Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif renounces the murder of civilians and choosing targets based on religion or nationality
Defusing Jihad from within
Could it be that the end of Islamist violence will be brought about by Jihadists themselves?
Jul 21, 2007 04:30 AM Sarah Barmak Special to the Star
After collectively wringing our hands for years over how many hearts, minds and billions of dollars it will take to win the global war on terror, the secret weapon needed to fight the terrorists might just turn out to be the terrorists themselves.
Revelations surfaced last week that one of Islamic Jihad's former top leaders is planning to renounce the extremes that define the movement, including the murder of civilians and choosing targets based on their religion or nationality. Such a retraction could puncture a huge hole in the fabric of the ideology of radical Islam, experts say. It could also trickle down to mosques and madrassas in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where terrorist doctrine often incubates.
Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a former associate of Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al Zawahiri whose writings provided much of the religious and intellectual foundation for that group, was reported in a Washington Post article to be authoring his retraction in the underground Egyptian prison where he has been held for much of the last decade.
As militant followers of el-Sherif begin to fall in line behind his so-called "revision" before it has even been penned, a long-neglected and complex aspect of the history of the jihadist movement is beginning to come to light. It shows that the surface of Islamic insurgency is anything but uniform: It contains cracks and fissures, with both moderate and extreme factions vying for supremacy.
Paradoxically, it would seem that violent jihadists can occasionally preach restraint more effectively than their Western critics, since terrorists would be more receptive to messages from their own than from outsiders.
Professor Fawaz A. Gerges, a Middle East scholar at New York's Sarah Lawrence College who has written two books dealing with what he calls the "civil war" within radical Islam, has long argued that such rifts within terrorist groups are nothing new. He also claims they may represent a great opportunity for the West.
"Since 2001, if we had looked closely at the debates ... we would have realized that the overwhelming number of (militants) not only stayed on the sidelines, but vehemently criticized Al Qaeda and 9/11," says Gerges, who is in New York briefly after having spent a year in the Middle East interviewing Islamic insurgents.
According to Gerges, the Western media's "Al Qaeda-centric" approach of lumping all Middle Eastern radicalism together is misleading. In actuality, he says, the creation of Al Qaeda in the mid-1990s created a rift among extremists. Al Qaeda was a small, elitist, fringe group interested in attacking what they called "the far enemy," or the U.S. This was preposterous to most militant Islamist organizations, which concentrated on "the near enemy" – local Muslim and Arab governments.
For Gerges, revisions such as el-Sherif's allow governments to learn key information about how terrorist cells work – and how their points of weakness may be exploited. Not all observers are as optimistic.
"I share Fawaz's position in general," comments Jens Hanssen, who teaches Middle Eastern history at the University of Toronto. "The questions are to what extent these revisions occurred under torture and how irreversible they are."
Hanssen pointed to the practice of taqqiye in Islamic history, which allows Muslims to lie under duress and retract statements later – although such a loophole has normally been associated with Shiites. El-Sherif's credentials are "as `Sunnist' as they get," he says.
Gerges says that misses the larger point. "The question really is, can Islamist movements transform themselves...can they be integrated into the political process? Do we have historical examples (of this)? I think we do."
Indeed, the list of extremists who have later become advocates of moderation – even mainstream leaders – is a long one, including prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners and other influential world leaders (see factbox).
In every historical case of an extremist's jump to moderation, however, critics will always remain to doggedly remember the bad old days. Gerges remains optimistic that the best source of moderation may be within the lunatic fringe.
"Let's capitalize on those revisions," says Gerges. "We should really build alliances with the same people who renounce violence and see whether they are genuine."
posted by jp at 3/18/2008 12:24:00 AM
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