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There is no shortage of differences between Islamic terrorist organizations. They belong to different religious sects, they hail from different populations and societies, they have different aims and different names. However, these Islamist cells find common ground in their strategy of muqawama, the Arabic term for “resistance.”The notion of Islamic resistance draws from the fundamentalists’ perception that Islam and its values are under severe attack by the West. The West's ill-mannered culture; its sexual liberalism, including its twisted outlook on the status of women; its blasphemy; and above all its coarse marketing of the liberal and democratic values through movies and the internet-all this creates a “threat” that Islamists see as a tremendous peril to the Islamic youngsters who can easily be tempted by the pleasures the Western culture has to offer. In short, Western culture challenges Islam's most basic conception, namely that it is a ruling religion that will prevail across the world. Resistance against the West, then, becomes the Islamists’ way of attaining the hegemony they believe is rightly theirs.Islamic terrorist organizations share seven similar goals:First, they believe that the muqawama is a long, obstinate, and persistent struggle. They do not expect immediate results, nor is a triumph foreseen.
Second, the muqawama is relatively weaker than the countries and regimes it attacks. Nevertheless, the muqawama sees its martial weakness as an advantage. The jihad campaign against the former Soviet Union’s forces in Afghanistan is a pilot model, offering the prospect of triumph against a significantly stronger enemy.
Third, the muqawama is premised on support from civilian populations. Thus, Islamic terrorist groups will efficiently support the local inhabitants in fields where the local regime neglects them by providing education, security, and other necessities. This component enables the resistance to survive on a long-term basis. Without the local population's support, Islamists know, they are doomed to fail.
The three components mentioned above are relatively common patterns of guerrilla warfare. The following patterns are unique to the muqawama.
A fourth feature of the muqawama is that it aspires to be a worldwide, religious struggle for ensuring the supremacy of Allah and his believers against the heretics. As a worldwide struggle, it will recruit support, activists and funding from various sources. The struggle, however, will necessarily seek some sort regional cause for reasons of recruiting local support.
Fifth, the resistance places little importance on territory. It is meaningless to hold a line, or keep a certain territory under its governance. The muqawama's warriors will not loose if they retreat from their posts, even for months. Islam needs to prevail, not a specific platoon.
Sixth, Islamic terrorists see death as an advantage, and pines for it. Those who have fallen in the name of the resistance’s gain earn special respect and become "Shahids" (literally – witnesses, who demonstrate, or testify about their deep belief by giving their lives away for the cause).This practice, based on the ancient Shiite tradition of self sacrifice and eventually imported to Sunni Islam, turns the wish and desire for martyrdom into a powerful weapon.
Seventh, the terrorists’ battle will take place among and against civilians. Innocent people on both sides are put into the battlefield, mostly against their will. Because the battlefield is a spiritual one, the battle can occur anywhere, whether in the enemy's main street or in the warriors own village. Regarding the risk that Muslim civilians will be killed during these actions, Muqawama combatants will reply with the saying that "Allah will recognize (the believers) of his own," literally meaning that Muslims who died during a campaign will gain respect and glory in heaven because Allah is able to identify them as true believers.
By Yaniv Ofek
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As in the days of Noah....
