Key bin Laden para raises translation and other questions
Then there’s the question of oaths. CTC not surprisingly is interested in exactly what oaths, pledges, promises or words of honor exactly are covered by this sort of restriction, noting:
Bin Ladin may also have had in mind the debate between Ayman al-Zawahiri and his former mentor, Dr. Fadl. The latter reneged on his jihadi views and among the accusations he made was that the 9/11 hijackers violated the terms of their visa, interpreting it as a form of aman (safe passage) from an Islamic law of war perspective. Thus, from Bin Ladin’s perspective, it is only when a Muslim takes an oath that he must be bound by it; a visa and citizenship by birth do not qualify as an oath.
It’s an intriguing question. Murad Batal Shishani @muradbatal tweeted yesterday:
#OBL against using ppl 2 attack US if they paid oath of allegiances 2 it. (what would some “experts” & “intel” say if u said that earlier?)
And what, I wonder, would Anwar al-Awlaki have said to Nidal Hasan if he’d read that particular paragraph?
Thinking about Nidal Hasan puts me in mind of at least two oaths that Hasan, an officer and a physician, presumably took — the US Army Oath of Commissioned Officers, which interestingly enough contains the phrasing:
I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion … So help me God
— and the Hippocratic Oath required of all physicians.
What would their status be, I wonder? And would al-Balawi, the Jordanian physician and triple agent, have taken the Hippocratic Oath?
Come to that, would the Pledge of Allegiance bind those who — “under God” and with their hands on their hearts — recite it to refrain from attacking the United Sates?
I don’t know, but these are questions whose answers have significance in terms of what can and cannot be considered permitted or even obligatory within Islam — which is surely why both bin Laden and Dr. Fadl take the time to address the issue of visas. Such things are important to them.
They are what I’d call “mild” or “light touch” CVE issues — meaning issues to be aware of, not challenges to be shouted from rooftops or forced down anyone’s throat.
And I too would appreciate some answers, pointers, appropriate corrections, clarifications and further insight…
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Lexington Green:
May 6th, 2012 at 5:40 pm
To what extent would OBL’s opinions on this be considered authoritative by jihadis? There is no magisterium in Islam, and there is no Caliph anymore, so there is no single source to go to for religious direction. Are there persons considered to possess authority who take a more expansive view of what is permitted as taqiyya? I speculate that you could find someone who would do so. There are, after all, over a billion Muslims, and many thousands of teachers and scholars, and most can probably get onto the Internet and publish their pronouncements. Further, we have the trial testimony of one actual, captured jihadi who thought nothing of making and breaking his oath citizenship oath. Is there any reason to think this conduct is not typical? Violent revolutionaries tend to have, or to drift into, a purely instrumental morality, with the revolutionary goal as the only standard. To see an earlier version of this same instrumental revolutionary morality, see e.g. Frank Meyer, The Moulding of Communists: The Training of the Communist cadre (1961). Meyer was a former communist. It would be interesting to study the recruitment, training and indoctrination of senior jihadis in comparison with senior communists cadres, such as Meyer depicts, and which he was himself.
Charles Cameron:
May 6th, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Hi Lex:
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There is no magisterium in Islam, and there is no Caliph anymore, so there is no single source to go to for religious direction.
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It is true that Islam has no single Authority other than the Qur’an as word of revelation, even the hadith being considered in some cases “strong” and in others “weak” – and that accordingly, there is no one authoritative interpretation of Shariah – but there are certainly authorities with a little “a” in Islam: the Sheikh of al-Azhar among the Sunnis, for example, and other qualified mujtahidin, scholars qualified to issue fatwas (bin Laden was not among them), and there are varying shades of consensus or ijma’; in Shi’ite Islam there remains the testimony of the infallible Imams, and more recently the rulings of one’s own marja or “source of emulation” are to be followed; and within Sufism, the murid’s obedience is to the pir.
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Having said that…
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To what extent would OBL’s opinions on this be considered authoritative by jihadis?
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It seems to me that two groups of people would consider OBL authoritative on this kind of issue: those who have sworn allegiance (bay’at) to him, and those whose respect he has earned because in their view he resisted the influence of the princes of this world when others buckled under. It is in this second sense that he would be a role model for many wannabe jihadists, and it is on them that the potential influence of this kind of statement might have its greatest impact.
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Are there persons considered to possess authority who take a more expansive view of what is permitted as taqiyya? I speculate that you could find someone who would do so. There are, after all, over a billion Muslims, and many thousands of teachers and scholars, and most can probably get onto the Internet and publish their pronouncements.
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It is my understanding that what is permitted as taqiyya would correspond pretty closely to how immediate a threat is perceived to one’s own or one’s family’s life, one’s property, or to Islam. Since OBL clearly perceived Islam to be under direct and immediate threat and indeed was intent on waging war to defend it, it is likely that he would see taqiyya as more necessary than the many Muslims who see no such threat either to their persons or to their religion. Among the Shi’ites, taqiyya is clearly understood to be appropriate when used to avoid slaughter by Sunnis during sectarian warfare.
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Further, we have the trial testimony of one actual, captured jihadi who thought nothing of making and breaking his oath citizenship oath. Is there any reason to think this conduct is not typical?
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Bin Laden was clearly worried that others might do the same, which is why he wanted a directive issued warning against the practice. So yes, others may have been liable to make the same error – but if bin Laden’s views on the matter become more widely known, those who are prone to take his word as guidance, and who have become naturalized US citizens will be much less likely to take violent action against a state with which they have a covenantal obligation.
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That’s the possibility here as I see it…
Lexington Green:
May 7th, 2012 at 4:30 pm
This creates the strange situation of the US Government having an incentive to circulate OBL’s statement, and to promote his statement as authoritative — not something we want to do with most of the things he has said, obviously. Of course it could not do so directly, which would at best be counter-productive. Best case, some respected Islamic scholar would publish something (a fatwa? i don’t know the correct usage for Islamic religious pronouncements) which would say to the jihadis, “look, even your fallen leader recognize that you may not break oaths when you wage jihad, so don’t do it.” Otherwise, how many people will even hear about this?
Charles Cameron:
May 7th, 2012 at 8:43 pm
I have my own ideas about how one might stir this sort of material into the pot, but the main point would be for the process to work indirectly and by osmosis.
Lexington Green:
May 7th, 2012 at 8:53 pm
“Indirectly and by osmosis” is nice when you can get it, and I hope your ideas come to fruition. It cannot be seen to have had any fingerprints on it from the jihadis’ targets.
Charles Cameron:
May 7th, 2012 at 9:28 pm
The Navajo mythology explored by Joseph Campbell in his first publication, Where the Two Came to their Father — which was also the first volume in the Bollingen series, sumptuous and now exceedingly rare in its first edition with a portfolio of 18 silk-screens of sandpaintings — focuses on the twin heroes, Monster Slayer and Child Born of Water. Elsewhere, Campbell remarks that the Twins provide the essential myth of the Americas.
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Monster Slayer, as you might expect, tackles obstacles directly and powerfully. Child Born of Water, as you might suspect, handles things more in the spirit of water — as the Tao Te Ching puts it:
My predilections lean towards the Child Born of Water approach…