Even Islamists love Angela Merkel

Posted By David Kenner Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 2:43 PM Share

Sayyed Imam al-Sharif gets all the credit, but another important Islamist preacher has published a letter renouncing violence in Europe. Mohammed al-Fizazi is currently sitting in a Moroccan jail for his role in the 2003 Casablanca terrorist attack, which killed 45 people. In a letter published by Der Spiegel, al-Fizazi praises the religious freedom and employment opportunities available to Muslims in Germany. "The German chancellor is great," he writes, in one particularly effusive paragraph.

Like al-Sharif, al-Fizazi argues that Muslims are forbidden from jihad in Germany because they have signed visa application forms, which amount to a contract between them and the German state to abide by Germany's laws. "Germany is not a battle zone," he states, and engaging in terrorism "will only reinforce the backwardness of Muslims and their image as a group of backward-looking idiots whose place is in the caves and not in the streets of Hamburg."

As a general rule, I'm skeptical that the abstract arguments of Islamist philosophers such as al-Sharif or al-Fizazi really will have a practical impact on regular jihadis, who are likely motivated by more mundane concerns such as lack of political freedom and economic opportunity. However, al-Fizazi's letter is inspiring because he argues that it is the very presence of these freedoms in Germany that prohibits Muslims from conducting violence there. This suggests that Europe is doing a better job integrating its Muslim population than is commonly believed -- a development which is good news for the West, and bad news for radicals everywhere.

 
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GRANT

11:57 PM ET

November 3, 2009

Don't be too sure of a

Don't be too sure of a minimal-impact theory. The recanting of several original creators of modern day militant Islam has been seen as dangerous enough that Zawahiri felt a need to write a rebuttal. A possible American example of this would be Ronald Reagan declaring that the Soviet Union was a far better place than anyone thought or Noam Chomsky favoring Truman over Chavez.

 

SMCI60652

11:03 AM ET

November 4, 2009

hold the sauce...

Muslims are forbidden from jihad in Germany because they have signed visa application forms, which amount to a contract between them and the German state to abide by Germany's laws.

Behoove the preacher to please list the countries in which this ISN'T the case.

Anytime you enter a foreign country legally, they make it a pre-requisite that you sign documents agreeing to obey the laws of said country. So why is Germany singled out to apply this principle?

 

DAVID KENNER

11:44 AM ET

November 4, 2009

Good question

I don't know any more about al-Fizazi's beliefs on this topic than what is included in the Der Spiegel article, but the sense I got was that signing the visa application forms amounted to a supporting reason to not engage in jihad, but not the definitive reason. That is, the argument goes something like, "Germany has a reasonably just government and laws, you've agreed to obey those laws -- so don't break that promise."

But you've got a good point. You need to sign visa forms to enter Israel, for example, but al-Fizazi doesn't have any problem in waging jihad there. So I have to assume that his real justification for living within the law in Europe has more to do with the character of the German government rather than the visa forms. In any case, I mentioned it in the post because of the parallels with al-Sharif's thinking, and because it's a unique line of argument that I doubt many in the west would consider.

 

MXCM428

2:13 AM ET

November 27, 2009

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