text: and had global significance – 'if a piece of Muslim land the size of a hand-span is infringed upon, then jihad becomes fard `ayn [a personal obligation] on every Muslim male and female, where the child shall march forward without the permission of its parents and the wife without the permission of the husband'
  Azzam had considerable impact. Fatwas going back to the Crusades had urged Muslims to defend one another against an invasion, but his contention that "such defense was a global obligation," that "Muslims everywhere were personally bound to take up arms" against invasions such as the Soviet's, was "all but unprecedented".
  Azzam is thought to have had influence on jihadists such as al-Qaeda with the third stage of his "four-stage process of jihad". This third stage was "ribat," defined as "placing oneself at the frontlines where Islam was under siege". This idea is thought to reinforce militants' "perception of a civilizational war between Islam and the West". His son Huthaifa Azzam, who assumes his father's legacy, on the other hand, says that al-Qaeda's methods of targeting civilians in the West or elsewhere would have been rebuked by Azzam, as would have been the use of kidnappings and beheadings.