The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 56 Issue: 13 - Saturday, May 13, 2006
The Old Man in the Mountain
In the 12 century, surviving Crusaders returned home from the Holy Wars to report the existence of a mysterious group of Islamic terrorists known as "Hashishiyyin" -- from which we get our word, "assassin."
The Hashishiyyin got their name from their practice of smoking hashish before going into combat. They would get so stoned on hash that they would demonstrate unbelievable acts of courage, terrifying their enemies, who would then report back even more exaggerated tales, until the Hashishiyyin took on almost mythical status.
But they weren't mythological, they were real. The Hashishiyyin were the minions of a 12th century Islamic leader named Hasan-i Sabbah, known to the Crusaders as "The Old Man in the Mountain."
Sabbah's agents would recruit volunteers with promises of paradise for martyrdom, complete with the 72 virgins.
The new recruit was drugged, awakening to a 'vision' of paradise, surrounded by beautiful virgins catering to his every whim. After drugging him again, the Hashishiyyin would take the recruit back. When he woke, they'd tell him it was only a foretaste of what awaited him following his martyrdom.
According to accounts brought back by the Crusaders, the Old Man in the Mountain had such control over his followers that he would amuse and terrorize visitors to his castle by ordering a few of his young men to jump off a cliff to demonstrate that they would obey his slightest whim.
The Old Man was real, the Hashishiyyin were real, and the mountain is real. The ruins of his castle, the Castle Alamut, may still be seen today, perched on a barren peak at the south end of the Caspian Sea.
Alamut was 'the base' for a secret Islamic fundamentalist society known as the Ismailis. The Ismailis' goal was to return Islam to its fundamental roots. He sent 'preachers' (recruiters) throughout the region, to Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo.
He warred against the Seljuk Turks and assorted caliphs, sheiks and viziers. He was a believer in the Shia' tradition that the true succession of Islam came through Ali, married to the prophet's daughter, Fatima.
The Old Man in the Mountain was a 12th century version of Osama bin Laden. (Or, I suppose it is more correct to say Osama bin Laden is a 21st century version of Hasan-i Sabbah).
bin-Laden sends out preacher/recruiters teaching the same theology, making the same promises, and Osama's followers are as willing to jump off a cliff today as were Hasan's 900 years ago.
al-Qaeda (in Arabic, 'the base') is as dedicated to its founder's principles as were their Hashishiyyin predecessors, and every bit as willing to kill for them.
There are therefore only three options in dealing with al-Qaeda; kill them, get them to change their religion, or be ready to change ours. (Oh, or die, but doesn't seem to fit into a list of 'options'.)
Assessment:
Osama and Hasan-i Sabbah share the same theology as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who announced in his presidential victory speech, "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world."
Then he added, "The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."
Like Osama and Sabbah, when Ahmadinejad's ship came in, it floated on a river of blood. Remember the Iranian hostage crisis when 444 Americans were taken hostage by Islamic radicals? Ahmadinejad was there.
Ahmadinejad was involved in the assassinations of Kurdish politicians in Austria, and supporting and engaging in terrorist operations against Israel, long before becoming the president of Iran.
Ahmadinejad also has his own cadre of 'Hashishiyyin' -- suicide bombers, (allegedly some 40,000 strong) scattered throughout Iran and abroad.
Politically correct conventional wisdom says that all these nutbars and their followers are NOT representative of world-wide Islam, which politically correct conventional wisdom says are peaceful moderates who follow the true teachings of the prophet Mohammed, who preached a religion of peace and love.
Islam's approved holy books detailing the life and times of Mohammed the prophet report that Mohammed and his followers participated in no fewer than 80 political assassinations in the course of consolidating power. Three of the first four caliphs were, in fact, assassinated.
It is an accepted doctrine of Islam dating back to the Battle of Poitiers in 738, that no part of Dar al-Islam (the Zone of Submission) ever can be ceded permanently to the infidel.
In 1493, the Spanish Reconquest of Andalusia kicked the Muslim Moors out of Spain.
On Oct. 7, 2001, the day the United States began bombing Afghanistan, bin Laden appeared in a videotape, stating, "Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of al-Andalus would be repeated."
In addition to the Dar al-Islam, there is the Dar al-Harb, the Zone of War. For it is still the duty of Islam to bring the struggle to the infidels.
A political battle at home is raging over the NSA's use of phone records to detect calling patterns to help identify terrorists inside the United States. The top-secret, classified program, was already well known to the Congressional intelligence committee members before it got splashed on the front page of the New York Times.
According to a report on NBC News, ""One intelligence source tells NBC News that two dozen members of Congress have known about this program for years and have been completely uninterested until today."
President Bush is afraid to admit this Zone of War exists, and it is probably the prudent way to go. For the time being, there are Muslim countries for whom war with the West is not in their best interests; an official declaration that the West is at war with Islam would change all that.
But the Zone of Islam exists; and to Muslims, so does the Zone of War, and we are smack in the middle of it. While our politicians leak our secrets in order to create 'issues' to get themselves elected, Ahmadinejad gets to keep building nukes. The House is too divided by political bickering to address this existential threat, leaving it to the Islamic-dominated United Nations to deal with.
Military and intelligence secrets get leaked by partisan politicians in order to stir up division among the voters -- giving them an opportunity to posture before the cameras to remind voters why they should be re-elected. Osama gets to keep plotting attacks.
All the enemy has to do is keep Americans fighting among themselves and stay current with the New York Times to stay one step ahead of the US.
And trust in American political partisanship to do the rest.
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