place.
Ismail gets angry and says we have been silent for long enough.
Hasan asks: what about Obama? He is coming here to salvage relations with the Muslim world.
Al-Huwayni intervenes: But he’s coming here while is armies are killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and supports the Jews in their killing of Palestinians.
Burhami says: The bottom line is that Obama the pig is coming here to slaughter us and he smiles at us in the process.
Al-Sisi sayd: Sure, but Obama the pig is coming here, so what should we do?
After long discussions, the scholars announce their decision, which consists of two steps.
First, a statement, denouncing Obama’s visit. It would be distributed on the satellite tv stations and on the internet forums and on facebook, and in all newspapers and journals, in Arabic and English and French. Second, a demonstration on the day of the speech. All preachers and scholars and their students would go to the location where Obama will deliver his speech and show their opposition.

– The end –
Here Sheikh Muhammad Husain Ya’qub intervenes, saying ‘I retract my positions’.”

The final part is quite funny – even in a dream official ulama lack moral courage.

The second type of posts are strategic assessments in which writers try to second-guess the real purpose and implications of the visit. These posts are neither numerous nor sophisticated, and so far none of the serious jihadi strategists have weighed in. “Al-Munasir1” warns that part of the purpose of Obama’s visit to Egypt is to make final preparations for an international campaign against Sudan.

The third and most widespread type of post focuses on tactical issues such as the detailed program of Obama’s visit, the size and nature of his security attachment and the prospects of carrying out an assassination. One writer quoted the Saudi opposition abroad as saying observers and Saudi security officials fear for Obama’s life in Saudi Arabia. He argued that the recent shooting in Jubayl is indicative of a surge in pro-al-Qaida sentiment in the Kingdom. The fact that the perpetrators of the Jubayl shooting have not been caught further worried the authorities. Most responses to the post expressed hope that Obama be assassinated, but one commentator drily noted that Obama comes and goes as he wishes so long as the royal family is in power.

Another post by “Baghdad al-Khilafa” presented a more detailed “Plan for killing Barak Obama” in Egypt. It included a picture of Cairo university followed by the note: “the best way of killing Obama: Suicide belt, suicide belt, suicide belt.” Then followed detailed instructions on how to manufacture a suicide belt, including links to downloadable instruction videos.

The fourth type of posting consists of reproductions of articles from other, more mainstream Arab and Islamic media. These posts are interesting not so much for the debates they generate (usually very little), but because they tell us something about which voices the forum participants would at least consider listening to. So we find
– Abd al-Bari Atwan ‘s article “Our advice to Obama”
– An article by Mahmud Abduh Ali at Islamonline entitled “An examination of Obama’s position on the big issues that concern the Muslim world”
– An article from al-Jazeera.net on the Muslim Brotherhood’s reaction to the Obama visit.
– An article from Middle East Online entitled “Egyptians: No Ahlan wa Sahlan for Obama”, which cites a poll showing three quarters of Egyptians were skeptical of Obama’s visit.

Of particular interest is the posting of an article from Sabq News reporting that the Saudi Islamist Ayidh al-Qarni loved Obama’s speech. The article is posted by the same Baghad al-Khilafa who wanted Obama blown up, and he is naturally expressing dismay at al-Qarni’s reaction, to the point of declaring him an infidel. This triggers a debate, with several contributors objecting to the excommunication (takfir) of al-Qarni. “Brothers, don’t declare him an infidel, he is just a regime cleric”, writes “Asad al-Jazira”.

In my two days of surfing the forums I was able to find one single statement mildly favourable to the Obama administration. A contributor named “Khaldun Halwani” wrote in a comment to a post: “Let us hope that this is the beginning of a new direction that will serve Muslim interests. I would add that Foreign Secretary has started changing US policy toward the enemy of Islam, Israel.” But this is of course an isolated statement by an anonymous contributor and thus not indicative of anything.

There are in other words no big surprises in the forum reactions to Obama’s Middle East tour, although it is still too early to tell how the jihadi movement will adapt to these initiatives. Hopefully we will see more serious jihadi strategic studies of Obama’s PR offensive in the weeks to come. I will keep my eye out for them and keep you posted. If anybody sees anything interesting, please let me know.

Update: Parts of this post was reproduced on the Foreign Policy Blog on 5 June and on NPR.com on 8 June.

Prêt à porter terrorism

Thomas Hegghammer March 2, 2009

As most Jihadica readers probably know, the jihadi internet is used for many things, but not for operational planning. I have yet to come across online discussions or instructions for concrete operations by professional militants. However, once in a while you see amateurs proposing specific operations – “prêt a porter plots” – for others to carry out.

One such bright idea was posted on Faloja yesterday by a member named Sabir, who proposes that al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP) fire Katyusha rockets from the Saudi shore of the Gulf of Aqaba toward Sharm al-Sheikh, where international leaders are meeting today to raise money for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Sabir addresses his message “to Abu Basir [Nasir al-Wuhayshi], Emir of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula” and humbly presents “a small and simple operation for three Islamic lions from the military corps under your command.” He notes that Ras al-Shaykh Hamid on the Saudi coast is only 7-8 kilometers away from Sharm al-Shaykh, while Katyusha rockets have a range of 10-22 kilometers. One could even use medium or heavy mortar shells, which have a range of 4.9-8.2km and 10 km respectively. Having done a certain amount of background research, Sabir includes maps, satellite pictures and photographs from the area to illustrate his point. Unconcerned about Muslim collateral damage, he concedes that one might not succeed in hitting the conference venue directly, but even striking nearby will send a strong signal, as did the failed mortar attack on UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon during the latter’s visit to Baghdad in March 2007. Sabir also admits that “you may not have time to do it today, but you have plenty of time in the coming days to acquire long-range missiles”.

There have been missile plots in Saudi Arabia in the past. In January 1998, Saudi security forces intercepted a shipment of missiles on the Yemeni-Saudi border intended for an al-Qaida attack on the US consulate in Jidda (see p 708 of this article). In May 2002, guards discovered empty missile tubes from a failed attack on planes taking off from the Prince Sultan Airbase. The missiles from the latter attack had been acquired in Yemen, and they were allegedly from the same batch as those used in the Mombasa attack later the same year.

Still, Sabir’s idea is completely off the wall. Katyushas have never been found on the Arabian Peninsula, the QAP is currently holed up in Yemen, and it takes more than a few days to plan an operation like this. Moreover, as other forum members dryly note in their comments, the idea is useless the moment you post it on online for all the intelligence services in the world to see.

The posting is nevertheless interesting, first of all because it is unusually specific and shows that we cannot completely dismiss the Internet’s potential as an arena for operational brainstorming. At the same time, it illustrates the lack of military know-how of many online jihadists. In much of the forum material, there is a spectacular disconnection between intention and capability. Unfortunately, the haute couture of terrorism is prepared behind closed doors.

Document (Arabic): 03-01-09-military-plan-for-qap

Update (6 March): This post not only prompted enthusiastic comments (see below), but was also discussed on Faloja itself. We wish our new readers a warm welcome.
Document (Arabic): 03-05-09-faloja-on-jihadica

Al-Awfi Captured, New Yemen Blog

Thomas Hegghammer February 17, 2009

Muhammad al-Awfi, one of the two former Saudi Gitmo detainees who appeared in the video by al-Qaida in Yemen on 19 January, has now been captured. Press reports and forum rumours this morning were confirmed this afternoon by the Yemeni embassy in Washington.

I owe the latter piece of information to a fantastic new blog that covers Islamism and security in Yemen. I strongly recommend it. Few people know more about jihadism in Yemen than Gregory Johnsen and Brian O’Neill. Welcome to the blogosphere, guys.

It is a shame, then, that there is not a single al-Qaida operative left in Yemen. Or so says the Yemeni Interior Minister, echoing past statements by his Saudi counterpart, who claimed in October 2001 that al-Qaida had no links to Saudi Arabia.
Back to al-Awfi. The official story is that he surrendered to Yemeni authorities. This is probably spin; if he did, it was at gunpoint. The question is why al-Awfi’s capture comes now, only weeks after he made headlines. This is especially interesting given Yemen’s very poor record of locating and arresting al-Qaida leaders. My guess is that Saudi intelligence has become more actively involved in Yemen. If true, this is a good sign, for the Saudis have become very good at counterterrorism.

The biggest question now is of course whether al-Awfi will lead investigators to the rest of the leadership of al-Qaida in Yemen. After six years in Guantanamo, he is no doubt used to interrogations. At the same time, he cannot claim ignorance of his comrades’ whereabouts, having appeared in a video with them just a few weeks ago. My guess is we will see more arrests in coming weeks, although probably not a dismantling of al-Qaida, who will have taken precautions by now.

I hope to write something about the Saudi list of 85 in the coming week. In the meantime you can read more on al-Awfi and the other ten escaped Saudi Gitmo detainees in this excellent new report by Evan Kohlmann.

Document (Arabic): 02-17-09-faloja-rumours-of-awfi-arrest

Pathetic Psy-ops

Thomas Hegghammer February 5, 2009

The British tabloid The Sun reported yesterday that al-Qaeda leaders rape male recruits to shame them into becoming suicide bombers. Let me start by congratulating the journalist on being able to fit the four words “al-Qaida”, “gay”, “rape” and “horror” in one and the same headline in the world’s largest English-language newspaper.

I would not normally bother with this kind of nonsense were it not for the fact that it sheds light on the recent reports about AQIM’s alleged plague experiments, covered previously on Jihadica. Both stories were broken in the West by The Sun, and both stories relied on Algerian security sources. We are most likely dealing here with an anti-al-Qaida psy-op, and a very poor one at that.

These latest stories echo an only marginally better operation targeting al-Qaida in Iraq last winter. It involved a steady stream of articles about al-Qaida exploiting all kinds of defenceless people for suicide missions: children, women with Down’s syndrome, orphaned homeless children with mental disabilities, and what not. This rapid succession of articles over the same theme reeked of information warfare. Of course al-Qaida in Iraq has used suicide bombers under 18 as well as female attackers. But given that reports from the same period highlighted a steady influx of able-bodied foreign fighters, why on earth would al-Qaida spend precious resources on disabled operatives? I am surprised that so many serious media outlets have uncritically conveyed these articles.

While the gay rape story wins the prize for worst psy-op ever, the silver medal goes to the Saudis, who claimed in 2003 that al-Qaida had planned terror attacks on pilgrims in Mecca and had booby-trapped copies of the Quran. In fact, since then the Saudi Interior Ministry has made a tradition of “warning against” or “foiling” attacks in Mecca almost every year around the Hajj; most recently in 2007 and 2008. To my knowledge, there is not a single indication in the jihadi literature that al-Qaida or its affiliates have ever contemplated an attack on pilgrims in Mecca. (The Juhayman group which attacked the Mecca mosque in 1979 represented a highly unusual apocalyptic sect).

For the record, several of these reports were subsequently denied. This was the case with the stories about the plague, the use of women with Down’s syndrome and the 2008 Hajj attacks. But of course the denials do not get nearly the same attention as the initial impact story.

Does it matter if we circulate stories that are not completely true, if it helps defeat al-Qaida? Well, maybe not, if counterterrorism is our only concern. But then we shouldn’t complain about the spread of conspiracy theories in the Muslim world.

Gaza Galore in New Issue of Sada al-Jihad

Thomas Hegghammer January 28, 2009

The thirty-second issue of the ever so slick magazine Sada al-Jihad is out. Like the rest of jihadi media these days, it focuses on Gaza. Practically the entire 41-page journal is devoted to Palestine, and the front page features a close-up picture of the blood-stained face of a Palestinian child. However, the articles do not seem to contain many original viewpoints and analyses. They highlight the civilian suffering, the treason of the Arab leaders, and the futility of the moderate  Muslim Brotherhood approach. Much of this has been heard before.

But this does not mean the Gaza rhetoric is inconsequential. For many I am stating the obvious, but the Israeli assault on Gaza has greatly benefited al-Qaida propagandists and recruiters. In 2007 and 2008, the global jihadist message was losing some of its resonance, partly as a result of Iraq’s sectarian turn, bickering within the jihadi movement, and the absence of new symbols of Muslim suffering. Gaza reinvigorated the global jihadist movement and provided a much-needed new rallying cause. I do not doubt that we will soon feel its repercussions in the form of new recruitment and perhaps more violent activity. By the way, it is a relief to finally see Western officials such as Alan West publicly recognizing the connection between Palestine and global jihadism.

The last time Palestine caused a similar stir was during the early days of the al-Aqsa intifada, which was then accompanied by a massive increase in the flow of recruits to al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. Today the impact will be somewhat more difficult to measure, since new recruits have fewer places to go, but I would not be surprised if we see an increase in the number of people trying to go to Iraq, Afghanistan and other jihad fronts.

We are also starting to see foreign volunteers making it to the battlefront in Palestine. Princeton Professor Bernard Haykel kindly brought to my attention the martyrdom biography of a Saudi fighter named Abu Muhammad al-Marri who was recently killed in Gaza. Although he is not the first Saudi to try to join the jihad in Palestine,  he is, to my knowledge, the first to die in combat there. The novelty is not that foreign jihadists want to fight in Palestine – they always wanted to – but rather that al-Marri made it through and was allowed to fight by the Palestinians. There are three ways to interpret this report: 1) as a fluke – al-Marri had a Palestinian wife so he may not have been seen as an outsider; 2) as reflecting a decision by Hamas to allow in a Saudi or two to embarrass the Saudis, or 3) as reflecting a strategic decision by Hamas to accommodate more foreign volunteers. Only time will show which one it is.

Meanwhile, here is the table of contents of Sada al-Jihad 32:

•    The Gaza war: if we lose, our enemies will benefit (leader)
•    Hamas: correct the basis and fear God, not people (by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi)
•    Gaza, attacked by the Jews and besieged by the apostates and the infidels (Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil)
•    The Gaza massacre and the siege of the traitors (Ayman al-Zawahiri)
•    Gaza, a war that distinguished the ranks and uncovered positions (Sada al-Jihad special)
•    Reflections on the jurisprudence of jihad (part 2) (Muhammad al-Shaybani)
•    Believers are brothers (Abu Umar al-Baghdadi)
•    A call for jihad and to end the aggression on Gaza (Usama bin Ladin)
•    The lies of the blood profiteers are uncovered in the cities of Gaza and al-Ahya (Abu Taha al-Miqdad)
•    The great scandal (Ahmad al-Masri)
•    Will Palestinians understand those waging war on them? (Akram Hijazi)
•    Amir al-Shihri (Abu Hilal)
•    How do you confront an interrogator?
•    A call to the monotheists

Document (Arabic): 01-28-09-faloja-sada-al-jihad-32

Document (Arabic): 01-28-09-almoltaqa-saudi-martyr-in-gaza

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