Khorasan: Behind the Mysterious Name of the Newest Terrorist Threat

TIME Politics National Security Khorasan: Behind the Mysterious Name of the Newest Terrorist Threat Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville, Jr., Director of Operations J3, speaks about the operations in Syria, Sept. 23, 2014, during a news conference at the Pentagon. Cliff OwenAPe The word sheds important light on the grandiose, even apocalyptic vision that drives many Sunni radicals

It was six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, and with dark smoke still rising from lower Manhattan, Ali Soufan was face-to-face with the most senior al-Qaeda leader in American custody.

Soufan, an FBI counterterrorism agent, was inside a Yemen prison, interrogating a captured al-Qaeda operative named Abu Jandal, a former bodyguard and confidante to Osama bin Laden.

Abu Jandal was far from intimidated by his American interlocutor. To the contrary, he sought to menace him. You cant stop the mujahedin. We will be victorious, he smugly told Soufan. You want to know why?

He continued with a grin: The hadith says If you see the black banners coming from Khurasan, join that army, even if you have to crawl over ice; no power will be able to stop them.

Soufan recognized this Islamic saying immediately, and interrupted Abu Jandal to complete it: And they will finally reach Baitul Maqdis [Jerusalem], where they will erect their flags, he said.

The grin was gone. You know the hadith? Abu Jandal asked with surprise. Do you really work for the FBI?

Abu Jandal had failed to appreciate that knowing the Khorasan hadith was part of the job of an Islamic terrorism expert like Soufan. As the former FBI agent explains in his 2013 book The Black Banners, the hadith of Khorasan sometimes also spelled Khurasan is fundamental to radical Islamist ideology. A prophecy describing a Muslim army from Central Asia storming across the Middle East and into Jerusalem has long inspired violent jihadists.

The hadith of Khorasan is newly relevant thanks to the disclosure by U.S. officials of a terrorist group by that name operating in Syria. The Khorasan Group was a surprise target of American air strikes in Syria on Monday night mostly aimed at the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).

While America obsessed over ISIS in recent weeks, Khorasan remained unknown to the public until this month. President Obama had never publicly mentioned its name before Tuesday morning. But U.S. officials say they have tracked the group for two years.

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Khorasan: Behind the Mysterious Name of the Newest Terrorist Threat