The Origins of Al Qaeda's Ideology: Implications for US Strategy

Sunni Islam is a big tent, and there always have been insiders and outsiders within Sunnism playing out their rivalries with clashing philosophies. Throughout the past century, the most important of these clashes have occurred between Sunni reformers and the traditional Sunni clerical establishment. The ideology espoused today by al Qaeda and similar groups can be traced directly from the 19th-century founders of modernist reform in Sunnism. Al Qaeda's leading thinkers are steeped in these reformers' long struggle against the establishment. The teaching of the reformers has been heterodox and revolutionary from the beginning; that is, the reformers and their intellectual descendants in al Qaeda are the outsiders of today's Sunni world. For the most part this struggle has been waged in Egypt, Sunni Islam's center of gravity. On one side of the debate, there is Cairo's Al-Azhar, a seminary and university that has been the center of Sunni orthodoxy for a thousand years. On the other side, al Qaeda's ideology has its origins in late-19th century efforts in Egypt to reform and modernize faith and society. As the 20th century progressed, the Sunni establishment centered on Al-Azhar came to view the modernist reform movement as more and more heterodox. It became known as "Salafism," for the supposedly uncorrupted early Muslim predecessors ("salaf," plural "aslaf") of today's Islam. The more revolutionary tendencies in this Salafist reform movement constitute the core of today's challenge to the Sunni establishment, and are the chief font of al Qaeda's ideology. This article focuses on the following topics: A Century of Reformation; Theology and Politics: Ibn Taymiyya; Muslim Rationalist: Al-Afghani; Sunni Reformers: Abduh and Ridha; Al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood; Reform Movements beyond Sunnism's Core; Sayyid Qutb; Mustafa, Zawahiri, and Bin Laden; Al Qaeda Strategy Today; Overcoming Class Conflicts; Saudi Arabia; and Strategic Implications for the United States.
Published in Parameters, U.S. Army War College Quarterly, v35 n1, p69-80, Spring 2005.