Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [13]
Shalabi visited Rashid in the hospital and convinced him that his story could inspire other Muslims. In addition to the videotape, Shalabi wanted him to travel around the country, talking about jihad. The attention was exactly what Rashid craved.
“Becoming a mujahideen just swelled his head,” Alia recalled. “They said go here to Canada, and speak to the students, he would go to Canada. He loved to travel, he would go to Canada. They said, go to Mexico, and tell them about what mujahideen is about, he would go there.” 45
Rashid did little to refute the “swelled head” theory, inflating his fifteen minutes of fame into an epic tale about a man of consequence.
The word had spread pretty far and wide, who I was and what my experience was, because the videotape went throughout the world. I used to hear from people in Egypt and Yemen, and people coming from Saudi Arabia I never even met would tell me we saw your film. And people who were not Muslims would say we saw your films.46
Although the scope of his stardom was exaggerated, Rashid did achieve a certain notoriety within the growing circle of Americans enamored of jihad. Within days after his release from the hospital, Shalabi gave Rashid a ticket to Boston, where he spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and at other events in the area.
Despite the fairly short and inglorious reality of his mujahid career, word spread around town that “Doctor Rashid” was the real deal, and he would soon find other ways to make himself useful. When Abdullah Azzam next came to America, Rashid and several other members of the Brooklyn community accompanied him on recruiting trips around the United States. Even though the Soviets were now on the run, the Al Kifah operation was still going strong.47
2
Al Qaeda’s Americans
August in Peshawar is hot by any measure, but it’s relatively dry and about 20 degrees cooler than the 110-degree days typical of June.
On one such August day in 1988, a small group of Arab men who had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan gathered in the dusty border town to discuss the future of jihad.
Among those attending were the legendary Abdullah Azzam, father of the global movement to support the Afghanistan jihad; his protégé, Osama bin Laden; and a handful of bin Laden’s closest followers. Azzam and bin Laden agreed the time had come to form a new group. The question at hand: what would that group set out to accomplish?1
One man furiously scratched out a few sparse pages of notes to memorialize the meeting. He was known in the room as Abu Rida Al Suri, but his real name was Mohammed Loay Bayazid, and he was an American citizen from Kansas City.
From its very first day, the newly christened group, al Qaeda, would include American citizens at its highest levels.
Bayazid had arrived at this momentous day through Abdullah Azzam. He was born in Syria, and his family moved to the United States while he was in his teens.2 Bayazid was not particularly religious, but he encountered a handout written by Azzam that described miraculous happenings in Afghanistan and decided he had to see for himself.3
Azzam was prone to sweeping and poetic descriptions of the lightly armed and vastly outnumbered mujahideen who were prevailing over elite Russian soldiers thanks only to their faith in God.4 There were stories about the shahid, or martyrs killed in the line of action, whose bodies were said to give off a sweet perfume.5
In 1985 Bayazid decided to fly to Afghanistan and ask questions later. After making contact with Azzam’s organization through a phone number printed on the handout, he found himself thrust into a world unimaginably different from his fairly typical American life back in Kansas City. The enormous culture shock dislocated him from his old life.6
Bayazid fought alongside Azzam and later Osama bin Laden