Jihad Joe

by J. M. Berger

  Yet Abdullah Azzam stood head and shoulders over the rest. At least dozens and as many as hundreds of Muslims living in America heard his call and were moved to action. Azzam toured the world propounding the jihad in Afghanistan, leveraging his scholarly credentials to argue for the legitimacy of the Afghan jihad as an act of defense against outside aggression. He also wrote books and produced videos exhorting Muslims to the cause. Although he frequently invoked the struggle of the Palestinians against the Israelis, most of his energy and direct efforts were reserved for Afghanistan. It was easier to get there and fight, thanks in no small part to the covert helping hand provided by the United States and the generous financing of the Saudi government.

  Although one can find arguments in favor of offensive jihad (that is, attempting to conquer non-Muslims without provocation), most jihadist ideologues find it easier to persuade audiences of the need for defensive jihad, which allows Muslims to conduct war in certain circumstances. In Afghanistan few could argue against the right of Muslims to fight the Soviets. Azzam’s 1984 book, Defense of Muslim Lands, lays out some of this rationale.

  Defensive Jihad: This is expelling the Kuffar [infidels] from our land, and it is Fard Ayn, [Arabic for] a compulsory duty upon all. It is the most important of all the compulsory duties and arises in the following condition: if the Kuf far enter a land of the Muslims.

  We have to concentrate our efforts on Afghanistan and Palestine now, because they have become our foremost problems. Moreover, our occupying enemies are very deceptive and execute programs to extend their power in these regions. The people of Afghanistan are renowned for their strength and pride. It seems as if the Glorified and Exalted prepared the mountains and the land there especially for jihad.29

  Azzam advanced the same line of thought in his lectures, often with stirring effect.

  In situations like Afghanistan and Palestine, [the scholars] have all ruled that jihad becomes an individual obligation, that if the enemy enters a Muslim land by as much as a hand span, jihad becomes the personal duty of every Muslim man and woman in that territory. [ … ] And if the people of that land are incapable, or negligent, or lazy, or refrain, the individual obligation expands in a circular fashion to include those nearest to them. And if they are also negligent, or lazy, or refrain, and so on, until the entire earth is included in the individual obligation. [ … ] All of [the scholars] stated this fundamental, that the individual obligation becomes, in this situation, like prayer and fasting—an obligation which cannot be abandoned.30

  The latter point is among the most controversial positions taken by jihadist thinkers. Daily prayer and the annual Ramadan month of fasting are among the “Five Pillars” of Islam, the baseline obligations that every Muslim is required to meet. Jihad is notably absent from that list, an omission that many jihadist scholars have tried to rectify. Although such rhetoric is largely rejected by mainstream Islamic scholars, it can have a profound effect on individuals looking for an excuse to fight—even those who neglect the actual pillars, as many jihadists do.

  One of Azzam’s best-known books was Join the Caravan, which was published a few years after Defense of Muslim Lands. This work showed a distinct expansion of the author’s jihadist vision. The war with the Soviets was winding to a close, and the mujahideen were poised to claim victory over the world’s most fearsome superpowers. Azzam had assembled a force of fighters, many of whom had been trained by experts and hardened in combat. Where would they go once the Soviets were defeated?

  Azzam presented a sweeping list of reasons why jihad would continue to be mandatory for all Muslims who were able.31 The list included:

  • To keep the “disbelievers” from dominating the world. To justify this rather broad motive, Azzam quoted an infamous passage from the Koran that orders believers to fight until all fitna has ceased. Azzam and other jihadist ideologues translate fitna as “disbelief,” although it is more often defined as “internal conflict among Muslims.”

  • Because God wants you to. This motive doesn’t require much explanation, but it’s noteworthy in that the injunction lacks a specific provocation. Azzam cited several different variations on this theme, including fear of hell, desire for heaven (via martyrdom), and following the example of the Prophet and his companions.

  • Scarcity of men. The global Muslim community, known as the Ummah, was sorely lacking in capable fighters who were also fully committed to religion, in Azzam’s estimation. “We will pass through Afghanistan so that you see for yourself an entire regiment, in which not a single person among them is proficient in the recitation of the Koran,” he lamented.

  • Protecting the Ummah. This extended to protecting both the lives and the “dignity” of Muslims around the world and protecting Muslim resources and houses of worship. Although this message was key to Azzam’s appeal, its importance had been significantly demoted during the course of the war against the Soviets. As seen in the previous rationales, the jihad had become to a large extent self-justifying. Once drawn in by an arguably legitimate defensive need, the world’s most influential jihadist was now fighting for more esoteric reasons.

  • Establishing a solid foundation as a base for Islam. Azzam also expounded on this idea in a 1988 article for his Al Jihad magazine, titled “The Solid Base.” The use of the word “base” here is highly significant—in Arabic, the word is “al Qaeda.” According to Azzam, the Muslim community must wage jihad from an “area of land.” This base would be “like the small spark which ignites a large keg of explosives, for the Islamic movement brings about an eruption of the hidden capabilities of the Ummah.”

  Azzam’s lectures and videotapes of battles fought by the mujahideen against the Soviets were often shown at mosques around the greater New York area. One American who was captivated by the videos and the talk of jihad was Abdullah Rashid, an African American born in Brooklyn under the name Clement Hampton-El.32

  His father was a Christian preacher, and his mother was deeply involved with the Moorish Science Temple, raising her son in the same tradition. Young Clement inherited from them both an intensity of belief and a propensity for persuasive talk—the “gift of gab,” as his wife put it.33

  Hampton-El had served in the U.S. Army during the 1950s. After being discharged for fighting over a racial incident, he was swept up into the rush of Black Nationalism that erupted during the 1960s. He was headstrong and passionate, even from an early age, and would wax on about the coming Revolution, which never came. He loved all kinds of music, and he loved women, remaining an inveterate womanizer even after becoming a Muslim.

  One day in 1967, Hampton-El was walking past the Islamic Mission of America, a Sunni mosque on State Street in Brooklyn, while sporting the distinctive maroon fez commonly worn by Moorish Science adherents. (“He was a man of hats,” his wife remarked dryly.) Several Muslims standing outside the mosque took him to task.

  “They said what you are practicing is not really true Islam, and they told me what I should do,” Hampton-El recalled. He converted to Islam the year he got married, changing his name to Abdullah Rashid.

  His twenty-one-year-old wife, then known as Elsie, was a Methodist and was not so fast to convert. Rashid was always rushing headlong into a new idea. Elsie took her time, investigated and considered, but eventually joined her husband in his new faith, taking the name Alia.

  Rashid studied zealously under Shaykh Daoud Ahmed Faisal, a Moroccan immigrant and the founder of the State Street Mosque. He learned how to pray in Arabic and studied the rules and the rituals of Islam. Among them was the concept of jihad. Rashid understood jihad to be fighting in self-defense, but the definition of what constituted self-defense wasn’t always clear.

  Rashid was a restless soul, but for a time he was content with adventuring at home, immersing himself in books about ninja techniques and idolizing martial arts superstar Bruce Lee. He once told an acquaintance that Lee’s meditative techniques were very similar to Islamic prayer—both called for clearing the mi
nd in order to take focused action.34

  During the day, he worked as a medical technician, surrounded by the seriously ill and dying, which earned him the nickname “Doctor Rashid,” or simply “Doc.”35 He tried to comfort those he met. At night, he and Alia were active in their community, struggling to clear their neighborhood of drug dealers and muggers who menaced the neighborhood’s children. Colorful stories circulated about Rashid’s nighttime patrols of the community in ninja attire. His wife recalled that the reality was more like a highly organized neighborhood watch.

  “And we did, did little patrols, you know. I had sometimes the observation thing up by the window, and we’d check it out,” she said. “But it wasn’t like we were out there like those gangbusters. It was just we live here.”

  According to investigators, Rashid found other, less innocuous outlets for his adventurous streak, which he kept from his wife. He was known as someone who could obtain guns and other weapons, which he trafficked among his associates in the Black Nationalist movement in Philadelphia and among Brooklyn Muslims, who were stockpiling arms on the pretext of providing security at Al Farook and other area mosques.

  Even that was not enough to sate his desire for action. In 1988, after a conversation with a friend about the jihad in Afghanistan, Rashid decided that he wanted to get involved. “What made me go was a combination of things. The killing of innocent people. [It] just seem[ed] right,” he recalled during an e-mail interview in 2010.36

  His first challenge was convincing Alia. “I don’t see why you should go there and go to jail,” she said. Rashid was undeterred and continued to bring it up. In his dramatic but questionable account, he remembered telling her, “You can’t outrun death. You got to die. So you best try to go back to Allah, with all of the good deeds that you can, sincerely.”37

  Alia was unconvinced and looked into it further. Her main concern was that Rashid was going to end up in jail. What did the U.S. government think about the jihad? After she read about the issue extensively, it seemed to her that the government approved of the fight. It also seemed to be acceptable from an Islamic standpoint. Her husband became single-minded about the subject, and eventually Alia capitulated.

  With the decision made, Rashid arranged for some time away from his job and went to the Al Kifah office on Atlantic Avenue. There, he spoke with Fawaz Damra, the imam of the affiliated Al Farook mosque. A Palestinian, Damra had come to the United States in 1984 and took over at Al Farook in 1986. He helped establish the Al Kifah office there on behalf of Abdullah Azzam.38

  Rashid gave Damra $500 and got a green light for the trip. He still had to buy his own airline ticket, which he did with Alia’s assistance. In June 1988 he left the United States and flew to Pakistan. With his typical enthusiasm and love of theater, Rashid boarded the flight dressed in full army fatigues. When he disembarked at the airport in Islamabad, a Pakistani approached him and suggested he switch to more discreet apparel.

  From Islamabad, Rashid caught a connecting flight to Peshawar, where Al Kifah had an office. The chief of the Al Kifah guesthouse enthusiastically welcomed Rashid and recommended an extensive program of religious study. Rashid explained that he didn’t have much time and that he had already been trained by the U.S. military. He asked to be shown to the front lines. After haggling with various people, he was taken to the front lines and arrived at a camp equipped with Stinger missiles, courtesy of the CIA. Rashid was immediately smitten with the life of the mujahideen.

  “It was every denomination that you could think of over there, young, old, rich and poor,” he recalled. “We had some kids that ran away from Kuwait, from Saudi, from Abu Dhabi, who had money to throw out the window, but their desire was to go to jihad.”39

  There were also other Americans. One of them had traveled from New York with Rashid, a striking red-haired man with a long beard and a broad smile named Mohammed Zaki, who went by the nom de guerre of Abu Umar Al Amriki (“the American”). Zaki, whose family tree had roots in Egypt, had been born in Washington, D.C., and later lived in San Diego.40

  Despite his dreams of glory, Rashid’s trip to the front lines was fraught with problems. First he was stricken with malaria and spent long days lying in bed. When he recovered, he joined the battle. Carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a Kalashnikov rifle (the Soviet-made gun of choice for mujahideen around the world), he ventured onto the battlefield in search of glory … and promptly stepped on a land mine. He recounted the ordeal on a videotape made just weeks after the incident.

  It was pitch black, and we could see almost like it was daylight. So we got to the opening, and it was an opening, say, about 15 feet by 8. And we figured we’d go in here, hit them with the rockets, the bazooka grenade launchers, machine gun fire, and as they tried to escape, we had grouped the brothers over here to get them over there. […]

  [T]he brothers stepped in before me, about six, seven of them. And as I stepped in, ’cause I had taken the combat boots off now, we all had on sneakers so we could move, I felt that I had stepped on a rock. And as I raised my foot up, BOOM. I went flying up in the air, because it was a mine.

  There was a bright, white light, and blue. And I saw, as I went up in the air, my leg say POP. And I went flying behind a rock wall, WHOP, on the ground. And machine gun fire went POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP. And more mines, BOOM, BOOM. And then my reality, the impact hit me, and I grabbed my leg. I said, “Oh.” I said, “My leg is off.” And it was just dangling, hanging.41

  It took eighteen hours for Rashid’s fellow combatants to get him to a medical facility. The battlefield medics, such as they were, wanted to amputate the leg, but Zaki, the American, fought to keep the limb.42

  “They carried us by stretcher for a while, first on their backs, then on stretchers, then on mules,” Rashid said. “Nobody ever immobilized my leg. All the way there, for 14 hours, just flop, flop, flop, flop. Blood comin’ in and out, in and out. I was yelling and screaming.”43

  Rashid spent the next three weeks in a Saudi-run hospital in Peshawar before flying home to complete his recovery in the United States. Zaki flew back with him. Rashid experienced serious pain for months afterward; his leg would never be the same. Yet he had no regrets. Far from it. Just a few weeks after he returned to the United States, he recorded an impassioned speech exhorting other Americans to join the fight.

  My stay in Afghanistan was tremendous. And my reason for telling you this is, is because I want you to feel, and perhaps to seek, to be warriors, [ … ] blessings from Allah, just for your efforts and endeavor to fight for the cause of Allah, with your wealth, with your life. [ … ] Now, I’ve been away from Afghanistan now, approximately, 40 days now. I miss it dearly. It’s wonderful, fighting for Allah. You may think that sounds a little strange. My leg here was blown off, just about. [ … ] In my love for him, this means nothing. And inshallah [God willing], it’s a blessing, ’cause we’re supposed to fight in war, we’re told this here.44

  The video recording was made by new friends. On his return from Afghanistan as a wounded warrior, Rashid became an instant celebrity in the Brooklyn Muslim community centered at the Al Farook Mosque. Chief among his patrons was Mustafa Shalabi, the Egyptian who headed the Al Kifah jihad recruiting station attached to the mosque.

  Shalabi visited Rashid in the hospital and convinced him that his story could inspire other Muslims. In addition to the videotape, Shalabi wanted him to travel around the country, talking about jihad. The attention was exactly what Rashid craved.

  “Becoming a mujahideen just swelled his head,” Alia recalled. “They said go here to Canada, and speak to the students, he would go to Canada. He loved to travel, he would go to Canada. They said, go to Mexico, and tell them about what mujahideen is about, he would go there.” 45

  Rashid did little to refute the “swelled head” theory, inflating his fifteen minutes of fame into an epic tale about a man of consequence.

  The word had spread pretty far and wide, who I was and w
hat my experience was, because the videotape went throughout the world. I used to hear from people in Egypt and Yemen, and people coming from Saudi Arabia I never even met would tell me we saw your film. And people who were not Muslims would say we saw your films.46

  Although the scope of his stardom was exaggerated, Rashid did achieve a certain notoriety within the growing circle of Americans enamored of jihad. Within days after his release from the hospital, Shalabi gave Rashid a ticket to Boston, where he spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and at other events in the area.

  Despite the fairly short and inglorious reality of his mujahid career, word spread around town that “Doctor Rashid” was the real deal, and he would soon find other ways to make himself useful. When Abdullah Azzam next came to America, Rashid and several other members of the Brooklyn community accompanied him on recruiting trips around the United States. Even though the Soviets were now on the run, the Al Kifah operation was still going strong.47

  2

  Al Qaeda’s Americans

  August in Peshawar is hot by any measure, but it’s relatively dry and about 20 degrees cooler than the 110-degree days typical of June.

  On one such August day in 1988, a small group of Arab men who had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan gathered in the dusty border town to discuss the future of jihad.

  Among those attending were the legendary Abdullah Azzam, father of the global movement to support the Afghanistan jihad; his protégé, Osama bin Laden; and a handful of bin Laden’s closest followers. Azzam and bin Laden agreed the time had come to form a new group. The question at hand: what would that group set out to accomplish?1