Zawaya

Istehlal is a Nihilistic Ideology

By: Mahmoud Belhimer

“The principle of istehlal” is part of the alien and nihilistic ideas in which terrorist groups fell in recent years. These groups have gone far in their extremism to the extent of creating an “ideological” and “religious” reference for themselves, a reference that competes with Machiavellism in the logic of: “the end justifies the means”. Needless to say, this ideology is not based on religion nor on any human logic.

This principle, like the other ideas they used to justify their suicidal choices, is the inevitable result of the great sin they fell in from the outset when they declared the rulers – and society as a whole – to be disbelievers, and then issued Fatwas for themselves to legitimize attacking society, killing whomever is against them, looting their money, capturing their women, and destroying their facilities in the name of “Jihad”.

They had also previously issued a Fatwa, for example, to permit bombing public places, even if that leads to killing hundreds of innocent people in the street, saying that they will be “resurrected based on their intentions”! Based on this Fatwa, they carried out bombings in several cities in Algeria, including those that targeted the central police headquarters in the capital, in the winter of 1995, where more than a hundred people were killed; they also carried out suicide bombings over the past two years.

This indicates that the Takfir ideology has no bounds; experiments have shown that terrorist groups move from one slide to a more serious one.

That can be explained by two reasons. First, the fact that the new generation of leaders and elements of these armed Islamist groups lack the slightest knowledge of Islam, or any jurisprudential or political formation, which explains their slip to a strange logic based on borrowing specific facts or texts that they used separately from their contexts, and then generalizing them to their case.

Second: The fact that such Fatwas indicate the narrowness that terrorist groups suffer from; these groups are no longer able to attract large numbers of adherents, nor can they win the sympathy of the community on their “Jihadist choice”. Therefore, they resorted to the adaptation of religious texts to find a legitimate backup for the situation they created for themselves, and for the projects they already decided to carry on.

Due to years of isolation from normal life, and the loss of a credible jurisprudence reference for the Jihadists, as well as a sense of helplessness and despair, it’s normal for those who are left of them to go towards more extremism in Fatwas and actions at once.

In fact, these groups are clinging to straws while drowning, because they moved from an alleged “Jihad”, to another situation that has a religious justification for any means that can give life to their movement.

Therefore, “istehlal” has become for the terrorists a lifeline from the scarcity of resources – mainly financial ones – to buy arms and be ready logistically. They also built relationships with other criminal networks, such as drug traffickers, smuggling barons, and specialists of money laundering. Their aim is the perpetuation of terrorist activity, securing it, and even trying to expand it.

It’s worth mentioning that the nihilistic approach was abandoned even by terrorist theoreticians, including the reviews of Dr. Fadl, the theoretician of “Jihad” in Egypt.