International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 51

Know What You Are Fighting
You know, the GIA does not kill at random and we say that we will kill those who
have turned against us, whom we call apostates, thus we do not pass new judgments
nor improvise fatwas, but these are the judgments of God and His Prophet that we
apply. What you hear in the villages and cities about throat-cutting, know that the
victims fell under the verdicts of the promotion of virtue and the fight against vice; 47
they are the transvestites, those who neglect prayer and drink alcohol, women in
indecent clothing as well as those who voted. This is the explanation of the operations
carried out by the mujahedin.
Another category of persons targeted by the mujahedin, and whose assassination is
justified by the principle of promoting virtue and combatting vice, is the category
that refuses to pay the tithe to the mujahedin, the Zakat. The emirs of the regions
and company and detachment leaders were ordered to designate soldiers worthy of
confidence and others who were physically strong to force people to pay the Zakat to
the mujahedin. The ones who hide or refuse to pay are apostates and risk the death
penalty. Thus the places where alcoholic beverages are produced must be burned,
even if their owners are inside with their companions. 48
We should note the path traced by the death drive, which strikes any obstacle
in its way. A brutal and growing Manicheism incites these criminal minds that have
returned to the state of nature, to the war of all against all, the social ties broken and the
foundations of morality and good sense banished under this subculture of devastation
unfolding without restraint or obstacle, in a spectacular regression of humanity to the
primitive stage.
How do they justify the killing and mutilation of children and women that are
neither impious nor apostate? In the same texts, we can read:
The assassinations of children, women, and other innocents are part of a combat
strategy: surprise attacks, ambushes, and the use of explosives. No one can deny
it, as recorded by El Boukhari in speaking of Saab Ibn Djathama, who said that the
Prophet was questioned about the children and women affected by the attacks against
unbelievers and found among them; he responded that they were considered to be
like them, in other words unbelievers. As stated by El Sounouy, “it is reported by the
men of science Abi Hanifa and Chafii that one can kill children and women inside
buildings.”
It is also reported in the judgments of El-Maouardi: “It is allowed, if the army
encircles the enemy, to invade them by throwing stones and with catapults. The
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Punitive expeditions were carried out during the period of legality of the FIS and continued into the
period of Zitouni and Zouabri. These are infamous militias for the eradication of evil and preaching
the good found in Islamist groups throughout the world.
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These arguments are omnipresent in the extremist discourse of different sorts of terrorists. They
were largely analyzed, for the first time and in particular by military presenters, during a colloquium
on terrorism held in Algiers in October 2002.
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