CIAO DATE: 04/2011
November 2010
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
When legendary jihadist Abdullah Azzam was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in November 1989, suspects in his murder included Osama bin Laden and Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) leader Ayman Zawahiri. After the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, Azzam sought to shift jihad to his homeland, Palestine. Zawahiri sought to focus the jihad on Egypt and the other secular Muslim states, in hopes of restoring the caliphate, the rule of Islamic clerics, which had ended after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1924. After Islamic rule had been re-established in the Islamic world, Zawahiri wrote, "then history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." It is not clear who killed Azzam, but his departure from the scene played into Osama bin Laden's hands, by shifting the target of the jihad not to Israel or to Egypt, but to the United States. When bin Laden formed Al Qaeda a year earlier, Zawahiri was convinced to throw in his lot with this "heaven-sent man,"[iii] as Azzam had characterized bin Laden, principally because Zawahiri felt stymied in fulfilling his lifelong dream of overthrowing the Egyptian regime.
Resource link: Al Qaeda's Religious Justification of Nuclear Terrorism [PDF] - 224K