Free American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson Page B

Somalia. In addition, fierce fighting was now raging between rival factions in Afghanistan. A few adventurers had moved on to Tajikistan, which promised to be a new Central Asian battleground.
    Those who stayed behind were potential settlers. They already had their own infrastructure, with school and community centers. Hamza, Hudaifa’s younger brother, for example, did not attend a Pakistani school. His high school was all Arabic, a product of the Afghan war. The mosque where Azzam had preached his sermons before being blown up had also become a school for the Arab community. Before the war there were no Arab schools in Peshawar.
    Tapes show how the elder Azzam would captivate an audience, weaving his account with mesmerizing detail. Hudaifa does the same thing. Like his father, Hudaifa is a storyteller in the tradition of Arabian Nights. He told us the story of a Libyan mujahid who became one of the first Arab martyrs to die in Tajikistan, mowing down rows of his enemies even after he had been mortally wounded. Hudaifa’s English seemed to be getting better and better with each episode. He obviously enjoyed talking with us, even though he did not fully trust us. Overall, I thought he seemed far more attracted to the United States than to Pakistan.
    Hudaifa confided his problems with his Jordanian passport. It was about to expire and the Jordanian embassy seemed unwilling to renew it. They wanted him to return home. He did not fear jail, even though he would certainly end up there—moderate Islamic governments being much less tolerant of fundamentalism than we are. But he still wanted to travel abroad. We asked him if he would like to come to the United States, where so much of his family has settled. He seemed to like the idea but felt obligated to continue his father’s work. Strangely, he was much more interested in talking with me than with Khalid. While he had been around Muslim scholars like Khalid all his life, I was a curious American journalist runaway from the Great Satan.
    The next day Hudaifa showed us the entire jihad organization, including a fairly large compound with ten printing presses. The laborers were all Afghans, the headmen Palestinians. There were no educated Afghanis or Pakistanis around. More and more I realized that he was living in a vacuum with only a few devoted natives, without the rallying support that his father enjoyed before his death.
    Hudaifa was not the boss of the show, however. The headman was Muhammad Yusuf Abbas, commonly known as Abu l-Qasim, who was suspicious and angry to find us in his office. He gave a scolding to Hudaifa, who remained remarkably calm, holding his ground without perplexity or embarrassment. Abbas was finally reassured of our purpose and, in the end, he even agreed to be tape-recorded.
    “Why has jihad become necessary?” I asked him. “Is it an obligation to Muslims everywhere?”
    “After Afghanistan it has spread to many places,” he replied. “It has spread to Kashmir, the Philippines, Algeria, and Bosnia and has grown stronger in Somalia since the U.N. intervention.”
    Why is jihad necessary in Muslim countries like Egypt and Algeria? Does it make sense for Muslims to be killing Muslims?
    “In the countries that used to follow Islam, the so-called Muslim countries, the jihad movement has arisen because they have been deprived of Islam. Western colonialism ruled those countries without Islam and the liberation movements were unable to restore Islam to its rightful place. Muslims have finally become aware of this point. Now everywhere they want Islam.”
    What are the teachings of jihad? Should it go west? Is it the role of Muslims to carry out jihad everywhere?
    “The Islamic teaching about jihad says that it is to clear the way for those calling to God’s religion. Wherever the missionaries of Islam are fought against, it becomes necessary for the Muslim power to protect them.”
    In so many words, the answer was that America and the West were