In May 1996, while the Kabul offensive was still being fought, Bin Laden and his ideologue Dr Al-Zawahri were forced by US diplomatic pressure to leave Sudan, where Bin Laden had sought to establish a dar ul-Islam on the Wahhabi model. The Egyptian moved from country to country, cementing ties with local militants, before arriving in Chechnya in December 1996. Meanwhile his Yemeni partner had flown to Jellalabad in a chartered jet crammed with Afghanistan veterans and their families, its hold reportedly filled with US dollars. Pathan xenophobia was by now beginning to reassert itself and ‘Arabs’ were no longer welcomed, but memories of the unstinting support and generosity of ‘Al-Shaykh’ ensured that he was given sanctuary at Hadda outside Jellalabad. In October of that same year Bin Laden flew to Kandahar and there met Afghanistan’s newly appointed but strangely reclusive Amir ul-Momineem. He offered Mullah Omar his unconditional support and financial backing, and was given the Taliban Government’s protection in return, so initiating the unholy alliance that eventually led to the destruction of the Taliban Government.
Having secured the regime’s support, Bin Laden returned to his original Bait al-Ansar camp complex near Khost and there set about building up what has been described by Jason Burke as ‘the most efficient terrorist organisation the world has ever seen’. In February 1997 Bin Laden felt confident enough to put out his first fatwa, issued without any claims to religious authority. He declared it to be a duty of all Muslims to ‘kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military . . . in any country in which it is possible’.
In April 1997, after being warned from Peshawar that the CIA were preparing to mount a military operation against his Bait al-Ansar camp, Bin Laden moved at the invitation of Mullah Omar to an abandoned Russian air base outside Kandahar. In that same month Al-Zawahri was arrested in Dagestan. Unaware of his guiding hand in a string of spectacular acts of violence, the Russian authorities sentenced him to six months’ detention for illegal entry. Bin Laden paid his bail and the two duly met in Afghanistan, where Bin Laden reoccupied his Bait al-Ansar camp at Khost.
A triple alliance was now joined as these three entered into a symbiotic relationship with each other. Logically, the traditional role of imam should have been filled by the cleric Mullah Omar. But while Mullah Omar enjoyed the unconditional support of Afghanistan’s Pathan majority as their Amir ul-Momineen, he remained irredeemably provincial, clinging to a medieval world view in which even Kabul was a foreign land. Bin Laden was an unscholarly leader without any sort of religious qualification but with a deep faith based on his early Wahhabism. As for Al-Zawahri, here was a man whose education, sophistication and intelligence far surpassed that of the other two and who alone of the three had a clear vision of the way forward, a vision he combined with an almost pathological desire to seek revenge on the non-Islamic world for all the perceived humiliations heaped on Islam and on himself. Logically, the Egyptian was the man to take on the role of amir/emir – except that he lacked precisely the qualities that Mullah Omar and Bin Laden had in full measure: charisma and a capacity for leadership. So Al-Zawahri, the organiser and ideas man, remained in the shadows in the role of wazir (counsellor), content to stand at the shoulder of the man to whom the world community of Islam could rally as both amir and imam of world jihad: Osama bin Laden, idealist and romantic, dreamer of past and future glories and perhaps even then harbouring apocalyptic visions of martyrdom, a Wahhabi Arab at heart but fully conscious of Islam’s ache for a Mahdi, the ‘expected one’ who would set matters to rights – and well aware that already as ‘Al-Shaykh’ he was adored by his ‘Arabs’ and by many Afghans and Pathans as the personification of Islamic resistance to Western imperialism.
At Khost in February 1998 Bin Laden and Dr. Al-Zawahri issued a joint fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. The US Embassy bombings in East Africa followed on 7 August 1998, the suicide attack on the USS Cole on 12 October.
Early in 1999 the Jordanian Al-Zarqawi was inadvertently released from prison in Jordan as part of a general amnesty. In jail his views had further hardened and after a brush with the local authorities he moved to Peshawar and then on to Kandahar to meet up with Bin Laden. However, Al-Zarqawi’s political agenda – the liberation of Jordan and Syria – did not fit in with Al-Qaeda’s and he subsequently struck out on his own, setting up his own dar ul-Islam outside Herat, in eastern Afghanistan, and his own organisation, Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War). Following the overthrow of the Taliban Government he and his band slipped across the border into Iran and then on to the mountains of northern Iraq, where he joined forces with the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar-i-Islam. The US-led invasion of Iraq provided him with a heaven-sent opportunity both to lead his own jihad against unbelievers and apostates and to act as a rallying-point for a new generation of jihadis, to whom he presented himself as both ally and natural successor to the Shaykh, Osama bin Laden.
The Muslim umma is made up overwhelmingly of pious, law-abiding men and women with strong moral values who wish nothing more than to live in harmony with their Muslim and non-Muslim neighbours. They want to see others embrace their faith, but are no more and no less bent on world domination than Christian Evangelicals who wish to see humankind ‘saved’. Islamist fundamentalism, as characterised by men like Osama bin Laden and bodies like the Taliban, is as much a threat to this Muslim majority as to the West. It believes that inclusiveness and tolerance of other values stand in the way of Islam’s destiny as a universal religion, and is prepared to use violence, oppression and fear to achieve its goal.
History teaches that fundamentalist theocracy does not work, because people simply will not put up with it. It may secure a foothold in societies that are isolated and ignorant, but rarely does it outlast its main propagator. Its usual course is to fragment into splinter groups, each accusing the others of heresy. Saudi Arabia became the exception to the rule, initially because of the unique pact between a clerical and a ruling dynasty that greatly benefited both parties, and subsequently because of a unique chain of events involving oil and global politics that made petrodollar multimillionaires of a few thousand male members of one family whose paternal grandfather or great-grandfather (Abul-Rahman ibn Saud) had quite literally measured his means in camels, goats and sheep. Thereafter it was in the interests of the House of Saud to support the religious status quo in Saudia Arabia, and in the interests of the US Government to support the House of Saud. So long as the world buys oil from the Saudis, Wahhabism will prosper in Arabia.
History also demonstrates that fundamentalists will always be listened to whenever and wherever people believe themselves or their religion or their co-religionists to be threatened. That does not mean the fundamentalists will be followed, but it does mean that they will find popular support. This was why Syed Ahmad’s brand of Wahhabi anti-imperialist revivalism took root on Indian soil; why Deobandism, for all its intolerance and sectarianism, came to be seen as a shield of Islam; and why Osama bin Laden is today by far and away the most popular figure in Pakistan – and a cult figure among many young Muslims in much of the umma. At the same time, it has to be remembered that the explosion of fundamentalist madrassahs that began in the 1970s was no expression of popular religious zeal but a direct consequence of political intervention only made possible by Saudi funding.
Deobandism has been the main repository of ‘Wahhabi’ fundamentalism outside Arabia since the mid-nineteenth century, but it is not as monolithic as this short history may have made it appear. Since its inception it has produced many outstanding Asian leaders, very few of whom have chosen the path of violence. General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan at the time of writing (2005), is the product of a Deoband education, and anyone who is familiar with the sub-continent will know Deobandis who are pillars of both Indian and Pakistani society. The same is true of Deobandis and Deoband institutions overseas. Yet it cannot be denied that Deobandis and their more overtly Wahhabi rivals, the Ahl-i-Hadiths, have in their zeal to revital
ise Islam in their own image, played the principal role in promoting Islamist extremism in South Asia and beyond.
The Christian and secular West is often blamed by Muslims for shortcomings in their own societies. Writing in his book Orientalism, first published in 1978 and since reprinted many times over, the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said was courageous enough to speak of the Arab world as being ‘disfigured by a whole series of outmoded and discredited ideas’ and shortcomings which included ‘its political failures, its human rights abuses . . . the fact that alone of all modern peoples, we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development’. However, Said’s Orientalism, with its central charge that Western scholarship was a weapon of imperialism, became the key text in Arab and Middle Eastern studies in the 1980s and 1990s, and has itself contributed mightily to the revisionism and myth-making which have given many Muslims a highly distorted understanding of their own history; in particular, giving further credence to the widespread Muslim self-image of the umma as innocent victim of Western oppression. A central pillar of this myth of innocence is the belief that before the rise of Zionism the umma of the Ottomans was tolerant in a way that Western Christendom was not, particularly in its treatment of non-Muslim dhimmi – Christians and Jews. This is pure fantasy, as any reading of the reports of ambassadors, envoys and travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will demonstrate.
And yet . . . set these shortcomings to one side and there remain political injustices that Western governments and pro-Western regimes in Muslim countries could and should have put right. First among those wrongs is the failure to support the creation of a viable state of Palestine. The ill-conceived invasion of Iraq – the Ambeyla Campaign multiplied by a factor of twenty – is another case in point. By allowing such grievances to continue, the West has done Islamist fundamentalism a huge and continuing favour. It has allowed the extremists to turn to the Muslim umma and say, ‘We told you so! Only we can help you. Together we can turn back the secular, Western tide and return to a glorious past.’ Remove the grievances, and the extremists and terrorists must wither away for lack of popular support.
On the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, Osama bin Laden’s Fanatic Camp survives, in part because he and his remaining ‘Arabs’ and Taliban allies have been offered sanctuary, but also because of the active connivance of the jihadised Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province – supported to a significant degree by the greater Pakistani populace. In October 2001 a pro-Taliban and anti-American coalition made up of five politico-religious parties was voted into power in the North-West Frontier Province. Dominated by the JI, JUI and Ahl-i-Hadith, its leaders have since sought to reintroduce Wahhabi sharia, issued fatwas proclaiming death to Americans and offered tacit support to Osama bin Laden. So widespread is the support for this coalition that the Pakistan Government has, to date, been powerless to act against it. Nevertheless, the same lesson applies: remove the grievances and mainstream, moderate Islam stands a better chance of reasserting itself.
Leading Muslim personalities
Names are listed in alphabetical order by the first letter of the abbreviated name
Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud Son of Muhammad ibn Saud, first titular imam of Wahhabi Arabia (not to be confused with Ibn Saud, below).
Abdul Aziz bin Abdul–Rahman ibn Saud see Ibn Saud.
Abdullah Ali Eldest son of Wilayat Ali, assumed leadership of Hindustani Fanatics in 1858 after the death of his uncle Inayat Ali, remained leader until his death in 1901.
Abdullah ibn Saud Succeeded Faisal ibn Saud as Emir of Nejd in 1865 but driven into exile by Emir of Hail.
Abdullah Azzam Palestinian ideologue, follower of Syed Qutb, called the ‘Emir of Islamic jihad’, spearheaded Muslim support for mujahedeen in Afghanistan, radical Islamist, assassinated in Peshawar 1989.
Abdul Ghaffur Sufi saint, first known as ‘Saidu Baba’, but later to achieve great eminence as the Akhund of Swat.
Abdul-Rahman ibn Saud Exiled father of Abdul Aziz bin Abdur–Rahman ibn Saud (see Ibn Saud).
Abdur Rahman Amir and Imam of Afghanistan 1880–1901.
Ahmadullah Maulvi Ahmadullah, eldest son of Elahi Bux and brother of Yahya Ali, led Wahhabis in1860s until his arrest.
Ahmad Sirhindi Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, 16th-century hard-line Naqshbandi Sufi.
Akhund see Abdul Ghaffur.
Al-Wahhab Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab of Nejd, founder of Wahhabism, father of aal as-Shaikh clerical dynasty.
Al-Zarqawi Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordanian follower of radical cleric Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, founded terrorist group Tawhid wal Jihad in Herat in 1999, joined Ansar-i-Islam in Iraq to lead Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Al-Zawahri Ayman al-Zawahri, Egyptian doctor and radical Islamist, founding ideologue of Al-Qaeda.
Amir Amanullah Succeeded his father Amir Habibullah as Amir of Afghanistan in 1919, launched Third Afghan War.
Amir Habibullah Succeeded his father Abdur Rahman as Amir of Afghanistan in 1901.
Amir Khan Nawab Amir Khan of Tonk, Pathan Pindari mercenary recognised as ruler of Tonk in 1818.
Bin Baz Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz, leading Wahhabi authority in Saudi Arabia until his death in 1989.
Bin Laden Osama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden, Saudi-born Yemeni radical Islamist, revered as ‘Al- Shaykh’, nominal leader of Al-Qaeda.
Elahi Bux Head of one of the three Patna families, father of Ahmadullah and Yahya Ali.
Faisal ibn Saud Emir of Nejd, 1842-65, great-grandson of Muhammad ibn Saud.
Farhat Husain Married daughter of Muhammad Husain, Wahhabi leader in 1830s and 1840s.
Fatah Ali Head of one of the three Patna families, father of Wilayat Ali and Inayat Ali.
Firoze Shah Nephew of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah, fought against British in 1857, then in exile for many years.
Ghazan Khan Pathan Daffadar of Mounted Police at Panipat who with his son uncovered evidence of Wahhabi supply route in 1863.
Ghulam Rasul Also known as Hajji Abdul Haq, first known Wahhabi in India, teacher of Wilayat Ali in Benares before he met Syed Ahmad.
Hafiz Wahba Sheikh Hafiz Wahba, Egyptian convert to Wahhabism who became Ibn Saud’s envoy in 1920s.
Hedayut Ali Rissaldar Sheikh Hedayut Ali, senior Indian officer in Rattray’s Sikhs.
Ibn Saud Abdul Aziz bin Abdul-Rahman ibn Saud, son of Abdul-Rahman ibn Saud, Emir of Nejd, founded Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, succeeded 1953 by his eldest son Saud.
Ibn Taymiyya Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya of Damascus, 14th-century hard-line Hanbali jurist, godfather of Islamist extremism through his reinterpretations of sharia.
Imdadullah Hajji Imdadullah, disciple of Sayyid Nazir Husain, teacher of Muhammad Qasim, Rashid Ahmad and Rahmatullah in 1857.
Inayat Ali Son of Fatah Ali, younger brother of and successor to Wilayat Ali as leader of Hindustani Fanatics.
Mawdudi Sayyid Abulala Mawdudi, radical Islamist, founded Jamiat-i-Islami (JI) in 1939.
Mowla Baksh Dewan Mowla Baksh, deputy magistrate in Patna under Commissioner Tayler.
Mahmood ul-Hasan First student of Deoband Madrassah, sub-sequently its rector, in 1915 made abortive attempt to lead a jihad against British India.
Mufti Mahmud Co-founder of Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) in 1945, Deobandi party with strong following in NWFP, father of Fazal-ur-Rahman, present leader.
Muhammad Hayat Muhammad Hayat of Sind, admirer of Ibn Taymiyya and Ahmad Sirhindi, with his father in Medina taught Al-Wahhab and Shah Waliullah.
Muhammad ibn Saud Bedouin chieftan of Dariya, formed an alliance with Al-Wahhab to become first emir of the Wahhabis and founder of Al-Saud dynasty.
Muhammad Hussain Syed Muhammad Hussain, head of one of the three Patna families, whose house in Sadiqpore Lane became the movement’s headquarters.
Muhammad Jafar Petition-writer of Thanesar whose incriminating letter provided first hard evidence of Wahhabi conspiracy in 1863, wrote autobiography after release.
&nbs
p; Muhammad Qasim Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi, student of Sayyid Nazir Husain and Imdadullah, co-founder with Rashid Ahmad of Deoband Madrassah.
Mullah Omar Mullah Muhammad Omar of Kandahar, Amir of the Taliban.
Mullah Sadullah Mullah Sadullah of Buner, also known as the ‘Mad Fakir’, Mastun Mullah, or Sartor Fakir, initiated the Malakand uprising of 1897.
Nasiruddin Maulvi Nasiruddin, Wahhabi caliph, led war party of Hindustanis to Sind and later to Ghazni.
Obaidullah Sindhi Deputy of Mahmood ul-Hasan, set up government in exile in Kabul in 1915.
Panipati Maulvi Qasim Panipati, led Hindustanis at Sittana after death of Syed Ahmad and initiated cult of Hidden Imam.
Pir Ali Pir Ali Khan, bookseller of Patna, executed for conspiracy in 1857.
Rahmatullah Rahmatullah Kairanawi, student of Sayyid Nazir Husain and Imdadullah, fled to Arabia after 1857.
Rashid Ahmad Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, student of Sayyid Nazir Husain and Imdadullah, co-founder with Muhammad Qasim of Deoband Madrassah.
Sayyed Akbar Shah Head of Saiyyed clan at Sittana, gave Syed Ahmad’s Hindustanis land, was later made Padshah of Swat.
Sayyed Firoze Shah Grandson of Sayyed Akbar Shah, son of Sayyed Mubarik Shah.
Sayyed Mubarik Shah Son of Sayyed Akbar Shah, succeeded his uncle Sayyed Umar Shah as leader of the Sayyeds of Sittana, patron of Hindustani Fanatics.
Sayyed Umar Shah Brother of Sayyed Akbar Shah, failed to secure recognition as Padshah of Swat, patron of Hindustani Fanatics.
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