In 2 Strict Sects, Terror Suspects Find Inspiration

Takfir wal Hijra and the Salafist Group for Call and Combat offered men linked to Bin Laden a way to justify attacks on West.

Los Angeles Times/December 22, 2001
By David Zucchino

Paris -- In the dreary suburbs of Paris, they were Algerian immigrants who survived on part-time jobs and petty crime. In Milan, they were Tunisians who stole and forged passports. And on Spain's southeastern coast, they were Algerians who specialized in stealing credit cards.

For these young Muslim men accused by police of plotting terror for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, two obscure Islamic sects seemed to provide an arcane justification for underground lives of crime and terrorism.

Before they were arrested in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the men existed in a self-imposed internal exile among the "infidels" of Western Europe. They drew inspiration, police say, from Takfir wal Hijra, a violent strain of fundamentalist Islam from Egypt, and from the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, a group formed in the crucible of Algeria's civil war. Both movements preach a virulent hatred of Christians and Jews, encouraging violence in the name of a "pure" form of Islam practic ed at the inception of the religion in the 7th century. The two clandestine groups provide a theology of terror for Bin Laden's jihad against the West.

Islamic scholars say the groups pervert the teachings of Islam and the prophet Muhammad. But for young, disaffected Muslim immigrants adrift in Western Europe, a religiously sanctioned call to arms can be intoxicating.

Police say Bin Laden's followers in Europe persuade poorly educated young men that it is their religious duty to carry out attacks against the West. A Takfir cell broken up in France and Spain planned to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris, police say, and members of a Salafist cell arrested in Italy plotted to attack the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

Followers of Takfir and the Salafists have not been directly linked to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. However, an investigating magistrate in Spain has said the Spanish Salafists were in contact with another Spanish Al Qaeda cell that allegedly provided logistical support to the hijackers.

Breaking Muslim Rules to Avoid Detection

Police say both groups have been funded and supported by Al Qaeda. An academic who studies the groups says some followers believe that Bin Laden himself gave the Salafist group its name in 1998.

The sects are so extreme that they call on followers to kill fellow Muslims who deviate from their vision of a pure form of Islam. Purification is achieved through self-imposed exile, followed by a vengeful return to a society where all nonbelievers are condemned to death.

Translated as Excommunication and Exile--a name given to the group by Egyptian police and newspapers--Takfir wal Hijra refers to the flight, or hijra, of Muhammad from the corruption of Mecca to the outlying city of Medina in 622. Believers emerge from modern exile to kill nonbelievers and those condemned as kafir, or apostate.

Takfir means to declare someone an apostate.

"They believe society is in a state of ignorance. They believe they must retreat--go into exile--and then return as conquerors," said Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian-born professor at the National Defense University in Washington.

A central tenet, particularly for converts in Europe, is that believers may deviate from strict Muslim practices in order to blend in and avoid detection while plotting attacks. Followers are allowed to shave their beards, drink alcohol, visit topless bars and commit crimes against Westerners--all under the cloak of subterfuge.

That concept is called taquya, which means to protect oneself by burrowing underground. "It means to make your appearance hide your inner reality," Fandy said.

(The Sept. 11 terrorists were not known to be associated with Takfir, said Muntasir Zayyat, a lawyer in Cairo who has defended Islamic militants. But the hijackers certainly adopted Takfir principles by shaving, dressing in casual Western clothes and frequenting taverns and topless bars.)

"With the Takfir logic, you can justify anything," said Alain Grignard, an Arabic-speaking expert on Islam who is also an anti-terror police commander in Belgium. "Takfir becomes the ultimate justification for committing crime as long as it is committed against an infidel."

Recruiters typically cite their own cryptic misinterpretations of the teachings of Muhammad to persuade poorly educated young Muslims that violence in defense of Islam is not only justified but a sacred duty.

The concept of "defensive jihad," or retaliation for a perceived Western assault on Islam, is paramount. Believers cite the presence of U.S. troops on the soil of Saudi Arabia, where Islam was founded, as well as the U.S.-led wars against Iraq and Afghanistan's Islamic regime, the Taliban.

"Bin Laden certainly believes he is fighting a defensive jihad," said Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian-born Islamic legal scholar in London who has been accused of raising money and recruiting for Al Qaeda--charges he denies.

"And in the psyche of Muslims, anyone who dies in such a cause--especially against America--will be highly regarded and respected, no matter the civilian casualties."

Takfir arose in Egypt in the late 1960s as an offshoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said Abul Ela Madi, an Islamic activist in Egypt and co-founder of the Wasat political party. The group fled to the Egyptian desert and set up a society in exile, Madi said. Takfir's founder, Shukri Mustafa, was executed by the Egyptian government following the group's kidnapping and murder of a rival cleric in 1977.

Takfir is part of a broader, pan-Islamic movement called Salafism, which advocates a return to the pure form of Islam practiced by Muhammad. Based partly on the concepts of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, Salafism refers to salaf, the companions of the prophet. The movement condemns regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria as corrupt and un-Islamic, and thus legitimate targets.

'The Hostility Against the West Is Profound'

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat is one particularly violent splinter group. It was formed in Algeria in 1998 by Hassan Hattab, a former commander of the Armed Islamic Group, known by its French acronym GIA, which massacred thousands of civilians in the 1990s as part of its effort to overthrow the government.

The Salafist Group, which sought to expand jihad beyond the Algerian conflict, received money and support from Bin Laden, according to 1999 court testimony in Algeria by a Hattab lieutenant, who said Bin Laden and Hattab often spoke by satellite phone.

With Bin Laden's support, the Salafist Group merged into Al Qaeda, said Quintan Wiktorowicz, an assistant professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., who has lived with and studied Islamic extremist groups.Intelligence services in Europe grew concerned about the spread of Takfir and Salafist groups around 1997, when Islamic militants in Egypt and Algeria agreed to truces with those governments. Many radicals fled to Europe after Arab governments began coordinating anti-terrorism efforts in harsh crackdowns that year, Wiktorowicz said.

Once within the Al Qaeda fold, the Takfir and Salafist groups began to focus on what they perceived as the ultimate power behind corrupt Arab regimes: the United States.

"The hostility against the West is profound, especially against the United States and Israel, mixing denouncement of oppression against Muslims . . . and anti-Christian feelings," said a French police intelligence report that identified 15 mosques in France as centers for Takfir recruiters.

Madi, the Egyptian militant, said Takfir has been absorbed into Al Qaeda but is still a distinct movement, as is the Salafist Group for Call and Combat.

What unites the groups is a common belief in Islam as a revolutionary weapon to crush the West and its client Arab regimes, Wiktorowicz said. "Bin Laden is certainly a 'Takfiree.' He's decreed that all the Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, are run by infidels," he said.

But Takfir has its own rigid code: Commitment must be absolute and everlasting. Believers who have tried to leave the fold have been executed, said Roland Jacquard, a French expert on terrorism who has close ties to intelligence services.

"Once inside Takfir, you cannot go outside again," he said.

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