Global Jihad: temi, piste di diffusione e il fenomeno del reducismo ...

ut the Afghan scene. While visiting the United States in 1988, in order to recruit
American Muslims for the fight in Afghanistan, Azzam described the Afghan
mujaheddin as the sublime model of Islamic fighters who would lead the Muslim
world toward a kind of eternal struggle against the evil powers of Western culture. 45
Another important element in the theory of al-Qa’ida was the sense of elitism that
characterized this vanguard army. This elitism was spurred by two branches of Islam
that had developed in Egypt and Saudi Arabia long before—Takfir (refutation) and
radical Wahhabism. Many of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan and later on in Iraq—
especially those who came from other countries, either as exiles or on a voluntary
basis—adopted the Takfir principles of creating an isolated society of true Muslims
and waging jihad against the rest. They also seized upon the extreme brand of
Wahhabism practiced in the 1930s by the Wahhabi Ikhwan zealots, who settled on
the borders of the new Saudi Arabian kingdom and developed radical ideas that
were counter to the rest of their society. According to Abdallah Azzam the only way
to consolidate all of these ideas was through protracted jihad. As Omar Abu Omar
put it in, “The only legitimate state that could represent the correct nature of Islam
and rely on its essence, is the state that would be established through the armed
struggle of jihad”. 46
Azzam’s “Solid base” article is similar to others published in the late 1970s and early
1980s in two Islamic magazines—Al-Mukhtar al-Islami [The Islamic assortment] in
Cairo and Al-Tali`ah al-Islamiyyah [The Islamic Vanguard] in London. The leading
editors of these magazines were Dr. Fathi Shqaqi and Dr. Bashir Nafi` (who used the
name of Ahmad Sadiq), the co-founders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While
studying medicine in Egypt, they were in close contact with the founders of the
Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian Islamic Groups (Al-Gama`at al-Islamiyyah) 47 .
Initially, Shqaqi and Nafi` tended to focus on the Palestinian issue, as opposed to
45 Exerpts from Azzam’s presentations in American mosques can be viewed in Steve Emerson’s 1994 PBS
documentary, Jihad in America.
46 Omar Abu Omar “Abu Qatadah”, Al-Jihad wal-Ijtihad, p. 58.
47 On the relations between the Palestinian and Egyptian Jihad groups, see: Anwar Abd al-Hadi Abu Taha,
Harakat al-Jihad al-Islami fi Filastin, chapter 2, on the official web site of Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
www.qudsway.com/Links/Jehad/4/Html_Jehad4/Jihadbolkhtml/4hje1-3.htm
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