Jihad and the Rifle Alone

We interviewed a young black man with a white embroidered scull-cap, or takiah (“piety”), at the final Ramadan service in San Diego, California in 2001, where there were 7,000 Muslims. He wore a denim jacket with the words “JIHAD AND THE RIFLE ALONE, NO Negotiations! NO Conferences! NO Dialogue!” embroidered in yellow on his back. It is a quote from the book Join the Caravan, a popular book written by the late Shiek Abdullah Azzam.¹ When we asked him if he could explain his understanding of Jihad to us he said, “Any Muslim who does not believe in jihad, is not a good Muslim.” He went on to write down familiar Qur’an references regarding jihad on a piece of paper for us. He went on to tell us that Mohammed the prophet was noted to have said the only reason he would be willing to come back from the dead would be to fight in jihad. I found the reference in the Saudi authorized version of the Qur’an “Call to Jihad” commentary. “I would love to be martyred in Allah’s Cause and then come back to life and then be martyred and then come back to life again and then be martyred and then come back to life again and then be martyred.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Hadith No. 2797).

The same commentary from the Hadith reads, “Jihad is a great deed indeed and there is no deed whose reward or blessing is as that of it, and for this reason, it is the best thing that one can volunteer for.” Jihad is seen as the ultimate form of Shahada, or testimony for God.

The man with the denim jacket was asked if he felt that flying commercial airliners into the twin towers in New York was a good expression of jihad. He said that he thought the targets should have been kept military. But, then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “But who am I?” This is the attitude of many in the Muslim world who are not really of the militant Islamist temperament themselves. Though they may not be partakers in the violence they are not too eager to condemn it either.

1 Azzam studied Sharia at Damascus University and joined Afghan Jihad efforts for a time. In 1989 he and two of his sons were killed in a bomb blast, giving him a new status as martyr author.

http://youtu.be/b6oZV283C4A?list=UUpvpku8O928I6bRiqbGvzeg

In the words of the prophet Islam is a death cult.