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Notes

Schon in diesen Jahren war es zu ersten Zerwürfnissen zwischen Fadl und al-Zawahari und bin Laden gekommen. Es ging um persönliche Rivalitäten, aber mehr und mehr distanzierte Fadl sich von der Art und Weise, wie AlQaida seinen Jihad führte. An den Anschlägen am 11. September 2001 war er schon nicht mehr persönlich beteiligt, sondern er erfuhr davon aus dem Radio.

Er ging in den Jemen, praktizierte als Arzt, wurde 2004 verhaftet und an Ägypten ausgeliefert. Im Gefängnis traf er auf Gefangene der einst von ihm geführten Al Jihad, die gerade im Begriff waren, der Gewalt abzuschwören und ein Friedensabkommen mit der ägyptischen Regierung zu schließen.

Fadl verschwand in den Innereien des ägyptischen Foltersystems und tauchte im November letzten Jahres mit einer neuen Schrift, Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World, die in zwei ägyptischen Zeitungen abgedruckt wurde, aus dem Gefängnis wieder zu Wort.

The premise that opens “Rationalizing Jihad” is “There is nothing that invokes the anger of God and His wrath like the unwarranted spilling of blood and wrecking of property.” Fadl then establishes a new set of rules for jihad, which essentially define most forms of terrorism as illegal under Islamic law and restrict the possibility of holy war to extremely rare circumstances. His argument may seem arcane, even to most Muslims, but to men who had risked their lives in order to carry out what they saw as the authentic precepts of their religion, every word assaulted their world view and brought into question their own chances for salvation.

In order to declare jihad, Fadl writes, certain requirements must be observed. One must have a place of refuge. There should be adequate financial resources to wage the campaign. Fadl castigates Muslims who resort to theft or kidnapping to finance jihad: “There is no such thing in Islam as ends justifying the means.” Family members must be provided for. “There are those who strike and then escape, leaving their families, dependents, and other Muslims to suffer the consequences,” Fadl points out. “This is in no way religion or jihad. It is not manliness.” Finally, the enemy should be properly identified in order to prevent harm to innocents. “Those who have not followed these principles have committed the gravest of sins,” Fadl writes.

To wage jihad, one must first gain permission from one’s parents and creditors. The potential warrior also needs the blessing of a qualified imam or sheikh; he can’t simply respond to the summons of a charismatic leader acting in the name of Islam. “Oh, you young people, do not be deceived by the heroes of the Internet, the leaders of the microphones, who are launching statements inciting the youth while living under the protection of intelligence services, or of a tribe, or in a distant cave or under political asylum in an infidel country,” Fadl warns. “They have thrown many others before you into the infernos, graves, and prisons.”

Das ist wohlgemerkt nicht die völlige Abkehr vom Jihad, aber die Voraussetzungen für einen „gerechten Kampf“ werden sehr eng gesteckt. Von einem der Chefideologen der Bewegung ist dies starker Tobak, der in der Szene für einige Aufregung sorgte.

AlQaida, „the heroes of the Internet … who live in a distant cave” befand sich plötzlich ideologisch in der Defensive. Al-Zawahari, der Fadl theologisch nicht das Wasser reichen kann, antwortete im März mit einem 200seitigen Brief.

Zawahiri claims that Fadl wrote his book “in the spirit of the Minister of the Interior.” He characterizes it as a desperate attempt by the enemies of Islam—America, the West, Jews, the apostate rulers of the Muslim world—to “stand in the way of the fierce wave of jihadi revivalism that is shaking the Islamic world.” Mistakes have been made, he concedes. “I neither condone the killing of innocent people nor claim that jihad is free of error,” he writes. “Muslim leaders during the time of the Prophet made mistakes, but the jihad did not stop. . . . I’m warning those Islamist groups who welcome the document that they are giving the government the knife with which it can slaughter them.”

Wright glaubt feststellen zu können, dass Fadl die Oberhand in dieser Kontroverse behalten hat, zumal die Kritik zu einem Zeitpunkt komme, wo sich mehr und mehr enttäuschte Anhänger fragen, was AlQaida mit all dem Blutvergießen bislang eigentlich erreicht habe.

Even if Fadl’s rhetoric strikes some readers as questionable, Al Qaeda’s sophistry is rudely displayed for everyone to see. Although it will likely continue as a terrorist group, who could still take it seriously as a philosophy?

Die Nachricht vom Tode AlQaidas hält Wright allerdings für verfrüht.

For the dreamers who long to institute God’s justice on earth, Fadl’s revisions represent a substantial moral challenge. But for the young nihilists who are joining the Al Qaeda movement for their own reasons—revenge, boredom, or a desire for adventure—the quarrels of the philosophers will have little meaning.

Es gibt allerdings nicht nur Dr. Fadl.

In einem nicht ganz so langen Artikel, der ebenfalls in dieser Woche in The New Republic erschienen ist, stellen Peter Bergen und Paul Cruickshank den Libyer Noman Benotman vor. Er war einst der Führer der Libyan Islamic Fighting Group und besaß enge Beziehungen zu AlQaida, bin Laden und Zawahiri.

Schon früh aber hielt er den Jihad in der Form, in der er von AlQaida und anderen terroristischen Organisationen geführt wurde, für gescheitert.

“I told them that the jihadist movement had failed. That we had gone from one disaster to another, like in Algeria, because we had not mobilized the people,” recalls Benotman, referring to the Algerian civil war launched by jihadists in the ’90s that left more than 100,000 dead and destroyed whatever local support the militants had once enjoyed. Benotman also told bin Laden that the Al Qaeda leader’s decision to target the United States would only sabotage attempts by groups like Benotman’s to overthrow the secular dictatorships in the Arab world. “We made a clear-cut request for him to stop his campaign against the United States because it was going to lead to nowhere,” Benotman recalls, “but they laughed when I told them that America would attack the whole region if they launched another attack against it.”

Benotman hat sich heute mit dem libyischen Regime ausgesöhnt, fliegt in Privatflugzeugen der libyischen Regierung und lebt in London. Im November letzten Jahres schrieb er einen Brief an Zawahiri, in dem er AlQaidas Terrorstrategie in den arabischen wie in den westlichen Ländern kritisierte.

London mit seiner hohen Zahl an Einwanderern aus islamischen Ländern scheint sich zu einem der Zentren der Kritik an AlQaida zu entwickeln. Unter den dortigen Klerikern wächst – so die beiden Autoren – der Unmut über das Blutvergiessen, das keiner erkennbaren Strategie zu dienen scheint und außer vielen Toten kein sichtbares Ergebnis vorzuweisen hat.

Why have clerics and militants once considered allies by Al Qaeda’s leaders turned against them? To a large extent, it is because Al Qaeda and its affiliates have increasingly adopted the doctrine of takfir, by which they claim the right to decide who is a “true” Muslim. Al Qaeda’s Muslim critics know what results from this takfiri view: First, the radicals deem some Muslims apostates; after that, the radicals start killing them. This fatal progression happened in both Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s. It is now taking place even more dramatically in Iraq, where Al Qaeda’s suicide bombers have killed more than 10,000 Iraqis, most of them targeted simply for being Shia. Recently, Al Qaeda in Iraq has turned its fire on Sunnis who oppose its diktats, a fact not lost on the Islamic world’s Sunni majority.

Additionally, Al Qaeda and its affiliates have killed thousands of Muslim civilians elsewhere since September 11: hundreds of ordinary Afghans killed every year by the Taliban, dozens of Saudis killed by terrorists since 2003, scores of Jordanians massacred at a wedding at a U.S. hotel in Amman in November 2005. Even those sympathetic to Al Qaeda have started to notice. “Excuse me Mr. Zawahiri but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency’s blessing, the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria?” one supporter asked in an online Q&A with Al Qaeda’s deputy leader in April that was posted widely on jihadist websites. All this has created a dawning recognition among Muslims that the ideological virus that unleashed September 11 and the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid is the same virus now wreaking havoc in the Muslim world.

Bergen / Cruickshank sind in ihrer Einschätzung, wie weit AlQaida ideologisch in die Defensive geraten ist, optimistischer als Wright im New Yorker. Sie zitieren Meinungsumfragen.

According to Pew polls, support for Al Qaeda has been dropping around the Muslim world in recent years. The numbers supporting suicide bombings in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, for instance, have dropped by half or more in the last five years. In Saudi Arabia, only 10 percent now have a favorable view of Al Qaeda, according to a December poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank. Following a wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan in the past year, support for suicide operations amongst Pakistanis has dropped to 9 percent (it was 33 percent five years ago), while favorable views of bin Laden in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, around where he is believed to be hiding, have plummeted to 4 percent from 70 percent since August 2007.

Ein Zersetzungsprozess habe begonnen, so ihre Einschätzung, der für AlQaida deshalb so bedrohlich geworden sei, weil er nicht von außerhalb geführt werde, sondern aus den Reihen derer komme, die selbst anti-westliche Haltungen vertreten. Dies mache ihre Positionen vor allem unter den Jugendlichen, den potentiellen Rekruten für AlQaida um so glaubwürdiger.

Nachtrag 16. Juni: die aktuelle Ausgabe der schweizer Weltwoche veröffentlicht ein längeres Interview mit Lawrence Wright zum Thema