Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [51]
In 1983, Ali was spotted outside a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, not long before the installation was bombed by militants believed to be connected to Hezbollah. At 6′3″ and 250 pounds, with a shaved head and decked out in full combat gear, he was hard to miss. Yet he was never charged or directly accused in the attack. Soon afterward, dismayed by the growing presence of terrorist tactics in Lebanon’s Shi’ite factions, Ali broke with the groups, which resulted in an assassination attempt that he barely survived.
He returned to the United States but found little satisfaction in ordinary life. In the mid-1990s, he was taken by media reports about atrocities against Muslims in Bosnia.
I heard a television interview with [Karadzic], a Bosnian Serb political official. And the thing was that he made a statement that during the time of war here that he was doing Europe a favor by ridding Europe of the Islamic presence. As a result of that, I began to think, OK, here I am sitting in Washington, D.C., and this man is making that statement. And I said, well, I’m going to be fortunate that I can be sitting here. And had I been sitting in Bosnia at this moment probably more likely I would be one amongst many who would suffer these various types of problems in Islam.29
In Bosnia, he joined the 7th Muslim Corps, a unit of mujahideen, bringing a host of military hardware and his long experience as a soldier to the conflict. After the war, he married a Bosnian woman who had served in the regular Bosnian army.
When asked to explain his motives for taking part in jihadist causes, Ali sounded like many other jihadists of the 1980s and 1990s. He said he was motivated by a desire to help other Muslims who were being oppressed and victimized.
In Islam, there’s a saying. We are like one body. And when one part of the body hurts, the rest of the body’s going to feel the pain. So that’s what happened to me. I felt the pain. [ … ]
The highest level of faith is when you see a wrong being committed, that you stop it with your presence, with your hands. The second level is to speak out against it with your words. The lowest degree of faith is to hate it in your heart and continue about your way. [ … ]
I kill only when it’s necessary. And the rest of the world is standing by, you know, giving lip service and no action, and I see that it is necessary for me to commit myself to such a time and a place, I’ll go and help those people, whoever they may be.30
Ali’s story was, in many ways, atypical. Relatively few Americans came to jihad through Shi’a Islam. Ali had joined the fight long before most Americans and even before many Arabs. On the face of it, his justifications were compelling. On Bosnia, for instance, he insisted,
I’m not a terrorist, I’m not an aggressor, I’m not a war junkie. I didn’t think I was coming here like the savior of the world. I just wanted to be part of what was taking place here, and to show that they were not alone. And for them to know that they weren’t forgotten.31
In other comments, however, it seemed as if his inner demons may ultimately have driven him more than ideology. Ali’s account of a sniper attack in Lebanon was chilling:
I saw this guy coming down the road. And first I sighted in on him. And I’m looking at him, and I can see on his epaulet that he’s an officer. So then I followed this guy, and then suddenly I just started think, I said, wow, this guy looks like he’s a family man. And I’m sure he has a mother and a father. Wife and children. And then I said, they’re gonna miss him. And I just said, “fuck it,” and I put that lead on him, and pow, that was it. I didn’t feel anything except the recoil from my rifle.32
Watching Ali speak in American Jihadist, one gets the impression that he sees himself fundamentally as a killer and that Islam provided a framework for him to indulge that impulse in a way that he viewed as morally acceptable. “I felt like I