name of Ansar al-Islam,91 had threatened to denounce AQI, and the author wanted to prevent this by asking Sultan to write to them, sympathize with their concerns, but also warn them that fitna (sedition/division) is worse and they must therefore stick with their fellow jihadis. His concerns were well placed. Within a few months of his letter, Ansar al-Sunna returned to using its original name Ansar al-Islam and formed an alliance with other Sunni militant groups, an alliance that excluded AQI.92 A few months before Hafiz Sultan was urged to write to and counsel the leaders of AQI, it seems that a dispute was raging among religious scholars in Saudi Arabia. The dispute is discussed in one of the letters authored by an intermediary between some of these scholars and `Atiyya, to whom the letter is addressed.93 The letter was authored in early 2007 shortly after private meetings the intermediary held with several religious scholars during the Hajj (December 2006-January 2007). What is known publicly is a statement released in November 2006 and signed by 38 Saudi scholars in support of Iraq’s Sunnis. It is characterized by a highly sectarian tone, accusing the Twelver Shi’ites of Iraq, whom they consider to be rafida (rejectionists), of “embracing the Crusaders and protecting their backs,” putting into practice their “hateful creeds” (`aqa’iduhum albaghida) against Sunnis.94 This was followed by a statement that `Atiyya released praising these scholars, taking it to mean support for jihadis, and singling out two of them, `Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak and `Abdallah al-Ghunayman. `Atiyya then added what was missing in their statement, calling on Sunnis in Iraq to join and support the
The group is based in Kurdistan. According to Abu `Abdallah al-Shafi`i, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, the group was established in 2001, but it had to change its name to Ansar al-Sunna because it was the target of U.S. occupation forces in 2003. For some time, he explained, the group changed its tactics and expanded its operations to cover all of Iraq, and as of November 2007 the group resumed using its original name, Ansar al-Islam. The changing of its name in 2007 may have been to signal its separation from AQI. His statement is available on Archive al-Jihad, https://www.jarchive.net/b/details.php?item_id=3511 (accessed 22 April 2012). He was reported to have been arrested by the U.S. Army in May 2010. See Shirzad Sheikhani, “Za`im ‘Ansar al-Islam’ Yantahi fi Qabdat al-Jaysh al-Amriki,” al-Sharq al-Awsat, 5 May 2010. 92 Brian Fishman, Dysfunction and Decline: Lessons Learned from Inside al-Qa`ida in Iraq, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (2009). 93 SOCOM-2012-0000014. 94 “Nida’ li-Ahl al-Sunna fi al-`Iraq wa-ma Yajibu `ala al-Umma min Nasratihim,” al-Muslim, http://almoslim.net/node/46629 (accessed 22 April 2012). The term rafida is literally “those who reject.” It is used in a pejorative way against Shi’ites to denote that they reject the legitimacy of the first three caliphs the Sunnis consider to have been lawful. The Twelver Shi’ites consider that `Ali (the fourth caliph from the Sunnis’ perspective) to have been the first lawful imam. For an academic study of the evolution of sects in Islam, see Patricia Crone, God’s Rule - Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), chapters 2-11. 91
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