Op-Ed Contributor
Terminal Debate


By BERNARD HAYKEL
Published: October 11, 2005
NY TIMES

WHEN Iraq's most notorious terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared a
"full-scale war" on Iraq's Shiites on Sept. 14, he appeared to be speaking
for all or most jihadis. But Mr. Zarqawi's war on Shiites is deeply
unpopular in some quarters of his own movement. In fact, growing splits
among jihadis are beginning to undermine the theological and legal
justifications for suicide bombing. And as that emerging schism takes its
toll on the jihadi movement, it could well present an opportunity for
Western governments to combat jihadism itself.

The simple fact is that many jihadis believe the war in Iraq is not going
well. Too many Muslims are being killed. Images of that slaughter, conveyed
by satellite television and the Internet throughout the Muslim world, are
eroding global support for the jihadi cause. There are strong indications
from jihadi Web sites and online journals, confirmed by conversations I have
had while doing research among Salafis, or scriptural literalists, that the
suicide attacks are turning many Muslims against the jihadis altogether.

The movement's leadership is sensitive to Muslim public opinion. Mr.
Zarqawi's mentor, Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, has denounced the campaign
against Shiites as un-Islamic. Other prominent radical Islamists have
advanced similar criticisms. And in a letter made public last week, Al
Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, cautioned Mr. Zarqawi against
particularly gruesome executions and attacks on Iraqi civilians for fear of
their negative impact on the global jihadi cause.

To be sure, the alternatives these critics recommend are no less violent.
Rather, many of the movement's dissidents suggest that jihadis diminish
their efforts in Iraq and revert to spectacular attacks in the West, like
those that took place on Sept. 11. These, such thinkers maintain, are
singularly popular among Muslims and the only effective means of doing
long-term damage to the West.

Still, Western governments should encourage the debate among jihadis
because, if the promise of absolute salvation through suicide attacks is
thrown into question by some within the jihadi movement, potential recruits
may come to doubt the wisdom of engaging in such tactics.

The prevailing jihadi theoretical argument consists in saying that there is
religious sanction for the killing of Muslim civilians, and that neither the
innocent victims nor the bombers are doomed to suffer in hell. Jihadi claims
about the certainty of salvation are the most important tools in their
recruitment efforts. But they are also so fractious and unstable as to
comprise the movement's Achilles' heel. In order to sustain these claims,
theorists quote examples from the Prophet Muhammad's time that permit the
targeting of Muslim civilians in war. They then draw tendentious analogies
between these cases and today's political situation. For example, jihadis
falsely claim that Iraqi civilians are being held as human shields by the
occupying forces.

Furthermore, in Iraq, the jihadis bank on the fact that their attacks
primarily kill Shiites. The fighters presume that their Sunni brethren, who
consider Shiites to be heretics, will either approve or turn a blind eye.
This policy is clearly failing, except among the radical Salafis in Saudi
Arabia whose hatred for Shiites exceeds even that for the United States.

Not only are some jihadis queasy about targeting Shiites, but particularly
following the London bombings, some jihadis have questioned the targeting of
civilians more generally. One major jihadi ideologue, Abu Baseer al-Tartusi,
has issued a fatwa arguing that all suicide bombing that targets Muslims, or
innocent non-Muslims, is unlawful.

Abu Baseer, a Syrian who lives in Britain, no doubt fears that in Britain's
changing legal climate, he might be extradited to his homeland, where he
would face certain imprisonment and torture. Some jihadis have excoriated
him on Internet message boards for placing self-preservation above religious
conviction. But the important point is that real chinks are widening in the
jihadi ideological armor, whether by the real consequences of suicide
attacks or because the religious justifications that have underpinned them
are becoming untenable.

Arguments can be built on Abu Baseer's position that suicide attacks
inevitably involve the killing of innocent civilians, including Muslims
living in the West, and that these are difficult to justify in Islamic law.
Rather than expelling him from his asylum in Britain, concerned authorities
ought to allow Abu Baseer to remain in Britain and make his case, which
amounts to one of the first principled arguments by a jihadi thinker against
suicide bombings since 9/11. Any would-be suicide bomber will have to weigh
these arguments.

The West needs to understand that reasoned debates take place within jihadi
circles and that such reasoning can change minds. Indeed, Al Qaeda's most
recent statements, like that of Mr. Zawahiri, betray an anxiety about these
splits within the movement and seek to reassert the legitimacy of suicide
attacks both in Iraq and in the West.

THE West should refrain from interfering in this evolving debate. Western
governments should not shut down jihadi Web sites or expel the movement's
dissenters, many of whom reside in the West or write from prisons in the
Middle East. Rather, they should allow this process to take its course. By
employing extreme tactics, the jihadis have laid bare the contradictions
within their own movement. Their internal debates about suicide tactics are
a sign of weakness - and of the fraying of the consensus Al Qaeda so
carefully built over the last decade.

Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York
University and a 2005 Carnegie Scholar, is the author of "Revival and Reform
in Islam."