{"id":74997,"date":"2019-02-08T04:38:23","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T20:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/?p=74997"},"modified":"2019-02-08T04:38:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T20:38:23","slug":"abdullah-azzams-wife-remembers-palestines-mujahid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/abdullah-azzams-wife-remembers-palestines-mujahid\/","title":{"rendered":"Abdullah Azzam\u2019s Wife Remembers Palestine’s ‘Mujahid’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1989, is still considered the \u201cgodfather\u201d of Afghanistan\u2019s Mujahideen-led resistance to Soviet occupation.<\/p>\n

Born in 1941 in the West Bank city of Jenin, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam had also been one of Palestine\u2019s most prominent Muslim preachers.<\/p>\n

He is largely remembered for recruiting and organizing Arab volunteers to fight in the Arab-Afghan \u201cjihad\u201d against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.<\/p>\n

He was murdered in 1989 — under circumstances that remain unexplained to this day — at the age of 48.<\/p>\n

In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Abdullah\u2019s widow, Samira Mohyeddin, 71, spoke about her late husband, who, she said, \u201cis entirely innocent of extremism and terrorism allegations\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI challenge anyone to prove otherwise,\u201d she added, saying the media had \u201cdistorted\u201d her late husband\u2019s image.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Istanbul, Mohyeddin said her husband \u201cnever permitted attacks on peaceful civilians, Russian or otherwise\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe always said, \u2018We only fight those who are hostile to us and who are occupying our land\u2019,\u201d Mohyeddin recalled. \u201cWe never even knew where the word \u2018terrorism\u2019 came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were fighting the enemies of Islam everywhere,\u201d she remembers, \u201cthose who were attacking Muslims in their own countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohyeddin, who once headed the women’s committee of the Mujahideen Services Office in Peshawar, stressed that innocent civilians had never been targeted under her husband\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

Nor, she added, did her husband ever call for targeting Christians or Americans.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pure jihad\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Afghan jihad during my late husband\u2019s time was pure,\u201d Mohyeddin said, going on to credit the \u201cjihad\u201d for ultimately ridding Afghanistan of the Soviet presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jihad certainly had its flaws — and was targeted by sabotage attempts — but that had nothing to do with Azzam,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the \u2018Emir of Jihad\u2019, he never ordered — or allowed anyone to carry out — \u2018sabotage operations\u2019, as he used to call them,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Azzam’s widow attributed the “purity” of Afghanistan\u2019s \u201cjihad\u201d to what she described as “the love of martyrdom — not of money, titles or fame.”<\/p>\n

She went on to assert that the effects of \u201cjihad\u201d had been almost entirely positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuslims came to Afghanistan from all over the world to take part,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd thanks to Allah, they liberated the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mohyeddin recalled one Muslim woman from Tajikistan, who had said: \u201cWe knew nothing about Islam — or even prayer — before the jihad in Afghanistan. How, then, could jihad be a bad thing? Genuine jihad is always known by its people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do young Muslims today still read Abdullah Azzam’s books?\u201d Mohyeddin asked. \u201cWhy do they say we were raised on his books? Why do Palestine\u2019s martyrs and great mujahideen say they were raised on Azzam’s thought?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory will never forget these people,\u201d she said, adding that Azzam and his fellow \u201cmujahideen\u201d had been subject \u201cto gross injustice because we failed to clarify their ideas — for which I blame the media in the Muslim world\u201d.<\/p>\n

From Palestine to Afghanistan<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Mohyeddin, Azzam first cut his teeth as a \u201cmujahid\u201d in Palestine. \u201cThe sheikh was one of the founders of jihad in Palestine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe prepared himself for jihad in Jordan with his fellow mujahideen who were fighting the Zionist occupation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen also helped the cause by raising funds to finance their bases in northern Jordan,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Azzam took part in that \u201cjihad\u201d for three and a half years, until the Jordanian authorities forbade him from continuing his activities.<\/p>\n

Mohyeddin recalled how her late husband had been teaching at Amman\u2019s Jordan University at the time, during which he helped \u201cprepare and organize young people, training them in scout groups\u201d.<\/p>\n

Azzam, she said, eventually left Jordan for Saudi Arabia, where he stayed for one year before moving on to Islamabad\u2019s Islamic University \u201cso that he might be close to the Afghan jihad\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe watched events taking place in Afghanistan until he realized that genuine Islamic jihad was taking place there,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, Muslims were sorely needed to fight the invaders, so he quickly joined the Afghan jihad,\u201d Mohyeddin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAzzam embarked on jihad at multiple levels,\u201d she added. \u201cThe enemies of Islam soon realized the threat that he posed.\u201d<\/p>\n

After following Azzam\u2019s activities in Palestine and Afghanistan, both the Israeli Mossad and the U.S. intelligence services reportedly tried several times to assassinate him.<\/p>\n

NOTE: In Arabic, the term \u201cjihad\u201d means \u201cstruggling\u201d. In addition to meaning \u201choly struggle\u201d — or \u201choly war\u201d — against Islam\u2019s enemies, it also refers to the daily \u201cstruggle\u201d to maintain one\u2019s faith and perform good deeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1989, is still considered the \u201cgodfather\u201d of Afghanistan\u2019s Mujahideen-led resistance to Soviet occupation. Born in 1941 in the West Bank city of Jenin, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam had also been one of Palestine\u2019s most prominent Muslim preachers. He is largely remembered for recruiting and organizing Arab volunteers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":{"id":74998,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":656,"height":400,"file":"2019\/02\/abdullah-azzams-wife-remembers-palestine-s-mujahid_00b99.jpg","filesize":131453,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":74997,"source_url":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/abdullah-azzams-wife-remembers-palestine-s-mujahid_00b99.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75000,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74997\/revisions\/75000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}