The Intellectual and Political Exchange Among Jihadists: The Case of Mustafa Setmarian Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri)

Abstract

The Internet provides the opportunity for jihadists to interact with each other. The purpose of the interactions is many fold. First, it provides jihadists with the emotional support and increases their resolve. Secondly it provides the justification for engaging in indiscriminate terror. Third, it makes it possible for them to share their experiences. One could see these active interactions among jihadists in publication of Russian jihadists sites. One of them translated or actually created a compendium of the works of Abu Musab al-Suri, one of the most well known jihadists theorist of jihad and who was recently released from a Syrian jail. In the Russian work, the major aspect of the struggle elaborates the importance of small isolated groups of terrorists. At the same time considerable attention is paid to justify the indiscriminate nature of the terror. It shall strike not just infidels but also the majority of those who call themselves Muslims, plainly because most of them are degenerated and became as bad or even worse than kafirs. The universal jihad and final victory depends here not much on the passive and often corrupt Muslim majority but on the skills and resolve of a few revolutionaries. Here al-Suri follows the model of many other revolutionaries of the past such as Lenin.