Al Qaeda as an Organisation and Belief System

Al Qaeda and Martyrdom

Al Qaeda as an Organisation and Belief System

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Al Qaeda as a “militant Islamist organisation” and this view is typically held in the West, however its definition can go deeper. It is also ideology, with a strive towards uniting the Islamic world against foreign intervention in the Middle East and corruption in Middle Eastern leadership. Al Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim group which, as Jason Burke stresses, does not strive for a global Islamic State, but to establish religious rule in the Middle Eastern region. Al Qaeda’s originated under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden in the late 1980s, specifically against the Soviet Union as a “logistical network” in the Afghan War, yet its wider goals became clearer during the early 1990s. The developing Al Qaedaism, as Burke describes, focussed on anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism beginning with attacks on hotels where US troops were believed to be staying in Yemen during 1992. These attacks continued and intensified during the 1990s and early 2000s, climaxing with the iconic September 11 attacks on American soil in 2001. Bin Laden was killed in May 2011, however Al Qaeda survived through its cell structure and its enduring ideological goals. Although its central leadership in Afghanistan was largely disintegrated by US drone strikes and ground presence in the early stages of the “War on Terror”, its new form is now “riding resurgent tide” and its core rhetorics have spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Martyrdom as a Tactic of Terror

In Al Qaeda’s own Declaration of War against the United States, the organisation recognises the “imbalance of power” between the military of the US and Al Qaeda and states that “a suitable means of fighting must be adopted”. The same declaration went on to say that these tactics will “shake and destroy its [the enemy’s] foundations and infrastructure” and “spread rumours, fear and discouragement”. Martyrdom, primarily through suicide bombings on civilian and military targets was a major component of the Al Qaeda war strategy. Assaf Moghadam proposes that Al Qaeda is “directly responsible for the rise in the number of suicide attacks”, reinforcing the importance of this tactic to the organisation. Suicide attacks have proven their worth in influencing global events, famously by the US retaliation after the September 11 attacks. In Serpent in Our Garden: Al-Qa-ida and the Long War, Brian M. Drinkwine explains the reasons for Al Qaeda’s suicide attacks, noting the symbolism of a suicide attack, their effectiveness in reaching a larger audience than its initial and the difficulties in stopping these attacks.

The symbolism of martyrdom plays into the concept of the “Theatre of Terror” explained