Why the Terror Plots Are False

By Abid Ullah Jan

a)      The present world order is unjust. It is a continuation of 700-year old colonial fascism.

b)      The former colonialism has combined with new systems for exploiting the natural resources of the weak and maintaining full control of their political systems through puppets.

c)      The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are illegitimate and illegal.

d)      9/11 was an inside job[1] unless we see evidence to the contrary or find answers to the long lists of unanswered questions.[2]

e)      Bush and Blair are neck deep in the blood of innocent Muslims and non-Muslims.

f)        Aggression and oppression should be resisted.

g)      Muslims deserve the right to self-determination and self-rule and should struggle to live by Islam, free from colonial interference.

h)      The dying British Empire illegally imposed Israel on the local Arab population and took its land. Regardless of any solution to the Muslim-Israel problem, it is an illegitimate, racist state created and sustained with the help of terrorism and racism.

Despite these facts and beliefs, and despite being from Pakistan, I will never sacrifice even a dead cell of my body, an ounce of my energy or a second of my time in an act that will harm a single innocent individual – let alone hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians. The reason is simple: there is no religious, moral, legal, logical or rational justification for doing so. Even from the material, secular perspective, there is absolutely no benefit to Muslims at large from a few Muslims engaging in such acts on their behalf.

Applying the same understanding to the men accused in the recently unveiled terrorist plots, it is inconceivable for a Muslim to believe that they had planned to kill themselves and innocent civilians. How is it possible that I could not find a single Pakistani who was willing to take my book, The End of Democracy, while traveling to Pakistan? Similarly, I couldn’t find a single Pakistani who was willing to bring a 1994 newspaper article about BCCI’s closure from Pakistan to Canada.[3] It is really surprising to see dozens of Pakistani Muslims who were willing to plant bombs on planes.

Muslims who share the same “misplaced grievances,” with the “Islamic-fascists” know from their personal experience that there is much more than meets the eye in the alleged terrorist plots.

These plots, even if they had succeeded, can never benefit Muslims or Islam. To the contrary, it is evident that these plots have neatly provided Islamophobes and the so-called leaders of the free world with a chance to remind us of their fight against the “Islamic fascists”.  

The idea of bombarding the public with news of foiled or successful terrorist attacks is based on some faulty assumptions. One assumption is that Muslims are “nihilists” to the extent that against all logic, reason and religious commandments, they are out to kill civilians. The other assumption is that the general public is stupid enough to ignore the pronouncements from Mr. Blair that this is not a war on terrorism or regime change but a war to impose “value systems” on the Muslim world.[4]

When people in the position of Bush and Blair are determined to change a way of life of 1.5 billion people, and regard lying and killing thousands of people as “collateral damage” for this cause, cooking up a couple of fake terror plots are the most benign acts on their part for a great cause. That is why it would be hard for the architects of false and real terrorist plots to convince both the Muslim and non-Muslim masses that Islam, or grievances against the West, or misinterpretation of religion, continues to engage some Muslims in irreligious, immoral, illegal and irrational acts of terrorism. This simply doesn’t make any sense at all.

If radicalism or fascism means the belief of creating a new order through terrorism, then the present-day political and economic order in the West is the result of such radicalism and fascism. Tony Blair’s idea of imposing a “value systems” on 1.5 billion people is a sign of fascism.

Historically, colonial crusades were based on the belief that a wholly new world could be brought into being by acts of terror. That is the sum and substance of American, British and Israeli policies today. The true precursors of radicalism can be found in the earliest European movements to colonize the world. The same approach resulted in the establishment of the modern systems of political and economic oppression. Any movement that resists this imperial order is crushed with military force, and terrorism is used to keep people, particularly Muslims, from challenging the status quo.

Islamic movements for self-determination are neither terrorist movements nor have they any resemblance with the revolutionary terrorism developed in late Tsarist Russia against a background of rapid change. That was a totally different phenomenon with totally different root causes. Cities were expanding; literacy was growing; population growth was rapid; a new class of unemployed intellectuals was emerging. Russia had all the marks of a fast-evolving society. The dislocated students who took to terror as a political weapon had no clear objective or ideology either from the past or for the future. Their view of future was extremely hazy. They were more interested in the act of destruction itself than in its supposed benefits. The father of Russian anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin, summed up this attitude in a celebrated dictum: 'The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.“ For those who acted on this slogan, terrorism was a triumph of the will. Nothing of this sort applies to Muslims struggle for liberation from the never ending colonialism and puppet regimes in the Muslim world.

Some analysts argue that there are similarities between comtemporary Islamic movements the European revolutionary anarchism. Some analysts consider Al Qaeda as an ‘Islamic project’ that tried to emulate European revolutionary anarchism.[5] There is no organized group in the Muslim world that behaves like the late nineteenth-century anarchists, who targeted public officials and used terror to achieve their objectives.

Those who attribute terrorism to Al-Qaeda have no evidence. The FBI has clearly said that it doesn’t have any evidence against Osama for his involvement in 9/11. Osama swore on the Holy Qur’an to General Hamid Gul that he was not involved in the bombing in East Africa in any capacity.

There are hidden forces, most probably the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Israel and Pakistan, who coordinate and carry out these terrorist operations to pin the blame on Muslims. This idea of inflicting mass civilian casualties has more in common with modem European revolutionaries than it does with anything in medieval times or in Islam. The architects of the false terror plots must stop their adventures before these blow up in their faces, when no one in the East and the West will believe any word from them. Like other totalitarians, such as Hitler, they will have no option but to go out first for blow up the world that doesn’t agree with them, and later, turn on themselves when they realize the impossibility of transforming the whole world in their image with terrorism and aggression. 

Abid Ullah Jan is author of six books, including “After Fascism: Muslims and the Struggle for Self-determination.”