Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror

Mary Habeck's professional bona fides lend credence to her hypothesis of radical ideology as the driving force and justification used by the jihadist terrorist leadership. And, importantly, she derives her hypothesis from the written and verbalized expressions of the jihadist leaders themselves. Secular western intellectuals stew over socio-economic drivers as the prime source of Islamist offensive jihadism, which can be just another form of western self-flagellation. Dr. Habeck notes the corruption and deprivation of much of the Middle East, and Euroepean and American governmental actions, not to mention the intractable Palestinian/Israeli conflict, but argues that these just feed cadre to the jihadist leadership. According to Dr. Habeck, a desire to return to the roots of Islam--to create a pure Islamic state under shari'a law--and a radical interpretation of the Quran and of Mohammad's life and actions, as espoused by certain seminal fundamentalist Islamic interpreters drive jihadism. Modernity, secularism, democracy, the United Nations, and all the other religions of the world must yield to this ideological view. All of what we think of as civilized society needs eradication by offensive jihad so that the Islamist utopia can get a foothold and flourish in what the Islamists view as divinely ordained necessity. An extensively referenced, somewhat academic dissertation on her theme, Knowing the Enemy gives chilling insights into the cold and calculating mindset of Islamist leaders and their motivation and justification for horrific acts of terrorism. This is a wake up call that the secular western world, and moderate Islam needs to carefully consider.

As a former military intelligence officer who spent years reading a mountain of books by and about Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Debray, et al, in order to understand how the enemy thought, I truly appreciate the work of Mary Habeck distilling the jihadist ideology into 243 pages. Having lived and worked daily with Muslims in Pakistan for more than a year and having read many books on Islam, I never found a single, satisfactory source on the subject of jihad that provided a concise historical prospective until I read "Knowing the Enemy." There's currently almost an unlimited number of books on the subjects of Islam and jihad, but Mary Habeck has condensed the essentials into one small volume that is brutally factual about the dark side of Islam without being inflammatory. This book should be a required high school and college history/political science text in the U.S. and Europe. I heartily recommend it to anyone who cares about the future of Western Civilization.

As much as this book is about knowing the enemy, it is as much about knowing who isn't the enemy. If you came away from any of your previous readings with feelings of intolerance for Muslims in general, then Mary Habeck's arguments will appeal to you. As an Associate Professor at John's Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Habeck's ultimate focus is public policy and statecraft. For her the term "war on terror" fails to sufficiently describe our objectives. She prefers "war on jihadism" or "war on the khawarij." The Khawarij were a group which tried, unsuccessfully following the death of Muhammad, to hijack Islam and declare war on mainstream Muslims. The similarity between the khawarij and modern jihadis has already been commented on by Muslim scholars, to the irritation of the jihadis. This approach will also illuminate for mainstream Muslims that the U. S. and the other Western democracies are natural allies in saving their religion from its fanatics. But renaming the battle won't win it. Spreading democracy throughout the Islamic world, and defusing the Palestinian crisis are the principal prescriptions for defusing jihadism. The U. S. cannot go it alone, however, so we have to improve our diplomacy and better engage other democracies to support us in defeating jihadism. The world of the jihadist is a very strange one, and Habeck instructs us without condescension or wonkism, and with a minimum of Arabic vocabulary. We learn, for instance, that it is intuitive to jihadists that the victory of the Afgan mujahidun "working entirely on their own" against Russian occupation caused the downfall of the Soviet Union. They believed that the United States would similarly collapse following 9/11. Moreover, they are stunned that we did not collapse, since it is a core tenet of thier belief. This book is exceptionally well researched, and includes fifty pages of endnotes. It is readable and accessible to the open-minded and literate reader. It is a multidisciplinary study of a complex subject which has unfortunately lent itself to oversimplification. Whether this is your starting point in learning about "the enemy," or if you already have been exposed to other authors' treatments, this book is an absolute must read. If you intend to read only one book on Islam, this is your best choice. And don't just put it back on the shelf when you're done. Recommend it, and pass it along.

Perhaps it wasn't inevitable that we would have to confront the radical idealogical jihadism that led to our being struck on 9/11, but funded by petrodollars and ignored by us for decades, this virulent form of fundamentalism has taken root and thrived and what might have been a lunatic sect out in the desert wastelands of Arabia is now a worldwide movement and our meeting it head on is no longer a question. It is necessary, therefore, to understand what these people believe, and Mary Habeck's thoroughly researched and annotated book will be helpful to you. She begins her book with a simple proposition. Instead of theorizing why the jihadists are at war with us, with explanations that include social and economic deprivation, US foreign policy, the Arab/Israeli conflict and so on, she posits instead that we ought to learn what the jihadis themselves have to say on the subject. What do THEY think justifies their jihad?What support for their views do they find in the Qur'an and traditional Islam? The answers she discovers are going to be an eye opener to many in the West employing the conventional wisdom espoused above. First, this radical jihadism goes back 8 centuries to earlier fundamentalist thinkers who believed even back then that the followers of Islam had strayed from the righteous path and purification was in order. This thinking espoused initally by Ibn Taymiyya and then later Wahhab was picked up by the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920's and in the following decades by others to the present with Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Zarqawi. Violent jihadism pre-dates the founding of Israel and the US ever setting foot in the Middle East. Second, believing they are the righteous and "true believers" intent on purifying Islam, establishing the Caliphate, and creating a worldwide Islamic paradise, justifies their killing anyone they consider "non-believers" which includes Muslims not adhering to Islam as the jihadis believe it. So, the murder of innocents, destruction of mosques, virtually any act of violence can be explained in their idealogy. Third, there will be no compromise, meeting of minds, reasoning, or accomodation made with these folks. These are hard core idealogues, and their beliefs so severely narrow that any deviation from those beliefs would undermine their whole reason for being. Their way is the only way, and "infidels" are anyone not complying with that way, including Muslims. Fourth, these are people who will never accept modernization in any form. They are anti-democratic, anti-pluralism, anti-anything but their form of "pure" Islam. They believe solely in a world ruled by Allah, through a Caliph, and under shari'a law. Anything less is rule by man and that is apostacy. Their dream is a totalitarian Islamic state. The best form of what they have in mind for the peoples of the world was Afghanistan under the Taliban. No other thought, idealogy, form of government, religious belief, or societal organiza

Mary Habeck's Knowing the Enemy is an extensive survey of contemporary jihadi literature as well as an account of its historical roots in the theology of Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab. This book is illuminating on several levels; at the same time, it is difficult to read dispassionately. Many of the ideas presented here in the jihadis' own words are simply so delusional and outrageous that it is hard for a reader who does not share their presuppositions to take them seriously. But they are deadly serious, and we should be listening, which is Habeck's premise. Habeck serves her material well, telling it straight and letting the bizarre logic of jihadi thought indict itself. Not just the political ambitions but the fundamentally political nature of radical Islam is made clear, even if its sense of political reality comes across as visibly demented. The jihadis are obsessed with acquiring the means of violence and the authority to institute Shari'a (Islamic law) through state power, but beyond that they are not particularily interested in statecraft or governance. "Jihadis in general," Habeck writes, "are not commited to any particular country, territory or part of the earth for their hijra or state." One quasi-comic moment occurs when Habeck quotes Siddiqi, an Islamist who shares Sayyid Qutb's dream of setting up a perfect Islamic state. (One of the puzzles resolved here, by the way, is how jihadi groups like the Taliban envisioned the pseudo-state they created in Afganistan as an Islamic paradise that would inspire emulation and envy throughout the world.) Siddiqi believed that "parts of America could even become Islamic territory.... He advocated using the electoral process to take over one of the fifty states peacefully, implementing shari'a there and making it the envy of its neighboring states. Americans would be attracted to the social justice created in this small Islamic land and would vote to establish shari'a in their own states." It is hard to imagine a more laughable idea articulated in full seriousness, yet that is the schizophrenic, delusional nature of the worldview in which Habeck immerses us. And it is quite frightening to meet such cold-blooded madness head-on.