The New Cold War, Salafi Jihadis

Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian scholar travelled to the United States in 1948, to refine his studies at the nation’s best universities. He brought back a religious vigor instead. His instinctual response was to have Islam brought back to the more “traditional” sense which would replace the selfless, materialistic values he saw in the United States, which horrified him. Believing the Muslims today as weak and empty and crossing in Takfiri purposes his mission was to legitimize Islam into government.

His writings and many books he had produced would reverberate, while he was in prison in Egypt, thru-ought the Islamic world. But by 1966, the year of his execution, his martyrdom would call on the Muslim ummah to propagate his teachings and to integrate the Islamic ideology into the secular Arab states. The goal. to bring back the Islamic ideologies of the following, Ibn Tammiyah, Ibn Hambali and of late, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The first truly religious Arab state began with the ideology brought by Abdul Wahab to Muhammad Ibn Saud, it was called the Emirate of Diriyah, which later became Saudi Arabia. al-wahab had implied to Ibn Saud:

“You are the settlement’s chief and wise man. I want you to grant me an oath that you will perform jihad (Struggle to spread Islam) against the unbelievers. In return you will be imam, leader of the Muslim community and I will be leader in religious matters.”

Abdul al-Wahhab considered his movement an effort to purify Islam by returning Muslims to what, he believed, were the original principles of that religion. However many Sunni Muslims thought him to be a heretic, his family considered him to be intolerant and cast him out. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born out of this virulent ideology. Many years would pass, and the Wahhabi school of thought funded by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia would take root.

http://ebooks.rahnuma.org/religion/Muslim_Sects/The-Wahhabi-Mission-and-Saudi-Arabia.pdf

November 19, 1977…a turning point. Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, became the first Arab leader to visit Israel officially when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in which he also spoke before the Knesset. His long awaited plan to have the reconciliation of Arabs and Israeli’s were unprecedented in the Arab world. The Peace treaty was finally signed by Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in Washington, D.C. which were then followed by the Camp David accords under U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The treaty was extremely unpopular in most of the Arab World and the wider Muslim World. His treaty and proposed peaceful solution with the Israelis were not in agreement with the religious sector, but Sadat still maintained popular consensus with the people.

He was assassinated on October 6, 1981. Afterwards, hundreds of Egyptian religious authorities, especially those with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Gamma Islamiyya were arrested and tortured for weeks, even months. Two notable figures would arise from the imprisoned inmates whom would later have future implications for the globe, especially the United States….Ayman al-Zawahiri and Omar Abdel Rahman (Blind Sheik). Both would suffer under extremely painful torture methods that would last weeks, but would not be charged with Sadat's murder. Rahman would enter the United States in 1980, while being under a terrorist watch list and fully approved of a US Visa. Numerous people would be charged with Sadat’s murder, most of the middle-rank members of the Islamic Jihad were discharged from prison after only three years and fled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to help the mujaheddin there and escape persecution at home.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anwar-Sadat

1979….Afghanistan was under the detestable rule of Nur Muhammad Taraki who was appointed as president under much controversy. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Arab Nationalist were brought together, along with Pashtuns began taking the fight to the massive Soviet army. The Muslim ulema found their new religious edict, one they have been waiting for since the Crusades. The secular Soviet nation would soon see a rise in the Islamic religious sector and would find them a formidable adversary. It would bring about a ten year war that saw the liquidation of the Pan Arabist mentality, as the older more, reserved Arabs began dying off. Replacing them with rapid succession were the fresh faces coming out of Pakistan. Especially the madrassas in Islamabad and Peshawar. One person in particular began implementing the older works of Qutb and Abdul Wahab. His name was Abdullah Azzam. Azzam was the religious imam whom taught Sharia Law in the University of Damascus in Syria. His knowledge and firebrand teachings were wanted in Afghanistan, but was told to stay in the calmer region of Islamabad away from the fighting in Kabul.

http://www.pwhce.org/azzam

He helped open a recruitment center which was located in Pakistan called the Maktab al-Khidamat or the Afghan Services Bureau. Assisting him in making the office functional were Egyptian born Islamic imam named Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi Construction Magnate. Azzam would begin teaching to thousands of the new faces a new type of jihad, it became the defensive and offensive focal point of ones life. The Jihadist mentality began uprooting the Nationalist point of view as the war raged onward.

Meanwhile recruitment offices began springing up in New York City, Brooklyn. There its headquarters were called the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. Branches open in over 30 US cities, as Muslim-Americans donate millions of dollars to support the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. With the end of the war in 1989, Azzam was killed under suspicious circumstances. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri take over the recruitment offices.

The intelligence services of the CIA and Pakistan ISI began funding millions of dollars to the recruitment centers. But as the war ended so did the funding. But it wouldn’t come without a cost down the road. The Mujahedin fighters began going back to their native homelands, and with them a newfound vigor to keep the jihad alive. Jihadism would begin taking more aggressive steps towards building a global caliphate as the venerable Ayman al-Zawahiri and his financial backer Osama Bin Laden began taking the fight to the House of Saud, who had allowed the “disbelievers” to build military bases in their key port cities.

The United States would have a decades long battle with this adept ideological enemy which came from the Sunni countries in the Middle East. The Frankenstein monster created in part by the United States intelligence services was walking upright and toward the global community. With the Israeli-U.S. partnership the new face of Salafi Jihadism had found a new primary objective. To eliminate the partnership and bring about the caliphate.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special/sala.html

Numerous Jihadist groups would begin to materialize across the globe…Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Hizb-i-Islami, Jaysh al-Islam, Abu Sayyaf would be among many dozens of others who would cause the poorer regions of the Middle East and SE Asia to witness the destructive mayhem, funded primarily by the Saudi Kingdom as they continue to propagate the Wahhabi ideology by opening up madrassas worldwide. Under Sun Tzu, Art of War, all warfare is based on deception. Thus the motto of the Israeli intelligence unit, Mossad, by way of deception thou shalt do war. Or the current motto, Where there is no deception, a nation falls.

As the threats began taking unprecedented steps of abject violence, the Israeli military services had long ago saw the implications of the Salafi Jihadist ideology. Mista-arvim, is the name given to counter-terrorism units of the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Border Police, and Israel Police who operate undercover. Such units are specifically trained to assimilate among the local Arab population. These units are to learn the language, and then at times spend decades integrating into Arab societies collecting sensitive information regarding the Arab populations collective mindset towards Israelis, and which Islamic organizations constitute a direct threat to the country of Israel itself.

http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/children-agents

With September 11th 2001 begin the focal point of Salafi Jihadism, it then spread into numerous nationalist countries which were uprooted by the United States led coalition countries such as Syria, Libya and Iraq. With military invasions of these countries liquidating the only opposition to the Sunni led extremists the Jihadists began to exist once again. With Syria being the country which helped give rise to the Islamic State and Levant and other notable Sunni extremists such as Al Nusra, Jund al-Khilafah, As-Sahaab, Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades.

Currently with the financial and military backing of the Sunni extremist groups in Syria and Libya by the United States, can it be said that Salafi Jihadism is now supported under convenient circumstances by the triumvirate partnership of Saudi Arabia-Israel-United States with a pre-concieved agenda to upend the secular Arab states, in order to prolong the war of Islamic extremism.

Or is it simply a matter of the enemy of my enemy is now a friend, for the time being.