Lawrence Wright’s essay in The New Yorker on the ideological divisions within the Islamic extremist movement from which al Qaeda emerged is essential reading. It really is long-form magazine journalism at its very best.
One anecdote in it is particularly interesting from a British perspective.
Zayyat reports that Zawahiri called him in March of [1997], when Zayyat arrived in London on business. “Why are you making the brothers angry?” Zawahiri asked him. Zayyat responded that jihad did not have to be restricted to an armed approach. Zawahiri urged Zayyat to change his mind, even promising that he could secure political asylum for him in London. “I politely rejected his offer,” Zayyat writes.
Now Zawahiri might have been bluffing but it is astonishing that al Qaeda’s chief ideologue believed that he could get political asylum in London for an Islamist if they adopted a more radical, more violent stance. It is a confirmation of just how corrupt—and shortsighted—a bargain the whole Londonistan approach was.
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