Reporting from Afghanistan

Main Page

THE NEW CRUSADE
Islam's Holy War against the World
Report by Kambiz Foroohar and Jim Reeden
April 1996

* In the countryside outside Algiers, Algeria, government security forces discover severed heads set on pikes and bodies strewn along the roadside.

* On the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines, 200 rebels disguised as soldiers raid the isolated trading town of Ipil, plundering stores and banks and leaving 53 dead.

* In the Gaza Strip, two separate suicide attacks by Palestinians kill seven Israeli soldiers and one American student; the American was riding on a bus when it was struck by a van packed with explosives.

These are not random acts of violence. This is a war. Fundamentalist Muslims are waging a jihad, or holy war, against secular governments that threatens to spill into the West.

Even America is not immune. In October 1995, Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, along with nine codefendants, was convicted of conspiring to wage warfare against the United States for his part in planning the 1993 bombing of New York City's World Trade Center. According to the FBI, one of the co-conspirators, Ramzi Yousef, had also planned to blow up as many as 11 American airliners, possibly all in one day, as a spectacular act of defiance.

"[Muslims] are ultimately committed to waging holy war, both in the Middle East and the world at large, against all of their opposition," says Oliver B. Revell, a former senior FBI official in charge of counter terrorism, "and that means us."

In Algeria, a civil war between Islamic radicals and the military-backed government has claimed 40,000 lives in the past four years. The bloodshed began in January 1992, when the army took power to head off an election victory by the Islamic Salvation Front. The resultant campaign of assassination and sabotage between government and fundamentalist guerrillas has snowballed into 1,000 deaths every week.

The fundamentalists' car bombings and trademark slashing of throats from the right ear through the spinal column have struck terror in Algerians. In one attack, guerrillas who had hijacked an airliner were killed by security forces. Their supporters, in retaliation, killed four Catholic priests and set off a car bomb that killed 42 people and injured 256.

In an effort to crack down on the radicals, the military has enlisted blackhooded commandos known as ninjas who patrol the streets of Algiers looking for young men in leather jackets-worn to conceal weapons. In one week alone in March 1995, more than 1,000 rebels were killed. But rather than showing signs of a letup, the bloody guerrilla war has only spread further, into France, where a wave of bombings in late 1995 killed seven and injured 140 people. The fundamentalists resent France's support of the Algerian government.

"Islamism now constitutes, for France, the number-one menace," wrote commentator Claude Imbert in the weekly Le Point.

lpil, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, was the site of violence between Muslim insurgents and Christian vigilantes in 1972, the first battle of a 20year Muslim insurrection on the island that left more than 50,000 people dead. The daring daylight attack on Ipil in April 1995 indicates that the 6 million Muslims in the mostly Christian Philippines may be re-emerging as a problem.

Abu Sayyaf, the group responsible for the raid, is one of several demanding either autonomy or a separate Muslim state on Mindanao. One theory holds that Abu Sayyaf raided the town to raise cash for their cause: They left with a total of $1 million. But they also indiscriminately gunned down men, women and children.

"They were killing people like they do this every day," reported a survivor of the carnage.

After over 40 years of fighting, the Palestinian Liberation Organization signed a peace accord with Israel in September 1993, but that hasn't stopped the bloodshed. Muslim fundamentalists such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, and the smaller Islamic Jihad are determined to torpedo the peace process. Since the treaty was signed, 65 Israelis have died in suicide bombings.

Palestinian boys as young as 14 years old are enticed with visions of a sensual paradise to blow themselves up in a crowd of Israelis and thus become heroes and martyrs. About 20 have done so in the past two years. But first they must go through rigorous training.

"They put two or three people together in a grave and cover it, as if they were really dead," reveals a senior Palestinian intelligence officer. "After two or three minutes, they let them out. Later they put the chosen one in a grave by himself. They tell him to recite a special part of the Koran." After the candidate is let out, he's left alone for two days and nights with nothing but the Koran. The trainers then study him to see if he's ready. "They tell him, 'Now you are great; you are holy; you are ready to go to heaven."'

With more than one billion followers, Islam is the second-largest religion in the world after Christianity, with devotees everywhere from the steppes of China to the southern coast of Africa.

Islam means "I surrender," or "I submit"; a Muslim is a person who submits to the will of Allah, or God. The religion was founded by the prophet Mohammed nearly 700 years after the birth of Christianity, after he received divine revelations from Allah. These revelations were recorded and compiled in the Koran, Islam's most holy book. To fundamentalist Muslims, anything deviating from the Koran is morally corrupt.

"Islam is not only a religion; it is also a political philosophy," notes Dr. Mohammed Amar, an Egyptian radical. "[Islam is] a comprehensive way of life."

Hassan al-Turabi, the leading intellectual of fundamentalist Islam, and the alleged behind-the- scenes power in the Sudanese government of Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, maintains that Islam led the Arabs to their zenith from 650 to 950 A.D. For 300 years, Muslims ruled an empire from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas, and Islamic art and science blossomed. Eventually, Islam declined-which Turabi chalks up to religious corruption. A power elite emerged, he says, that excluded the masses: "Muslims then fell into a trap. They began to justify their distance from the Koran, and an unfortunate tradition began."

But, Turabi predicts, "There is a renaissance of Islam coming. It is part of the historical cycle. Islam will be on top again."

Middle East experts posit that one reason for the global reach of radical Islam is its strong appeal to countries beset by tyranny and economic stagnation. They point to Egypt, the site of a bloody four-year police and military crackdown on violent Islamic groups who want to replace the secular government. The African country has been the second-largest recipient of U.S. military and nonmilitary aid since 1979-some $2 billion annually-yet the country's poverty level has soared.

"Islamic fundamentalism offers solutions--concrete ones-and is not beset by corruption or doubt," says one political scientist. "That's important if you look at the corrupt nature of most of the ruling bodies in nearly all Muslim countries."

That is why Sudan's Hassan al-Turabi believes that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan will turn to fundamen-talist Islam within the next few years.

The current revival of political Islam is attributed mainly to the revolution in Iran, the defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan and the radicalization of Sudan, according to one Middle East analyst.

Islamic fundamentalists claimed their first major scalp in 1979, in Iran. After a year of revolutionary upheaval, unarmed demonstrators led by an 80-year-old cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeini, toppled the Shah of Iran, then one of the most powerful rulers in the Middle East.

"This was a revolution that valued religious orthodoxy above all else, including economics," says one observer.

The revolution launched militant Islam as a powerful modern political force, reaching beyond the boundaries of the country itself.

The Iranians played a significant role in training Bosnian Muslims and Muslims from other countries who fought in the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, reported U.S. senior officials in December 1995 during the deployment of American peacekeeping troops to Bosnia. They also provided more than 5,000 tons of arms to Bosnian Muslims. The presence of more than 200 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Bosnia was considered a major threat to the safety of American troops.

"Iran has its own agenda apart from Bosnia," said a highly placed Clinton Administration official at the time, "and if the Iranians have an interest in targeting us, I would be concerned about what happens in Bosnia."

Iran's world view makes its attempts to obtain atomic reactors and technology for what they call research all the more chilling.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Iran would like to join the nuclear-weapons club but wants to appear to do otherwise," says Lawrence Korb of the Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Afghanistan's 1988 victory over the Soviet Union and the "godless communists" reverberated across the Muslim world. One superpower had taken on Islam and been vanquished. In a similar David and Goliath scenario, the tiny Muslim republic of Chechnya has been battling Russia for independence since late 1994, to the tune of 20,000 lives. Despite a cease-fire called in mid-1995, the Chechens stepped up their terrorist activities by the end of the year, capped by a car bomb that killed 11 people in plain view of the Moscow-installed government in Chechnya's capital.

Afghanistan served as a powerful catalyst in activating fundamentalist Muslim youth. During the 1980s, thousands of militant volunteers from 50 countries rallied to the cause of Afghan freedom fighters. Some returned home to cause serious trouble for their rulers. Several of those arrested in the World Trade Center bombing were veterans of the Afghan campaign. Convicted co-conspirator Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman made at least three trips to Afghanistan during the war and two of his sons reportedly fought there.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak calls the Afghanistan veterans the main terrorist threat to the stability of his government. Some of the assailants involved in the political assassinations and bombings in Egypt have proven to be Egyptian veterans of the Afghan war. One Cairo lawyer close to the militants says that 20,000 Egyptians fought against the Soviets.

Allegedly presenting another threat to Egypt is neighboring Sudan, Africa's only Islamized nation. Relations between the two countries are tense because Sudan has trained and sheltered a number of extremists from several nations, including Egypt. Sudan also has close ties with and receives support from Iran.

Hassan al-Turabi, the acknowledged power in Sudan and a religious leader well-versed in Western thinking, condemns Western intrusion into Muslim consciousness and belittles Arab countries that, he maintains, have adopted Western practices-Egypt chief among them. When Egyptian President Mubarak was attacked in June 1995, he pointed a finger at Turabi, who said there was no substantiation to the charges. Turabi also denies charges that Sudan supports the Egyptian rebels with guns.

"That allegation is just another lie your State Department is passing off as the truth," he declares.

Still, Turabi calls the fundamentalists fighting the Egyptian government "honorable men," and advises that tourists in Egypt "watch their step. They should stay away from the battle."

Visitors are staying away from Egypt in droves. Hardly a day goes by without some report of armed clashes between government forces and terrorists allegedly belonging to Islamic groups, says Israeli writer Amos Elon. The tourist industry has lost an estimated $3 billion in revenue since 1992.

Egypt has been under a state of emergency since 1981, when Muslim radicals assassinated pro-American President Anwar Sadat. The fundamentalists never accepted Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Since 1992, about 1,000 people have died in clashes. In 1993 alone, Egyptian fundamentalists bombed the Interior Minister's car, attacked the Prime Minister and attempted to gun down the Information Minister. And in November 1995, the radicals moved their battle onto foreign soil, with their car bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan.

Spurring Egyptian fundamentalists on in their battle against the Egyptian government is convicted World Trade Center co-conspirator Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, their spiritual mentor.

"Islamic radicals in Egypt regard Sheik Rahman as a saint," says Amos Elon.

The blind sheik castigates the Mubarak government, sending out taped sermons every week in which he urges his followers to overthrow the president.

"Self-defense is legal in all religions," Rahman told Time magazine. "This is called jihad in Islam. The West has misinterpreted this concept. People who are defending their lands are called terrorists."

What is America's place in the new crusade? Was the World Trade Center bombing an isolated incident, or a portent of things to come?

According to the U.S. Census, the American Muslim population of 5 to 6 million will overtake the Jewish-American population by the year 2000. Most Muslims are law-abiding and do not condone violence; radical groups represent only an extremist fringe. But those groups are gaining ground.

"Until Oklahoma City, the consensus in the FBI was that, of the various extremist groups in the United States, it was radical Islamic groups that most threaten American security," says Steven Eiri6rson, who researched Muslim fundamentalists as the executive producer of the acclaimed PBS documentary Jihad in America.

Islamic fundamentalists object philosophically to the United States and what they perceive as the corruptness of American society. They embrace the belief that, "Western, particularly American, society is morally corrupt, intrinsically anti-Islamic and evil," says Emerson.

The World Trade Center bombing conspiracy and subsequent trials provided a rich source of materials on the extensive terrorist infrastructure in the New York and New Jersey areas. When, immediately after the bombing, police examined the papers of EI-Sayyid Nosair, a follower of Rahman who had been arrested (later convicted) for the murder of militant Jewish leader Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990, they discovered a road map to an international terrorist network headquartered in the United States.

But, warns former FBI official Oliver B. Revell,, these materials are "only a small part of the picture. There is an extensive subterranean network in the United States of radical militants whose activities are not illegal. What we need to focus on is what these people are saying. That is the key to understanding what they will do."

According to Ahmed Said Nasr, an Egyptian journalist and former diplomat based in Washington, D.C., "During the past several years, there has been not only a proliferation of Islamic fundamentalist groups in the United States, but they have carried out a major deception to the American public by masquerading as charities and religious or educational organizations. In the West, you think of schools or religious institutions as totally innocent because of your tradition of separation of church and state. But for the Islamic fundamentalist movement, there is no separation of church and state."

One of these groups, the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), based in Plainfield, Indiana, holds an annual convention at which American Muslims are rallied in support of various militant Islamist causes. The world's fundamentalist leaders come to the conventions not only to address Muslim Americans, say law-enforcement officials, but to coordinate operations behind closed doors. A Chicago-based PalestinianAmerican who was convicted of abetting terrorist acts admitted to Israeli authorities that he had helped to train Hamas recruits at a MAYA convention.

Steven Emerson reports that one of the most popular lecturers at the MAYA conference held in December 1994 was Bassani al-Amoush, a member of the Islamic coalition in the Jordanian parliament. Amoush led the crowd in cheers of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) when the news was handed to him that Hamas had attacked a bus in Jerusalem, wounding 19 and killing three. At a smaller gathering of fundamentalists in Detroit six months earlier, Amoush declared America "the number-one enemy and ... the Great Satan.-He assured the crowd that it was "certainly possible to defeat America, as the Vietnamese demonstrated."

For fundamentalist Muslims, this may just be the beginning. After 1,000 years lying dormant, Islam has time on its side.

Main Page