![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Al-Suri.png\" "\\"Al")
<\/a><\/p>\nAbu Mus\u2019ab al-Suri<\/strong> appears to have been released<\/a> from prison recently. Speaking of which, we seem to have a blind spot<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n 1.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here’s how an Egyptian activist who was in prison with Abu Musab in 2005 described their conversations, as reported three days ago in The Arab Digest<\/a>:<\/p>\n Abu Musab\u2019s Philosophy in prison was about spreading hope, and what we have to do now to strengthen our connection to Allah; it is the strong power to restore trust in that we will prevail, and that the nation\u2019s projects will not stop at the tyrants\u2019 plans, and the occupation of Afghanistan. The prophet\u2019s prophecies assures the return of Afghanistan and the rise of the black flags army from Khurasan. We will win and continue our role together till victory – May Allah relieve you Abu Musab \u2013 these words had a profound effect on our morale, they ended all of our pains in a moment when we foresee a future and our duties. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n As my analyst friend Aaron Zelin<\/strong>, who kindly pointed me to this extract and has himself written on al-Suri for Foreign Policy<\/a> said: <\/p>\n Yes indeed — Aaron is exactly right<\/em><\/strong>. And just to be clear on this, let me repeat myself: <\/p>\n Abu Musab al-Suri is the man who “wrote the book” \u2013 the 1,500-page book<\/a> \u2013 on jihad. And as you may remember, his book builds to what Jean-Pierre Filiu<\/strong> calls<\/a> “a hundred-page apocalyptic tract” while also commenting that there is “nothing in the least rhetorical about this exercise in apocalyptic exegesis. It is meant instead as a guide for action.”<\/p>\n And that black flags army from Khurasan<\/a>? Those are not just any old black flags, they’re the banners of the “end times army” of the Mahdi<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you wrote a 1500 page book about jihad and devoted the last 100 pages to describing a set of “end times” prophecies that predicted where and in what order various battles would take place, would you have added those last hundred pages in because you had paper to spare and time to kill?<\/p>\n Or would you have climaxed your book with those hundred pages because those end times prophecies were what the whole business was all about?<\/p>\n And if, on the other hand, you were in the business of analyzing jihadist strategic literature with a view to understanding the jihadist enemy, would you more or less skip those last hundred pages because they’re just “repetitive theological justification<\/a>” — because, let’s face it, it’s weird religious stuff? <\/p>\n 3.<\/strong><\/p>\n Abu Musab al-Suri is the man who introduced Peter Bergen<\/strong> to bin Laden<\/strong>, and of whom Bergen later wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n He was tough and really smart. He seemed like a real intellectual, very conversant with history, and he had an intense seriousness of purpose. He certainly impressed me more than bin Laden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While he was at large prior to his capture in 2005, the FBI offered a $5 million bounty<\/strong> for information as to his whereabouts. <\/p>\n And Abu Musab al-Suri’s 1,500 page Call to Global Islamic Resistance<\/strong> has been described by counter-terrorist researcher Brynjar Lia<\/strong><\/a> as “the most significant written source in the strategic studies literature on al-Qa’ida”.<\/p>\n A source which has has a 100-page closing section which discusses “end times” hadith…<\/p>\n WTF?<\/em> you might well ask — WTF?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n 4.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here’s one answer to WTT?<\/em> It comes from Tim Furnish<\/strong>, who (unless I’ve missed it, always a possibility) doesn’t mention al-Suri in his book Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden<\/a>, which as you can tell from the subtitle is precisely and exactly about Mahdist warfare — but he does let us know, right in the first paragraph, why Mahdist warfare is important, telling us: <\/p>\n Muslim messianic movements are to fundamentalist uprisings what nuclear weapons are to conventional ones…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Okay, perhaps you think Furnish is screaming — here’s something more like a whisper<\/a> from J-P Filiu as to what a Mahdist movement might portend:<\/p>\n An appeal to the imminence of apocalypse would provide it with an instrument of recruitment, a framework for interpreting future developments, and a way of refashioning and consolidating its own identity. In combination, these things could have far-reaching and deadly consequences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So. Should I shout, or should I whisper?<\/p>\n 5, 6, 7…<\/strong><\/p>\n This is getting too long, I have too much more to say, I want to tie this in with Richards Heuer<\/strong> and Clint Watts<\/strong> and the Psalms of David<\/em>, so I’ll just list the books illustrated at the head of this post for your convenience now — <\/p>\n Brynjar Lia, Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri<\/a> — and I’ll be back with a follow-up post tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ by Charles Cameron — abu Musab al-Suri, analytic blind spot, prophecy as strategy, redux redux redux ] . Abu Mus\u2019ab al-Suri appears to have been released from prison recently. Speaking of which, we seem to have a blind spot. 1. Here’s how an Egyptian activist who was in prison with Abu Musab in 2005 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[205,622,526,47,210,623,520,19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-al-qaida","category-apocalyptic","category-charles-cameron","category-intelligence","category-islamist","category-mahdist","category-osint","category-recommended-reading","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5643"}],"version-history":[{"count":84,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5859,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions\/5859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nJim Lacey, A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad: Deciphering Abu Musab al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto<\/a>
\nPhilipp Holltmann, Abu Musab Al-Suri’s Jihad Concept<\/a>
\nJ-P Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n