Jihad, martyrdom and other murky concepts (1)

The Austrian authorities pointed out that the attacker was an extremist who had attempted in the past to travel to Syria to join the I.S.I.S. According to that city's police department, he was a sympathiser of the Islamic state and was credited with motivating it to commit an Islamist terrorist attack.

With no apparent intention of surrendering, Kujtim Fejzulai was shot down by the security forces that same evening.
A fortnight before the aforementioned attack, on the afternoon of Friday, 16 October, a young man named Abdullah, 18 years old, born in Moscow (Russia) but of Chechen origin, slit the throat of a history teacher at the Bois d'Aulne secondary school in the French town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Eragny, in broad daylight as he was leaving the classroom. The origin or trigger of this action was attributed to the fact that the teacher had shown some cartoons of Muhammad in the school where he worked a few days earlier. 

The French police authorities pointed out that the young attacker had not undergone any apparent process of radicalisation.
Investigators found a message on his phone claiming responsibility for the attack, which had been recorded hours before the attack. He also posted on Twitter a photograph showing the severed head of the professor with a message addressed to President Emmanuel Macron, whom he described as "leader of the infidels" and in which he proclaimed his authorship by stating that he had murdered the "Kafir" (infidel) for having despised Mohammed.

After an incessant search, the French police managed to locate the perpetrator of the execrable murder by shooting him down in the face of the resistance shown by the latter, who confronted the police with an air gun and with no intention of surrendering.

Finally, among the examples mentioned, if we go back only three years, in this case to an event that occurred in Spanish territory, we find how a young man named Younes Abouyaaqoub committed thirteen murders in the same act, when he ran over a van that was driving the pedestrians who were circulating peacefully in the famous Barcelona street of Las Ramblas, abandoning the vehicle he was driving to stop, Taking advantage of the prevailing confusion, he walked to the university area of the city, where he continued his macabre action by assassinating Pau Pérez, after he resisted the theft of his vehicle, with which he made another escape by running over a member of the regional police force of the Mossos de Esquadra, after skipping a police checkpoint in which she was participating.

Interrogations carried out after the events described above revealed that both friends and family members denied having observed any significant changes in Younes' character and behaviour that might presage such an end. Younes, they said, was an open-minded Westernised character. 

In the days that followed, specifically on 21 August, Younes was shot down by the police when he was intercepted on a rural road, wearing a false explosive belt, and confronted to death by the police who located him, at no time showing any courage to allow himself to be arrested without violence or resistance.

Young people and others not so young, all of them chose to die by killing and not to surrender until the last breath of their lives acting in the name of Jihad and Islamic martyrdom in our European cities despite the apparent Western education and life most of them led.
In connection with this and other similar phenomena, a wall of intentional posturing and misinformation has been erected, sometimes as a result of ignorance and sometimes by creating a wall that increasingly reduces our possibilities of achieving a true understanding of such phenomena and hence our chances of being able to fight effectively to prevent such acts to a greater extent.

A post-truth that is fed and reinforced by the dissemination and re-dissemination in the mass media in general and in security and anti-Jihadist circles in particular of the erroneous idea that Jihad and martyrdom are concepts intrinsic to Jihadist organisations and that Jihad and martyrdom are concepts invented by the latter that induce it, despite the fact that all those who carry out these actions are actors linked to Jihadist organisations and groups, or at least indirectly incited by them to consume their propaganda as a preliminary to their radicalisation.

A whole smokescreen that dilutes and increasingly hides the truth, a substantial and basic truth for solving the dilemma, the truth about considering that Jihad and martyrdom, far from being mere inventions of the Jihadist organisations, are Islamic concepts rooted in the message disseminated by them, finding their basis and legality in the immovable referential corpus of Islam, that is, in its sources (the Koran and the Sunna). 

At the heart of the Sunna (the second source of Islam) lies the great chapter(s) of the Jihad and the government. A whole chapter of hundreds of pages and thousands of Hadith that makes clear the advantage of practising the armed Jihad, its great reward and the prevalence of it over many acts, and the high status the martyr attains for practising and following it. Hadith who encourage the practice of Jihad with all means (goods and lives...) and surrender to Allah with martyrdom. Indeed, all Jihadist propaganda is literally removed from the aforementioned chapter.

We must understand that Jihad and martyrdom are part of the Islamic world view, two Islamically legal concepts accepted and internalised by all Muslims. Not believing in them is equivalent for the Muslim to not believing in an intrinsic part of Islam. Jihad and martyrdom are concepts that form part of the mental schemes of any Muslim, because they are part of his worldview formed by the sources of Islam. It is as simple as that and as complicated as that.

We should not be afraid, as Muslims, to face this reality, which does not mean that our religion is bad but rather that it is time to correct the basic references of Islam and eradicate from them everything that generates dangerous mental schemes and serves as the basis for Jihadist propaganda.

Fighting against the propaganda of the Jihadist organisations is a necessary step towards closing the way to any project of radicalisation and suggestion of our youth, but it will always have a punctual and momentary effect until the step towards eradicating "Bab Al-Jihad" (the chapter of Jihad ) from the sources of Islam is taken, as every reference incites the Jihad where martyrdom has been hidden for over fifteen centuries and from which groups rescue their material to build their propaganda.

The sources of Islam say, specifically, in the famous chapter on Jihad and the government: "the spirit of the martyrs lies in the bodies of green birds that have their nests in candlesticks hanging from the throne of Allah. They feed on the fruits of paradise wherever they want and then return to their candlesticks".

All the young people who decide to take up arms in our cities and cause death with them, before having the Jihadist organisation in their acts, remember the martyrdom and the privilege of dying as a martyr, they have in mind that their soul will rest in the body of a light green bird that will fly in paradise and enjoy all its fruits...

When Younes decided to die by killing without surrendering, even though he gave his Baya (loyalty) to the I.S.I.S., what encouraged him in his action was not that organisation but all the following references sculpted in his mind and that of every Muslim, as before being used by Jihadist organisations they are reflected and lie in the Muslim's corpus of references (the sources of Islam)
The sources of Islam say: 

• Abû Sa'îd Al-Judrî reported that a man addressed the Prophet and asked him, "Who is the best of men?" He replied, "A man who fights for the cause of Allah with his goods and his life. 
• Anas ibn Mâlik related: "The Messenger of Allah said: 'To go out in the morning or in the evening (to fight) for the cause of Allah is better than the world and (all) that which is in it.
• Anas ibn Mâlik reported that the Prophet said: "No one who has entered paradise wishes to return to this world, even if he is offered anything on earth except the martyr. He undoubtedly wishes to return and be killed ten times, and this from what he has seen of honour (of martyrdom)".
• Abû Qatâdah related that the Messenger of Allah stood among them and told them that: "The best deeds are the fight for the cause of Allah and faith in Allah. A man stood up and asked, "O Messenger of Allah, do you think that if I am killed for the cause of Allah my sins will be erased? The Messenger of Allah said, "Yes, if you are killed for the cause of Allah and you have been patient and sincere, always facing the enemy and not turning your back.
• Abû Sa'îd Al-Judrî reported that the Messenger of Allah said, "O Abû Sa'îd! He who accepts Allah as his Lord, Islam as his religion and Muhammad as his Prophet will necessarily enter paradise. Abû Sa'îd was surprised by this and requested him saying, "Repeat it to me, O Messenger of Allah" He did so and (then) said, "And there is another thing that raises the slave a hundred ranks in paradise. And the distance between one rank and another is equal to the distance between heaven and earth. (Abû Sa'îd) answered: "And what is that?" He replied: "The fight for the cause of Allah. The fight for the cause of Allah.
• Abû Hurayrah related: "The Messenger of Allah said: 'Allah cares for the one who goes out (to fight) for His cause»"