by Peter Goodgame

2002

from RedMoonRising Website

Contents

1. The Roots of Islamic Terrorism

2. Creating the ’Arc of Crisis’

3. The Muslim Brotherhood Branches Out

4. Osama Bin Laden - The Early Years

5. Bin Laden In Exile

6. World Trade Center 1993

7. Bin Laden’s Money Problems

8. The Brotherhood Revolution Continues

   Section Notes and Sources

I. The Roots of Islamic Terrorism

Over the past half-century religion has been in decline in the Western part of the world and in most of the East as well. Spirituality has been traded for materialism as living standards have increased, and popular culture has become almost completely secular as well. Why has the situation been different within the Middle East? How come the Judeo-Christian ethic has eroded, but the Islamic ethic has experienced an apparent resurgence? This study will try to explain how this situation is not something that has occurred by chance and it will offer evidence that militant Islam has been a card played by the global elites of the dominant Anglo-American establishment to achieve the long-term goal of a world government.

Before we turn to the events of September 11 we must first look at the small group of Muslim scholars who developed the ideology, and then as we continue it will become clear how tight-knit and closely connected the movement really is. It is a small movement within the religion of Islam, but it is very influential and its effectiveness must be measured in other ways than simply counting the number of adherents to its philosophy.

As we related in Part One, the British used Islam to legitimize their puppet rulers in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Palestine after taking over the Middle East in World War I. Because of this Islam was seen by much of the Arab populace as just another part of the corrupt colonial establishment. That is why the legitimate anti-colonial movements, such as those of Nasser, Mossadegh and Bhutto, were primarily secular in nature. When these nationalist movements began to succeed outside of the British sphere of influence the British turned to their Islamic allies to subvert these independent regimes. The Muslim Brotherhood stands out as the most important counter-revolutionary movement of this period in the Middle East, and one of the British-based Globalists’ most important strategic assets today.

The Muslim Brotherhood emerged out of Egypt in 1928 to evolve into "the largest and most influential Sunni revivalist organization in the 20th century." It was founded by Hasan al-Banna, the first son of a respected sheik who was also an author and the leader of a local mosque. Hasan was born in 1906 and was brought up immersed in Islam under his father’s tutelage. He memorized the Koran and at age twelve he founded an organization called the Society For Moral Behavior.

Shortly after he created another group, the Society for Impeding the Forbidden. He was a devout Muslim dedicated to his faith and at age sixteen he enrolled in an Islamic school in Cairo to train to become a teacher. As a teenager Hasan al-Banna also became a member of a Sufi order, the Hasafiyya Brothers’ order. He was active in the order, reading all of the Sufi literature he could get his hands on, and he organized a Sufi group, the Hasafiyya Society for Welfare. ⁽¹⁾

In Part One of this study we related several allegations that the Muslim Brotherhood was created, infiltrated, or at least promoted by British Intelligence and/or British Freemasonry. Dr. John Coleman alleges that it was created by "the great names of British Middle East intelligence...", Stephen Dorril writes that the Brotherhood was linked to British Intelligence through dame Freya Stark prior to World War II, and the Shah’s regime in Iran considered it to be a tool of British Freemasonry.

Some Muslims will find these claims hard to believe but they should not be rejected out of hand. Hasan al-Banna was a devout Muslim who put Islam first but it should not be considered inconceivable that he was influenced by Britain’s Masonic Brotherhood, or that he accepted British aid to advance his movement, at least in the early stages. Islam was used effectively by the British outside of Egypt, so why would they not try to use it in Egypt as well?

Freemasonry appeared in Egypt soon after Napoleon’s conquest in 1798 when General Kleber, a French Mason and top commander in Napoleon’s army established the Lodge of Isis. French Masonry dominated Egypt until British lodges began to appear after the British occupation in 1882. Freemasonry was very popular in the first half of the twentieth century, and many important Egyptians were Masons, along with the British rulers and aristocrats who occupied the country.

In fact the Egyptian monarchs, from Khedive Ismail to King Fouad, were made honorary Grand Masters at the start of their reigns. From 1940 to 1957 there were close to seventy Masonic lodges chartered throughout Egypt. At one time the leaders of the Nationalist and Wafd parties were Freemasons, and many members of the Egyptian parliament were Masons as well, where they mingled with the military commanders and aristocrats of the ruling British occupation. ⁽²⁾

Two very important Islamic leaders in Egypt, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Mohammed Abdou, were also Freemasons. Al-Afghani was a foreigner who had been the prime minister of Afghanistan before becoming an activist in Iran and Russia prior to his appearance in Egypt. He is considered "the founder of the political pan-Islamic movement," and his movement is known as the Salafiyya movement.

He agitated against British imperialism but at the same time he advocated modernization for the Muslim world. Before being expelled from Egypt he became an important figure at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and his most important disciple was Mohammed Abduh. Throughout his life he was an activist for Muslim self-determination, but several times he visited London where, according to one biographer, "he reestablished ties with his lodge members." When al-Afghani died in 1897 he left behind a large body of political and religious writings that would form part of the basis for the later Islamist movements. ⁽³⁾

After al-Afghani was expelled from Egypt in 1879 Mohammed Abduh continued to promote his reformist message. For this Abduh was expelled in 1882. During his exile he met up with al-Afghani in Paris where they collaborated to publish a Muslim journal and where they expanded their contacts within the Masonic Brotherhood. Four years later the British had a change of heart and they allowed Abduh to return.

He became a teacher at Al-Azhar University where he focused on reforming the prestigious Islamic institution. At the same time he quickly rose to become a judge in the National Courts. Only eleven years after returning from his British-imposed exile the ruling British governor, Lord Cromer, made Sheikh Mohammed Abduh the Grand Mufti of Egypt, in 1899. He was now the Pope of Islam.⁽⁴⁾ At the same time he was the Masonic Grand Master of the United Lodge of Egypt. ⁽⁵⁾

There was of course an ulterior motive for Cromer making Abduh the most powerful figure in all of Islam. You see, in 1898 the ruling council of Al-Azhar University had reaffirmed that usury, and thus banking according to the Western model, was harem (illegal) according to Islamic Law. This was unacceptable to Lord Cromer because his given name happened to be Evelyn Baring - he was an important member of England’s prestigious Baring banking family that had grown rich off of the opium trade in India and China.

Lord Cromer installed his friend Sheikh Abduh to change the law forbidding banking, and once he was made Grand Mufti he used a very liberal and creative interpretation of the Quran to fabricate a loophole that allowed the forbidden practice of usury. British banks then had free reign to dominate Egypt. In Lord Cromer’s writings he says, "I suspect my friend Abduh was in reality an agnostic," and he commented on Abduh’s Salafiyya movement saying, "They are the natural allies of the European reformer." Even Cromer saw that the Islamist movement could be used to Britain’s advantage. ⁽⁶⁾

Sheikh Mohammed Abduh had two students that were important in continuing the Salafiyya movement after he died in 1905. One of them was Sheikh Ahmad Abd al-Rahman al-Banna, who was Hasan al-Banna’s father. The other was Mohammed Rashid Rida, a freemason who became Sheikh Abduh’s good friend and publisher of the monthly magazine, The Lighthouse. This mouthpiece of the Salafiyya movement was first published in 1897, and Rida remained the publisher for thirty-seven years. Rida also existed within the British circle of influence and his publication reflected the British point of view by agitating against the Ottoman Empire. He praised the freemasonic Young Turk movement, but after World War I he castigated Turkey’s nationalist revolution under Ataturk. ⁽⁷⁾

Hasan al-Banna’s young life was influenced by all of these factors: by the Islamic movement, by the British occupation, by his father, and by his most important mentor, Mohammed Rashid Rida. Al-Banna grew up reading Rida’s publication and through his family connections they became good friends. At his death in 1935 Rida had placed all of his hope for an Islamic resurgence in al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood. The other factor in Hasan al-Banna’s life was Freemasonry. Al-Banna experimented with numerous religious sects and political groups as a young man and he also became a member of the Masonic Brotherhood. This was entirely normal for someone growing up in the higher echelons of Egyptian society at the time and his membership was not considered a betrayal of Islamic values as it is today. ⁽⁸⁾

In 1927, at the age of twenty-one after graduating from his university, he was appointed to teach Arabic at a school in Ismailiyya. This town happened to be the capital of the British-occupied Canal Zone and the headquarters of Britain’s Suez Canal Company. Hasan al-Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood there a year later. The Suez Canal Company helped to provide the funds for the first Muslim Brotherhood mosque that was built in Ismailiyya in 1930. ^(8a)

An important question is how, among a multitude of competing Islamic organizations, did the Muslim Brotherhood expand with such great leaps and bounds to number over 500,000 active members only a decade later? Al-Banna was only twenty-two when it began, and it was based in the heart of British occupied territory for its first four years. Contemporary histories credit the Brotherhood’s success directly to the organizational skills of al-Banna:

The single most important factor that made this dramatic expansion possible was the organizational and ideological leadership provided by al-Banna. He endeavored to bring about the changes he hoped for through institution-building, relentless activism at the grassroots level and a reliance on mass communication. He proceeded to build a complex mass movement that featured sophisticated governance structures; sections in charge of furthering the society’s values among peasants, workers and professionals; units entrusted with key functions, including propagation of the message, liaison with the Islamic world and press and translation; and specialized committees for finances and legal affairs.

In anchoring this organization into Egyptian society, al-Banna skillfully relied on pre-existing social networks, in particular those built around mosques, Islamic welfare associations and neighborhood groups. This weaving of traditional ties into a distinctively modern structure was at the root of his success. ⁽⁹⁾

The bottom line is that the Muslim Brotherhood’s success could not have been achieved without the approval of the British ruling establishment, and al-Banna’s association with the Masonic Brotherhood goes far to explain how efficiently it was organized and how seamlessly it fit into Egyptian society. Like the Masonic Brotherhood it was established initially as a charitable organization. However, while Freemasonry was liberal and allowed members of all faiths to join, the Muslim Brotherhood was focused specifically on Islam. It was Masonry for Muslims only. Like Masonry the Muslim Brotherhood was devoted to secrecy and it was run according to a pyramidal command structure. The foot soldiers at the bottom had no idea of the true goals of the leaders at the top.

The Muslim Brotherhood was established with the approval and the support of the British establishment, but such a popular mass movement proved hard to control. The Egyptian people harbored a deep anti-British resentment, and this feeling inevitably dominated the Muslim Brotherhood. It ceased to be solely a charitable and religious organization in the late 1930s when it entered the realm of politics to support the Palestinian Arab uprising against the British and the increasing influx of Jewish immigrants. Anti-British activity soon began to pick up within the Brotherhood back at home, and early in World War II al-Banna was briefly imprisoned by the pro-British regime for allowing his organization to get out of hand.

After World War II ended al-Banna found that he was one of the most powerful leaders in Egypt. He found himself in a struggle for power against the monarchy and the secular Wafd party, and his organization was seen as the most militant, the most radical and the most dangerous. In 1948 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were implicated in the assassination of the police chief of Cairo and the government retaliated when Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha issued a proclamation in December of 1948 dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood.

Its headquarters and branches were shut down and its assets and funds were seized. Hundreds of members were arrested and incarcerated and the Muslim Brotherhood was driven underground. Weeks later Nuqrashi Pasha was assassinated by the Brotherhood, and then on February 12, 1949 Hassan al-Banna was himself assassinated by Egypt’s secret police.

In May of 1950 the government tried to reconcile with the Brotherhood and released most of the captured members from prison. The next year the ban on the Brotherhood was repealed, but it was forced to maintain itself under a new law passed to regulate the many different Egyptian societies, groups and organizations.

As the monarchy continued to decline in popularity, moving way too slowly to break away from Britain for the public’s liking, two subversive groups schemed behind the scenes to control Egypt’s destiny: the Free Officers and the Muslim Brotherhood, the army and the fundamentalists. The army proved to have the upper hand, especially after the death of al-Banna, and Nasser finally emerged as the man to lead Egypt on an independent path. At first the Brotherhood supported the army and attempts were made to include them in the new government, but the Brotherhood over-estimated its strength and influence and demanded too much.

Then after Nasser won his power struggle with General Naguib the Brotherhood knew that it faced a tough future. Nasser was far less understanding of the fundamentalists than was Naguib and the break became complete after the Brotherhood attempted to assassinate Nasser in October of 1954. Many years later the deposed and embittered General Naguib claimed in his memoirs that the assassination was a sting operation planned by Nasser to make an excuse to do away with the troublesome Brotherhood once and for all. ⁽¹⁰⁾

In any case, by the end of 1954 thousands of Brotherhood members were imprisoned, including almost all of its leaders, and six were executed. It was this break that paved the way for a new relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the intelligence services of Britain and America because all of them were united in their hatred of Nasser. Unfortunately for the West the Brotherhood remained largely ineffective within Egypt throughout Nasser’s reign, even though they were involved in several more attempts on his life. During this time many fleeing members were welcomed in London, where they set up a presence that remains to this day, and a number of them also relocated in Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Hasan al-Banna created an organization described by Arab historians as "the greatest modern Islamic movement." Al-Banna was known to say,

"We need three generations for our plans - one to listen, one to fight, and one to win." ⁽¹¹⁾

He died young at the age of 43. His was the "listening" generation, but he was the speaker. After his premature death several other leaders emerged to continue to instruct the believers within militant fundamentalist Islam.

One of them was a man by the name of Sayed Qutb. He eventually became recognized as the "chief ideologist" of the Muslim Brotherhood after al-Banna, and his extensive writings justify the beliefs of radical Islamists today. Muslims rarely take the radical path of Islam without reading something written by Qutb.

Sayed Qutb was the same age as al-Banna, and also a Freemason, but he did not even join the Brotherhood until after al-Banna’s death. He had become critical of the West after living in the United States for a time and when he returned to Egypt he embraced fundamentalism. He advanced within the Brotherhood very quickly and served as their ambassador in Syria and Jordan before becoming the editor of the Brotherhood’s official periodical in 1954.

However, upon the "assassination attempt" of Nasser he was arrested with many of his compatriots, cruelly tortured and then sentenced to fifteen years in a labor camp. One year later a representative from Nasser offered him amnesty if he would but ask for forgiveness. Qutb refused and remained in prison, studying and writing on Islam’s role in the modern world. He developed the doctrine that according to Islam, modern Arab states such as Egypt are overrun by Jahiliyyah, which is a term translated as barbarity, primarily pertaining to the influence of Western culture and political systems.

Qutb wrote,

"It is not the function of Islam to compromise with the concepts of Jahiliyya which are current in the world or to co-exist in the same land together with a jahili system... It derives its system and laws and regulations and habits and standards and values from a source other than Allah. On the other hand, Islam is submission to Allah, and its function is to bring people away from Jahiliyyah towards Islam.

 

Jahiliyyah is the worship of some people by others; that is to say, some people become dominant and make laws for others, regardless of whether these laws are against Allah’s injunctions and without caring for the use or misuse of their authority. Islam, on the other hand, is people’s worshipping Allah alone, and deriving concepts and beliefs, laws and regulations from the authority of Allah, and freeing themselves from the servitude to Allah’s servants.

 

This is the very nature of Islam and the nature of its role on earth. Islam cannot accept any mixing with Jahiliyyah. Either Islam will remain, or Jahiliyyah; no half-half situation is possible. Command belongs to Allah, or otherwise to Jahiliyyah; Allah’s Shari’ah will prevail, or else people’s desires..." ⁽¹²⁾

Qutb believed that Arab states governed by anything other than Islamic Shariah law were compromised by Jahiliyyah, and he advocated the violent use of force to overthrow political systems, especially Nasser’s regime in Egypt, in order to eradicate Jahiliyyah. Qutb wrote, "The foremost duty of Islam is to depose Jahiliyyah from the leadership of man." ⁽¹³⁾

In 1964 Qutb was pardoned and released at the insistence of the visiting Iraqi head of state. Qutb then published perhaps his most important work, a book entitled Milestones. Nasser used the militant language within the book as an excuse to incarcerate Qutb once again. At the same time, fearful of a re-organized Brotherhood plot against his regime, Nasser rounded up 20,000 other suspected Brotherhood members as well. On August 29, 1966 Nasser made an example out of Sayed Qutb and executed him by hanging.

Over the course of Sayed Qutb’s life he published 24 books, as well as a 30-volume commentary of the Koran. Today his work inspires fundamentalist Muslims within Egypt and around the world and his life is held up as an excellent Islamic example of how to carry oneself in the face of persecution and hardship.

Another of the "speakers" for the first generation of revolutionary Islamist militants was Mustafa al-Sibai. He was born in Syria and educated at the preeminent Islamic university of Al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt. It was there that he became involved with the Muslim Brotherhood. He was imprisoned for a time by the British, and then after he returned to Syria he was arrested and imprisoned again for his constant revolutionary activities, this time by the French. In 1946, after serving his sentence, Mustafa al-Sibai formed the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria as a branch subordinate to the Egyptian base.

Al-Sibai’s career in Syria was eventually quite successful. He completed his doctorate in Islamic law and began teaching Arabic and religion in Damascus. In 1951 he married into a powerful Damascus family. He traveled throughout the West, published books, gave lectures and helped to direct the Muslim Brotherhood until his death in 1964.⁽¹⁴⁾ Al-Sibai was one of the most articulate spokesmen of the Islamic movement and he had a great understanding of what was happening in the Middle East. In one of his many articles he wrote about Western business interests in Arab lands:

They are the direct reason for foreign intervention into the domestic matters of the country and are the great obstacle toward the realization of independence and dignity. On the one hand, the [oil] concessions are the legacy from the Turks; on the other hand, the concessions were granted under the veiled assertion that it would be economically good for the country and the people. But history has shown that such firms constitute the beginning of colonialism. ⁽¹⁵⁾

The father of Pakistan’s Islamic movement is considered to be Abul Ala Maududi. Born in 1903 he first achieved influence in 1937 when he became the director of the Islamic Institute of Research in Lahore. When Pakistan was made a nation in 1948 he objected to the secular nature of the British-sponsored government and for this he served time in jail in 1948 and again in 1952. Maududi’s lasting achievement, along with his eighty published books and brochures, is his organization Jamaat-e Islami, or Islamic Society. Maududi and his group maintained close links with the Muslim Brotherhood and Dietl writes that,

"Both organizations still consider themselves branches of the same movement. At times the Muslim Brotherhood even recognized Maududi as the legal successor to its ideologists al-Banna and Sayed Qutb." ⁽¹⁶⁾

Maududi is well known for his articulation of the ideal Islamic state, and his definition is accepted by the majority of Muslims within the militant Islamist movement. In the following passage he comments on democracy,

The difference between Islamic democracy and Western democracy is, of course, the following: while the latter is based on the conception of the sovereignty of the people, the former is based on the principle of the caliphate [leadership] by the people. In Western democracy, the people are sovereign; in Islam, sovereignty rests with God, and the people are his caliphs or subjects. In the West the people themselves make the law; in Islam the people must follow and obey the laws that God communicated through his prophets.

In one system the government carries out the will of the people; in the other the government and people together must translate God’s intentions into deeds. In short, Western democracy is a kind of absolute authority that exerts its power freely and in an uncontrolled manner, whereas Islamic democracy is subject to the divine law and exerts its authority in harmony with the commands of God and within the framework established by God. ⁽¹⁷⁾

The last of the revolutionary Islamic ideologists that we will focus on is an Iranian by the name of Ali Shariati. Here is another concrete connection between the Islamic movement and Freemasonry, because Ali Shariati was himself a Mason. His father, Muhammad Taqi Shariati, was a Mason as well who was also, at least at one time, an agent for the far eastern division of British Intelligence. ⁽¹⁸⁾

Ali Shariati was born in 1934. He went to school in Mashad and grew up in the shadow of his father who led a revolutionary Islamic center called the Center for the Propagation of Islamic Truth. After Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown and the Shah took over Ali Shariati joined the National Resistance Movement. In 1957 he was arrested with his father and a handful of other activists and spent six months in prison.

The Shariati family had powerful friends in high places and Ali was accepted to the prestigious Sorbonne University in France. He began his studies there in 1960, receiving a doctorate in sociology and Islamic history. While in France he was exposed to, and captivated by, a group of elitist intellectuals known as the Existentialists. This was a group of anti-capitalist and anti-materialist writers that included Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Albert Camus, Jacques Berque, Louis Massignon and Jean Cocteau. Shariati also developed a fine appreciation for many Marxist ideas.

Shariati returned to Iran in 1965 and was immediately arrested. He was known to have been involved with groups that sought to overthrow the Shah while he was in France, and he had helped to create the Iranian National Front for Europe. However he was immediately released, and he subsequently took up a teaching job near Mashad. For the next five years he focused on writing, promoting his view of Islam and cultivating ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and other resistance groups.

In the early 1970s Dr. Shariati began to give lectures on politics and religion, publicly promoting his writings and pushing his views that were diametrically opposite to those of the Shah, who was developing industrial infrastructure, advancing economic development and advocating modern secular education. Shariati wrote,

"Come friends, let us abandon Europe, let us cease this nauseating, apish imitation of Europe. Let us leave behind this Europe that always speaks of humanity but destroys human beings wherever it finds them." ⁽¹⁹⁾

Ayatollah Khomeini would have never been successful were it not for Shariati’s constant agitation against the Shah, done under an intellectual guise and focused on the students and fundamentalists of Iran. For a time Shariati was considered the most influential speaker in Tehran’s forums. Dietl writes,

Shariati’s importance shows that the Iranian revolution was fostered not only by the old mullahs and ayatollahs, but also by agitated youth who to some extent were influenced by other models.

As many as 5,000 listeners attended the public lectures given by Shariati. His writings were distributed in the hundreds of thousands, although arrest and torture were the penalty for owning them. Often, the modest, quiet Shariati spoke all day and then held discussions late into the night. After he had given more than 100 lectures, SAVAK [secret police] tried to arrest him, but Shariati escaped; he gave himself up to the police only after they had seized his father as hostage. For two years he was gruesomely tortured in Komiteh prison. After his release he was not permitted to indulge in any teaching activities or to maintain any conspiratorial contacts. The secret police followed every move. ⁽²⁰⁾

Finally in 1976 Ali Shariati was able to make an escape to London and there while waiting to catch a plane to meet up with members of his family in the Untied States he died of a brain embolism. The usual allegation, now almost universally accepted, is that SAVAK agents assassinated Shariati with the use of a poison needle dart dipped in cobra poison. The fact remains that although the Shah hated Dr. Shariati and the repressive philosophies he advocated the cause of Shariati’s brain embolism has never been proven.

Hasan al-Banna predicted three generations before the Islamic movement would take over the Middle East. He said that the first generation would demand "listeners" and he, Sayed Qutb, Mustafa al-Sibai, Abul Ala Maududi, and Ali Shariati were a few of the most prominent strategists laying the ideological groundwork for the modern Islamist movement. The next generation was predicted by al-Banna to be a generation for "fighting."

Section Notes and Sources
 

Back to Contents

II. Creating the ’Arc of Crisis’

By the 1970s elitist intellectuals and globalist institutions had focused on population growth and industrial development as two of the most pressing enemies of the human race. The United Nations, the Club of Rome, the Tavistock and Aspen Institutes and many other organizations that served as mouthpieces for the ruling elites all began crying out that the environment was being destroyed and that industrialization was becoming a terrible menace. Technology, science and human progress were falling out of favor. The elites considered the earth’s resources their possessions and they did not want to share them with an emerging and developing Third World.

Lord Bertrand Russell was one of the most important of these anti-human "humanists" who advocated a return to the dark ages. He believed that,

"The white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence. Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary."

Russell was also an advocate for world government,

"I have already spoken of the population problem, but a few words must be added about its political aspect. .... It will be impossible to feel that the world is in a satisfactory state until there is a certain degree of equality, and a certain acquiescence everywhere in the power of the World Government, and this will not be possible until the poorer nations of the world have become ... more or less stationary in population. The conclusion to which we are driven by the facts that we have been considering is that, while great wars cannot be avoided until there is a World Government, a World Government cannot be stable until every important country has nearly stationary population."

For Russell, population control was a prerequisite to World Government. ⁽¹⁾

As far back as 1947, a leading Australian scientist was suggesting, in a secret report to the Australian Defense Department, that,

"...the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical, but not under Australian, conditions."

This archetypical mad scientist was Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet, knighted by the British crown in 1951, and winner of a Nobel Prize in 1960. ⁽²⁾

In 1968 Stanford biologist and Bertrand Russell admirer Paul Ehrlich wrote the best-selling book The Population Bomb. He wrote,

"A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people.... We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions."

In his book he advocated placing birth control chemicals into the world’s food supplies. ⁽³⁾

Sir Julian Huxley, the British scientist and intellectual who played a leading part in creating the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), held much the same views. He saw scientific advancement, such as penicillin, DDT and water purification, as a two-edged sword. He wrote,

"We can and should devote ourselves with truly religious devotion to the cause of ensuring greater fulfillment for the human race in its future destiny. And this involves a furious and concerted attack on the problem of population; for the control of population is…a prerequisite for any radical improvement in the human lot." ⁽⁴⁾

Huxley’s extremist views have remained within the United Nations and they were showcased in the world’s first Earth Summit, the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Maurice Strong was chosen to put together this conference by UN Secretary General U Thant, and the next year Strong was put in charge of the newly created UN Environment Program.

1972 was also the year in which the Club of Rome published their infamous report Limits To Growth. This report, backed by research done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, basically concluded that industrialization had to be halted to save the planet from ecological catastrophe. Since then even the Club’s most loyal admirers, such as Maurice Strong, have admitted that the report was "premature," and didn’t take into account advances in technology. ⁽⁵⁾

The Club of Rome has been one of the most influential groups promoting world government since it was created in 1970 by Dr. Alexander King, a British scientist and diplomat, and Arelio Peccei the Italian industrialist. In 1973 the Club published a report entitled Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System, that presented a model of a one world government system sub-divided into ten regions.

The Aspen Institute is another important globalist think tank. It was established in 1949 by three Chicagoans: a businessman, the president of the University of Chicago and one of his professors. The University of Chicago was founded with Rockefeller money, and the Aspen Institute has always existed within the Rockefeller sphere of influence. One of the high points of the history of the Aspen Institute was a conference on "Technology: Social Goals and Cultural Options" in 1970 that paved the way for the UN’s Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972.

The World Wildlife Fund is another elitist racist institution that masquerades as a humanitarian environmentalist organization. It was created by Prince Phillip of England, the husband of the Queen. He is on record as saying that if he is reincarnated he would like to return as a killer virus, to help solve the overpopulation problem. Since then other WWF executives have voiced the same concerns about overpopulation. ⁽⁶⁾

Dr. Arne Schiotz, a WWF director has said,

"Malthus has been vindicated, reality is finally catching up with Malthus. The Third World is overpopulated, it’s an economic mess, and there’s no way they could get out of it with this fast-growing population. Our philosophy is: back to the village."

Sir Peter Scott, former chairman of the WWF warned,

"If we look at things causally, the bigger problem in the world is population. We must set a ceiling to human numbers. All development aid should be made dependent on the existence of strong family planning programs."

Thomas Lovejoy, a former vice-president of WWF put it bluntly,

"The biggest problems are the damn national sectors of these developing countries. These countries think that they have the right to develop their resources as they see fit. They want to become powers."

These repressive views are held even by some of the most important managers of the global financial institutions. Fritz Lutweiler, the chairman of the Bank for International Settlements (the world banking headquarters), has said,

"It means the reduction of real income in countries where the majority of the population is already living at the minimum existence level or even under it. That is difficult, but one cannot spare the highly indebted countries this difficult path. It is unavoidable." ⁽⁷⁾

Robert McNamara, the president of the World Bank warned,

"There are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no other way. There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease are nature’s ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene.... To put it simply: Excessive population growth is the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the societies in the developing world." ⁽⁸⁾

Ultimately these views became accepted within the American foreign policy establishment. In 1974 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger submitted National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) entitled, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests."

The conclusion:

"World population growth is widely recognized within the Government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for urgent measures.... There is a major risk of severe damage [from continued rapid population growth] to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values."

NSSM 200 was to have been made public in 1979, but it was successfully kept under wraps until 1989. During his career Kissinger made sure that population control remained a cornerstone of his foreign policy strategy, and after him his ideological partner Zbigniew Brzezinski pushed the same agenda in the Carter administration. Both are closely connected with the Rockefeller family, and both had studied under Harvard’s William Yandell Elliott, the Oxford-trained British-allied professor.

The WorldWatch Institute was created in 1974, during the same time that NSSM 200 was being promoted in America’s foreign policy establishment, with a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Since 1984 its annual "State of the World" publication is always highlighted by the media, and its hundreds of alarmist pseudo-scientific papers and reports have been used as ammunition in the leftist and elitist war against industrialization ever since.

As we related in Part One of this study, the first attack on the Third World came in the form of a premeditated massive rise in oil prices in connection with the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Economies cannot develop without an energy supply, and the quadrupling of energy prices was a major setback to nations like India, Brazil, Pakistan, Indonesia and Mexico. Then when President Bhutto of Pakistan tried to work around the situation by developing nuclear energy Kissinger threatened him saying, "We will make an example of you!" ⁽⁹⁾ The Shah of Iran, even though his nation had an abundant supply of oil, also began a program to develop nuclear energy. Both leaders were quickly eliminated.

With the rise in energy prices the development of the Third World was checked, but the Arab Middle East became greatly enriched. This was when the Globalists turned to their allies, the Islamists, to remedy the situation. Islam would be used to attack industrialization and modernization using the lie that human progress was un-Islamic and a Western plot against the servants of Allah. The real plot was actually aimed at the brown-skinned masses of the Middle East who were briefly experiencing a positive change in their quality of life in terms of education, employment, shelter, sanitation and nutrition. However the religious and intellectual advocates of ignorance, filth and violence joined forces to throw the prosperous Middle East back into the dark ages.

In England the Islamic Foundation was set up as a branch of the Jamaat-e Islami by Professor Kurshid Ahmad in Leicester in 1973. When General Zia took over Pakistan he appointed Ahmad to serve as his Minister of Economics.⁽¹⁰⁾ Also in 1973 the Islamic Council of Europe was created with headquarters in London. The Council’s long-time Secretary General was a prominent Muslim Brother by the name of Salem Azzam, who we will return to later. ⁽¹¹⁾

Another project was "Islam and the West," begun at Cambridge in 1977 with Muslim Brother and former Syrian prime minister Maarouf Dawalibi in collaboration with the Club of Rome’s Peccei and Britain’s Lord Caradon, along with Dr. Alexander King’s International Federation of Advanced Study. "Islam and the West" assembled a policy outline effectively defining Islam as a backwards religion in a struggle with science and technology. The Globalists were determined to promote only the repressive anti-Western minority version of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood was the key to selling this view to the world. ⁽¹²⁾

In Iran members of the Aspen Institute and the Club of Rome linked up directly with the ideological opponents of the Shah’s regime in Iran. Ali Shariati, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and many of the leading educators in Iran’s universities were brought into their circle of influence. The Globalists’ destabilization campaign against the Shah is documented in Robert Dreyfuss’ book Hostage To Khomeini, of which a portion can be read here at the website dedicated to Iran’s former prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda.

Crucial to the overthrow of the Shah was the Iranian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood known as the Fedayeen-e Islam, which had been set up in the 1940s. It was led by the fanatical Ayatollah Khalkali, and the Ayatollah Khomeini was a longtime member. The students who took over the American embassy in Tehran after the overthrow of the Shah, taking scores of American hostages, were also members of the Fedayeen-e Islam. Khalkali was able to personally exercise his political power during the Iranian revolution when he presided as judge in the trials of thousands of political prisoners, sentencing the majority of them to death. ^(12a)

The Fedayeen-e Islam also controlled Iran’s opium production and drug smuggling network which, near the end of the Shah’s reign, had become increasingly threatened by the Shah’s largely successful anti-dope campaign. After Khomeini took over Khalkali was cynically made head of Iran’s national anti-drug program and under his watch opium production skyrocketed. According to Khomeini’s rulings, since collected and translated into English,

"Wine and all other intoxicating beverages are impure, but opium and hashish are not." ^(12b)

In Pakistan the Muslim Brotherhood in the form of the Jamaat-e Islami supported the overthrow of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by General Zia ul-Haq. Bhutto was hated by the British globalists for withdrawing Pakistan from the British Commonwealth, for implementing nationalistic policies, for leaning towards the Soviets and for seeking to develop nuclear energy. When General Zia announced a death sentence on the imprisoned Bhutto his sentence was officially protested by the heads of state from fifty-four countries. Zia went ahead and executed Bhutto in 1979 only after receiving assurances from the head of the Jamaat-e Islami that the execution would not lead to internal unrest.⁽¹³⁾ In the years that followed the Jamaat-e Islami became Zia’s most important backer and the nation was forced into a brutal process of Islamization.

In Afghanistan the CIA, prodded on by British Intelligence, began to fund the Islamic opponents of the pro-Soviet regime even prior to the Soviet invasion. President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski advocated the subversion in order to provoke the Soviet invasion that occurred on December 24, 1979.⁽¹⁴⁾ General Zia and the Jamaat-e Islami in Pakistan were two crucial elements that made the mujahedin revolt in Afghanistan successful. Their takeover of Pakistan was a necessary part of the plan to pull the Soviets into the Afghan conflict. As related in Part One, an Afghan warlord affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood by the name of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar emerged as the primary recipient of American military aid, despite his well known anti-Western views and his radical view of Islam.

(When the US Congress finally acted to put an end to this aid it was already too late. Hekmatyar reached the pinnacle of his success in 1993-1994 and also in 1996 when he served as Afghanistan’s prime minister. He was eventually driven out of Afghanistan by the Taliban but today he is back, agitating against the new government of Hamid Karzai. In May of 2002 the British took it upon themselves to patrol the area where Hekmatyar was based in Operation Buzzard. The stated goal was the suppression of Hekmatyar’s forces, but Hekmatyar remains at large and his forces have been suspected in recent terrorist bombings in Kabul. Perhaps the stated goal of Operation Buzzard was not the real goal.)

In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood experienced a resurgence after President Sadat began to loosen restrictions against the organization in the early ’70s. Publicly the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to soften its image into that of a "moderate" Islamic organization, but behind the scenes it spawned off a number of violent extremist groups. Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Group and Takfir wal Hejra are just a few of the interlinked terrorist groups that began to agitate more openly against Sadat after he signed the historic Camp David peace agreement with Israel in 1978. Militants associated with these groups assassinated Sadat in 1981 and martial law was declared as the new leader, President Mubarak, launched a vigorous crackdown on the Islamists.

In Syria the Muslim Brotherhood revolted against the Assad regime and took over the city of Hamah. The Syrian government’s siege against the Brotherhood stronghold lasted for three weeks. 6,000 soldiers and 24,000 civilians were killed in the intense fighting and in the aftermath 10,000 more residents were arrested and placed in internment camps. Afterwards the Syrian government showed evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood forces had been armed by the West.

This explosion of violence throughout the Middle East in the late ’70s and early ’80s was referred to by Zbigniew Brzezinski as the "Arc of Crisis." It was not something that occurred by chance, but was in fact the result of the deliberate plan developed by the Globalist strategists such as Dr. Alexander King, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and British operative Dr. Bernard Lewis. The Middle Eastern "Arc of Crisis" was not a spontaneous internal conflagration, it was something that came about as a result of Western policy in league with the Muslim Brotherhood. Without help from the West radical Islam would have remained the illegitimate, repressive minority movement that it has always been, and the Middle East would have remained stable and prosperous.

Section Notes and Sources

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III. The Muslim Brotherhood Branches Out

At the beginning of World War II the Muslim Brotherhood gained a huge amount of prestige when it was joined by members of the influential Azzam family of Egypt. Abdel-Rahman was the most famous of these Azzams, and his whole life had been one of service to the British Empire. After World War I he had worked with British Intelligence to help organize the political work of Libya’s Senussi Brotherhood.⁽¹⁾

His work was very successful and the head of the Senussi Brotherhood was proclaimed king of Libya at a UN ceremony in 1951. (At first a darling of the British Empire, King Idris I led Libya until being ousted by Moammar Khaddafi in 1969. Khaddafi’s own revolutionary organization had been established in London in 1966,⁽²⁾ but his regime quickly fell out of favor with the British.)

After World War II Abdel-Rahman Azzam became the first Secretary-General of the British-sponsored League of Arab States. Azzam’s prestige is proven by the fact that his daughter Muna was married to Mohammed, the eldest son of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.⁽³⁾

In 1955 after General Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood the organization moved its base of operations to London and Geneva. The Geneva base was under the control of Said Ramadan, who was married to the daughter of Hasan al-Banna. Ramadan set up the Institute for Islamic Studies and under his control Geneva became a major Islamic base in Europe. Today this is where King Fahd of Saudi Arabia flees to anytime he feels that his life is in danger back in the kingdom. The following story demonstrates Ramadan’s intimate connections to the worldwide Islamist underground:

Soon after the Iranian revolution a man named Ali Akbar Tabatabai became the most important voice of opposition to the Ayatollah’s regime. Under the Shah he had been information counselor at the Iranian embassy in Washington D.C. and after the Shah’s fall he had set up the Iran Freedom Foundation. In July of 1980 he was murdered by David Belfield, also known as Daoud Salahuddin. Belfield was a Black Muslim who was part of a gang connected with Bahram Nahidian who was reputed to be the Washington head of the Ayatollah’s secret service (Savama). Less than two hours after the murder Belfield placed a person-to-person call to Said Ramadan in Geneva, and then using several different passports he fled the United States bound for Switzerland. ⁽⁴⁾

Geneva has always been a useful base for the Muslim Brotherhood but its London headquarters became the most important. The man in charge there is Salem Azzam, a relative of Abdel-Rahman Azzam. As previously mentioned, he became the head of the Islamic Council of Europe that was formed in London in 1973 in close collaboration with Said Ramadan. Dreyfuss explains the role of the Council,

" [the Council] directs the Ikhwan [Brotherhood] from Morocco to Pakistan and India, controlling hundreds of ’religious’ centers across Western Europe, and through them, thousands of fundamentalist students and Muslim clergy in both the Middle East and Europe." ⁽⁵⁾

In 1978 the Islamic Institute for Defense Technology was created to support the Islamic "arc of crisis" revolution. The inaugural seminar was held in London in February of 1979. It was to work hand in hand with NATO, and it was led by Salem Azzam and members of his Islamic Council of Europe. Pakistan and Afghanistan were at the top of the agenda and the IIDT helped to coordinate the massive arms shipments that were supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggles there and throughout the Middle East. ⁽⁶⁾

Outside of Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood was successful in creating a number of respectable front organizations and it became widely perceived as a moderate institution that had renounced violence. But inside of Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood remained committed to the overthrow of the regime and the installation of a "pure" Islamic state and they used terrorism as the means to achieve that end.

When Anwar Sadat became president of Egypt in 1970 he began a campaign to distance his country from Nasser’s pro-Soviet policies and to realign with the West. Initially one of his most formidable opponents in this task was the Arab Socialist Unity Party. Sadat began to reconcile with the Muslim Brotherhood as a way to pressure the Arab Socialists and to solidify his regime, and he released hundreds of Muslim Brothers from prison in his first few years in office.

Throughout the history of the Muslim Brotherhood there have been six Supreme Guides.

• Al-Banna led until his death in 1949. He was succeeded by Hassan al-Hudaibi after a brief period of chaos in 1951.

• Al-Hudaibi led until his death in 1976, suffering periods of imprisonment throughout Nasser’s reign.

• He was succeeded by Omar el-Telmisani, who died in 1987 to be succeeded by Hamid Abdul Nasr.

• Both Talmisani and Nasr had been thrown in prison in 1954 during Nasser’s anti-Brotherhood purge.

• Sadat released Talmisani from prison in 1971 and Nasr in ’72.

• The last Supreme Guide was Mustafa Mashhour, who took over in 1996 and led until his death on November 14, 2002.

• The present Supreme Guide is Maamoun al-Hudaibi, the eighty-three year-old son of the second Supreme Guide, Hassan al-Hudaibi.

The Supreme Guide always maintains his residence and offices in Egypt, although the vast majority of members and most of its leadership is based abroad. For the most part the Supreme Guide is merely a figurehead and the clandestine operations of the Muslim Brotherhood are directed from London and Geneva.

Sadat sought to reconcile with the Islamists but he knew they could always be a threat and he never did lift the official government ban on the Brotherhood as a political group. Even so the Brotherhood quickly emerged as a political force. Publicly the Brotherhood tried to maintain a "moderate" stance, but behind the scenes it was spawning a number of loosely connected violent extremist groups.

The Takfir wal Hejra was one of the most important of these groups. It was led by a former Muslim Brotherhood member, Shukri Ahmed Mustafa, and it was created in the early ’70s. It was publicly exposed in 1975 by the Egyptian daily Al Ahram after a number of its members were arrested. In 1977 this group abducted a former minister of religion, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein al-Dhahabi, and demanded the release of sixty prisoners and 200,000 Egyptian pounds for his release. The demands were refused and the corpse of the Sheikh was turned over, followed by several targeted bombings. On July, 8, 1977, Mustafa, the leader of the group, was arrested along with a number of his followers. Mustafa and four of his ringleaders were executed on March 19, 1978, but his terrorist organization lived on. ⁽⁷⁾

The Organization for Islamic Liberation was another terrorist cell created by a former Muslim Brother, a man named Dr. Saleh Siriyya. In 1974 members of this group tried to take over a military academy, capture weapons and then move on an assembly where Sadat was speaking. The plan failed, eleven people died and Siriyya was captured and later executed. ⁽⁸⁾

In 1974 security forces uncovered another group, the Islamic Liberation Party, founded in Jordan in the ’50s by Sheikh Taghiud Din Nabhani, a Muslim Brother and judge originally from Haifa. This group primarily focused activity against Israel but Sadat arrested and interrogated members of the group who lived in Egypt. ⁽⁹⁾

The two most important Egyptian terrorist organizations that were offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood that still exist today are the Jamaat al-Islamiyya, which translates as the Islamic Group, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, also known simply as Jihad or al-Jihad. Both of them were closely involved in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

The Jamaat al-Islamiyya was created in 1971 to agitate against Sadat because of his cooperation with Libya’s Qaddafi. It was headed by Muslim Brother Dr. Hilmi al-Gazzar and initially refrained from violence and focused on activism within the universities, but this was soon to change. A blind sheikh by the name of Dr. Omar Ahmed Mohammed Abdel Rahman later emerged as the leader of the organization. ⁽¹⁰⁾

The other prominent group, Islamic Jihad, first came to light in 1977 when Al Ahram reported that eighty members of this fighting organization had been arrested. One of Islamic Jihad’s members at the time was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a young upper-class Muslim related to the Azzams. His grandmother was the sister of the illustrious Abdel-Rahman Azzam mentioned previously, and his uncle was Salem Azzam of the Islamic Council of Europe. Zawahiri had first been arrested in 1966 at the age of 16 because of his Muslim Brotherhood affiliation, and his militant views continued to grow over the years.

In early 1980 Islamic Jihad was targeted again when the government arrested seventy more members. Egypt’s prosecutor described the organization as a "fanatic terrorist group," and said that it was "financed from abroad and was armed with weapons, explosives and technical equipment." ⁽¹¹⁾ However, the arrests and investigation failed to prevent the ultimate terrorist attack. Dietl describes it,

"The Jihad group made the headlines once again on October 6, 1981, when a commando squad under Khaled Islambuli shot President Anwar el-Sadat. Following arduous investigations during the summer of 1982, it became known in Cairo that the Jihad group was part of the large family enterprise of the Muslim Brotherhood. When I asked, this was conceded by the Muslim Brotherhood. In the meantime, in a unanimous statement, the Jihad group ’condemned to death’ Sadat’s successor Mubarak. In September 1982 the three most important leaders of the Jihad group were tracked down and arrested." ⁽¹²⁾

Just two years prior to Sadat’s assassination the International Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood had held a summit meeting in London. Brotherhood leaders from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Pakistan and Afghanistan converged, along with the head of the Saudi Arabian secret service, to discuss the recent achievements in Pakistan and Iran, and to discuss the future of Afghanistan, Syria and Egypt. ⁽¹³⁾

In Egypt Sadat had continued to reconcile with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1978 he allowed the Muslim Brotherhood’s publication Al Dawa to be distributed again. In 1979 he even met with Supreme Guide Omar el-Telmisani on two occasions but nothing came of the dialogue and the Muslim Brotherhood continued its aggressive attacks on Sadat in print as well as in the mosques. Finally, just weeks before Sadat was assassinated, he had el-Telmisani arrested and a ban was placed on the distribution of Al Dawa.

When Sadat was gunned down Kemal al-Sananiry was the Muslim Brotherhood’s most prominent representative in Egypt. He was arrested and interrogated and died in prison a few weeks later. The government lamely claimed that he had committed suicide, but his wife Amina rejected this explanation. She was the daughter of Sayed Qutb.

Also arrested, but later acquitted, was the blind sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman. He had encouraged the perpetrators of the assassination by ruling that the government was led by atheists and heretics. He also permitted them to steal as a means to finance their cause and even ruled that they would be allowed to have their way with the wives of government officials if they succeeded in toppling the government.⁽¹⁴⁾

Years later he was implicated in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison where he now sits. His two sons carry on the jihad as members of Al Qaeda and close followers of Osama bin Laden. They were highlighted in the cache of Al Qaeda videos that were recently publicized on CNN (see the clip "Roots of Hatred"). Sheikh Rahman is still the recognized spiritual leader of the Islamic Group, and its members have vowed to take revenge on America if the diabetic Sheikh dies in his American prison.

Ayman al-Zawahiri was also arrested in connection with the assassination. After spending three years in prison he was released, whereupon he soon rose to the top of Islamic Jihad, taking over in 1993, and then linking up with Osama bin Laden in Sudan. After he fled Egypt he based his operations in Geneva, Switzerland, working under the cover of the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Islamic Center led by Said Ramadan. ⁽¹⁵⁾ (With whom Malcolm X had his famous correspondence just weeks prior to his assassination by Elijah Mohammed’s Black Muslims.)

Al-Zawahiri has emerged as the alleged "number two man" in the "Al Qaeda" organization. His brother Muhammad al-Zawahiri is currently in the Balkans directing Muslim attacks against Serbia and Macedonia. Reports say that he works out of a NATO-controlled area of Kosovo.⁽¹⁶⁾

These two "Azzam family" brothers have always maintained their connections with the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that Ayman has publicly criticized the Brotherhood for its lack of support for the revolution in Egypt. His criticism has been a useful cover for the Brotherhood which tries to maintain its "moderate" facade.

Another important figure in the Al Qaeda organization with links back to the Sadat assassination is the brother of assassin Khaled Islambuli, who was executed on April 15, 1982. Ahmad Shawqi al-Islambuli left Egypt and appeared in Karachi, Pakistan, where he helped to set up a smuggling network. Later Islambuli worked with bin Laden in Sudan setting up a militant base in Somalia, and then he became a member of bin Laden’s World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders in 1998. ⁽¹⁷⁾

The most recent prominent terrorist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood is the Palestinian group HAMAS, which surfaced as a separate group in 1988 upon the release of its "Islamic Covenant," by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He had been the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza for a number of years and his group can be traced back to 1978 when it was registered as an Islamic association called Al-Mujamma Al-Islami. In its Islamic Covenant of 1988 the group plainly describes itself as the "Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood." ⁽¹⁸⁾

Robert Dreyfuss summarizes the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the few paragraphs below. These words were written in 1980, but they are just as true today,

"The real Muslim Brotherhood is not the fanatical sheikh with his equally fanatical following, nor is it even the top mullahs and ayatollahs who lead entire movements of such madmen; Khomeini, Qaddafi, General Zia are exquisitely fashioned puppets.

The real Muslim Brothers are those whose hands are never dirtied with the business of killing and burning. They are the secretive bankers and financiers who stand behind the curtain, the members of the old Arab, Turkish, or Persian families whose genealogy places them in the oligarchical elite, with smooth business and intelligence associations to the European black nobility and, especially, to the British oligarchy.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is money. Together, the Brotherhood probably controls several tens of billions of dollars in immediate liquid assets, and controls billions more in day-to-day business operations in everything from oil trade and banking to drug-running, illegal arms merchandising, and gold and diamond smuggling. By allying with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Anglo-Americans are not merely buying into a terrorists-for-hire racket; they are partners in a powerful and worldwide financial empire that extends from numbered Swiss bank accounts to offshore havens in Dubai, Kuwait and Hong Kong." ⁽¹⁹⁾

Hopefully the reader is beginning to understand how small the radical Islamist movement really is, how closely inter-connected it is, and how it all seems to tie back into the Muslim Brotherhood. The picture gets even clearer when the career of Osama bin Laden is closely inspected.

Section Notes and Sources

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IV. Osama bin Laden: The Early Years

Osama was born around 1957, the seventeenth son of the Yemenite construction magnate Sheikh Mohammed bin Oud bin Laden. Over the years Mohammed had established himself as a trusted friend of King Abdul Aziz and then King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, and his construction firm was hired to refurbish the holy sites in Mecca and Medina, including Mecca’s Grand Mosque. He also received a contract to refurbish the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1969.

At the time of Mohammed bin Laden’s death in 1972 his family had grown to become perhaps the richest non-royal family in Saudi Arabia, and his estate was handed over to his fifty-four children. His son Salem emerged as the head of the firm, and then Bakr, with Abdelaziz, Ali, Yeslam and Yahya emerged also playing leading roles in directing the bin Laden empire. These heirs have always enjoyed a close relationship with the Saudi royal family and are responsible for training many of the younger Saudi princes in the intricacies of global finance and industry. Mohammed bin Fahd and Saud bin Nayef are two of the princes who owe their current status as global tycoons to the bin Laden brothers.⁽¹⁾ The Saudi royal family has always been close with the top levels of the bin Laden family, but the same cannot be said about some of the younger sons of Mohammed bin Laden.

On November 20, 1979, Mecca’s Grand Mosque was taken over by several hundred militants. The Imam was murdered and in the chaos thousands of worshipers were trampled to death. The militants took hundreds of hostages and holed up in the vast cellars under the mosque. Saudi forces reacted quickly and staged a counter-attack against the rebels inside but they were easily repulsed by the well-armed and well-fortified militants. For days the rebels fought off the government forces, destroying tanks and even a helicopter that flew in too close, crashing into a minaret.

Finally King Khalid turned to the French government and French special forces arrived with chemical weapons to smoke out the rebels. The Grand Mosque was finally liberated on December 4. For two weeks the holiest shrine of Islam had been taken over by radical fundamentalists. The end result was hundreds of government soldiers and over a hundred rebels dead, with most of the hostages dead as well. On January 9 sixty-three of the captured rebels were paraded into the main squares of several Arabian cities and publicly beheaded. Hundreds more were arrested and interrogated in the ensuing investigation. ⁽²⁾

Among those arrested was Mahrous bin Laden, son of Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden and brother of Osama. In his biography of Osama bin Laden Jacquard writes,

"The terrorists had established contact with Mahrous several years earlier, when he was a student in London and when he counted among his friends the son of a Southern Yemeni dignitary, the leader of a very active fundamentalist group. Following this university connection, Mahrous bin Laden became involved with a group of Syrian Muslim Brotherhood activists exiled to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi secret service investigation ultimately declared Mahrous innocent. The investigation stated that by exploiting networks of the young Mahrous’s former friendships, the terrorists had gained access to the bin Laden group’s trucks to organize their attack without the young man’s knowledge." ⁽³⁾ p.13-14

The Bin Laden firm was responsible for the Grand Mosque’s renovations and so its trucks were allowed to come and go freely without being searched. The terrorists had used these trucks to help them smuggle in weapons that were then stashed inside the mosque prior to the takeover. Mahrous was declared innocent of being involved in this intrigue but his honor was tainted forever and he knew he could never rise to the level of achievement reached by his older brothers.

Had he been the member of any other family it is likely that he would have been executed, if only for simply having relations with some of the fundamentalists linked to the terrorists. In the end it was the bin Laden family that saved the day, because they provided the blueprints of the mosque that helped to plan the final successful attacks against the rebels. In the end the bin Laden family emerged from the whole affair pretty much unscathed, with their integrity and their close relationship with the House of Saud intact. ⁽⁴⁾

Osama bin Laden, as one of the youngest sons of the bin Laden family, grew up feeling somewhat of an outsider and like his brother Mahrous he turned to fundamentalist Islam. Biographer Adam Robinson states that the young Osama lived a very indulgent and secular lifestyle during his teenage years, especially while he attended high school in Beirut from 1973 to 1975. Others, such as Roland Jacquard argue that this was not the case.

Whatever the truth of his younger days, it is clear that Osama wholeheartedly embraced Islam during the time that he attended King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. He enrolled there in 1976 and in 1977 he undertook the two-week long holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. Robinson writes that after this experience Osama began to grow his beard long and his sincerity towards Islam became apparent. What Robinson does not divulge is that Osama’s exposure to the Muslim Brotherhood at this time brought about his conversion.

Mohammed Qutb, the brother of Sayed Qutb the "chief ideologist" of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed in 1966, emigrated to Saudi Arabia as a result of Nasser’s crackdown on the Brotherhood. In the 1960s he was given several different official positions within Saudi universities to teach and to carry out the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood. While in Saudi Arabia Mohammed Qutb conceived of the organization now known as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and it was made a reality in 1972 thanks to large donations from the bin Laden family. Osama’s brother Omar was at one time its executive director, and another brother, Abdullah, also served as a director.⁽⁵⁾

WAMY was being investigated as a source of terrorist funding until the Bush administration halted the FBI’s investigation at the beginning of his term in 2001.

WAMY’s perspective on Islam is the familiar Muslim Brotherhood perspective that the Globalists like so much, that Islam is threatened by the West and that it must remain wary of science and technology and return to its primitive roots. WAMY’s headquarters today are in Riyadh, with major offices in Falls Church, Virginia and London, England. According to reporter Greg Palast there are over twenty WAMY-aligned organizations also based in Britain. ⁽⁶⁾

While attending King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah Osama bin Laden became close to Mohammed Qutb and he was initiated into the Muslim Brotherhood. Malise Ruthven, author of Islam In the World and former editor with the BBC Arabic Service, even remarks that Qutb was Osama’s "mentor" during this period. ⁽⁷⁾

Another important figure in Osama’s university life was a professor by the name of Sheikh Abdullah Yussuf Azzam. Unrelated to the Egyptian Azzams, he was a Palestinian-born teacher of religion who was an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank. Later he pursued an education in Jordan and Damascus before receiving his doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from Cairo’s Al Azhar University in 1973. While in Cairo he met the family of Sayed Qutb and was "drawn into the ranks of the Egyptian militant Islamists."⁽⁸⁾

Shortly after this he moved to Saudi Arabia after being invited to teach at King Abdul Aziz University, where he linked up with Mohammed Qutb. Osama attended Azzam’s classes and was caught up into his militant ideology. Azzam’s famous motto was,

"Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, and no dialogues." ⁽⁹⁾

In 1979 Dr. Azzam left Saudi Arabia and was one of the first Arabs to join the Afghan jihad. He was the lead Saudi/Palestinian representative of the Muslim Brotherhood. The 22-year old Osama bin Laden followed soon after and together they established the Maktab al-Khidamat, MAK, or Mujahideen Services Bureau based in Peshawar, Afghanistan. Their organization linked up with Pakistan’s Muslim Brotherhood organization, the Jamaat-e Islami. The MAK worked to recruit fighters to join the jihad and by the late 1980s there were branches of the MAK, known also as the Al Kifah Organization, in fifty countries around the world.

The Muslim Brotherhood network combined with bin Laden family money to make the MAK a tremendous success.

Militants from around the globe poured into Afghanistan, but Azzam and bin Laden recognized that many of the prospective mujahedin lacked the necessary training and supplies for the Afghan campaign. To remedy this they established Masadat Al-Ansar in Peshawar as a central base, training compound and storehouse to serve the Arabs coming in to fight.⁽¹⁰⁾ Bodansky p. 12

This was Al Qaeda (the base) for the thousands streaming in to fight the jihad. Dr. Saad al-Fagih was one of the many Saudis who passed through the Peshawar base, and he explained in a PBS interview how Al Qaeda came to be and how it was never meant to refer to bin Laden’s terrorist organization,

"Well, I [really] laugh when I hear the FBI talking about Al Qaeda as an organization of bin Laden... [It’s really a] very simple story. If bin Laden is to receive Arabs from Saudi Arabia and from Kuwait--from other regions--he is [to] receive them in the guest house in Peshawar. They used to go to the battle field and come back, without documentation... There [was] no documentation of who has arrived. Who has left. How long he stayed. There’s only [a nice general reception]. And you go there. And you join in the battle field...

 

Now, he was embarrassed by many families when they called him and ask what happened to our son. He don’t know. `Cause there’s no record. There’s no documentation. Now he asked some of his colleagues to start documenting the movement of every Arab coming under his umbrella... It is recorded that [they] arrived in this date and stayed in this house... Many of them had come only for two weeks, three weeks and then disappeared. That record, that documentation was called the record of Al Qaeda. So that was Al Qaeda. There’s nothing sinister about Al Qaeda. It’s not like an organization...

 

I don’t think he used any name for his underground group. If you want to name it, you can name it ’bin Laden group.’ But if they are using the term Al Qaeda ... Al Qaeda is just a record for the people who came to Peshawar and moved from there back and forth to the guest house. And moved back to their country." ⁽¹¹⁾

Bin Laden’s years fighting the Afghan war were mostly spent in Pakistan and his job was primarily that of a fundraiser and an organizer, although many times he would travel into Afghanistan with his mentor Sheikh Azzam, known as the ’Emir of Jihad,’ who would give fiery speeches to raise the morale of the mujahedin warriors. In Afghanistan bin Laden’s resources as a contractor were also used and he brought in heavy equipment on a number of occasions to help fortify mujahedin strongholds and to refurbish supply roads. The debate is still unsettled as to whether or not bin Laden or Azzam were ever involved in any actual front-line fighting, but both have been mythologized as active and courageous warriors.

During bin Laden’s Afghan years the MAK developed close relations with Pashtun warlord and Muslim Brother Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Azzam and Hekmatyar both held anti-American views, but Hekmatyar’s were more pronounced, even though it is estimated that his group, the Hezb-e-Islami, received up to 40% of the American aid channeled to the mujahedin through the CIA and the ISI.⁽¹²⁾ During the 1980s Azzam also traveled throughout the USA meeting American Muslim groups, raising funds and recruiting fighters for the jihad. He set up major Al Kifah centers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Pittsburgh, and Tucson, and smaller Al Kifah branches in thirty other American cities.⁽¹³⁾ In this way the militant Muslim Brotherhood message was dispersed throughout the United States and recruits were brought into the jihad.

According to respected Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid the Afghan war escalated in 1986 when the CIA made three strategic decisions.⁽¹⁴⁾ First, to provide the mujahedin with American made Stinger missiles. At the height of the war it is estimated that the mujahedin averaged 1.5 kills per day of Soviet and communist Afghan aircraft. The second decision was one promoted by British Intelligence and the ISI to launch guerilla attacks into Soviet territory in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Predictably, the operation was handed over to Hekmatyar’s forces, who managed to achieve a symbolic success, to which the Soviets responded by firebombing all nearby villages. The CIA immediately stopped this action as counter-productive. Thirdly, the CIA began to endorse the Arab initiative of recruiting jihad warriors around the world. Rashid describes how this recruiting drive was run,

"Pakistan had issued standing instructions to all its embassies abroad to give visas, with no questions asked, to anyone wanting to come and fight with the mujahidin. In the Middle East the Ikhwan ul Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), the Saudi-based World Muslim League, and the Palestinian Islamic radicals organized recruits and put them in contact with the ISI. The ISI and Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami Party set up reception committees to welcome, house, and train the foreign militants.

 

Then the two encouraged militants to join the mujahidin groups, usually the Hizbe Islami. Much of the funding for this enterprise came directly from Saudi Intelligence, which was partly channeled through the Saudi radical Osama bin Laden, who was then based in Peshawar. At the time, French scholar Oliver Roy described the enterprise as ’a joint venture between the Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Jamaat-e-Islami, put together by the ISI.’ " ⁽¹⁵⁾

These three decisions escalated the war in Afghanistan and made it clear to Mikhail Gorbachev that his nation was fighting a battle that it could never win. On April 14, 1988 the Geneva Accords were signed mandating a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. By early 1989 the Soviet Army was out of Afghanistan, but a staunchly communist and well-armed Afghan regime was still ruling from Kabul.

American aid to the mujahedin ended almost precisely at the moment the Geneva Accords were signed. The Soviets were leaving and so the West congratulated itself on achieving a victory. For the United States the war was over and the CIA did not want to participate in creating an Islamist regime in Afghanistan that would undoubtedly be anti-American. As a result Hekmatyar, Azzam, bin Laden and the Islamist warlords were left feeling betrayed and used.

The mujahedin also received a major setback on August 17, 1988, when General Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s ruling dictator and mentor of the mujahedin, died when his C-130 aircraft crashed minutes after taking off from Bahawalpur airport. Also killed were a number of generals and the American ambassador. In November of 1988, Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto who had been executed by General Zia, was elected Prime Minister. She began to introduce policies that threatened the fundamentalists and the warlords, including legislation that cracked down on drug smuggling.

In March of 1989 the mujahedin were convinced by Saudi and ISI advisors to launch a full-scale assault on the communist-held city of Jalalabad. It was argued that the fall of Jalalabad would lead to a quick route of President Najibullah’s forces and that Afghanistan could then be quickly liberated. The assault turned into one of the biggest disasters for the mujahedin because Jalalabad was well-defended and protected by a veteran army that included a significant artillery contingent. The mujahedin were slaughtered by the thousands.

Back in Peshawar bin Laden and Azzam reacted in fury. They began to issue statements from their press offices accusing Pakistan and Saudi Arabia of being part of a treacherous American plot. This was perhaps the first public notice of bin Laden’s growing resentment towards the decidedly pro-American Saudi regime of his homeland. ⁽¹⁶⁾

A greater blow struck bin Laden when his friend and father-figure Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was assassinated several months later. Notice the mythology that surrounds the passing of this man as related on a Muslim web site,

"On Friday the 24^th of November 1989 in Peshawar, Pakistan, he was assassinated along with his two sons Mohammed and Ibrahim, by 20kg of TNT activated by remote control while he was driving to Friday (Jumma) prayer. His car was blown apart into fragments in the middle of a busy street. The blast was so intensive that fragments from the bodies of his sons were found up to a hundred meters from the carnage. One of his son’s legs was also found suspended from an overhead telephone line. Nevertheless, Allah be glorified, the Sheikh was found perfectly intact, except for an internal haemorrhage, which caused his death. Many a people present will confirm to the smell of musk that emanated from his body." ⁽¹⁷⁾

In his early days Sheikh Azzam had helped to create the Palestinian organization now known as HAMAS. Today the military wing of HAMAS on the West Bank is officially known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades.⁽¹⁸⁾ In London the Azzam Organization was founded in his name and its affiliate Azzam Publications (www.azzam.com) describes itself as "an independent media organization providing authentic news and information about Jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere." The website was shut down after September 11, 2001. ⁽¹⁹⁾

At the end of 1989 Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. He was welcomed as a celebrity and a hero, but he remained bitter about the political infighting that was consuming Afghanistan and cynical of the ruling House of Saud. He turned back to his family and he briefly took up a job within the Bin Laden Firm working in road construction. He was 32, and almost a ten-year veteran of the Afghan war, but his jihad days were just beginning. The Muslim Brotherhood had further plans for him.

Section Notes and Sources

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