U.S. must free minds held captive by hatred

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2001 | by Tashbih Sayyed

This first war of the new millennium is a war of minds. This war will not be won by conquering bodies and real estate, but rather minds and hearts. This war is to be waged on a different kind of battlefield -- in the religious academies and schools. The weapons in this war will have to be different. They will have to change the circumstances that give birth to such a state of mind. We will have to remember that poverty, ignorance and absence of basic human rights give birth to anger and frustration. Extremists can harness these feelings to further their destructive goals.

Those who attacked the World Wade Center and the Pentagon are products of a culture of hatred. This culture evolved over the course of decades and grew out of several sources. To overcome it, Western policymakers should take notice of its origins and vital elements.

The most important of these has been the development of Wahabiism in Saudi Arabia, which preaches a very narrow and rigid interpretation of Islam based on its hatred of Zionism and the United States. It preaches that all the miseries that Muslims suffer are caused by a Judeo-Christian conspiracy backed by the United States. In the view of Wahabiism, a global theocratic "Islam" will follow the destruction of the United States and Israel.

Until Saudi Arabia got its windfall of petro dollars in the 1970s, Wahabiism was slow in recruiting its cadre. Its exponents told the Muslims that Jews, with the help of the United States, kept Muslims in economic, social and cultural bondage. They blamed Zionism for destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of the state of Israel and the total humiliation of Muslims around the world. Wahabiism promises to avenge the centuries-old insults and degradation that Muslims have suffered at the hands of Western industrialized countries as well as Zionism.

Adherents established academies known as madrasas to indoctrinate young Muslim minds in this theory. Saudi petro dollars provided the movement with funds to establish madrasas in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. In my experience these madrasas have only one objective: to breed Islamic jihadists committed to either convert or eliminate all non-Wahabis everywhere.

Because of the socioeconomic conditions prevailing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the madrasas have had no problem finding students. By the time the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, madrasas had enough numbers to put up an impressive resistance against them. Even U.S. officials were impressed when they encountered in the jihad movement a potent Cold War ally. What U.S. handlers did not know then was that, to these jihadists, there was no difference between Moscow and Washington -- both were infidels. They were fighting their war, not that of the United States.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the United States dumped billions of dollars into the hands of Pakistan's military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, a devout Wahabi himself. He steered some of these funds toward establishing a network of madrasas to train and educate future recruits for the mujahideen. He urged the extremist Wahabi Muslims to establish as many madrasas as they could and to do this as quickly possible.

Poverty, ignorance, hunger and the absence of basic civil amenities were silent partners in recruitment with the fundamentalist clerics. Madrasas instructors conveniently attributed all these ills to the workings of a universal Judeo-Christian conspiracy to keep the Muslims backward. And the United States was cast as the leader of this conspiracy.

The war filled the madrasas with new students. In Afghanistan there is only one breadwinner in most families. Thousands of these breadwinners died in the war against the Soviets, leaving behind many thousands of widows and orphans. There was no social-security system to take care of them. Madrasas took advantage of the situation and offered to take these orphans off their mothers' hands. Afghan mothers were only too happy to find that the madrasas would take, feed, clothe, shelter and educate their children.

The curriculum was simple: memorization of the Koran, education in the most primitive ways of a very rigid Wahabiism and strenuous military training to fight the infidels. Children in these schools were forbidden to see anyone outside the madrasas and were not allowed to watch TV or listen to radio. They were virtually in a bubble totally insulated from the outside world. Day in and day out they were brainwashed into hating the infidels, especially the United States and Zionism.

This culture does not owe its existence to any one particular leader but evolved as part of a popular psychology. Virtually all graduates of this culture are ready to die in the process of establishing their "Islamic" state. Needless to say, one may not get rid of the culture by eliminating its leaders. The whole environment has to be changed to eradicate this culture of terrorism.

It took almost 40 years for this culture to grow into a formidable "ism" -- Islamism. In this period few realized that Islamism was more dangerous than communism. It has not only conquered Afghanistan but also besieged Pakistan from within. It has exported its revolution to all parts of the world. Sept. 11 proved that even the United States is not beyond its reach.