Christof putzel omar hammami autobiography

Putzel wonders if the remarkable communications they shared may have crossed an invisible line between reporter and source. 

“I’m a third-generation reporter,” he said in introducing the new series, “and for years, I’ve been chasing Omar Hammami, a Southern Baptist from Alabama, who, by rapping an online video, became the face of Jihad in Africa and one of the most wanted terrorists in the world”. 

The dramatic podcast is woven from hours of recorded phone calls between the two young men; hundreds of pages of decrypted emails; propaganda videos that Hammami made for Al-Shabaab, his Islamic terrorist organization rooted in Somalia, and extensive interviews with Hammami’s family and friends.

99.

[19] Ambush at Bardale.

[20] Christopher Anzalone, “Harakat al-Shabab in Somalia Hold Conference to Eulogize Usama bin Laden, American Member Omar Hammami Present,” Views from the Occident Blog, May 11, 2011.

[21] Christopher Anzalone, “The End of a Romance? He was unabashedly critical of its “halfway” implementation using the disingenuous excuse of protecting the public interest (maslaha).[35] The failure to fully implement Shari`a is because of a lack of trust in God (tawwakul ‘ala Allah).[36]

The writ of jihadist Shari`a must, Hammami argued, be extended until it encompasses the entire world.

He also criticized the ICU’s treatment of foreign fighters in a short treatise, “A Message to the Beloved Mujahideen Specifically and the Muslims Generally,” dated January 8, 2008, and released by al-Shabab’s media department and distributed on jihadist internet forums by the Global Islamic Media Front.

[12] He warned against premature expansion beyond jihadists’ current capabilities in one of the strategic monographs he penned as Abu Jihad al-Shami, The Vision of the Jihadi Movement & the Strategy for the Current Stage, pp.

In another work, A Strategy for the Land of the Gathering (Syria): An Attempt to Pinpoint the Pivotal Aspects, he advised Syrian rebels to stick to guerrilla tactics against the larger and more technologically-advance and well-equipped Syrian military and security forces.

[13] Al-Amriiki, The Story of an American Jihaadi, pp.

11-12.

[45] Ibid., pp. The second is an honorific title denoting a leader, either religious or societal; however, the term is used by jihadists so frequently and generally that its meaning is of limited value by itself with regards to determining an individual’s specific position in an organization. The picture based on al-Shabab primary sources, however, is at best ambiguous and short on specifics.

In insurgent statements and videos in which he appears or is mentioned, Hammami has been referred to in three ways: al-akh,[14] shaykh,[15] and al-qa’id al-maydani.[16] The first translates to “the brother” and is simply a term of endearment used by some Muslims to refer to a fellow male Muslim.

15.

[50] For a straightforward discussion of the historically symbolic importance of the concept of nifaq, see Robert Wisnovsky, “Beyond Jihad: What We Can Learn from the Religious Language of Terrorists,” Slate, October 23, 2001.

[51] Al-Shami, The Vision of the Jihadi Movement, pp. In his view, however, the mujahidin have not made the formation of a new caliphate their main goal because they have failed to truly understand “the vision and [grand] strategy” as he envisioned it.[42] This misunderstanding is manifested in several ways.

34, fn 43.

[39] The “People of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitab) are generally believed by Muslims to have received revealed scriptures from God, although it is believed they have since corrupted some of its original message. This is necessitated by the obligations of maintaining belief in the absolute unity of God (tawhid), upholding the Shari`a, and safeguarding the welfare of Muslims.[37] Islam, as a total system of life, must be followed to the exclusion of everything else.[38] Hammami identified three ways by which this is achieved: missionary propagation (da`wa), getting non-Muslims to convert to Islam or, if they are from the People of the Book,[39] pay the jizya poll tax, or if this fails, through “outright warfare.”[40] Da`wa is not only aimed at non-Muslims but also Muslims, who must be properly educated and prepared for the advent of the caliphate.

12-15.

[48] Ibid., p. The highest profile of these was a conference the insurgent movement held in mid-May 2011 in the Lower Shabelle region following the killing of Usama bin Ladin in Pakistan. Local jihadist emirates are only meant to lead  to the establishment of a single “Islamic state.”[45] Glocalized militancy, which uses global rhetoric while maintaining a primarily local operational focus, is what Hammami believed is the most serious problem facing the jihadist movement.

He emerged as the English-speaking, Western face of al-Shabab’s recruitment of foreign fighters following an interview from the field in October 2007 with the Arabic satellite news channel al-Jazira and continues to be the subject of intense Western media interest even after his public break with al-Shabab on March 16, 2012, in a video posted to YouTube.[1]

In May 2012, Hammani released the first part of his autobiography describing his experiences before and after traveling to civil war-torn Somalia.[2] The first part of the autobiography, totaling 127 pages, was released as a document upload to the Scribd website in mid-May after its release was teased a week earlier by “somalimuhajirwarrior”[3] in a comment left on the original YouTube video.[4] In a footnote, Hammami also revealed that he produced written work as an online jihadist writer using the pseudonym “Abu Jihad al-Shami,” specifically four written volumes totaling nearly 300 pages.[5] This work stands in contrast to the widely-ridiculed jihadist rap songs for which he was previously known and shows an attempt by the Alabama-native to evolve from simply being another “mujahid” on the battlefield to a respected jihadist strategist and ideologue along the lines of individuals such as Abu Mus`ab al-Suri, whom he openly admires.

This article examines both Hammami’s career in al-Shabab, paying particular attention to the debate over his exact position within it, and his strategic writings under the pen name “Abu Jihad al-Shami.” Drawing from Hammami’s writings, including his autobiography, the article seeks to provide a detailed analytical profile of one of the most famous and prolific Western jihadist foreign fighters, contributing to the existing literature on the development of jihadist strategic studies[6] and the Muslim foreign fighter phenomenon.[7]

The Road to Somalia and Al-Shabab
After living in Egypt for a brief period of time, during which he tried and failed to enroll at al-Azhar University, the prestigious Sunni center of religious learning located in Cairo,[8] Hammami left for Somalia in November 2006 using the pretext of looking for work in Dubai.[9] He traveled to the East African country to support the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), an umbrella movement that brought together local Shari`a courts and a diverse array of Somali Islamist actors and successfully established a brief period of relative peace in much of central and southern Somalia during the second half of 2006 before being overthrown by an Ethiopian invasion in late December of that year.[10] In his autobiography, Hammami blamed the ICU’s military failures on several factors, including the “tribal” mindset of some of its leaders—specifically naming Shaykh Sharif Shaykh Ahmad and Hawiye clan leaders—and overreach by attempting to seize control of more territory than the ICU’s “fledgling army” was capable of realistically controlling at that time.[11] His experiences in 2006-2007 had a profound effect on him, as represented in his strong opposition later to premature expansion and the use of conventional military tactics over guerrilla warfare in spite of jihadists’ technological and numerical disadvantages vis-à-vis their enemies.[12]

After the outbreak of guerrilla warfare by al-Shabab and other Somali Islamist insurgent groups following the Ethiopian invasion, Hammami eventually moved away from the armed faction led by Hasan al-Turki following political and strategic disputes and toward al-Shabab, which emerged in 2007 as a movement independent from the ICU.[13]

Hammami in Al-Shabab’s Media Campaign
Despite the attention he receives in Western media, Hammami’s exact position and role in al-Shabab is debated and unclear.

2; Abu Jihad al-Shami, A Strategic Study of the Prophetic Sirah, pp. 3, 127.

[29] Much of this monograph is lifted whole cloth from several U.S. military training manuals and other books, the titles of which Hammami noted in the introduction but did not fully cite in the actual text.

[30] Al-Shami, An Islamic Guide to Strategy, p.

28.

[56] Other notable personal accounts from Western jihadists include those of Adam Gadahn, Anwar al-`Awlaqi, Samir Khan, Yassin and Mounir Chouka, Eric Breininger, and Donald Maldonado.