Radical Islam: the critical decade (1977-1989); (October 11, 2009)

            Sadate of Egypt visited Jerusalem in 1977 and spoke at the Knesset and sighed a peace treaty with Israel.  The Arab and Islamic world is angry.  The Arab League rejected Egypt as member for ten years. The Moslem Brotherhood movement in Egypt stopped cooperating with Sadate and an extremist faction proclaimed “Takfir wa Hejrat” which means repentance and refuge from the urban centers and isolation into communities for the Moslems abiding by the Charia. 

            The religious dogma of Sayyed Qotb whom Nasser had hanged in 1966 resurfaced with acute power.  Qotb was studying in the USA and returned to preach that Islam has been weakened because it has forgotten the notion of “Jihad” and is cooperating with the infidels the “monafikeen” or hypocrites whom the Prophet Muhammad lambasted for being ready to rally with the Jews or to returning to “Jahiliya”; thus, Qotb encouraged Jihad against the Moslems consorting with the policies and traditions of the infidels.

            A retired Palace Guard in Saudi Arabia, Juhaiman Otaibi, got wind of the message of “Takfir wa Hejra” and started Friday preaches in that vein: He warned the Moslems that 1979 is the 15^th century of the Moslem Hijra and that the most awaited Mahdi is coming to unite Islam.  A Yemenite from Assir, Abdallah Kahtani, who broke up from his master Ben Baz (still the formal actual cleric to the Saudi Kingdom), became the theologian for Otaibi.  The Egyptian Muhammad Elyas joined forces and the recruits of these three leaders invaded Al Kaaba in the autumn of 1979 and captured it.  The Saudi monarch paid the French paratroopers to retaking Al Kaaba; hundreds were massacred in that fight.

            The “Royal Family” in Saudi Arabia got the message clear and loud; Saudi Arabia was slightly inching from the Dark Ages before it re-sank even further in the darkest of ages.  The two monarchs Khaled and Fahd were staunch Wahhabits and hated the Chiaa sect. The minister of the Defense was Sultan and his cadet brother Nayef was the minister of the Interior, and their half-brother Bandar from a Sudanese mother was the eternal Ambassador to the USA.  This trio had vast contacts with Sunni radical Islamic Pakistan, Iraq of Saddam Hussein, and they financed the El Qaeda; they even asked the US to dismantle their bases in Saudi Arabia in order to keep the face of radical Moslems toward the widespread feeling in the Arab and Islamic World. It is to be understood that the Saudi sovereign fund is practically cash money for the US Administrations to use when the US Senate denies any funds to the Executive branch.

            In 1977, the Islamic forces in Iran were virulent and sympathized with the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood movement.  The US, France, and Britain permitted the overseas Iranian parties against the Chah to organize and demonstrate: these three States wanted to put the squeeze on the overbearing Chah of Iran because he was leading OPEC and had increased oil prices 160% within a couple of years. I recall that during my study in Oklahoma the Iranian parties kept constant demonstrations and gathering all of 1977 until Khomeini came to power in 1979.  There were the Khomeini movement, the Islamic Moujahedeen Khalq, and the secular communist leaning Fedayeen Khalq.  What the Western powers started as a simple squeeze ended up in catastrophe: The Chah decided that the game is over and didn’t even put up a fight before the superpowers planned a counter-attack.

            In 1979, Iran of Khomeini, Syria of Hafez Assad, and President Bakr of Iraq decided on a rapprochement of Islam (Sunni and Chiaa).  Saddam Hussein was chief of security and Vice President of Bakr; Saddam hated the Chiaa and also Hafez Assad.  At the instigation of Saudi Arabia and the green light from the USA Saddam deposed Bakr and swiftly executed all the Iraqi Baath members who supported this entente; these prominent members of the Iraqi Baath were mostly Chiaa. Thus, Saddam and the Saudi monarchs joined forces to destabilize Iran of Khomeini.

            President Sadade was becoming a dead weight for the USA Administration; the Vice-President Housni Moubarak received the green light from the US to cooperate with the Moslem Brotherhood to eliminate Sadate. Lieutenant Islambouli, brother of Muhammad Elyas who invaded the Kaaba, shot dead Sadate during the yearly military parade.  Moubarak pleased the Moslem Brotherhood for a year and tightened the application of Charia and froze the peace treaty for a short while.

            The Saudi Monarchs financed and instigated Saddam to invade Iran in 1980. The US disturbed the electronics of a plane carrying the entire Iranian chief of staff inspecting the Khuzestan which crashed with no survivors.  After a swift advance in Khuzestan the Iraqi troops were halted, defeated, and then retreated into Iraq by 1982.  During that war Iraq received all the military logistic, support, and aerial intelligence from the USA, France, and Britain. France sold Saddam a nuclear reactor that Israel would bomb in 1983.  The US supplied Saddam with bacteriological and chemical arms of mass destruction. Iran wanted the war to continue in order to re-structure its political system and thus this insane war lasted till 1989 before Khomeini died.  The leaders of the strong Iranian movement for entente between Sunni and Chiaa were blown up during a convention; among the dead was Ayatollah Montazeri.  Rafsanjani, later to become President of Iran, hated the Sunni sect and made sure to arrive 15 minutes late to the convention: he was the right hand man of Khomeini at the time.

            With the Chah out the Soviet Union was encouraged and then sucked in militarily into Afghanistan; the same process as the US was gradually sucked in Viet Nam.  Iran of Khomeini arranged a deal with the Soviet not to interfere in the North and West of Afghanistan with Chiaa majority. Saudi Arabia recruited radical Moslem Sunnis from around the world to fight communist Soviet Union; Pakistan was the State to supply arms, logistics, and training to the Moslem “mujahideen”.

            As the Soviet Union was disintegrating in 1991, the US and Europe were busy with a new world order and intentionally forgot radical Islam for an entire decade.  Radical Islam got under way in organization and proliferation and performed many operational activities in Indonesia, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, Chechnya, Pakistan, India, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia (the Khobar bombing of the hotel where the American aviators had residence) to end up with the 9/11/ 2001 attack on the Twin Towers.  During the decade, after the dismantlement of Russia, the US Administrations toned down every terrorist’s activities to its public opinion in order to focus on world financial domination and the restructuring of Europe.