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

Azzam, who focused on the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. From 1996 on, however,
Osama bin Laden worked to combine these two Islamic struggles, in an effort to
make the Palestinian issue the most unifying element of the global jihad. In his long
"Declaration of War against the American Occupying the Land of the Two Holy
Places", a Fatwa first published in the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat in August
1996, 48 , Bin Laden stated:
"My Muslim Brothers of the World, your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the
two Holy Places [Saudi Arabia] are calling your help and asking you to take part in
fighting against the enemy--your enemy and their enemy--the Americans and the
Israelis… Our Lord, the people of the Cross had come to with their horses and
occupied the land of the two Holy places, and the Zionist Jews fiddling as they wish
with Al-Aqsa Mosque, the route of the ascendance of the messenger of Allah. Our
Lord, shatter their gathering, divide them, shake the earth under their feet and give
us control over them".
The struggle against the Crusader-Jewish conspiracy was the main theme of another
Bin Laden Fatwa, the "World Islamic Front for the Jihad against the Jews and the
Crusaders", first published in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi on February 23 rd
1998. 49 This time, however, Bin Laden was joined by the leaders of Egyptian Islamic
Jihad, the Egyptian Islamic Groups, Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Pakistan (Association of
Pakistani clerics), and the Islamic movement of Bangladesh.
The union of the Islamic world, the Afghan base, and the Palestinian struggle, was
the center of Bin Laden's famous interview on Al-Jazirah television following the first
American attack on Afghanistan in early October 2001. Yet, the ideology of global
jihad —a combination of jihad, Takfir, and Wahhabism—had been developed many
years prior to the creation of its global terrorist infrastructure.
48 Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), 23 February 1998. Several English translations are available on line (e.g. see
www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1998.html and
www.azzam.com/html/articlesdeclaration.htm)
49 English translation available on-line
(www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html).
65