The Real Story of John Walker Lindh

I believe the case of John Lindh is an important story and worthy of this audience's attention. In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man, embarked on a spiritual quest, who became the focus of the grief and anger of an entire nation over an event in which he had no part. I refer to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The reason I think this story is important is because our system broke down in the case of John Lindh. My goals today are first, just to tell you the story of John Lindh. Second, to ask you to reflect, based on the fact of John's case, on the importance and the fragility of the rights we enjoy under our Constitution. And my third point is to suggest that the so-called war on terrorism lacks a hearts and minds component.

I want to begin by asking you to call to mind the September 11th terrorist attacks and the shock and horror they engendered in the hearts of everyone. On that awful day, a band of terrorists, who claimed Islam as their cause, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them full of passengers into occupied buildings without warning -- the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They crashed the fourth airplane, also filled with passengers, into a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand innocent Americans lost their lives that day.

But for those attacks, John's activities, which I will describe, would have been treated with indifference, or perhaps curiosity here in the United States. But, viewed through the prism of the September 11th attacks, those very same activities caused this young man to be vilified as a traitor and a terrorist.

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Comment:

When I was directed to this article, I was disgusted that the people who so directed me — people that I ordinarily have a very high opinion of — would defend such traitorous scum. Yes, I realize that the Bush administration has a very long and very accomplished history of lying, but that doesn't mean that the opposite of what he says is by default true. I was especially disgusted given how clear cut cut the facts of the matter were, and intended on telling them as such — in no uncertain terms — once I had read the article. It's a good thing I did decide to read the article first, because, to my great surprise, the article turned out not to be the wishful thinking of a parent in denial (e.g. "My little Johnny would never do something like that. He's a good kid!"), but rather a persuasive, well researched piece that just so happened to be written by the subject's father. To my great surprise, I learned that most of what I had been led to believe about the basic facts of the case was simply not true. I admit to not having followed his case closely — I had other things on my mind at the time, and was in any case much younger and less aware of current affairs — but I had been under the impression that Lindh had gone to Afghanistan after 9/11 in order to fight against our retribution for the attacks, that he had been captured in combat against American troops, and that he had been convicted of committing treason.

Nope. It turns out that he had gone to Afghanistan some time earlier in order to fight the Northern Alliance, who, it turns out, were supported by the Russians (i.e. the successors of the evil atheist empire that had invaded the Realm of Islam in an effort to supplant Islam with Communism, and against which a jihad — a real one, not like Osama's unholy war — had been declared). His objectives had nothing to do with America, or the Apostasy. He wasn't captured fighting American troops, either. He actually surrendered his weapons to the Northern Alliance, which then betrayed him. Finally, he was not convicted of committing treason, or of belonging to a terrorist organization, or anything like that. He was convicted of violating the trade embargo by importing his services as a soldier.

I am aware of, and have read, both Robert Young Pelton's and Johnny Spann's rebuttal's of Mr. Lindh's speech, and I have found them wanting. Both, unlike Mr. Lindh's speech, rely on emotionally loaded language, make unsupported claims, and generally ignore facts. Moreover, both make the same two basic mistakes: they effectively treat "Taliban" and "al-Qaeda" as synonyms, and they look at al-Qaeda — and thus the Taliban — from the perspective of today, after 9/11 made it the ultimate incarnation of evil in our time (rather than just another terror group, which is what it had been). In short, they both operate under the assumption that the other grunts in Lindh's unit were evil.

In war, on the ground, there is no good and evil, only death.

Prince Naif urges imams to confront deviant ideology

Riyadh – Jamad Al Akher 06, 1428/ June 21, 2007– Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz yesterday emphasized the role of imams and khateebs in the Kingdom’s fight against terrorism and destructive thoughts and ideas. During an open meeting with more than 600 prayer leaders and those who give Friday sermons in mosques, the prince stated, “It is your responsibility to confront this problem by applying your knowledge, minds and courage. There are at least 14,000 mosques where Friday prayers are holding in various parts of the Kingdom. “This means we have 14,000 platforms. If the khateebs use this opportunity to expose the deviants and their ideology, it will have a great positive impact upon society,” he observed. [More]


Comment:

This is good. While the West is obviously involved, the so-called War on Terror is in reality a war within Islam, the war between the Muslims and the Apostates. We can only do so much; it is on this battlefield that the war will be won.

The Roots of Apostasy

There are two major theories regarding the spiritual cancer currently afflicting Islam. They might be referred to as the Wahhabi and Salafist Theories. The Apostates trace their ideology back to Muḥammad ibn 'Abdu'l-Wahháb, but the evidence points towards Salafism. While the prevalence of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia certainly facilitated the Apostasy's spread into that kingdom, the Apostasy originated outside Saudi Arabia, among the Salafists. In any case, the two terms have since become nearly synonymous.

When Salafism got its start way back in the 19th Century, it was actually not a bad thing. The original source of the idea can be traced to one Siyyid Jamálu'd-Dín-i-Afghání. He was, surprisingly, a Shiite, and in many ways what we would refer to as a liberal. He lived in the twilight of the Caliphate, and lamented the passing of supremacy from the lands of Islam to the European powers. He believed that the reason for this was the splintering and ossification of Islam. He asked, "What would the early Muslims do now?", although his ideological descendants would warp this into "What did the early Muslims do then?", and somehow even get that wrong.

Afghani eventually died, as historical figures are wont to do, and his teachings were further developed by Muḥammad Abduh, who had studied under him at the grand and glorious Azhar University in Cairo, which would end up being the incubator for all this. Abduh's ideas were inherited by a student of his, Rashid Rida, and this seems to be where darkness begins to creep into the picture. The previous Salafists, who are also referred to as Islamic Modernists in order to distinguish them from their mutant spawn, had criticized both westernization and stodgy old conservatives within Islam. Rida put most of the blame on westernization.

One of Rida's most fervent admirers was Hassan al-Banna. He went even further than Rida had, and it is with him that we begin to see the "Islamism" we all know and love. In 1928, Banna founded what has come to be known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's rise was meteoric, it rapidly became a major force in Egyptian politics. Enter Sayyid Qutb.

It was with Sayyid Qutb that Salafism's descent into Apostasy was completed. He was a high ranking member of the Brotherhood, and it was he who first raised the call for jihad. His Apostasy infected large parts of the Brotherhood, many of which split off to become full fledged terrorist organizations. Understandably alarmed, the Egyptian government took action against the Brotherhood, executing Qutb in 1966. Unfortunately, much of the faculty of al-Azhar University were by that time Apostates; they, in turn, churned out little Apostates, one of whom was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam.

Azzam went on to teach at a prestigious school in Saudi Arabia. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he issued the fatwa declaring jihad and formed the group Maktab al-Khadamat to train and equip jihadis. When he learned that a like-minded (and rich) former student of his, Osama bin Laden, had just moved into the area, he asked him for help. Osama said sure, and they became co-leaders of the group. Then, one day, Azzam was assassinated. The culprit was never firmly identified, but it had bin Laden's style. Osama then took sole command of the group.

Thus was al-Qaeda born.



Note: It's one in the morning as I write this, so I'm not going to proofread it yet. I will tomorrow.

The Heartbeat of War

In creating and maintaining this site, I have come to a better understanding of why news organizations cover the war so little. The daily bombings, suicide attacks, ambushes and mortar fire are the heartbeat of the war. They occur with such regularity that you expect them to occur. It's like they're one long event, rather than innumerable single ones. When you hear of one, you don't think to yourself, "Aha, something has just happened," you think, "Aha, something is continuing to happen." Since they seem like one event that is merely continuing, it's difficult to think of them as "news," since news is, by its very definition, new. No journalist wants to write the same story over and over again.

Unfortunately, this mindset, which I have found myself to be falling into, is deeply flawed. Each new attack is happening for the first time. Each person who dies had been alive before; each shattered world had been intact. This is not some endlessly repeating cycle. When a bomb goes off, something new is happening, and as it is new, it is also news. We must never forget that.

It is with this in mind that I have added a news feed. Even if an attack is not mentioned here in the main blog, it will still be in the sidebar, reminding us of fresh lives lost.

In other news, three more NATO soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb yesterday, and the Apostasy again demonstrated its pure and unsullied love of Islam by bursting into a mosque and shooting seven people even as they prayed to God, as they had been commanded to do in the Glorious Qur'án. Three people were thusly martyred, and the other four will for the rest of their lives bear the scars inflicted on them by those who war against God. With each such martyrdom, each civilian cut down for no reason other than pure malice, the true nature of the Apostasy is made even more evident to the rest of the world.

Speaking of which, this is a story that must be told.

Those who have joined partners with God

"An Iraqi al-Qaeda-led group meanwhile said it had killed 14 Iraqi army and police personnel and posted an internet video showing a masked man shooting the kneeling men in the head. 'After the deadline given by the Islamic State in Iraq expired the sharia court decided to implement God's ruling against those apostates,' the group said on the video."

—Excerpted from an article by Al Jazeera

I must say, this is a new low for the Apostacy. "God's ruling"? Unless God was a part of that court I don't see how the ruling could have come from Him. The ruling, of course, came from the court itself, and it knows it. Apparently, they now believe that their judgment is God's judgment, as though they sit on the same throne. The Qur'án, in chapter 4, verse 48, says,
"Lo! God forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto Him. He forgiveth (all) save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners to God, he hath indeed invented a tremendous sin." This refers to the worship of multiple deities. Now, though, the Apostates have done the Qur'án one better by actually setting up themselves as God's partners. This is the second deepest into apostacy you can sink, the lowest being the Faustian belief that you are superior to God. It chills me to think that someday they may even descend to that level.

May God have mercy on their souls.

1967 and the rise of extremism

Forty years after Israel defeated the combined armies of Jordan, Syria and Egypt in the 1967 war, some Middle East analysts argue that the conflict has helped to fuel the rise of Islamist ideologies.

Prior to the war, Arab nations such as Egypt, Iraq and Yemen overthrew monarchies and established military-backed socialist governments.

Arab nationalism and unity were touted as the ideological instruments to liberate occupied Palestinian lands and guide Arabs towards modernity. But the speed of Israel's victory shocked the Arab world and shattered the idea of Arab military might, as well as the region's military governments.

Huda Awad, a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera: "What happened in 1967 shook the military prestige in the Arab world." "The cradle of authoritarianism was rocked and that repealed its legitimacy."

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Comment:

So-called "Islamism" is hardly a recent phenomenon — such fanatics played a roll in the fall of 'Ali and the destruction of the Islamic Empire over a dozen centuries ago — but it is interesting how the current Apostate movement, which is worldwide in scope, all seems to go back to this one individual, Siyyid Qutb. The origins of Apostacy have long intrigued me; I will have to research the "family tree" of modern Apostacy, and see if I can discover what it is that made this siyyid tick. His motivations, and/or the motivations of those that motivated him, have profound implications for both human nature and the nature of Apostacy. I will post more on this later.