Hekmatyar calls for jihad

[Dreamer128]

Thursday 11 December 2003, 12:54 Makka Time, 9:54 GMT

Afghan leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has called on his countrymen to launch jihad against US-led forces, saying they were occupation troops.
Hekmatyar made the statements in a video recording released on Wednesday. It appeared to be recently made as it mentioned current events such as US President George Bush’s visit to Iraq last month and the political unrest in Georgia, also last month.
Hekmatyar, wearing a simple wool hat and black jacket, said that US and NATO forces in Afghanistan had failed to return peace and security to Kabul or the rest of the country.
“The resistance has reached a stage where it is not possible to be crushed,” he said, speaking in Afghanistan’s Pashtu language. It was his first known public statement since the one he made by fax last month and his first by video recording since July.
A copy of the latest video, on a compact disc, was handed by a member of Hizb-e-Islami, the group which Hekmatyar leads, to journalists at the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister, has repeatedly issued calls for a war against foreign troops in Kabul and eluded US efforts to arrest or kill him.
Disarming militias
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that he could not confirm a news report that American representatives had met with four commanders under Hekmatyar to persuade them to disarm and form political parties.


Rumsfeld visited Afghanistan last week in an effort to convince regional leaders to disarm their militias.
The US Defence Secretary said Hekmatyar continues to cause “a whale of a lot of trouble” in Afghanistan.
US-led forces ousted the ruling Taliban in 2001. Since then 11,700 soldiers, mainly American, remain in Afghanistan on combat missions against those loyal to the Taliban, al-Qaida and Hekmatyar.
Attacks against foreign aid workers, US soldiers and Afghan government officials have undermined American claims that the coalition is winning the war to stabilise the country.
“We will agree to talks for solving the crisis if the American forces leave Afghanistan and Afghans are given the opportunity to decide their destiny,” said Hekmatyar. He also condemned what he said was “the Americans’ war against Islam and Muslims”.

[Source:english.aljazeera.net]

[ 12-11-2003, 07:25 AM: Message edited by: Dreamer128 ]

[Timber Loftis]

Afghanistan's just like that. You have to throw a few bombs at them every few years to get them to shut up.

[Dar'tanian]

Jihad does not mean "Holy War" like us Americans belive it does. We have miss-interprated the word...all it means is that you have put god above all else (or to make him your first priority i dont rember exactly), it has nothing to do with a holy war!

[johnny]

Originally posted by Dar'tanian: Jihad does not mean "Holy War" like us Americans belive it does. We have miss-interprated the word...all it means is that you have put god above all else (or to make him your first priority i dont rember exactly), it has nothing to do with a holy war!

They must have changed the rules then. If it means "put god above all else", then how do you explain the recruitments for the Jihad all over Europe ? I know what "Jihad" originally stands for, but today it means nothing but "kill all Jews, and kill all Westerners, in the name of Allah".

[Dreamer128]

Originally posted by Dar'tanian: Jihad does not mean "Holy War" like us Americans belive it does. We have miss-interprated the word...all it means is that you have put god above all else (or to make him your first priority i dont rember exactly), it has nothing to do with a holy war!

I get the feeling Mr Hekmatyar made the same mistake

[Skippy1]

Definition
jihad
noun
1 [C or U] a holy war which is fought by Muslims against people who are a threat to the Islamic religion or who oppose its teachings

2 [C] a spiritual fight against the evil in yourself

(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

[uss]

Originally posted by Skippy1: Definition jihad noun 1 [C or U] a holy war which is fought by Muslims against people who are a threat to the Islamic religion or who oppose its teachings 2 [C] a spiritual fight against the evil in yourself (from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

Ah, I also did a bit of searching and found this:

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/jihad.htm

[Skippy1]

Very interesting. Haven't read it all yet, but I get the drift. The fact is that the islamic press and those muslims that speak of Jihad in the press are aware of the western interpretation of the word. If they were not advocating violence, they would use another word in order to get their message across.

[Skippy1]

The very last paragraph really is the crux of the matter.


The term jihad should cause little confusion, for context almost always indicates what a speaker intends. The variant interpretations are so deeply embedded in Islamic intellectual traditions that the usage of jihad is unlikely to be ambiguous. An advocate of jihad as warfare indicates so through his goals. A Sufi uses the term mujahada or specifies the greater jihad. Bourguiba clearly did not advocate violence to improve education and development in Tunisia. When ambiguity does exist, it may well be deliberate. In the case of Arafat’s statement about a “jihad for Jerusalem,” he intended his Muslim audience to hear a call to arms while falling back on the peaceful definition to allay concerns in Israel and the West. Only his later actions reveal whether he was coopting Islamists by adopting their rhetoric or duping Israelis by hiding his violent intentions.

[uss]

Yes, Skippy1, I also believe that this Hekmatyar intends for blodshed, I just wanted to argue about the meaning of the word