The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [15]
One doesn’t have to look far in Islamic theology to see how wrong this view is: the Quran states that anyone who kills an innocent person shall be treated “as if he had murdered all of mankind.” That refers to any human being, regardless of religion. It also states: “As for anyone who kills a Muslim deliberately, his repayment is Hell, remaining in it timelessly, forever. God is angry with him and has cursed him, and has prepared for him a terrible punishment.” To this day Ibn Taymiyya’s arguments are used by takfiri terrorists—those who accuse other Muslims of being apostates—to justify the killing of innocent people. Some who subscribe to it don’t have enough knowledge of Islam to know how wrong it is, and others knowingly misuse it to justify violence.
Qutb was hanged in 1966. Beforehand, the regime offered him mercy on the condition that he recant his views, but he refused, allegedly telling his sister, “My words will be stronger if they kill me.” He surely was right in that sense, as his ideas have been used by everyone from Khomeini to bin Laden. Khomeini was fond of employing Qutb’s imagery and conceptual arguments: just as Qutb, for example, compared Nasser (whom he viewed as a tyrant) to Pharaoh, Khomeini likened the shah to the biblical Pharaoh, and by his logic whoever challenged the Pharaoh took on the role of Moses. Given Khomeini’s international prominence as the leader of Iran, his use of Qutb’s ideas and arguments gave them wide circulation in the Muslim world.
In March 1979, one month after the Iranian revolution, Egypt and Israel signed the peace treaty that formally completed the Camp David Accords of the previous year. In the Middle East, the agreement was seen as a betrayal of the Palestinians and undermined the Arab world’s solidarity against Israel. As a consequence, Egypt faced isolation throughout the Muslim and Arab world and was suspended from the Arab League. Islamist radicals in Egypt were enraged: Sadat, in the years before his assassination by extremists in 1981, had tried to sell himself as a religious president, in contrast to Nasser, who battled the Islamists and imprisoned Qutb.
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking fifty-two Americans hostage in retaliation for the United States’ having allowed the shah into the country for cancer treatment. The failed U.S. rescue attempt in April resulted in the hostages being scattered around Iran; they were not released until January 1981—444 days after they had been seized. While the student leaders who overran the embassy hadn’t sought Khomeini’s approval before they acted, he supported them once it became clear that they were loyal Islamists who had pledged fealty to him. For the duration of the 444 days, the United States under Jimmy Carter seemed powerless to respond, and the forces of political Islam appeared to be on the rise.
Sixteen days after the attack on the embassy, on November 20, the destruction of a holy place shook the Islamic world when extremists seized al-Masjid al-Haram and took pilgrims hostage. The mosque surrounds the Kaaba, which is said to have been built by Abraham and is the place that Muslims turn to face when they pray five times a day. It is considered the first house of worship and the holiest site in Islam. The extremists declared that the Mahdi, the redeemer of Islam, had arrived—it was one of their leaders—and called on Muslims to obey him. Using the Grand Mosque’s loudspeaker system, which could be heard throughout Mecca, they announced that the Saudi leadership had been corrupted by the West and demanded that the monarchy be replaced, that all ties with the West be cut, and that a stricter version of Islamic law be introduced into the country.
It took two weeks for the mosque to be fully retaken, and hundreds of pilgrims and Saudi troops were killed in the process. Afterward,