THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF ISLAMIC TERROR:
"The Ink of the Scholar and Blood of the Martyr."

Richard A. Koenigsberg
  • Hitler developed a theory on the nature of Jews, leading to his belief that members of this group should be exterminated. Lenin developed a theory about capitalists, leading to his belief that members of this group had to be destroyed or eliminated.
     
  • Islamic violence and mass-murder, similarly, grows out of a theoretical foundation, although most of us are not aware of Islamic theories. The violence advocated and enacted by radical Islamicists—like the political violence generated by Hitler and Lenin—grows out of ideological tracts explaining why certain classes of people need to be destroyed or eliminated.
     
  • The most important Islamic theorist was Sheik Abdullah Azzam (1941-1989), called the “father of modern Islamic terrorism.” Considered the intellectual inspiration for the jihadis’ war on America, Azzam traveled around the world throughout the 1980s urging Muslims to join the “caravan of jihad” in Afghanistan.
     
  • Teacher and mentor to Osama bin Laden, Azzam, was a key figure persuading Bin Laden go to Afghanistan and back the mujahideen fighters. Writing dozens of articles and books extolling the need for a global jihad, Azzam glorified suicide operations and martyrdom.
     
  • Azzam’s ideology was blunt and terrifying: “The life of the Muslim Ummah,” he declared, is solely dependent on the “ink of the scholars and the blood of its martyrs.” History does not write its lines “except with blood.” Glory does not build its lofty edifice “except with skulls.”
     
  • In his famous essay, “Martyrs: The Building Blocks of Nations,” Azzam claimed that honor and respect cannot be established except upon a foundation of “cripples and corpses.”
     
  • Glorifying murder and martyrdom, Azzam produced a theoretical foundation for terrorism, stating that Empires, distinguished peoples, states and societies cannot be established “except with examples.” Those who think they can change reality or societies without blood sacrifices and invalids, without “pure innocent souls”—do not “understand the essence of this religion.”
     
  • The founders of nations and architects of glories, Azzam declared, are few. Those who want to ascend to the price of glory must do so upon “seas of his own blood” and the “sweat and blood of those around him.” Azzam’s ideology is breathtaking—insisting that murderous violence is good, worthwhile and productive in and of itself.
     
  • Azzam explained that the Muslim Ummah does not continue to exist in the course of history except by an ideology and the blood that flows “spreading this divine ideology and implementing it into the real World.”
     
  • Azzam explicated a theory of history. What is more beautiful, he declared, than the writing of the Ummah’s history with both the “ink of a scholar and his blood”—such that the map of Islamic history becomes coloured with two lines: one of them black—what “the scholar wrote with the ink of his pen;” and the other red—“what the martyr wrote with his blood.”
     
  • And something even more beautiful—when “the blood is one and the pen is one”—so that the hand of the scholar expending the ink and moving the pen is the same as “the hand which expends its blood and moves the Ummah.” The “peak” achievement, in other words, is when the martyr and man who writes about martyrdom are the same person. Killing and writing about killing. Death and keeping a record of those who have died. What an extraordinary vision!