At 8:46:40 a.m. EDT on September 11, 2001, an unprofessional pilot maneuvered an incredible "weapon"—a Boeing 767 airliner—crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, where more than 90,000 litres of kerosene loaded with fuel ignited the North Tower on a violent impact. After 16 minutes and 14 seconds, another "weapon" crashed into the south tower, and more than 1 million tons of glass, stone, steel and the remains of nearly 3,000 victims turned into a pile of seven-story "graves".
In the days that followed, a sharp-eyed Arab man appeared on billions of television screens around the world. For many, he has become the embodiment of evil. He flew the first plane in 9/11 to hit the World Trade Center and is believed to be behind the suicide terrorist attack.
The young man, Muhamed Atta, was the only Egyptian among the 19 hijackers. For a long time before 9/11, he seemed to have been following an established Egyptian middle-class path, from entering prestigious universities to studying abroad.
One day, however, he suddenly strayed from that path and turned in a direction that people could not understand.
Muhammad Atta's ID photo, which appeared repeatedly in media coverage after 9/11.
Atta was born in 1968, a year of raucous, radical, explosive world in the Cold War: the "May Storm" in France, the civil rights movement sweeping the United States, the young people of all countries infatuated with the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, rock and roll and hippies all the rage... And this year's Egyptian society is also surging in the dark tide.
"1968 was a very important year, the year after the Six-Day War (the Third Middle East War), and the outcome of this war was crucial, which led directly to the collapse of Nasserism (Editor's Note: the political ideas of The second President of Egypt, Nasser, which combines pan-Arabism, Arab socialism, Arab nationalism, republicanism, anti-imperialism, etc.)." Victor J. Willi, a Swiss middle Eastern scholar, said in a recent interview with The Paper.
In April, Willie published "The Fourth Ordeal," based on oral accounts by more than a hundred Muslim Brotherhood leaders, ordinary members and dissidents, about the ups and downs of the Egyptian Brotherhood from the late 1960s to 2018 — the beginning of his narrative in 1968, when Atta was born.
"Nasser is a beacon of hope for Egypt and the Arab world as a whole. He is part of the Non-Aligned Movement and the real driving force behind pan-Arab nationalism – the ideology that twists all Arab countries together. "But the defeat in the 1967 war proved the fragility and powerlessness of the pan-Arab movement, which created a disillusionment in Egypt." ”
The Fourth Ordeal, by Victor M. By Victor J. Willi in April 2021 by Cambridge University Press
Atta came from an Egyptian society where the Muslim Brotherhood had been revived, and he later established links with al-Qaida in Europe. Although the two movements have completely different agendas, programs, and instruments, they theoretically share the same ideological roots. In a way, Atta's life trajectory tells the story of two different threads of the Political Islam or Islamism movement of the 20th century, and to this day his story still brings us to reflection on the relationship between violence and ideology.
The adulthood of a terrorist
Born in the Nile Delta's Kafsheikh province, Atta spent her adolescence in the crowded, dilapidated suburb of Cairo. His father was a serious and dedicated lawyer, and under the supervision of his strict father, there was almost only learning in the world of young Atta. From 1985 to 1990, Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, the most prestigious institution in the Arab world.
"Although we may not know Atta, we can see how he came of age." Willie paints a picture of what the young Atta might have experienced in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s: after Nasser's death in 1970, Sadat succeeded to the throne, the student movement rose, Egypt's "68th generation" still pondered how to bid farewell to Nasser's time, and in the chaos and confusion, the political Islamic ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood re-infiltrated Egyptian social life.
"From the '70s until 1981, when President Sadat used the Muslim Brotherhood and a number of other political Islamist groups to counter some of the pro-Soviet communist movements that had sprung up in Egypt. He opened a large number of mosques, released the Leaders of the Brotherhood, gave them the opportunity to participate in democratic elections, and the time came for the Brotherhood. Morsi Mahmoud, a professor at Alexandria University in Egypt who was almost born at the same time as Atta, told The Paper.
Photo by Yu Xiaoxuan, a surging journalist at Cairo University
In the eyes of Atta's Egyptian friends, although the later terrorist Atta was not an impressive person at that time, he did show a pious side from then on. In a los Angeles Post report, years later, cousin Issam recalled watching TV with Atta as a teenager: "Whenever a belly dance show appeared on TV, Atta left the room. ”
Cairo in the 1980s was a sea of ideas and a haven for action planners of all kinds. The crowded city is the only job- and cafés are packed with idle people, the smell of coffee, shisha and Marlboro cigarettes mingles and haunt the houses, and the narrow and messy streets are filled with soft smoke and gossip – but not all conversation is small talk.
"The Brotherhood leaders were released from prison, and they saw the simultaneous student movement and began to reach out to these students to persuade them to join the Brotherhood, and these students did." Willy notes that "these students relied on only two texts: the Quran and Sayyid Qutb's Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Road Signs) (Editor's note: Qutb was an Egyptian writer, educator, Sunni Islamic theorist, and poet. He was the leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood from the 1950s to the 1960s. Although neither book actually offers a clear political plan, they see that the Muslim Brotherhood actually has a political plan—a plan for the realization of an Islamic way of life in society. ”
Since the 1980s, the Brotherhood has recruited extensively on campus. They called for a return to the "basic principles of Islam" and warned of staying away from "corrupt modernization forces" and rejecting Egypt's tilt toward the United States. At the same time, the Brotherhood began to participate in democratic politics, not only in parliamentary elections, but also in the syndicates of universities and other institutions to gain more and more seats. The same was true of the architecture department at Cairo University, where Atta worked, perhaps out of his father's warning not to get involved in politics, and atta did not appear to have established contact with the Brotherhood at the time, but when he traveled to Germany a few years later, he did join the brotherhood's trade union body in europe.
In 1979, President Sadat led Egypt to sign a peace agreement with Israel, a historic step toward Arab-Israeli reconciliation. Radical Egyptian Muslims, naturally, could not accept that Egypt had suffered a "great setback" (??????? Naksah's old enemy, Israel, was about to become a friendly neighbor of Egypt, and Sadat's move set the stage for his assassination two years later by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the Egyptian army.
According to a 2001 report in the British newspaper The Guardian, a friend of Atta's later in Germany described a trip with him to Egypt, and according to his observations, Atta had a very traditional mindset, and like many Egyptian Muslim intellectuals, he had the "most angry prejudice" against Egypt's friendship with the West before the assassination of President Sadat.
In the same year that Sadat was assassinated, the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted for eight years, broke out. "At that time, a large number of young Sunni Muslims were fighting Shiite Iran in Iraq, and they were fighting under the ideological inspiration of the Islamist movement, which was also affecting the youth of Egypt." Professor Morsi recalled.
Violence or peace?
After graduating from Cairo University, Atta was unable to get the opportunity to pursue a master's degree. In 1992, at the behest of her father, the 24-year-old Atta went to Germany to continue her studies in architecture. Over the past 20 years, various studies have concluded that, in fact, the process of ata's radicalization was completed in Europe, and behind this is also the two veins of political Islamism that developed from Egypt.
Since 1996, Atta has been frequently involved in the Al-Quds mosques in Hamburg, Germany. At that time, as the number of migrant laborers continued to grow and many Muslims settled permanently in Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egyptian origin had developed a complex branch of genealogy across Europe, where they concentrated in mosques, where the degeneration of Western social values and the confusion of gender relations were often the subject of their criticism, and the revival of Islamic values was their goal.
Mohammed Atta (fourth from left) attends student events in Germany
Leaving his hometown, Atta developed some new habits, he grew a beard, prayed five times a day, often went to the mosque, and formed a "system" different from ordinary people academically. In 2009, the American online magazine Slate received a master's thesis from Atta, in which he demonstrated his ambitions for the construction of the Syrian cityscape of Aleppo: demolition of highways and tall buildings, reconstruction of traditional bazaars and houses, and reconstruction of an "Islamic Eastern city."
After earning a master's degree at the end of 1999, Atta left Germany. A few months later, at an Ramadan feast in Afghanistan, thousands of kilometres away, a Saudi named Osama bin Laden told him, "You will become a shahid." Atta was told he would lead a plan to destroy America's most famous and modern high-rise complex. In a way, this coincides with his master's thesis's vision of rebuilding Aleppo. Atta may have felt the hand of fate fueling it, and he gladly accepted the mission.
U.S. investigators believe that at the Al-Quds Al-Sharif Mosque in Germany, Atta met with extremists and was most likely recruited directly by bin Laden's al-Qaida agents. The investigation also concluded that two other young Arabs met by Atta at the Al-Quds Mosque, Ziyad Jara and Marwan Sheikh, were also recruited as members of Al-Qaida, who later became pilots of the two airliners that rammed the Petronas Twin Towers during 9/11.
The consensus now is that Atta, who planned the 9/11 attacks, was not directly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and was employed by al-Qaida. However, the terrorist organization, which is still considered the most heinous, did share the same ideological roots with the Muslim Brotherhood theory, but it embarked on a different path.
In 1928, Hassan Banna, an Egyptian teacher born on the banks of the Suez Canal, founded the Muslim Brotherhood. The Suez Canal was still dominated by British colonists, and in the context of the time, the Brotherhood was founded as a response to Western colonization and modernization, calling for a "return to tradition and islam."
Although the nature of the Brotherhood was initially more social and cultural, this idea was incompatible with the secular nationalism advocated by Nasser, and the Brotherhood's confrontation with the Egyptian government also caused a huge ideological disagreement within the organization, resulting in a division between moderates and radicals. The extremist Muslims who assassinated Sadat in 1981 came from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a radical group that splintered from the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida's current leader, Al-Qaida, Al-Qaida, is also from Islamic Jihad in Egypt.
"When the concept of political Islam first emerged in the 1920s, there was a debate about whether it was legitimate to use violence to advance political movements. In fact, within the Islamists, there is a faction that pays more attention to the 'Da'wah,???? They prefer to convert or convert to Islam through education and preaching, but another faction says, no, we can't rely on 'Dawa' alone, we need to make it a political movement, either to participate in the political agenda or to become more radical in politics, that is, to be more violent in resisting the enemy. "Debates like this have always divided the political Islamist movement. ”
The points of disagreement on the road focused on Qutb, an important figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s. Qutb argues that Nasser's rule and repressive policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood brought Egypt back to the obscurantist period before the advent of Islam (also known as Jahiliyyah), and he encouraged people to directly rebel against the country in the form of "jihad".
Qutb was sentenced to death by hanging in 1966 for conspiring to subvert the state, and his brother Mohammed Qutb was jailed, after which he came to Saudi Arabia to continue spreading Kutbism. A close friend of bin Laden's has revealed that bin Laden regularly attends Muhammad Qutb's lectures in Saudi Arabia, and that his successor, Al-Zawahiri, paid tribute to Qutb in his book The Knights of the Prophet.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 further led the political Islamic movement to a crossroads of violence. Muslims in the Middle East are inspired by the idea of "jihad" against the superpowers that invaded Muslim territory, and the war against Soviet independence attracted countless radicals from the Middle East and North Africa. Afghanistan has become a link between political Islam and violence, and a "base" for bin Laden's global jihad.
"Indeed, the political Islamist movement in Egypt has a lot to do with the Political Islamist movement in Afghanistan that defeated the Soviet Union and the United States one after another, and many of the first 'jihadists' who went to Afghanistan were Egyptians, and many of their ideas originally came from the seeds sown in Egypt." Morsi said, "But they are very different from the Brotherhood. ”
While al-Qaida continues to recruit and train "jihadists" like Atta for terrorist attacks, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is still fighting for participation in party politics and, despite several crackdowns, has not given up on its goal of gaining legitimacy in power within the framework of elections.
During President Mubarak's reign, a degree of political reform was introduced, many opponents were able to return to politics, and the Brotherhood seized the opportunity. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood was effectively the largest opposition party in Egypt's modern history (Editor's note: Brotherhood members ran as independents). At the same time, in other countries of the Arab world, political opponents close to the Muslim Brotherhood were making the same effort.
"Whether it's the Muslim Brotherhood or the tunisian revival movement, they're suddenly on the fringes of radicalism by a new global organization like al-Qaida." Faisal Devji, a professor of history at Oxford University who studies political Islamist movements, pointed out to The Paper that al-Qaida is completely different from the later extremist group Islamic State, which is very nationalistic, and although they certainly have their own vision of the Muslim world, they are more inclined to accomplish this within their own countries." ”
Rise, fall, come again?
The turning point in the fate of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood came in late 2010. The Arab Spring swept across North Africa from Tunisia, and on January 25, 2011, millions of Egyptians, predominantly young, occupied Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo. Eighteen days later, Mubarak, who had been in power for 30 years, was forced to step down, and the long-dormant Brotherhood seized the opportunity of Egypt's sudden political situation to quickly come to the political front, and Mohammed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood was elected Egypt's first democratically elected president in 2012.
However, the Brotherhood's rise to power did not allow the people to see much change, and some people believe that the Brotherhood "stole" the fruits of the people's struggle, and the protests broke out again in the summer of 2013. On June 30, 2013, on the first anniversary of Morsi's rise to power, millions of people gathered in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and other cities to hold demonstrations, including both Morsi's supporters and opponents. Egypt's political situation is once again in turmoil, with the first democratically elected, non-military president since Egypt's independence in 1952, overthrown a year after taking office by his hand-promoted defense minister, Sisi.
The famous graffiti "Boy Eating Bread with Tears" near Tahrir Square during the "Arab Spring" period was photographed by The Paper's reporter Yu Xiaoxuan
Professor Morsi, whose name is the same name as the former president, is often asked questions about the Brotherhood when he travels abroad, and his answer is simple: "This is not their time." It's true that you need to get the right guy on stage at the right time, and all I can say is that 2012 wasn't a good time for the Muslim Brotherhood, who didn't yet know how to stay stable and how to convince the people. ”
"One of the mistakes Morsi made was that he made people think he had mastered the politics of the country, and yet he didn't. Although he was only placed in the position of president, it made people believe that a real 'revolution' had taken place. Abdullah Arian, an associate professor of history at the Diplomatic College of Georgetown University at Qatar, once analyzed that "the country [of Egypt] at that time was still largely controlled by the same gang under Mubarak." ”
Immediately after Morsi stepped down in 2013, the Egyptian government declared the Brotherhood illegal, with more than 500 Brotherhood members sentenced to death and many more Brotherhood supporters on trial. Six years later, Morsi died suddenly at the age of 67 in a trial of his involvement in "terrorism" and "espionage." The Egyptian Brotherhood, which had been floating and sinking, once again inevitably fell.
In the years following the Arab Spring, Willy was impressed by his contacts with more than a hundred Muslim Brotherhood members.
"I realized that they were the losers of history." Willy said, "These ordinary members of the Brotherhood live poor and hard lives, they are the middle and lower classes of Egyptian society... In a way, I think, they've been misled by the Muslim Brotherhood leaders, who are uneducated and basically just talking about political Islam. ”
In addition to sweeping away the Muslim Brotherhood forces, Sisi also faced counter-terrorism and policing problems after coming to power. In the vast and rugged sinai province of northeastern Egypt, where extremist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) have taken advantage of the security vacuum to plan and carry out numerous terrorist attacks throughout Egypt.
In 2015, Sisi signed a new anti-terrorism law and approved the establishment of a special court, although there were also critics at the time that Sisi's move was "drunk and not drunk" because many Muslim Brotherhood supporters and political opponents were also arrested after the new law was enacted. Professor Morsi believes that the Egyptian government has taken almost the same "anti-terrorism" measures against the two very different political Islamist movements of the Muslim Brotherhood and the extremist organization "Islamic State", which is indeed based on the practical consideration of stabilizing the regime, but this measure is not entirely appropriate.
"The Brotherhood has been suppressed four times, and the current situation, we can refer to the situation in the late 50s and early 60s, when there were about 1 million Muslim Brotherhood members throughout Egypt. Leaders go to jail and ideology can be revived. "After 2013, although the Brotherhood as an organization is very fragile and fragmented, this does not mean that its ideology is dead." ”
The recent dramatic turn in Afghanistan has also allowed the world to witness how a powerful political Islamic force is regrouping.
"While political Islam may make a comeback, it still faces great challenges because it has never succeeded, in fact it has only recently succeeded." "With a very powerful army, this ideology returned, with Humvees, Apache helicopters and fighter jets, and they had a large number of rifles, night vision goggles... Look at the Taliban today, they're like America's fighting forces... Yes, political Islam has largely indeed returned. ”
Some analysts believe that the success of the Taliban may be an incentive for political Islamist movements in the Arab world. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas, which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has called Taliban leaders to congratulate them. The Egyptian Government is also clearly wary of developments.
"Can egypt's Brotherhood make a comeback? This is a very different question, depending on the current Egyptian government and whether it can truly provide services to the people. Willie argues that if there were another "revolution" (Thawrah) in Egypt now, the Brotherhood would still be a strong candidate, and I wouldn't completely deny the possibility of their comeback, but it would require a profound social change. ”
"Egypt is also worried now that if some of the 'jihadists' who have been active in Afghanistan for a long time return to Egypt and try to build a new political Islamist movement, they may adopt the same ideology and organizational form as the Taliban, and the Egyptian government will never allow this." Morsi, who has worked on security research for the Egyptian military, said, "I think the government will carefully examine those who come to Egypt from Afghanistan, whether they are the Taliban, 'jihad', or Afghans... But I don't think egyptians need such a political Islamist movement today. ”
"All the evidence we have today shows that political Islam does not have a story that can be told uniformly, because its expression, its experience, its future trajectory are very different from country to country." In 2017, Peter Mandaville, a former senior adviser to the State Department's Office of Religion and Global Affairs, said in a lecture in Peking University's Department of History.
(Duan Jiuzhou, assistant researcher at the Institute of International and Regional Studies, Tsinghua University, also contributed to this article))
Source: The Paper