Religion and Ideology in the Global Age: Analyzing al Qaeda's Islamist Globalism

Abstract

Commenting on the remarkable convergence of religion and ideology in the global age, this article utilizes the method of morphological discourse analysis to examine and map the conceptual structure of al Qaeda's Islamist globalism. Identifying a number of crucial concepts and claims at the heart of this “new” ideology, the essay shows how its principal codifiers—Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri—imagine community in unambiguously global terms.

Notes

¹ This article is a revised and expanded version of section 6.2 in Chapter 6 of my recent study, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

² Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 4.

³ Hans Maier, “Political Religion: a Concept and its Limitations,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8.1 (March 2007), p. 15.

⁴ Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). See also Stanley G. Payne, “On the Heuristic Value of the Concept of Political Religion and its Application,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 6:2 (September 2005), pp. 163–174.

⁵ John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London: Allen Lane, 2007), pp. 1–3.

⁶ See, for example, Mehdi Mozaffari, “What is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8:1 (March 2007), pp. 17–33; Greg Barton, Jemaah Islamiyah: Radical Islamism in Indonesia (Singapore: Ridge Books, 2005); Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York: HaperCollins, 2005); Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Azza Karam (ed.), Transnational Political Islam: Religion, Ideology and Power (London: Pluto Press, 2004); Thomas W. Simons, Islam in a Globalizing World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004), and Jihad: On the Trail of Political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002); and Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America (London: Granta Books, 2002).

⁷ Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). For an emphasis on analyzing ideologies in terms of “ideological claims,” see Manfred B. Steger, Globalisms: The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-First Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), pp. 51–95.

⁸ For an accessible account of the origins and evolution of the al Qaeda terrorist network, see Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).

⁹ Bruce Lawrence, “Introduction” in Osama Bin Laden, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence and translated by James Howarth (London: Verso, 2005), pp. xvii, xi. See also Bernard Lewis, “License to Kill,” Foreign Affairs 77:6 (November–December 1998), available at: < http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/54594/bernard-lewis/license-to-kill-usama-bin-ladins-declaration-of-jihad> (accessed May 21, 2009). For the most recent collection of writings by al Qaeda leaders, see Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli (eds), Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).

¹² Osama Bin Laden, “From Somalia to Afghanistan” (March 1997), in Messages to the World, op. cit., pp. 50–51.

¹⁰ Osama Bin Laden, “Under Mullah Omar” (April 9, 2001), p. 96, and “The Winds of Faith” (October 7, 2001), pp. 104–105, both in Bin Laden, Messages to the World, op. cit.

¹¹ Ayman al Zawahiri, “Loyalty and Enmity” (n.d.), in Raymond Ibrahim (ed. and trans.), The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), p. 102.

¹³ Osama Bin Laden, “The Saudi Regime” (November 1996), in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 39.

¹⁴ Osama Bin Laden, “The Invasion of Arabia” (c. 1995/6), in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 15. See also Osama Bin Laden, “The Betrayal of Palestine” (December 29, 1994), in idem, pp. 3–14.

¹⁵ See, for example, Bin Laden, “The Saudi Regime,” in Messages to the World, op. cit., pp. 32–33.

¹⁶ Mohammed Bamyeh, “Global Order and the Historical Structures of dar al Islam,” in Manfred B. Steger (ed.), Rethinking Globalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), p. 225.

¹⁷ Bin Laden, “The Betrayal of Palestine,” in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 9.

¹⁸ Osama Bin Laden, “A Muslim Bomb” (December 1998), in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 88.

¹⁹ Sayyid Qutb, “War, Peace, and Islamic Jihad,” in Mansoor Moaddel and Kamran Talattof (eds), Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam: A Reader (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 240.

²⁰ Mary R. Habeck, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 62.

²¹ Osama Bin Laden, “Terror for Terror,” (October 21, 2001), in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 119.

²² Ayman al Zawahiri, “I Am Among the Muslim Masses” (2006), in Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, op. cit., pp. 227–228.

²³ Roy, Globalized Islam, op. cit., p. 19.

²⁴ For an insightful analysis of the tribal, national, and global dimensions in Bin Laden's discourse, see Denis McAuley, “The Ideology of Osama Bin Laden: Nation, Tribe and World Economy,” Journal of Political Ideologies 10:3 (October 2005), pp. 269–287. For a brilliant discussion of globalizing dynamics involving tribal identities, see Paul James, Globalism Nationalism Tribalism: Bringing the State Back In (London: Sage, 2006).

²⁵ For a more detailed exposition of the reasons behind al Qaeda's shift from the near to the far enemy, see Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds op. cit.

²⁶ Bin Laden, “A Muslim Bomb,” in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 91.

²⁷ Roy, Globalized Islam, op. cit., Chapter 7.

²⁸ Osama Bin Laden, “Moderate Islam Is a Prostration to the West” (2003), in Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, op. cit., pp. 22–62. For a readable overview of the history and meanings of jihad, see David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2005).

²⁹ Osama Bin Laden, “Among a Band of Knights” (February 14, 2003), p. 202; “Resist the New Rome” (January 4, 2004), p. 218; and “A Muslim Bomb,” p. 69, all in Messages to the World, op, cit.

³⁰ Osama Bin Laden, “The World Islamic Front” (February 23, 1998), p. 61 and “To the Americans” (October 6, 2002), p. 166, both in Messages to the World, op, cit.

³¹ Osama Bin Laden, untitled transcript of the videotaped message (6 September 2007), available at: < http://www.msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/070907_bin_laden_transcript.pdf>.

³² Bin Laden, “To the Americans,” pp. 167–168, and “Resist the New Rome,” p. 214, both in Messages to the World, op. cit.

³³ Osama Bin Laden, “Nineteen Students” (December 26, 2001), in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 150; and untitled transcript of a videotaped message to the American people, op. cit.

³⁴ Bin Laden, “Terror for Terror,” in Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 112.

³⁵ See, for example, Bassam Tibi, “The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism and its Challenge to Europe and to Islam,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion 8:1 (March 2007), pp. 35–54; and Hendrik Hansen and Peter Kainz, “Radical Islamism and Totalitarian Ideology: A Comparison of Sayyid Qutb's Islamism with Marxism and National Socialism,” in idem, pp. 55–76.

³⁶ Osama Bin Laden, “Depose the Tyrants” (December 16, 2004), in Messages to the World, op. cit., pp. 245–275. Ayman al Zawahiri, “Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents” (n.d.), in Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, op cit., pp. 141–171.

³⁷ Bin Laden, “A Muslim Bomb,” pp. 73, 87, and “The Winds of Faith,” p. 105, both in Messages to the World, op. cit.

³⁸ Bin Laden, “Moderate Islam Is a Prostration to the West,” in Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, op. cit., pp. 51–52, 30–31.

³⁹ Faisal Devji, “Osama Bin Laden's Message to the World,” OpenDemocracy, 21 December 2005, p. 2. See also Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 144.

⁴⁰ Bin Laden, untitled transcript of a videotaped message to the American people, op, cit.