Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [3]
I performed about one hundred interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement, military, and diplomatic officials; Muslim radicals and counterradicals (including former jihadists and al Qaeda members); the families and the associates of former jihadists; and academics who study Islam and Islamic radicalism as well as some third-party accounts.
I mined tens of thousands of pages of court records and drew on dozens of intelligence and diplomatic documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as well as material generously shared by sources and colleagues. Included in the data set are more than one thousand pages of FBI records pertaining specifically to September 11, which I obtained through the FOIA and which can be viewed on my website, Intelwire.com.
I also reviewed scores of hours and thousands of pages of jihadist and Salafist propaganda, as well as al Qaeda internal records and documents captured in the process of prosecuting the war on terrorism. A more complete description of this material and its sourcing can be found in the acknowledgments.
WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK
This book is primarily concerned with who American jihadists are, how they are recruited and indoctrinated, and why they do what they do. In order to maintain that focus, I have deliberately downplayed terrorist tradecraft, except where it is exceptionally relevant.
The World Trade Center bombing and the September 11 attacks have been covered in lavish detail elsewhere. I made a conscious decision to avoid rehashing the details of those attacks at length, except where I felt I could add something new and distinctly American to the record. After wrestling with the question, I also decided to devote relatively little time to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad activities in the United States.
This decision should not be read as a dismissal of the importance of Palestinian jihadist groups in the fabric of American jihadism. Although the U.S. activities of these organizations are important and represent a serious challenge for law enforcement, they exist on a slightly different plane from the broader global jihad movement, which is most dangerously represented by al Qaeda.
The involvement of foreign jihadists as fighters in Israel and Palestine is relatively limited. Most Americans involved with Hamas and Hezbollah have been fundraisers and propagandists, with a handful of arms traffickers and an even smaller number who have actually tried to go to the Holy Land to fight.
Finally, the Palestinian political issue is very complex, especially as it plays out among Americans, both Muslim and otherwise, and condensing the topic into one or two chapters would require more simplification than I was prepared to accept.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
American politicians habitually describe al Qaeda’s motive as the creation of a global caliphate—a world-spanning Islamic state with dreams of conquest. Although this does reflect the view of certain Islamic thinkers and fringe Muslim leaders, jihad is most often characterized as defensive in nature. When Muslims are imperiled, other Muslims are urged to wage jihad in their defense.
Bosnia is one of the most obvious examples of this line of thought. Serbian assaults on Bosnian Muslims provided a clear rationale for why Muslims from around the world should lend assistance, whether directly by fighting or indirectly by financially supporting Muslim fighters.
The definitions of when Muslims are being attacked and what type of attack justifies a military response, however, are extremely fluid and subject to manipulation