Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [1]
Americans fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, and at least one American citizen was present at the founding of al Qaeda. Americans have gone to jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, and Yemen. Virtually every major terrorist attack against the United States—including 9/11—has included Americans as willful accomplices.
While all major religions have rules that limit or justify war, a small but significant minority of Muslims believe that under the correct circumstances, war is a fundamental obligation for everyone who shares the religion of Islam. When war is carried out according to the rules, it is called military jihad or simply jihad.
“Jihad” is a word that has become contentious, with many Muslims arguing that it is most properly applied to a host of nonviolent activities, such as self-improvement or seeking justice. Although this argument applies in certain contexts, military jihadists do not make such qualifications when they call their work jihad.
“Whenever jihad is mentioned in the [Koran], it means the obligation to fight. It does not mean to fight with the pen or to write books or articles in the press, or to fight by holding lectures.” Those are the words of Abdullah Azzam, the spiritual and physical leader of the volunteer jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, who was speaking in Brooklyn in 1988.4 This book will generally follow Azzam’s usage, although it will also examine those who use the pen and the lectern to incite others to acts of physical jihad.
I acknowledge that there is a debate in the public square on this issue, but this book defines jihad as jihadists do—as the use of violence to achieve specific goals, usually either the defense of Muslims perceived to be in peril or the advancement of Islam’s global position.
Although most religions include guidelines for war and civic defense, the rules of jihad are fundamental to the core texts of Islam. A small minority of Muslims even rate jihad as one of Islam’s most basic obligations.
OTHER DEFINITIONS
Throughout this book, I have put a premium on representing the voices of American jihadists and letting their own words explain their actions. This doesn’t mean I accept everything they say as being sincere and legitimate. Far from it—there are clear lies in some cases, distortions and misconceptions in others. But regardless of how imperfect these sources are, the words of American jihadists provide a window into their overt reasons for taking up arms and their moral context for the violence they inflict.
In many cases, however, these sources are strong. Some, of course, are statements given in interviews after an arrest—attempts to rationalize or justify violent acts in an effort to win a lighter sentence or to burnish a public image. Yet many of the quotes you will read in these pages were intended for Muslim audiences. Many are taken from surveillance tapes in which these Americans talked with their peers in unguarded moments. Such sources are invaluable windows into why Americans take up the banner of jihad.
What lies in their hearts only Allah knows. One can only work with the sources as they exist. To ignore the stated reasons that jihadists use to justify their actions is, at the least, foolish. To impose imagined reasons without examining the evidence is reckless.
Many labels exist for people who embrace a vision of global jihad or the dream of a world ruled by Islamic law, such as Salafis, Wahhabis, Deobandis, Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamists. For the most part, I have tried to downplay these labels, in part to spare the reader a barrage of unfamiliar and confusing technical terms whose meanings are often disputed.
One area where important definitions can get murky is the distinction between “terrorist” and “jihadist.” The two terms have become conflated in recent years, in part due to a deliberate and systematic rebranding of the word by Western diplomatic maneuvers