ʿAbdallāh ʿAzzām and Palestine
In: Die Welt des IslamsʿAbdallāh ʿAzzām (1941–1989) helped make jihadism more transnational by spearheading the effort to bring Muslim foreign fighters to Afghanistan in the 1980s. But why would a West Bank native devote himself to a war in Central Asia and not to the Palestinian struggle? In order to understand ʿAzzām’s unusual ideological trajectory, this article examines his relationship with Palestine, notably his experiences growing up in the territories, the extent of his involvement in the armed Palestinian struggle, and his views on the conflict with Israel. The article draws on previously underexploited primary sources, including ʿAzzām’s own writings, rare Arabic-language biographies, and interviews with family members. I argue that ʿAzzām’s Palestinian background predisposed him to transnational militancy. His exile in 1967 made him an aggrieved and rootless citizen of the Islamic world. His time fighting the Israel Defense Forces with the Fedayeen in 1969–70 gave him a taste of combat and a glimpse of pan-Islamic solidarity in practice. The inaccessibility of the battlefield after 1970 combined with ʿAzzām’s distaste for the leftist PLO led him to pursue the more accessible jihad in Afghanistan instead. There, he hoped to build an Islamist army that could reconquer Palestine. When Ḥamās rose as a military organization in the late 1980s, ʿAzzām embraced and supported it. Thus ʿAzzām was, to some extent, a byproduct of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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2
Fawaz Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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5
Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and pan-Islamism Since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chapters 1, 2 and 5.
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6
Thomas Hegghammer, “The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad”, International Security 35, no. 3 (2011): pp. 53-94.
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8
Asaf Maliach, “Abdullah Azzam, al-Qaeda, and Hamas: Concepts of Jihad and Istishhad”, Military and Strategic Affairs 2, no. 2 (2010): pp. 79-93.
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17
Sami Hadawi, Village Statistics 1945: A Classification of Land and Area Ownership in Palestine (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, 1970).
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18
Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 17f.
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31
Lawrence Wright, “The Man Behind Bin Laden”, New Yorker (16 September 2002), pp. 56-85.
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32
Walid Khalidi, ed., All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992).
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45
Anita Shapira, Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 35f. The school still exists today; see http://www.kadoorie.edu.ps/ (accessed 16 March 2012).
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46
Many biographies say he graduated in 1959, but his school records show he did not leave until 1960 (unpublished documents in author’s possession).
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50
Jordan University was founded in 1962, but did not have a Faculty of Sharia until 1971; see www.ju.edu.jo (accessed 16 March 2012).
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55
Jarār, al-Shahīd, p. 38; Abu Rummān and Saʿīd, al-ʿĀlim, p. 110; ʿĀmir, al-Shaykh, p. 54.
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56
Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 205 and 219.
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61
ʿĀmir, al-Shaykh, p. 55; interview with Fāyiz ʿAzzām (Sīlat al-Hārithiyya, May 2008).
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67
ʿAzzām, Ḥamās, p. 69. A source named Dawūd Jarār (likely from Jenin) said “The first base we established was in the woods of Dibbīn, and ʿAzzām was there”; Jarār, al-Shahīd, p. 58.
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69
Mishari Al-Dhaidi, “History of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood—part one”, al-Sharq al-Awsat English (27 December 2005).
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85
Ibid., p. 33.
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90
ʿAzzām, Ḥamās, p. 73; Jarār, al-Shahīd, p. 65. Ibrahīm al-Ghazzī is described in both sources as “one of the founders of Fataḥ and one of the top trainers in the ʿUlūk camp”.
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92
Clinton Bailey, Jordan’s Palestinian Challenge 1948–1983: A Political History (London: Westview, 1984), p. 61.
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108
Shlomo Shpiro, “Israeli Intelligence and al-Qaeda”, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 25, no. 2 (2012): p. 241.
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136
ʿAzzām, Ḥamās, p. 82. Maliach, “Abdullah Azzam, al-Qaeda, and Hamas”, p. 87.
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137
ʿAzzām, Ḥamās, p. 82. Maliach, “Abdullah Azzam, al-Qaeda, and Hamas”, p. 86.
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ʿAbdallāh ʿAzzām (1941–1989) helped make jihadism more transnational by spearheading the effort to bring Muslim foreign fighters to Afghanistan in the 1980s. But why would a West Bank native devote himself to a war in Central Asia and not to the Palestinian struggle? In order to understand ʿAzzām’s unusual ideological trajectory, this article examines his relationship with Palestine, notably his experiences growing up in the territories, the extent of his involvement in the armed Palestinian struggle, and his views on the conflict with Israel. The article draws on previously underexploited primary sources, including ʿAzzām’s own writings, rare Arabic-language biographies, and interviews with family members. I argue that ʿAzzām’s Palestinian background predisposed him to transnational militancy. His exile in 1967 made him an aggrieved and rootless citizen of the Islamic world. His time fighting the Israel Defense Forces with the Fedayeen in 1969–70 gave him a taste of combat and a glimpse of pan-Islamic solidarity in practice. The inaccessibility of the battlefield after 1970 combined with ʿAzzām’s distaste for the leftist PLO led him to pursue the more accessible jihad in Afghanistan instead. There, he hoped to build an Islamist army that could reconquer Palestine. When Ḥamās rose as a military organization in the late 1980s, ʿAzzām embraced and supported it. Thus ʿAzzām was, to some extent, a byproduct of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 731 | 171 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 56 | 29 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 100 | 69 | 0 |