The Islam in Islamic Terrorism

The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology

Ibn Warraq

• Publisher: World Encounter Institute/New English Review Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781943003099
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Ibn Warraq addresses several misconceptions regarding the cause of Islamic terrorism. Many scholars refuse to take into account the beliefs of the terrorists, and many seem to think that "Islamic terrorism" has emerged only in the last forty years or so. Many analysts believe that the United States was targeted because of its foreign policy, while others opine that we have to dig out the root causes which are essentially socioeconomic, with poverty as the favorite explanation. Ibn Warraq, on the other hand, argues that we must take the beliefs of the jihadists seriously. The acts of ISIS or the Taliban or any other jihadist group are not random acts of violence by a mob of psychopathic, sexually frustrated, impoverished vandals, but carefully and strategically planned operations that are a part of a long campaign by educated, affluent Muslims who wish to bring about the establishment of an Islamic state based on the Shari'a, the Islamic Holy Law derived from the Koran, the Sunna and the Hadith. Nor did Islamic terrorism emerge, ex nihilo, in the past forty years or so. From its foundation in the seventh century, violent movements have arisen seeking to revive true Islam, which its members felt had been neglected in Muslim societies, who were not living up to the ideals of the earliest Muslims. Thus, the answer to the cause of Islamic terrorism, according to Ibn Warraq, lies in Islamic theology (especially the concepts of jihad and Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong), and Islamic history, both of which he examines closely. This is borne out by what the Islamists themselves tell us, hence Ibn Warraq's detailed examination of the writings of key Islamic thinkers of the past, such as Ibn Taymiyya, and modern activists, from Mawdudi to Khomeini.

Table of contents

• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1- Root Cause Fallacy
• 2 - Explanations of Islamic Terrorism
• 3 - Marx, Freud, and Darwin among the Jihādists
• 4 - Islamic Doctrines as Motivating
• Factors
• 5 - Jihād: Definitions, Descriptions, and Discussions
• 6 - Jihād: Theory and Practice
• 7 - The Goals of Jihād: Apocalypse and
• Conversion
• 8 - Muhammad’s Campaigns and Early
• 9 - The First Terrorists? Khārijites, Violence, and the Demand for the Purification of Islam of Its Unpious Accretions
• 10 - Sahl ibn Salāma, Barbahārī, and Bid‘a: Religious Violence in Ninth- and Tenth-Century Baghdad
• 11 - Religious Violence in Baghdad between 991 CE and 1092 CE
• 12 - Ibn Taymiyya
• 13 - The Qādīzādeli Movement in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul
• 14 - Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhāb and Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform
• 15 - Sayyid Abu ’l-‘Alā’ Mawdūdī
• 16 - Brigadier S.K. Malik and The Qur’anic Concept of War
• 17 - Hasan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood
• 18 - Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husaini and the Nazis
• 19 - Sayyid Qutb
• 20 - Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salām Faraj and The Neglected Duty
• 21 - Abdullah Azzam and Defense of the Muslim Lands
• 22 - Ayman al-Zawahiri and Knights under the Prophet’s Banner
• 23 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution
• 24 - Conclusion: “The Life of the Muslim umma is solely dependent on the ink of the scholars and the blood of the martyrs.”
• Selected Bibliography