The Ideological Origins of 9/11
I’ve written about the September 11 attacks quite a few times here, often mentioning them in posts on unrelated topics. Since the 23rd anniversary of the attacks is this week, I will dedicate a full post to the subject.
Last week, I put out a call for any personal stories related to the attacks that readers wish to share. I got no responses. I didn’t really expect any responses; based on the numbers, it was unlikely. But it is worth asking. When we are discussing tragedies and atrocities, it is important to remember the human side of the story.
To that end, I recommend following Brian Clark’s story in particular. Clark is one of the few people who escaped the South Tower from above the crash site. I would like to write more about survival and heroism stories at a later time.
For today, though, we will attempt the impossible: to understand what could compel a person to hijack an airplane and deliberately crash it into a building full of innocent people. Obviously, this is a big subject and not one that we can even come close to covering comprehensively today. But we will at least attempt to consider a few pieces of the story: the concept of jihad, of Wahhabism and Salafiyya, of Islamism (or political Islam), and how these elements came together in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later and led to the deadliest terrorist attack in history.
As was the case two weeks ago, please be advised that some elements of this post will be especially controversial, maybe even inflammatory. I will do my best to be fair-minded, but to play on a certain cable company’s former slogan, “fair and balanced” are two ideals that are not always compatible.
The Nature of Jihad
On September 17, 2001, President George W. Bush said the following at the Islamic Center of Washington,
The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.
In 2007, Bush said, “[y]et this enemy [terrorism] is not the true face of Islam”. Bush deserves a great deal of credit for speaking against the anti-Muslim bigotry that was raw at the time. This is in contrast, to give one of many possible examples, to the internment of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. A less scrupulous leader could have gone down the same road.
The biggest problem, though, is that as a non-Muslim, Bush is not qualified to opine on the “true face of Islam”. The reality is complicated. Islam is deeply divided on what constitutes the “true face”—Shia vs. Sunni for starters—and whatever we can call authentically Islamic necessarily includes some elements that most of us would regard as repugnant.
Jihad (Jihād, if we transliterate it more precisely) is an Arabic word that might be best translated as struggle or striving. The notion of jihad can be subdivided into greater jihad or inner jihad, which refers to a person’s interior struggles to avoid sin and live in accordance with the Qur’an. Lesser jihad, or outer jihad, refers to defending the Muslim community from attack. Lesser jihad can in turn be subdivided into nonviolent persuasion (jihad or the pen or jihad of the tongue) and violence (jihad of the sword).
Pre-modern Islamic jurisprudence discussed the distinction between defensive and offensive wars, the distinction between wars between Muslim groups and wars between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the rules of war. There is some similarity between Islamic jurisprudence on warfare and the Just War Theory of Christian tradition, and it gets very complicated.
Every major world religion is, in some ways, associated with warfare, but Islam is unique in that the founder himself, the Prophet Muhammed, was a notable military leader. The early Muslim conquests under Muhammed himself, the Rashidun Caliphate, and the Umayyad Caliphate from AD 622 to 750 are among world history’s most rapid and extensive periods of imperial expansion.
Ahmed Mohsen Al-Dawoody finds that jihad, as the term is used today, is seen by Muslims as self-defense of their nations or response to persecution of Muslims. The primary understandings by Western observers (see discussion starting on p. 165)—that jihad is a holy war, analogous to the Crusades; that jihad is a cover for the search for booty; and that jihad is fundamentally about conquest—is a caricature at best in his view. Paul Fregosi documents an extensive history of conflict between Muslim civilization and Europe from the 7th century to present day.
Majid Khadduri writes that expansionism is a central part of Muslim identity, but after the rapid conquests slowed from the 8th century, Islamic civilization developed a jurisprudence that was more compatible with peaceful coexistence with other civilizations and humane in its conduct of warfare. Chief among such thinkers was Muhammad ibn al-Hasan Shaybani, who lived in the 8th and 9th centuries and wrote a treatise on international law, long before the work of Hugo Grotius.
Michael Bonner examines jihad in early Islamic history and offers a balanced view between Islam as an inherently violent religion and jihad strictly as peaceful struggle.
Jihad took a revived meaning as resistance to European colonialism, such as in Emir Abd el-Kader’s fight against French colonialism in Algeria. First viewed as an enemy of France, Abd el-Kader gained international renown for saving Christians in Damascus when civil war broke out in 1860.
Those who wish to present Islam as an inherently violent religion will also cite the “Sword Verse”, Qur’an 9:5.
But once the Sacred Months have passed, kill the polytheists who violated their treaties wherever you find them, capture them, besiege them, and lie in wait for them on every way. But if they repent, perform prayers, and pay alms-tax, then set them free. Indeed, Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Both within and beyond Islam, there is debate as to the meaning of the Sword Verse. Some argue that the context of surrounding verses add interpretation to what otherwise looks like a harsher meaning; I think we all know how easy it is to lift out-of-context verses from the Bible to make it look like they say something other than the clear meaning. Others argue that the verse is contextual; it refers to Arabian polytheistic pagans under particular circumstances at the time of Muhammad; while others argue that the verse is directed against all pagans, or even all non-Muslims and apostates. I lack the knowledge to judge which interpretation is most plausible.
There are five pillars of Islamic practice; they are faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and the Hajj (pilgrimage). Jihad is not one of them, but it is one of the 10 practices of Shia Islam.
I don’t buy the notion that Islam is an inherently violent religion or should be reviewed as in irreconcilable conflict with the West, as might be concluded from Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. But it is fair to observe that warfare has played a more central role in the history of Islam that it has in other major world religions. Still, our purpose is to understand how 9/11 happened in particular, and that will require a look at more recent history.
Wahhabism and Salafiyya
Wahhabism, named for its founder Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, is a reformist—also described as fundamentalist—Sunni interpretation of Islam that rejects innovations such as veneration of saints and promotes a return to the practices of the first three generations (salaf), particularly adherence to the Qur’an and the sunnah, the body of practices and traditions of the Prophet Muhammed. The development of Wahhabism from around the 1740s corresponded with the founding on the first Saudi dynasty, and Abd al-Wahhab worked closely with Muhammad bin Saud, the founder of the dynasty. The movement arose in reaction to perceived moral decay in the Arabian Peninsula.
The partnership continued through the founding of the modern state of Saudi Arabia by Abd al Aziz ibn Saud in 1932 and continues to this day.
Salafiyya, or the Salafi movement, is a fairly similar movement within Sunni Islam, developed in the early 20th century in part in reaction to British and French colonialism. Salafi too is a kind of back-to-basics fundamentalism, which has championed such practices as praying in shoes and growing the kind of facial hair advocated by the Prophet Muhammad.
Especially problematic for Salafis is living under a secular state, particularly one aligned with what they see as decadent Western values. Underground in Egypt for much of its lifetime, due to assassination attempts and other actions, a central goal of the Muslim Brotherhood has been the overthrow of secular regimes in that country. One of Osama bin Laden’s major goals was the overthrow of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, particularly for their hosting of American troops after the first Persian Gulf War. More on that later.
According to a report by Michael Dillon, Wahhabism provides passive ideological support for violent extremism by spreading an intolerant brand of Islam. Examples include blatant anti-Jewish and anti-Christian material in school textbooks. Dillon argues against the stronger hypothesis that Wahhabism provides material or direct support for terrorism.
It was not lost on anyone that Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were of Saudi nationality. Families of 9/11 victims have brought a lawsuit against the government of Saudi Arabia, alleging complicity in the attacks. The 9/11 Commission, which published its findings in 2004, found no evidence of direct Saudi involvement, a conclusion that was reaffirmed by a CIA/FBI report in 2005. Documents finally declassified in 2022 cast doubt on this conclusion.
It has not been, and may never be, determined the full extent of the Saudi role in the attacks, but the failure of the United States to grapple seriously with this question for so long is a major failure of post-9/11 policy.
Islamism
Islamism, also called political Islam, is an ideology that seeks to establish national governments that are run in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law.
Muhammad Rashid Rida, who lived much of his life in the Ottoman Empire and then in Egypt, was an adherent to Salafiyya and Wahhabism. He advocated for Islamic rule, with the eventual establishment of a universal Islamic caliphate, and for jihad against what he saw as the corruption of Western values. Rida took an eclectic approach to modernity and was not necessarily the Salafi/Wahhabi zealot as sometimes portrayed.
Rida would exercise great influence over Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and Sayyad Qutb. I briefly discussed Qutb a couple years ago. Qutb was a visiting scholar in the United States from 1948-1950, during which time he developed sharply anti-American views. He came back to Egypt, now opposed to pro-Western government of Gamel Abdel Nasser. He was executed in 1966 for a failed plot to assassinate Nasser. Qutb was a mentor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who cofounded al Qaeda along with Osama bin Laden, and laid much of the foundation for the Salafi-Jihadi movement that would become so potent from the 1990s.
The history between the United States and Islamism is, shall we say, complicated. In the 1950s, domestically Christianity was experiencing a revival under the rallies of Billy Graham, and internationally, religion was seen as a potent propaganda tool in the Cold War against the officially atheistic Soviet Union. Although not a particularly religious man himself, President Eisenhower responded domestically with such gestures as adding “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Internationally, the Eisenhower Doctrine, proclaimed in 1957, declared the Middle East to be a front in the Cold War, and he stressed the “holy war” aspect of opposition to the Soviet Union to gain the support of Islamist groups. But the relationship truly deepened in 1979, as we shall see shortly.
Israel too supported financially a predecessor organization to Hamas, in the hope that Hamas would focus on reading the Qur’an rather than armed resistance, like the Marxist Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah. That hope was obviously misplaced.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
The year 1979 was a watershed in the Muslim world. In November and December of that year, Islamist militants under Juhayman al-Otaybi seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing 127 people. Rather than the crackdown on religious conservatism that might be expected, the Saudi government responded with new puritanical policies, such as more gender segregation. The siege could thus be regarded as a victory for the militants.
In 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran put the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in power, marking the most significant victory for Islamist rule in that movement’s history.
And in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support a socialist, pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan’s civil war. The invasion met widespread international condemnation and provoked a long, U.S.-backed insurgency. All three of these events are important for our story, but we’ll focus on Afghanistan.
Even before the invasion, the Carter administration began Operation Cyclone, one of the longest and most expensive covert operations in CIA, to support the mujahideen that were fighting against the socialist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan intensified the support. The Afghan mujahideen was a coalition of Islamist insurgents who were united by anti-communism. After the Soviet intervention, the war became a cause celebre across the Muslim world and attracted jihadist fighters from many other countries. One of those fighters was Osama bin Laden, then freshly out of university. The story is famously told in George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War.
The issue of Chalmers Johnson’s “blowback” inevitably comes up when discussing the American response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Blowback asserts negative consequences for U.S. interventions, such as the rise of al Qaeda as a consequence of the backing of the mujahideen. I take the view, as outlined by Nicholas Kotarski, that blowback is greatly overstated. If we want to blame someone other than the terrorists for 9/11, it would be more fruitful to blame the intelligence agencies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who preferred to fund more extreme insurgents who would go on to careers in the Taliban and al Qaeda, and gross American intelligence lapses in the 1990s that allowed terrorists to plot and enter the country unimpeded. I also agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, that given the mujahideen’s victory’s contribution to the fall of the Soviet Union, American covert intervention in that conflict was a good investment.
Operation Cyclone lasted until 1992, well after the Soviet withdrawal, and until the fall of Afghanistan’s Marxist government. If any American decision can be blamed for allowing al Qaeda to fester in Afghanistan, it may be the decision to end the operation and let extremists take over the country. Ahmed Shah Massoud, nicknamed the “Lion of Panjshir”, warned that the United States forget its moral responsibility in Afghanistan after the geopolitical goal was accomplished, and he warned that there would be consequences for this forgetting. He was assassinated by terrorists posing as journalists on the orders of Osama bin Laden, and the consequences Massoud warned of came two days later. If the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan in 1992 was the tragedy, then the abandonment in 2021 was the farce.
The Pieces Comes Together
In the 1990s, the Salafi and the jihadi movements came together, having been somewhat distinct before that. The Soviet Union was no more, and the United States had become the primary target for jihadists after the Persian Gulf War. The decade was full of missed wake-up calls and mistakes in a country that was not taking the threat of terrorism seriously. The closest of the close calls came on February 26, 1993, the first terrorist attack at the World Trade Center, which was intended to blow out the support structure from the North Tower and send it collapsing onto the South Tower, bringing down both. It was sheer luck that this didn’t happen.
There is obviously much more that could have been discussed today, but won’t be for lack of space and time. This is a topic that I would like to return to later, perhaps at the anniversary next year. As a parting thought, there is a lesson for all of us, especially those of us like myself who are religious. Every religious tradition has its violent side, its fundamentalist strains, and its political corruption. Of the major world religions, it is in Islam today that these problems are most apparent, but I do not wish to imply that Islam has a monopoly on these things. There is a fine line between devotion and fanaticism, and most likely, if we have to ask where that line is, things have long since gone terribly wrong.
Quick Hits
In some of the least surprising news in a long time, the Department of Justice has handed down indictments that several prominent far right pundits from Tenet Media, which has received funding from the Russian state media firm RT. The usual “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law” disclaimer applies, but it is well-known that the Russian government funds far right activists around the world, much as the Soviet Union funded communist activity around the world through Comintern.