The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

al-Zawahiri, Ayman (b. 1951)

The radical Egyptian Islamist Ayman al-Zawahiri was born in Cairo on June 19, 1951, to Dr. Muhammad Rabie al-Zawahiri and Umayma ‘Azzam. The Zawahiri and ‘Azzam families enjoyed an aristocratic rank in Egyptian society that included physicians, university professors, and high-ranking religious and political notables. Zawahiri was raised in Ma‘adi, an upper-class suburb south of Cairo, where he was exposed at an early age to a broad range of different political currents and ideologies. Throughout his life, he was an active member and chief ideologue of a number of different violent political organizations, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda.

Zawahiri was introduced to the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, the infamous ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood whose work Milestones has been regarded as a blueprint for transnational Islamic militancy, through his maternal uncle Mahfouz ‘Azzam, who himself served as Qutb’s personal lawyer and trusted confidant. Qutb’s assassination in 1966, which had a deep effect on Zawahiri, contributed in part to Zawahiri’s active involvement, at the early age of 15, in a clandestine militant cell that sought to overthrow the Egyptian government and pursue a model of Islamic governance. The cell matured in 1974, as Zawahiri was finishing his medical education, when it converged with other similar militant networks that together later formed the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Then named simply al-Jihad, the group was under the direct leadership of ‘Abd al-Salam al-Faraj, who, along with Khaled Islambouli, was directly responsible for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat in 1981.

Zawahiri was one of over three hundred defendants tried for conspiracy in the assassination. The trial lasted three years and resulted in Zawahiri’s release, after he was charged and convicted of illegal weapons possession. He emerged from his prison experience as an articulate voice for the militants and eventually assumed leadership of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Zawahiri left Egypt for Saudi Arabia in 1985, where he practiced medicine in Jeddah. Shortly after, he arrived in Afghanistan in order to contribute to the jihad against the Soviet invasion taking place there. In fact, Zawahiri had already been exposed to the Afghan jihad effort through two trips to Pakistan in 1980 and 1981, where he had offered medical services to Afghan refugees under the auspices of the Red Crescent. The return to Afghanistan in 1986 provided the opportunity for Zawahiri to cultivate a relationship with Osama bin Laden.

As the Afghan-Soviet struggle subsided, Zawahiri, along with Bin Laden, sought refuge in Sudan under the patronage of Hasan al-Turabi and established operational bases between Khartoum and Yemen. However, in 1996 Zawahiri, members of Islamic Jihad, and Bin Laden’s group were expelled from Sudan after the failed assassination attempt on the Egyptian president Husni Mubarak a year earlier. Zawahiri and Bin Laden both found refuge in Afghanistan, then under the control of the Taliban. The alliance between the two leaders strengthened, and they issued a joint fatwa (religious opinion) in 1998 under the auspices of the “World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders,” which served as a virtual declaration of war against the United States and its allies. By this point Zawahiri’s organization, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, had formally merged with Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Zawahiri was tried in 1999 in absentia and sentenced to death by an Egyptian court in what has come to be known as the Returnees from Albania case.

Until Bin Laden’s death in 2011, Zawahiri was seen as the strategic and operational commander of al-Qaeda by most global intelligence services. On June 16, 2011, Zawahiri was announced as the new head of al-Qaeda by the organization’s consultative assembly. At the time of writing he was under worldwide sanctions by the United Nations, and there was a $25 million bounty for him from the United States. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is largely believed to be in hiding in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the northwest of the country.

Zawahiri assumed the role of unofficial spokesman of radical political Islam since his imprisonment in the 1980s. His writings and proclamations are voluminous and extensive. One of the most important ideological statements he authored is a polemical history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt titled The Bitter Harvest: The Brotherhood in Sixty Years (1991). Part history, part intra-Islamist critique, the text scorns the official policies and leadership of the Brotherhood since its founding up to the present. He condemns the Brotherhood’s alleged collusion with Egypt’s successive secular governments in the 20th century as well as its recognition of, and participation in, secular governing institutions such as representative parliament and elections. He praises Sayyid Qutb and other members of the Brotherhood who did not follow the official line of the Brotherhood as the true representatives of Islamic political action. In The Bitter Harvest, Zawahiri increasingly deploys, even if implicitly, the rhetoric of takfīr (excommunication), which in his theological apparatus legitimates violent action.

In addition to hundreds of speeches, pamphlets, and short treatises, he wrote a memoir titled Knights under the Prophet’s Banner (2001), which provides detail on the formation and development of Islamic Jihad in Egypt and its later convergence with al-Qaeda. At the same time it condemns other Islamist activists for not pursuing the path of violent action he advocates. One of his targets of criticism, Muntasir al-Zayyat, a prominent Islamist lawyer and former cell mate of Zawahiri’s, wrote a critical biography of Zawahiri in 2002, Ayman al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him. Together, the two texts provide some of the most important primary material on the evolution of Egyptian Islamic radicalism.

In order to gain an appreciation of Zawahiri’s rhetorical and theological appeal, it is important to read Zawahiri’s writings in light of the classic Islamic exegetical and legal traditions. A cursory look at one example is revealing; consider the treatise “Loyalty and Enmity: An Inherited Doctrine and Lost Reality” (Al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara’: ‘Aqida Manqula wa-Waqi‘ Mafqud), written in 2002.

In the first section of the text Zawahiri provides the theological and legal justification for the doctrine of loyalty and enmity, which mandates Muslims to commit socially and politically to the worldwide Muslim community (umma) over and against any association with non-Muslims. He begins with the Qur’anic verse, “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah—unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions. But Allah cautions you to fear Himself. For the final goal is to Allah” (Q. 3:28). He invokes this verse in order to describe a permanent mode of tension between Muslims and non-Muslims, which may be marked by outright warfare (jihad), cordial demeanor, or dissimulation (taqiyya), depending on context. Zawahiri grounds the treatise in the Qur’an, hadith, and quotes from prominent scholars (‘ulama’) from the classical tradition, which together rhetorically function to promote a sense of undisputed orthodoxy. For example, he begins with the tenth-century Muslim polymath Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (d. 923), who is recognized by many Muslims as Sunni Muslim par excellence. He then draws upon Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 1328) ideas, which have been used by modern radicals to justify their violent positions against secular Muslim rulers. However, throughout the text he weaves together statements and opinions of classical scholars across centuries of Islamic intellectual history. The cumulative rhetorical effect is to create the semblance of an undeniable historical consensus, to which only Zawahiri and his allies remain loyal.

In the second section of the text, Zawahiri discusses the relevance of the doctrine of loyalty and enmity to the contemporary political context and identifies those who have “deviated” from the mandate. His first target of criticism is the entire “clique” of Muslim rulers who “have placed their armies into the service of the new Crusading campaign against the Islamic umma” (Zawahiri, 2002, 101). He then identifies state-sponsored ‘ulama’ (scholars) and lay intellectuals as the “rulers’ henchmen.” He calls them the “Sultan’s ulema” who “sign fatwas delivered from the palace, to legitimize this seizure, this pillaging, this Crusader overlordship” (106). He holds this class responsible for “distracting” the youth from their true religious duty of jihad.

The repeated reference to medieval images such as the Crusades or the invading Mongols paints a picture that the majority of contemporary Muslims are out of step with their “heritage.” Zawahiri uses this trope effectively. At one point he asks rhetorically, “So, what would al-Tabari, Ibn Hazam, and Ibn Taymiyya say if they were made witness to American planes, troops, and their allies launching off from the [Arabian] Gulf to strike Muslims in Iraq?” (Zawahiri, 2002, 92). Zawahari’s recourse to the imagery and symbolism of a mythical Islamic imperial past is one of the cornerstones of his rhetorical allure. Deeper analysis of Zawahiri’s writings in the context of classical Islamic theological and legal traditions will likely reveal more about the ideological and aesthetic appeal of his message.