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Islam: Understanding and Outreach

Al-Qaeda Fact Sheet

from an outline by Pastor Mason Okubo

Introduction
The central theme of Pastor Okubo's teaching can be summarized in the following equation which he wrote on the whiteboard of the classroom:

Al-Qaeda ≠ Muslims ≠ Arabs

Al-Qaeda, Muslims and Arabs are NOT equal or identical to each other. Al-Qaeda terrorists are not true Muslims and do not represent all of Islam. Also, not all Muslims are Arabs, and not all Arabs are Muslims. There are many Arabs in the Middle East who are Christians, and in the West there are non-Arabs, including whites, who are Muslims.

Here is a list of relative populations:

• World: 6.7 billion
• China: 1.3 billion
• India: 1.1 billion
• U.S.: 307 billion
• Arabs (the Middle East): half billion
• Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait
• Muslims: about 1 billion
• in Middle east: about half billion
• outside of Middle East (Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.): half billion

Origins of Al-Qaeda
The radical Islamist movement and al-Qaeda developed during the last three decades of the 20th century. It is rooted in the works of the Islamic author and thinker Sayyid Qutb. Qutb preached that because of the lack of sharia law, the Muslim world was no longer Muslim. To restore Islam, righteous Muslims needed to establish "true Islamic states", implement sharia, and rid the Muslim world of non-Muslim influences, such as concepts like socialism or nationalism.

Qutb's idea that "may who said they were Muslims were not" gave jihadists a legal loophole around the prohibition of killing another Muslim and rather made it a religious obligation to execute apostate Muslims. These alleged apostates included leaders of Muslim countries, since they failed to enforce sharia law.

Influental Al-Qaeda Leaders

• Osama bin Laden, Senior Operations Chief (killed in 2011 by U.S. forces)
• Ayman al-Zawahiri, successor to Bin Laden

Al-Qaeda Regional Groups

• Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia
• Islamic Jihad of Yemen--Nasser al-Wahayshi
• Al-Qaeda in Iraq-- Abu Ayyub al-Masri
• Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb
• Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen in Somalia
• Egyptian Islamic Jihad
• Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
• East Turkestan Islamic Movement in Xinjiang

Strategy of Al-Qaeda

• Recruiting through radical Islamic message, not necessarily to the impoverished
• Franchising: convert al-Qaeda into an ideology and set of operating principes that can be loosely franchised in other countries without requiring direct command and control
• Using terrorism and guerilla warfare
• Seeking collapse of non-Muslim enemies
• Establishment of sharia law

For a good article in the Washington Post on al-Qaeda strategy, see the article by Bruce Hoffman, professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/01/08/DI2010010803548.html

Recently in the News

• September 30, 2011: U.S. unmanned drone aircraft kill U.S.-born terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in an airstrike carried out in southeastern Yemen. Al-Awlaki was the first U.S. citizen ever placed on the CIA target list.
• May 1, 2011: President Obama announces in a televised address that U.S. Navy SEALS carried out a mission that found and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at a secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, ending a more than decade-long manhunt for the world's most wanted terrorist.
• October 2010: Ibrahim al-Asiri, a 28-year-old Saudi, attempts to air mail explosive devics to the U.S. Shipments are stopped in Britain and Dubai. Also responsible for failed underwear bomb in San'A, Yemen in previous years.
• April 2010: President Obama approves the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born radical preacher, linked to al-Qaeda failed bombing, making al-Awlaki the first U.S. citizen ever placed on the CIA target list.
• 2010: Al-Qaeda movement toward Somalia and Yemen. The percentage of terrorist attacks on the west, originating from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, have declined considerably from almost 100% to 75% in 2007 and to 50% in 2010, shifting operations toward Somalia and Yemen.
• March 2010: Muslim Fatwa on Terrorism (Muslim Condemnation of Terrorism): a direct Quranic refutation of the ideology of al-Qaeda and the Taliban regarding the usage of terrorism and suicide bombings, produced by an influential Muslim scholar, Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri of Canada.

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