00.29 00.39 Show no signs of confusion and strain. Be gay, happy, cheerful and confident instead.You carry out a deed that God loves and approves of.Then the day will come when you will be in paradise with the black-eyed virgins and with God’s approval.And smile death into the face, young warrior, for you shall enter into the eternal gardens. KILLING FOR ALLAHA film by Christian Rathner

00.46 Several days after the terror attacks of September 11th 2001, a teacher by the name of Abd Samad hears on the radio some staggering news on his way home. A French man was suspected of being one of the assassins of September 11th. But he was said to have been arrested weeks before the assault. The name of the man: Zacarias Moussaoui. Abd Samad knows at once: he is his brother.

01.12 A thousand memories, a thousand questions. Zacarias Moussaoui, the young man from France – a terrorist?Willing to kill the innocent? We try to understand and follow his tracks.

Insert01.30 OSAbd Samad Moussaoui Brother He changed in the course of the time. In 1992, he went to England. There, he met people who told him of jihad, of defending Islam, and that Islam should obtain new laurels – as if it could be besmirched by anyone. These people have only one goal – promoting their own interests.

01.58 Abd Samad writes a book on the life of his brother – from a very personal point of view. He presents it to the media. Shortly afterwards he hides from the public. Because – according to his mother – he belongs to an extremist Islamic organization. Some people believe he is in Lebanon. He has broken all contacts with his family.

02.34 Remembrances of better times. Aisha el Wafi raised four children. For the time being, it looks as though she has lost both sons to extremist thinking.

02.46 OS InsertAisha el WafiMother of Zacarias Moussaoui, Narbonne I love my children but they were about to destroy themselves because of religion. Abd Samad reproached Zacarias for not being a true Muslim. Zacarias said the same of Abd Samad. This is certainly not what I wanted – a quarrel inside the family because of religion.

03.24 Aisha el Wafi is deeply worried about Zacarias, who has been in prison awaiting his trial for four years. ‘Tango Tango’ he had called himself at the American flight school where he wanted to be trained as a pilot. He became a suspect and was arrested on grounds of a visa violation – weeks before September 11th.

03.48 His mother travels into the USA, visits a court hearing, wants to support him. He acts stubborn and quarrelsome in court. States for the records that he wishes all Americans and Israeli to be wiped out. He confesses to be an Al-Quaida terrorist and to have participated in planning an assault, although not for September 11th. Yet, he might be facing a death sentence in the USA, for only planning to commit acts of terror, hijack a plane, destroy and use it as a means of mass destruction. According to the mother, he should be protected from the American justice – and from himself.

04.30 OS Mother Guilty? He is guilty of belonging to this movement, Al- Quaida. But he is not guilty of the September 11th attacks. He had nothing to do with it. But yes, he belongs to Al-Quaida, that’s for sure. They are a gang of criminals.

04.52 7 July 2005. Islamic terror in Europe. London is bleeding. The terrorists: fellow countrymen, Britons. Europeans like Zacarias Moussaoui. What motivates them to kill?

05.08 OS Mother Zacarias was a child like all the others. When he was a baby, he never woke me up at night. He was a pretty child, but fat. By nine months, he already weighed 15 kilos. We had bad experiences in our life. We five – the four children and I - experienced a lot of violence from the father. Zacarias was still a baby but he saw and heard it. He was there. But he was not beaten up because we left the father when Zacarias was two and a half years old.

06.01 The parents are from Morocco. After the divorce the mother enters into a new relationship. Years later the father tries to re-establish contact with the children.

06.16pointing at photos There are conflicts. The young family is poor but Aisha el Wafi works hard. She advances to a Telecom employee, a good career since her modest start in France.I haven’t changed. I’m still the same.

06.34 In the apartment building in Narbonne, where the family lives in the early years, ethnic groups fight each other. In school, the children are met with prejudices because of the colour of their skin. Being strangers and staying strangers leave marked traces. Especially Zacarias suffers under these conditions. “Where can we integrate ourselves,” he once asked his mother, “after all we are Frenchmen.”

06.59 OS Mother In the street, my children heard harsh words: dirty nigger, dirty Arab, what are you doing here? Although they were born here in France and can’t go anywhere else. When they were about 16, 17 they often retuned from the disco before 12 o’clock. Then I knew they had had problems again.In school, it was the same. They once knocked out one of Zacarias’s teeth because he didn’t give something to a child when playing. This racism was in everyday life, time and again. You must have experienced it in order to understand it.

08.15 Only later on do the children learn about their religion. As youngsters, the mother says, they refused to even talk about religion. In their opinion Islam was not French but antiquated and the world of their Moroccan grandparents. Only as a young adult does Zacarias Moussaoui learn to pray.Sheik Mohamed Khattabi, the Imam of the new Ibn Rushd-Mosque in Montpellier knows well about the problems of the young Muslims.

08.41 OS InsertSheik Mohamed KhattabiIbn Rushd-Mosque, Montpellier The problems of racism, the exclusion, the feeling of having a second nationality although one is a citizen like all the others. You want to have a flat, but you are not entitled to. You want to work but you are not allowed to. Probably there were several circumstances that caused Zacarias Moussaoui to do what he possibly did. I could also name cases of young people who suffered under the same problems but who reacted differently. This puts the theory of exclusion into perspective. In any case, there is this unease. An unease the Islamic youth feels and experiences.

09.40 But the reasons for the violence are not only to be found in Western countries. They have a lot to do with the conflicts in the Arab world.

09.58 Cairo, the capital of Egypt, is the cradle of the political Islamic movement, the Islamism. Here, the Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in 1928. Islam was to become the sole foundation of state and society. The consequences were fierce conflicts with the potentates, arrests, torture and executions. A sore dream of a better world.

10.27 And until today a topical search for identity as an answer to secularisation and globalisation.

10.34 Today, the Muslim brothers, although officially prohibited, are an important factor in Egypt. They demand political freedom, democracy based on Islam. ‘Blood and life we give for the Islam’, they chant.

11.00 Montpellier in Southern France. A city of students and tourists. Zacarias and his brother live here. According to his brother, it was here where Zacarias Moussaoui first met Islamists. On the university campus he makes the acquaintance of Muslim Brothers and of so called Wahhabis. Representatives of a particularly strict interpretation of the law from Saudi Arabia. The university, a place of ideas, unformed thinking and juvenile vehemence.

11.30 Zacarias hears for the first time of the religiously motivated fight, the jihad, of divine law, the sharia, of the struggle for the Islamic state and true Islam. And he hears of the question of violence.

11.58 The Islamists dream of a counter world, of a state in line with divine law, without oppression, without corruption, without poverty, instead pious and puritanical.Governments and contemporaries are considered ignoramuses and disbelievers. As if prophet Mohammed had never lived.

12.23 Some are impatient. Militant groups form. They want to take change into their own hands. A coup d’état is envisaged. A jihad against the ruling class. In the underground, the idea of violence shapes and narrows the thinking.

12.41 OS InsertMurad HofmannEx Diplomat, Bonn I think in all these cases – and it is also known of other religions – there is a loss of identity that leads to an ideologisation of religion. Religion is treated like an ideology, it empties its spirituality.

13.01 A Hadith, a word passed down by the prophet, plays a major role in ideology, says Murad Hofmann, who converted to Islam in 1980 and has since been one of the most important Muslim voices in Germany. The Muslims, so it is said, are to fight the evil…

13.21 OS Hofmann …and if possible with the hand, if not with the tongue and if that is not possible either, at least with the heart.Thus many young Muslims conclude they are not only entitled but even obliged to fight the evil with their hands wherever they can.

13.49 On 6 October 1981, state president Anwar al Sadat is murdered. Two militant groups had planned the assassination: Gamaa Islamiya and Al Jihad. Further assaults are to follow.

14.13 Montasser al Zayat is a lawyer in Cairo and an Islamist. He fights for the re-Islamisation of society as well. Yet, he has renounced violence. He focuses on ‘Dawa, annunciation. This had not always been the case. After the assassination of Sadat, he spent three years in prison for being an accessory. There he met the leader of the group Al Jihad, Ayman Zawahiri, to whom he dedicated a book.Zawahiri has not given up the fight, he has extended the field of action. He is the second man in Al-Quaida.

14.57 OS InsertMontasser al ZayatLawyer I differ from Sheik Zawahiri because I believe in peaceful work, in the peaceful jihad. I am politically active, I criticise the government. I’m also responsible for my opinion, even though I have to pay for it with my freedom. I believe I cannot implement my goals by violence. And that the armed combat, blood shed and killing will only make me lose the liking of many. Zawahiri sees his goal in overthrowing governments by force. I, however, take the view it would be better to win broad masses of the population for our cause.

15.54 Resting on the Nile. We are on a journey to learn to comprehend Zacarias Moussaoui’s motivation. We speak with Muslims and Islamists. In Cairo. In the Middle East. And in London.

16.11 Islam as a seemingly simple answer to difficult questions. Zacarias also hears reproaches directed at the West. Does he not support the unpopular regimes impeding an Islamic renaissance?

16.30 In 1992, Zacarias comes to London. All alone and seeking contacts. Many Muslims live here, among them Islamists and activists. They fight for political change in their home countries. “As the July attacks show, some have crossed a border line”, says the London correspondent of the Arabian television station Al Jazeera.

16.53 OS InsertYosri FoudaCorrespondent ‘Al Jazeera’, London
17.50 One of these radical Islamists with anti Western paroles is Sheik Omar Bakri from Syria. Repeatedly, he voiced in public that he wished the Islamic flag would wave over London. In an interview with us, a few days before the attacks, he blatantly praises the September 11th terrorists. Meanwhile he has left England and is not allowed to return.
OS InsertOmar BakriIslamic Preacher

19.28 At the Southbank University, Zacarias Moussaoui successfully passes his studies in economics. During this period, his contacts to a fanatical Wahabi group must have intensified.

19.40 He wants to found a trading company for business transactions between England and the Orient. This is what he tells his mother who he visits in Narbonne in 1997.

19.55 OS Mother When – after many years - I met him again in 97 he had become a Muslim. My father, my grandfather, my mother they all had been good Muslims who prayed, who did not speak evil about others, who tried to be honest and to understand one another. In 1997, when Zacarias came, he prayed but he did not ask me why I was not wearing a scarf. He asked no questions at all. I was glad that my son had become better behaved and that he prayed. He even asked my forgiveness for all he had done as a young lad. I did not foresee the extremist in him.

20.55 But with his brother in Montpellier the quarrel for the true Islam leads to the break-up. Abd Samad describes how Zacarias alienates, how Zacarias reproaches him and his sisters of being disbelievers. He hardly communicates. Little is known about his life in London. Abd Samad tries to talk his brother out of the sectarian way of thinking, as he writes in his book. But no word that he himself is a follower of extremist ideas, as his mother says. In any case: Zacarias, who knew so little about Islam, has turned into a pious Wahhabit in London.

21.32 OS InsertSheik Mohamed KhattabiIbn Rushd-Mosque, Montpellier I take the view a movement should have its place in its environment. The Wahabis formed in Saudi Arabia in the 18th century. Their founder, Muhammad al Wahab, lived in his environment, his context, his milieu. Attempting to convert the same ideas into a Western environment is a severe mistake. Yet, no matter which extremist movement is concerned, young people can easily be allured by any movement. If you feel emptiness, a vacuum, a weakness, you are willing to clutch to the smallest straw.
The Islam has many aspects. Yet, whoever considers his own truth as the absolute one can only regard somebody with a differing view as a kafir, a disbeliever.

22.35 OS InsertMurad Hofmann, Ex Diplomat, Bonn There’s a wicked thing called ‚takfir’, meaning to make someone a kafir. It is strictly forbidden in the Koran that one Muslim denies the other Muslim being a Muslim, as only god is entitled to make this judgement. And the Koran reads: the man who makes this judgement will be stricken by this judgement himself and will cease to be a Muslim. And yet, this method, called takfir, which means to deny someone to be a Muslim, has become an epidemic in individual militant Islamic, Islamistic groups.

23.30 What to do against the extremist menace? In April of 2005, the first Austrian Imam conference in the Old Vienna City Hall distanced itself expressly from extremism, fanatism and violence. First remedy against it: integration.
OS InsertAmir Zaidan, Islamic Pedagogue for Religion, Vienna I believe we first must attempt to realise one thing. That Muslims will feel at home in this country – with all rights but also obligations. To avoid the permanent feeling of being outsiders or discriminated or without any rights etc. These thoughts can be a fertile soil for such ideologies. And therefore I think Austrian politics are very reasonable politics. Politics treating Muslims sensitively, on the other hand it is for Muslims a great challenge how to be able to integrate themselves into this society. And we try to develop something in this field like a Muslim identity in Austria and – and as we talk of Europe today – in Europe. This means it ought not to be a contradiction being an Austrian, a European Muslim committed to this home country that is also my home country and with all rights and obligations – even if I live in a predominately Christian or non-Christian society, that is to say not an Islamic one. It may not be a contradiction. This Muslim experience to live in a non-Muslim society is something like a new experience.

25.30 Sheik Adnan Ibrahim tries in his Vienna Shura-Mosque to keep the spirit of his believers wide and to preserve it from narrowness and fundamentalism. Religion is not only what is written in holy books but also especially what is understood and interpreted from it.

25.49 Sheik Adnan has been living in Austria for 14 years. But if it is about his religion he wants to speak Arabian, in order to be precise. We ask him for the Koran that is under discussion now. Does it call for the fight against the disbelievers?

26.04 OS InsertSheik Adnan IbrahimShura-Mosque, Vienna Foremost principle of the Koran is that we only fight against those who attacked us, whoever that might be. The Koran says: fight those who attack you and God Almighty says: do not start the fight, God does not like aggressors.

26.41 When Zacarias Moussaoui starts to show interest in the Islam, he solidarises with suffering Muslims, sees Muslims fighting in many places of the world. Hears of Mujaheddin and Jihad fighters. In Bosnia, Chechnya, Cashmere, the Middle East.

27.09 Is Islam more belligerent than other religions? Is it a teaching of violence? We ask Azzam-al-Tamimi, director of the Institute for Islamic Political Thinking in London. He is from Hebron in Palestine and has witnessed Muslim fight there.

27.33 OS Azzam al Tamimi,Institute for Islamic Political Thinking, London

28.44 Ramallah, West Bank. Hustle and bustle at the checkpoint on the way to nearby Jerusalem. Fence and wall separate Israelis and Palestinians who have such a hard time finding peace. Despite recent progress in the peace process, the Middle East conflict represents a severe wound in the relation of Arab countries and Muslims to the West.

29.14 The Islamic resistance organisation Hamas, which had its origin in the Muslim brotherhood, is in the first line of the fight against the occupants. Also women act martially here. Religious arguments add to this. Death loses its terror if it promises happiness. Whoever dies in combat becomes a martyr, a shahid.

29.55 Jihad means everything for Muslims, according to Yousef Abu Humais, mother of ten and enthusiastic grandmother. To be with the children, to teach them praying, to clean the house, to be a good person – any endeavour to please god. And the armed fight for god and fatherland is part of it.

30.14 For Om Yousef it is much too silent in the house. She lives together with one daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Their sons fought in the entifada, the fight against Israel. Six of them are in prison, sentenced to several thousand years of imprisonment. One of them was killed by special task forces. He is a shahid, a martyr.

30.40 OS InsertOm Yousef Abu HumaidHousewife, Ramallah Shahid is a martyr at god’s side. He committed himself to defend his country, fight its enemies, so his death is martyrdom. We have neither Apache helicopters, nor rockets, nor cannons, only our shahids who fight occupation.

31.15 If it is true what the faith says the son who died in combat is better off than his brothers who are in prison. As immediately after his death he has the privilege to be with god, escorted by 72 virgins, as the prophet predicts. And thus he can do good things for his family.

31.35 Om Yousef He becomes an advocate for seventy family members on Judgement Day. And it was an experience for me when I saw him after he had been murdered. I was overwhelmed by the light shining from his deformed face. I started to rejoice although I was very sad that my son was lying dead in front of me. I felt joy and was proud that he had experienced his fate. He had always wished to die like that. The earth is perishable but paradise is eternal. I remembered that I often asked him: don’t you want to get married, he answered, how? I have neither house nor money nor job nor future. Now he lives with god and will be our advocate.

32.38 The green flag of Hamas waves over Ramallah’s old town.

32.52 Shahids are revered. They are part of Ramallah’s face.Some kill themselves as human bombs in their attacks, leaving behind death, wounds and devastation.Not only among soldiers in the occupied countries but also among civilians in the middle of Israel.

33.13 Suicide bombing is not an Islamic invention. It was first introduced by a Marxist terror organisation in the Middle East. When in 1993, Hamas started with it, Muslims had fierce debates about it, as the Koran expressly prohibits suicide. We ask a leading Hamas representative for his argument.

33.39 OS InsertHassan Yousif,Hamas, Ramallah We must differentiate between two things: someone killing himself because he wants to part this life because he has problems, personal, social, or psychic ones. This is known the world over, in Europe, in America, everywhere. And this we strictly protest. Whoever kills himself under these circumstances is a suicide. But the Istishadi, who carries out a martyr operation, is someone sacrificing himself voluntarily for a noble aim, defending his country, its shrines, its faith, its belongings. He sacrifices his life for a noble cause. This is the Istishadi martyr.

35.00 Beirut, the capital of LebanonPortrays of shahids with their spiritual leaders, the Imams, characterise the streets of the quarter controlled by the Shiite Hisbollah. In a conversation with us, Hisbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah – who seldom gives interviews - emphasises that the fight is entirely in line with the Koran.

35.25 OS InsertHassan NasrallahSecretary General Hisbollah Our fight was a jihad in self defence against the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. Within the framework of the self defence of our countries, our peoples, our sovereignty and independence, our dignity, our natural resources violence may be used. Not only is this in line with the religious precept, but it is also conforms to law, even pursuant to international law and anything human beings can agree upon.

36.00 The Hisbollah – Party of God and supported by Iran, was founded as a resistance against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 1982. It is considered a terror organization by Israel and the USA, however, in Lebanon it is represented by one member in parliament.

36.17 According to the Koran, civilians may in no way become victims of assaults. Hisbollah as well as Hamas have vehemently condemned the attacks of September 11th as well as those of Madrid and London – and they condemn terror activities of Islamic extremists in Iraq directed against civilians.

36.41 OS Nasrallah We say killing people in Iraq is as criminal and terrorist an act as killing people in London or Madrid or in New York. If somebody wants to fight occupation troops he shall do it. But it is not permissible to kill civilians when attacking a military patrol of two, three or even ten soldiers. If today you are not in a position to carry out such an operation then postpone it to tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. The fight must concentrate on the military, civilians should not pay the price.

37.35 Only if it is about Israel, many Muslims make an exception. Regarding the Big Enemy, Hassan Nasrallah also uses an argument that blurs the difference between civilians and soldiers.

37.57 OS Nasrallah All people in Israel are reservists. So if one says in Israel one distinguishes between civilians and non-civilians one has to take a closer look.

38.21 Although Sheikh Nasrallah maintains that Israeli women and children should possibly be protected as well, the difference between troops and civilians are no longer that distinct.

38.38 Civilians thus lose the protection, granted to them by the Koran, because – according to this argument - Israeli are not really civilians.Also Azzam Tamimi speaks of the exception Israel.

38.57 OS InsertAzzam al TamimiInstitute for Islamic Political Thinking, London

40.05 One side tries to blame the other, this is in the nature of the conflict. But Vienna’s Sheikh Adnan, who is a Palestinian himself, contradicts. According to him civilians are civilians and should absolutely be protected, in Israel or elsewhere.

40.21 OS InsertSheik AdnanVienna The problem is not that a person kills himself, if he sacrifices himself to free his country of people. The danger is that something is justified that cannot be justified. That someone kills himself and the innocent as well. That is a tragedy.

40.44 The graves of martyrs in the cemetery of Ramallah. The fight against Israel has already led to two alterations. The suicide bombing has become Islamic. And the clear instruction to protect civilians has been softened. An argument that will set a precedent. Yet, behind any fierce rhetoric and symbolism – the cry for peace..

41.39 OS InsertOm Yousef Abu HumaidHousewife, Ramallah I want our children to be able to go out in the evening, in safety, that any family lives in peace with their children. I do not believe that peace between Israel and Palestine is possible, even if they wanted it. Every mother wishes that for her children. A mother stays a mother. There are many women in Israel who have also lost their spouse or their children. They also long for peace just like the Palestinian mothers.

42.36 From Ramallah back to France, back to the mother of the alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

42.46 OS Wafi After Zacarias had visited me in 97, he used to phone me over a long period. Time and again. And all of a sudden it was over. For three and a half years I didn’t know where he was. I turned in circles crying and then I looked at the photo. Asked him: why did you come to ask me for forgiveness? And to tell me that you’ll take care of me. You broke all ties. Until the moment they arrested him and I saw him on television.

43.25 Zacarias ends up in a trap and has himself recruited by Al-Quaida. In those days, Osama Bin Laden declares it the obligation of Muslims to join forces to terrorise god’s enemies. In 1998 Zacarias leaves London and visits an Al-Quaida training camp in Afghanistan. In 2001, he comes to Oklahoma to be trained as a pilot. There he is arrested because of a visa violation.September 11th, he spends in prison.

43.55 Two years later Aisha el Wafi comes to the Thames. However, not as a tourist. She wants to get an impression of Abu Hamza. Zacarias probably had contacts to this preacher of hatred, who was arrested later.

44.11 In what she hears there, the mother believes she detects the thoughts of her son. Zacarias was told, ‘they don’t like us, they will always hate us’. And that the fight, the jihad was the only solution. When she asks Abu Hamza for help he puts her off telling her the son should employ a good lawyer. Afterwards she said it’s not about religion, it’s about power.

44.35 OS InsertAisha el WafiMother of Zacarias Moussaoui, Narbonne All these important men, even Osama Bin Laden, are not interested in religion but in power. All these men, they don’t think of the destroyed families, they only think of power. And the young people suffering under daily racism end up in their trap. It’s misery causing more misery.

45.10 Chief correspondent Yosri Fouda was the only journalist in the world to interview both brains behind the attacks of September 11th, before their arrest. Fouda tells us that the story of al Qaida starts with young men who went into the trap. Mujaheddin, Muslim fighters, who had won their jihad in god’s name in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

45.41 OS InsertYosri FoudaCorrespondent ‘Al Jazeera’, London
46.53 In his book on September 11th, Yosri Fouda characterises the organiser, Ramzi Binalshibb, as a pious Muslim. Al-Quaida boss Osama Bin Laden declared jihad on the godless USA. In 1998, he took up the Israel argument and declared Americans were not civilians either because they paid taxes for the military. Like in London, attacks on the civilian population were thus legitimatised.

47.26 OS Fouda

48.31 Also Ayman Zawahiri, the jihad leader from Egypt, came to Afghanistan. In 1998, he founded together with Osama Bin Laden the International Islamic Front for fighting Zionists and crusaders they felt attacked by.

48.49 OS InsertAzzam al TamimiInstitute for Islamic Political Thinking, London

50.00 When on September 11th, 19 terrorists strike they are convinced they sacrifice themselves for a good cause. And they are convinced to be welcomed by god as martyrs. In the Spiritual Guideline, a pious text, which is found on some of the terrorists reads:‘You carry out a deed that Allah loves and of which he approves.’

50.28 OS InsertSheik AdnanVienna The young people are certainly convinced they will enter into paradise because of their deed. We should succeed in piercing a hole of doubt the size of a pinpoint into their conviction. They should comprehend that they might have to stay in hell forever because they killed innocent people, that the scorn of god would be on them, and they would be dispelled from his mercy.

50.57 Zacarias Moussaoui from Narbonne in France. He met the wrong people. Personal motivation and the major questions of world politics have become too explosive a mixture. Now the court will decide.
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