Nuclear option escalates jihad threat

October 01, 2005

IN the past 12 months, influential Islamist jihadist websites have
carried an increased discussion on the ethics and strategy of using
weapons of mass destruction as part of the global terror campaign. 
In the week when state and federal governments in Australia have
announced tougher rules to monitor and restrict possible and suspected
terrorists, we have to take this discussion very seriously.

The Western policy-makers who deal with this do so cautiously.
Virtually nobody in authority is being alarmist. But it is the WMD,
especially the nuclear, dimension that raises terrorism from the
spectrum of gruesome criminality through sustained insurgency and up
to genuine strategic threat.

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal two weeks ago Prime
Minister John Howard, in expressing bitter disappointment at the UN's
failure to do anything serious about nuclear non-proliferation, noted
that "al-Qa'ida has made no secret of its ambitions to acquire -- and
to use -- WMD".

The authoritative discussion of this option among several key
religious figures in the global jihadist network should give us
serious pause. Former foreign minister Gareth Evans, now head of the
International Crisis Group, while acknowledging the real dangers, was
this week urging caution and restraint in our response to terrorism.

But his words on nuclear terrorism were sobering: "We know very well
how limited our capacity is, and always will be, to deny access to
terrorist groups to chemical and especially biological weapons. But
the same is true of nuclear weapons."

[...]

In a new volume, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, published by the
Hudson Institution, Reuven Paz of the Israeli Herzliya Centre for the
Study of Terrorism, examines several definitive discussions and
religious rulings on the use of WMDs in jihadist websites.

Again, Paz is not remotely alarmist. He notes the technical difficulty
for terrorists in using nuclear weapons and the relatively small
number of such discussions in the jihadist world. Nonetheless, they
are disturbing.

In 2003 Saudi Sheikh Naser bin Hamad al-Fahd published the first fatwa
on the use of nuclear weapons (he is now in jail in Saudi Arabia). Al-
Fahd wrote: "If the Muslims could defeat the infidels only by using
these kinds of weapons, it is allowed to use them, even if they kill
all."

In a highly significant move, he later published a long, theological
defence, citing all the relevant Islamic authorities and providing the
kind of scholarly argument for his position that is so important to
the committed jihadist. He discounted international law as this was
not part of Islamic law. He argued that the US had used WMDs in the
past and it and its allies possessed WMDs. He argued, with many
recondite references, that Muslims were enjoined to act to the full
limit of their ability and this logically necessitated the use of
WMDs. His justification covered the general question of using WMDs and
the specific case of using them now against the US.

As Paz comments: "Were any Islamist group planning to use WMDs, they
have now received the necessary endorsement to do so from an Islamic
point of view." 

[...]

Full article at "The Australian"
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/
0,5744,16774533%5E25377,00.html


Cheers, Steve..

---