The Moral Implication of the Ultimate War

Abu Musab al Suri

International Society for Military Ethics
University of San Diego - 2009

Marc Imbeault, Ph.D.

Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean
Royal Military College Saint-Jean

Division of Continuing Studies
Division des études permanentes


Translated from French by Marie-Claude Leblanc

“I wish by God that America will regret bitterly that they provoked me and others to combat her with pen and sword.[1]”

Abu Musab al-Suri

1. Virtue, terror and salvation

This presentation aims at clarifying the concept of ultimate war in the context of counterterrorism and of contemporary « war on terrorism ». Jihadist thought requires special attention along the same lines. I would like to analyze jihadist strategy dating from the last few years, particularly the theses of Abu Musab al-Suri, who proposes a “Post 9/11” approach in his Call to Global Islamic Resistance, published on the Internet in 2005 and sometimes compared to Hitler’s Mein Kampf [2].

Al-Suri’s approach not only intersects many patterns of classic extreme left-wing revolutionary thought, but is also inspired by the extreme right. Total demonization of the enemy and the complete justification for his annihilation clearly demonstrate up to what point the movement confronting the Western world is serious. But there is more: the doctrine of al-Suri and that of other jihadists magnify the idea of the ultimate combat, a war which will decide forever the destiny of mankind, thus justifying the use of all means, even legal. The moral sense of this absolute and final sanctification of war is what I would like to cover in my paper.

I would like to start with a brief historical overview. When eighteenth century revolutionaries started implementing the “Great Terror” and the word “terrorist” first appeared in modern vocabulary, their intention was to establish the reign of virtue. In his famous 1794 speech entitled “On the Principles of Political Morality” Robespierre explains that without terror, virtue is powerless.[3] This type of reasoning gained widespread acceptance and its legacy can be traced in the writings of present-day jihadist ideologists.

Revolutionaries of all times strongly believe that their political projects have an unsurpassing moral legitimacy.

To this blend of the ethical and the political, contemporary revolutionaries add religion. It is interesting to note however that at the peak of his power, Robespierre had implemented to the Republic the cult of the Supreme Being. From that point on, the Revolution became not only a moral and political cause, but also a religious one. The comparison with contemporary revolutionaries must be qualified, since Robespierre’s attempt was to create a new cult, while Islamists build on a well established religion.

Therefore, our first conclusion is the following: the revolutionary movement that the Western world faces today in what we call “counter-terrorism” must be understood from three hermeneutical keys: virtue, terror and salvation.

2. A Call to Global Islamic Resistance

I would now like to take a closer look at some of the governing ideas of jihadist ideology as they are presented in the writings of some leading strategists, and more specifically al-Suri.

Let’s start with the notion of jihad.

Jihad is an element of the Muslim religion that literally means “struggle” or “effort”. There are several types of jihad. For example, it can refer to the purely spiritual effort of the believer seeking self-control, a form of yoga (the word is from W. Phares in War of Ideas) practiced by Muslims wanting to deepen their religious faith. But the most meaningful definition for Jihad today is “war among other nations[4]” for Allah and his glory. Based on this last definition, contemporary jihadists have developed an ideology justifying war against the Western world, accused of threatening their faith, their believers and territories. This explains why jihad is fundamentally an ideology justifying violence. It is important to stress that it is not a religion, even if it originates from religion and that guardians of this ideology sincerely think their acting in defense of Islam.

Incidentally, it is from the combining of the religious, political and ethical realms that the problem arises. Jihadists are sincerely convinced of the goodness of their action when they kill in the name of religion. The assumption is obvious for authors like Al Shaheed Sayyid Qutb[5], Muhammad al-Salam Faraj, Sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam[6] or Abu Musad al-Suri, newcomer to the ranks of great jihadist ideologists, who stated after 9/11: “I would have advised selecting international flights so that the planes could have been loaded with weapons of mass destruction. Attacking America with such weapons is difficult… but it is a necessity.[7]”

His particular case is worth taking a closer look at. Known as Abu Musad al-Suri, his real name is Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar. He was born in Alep, Syria, in 1958 and was involved in jihad on many levels: as a war fighter, historian, course developer and strategist. From this perspective, he can be compared to high-ranking officers of Western armies, since he is equally a man of action and a scholar. Woven in an out of his intellectual work is an acute sense of historical consciousness. He has the breadth of jihad’s history at the tip of his fingers and can accurately demonstrate its logic and development either through his writing or as an orator. He systematically sheds light on past mistakes suggesting concrete means not to repeat them, and we have to admit that this is one of his greatest strengths. Finally, his work bears the mark of an exceptional imagination, which makes it’s a dreadful, yet fascinating weapon.

Even though he is not a theologian, al-Suri often refers to the writings and teachings of the prophet Mohammed. The last thirty years of al-Suri’s action is entirely devoted to the final triumph of the Muslim religion. Yet, although al-Suri believes in the final victory, he concedes to his enemy a provisional advantage that stems from the mistakes made by the Mujahidin themselves and the collaboration of the regimes of certain Muslim countries.

Al-Suri’s 1600 pages treatise entitled Call to Global Islamic Resistance was published on the Internet in 2005, shortly before his arrest in Pakistan. In this work, he presents the history of jihad’s long-standing quest. The discussion I would like to open exclusively relates to the part of his work dealing with the last 10 years.

From al-Suri’s perspective, intensification of wars against Muslims all around the world is what characterizes the present-day situation. The 9/11 “terrorist” attacks were used as a reason for setting off the greatest manhunt in history. The worldwide operation almost succeeded at destroying the jihad’s leadership and virtually all its training camps and headquarters. Notwithstanding the fact that the only truly Islamic state, Afghanistan under Taliban rule, is now, according to him, occupied and under the control of the United States thanks to the established puppet state. In other words, victims of violence are not mainly Westerners but rather Muslims, which is why it is legitimate that they defend themselves when they have – rarely – the means to do so.

Indeed, al-Suri interprets the situation as being desperate. Moreover, he states that while there are more than a billion Muslims on earth, not more than a few thousand are willing to fight for their religion.

Having acknowledged this fact, al-Suri carries on with his reasoning laying emphasis on the fact that in spite of the enemy’s intensive attacks since 2001, the war is not definitely lost. As a jihad veteran, al-Suri suggests passing on to new generations of mujahidin a combat manual that could give them the means to reconstruct in such a way as to escape from the type of aggression lead by the coalition.

Here are in substance al-Suri’s propositions. First of all, according to al-Suri, jihadists made errors in three fields[8]:

1. Errors in curriculum and ideology;

2. Errors in structure and organization;

3. Errors in development methods and the way they were implemented.

The first type of error refers to dogmatism, a parochial approach and ignorance that damp down, paralyze and adversely affect the cause. This type of error also concerns culture of secrecy – even if sometimes necessary – sheds prejudice on communications and recruiting. To these two inconveniencies, are added the weakness of the exclusively military training that handicaps many mujahidin.

The second type of error essentially refers to the pyramidal structure of terrorist organization. In this configuration, the chain of command is perfectly clear, but there is an important weakness at the security level. When a member of the organization is arrested, the whole organization is destabilized. Al-Suri mentions, among other things, the use of torture and drugs by western intelligence services and their allies to obtain information and concludes that pyramidal-type structure cannot resist very long to the offensive lead by the West since 2001.

The third type of error refers to a series of work methods marked by amateurism, improvisation and demagogy.

But all along his explanations concerning the errors committed by the jihadist movement, al-Suri insists many times on issues related to ethics, which according to him has been the most important weakness of the movement in the past years:

“The many young men from the general and average classes of Muslims were charged with zeal, loyalty, and emotions, but they suffered from clear lack of religious knowledge and compliance as well as the rules of Islamic dealing and ethics. In addition, the cadres of jihad were suffering from lack of good knowledge in these areas. The lack of proper educational curricula led to severity and lack of mercy in the leaders of jihad”.[9]

Briefly said, it is useless to be overly zealous if incapable of discernment– and even pity when it is justified to do so. Al-Suri carries on:

“Likewise, the lack of good morals led jihadists to act in ganglike manner and not as proper jihadists. Also, most jihadists narrowed the Islamic religion to the concepts of jihad and forgot that there are other sides and aspects to Islam. They narrowed Islam to fighting, and fighting to just discharging firearms, forgetting the requirements of patience, preparation, and ethics”.[10]

al-Suri states that the lack of professionalism from which the jihadist movement suffers rests in the fact that 80% of its leaders have been either killed or arrested after the September 11 attacks, resulting, he concludes a little farther, in that the use of violence has become a matter of daily routine, an error he describes as follows :

“The appearance of the strictness during recent jihad incidents, with the adherence to violence and radicalism even in the most trivial matters.”[11]

Al-Suri questions the standard thinking by revolutionaries of all times which namely is that one must kill the enemy by all means, even legal. In this matter, he stands out from others, and from an ideological point of view, he rises above them – including Ben Laden, who is more of a calculator.

3. Opening new ways of ethical thinking?

Yet, one of the main errors identified by the author concerns the use of violence. Al-Suri insists on the importance of the moral element of mujahidin training. According to him, recourse to violence is necessary, but shouldn’t become an end in itself. His legitimating recourse to violence arises from the objective it serves - the ultimate victory of Islam in the World - which both transcends and justifies the means – violence.

Confronted with such a threat, the Western world has since 2001 reacted from a moral perspective in referring to Just War Theory. Not in the sense that the West would have fulfilled its imperatives, but rather in its attempt to justify its action by refereeing to it – most of the time implicitly.

Here are the essential elements of the Just War theory as summarized by the Canadian scholar Fen Olser Hampson:

1. Wars must [be] undertaken for a just cause in which the overriding principle is one of self-defence. A just cause therefore involves action taken in response to a physical injury (including loss of territory), an aggression against national honour, or an aggression against a neighbour.

2. Wars may be only undertaken as a form of last resort when all other means to seek redress have been exhausted.

3. Wars can only be waged by a legitimate authority, which is defined as residing in the sovereign power of the state.

4. Wars must only be undertaken following a formal declaration of war.

5. There must also be a reasonable chance or hope of success in resorting to the use of force to achieve one’s objectives. Deaths and injuries incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.

6. The goal of war is re-establish peace and a peace that is, on balance, better than the peace (or situation), which would have prevailed, had the war not been fought.[12]

The terms of this theory cannot be applied to the threat that represents al-Suri’s strategy since it implies the relativity of the conflict between the two belligerent. Such being the case, here at least one of the two enemies considers its opponent as an absolute threat he needs not only to bring under military control on a one-time basis to gain a precise advantage, but the defeat must result in his annihilation.

The interference of religious motives in the political and ethical realms introduces the possibility of an absolute enemy. There is no politics without an enemy, but politics can recognize the enemy’s right to exist. This is not the case in wars of religion, where the enemy embodies an evil with whom any comprise is unacceptable[13].

A first conclusion seems to me that the comparison between Call to Global Islamic Resistance and Mein Kampf is – partially – awkward. It is true that there are numerous resemblances, but many of them are superficial. To the contrary, there are some fundamental discrepancies:

· The higher intellectual level of Call to Global Islamic Resistance gives al-Suri greater precision and a better assessment of the movement’s real situation and by that allowing the book to longer and deeper influence its strategy and tactics.

· The sincere religious fervor that inspired al-Suri deeply roots his undertaking in a tradition that is far more established than the chimeras that obsessed Hitler.

· The correct assessment on the importance of education, professionalism and ethics in military training make al-Suri’s text an even more dangerous weapon than Mein Kampf.

In the context of ultimate war, al-Suri’s strategy - based essentially on ethics and professionalism - seems to me, represents the greatest jihadist ideological threat. The fact that its author is presently held in an unknown location without him being able to communicate with the external world does not change anything to the reality of the threat. His work is independent from his person and it is now up to the West to take the initiative once again on the grounds that the jihad strategist has so well identified: professional military ethics.

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu

January 2009

Bibliography

FREUND, Julien, L’essence du politique, Sirey, Paris, 1965.

HAMPSON, Fen Olser, “The Role of Ethics in the War Against Terrorism”, The 4^th Canadian Conference on Ethical Leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, 7-9 November 2001, p.4.

HITLER, Adolf, Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/

IMBEAULT, Marc, MONTIFROY, Gérard, Géopolitique & Idéologies, Frison-Roche, Paris, 1996.

IMBEAULT, Marc, MONTIFROY, Gérard, Géopolitique & Pouvoirs, L’Âge d’Homme, Lausanne, 2003.

IMBEAULT, Marc, TROTTIER, Yves, Limites de la violence. Lecture d’Albert Camus, Presses de l’Université Laval, Sainte-Foy, 2006.

LACEY, Jim, editor, A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad. Deciphering Abu Musad al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008.

LACEY, Jim, editor, The Canons of Jihad. Terrorists’ Strategy for Defeating America, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008.

LIA, Brynjar, Architect of Global Jihad. The Life of al-Quaida Strategist Abu Mus‛ad al-Suri, Columbia University Press, New York, 2008.

MEM RI, Dossiers spéciaux No. 22, 17 novembre 2003, p.1. http://www.memri.org/bin/french/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR2203

PHARES, Walid, Future Jihad. Terrorism Strategies Against the West, New York, Palmgrave Macmillan, 2005.

_____, The War of Ideas. Jihad Against Democracy. New York, Palmgrave Macmillan, 2007.

ROBESPIERRE, Maximilien, “On the Principles of Political Morality”, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1794robespierre.html.

STOUT, Mark E., HUCKABEY, Jessica M., SCHINDLER, John R., LACEY, Jim, The Terrorist Perspectives Project. Strategic and Operational Views of Al Qaida and Associated Movements, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008.

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[1] “Communiqué from the Office of Abu Musad al Suri”, November 2004, in Lia Brynjar, Architect of Jihad. The Life of al-Quaida Strategist Abu Mus‛ad al-Suri, Columbia University Press, New York, 2008, p. 322.

[2] “Decades ago the world ignored Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Vladimir Lenin’s What Is to Be Done, with tragic consequences. Today, the jihadists have presented the world with a work of similar importance, which we ignore at our own peril.” Jim Lacey, A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad. Deciphering Abu Musad al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto, Preface, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008, p. vi.

[3] « If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. » http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1794robespierre.html. The complete title in french is: Sur les principes de morale politique qui doivent guider la Convention nationale dans l’administration intérieure de la République.

[4] MEM RI, Dossiers spéciaux No. 22, 17 novembre 2003, p.1. http://www.memri.org/bin/french/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR2203

[5] “As we have described earlier, there are many practical obstacles in establishing God’s rule on earth, such as the power of the state, the social system, and traditions and, in general, the whole human environment. Islam uses forces only to remove these obstacles so that there may not remain any wall between Islam and individual human beings.” Al Shaheed Sayyid Qutb, “Milestones”, The Canons of Jihad. Terrorists’ Strategy for Defeating America, Edited by Jim Lacey, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008, p. 24.

[6] “There is agreement among scholars that when the enemy enters an Islamic land or a land that was once part of the Islamic land, it is obligatory on the inhabitants of that place to go forth to face the enemy. But if they sit back, or are incapable, lazy, or insufficient in number, the individual obligation spreads to those around them. Then if they also fall short or sit back, it goes to those around them, and so on and so on, until the individually obligatory nature of jihad encompasses the whole world.” Sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, “Join the Caravan”, The Canons of Jihad, p. 126

[7] A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, p. viii.

[8] A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, p. 162

[9] A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, p. 164.

[10] A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, p. 164

[11] A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, p. 170

[12] “The Role of Ethics in the War Against Terrorism”, The 4^th Canadian Conference on Ethical Leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, 7-9 November 2001, p.4. (Emphasis added.)

[13] On that point, I disagree with the view that the resolution of the conflict lies in the West consenting to requests set forth by Usama Bin Laden. It is undeniable that such a peacemaking effort would result in nothing else than fostering the idea that terrorism can be used as negotiating power.