Jihadists see divine approval in suicide bombing

As noted at The Long War Journal on July 6, the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, posted a series of propaganda photos from a recent suicide bombing in Aleppo. One of the pictures in particular has caught the attention of jihadists online.

The image, which can be seen above, shows the explosion caused by Abu Osama al Jazrawi after he detonated his improvised vehicle bomb. Look carefully at the peak of the flame and you’ll see what appears to be a hand pointing an index finger towards the heavens. Some jihadists believe this picture shows that Allah approves of Abu Osama’s act. Raising a lone index finger in praise of or supplication to Allah is a common gesture. And the Al Nusrah Front’s supporters think the fire has duplicated it.

Of course, fire creates many shapes. And you’d be hard-pressed to find anything divine in the aftermath of the many suicide bombings launched around the world each year. The jihadists are seeing what they want to see.

But the mythology surrounding Abu Osama’s suicide bombing reminds me of Abdullah Azzam’s writings, and the work Azzam did to popularize the notion of jihad back in the 1980s. One of Azzam’s books, Ayyat al‐Rahman fee Jihad al‐Afghan (God’s Signs in the Afghan Jihad), contains references to supposedly divine acts on the Afghan battlefield. As CDR Youssef Aboul-Enein wrote for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in 2008, Azzam marketed mythological details such as: a flight of birds taking flight “as a warning from God that” a “Soviet low tactical airstrike” was imminent, “scorpions that do not sting the Muslim fighters,” “corpses of martyrs that do not decay,” “fog that arrives to shield the Afghan and Arab fighters,” “enemy rounds that do not explode,” “a bullet that hit the belt of Afghan mujahideen leader [Jalaluddin] Haqqani,” “martyrs who refused to relinquish their weapon except to a Muslim,” and “martyrs smiling in death.”

Some of these motifs are still prevalent. For instance, jihadists frequently post pictures of fallen “martyrs” who appear to be smiling.

Azzam’s teachings continue to influence jihadists to this day. The Al Nusrah Front considers him to be one of its ideological ancestors, which is unsurprising given that Azzam mentored Osama bin Laden.

If he had survived a massive car bombing in 1989 and were alive today, Azzam would undoubtedly see what today’s jihadists see in the photo above — Allah’s will.

The Al Nusrah Front subsequently posted a video of Abu Osama’s suicide attack in Aleppo. One screen shot from the video can be seen below. Note his right hand.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

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Tags: Abdullah Azzam, Al Nusrah Front, Al Qaeda, aleppo