http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=15325
A great god and small knives
The “lone-wolf terrorist” phenomenon should not come as a surprise to the defense apparatus. It’s an exact implementation of the obligation of Muslim believers in an age when political Islam is reawakening.
A decade ago, Abu Moussab a-Suri — who would become the strategist for the Islamic State group — wrote “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance,” a 1,600-page document that called on all believers to upgrade their jihad tools to G3.
According to a-Suri, the first generation was resistance organized in specific territory, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, which despite its partial successes, turned out to be untenable when facing the armies of the West. Even the second generation — organization without territory, like al-Qaida — has had difficulty ever since its cross-border success on 9/11 in combating the technological intelligence methods activated against it. The alternative is a war fought by crowds of individuals motivated solely by commandments and faith. This is G3: Nizam la Tanzim (“The School of Individual Jihad”). Non-organized, and with no territory. Anyone, using any method, at any time.
This is not only a new tactic, it’s the fulfillment of the Islamic dream. The G3 jihad has no organization and no hierarchy, no funds and no international training camps.
But they’re not necessary. The only thing that sets the act in motion is a divine command, which contains three main principles: The first is loyalty to the Islamic nation, rather than to the family or a tribe. This turns every individual into a soldier in the service of the nation. The second principle is universality: the only border recognized in Islam is that between Dar al-Islam (“the House of Islam,” the lands where Islam rules) and Dar al-Harb (“the House of War,” where Islam does not rule). This jihad brings the globe back to its original Muslim definition, “a House of War,” which is destined to continue until Shariah law is applied to all of it. The third principle is an update from the Muslim Brotherhood school — that murderous jihad is not just the obligation of the public as a whole but also of every individual.
In the Muslim world, there is a debate about timing, about the good of the nation. And there is a battle between Sunni and Shiite, between the different groups fighting for local rule or rule of the entire caliphate.
But this religious ideology is a common denominator and what motivates them all, so it’s the enemy we find ourselves facing.
That conclusion makes us uncomfortable. We hoped that we had left ideological wars behind in the last century. We trusted the prophecy of Fukuyama in “The End of History,” but the religiosity of the G3 Muslims is not satisfied with the modern conveniences and individual freedom that prophecy ushered in, and we should acknowledge that. We should treat these aspects of Muslim ideology as we treated other ideologies that threatened the free world not so long ago. We must remove it from the concept of freedom of religion and invalidate all activity related to it and its dissemination — certainly that which condemns the principles of humanism or national sovereignty.
Victory is conditional upon knowing the enemy. When they stop searching for “inciters” in Western terms and reject the ideology itself, we can do it. The public discussion of Balad MKs meeting with the families of “mujahedeen” (“jihadis”) and the fuss about broadcaster Razi Barkai’s sensitivity toward their mothers are the result of the mistaken conception of Islam. A moral society must take action, not out of blood lust or an explosion of nerves, but rather as a justified, vital war against parts of an ideology that threaten all of humanity.
Amit Halevi is the executive director of the Jewish Statesmanship Center in Jerusalem.
