Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [18]
Mohamed’s indiscretions became even more indiscreet. At one point, while discussing Anwar Sadat with a superior officer, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, Mohamed volunteered that Sadat “was a traitor and he had to die.” In 1988 he informed Anderson that he was planning to travel to Afghanistan to take part in the jihad during his annual leave.
Anderson was appalled, pointing out that there could be tremendous ramifications if a U.S. Army soldier was exposed while killing Russians. Mohamed shrugged it off. After a month of leave, Mohamed returned looking like he had been to war. He gave Anderson a souvenir—the belt from a Russian Special Forces soldier’s uniform—and a debriefing on the action, including maps of the combat. He told another officer that he had given U.S. Army maps of the region to warlord Ahmad Massoud, the ally of Abdullah Azzam.
Anderson filed an eight-page report outlining his concerns about Mohamed’s freelance adventuring. It disappeared into the black hole of army bureaucracy, and he never heard back from his superiors.34
Where Anderson saw cause for alarm, retired colonel Norvell Deatkine saw opportunity. A civilian instructor in Middle East studies at the school, Deatkine helped train Special Forces members in “Civil Affairs,” a nebulous department purportedly focused on community relations overseas that often served as a cover for psychological operations and intelligence works.
Deatkine drafted Mohamed as a Middle East specialist. At one point, he convened a panel discussion that was videotaped as an educational aid. Mohamed was the star of the show, fielding questions from a motley handful of army wonks whose expressions ranged from pained to dazed to disinterested. Of the five panelists, Mohamed cut the most formidable picture of a soldier by far.35
Animated and basking in the spotlight, Mohamed was remarkably candid during the ninety-minute talk, providing a window into the viewpoint of the hardened jihadists who would soon target America. If only anyone had been paying attention.
Many American jihadists of the period were motivated by a mix of understandable emotions and rationalizations, including the impulse to defend Muslims in peril and a craving for adventure in a venue that had been blessed by both Muslim religious authority and American patriotism.
Mohamed cared nothing for America. His loyalty lay with a radical version of Islam reflecting the sophisticated and ambitious thinking of his mentor, Zawahiri, and a core ideology that would soon become part and parcel of the newly formed al Qaeda.
Mohamed’s views came from established jihadist ideology—specifically the writings of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, which had deeply influenced Azzam, Zawahiri, and bin Laden. These views included the separation of the world into a war between Islam and non-Islam, and the overwhelming imperative to create Islamic states ruled by shariah law. Sitting in the heart of one of the most important military installations in the United States, Mohamed told the panel,
I cannot consider Islam a religion without political domination. So what we have, what we call Dar Al Harb, which is the world of war, and Dar Al Islam—the world of Islam. And Dar Al Harb, the world of war, it comprises all the territory [that] doesn’t have Islamic law. [ … ] So as a Muslim, I have an obligation to change Dar Al Harb to Dar Al Islam.
When asked about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, Mohamed replied that there was no such thing as a Muslim fundamentalist— “just ordinary Muslims.” All Muslims were, by definition, fundamentalists, he explained.
If you look at the religion, the religion, we do not have moderate, we do not have extremist, we do not have people between. You have one line. You accept the one line or not. [ … ] I accept everything, and this is my way. In the religion