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The Road To Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden's Right-Hand Man (Critical Studies on Islam)

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Among various books of Islamic movements that published after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, this book might be the most controversial. The author of this book, Montasser Al-Zayyât gave a reflection about his comrade Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the second command of the contractor turned religious revivalist Osama Bin Laden. Zayyât and Zawâhirî are two Islamists who rose from the underground movement in the post 1967 era. Both Zayyât and Zawâhirî are coming from the middle class of Egypt and have gained professional education and career; Zayyât as a lawyer and Zawâhirî as a medical doctor. They are bounded as comrade in the Islamic political movement after they met firstly in 1981, the time when they were imprisoned suspected of having conspiracy of assassinating the former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Although they did not play a part in the assassination of Sadat, they had have to spend three years in prison as the price of their involvement of the cells and their ideology of toppling Egyptian secular government. Three years time in prison is a significant phase of their life that eventually separating their practical vision; Zayyât chose to be the advocate of da'wah, a society centered movement of Islamism, while Zawâhirî chose to be a jihâd fighter, a state centered of Islamic activism.
Zayyât seems to understand of what he wrote. In the third chapter of this book, for example, Zayyât broadly analyzed the experience of Zawâhirî living in Afghanistan, the place where the ideology of jihâd was crystallized into skills, tactics, and strategies. In this book, Zayyât also differentiated two phases of the experience of Zawâhirî during his life in Afghanistan; the first is Zawâhirî's experience during jihâd against the Soviet before the 1990's; and the second is during Taliban's rule from 1996 to 2001, the time when Taliban demolished by the U.S. military. There was a vacuum period around 1992-1995 in which the Arab-Afghans like Zawâhirî had had to step out from Afghanistan. Sibghatullah Mujadadi, the interim president for the mujâhideen government of Afghanistan wanted the Arab-Afghans to go back to their home countries because their mission of wiping out Soviet's power in Afghanistan accomplished. However, this decision could not easily be accepted by the Arab-Afghans because the government of their home countries would not accept their return as free citizens. In the case of Egypt, Zawâhirî says: "Egypt had already started taking security measures against the Arab-Afghans by trying them before military courts in absentia and issuing harsh sentences, including death sentences for the elite of the Arab-Afghans, as well as sentences of life imprisonments for others (55). In this unpredicted situation, thousands veteran of Afghanistan war were in the state of uncertainty. Some of Arab-Afghans who succeed to return to their county, for example the Algerian-Afghan, because of their confidence after demolishing Soviet's power, had actively engage in attacking the Algerian government. Some others who could not even step into their countries had had to live in the foreign countries, some of them as the illegal citizens. It is in this situation that the generous help of Osama bin Laden and the strong leadership of Zawâhirî became a combination of power that highly applauded by the Arab-Afghans.
Osama bin Laden is a generous sheikh who rendered in providing a place to stay for the homeless Arab-Afgans in his military camp in Sudan. At this time, Sudan is the nirvana of the ex-mujâhideen because only in Sudan that the government were pleased to cooperate with the Islamist leaders. Thousands of the veterans of Afghanistan jihâd decided to join Osama bin Laden in Sudan after being spy on by their government. Their decision to enter Sudan was continuously followed by thousands others veterans until Taliban gained their power in Afghanistan. After Taliban took over the government of Afghanistan, Zawâhirî and Osma bin Laden returned to Afganistan and told thousands veterans to follow them. However, Afghanistan that ninety five percent of its land was controlled by Taliban was no longer a fascinating land of jihâd. Under Taliban rule, the Arab-Afghans who reentered Afghanistan were not forced to join Taliban to fight other Afghan factions. In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and Zawâhirî more concerned to organize the jihâd to outside of Afghanistan, rather than to fight with the other mujâhideen. At this period of time, Afghanistan really became the base of Al-Qaeda in its true meaning.
In his second phase of living in Afghanistan, Zawâhirî was more active in organizing his cadre of Islamic Jihâd to topple the Egyptian government. His friendship with the salafî contractor, Osama bin Laden, to a certain extent, had broaden his objectives and goals, from a domestic jihâd inside Egyptian border, to be a borderless international jihâd against the global enemy. It is not clear in this book how Zawâhirî became more radical and interested in a direct attack to the U.S. and its interests. Zayyât and some other experts on this issue believed that Osama was the one who brain washed Zawâhirî's mind. In this book, Zayyât commented Zawâhirî's articles in the Islamic Jihâd publication during the year of 1997 that are entitled "America and the Issue of Jihad on Jews in Cairo" and "America and the Illusion of Power." In these two articles, Zawâhirî showed his new concern to hit the U.S. regardless its strength as the only superpower on earth. Zayyât mentioned there are at least eight reasons why Zawâhirî radically changed his mind. One of the reasons, according to Zayyât, is the failure of their internal actions in Egypt. In addition to that reason, the capture of many of jihâdî members shake the Islamic Jihâd movement and finally it required alliance with the more stable organization both in term of financial and structure. Finally, Zawâhirî decided to merge the Islamic Jihâd with Osama bin Laden and they created the so-called movement "the International Islamic Front for Jihâd on the Jews and Crusaders" (64-70).
In my view, as a reader of contemporary Islamic movements, Zayyât missed several key points that are very significant to understand the setting and the idea behind the movements. Zayyât, as an insider of the Islamic movements, failed to inform his audience how the jihâd movements that is basically try to restore the ideal form of ummah as a response of modern challenge of social life, has been turned to be the so-called terrorist movements that haunted Western world. To say in the explicit words, this book is so weak in clearing up the radicalization process of the Arab-Afghans who are in the situation of culdesac after the mission of jihâd against Soviet is accomplished, but cannot go back to their normal life in their home countries, and finally find the way to continue the desire of jihâd by attacking American interests around the world. Zayyât seemed to be not interested in searching the link between the radicalization of the Islamists and the continuous repression of Arab or Muslim countries under auspices of the United States as the only super power on earth. What Zayyât wrote in this book is more about his experience of knowing Zawâhirî and his concern to respond Zawâhirî's criticisms in the book entitled "Knight Under The Prophet's Banner" against his peace initiative, rather than showing off his challenging vision of modernist Islam. It is true that in the chapter eight, Zayyât slightly revealed his modernist views by highlighting the mistakes of Zawâhirî that caused all Islamist, whether they are the member of Al-Qaeda or not, had paid the mistakes. He also criticized several conditions of his fellow Islamists such as fossilization of mind, imitation of the past, and the lack of ijtihâd. However, Zayyât's languages of criticism are nothing new to the consciousness of Muslim masses. In this pocket size book, Zayyât spent three pages to marshal the visions of the salafî intellectuals from Jamal al-Din al-Afghânî, Rashid Ridha, Hassan Al-Bana to Sayyid Qutb. However, he still unable to crystallize their ideas into a new vision that at least will give a confident to Muslim masses to wrestle with the multitude of problems of modernity and the world's advanced capitalist challenges today. Zayyât, in this period of time, seemed to understand that Islamic vision that is still using the old pattern of the early post-colonial era, such as establishing shari'a, is not a ready made-solution. At the same time, he also realized that the social conditions of Muslims that is disunited, is one of the reasons why Muslims cannot transform themselves into an ideal society.
Zayyât convinced that building peace and signing the agreement of cease-fire between Islamists and Egyptian government is the only possible way to heal the wounded Muslims today. His criticism of the use of violence by his fellow Islamists like Zawâhirî and the Islamic Jihâd's members that caused thousands loss their lives is a great effort that paved a new basic of dialog between the Islamist vision and the modern vision of society. "The type of dialog that Al-Qaeda used with the media must be avoided," he said. "So too should we abandoned the approach of bin Lâden and Zawâhirî in which the main objective is to administer as much harm to the United States as possible," he added (112). In this book, Zayyât wanted to differentiate and to distinguish in term of ideology and practical action between Al-Qaeda and other Islamists who are not interested in violence and in attacking American interests. From the whole explanation on this book, he intensely wanted to show that aim and he seemed success to do so.

Also available in a hardcover edition (0745321763, $65.00) The Road To Al-Qaeda: The Story Of Bin Laden's Right-hand Man by Montasser Al-Zayyat is the biography of one of the world's most-wanted terrorists -- Ayman al-Zawahiri. An Egyptian, Ayman was identified as the man to take over the leadership of Al-Qaeda after the death or incapacitation of Osama bin Laden. Since the September 11 attacks, Ayman is also the reputed architect of the Riyadh bombings in Saudi Arabia. Enhanced with an extensive introduction from the distinguished Islamic scholar Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, The Road To Al-Qaeda provides western readers with critically important insights into the tensions between violent and non-violent factions within radical Islamist movements. No contemporary Islamic Studies collection can be considered complete or comprehensive without the inclusion of The Road To Al-Qaeda.

By rendering this book into English, Ahmed Fekry and Sarah Nimis have done a tremendous service for anyone seeking more insight into international terrorism than she can get from a talking head on the evening news.

Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi3's introduction, though a bit meandering, provides useful background and presents interesting questions.

Highly recommended.