Image by Getty Images via @daylifeIn the public eye, Afghani was careful to present himself as a devoted follower and preacher of Islam who was opposed to the imperial power that were undermining the self-determination of the Arab people (23). Behind the scenes, however, Afghani “was a closet atheist who railed not only against Islam, but all religions” (23). The pragmatic atheist and his esoteric adherents were nothing if not cynical, preaching anti-imperialism to the masses while they enjoyed the role of “ally, errand boy, and tool of the imperial powers” (21). Dreyfuss writes: “… while he (Afghani) posed as an anti-imperialist when it suited his purposes, Afghani and those in his inner circle engaged in a conspiratorial alliance with those very imperialists” (23).
This “conspiratorial alliance” with deviant elites in the west gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood’s precursor in 1885. It was in that year that Afghani “proposed the idea of a British-led pan-Islamic alliance” (20). The Persian acquired the sponsorship of the British elite, even occasionally acting in an intelligence-oriented role for the British oligarchs. Dreyfuss describes the Afghani’s exploits:
From the 1870s to the 1890s, Afghani was supported by the United Kingdom, and at least once, the record shows – in 1882, in India, according to a secret file of the Indian government’s intelligence service – Afghani officially offered to go to Egypt as an agent of British intelligence. (20)
Possibly drawing from his Freemasonic background, Afghani designed his pro-British pan-Islamic movement to operate like a secret society. In true Masonic fashion, the Persian possessed two sets of teachings: a public one for the masses and a private one for the movement’s elite. Dreyfuss states: “Throughout his life, Afghani had one message for the ‘mass’ and another for the ‘choice spirits’: for the masses, pan-Islamic; for the elite an eclectic brand of philosophy” (23).
The Pan-Islamic movement birthed by Afghani was an Arab variant of what authors Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould refer to as “mystical imperialism,” which was a “philosophy that rationalized the expansion of empire by infusing a sense of the divine into the raw politics of empire building” (“Mystical Imperialism: Afghanistan's Ancient Role”). Mystical imperialism was the result of elite projects in religious experimentation, which “sought to create a syncretistic cult-like religion with the over-arching goal of uniting the various factions and cultures within the empire” (“Mystical Imperialism: Afghanistan’s Ancient Role”). Afghani almost certainly imbibed elements of mystical imperialism while in the lodges of Freemasonry. Fitzgerald and Gould explain that mystical imperialism drew “on Anglo and Franco-Egyptian Masonic societies for inspiration” (ibid). Afghani was very familiar with Freemasonry of the Anglo-Egyptian and Franco-Egyptian variety. Dreyfuss writes: “In the 1870s, in Egypt – while outwardly professing to be a pious Muslim – Afghani frequented the lodges of the Anglo-Egyptian and Franco-Egyptian Freemason societies” (26).
In 1869, Afghani left Afghanistan to look for fertile soil abroad to plant the seeds of what would become Pan-Islam. From the very beginning, the Persian received support from the British elite. According to Dreyfuss, Afghani “went first to India, whose British-led colonial authorities welcomed the Islamic scholar with honors, graciously escorting him aboard a government-owned vessel on an all-expense-paid voyage to Suez” (25).
After his trip to India, Afghani made a brief visit to Cairo and then traveled Turkey (25). His stay in Turkey, however, was short-lived, ending in expulsion when his religious views became a threat to the Turkish religious establishment (25). Afghani returned to Cairo where he “was adopted by the Egyptian prime minister, Riad Pasha, a notorious reactionary and enemy of the nascent nationalist movement in Egypt” (25). By taking up league with an opponent of the nationalist movement, Afghani was again coming into proximity with the imperial powers; the imperialists considered the nationalist movement to be a threat to their regional dominance.
Pasha provided Afghani with residency in Cairo’s Al Azhar mosque “considered the center of Islamic learning worldwide” (25). Receiving a monthly government stipend, Afghani went to work laying the building blocks of Pan-Islam with British sponsorship. Dreyfuss states: “Feted by the British in India, transported by London to Egypt, and sponsored by England’s agent in Cairo, Afghani patiently laid the cornerstone of Pan-Islam (25).
During his time at the Al Azhar mosque, Afghani took a disciple named Mohammed Abduh under his wing (26). From 1871 to 1879, Afghani and Abduh worked together (27). In 1879, when the nationalist movement began gaining ground in Egypt and Pasha started to lose his political influence, the two left Cairo together (27). While in Egypt, however, Afghani and Abduh were British agents who worked feverishly to create a movement for mobilizing the Arab world on behalf of the British elite. Dreyfuss elaborates:
In the half century between 1875 and 1925, the building blocks of the Islamic right were cemented in the place by the British empire. Afghani created the intellectual foundation for a pan-Islamic movement with British patronage and the support of England’s leading Orientalist, E.G. Browne. Abduh, Afghani’s chief disciple, founded, with the help of London’s Egyptian proconsul Evelyn Baring Lord Cromer, the Salafiyya movement, the radical-right, back-to-basics fundamentalist current that still exists today. To understand the proper role of Afghani and Abduh, it is important to see them as experiments in a century-long British effort to organize a pro-British pan-Islamic movement. (20-1)
After his expulsion from Egypt, Afghani entered into a long period of travel. He went to India, London, Paris, Russia, Munich and Iran (25). Afghani was initially welcomed in Iran. Things changed, however, when the Persian let his revolutionary impulses consume him. Afghani encouraged social upheaval that would presage the 1979 revolution. Dreyfuss explains:
In Iran, the shah made him war minister and prime minister, but Afghani and the shah soon parted ways, and Afghani began agitating against the Persian monarch. Foreshadowing Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1970s revolution, Afghani took refuge in a mosque and organized the clergy to support him, until he was arrested and deported to Turkey. In 1896, his followers would assassinate the shah, ending that king’s fifty-year reign. (25-6).
An agitator and revolutionary to the very end, Afghani died in 1897 (26). Afghani’s radical brand of Islamism, however, did not die with him. In 1928, an Egyptian school teacher and imam Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which Dreyfuss describes as “the direct outgrowth of the pan-Islamic movement of Afghani and Abduh” (49).
Many of the concepts of pan-Islamism may have been passed to Banna by his father, who was a student of Abduh (51). It was a Syrian named Rashid Rida, however, who Dreyfuss characterizes as the “transmission belt” of pan-Islam to Banna (49). In 1897, Rida came to Egypt seeking Abduh (49). Both Afghani and Abduh were a source of inspiration for Rida. The Syrian was “an avid follower of The Indissoluble Bond, Afghani and Abduh’s weekly” (49). Rida located Abduh, who was enjoying the patronage of Lord Cromer, Egypt’s ruler (49). According to Dreyfuss, Rida became Abduh’s “chief acolyte” (49).
Determined to spread pan-Islam, Rida formed the Society of Propaganda and Guidance, which Dreyfuss tells us was “an early forerunner of the Muslim Brotherhood” (49). This organization, with its related Institute of Propaganda and Guidance, was responsible for indoctrinating the next generation of Islamists. Dreyfuss writes:
Its (the Society of Propaganda and Guidance’s) enrollees included students from as far away as Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Central Asia, and East Africa. They formed a second wave of the international cadre for an Islamist movement, after the secret societies tied the Indissoluble Bond. (50)
These second wave Islamists included eminent and well-known Egyptian sheikhs and religious figures who used their clout and influence to bring followers of Abduh and Rida together in the “Lighthouse Party,” a political organization that shared its name with an eight-page weekly newspaper founded by Rida in 1898 (49 and 50). Motivated by its opposition to the new Nationalist Party, the Lighthouse Party brought adherents of Abduh and Rida together to form yet another political organization, the People’s Party (50). Again, the British elite helped the Islamist descendants of Afghani and Abduh thrive. Lord Cromer, the British Consul-General in Egypt, played a major role in supporting the People’s Party. Dreyfuss states:
The People’s Party, reportedly created with British support, openly supported the British occupation of Egypt, and it won plaudits from Lord Cromer, who described its members as a “small be increasing number of Egyptians of whom comparatively little is heard.” In his 1906 Annual Report, Lord Cromer wrote: “The main hope of Egyptian Nationalism, in the only true and practicable sense of the word, lies, in my opinion, with those who belong to this party.” (50)
Hassan al-Banna became a member of the second wave of Islamism, influenced by his reading of Rida’s The Lighthouse (20). Dreyfuss tells us: “Rashid Rida’s chief acolyte was Hassan al-Banna” (50). Banna and his Muslim Brotherhood played a pivotal role in the rise of Islamism. According to Dreyfuss, their influence remains relevant to this very day:
It is impossible to overestimate the importance and legacy of Hassan al-Banna. The twenty-first century War on Terrorism is a war against the offspring of Banna and his Brothers. They show up everywhere – in the attorney general’s office in Sudan, on Afghanistan’s battlefields, in Hama in Syria, atop Saudi Arabia’s universities, in bomb-making factories in Gaza, as ministers in the government of Jordan, in posh banking centers in the Gulf sheikhdoms and in the post-Saddam Hussein government. (50-1)
Like its pan-Islam predecessor, the Muslim Brotherhood plays an integral role in the deep political world, engaging in intrigues and subversive activities with the covert machinations that drive the undercurrent of politics and history. These covert machinations can be seen at work before World War Two with the British travel writer Freya Stark. Stark was not just a writer. She was also an agent of British intelligence. Stark was used by British intelligence to foster an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood (Dorril 622). Brotherhood collaboration with Western intelligence continued with an alliance between the Brotherhood and the CIA that began around 1955. According to former CIA agent Miles Copeland, it was around this time that America began looking for the Muslim equivalent of Billy Graham, hoping to use such a charismatic individual to influence the Arab world. When this failed, the Agency began forging ties with the CIA (Aburish 60-61). What was the motive for this marriage between Western intelligence and the Muslim Brotherhood? This alliance would help the Western power elite neutralize the challenge to their hegemony coming from the secular Arab nationalist movement. Said Aburish elaborates:
In the 1950s and later, the West opposed the secular Arab nationalist movement for two reasons: it challenged its regional hegemony and threatened the survival of its clients' leaders and countries. Specifically, there was nothing to stop a secular movement from cooperating with the USSR; in fact, most of them were mildly socialist. Furthermore, most secular movements advocated various schemes of Arab unity, a union or a unified policy, which threatened and undermined the pro-West traditional regimes of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other client states. The West saw it as a challenge that had to be met. (60)
Was the alliance between the CIA and the Brotherhood merely a continuation of the alliance between British intelligence and the Brotherhood? According to the authors of Dope, Inc. the OSS, which was the forerunner of the CIA, was merely a subsidiary of British intelligence (540). When the Office of Strategic Services was being organized, William Stephenson, Britain's Special Operations Executive representative in the United States, was brought in for "technical assistance" (418). Stephenson's involvement would lead to the creation of "a British SOE fifth column embedded deeply into the American official intelligence community" (454). When it came to religious engineering to promote fanaticism within the Arab world, it could be that the British power elite passed the mantle to the American power elite.
The Muslim Brotherhood's involvement in the realm of intelligence and national security politics has contributed to a profound decline in the integrity and moral strength of intelligence agencies the world over. Even Israeli intelligence has periodically soiled itself by jumping into bed with the Muslim Brotherhood. In his book, The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda, former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky reveals that the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel, began destabilizing Jordan by arming the Muslim Brotherhood along with its offshoot organization, Hamas, and similar fundamentalists (182). As part of its destabilization plans, Israel participated in a covert weapons pipeline that supplied the Muslim Brotherhood (254).
To the average Israeli, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood is suicidal… even treasonous. For those Israeli elites and criminalized portions of the Mossad that wish to maintain an Israeli national security state, the move is quite reasonable. The threat of Islamism provides factions within Israel with a pretext for the refusal of treaties and the maintenance of military strength. Ostrovsky elaborates:
The Mossad realized that it had to come up with a new threat to the region, a threat of such magnitude that it would justify whatever action the Mossad might see fit to take.The right-wing elements in the Mossad (and in the whole country, for that matter) had what they regarded as a sound philosophy: They believed (correctly, as it happened) that Israel was the strongest military presence in the Middle East. In fact, they believed that the military might of what had become known as “fortress Israel” was greater than all of the Arab armies combined, and was responsible for whatever security Israel possessed. The right-wing believed then – and they still believe – that this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war.The corollary belief was that peace overtures would inevitably start a process of corrosion that would weaken the military and eventually bring about the demise of the state of Israel, since, as the philosophy goes, its Arab neighbors are untrustworthy, and no treaty signed by them is worth the paper it’s written on.Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run be fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. (251-52)
There is a sad and dangerous irony to all of this. While Israelis have been facilitating a fundamentalist Islamic threat to undermine regional treaties, factions in the West have been supporting Islamic fundamentalist and questionable Arab elements in hopes of giving rise to a comprehensive Middle East Peace plan. Western funding of a fundamentalist Islamic threat is motivated by the “level battlefield doctrine” (LBD), a Reagan Administration policy that was designed to weaken Israel. It is the opinion of these writers that the LBD policy is still being practiced by deviant elites and criminalized portions of Western intelligence. Israeli investigative reporter Joel Bainerman describes the policy:
The LBD became and some say still is today the cornerstone of U.S. policy towards Israel. The doctrine is based on a Saudi Arabian notion that the problem in the Middle East is not with the Arabs, but in Israel’s reckless use of its military superiority. The Administration must ensure that the Arabs are put on parity with Israel militarily so that Israel will be pressured into concessions which will lead to a comprehensive Middle East peace. (The Crimes of a President 184-85)
Needless to say, both sides are fueling a vicious cycle. In the end, Israel does not achieve regional dominance and the Western elite does not achieve regional peace. The Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamists are the only ones who come out the clear victor.
The Muslim Brotherhood received an important endorsement in May of 1979 at the Bilderberg meeting held in Austria (Engdahl 171). At this meeting, British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis suggested that endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood would allow the Western elite "to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines" (171). This balkanization process would result in the rise of various autonomous groups and the spreading of chaos in the Near East (171). In what Lewis termed an "Arc of crisis," the chaos would eventually spill over into the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union (171). This would help the Western elites counter Soviet moves to become the world's sole hegemon, thus preserving the Cold War dialectical rivalry that had been so advantageous to the Western oligarchs.
The power elite's support of the Muslim Brotherhood had begun one year earlier, when Carter appointed Bilderberg attendee George Ball to head a White House Iran task force that fell under the authority of then-National Security Advisor Brzezinski (171). Ball recommended pulling support for Iran's leader at the time, the Shah of Iran (171). He also suggested supporting the Shah's opposition, the infamous Ayatollah Khomeini (171). While Khomeini's fanaticism was obvious to many, the Carter Administration portrayed the cleric as a progressive reformer. Mike Evans elaborates:
Carter's ambassador to the U.N., Andrew Young, said, “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter's Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979, that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.” (14)
The Muslim Brotherhood was the movement behind Khomeini (Engdahl 171). According to Dreyfuss, Khomeini’s godfather and teacher, Ayotollah Seyyed Abolqassem Kashani was the “chief representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iran” (110). Kashani played a role in the formation of the Devotees of Islam, thereby facilitating the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence into Iran. Dreyfuss writes: “In 1945, Kashani helped found the unofficial Iranian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Devotees of Islam, led by a radical mullah named Navab Safavi” (111).
Khomeini received assistance from Western intelligence during the earliest days of his revolutionary activities against the shah of Iran. In 1964, Khomeini’s attempts to topple the shah led to his brief imprisonment by SAVAK, the shah’s secret police, and exile to Turkey (Trento, Prelude to Terror 196). In hopes of influencing the fanatical religious leader, the CIA made arrangements for Khomeini to take up residence in a safe haven in Iraq (Prelude to Terror 196). Trento provides the details:
The CIA arranged for the Iraqi regime to let Khomeini move to the holy city of An-Najaf, where he directed his campaign against the shah. When Saddam Hussein came to power as Iraq’s vice president in 1968, he permitted the CIA to place a number of Iranian-born agents around the ayatollah. From the huge and beautiful golden-domed mosque in An-Najaf, Khomeini was the most influential cleric in the region. (Prelude to Terror 196)
By 1978, it became painfully apparent to Saddam that Khomeini imperiled his secular power (Prelude to Terror 196). Given this potential threat to his primacy, Saddam paid credence to the shah’s recommendation that Khomeini seek asylum elsewhere (Prelude to Terror 196). According to Trento, Khomeini relocated to Neauphle-le-Chateau, a hamlet outside of Paris (Prelude to Terror 196). While in France, the transient religious leader was joined by several Iranians that happened to be on the CIA payroll (Prelude to Terror 196). These Iranians assisted Khomeini with his preparations for a victorious return to Iran (Prelude to Terror 196). In an interview with author Mike Evans, a former covert operative revealed that money from the U.S. government made its way into Khomeini’s coffers during his stay in France. Evans shares the specifics of the account:
A former naval intelligence officer and CIA operative during the Carter Administration, who asked to remain anonymous, related to me that the U.S. government wrote checks to Khomeini in increments of approximately $150 million. (This operative was directly involved in the operation of funding the cleric). According to this gentleman, Khomeini’s French operation was paid for by the U.S., including the Air France flight that returned the fanatical Islamic cleric to Tehran. He fully believes Khomeini left France for Iran because Carter stopped giving the cleric money. It is his opinion that Jimmy Carter should have been tried for treason for aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States. (14)
When Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, he did so “with several CIA agents on his staff” (Trento, Prelude to Terror 197). Just a few weeks before Khomeini's return, it became apparent to the Shah that the West was preparing to oust him. According to Mike Evans in his book Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos, it was the Guadeloupe summit in January of 1979 that provided the Shah with the tip-off. Evans writes:
In the midst of the turmoil in Iran or perhaps because of it, President Carter called for a summit on the French Republic island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Invited to meet with Carter in January 1979 were French President Valery Giscard d' Estaing, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and British Prime Minister James Callaghan. In his memoir, Answer to History, the Shah wrote:“Giscard said they hoped to 'evaluate the situation of the world,' with special emphasis on events in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. I believe that during those meetings the French and West Germans agreed with the British and the American proposals for my ouster.”It was at Guadeloupe, according to d' Estaing, that Carter showed his hand in favor of the ouster of the Shah. (14-15)
With his feet planted firmly on Iranian soil, Khomeini began his crusade to transform Iran into an Islamic republic, with factions of Western intelligence providing assistance and support from behind the scenes. Western intelligence factions cultivated the revolutionary environment in Iran before and after Khomeini's arrival. CIA case officer Robert Bowie ran covert operations against the Shah that allowed the coup to be successful (Engdahl 171). The CIA-led coup used economic pressures placed on Iran by London to create the pretext for religious discontent against the Shah (172). London refused Iranian Oil production, "taking only 3 million or so barrels a day on an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels per day" (172). This move imposed revenue pressures on Iran, and agitators trained by U.S. intelligence went about blaming the Shah's regime (172).
According to William Engdahl, the destabilization of the Shah's regime was also aided by American's working within Iran's security establishment:
As Iran's economic troubles grew, American "security" advisers to the Shah's Savak secret police implemented a policy of even more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah. At the same time, the Carter Administration cynically began protesting abuses of "human rights" under the Shah. (172)
The efforts to tear down the Shah's government from within were not limited to encouraging corruption among the ranks of SAVAK. The Western alliance against the Shah also encouraged Iran's military to retract its support for the embattled Iranian ruler. Mike Evans elaborates:
When Carter later sent General Robert Huyser to Iran as his special emissary to persuade the Iranian military leaders to acquiesce to the Shah's exile, Huyser represented not only the U.S. but the entire Western alliance. His counterparts in Iran agreed to the exile of Pahlavi only after Huyser produced copies of the record of the meeting in Guadeloupe.Before General Huyser's death in 1997, I met with him in his home. During the meeting the general told me, “Jimmy Carter was responsible for the overthrow of the Shah.” Huyser maintained Carter had “deceived not only the Shah, but me also.” (15)
The action taken against the Shah was successful and the deposed Iranian leader fled the country in January of 1979 (Engdahl 172). Writing about his downfall, the Shah later stated:
I did not know it then - perhaps I did not want to know - but it is clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out. Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted… What was I to make of the Administration's sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an adviser on Iran?... Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country. (172)
