Would-be extremists need a history lesson

Hassan Hassan looks at the early history of Islam and says extremist groups such as Al Qaeda should not be allowed to impose their own narrative on the Muslim world

Mongols besieging Baghdad in 1258. Courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France

In the Middle East today, the legacy of the Mongol invasion of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad is still alive. It is a historical moment that many people point to in their efforts to explain current events.

Some Sunnis say the man responsible for the fall of Baghdad was Ibn Al Alkami, a Shia vizier. For others, the Mongols’ shift towards the Muslim world happened because their ruler Hulagu Khan’s mother was Christian, or because a Christian delegation from France visited the khanate and persuaded it to turn its attention to Muslims instead.

For one former Al Qaeda member, one part of this story resonates today – because it helped him turn away from the extremist organisation.

Bahraini Aimen Dean, who left Saudi Arabia in 1994 to join Muslim volunteers fighting in Bosnia and then Afghanistan, and who formally pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in 1997, compares his former group to Sultan Muhammed II Khwarezm, who reigned the Khwarezmian empire in central Asia for 20 years in the 13th century.

Dean argues that confrontation with the burgeoning Mongol empire was not inevitable, and that Sultan Muhammed provoked a devastating campaign that would deal a decisive blow to the Muslim world, which was then torn by division, infighting and treachery.

Historians largely agree that the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan made two peace gestures to Inlachuq, Sultan Muhammed’s uncle and the governor of the Khwarezmian region of Otrar, although various accounts dispute his intentions. Some believe that Genghis did not initially want to invade the Muslim world and that, in fact, he wanted to build a relationship with his much more learned neighbours while he focused his military efforts on more immediate rivals.

Genghis sent a large trade caravan with an ambassador. Inlachuq seized the caravan, either because he suspected it included spies – a practice that was a common part of the Mongols’ preparations for invasion – or simply because he coveted the lavish caravan. Inlachuq, with the blessing of Sultan Muhammed, executed all members of the caravan. Rather than immediately escalate the situation, Genghis sent a delegation to Sultan Muhammed to inquire about the incident and to demand the handover of his uncle for punishment.

It is impossible to have a definitive account of what happened at the time, but this part of the story is typically missing in Muslims’ discussions of this defining moment in Islamic history.

For Dean, who left Al Qaeda and worked for British intelligence after the terror attacks on the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, the role played by Sultan Muhammed and his uncle is worth telling today.

He maintains that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are making the same mistake. They are provoking an unnecessary confrontation with the outside world and also within the Middle East.

The narrative that they are selling, and is gaining traction in the region, is this: there is a global war under way, that continuing confrontation is inevitable and that the winners will be the ones who fight until the bitter end. According to them, destruction and bloodshed is a confirmation of their narrative, not a product of it.

Dean believes that the narrative is powerful in the world of extremists, but it is false and needs to be tackled head on. The problem with the extremists’ narrative is that many endorse it even though they do not endorse the extremists. Some believe that the extremists are the catalyst for change because they are the ones most capable of challenging the current regional order. It does not matter how much destruction will take place in the process. Destruction can happen either at once or in a slow motion over a long period of time.

Extremists recruit in this atmosphere. They benefit from the constant validation of their narrative by regimes that seem to have no interest in a middle way. They are unstoppable in terms of destruction and carnage. The hordes of these regimes, in Syria and elsewhere, seek to besiege, starve and shell populations into submission. Resistance means complete annihilation and submission does not necessarily lead to peace.

Al Qaeda and like-minded groups should not be allowed to impose their narrative on the Muslim world. As Dean argues, it is a narrative that must be challenged and rejected.

The tyrannical regimes that wage war on their people are today’s Sultan Muhammed, in the way that they make confrontation and destruction inevitable. Unless this reality is changed, extremists will continue to attract recruits based on this world view because, in this particular case, confrontation is not perceived. It is an unprovoked campaign of terror launched by remorseless regimes.

Hassan Hassan is associate fellow at Chatham House's Middle East and South Africa programme, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

On Twitter: @hxhassan