Abdullah Yusuf Azzam

Dr. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (1941–1989) also known as Shaikh Azzam or the “Godfather of Jihad”, was a central figure in the global development of the militant Islamist movement. Shaikh Azzam built a scholarly, ideological and practical paramilitary infrastructure for the globalization of Islamist movements that had previously focused on separate national, revolutionary and liberation struggles. Shaikh Azzam’s philosophical rationalization of global jihad and practical approach to recruitment and training of Muslim militants from around the world blossomed during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation and proved crucial to the subsequent development of the al-Qaida militant movement.

Abdullah Yusuf Azzam was born in 1941 in the village of As-ba'ah Al-Hartiyeh, province of Jenin, on the West Bank of the Jordan River in the territory then administered as the British Mandate of Palestine. After completing his elementary and secondary school education in his home village, he studied agriculture at Khadorri College near Tulkarm. After college graduation, Shaikh Azzam worked as a teacher in the Jordanian village of Adder. He subsequently joined Sharia College at Damascus University where he obtained a B.A. in Sharia in 1966. After the 1967 Six-Day War and Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Shaikh Azzam fled to Jordan and joined the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.

Shaikh Azzam participated in paramilitary operations against the Israeli occupation but became disillusioned with the secular and provincial nature of the Palestinian resistance coalition held together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and led by Yasser Arafat. Instead of pursuing the PLO’s Marxist-oriented national liberation struggle supported by the Soviet Union, Shaikh Azzam envisioned a pan-Islamic trans-national movement that would transcend the political map of the Middle East drawn by non-Islamic colonial powers. [1]

Shaikh Azzam traveled to Egypt to continue Islamic studies at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University where he earned a Master’s degree in Sharia. He returned to teach at Jordan University in Amman but in 1970, the Jordanian military expelled PLO militants from Jordan during what became known as Black September, thereby preventing the use of Jordanian territory for anti-Israeli attacks. In 1971, Shaikh Azzam received a scholarship to once again attend Al-Azhar University where he obtained his Ph.D. in the Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (Usool ul-Fiqh) in 1973.

During theological studies in Egypt, Shaikh Azzam met Shaikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and other followers of Sayyed Qutb, an extremely influential leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who was executed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1966. Shaikh Azzam adopted elements of Sayyed Qutb’s ideology, including beliefs in an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the Islamic world and non-Islamic world, and in the necessity of violent revolution against secular governments to establish an Islamic state. Shaikh Azzam returned to teach at Amman University but his radical views were suppressed, so he took a position as lecturer at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was enrolled as a student in the university at the time and he probably first made contact with Shaikh Azzam at that time.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Shaikh Azzam issued a fatwa, Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith [2] declaring that both the Afghan and Palestinian struggles were jihads in which killing kuffar (unbelievers) was fard ayn (a personal obligation) for all Muslims. The edict was supported by Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti (highest religious scholar), Abd al-Aziz Bin Bazz.

In 1980, Shaikh Azzam moved to Pakistan to teach at International Islamic University in Islamabad. Soon thereafter he established Maktab al-Khadamat (Services Office) to organize guest houses in Peshawar and paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan to prepare international recruits for the Afghan war front. After orientation and training, Muslim recruits volunteered for service with various Afghan militias tied to Shaikh Azzam. In 1984, Osama bin Laden founded Bait ul-Ansar (House of Helpers) in Peshawar to expand Shaikh Azzam’s ability to support “Afghan Arab” jihad volunteers and, later, to create his own independent militia.

Employing tactics of asymmetric warfare, the Afghan resistance movement was able to fend off the Soviet Union’s superior military forces throughout most of the war, although the lightly armed Afghan mujahideen suffered enormous casualties. The Saudi Arabian government and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gradually increased financial and military assistance to the Afghan mujahideen forces throughout the 1980s in an effort to stem Soviet expansionism and to destabilize the Soviet Union.

Shaikh Azzam frequently joined Afghan militias and international Muslim units as they battled the Soviet Union’s forces in Afghanistan. He sought to unify elements of the resistance by resolving conflicts between mujahideen commanders and he became an inspirational figure among the Afghan resistance and radical Muslims worldwide for his passionate attachment to jihad against foreign occupation. In the 1980s, Shaikh Azzam traveled throughout the Middle East, Europe and North America, including 50 American cities to raise money and preach about jihad. Shaikh Azzam believed that the struggle in Afghanistan was a model for future struggles with the objective of establishing an Islamic Caliphate across all Muslim lands under foreign occupation.

Shaikh Azzam’s radical ideology, combined with his skill at organizing paramilitary training for more than 20,000 Muslim recruits from about 20 countries around the world, created an international cadre of highly motivated and experienced militants intent on perpetuating his vision of global Islamic revolution.

In Join the Caravan, Shaikh Azzam implored Muslims to rally in defense of Muslim victims of aggression, to restore Muslim lands from foreign domination, and to uphold the Muslim faith. [3] Shaikh Azzam's trademark slogan is "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues."

On November 24, 1989, Shaikh Azzam and his two sons, Ibrahim and Muhammad, among others, were killed while on their way to Friday prayers in Peshawar when unknown assassins detonated land mines as Sheik Azzam’s vehicle approached. The Soviet Union had been defeated in Afghanistan by the Afghan mujahideen. Suspects in the assassination include Osama bin Laden, competing Afghan militia leaders, Pakistani Interservices Intelligence Agency, the CIA, and the Israeli Mossad.) The first possibility is supported by an alleged falling out with nascent Al Qa'eda over the next target of jihad. Azzam apparently wanted to bring the war back to his native Palestine against Israel, while Bin Laden notably wanted to bring the war to the West.

After his death, Shaikh Azzam’s militant ideology and related paramilitary manuals were promoted through print and Internet media by Azzam Publications, which described itself as "an independent media organisation providing authentic news and information about Jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere." The publishing house operated from a London post office box (Azzam Publications — BMC UHUD, LONDON, WC1N 3XX) and an Internet site, www.azzam.com, that were shut down shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks and are no longer active. Mirror sites are frequently registered before being removed either by the application of political pressure on internet service providers, through denial-of-service attacks or other means.

See also

• Islamism
• Qur'an
• Shari'a
• Hadith
• Sayyid Qutb
• Egyptian Islamic Jihad
• Muslim Brotherhood
• Mujahideen
• Hasan al-Banna
• Yusuf al-Qaradawi
• Jamaat-e-Islami
• Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi
• Khurshid Ahmad

References

• Defence of the Muslim Lands; The First Obligation After Iman
• Join the Caravan
• Sheikh Abdullah Azzam: Bin Laden’s spiritual mentor
• The striving Sheikh: Abdullah Azzam
• Abdullah Azzam The godfather of jihad
• Virtues of Martyrdom in the Path of Allah
• The Signs of ar-Rahmaan in the Jihad of the Afghan
• What Role Can Sisters Play in Jihad?
• The Will of Abdullaah Yusuf Azzam