God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad

God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad

Charles Allen

Language: English

Pages: 368

ISBN: 0306815222

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In today's post-9/11 world, the everyday news shows us images of fanatic fighters and suicide bombers willing to die in holy war, martyrs for jihad. But what are the roots of this militant fundamentalism in the Muslim world? In this insightful and wide-ranging history, Charles Allen finds an answer in the eighteenth-century reform movement of Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his followers--the Wahhabi--who sought the restoration of Islamic purity and declared violent jihad on all who opposed them, Moslems and pagans alike. As the Wahhabi teaching spread in the nineteenth century, first, to the Arabian peninsula, and then, to the region around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, their followers brought with them a vicious brand of political ideology and militant conflict. The Wahhabi deeply influenced the rulers of modern Saudi Arabia and their establishment of a strict Islamic code. A more militant expression of Wahhabism took root in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where fierce tribes have waged holy war for almost two hundred years. The ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda today are filled with young men who were taught the Wahhabi theology of Islamic purity while rifles were pressed into their hands for the sake of jihad. God's Terrorists sheds shocking light on the historical roots of modern terrorism and shows how this dangerous theology lives on today.

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notwithstanding, General Zia came from a traditionalist clerical background and was determined to Islamicise his country. He turned to Mawdudi’s JI party, and for the eleven years of his rule the JI and the other Islamist parties enjoyed unprecedented influence, providing the ideological driving force that enabled the General to create an authoritarian Islamic state which had little support from the people of Pakistan. By now there were more than nine thousand Deobandi madras-sahs in the

Shah Sayyed Mubarik Shah Sayyed Umar Shah Sayyid Abulala Mawdudi Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (’the Afghan’) Sayyid Muhammad Sayyid Nazir Husain Muhaddith Maulana Scindia, Daulat Rao Second World War Sepoy Mutiny Wahhabis and, effect on British perceptions Seringaputam Shabkadar Shafi, Muhammad Shahabad shahid Shakespear, William Shamlee, mosque Shankargarh sharia Wahhabi immutability of, itjihad, in Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan Taliban Shariat-i-Mohammadi (Movement for

those that can only be brought under the sway of the Imam by a decisive fight . . . For whoever has heard the summons of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and has not responded to it, must be fought.’ Ibn Taymiyya further declared jihad to be the finest act that man could perform: ‘Jihad against the disbelievers is the most noble of actions and moreover it is the most important action for the sake of mankind . . . Jihad implies all kinds of worship, both in its inner and outer forms.

to come into contact with the British when the East India Company pushed northwards across the Punjab in the 1840s. Because the British came to the Vale of Peshawar as conquerors of the Sikhs, who had long oppressed the Pathans, the Yusufzai greeted them as liberators when they took over from the Sikhs as governors of Peshawar city and began administering the surrounding countryside. The young British officers who came to speak to their tribal chiefs and clan leaders, the khans and maliks, were

362 fighting men, divided into eight units. They had seventy women and children with them and were living in very straitened circumstances. Reily then wrote to his superiors recommending pardons for all the Hindustanis – except for Abdullah Ali, their leader, and his deputy Faiyyaz Ali, a brother of Ahmadullah and Yahya Ali, both now in prison. Shortly afterwards Reily seems to have been visited in the Hazara hills by Abdullah Ali himself or by an emissary from the Hindustani camp – a mysterious

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