The Westminster Institute (Virginia): Educating the Public and Government About the Ideology of the Terrorists, and Ways to Counter It
by Ibn Warraq
Part I here.
Part II here.
Part III here.
4. BRIGADIER S. K. MALIK, THE QURANIC CONCEPT OF POWER [1979].
The book The Quranic Concept of Power by S.K. Malik, about whose life I was unable to discover anything substantial, has been enormously influential in providing the ideological foundations of the internationalist jihadist movement. It offers an unapologetic Islamic rationale for the use of terrorism to accomplish political and religious ends. As Patrick Poole and Mark Hanna, in their introduction to the online pdf edition of the book, inform us, we have startling evidence of the book’s importance and continuing relevance in the discovery by US military officials of summaries of it in various languages on captured and killed jihadist insurgents in Afghanistan. “This is hardly a surprising development,” continue Poole and Hanna, “as Malik finds within the Quran a doctrine of aggressive, escalating and constant jihad against non-Muslims and the religious justification of terrorism as a means to achieving the dominance of Islam around the world — dogmas that square with the Islamist ideology driving terrorism worldwide”.
It is of the utmost significance that the book’s Foreword was written by Muhammad Zia ul-Haq [1924-1988], the then-President of Pakistan and Army Chief of Staff, and the Preface by Allah Bukhsh K. Brohi [” 1987], the Advocate-General of Pakistan, and one-time Pakistani Ambassador to India. As Poole and Hanna emphasize, “Their respective endorsements of the book established Malik’s views on jihad as national policy and gave his interpretation official state sanction. General Zia embraces Malik’s expansive understanding of jihad as a duty extending to individual citizens as well as soldiers; and Brohi, drawing an explicit distinction between Dar-al-Islam [The House of Islam] and Dar al-Harb [the House of War, i.e. non-Muslims], accepts the redefinition of defensive jihad to include the removal of any obstacles and countering any resistance to the spread of the message of Islam and the institutionalization and governance according to shari”˜a. In this view, even passive resistance to the advance of Islam is legitimate grounds for attack.”
Malik argues that “As a complete Code of Life, the Holy Quran gives us a philosophy of war as well. . . .This divine philosophy is an integral part of the total Quranic ideology.” Malik tries “to distill God’s doctrine for war through the examples of the Prophet”. [1] Central to Malik’s thesis is his advocacy of terror as a weapon willed by God. We must target the very soul of the enemies of Islam; the best way to destroy the enemy”s faith is through terror. If peaceful means to advance the cause and the spread of Islam are not available, if someone hinders the advance of Islam, then force is necessary, and perfectly legitimate. As Malik says, “The Holy Quran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test . . . lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of our enemies.”
Brohi tells us in his Foreword, “It is the duty of a believer to carry forward the Message of God and to bring it to notice of his fellow-men in handsome ways. But if someone attempts to obstruct him from doing so he is entitled as a matter of defense, to retaliate.”
Brohi puts forward the familiar notion of the ummah and the international system. “The idea of Ummah of Mohammad, the Prophet of Islam, is incapable of being realized within the framework of territorial states.” As analyst Joseph C. Myers summarises, “The ummah is a transcendent religious and cultural society united and reflecting the unity (tawhid) of Islam; the idea of one God, indivisible, one community, one belief, and one duty to live and become godly”. Brohi expounds what he takes to be the Prophet’s ideas, “Ummah participates in this heritage by a set pattern of thought, belief and practice. . . and supplies the spiritual principle of integration of mankind””a principle which is supra-national, supra-racial, supra-linguistic and supra-territorial.”
Here are the key quotes from Malik’s book:
Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him…
“Jehad,” the Quranic concept of total strategy. Demands the preparation and application of
total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war…Under ideal conditions, Jehad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting.…the Book [Quran] does not visualize war being waged with “kid gloves.” It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war “in toto,” that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Quran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of the enemies.
It is worth highlighting the fact that for Malik, that war has nothing to do with the interests of the nation-state (which is the Western understanding), but serves solely to impose Allah’s sovereignty on all of humanity.
CONCLUSION.
Al-Qaeda is only a part of a much larger and older movement which has plans to destroy our Western systems by all means possible, including but not only violence. This conflict is more dangerous than the Cold War, because our enemy believes that God is on their side, and is not afraid to bring about mass destruction including its own.
All the four thinkers draw heavily from the Koran, and other founding documents of Islam, such as the Hadith, the Sira, that is, the life and military campaigns of their Prophet, Muhammad, and even Koranic Commentators. They were not motivated by a desire to alleviate poverty as such but by a desire to establish the reign of Islam, societies ruled by Sharia; they were educated, and well-versed in their religion; some came from wealthy and influential families; they were not from the fringes of Islamic societies.
What is the present situation? As Dr. Sebastian Gorka himself concluded,
“The sad truth is that we seem to be going backwards. Take just these three quotes from the 9/11 Commission report:
— Our enemy “is sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.”
— “[T]he institutions charged with protecting our national security did not understand how grave this threat could be, and did not adjust their policies, plans, and practices to deter or defeat it.”
— “In short, the United States has to help defeat an ideology, not just a group of people.”
” I am told,” continues Dr.Gorka, “that the U.S. Government’s policy now is to see our salvation in negotiations with people like Qaradawi, to engage the Soft Jihadists. If that is the Intelligence Community”s strategy and White House’s answer, then we have already lost. If people who are the seminal clerical advocates for Jihad for the Muslim Brotherhood and the lead clerics for Al-Jazeera are going to be our saviors, then we have surrendered. If you do not want to give up, remember this. This is what we have to understand. There are violent Jihadists and there are non-kinetic Soft Jihadists. There is AQ and there is the OIC and the Muslim Brotherhood. They are taking different pathways to the same destination: the imposition of sharia law wherever they can make it happen and to the creation of a Caliphate. Both groups believe in Jihad. Both groups are driven by the objectives Qutb, Azzam, Zawahiri and Malik espoused. They simply represent two faces of the same foe, an enemy whose doctrines and strategies we must begin studying in earnest.”
[1] Joseph C. Myers. The Quranic Concept of War, in Winter 2006-2007 issue of Parameters: the US Army War College Quarterly.