Deconstructing a Radical Wahhabi Islamist

On March 20, 2007. Sheik Omar Bakir (hereinafter ‘SOB”), a guest of Her Majesty for 20 years until his recent expulsion (still under appeal) and Egyptian Islamist Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana appeared with others on New TV – a station in the Middle East, to discuss “Jihad.” Memri.org has posted a video clip and a transcript. It is revealing when deconstructed to see how Wahhabi jihadists twist history and alter religious terms, redefining them beyond any reasonable bounds to justify their actions.

Deconstructing SOB and friends short talk leads to several conclusions about the radical Wahhabi Islamist philosophy:

1. Under the concept of defensive jihad, every Muslim must take up the sword and seek to kill their enemies.

2. The Wahhabi Islamists define Europeans and Americans as their enemies in the context of defensive jihad on a theory of guilt for a long litany of sins, many of which will not disappear even if all Europeans and Americans withdrew from the Middle East tommorow. The radical Wahhabi Islamists will still argue that the imperative of defensive jihad justifies any act of violence against non-muslim taken anywhere in the world.

3. Wahhabi radical Islamists justify their actions by turning the ambiguity in their religious texts into black and white definitions far removed from any reasonable interpretation of the original words. By so doing, they change what on its face would appear to be clear moral limits, and alter them to the point where radical Islamists see no limit upon their savagery, no act too base, no target out of bounds.

4. The same ambiguity that Wahhabi radical Islamists twist to justify their ends is what will allow Islam to moderate and modernize if given an opportunity. See here. Unfortunately, the radical Wahhabists have a head start, the willingness to use force against all who disagree with them, and the backing of the billions of petrodollars that flow into Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

The Transcript:

Interviewer: "In an interview with [the London daily] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on October 10, 2005, you described the people who carried out the 9/11 operation as 'magnificent.' You said that Sheikh Osama bin Laden revived the neglected duty of jihad, and that Allah will reward him for this."

SOB: "Yes. The duty of jihad - and in this case, I'm referring to defensive jihad - had been neglected by the Islamic nation for a long time, because of the arrogance and injustice or America and its allies against the Islamic nation, and because of their support of Israel, and what we see now in the region is the best proof of this. The 9/11 operations were a response to great acts of aggression by America - its attacks on Afghanistan, on Iraq, on Sudan, not to mention the historic Crusades from long ago, and so on."

Deconstruction:

1. Defensive jihad is the duty of every Muslim to fight against any who have invaded or taken what was, at any time, land belonging to Muslims – which would include most of Spain, a part of France, and other parts of Europe. Within the world view of radical Muslims, Islam’s conquests by the sword were not imperialism, rather the conquests were merely advancing the Muslim faith as ordained by Allah. Whereas, any attempt to fight back against Islam and to retake lands lost to the Muslim conquest – which when you get right down to it includes the entire Muslim world outside of Saudi Arabia – is aggression and imperialism by the West. The clear hypocrisy of this position goes over the head of all jihadists. Allah Akbar.

2. SOB actually extends the concept of defensive jihad beyond responding to a loss of territory, but to revenge attacks for past acts of “aggression.” Under this definition of defensive jihad, attacks against non-Muslim Europeans and Americans are a duty of all Muslims anywhere and everywhere across the globe.

3. Just how stupid an SOB is SOB?. America is responsible for the Crusades? Can he possibly mean the Crusades that happened several centuries before America was discovered by Columbus? Actually, he does. This is a common refrain among the jihadists. Apparently, if you are occidental and not a Muslim, then you are a Crusader. What SOB and all other radical Islamists fail to mention is that the Crusades were a response to both several hundred years of Muslim conquest and to the Muslim destruction of the holiest place in Christendom, the Church of the Holy Sephelcure in Jerusalem – the sight of the crucifixion of Jesus. The Church had been built in about 400 A.D. Jerusalem was later invaded and occupied by Muslims and, at the order of Egyptian Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the original Church was completely destroyed in 1009.

4. More SOB dissembling – that 9-11 was justified by American aggression in “Afghanistan, Iraq,” and “so on?” We did not set foot in Afghanistan until after 9-11. Prior to 9-11, we beat back aggression by a secular Iraq in ’91 to save Muslim Kuwait. Hmmm, guess that aggression falls under the “no good deed goes unpunished category.” Aggression in the Sudan? I guess that was the cruise missile President Clinton tossed towards a suspect chemical weapons plant in 1999 in order to take America’s collective attention off illicit Presidential blow jobs – or, as known ever since, “gettin’ a Lewinski.” Hooah. And I guess the “so on” can only refer to America’s war in the early 1800’s against the Muslim Barbary pirates who were raiding American ships. Can you believe our temerity to defend against Islamic . . . aggression is not the right jihaddi word here – let’s call it reasonable Islamic protection from Christian encroachment in Mediterranean sea lanes. I guess the problem with that “great act of aggression” was that Stephen Decatur effectively paddled the Muslim pirates.

5. The bottom line, to radical Islamists, the West is stained with original sin and no further justification is needed to invoke defensive jihad – the duty of all Muslims to take up the sword and attack. We could pack up and leave the Middle East lock, stock and barrel tomorrow, it would make no difference to the radical Wahhabi Islamists.

The Transcript (continued)

SOB: [The 9-11 murderers] "were magnificent, even though they were terrorists. The fact that they carried out a terrorist act does not prevent us from calling them 'magnificent,' because this is what religious scholars call 'commendable terrorism.'"

Interviewer: "You are saying that they waged jihad."

SOB: "That's because we have two kinds of terrorism - commendable terrorism and reprehensible terrorism. Reprehensible terrorism is an attack on women, children, the peaceful, and the innocent."

Interviewer: "So how do you explain the 9/11 operations, in which innocent people were killed, while a Koranic verse says: 'Whoever slays a soul, it is as though he slew all men.'"

SOB: "Yes, but that verse refers to killing in general. 'Do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except when required by justice.' In other words, a Muslim carry out certain religious duties, so when he attacks the enemy attacked on its own land, some innocent people might consequently die, but they are not killed intentionally. This happened in the Bani Al-Nazir raid, and in many other raids in the days of the Prophet Muhammad. When they violated the agreement with him, the Prophet said: 'We conspired against them, and harmed their women and children.' . . . "Killing innocent people is forbidden in Islam. But who is innocent - that is another question."
Interviewer: "There were women, children, and people who had nothing to do with it. They had nothing to do with the U.S. policies."

Sheikh Omar Bakri: "In any war, women and children might be killed unintentionally."

Gamal Al-Bana: "Martyrdom operations in Palestine, in particular, are justified, for two reasons. First, the Palestinians do not have weapons to defend themselves. They have no tanks, artillery, and so on. This is the only means available to them. Therefore, it is justified, especially since it is the Israeli soldiers that are targeted. When I say 'soldiers' - the entire Israeli people is recruited. The women are the most vicious of them all. Therefore, this is justified. I consider this to be martyrdom. Even if they harm a woman - all the women serve in the army. All the men serve in the army. Only the small children remain, and the fact is that these are only very rarely harmed. I believe that these are martyrdom operations, and are necessary."

Deconstruction (continued)

1. This is fascinating. Even an unadulterated radical Islamist like SOB can recognize that the acts of 9-11 constituted terrorism – i.e., violent acts aimed at coercing the civilian population and the government to achieve a political goal. Seems self-evident, does it not? Why is that important? Because the Islamic countries at the UN refuse to agree to a UN definition of terrorism. They do not want to be criticized for their support of - nor their commission of – terrorism against Israelis in particular, whenever and wherever it can be accomplished. Slaughtering Jews is apparently “commendable terrorism,” but then again so is murdering the citizen of any non-Islamic state, such as the US. Note that the statement of Al-Bana states this even more clearly.

2. “Commendable terrorism” and ‘”reprehensible terrorism?” I guess the dividing line is all in the eye of the radical Wahhabi Islamist beholder.

3. I have previously posited that Islam does have the capacity to moderate. What we see here is how a radical Islamist fills in the gray of the Koran with the black and white of the Wahhabi. “. 'Do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except when required by justice.” To the Wahhabi triumphalist interpreting that passage, the term “justice” has one definition - justice means that the Islam must be spread by any and all means. Obviously, there can be more then one interpretation of “justice.” But it will only be accepted in the Muslim world as possible if we fight against Wahhabi Islam as hard as they are fighting against us. Unfortunately, the Wahhabis have a significant head start – and the backing of billions of Saudi petrodollars.

4. Killing innocent people is forbidden in Islam, but who is innocent - that is another question." Here the Wahhabis have twisted the word “innocent” until it has no practical meaning. If you are a non-Muslim, you are not an innocent. If I recall correctly, bin Laden justified the wholesale slaughter of 9-11 by reasoning that the people killed paid taxes the government and voted for the government, and thus were complicit in the sins of the nation state. SOB is doing the same. Again, this is a replay of what I wrote in paragraph 3, above.

5. You got to love al-Bana’s statements. “The Palestinians do not have weapons to defend themselves . . .” You could have fooled me. Actually, it seems like, between small arms, RPG’s and Katusha rockets, Gaza is, per square mile, one of the more militarized places on the face of this earth. And then there is more of the same Wahhabi logic. There are no innocent Israelis. All Israelis are subject to military induction and therefore every Israeli citizen is a legitimate target. This is also why you will never here Wahhabi organizations, such as CAIR, which purports to decry violence against innocents, ever actually name a Hamas or similar organization in their pronouncements against terrorism. The average Westerner cannot begin to fathom how these Wahhabists define their terms, and that what allows CAIR and similar organization to present a facade of reasonableness. Bottom line, unless you get an unambiguous statement from a Wahhabi Islamist, don’t believe it. And even then . . .