1 Unveiling the Great Deception in al-Zawahiri’s ‘Exoneration of the Nation’ Al-Sayyid Imam Abdul-Aziz al-Sharif Dr Fadl November 2008 2 Part I “Al-Zawahiri’s book is full of lies, calumnies, jurisprudential fallacies, and indirections” Dr Fadl, the mastermind of the jihadists Recently, The Middle Eastern newspaper ‘Al-Sharq Al-Awsat’ has published several sequels of Dr Fadl’s “Unveiling al-Zawahiri’s Deceptions in His ‘Exoneration of the Nation’ ” (Mudhakkirat al-Ta’riya li Kitaab al-Tabri’a), which the author wrote as a response to the book written not long ago by the second man in command in al-Qaeda, under the title ‘Exoneration of the Nation of the Pen and the Sword of the Denigrating Charge of being Undetermined and Powerless’. In this response, Dr Fadl not only debunks the ideas of al-Zawahiri, but he also divulges many aspects of his life and personality that are usually unknown to the general public Tuesday the 20/Dhu al-Qi‘da/ 1429 AH – 18/ November/ 2008, Cairo Issue No 10948 Al-Sharq Al-Awsat By Muhammad Mustafa Abu Shama A year ago [in 2007], al-Sayyid Imam Abdul-Aziz al-Sharif, Dr Fadl, the former mastermind and ideologue of the Jihad Organization (Tanzeem) of Egypt, launched his jurisprudential reviews on jihadi activity, in a booklet titled “The Document for the Guidance of Jihadi Action in Egypt and the World’. These reviews, which came in the form of disavowals of the prevailing jihadi philosophy in the Muslim world, have had a significant impact among the jihadists and were since then considered a turning point in the history of the Islamist movements. This impact and popularity that the reviews enjoyed did not obviously go down well with the current leader of the Jihad (Tanzeem), and second man in command of the al-Qaeda organization, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who moved quickly to retort the charge against Dr Fadl’s document in a book titled ‘The Exoneration of the Nation of the Pen and the Sword of the Denigrating Charge of being Undetermined and Powerless’. This book was, in turn, followed by a rejoinder which Dr Fadl titled Unveiling the Deception in al-Zawahiri’s ‘Exoneration of the Nation’. In it the author, discusses his long relationship with Dr al-Zawahiri and reveals for the first time aspects of the latter’s life and 3 personality which have hitherto remained unknown. The Middle Eastern newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has obtained publishing rights to publish all of Dr Fadl’s recent rebuttals and is delighted to release them in sequels starting from today. As a preliminary to these sequels, it is worth mentioning, albeit briefly, a few things about Dr Fadl’s position among the jihadists and the nature of his long relationship with Dr al-Zawahiri. Certainly, Dr Fadl had for years been regarded as the mastermind and ideologue of jihadi activity, so much that the Jihad Group (Jamaa’at al-Jihad) of Egypt had no hesitation conferring on him the title of “The mufti of the jihadists worldwide”. Also his friend Ayman al-Zawaheri was so convinced of his credentials that he vehemently urged him to take on the role of leader (Amir) of the Jihad Group when they met in the city of Peshawar on the Afghani-Pakistani border during the eighties of the past century. This title of Amir that al-Zawahiri was eager to bestow upon Dr Fadl does in fact reflect his yearning to imitate and at the same time rival the Islamic Group (al-Jamaa’a al-Islamiyya) which had at its helm another great legal scholar in the person of Sheik Omar Abd al-Rahman. Al--Zawahiri met Dr Fadl fifty eight years ago in the corridors of the medical faculty at Cairo University in 1968. This collegial environment of the university allowed the two to meet regularly and converse about all kinds of issues beyond their common interest in medicine, and to ultimately form a friendship that would last many years after the two had graduated. This friendship, it is worth recalling, was to take on other proportions about forty years ago, particularly in the wake of the collapse of the grand Nassiri project, and was to consolidate further during the wave of political Islam that swept through Egypt during the era of the late president Anwar al-Sadat and reached its peak after the assassination of the latter in 1981. Following this event, Dr Fadl left for Saudi Arabia where he was soon joined and by al-Zawahiri after his release from jail in 1986. From there, they went to Afghanistan and were at the heart of the jihadi resistance to the Soviet invasion, and then both made their way to Sudan where they finally parted ways in 1994, following a growing difference of opinion between the two of them regarding the jihadi philosophy of the Tanzeem, notably after al-Zawahiri had succeeded in swaying the Group towards the course of violence and armed confrontation with the Egyptian regime, and before the latter had finally joined al-Qaeda following his infamous deal with Osama Bin Laden in 1998, which saw the birth of the International Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders (al-Jabha al-Islaamiyaa al-‘Aalamiyya li Jihad al-Yahud wa al-Nasaara) 4 After Sudan, Dr Fadl went to Yemen where he worked as a doctor under his real name, al-Seyyid Imam Abdul-Aziz. However, the authorities in Yemen handed him over to Egypt to face the sentence of life imprisonment in a court trial known the case of “The returnees from Albania”. While Abdul-Aziz was doing time in jail, his friend continued on the path he had chosen for himself along his new companion Osama Bin Laden. Both al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden had dreams in the Afghani caves that soon turned to crazy quests that Muslims all over the world had to pay the price for. When Dr Fadl published his Document for the Guidance of Jihadi Action about a year ago, it fell like a bombshell whose impact was most disruptive to the jihadi planners of al-Qaeda. The die-hards of the organisation were so taken aback by Dr Fadl’s document; they wasted no time nor spared effort in mounting a response to it. Al-Zawahiri and his ilk were naturally fully aware of the weight of such a document: it was after all authored by the Sheik Abdul-Qader Bin Abdul-Aziz (Dr Fadl) who may not only be regarded as the foremost ideologue of jihadi activity in the organization (tanzeem), but also of al-Qaeda if one takes into consideration the fact that his books and ideas have become the very basis of the organisation’s ideology after it had formed an alliance with the Group. It was due to this trepidation that The Document had caused in the ranks of al- Qaeda, that the book of al-Zawahiri, ‘The Exoneration of the Nation’ appeared encyclopaedic and contrived: despite attempts to embellish it with all kinds of fakeries, and using all sorts of arguments, al-Zawahiri’s book is trite and fails to make an impression on the reader or evoke his interest, let alone convince him. Commenting on the failures and shortcomings of al-Zawahiri’s book, Dr Fadl writes: “In 1988 AD/1408H, I had already written a book on some issues relevant to the jurisprudence of jihad, under the title of Al-‘Umda fi I’daad al-‘Udda (The Reliance of the People of Jihad), which was the fruit of my experience of jihad against Communism, in Afghanistan. During those ten years (1983-1993) I had certainly noticed that the Arab brothers who participated in this jihad paid a lot of attention to military issues, while often ignoring the demand of the Sharia, which resulted in many of their actions being mainly impulsive and guided by their emotions rather than the rulings of the Law. Equally, during those years in the Afghani front, I came to notice that some of the brothers were so blindly attached to some of the ‘leaders of jihad” that they would defend them tooth and nail and also to the detriment 5 of the Sharia. It is owing to all of these deviations and inconsistencies that I felt impelled to write about the importance of learning about religion and holding onto the rulings of the Sharia in my book ‘Al Jaami’ fi Talab al- ‘Ilm al-Shareef’ (The Complete Source on the Quest for Noble Knowledge), published in 1423 AH/1993 CE” Commenting further on the behaviour of the Arab Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, Dr Fadl went on to say: “This emotionality and impulsivity appears to have taken a much tighter grip over the action of the jihadists and have become in time their hallmark, such that in recent years they were led to commit mass-killings and genocides in the name if Islam and jihad. I know the people who perpetrated those crimes, just as I know the extent of their religious knowledge and their stance vis-à-vis religion. Indeed, not only have these people committed crime, they have even had the audacity to find a jurisprudential basis for it in Islamic law. I have pointed to some of the salient features of this ‘exonerative jurisprudence’ and have exposed it in my Document for the Guidance of Jihadi Action and in the journalistic interview which was later added to that document. But the followers of this corrupt doctrine and jurisprudence from the members of al-Qaeda were led by arrogance to more crime and so after months were able to summon up a reply to the document, though it seems that they have began preparing their response well before my document was published, and that more than one attempt was tried prior to the present response.