Aren’t these differences based more on different men proselytizing their own personal beliefs and/or interpretations of Islam than on a singular desire to unite all Muslims under one Islamic system?
In [Global Jihadism] I’ve spun each of these different schools of thought around one individual, so they do become sort of cult of personality-type schools. Most aren’t calling for the establishment of a local caliphate, although they all buy into that narrative. The only ones actually demanding a global caliphate immediately are the global jihadist scholars. They are creating these separations between themselves and other scholars in order to maintain their following.
The Caliphate at its widest extent covered Northern Africa, Spain, the Middle East through the Pakistan/Afghanistan region to Indonesia. Is this what Global Jihadists are striving for, to bring this same swath of territory under Islamic rule?
Yes. You have to build into this. First, they are okay with emirates, which are smaller versions of the Caliphate. They discuss, ‘When do you establish an Islamic state versus an Islamic emirate?’ And ‘If you are an emir, what does that mean?’ They think of Afghanistan and Iraq as emirates. Anywhere where there is a jihadi presence they look to establish some sort of an emirate or island of sharia. The goal is to slowly bleed these out, then tie them together and take over the historic geography that was ruled at one point under Islamic law—the swath you are talking about. Their bigger goal is global domination. They are happy to subordinate Christians and Jews to second-class citizens—no need to destroy them, just subordinate them. Marx wanted a global communist state. The jihadists want a global sharia state or caliphate. They don’t think they can have that anytime soon, but for now whatever was under Islam, they want it back—North Africa, Al-Andalus, all the way to Indonesia.
Can you briefly address what you call the “awakening” of the ‘60s and its three interconnected phenomena?
The movement began in the early 1920s with the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which bubbled into this sense that the solution to all social and political ills was to be found in Islam, specifically the pure and fundamental components of the Sunni and Salafist version of Islam. Turning more into a political/social movement, it culminated with Sayyid Qutb, an educated Egyptian government official well versed in English literature and culture. Qutb studied in the US from 1949 to 1950 and came away believing that America was nothing short of a hotbed of perversion, racism, and exploitation. Returning to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and began to write prolifically about the potential threat of the invasion of Western culture into the Islamic world. His writings stirred up the hornets’ nest and caused the Egyptian government to aggressively crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Sayyid Qutb was executed and his brother led an exodus of highly educated, ultra conservative followers from Egypt to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to expand the Brotherhood’s civil infrastructure bureaucracy. Going to Saudi Arabia was a match made in heaven. By the early `60s, a vacuum appeared among the Islamists in Egypt with many imprisoned, executed or fled to Saudi Arabia. After the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel, Arab states were collectively humiliated, emasculated, and embarrassed. It became apparent within Islamist circles operating at the time—including that of Aman al-Zawahiri, who was in his formative age in Egypt during the `67 War, and of Sayyid Imam Sharif—that the Arab governments were impotent and could not, even as a unit, defeat the tiny state of Israel. Reenergized, they began to take matters into their own hands. By the early `70s you’ve got Zawahiri’s group, the blind Shaikh’s group, and a number of other popping up to fill the vacuum. These young upstarts came in very aggressively with a new wave of jihadist terrorism shooting out of Egypt.
