Weak Points In The Ideology Of Jihad

Weak
Points in the Ideology of Jihad

The
Resilience of the Ideology

Whether
you like it or not, whether you consider it something too obscure to
be bothered with, the ideology is the jihad’s most effective and
most enduring weapon. Ideology is the most important arm because it
is the most resilient. It is going to remain long after Bin Laden is
gone, long after the individual groups have vanished. If, and when,
all the strategies and tactics of these cells have been wound up, the
jihad as an ideology will stay and will go on to generate the next
group, and the next.

So
how does the ideology provide this resilience?

It
frames the conflict, and justifies it. It gives the Mujahideen a
grand mission: the salvation, no less, of humanity. This is something
that is not sufficiently understood. There is a common perception
that these people must be nihilists, that they are just
negatively‐minded people. They cannot be religious, because a
religious person who reads books would not be acting the way that
these do. If they are religious then they certainly cannot be doing
any reading.1 Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. Because by
looking at the ideological materials put out, you realize that it is
very important to them to feel that they are engaged in a very
important and noble cause for humanity. They are rescuing us from
ourselves. As they see it, we are all sunk in the mire of jāhiliyya
(a renewed ‘era of pagan ignorance’). We are diverted from the