Destruction-oriented narratives from nontraditional Islam as a tool of U.S. foreign policy

Intervention in the internal affairs of foreign states became a major direction of U.S. foreign policy soon after the end of World War II. The key instrument for achieving these goals was an agency with virtually unlimited powers, approved under the National Security Act of 1947, called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Forms and methods of intervention in the affairs of foreign states were determined by various directives, adopted one after another during 1947-1955.

Thus, for example, Directive BNS-4/A defined the content of “psychological warfare” as “propaganda, including the use of anonymous, falsified, or tacitly subsidized publications; political action involving stateless persons, traitors, and support for political parties; quasi-military methods, including assistance to insurgents and sabotage; and economic activities related to foreign exchange operations” [1].

And Directive NSC-10/2 formulated the term “covert operations” as “all activities conducted or approved by the United States government against hostile foreign states or groups. ...These covert operations include: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, counter-sabotage, destruction, and evacuation; subversive activity against foreign states, including assistance to the underground resistance movement, guerrilla and emigrant liberation groups, support for anti-communist groups in threatened countries of the free world” [2].

The extent of CIA interference in the internal affairs of foreign states in the second half of the 20th century alone is so impressive that it is unlikely that there will be any place on earth where the atrocities and crimes of the departments of the American department have not been heard of. It is impossible to erase from memory such acts of international terrorism as:

• a coup in Iran and the overthrow of the government of M. Mossadegh (1953). In two decades, 360,000 political prisoners were executed and tortured in the dark prisons of the SAVAK secret police, established in 1957 with the direct participation of the CIA and the Israeli special service Mossad;
• a military coup in Guatemala and the overthrow of the government of X. Arbenz (1954). The “welfare” model imposed on Guatemalans was backed by terror and violence from terrorist organizations such as the Death Squadron and the Secret Anticommunist Army, whose members were mostly army officers trained in the United States by CIA instructors and completed special courses in Israel, Chile and other countries. Between August 1980 and May 1981 alone, 76 members of the Christian Democratic Party and ten activists of the center-left Social Democratic Revolutionary United Front were killed. In rural areas of the country, using “scorched earth” tactics, entire villages were destroyed, civilians were tortured and killed, entire families were burned alive, sparing neither women nor children;
• the overthrow of the Popular Unity government in Chile and the assassination of President S. Allende (1973). The far-right organization “Patria i Libertad”, which acted in close collaboration with the CIA, in July-August 1973 alone organized some 500 explosions and carried out several political assassinations;
• plots against Cuban President Fidel Castro. Covert Action, an organization of Cuban exiles, not only carried out countless missions for the CIA and its affiliated intelligence agencies against Cuba, but also provided mercenaries in the Congo and Vietnam, supplied professional “technicians” for the operation nicknamed “Watergate”, as well as assassins for the Chilean intelligence service DINA and other intelligence services that were once created by the CIA and are a tool in its hands;
• the policy of “appeasement” of South Vietnamese villages, carried out since 1966 under the leadership of CIA Deputy Director William Colby, involving groups called provincial intelligence branches and consisting of South Vietnamese irregular units, to carry out punitive raids on settlements. As a result, 20,587 “suspects” were killed. (According to the Saigon government, the number of people killed was 40,994) [3]. The number of people killed was 40,994.

The list could go on, as countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, Southeast Asia and even Europe have been “targeted” by the CIA whenever conventional U.S. diplomacy has failed.

Statistics say that “from 1945 to 2003, the United States tried to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, suppress more than 30 popular patriotic movements that fought against dictatorial regimes. At the same time, the United States bombed 25 countries, as a result of which several million people died and millions more were condemned to live in agony and despair”.

During the Cold War, in its strategy of interfering in the internal affairs of foreign states, the CIA was guided by a whole arsenal of tools, including “economic sabotage, international isolation and blockade, creation of socio-economic and political chaos in the country, the conduct of individual acts of terrorism and sabotage, the use of sophisticated methods of psychological warfare and propaganda. In the event that attempts to bring about a “natural” fall of governments by such methods were unsuccessful, the CIA shifted its focus to unleashing terror, provoking armed incidents, sabotage on the country's critical infrastructure, attempts on the lives of prominent figures, and consolidating and uniting counterrevolutionary forces” [5].

Forty years of experience in subversive and sabotage activities have enabled the U.S. to improve approaches and methods of intervention, forming a multifaceted mechanism for the gradual implementation of its agenda in the occupied territories, covering almost all spheres of society's life and all factors that are in some way connected with its vital survival force.

The core of the enslavement of peoples is the promotion of the values of liberal-Western democracy, which are the fundamental criterion for evaluating all subsequent reforms and changes in the socio-political and cultural-spiritual life of the society on its way to “development and progress”.  This task is entrusted to various international organizations and public funds (U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, Soros Foundation and others), which enable the creation of thousands of NGOs and NPOs in the country - targets that realize the current problems of society not for the purpose of their constructive solution, but for the purpose of their politicization in order to form the necessary protest attitude toward the country's leadership, which eventually develops into a protest movement to change the existing government [6].

To discredit opponents of the imposition of Western European values and practices, the U.S. encourages the creation and then supports pseudo-patriotic, pseudo-nationalist and pseudo-religious movements and organizations with pronounced racist, Nazi and fascist slogans, steeped in open xenophobia, in order not only to declare human rights violations in this country, but also to discredit the sovereign path of the target country's historical development and its inherent traditional values. “In particular, on July 2, 2018, the Russian delegation attending the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) session in Geneva expressed concern about the growth of neo-Nazi movements in EU countries and Ukraine. In the Baltic states, with the connivance of the authorities, the marches of the legionaries of the Nazi units of the Waffen SS took place” [7]. “In the capital of Bulgaria, the Lukov March marches took place, propagating xenophobia, discrimination and hatred” [8]. “The authorities of the Netherlands, which, following the example of the Federal Republic of Germany, decided to publish an annotated version of Mein Kampf” [9]. “Extremely radical movements in Ukraine (“Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” (OUN, banned in the Russian Federation), about 30 representatives of the nationalist organization C14 and extremists of the “Pravy Sektor” (banned in the Russian Federation) created an atmosphere of fear and lawlessness” [10].

Moreover, by using the national and religious differences of the target country's peoples, the U.S. stimulates conflicts on ethnic and confessional grounds, encouraging and supporting the separatist tendencies of nationalist and terrorist groups, leaving tens and hundreds of thousands of people hostage to them. For example, the ultranationalist Kosovo Liberation Army, which received training and secret supplies from the Clinton administration in 1995, “was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav authorities” (statement by British Defense Secretary George Robertson in the spring of 1999), while Western audiences were being fed stories about “Milosevic's executioners” who went on to commit genocide in Kosovo [11].

In an effort to achieve the fulfillment of geopolitical, economic and strategic-military tasks, the U.S. does not disdain to adopt the most sacred aspects of peoples' mentality, allowing itself to distort not only the true meanings of the intimate, but also fill them with monstrous content, condemning entire generations to reckless sacrifices in the name of American interests.

Despite the obvious peaceful nature of traditional Islam, Muslims have also become hostages to the bloodthirsty policy of the United States to dominate the world, which has adopted not only the sacred symbols of Muhammad's religion (peace be upon him), but has also picked up the destructively oriented narratives coming from nontraditional Islam.

The first serious attempt to use the links of Islamic doctrine for its own political interests was made by the British Empire in its colonial aspirations in the Middle East in the late 18th century. By inspiring their adherents with the “captivating charm” of Protestant doctrine, British missionaries succeeded in sowing the seeds of religious reform in the hearts of the followers of the Mohammedan religion. Rejected and condemned not only by scholars of traditional Islam, but also by his father and brother, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) attracted the attention of English colonists with his reformist views and ideas for updating the religion of the faithful. Not missing a unique opportunity, he received full support from a reliable partner of the British crown, Emir of the village of Ad-Dargiya Muhammad ibn Saud. As a result of the agreement concluded between the two namesakes, secular power ended up in the hands of the Saudi family, and spiritual power in the hands of the “sheikh”, which allowed the British to destabilize internal political life in the Ottoman state, as a result of which thousands of the faithful gave their lives, protecting their cities and families from the invasion of the “black hordes, blessed by the British crown. And only thanks to the solid unity of the adherents of traditional Islam, this newly minted chimera was pacified, leaving a black mark in the history of the blessed Ummah” [12]. By rejecting the legitimacy of the judgments of all the imams of the traditional religious and legal schools (madhhab) and the legitimacy of the Ottomans' right to power, the naive reformer laid the foundation for a new ideology of Protestant Islam, the ideology of Wahhabism, which became not only a convenient tool for colonial powers in plundering the natural resources of Muslim countries, but also a valuable aid for Orientalists to reconsider and rethink the foundations of traditional Islam, which are the sole guarantor of the preservation of the centuries-old heritage of Islamic civilization.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, human history is shaken by wars, conflicts and revolutions, whose locomotive was mostly the ideas of national socialism of various kinds and in various combinations, gradually replacing the religious mentality of peoples practiced for centuries. Such a massive impact on mentality did not leave Muslim peoples aside, immersing the talented minds of the faithful in an endless and chaotic search for the reasons for the decline of the once leading, both in science and culture, nation of Islam. Being mindlessly searching for “keys” to “development and progress” imposed by the Western model of modernism, Muslims were instilled with the idea of archaism and rigidity of the rules and regulations of traditional Islam. As early as the 1960s and 1970s, a slow but targeted propaganda of the ideas of Saudi Wahhabism, as the advanced, modernist standard and the only correct understanding of “pure Islam”, began, whose main spokesmen are two official Saudi-sponsored structures, the World Muslim League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. In addition, by developing a worldwide network of initiation into puritanical Islam, Saudi authorities have sponsored the opening of various Islamic centers in major cities in America and Europe [13], which have played an important role in the formation of Euro-Islam, the phenomenon “which is based on the recognition by the Muslim communities of Europe that only the Western system of values, the Western political system can supposedly provide Muslims with a dignified existence, progress and development” [14]. Later, in 2019, the Prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad ibn Salman, revealing the real reason for such a sudden activity of Saudi authorities to promote the ideology of Wahhabism in the world in the 1960-80s, admitted that this was one of the strategies of the West, particularly the United States, to counter Soviet influence in Muslim countries [15]. The practice of puritanical Islam, the basis of which was based on the postulates of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, which allowed people to comment on the Quran according to their own understanding and desire, without even analyzing the verses from the point of view of language and logic [16], became a harbinger of a new ideology, the destructive potential of which the United States and its allies had already begun to exploit in the 1980s.

The United States is embarking on another adventure to “restore the former glory of Islam” in its confrontation with the USSR in the long-suffering lands of Afghanistan. To accelerate the possible invasion of Soviet troops into Afghanistan and thus draw the USSR into the Vietnamese abyss (an idea formulated by U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and CIA Director Robert Gates), in the summer of 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a decree launching the beginning of the CIA's Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan [17]. Osama bin Laden (according to some experts, he was a CIA agent) [18], arrived in the country in the same year, sent by then Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, where he created the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), which helped fund, recruit and train mujahideen fighters. Bin Laden, the IAC and the Afghan mujaheddin in total received about half a billion dollars a year from the CIA and about the same from the Saudis, which were sent through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) [19]. The methods and approaches to conducting the inhumane massacre were exactly duplicated by actions already carried out or still being carried out by Americans in other countries around the world (Nicaragua, Angola, El Salvador, etc.). “Placing car bombs, firing rockets into residential areas of Kabul, destroying government-built schools and hospitals, killing teachers and other symbols of the government's social activities were the activities of the “mujahideen”, just as was done on the other side of the globe by the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels, strictly following the instructions specified in the CIA training manual “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare” [20].

Having obtained the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States, contrary to the agreements reached with the USSR, did not stop supplying the region with weapons and money, strengthening the military “jihad” machine that had been formed over the years and reintegrating it with new “fighters for the faith”.

As a result of the synthesis of the expertise accumulated over a decade in the conduct of military-terrorist operations and the ideology of Wahhabism, a new political-military phenomenon was formed and transformed into a new ideology - the ideology of jihadism - the place of religion, where it is purely nominal. The main ideas that allowed this monster to “legalize” are expressed in the trinity of concepts such as salafism, takfir and jihad.

Salafism-a reformist movement in nontraditional Islam-is a prototype of Protestant fundamentalism for followers of Islam, which arose at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The central category of “teaching” is the rejection of the entire legacy of Islamic tradition after three generations of Muslims (as-salaf al-salihun) as a heretical innovation (bid'a) and a return to the practice of early Muslims (salafs) as a precondition for the purity of dogma [21].

By thoughtlessly erasing an entire layer of knowledge accumulated over centuries, Salafists have lost the only true methodology of traditional Islam in interpreting the texts of Holy Scripture, whose reliability has been tested for centuries. After “cleansing” the religion of its “heretical” layers, the followers of Salafism found themselves in a methodological vacuum and cognitive trap, which forced them to interpret the texts of Holy Scripture on the basis of their own conjectures, depending on the current situation -- a method that is not unlike the practice of liberal “Muslim” reformers. In order to give visible integrity to the project of “Muslim” Protestantism, its content is filled with ideas and views from various areas of non-traditional Islam (Mujassimites, Mushabbiha, Jabrits, etc. [22]), and even judgments of scientists such as Ibn-Taymiyyah, so that the protest built against traditional Islam has far-reaching consequences, up to its final dismantling, as was the case with Christianity in the West. In order to rule out any possibility of exposing the inconsistency of the design of Puritan “Islam”, the epigones of Salafism proclaim themselves to be the only righteous community, and all those who disagree with their “manifesto” are removed from the bosom of the religion with the charge of unbelief (takfir).

“Takfir is the declaration of all enemies of Islam (within Muslims themselves) as kafirs (infidels), that is, tactics adopted by numerous far-right Islamist organizations that make extensive use of terror” [23]. The practice of takfir originated in the early days of Islam, during the lifetime of the fourth righteous caliph, Ali ibn Abu Talib. It was under him that after the Battle of Siffin in 657, during the power struggle between Ali ibn Abu Talib and Muawiya, a political event took place, known in the history of Islam as the “Arbitration Court”.  The agreement accepted by both sides (Abu ibn Abu Talib and Mu'awiya) was to resolve the dispute by holding new elections, following which the decision on the appointment of the Caliph was made in favor of Mu'awiya. Those who disagreed with the procedure and the results of the choice of a new successor rebelled and declared all those who “turned to the judge and not to the Book of Allah” are kafirs (disbelievers), separated from the majority of Muslims in the first religious and political grouping in the history of Islam, the Kharijites (from the Arabic “khawarij” - to speak, to depart) [24] initiated an “endless” jihad against their fellow believers, turning two innovations of the first centuries (takfir-jihad) into inseparable twins, whose lethality has not failed to this day.

Inspired by the success of the U.S. “jihad” in Afghanistan, the U.S. continued to utilize the services of the “mujahideen” and sent them to carry out various political and strategic-military tasks in the Balkans and the Caucasus, in the regions to which U.S. national interests expanded, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, “from 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon deployed thousands of al-Qaeda mujahideen (bandits in the Russian Federation) from Central Asia to Europe to fight side by side with Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs. According to intelligence sources, the mujahideen were “escorted by U.S. special forces equipped with high-tech communications equipment”.  Bin Laden's mercenaries were used by the Pentagon as shock troops” [25]. Led by Mohammed Al-Zawahiri (brother of al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri), the elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army had direct radio contact with the NATO leadership during the Kosovo conflict, while British SAS instructors and U.S. Delta forces were directly involved in their preparation. “The CIA provided military assistance before and during the 1999 bombing campaign, including military training manuals and field consultations, under the guise of OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) observers” [26].

As for the Caucasus, the American strategy to destabilize the region was no different from other bloody adventures. “U.S.-sponsored Mujahideen fighters with ties to Osama bin Laden were transported from Afghanistan to Azerbaijan via an airline established on behalf of the CIA by former Deputy Secretary of Defense General Richard Secord. By 1993, another shell company, MEGA Oil, founded by the same employee, had recruited and armed 2,000 mujahideen, turning Baku into a base for mujahideen terrorist operations throughout the Caucasus [27]. Since the mid-1990s, bin Laden has financed militant leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab to the tune of several million dollars a month. U.S. intelligence remained deeply involved for the rest of the decade. According to Yosef Bodanksy, then director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively engaged in “another anti-Russian jihad” by seeking to support and strengthen the more virulent anti-Western Islamist forces [28]. Despite the ordeal that befell them, the Chechen people, however, managed to turn the tide and oppose the ideology of Wahhabism, relying on the Vainakhs' centuries-old traditions and customs (adat). It is thanks to the efforts of the followers of traditional Islam, particularly the first president of the Chechen Republic Akhmat-Khoja Kadyrov (1951-2004) and Sheikh Muhammad-Sodik Muhammad-Yusuf (1952-2015) (theologian of the Republic of Uzbekistan), revealing the true meaning of jihad, that it was decided to cleanse the Chechen land of international extremism, terrorism and various gangs. The golden words of Sheikh Muhammad-Sodiq Muhammad-Yusuf who stated: “...you Chechens must realize one truth, that neither the Saudis need you, nor the Emirates need you, nor the Libyans need you, and neither do the others need you, only Russia needs you, and you need Russia, because you are a small people, ...and only together with a big country can you achieve success” [29], were of paramount importance in making a fateful decision for the Chechen people-”to live, work , raise their children as part of Russia” [30].

Maddened by the possibility of not binding itself to the obligations of international law, the United States has made no secret of its nefarious ambitions to conquer the Greater Middle East. Thus, in September 2000, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (founded in 1997 by a number of prominent neoconservative writers and scholars to promote aggressive U.S. foreign policy and “mobilize support for U.S. global leadership” [31]), published a document outlining its foreign policy vision. He called for the United States to use overwhelming military force to control the Persian Gulf region and “to maintain U.S. global supremacy ...and shape an international security order consistent with American principles and interests”.  However, to achieve the intended goal, continuing in this report, it was necessary for some sort of catastrophic event to occur, something akin to a new Pearl Harbor” [32]. This was the case. And this event occurred on September 11, 2001 (9/11), an event that allowed the neoconservatives to take a leadership position in foreign policy in the administration of President G. W. Bush.

The invasion of Afghanistan (in 2001) and Iraq (in 2003) were the main catalysts for the radicalization of the population of Muslim countries, which enabled the reconstitution of the ranks of the already formed Al-Qaeda terrorist cells (banned in the Russian Federation) as a necessary condition for destabilizing the region. The strategy of destabilizing the Middle East was openly postulated by the neoconservatives. Thus, in 2002, neoconservative leader Michael Ledeen (former advisor to the U.S. National Security Council, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Defense; chairman of the Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute [33]) stated, “...We don't need stability in Iran, or Iraq, or Syria, or Lebanon, or even Saudi Arabia...The real question is not whether, but how to destabilize the situation. We must ensure the completion of the democratic revolution” [34]. This “how” has led to the propaganda of the ideology of jihadism by various extremist and terrorist organizations and movements, including Al-Qaeda, which is fully consistent with U.S. tactics of spreading false values and eroding the national and cultural foundations of the peoples of Middle Eastern countries, one of the elements of the technology of “controlled chaos” [35].

The traditional teaching of Islam has firmly established the norm of prohibiting any riot leading to bloodshed, regardless of the complexity of the political situation. This position is most profoundly revealed in the commentary of the eminent Muslim thinker, theologian and Sunni jurist (faqih) Imam al-Ghazali: “...or deem it necessary to rid the country of the [power] of the ruler (imām) and the fall of the provinces, and this is impossible and unthinkable for us. We decide to have an unjust ruler, an oppressor, in power in the country, because of the extreme need of its inhabitants” [36].

In the absence of any legal basis to legalize the “religion of jihad” within the canons of traditional Islam, the ideologues of jihadism had no choice but to resort to the schemes of destructive sects, the only way to “destroy the human personality and its ties with the outside world, using psychological control and technology that reforms consciousness” [37]. The absolutization of the idea of jihad to the degree of a measure elevated to the rank of “permission from God” allowed for the realization of the possibility of manipulative influence on the masses in order to promote one's extreme ideological views and establish total control over the consciousness and behavior of adherents. Therefore, the main ideologue of Islamist jihad, Abdullah Azzam, argued “The obligation to fight continuously until death and remains everyone's responsibility until we liberate al-Andalus, until we reach again Leningrad, the Finns, the Rul River in France. The lands covered by the laws of Islam must be liberated” [38]. And in response to the call by the former leader of the Egyptian branch of Islamic Jihad (banned in the Russian Federation), Sayed Imam al-Sharif, to stop the bloodshed, al-Qaeda (banned in the Russian Federation) theorist Ayman al-Zawahiri said that “this jihad is not for the sake of humanity: it is to please Allah. The expression 'fi sabil Allah,' 'in the way of Allah,' is the criterion” [39]. Proclaiming “jihad” for the sake of “jihad”, and following the example of the fanatics of “pure Islam”, the spokesmen of jihadism have not hesitated to turn to divine texts, selectively distorting the meanings of the intimate, so as not to ruin their “profitable enterprise”.  As a result, thousands of deceived sons and sisters of the blessed Ummah have been subjected to humiliating and harrowing experiments for the “great cause of Islam”.  Thus, the legalization of prostitution and unfaithfulness to a spouse (zina) under the compromising name of “jihad al-nikah” (“sexual jihad”) [40] has exposed the bowels of “Salafist” freedom, which is no different from the liberal agenda of destroying the institution of the family. Moreover, jihadists have forced perverse “services” “at gunpoint” by cold-bloodedly sentencing “intractable wives” to execution [41].

How many women from entire families forced to leave with their husbands for the territory of “Islam” have bitterly tried all the enchantments of “Sharia”, involuntarily changing “mates” several times, gradually realizing that they are locked up in a psychological prison. Fanatically following the “big idea”, jihadists did not spare even disabled children, allowing “the killing of infants with Down syndrome and physical disabilities... 38 babies with Down syndrome aged between one week and three months were executed. They were killed by lethal injection or strangulation. Some of the killings took place in Syria and Mosul” [42]. In their concern for “cleansing” the ranks, the jihadists resemble the leader of the Third Reich, who “came to the conclusion that the terminally ill and mentally handicapped should be eliminated not only to preserve the purity of the Aryan race, but also for economic reasons” [43]. Cultivating inhumane practices, the “saviors of the Ummah” passionately competed in seizing houses, cars, chopping off heads, seizing sex slaves as “trophies”, considering these atrocities as “God's mercy”, and zealously praised these “gifts” in front of the potential public.

“Characteristic of destructive cults are such signs as a negative perception of dissenters and secular science, hostility toward other religious denominations, an indifferent and contemptuous attitude toward historical and cultural heritage, a rigid hierarchy with frequent veneration of the cult leader the absolutization and intense propaganda of one's religious concept, eclecticism and heightened eschatologism of doctrine, and the establishment of total control over the consciousness and behavior of the adept” [44]. Easily coexisting in the jihadist monster, whose adherents tend to act according to the following plan: “first, make a resettlement (hijra) from the territory of disbelief (dar-ul-kufr) to the territory of Islam (dar-ul-islam) (may be a country, a region or places such as mountains and forests), the establishment of a jamaat there, e.g., the Islamic community (or joining such a community), then undertaking military jihad (raids on the enemy from one's military camp), first to liberate the territory that was in the hands of Muslims, then to spread Islam by military means to other countries, then creating a single world Islamic state (caliphate)” [45].

Submitting to political-military tasks in the political project outlined by the West, ambitious jihadists rushed to carry out their assigned “mission”.  For example, the Ansar al-Islam group, established in northern Iraq (banned in the Russian Federation), created by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi allowed U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking at the United Nations on Feb. 3, 2003, a few weeks before the start of the Iraq war, to declare al-Qaeda's connection with Saddam's regime [46]. After the invasion of U.S. troops, with the famous jihadist slogan, “to defeat the “far enemy” one must destroy the “near enemy”, which changes to “to defeat the “far enemy” one must cooperate with the remnants of the “near enemy”, Osama bin Laden endorses the jihadist-Baathist alliance [47], whose deadly consequences were not long in coming. Terrorist attacks by militants “Tawhid wal-Jihad”, “Al-Qaeda Iraq”, “Islamic State of Iraq” (banned in the Russian Federation) and other Al-Qaeda-linked groups began to overwhelm Iraq. Explosion at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad (19 dead, 60 wounded), bombing of the United Nations headquarters (23 dead, over 200 wounded), explosions at the offices of American companies, headquarters of Italian troops, terrorist attacks on the city of Karbala (14 dead, up to 170 wounded), explosions at the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the city of Erbil (200 dead, 267 wounded) sowed fear and hatred among the people of Iraq [48]. Suicide bombers carried out almost 42% of the attacks in Iraq, which resulted in the highest number of casualties [49].

Unexpectedly for Washington, an uprising erupted on the southern Shiite front, led by Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, met with a series of brutal terrorist attacks against Shiites. An explosion near one of the Shiites' main shrines--Imam Ali's mausoleum in An-Najaf (126 killed, 230 wounded; among the dead--the leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim), sabotage at Shiite shrines in Karbala and Baghdad (more than 170 people, about 500 Iraqis were wounded; 49 Iranian pilgrims among the dead) [50], and others demonstrated the provocative strategy of war against the Shiites, embodied by Al-Zarqawi, to provoke them to retaliation, and bring the Sunnis under his wing, plunging the country into an implacable civil war. The terrorists' “pro-terrorist” actions have only strengthened the U.S. presence in Iraq; already in 2007 there were 170,000 U.S. troops in the country “boots on the ground” [51].

After completing the “democratization” of Iraq and the withdrawal of its troops in December 2011, the United States left the Iraqi people alone in internal economic and political chaos, paving the way for Iraq's collapse along ethnic-religious lines.

Meanwhile, the “Arab Spring” raged in the Arab world, sacking Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, brutally suppressing the leader of the Libyan revolution, Muammar Gaddafi, and sowing the seeds of a civil war in Syria, in which the opportunity opened up for jihadists to carry out their new “jihad”.

Following Al-Zarqawi's strategy, Al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) (banned in the Russian Federation), launched terrorist attacks and massacres against Iraqi Shiites, continuing to sow sectarian hatred, which similarly moved into Syria. Meanwhile, in Syria, Ahrar ash-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra groups (banned in the Russian Federation) associated with al-Qaeda have recklessly and cruelly put their political-military “skills” into practice in building the “caliphate”.  And only the support of Russia and Iran in maintaining the integrity of the Syrian state has not allowed the implementation of the Western colonialists' insidious plans to divide Syria along ethnic-religious lines.

Feeling ill-concealed annoyance at the unrealized dream of ruling the world, the United States continues its strategy of destabilizing regions by sending its well-fed “jihad warriors” to various hot spots. In Afghanistan alone, the actions of the U.S. and Britain contribute to the strengthening of the regional wing of the ISIS terrorist group, whose number was already 3.5 thousand as of November 2022 [52]. As for Ukraine, dozens of militants associated with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization have been transferred to its territory from Syria's Idlib province [53].

Wandering in the unrealizable illusions of an existential vacuum and rejecting the sane parting words of the scientists of traditional Islam, the hardened admirers of “jihad” are forced to fulfill the “mission” assigned to them by the West to uproot the old traditions and beliefs of the peoples of the world in order to build a new society of transhumanism, devoid of noble ideals, on the resulting wasteland of spirituality, morality and justice.

P.S. : The Special Military Operation conducted by Russia in Ukraine is aimed not so much at eliminating the military objectives of the enemy as at rescuing the Ukrainian people from the captivity of illusions and deceptions, inhumanly and cowardly introduced into the naive consciousness of their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, just as was done with the followers of Islam, to fill their hearts with hatred and cruelty not only toward their centuries-old culture and history but also toward their wonderful traditions of good neighborliness and friendliness, condemning them to the cowardly slavery of the ideology of hypocrisy and forcing them to die recklessly in the name of the “jihad” of globalization, in which there is no place for the identity of the Ukrainian people, as well as for the identity of all other peoples on the planet.

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[8] https://tass.ru/obschestvo/4969524
[9] https://tass.ru/politika/5585434
[10] https://tass.ru/politika/4970678
[11] https://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia/
[12] Gabdullah al-Qahtani, “Who are the neo-Kharijites (Wahhabis - “Salafis”)?” - Kazan: Iman publishing house, 1992.
[13] Shagaviev D. A., “Islamic movements and groups”, - Kazan: PI “ID “Khuzur” - “Calm”, 2018. - 288 p.
[14] https://milliard.tatar/news/evroislam-cto-eto-takoe-i-pricem-tut-rossiiskie-musulmane-2447
[15] https://tribune.com.pk/story/1672777/wahhabism-spread-behest-west-cold-war-mohammed-bin-salman
[16] Gabdullah al-Qahtani, “Who are the neo-Kharijites (Wahhabis - “Salafis”)?” - Kazan: Iman publishing house, 1992.
[17] https://tvzvezda.ru/news/20191016150-OqTeY.html
[18] https://www.rbc.ru/politics/28/08/2010/5703dd859a79470ab50244be
[19] https://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version
[20] Bloom W., “Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon operations during the Cold War / translated from English by A. Chernov and E. Loginova; translation editor V. Krasheninn. -M.: ANO “Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives”, Kuchkovo Pole, 2013.-713p. (“Real Politics” series).
[21] https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/islamskiy-fundamentalizm-teoriya-i-praktika
[22] Tadjism is the idea of Almighty Allah in some form, shape (jism) or with a body. Tashbih is the assimilation of Almighty Allah to something in creation (mahlukat). Those who follow this belief are called mushabbiha.
https://islam-today.ru/veroucenie/veroubezdenie/upodoblenie-tadzism-i-tasbih/
https://islam-today.ru/istoria/kto-takie-dzabarity-i-kadarity/
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[25] https://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version
[26] https://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version
[27] https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2015/05/30/azerbaijan-terrorism/41534
[28] https://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version
[29] Life dedicated to Islam. Documentary Part 2 – YouTube
[30] https://grozny.tv/news/main/24091
[31] https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/project_for_the_new_american_century/
[32] https://islamophobiaisracism.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/kumar-the-foreign-policy-establishment.pdf
[33] https://www.jewage.org/wiki/ru/Article:Michael_Ledeen_-_Biography
[34] https://oregondigital.org/sets/easia/oregondigital:df72d883s#page/1/mode/1up
[35] http://www.philos.lv/Citu_raksti/Upravlaemij_haos.html
[36] Nasyrov I. R., “Foundations of Islamic mysticism (genesis and evolution)”, - M.: Languages of Slavic cultures, 2009. - 552 p.
[37] T. Leary, M. Stewart, et al, “Technologies for changing consciousness in destructive cults”, ed. I. Mitrofanova Translation from English. - “Janusbooks”, San Ven: “Exlibris”, 2002. - 224 pp.
[38] https://topwar.ru/156862-razgromlennye-dzhihadisty-podnimajut-golovu.html
[39] https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A3144112/view
[40] https://ria.ru/20140908/1023305894.html
[41] https://www.tatar-inform.ru/news/islamisty-kaznili-19-zhenschin-za-otkaz-ot-seks-dzhihada
[42] https://ren.tv/news/v-mire/66513-smi-boeviki-ig-kaznili-38-detei-s-sindromom-dauna
[43] https://lenta.ru/articles/2020/05/11/psycho2/
[44] https://studfile.net/preview/5359052/page:34/
[45] Shagaviev D. A., “Islamic movements and groups”, - Kazan: PI “ID “Khuzur” - “Calm”, 2018. - 288 p.
[46] Weiss M., “Islamic State. Army of terror” / M. Weiss - Alpina Digital, 2015.
[47] Weiss M., “Islamic State. Army of terror” / M. Weiss - Alpina Digital, 2015
[48] https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1282947
[49] https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1282947
[50] https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1282947
[51] https://asiaplustj.info/ru/news/world/20111215/ssha-ofitsialno-zavershili-voennuyu-kampaniyu-v-irake
[52] https://ria.ru/20221102/terroristy-1828799893.html ; https://t.me/SputnikTj/13214
[53] https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/16139269

Original column by Rustam Nugumanov

Translation by Costantino Ceoldo