Introduction
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share a religious proximity that is rooted in history, geography, genealogy, philosophy and theology. These three great world religions claim a common prehistoric ancestry to Adam and Abraham. In Judaism Abraham provides a genealogical foundation as a founding tribal father. In Christianity Abraham’s sacrifice of his son provides a similitude of the sacrifice of Jesus. In Islam, genealogy and sacrifice are retained, but it is Abraham’s unequalled monotheism and unparalleled love of the one true God, even beyond the love of his own flesh and blood, that provides the theological paradigm. Islam’s central tenant is the oneness of God and it positions Abraham as the spiritual father of all believers in the unicity of God. In this sense Islam, an Arabic word which means ‘peaceful submission to God’, claims finality in the prophetic and revelatorary process between God and man. Islam therefore shares and inherits the Old Testament Prophets, their beliefs, rites and rituals and their practices. In the traditional geography of the holy lands these three monotheistic religions have lived historically side by side, sharing the same culture, customs and traditions.
In the west, where until relatively recently, Christianity has enjoyed an exclusive position in the religious domain, this Judaio-Christiano-Islamic heritage is either unknown or somehow by-passed. Engagement with Islam has largely been through the restricted experiences of the historical Crusades or the more recent impact of colonial and imperial rule in the Muslim world. As a result, the recent emergence of Islam (and to some degree, Judaism), via the minority communities of Muslims, has arrived within the western domain of Christendom as a cultural, geographical, genealogical, philosophical and theological ‘stranger’.
The emergence of superpowers
For a number of years Muslim and non-Muslim academics alike had been speculating the possibility that two great world civilisations namely, western Christendom and the Muslim world, might be on a collision course of confrontation and unimaginable military hostilities. Samuel Huntingdon’s book The Clash of Civilisations is now seen as the classic example of this confrontation theory. What led scholars to this conclusion was not in increase in religious intolerance between Christianity and Islam or any revisit of medieval crusader confrontations which preoccupied the early middle ages. It was in fact, the coincidental decline of two great global forces: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline in the world’s oil reserves. How then have these two seemingly unconnected occurrences created a potentially catastrophic situation of unknown proportions between the so-called Christian world and the Muslim world?
Before the demise of the former Soviet Union, now Russia, Marxist socialism or communism was globally propagated, supported and funded by the Soviets. The dominance of world socialism acted against and as an alternative to global capitalism which was and still is globally propagated, supported and funded by the United States. These two opposing political world views vied with each other for world domination each believing that their political philosophy was the best for the global population. These two so called ‘superpowers’ effectively kept each other in check not just by trying to counter the effects that each had on the rest of the world but by threatening each other with the proliferation of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. By creating the ability to annihilate each other and the rest of the world by use of their ‘weapons of mass destruction’ the Soviets and the Americans locked the world into their power game.
Unwilling to confront each other directly out of a real and genuine fear of complete annihilation of everyone on the face of the earth, these two superpowers played out their confrontations on the battle lines drawn up in the countries of the developing world. This was done by supporting and funding socialism in one country by the Soviets and supporting and funding capitalism by America in the next. In reality the developing world literally became pawns in the political chess game of the Soviets and the Americans. The result was famine; strife, dissention and war for all those countries caught on the frontline of this global power game.
The wars in Korea, Angola, Vietnam, Yemen, Salvador and Afghanistan are all examples of how the superpower struggle was played out. In the terminologies developed to identify the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ in this struggle to establish Soviet socialism or American capitalism were the terms ‘rebels’ and ‘freedom fighters’. Whether one was a ‘rebel’ or a ‘freedom fighter’ depended very much of course on whose side you were on. For the Americans, if you were fighting the oppressive regime in Salvador, South America, backed by America you were of course a ‘communist rebel’ but if you were fighting the also brutal and aggressive regime in Afghanistan, in central Asia, backed by the Soviets you were of course a ‘freedom fighter’. We will return to Afghanistan very shortly.
The control of oil
Both the Soviets and the Americans found that in the process of establishing world domination based on their particular philosophical and political ideas, which ran in complete opposition to each other, propagating, supporting and funding their ideologies throughout the developing world brought not only the power they so needed to become the leading or hegemonic force, but other materialistic advantages. The developing world is home to a great wealth of natural resources and mineral wealth and many of these countries have huge deposits of oil, gas, plutonium and uranium in addition to their ideal climates for producing foodstuffs and cash crops. Superpower domination and influence paid dividends in vast quantities of subsidised mineral resources and cash crops.
In order to maintain their influence and exploit the cheap supply of much needed natural resources both superpowers patronised regimes and leaders in these developing countries that abused and suppressed their own people in savage and unbelievably inhumane ways. These ‘puppet’ regimes and ‘tin pot’ dictators blatantly flaunted and violated international human rights under the protection and patronage of the two superpowers. This was the pay-off for their influence and exploitation. The superpowers remained untouched and unharmed by the localised tensions and hostilities they created around the world in their efforts to exert their domination provided they did not get directly involved and instead maintained their position as agents provocateurs.
America suffered humiliating defeats in Korea and Vietnam when it committed its own armed forces to the frontline struggle of capitalism against the invading communist influence. The soviets had been more fortunate. That was until they entered Afghanistan in 1980. Wherever one of the superpowers had established their political and ideological influence covert and subversive methods were employed by the other superpower by sponsoring opposition. This opposition might be political, ideological or by armed struggle depending on the situation.
In the case of Afghanistan covert methods were employed by the United States through its intelligence service, the CIA, to support, train and arm an effective opposition to the Soviet regime. In Afghanistan the American backed ‘freedom fighters’ adopted a religious modus operandi and instead became the ‘Mujahideen’.
Jihad
The Mujahideen took their name from the Arabic word ‘jihad’, which literally means ‘to strive or to struggle’. In Islamic theology jihad has a much wider context and meaning, from the esoterical, or inner struggle, concerned with conquering ‘the self’ or ‘the ego’, to the exoterical, outer experiences, the strife of establishing a life devoted to submission to God (Islam) and the religious obligation of fighting oppression and transgression through armed struggle. Most Muslims have some concept and practical experience of jihad through the devotional dimensions of their religious lives although very few are ever engaged with the jihad of armed struggle.
The Islamic imperative to fight oppression and transgression is also met in defending ones own property, land or country from invasion or occupation and in seeking liberation from such forms of aggression. There are a number of verses in the Qur’an that refer to the reasons and rules of arm engagement but the instruction to take up armed struggle comes in this verse, ‘And fight in the way of God, those who fight against you, but do not transgress the limits. Truly God has no love for the transgressors.’ (Qur’an, 2:190). This is why Muslims generally see a ‘just cause’ in for fighting occupation in Kashmir and Palestine. In the case of the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, a clear case for armed struggle jihad could be made. Soviet communist political ideology, devoid of any attachment to belief in God and religions, represented the face of aggressive atheism for the majority of traditional Afghani Muslims. Further, America was quick to exploit the theme of ‘belief versus atheism’ amongst other traditional Muslim societies, particularly Saudi Arabia, in its efforts to encourage petro-dollars to help fund the Afghan Mujahideen uprising. As money poured in from the rich Arab oil states many bored young Saudi men financed their own enterprising mini-jihad breaks in Afghanistan during their long summer breaks from university. They were very soon joined by a more permanent Arab Muslim contingent from less wealthy North African countries such as Eygpt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. These young men were much more serious, their participation was not undertaken to ‘kill time’ between University semesters.
The North African Jihadis were disparate, angry and disillusioned young men who had experienced their own form of oppression and occupation by European colonial and imperial powers. They, unlike their Gulf Arab counterparts, had suffered from the direct results of cultural and economic ravage and exploitation. Although the imperialists had departed from North Africa a generation earlier, their societies had not recovered from the destructive impacts of imperial and colonial cultural domination. Left disconnected from their traditional culture, language and religion under the guise of modern secular nation-states, many of the youth in these former colonies sought to reconnect and re-identify themselves with their traditions.
Whether this shift towards tradition was as a political protest and reaction to enforced modernisation or a genuine search for spiritual and religious expression is not clear. However, the growing number of disenfranchised and religiously radicalised youth throughout the Muslim world began to identify with the Afghan struggle. If the Muslim youth could not free Palestine from the grips of Zionist Israeli occupation and genocide, backed by powerful America dollars and weapons, perhaps the Soviets might present an easier challenge.
Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia into the wealthy, Yemeni-origin, Bin Laden family. His father was one of the richest non-Saudi family businessmen in the Kingdom, who owned amongst other businesses; a massive construction company which was responsible for the multi-million dollar holy mosques in Makkah and Madinah expansion project and the contract cleaning company which served both holy sites. Osama trained as a civil engineer under the tutorship of Dr. Abdullah Azzam, a leading Palestinian Muslim activist who later joined the jihad and Afghanistan and went on to command the Arab Mujahideen there. Osama was very impressed and affected by Azzam’s character and commitment to Islam which no doubt inspired his own involvement in the Afghan struggle.
Bin Laden’s high profile and charismatic persona - he was very tall and charming - became an inspiration for many young Arab Muslims. The CIA recognised the obvious potential of Bin Laden’s pulling power and they therefore actively projected his personality through the mass media. Portraying him as deeply sincere and devoutly religious, they projected the image of an ideological freedom fighter who had abandoned all the trappings of his luxurious lifestyle to help free the poor Afghan Muslims from the evil communist aggressors. Bin Laden was better than Rambo and he was real - the Americans loved it. The Gulf petro-dollars poured in and young Muslim jihadis were literally queuing up to take their place amongst ‘Gods soldiers’.
Ultimately, with Arab money and American military training the Afghans were not only able to repel the Soviets - they humiliated the mighty superpower. Many commentators say that the invasion of Afghanistan was the final curtain call for Soviet domination and world socialism. Perversely, the saviour of the modern western free capitalist world from the scourge of atheist communism was not the military might of the United States, but the traditional tribal peasants in the isolated regions of Afghanistan. Bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia a national hero and confident of the American government. How then did this hero fall? What happened that caused the darling of American ‘freedom fighting’ to become the ‘world’s most wanted man’?
The Gulf War
In 1991 the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussain, a tyrant and friend to the American government was given what he interpreted to be the green light from the United States government to invade and annex Kuwait on to Iraq. The result of this folly by Saddam resulted in the biggest allied military operation since World War II. The outcome was catastrophic for the Saddam and the ruling elites of the Gulf. Whilst most agreed that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was an un-Islamic act of aggression, the involvement of non-Muslim’s in the conflict, particularly Americans, and the use of other Arab Muslim states as bases from which massive air strikes and armed offences was launched, did not meet with the agreement of the mass Arab Muslim population of the region.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share a religious proximity that is rooted in history, geography, genealogy, philosophy and theology. These three great world religions claim a common prehistoric ancestry to Adam and Abraham. In Judaism Abraham provides a genealogical foundation as a founding tribal father. In Christianity Abraham’s sacrifice of his son provides a similitude of the sacrifice of Jesus. In Islam, genealogy and sacrifice are retained, but it is Abraham’s unequalled monotheism and unparalleled love of the one true God, even beyond the love of his own flesh and blood, that provides the theological paradigm. Islam’s central tenant is the oneness of God and it positions Abraham as the spiritual father of all believers in the unicity of God. In this sense Islam, an Arabic word which means ‘peaceful submission to God’, claims finality in the prophetic and revelatorary process between God and man. Islam therefore shares and inherits the Old Testament Prophets, their beliefs, rites and rituals and their practices. In the traditional geography of the holy lands these three monotheistic religions have lived historically side by side, sharing the same culture, customs and traditions.
In the west, where until relatively recently, Christianity has enjoyed an exclusive position in the religious domain, this Judaio-Christiano-Islamic heritage is either unknown or somehow by-passed. Engagement with Islam has largely been through the restricted experiences of the historical Crusades or the more recent impact of colonial and imperial rule in the Muslim world. As a result, the recent emergence of Islam (and to some degree, Judaism), via the minority communities of Muslims, has arrived within the western domain of Christendom as a cultural, geographical, genealogical, philosophical and theological ‘stranger’.
The emergence of superpowers
For a number of years Muslim and non-Muslim academics alike had been speculating the possibility that two great world civilisations namely, western Christendom and the Muslim world, might be on a collision course of confrontation and unimaginable military hostilities. Samuel Huntingdon’s book The Clash of Civilisations is now seen as the classic example of this confrontation theory. What led scholars to this conclusion was not in increase in religious intolerance between Christianity and Islam or any revisit of medieval crusader confrontations which preoccupied the early middle ages. It was in fact, the coincidental decline of two great global forces: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline in the world’s oil reserves. How then have these two seemingly unconnected occurrences created a potentially catastrophic situation of unknown proportions between the so-called Christian world and the Muslim world?
Before the demise of the former Soviet Union, now Russia, Marxist socialism or communism was globally propagated, supported and funded by the Soviets. The dominance of world socialism acted against and as an alternative to global capitalism which was and still is globally propagated, supported and funded by the United States. These two opposing political world views vied with each other for world domination each believing that their political philosophy was the best for the global population. These two so called ‘superpowers’ effectively kept each other in check not just by trying to counter the effects that each had on the rest of the world but by threatening each other with the proliferation of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. By creating the ability to annihilate each other and the rest of the world by use of their ‘weapons of mass destruction’ the Soviets and the Americans locked the world into their power game.
Unwilling to confront each other directly out of a real and genuine fear of complete annihilation of everyone on the face of the earth, these two superpowers played out their confrontations on the battle lines drawn up in the countries of the developing world. This was done by supporting and funding socialism in one country by the Soviets and supporting and funding capitalism by America in the next. In reality the developing world literally became pawns in the political chess game of the Soviets and the Americans. The result was famine; strife, dissention and war for all those countries caught on the frontline of this global power game.
The wars in Korea, Angola, Vietnam, Yemen, Salvador and Afghanistan are all examples of how the superpower struggle was played out. In the terminologies developed to identify the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ in this struggle to establish Soviet socialism or American capitalism were the terms ‘rebels’ and ‘freedom fighters’. Whether one was a ‘rebel’ or a ‘freedom fighter’ depended very much of course on whose side you were on. For the Americans, if you were fighting the oppressive regime in Salvador, South America, backed by America you were of course a ‘communist rebel’ but if you were fighting the also brutal and aggressive regime in Afghanistan, in central Asia, backed by the Soviets you were of course a ‘freedom fighter’. We will return to Afghanistan very shortly.
The control of oil
Both the Soviets and the Americans found that in the process of establishing world domination based on their particular philosophical and political ideas, which ran in complete opposition to each other, propagating, supporting and funding their ideologies throughout the developing world brought not only the power they so needed to become the leading or hegemonic force, but other materialistic advantages. The developing world is home to a great wealth of natural resources and mineral wealth and many of these countries have huge deposits of oil, gas, plutonium and uranium in addition to their ideal climates for producing foodstuffs and cash crops. Superpower domination and influence paid dividends in vast quantities of subsidised mineral resources and cash crops.
In order to maintain their influence and exploit the cheap supply of much needed natural resources both superpowers patronised regimes and leaders in these developing countries that abused and suppressed their own people in savage and unbelievably inhumane ways. These ‘puppet’ regimes and ‘tin pot’ dictators blatantly flaunted and violated international human rights under the protection and patronage of the two superpowers. This was the pay-off for their influence and exploitation. The superpowers remained untouched and unharmed by the localised tensions and hostilities they created around the world in their efforts to exert their domination provided they did not get directly involved and instead maintained their position as agents provocateurs.
America suffered humiliating defeats in Korea and Vietnam when it committed its own armed forces to the frontline struggle of capitalism against the invading communist influence. The soviets had been more fortunate. That was until they entered Afghanistan in 1980. Wherever one of the superpowers had established their political and ideological influence covert and subversive methods were employed by the other superpower by sponsoring opposition. This opposition might be political, ideological or by armed struggle depending on the situation.
In the case of Afghanistan covert methods were employed by the United States through its intelligence service, the CIA, to support, train and arm an effective opposition to the Soviet regime. In Afghanistan the American backed ‘freedom fighters’ adopted a religious modus operandi and instead became the ‘Mujahideen’.
Jihad
The Mujahideen took their name from the Arabic word ‘jihad’, which literally means ‘to strive or to struggle’. In Islamic theology jihad has a much wider context and meaning, from the esoterical, or inner struggle, concerned with conquering ‘the self’ or ‘the ego’, to the exoterical, outer experiences, the strife of establishing a life devoted to submission to God (Islam) and the religious obligation of fighting oppression and transgression through armed struggle. Most Muslims have some concept and practical experience of jihad through the devotional dimensions of their religious lives although very few are ever engaged with the jihad of armed struggle.
The Islamic imperative to fight oppression and transgression is also met in defending ones own property, land or country from invasion or occupation and in seeking liberation from such forms of aggression. There are a number of verses in the Qur’an that refer to the reasons and rules of arm engagement but the instruction to take up armed struggle comes in this verse, ‘And fight in the way of God, those who fight against you, but do not transgress the limits. Truly God has no love for the transgressors.’ (Qur’an, 2:190). This is why Muslims generally see a ‘just cause’ in for fighting occupation in Kashmir and Palestine. In the case of the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, a clear case for armed struggle jihad could be made. Soviet communist political ideology, devoid of any attachment to belief in God and religions, represented the face of aggressive atheism for the majority of traditional Afghani Muslims. Further, America was quick to exploit the theme of ‘belief versus atheism’ amongst other traditional Muslim societies, particularly Saudi Arabia, in its efforts to encourage petro-dollars to help fund the Afghan Mujahideen uprising. As money poured in from the rich Arab oil states many bored young Saudi men financed their own enterprising mini-jihad breaks in Afghanistan during their long summer breaks from university. They were very soon joined by a more permanent Arab Muslim contingent from less wealthy North African countries such as Eygpt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. These young men were much more serious, their participation was not undertaken to ‘kill time’ between University semesters.
The North African Jihadis were disparate, angry and disillusioned young men who had experienced their own form of oppression and occupation by European colonial and imperial powers. They, unlike their Gulf Arab counterparts, had suffered from the direct results of cultural and economic ravage and exploitation. Although the imperialists had departed from North Africa a generation earlier, their societies had not recovered from the destructive impacts of imperial and colonial cultural domination. Left disconnected from their traditional culture, language and religion under the guise of modern secular nation-states, many of the youth in these former colonies sought to reconnect and re-identify themselves with their traditions.
Whether this shift towards tradition was as a political protest and reaction to enforced modernisation or a genuine search for spiritual and religious expression is not clear. However, the growing number of disenfranchised and religiously radicalised youth throughout the Muslim world began to identify with the Afghan struggle. If the Muslim youth could not free Palestine from the grips of Zionist Israeli occupation and genocide, backed by powerful America dollars and weapons, perhaps the Soviets might present an easier challenge.
Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia into the wealthy, Yemeni-origin, Bin Laden family. His father was one of the richest non-Saudi family businessmen in the Kingdom, who owned amongst other businesses; a massive construction company which was responsible for the multi-million dollar holy mosques in Makkah and Madinah expansion project and the contract cleaning company which served both holy sites. Osama trained as a civil engineer under the tutorship of Dr. Abdullah Azzam, a leading Palestinian Muslim activist who later joined the jihad and Afghanistan and went on to command the Arab Mujahideen there. Osama was very impressed and affected by Azzam’s character and commitment to Islam which no doubt inspired his own involvement in the Afghan struggle.
Bin Laden’s high profile and charismatic persona - he was very tall and charming - became an inspiration for many young Arab Muslims. The CIA recognised the obvious potential of Bin Laden’s pulling power and they therefore actively projected his personality through the mass media. Portraying him as deeply sincere and devoutly religious, they projected the image of an ideological freedom fighter who had abandoned all the trappings of his luxurious lifestyle to help free the poor Afghan Muslims from the evil communist aggressors. Bin Laden was better than Rambo and he was real - the Americans loved it. The Gulf petro-dollars poured in and young Muslim jihadis were literally queuing up to take their place amongst ‘Gods soldiers’.
Ultimately, with Arab money and American military training the Afghans were not only able to repel the Soviets - they humiliated the mighty superpower. Many commentators say that the invasion of Afghanistan was the final curtain call for Soviet domination and world socialism. Perversely, the saviour of the modern western free capitalist world from the scourge of atheist communism was not the military might of the United States, but the traditional tribal peasants in the isolated regions of Afghanistan. Bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia a national hero and confident of the American government. How then did this hero fall? What happened that caused the darling of American ‘freedom fighting’ to become the ‘world’s most wanted man’?
The Gulf War
In 1991 the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussain, a tyrant and friend to the American government was given what he interpreted to be the green light from the United States government to invade and annex Kuwait on to Iraq. The result of this folly by Saddam resulted in the biggest allied military operation since World War II. The outcome was catastrophic for the Saddam and the ruling elites of the Gulf. Whilst most agreed that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was an un-Islamic act of aggression, the involvement of non-Muslim’s in the conflict, particularly Americans, and the use of other Arab Muslim states as bases from which massive air strikes and armed offences was launched, did not meet with the agreement of the mass Arab Muslim population of the region.
