Al Qaeda's Grand Strategy.

AuthorJones, David T.

Al Qaeda's Grand Strategy

By Dr. Mary Habeck, Visiting Scholar, AEI

Text: https://www.fpri.org/articles/2014/02/attacking-america-al-qaedas-grand-strategy-its-war-world

In a densely written, 6,600 word lecture published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Dr Mary Habeck examines in detail the elements of what she believes is Al Qaeda's "grand strategy" for attacking the West in general and the United States in particular.

Ultimately, she concludes that Al-Qaeda's grand strategy is currently directed toward other Muslims; it is primarily about the rest of the world and not about us at all. She draws short term comfort from this judgment; however, notes that Al-Qaeda believes that it is doing well in achieving global objectives, having forced U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and anticipating our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Dr Habeck carefully examines the aspects of Al-Qaeda thought contrasting them with mainstream Islam. Most prominently, she concludes that Al-Qaeda holds intensely exclusive beliefs including that "democracy" is an attempt to replace God and God's law with popular control. For Al Qaeda, jihad is not "internal" self mastery but externally directed violence to bring others under its control. And Sharia has only one variant--that promulgated by Al Qaeda and imposed by violence if necessary.

She postulates several Al Qaeda objectives:

--rid the Muslim-majority world of all non-Muslim occupiers, including all "apostate rulers," that is, all the current leadership of Muslim Middle Eastern countries. It also includes the expulsion of all Westerners of whatever nature.

--impose their version of Sharia and force--through violence if...

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