Islamism, Fascism and Terrorism by Marc Rikson [Asia Times Online]

8/10/2019 Islamism, Fascism and Terrorism by Marc Rikson [Asia Times Online]

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Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 1)

By Marc Erikson

[Editor'snote: As distinct from the world religion of

Islam, Islamism as in part contextually defined

below is a political ideology that adherents would

apply to contemporary governance and politics, and

which they propagate through political and social

activism.]

On November 7, 2001, on the request of the US

government, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor'sOffice

froze the bank accounts of Nada Management, a

Luganobased financial services and consulting firm,

and ordered a search and seizure raid on the firm's

offices. Police pulled in several of the company's

principals for questioning. Nada Management, part

of the international alTaqwa ("fear of God") group, is

accused by US Treasury Department investigators

of having acted for years as advisers and a funding

conduit for Osama bin Laden'sal-Qaeda.

Among those interrogated by police was a certain

Albert Friedrich Armand (aka Ahmed) Huber, 74, a


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Swiss convert to Islam and retired journalist who sits

on the Nada board of directors. Nothing too unusual

perhaps, except for the fact that Huber is also a

highprofile neo-Nazi who tirelessly travels the far-

right circuit in Europe and the United States. He

sees himself as a mediator between radical Islam

and what he calls the New Right. Since September

11, a picture of Osama bin Laden hangs next to one

of Adolf Hitler on the wall of his study in Muri justoutside the Swiss capital of Bern. September 11,

says Huber, brought the radical Islam-New Right

alliance together.

On that, as his own career amply demonstrates, he

is largely wrong. Last year'shorrific terrorist actswere gleefully celebrated by lslamists and neoNazis

alike (Huber boozed it up with young followers in a

Bern bar) and may have produced closer links. But

lslamism and fascism have a long, over 80-year

history of collaboration based on shared ideas,

practices and perceived common enemies. Theyabhor "Western decadence" (political liberalism,

capitalism), fight holy wars - if needs be suicidal

ones by indiscriminate means, and are bent on the


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destruction of the Jews and of America and its

allies.

Horst Mahler once a lawyer for, later a member of,

the 1960s/'70sGerman u|tra|eft terrorist Baader

Meinhof gang, and now a leading neo-Nazi

summed up convergent radical Islamic and far-right

views and hopes in a September 21, 2001 letter:

"The USA or, to be more exact, the World Police-

has shown itself to be vulnerable The foreseeable

reaction of the East Coast [= the Jewish controllers

and their gentile allies = the US Establishment] can

be the spark that falls into a powder keg. For

decades, the jihad the Holy War - has been the

agenda of the Islamic world against the Westernvalue system.This time it could break out in earnest

It would be world war, that is won with the

dagger The AngloAmerican and European

employees of the global players,dispersed

throughout the entire world, are as Osama bin

Laden proclaimed a long while ago - military targets.These would be attacked by dagger, where they

least expected an attack. Only a few need be

liquidated in this manner; the survivors will run off


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like hares into their respective home countries,

where they belong."

Such convergence of views, methods and goals

goes back to the 1920s when both Islamism and

fascism, ideologically preshaped in the late 19th

century, emerged as organized political movements

with the ultimate aim of seizing state power and

imposing their ideological and social policy precepts(in which aims fascism, of course, succeeded in the

early '20sand '30sin Italy and Germany,

respectively; Islamism only in 1979 in Iran; then in

Sudan and Afghanistan). Both movements claim to

be the true representatives of some arcane,

idealized religious or ethnically pure communities ofdays long past in the case of Islamism, the period

of the four "righteous ca|iphs" (632-662), notably the

rule of Umar bin al-Khattab (634-44) which allegedly

exemplifies "din wa daw|a", the unity of religion and

state; in the case of the Nazis, the even more

obscure Aryan "Volksgemeinschaft", with nohistorical reference point at all. But both are in reality

as historian Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle

East Forum, puts it - 20th century outgrowths,


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radical movements, utopian and totalitarian in their

outlook. The Iranian scholars Ladan and Roya

Boroumand have made the same point.

The Nazi ("national socialist") movement was formed

in reaction to the World War I destruction of the

"Second Reich", the "unequal and treasonous"

Versailles Treaty and the mass social dislocation

that followed, its racialist, corporatist ideology laidout in Hit|er'sMeinKampf (My Struggle). The Muslim

Brotherhood (Al lkhwan Al Muslimun), parent

organization of numerous lslamist terrorist outfits,

was formed in 1928 in reaction to the 1924 abolition

of the caliphate by Turkish reformer Kemal Ataturk,

drawing the consequences of the World War Idemise of the Ottoman Empire. lkhwan founder

Hassan alBanna, an Egyptian school teacher, wrote

at the time that it was endless contemplation of "the

sickness that has reduced the ummah (Muslim

community) to its present state" which prompted him

and five like-minded followers - all of them in their

early twenties to set up the organization to rectify

it.


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Fascist Nazi history need not be dwelt on further

here. It led to the horrors and destruction of World

War II and the Holocaust. NeoNazism, whether in

Europe or the US, remains a terrorist threat and - as

the French Le Pen version demonstrated in

parliamentary elections this year retains a measure

of political clout. It is nonetheless a boxedin niche

force with little capability for breakout. Its ideological

twin, lslamism, by sharp contrast, has every chancefor wreaking escalating worldwide havoc based on

its fastgrowing influence among the world'smore

than one billion Muslims. Immediately following

September 11 last year, US President George W

Bush declared war on terrorism. It'sa catchy phrase,

but a serious misnomer all the same. Terrorism is a

method of warfare, not the enemy. The enemy is

lslamism.

Al-Banna'sbrotherhood, initially limiting itself to

spiritual and moral reform, grew at astonishing

speed in the 1930s and '40safter embracing widerpolitical goals and by the end of World War II had

around 500,000 members in Egypt alone and

branches throughout the Middle East. Event


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background, ideology, and method of organizing all

account for its improbable success. As the war drew

to a close, the time was ripe for an end to British and

French colonial rule and the lkhwan was ready with

the persuasive, religious|ybuttressed answer: Free

the Islamic homeland from foreign, infidel (kafir)

control; establish a unified Islamic state. And al-

Banna had built a formidable organization to

accomplish just that: it featured sophisticatedgovernance structures, sections in charge of

different segments of society (peasants, workers,

professionals), units entrusted with key functions

(propaganda, press relations, translation, liaison with

the Islamic world), and specialized committees for

finances and legal affairs all built on existing socialnetworks, in particular those around mosques and

Islamic welfare associations. Weaving of traditional

ties into a distinctly modern political structure was at

the root of alBanna'ssuccess.

But the "Supreme Guide" of the brethren knew thatfaith, good works and numbers alone do not a

political victory make. Thus, modeled on Mussolini's

blackshirts (al-Banna much admired "|| Duce" and


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soul brother "Fuehrer" Adolf Hitler), he set up a

paramilitary wing (slogan: "action, obedience,

silence", quite superior to the b|ackshirts'"believe,

obey, fight") and a "secret apparatus" (al-jihaz al-

sirri) and intelligence arm of allkhwan to handle the

dirtier side terrorist attacks, assassinations, and so

on of the struggle for power.

In 1948, after the brotherhood had played a pivotalrole in mobilizing volunteers to fight in the war

against "the Zionists" in Palestine to prevent

establishment of a Jewish state, it considered itself

to have the credibility, political clout, and military

might to launch a coup d'etatagainst the Egyptian

monarchy. But that wasn'tto be. On December 8,1948, a watchful Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha

disbanded it. He wasn'twatchful enough. Less than

three weeks later, the brethren retaliated by

assassinating the prime minister in turn prompting

the assassination of al-Banna by government agents

on February 12, 1949.

That didn'tend it. Under a new, more radical leader,

Sayyid Qutb, the allkhwan fight for state power


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continued and escalated. A mid1960s recruit was

Ayman al-Zawahiri, present number two man of al-

Qaeda and the brains of the organization.

(@2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All rights

reserved. Please contact [email protected] for

information on our sales and syndication policies.)

Next, Part 2: The World War II Nazi connections ofthe Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological precursors

of lslamism, and its presentday exponents and

financiers.

lslamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 2)

By Marc Erikson

lslamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 1) iirtaizr

mm

Osama bin Laden has the money, proven

organizational skills, combat experience, and the

charisma that can confer the air of wisdom and

profundity even on inchoate or trivial utterances and

let what'sunfathomable appear to be deep in the

eyes of his followers. But he'sno intellectual. The


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brains of al-Qaeda and its chief ideologue by most

accounts is Egyptian physician Ayman alZawahiri,

51, the organization'snumber two man and former

head of the Egyptian al-Jihad, which was merged

with bin Laden'soutfit in February 1998 to form the

"|nternationa| Front for Fighting Jews and

Crusaders".

A|Zawahiri hails from an elite Egyptian family. Hisfather was a professor at Cairo University'smedical

school from which Ayman graduated in 1974. His

paternal grandfather was the Grand Imam at the al-

Azhar Institute, Sunni Islam'sparamount seat of

learning. His greatuncle, Abdel-Rahman Azzam,

was the first secretarygeneral of the Arab League.

Such family background notwithstanding, perhaps

because of it, a|Zawahiri joined the radical lslamist

Muslim Brotherhood (al-lkhwan al-Muslimun) as a

young boy and was for the first time arrested in 1966

at age 15, when the secular government ofPresident Gamal Abdel Nasser rounded up

thousands of al-lkhwan members and executed its

top leaders in retribution for repeated assassination


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attempts on the president. One of those executed by

hanging was chief ideologue Sayyid Qutb. Al-

Zawahiri is Qutb'sintellectual heir; he has further

developed his message, and is putting it into

practise.

But without Qutb, present-day lslamism as a noxious

amalgam of fascist totalitarianism and extremes of

Islamic fundamentalism would not exist. His principal"accomplishment" was to articulate the social and

political practices of the Muslim Brotherhood from

the 1930s through the 1950s including

collaboration with fascist regimes and organizations,

involvement in anti-colonial, antiWestern and anti-

Israeli actions, and the struggle for state power inEgypt - in demagogically persuasive fashion,

buttressed by tendentious references to Islamic law

and scriptures to deceive the faithful. Qutb, a one-

time literary critic, was not a religious fundamentalist,

but a Goebbels-style propagandist for a new

totalitarianism to stand sidebyside with fascism andcommunism.

Hitler'searly 1933 accession to power in Germany


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was widely cheered by Arabs of all different political

persuasions. When the "Third Reich" spook and

horrors were over 12 years later, a favorite excuse

among those who felt the need for one was that the

Nazis had been allies against the colonial

oppressors and "Zionist intruders". Many felt no

need for an excuse at all and simply bemoaned the

fact that the Nazis "final solution" to the "Jewish

problem" had not proved final enough. But affinitieswith fascism on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood

and other segments of Arab and Muslim society

went much deeper than collaboration with the

enemy of one'senemies, and collaboration itself

took some extreme forms.

Substitute religious for racial purity, the

idealized ummah of the rule of the four righteous

caliphs of the mid7th century for the mythical Aryan

"Volksgemeinschaft", and most ideological and

organizational precepts of Nazism laid out by chief

theoretician Alfred Rosenberg in his work The Mythof the 20th Century and by Adolf Hitler in Mein

Kampf, and later put into practice, are in all essential

respects identical to the precepts of the Muslim


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Brotherhood after its initial phase as a group

promoting spiritual and moral reform. This ranges

from radical rejection of "decadent" Western political

and economic liberalism (instead embracing the

"leadership principle" and corporatist organization of

the economy) to endorsement of the use of terror

and assassinations to seize and hold state power,

and all the way to concoction of fantastical anti-

Semitic conspiracy theories linking internationalplutocratic finance to Freemasonry, Zionism and all-

encompassing Jewish world control.

Not surprisingly then, as Italian and German fascism

sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the

1930s and '40sto counter British and French

controlling power, close collaboration between

fascist agents and lslamist leaders ensued. During

the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,

head of German military intelligence, sent agents

and money to support the Palestine uprising against

the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and

"supreme guide" Hassan al-Banna. A key individual

in the fascist|s|amist nexus and gobetween for the

Nazis and a|Banna became the Grand Mufti of


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Jerusalem, Haj Amin elHusseini - incidentally the

later mentor (from 1946 onward) of a young

firebrand by the name of Yasser Arafat.

Having fled from Palestine to Iraq, elHusseini

assisted there in the short-lived April 1941 Nazi-

inspired and financed antiBritish coup. By June

1941, British forces had reasserted control in

Baghdad and the mufti was on the run again, thistime via Tehran and Rome to Berlin, to a hero's

welcome. He remained in Germany as an honored

guest and valuable intelligence and propaganda

asset through most of the war, met with Hitler on

several occasions, and personally recruited leading

members of the Bosnian-Muslim "Hanjar" (saber)division of the Waffen SS.

Another valued World War II Nazi collaborator was

Youssef Nada, current board chairman of al-Taqwa

(Nada Management), the Lugano, Switzerland,

Liechtenstein, and Bahamasbased financial

services outfit accused by the US Treasury

Department of money laundering for and financing of

Osama bin Laden'sal-Qaeda. As a young man, he


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had joined the armed branch of the "secret

apparatus" (al-jihaz al-sirri) of the Muslim

Brotherhood and then was recruited by German

military intelligence. When Grand Mufti el-Husseini

had to flee Germany in 1945 as the Nazi defeat

loomed, Nada reportedly was instrumental in

arranging the escape via Switzerland back to Egypt

and eventually Palestine, where el-Husseini

resurfaced in 1946.

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information on our sales and syndication policies.)

Next, Part 3: The Muslim Brotherhood, Nasser andSadat, and the reshaping of Brotherhood lslamism

into its present form by Sayyid Qutb.


By Marc Erikson




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Islamism, or fascism with an Islamic face, was born

with and of the Muslim Brotherhood. It proved (and

improved) its fascist core convictions and practices

through collaboration with the Nazis in the runup to

and during World War II. It proved it during the same

period through its collaboration with the overtly

fascist "Young Egypt" (Misr al-Fatah) movement,

founded in October 1933 by lawyer Ahmed Hussein

and modeled directly on the Hitler party, completewith paramilitary Green Shirts aping the Nazi Brown

Shirts, Nazi salute and literal translations of Nazi

slogans. Among its members, Young Egypt counted

two promising youngsters and later presidents,

Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar E|Sadat.

In later years, the Brotherhood had serious failings-

out with Nasser, whom it attempted to assassinate

on several different occasions, and with Sadat,

whom it did assassinate in 1981. But up until at least

the time of Nasser's1952 coup d'etat,all was

sweetness and light between Hassan alBanna'sbrethren and Nasser's"free officers". In his personal

diary, Sadat wrote in the summer of 1940:


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"One day I invited Hassan alBanna, leader of the

Muslim Brotherhood, to the army camp where I

served, in the Egyptian Communication Corps, so

that he might lecture before my soldiers on various

religious topics. A few days before his scheduled

appearance it was reported to me from army

Intelligence that his coming was forbidden and

canceled by the order of General Headquarters, and

I myself was summoned for interrogation. After ashort while I went secretly to El Bana'soffice and

participated in a few seminars he organized. I like

the man and admired him."

Whether al-Banna, who had already been in contact

with German agents since the 1936-39 Palestineuprising against the British, or someone else

introduced Sadat and his free officer comrades to

German military intelligence is not known. But in the

summer of 1942, when Rommel'sAfrikakorps stood

just over 100 kilometers from Alexandria and were

poised to march into Cairo, Sadat, Nasser and theirbuddies were in close touch with the German

attacking force and - with Brotherhood help

preparing an anti-British uprising in Egypt'scapital. A


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treaty with Germany including provisions for German

recognition of an independent, but proAxis Egypt

had been drafted by Sadat, guaranteeing that "no

British soldier would leave Cairo alive". When

Rommel'spush east failed at El Alamein in the fall of

1942, Sadat and several of his coconspirators were

arrested by the British and sat out much of the

remainder of the war in jail.

lslamistfascist collaboration did not cease with war's

end. King Farouk brought large numbers of German

military and intelligence personnel as well as ranking

(ex-) Nazis into Egypt as advisors. It was a bad

move. Several of the Germans, recognizing Farouk's

political weakness, soon began conspiring withNasser and his free officers (who, in turn, were

working closely with the Brotherhood) to overthrow

the king. On July 23, 1952, the deed was done and

Newsweek marveled that, "The most intriguing

aspect [of] the revolt was the role played in the

coup by the large group of German advisors servingwith the Egyptian army The young officers who

did the actual planning consulted the German

advisors as to 'tactics'This accounted for the


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smoothness of the operation."

And yet another player fond of playing all sides

against the middle had entered the game prior to

Farouk'souster: In 1951, the CIA'sKermit Roosevelt

(grandson of president Teddy, who in 1953 would

organize the overthrow of elected Iranian leader

Mohammed Mossadegh and install Reza Pahlavi as

Shah) opened secret negotiations with Nasser.Agreement was soon reached that the US, post-

coup, would assist in building up Egypt'sintelligence

and security forces in the obvious manner, by

reinforcing Nasser'sexisting Germans with

additional, "more capable", ones. For that, CIA head

Allen Dulles turned to Reinhard Gehlen, one-timehead of eastern front German military intelligence

and by the early 1950s in charge of developing a

new German foreign intelligence service. Gehlen

hired the best man he knew for the job former SS

colonel Otto Skorzeny, who at the end of the war

had organized the infamous ODESSA network tofacilitate the escape of high-ranking Nazis to Latin

America (mainly Peron'sArgentina) and Egypt. With

Skorzeny now on the job of assisting Nasser, Egypt


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became a safe haven for Nazi war criminals galore.

The CIA officer in charge of the Egypt assistance

program was Miles Copeland, soon a Nasser

intimate.

And then things got truly complicated and messy.

Having played a large role in Nasser'spower grab,

the Muslim Brotherhood, after the 1949

assassination of Hassan al-Banna by governmentagents [see part 1] under new leadership and (since

1951) under the radical ideological guidance of

Sayyid Qutb, demanded its due - imposition of

Sharia (Islamic religious) law. When Nasser

demurred, he became a Brotherhood assassination

target, but with CIA and the German mercenarieshelp he prevailed. In February 1954, the

Brotherhood was banned. An October 1954

assassination attempt failed. Four thousand brothers

were arrested, six were executed, and thousands

fled to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon.

Within short order, things got more tangled still: As

Nasser in his brewing fight with Britain and France

over control of the Suez Canal turned to the Soviet


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Union for assistance and arms purchases, the CIA

approached and began collaboration with the

Brotherhood against their exally, the now proSoviet

Nasser.

We leave that twisted tale at this stage. A leading

Brotherhood member arrested in 1954 was Sayyid

Qutb. He spent the next 10 years in Jarah prison

near Cairo and there wrote the tracts thatsubsequently became (and till this day remain)

mustreading and guidance for lslamists

everywhere. (The main translations into Farsi were

made by the Rahbar of the Islamic Republic of Iran,

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.) But while brother number

one went to jail, other leading members who hadescaped were given jobs in Saudi universities and

provided with royal funding. They included Sayyid's

brother Muhammad and Abdullah al-Azzam, the

radical Palestinian preacher (the "Emir of Jihad")

who later in Peshawar, Pakistan, founded the

Maktab a|Khidamat, or Office of Services, which

became the core of the al-Qaeda network. As a

student at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah,

Osama bin Laden, son of Muhammad bin Laden, the


22/34

kingdom'swealthiest contractor and close friend of

King Faisal, became a disciple of Muhammad Qutb

and al-Azzam.

Sayyid Qutb was born in 1906 in a small village in

Upper Egypt, was educated at a secular college,

and subsequently worked as an inspector of schools

for the ministry of education. In the 1930s and

1940s, nothing pointed to his later role. He wroteliterary criticism, hung out in coffee houses, and

published a novel which flopped. His conversion to

radical Islam came during twoandahalf years of

graduate studies in education in the United States

(1948-51). He came to hate everything American,

described churches as "entertainment centers and

sexual playgrounds", was shocked by the freedom

allowed to women, and immediately upon his return

to Egyptjoined the Muslim Brotherhood and

assumed the position of editor-in-chief of the

organization'snewspaper.

While in jail, Qutb wrote a 30volume (l) commentary

on the Koran; but his most influential book,

published in 1965 after his 1964 release from prison


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for health reasons, was Maalim fil-tariq("Signposts

on the Road", also translated as "Milestones"). In it,

he revised Hassan a|Banna'sconcept of

establishing an Islamic state in Egypt after the nation

was thoroughly lslamized, advocating instead

fascist or Bo|shevikstyle that a revolutionary

vanguard should first seize state power and then

impose lslamization from above. Trouble is, this

recipe went against the unambiguous Muslimprohibition against overthrowing a Muslim ruler.

Qutb found his clue to resolving the dilemma in the

writings of his Pakistani contemporary, Sayyid Abul

Ala Mawdudi (1903-79), founder in 1941 of the

Jamaati|s|ami, who had denounced the existingpolitical order in Muslim societies as

partial jahiliyyah - resembling the state of

unenlightened savagery, ignorance and idolatry of

pre-Islamic Arab societies. There was nothing

"partial" about the jahiliyyah of the existing order,

nothing that could be redeemed, pronounced Qutb: a society whose legislation does not rest on

divine law is not Muslim, however ardently its

individuals may proclaim themselves Muslim, even if


24/34

they pray, fast and make the

pilgrimage jahiliyyah takes the form of claiming

the right to create values, to legislate rules of

collective behavior and to choose any way of life that

rests with me, without regard to what God has

prescribed."

Only uncompromising restoration of the ideal of the

union of religion and state as evidenced during the7th century reign of the "righteous caliphs" would do.

Islam was a complete system of life not in need of

manmade additions. Any ruler, Muslim or otherwise,

standing in the way could be justifiably removed - by

any means.

This, naturally, applied to Nasser, and another

attempt on his life was made in 1965. Qutb was

rearrested, tortured and tried for treason. On August

29, 1966, he was hanged. The charge against him of

plotting to establish a Marxist regime in Egypt was

ludicrous. Nasser and his minions knew full well that

the real danger to the regime stemmed from Qutb's

denunciation of it as jahiliyyah, and not from those

clauses of his Maalim l-tariq which speak of a


25/34

classless society in which the "selfish individual" and

the "exploitation of man by man" would be

abolished, which the prosecution cited as evidence

against him.

The martyred Qutb'swritings rapidly acquired wide

acceptance in the Arab world, especially after the

ignominious defeat of the Arabs in the June 1967

"Six Day War" with Israel, taken as proof of thedepth of depravity to which the regimes in the

Muslim realm had sunk.

To come: lslamism, fascism and terrorism (Part

4)

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information on our sales and syndication policies, or

to submit a letter to the editor.)


By Marc Erikson



26/34



An early convert to Sayyid Qutb'snewfang|ed

fascist lslamism which condones, indeed

commands, terrorism and murder was the alleged

number two man of Osama bin Laden'sa|Qaeda,

Ayman al-Zawahiri. [see part 2]. Having joined theMuslim Brotherhood at age 15, he was caught in the

Nasser dragnet after the 1965 assassination attempt

on the Egyptian leader and young age and elite

family background notwithstanding - was thrown in

jail. An April 1968 amnesty freed most of the

brethren, and Ayman, in that regard following in hisfather'sfootsteps, went on to Cairo University to

become a physician. He obtained his degree in 1974

and practiced medicine for several years.

His profession, however, was not his calling. By the

late 1970s, he was back full-time in the lslamist

revolution business agitating against the Egypt-

lsrael peace treaty (concluded in 1979). In 1980, on

the introduction by military intelligence officer Abbud


27/34


28/34

for Saudi Arabia and later Peshawar, Pakistan,

where he wasjoined by Muhammad al-lslambuli, the

brother of one of Sadat'sfive assassins, 24-year-old

artillery lieutenant Khalid Ahmed Shawki al-

lslambuli. There, connections were made with the

groups of Palestinian lslamist Abdullah Azzam and

the latter'sone-time student Osama bin Laden, by

then fully engaged (with well-known CIA support) in

assisting the mujahideen struggle against Sovietoccupation of Afghanistan.

Al-Zawahiri'sal-Jihad was in many respects better

organized and better trained than other groups in the

Afghanistan theater. Prior to the murder of Sadat, it

had succeeded in recruiting members of thepresidential guard, military intelligence and the civil

bureaucracy. Most importantly, it was in possession

of a cogent and comprehensive ideology pointing

beyond the Afghan struggle against the Soviet

occupiers. "Afghanistan should be a platform for the

liberation of the entire Muslim world," was the

distinguishing creed of al-Jihad.

Al-Zawahiri wrote several books on Islamic


29/34

movements, the best known of which is The Bitter

Harvest (1991/92), a critical assessment of the

failings of the Muslim Brotherhood. In it, he draws

not only on the writings of Sayyid Qutb to justify

murder and terrorism, but prominently references

Pakistani Jamaat-i-Islami founder and ideologue

Mawdudi on the global mission of lslamicjihad.

Mawdudi had written, "IsIam wants the whole earthand does not content itself with only a part thereof. It

wants and requires the entire inhabited world. It

does not want this in order that one nation

dominates the earth and monopolizes its sources of

wealth, after having taken them away from one or

more other nations. No, Islam wants and requiresthe earth in order that the human race altogether

can enjoy the concept and practical program of

human happiness, by means of which God has

honored Islam and put it above the other religions

and laws. In order to realize this lofty desire, Islam

wants to employ all forces and means that can beemployed for bringing about a universal all-

embracing revolution. It will spare no effort for the

achievement of this supreme objective. This far-


30/34


31/34

recruiting and reconnaissance missions. Then came

initial implementation of the offensive.

It is not known whether he had a hand in the 1993

bombing of the New York World Trade Center. But

he had close connections to Sheikh Omar Abdel

Rahman, the spiritual leader of the group that

carried out the attack. Then, in 1995, he was behind

the truck bomb attack on the Egyptian embassy inPakistan; in November 1997, he led the Vanguards

of Conquest group responsible for the Luxor (Egypt)

massacre in which 60 foreign tourists were

systematically murdered and mutilated; in August

1998, he organized the bombings of the US

embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and probably, in2000, the speed-boat bomb attack on the USS Cole

in Aden. Israeli intelligence considers him the

"operational brains" behind September 11; the fact,

in any case, is that the Egyptian Mohammed Atta,

principal of the Hamburg, Germany, al-Qaeda cell

that was instrumental to the World Trade Center

destruction, was a member of Zawahiri'sal-Jihad.

Osama bin Laden, as we wrote earlier, had the


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money, some of the connections, and perhaps the

charisma to function as the leader of the alQaeda

global jihad. But it was not until Zawahiri'sal-Jihad in

February 1998 formally joined forces with bin Laden

that the present global lslamist terrorist threat truly

emerged. With his long experience in the Muslim

Brotherhood, his critical assessment of its failures,

his cunning - albeit highly eclectic - fashioning of a

fascist ideology drawing on Islamic religiouselements, and his organizational and operational

skills, al-Zawahiri is the key personality of global

jihad. The key point to understand is that Zawahiri

fascist lslamism has seized the ideological initiative

in the Muslim world against which traditional Islam

has so far proved an impotent, indeed oftenunwilling, opponent. Young Muslims everywhere are

captivated by Zawahiri lslamism and jihad to which

they attribute selfless idealism and in which they

admire ruthless determination. It will be a long war.

And make no mistake: In this war against a new,

ideologically vigorous fascism, collateral assets of

the Islamists, the neoNazis of the Ahmed Huber

variety which we described in part 1 of this series, or


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for that matter Saudi financiers wittingly pushing

narrow sectarian Wahhabism upon youths

in madrassas worldwide, are key forces in the

enemy camp. Islamism as we have portrayed it in its

historical and present dimension is a form of fascist

madness - the same type of madness which one of

Hitler'sclosest confidants, convicted war criminal

Albert Speer, saw during the Fuehrer'sfinal days. In

his Spandau prison diary entry for November 18,1947, Speer recollects:

''Irecall how [Hitler] would have films shown in the

Reich Chancellory about London burning, about the

sea of fire over Warsaw, about exploding convoys,

and the kind of ravenous joy that would then seizehim every time. But I never saw him so beside

himself as when, in a delirium, he pictured New York

going down in flames. He described how the

skyscrapers would be transformed into gigantic

burning torches, how they would collapse in

confusion, how the bursting city'sreflection wouldstand against the dark sky."

(2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights


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Islamism, Fascism and Terrorism by Marc Rikson [Asia Times Online]