Background: The Salafyah trend of Islam, published as The Heritage of the Sunni Militant Groups - An Islamic Internacionale? by Reuven Paz (January 4, 2000)
In May 1998 a group of 5 men was arrested in Amman, Jordan. They belonged to a new Islamist group, known as "Harakat al-Islah wal-Tahaddi" (The movement of reform and challenge), composed of 12 individuals. They had planted explosives in several places in Amman: the kindergarten of the American school; the Highway Patrol Headquarters; a vehicle owned by Member of Parliament and former director of General Intelligence Muhammad Rasul al-Kaylani; and a vehicle parked in the garage of the Jerusalem International Hotel. The hotel was apparently chosen due its being the site of a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the independence of Israel held by the Israeli embassy.
The leader of the group (Amir) was `Abd al-Nasir Shehadah. Other members were Samir Muhammad, a chemical engineer, Ra`ed Kafafi, `Abd al-Naser Abu Shanab (an Egyptian citizen residing and married in Amman), Muhammad Sa`id (the religious leader of the group), Ramzi al-Sa`adeh (their driver), Khaled al-`Aruri (former administrative employee in the Jordanian Army), Mahmud Stayti and Samir Sa`id.
The targets for the bombings were chosen by Omar Mahmud Abu Omar (Abu Qatadah) from his residency in London, who relayed his orders to the group by phone. The name of the group was taken from a book written by Abu Omar before he left Jordan for the UK. The book was "Between two Methods" (Bayn al-Manhajayn).
According to Jordanian press, the financier of the group was Majid Tal`at, who has an American passport. He also gave the group members religious courses in the ideology of the Salafiyyah trend. They were also influenced by the Palestinian-Jordanian Islamist ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdasi, currently imprisoned in Jordan.
This incident was indicative of a new phenomenon in the Islamic world, the spread of the Salafist trend. The 1990s saw a process of reinforcement of the links between the different Islamist groups developed under the influence of the Salafiyyah trend, sometimes called Neo-Wahhabiyyah. Their main ideological principle is the Takfir—the perception of the secular Muslim society as heretical, with the majority of the blame placed on the rulers of the Arabic and Islamic States. As such these secular governments were singled out as the target of a permanent Jihad.
The Salafiyyah trend was dissiminated in the Arab World during the 1950s by the Saudi religious establishment, in an effort to spread the Wahhabi principles. Its main ideology is based on the Kharijite movement at the early history of Islam, on the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah of the 13-14th centuries and Muhammad Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab of the 18th century. Its organizational principles are those of the Saudi Ikhwan movement (not the Muslim Brotherhood)—a movement of radically extremist settlers who were sent in the 1920s and 1930s by the Saudis to found settlements on the Saudi borders. Ironically they subsequently became a real danger for the Saudi regime.
The Saudi regime and its financiers, along with private financing by Saudi and some Kuwaiti individuals, at first encouraged these efforts for political reasons. But the ideas of this trend outside of the Saudi State took on a much more extremist nature due to the fact that the Saudi Kingdom was regarded as an Islamic State, while the other Arab States and societies were seen as heretics.
The country in which this effort acheived its greatest success was Egypt, during the struggle of the Muslim Brotherhood against the Nasserist regime in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the Brotherhood leaders found refuge in Saudi Arabia or recieved Saudi assistance in other Arab States. This led them to adopt the Salafi/Wahhabi ideas in their more extremist commentaries. Others while serving out sentences in Egyptian jails were encouraged by the teachings of Sayyid Qutb, the ideological father of the Jihadi current in Egypt and other Arab States, who legitimized the Jihad against Arab rulers.
From that point there developed two Takfir trends:
* The Islamic Jihad groups: the Egyptian Jihad of Sheikh Omar `Abd al- Rahman, and later the various groups of Al-Gama`at al- Islamiyyah; the different groups of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, mainly that of Sheikh As`ad Bayoud al-Tamimi, as opposed to the Shqaqi faction which was primarily affiliated with the Islamic revolution in Iran; Al-Tali`ah al-Islamiyyah in Syria; Al-Tawhid group in Tripoli, Lebanon; Al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah in Saida, Lebanon; the various Afghan Mujahidin groups (under the ideological guidance of the Palestinian Dr. `Abdallah `Azzam); and several other small groups in the Arab World and Pakistan.* The Takfir groups: mainly the Egyptian group, Jama`t al-Muslimin, whose popular name is Al-Takfir wal-Hijrah (this name was given to them by the Egyptian authorities, based upon their ideology, and is now better known than their official name). The group first came to light in 1978 when they kidnapped and murdered the Egyptian Minister of Endowments Hasan al-Dhahbi. They had adopted the Saudi Ikhwan ideas in all their extremism, including the idea of settling in the desert to found a pure Islamic society (Hijrah). However their main influence was in spreading the idea of Takfir in its full sense. After their discovery and trials, with all but a small group in jail, they lost their ability to act as an organized group in Egypt, and were "inherited" by the rising influence of the Egyptian Jihad groups. The following are some of the offshoots of the Takfir trend:
Egyptian Salafist groups - One of the groups composed of the remaining Egyptian Takfir members was Al-Najoun min al-Nar (Survivors of the Fire/Hell) who were active in Bosnia and later in Albania. A small group of their Palestinian followers still exists in the Gaza Strip. The author interviewed their leader in Gaza in 1987, and found him very cooperative, since they see their main enemy as being the secular Arab regimes rather than Israel. They took no part in the Palestinian Uprising and maintain no links to Hamas nor to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which on their part view them as a deviatiant Islamic trend.
The Jordanian Takfir - Other Salafiyyah groups have spread to Jordan and the Palestinian society in the Territories, under Saudi guidance and financial aid. In the Gaza Strip they existed until 1986, when they dissolved and merged into the developing groups of the Islamic Jihad. In Jordan they forced to stay on the move due to their terrorist activity and the opposition of the authorities. During periods of imprisonment they were involved with members of Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (The Islamic Liberation Party), another Palestinian/Jordanian illegal militant group which has a different ideology and occupies a different position on the "Islamist map," but which has carried out a good deal of terrorist activity in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon and Uzbekistan. The Party has also a strong, but so far non-violent base in the West Bank. The Salafiyyah in Jordan was the initiator of the Jordanian Takfir, which in the recent years has developed a large following, composed of several groups of people of different nationalities, mainly Egyptians. In April 1996, for instance, the Egyptian authorities demanded that the Jordanians to extradite 57 fugitive members of the Egyptian Takfir group.
The Pakistani Militants and Osama bin Ladin - Other groups of the Takfir current are the Pakistani Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM) who are responsible for the hijacking of the Indian plane last week, and the CDLR (The Committee for the Defense of Legal Rights in Saudi Arabia) which is the political wing of the Saudi Islamist opponents of the Saudi royal regime. Their military wing is probably the Al-Qa`idah al-Sulbah (The solid Base) of Osamah bin Ladin, which is ideologically based upon the ideas of Dr. `Abdallah `Azzam, and whose name was taken from his writings.
The Algerian Armed Islamic Group - Based upon their ideology, the Algerian GIA (Groupe Islamique Armee in French, or Armed Islamic Group) can also be regarded as a Takfir group. Furthermore, nine members of this group, specialists in smuggling of weapons and false identity documents, were arrested in Northern Italy in May 1998, in connection with the Soccer World Cup in France that summer. According to Italian police sources, they belonged to the Takfir group active in Europe, especially in France and Germany.
Yemeni Islamic militants - Another group is probably the Islah gin the Yemen, whose European base is in London under the name of Ansar al-Shari`ah (Supporters of Shari`ah) and the command of the Egyptian Abu Hamzah al-Masri. The group in London politically cooperates with a group named Al-Muhajirun (The Immigrants) that had been founded as a consequence of a split in the Tahrir Party in London, under the command of Sheikh Omar Muhammad al-Bakri.
The meeting point of the two trends during the 1980s and mainly the 1990s, was primarily Afghanistan, and secondly the violent disputes in Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya and Daghestan. It seems that there were movements of activists from group to group accompanied by a developing cooperation between the various groups affiliated with the two trends. One of the consequences of the influence of the Takfir ideology on the Egyptian Jihad group was the anti-American extremism that led them to carry out the bombing in The World Center in NY and several other bombing attempts in the United States. Up to the early 1990s, the Egyptian Jihad had made no move to carry out terrorist operations outside of Egypt, not even against Egyptian targets abroad.
It seems that under the Afghani influence (not necessarily the Taliban) a "brotherhood of the persecuted" has developed among all these groups, which led to cooperation and mutual assistance, with or without the help of bin Ladin and his financial sources. One of the main influences of this cooperation was probably the spread of the ideas of the Takfir groups to the Jihad groups, and the use of the term Takfir in recent years together with the term Jihad, especially in regard to the struggle in the Arab World against those rulers who are perceived by them as collaborators with the "Western Infidel culture."
Posted on 17 April 2005 @ 08:14