Download A Jihadist in Algeria World History Name: E. Napp Date: Religious

A Jihadist in Algeria
World History
E. Napp
Name: _________________
Date: _________________
Religious and Theological Context:
“Jihad, also spelled jehad, (‘struggle,’ or ‘battle’), [is] a religious duty imposed on
Muslims to spread Islam by waging war; jihad has come to denote any conflict
waged for principle or belief and is often translated to mean ‘holy war.’
Islam distinguishes four ways by which the duty of jihad can be fulfilled: by the
heart, the tongue, the hand, and the sword. The first consists in a spiritual
purification of one’s own heart by doing battle with the devil and overcoming his
inducements to evil. The propagation of Islam through the tongue and hand is
accomplished in large measure by supporting what is right and correcting what is
wrong. The fourth way to fulfill one’s duty is to wage war physically against
unbelievers and enemies of the Islamic faith. Those who professed belief in a divine
revelation – Christians and Jews in particular – were given special consideration.
They could either embrace Islam or at least submit themselves to Islamic rule and
pay a poll and land tax. If both options were rejected, jihad was declared.
Modern Islam places special emphasis on waging war with one’s inner self. It
sanctions war with other nations only as a defensive measure when the faith is in
danger.
Throughout Islamic history, wars against non-Muslims, even though with political
overtones, were termed jihads to reflect their religious flavour. This was especially
true in the 18th and 19th centuries in Muslim Africa south of Sahara, where
religiopolitical conquests were seen as jihads, most notably the jihad of Usman dan
Fodio, which established the Sokoto caliphate (1804) in what is now northern
Nigeria. The Afghan War in the late 20th and early 21st centuries was also viewed
by many of its participants as a jihad, first against the Soviet Union and
Afghanistan’s Marxist government and, later, against the United States. During that
time, Islamic extremists used the theory of jihad to justify violent attacks against
Muslims whom the extremists accused of apostasy (Arabic riddah).
~ Britannica
What are the main points of the passage?
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The Article: Jihad ‘Prince,’ a Kidnapper, Is Tied to Raid; New York Times, January
17, 2013, Steven Erlanger and Adam Nossiter
PARIS – His entourage calls him “the Prince,” and after the militant Islamist
takeover of a town in northern Mali last year, he liked to go down to the river and
watch the sunset, surrounded by armed bodyguards.
Others call him “Laaouar,” or the One-Eyed, after he lost an eye to shrapnel; some
call him “Mr. Marlboro” for the cigarette-smuggling monopoly he created across
the Sahel region to finance his jihad. And French intelligence officials called him
“the Uncatchable” because he escaped after apparently being involved in a series of
kidnappings in 2003 that captured 32 European tourists, an undertaking which is
thought to have earned him millions of dollars in ransoms.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 40, born in the Algerian desert city of Ghardaïa, 350 miles
south of Algiers, is now being called the mastermind of the hostage crisis at an
internationally run natural-gas facility in eastern Algeria.
Algerian officials say he mounted the assault and the mass abduction of foreigners;
his spokesmen say the raid is in reprisal for the French intervention in Mali and for
Algeria’s support for the French war against Islamist militants in the Sahel.
Mr. Belmokhtar has been active in politics, moneymaking and fighting for decades
in the Sahel, which includes Mali, Mauritania and Niger and is one of the poorest
regions in the world. But through this single action, one of the most brazen
kidnappings in years, he has suddenly become one of the best-known figures
associated with the Islamist militancy sweeping the region and agitating capitals
around the world.
The 1989 killing in Pakistan of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian considered
the “father of global jihad” and a mentor of Osama bin Laden, prompted Mr.
Belmokhtar to seek to avenge Mr. Azzam’s death, he has said in interviews. At 19 he
traveled to Afghanistan for training with Al Qaeda, and has claimed in interviews to
have made contact with other jihadi luminaries like Abu Qatada and Abu
Muhammad al-Maqdisi, according to a 2009 Jamestown Foundation study. Bin
Laden made contact with him, through emissaries, in the early 2000s, according to
Djallil Lounnas, who teaches at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco.
Mr. Belmokhtar later named a son Osama, after Bin Laden, and inserted himself
into local populations in the southern Algerian and northern Malian desert by
marrying the daughter of a prominent Arab leader from Timbuktu, Mali. He is also
said to have shared the riches of his lucrative activities with the impoverished local
population, Mr. Lounnas has written.
Mr. Belmokhtar, described as taciturn, watchful and wary by a Malian journalist,
Malick Aliou Maïga, who met him last summer, was one of the most experienced of
the leaders of what became Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb until he broke with
the group last year to form his own organization, the Signed-in-Blood Battalion,
sometimes translated as the Signatories for Blood. Occasionally using the alias
Khaled Abu Abass, he is thought to have based himself in Gao, Mali, which has seen
heavy bombing by French warplanes.
It was not clear whether Mr. Belmokhtar was at the scene or commanding the
operation from afar.
What are the main points of the passage?
12345678910There are stories that he lost his eye fighting in Afghanistan, but others say he lost
it fighting Algerian government troops after he returned to Algeria in 1993. The
country was being ripped apart by civil war at the time, after the government
annulled 1992 elections that were about to be won by an Islamist party. Mr.
Belmokhtar has been a wanted man in Algeria since that time and condemned to
death several times by Algerian courts.
Mr. Belmokhtar was falsely reported to have been killed in 1999. Nearly a decade
later, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which he joined, adopted the
jihadist ideology of Bin Laden and renamed itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Mr. Belmokhtar is considered to have been a key intermediary with Al Qaeda and a
well-known supplier of weapons and matériel in the Sahara.
But he clearly does not share authority easily, and left or was removed from his
post as commander of a battalion in Mali last October, reportedly for “straying
from the right path,” according to a Malian official, quoting the leader of Al Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel.
The dispute was about Mr. Belmokhtar’s return to smuggling and trafficking.
Dominique Thomas, a specialist in radical Islam, told Le Monde that Mr.
Belmokhtar’s activities ran counter to the group’s official line, which presents itself
as entirely virtuous.
Mr. Belmokhtar then founded his new group, which he allied with the Movement
for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist group that had broken off
from Al Qaeda.
Some suggest that his expertise has been more in criminal activities than in holy
warfare. Kidnapping and smuggling – of cigarettes, stolen cars, arms and drugs –
have been his specialties in the vast and largely lawless border regions. He was said
to be central to hostage-takings and subsequent negotiations for their release in
2003, 2008 and 2009.
Robert R. Fowler, a former Canadian diplomat and a United Nations special envoy
to Niger, was kidnapped by Mr. Belmokhtar’s brigade in late 2008 and met with
him several times.
“He’s a fairly slight, very serious, very confident-looking guy who moves with quiet
authority,” Mr. Fowler said in a telephone interview from Canada. “He’s clearly
been in the business of being a terrorist and surviving for a long time. I was always
impressed by the quiet authority he exhibited.”
Mr. Maïga, the Malian journalist, recalled seeing Mr. Belmokhtar, dressed in
black and wearing a turban that descended over his eye, leaving a hospital in Gao
with his entourage. He called out to him, and a bodyguard quickly interposed
himself: “You must not,” the bodyguard warned. “That is the Prince.”
Subsequently, Mr. Maïga recalled seeing Mr. Belmokhtar seated on the beach by
the river at Gao, surrounded by bodyguards. “He was saying nothing. He has a
fixed stare. He doesn’t trust people.”
Mr. Maïga and others say locals regard him with both respect and fear.
In an interview with the Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar in Gao in November,
Mr. Belmokhtar said he respected “the clearly expressed choice” of the people of
northern Mali “to apply Islamic Shariah law.” He warned against foreign
interference, saying that any country that did so “would be considered as an
oppressor and aggressor who is attacking a Muslim people applying Shariah on its
territory.”
Mr. Belmokhtar was already scheduled to be tried again in absentia by the Algiers
criminal tribunal starting next Monday, on charges that include supplying weapons
for attacks on Algerian soil. Planned targets were said to include pipelines and oil
company installations in southern Mali.
What are the main points of the passage?
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678910Analyze the following political cartoons: