Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [48]
Even though it ventured into deeper intellectual waters at times, Al Hussam played all of the classic cards of jihadist incitement, including lurid tales of atrocities and rape. One mailing suggested that readers tell their children tales of the slaughter of Albanian Muslims as a bedtime story—“The evil people killed many Muslim youths, and harassed many women. Even domesticated animals did not escape their savagery.” Children who were too young to fight could donate part of their allowance to jihad, the newsletter suggested.10
A favorite ploy of Al Hussam’s editors was to publish letters purportedly written by jihadists in between battles abroad. These letters combined appreciation for the meaningful nature of jihad with accounts of offenses against Muslims and repudiations of those who did not choose to fight. One letter from a mujahid to his mother (a popular subgenre of jihadist literature) was especially colorful:
Dear Mother: Remember me with every fragment which the enemies of Allah rip out of the body of this ummah. Remember me with every resounding scream uttered by a pure Muslim woman in the land of Jerusalem, or Chechnya. Remember me with every whip which cracks down on the back of a monotheist in the prisons of the oppressors and tyrants. And, remember me with every victory the Islamic revival achieves, and with every cry of “Allahu Akbar” which is given to shake the earth beneath the feet of the oppressors.11
Other articles told the tale of American jihadists in the third person:
He was seared by the horrifying pictures reaching us from all over. Sleep was driven out of his eyes by the reports of Muslim women’s chastity being violated at the hands of the Crusader criminals. His heart was rent by the sight of a Bosnian child slaughtered before his parents, while the whole world looked on apathetically. [He realized] that there could not be a life in this country, for his life could only be lived in the land of jihad. [ … ]
Thus, he packed his suitcases and left, never to return, at a time when the world was starting to turn toward him—he was receiving job offers and marriage proposals from all over. He was well-known for having great respect for his mother, but the call to jihad was stronger, and the screams of the Muslim women were louder to his ears than the words of all seeking to hold him back.12
The absolutism of the newsletter belied battles behind the scenes. As in New York, the Boston leadership—about thirty people who had a greater or lesser voice in the office’s direction—was divided about the course of jihad in the wake of the Soviet defeat. The argument continued long after the dust of the last departing Soviet tank had settled.
As in Brooklyn and Afghanistan, the question on the table was whether to continue building an Islamic state in Afghanistan or to take jihad to the rest of the world. The top leadership of the Boston office had sworn loyalty to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord who was now working closely with Osama bin Laden. The leaders had reservations about bin Laden, but more and more of them wanted to take the fight to new fronts.13
The outbreak of the war in Bosnia helped edge the undecided toward global jihad. The highly visible atrocities provided an easy hook for recruiting and fund-raising—in some ways even easier than Afghanistan, although the secular proclivities of Bosnian Muslims blunted some of the enthusiasm of the hard-core Islamists. Propaganda videos explained that the mujahideen had to “correct” the Bosnian practice of Islam before fighting could begin. E-mails from CARE’s allies complained that “large sums of money were being sent from various ‘Jihad’ funds to Bosnian, wine-drinking, womanizing, communist ‘Mujahideen.’”14
The sums were indeed large. Checks flowed into CARE International from individual