In the late 1980’s, author Jon Lee Anderson traveled around the globe researching the lives of guerrilla soldiers in order to deliver a very informative book, Guerrillas: Journeys into the Insurgent World. One of the groups Anderson visited were the mujahedin guerrillas of Afghanistan. At the time of his visit the Soviet Union was in the process of withdrawing from what had been a long and bloody ten-year war for control of Afghanistan. However, while the mujahedin were fighting against continued aerial bombings from Soviet fighters, they were also fighting the existing Afghan government over political control of the state. As a militant Islamic group, the mujahedin’s purpose was to create an independent Islamic Afghan nation (118). Likewise, the shabbab, a guerrilla group in Palestine were fighting the Israelis in an ongoing conflict that began in 1948, the year Israel first became a nation. However, since 1948 the Palestinians have been struggling to create a separate Islamic nation state in the highly contested area of the West Bank or “Gaza strip” (142). While both the mujahedin guerillas in Afghanistan and the shabbab guerillas in Palestine find personal meaning and national strength through their devotion to the Islamic faith, both groups also share similar ways of finding purpose while coping with the ongoing struggles and losses that is brought about by these conflicts.
For the mujahedin guerrillas, the fight for control of their Afghan homeland is not just a political struggle but a religious one. The mujahedin are a devoutly religious group who envision a future Afghanistan governed by Islamic law (120). Their faith and belief in their cause is what motivates them to keep fighting, even when casualties are high. The mujahedin believe that the war they fight is spiritually sanctioned, a jihad, or “struggle,” or what Westerns term “holy war.” Consequently, for the guerrillas participation in a jihad is typically viewed in terms of good versus bad,...