فهم مختصر لتاريخ الحركة الإسلاموية مع أمثلة لتعزيز نظرتي (كرستوفر ديڤيس) وحلّ مشكلة الفكرة الأسطورية بأنّ مجموعة ما، هي الخاطئة.
My experience of self study of different terrorists organisations has taught me one thing, listen to what they say and do, it is not that we did not know why they hate everyone and anyone who does not adhere to their ideology. For all they create videos and send them to Al-Jazeera to air world Wide, they release press statements and use social media to tell us exactly why they hate. We can no longer say we did not know. During the war on terror, we were told often if we just get rid of Al-Qaeda there will be peace, we have since then heard the same about the Taliban and now we hear the same statements about ISIS, rather than looking at the source (the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood). The problem is that people ( mainly leftists )
tend to consider such groups like the Muslim brotherhood, or Hamas and Hezbollah as peaceful political movements that believe in election and democracy, which is not true, it is just their way to get into power.
Another interesting fact is that the Islamists all use history as their source of justification to create terror around the world.
On March 3, 1924, President Ataturk decided to bring Turkey to a modern state with abolishing the caliphate, which lasted for 1,400 years.
President Ataturk was a secular leader who gave women the right to an education and made women equal to men ahead of many western countries, he also gave women the right to choose a husband, the option to wear the hijab. Islamists still to this day believe that Ataturk maternal blood line was Jewish and that was the influence for ending the caliphate.
The Muslim brotherhood was founded by Hassan al Banna who wanted to take Egypt, the Middle East and the whole world back to the days of the original caliphate. He also strongly opposed British/ western colonialism that was present in Egypt. During the 1940s, 50s and 60s scholars thought that the caliphate was over but three things happened in the Middle East which gave life to the Islamist movement.
First was the discovery of oil in 1938 in Saudi Arabia which gave them the money to spread their radical Wahhabi ideology across the globe. An estimated 70 billion dollars has been spend by the Saudi government to spread the Wahhabi ideology throughout the world.
Secondly, was the removal of the Shah in Iran and Ayatollah Ruhallah khomenei coming to power in 1979 which ended a secular rule in Persia and imposed a strict Sharia law over Iran and the Shia sect of Islam.
Now the Islamists have the money and the spiritual cover they exploded onto the global platform in the 80s. (Islamists were also used by the West to fight communism in Afghanistan) The revolution in Iran started by communists and this led the west to support Khomeini who was in Paris at the time)
Many western people did not take the serious threat of what was happening throughout the Middle East with innocent blood from every religion being spilled on the streets, from Israel to Lebanon from Jordan to Egypt and from Iraq to Syria and Iran.
It was not until 9/11 that the west woke up and asked the question what is happening?
Even though the west had been attacked directly or indirectly since the early 80s by Islamists such as the kidnapping of the workers of the
American embassy in Tehran in 1979,
the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980,
The Lockerbie bombing in 1988 and the 1993 bombing of the twin towers, just to mention few.
It is unfortunately true that here in the west in a modern day society we think that world war I and II is ancient history. Yet terrorists’ organisation such as the Muslim brotherhood and al Qaeda remember history as far back to the success of the various caliphates.
When we look to the history and the caliphate that these organisations aspire to, we can see how ancient history has been used in modern history, for example most people think the yellow star was a Nazi invention. It was actually a invention giving to the Jews by the second caliph, Caliph al Mutawakkil of Iraq in the 900s to identify that this person was a Jew. It is said that Jewish women were forced to wear pinkish clothes to be identified during the Ottoman period as well It is also said that Hitler was working with the grand mufti of Jerusalem and this is where the idea came from. The same happened for the Christians who were order to wear the belt as identity clothen. All none Muslim were forbidden to ride horses, they had to ride donkeys and if a man was riding the donkey he had to ride the donkey backwards.
Christians and Jews were ordered to pay the Jizzya (protection tax) to live in an Islamic state because they are the people of the book. We have seen this in the 21st century by ISIS that imposed rules on all non Muslim living in an Islamic state, non Muslims were given three choices, these were,
Conversion to Islam.
Pay the humiliation / protection tax
Leave or face decapitation.
Jabhat al Nusra also tried this in the areas they took over in Syria. They done this in the village I know very well called Maloola Christians couldn’t attend to their farm on the top of the mountain unless they were accompanied with a Muslim.
Also Hamas tried to introduce this to the Christian Palestinian Community back in 2006 in the Palestinian territory, the Gaza strip.
Following the movement of Islamist organisations, I also began to notice that Islamists hold dates and traditions true to that of the historical caliphate. The head of Islamic state Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself Abu Bakr after the name of the first ruler of Islam after the death Mohammed. He was the first caliph of the Rashidun caliphate.
In month of Ramadan which is the holy festival of Islam, terrorists organisation wage attacks in this period because various caliphates in the early stages of their rule won successful battles during Ramadan, in the 21st century Islamist groups wage attacks on their opposition in the month of Ramadan with suicide bombers and also use other alternative methods to caused terror. The bloodiest attacks in Iraq were recorded in Ramadan.
Another example of this is the date 9/11, this is symbolic date to the Islamists. Why?
They consider this date to be the date in which was the start of the end of the global caliphate.
In 1683 the Ottoman empire laid siege to Vienna under the command of Kara Mustafa Pasha. On the 11th of September 1683 surrounding Christian countries came to the aid of Vienna and defeated the Ottoman empire and pushed them back into the middle east and north Africa, liberating areas which were controlled by the Ottoman empire, as land was liberated less people paid the jizzya and the caliphate began to shrink. This is the reason why Bin Laden chose the date to attack the United states on 9.11 because he believed that the Islamic nation was defeated by Christendom and by attacking the United States, being a Christian country and the super power of the world he would revive the Islamist movement around the globe and usher in a new caliphate with him being a potential caliph.
The third thing that is crucial to mention in taking part to the Islamist movement was and is western intervention, I believe it was not western intervention for the help of humanity in the Middle East but the intervention for self wealth from the production of oil hence the war on terror in Iraq which was based on miss information and lies and as a result an estimated 1 million people were killed.
Intervention can be sought in two ways, firstly intervention for ones own goal which we have seen in recent times for example, proxy groups like FSA (Free Syrian Army) and the White helmets that were classified as the moderate rebel opposition to the Syrian government, many western countries armed, financed and supported these rebel groups along with Arab countries from the Gulf and Turkey, hoping to over throw the Assad regime.
This heavily back fired as these and other groups were actual extremists/ terrorists themselves. The FSA along with jahbat al Nusra took over Maloola and were killing and expelling the Christian community along with the Muslims that lived there who did not adhere to their version of religion. The White Helmets are a branch of al Qaeda, videos can be seen of the White Helmets holding the heads of people from the Syrian army that had been decapitated in Aleppo.
The other way of looking at intervention is by countries sharing intelligence for counter terrorism. At a mass protest in Iran the people of Iran were protesting against the Iranian government and were calling for the Americans to intervene. Another positive factor for intervention was The Israeli Mossad went to Australia to notify the Australian government of a terrorist attack going to take place, with this intervention the attack was foiled.
Various countries in the Middle East share intelligence with the west, countries like Egypt, Jordan and Israel.
Here, in the west, we are lead to believe that the Middle East and North Africa is a barbaric middle age society which in many areas this is true, in places under the rule of the Taliban (students) in Afghanistan or
under the rule of al Qaeda (the base) in Iraq,
al Shahab (the youth) in Somalia,
Ansar al sharia (bringer of the sharia) in Libya.
Boko Haram (forbidden western education) in Nigeria
or in Saudi Arabia under the Wahhabi doctrine and in Iran under the Khamenei regime rule.
Yet outside of these areas there are cultures, historical architecture and world famous heritage sites and not to mention where the cradle of civilisation was born that is still blooming today. (Mesopotamia, ancient Sumeria was where people first wrote, legislate laws, discover the wheel, just to mention few)
Many countries in the Middle East enjoyed a secular life style for example pre 1990 in Iraq, women could dress freely, they did not have to dress in religious attire. This started directly after the collapse of the Ottoman rule.
Under the shar of Iran people were free to express themselves and women did not have to abide with the compulsory hijab. (There were even protests in Tehran when Khomeini imposed hijab)
Afghanistan was a liberal society until the Soviet union entered Afghanistan and the west help create, arm and finance the Taliban to prevent Russia having a storing hold in the Middle East.
My personal view.
After studying such extreme organisations, the historical events that motivate then. I believe that western countries must be educated with the facts, look beyond the agenda of the main stream media and back reformist movements in the Middle East instead of backing rebel movements that tend to turn out to be more extreme than the people they claim are the oppressors. I also believe we should become energy sufficient in solar power and not reply on countries for fossil fuel that hold radical views that use money from fossil fuel to transport extreme ideologies.
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