The United Nations is reporting good news in the War on Terrorism:
Global deaths from terrorism have declined significantly in recent months, due in part to dwindling popular support in the Muslim world for Islamist terrorist groups, according to the Human Security Brief 2007, published Wednesday at United Nations headquarters.
The shift is a product of "the Islamists shooting themselves in their feet. They've become their own worst enemy," said Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Report Project, the research group at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, that produced the study. All over the world there has been "a huge reaction against the indiscriminate violence of (Islamist terrorist) organizations, violence which is mostly perpetrated against fellow Muslims," he said.
It is pretty clear that at least some within al Qaida recognized the problem in advance of the study. Last year Sayyid Imam Al Sharif, the ideological godfather of Al Qaeda, wrote a book rethinking the strategy of Jihad
The incentive for writing the book, he explained, was that "jihad ... was blemished with grave Sharia violations during recent years. ... [N]ow there are those who kill hundreds, including women and children, Muslims and non Muslims in the name of Jihad!" Dr Fadl ruled that Al Qaeda's bombings in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere were illegitimate and that terrorism against civilians in Western countries was wrong. He also took on Al Qaeda's leaders directly in an interview with the Al Hayat newspaper. "Zawahiri and his Emir bin Laden [are] extremely immoral," he said. "I have spoken about this in order to warn the youth against them, youth who are seduced by them, and don't know them."
al Qaida didn't like their spiritual advisor's assessment.
In December, Zawahiri released an audiotape lambasting his former mentor, accusing him of being in league with the "bloodthirsty betrayer" Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; and, in a 200-page book titled The Exoneration, published in March, he replied at greater length, portraying Dr. Fadl as a prisoner trying to curry favor with Egypt's security services and the author of "a desperate attempt (under American sponsorship) to confront the high tide of the jihadist awakening."
Despite this rationalization
Zawahiri has watched Al Qaeda’s popularity decline in places where it formerly enjoyed great support. In Pakistan, where hundreds have been killed recently by Al Qaeda suicide bombers—including, perhaps, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto—public opinion has turned against bin Laden and his companions.
And ultimately, Dr Fadl's arguments resonate more strongly.
“It is not permissible for a Muslim to condemn another Muslim,” he writes, although he has been guilty of this on countless occasions. “He should renounce only the sin he commits.”
Fadl acknowledges that “terrorizing the enemy is a legitimate duty”; however, he points out, “legitimate terror” has many constraints. Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks in America, London, and Madrid were wrong, because they were based on nationality, a form of indiscriminate slaughter forbidden by Islam. In his Al Hayat interview, Fadl labels 9/11 “a catastrophe for Muslims,” because Al Qaeda’s actions “caused the death of tens of thousands of Muslims—Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis and others.”
...At one point, Fadl observes, “People hate America, and the Islamist movements feel their hatred and their impotence. Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours? . . . That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.”
There is no success like winning. I have pointed out before that one of the things Jihadists believe most strongly is that God is on their side. When defeat after defeat occurs, this underlying motivation begins to dissipate: They must begin to question whether or not their Jihad is indeed sanctioned by the Almighty.
And then someone like Dr Fadl comes along and the Jihadists stand among the ruins of what they have done and look around to see they are hated by the very people they believe they represent.
And worse yet, the Infidels are winning.
Clearly, this is not the time to surrender in Iraq.
