Abdullah Yusuf Azzam
Encyclopedia
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (Arabic عبدالله عزام) was a highly influential Palestinian Sunni Islamic scholar and theologian, who preached in favor of defensive jihad
by Muslim
s to help the Afghan mujahideen
against the Soviet invaders
. He raised funds, recruited, and organized the international Islamic volunteer effort of Afghan Arabs
through the 1980s, and emphasised the political ascension of Islam
.
He is also known as a teacher and mentor of Osama bin Laden
, and persuaded bin Laden to come to Afghanistan and help the jihad, though the two differed as to where the next front in global jihad should be after the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan. He was killed by a bomb blast on November 24, 1989.
village), a few kilometers northwest of the city of Jenin
, in the Jenin Sanjak
(District), then administered as the British Mandate of Palestine.
After completing his elementary and secondary school education in his home village, he studied agriculture at Khadorri College
near Tulkarm
. After college graduation, Azzam worked as a teacher in the south Jordanian village of Adder. In 1961, at the age of 20, he married
a girl named Umm Muhammad. He subsequently joined Sharia College at the University of Damascus
where he obtained a B.A. in Sharia
in 1966. After the 1967 Six-Day War
ended in Israel
i military occupation of the West Bank, Azzam left the West Bank and followed the Palestinian exodus to Jordan
, where he joined the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood
.
His father, Mustafa Azzam, died in 1990. His mother was Zakia Saleh who died in 1988, one year before the he was killed. She was buried in the Pabi camp, in Peshawar
, Pakistan
, where Abdullah Azzam was later killed.
(PLO) and led by Yasser Arafat
. Instead of pursuing the PLO’s Marxist-oriented national liberation struggle supported by the Soviet Union
, Azzam envisioned a pan-Islamic trans-national movement that would transcend the political map of the Middle East
drawn by non-Islamic colonial powers. He is believed to have had a role in founding the Islamist Hamas
movement in Palestine.
Azzam then went to Egypt
to continue Islamic studies
at Cairo
’s Al-Azhar University
where he earned a Master’s degree in Sharia. He returned to teach at the University of Jordan
in Amman
, but in 1970, the Jordanian military expelled PLO militants from Jordan during what became known as Black September
, thereby preventing the use of Jordanian territory for anti-Israeli and anti-Western attacks. In 1971, Azzam received a scholarship to once again attend Al-Azhar University where he obtained his Ph.D. in the Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence
(Usool ul-Fiqh) in 1973.
During theological studies in Egypt, Azzam met Omar Abdel-Rahman
, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri
and other followers of Sayyed Qutb, an extremely influential leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who had been executed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser
in 1966. Azzam adopted elements of Sayyed Qutb’s ideology, including beliefs in an inevitable “clash of civilizations
” between the Islamic world and non-Islamic world, and in the necessity of violent revolution against secular governments to establish an Islamic state.
. Since the 1960s, King Faisal
of Saudi Arabia had welcomed exiled teachers from Syria
, Egypt, and Jordan, so that by the early 1970s it was common to find many Saudi high school and university teachers who had become involved with exiled dissident members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
As one of those Jordanian dissidents in the early 1970s, Azzam took a position as lecturer at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah
, Saudi Arabia, where he remained until 1979. Osama bin Laden
had grown up in Jeddah, and was enrolled as a student in the university there between 1976 and 1981 and he probably first made contact with Azzam at that time.
, with three huge revolutionary events in the Muslim world. First, on January 16, 1979 the Iranian Revolution
succeed in taking over the country and exiling the Shah
, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
, which then brought about the world's first modern Muslim theocracy
under the rule of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini
.
The second major attempt at Islamic revolution that year was the November 20, 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure
at Mecca
, in western Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The hostage-taking, two week siege, and bloody ending shocked the Muslim world, as hundreds were killed in the ensuing battles and executions. The event was explained as a fundamentalist dissident revolt against the Saudi regime. The Saudi regime responded with repression, and in 1979, Azzam was expelled from the university at Jeddah. He then moved to Pakistan
to be close to the nascent Afghan Jihad.
In the third major event of the year, on December 25, 1979 the Soviet Union, attempting to suppress a growing Islamic rebellion, deployed the 40th Army into Afghanistan
, in support of advisors it already had in place there.
, Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith declaring that both the Afghan and Palestinian struggles were jihad
s in which killing occupiers of your land (no matter what their faith) was fard
ayn (a personal obligation) for all Muslims. The edict was supported by Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti
(highest religious scholar), Abd al-Aziz Bin Bazz.
In Pakistan in 1980, Azzam began to teach at International Islamic University in Islamabad
. Soon thereafter, he moved from Islamabad to Peshawar
, closer to the Afghan border, where he then established Maktab al-Khadamat
(Services Office) to organize guest houses in Peshawar and paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for the Afghan war front.
Peshawar is a major border city of a million people in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan. From there, Azzam was able to organize resistance directly on the Afghan frontier. Peshawar is only 15 km east of the historic Khyber Pass
, through the Safed Koh
mountains, connected to the southeastern edge of the Hindu Kush
range. This route became the major avenue of inserting foreign fighters and material support into eastern Afghanistan for the resistance against the Soviets.
After Osama bin Laden graduated from the university in Jeddah in 1981, he also came to live for a time in Peshawar, "Azam prevailed on him to come and use his money" for training recruits, according to The News International
. Some have suggested that Mohammed Atef
was responsible for convincing Azzam to abandon his academic pursuits to devote himself solely to preaching jihad.
Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, dealt with paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihad fighters. To keep al Khadamat running, bin Laden set up a network of couriers travelling between Afghanistan and Peshawar, which continued to remain active after 2001, according to Yusufzai.
After orientation and training, Muslim recruits volunteered for service with various Afghan militias tied to Azzam. In 1984, Osama bin Laden founded Bait ul-Ansar (House of Helpers) in Peshawar to expand Azzam’s ability to support “Afghan Arab
” jihad volunteers and, later, to create his own independent militia.
In 1988, Azzam convinced Ahmed Khadr to raise funds for an alleged new charity named al-Tahaddi based in Peshawar. He granted Khadr a letter of commendation to take back to Canadian mosques, calling for donations. However, the pair had a sensationalist showdown when Khadr insisted that he had a right to know how the money would be spent, and Azzam's supporters labelled Khadr a Western spy. A Sharia court
was convened in bin Laden's compound, and Azzam was found guilty of spreading allegations against Khadr, though no sentence was imposed.
Employing tactics of asymmetric warfare
, the Afghan resistance movement was able to fend off the Soviet Union's superior military forces throughout most of the war, although the lightly armed Afghan mujahideen
suffered enormous casualties. The Saudi Arabia
n government and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gradually increased financial and military assistance to the Afghan mujahideen forces throughout the 1980s in an effort to stem Soviet expansionism and to destabilize the Soviet Union.
Azzam frequently joined Afghan militias and international Muslim units as they battled the Soviet Union's forces in Afghanistan. He sought to unify elements of the resistance by resolving conflicts between mujahideen commanders and he became an inspirational figure among the Afghan resistance and freedom-fighting Muslims worldwide for his passionate attachment to jihad against foreign occupation.
In the 1980s, Azzam traveled throughout the Middle East, Europe
and North America
, including 50 cities in the United States, to raise money and preach about jihad. He inspired young Muslims with stories of miraculous deeds, mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed, who had been run over by tanks but survived, who were shot but unscathed by bullets. Angels were witnessed riding into battle on horseback, and falling bombs were intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of the jets to form a protective canopy over the warriors.
In Steven Emerson
's 1994 television documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America,
he showed a video of Abdullah Azzam in Brooklyn urging his audience to wage jihad in America (which Azzam explains "means fighting only, fighting with the sword"), and Fayiz Azzam (a cousin of Abdullah) tells an Atlanta audience: "Blood must flow. There must be widows; there must be orphans."
Azzam built a scholarly, ideological and practical paramilitary infrastructure for the globalization of Islamist movements that had previously focused on separate national, revolutionary and liberation struggles. Azzam’s philosophical rationalization of global jihad and practical approach to recruitment and training of Muslim militants from around the world blossomed during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation and proved crucial to the subsequent development of the al-Qaida militant movement.
Like earlier influential Islamist Sayyid Qutb
, Azzam urged the creation of `pioneering vanguard`, as the core of a new Islamic society. `This vanguard constitutes the solid base` [qaeda in Arabic] for the hoped-for society ... We shall continue the jihad no matter how long the way, until the last breath and the last beat of the pulse - or until we see the Islamic state established.'
From its victory in Afghanistan jihad would liberate Muslim land (or formerly Muslim land in the case of Spain) ruled by unbelievers: the southern Soviet Republics of Central Asia, Bosnia, the Philippines, Kashmir, Somalia, Eritrea, and Spain. He believed the natural place to continue the jihad was his birthplace, Palestine. Azzam planned to train brigades of Hamas fighters in Afghanistan, who would then return to carry on the battle against Israel."
This put him at odds with another influential faction of the Afghan Arabs
the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The next group of "unbelievers" the EIJ wanted to jihad against were not Israeli Jews, European Christians or Indian Hindus, but self-professed Muslims of the Egyptian government and other secular Muslim governments. For the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, takfir against the allegedly impious Egyptian government was central, but Azzam opposed takfir
of Muslims – including takfir of Muslim governments – which he believed spread fitna and disunity within the Muslim community.
neighbourhood in western Peshawar, in Gulshan Iqbal Road. Abdullah Azzam used the mosque as the jihad center, according to a Reuters
inquiry in the neighborhood. Had the bomb exploded, reportedly it would have destroyed the mosque, and killed everybody in it.
But then on November 24, 1989, Muhammad Azzam was driving his father and brother to Friday prayers in Peshawar, when unknown assassins detonated a bomb as the vehicle approached; lying in a narrow street across from a gas station, the explosive had a 50 metre detonation cord which led to the sewerage
system where the assailant presumably waited.
Azzam and his sons were buried near the same site as his mother the year before, the Pabi Graveyard of the Shuhadaa' (martyrs), in Peshawar.
Suspects in the assassination include competing Islamic militia leaders, the CIA, and the Israel
i Mossad
.
Since the Soviet Union
had withdrawn all troops from Afghanistan by this time, the CIA would not seem to have an obvious reason to assassinate Azzam. Many suspect the killing was part of a purge of those who favored moving the jihad to Palestine. In March 1991, Mustapha Shalabi, who ran the Maktab al-Khidmat, the Services Bureau in New York and was also "said to prefer a `Palestine next` strategy, turned up dead in his apartment." He was replaced by Wadih el-Hage
, who later became bin Laden's personal secretary.
Osama bin Laden
has also been accused of being a suspect in the murder, but seems to have remained on good terms with Azzam during this time. Yet another actor accused of the hit is Iranian intelligence, an active adversary of Salafi Islam
. In 2009, Jordanian double agent
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi
claimed knowledge of Jordanian Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah
cooperation with the CIA to set up the assassination.
and are no longer active, though mirror sites persisted for some time afterwards. Babar Ahmad, the alleged administrator of azzam.com, is awaiting extradition from Great Britain to the USA.
In terms of ideas, Azzam’s belief in jihad – 'one hour in the path of jihad is worth more than 70 years of praying at home' – has had considerable impact. Azzam is thought to had influence on jihadists such as al-Qaeda
with the third stage of his "four-stage process of jihad". This third stage was "ribat," defined as "placing oneself at the frontlines where Islam was under siege". This idea is thought to reinforce militants "perception of a civilizational war between Islam and the West".
Defensive jihad
There are two types of armed religious warfare in Islam, namely the defensive jihad and the offensive jihad. This article discusses defensive jihad as a concept in Islamic law...
by Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s to help the Afghan mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
against the Soviet invaders
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
. He raised funds, recruited, and organized the international Islamic volunteer effort of Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs were Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet-Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans....
through the 1980s, and emphasised the political ascension of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
.
He is also known as a teacher and mentor of Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
, and persuaded bin Laden to come to Afghanistan and help the jihad, though the two differed as to where the next front in global jihad should be after the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan. He was killed by a bomb blast on November 24, 1989.
Early life in the West Bank
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam was born in 1941 in the village of as-Ba'ah al-Hartiyeh (Silat al-HarithiyaSilat al-Harithiya
Silat al Harithiya is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, located 10 km Northwest of the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 9,840 inhabitants in mid-year 2006....
village), a few kilometers northwest of the city of Jenin
Jenin
Jenin is the largest town in the Northern West Bank, and the third largest city overall. It serves as the administrative center of the Jenin Governorate and is a major agricultural center for the surrounding towns. In 2007, the city had a population of 120,004 not including the adjacent refugee...
, in the Jenin Sanjak
Sanjak
Sanjaks were administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. Sanjak, and the variant spellings sandjak, sanjaq, and sinjaq, are English transliterations of the Turkish word sancak, meaning district, banner, or flag...
(District), then administered as the British Mandate of Palestine.
After completing his elementary and secondary school education in his home village, he studied agriculture at Khadorri College
Khodori Institute, Tulkarm
Khodori Institute is an agricultural college located in Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank. The college was inaugurated in 1930 after the British Government had received a bequest from the Iraqi born Jewish philanthropist Sir Ellis Kadoorie. The college was named in his honour and still bears his...
near Tulkarm
Tulkarm
Tulkarem or Tulkarm is a Palestinian city in the northern Samarian mountain range in the Tulkarm Governorate in the extreme northwestern West Bank adjacent to the Netanya and Haifa districts to the west, the Nablus and Jenin Districts to the east...
. After college graduation, Azzam worked as a teacher in the south Jordanian village of Adder. In 1961, at the age of 20, he married
a girl named Umm Muhammad. He subsequently joined Sharia College at the University of Damascus
University of Damascus
The University of Damascus is the largest and oldest university in Syria, located in the capital Damascus and has campuses in other Syrian cities. It was founded in 1923 through the merger of the School of Medicine and the Institute of Law , also making it the oldest university in modern-day Syria...
where he obtained a B.A. in Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
in 1966. After the 1967 Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
ended in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i military occupation of the West Bank, Azzam left the West Bank and followed the Palestinian exodus to Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, where he joined the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...
.
His father, Mustafa Azzam, died in 1990. His mother was Zakia Saleh who died in 1988, one year before the he was killed. She was buried in the Pabi camp, in Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, where Abdullah Azzam was later killed.
Life in Jordan and Egypt
In Jordan, Azzam participated in paramilitary operations against the Israeli occupation but became disillusioned with the secular and provincial nature of the Palestinian resistance coalition held together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation OrganizationPalestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
(PLO) and led by Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...
. Instead of pursuing the PLO’s Marxist-oriented national liberation struggle supported by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Azzam envisioned a pan-Islamic trans-national movement that would transcend the political map of the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
drawn by non-Islamic colonial powers. He is believed to have had a role in founding the Islamist Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
movement in Palestine.
Azzam then went to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
to continue Islamic studies
Islamic studies
In a Muslim context, Islamic studies can be an umbrella term for all virtually all of academia, both originally researched and as defined by the Islamization of knowledge...
at Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
’s Al-Azhar University
Al-Azhar University
Al-Azhar University is an educational institute in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 970~972 as a madrasa, it is the chief centre of Arabic literature and Islamic learning in the world. It is the oldest degree-granting university in Egypt. In 1961 non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum.It is...
where he earned a Master’s degree in Sharia. He returned to teach at the University of Jordan
University of Jordan
The University of Jordan , is a government-supported University located in Amman, Jordan...
in Amman
Amman
Amman is the capital of Jordan. It is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Greater Amman area has a population of 2,842,629 as of 2010. The population of Amman is expected to jump from 2.8 million to almost...
, but in 1970, the Jordanian military expelled PLO militants from Jordan during what became known as Black September
Black September in Jordan
September 1970 is known as the Black September in Arab history and sometimes is referred to as the "era of regrettable events." It was a month when Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan moved to quash the militancy of Palestinian organizations and restore his monarchy's rule over the country. The...
, thereby preventing the use of Jordanian territory for anti-Israeli and anti-Western attacks. In 1971, Azzam received a scholarship to once again attend Al-Azhar University where he obtained his Ph.D. in the Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence
Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence
Principles of Islamic jurisprudence is a subject that provides a critical analysis of the sources and principles that Islamic jurisprudence is built upon....
(Usool ul-Fiqh) in 1973.
During theological studies in Egypt, Azzam met Omar Abdel-Rahman
Omar Abdel-Rahman
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman , commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", is a blind Egyptian Muslim leader who is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Medical Center which is part of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, United...
, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian physician, Islamic theologian and current leader of al-Qaeda. He was previously the second and last "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life...
and other followers of Sayyed Qutb, an extremely influential leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who had been executed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
in 1966. Azzam adopted elements of Sayyed Qutb’s ideology, including beliefs in an inevitable “clash of civilizations
Clash of Civilizations
The Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world....
” between the Islamic world and non-Islamic world, and in the necessity of violent revolution against secular governments to establish an Islamic state.
Life in Saudi Arabia
After obtaining his Doctorate in Egypt in 1973, Azzam returned to teach at the University of Jordan, but his radical views were suppressed there. So Azzam then moved to Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. Since the 1960s, King Faisal
Faisal of Saudi Arabia
Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud was King of Saudi Arabia from 1964 to 1975. As king, he is credited with rescuing the country's finances and implementing a policy of modernization and reform, while his main foreign policy themes were pan-Islamic Nationalism, anti-Communism, and pro-Palestinian...
of Saudi Arabia had welcomed exiled teachers from Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, Egypt, and Jordan, so that by the early 1970s it was common to find many Saudi high school and university teachers who had become involved with exiled dissident members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
As one of those Jordanian dissidents in the early 1970s, Azzam took a position as lecturer at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah
Jeddah
Jeddah, Jiddah, Jidda, or Jedda is a city located on the coast of the Red Sea and is the major urban center of western Saudi Arabia. It is the largest city in Makkah Province, the largest sea port on the Red Sea, and the second largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital city, Riyadh. The...
, Saudi Arabia, where he remained until 1979. Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
had grown up in Jeddah, and was enrolled as a student in the university there between 1976 and 1981 and he probably first made contact with Azzam at that time.
Life in Pakistan and Afghanistan
1979 became a pivotal year for Islamic movementIslamic Movement
The term Islamic Movement can refer to Islam or Islamism in general, or to any of several religious or political organizations:*Islamic Movement of Afghanistan*National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan*Students Islamic Movement of India...
, with three huge revolutionary events in the Muslim world. First, on January 16, 1979 the Iranian Revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
succeed in taking over the country and exiling the Shah
Shah
Shāh is the title of the ruler of certain Southwest Asian and Central Asian countries, especially Persia , and derives from the Persian word shah, meaning "king".-History:...
, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
, which then brought about the world's first modern Muslim theocracy
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....
under the rule of Ayatollah
Ayatollah
Ayatollah is a high ranking title given to Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. Those who carry the title are experts in Islamic studies such as jurisprudence, ethics, and philosophy and usually teach in Islamic seminaries. The next lower clerical rank is Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin...
Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
.
The second major attempt at Islamic revolution that year was the November 20, 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure
Grand Mosque Seizure
The Grand Mosque Seizure on November 20, 1979, was an armed attack and takeover by Islamist dissidents of the Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest place in Islam...
at Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
, in western Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The hostage-taking, two week siege, and bloody ending shocked the Muslim world, as hundreds were killed in the ensuing battles and executions. The event was explained as a fundamentalist dissident revolt against the Saudi regime. The Saudi regime responded with repression, and in 1979, Azzam was expelled from the university at Jeddah. He then moved to Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
to be close to the nascent Afghan Jihad.
In the third major event of the year, on December 25, 1979 the Soviet Union, attempting to suppress a growing Islamic rebellion, deployed the 40th Army into Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, in support of advisors it already had in place there.
Support for Afghan mujahideen
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Azzam issued a fatwaFatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
, Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith declaring that both the Afghan and Palestinian struggles were jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
s in which killing occupiers of your land (no matter what their faith) was fard
Fard
also is an Islamic term which denotes a religious duty. The word is also used in Persian, Turkish, and Urdu in the same meaning....
ayn (a personal obligation) for all Muslims. The edict was supported by Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti
Grand Mufti
The title of Grand Mufti refers to the highest official of religious law in a Sunni or Ibadi Muslim country. The Grand Mufti issues legal opinions and edicts, fatwā, on interpretations of Islamic law for private clients or to assist judges in deciding cases...
(highest religious scholar), Abd al-Aziz Bin Bazz.
In Pakistan in 1980, Azzam began to teach at International Islamic University in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
. Soon thereafter, he moved from Islamabad to Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....
, closer to the Afghan border, where he then established Maktab al-Khadamat
Maktab al-Khadamat
The Maktab al-Khidamat, also Maktab Khadamāt al-Mujāhidīn al-'Arab , also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, is reliably believed to have been founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahidin for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan...
(Services Office) to organize guest houses in Peshawar and paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for the Afghan war front.
Peshawar is a major border city of a million people in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan. From there, Azzam was able to organize resistance directly on the Afghan frontier. Peshawar is only 15 km east of the historic Khyber Pass
Khyber Pass
The Khyber Pass, is a mountain pass linking Pakistan and Afghanistan.The Pass was an integral part of the ancient Silk Road. It is mentioned in the Bible as the "Pesh Habor," and it is one of the oldest known passes in the world....
, through the Safed Koh
Safed Koh
Spin Ghar or Safed Kuh or the Indian Caucasus, also known as the Safīd Mountain Range or Morga Range, is a mountain range on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, up to above sea-level at Mount Sikaram, straight and rigid, towering above all surrounding hills...
mountains, connected to the southeastern edge of the Hindu Kush
Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir in the Chitral region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a...
range. This route became the major avenue of inserting foreign fighters and material support into eastern Afghanistan for the resistance against the Soviets.
After Osama bin Laden graduated from the university in Jeddah in 1981, he also came to live for a time in Peshawar, "Azam prevailed on him to come and use his money" for training recruits, according to The News International
The News International
The News International , published in tabloid size, is the largest English language newspaper in Pakistan. The News has an ABC certified circulation of 140,000. It is published from Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad...
. Some have suggested that Mohammed Atef
Mohammed Atef
Mohammed Atef was the alleged military chief of al-Qaida, although his role in the organization was not well known by intelligence agencies for years...
was responsible for convincing Azzam to abandon his academic pursuits to devote himself solely to preaching jihad.
Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, dealt with paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihad fighters. To keep al Khadamat running, bin Laden set up a network of couriers travelling between Afghanistan and Peshawar, which continued to remain active after 2001, according to Yusufzai.
After orientation and training, Muslim recruits volunteered for service with various Afghan militias tied to Azzam. In 1984, Osama bin Laden founded Bait ul-Ansar (House of Helpers) in Peshawar to expand Azzam’s ability to support “Afghan Arab
Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs were Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet-Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans....
” jihad volunteers and, later, to create his own independent militia.
In 1988, Azzam convinced Ahmed Khadr to raise funds for an alleged new charity named al-Tahaddi based in Peshawar. He granted Khadr a letter of commendation to take back to Canadian mosques, calling for donations. However, the pair had a sensationalist showdown when Khadr insisted that he had a right to know how the money would be spent, and Azzam's supporters labelled Khadr a Western spy. A Sharia court
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
was convened in bin Laden's compound, and Azzam was found guilty of spreading allegations against Khadr, though no sentence was imposed.
Employing tactics of asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly....
, the Afghan resistance movement was able to fend off the Soviet Union's superior military forces throughout most of the war, although the lightly armed Afghan mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
suffered enormous casualties. The Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
n government and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gradually increased financial and military assistance to the Afghan mujahideen forces throughout the 1980s in an effort to stem Soviet expansionism and to destabilize the Soviet Union.
Azzam frequently joined Afghan militias and international Muslim units as they battled the Soviet Union's forces in Afghanistan. He sought to unify elements of the resistance by resolving conflicts between mujahideen commanders and he became an inspirational figure among the Afghan resistance and freedom-fighting Muslims worldwide for his passionate attachment to jihad against foreign occupation.
In the 1980s, Azzam traveled throughout the Middle East, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, including 50 cities in the United States, to raise money and preach about jihad. He inspired young Muslims with stories of miraculous deeds, mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed, who had been run over by tanks but survived, who were shot but unscathed by bullets. Angels were witnessed riding into battle on horseback, and falling bombs were intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of the jets to form a protective canopy over the warriors.
In Steven Emerson
Steven Emerson
Steven Emerson, is an American journalist and author, who writes about national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism.Emerson is the author of six books, and co-author of two more. His television documentary Jihad in America won the 1994 George Polk Award for best Television Documentary, and...
's 1994 television documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America,
he showed a video of Abdullah Azzam in Brooklyn urging his audience to wage jihad in America (which Azzam explains "means fighting only, fighting with the sword"), and Fayiz Azzam (a cousin of Abdullah) tells an Atlanta audience: "Blood must flow. There must be widows; there must be orphans."
Global Jihad
Azzam's trademark slogan was "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues." In Join the Caravan, Azzam implored Muslims to rally in defense of Muslim victims of aggression, to restore Muslim lands from foreign domination, and to uphold the Muslim faith.Azzam built a scholarly, ideological and practical paramilitary infrastructure for the globalization of Islamist movements that had previously focused on separate national, revolutionary and liberation struggles. Azzam’s philosophical rationalization of global jihad and practical approach to recruitment and training of Muslim militants from around the world blossomed during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation and proved crucial to the subsequent development of the al-Qaida militant movement.
Like earlier influential Islamist Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamist theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and '60s....
, Azzam urged the creation of `pioneering vanguard`, as the core of a new Islamic society. `This vanguard constitutes the solid base` [qaeda in Arabic] for the hoped-for society ... We shall continue the jihad no matter how long the way, until the last breath and the last beat of the pulse - or until we see the Islamic state established.'
From its victory in Afghanistan jihad would liberate Muslim land (or formerly Muslim land in the case of Spain) ruled by unbelievers: the southern Soviet Republics of Central Asia, Bosnia, the Philippines, Kashmir, Somalia, Eritrea, and Spain. He believed the natural place to continue the jihad was his birthplace, Palestine. Azzam planned to train brigades of Hamas fighters in Afghanistan, who would then return to carry on the battle against Israel."
This put him at odds with another influential faction of the Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs were Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet-Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans....
the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The next group of "unbelievers" the EIJ wanted to jihad against were not Israeli Jews, European Christians or Indian Hindus, but self-professed Muslims of the Egyptian government and other secular Muslim governments. For the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, takfir against the allegedly impious Egyptian government was central, but Azzam opposed takfir
Takfir
In Islamic law, takfir or takfeer refers to the practice of one Muslim declaring another Muslim an unbeliever or kafir...
of Muslims – including takfir of Muslim governments – which he believed spread fitna and disunity within the Muslim community.
Assassination
In 1989, a first attempt on his life failed, when a lethal amount of TNT explosive was placed beneath the pulpit from which he delivered the sermon every Friday. The Arab mosque was in the University TownUniversity of Peshawar
The University of Peshawar is a public sector university in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. The university was established in October 1950 by Mr...
neighbourhood in western Peshawar, in Gulshan Iqbal Road. Abdullah Azzam used the mosque as the jihad center, according to a Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
inquiry in the neighborhood. Had the bomb exploded, reportedly it would have destroyed the mosque, and killed everybody in it.
But then on November 24, 1989, Muhammad Azzam was driving his father and brother to Friday prayers in Peshawar, when unknown assassins detonated a bomb as the vehicle approached; lying in a narrow street across from a gas station, the explosive had a 50 metre detonation cord which led to the sewerage
Sewerage
Sewerage refers to the infrastructure that conveys sewage. It encompasses receiving drains, manholes, pumping stations, storm overflows, screening chambers, etc. of the sanitary sewer...
system where the assailant presumably waited.
Azzam and his sons were buried near the same site as his mother the year before, the Pabi Graveyard of the Shuhadaa' (martyrs), in Peshawar.
Suspects in the assassination include competing Islamic militia leaders, the CIA, and the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
.
Since the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
had withdrawn all troops from Afghanistan by this time, the CIA would not seem to have an obvious reason to assassinate Azzam. Many suspect the killing was part of a purge of those who favored moving the jihad to Palestine. In March 1991, Mustapha Shalabi, who ran the Maktab al-Khidmat, the Services Bureau in New York and was also "said to prefer a `Palestine next` strategy, turned up dead in his apartment." He was replaced by Wadih el-Hage
Wadih el-Hage
Wadih el-Hage is a former al-Qaeda member who is serving life imprisonment in the United States for his part in the 1998 United States embassy bombings. He was indicted and arrested in 1998, and convicted on all counts and sentenced to life without parole in 2001...
, who later became bin Laden's personal secretary.
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
has also been accused of being a suspect in the murder, but seems to have remained on good terms with Azzam during this time. Yet another actor accused of the hit is Iranian intelligence, an active adversary of Salafi Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. In 2009, Jordanian double agent
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi according to Western intelligence officials, was a Jordanian doctor and a double agent suicide bomber loyal to Islamist extremists who carried out Camp Chapman attack, a suicide attack against a CIA base near Khost city in Afghanistan on December 30,...
claimed knowledge of Jordanian Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah
Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah
Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah is the intelligence agency of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and a branch of the Jordanian Armed Forces...
cooperation with the CIA to set up the assassination.
Legacy
After his death, Azzam’s militant ideology and related paramilitary manuals were promoted through print and Internet media by Azzam Publications, which described itself as "an independent media organisation providing authentic news and information about Jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere." The publishing house operated from a London post office box (Azzam Publications—BMC UHUD, LONDON, WC1N 3XX) and an Internet site, www.azzam.com, that were shut down shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacksSeptember 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
and are no longer active, though mirror sites persisted for some time afterwards. Babar Ahmad, the alleged administrator of azzam.com, is awaiting extradition from Great Britain to the USA.
In terms of ideas, Azzam’s belief in jihad – 'one hour in the path of jihad is worth more than 70 years of praying at home' – has had considerable impact. Azzam is thought to had influence on jihadists such as al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
with the third stage of his "four-stage process of jihad". This third stage was "ribat," defined as "placing oneself at the frontlines where Islam was under siege". This idea is thought to reinforce militants "perception of a civilizational war between Islam and the West".
Quotes
- "Indeed he (Ahmad Shah Massoud) is the hero of Islam."
- "Muslims cannot be defeated by others. We Muslims are not defeated by our enemies, but instead, we are defeated by our own selves."
Written works
- Defense of the Muslim Lands: The First Obligation after Faith, 1979 (many typographical errors); 2002 (second English ed., revised with improved citations and spelling.) Is a study on the legal rulings of Jihad. It discusses the types of Jihad, the conditions under which Jihad becomes an obligation upon all Muslims, parents’ permission, fighting in the absence of the Islamic State, and peace treaties with the enemy.)
- Join the Caravan, 1987, 1991 (second English ed.) (An appeal for Muslims to establish “a solid foundation as a base for Islam” in Afghanistan by expelling the Russian invaders of this Muslim land. The author quoted extensively from the Quran and the ahadeeth in establishing his jurisprudence reasoning as to why there is now an individual obligation (Fard Ain) for committed Muslims to travel to Pakistan-Afghanistan and become active combatants (mujahideen) themselves.)
- The Lofty Mountain (A biographical book on the life of Tameem Adnani, a scholar of the Afghan Jihad. It contains a unique, descriptive, first-hand account of the famous Lion's Den Operation in Jaji, Afghanistan, in 1987 whereby 50 Mujahideen held off a month-long assault by several battalions of Soviet and Communist soldiers.)
- The Signs of The Merciful in the Jihad of the Afghan (A fully checked and revised version of a book listing over a hundred eyewitness alleged accounts of miracles experienced by the Mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan Jihad, from perfumed bodies of martyrs to accounts of angels helping the Mujahideen, and other claims..)
- Lovers of the Paradise Maidens (Lovers of the Paradise Maidens contains the biographies and stories of over 150 Mujahideen who died in the Soviet-Afghan Jihad.)
See also
- Egyptian Islamic Jihad
- Jamaat-e-IslamiJamaat-e-IslamiThis article is about Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. For other organizations of similar name see Jamaat-e-Islami The Jamaat-e-Islami , is a Pro-Muslim political party in Pakistan...
- MujahideenMujahideenMujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
- Reagan DoctrineReagan DoctrineThe Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War...
- Azzam the American
- Hasan al-Banna
- Javed Ahmed GhamidiJaved Ahmed GhamidiJaved Ahmad Ghamidi is a well-known Pakistani Muslim theologian, Quran scholar and exegete, and educationist. A former member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, who extended the work of his tutor, Amin Ahsan Islahi. Ghamidi is the founder of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister...
- Khurshid Ahmad
- Mohammad Amin al-HusayniMohammad Amin al-HusayniHaj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. From as early as 1920, in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of a violent riot...
- Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi
- Sayyid QutbSayyid QutbSayyid Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamist theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and '60s....
- Yusuf al-QaradawiYusuf al-QaradawiYusuf al-Qaradawi is a controversial Egyptian Islamic theologian. He is best known for his programme, ash-Shariah wal-Hayat , broadcast on Al Jazeera, which has an estimated audience of 60 million worldwide...
- Brigades of Abdullah Azzam
- Abdullah Azzam Shaheed BrigadeAbdullah Azzam Shaheed BrigadeAbdullah Azzam Brigades is an Islamist militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the global jihad movement. The group, which began operating in 2009, has local networks in various countries., The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 01-09-2010 It is named after the late Sheikh...