Islamic Jihad

12/12/2006

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad operates in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, as well as in Egypt and Jordan. Like HAMAS, Islamic Jihad is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafi Sunni Islamic religious movement that originated in Egypt that has spawned so much evil. They seek to impose by force fundamentalist Islamic social, moral, legal, educational, religious, and political ideologies on Israel, which they call Palestine, and then upon the world.

The Palestinian variant of Islamic Jihad is only one faction within a loosely organized, highly secretive group of Islamic Jihad movements that span the entire Middle East. For example, Egyptian al-Jihad, was larger when it merged into al-Qaeda. Born a Sunni organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad is now sponsored by the Iranian and Shi'a Hezballah.

The PIJ was founded in the late 1970s by a group of fundamentalist Muslims living in Egypt. Led by Fathi Shaqaqi and Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Awda, they believed that the Muslim Brotherhood had become too moderate. Inspired by the Shi'a Islamic revolution in Iran, the PIJ blended Sunni religious fundamentalism and Shi'a political revolutionary thought into an Islamic ideological agenda.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad believes that the annihilation of Israel is a prerequisite for recreating a pan-Islamic empire. The PIJ stresses that the Islamic-Israeli conflict is not a national dispute over territory but rather a worldwide religious conflict. The group rejects any political or diplomatic solutions to bring peace to the war they have initiated. Islamic Jihad believes that terrorist violence will inspire Muslims to destroy Israel and conquer the rest of the world. They believe that they are following Muhammad's example and Allah's orders.

The PIJ initially operated out of Egypt, but after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 by fundamentalist Muslims, the leadership was exiled to the Gaza Strip. Starting in the early 1980s, Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out a series of vicious attacks on Israelis.

During the first Palestinian Intifada that began in 1987, the PIJ leadership was exiled to Lebanon. This allowed many Islamic Jihad leaders to establish direct contact with Iranian clerics by way of the Islamic Republic's embassies in Beirut and Damascus. PIJ operatives soon began training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon under the supervision of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Islamic Jihad terrorists stationed in Lebanon also carried out some joint operations with Hezbollah against Israelis during the 1990s.

While Shi'a Muslims have been conditioned to see Sunni Muslims as insufficiently Islamic, the simple truth is that apart from the leadership structure and a few holidays, there is no difference between a fundamentalist Shi'a and a Salafist Sunni. The five oldest Islamic sources, the Qur'an, Ishaq's Sira, Tabari's Ta'rikh, Bukhari's and Muslim's Hadith, were all written under Shi'a influence in Baghdad in Islamic Persia. That means that Shi'a Islam is Salafi Islam. Further, Salafi Islam forms the basis of Sunni Wahhabi Islam which is the Islam at the heart of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda.

While we are on the subject of a Sunni terrorist organization transforming itself into a Shi'a militant group, it's important to recognize that Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran are now essentially one country. The political and religious leadership either comes from Iran or they are influenced by Tehran. You could call it a crescent from Babylon to the Promised Land.

Surrounding this Shi'ite crescent on the east is Pakistan, on the south, Saudi Arabia, on the west, Egypt, and in the north, Turkey. These fiefdoms form the heart and soul, the mind and fuel, of Sunni Islam. And while on a personal level, the Sunni and Shi'ite conflict gives the impression that Islam is a religion divided, understand that at the warlord and cleric level there is a consensus when it comes to most every important issue - including killing Christians and Jews en route to establishing a pan-Islamic world empire.

With militants in Lebanon, in 1989, the leadership of Islamic Jihad moved their headquarters to Damascus, where it has remained ever since - something it also shares with Hezballah. The Damascus PIJ office controls funding, engages in recruiting, and coordinates terrorist operations. In addition, it is widely known that Syria allows Iranian weaponry to pass through its territory en route to Palestinian terrorist groups such as PIJ.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad strongly opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords because they elevated Fatah and PLO at the expense of their movement. Like HAMAS, they attempted to derail the peace process by committing a number of terrorist attacks against Israel.

Israel dealt the PIJ a temporary blow in 1995 with its assassination of Shaqaqi in Malta. However, with the beginning of the Fatah/PLO al-Aqsa Intifada in September of 2000, Islamic Jihad sprang back to life. Since 2000, it has claimed responsibility for countless terrorist attacks in Israel against Jews. In part, their "success" is a measure of Islamic Jihad's coordination with other Islamic terrorist groups such as HAMAS and Hezballah and a radical increase in Iranian OPEC funding. There is a direct corrrelation between the price of crude and the quantity of Islamic terror.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is smaller than HAMAS because the Iranian-funded organization has an exclusive focus on terrorism while the Saudi and Kuwaiti funded HAMAS offers impoverished Palestinians a network of social services, including homes, financing, food, education, healthcare, and religion. But that all comes with a price - accept their charity and you join their cause.

Ramadan Shallah, who replaced Shaqaqi as PIJ's leader, lacked the founder's charisma which diminished recruiting. Islamic Jihad's activities have further been hampered by a series of arrests and indictments in the United States following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Also, the construction of security fences by Israel along both the West Bank and Gaza border have made it more difficult for the PIJ to execute terrorist attacks in Israel. Still, Islamic Jihad remains dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel and shows no interest in joining the political process.

Let's examine some of Islamic Jihad's leadership to better understand why these Muslims kill. Fathi Shaqaqi was born in 1951 in Gaza. He studied mathematics at Birzeit University in the West Bank and medicine in Egypt. He was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood during his medical training. During the early 1980s, Shaqaqi and Sheikh Odeh formally established Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Shaqaqi believed that a campaign of spectacular terrorist attacks against Israel in the name of revolutionary Islam would inspire a popular revolt. He was arrested and sentenced by Israel to one year of prison in 1983, and to three years in 1986 for his treasonous activities. Israel then deported him to southern Lebanon in August 1988. He was a key player in setting up the National Alliance in 1994, a coalition of eight PLO groups, including the PIJ and HAMAS which all rejected the Oslo Accords. Shaqaqi is said to have been behind many suicide bomb attacks in Israel. He was assassinated in Malta, apparently by Mossad agents on October 26, 1995. His funeral in Damascus was attended by 40,000 people. Terror is very popular in Islam.

Ramadan Abdullah Shallah was born in the Gaza Strip and spent five years at Durham University in northern England, where he reportedly coordinated the activities of Palestinian Islamic Jihad by sending and receiving orders to and from cells of the organization in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. From 1990 to 1995, Shallah lived in Tampa, Florida where he was a leading member of the Islamic Concern Project, also known as the Islamic Committee for Palestine. The organization distributed official Palestinian Islamic Jihad literature used to indoctrinate followers by glorifying suicide bombers as martyrs. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah headed an Islamic think tank called the World Islam and Studies Enterprise (WISE). It operated out of the University of South Florida. During this time, WISE sponsored the visits of Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist leaders to the United States. It's not a coincidence that the fundamentalist Muslims who murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11 trained in central Florida flight schools. After PIJ leader Fathi Shaqaqi's death in October 1995, Shallah became the new chief of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a member of its Shura Supreme Council.

Born in Kuwait in 1958, Sami al-Arian grew up in Egypt before coming to the United States more than 30 years ago. Today he lives in a U.S. prison. Al-Arian was a University of South Florida professor who was arrested by the U.S. government in February 2003 on a number of charges relating to terrorism. The indictment against him listed more than a dozen PIJ attacks and 100 deaths that he was accused of facilitating. Al-Arian originally denied the charges claiming he was a martyr to free speech and a victim of anti-Muslim sentiment. In early 2006, he pleaded guilty in a secret hearing to a charge of conspiring to help a terrorist organization. Unsealed court papers have revealed that al-Arian admitted he raised money for Islamic Jihad and that he conspired to hide the identities of other members of the terrorist organization. In return for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining eight charges against him. Al-Arian was deported from the U.S. after serving a prison sentence that amounted to a little more than time served. It is not clear as to what country Sami al-Arian was sent.

Abd al Aziz Awda was born in Gabaly, Israel. He was a founding member and spiritual leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In addition, he was a member of the Jihad Shura Council. At one point, Awda was the imam of the Al Qassem Mosque, located in the Gaza Strip. He was designated by the U.S. as a terrorist in January 1995. A few years later, in February 2003, a U.S. Department of Justice federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida indicted Awda, among others, on 50-counts of terrorism. Abd al Aziz Awda remains at large.

Musa Nafi was born in Egypt, and he currently resides in Oxfordshire, England. There he teaches Islamic Studies at Muslim College. A 1995 U.S. search warrant described Nafi as a significant leading member of the PIJ. He wrote much of the group's early ideology. Musa Nafi was a lecturer at the World Islam and Studies Enterprise (WISE) that was affiliated with the University of South Florida. Israeli officials claimed that while Nafi lived in England during the late 1980s, he was a communications link between terrorists in the field and Islamic Jihad's headquarters in Syria. In 1996, Nafi was deported from the U.S. back to England for visa violations.

Luay Saadi was a top commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad before he was killed by the IDF in October 2005. His cell was responsible for several suicide bombings, including the Stage nightclub attack in Tel Aviv in February 2005.

When one comes to know Islamic Jihad, they come to understand Islam's role in terrorism. Islamic Jihad was born out of the Muslim Brotherhood - a Salafist Sunni organization and yet today they are armed, financed, trained, and directed by Shi'a clerics in Iran. Islamic Jihad has become indistinguishable from Allah's Party, known as Hezballah. Their goal is to annihilate Jews and Christians en route to establishing a worldwide Islamic state - and in that cause they are indistinguishable from al-Qaeda. The PIJ will infiltrate any academic, political, or religious organization anywhere in the world to achieve their means, publicly acknowledging that deception and terrorism are justified, even a glorified means to their ultimate goal of a worldwide Islamic Empire.