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Talk:World Islamic Front

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Requested move

The fatwa urging "Jihad against Jews and Crusaders" was issued by the World Islamic Front. Sources: 911 report, Fas.org. I think it should be moved to that name.

Voting

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
As you can see, User:Chaosfeary added the term "International Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders" to the first of the al-Qaeda article on December 9. The term has remained there ever since (through 70 edits). Apparently, quite a few editors of the al-Qaeda article think that the term exists. --Peter McConaughey 03:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

File:Organization layout.gif

Common misconceptions occurs when we try to simplify the organization of Middle Eastern groups. While this diagram is a drastic over-simplification in itself, it illustrates that al-Qaeda, the World Islamic Front, and the International Front for Jihad against the Zionists and Crusaders are not the same thing. --Peter McConaughey 18:34, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

This diagram doesn't make any sense. Where does it come from? Some Jews and Christians are part of the International Front? Most Muslims are? If there is a separate such organization, the original poster is correct that the 1998 fatwaq refers to the World Islamic Front (I think there is another page with a similar name btw), and the article must be changed to reflect that. More research is necessary to make some sense of this.--csloat 21:04, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
The original Arab text refers to a Jihad against Zionists and Crusaders. Most of the people of the world have a big problem with Zionists and Crusaders, including me (a Christian), and most of my Jewish friends. Up until 9/11, we assumed that our leaders (of the United States) followed a higher law than "might makes right." When the tragedy happened, we thought that the law and civility the "free world" had established would prove to these "backward people" that there are superior methods of dealing with disputes than to hurt and kill each other.
Instead, our United States representatives proved bin Laden right. They fell into every trap that he "prophesied." Bin laden was able to drain us of over two trillion dollars, expose the atrocities that we had previously been able to hide from most of the world (including our own people), and draw us into a war that we cannot win. There may not have been very many people actively fighting against the bigotry of Zionists and Crusaders a few years ago, but the United States response to 9/11 has certainly opened our eyes since then. I can assure you that large numbers of people from all ethnic and religious groups consider themselves part of the front against the war crimes being committed. --Peter McConaughey 01:25, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
While what you say regarding bin Laden might be true, that is not really relevant to this discussion. I don't believe that you as a Christian feel that you are fighting a "jihad", nor would I expect any of your Jewish friends. This is not about opposition to the Bush administration, but about the correct name for this article. I think that the organisation that released the Fatwa in 1998 is the "World Islamic Front" so I'm sticking with my proposal to move the page. Jacoplane 01:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not Islamic, so I'm certainly not part of the "World Islamic Front." I am, however, part of a front against the war criminals known as Zionists and Crusaders, as I consider all Americans should be who care about this country, its future, and the principles upon which it was founded. --Peter McConaughey 01:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
So what the hell is this International Front then? Something you made up? Where did the diagram come from? We certainly don't need an entry on the "front" that you describe and certainly the article refers to the World Islamic Front... bin Laden certainly would have no part of such a front as you describe. Maybe I don't understand what you're saying but this sounds like original research to me, and it sounds very far afield of what is described in this article as relating to the 1998 fatwa.csloat 02:36, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sure you don't want an 8-page report on the differences between the various groups, so I created a diagram for your convenience. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, I think it shows what I could scratch the surface with in about 10,000 words. Adding citations might bring it up to 12,000, but the ratios involved will always be subjective. I will never be able to get a million Jews to sign a statement that they are against Zionism, for instance, but based on the people I've talked to, I think that about 35% to 40% are. That percentage could be off, but I personally have talked to many people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds, from all around the world, who think that the methods of the Zionists are despicable, and who will not fight with the Zionists when the end comes and the sides are chosen.
If you believe President Bush when he says, "If you are not with us, you are against us," then it looks like the sides have already been chosen. I don't think there's very many people with the side of the Crusaders and Zionists. If the only other position is against the Crusaders and Zionists, then I feel comfortable with the numbers of my side during the upcoming apocalypse.
I started this article because someone in al-Qaeda asserted that al-Qaeda is the same as the Front. It isn't, so I changed the al-Qaeda article to more accurately describe it as a subset of the Front. After that, people wanted to know what the Front was, so I started this article. I didn't put the original reference to the Front in the al-Qaeda article; I merely clarified it. There are a lot of groups in Islam that don't like the United States or Israel. I realize that its easier to combine many of these groups into a general idea when talking about them, but thinking of the larger International Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders, which is really more of a movement, as the same thing as al Qaeda, is perhaps too much of a generalization. You could generalize the World Islamic Front as loose enough to be the same thing as the International Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders except that the World Islamic Front only has Islamic members. That means that most of the people in Bush's "against us" category could not be part of the World Islamic Front.
Your assertion that "bin Laden certainly would have no part of such a front as you describe," is absolutely untrue. bin Laden isn't a racist. He encourages any group that helps his cause and has often appealed to American and Jews to control the crimes being committed in their names by their leaders. --Peter McConaughey 00:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't plan to debate this. You are describing a "front" that doesn't exist in any encyclopedic sense. If you want to be in bin Laden's group, go ahead and ask him if he'll take an anti-Zionist Irish Catholic (just guessing here...) but whether he says yes or no, this doesn't belong in Misplaced Pages.--csloat 11:38, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I have no desire to belong to bin Laden's group, only to create factually correct articles. If we created an article incorporating the World Islamic Front (WIF) with the larger organization created by the WIF through their Jihad Against Zionists and Crusaders fatwa, it would incorrectly identify members of the larger organization as being strictly Islamic. Nowhere in the Jihad Against Zionists and Crusaders fatwa, does the WIF limit the membership of the organization to Muslim. In his video and audio addresses, bin Ladin often refers to the International Front for Jihad against the Zionists and Crusaders (IFJZC) as a multi-cultural organization or movement concerned primarily with doing what is right for all people by objecting to the special interests of Zionists and Crusaders. He regularly appeals to Americans to join the IFJZC to fight "tyranny and suppression of freedom to own country, ...the Patriot Act under the disguise of fighting terrorism." --Peter McConaughey 19:36, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

You can make up whatever groups you want and describe whoever you want as a member, but they do not belong in Misplaced Pages. The name you propose for this group gets no hits on google. The article title reveals that all hits point to this as a different moniker for al-Qaeda or for the "World Islamic Front," which is more common. Nobody (except you) is defending this bizarre claim that bin Laden is referring to a separate group and making a "multicultural" appeal. Bin Laden does not "regularly appeal to Americans to join the IFJZC" -- he has never done so. The front is listed on this page as a synonym for the World Islamic Front. Again, you can make up whatever groups you want and draw charts all day long, but don't expect that stuff to be in an encyclopedia.
If I go through all the trouble of cliping the segments that show bin Laden appealing to Americans to join the IFJZC, will you change your vote?
There is no Arabic word for "Zionist," so one needs to be mindful when translating as to whether the user was talking about all Jews or only those Jews with Zionist ambitions. I think it's pretty obvious from the Jihad Against Zionists and Crusaders fatwa, which group bin Laden was talking about. --Peter McConaughey 20:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
No, Peter, because you are out to lunch. I have read quite a few of bin Laden's speeches and I am quite certain there is no such group as the IFJZC and that he has made no appeals to Americans to join such a group. You are simply twisting his words around to promote some kind of cause that it is clear even he would not be interested in.--csloat 03:53, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Please don't let your personal feelings cloud the matter. As you can see, User:Chaosfeary added the term "International Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders" to the first of the al-Qaeda article on December 9. The term has remained there ever since (through 70 edits). I didn't add the name of the organization to the al-Qaeda article; I simply made it a link to an expanded article. I understand that you want to make this thing about Muslims vs. Christians and Jews, but it simply isn't. Many Jews don't like Zionism or Crusading, and speaking as a Christian, I can say that I don't like those things either. If we are forced to take sides in this war, I feel confident that most of us will not be on the side of the Zionists and Crusaders. --Peter McConaughey 03:39, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
I do not seek to make anything about Muslims v. Christians and Jews. The term "International Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders," as I said above, is treated by experts as synonymous with "World Islamic Front," i.e. al-Qaeda. I agree with you that there are Jews and Christians who don't like Zionism or "crusading," but that is not the point -- the point is that there is not an organized group of Jews and Christians who have declared "jihad" against Zionists and Crusaders. As I said I am quite familiar with bin Laden's rhetoric as well as that of other jihadists, and they never describe the sort of "multicultural" alliance that you're talking about.--csloat 20:12, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

There is no neutral ground – no neutral ground – in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death. ~President George W. Bush, March 19, 2004

Redirects?

To add to all our confusion, this page and this page redirect to Al-Qaeda rather than here. Is there a reason to have this one as a separate article from the al Qaeda article at all? If so, those pages should redirect here rather than to al-Qaeda.--csloat 20:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

How many things you lump together depends on how accurately you want to know your enemy. The major differences are:
  • Culture - some groups are comprised of purely Islamic members, while others cross cultural boundaries.
  • Structure - some groups have strict hierarchical control, others are purely a movement, and all flavors exist in-between
  • Size - al Qaeda has been described as having less than two dozen members and more than 40,000 on American television alone. If we include every punk that claims to be part of al Qaeda, I'm sure that number would be over a million. The supposed strength of the organization depends on how many groups we combine with it in our minds.
  • Religious Zeal - To some extent, all of the larger organized groups have political goals. As one rises in the organization, motivational religious zeal is replaced by political logic. The political aspect is consciously identified by members of these groups to widely varying degrees.
  • Goals - goals range in these groups from eliminating globalization threats to uniting the Ummah under a restored Caliph.
I'm sure bin Laden would thank you very much for merging all of these disparate groups under one or two headings. By using "Islamic" in any of the titles, you also help the hopeful Caliph to play the religion card, uniting ever more of the 1.2 billion Muslims in a common cause. --Peter McConaughey 21:03, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm flattered to learn that 1.2 billion Muslims hang on my every word. I'll be more careful next time. Back here on earth, you are just wrong about these things. Do you have any evidence, besides the chart that you yourself drew, that there exists such a group as you describe? You raise several red herrings above. Of course one would not want to confuse, for example, a group like Monotheism and Jihad with a group like, say, Abu Sayyaf -- obviously there are cultural, structural, religious, and goal-related differences between these groups that one would not want to gloss over. But you're demanding recognition of a group that can't be shown to exist by anyone's account.--csloat 21:34, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
You have nothing to fear from me. There is no reason to exaggerate my words or to take a hostile tone. I am here for the same reason as you, to create an efficient and accurate encyclopedia. We have different viewpoints, and that's a good thing. When we use those differences to create an article that pleases all of the editors involved, we make it stronger, more informative, and neutral.
I don't consider Misplaced Pages to be a debating forum. I've told you what I know because it is true and I want Misplaced Pages to be true. The information that I mentioned above, however, does not help any cause in which I am interested. For that reason, I do not feel compelled to offer it as anything more than things that you can research if you choose. If, instead, your desire is to base wars on misinformation and propaganda, don't be surprised when you lose. --Peter McConaughey 22:03, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Founding of WIF

Peter, every source that has anything to say about this agrees that the 2/23 fatwa founded the "front," and indeed that the front itself was a rhetorical gimmick to create the appearance of a broad-ranging Islamist consensus when really this was a small group of fanatics. Note the different signatories, including Egyptians, a Pakistani, and a Bangladeshi, representing various groups -- what the fatwa doesn't say is that these people are no longer recognized as representatives of those groups and in a couple cases there was animosity. It is generally agreed by experts - see, for example, Benjamin and Simon - that bin Laden used the term "World Islamic Front" here as a rhetorical ploy, essentially creating a "front" out of whole cloth. Note that he never uses this term prior to 1998 and his much longer 1996 fatwa never mentions anything like this.

Do you have sources that say otherwise? Where does all this come from? You're aggressively editing out references to the FAS website; do you have access to another translation? James Howarth's translation in Messages to the World is substantively the same as this one, including the word "Jews." Also, I believe this translation is by the FBIS, not the FAS; it is just on the latter's website. I don't see any indication on the web either way but I find it hard to believe that the FAS would translate such a document. In any case, can you please explain clearly what it is you think this article should say that it does not?--csloat 20:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Content of the article must be cited and verifiable. If you think that someone is an expert and that his opinion is relevant to the article, please add that information, but it must be cited. It must be in the form so-and-so says that somesuch allegation. Of course, we can't have the opinion of every crackpot around, so relevance might become an issue, but as long as you say who makes the biased claims, it is NPOV to quote or summarize their words while attributing it to them. That way, if one thinks that James Howarth is biased, for instance, the reader can easily discount his findings. Saying that something is true without citing the source in the article leaves the reader with no option but to discount Misplaced Pages entirely when POV is found. --Peter McConaughey 18:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Read just about any book on this topic to verify these claims Peter. This is not an "allegation"; it is accepted by everyone who writes about this. It is simply not a POV issue. Can you cite anyone who disagrees with the statement? I notice we don't need a cite to document that the Declaration of Independence is the founding document of the United States, or are you insisting that claim of fact is also POV? -csloat 18:26, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
If "just about any book on this topic" can "verify these claims" then it shouldn't be too hard to cite one of them. This is an encyclopedia, CSloat. It is not your soapbox. We do not assert controversial information, no matter how strongly you know it to be true, without citing a verifiable source.
Granted, you could make your point by continuing to follow me around, taking issue with benign assertions like the Declaration of Independence founding the United States of America, but I would rather that we work toward creating strong articles. Strong articles are created when the reader considers them to be useful resources of information, not sales-pitches for a war. From your point of view, the people who find your edits to be propaganda may not matter, but Misplaced Pages is a global resource. It has to be accessible to everyone. I feel confident that, if we work together, we can build articles that are informative for the widest range of people. All I'm asking is that you cite the sources of your controversial claims. This is the minimum requirement of a Misplaced Pages entry. --Peter McConaughey 18:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem with citing one is that it makes it seem as if only one expert feels this to be the case. Again, why aren't we insisting that the Declaration of independence be cited in this way? And I'm not following you around; the document is analogous. I'm not trying to make this a soap box; it is simply not a POV issue. You can't cite a single source who disagrees with the claim; I can cite at least twenty that agree with it. I really don't think it makes sense to have a list of sources; compare "The sun, according to Newton, Gallileo, Einstein, and George W. Bush, is the earth's main source of heat and light". Seriously, why do we need a source for facts such as this that nobody disagrees with? This has nothing to do with propaganda. This claim is not "controversial".--csloat 19:02, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
PS how the hell is the claim that the DofI founded the US "benign" while this claim is considered a "sales pitch"?? The claims are exactly analogous, and they have exactly the same number of experts who disagree with them: zero. Sorry Peter but your claims are sheer nonsense. You are starting to remind me of another user, who coincidentally disappeared right around the same time you arrived. Interesting.--csloat 19:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
If you are comparing me to other editors that have kept you from biasing the content of articles, I thank you for the compliment. Beyond that, it appears that this conversation has taken a very personal turn for you. Since articles cannot be improved in an environment controlled by ego, and my only interest is in creating a strong and informative article, I will graciously bow out of this conversation. --Peter McConaughey 19:56, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
OK Zeph. I'm not trying to get personal, I just don't see any evidence to back up your claim that this claim is controversial.-csloat 22:09, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Who is this Zeph? One of your ex-lovers? As my girlfriend keeps explaining, always try to remember the name of the person you're with.
If I'm reading it right, it appears that Misplaced Pages:Verifiability wants the person making the claim to back up his statements. It doesn't appear that the person questioning uncited claims in an article has to show evidence that someone else questioned the things that the original person made up. --Peter McConaughey 22:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Misquotes

From this article:

Original Arabic text of the fatwa is considered by terrorism experts of all political perspectives such as Rohan Gunaratna, Peter Bergen, Daniel Benjamin, Richard Clark, Michael Scheuer, and many others to be the founding document of the World Islamic Front.

The above is a series of misquotes. I'll add them one at a time.

  • Rohan Gunaratna actually said that in 1998, al-Qaeda announced the formation of a "second front" called the "World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," and that the second front released a new fatwa ordering the killing of Americans. The article misquotes the name of the organization that Gunaratna used and misquotes that Gunaratna said that the fatwa created the organization. In fact, Gunaratna states the an organization of a different name formed, announced its existence, and then created the fatwa.

--Peter McConaughey 20:10, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Great, let's have the citation then.csloat 22:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Goat nuggets

You are all arguing over goat nuggets. The Mehdi did not appear to any of your so called "terrorism experts" to explain the meaning of the 23 February 1998 World Islamic Front Statement. The meanings and titles you assign to it are as valuable as goat nuggets. Nothing. Anything that is not in the statement is not true about the statement. The Mehdi did not make a secret statement for advanced users and American "terrorism experts." There is only one statement. If you want to know what it says, read it. Any interpretation different than it is false. --The Random Element 21:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that there should be quotes directly from the statement, but there is no need to wage jihad against "so-called 'terrorism experts'" to add them. There is no need for this. Terrorism experts have studied the words of the fatwa, as well as the many other documents produced by al Qaeda. That is why their interpretation is meaningful, not because they have access to something we don't (although in most cases, they also do). But the implication of the fatwa is obvious. Before this fatwa, the "World Islamic Front" is not mentioned. This really isn't that controversial. I don't know of anyone who disagrees with the point.--csloat 22:08, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
If you don't want to provide links to any verifiable information in the article, would you mind providing just one of your links to anyone saying that the fatwa created the World Islamic Front here in discussion? --Peter McConaughey 22:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Random Element revert

In response to your last edit summary; I have read the fatwa; in fact, I have written about it. I even said I think the quotes belong in the article. What I disagree with is your POV slaps at what you call "so-called" terrorism experts. There is no need for it and you are distorting the claims of this article. I also responded to you above in talk; please look at this page before charging that someone else isn't paying attention to it.--csloat 22:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

If you agreed with some of what she said, why did you revert the whole thing? Do you expect her to copy-edit it to make you happy when you won't even tell her what parts you have a problem with? If the only thing you don't like is "so-called," why not delete that phrase? --Peter McConaughey 22:48, 28 December 2005 (UTC)