Amsterdam 2012 (13 page)

#

In late June
Al
Jazeer
a
broadcasted a speech by
Qasim
bin Laden, the new Al
Qaeda
leader, who was, if possible, more ruthless and charismatic than his father,
Osama
.
 
“A new battle has begun, a great battle, like those of the great battles of Islam.
 
Fear God, O Muslims and rise to support your religion.
 
Islam is calling on you.
 
It is the duty for the
umma
,
for all men, women, and youths to give themselves, their money, and all types of material support to promote jihad.
 
Fear not the number of the enemy and their arsenal of arms, because victory is a gift of God.
 
The winds of faith have come.
 
Allah blesses us.
 
Now is the time for all Muslims to rise up and fight for Allah.”

It was as if someone shot off a starter pistol.
 
The Middle East erupted.
 

In Afghanistan, after years of bruising battles between NATO troops and Taliban fighters, the Taliban along with
jihadists
recruits from Pakistan overtook Kabul.
 
The Afghan government, already thoroughly infiltrated by Islamic extremists, and terrified of massacres, turned over power to a local imam, who immediately declared Afghanistan an emirate under Islamic law.
 
Al
Jazeera
applauded the “stabilization” of the country.
 

Al Qaeda stepped up terrorist attacks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iraq, targeting the economic and tourist centers of these countries, destroying oil refineries, causing the governments to lose control.
 
Al Qaeda soldiers moved in creating chaos.
 
Desperate for order, local populations allied themselves to local
Salafi
imams, who established security, food, water, medicine, Islamic courts of justice, and jobs for the numerous unemployed.
 
As soon as the imams exerted control, Al Qaeda soldiers moved on while simultaneously targeting more oil installations in the Persian Gulf.
 

On the world market, oil jumped to $150 a barrel.

In Sudan, government troops of the National Islamic Front and the
Janjawid
militia resumed fighting against
Darfur
rebels in the western part of the country.
 
Massacres were occurring in the tens of thousands, but Europe, preoccupied with its own problems, and the United States, still hesitating to become involved, did nothing.
 
The Islamic Courts Union in Somalia, backed by Eritrea, stepped up their drive to oust Somalia’s United Nations-backed government.
 
Hizb
ut
Tahrir
, a radical pan-Islamic group, overthrew the government of Zanzibar, setting up a radical Islamic state, a safe haven and training ground for
jihadists
.

Then Taliban armies joined by Al Qaeda troops from Afghanistan invaded Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the north without opposition.
 
The three countries declared themselves to be a single Islamic emirate, joined quickly by the Islamic Courts of Sudan, Zanzibar, Somalia, and Eritrea.

The United Nations of Islam.

#

I went to The Map Store on Pico and Bundy and bought the biggest map of the world I could find.
 
At Staples I bought a box of pins with colored balls on the ends, blue, red, and yellow, and some magic markers.
 
I taped the map to my bedroom wall.

With a pink magic marker, I colored in all of the countries that were once part of the Islamic Caliphate that ended in the thirteenth century or part of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century.
 
I started with Spain, up to just below Paris, over to Austria to Vienna, Sicily, Hungary, Armenia, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romanic Moldavia, Hungary, Turkey, up into the Balkans, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus, all of the Middle East, then east through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, then west through Egypt to Morocco.

I stood back shocked.
 
It stretched over three continents.
 
These were the lands the
jihadists
claimed were rightfully theirs.
 
Once all of these countries were again under a caliphate, they would press on until the entire world was under Islamic rule.
 

I thought of something Alex said in our last argument.
 
“You know why
Qasim
bin Laden wants Sudan and Somalia as part of his United Nations of Islam?
 
Africa isn’t good for much—no arms, no money,
no
organization.
 
But they have lots of people.
 
More than forty percent of these countries are under the age of twenty, desperately poor with nothing better to do than to die for jihad.
 
Like Hitler said, ‘Give me the youth, and Germany will rule the World.’
 
A little brainwashing and they’re set.
 
They’ll have soldiers to fight to the end of time.”
   

As I began sticking in pins—red for the countries that now formed the United Nations of Islam, yellow for Islamic governments not yet part of UNI, blue for secular governments—I realized how small Europe was, and how vast the lands of the Middle East and Africa.
 
Europe looked so vulnerable.

Every day after I studied the daily news, I moved the pins.
 

“Hey,” said Alex.
 
“What are you doing?”
 
He sauntered into my room and sat on my bed.
 
“You look like some World War II general plotting the Invasion of Normandy.”

“Lieutenant General
Aulis
, if you please.”
 
I pushed in more pins.
 
UNI troops were making rapid progress in Uzbekistan, and fighting had broken out in Bosnia.
 
“Everything seemed so abstract.
 
I needed to see it to understand it.”

“What’s to understand?
 
It’s just like when Hitler marched into the Rhineland, then Austria, then the Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia, practically without firing a shot.
 
Then Poland and Norway.
 
He overran Denmark in one day.
 
Four days for the Netherlands.
 
Then Belgium and Luxembourg.
 
Everyone just lay down for him.
 
People forget.
 
From the time Hitler took control of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 to when the Germans marched into Paris in June 1940 was only fourteen months.
 
You get the magnitude of that?
 
Hitler took over most of Europe in less than a year!
 
Fucking dominoes, man.”

“The circumstances were different.”

“It’ll happen again.
 
You just watch.
 
Europe, then the United States.”

“You can’t be serious.
 
They won’t invade the United States.”

“Don’t forget Venezuela.”

“What about Venezuela?”

“Iran has been exporting long-range missiles to Venezuela.
 
President Hugo Chavez and Ayatollah
Khamenei
have been paying each other visits for years.
 
Venezuela is the launching pad into Cuba and Mexico.
 
Then the United States.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m joining ACC.”

“What’s that?”

“The American Christian Crusaders.
 
You think the National Guard will be able to protect us?
 
Fuck no.
 
It’s the enemy within we’ve got to be worried about.
 
Have you ever noticed every computer store and every Radio Shack employee is Middle Eastern?”

“Alex, you’re paranoid and racist.”

“They’re going to bring down the Internet.
 
They’re going to bring down the power grid.
 
Just you wait.
 
They have infiltrated the country.”

“You’re insane!”

“I’m not insane.
 
Saudi Arabia uses their oil money to spread
Wahabism
, which is a brand of reactionary Islam.
 
They believe in jihad just as much at Al
Queda
, they just prefer to do it through nonviolent subversion, through education.
 
Did you ever wonder why a small liberal arts college like Canterbury has such a fabulous Middle Eastern studies program?
 
Oil money.
 
Ninety percent of America’s Middle Eastern studies programs are funded by
Wahabists
.
 
They hire teachers with a fundamentalist world view.
 
They teach the reason for terrorism is bad U.S. foreign policy.
 
Then those graduates get jobs in the State Department and other colleges and the media.
 
That’s how nine-eleven happened, don’t you see?
 
The media, Arab specialists in government, and academic experts all underplayed the force of jihad because that’s what they were taught!”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why do you think the U.S. government did nothing every time
jihadists
struck in the nineties?
 
In 1993
jihadists
tried to blow up the Twin Towers.
 
In 1994
jihadists
blew up a U.S. facility of
Khubar
in Saudi Arabia.
 
Both times the U.S. failed to crack down on radical Islamists.
 
Osama bin Laden appeared on television in February 1998 declaring war against America, which was dismissed by Washington and barely mentioned by the media.
 
A group of people declare war on us and we do nothing?
 
Was there retaliation for the two U.S. embassy bombings in 1998?
 
Or when the USS Cole was bombed in 2000?
 
No, because Middle East experts advised against creating tensions in the Muslim world!
 
Why?
 
Because everything our fucking experts knew about Islam and the Middle East they learned from
teachers
intent on spreading
Wahabism
.”

I thought of Sara
Jiluwis’s
smooth and ready answers.
 
I wondered if she was a
Wahabi
.
 
“You know your facts a lot better than I do, but I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

“Oh yeah?
 
Did you ever wonder why Elliot
Gladwell
proposed his Cultural Accommodation Policy?
 
Do you know how much money it takes to get something like that through Congress?
 
Who backed him?
 
Wahabi
lobby groups, who also contributed to his election campaign.
 
Liberals have been completely bamboozled.”

“
Gladwell
wanted to integrate Muslims so there won’t be jihad in the U.S.”

“But that is jihad!
 
Information jihad!
 
Look at our fucking sister.
 
She wants to be an Arab princess!”

“You’re crazy, Alex.
 
I can’t believe you’re my brother.”

“Is that right?
 
Well you’re a fucking idiot.”

#

I was furious with Alex.
 
What a Nazi!
 
But then I began to think about the gorgeous brand new Islamic center at Canterbury College—travertine and stainless steel on the outside, glowing oak floors and exposed beams on the inside—and the many scholarships to Middle Eastern students and paid summer internships in Washington and at television stations across the country.
 
An unusually large department for a college with three thousand students.

Paid for by oil money from Saudi Arabia?

I looked for clues on the Canterbury College website.
 
The chair for Middle Eastern studies was called the
Adul
Aziz
Al
Sa’ud
Chair for Middle Eastern Studies
after a member of the Saudi royal family.
 
The full name of the Islamic Center was the King
Fhad
Center for Islamic Studies.
 
I paged through the list of major “angel” donors, which included several dozen Arab names.
 
And then I recalled a name I had never thought twice about, the publishing arm of Canterbury College,
Buraq
Press, which produced a substantial number of titles about Islam and Arab culture.

Wasn’t the basic premise of most of the political science classes at Canterbury that the West misunderstood the Middle East, that imperialism and oil lust had completely screwed up our foreign policy?
 
Didn’t a lot of students say the 9/11 was our own fault?