Charles Allen - God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad

In the three years since I wrote Gods Terrorists things have moved on. In the memorable words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, stuff happens, and chief among that stuff is the continuing fallout from the US-British intervention in Iraq. It alienated millions of mainstream Muslims who had previously felt sympathy for America in the wake of 9/11 and had supported its war against Osama bin Laden and his local allies, the Taliban. It gave new authority to the Al-Qaeda confederacy, once more able to present itself as the defender of Islam in the face of US-British aggression. And it led to the revitalization of the Taliban.

Three years ago there was a growing consensus among impartial observers of the Afghanistan scene that the war against the Taliban and their Arab guests was close to being won. The reconstruction of the country under a democratically-elected government was under way. Military and political pressures had turned Osama bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and their lieutenants into hunted men, forced to keep moving from one hideout to another within the tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Their long-suffering Pathan hosts were showing signs that their famous tradition of limitless hospitality did indeed have limits. In Pakistan, too, President Musharrafs alliance with the United States and Britain had enough popular support within the country to allow him to stand up to the hard-line Islamist politico-religious parties led by Deobandi and Ahl-i-Hadith mullahs, and to begin purging the pro-Taliban elements in the Pakistan Army and the ISI military intelligence service. The war in Iraq sent all this into reverse. The Bush Administration diverted key assets and funds, aid donors reneged on their pledges, fair weather allies pulled out troops, the old corrupt practices resurfaced. Both in Afghanistan and Pakistan the perception grew that the United States had lost interest, lacked the will to continue the fight. The fanatics breathed again and regrouped, the waverers reconsidered their positions and those who had been vocal in their support for US policies fell silent.

Just as the British and the Russians did in Afghanistan before them, the United States and its remaining allies have waged their war on terror almost exclusively in military terms, all but ignoring the far more important parallel battle for hearts and minds. There is an uncomfortable parallel here with the Prophet Muhammads division of jihad into a greater and lesser struggle and his statement that the spiritual struggle of the greater jihad was more important than the physical struggle of the lesser jihad. Back in 19945 many Pathans gave their support to the Taliban not because they shared their religious ideology but because they represented the least worst option. Today, the Pathans are again turning to the home-grown enemy they know and for the same reason. For want of evidence to the contrary they have accepted the Wahhabi propaganda that the US Nasrani (Christian) agenda is the destruction of their religion.

As I write, the Taliban are once more in the ascendant and Pakistan is in deep trouble. In the tribal areas along the Afghan border the Islamist politico-religious parties dominate local government and are backing the Taliban to the hilt. They have made it clear that their agenda is nothing less than the Talibanization of Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. Three years ago their pretensions seemed laughable but the reality today is that they are winning the greater jihad as mainstream Sunni Islam in Pakistan becomes increasingly demoralized and polarized. This radicalization extends to the streets of Britain, where large numbers of young Muslim Britons have rejected the tolerant, inclusive Islam which their parents brought with them from Pakistan in favor of the hard-line jihadism preached by the Islamist mullahs. The cult of the suicide bomber has won converts among young men desperate to find a Muslim identity in a non-Muslim land and eager to embrace the chimera of martyrdom. Homeland America is as vulnerable to these young would-be martyrs as Britain, Spain or other European countries where the bombers have left their bloody handprints. Their war against the West will not end with the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Dr Ayman al-Zawahri.