The Historical Aspect of Transnational Islamist Terrorism

            In Arabian language the noun Islam was derived from the word aslama, meaning he gave up, surrendered.
Today Islam(1) is the most significant ideological force inside the Muslim community, with a decisive influence on culture and politics. For just a few decades now, the rise of Islam has been carrying with it exceptionally strong Islamic organizations, being implicative factors in creation of present state. Radical Islam has already taken over the role of creating policy by way of force, attacking Muslim elite and western governments alike. Muslim communities in Europe and America, strengthened by the support and penetration of Islam, raise questions about their identities, social values and participation in political life of countries they live in.
The creation of the community of believers starts with the work of Muhammad the Prophet.(2) Muhammad’s prophetic career was met with resistance of pagan sects in western Arabia, including members of Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh. Their astonishment at his condemnation of everything they have believed in till that moment caused attacks on him and his family. He found refuge, with a number of his followers, in the oasis-city Yathrib some 400 km north of Mecca. In the year of 622 he settled in that city, which was henceforth known as Medina, from Arabian Madinat Al Nabi – The City of the Prophet. His emigration to Medina brought the creation of an independent religious-political community in power.
Hijra, the emigration of the Prophet, marks the start of the Islamic era, and the starting year from which the Muslims count the time. The Prophet’s house in Medina, in which he lived until he died in 632, and in which he was buried, also became the first mosque in the history of Islam.
In the years of the 7th century when the Prophet was starting his sermons, the whole Mediterranean was part of the Christian world, with only religions of the Greek-Roman world surviving and preached by minorities being Judaism and Manichaeism.(3) The Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, with the capital of Constantinople, ruled over Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Middle East, South-Eastern Europe, and a portion of Northern Africa. Mesopotamia, as the part of the Persian Empire, was Christian as well. Outside the borders of these two empires, in Arabia, lived Christian and Hebrew people, among the pagan majority.
The early community of believers argued that after Muhammad no one could succeed to the title of the Prophet. Those first believers decided, however, that someone should succeed to the position of the secular community leader. In the oldest writings, the leader of the community of believers was not called a caliph, but Emir Al-mu’minin (“the commander of believers”) instead, which might have been the first title, later to be replaced by the title of caliph, oftentimes used in the Quran. The first two caliphs(4) by all accounts had wide support of the believers, while the Muslim rebels killed the third, Uthman, during his reign, and the First Civil War (the First Fitna) erupted. This period is significant because during that time subgroups, or sects of Islam emerged, which are still in existence today. Several reputable leaders from the Prophet’s tribe of Quraysh fought for the leadership of the community of the believers, and after the murder of Uthman the people of Medina named Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin and brother-in-law, as the fourth caliph. Ali’s supporters are called Shi’ite. That naming was confronted by members of Uthman’s clan Umayyad, under the leadership of Mu’awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan. Many struggles for power ensued. During those wars, division into sects appeared for the first time in Islamic community: Shi’ites, Kharijites who separated themselves from Ali’s supporters, and Sunni, or the orthodox branch of Islam, whose main characteristic was renouncing the key beliefs of Shi’ites and Kharijites.
Sunnis represent the major branch of Islam. In cases when Quran does not provide answers for solving certain problems, or instructions for proper behavior, the Sunnis rely on Muhammad’s Sunnah(5) in Medina, or on Hadith.(6) Contrary to Shi’ites, the Sunnis accept the rightfulness of the historical succession of the caliphs.
Shi’ites are a branch of Islam comprised of supporters of Ali, Muhammad’s brother-in-law. They support the direct succession of imam after Muhammad. They refuse to acknowledge the imamate, even those reigning as caliphs before Ali. Shi’ites developed a doctrine according to which only a descendant of Ali can be an imam, or the leader of the Muslim community. Some Shi’ites argued that the leadership of the imam was of key importance, because only he possessed the secret knowledge. According to this argument, every imam transferred his knowledge, crucial for community leadership, onto his heir before he died. This group separated into radical and moderate branches. Moderate branch, called the Imamites, or Twelve-imam Shi’ites, believed that the lineage of non-hidden imams ended in 874, when the twelfth imam, still a child, secluded himself from the public, and that at the appropriate moment he will return as Mahdi, a person whose thousand-year long reign was supposed to prepare the Islamic community for the Day of Judgment by establishing the true faith. However, the radical branch, the Ismailites, argued that the imamate did not end, as the twelve-imam Shi’ites believed, and that it continued with a second line of Ali’s descendants. According to their beliefs, the imam had always existed, although his identity was not known at certain times.
In 659, the Kharijites abandoned Ali’s army to form their own military force. They were accusing Ali of making compromises with the enemies after calling to fight them. Ali’s army killed most of the Kharijites, but a surviving few will spread their movement; one of them will kill Ali in 661.
            They are also the first Muslim sect that raised the question of capabilities needed to lead the Muslim community, and of relation of faith and action. Their significance lies in that they have insisted upon the possibility of realizing an Ummah of the righteous, based on Quran.
The most important role in rejecting the modern ways to return to the path of the holy past had a movement named after its founder, Muhamman ibn Abd Al-Wahhab(7) - the Wahhabism, founded in 1744 AD. The supporters of Wahhabism started promoting their teachings quite convincingly, by way of weapons. In a series of territorial campaigns, from Eastern to Central Arabia, and by way of Shi’ite holy place in Iraq, they occupied the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Attacking the Ottoman Empire stopped them, but Wahhabism lived on. Wahhabites did not direct their hatred towards the foreigners – it was most directly addressed towards those who, as they saw it, shamed and degraded Islam from within. Those were the ones trying to conduct any kind of modern reform of Islam – for Wahhabites it was a humiliation of the true Muslim legacy. They were opposed to every school of thought except their own – Sunnis, Shi’ites, and especially Sufists,(8) condemning its mysticism and pagan cults related to Sufist teachings. Therefore, the Wahhabites, in their attempts to spread their teachings, resorted to most cruel and immoral actions. They demolished tombs, desecrated what they thought were false idolatry shrines, murdered men, women and children who did not conform to their criteria of purity. They burned books related to opposing teachings and murdered writers thereof.
            Since those times, except the struggle for power, the problem that confronted the differentiated branches inside the Muslim community, also typical for the leaders of Islamist terrorist organizations and their religious leaders, is the possibility of various interpretations of Quran, and free interpretation of supplementary religious scripts, Sunnahs and Hadith.
            The main religious branches occur in many forms. The most pronouncedly confronted are modernism, secularism and fundamentalism. The modernist movement, founded in the second half of the 19th century, was based on the idea to modernize Islam, to show its universal capability of survival and to entice social and political changes based on Sharia law. Secular intellectuals dispute the idea of theocracy, and argue for the separation of political and spiritual. Fundamentalists from the second half of the 20th century were, and still are, in habit of accusing the West of causing moral downfall of the Muslims and spreading of secularism and unbelief. By their arguments, the spiritual character of Christians allowed humankind to realize their epicurean, egoistical and material potentials. They are also accusing the West of allowing the breaking of the highest tenet of divine unity, which states that the supreme power and reign of God are not limited to spiritual aspects of human life – they rule all aspects of it. Further criticizing the western civilization, they vehemently attack Western nationalism, democracy and secularism. Nationalism, in its highest phase, turns into a cult of nation, the democracy into tyranny, and secularism into dismissing the supreme reign of God, and finally into unbelief. Muslims, in the measure according to their disposition, are starting to accept democracy, nationalism and secularism, and are therefore departing from religion, betraying the Prophet, and even revolting against the God himself.
In Islam, as we have seen at the very start of Muhammad’s prophethood, the struggle had political, but military connotations as well. The Prophet himself was not only the founder and the teacher, he was also the sovereign and a soldier, and therefore included the state and its army into the religious frame. Having that kind of start in mind, jihad was always regarded as a way to spread faith.
            Aiming to understand the historical aspect as the hereditary cause for today’s transnational Islamist terrorism, we will recount territorial conquests, i.e. territorial gains and losses through Islamic jihads and crusades.
            In earlier centuries of Muslim era it had seemed that the spreading of faith till the final conquest of the world was easy and possible. In a short period of time the Muslim army conquered Persia and joined it to the territory of the caliphate, and invaded central Asia and India afterwards. The Byzantine Empire lost a large part of its territory, and Syria, Palestine, Egypt and northern Africa were conquered. Invasion of Europe has started by conquering Spain, Portugal, and northern Italy, all the way to France. The history of Western civilization noted that the stopping of this jihad happened at the Battle of Tours/Poitiers of 732, where the Franks inflicted significant losses upon the Muslim army. With the calming of passions of this Holy war, the conquest of Sicily in 827 and 902 was the most significant territorial gain in the west, and in the east, the Muslims were stopped at the borders of India and China.
            Using the religious schism and inner struggles between caliphs in Islam, causes of Muslim weakness, the Christians move on an expedition to regain their territories, including the Holy land itself, where the Christian religion was born. During that time, the Muslims were suffering the attacks of pagans – from Khazar(9) Turks in the east, and Vikings in the west – and although these were short-lived episodes, they enabled the strengthened Christians to start the Crusade. The fighting began in Spain, where small Christian duchies, aided by Franks, and later the Normans, started to widen their territories. In the east, other Christian peoples, Georgians and Armenians from the Caucasus, alarmed the Muslims. By the second half of the 10th century, the Byzantine was strong enough to attack the Muslim army in Mesopotamia, Syria and on Greek islands, and regain its territories. The Christians took over Sardinia and Sicily, and the Spanish reconquista(10) regained Toledo in Spain, and Coimbra in Portugal. The crusaders later managed to regain many territories conquered by the Muslims, and that reign lasted for about two centuries.
The new jihad was begun by new Islam converts, Seljuq Turks, by conquering Anatolia, the bastion of the Byzantine Empire, and transforming it into Turkish and Muslim country. But in the meantime, at the start of the 13th century, the Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan, after uniting the nomadic warrior tribes of Mongolia, moved to conquest, and his descendants reached the very heart of the Islamic territory, all the way to Egypt. In 1243, they defeated the forces of sultan of Seljuq Turks from Anatolia. Penetrating towards the north, they conquered the bigger part of territory of today’s Russia, establishing their reign over the people of the steppes, mostly of Turkish origin. Over time, small-numbered Mongols in power started to blend in with the Turks and to speak Turkish language. This resulted in emergence of Turkish-Mongol people named the Tatars. After the breakdown of the empire of the great khans, which ruled over a large part of the Muslim world, the land under its government was divided into many small countries. The period of Tatar reign over Russian territories was known as the Tatar Yoke, and the Mongol nation as the Khanate of the Golden Horde, which was converted into Islam at the end of the 13th and the start of the 14th century. The jihad of the defeated Seljuq Turks is continued by their descendents, the Ottomans, with Osman as their first ruler, from 1299 till 1326. In 1453, sultan Mehmed II conquers Constantinople, thereby crowning his conquests. The two parts of the old empire, Asia and Europe, were under his reign. In Europe, the Ottomans reached Vienna.
The Christian response to this jihad was started by the Muslim-oppressed Russians in the east, and the army of Ferdinand and Isabella on the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. This reconquista will later come to be known as imperialism, in which Christianity swallowed almost entire Muslim world. The 1798 occupation of Egypt by the French under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte is significant for the development of the Christian world, but the Muslim world as well. Although Bonaparte stayed shortly in Egypt, and so the territory was returned under the Muslim rule, the conquest brought with it a new idea, a consequence of French revolution – secularism. Henceforth, the standard idea of a barrier between the Christian and Muslim religions takes on a new, less divided, form. While the Muslims saw it at first as the intrinsic problem of France, or even the Christianity, later it became clear that the new thought penetrated deep into the idea of Islam, and marked many a milestone in the contemporary history.
More recent history, i.e. the mid-20th century, brings a period of decolonialization and a multitude of struggles, but their dominant motive was the establishment of an entity in colonialized Muslim nations. The religion was not the primary objective of these fights, at least not in the sense of creating countries on the basis of Islamic principles, which was demonstrated by the fact that many nations, after gaining freedom, were secular-oriented. One of the significant events that influenced the development of idea of irreconciliation with non-Muslim peoples, culminating at the end of the 20th and the start of the 21st century, was the defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, which Israel waged against the allied forces of the Arab nations of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. This conflict had serious consequences, since the territories of Gaza, Sinai, West coast and Jerusalem(11) were lost. The shock that ensued, as the consequence of realization of the evident Arab weakness, heightened the hatred, among the secularists, as well as the Islamists, towards the Israeli people, and towards America, who supported it in that war. Since then, the imperative of Muslim people became the freeing of Palestine and Jerusalem.
            In the confusion in Muslim countries, striving to find their own identities, many currents intermingled with their foreign supporters. The main contribution to the heating up of the instability in Arab countries was due to the struggle for political and economic world supremacy between the USSR and the USA, who tried to establish types of government of their own liking in those nations. Especially significant for today’s transnational Islamist terrorism was the support the USA gave to the radical activist movements in nations supporting socialism, i.e. pro-Soviet-oriented nations. Namely, “in order to counterbalance the leaders such as A. Nasser and M. Gadaffi, preaching Arabian nationalism, special services of the USA, together with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, are taking part in financing and developing trans-Arabian radical structures, ideologies that dismiss the national idea, considering it the devilish contrivance of the ‘non-believers’ with the aim of shattering the unity of the Ummah. The basis for such structures was found in the radical organization named The Muslim Brotherhood.(12) The CIA and the King of Saudi Arabia started financing that structure in 1956.”(13)
            The second very important event was the Iranian revolution in 1978-1979, which by many opinions represents a milestone and a key factor in the revival of Islam and its shaping into what it is today. Neither the members of secularist orientation, nor the Western elite could begin to presume the proportions that the Iranian Muslim revolution would attain. It looked impossible for the powerful and rich Iranian shah, with the support of his army and the West, to be dethroned. The leader of that popular revolution was Ruholah Homeini, then living in exile in France. The events that followed demonstrated, without any doubt, the spreading of militant Islam – Islamic fundamentalism. This revolution destroyed all hopes to modernize Islamic nations and their secularization. The revival of Islam was spreading and manifesting in its strongest, paradoxically, in countries, which were strong on the way of modernization and secularization. Piety grew in such proportions that there was a revival and a comeback of Sufism, their mysticism and asceticism.
            The next crucial event in developing today’s terrorist motives was the involvement of USSR in Afghanistan’s civil crisis in 1979, by military support of current Afghanistan government, loyal to the Soviets. That motivated the USA to become directly involved and to support the anti-regime side. Osama Bin Laden, one of the leaders of the “resistance”, was fully supported by his American ally, with the objective of creating irregular military forces necessary to topple the regime and banish the Russians. The liberation of Afghanistan in 1979, and the victory of Mujahedins in that jihad, supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, did not bring peace to that country. Centuries of schism and rivalry inside the religion, mostly between the Sunni and Shi’ite branches of Islam, diminished the importance of the defeat of the USSR, which left a vacuum in the governing of the nation, and political struggles ensued. After years of bloody civil war, a group of students of religious schools emerged – the Taliban – who dismissed all military leaders and did not promote any foreign interests. They represented the majority of the population, which has suffered in the conflict, and that gave them the right to moral leadership. In the beginning, the Taliban presented themselves as young students, without military experience, and with weak armed forces. However, later it turned out that they were a strong military force that took over the ruling of Afghanistan in 1998.(14)
            Although there are no official confirmations yet, the source of today’s bloody terrorism aimed at the West and at the USA at the foremost, lies in two versions of the events happening at that time. As we have already mentioned, one of them is that Osama Bin Laden, together with the Taliban in power, carried by the fruitful cooperation with the USA, counted after all those events on renewed support from his allies in his intentions to topple the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. The second version is that this shrewd leader of Al-Qaeda used the American disinterest in the Afghanistan case to strengthen the Taliban movement and take over the leadership, so that he could confront anyone who stood in his way of realizing “Ummah” without relying on the cooperation of the Americans. In any case, whichever of these two versions is true, Bin Laden and his collaborators found courage and rationality in armed opposition to such a great force and its allies in the perception of “cowardice” of the peoples of the Western countries, which he expressed on several occasions. “We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier who is ready to wage Cold Wars and unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia... The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers... After a few blows, they ran in defeat and America forgot...  about being the world leader, and the leader of the new world order. [They] left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat...”(15) Many analysts think that the terrorists tried, by way of the 9/11 attack, to bring the Western troops onto the Arabian soil. There they saw a possibility for an equal one-on-one fight, where Bin Laden’s “army” would cause definitive cease of foreign interventions by using public pressure in Western nations, which would much rather opt for the continuation of the good and safe way of life, than for war. Of course, besides this one, there exists a scenario which describes the USA themselves conducting this most spectacular attack in the history of terrorism onto their own cities, in order to justify their new armed intervention on Arab territories; however, conspiracy theories are not the subject of this paper.
Parallel to the Iranian revolution and the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, radical movements and organizations gained strength throughout Arabian countries. Those structures tried to forcefully topple the secular-oriented governments, with the objective of establishing Islamist states. In the late 1980’s Osama Bin Laden founded the terrorist network Al-Qaeda, with the objective of unification and coordination of the fundamentalist activities worldwide, their financing and support in all necessary ways.

Dr. Violeta Matovic

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