by Rob Reid
The movement carefully shapes its propaganda to appeal to the depressed and the suicidal, who exist in all societies, and can be highly vulnerable to emotional manipulation and apocalyptic reasoning. Its ideology has been condemned by all mainstream schools of Islamic thought, as well as all other religious terror groups (including Al Qaeda and ISIS’s various shards and splinters). However, it has many small pockets of adherents throughout the world, due to the meticulously argued online sermons of its charismatic, multilingual founder Abu Sayf al-Din.
ORIGINS: Jaysh al Hisaab emerged in N’Djamena, the capital of the impoverished, landlocked African nation of Chad. Extremely violent struggles were then under way in three of Chad’s immediate neighbors (the Darfur conflict in Sudan, the post-Qadaffi anarchy in Libya, and the Boko Haram uprising in Nigeria). The movement began in an encampment that was originally started by foreign refugees, then later expanded by local jobless youth. New residents were drawn by a set of low-level communal services provided by Abu Sayf al-Din’s early followers. In 2014, the Chadian government denounced Jaysh al Hisaab as a “parallel state.” The encampment was then destroyed, and over two thousand of its residents brutally massacred. A radicalized core of survivors, including Abu Sayf al-Din, fled and found shelter with a sympathetic Boko Haram offshoot in neighboring Nigeria.
LEADERSHIP: Little is known for certain about Abu Sayf al-Din, including his nationality (conflicting sources cite Chad, Niger, and Nigeria), his precise age, or whether he remains alive. What is clear is that he is (or was) an intensely gifted polemicist with a fluent command of highly idiomatic French, a strong command of formal Arabic, and access to an English linguist who translated his sermons, then coached him to mouth them phonetically (this is inferred because the English sermons consist of hundreds of stitched-together cuts, whereas all French and Arabic sermons were recorded in single, fluid takes). Abu Sayf al-Din also has a very strong knowledge of multiple scholarly Islamic traditions.
Along with Jepson, a striking woman Mitchell hasn’t yet met is in the conference room. All Louboutin and Chanel, she’s the Hollywood ideal of a Wintour-grade corporate doyenne. She also emits this compass-bending…field of authority, which proclaims she’s been Boss for decades, and not mere years, young man! But her look and build would still turn heads in a bar. Not in an EDM-pumping meat market, no. But in one of your swanker, Rat-Packy joints—one with artisanal tonics and a pro on the baby grand, maybe in the Four Seasons of one of your better city-states; Singapore, say, or Dubai. She seems to cross the squash-court-sized conference room in a single mighty stride. And as she zeroes in, Mitchell feels like…quarry. Or maybe putty. Putty of the sort that Mrs. Robinson reduced Dustin Hoffman to way back then (but not sexual in this case; no, no, no, not that!).
“I know,” she says. “The Help wears business formal in Silicon Valley, don’t they? So you’re thinking, who is this lowlife, and how’s she getting face time with the mighty Phoundr?” For the record, Mitchell is thinking nothing of the sort. But given a moment to catch his breath, a less arch, provocative, and (let’s be honest) articulate version of this thought would have crossed his mind. Because the Valley’s ruling class—its smattering of Jepsons and armies of proto-Jepsons—is indeed universally hoodied, jeaned, and/or besneakered. Suits and professional garb like hers are like tradesmen’s uniforms in a midcentury British class drama. They’re the plumage of your investment banker, lawyer, consultant, or wealth-management hack. Erstwhile Masters of the Universe who here, in the seat of Capitalism 3.0, are but the Help—a respected but lesser caste of journeymen who generate documents and tend to the accounts, freeing up the better sort for more important matters. “I’m Judy Sherman,” she says, extending a hand for Mitchell to shake, which he manages rather well. “Attorney. And you have no idea why you’re here.”
She withdraws a few feet, toward the biggest and blankest whiteboard wall. “Ever heard of Poland, Mitchell?” She asks this without looking at him, clearly seeking no answer, and starts pacing professorially. “Butt of many jokes. But geopolitically, it’s what we call a buffer state. Germany and Russia? Not friends. So God, or someone, puts Poland smack between them. That way, when the big boys just have to rumble, one of ’em can conquer Poland instead! It blows off steam, see? They basically take turns at this for centuries. Some of my mom’s people were from there. And reading through Polish history—as your Polack granny will insist, trust me—every few years, you’re like, ‘Holy crap, they’re doing it again!’ Another conquest, and it usually takes about six minutes! That’s what you get for picking flat plains for your natural defense. Eventually, the world can’t see Poland as anything but a buffer state! It gets so bad, at the end of World War II, they literally pick up the entire country and move it two hundred miles to the left. Russia wants some more Poland, which means Germany has to lose some, so let’s just move the fucker to the left! Anyway. I know I’m not exactly selling you on buffer-statedom. But you don’t have a choice, so I don’t have to.”
Judy’s now on the closest approach of her pacing circuit. So it’s jarring when she stops dead, then whirls on a stiletto stylus to face him. “What I’m saying is, you’re gonna be a buffer, Mitchell. Between two somewhat larger entities. In this corner”—she waves her arms Jepsonward, like a matador flinging a cape—“we have the digital juggernaut known as Phluttr! And in that corner”—she waves toward the room’s emptiest quadrant—“the Government of the United States of America! And smack in the middle? We have lit-tle Mit-chell Pren-tice. Sound like fun?”
CROSS-AGENCY INTELLIGENCE SYNOPSIS: JAYSH AL HISAAB (CONT’D.)
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DEVELOPMENT AND DIFFUSION: Though little survives of Abu Sayf al-Din’s earliest teachings, they are reported to have focused upon the notions of jabr and qadar, which connect to issues of fate and predestination in Islam. His interpretation of these concepts holds that all human affairs are entirely foreordained, a perspective more in line with Calvinist Christianity than much of mainstream Islam.
After the massacre of his followers, he struggled with overwhelming suicidal thoughts, which were all the more troubling because suicide is a grave sin in Islam. More troubling still, his highly deterministic theology obliged him to view the massacre as a magnificently calculated act of God’s will, which could only be seen as an unambiguous blessing. He concluded that the blessing stemmed from hastening his noble followers to their infinite reward in paradise. Just as desirable, any false or impure followers were hastened to searing punishments that would otherwise have been delayed for years. This logic led Abu Sayf al-Din to his extreme conclusion that indiscriminate mass murder can have “unambiguously good” outcomes.
After fleeing to Nigeria, Jaysh al Hisaab leadership obtained reliable Internet access and video-production tools. Abu Sayf al-Din then distilled his theology into nine 30–40-minute canonical sermons that were each filmed in English, Arabic, and French. They have since been subtitled into over one hundred languages by followers, scholars, and others online. His delivery in all languages is punctuated by highly evocative gestures and facial expressions. Though surely meticulously choreographed, they’re delivered in a natural manner which greatly bolsters overall impact. The rhetoric is highly accessible, with scholarly gyrations avoided and everyday vocabulary favored. Abu Sayf al-Din also conveys a warm, earnest, and at times almost loving demeanor, in stark contrast to the stern, somber tones favored by many modern mullahs.
THEOLOGY: Each sermon begins with opening statements and principles that will be wholly uncontroversial to its intended audience of conservative Salafi Muslims. From this starting point, Abu Sayf al-Din unfolds a sequence of logically connected arguments, each supported by coherent and often very witty analogies, as well as quotes from the Quran and the hadiths. All lead to his conclusions about murder and acts of terror. Although common murderers are “wicked,” Abu Sayf al-Din says those who kill with the express purpose of hastening fellow humans “to the afterlife t
hat they merit infinitely” are sanctified. Righteous victims end up spending far less time on Earth, “which, however delightful, is wretched compared to the joys of heaven,” while infidels are “delivered more swiftly to their rightful infinite torment.”
Much care is devoted to reaching those afflicted by suicidal feelings, which Abu Sayf al-Din discusses in the intensely personal terms of his own anguish in the wake of the massacre. Many followers who find his sermons in the throes of their own crises have cited this as inspiring their conversions. Abu Sayf al-Din posits that a meaningless life on the cusp of an empty and sinful ending can be redeemed and wholly sanctified if it closes with the “boundlessly just and merciful act” of “rightly motivated” mass homicide.
While fiercely emotional, his arguments are also quite analytical and built atop a linear logical edifice. As such, they resonate most deeply with the intelligent, educated, and sincerely devout. People of this ilk often have significant resources and access, creating the potential for especially sophisticated and destructive attacks. Abu Sayf al-Din ingeniously manipulates the conflicting feelings of guilt, grandeur, desperation, and entitlement that might beset suicidal Muslims in a privileged, developing-world context. He offers a way out of a previously intractable situation, while salving injured vanity with the promise of a spectacular exit, followed by glory, laud, and honor in the hereafter.
TEACHINGS: Abu Sayf al-Din presents his core philosophy in his first four sermons, in markedly nonsectarian terms. Because only God can judge, followers of Jaysh al Hisaab’s path should not presume to target victims on any basis at all. Rather than being animated by hatred and anger, they should coolly optimize attacks to “release the greatest number of souls.” Abu Sayf al-Din devotes the five subsequent sermons to reaching specific outside groups. Adherents of Al Qaeda, Islamic State, and Nigeria’s Boko Haram movement are each addressed in terms that carefully position Jaysh al Hisaab’s brand of Sunni extremism within their own complementary traditions. Far more audaciously, the eighth sermon addresses Shi’as in extremely well-researched and carefully worded terms. This is a bold gambit in this time of peak tension and violence between the Sunni and Shi’a communities, and has inspired terror-suicide attacks in both Isfahan and Tehran, Iran. Most remarkably, the ninth sermon targets non-Muslims (above all, apocalyptic Christians) who believe in an afterlife preceded by divine judgment.
Abu Sayf al-Din’s overture to non-Sunnis amounts to a perverse inversion of Pascal’s Wager. He maintains that non-Sunnis are damned, and accepts that many non-Sunnis will maintain that he is damned. However, he proposes that all who believe that God alone will ultimately judge the dead should cooperate to hasten a maximum number of people to that very judgment. All can agree that God will then infallibly determine who is damned and who is saved. This leads to the astounding proposition that Muslims and non-Muslims collaborate in massive joint suicide attacks.
Abu Sayf al-Din’s arguments contain many glaring inconsistencies and logical fallacies, but minds unversed in critical thinking will struggle to identify them, or to refute the freight train of charisma and apparent logic that contains them. In any event, his arguments are not intended to inspire a broad movement or sustain a lasting nation-state. They are instead carefully packaged to appeal to lone-wolf attackers, small self-organizing cells, and somewhat larger ideologically fired groups. As such, they need only sustain faith and conviction long enough for the new converts to stage a self-annihilating attack.
Whether by design or chance, Abu Sayf al-Din’s philosophy seems to complement a growing trend among Islamic terrorists toward the nihilistic slaughter of fellow Muslims, particularly (but not exclusively) by Pakistani terrorists. Indiscriminate attacks like the International Islamic University bombing in Islamabad, and the more recent Peshawar massacre of 132 schoolchildren could be at least partly consistent with Jaysh al Hisaab’s theology.
Danna’s killing time with Kuba and Tarek at their desks while they wait for Mitchell to return from his meeting. As they gossip and catch up, Tarek tells them about the crazy UberX of Sex pitch. “I hear Jepson wasn’t nuts about it. But it lines up with this notion he sometimes pushes about Phluttr being all about sex. Or something.”
“Ick,” Danna says. “Tell me more.”
“The idea is, our era’s defined by hyper-abundance in the developed world. Information’s basically free. Most entertainment, too. And calories’re so cheap that obesity’s a much bigger problem than hunger. Meanwhile, almost everyone has shelter, and is mostly safe from violence. And these are the things that almost all human beings spent almost every waking hour obtaining since the dawn of time. We were literally designed and born to pursue these things! And now, they’re practically givens. From birth until death.”
“And therefore sex?” Danna asks skeptically.
“Kinda. The idea is, sex is the one primal drive we can’t just satisfy with dead-simple purchases. And while that’s been true for years, we’re increasingly accustomed to getting everything else on demand—which pushes expectations to crazy new heights! Meanwhile, experiences are becoming more prized and precious every year, because so much else is commonplace. And unlike fame, or the thrill of a competitive victory, say, sex is one sublime experience that could be almost universally available, in theory. Yet it remains scarce. It’s highly coveted, it can be really tricky to obtain, and lots of people feel a huge lack of it.”
“So, with all the other bases covered, sex is the last great consumer market vacuum?” Danna guesses, and Tarek nods. “So, fill the vacuum, and the whole world adopts Phluttr?” He nods again. She stews on this for a moment. Then, “Wait a second! Mitchell’s got ninety days to come up with an internal startup idea, or he’s gone, right?”
Tarek nods. “That’s the general rule with founders after acquihires.”
She turns to Kuba. “And you and Ellie think motes might have something to do with Falkenberg’s disease?”
Kuba nods. “It’s a total shot in the dark for now. But it feels right. Kind of strongly, in fact.”
“So we need an excuse to keep working on motes!” Danna says. Kuba nods again. “And Jepson’s most likely to approve a pitch with some twisted, pervy angle to it?” All nod. “Well, this whole Cyrano thing has given me an idea…”
“A little background for you,” Jepson says to Mitchell. “Judy here’s an intellectual property lawyer. Her firm once defended my personal IP from certain niggling mimics and pilferers.”
“Like Apple and Microsoft?” Mitchell asks. These were two of the bigger names in the legal crusade against Jepson’s colors-on-Web-pages patent.
“Among others,” Jepson says, dismissing the founding duo of modern computing with an irked flick of a wrist. “Judy’s practice deals with media IP, so she wasn’t directly involved in my case. But she also runs government relations for her firm, and I made a couple of lobbying calls to DC during that period.”
“The real fight was in the courts, of course,” Judy says. “But there was an odious and underhanded patent reform push in Congress that we were able to stave off for quite a few years.”
Outwardly calm, Mitchell inwardly screams, That was YOU? Cannibals and Ba’athists are less popular than patent trolls in Silicon Valley, sure; but by narrow enough margins that it reflects poorly on everyone. For years those gutter-grade parasites sucked billions from the innovation budgets of startups and giants alike, with waves of frivolous lawsuits (patent trolls, that is. Ba’athists are another matter). Bipartisan apathy over this patently broken system (sorry) fueled boundless bafflement and cynicism among tech elites. But their indignation was ironic in light of their own torpid disengagement from the Washington process. Early in the millennium, the industry finally roused itself to launch its own lobbying efforts. But for years they made no headway on the patent front because some ingenious operative of the ancien regime was holding back the floodwaters. And is this she? Who knows. But Judy seems to be just the sort of dervish who could whirl from comm
ittee to hearing to caucus with enough nudges, winks, and dislocating arm twists to foil an entire industry.
“While she mainly works the legislature, Judy has contacts everywhere,” Jepson says. “So when the FTC started investigating Phluttr, she knew within nanoseconds.”
“Oh, you,” Judy says, “it was at least five minutes.” She turns to Mitchell. “Our problem is a commissioner. The FTC has five of them, and Annabelle Milford’s eyeing a Senate run in Iowa. Iowa’s a remarkably queer state—and I definitely do not mean gay! It leans Dem, but has these red-state rural social values. Which means you can win over half-witted hillbillies on both sides of the aisle by beating up on Phluttr. On the right, they hate you guys for getting people laid and giving their schoolgirls yet another route to Justin Bieber. With no relation between the two, let’s hope! And your lefties have hissy fits over privacy crap that the right lets slide because they think markets are infallible, and ergo, so are companies. Milford’s got lots of throw-weight on the Commission because she’s charming and plays nice with everyone. She’s right down the middle politically and could probably get nominated by either party, though she’ll go with Democrats.”
“Judy’s little birds have it that Milford plans to hit us hard on privacy,” Jepson says. “Which is nothing but trumped-up, politicized bullshit.”
“Sure. If we ignore that Phluttr tramples the letter and spirit of every privacy law since the Alien and Sedition Acts!” Judy snaps.
“Oh, right,” Jepson says. “There’s that.” And the two of them break into playful laughter. This goes on quite a bit longer than Mitchell’s comfortable with and veers toward demonic cackling before they stop.