Book Review: The Far Enemy by Fawaz Gerges - Page 2

Gerges points out that since the time of Mohammad, jihad has been seen as fard kifaya, or a collective duty, the agenda of which can only be determined by the whole community. Jihadis, on the other hand, consider it to be fard 'ayn, or a permanent and personal obligation. As such, jihadis believe that they are justified in taking up arms and carrying out terrorist attacks on their own authority.

Fawaz corrects several misconceptions regarding jihad and its place in Islam. The first is to note that while all jihadis share this conception of jihad, they represent "a tiny ... minority," even among Islamists. Theirs is far from the dominant view. The second misconception—and the crux of this book's argument—is that the jihadist movement has always seen the United States and the West as its primary enemy. Quite the contrary, Al Qaeda's attack on America was the result of a "civil war within the jihadist movement" and "represented a monstrous mutation, an implosion from within, not just another historical phase in the movement's evolution."

Jihadis always saw the near enemy—particularly the secular Egyptian regime—as their main foe. Apostate Muslim rulers stood in the way of their goal of establishing an Islamic government based upon Shariah, or Islamic law. It was to this end that al-Jama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), one of the largest jihadist organizations in the world, and Tanzim al-Jihad (Islamic Jihad), led by current Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, collaborated on the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. (Jama'a al-Islamiya is not associated with the Indonesian group of the same name who recently immolated Bali for a second time.) Even as late as 1995, Zawahiri was preaching jihad against the near enemy exclusively. Despite his subsequent alliance with Osama bin Laden and his conversion to transnational terrorism, "the overwhelming majority of jihadis have been religious nationalists whose fundamental goal was to effect change in their own society."

Gerges goes into minute detail to lay bare the fissures with the jihadist movement which led to the rupture that created Al Qaeda and the transnational terrorists. Years of clashes with government troops in Egypt and Algeria—home to the vast majority of active jihadis in the Muslim world—left traditional jihadist groups in tatters and on the run. By the mid-1990s, most of the leaders of these groups were dead or behind bars. The only fertile ground remaining for the jihadis was Afghanistan, home to highly trained and battle-seasoned mujahedeen who had served American foreign policy for a decade as a buffer against the Soviets. And while the American hand in creating Afghanistan's jihadis cannot be denied, Gerges points out that Muslim states themselves were at least as guilty because they aggressively encouraged local jihadis to travel to Afghanistan in order to deflate the jihadist threat at home.

Article Author: Pete Blackwell

Pete Blackwell is a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. He lives in St. Louis, Gateway to the West and proud home of Provel cheese.

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