http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?&id=9635
Thanks to a long-term source* of mine, virtually as I clicked 'post' on that last piece about 'God's Terrorists', I got this link. The article is full of useful facts, the forensic details which are missing from most of the mainstream reportage and therefore prevent rapid learning about what is going on in the communities where Wahhabism is seen as a highly viable option.
There is the occasional infelicity, 'In 1999, it seems that Sidique began to consider the step from Wahhabi fundamentalism to a form of jihadism actively committed to violence', ' The network starts operating like a cult' but lots of very useful detail 'Her family was from India, and she was a Deobandi Muslim—a South Asian Wahhabi-linked movement directly opposed to the Khan family's traditionalist Barelvi convictions'. The detail starts to paint the real picture of what is going on in British Islam. 'However, Fiaz's testimony reveals that Khan was plugged into a wider Islamist network well before the Iraq war, and even before 9/11.' I became aware of Al-Muhajiroun in 1993. Thats the year of the first Wahhabist attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre. What is clear from this article, and from 'God's Terrorists' is that the networks Wahhabists set up are very effectively hidden, and unless the authorities are extremely capable and alert, networks will be established under their noses.
The British authorities in India were superb at gathering intel, and by and large interpreted it well enough to paralyze potential groups of trouble-makers. Chapter five of 'God's Terrorists' narrates the story of how one District Commissioner, William Tayler, decapitated and paralyzed the Wahhabist networks in a huge swathe of northern India south east of Delhi (a highly crucial area) by taking into temporary custody three Maulvee's (the highest ranking Wahhabist Imams). Because he understood how the Wahhabist cult worked (extremely hierarchical and authoritarian), he disabled the network with one elegant action. Nobody died, and hundreds of thousands of British and Indian lives were saved consequentially.
Sadly, in 2007 we don't seem to have any William Taylers. As Mark Steyn constantly points out, what the British did as a matter of course in their imperial domains (getting down and dirty with local politics and religion), the top American echelons (many entry-level officers have got stuck in) seem highly loath to learn what makes other nations tick. This has been disastrous in Iraq, where apparently no attempt was made by Paul Bremer to understand the superstructure and disposition of Iraqi life, and he managed to alienate everybody except the Kurds. The latter, in fact, seem to have been gifted far too much for the future success of a united Iraq.
But back to Britain. 'There's an informal theory that states that 30 years after the establishment of any sizeable ethnic minority community, there will be riots' This article is full of useful additional information. I'm not sure where the authors got it, but it does add tremendously to the forensic detail about Beeston and the 7/7 bombers. 'This is why, over the last 50 years, Wahhabi authorities in Saudi Arabia have demolished more than 300 historical structures in the holy cities of Medina and Mecca.' Read about that in the Telegraph? Me either. But the destruction of Mohammeds tomb at Medina by Wahhabi's in 1804 prompted the Ottoman empire to send a series of armies to Arabia, so there is direct historical precedent. Over and over again, we can see that virtually nothing has changed in Wahhabism since its inception in the 1290's.
'It is estimated that over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia has set aside $2-3bn a year to promote Wahhabism in other countries.' Not only is the amount shocking, it could be seen by Moslems all over the world as a declaration of war on traditional Sunni and Shia Islam. Given that even in Saudi Arabia Wahhabism was considered until very recently as a perverted and dangerous cult, the fact the house of Saud is now promoting a world-wide corporate takeover of Islam by Wahhabism should shock even non-Moslems. If William Tayler were alive and sitting in Whitehall, I think he would know where to start to protect British Moslems and non-Moslems. Turn off the spouting fount of money from Saudi Arabia, and shut down its franchises here.
'The fourth school, Islamism, is a relatively recent offshoot of fundamentalism. It emerged in response to the final demise of Islamic authority with the fall of the Ottoman empire after the first world war, but harks back to the early days of the caliphate, when the Koran was the basis for law-making. It sees Islam not just as a religion, but as a socioeconomic system. The Koran is God's version of Das Kapital. Islamists pick and choose teachings from across the ages, and while they read script literally and share a religious zeal with the fundamentalists, they are more akin to an ideological movement than a religious one. Their style of work is often compared with the student far left of the 1960s and 1970s.'
This description I find somewhat obscure. Its not clear to me what the relationship is between Islamism and Wahhibism. At the moment, it appears that Islamism is 99% Wahhabism, with a few nods to historically recent political events in Turkey and Arabia. If Islamists see Islam as a socioeconomic system, I have yet to hear one pontificating about it, or attempting to explain how an Islamic socioeconomic system might differ from say Marxist state ownership of the means of production. Great swathes of industry owned and run by Mullahs, like in Iran? One family owning just about everything, like in Saudi? The only discussion of economic matters that Islamists partake in to any great extent that I'm aware of is pouring abuse on American capitalism (which I do think is straightforward parroting of 1960's left wing mantras), and harping on about which economic activities need to be banned because they are haram. I suppose that the latter could be seen at attempting a description of an economic system, but it seems much more like trying to stamp out commercial activities which are morally suspect regardless of the economic outcome. In fact, as a working description of Wahhabism, violently stamping out what Wahhabism believes Islam forbids, including rejecting Islam, is the sole purpose, to be pursued whatever the cost to society in terms of happiness, ease, wealth or diversity. I have yet to read a coherent explanation of the advantages of a Caliphate from the Islamists, but they do discuss attempting to recreate it a lot; If the Islamists have some positive economic model to replace our current one, they are keeping very quiet about it.
'...many British Muslim youths who had drifted towards fundamentalist or Islamist organisations were susceptible to the violent global jihadism that emerged in the mid-1990s. This is plain from the anti-traditionalist rhetoric of Sidique Khan's al Qaeda-produced video suicide note. The video is 27 minutes and 29 seconds long. Most of it is filled up by a speech from senior al Qaeda member Ayman al-Zawahiri, but the central feature is Khan's address, which runs to six minutes and 11 seconds. It has two parts, but it is only the first—about British foreign policy—that ever gets played in the mainstream media. Part two, which makes up three quarters of Khan's speech, is addressed to Muslims in Britain. Here is an excerpt: "Our so-called scholars today are content with their Toyotas and semi-detached houses. They seem to think that their responsibilities lie in pleasing the kufr instead of Allah. So they tell us ludicrous things, like you must obey the law of the land. Praise be God! How did we ever conquer lands in the past if we were to obey this law?… By Allah these scholars will be brought to account, and if they fear the British government more than they fear Allah then they must desist in giving talks, lectures and passing fatwas, and they need to sit at home and leave the job to the real men, the true inheritors of the prophets."'
Reading this, it struck me that embedded in this paragraph are most of the things which are wrong with both the intra-Moslem situation in Britain, and the response of the vastly influential mainstream media in Britain to it. I have seen the foreign policy excerpts of this video perhaps ten or twelve times, and I have never seen, nor read a transcript of, the three quarters aimed at other British Moslems. That is disgraceful and suspicious. As General Custer found out, good intelligence about your enemies is not negotiable. Talking about Beeston, home of the 7/7 jihadists, 'Many journalists who landed there after 7/7 saw its poverty and assumed that there must be a direct link to the bombings.' Remember folks, journalists these days are just not content with the facts. Shiv Malik explains 'In the end, the BBC drama was never made. The script was finished in good time, but the commissioners decided it wouldn't work as a drama. I was also told that the script was "anti-Muslim." But as we approach the second anniversary of 7/7, Beeston's story deserves to be told.' And the reason the most damning part of Siddique Khans video wasn't shown was presumably also because it was "anti-Muslim". Thanks BBC: ignorance and cowardice, neatly rolled into one incompetent bundle.
'I translated my usual question of whether he thought what his brother had done was "good" or "bad"—he had said that it was a terrible thing several times—and instead asked him whether he thought 7/7 was halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden) in Islam. Only when a look of stunned surprise come over Gultasab's face did I realise that I must have been asking him an entirely different question. After a brief pause, he replied. "No comment."
Here, it seemed, was the perfect example of the division between two worldviews—secular ethics and an embattled Islamic faith. How long had Gultasab managed to function with these two conflicting positions fighting within him? Everyday morality told him that his brother had committed a cold-blooded act of terror, while his own Islamic theology told him that there was no clear answer and maybe his brother was a hero. How many thousands of young British Muslims are similarly conflicted?'
This to me seems tenuous- Islamic theology is clear about where and by whom lesser jihad can be launched. It must be declared from the Dar-al-Islam by an authoritative source- ordinary joe's can't just declare jihad and wander off to murder random Kaffirs. Setting up cells of murderers in the Dar-al-Harb to carry out terrorist acts is definitely against the rules in Islam- as presumably every well-taught Moslem must know. Could it not be that the question posed here brought into sharp focus the dilemma for many Moslems in Britain: do you pander to the Wahhabist cult version of lesser jihad, or bravely hold out for the mainstream views of lesser jihad which rules out murder in the Dar-al-Harb? To me this seems much more likely. If the material in Charles Allen's book is correct, mainstream Islam is not likely to come into conflict with secular laws in the real world unless something extremely provocative comes into play. Nothing like that exists in Britain at the moment- Iraq is a fraud of an issue.
Lesser Jihad (jihad kabeer) teaching is crucial. The founder of Wahhabism, Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya, contradicted his own previous school of Islamic teaching, the Hanbali school, and all three other mainstream schools of Islamic thought in insisting that Mohammed was wrong and in fact had contradicted God by saying that Jihad Kabeer was to be replaced by Jihad Akbar (Greater Jihad). He was forced into this position though, because Wahhibism was birthed as a movement against other Moslems, namely the Mongols. And he had to find his way around both the issue of going to war in the Dar-al-Islam against other Moslems, and the issue of declaring Jihad Kabeer to be of superior worth to Jihad Akbar. For him, there was no possibility of allowing the happy-clappy Islam-lite of the Mongols to live alongside his own conception of Islam- his true Islam must annihilate the other. If Jihad Akbar was the mode in play, there was no scope for this kind of murderous warfare against practising Moslems. Hence the tortuous and plainly abusive 'interpretation' of Islamic teachings used to justify switching away from Jihad Akbar back to Jihad Kabeer. It never washed with most highly trained Moslem jurists, which is why Wahhabism is a cult, not a valid part of the Islamic panoply.
Of course, when a cult gets big enough, it can kill the religion from which it originally spawned. It seems to me that the approach most likely to succeed in destroying Wahhibism in Britain will be a combination of the methods used in Italy and the US to destroy the mafia, and the methods used by various bodies (like the Labour party in Britain) to divest themselves of cult-like attachments (Militant in Labours case). This may well be the case already, as the security services don't tend to post communique's on the internet to let us know how they are dealing with things. Maliks solution is definitely not viable '...the problem of Islamic extremism looks depressingly intractable. The government's first reaction following 7/7 was to consult with a wide range of Muslim opinion, including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and similar bodies. The government now argues that the MCB and some of its affiliates are as much part of the problem as of the solution, and the new initiatives to tackle radicalism stress the promotion of British values at a grassroots level and working more closely with the few liberal modernisers in Britain's Muslim community. But maybe all that we can do now is remain vigilant and wait for the tide in the battle for Islam's soul to turn in the west's favour.' [my italics] In my estimation, new initiatives about anything is code for 'lets just sit around and see how things pan out'. As the British found in India, sitting around waiting allows the highly motivated and resilient Wahhabists the time and space they need to develop their networks, train their operatives and destroy any opposition from real Moslems.
Remember the Finsbury Park mosque? It was taken over by Wahhabists by force majeure. The Malik solution is no solution at all. As observers of any mafia could tell you, once the cancer starts to grow, only the most vigorous and tough action (like say forming the FBI and having them kill the mafia goons) will stop its spread.
Its a bit disappointing to read such a superbly fact-based and insightful article, and have it end with such a limp prescription. And the very last paragraph is extremely disturbing. Its a powerful sequence of images, but I'm not sure what purpose it serves. I'm very grateful to Mr Malik for such a bounty of research and thought, but if our only response to the Wahhabist infiltration of British Moslem life is to 'remain vigilant and wait for the tide in the battle for Islam's soul to turn in the west's favour' we will sorely regret it. William Tayler saved Patna from a bloodbath by using his knowledge and insight of the genuine threat of Wahhabism. We need a Tayler.
* and Friend obviously!!
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