Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 35

FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN JIHAD

J

ust as one must study Carl von Clausewitz,
Machiavelli, or Napoleon to understand the
modern Western way of war, there are key
writers and thinkers that those who wish to defeat
our current jihadist enemy must acquaint themselves
with intimately. In order to understand the strategy
of today’s global jihadist movement, one must understand the work of a handful of Islamists who wrote
the most important strategic texts on war against the
“infidel.” These men are Seyyid Qutb, Ayman al-Zawahiri (the current head of al-Qaida), Brig. Gen. S.K.
Malik, and lastly, the late American al-Qaeda leader,
Anwar al-Awlaki. The works of these “big picture”
Islamist thinkers together shape the actions and plans
of all of today’s jihadist terror groups, from Boko
Haram to al-Qaida, from the al-Nusra Front to the
Islamic State (IS).

(Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Seyyid Qutb is author of the 1964 book Milestones, which became
a field manual for jihadists. It remains a doctrinal text for the Muslim
Brotherhood.

Milestones: All Must Fight for the
Caliphate
Qutb, a minor Egyptian government official, is responsible for writing the most influential modern text on
jihad. His 1964 book, Milestones (sometimes translated
as Signposts Along the Way), has become the field manual
for jihadists everywhere and remains a core doctrinal
text for the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Qutb was
a key member. Written after Qutb visited the United
States on an exchange program soon after World War II,
the book describes the reasons why the Muslim community has lost its preeminent position in the world and
how the godless, infidel nation of the United States must
MILITARY REVIEW  May-June 2016

be destroyed in order to rid the world of jahilliyyah, the
pagan ignorance of Allah that once again has infected
the minds and souls of Muslims across the globe.
In this violent purification of the world and the
reinstatement of Islamic greatness through the reestablishment of the theocratic empire that was the
Caliphate, the most powerful weapon is a “holy war,”
or jihad. Most significantly of all, Qutb is explicit in
his belief that Islam is not to be understood as just a
religion, but instead as a “revolutionary party,” with a
politically supremacist mission to mobilize the masses
and capture global power for the glory of Allah. Islam
for Qutb is not limited to a matter of personal belief.
Again and again, in this short book, Qutb repeats that
Islam has a mandate to re-create the Caliphate, but this
time a theocratic empire that will span the world.
It is no accident that given this understanding,
Milestones lifts heavily and frequently from other
ideologies which promoted revolution, especially fascism and communism, which is why Qutb (and later
Osama bin Laden) frequently used Marxist terminology such as the “vanguard” to explain the special role
the small minority of “enlightened” religious revolutionaries has.
Qutb was eventually arrested by the regime
of Gamal Abdel Nasser for his central role in the
Brotherhood and involvement in a plot to kill the
president, and he was finally executed in August 1966.
However, his ideas on jihad and religious war live on
and his book is available not only all over the Middle
East but also in many Islamic “cultural centers” across
the United States. This is a problem because the other
places it is most often found is in the possession of
high-value jihadist targets on the battlefield and on
terrorists apprehended here in the United States.
Qutb’s ideas very specifically link insurgent leaders
like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of IS with individual terrorists, such as the Tsarnaev brothers responsible for the
Boston Marathon bombing, because each of them concurs with the fundamental analysis in Milestones that:
Muslims are once again like the pagan Arab
tribes of Mecca in the time of Mohammed.
They have failed to submit themselves to the will
of Allah, in part because they are following leaders
who are themselves false Muslims and puppets of the
West, but also because they have been corrupted by the
heretical values of the infidel.

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