Who’s winning the war of ideas?

A new piece by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank suggests that while it may not be the U.S., it’s not al-Qaeda either. Recounting the drubbing that al-Qaeda Central, and bin Laden in particular, have taken from a couple of former jihadists and one of bin Laden’s personal heroes, the authors suggest that al-Qaeda is on the losing end of an ideological battle within the Muslim world. What’s driving this? The authors write:

Why have clerics and militants once considered allies by Al Qaeda’s leaders turned against them? To a large extent, it is because Al Qaeda and its affiliates have increasingly adopted the doctrine of takfir, by which they claim the right to decide who is a “true” Muslim. Al Qaeda’s Muslim critics know what results from this takfiri view: First, the radicals deem some Muslims apostates; after that, the radicals start killing them. This fatal progression happened in both Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s. It is now taking place even more dramatically in Iraq, where Al Qaeda’s suicide bombers have killed more than 10,000 Iraqis, most of them targeted simply for being Shia. Recently, Al Qaeda in Iraq has turned its fire on Sunnis who oppose its diktats, a fact not lost on the Islamic world’s Sunni majority.

Additionally, Al Qaeda and its affiliates have killed thousands of Muslim civilians elsewhere since September 11: hundreds of ordinary Afghans killed every year by the Taliban, dozens of Saudis killed by terrorists since 2003, scores of Jordanians massacred at a wedding at a U.S. hotel in Amman in November 2005. Even those sympathetic to Al Qaeda have started to notice. “Excuse me Mr. Zawahiri but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency’s blessing, the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria?” one supporter asked in an online Q&A with Al Qaeda’s deputy leader in April that was posted widely on jihadist websites.

When the Q&A came out I could almost picture the al-Qaeda leadership sitting there, wanting to scream that it wasn’t al-Qaeda Central (AQC) it was those damn upstart affiliates. Ayman al-Zawahiri had even written that nice letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to ask him to ratchet back the Muslim on Muslim violence and quit it with the beheadings. Instead AQC responded the only way it could… al-Zawahiri claimed al-Qaeda didn’t kill innocents and if they did it was not on purpose. And Abu Yahya, the group’s “theological enforcer” as Michael Scheuer dubbed him, put on a serious show of ideological legerdemain to explain why it was all legit.

What’s interesting to me is that clearly those clerics and former militants who are beating up on AQC know that the leadership doesn’t have command and control of these groups, and are holding AQC accountable anyway. The message seems to be: you pried open this Pandora’s box and you’re ideologically responsible so we’re going to blame you. Which is great. And they should. Except, if AQC disappears won’t we still be left with all of these other groups? The authors suggest not:

Which means that the repudiation of Al Qaeda’s leaders by its former religious, military, and political guides will help hasten the implosion of the jihadist terrorist movement. As Churchill remarked after the battle of El Alamein in 1942, which he saw as turning the tide in World War II, “[T]his is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Personally, I’m a bit skeptical. I think it is great that people with some real ideological firepower and credibility in the Muslim world are standing up to al-Qaeda. Even if they’re not doing it out of love for America, and think the Iraq insurgency is a legitimate jihad. I get it. As the authors note, these are the people whose ideas matter. Though Michael Scheuer does not think so. What I’m concerned about is, given the direction of the jihadist movement, if this is the end of the beginning then are we prepared for what comes next?

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