Born in Palestine, Azzam’s politics was shaped by his membership of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad — an organisation devoted to overthrowing that country’s secular state. He arrived in Pakistan in 1979, and founded the Maktab al-Khidmat (Office of Service). In time, the Maktab mentored thousands of West Asian jihadists — among them, Osama bin Laden.
Eight years later, Azzam teamed up with Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, a religious studies teacher in Islamabad whose family’s experiences of Partition left him with an abiding hatred of Hindus and India. Together, the men set up the Markaz Dawat wal’Irshad, which gave birth to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Azzam’s significance, though, far transcends his role in the founding of the Lashkar: his ideas have become the keystone of a system of ideas that today threatens Pakistan itself.
From Azzam to Masood Azhar
For the most part, The Signs is a compendium of miracles: stories of men whose bodies were untouched by bullets which ripped apart their clothes and of birds that flew faster than the Soviet Union’s supersonic jets to warn the mujahideen of imminent bombardment.
But Azzam also laid out his vision of the obligations of an Islamic state. “It is incumbent on the Islamic state,” he stated, “to send out a group of mujahideen to their neighbouring infidel state. They should present Islam to the leader and his nation. If they refuse to accept Islam, jizyah [a tax] will be imposed upon them and they will become subjects of the Islamic state. If they refuse this second option, the third course of action is jihad to bring the infidel state under Islamic domination.”
http://newageislam.com/the-mind-of-pakistans-jihad--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1262
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