 The Rise of Totalitarian Islam, Lecture 3 Okay, good morning everybody. We're going to get going. Okay, just to quickly summarize where we are. I stated in the first class that the... I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is at the heart, at the core, the fountainhead, if you will, of the entire Islamic totalitarian movement. The origins of the violent form of Islamic totalitarians with the Muslim Brotherhood, we've kind of gone through their history. We're in the 1970s post-Site coup, and the Muslim Brotherhood is kind of split, factored into those who are taking coups, writing seriously, a more violent streak within the Muslim Brotherhood, to a more moderate view that believes still in the same goal. There's no difference in the goal, but advocates for achieving that goal primarily through political means, primarily through working within the culture, changing people one at a time, and at the same time working through the political process, you know, to achieve control over Egyptian society, and ultimately change it with the same vision, Islamic law and Islamic State, and so on. But I just want to give you a sense of what this moderate Muslim Brotherhood has to say, just so you can see how moderate they are. In their view, there are four enemies of Islam. This is, you know, again, from the mid-1970s from one of their major publications, four enemies of Islam, the Jews, the Crusaders, the communists, and the secularists, in that order. Now, this was an article that was written, this identifying these four is an article that was written for the youth movement, they have a youth movement. They're called lion cubs. They're lion cubs, you know, like scouts, you know, young kids. And this is what they had to write about Jews in this publication. Brother Muslim Lion Cub, have you ever wondered why God cursed the Jews in his book after he had earlier preferred them to the rest of the world, his book meaning the Quran? Well, by this preference, the original preference, God was testing the children of Israel. And what was the result? God grew wary of their lives. God has heard the words of those who said, quote, God is poor but we are rich. That's what the Jews said. It may happen that the man lies or falls into error, but for people to build their society on lies, that is the speciality of the children of Israel alone. Such are the Jews, my brother Muslim Lion Cub, your enemies and the enemies of God, and such is the truth about them as told in the book of God. Such is their particular natural disposition, the corrupt doctrine that is theirs. They have never ceased to conspire against their main enemy, the Muslims. In one of their books, they say, quote, we Jews are the masters of the world. It's corrupters, those who format sedition. It's hangman, unquote. You know what book that's from? That's the Elders of Zion, right? The so-called book that the Nazis used quite effectively. So it was a book not written by Jews, but as part of a conspiracy theory, as if written by Jews who want to control the world. In other words on, they do not like you Muslim Lion Cub, you who are via God, Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Muslim Lion Cub annihilate their existence, those who seek to subjugate all humanity so as to force them to serve their satanic designs. So this is the moderate Muslim brothers. The Crusades, while not as evil, the Crusaders, i.e. the Christians in other words, are not as evil as the Jews, still evil. There's nothing more dangerous, nothing more seditious than the missionaries that are working in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. They are the real corrupters trying to corrupt Islam and trying to destroy the Islamic world. They also have long segments criticizing the Orientalists. That's a Western scholar studying Islam. Westerners and Christians or Jews who never understand Islam. It's just a way in which to pervert the Muslim world and pervert the perception of the Muslim world. And of course, out of the Crusades come the whole phenomena of colonialism. And one of the big issues in the 70s for these Muslim brothers in Egypt, again, these moderates, were the cops, COPD. Copts are Egyptian Christians. They're not Muslims converted to Christianity. These are Christians that have always been Christians, going back from before Islam, who live in Egypt. So these are Egyptians by ethnicity who were Christians. And during the 1970s, churches were burnt. Copts were murdered because they were viewed as, in a sense, you know, as Crusaders, as this fond element within Egyptian society that had to be thrown out. In the 70s, communism was a big enemy. It was materialism. You know, it combats Islam because it's atheistic. It's evil. And of course, they always point out that, oh, by the way, Marx was a Jew. So surprise, surprise, this has to be an evil ideology. And finally, secularism, which they believe was less powerful than the other three, secularism primarily in these Muslim countries, undermized the idea of Islam, both religion and state. And the big enemy was secularism. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but just mention was Ataturk. Ataturk was the man responsible for the secularization of Turkey during the 1920s. You know, Bin Laden, in many of his speeches, talks about 80 years of humiliation, that the Muslim world has been humiliated for 80 years. He is dating it back to the day where the Caliphate, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic ruler of the Ottoman Empire, the Caliph, who was the spiritual and political leader, was eliminated. The Caliphate was eliminated by Ataturk in 1924. And that, to him, is the beginning of the end. If you will, could, when saying, if we're not, you know, we need an Islamic law, otherwise we're not Muslims. Bin Laden, in a sense, is saying, since 1924 we've lived in a state of apostate because the Caliph has gone, the rule by Islam is gone, and therefore we've been humiliated. And Ataturk is the bad guy here because he secularized Turkey. He stopped, he used to be, Turkey used to use Arabic letters. He brought in Latin letters. His whole focus was to turn Turkey to Europe and away from the Arab Islamic culture. He actually went through a whole period of massacring, killing. Many of the religious leaders of Turkey, tried to eradicate Islam from Turkey's society. It's illegal in the capital city to wear Islamic headdress for women. So you cannot wear a veil. It's literally against the law. It's certainly against the law in parliament, in schools, in public schools. So a lot of this conflict that was seen today in Turkey between the Islamists and the secularists as a result of these laws, is saying, which we would all say, yeah, I mean they have a right to walk around in any dress that they want, but of course the secularists are protecting against that. It also has a very, the constitution in Turkey is built in such a way that if the military says in the constitution, if the military thinks that the government is becoming religious, then the military has a constitutional right to overthrow the government and to ultimately call for new elections. And they have done that at least twice in the last 25 years. And indeed the prime minister, the current prime minister in Turkey, when last he was prime minister in the early 90s, was deemed by the military too religious, was kicked out, and new elections were held, he reformulated his party, his political party, to become even more moderate in their Islamist views. And today they're in the military, he lets them in, but they're trying to play it both ways. On the one hand they want to become part of the European Union, on the other hand they try to pass a law that would criminalize adultery, which is Sharia law. In Sharia you actually stone the adulterer to death. They just wanted to criminalize it. There was a big uproar in Europe, they said basically if you pass this law this is the way we're accepting you into the European Union, and they dropped it. But that is the tendency, even in Turkey, even in secular Turkey, the tendency today is, the wards bringing more and more Islam, more and more religion into the state. So Ataturk is taught, the way these kids are taught, Ataturk is the enemy, because he brought secularism, the separation of church and state into Islamic culture, and he is viewed as, you know, a messenger of Satan, and you know, like every other evil guy, there are accusations based on, probably half truths, based on some glimmer of truth that Ataturk was a Jew. By some, you know, through his lineage there's some Jewish blood there somewhere. It's bizarre, but that's, you know, the Arab world is filled with conspiracy theories. If you're interested in that more, in the, in the last, in the first issue of the objective standard, there's an article by Lanjona about those conspiracy theories in the Arab world. Okay, so these moderates, what makes the moderate is not their agenda, ultimately. What makes the moderates is even not them saying, oh, we shouldn't use violence generally, jihad is a bad thing. What makes the moderates is in Egypt they have come to the conclusion that their best path to power is political. And even through election. Now, once they get into power, elections will go away and they will say that. Because there is no legislation, there's a legislature under Sharia. But they are participating in the electoral process, and indeed we'll talk about it tomorrow. There's a huge conflict between the bin Laden wing, the al-Qaeda wing of the Islamic totalitarian movement, and even now, in Egypt, and even Hamas now, because the bin Laden wing believes that even if you achieve power through democracy, it's bad. Even if you can use this tool in order to achieve power, it's bad that the only the violent, only through violent jihad would power be legitimized. Even within the Palestinians, for example, Islamic jihad did not participate in the elections, Hamas did, because Islamic jihad believes that it's inappropriate. Another one of these splinter groups was the Muslim brother. There would be a legitimate to gain power through elections. Okay, just a little story in terms of how could influences some of the Muslim brothers thinking. In 1967, we talked about the Six-Day War. You remember that in 1948, when there was a war with Palestine, the Muslim brothers were the first ones to volunteer and go to the front, and were the most passionate of the fighters. Nasser went to the Muslim brothers in jail and said, and they remember this is about a year after his hunger, and he said to them, if you will go to the front, if you will fight with the Egyptian military against Israel, we will free you from jail. You can leave. And the Muslim brotherhood said no. They said the real enemy is the regime in Egypt. Only when Egypt is an Islamic state will we go after Israel. And that is could. You are apostates. You Nasser are apostates. You are the real enemy. We will not fight on your side even against the Jews. So that could influence on their thinking the difference between 1948 where the primary enemy was to kick out the Zionists, the Jews from Israel. Now it's getting the Egyptian regime changed. That is the primary focus. We're going to leave Egypt but we're not going to leave the Muslim brothers. As I mentioned on a number of occasions every time they were oppressed the Muslim brothers spread out into the rest of the Middle East. They established strong footholds in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank, in Jordan, in Syria and in Saudi Arabia. And as we'll see even in Europe and I would argue quite a few footholds even in the United States. And what's interesting is that early on at least in the 1950s and really through the 1970s the United States viewed the Muslim brothers as as a potential positive force in the Middle East. And it's not true that the first time the US helped Islamic totalitarianists totalitarianism was in Afghanistan with Bin Laden. It turns out that they were probably supporting Muslim brotherhood organizations in places like Syria, Jordan less so in Jordan but Egypt during the 1960s and 70s. Because they viewed them as anti-communist and in the big coalition and Nasser of course was pro-communist pro-Soviet Union. The Syrian regime was pro-Soviet Union and these were elements within these countries that could be supported and there's evidence not all these files have been declassified but there's some evidence to suggest that the CIA was actively giving their money and helping them spread the word to barrier to communism in the Middle East. So and indeed Hassan and Bala's son-in-law there's a photograph of Hassan and Bala's son-in-law who was a big time Muslim brother in the White House with Eisenhower in 1953 while attending a conference at Princeton on Islam funded by the US government the whole conference was funded by the US government. Hassan and Bala's brother-in-law goes on to found something called the Islamic Center in Geneva which by the way still exists it is still a major source of funding of Islamic groups throughout Europe his son the son now runs it in real issues when the son wanted to come into the United States after September 11th and he actually was banned because people looked I think I can't remember which university invited him but he was invited to come and speak and they stopped him from coming because they started reading what the guy was writing and what kind of organizations this center was supporting and again you see kind of the tentacles going out and I think if you get that sense that they're everywhere it's true particularly in Europe the US Center is a substantial presence in Europe huge amounts of money and it is a way of funneling Saudi money into different Islamic organizations throughout Europe and ultimately into the United States as well and we'll come back to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States in a little while okay expanded in the Muslim world all over the place could inspire many the Jordanian military actually at some point trains the Muslim Brotherhood as a counter force to Yasser Arafat's Palestinians in the 1960s there's a civil war in 1970 there's a civil war in Jordan and the Muslim Brotherhood actually fights on the side of the king against the Palestinians Palestinians then leave to Lebanon so they're everywhere they're supported by the US, by Jordan by their most substantial presence though is in Saudi Arabia now Saudi Arabia is quite receptive to the whole message of the Muslim Brotherhood because of the Wahhabi the Wahhabi sect that dominate Saudi Arabia so we'll step a little bit back into history to talk about the Wahhabis in the 18th century Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud Sa'ud SAUD was ruler of a small oasis in the desert of Saudi Arabia in 1744 he entered into an alliance a sworn alliance with a radical religious preacher named Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab W-A-H-H-A-B Wahhab marriage occurred between the families to bond them together which is typical in that culture and they joined together to establish a monarchy in the Arabian Peninsula Wahhab at the time was advocating for a strict following of Islamic law a strict interpretation of the Quran and the idea of that which keeps repeating itself that the problem with Islam the decline of the Ottoman Empire and everything was all a consequence of the fact that they weren't good enough Muslims but this is a relatively isolated place 18th century Arabian Peninsula nobody really cared and really until very late nobody really cared until oil was discovered in that Arabian Peninsula nobody cared his inspiration was Ibn Taymiyya who we've talked about last time and he believed that both the political and religious authorities of the time were corrupt and he joined with Sa'ud states and indeed they conquered big chunks of what today is Saudi Arabia established a monarchy established the rule of this religious entity between 1774 and 1819 the Saudis and Wahhabis united and then through bloody conquest the lands that Muhammad had originally ruled around Mecca and Medina in the Arabian Peninsula and this is what will become Saudi Arabia the state of Saudi Arabia in 1819 the state was destroyed by the Egyptians at the urging of the Ottoman Empire they didn't like this entity there there was upsetting things and then you know the Saudis joined up with Wahhabis again in 1824 re-established a kingdom until 1891 which ends in civil war and the exile of the king and then finally in 1902 King Abdul Aziz recaptures Riyadh at the age of 20 relies on the Wahhabi preachers and the Wahhabi sect to mobilize kind of the nomadic tribesmen on his behalf at which point once he's established control once he's the king he has control over them he suppresses the Wahhabis he reduces their influence dramatically this is typical of Saudi Arabia they go through this periods in which the Wahhabi preachers the Wahhabi school is prominent influences every aspect of society as the king feels more confident he oppresses them he kicks out the more radicals loosens things up a little bit you know maybe allows women to drive for a few days something happens that threatens the king and the royal family and he brings the Wahhabis back to help him out and reestablishes the more strict Islamic law and you can see this pattern goes back and forth throughout the decades really and we'll see a few of those think of the fact for example that today Saudi Arabia in spite of the way in spite of our perception of that country in spite of how religious that country is is considered an apostate country by many radical Islamists like bin Laden so they're not radical enough and the Wahhabis don't believe that Saudi Arabia today is a truly Islamic country for many reasons one of which the fact that they have so many foreigners living on holy land this is the birthplace of Islam now now in the 1950s you've got a very conservative monarchy well conservative but not radical vision of Islam really no expansionary goals no real ambition no vision I'd say no ideology you know they're religious very conservative very static but they've just discovered oil so they have lots of money lots of money and the most they want to do with that money is educate is build schools build universities but they have no teachers this is a land of no man's this is a land relatively primitive culture you know and they have no teachers luckily about the same time luckily for them unluckily for us the Egyptian Muslim brothers were kicked out of Egypt or leaving Egypt because they're being persecuted mid 1950s now these are educated people middle class, well educated from the most western the most civilized fuel of all the countries in the Middle East probably Egypt and they are welcome with open arms indeed a whole university is founded for them University of Medina is founded for the Muslim brothers they become its faculty but they become the faculty of the university of all the universities they become the dominant faculty members at these universities by 1960 most professors in the kingdoms new universities were Egyptian Muslim brothers indeed Bin Laden I think I mentioned it Bin Laden studied engineering at the university in Jeddah but he took some theology classes and his Islamic studies class was taught by none other than a guy named Muhammad Kut Said Kut's brother Abdul Azam Abdullah Azam AZZAM who would go on to inspire Jihad in Afghanistan would be the central figure in the Jihad all the Arab troops that went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets in the 1970s this is the central figure of that whole movement was also a professor in Jeddah and of course he too was one of Bin Laden's teachers and he came to Jeddah from Jordan where he was heavily involved in the Muslim brotherhood originally in Palestine because he was a Palestinian Jordan and then moved to Saudi Arabia indeed I would argue that the whole violent radical form of Jihad the the al-Qaeda mentality of suicide bombings of mass murder on this enormous scale is a consequence of the merging of two cultures it is the merging of the ideology the intellectualism if you want the commitment to these ideas and understanding of these ideas of the Egyptians and of the waria nomadic aggressive Saudi mentality and I think it is the and if you add in the mix money because that's going to be crucial to Saudi money that is what has resulted in the kind of terrorism and the kind of violence that we have seen throughout the Middle East since then and it started in the 1950s this merger it continues through the 1960s and just got more radicalized by this merger of the Wahhabis and the Muslim brothers the Wahhabis were not intellectuals they believed in basically the same stuff they believed in intellectuals it's a very primitive Saudi Arabia it's a very primitive culture very primitive state these are nomadic tribes they needed the radicalization that the Muslim brotherhoods provided them it's that combination that I think is responsible for what we're seeing today 5 on the 101 any questions? yes I'm still going to get a handle on the issue of whether is the enemy just radical Islam or is the enemy as such given what moderates have to say well remember these are the moderate Muslim brothers these are the moderate Muslim brothers this is not some moderate Islamic professor I don't know at the University of Amman you know so look given that Islam put it this way I think the majority of Muslims particularly in the Middle East I think it's maybe a little different in Southeast Asia not as different as I'd like and maybe it's different among Muslims in the U.S. certainly and among some Muslims in Europe given the fact that Islam quite Islam never went through an enlightenment and rejected reason so explicitly by Al Ghazali in the 12th century Muslims generally are very open to these radical ideas it doesn't mean they endorse them but they are open to them so when there is a revolution we'll talk about Iran they rally to it they're going to rally are they going to be at the forefront are they going to be the vanguard millions and millions no but they are sympathetic so is everybody agree with there's a Muslim world generally you know we're talking about a billion people do they think bin Laden's right with what he's doing no I mean a certain significant minority thinks that what he's doing is great but then there's a huge and I would argue maybe even a majority that think his tactics are wrong but his aims ultimately are right and that is the enemy so is it a majority is it 20% is it 40% is it 60% I don't know but so in that sense it's Islam because it was never moderated but I don't want to come out and say that they are not Muslims who practice Islam who do not believe in Sharia who do not believe in an Islamic state who do not because they are such people there's certainly Muslims in the United States who are like that I think a significant proportion if not an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the US are like that and at least significant minorities throughout the Arab world are like that I think they're being radicalized and we'll talk about that tomorrow I think if things are getting worse not better that is that there will be more and more tendencies toward radicalization and soon enough the whole Muslim world will be our enemy but I don't think that's what we are today Yes Is there also a set of it's not in the Quran but it's kind of the sayings or the practices of Muhammad Sunnah and Hadith and isn't like that the second tenet is the one that talks about Jihad so you know I mean I've been told that you won't find that the term Jihad in the Quran but you will find it in this Oh no there's no question Jihad is in the Quran it's just a question of how you interpret it and indeed Muhammad says there are two types of Jihad there's the greater Jihad and the lesser Jihad and the greater Jihad is the internal Jihad of making yourself virtuous and fighting the temptations of the flesh and the temptations of this world and the lesser Jihad is the violence and all the scholars will agree with that even Bilalad would say that but he would say it's still important just because it's a lesser Jihad doesn't mean it's not Jihad and doesn't mean it's not crucial Yeah, last one You mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood's opposition to western orientalist scholars I note that a Palestinian scholar by the name of Edward Said wrote one of the most influential books on western scholarship called Orientalism Is there a connection there? I find it interesting that he wrote it well after these criticisms were being made by Muslim Brothers which I tend to think he maybe wasn't an original in his criticism now he of course presents this in the context of postmodernism so he brings that whole postmodern analysis to it which of course the Muslim Brothers would reject and wasn't but the attacks and Orientalism would go way back to probably the 30s and the 40s even of these British scholars coming here to study us they're the barbarians, we're the cultured ones so that type of attitude goes way back The question was Orientalism there was a very, very significant book written now I don't remember, I think it was 1980 in the early 80s maybe late 70s by a Columbia university professor named Edward Said which is incredibly has been very influential criticizing from a postmodern perspective the ability of westerners to interpret the East, to interpret the Orient, in particular the Middle East he was a Palestinian, he died a few years ago very, very influential there's a wonderful book by I think Martin Kramer it's called something like Shifting Sands Ivy Towers in the Sand where he analyzes how Edward Said's book destroyed one book, destroyed the study, the Middle East studies in all American universities it's an incredibly powerful book about ideas about how ideas have an impact in academia and how in this case really, really bad ideas for a decade destroy a whole field with an academia it's Martin Kramer he's at the Middle East with the Middle East Quarterly Middle East Forum I think in Philadelphia but if you want to see the power of ideas a negative example of that, it's a really good book Ivy Towers in the Sand and the name is Martin Kramer with a K just one last point on these Saudi universities you remember I talked about this guy, Maldudi the Pakistani guy who influenced Kud he became actually an honorary dean of one of the universities in Saudi Arabia so they were importing people from everywhere and importing the most radical of these ideas as part of that okay, so we're going to move away from the Muslim brothers now, as you'll see I believe that there are four pillars you know the four pillars of Islam I think there are four pillars to the Islamic totalitarian movement today, you know and we've covered two of them I think one is the Muslim Brotherhood the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood the second is the combination of Saudi spirit and Saudi money a lot of it's Saudi money and the third is the topic we're going to turn to is the Iranian Revolution we'll talk about the fourth tomorrow and of course the Iranian Revolution is a lot more powerful also because of money so the fact that Iran has oil is also significant in the degree of influence Iran ultimately has but one of the ways in which the Saudis exported this ideology helped spread it everywhere is starting from the 50s, 60s, 70s the Muslim Brotherhood is to control of a lot of these huge charities in Saudi Arabia and started spreading money building madrasas all over the place building mosques all over the place and sending their people everywhere to every major Arab country an Islamic country you see Saudi money flowing in and you see Muslim Brothers intellectuals coming in and you can trace them all the way to Indonesia to the Philippines and on the other side to Morocco and they played a crucial role in inspiring the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s so throughout the Muslim world there's the combination of Saudi money and Muslim Brotherhood ideology has been incredibly powerful and without that money the effect would have been a lot less they still would have had an effect but they wouldn't have been able to go out to the schools and send these supposed intellectuals into all these countries and have the kind of influence they have that they have had so draw a line shifting from the Arab world to the Persian world to Iran and if you want to know the real Persian history you can talk to John Lewis because I don't know it I'm going to start with there's always this notion that and it's prevalent among objectivists and I believed it until a few months ago that here was a country Iran that was the most westernized of all Islamic countries where there were people well educated they were western they were a thriving economy and then there was the shock the revolution that went against the grain of the Iranian people and any day now because the Iranian people were so westernized they're going to rise up and overthrow the Islamic regime because these western values were so well ingrained in them through these centuries I guess the centuries before the Iranian Revolution and it was just I've always just taken that as it you know everybody says that so it turns out that in my view at least that is completely false if anything Iran is one of the least westernized was one of the least westernized of all Middle East countries pre-revolution I actually think the most is Egypt if you go back to the 19th century well Britain and France had a substantial impact on Egypt, on Syria, on Lebanon on the even the Ottoman Empire had a lot of communication with Europe was continuously engaged Iran was like somewhat in the middle of nowhere nobody really cared now the Russians were putting pressure on them from the north and at least they were infiltrating a little bit and the British worried a little bit by the fact that the Russians were coming in from the north of course in India and Pakistan were a little worried that the Russians would come their way exerted some influence on Iran from the south but overall Iran was pretty much left alone to maintain a pretty decadent you know primitive Islamic culture there was very little western influence very little western influence certainly any significant important western influence on Iran I mean if anything what the British and the Russian tried to do was destabilize and try to have a little bit more political influence a little bit less political influence but there was no culture being brought into Iran during the 19th century particularly as you compare it to Egypt which was occupied for much of that period where there was Aida Verdiapa was performed at the pyramids the Suez Canal the west was heavily involved in what was going on in Egypt during the 19th century and Egyptians were sending their kids to study in European universities the wealthy Egyptians sending their kids to study in European universities you don't see that in Iran you see a lot of political unrest you see a lot of battles you see very little western influence very decentralized state a lot of local authority and a big role played by religious leaders and this brings us to the key difference between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims after the 4th caliph way back just after Muhammad the new caliph Ali was instated but his legitimacy, his ability was questioned by a Syrian governor who basically overthrew Ali and established his own rule over the Islamic lands a rule that his family continued for I think well over 100 years and what happened was that the loyalists of Ali those people believed Ali was the legitimate heir or the Shiites so the whole split is political it's not originally theological so from the beginning Shiites believed that they were being ruled by this new ruler who was illegitimate and that Ali was the rightful the rightful heir and that as a consequence while they couldn't rise up against this new ruler because they were too weak and he was too powerful they never quite accepted his authority and indeed the Shiite tradition really up until the Iranian Revolution has been we don't trust the rulers we'll play along we'll pretend we're okay with them but we don't trust them we don't believe in them and the real authority the real guides within the Shiite community were the religious leaders the religious leaders play a much bigger role within the Shiite communities than with the Sunnis the Sunnis on the other hand those who accepted this new ruler also kind of said his legitimacy is questionable he did overthrow Ali by use of force and that's not the way it's supposed to be but he won he's the victor the fact that he won probably suggests that Ali was a weak person and probably not the right guy to rule over us so we're going to go with strength and we're going to be committed to this guy and we're going to accept his authority and therefore the Sunnis are much more oriented towards political leadership and less reliant on their particular religious community leaders they're willing to listen to what their political leader if he has some religious authority as they did while the Caliphate was still around while you still had this religious leader as part of for example the Ottoman Empire they were willing to tolerate the Shiites and they call this quietism quietism you know they leave politics alone politics is corrupt, politics is bad indeed one sect of the Shiites which is the dominant sect of the Shiites and includes all Shiites in Iran and most of them in Iraq today believe at some point one of Ali's who's saying one of Ali's grandkids great grandkids one of it from his line challenged re-challenged the authority and try to establish himself as the leader of the Muslims and you know Kabbalah in Iraq the place for the Shiites is because he was going towards Damascus to challenge the authority and he was ambushed basically and a big battle happened in Kabbalah where he was killed that's where they had the big mask there and he supposedly had his child with him and the legend is that while Hussein which was this heir to Ali was killed heroically in the big battle of Kabbalah his child disappeared and indeed the Shiites really believe and if you listen to the president of Iran today he makes reference to this that this child is still in hiding waiting to return to his legitimate role as the leader of the Muslims he is the 12th caliph the legitimate caliph and they are waiting for him and they are quiet in the meantime in the meantime they are just hanging around waiting for this political leader religious leader to come back and establish his authority over all Muslims so generally the real power base the real power base among Shiites that have been the clergy and Shiite clergy actually do have some kind of structure the dominant theological schools were traditionally in Qum in Iran and in Najaf in Iraq there were grades of Ayatollahs how more prominent you were and less prominent you were in the religious hierarchy while there was no one specific leader up until about the 50s and 60s there were several Grand Ayatollahs for example Grand Ayatollah Sistani the real political power in Iraq today you don't hear or you haven't heard about it in the last couple of years but he's the guy pulling all the strings he's the guy telling the government who should be prime minister and how to manage it and the Shiite should copper with the U.S. right now but he's the guy that the politicians go to to ask pilgrimage are made nobody's seen him in years and years partially because they keep killing each other these Ayatollahs they don't want to fight but he for example will not meet with Americans he will not meet with Europeans he's intermediaries will meet with Europeans but he will not because to him that is you know your scum I mean why would he meet with you so the tradition again was not to confront the leaders rulers directly everything was through these religious clergy I'm in Glendale I'm in Glendale and found love in the south bay yes I find my way see you in my next videos thanks for watching see you soon myself in an LA long-distance thing. Guess who helped make it work, AT&T. I bought one phone, got another one on them, and romance is alive on the 101. Come into an AT&T store, buy a smartphone, and get one on us. More for your thing, that's our thing. Limited time in areas, select devices. Each requires up to $900 on installment agreement. Requires one new line of minimum $75 per month service. Three after credits over 30 months starting within three bills. If cancel service, device balance is due. $30 activation, additional fees, taxes, and restrictions apply. See your local AT&T store for details. Now, during the 20th century, the Shah of Yuan's father established significant military experience. The British helped, the British actually trained him, and established his own kingdom, the own line of Shahs. He was the first. And tried to bring some westernization to Iran. But this is what we're talking about, the 20s, the 30s, half-heartedly. There wasn't a lot of money. Slowly oil starts coming in. The government becomes a little bit more secularized. They build up a bigger military. At some point, there's even elections. And you've got a very strong prime minister that the CIA thinks is going to be working with the communists and there's strong evidence, I think, that manages to help the Shah overthrow him in 1953 and reestablish himself. The Shah that we're familiar with is that original, from the original line, is the son, who rules from the 1950s through 1979. Aggressively tries to westernize. There's no question. I mean, brings in, tries to secularize, tries to build up a nationalistic fervor within the Iranians, brings them back to their Persian roots, Persian pride, tries to distance himself from the clergy, tries to minimize their role, obviously brings in Western technology, brings in Western advisors. Also is very oppressive, crushes any kind of resistance, crushes any kind of revolution, any religious tendencies. He tries to crush them. He doesn't quite go that to Turk way. He doesn't go out there and kill all the clergy. He certainly doesn't ban religion. He indeed goes through these phases, like all these dictators do, where they appease them and then they oppress them and then they appease them, depending on the mood and depending on the swings of public opinion in the population. But generally, I would say that Iran, what the Shah tries to do, is give Iran shock therapy of westernization. 20 years of intense westernization, interculture that was very, this was very far into it. And indeed, most of that happens in the big cities like Tehran. And most of the Iranian population is just spread out in mountain villages that only after the Islamic revolution started to get things like water and electricity and so on. So much of the vast Iranian population never benefits from this tendency. In addition, the Shah opens up markets, big corporations come in. And some of the people who are most feel threatened by this are the conservative, religious tradesmen, people in the bazaars, the traditional middle-class traders that are prevalent in all of, if you travel in the Middle East, the bazaars everywhere, the shopkeepers everywhere, they are the heart of economic life in most of these countries. Well, the bazaar, the shopkeepers, this middle-class was very anti-Shah, was very anti-westernization and viewed it as an economic threat to them and viewed it as a threat to their traditional values, to their family values, their Muslim values. And they aligned themselves very early with the clergy and had a very strong relationship with the clergy and funded much of what the clergy tried to do to undercut the regime. And the clergy was trying continuously to re-establish itself as an authority and indeed continue to be an authority for I'd say, you know, 70% of all Iranians. It was a very small class of them, maybe the students at the universities who were westernized. And even then, what did it mean to be westernized? It primarily meant that you were a communist. That was the ideology that was prevalent on universities in Tehran in those days. You were definitely a socialist. Indeed, as we'll see, Homeini takes advantage of that. You see even clerics. There's one famous cleric, his name was Ali Shariati, trained, got a PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris, trained in western philosophy, was actually a student of Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris in the 1940s and 50s, went back to Iran and tried to combine this socialism with religion. And was probably, until he died, was probably more popular in Iran, certainly among the students, certainly among the intelligentsia than Ayatollah Homeini was. He was an incredible speaker and really managed to, and was crucial to the revolution, in the sense that he managed to bridge between Ayatollah Homeini kind of religious orthodoxy and the socialist, secular students on campuses. He was killed about two years before the revolution by, everybody says by the Shah, I personally wouldn't be surprised if Homeini had him killed, because I think he definitely viewed him as a threat to the revolution. So, you know, this is the world win. This is a predominantly Muslim country with some real westernization happening in the cities, very fast kind of shock therapy. A lot of people are upset about this. A lot of people don't like this. There's still enormous amounts of poverty. The bizarre, the middle class is unhappy. And the primary loyalty of the most people is still towards the religious leaders, who have a vast network of mosques, a vast network if you will of propaganda throughout Iran. They are the people that the commoners listen to every Friday to their summons. They are the ones who engage with the public on a regular basis. Now, traditionally again, that wouldn't have mattered because traditionally, Shiites are quiet. They don't get involved in politics. They stay out of the way. And what Homeini's real revolution is, is in changing that attitude of the Shiites, of urging for political power for the clergy, of starting to speak up and not staying quiet. And in that sense, Homeini was a radical within the Shiite community. I told Homeini, K-H, K-H-O-M-E-I-N-I, although there are many other spellings of this name that I've seen, depending on the books. Was born in 1902. He had a rigorous religious education. He went to all the white seminaries. He was a religious cleric. Note the difference here between him and Bana and Kud and most of the Sunni Muslim brotherhood leaders who had no rigorous systematic, you know, mainstream religious training. Aitullah Homeini was an Aitullah. He was part of the clergy. He was trained in Qum, the leading theological seminaries. He was well read, as we mentioned last time, in Neoplatonic philosophy. Was well read in Western literature. Indeed, he met, he probably read Qud, although we can't prove that, but just too many similarities between what he wrote after Qud and what Qud wrote to suggest that he didn't, but he probably read Qud. We know that he met Maududi from Pakistan in Mecca in 1963. From the beginning, he was a radical. He was a problematic student. He was very interested in mysticism. You know, we consider all religion mystical, but even within religion, they are these grades, right? And very influenced by Eastern philosophy, Eastern trends within Islam. But from very early on, came to the conclusion that this westernization, that the Shah was involved in something that the clergy could not keep quiet about, that they had to act, that they had to stop this. This was not a regular dictator or ruler that they could just, these corrupt, and they could just ignore him. He was set on destroying Islam, and this they could not stay quiet about. As early as 1963, he was involved in a small uprising, and indeed was banished to Turkey. So in 1963, Khomeini is banished, kicked out, and goes to Turkey, ultimately gets permission to go to Najaf in Iraq, and settles in Najaf, and spends most of his time until he returns to Iran in 79, and Najaf spends a few months in Paris just before his return. Paris always seems to fit in here somehow, so is French. From Najaf, he continues to write, he writes books on shared political theory. He writes books about what a state should look like when there is one, but more importantly, all of his sermons, he preaches regularly, all of his sermons are audiotaped, and those tapes are smuggled into Iran, and are distributed all over the country through the system of mosques that the clergy have in Iran. His tapes are widely circulated into the bazaars, into the mosques, everybody's listening to these tapes. And he becomes a major influence within Iran. At the same time, the Shiites decide that they need a more concentrated authority when the clergy, so usually there are a number of people who are considered at the top, and they wanted to have one person at the top, rather than a number of people, and there were some conflicts of who that would be, but ultimately, Khomeini becomes that one, in a sense, the spiritual leader of all the Shiites. So this is a real, again, a real clergy, he's in the system, he's not an outsider, he's not somebody outside criticizing the religious authorities, or the religious establishment. He is the religious establishment, and he uses that fact to get his ideas out there, to get other clergy who might not even be as radical as he is, to get them to help spread these ideas. He's in the 70s, I don't think so. He was doing this farmy walk, any walk, and then spreading it into Iran. Son of a saint, let it go on. Yeah, well, I remember Saddam was saying, only comes to power in 79. 68, 69. No, he becomes a complete dictator, only in 78, 79, because then he goes to war with Iran in 1980. So he is not around, but yes, basically the Ba'ath party, the military dictators, before that, you walk at a king. King from Saudi Arabia, but a king. You know, they let it go on because it was Iran, because you don't suppress the religion, because you don't want to upset the Shiites, particularly if you're the minority Sunni ruling over them. So you leave them pretty much alone. Now, Saddam Hussein got tougher with a lot of the Shiite clergy when they got more aggressive, but then Saddam Hussein ran a much more authoritarian state than his predecessors do. He's much worse than the people who came before him. Okay, first book that Humani wrote was a clear attack on secularism, again, encouraged by the Shah. Humani supposedly, you know, go figure, but he was a very charismatic person. His students loved him, he was supposedly a great teacher. And his loyalty to his students was amazing. And all these students basically became soldiers in his intellectual revolution. And they stayed in Iran while he had to leave. They stayed in Iran. And they went throughout the whole country, spreading these ideas systematically and building networks. And they built networks together with the middle class. It's really crucial, this relationship between the clergy and the middle class, because the middle class provided money, provided the financing, but also provided the network into kind of lay society. So he is advocating for these ideas. In the meantime, the Shah is becoming more and more authoritarian through the 1970s, more and more oppressive. He has more and more money, but there's also more and more corruption. His secret police are becoming more brutal. He's becoming less and less popular within Iran. And Humani is becoming more and more ambitious. Humani actually sees an opportunity here to actually get rid of the Shah. And throughout the 1970s, there's more and more agitation. Ali Shariati is in Iran advocating for an Islamic socialist state. Social justice becomes a big part of all of actual Humani speeches. This is how Shariati influences Humani. Humani suddenly starts talking in the early 70s about social justice in a big way, social justice meaning socialism. He establishes connections, really solid connections, with the liberals who want democracy in Iran, he establishes solid connections with the socialists and the communists, with the student movement, all aligned together to get rid of the Shah. It reminds me of kind of, and I don't know the history here accurately, but it reminds me of the pre-Russian revolution when the communists for a while are aligned with the liberals and everybody else just to get rid of the Zan. And then of course, we know what happens. The more consistent element wins out. Same thing happens in Iran. And indeed, there's no question that they, Shariati at least, certainly knows about how the communist revolution happens. Again, in Iran, they have these cells, five member cells. They structured very much like the revolutionary structure that Lenin put together. Now, Atyula Khomeini as part of this clergy, as part of this establishment, really opposed something that the Sunnis encouraged. He opposed individual interpretation of the Quran. The Sunnis encouraged it and as a consequence, you get people like Bin Laden who are not trained in religion at all, making frauds laws, making statements, making in a sense laws based on the Quran because it's okay for each individual to interpret the Quran. Atyula Khomeini says, absolutely not. Look, we are scholars. We study this day and night. We get training. We know this stuff. You guys, you can read the Quran, but you don't get it. You don't get the subtleties. You don't get the nuances. You're amateurs. Pladenism, yes. We are the philosophers. We get it. We see the light. We see the truth. You need to be guided by us. This is very much a platonic attitude, but also one that's consistent generally with somebody who, with the, I think, Catholicism has a similar attitude, right? The Pope knows more about Christianity than anybody else because he's the Pope. Partially because maybe he talks to God, but mainly because he's studied a lot and really this is his life. Well, Khomeini really strongly advocated against personal interpretation. And as a consequence, Shiism generally and Ahomeini believe in the need for this structure, for this clergy to exist, because if you can't interpret the Quran for yourself, you need somebody to do it for you. He believed therefore in a strong centralized state. And a strong centralized state in which the clergy ruled because they were the philosopher kings. They understood. In which they got the authority, he would say, from the people. So it was some form of election, but the supreme leader who has to be a clergy is chosen once for life. And he's chosen by the other clergy. There is some role and there are elections in Iran for parliament. There is a council of guardians which oversees parliament and indeed there's a president. But they are just executors, I mean executors in the sense of executing policy. They're executing the laws. They're not, they can legislate within a very narrow band of consistency with Islamic law or Sharia. So only new things that come about in a modern society, but they can't change anything in terms of what is written in Sharia. And everything, every law they pass has to get by the council of guardians which are there to protect the Islamic law. So the real power in Iran today, for example, is not worth this guy whose name I can't pronounce. The president of Iran, what's that? No, Raf Sanjani is not the president. Raf Sanjani I can do. I'm Madhira Jad. I'm Madhira Jad. I'm Madhira Jad. I'm Madhira Jad. There you go. Who is the president? Who is a mouthpiece? And quite a mouth he has. The real power in Iran lies with Khamenei. Who is the supreme leader? Only the second supreme leader Iran has had. They've had a number of presidents. Quite a future president. He is the second, he inherited the job from Ayatollah Khomeini. He is the real power in Iran. He gets to ultimately veto any decision parliament that the president makes. And indeed the so-called reformists, everybody was touting the reformists who were just a little bit less radical on the spectrum of Islam, but they were reformed within an Iranian context. They were considered reformists. Didn't get any of the reform agenda passed. They voted them in parliament. Everybody approved and then these guys vetoed everything that came by. Indeed the elections are held in a way that the council of guardians has to choose the candidates, has to approve the candidates. So only the candidates that are true Muslims from their perspective even get to be on the ballot in terms of the elections. I think once that happens, the elections are really free. Everybody goes to poll, I don't think they're rigged. Once the candidates are prefixed. And indeed a significant proportion of Iranian population actually votes. Again, indicating that there's no mass revolt against the existing regime. There's no mass sentiment that's against other than in universities among students. We hear about the students that like the West and don't have any shape and authority. Do they exist or they're just too numerically small? First of all, I think they do exist, but they're small. And then they are the moderates, what I call. These are Islamists who are less radical than the existing regime. But look, if they get into power, they're not that much better. They still hate America. They still advocate for Sharia. They just advocate for a moderate form of it. And they're not, the real, the real poor Westerners are a very small minority on the university campuses. Yeah, John. At this point, I've had some correspondence with some of these secular students of the West Coast who are really opposed to the regime and really want a secular country. They want a socialist country akin to Sweden. They're socialists. Well, let me note that I think that many of the pro-Westerners left Iran after 1979 revolution. And what you're getting is when you meet, we meet Iranians all the time in California because there are many of them, huge community in Los Angeles and particularly in Beverly Hills. They've done very, very well. And they are westernized and they are anti the regime and they are adamant about this and they have TV stations and radio stations and they devote significant resources to trying to overthrow the regime. And they will tell you that most of the Iranian population is pro-the West. But you have to take what they say with a grain of salt because they clearly have an incentive. They want to motivate Americans to get more active. They want to give us more hope that if we get active, there'll be positive successes. And I think they have a rosy view of Iran, 30 years after they left, or 25 years after they left. But there's definitely a political agenda and I definitely think there's a political agenda among many of the American intellectuals who present Iran in a rosy way. They want us to, they don't want military action and they want us to help the students and that will somehow cause a revolution. I am very doubtful that that is true. Khomeini believes that in this totalism, again, Islam covers everything. He completely agrees with the Muslim brothers on that. And that ultimately Iran is not the end. That is that Iran as an Islamic state is the beginning of the establishment of a Muslim empire over ultimately the whole world. All Muslim uniting under one regime. I'm not gonna go into details of the revolution but let me just say this. So they created this broad coalition, riots in the streets in 78, the Shah leaves in 79. Of course it gets no support from the Americans so leaves for good in January of 79. In February 1979, I took Khomeini returns to Iran from Paris to hundreds of thousands of millions of people in the streets cheering him on. There's a lot of politics that goes on from the next year or so in terms of shuffling around and manipulation and who's gonna rule. But ultimately I tell the Khomeini managers to oppress, kick out some of his opponents to leave the country, some of them are slaughtered and killed and he establishes basically his rule and the rule of the clerics, the rule of the clerics over the country. This is truly a theocracy in the sense of the clerics, the religious establishment rules the country. He establishes his political vision, every part of it. Is consistent, the way Iran is is completely consistent with the Khomeini's writings from the 60s and 70s. He gets everything that he wants. Is the first presidents are not to his liking and he just gets rid of them. He is the supreme leader. He establishes himself, he's voted a stuff. Indeed, there was a vote in 1979 about whether the Iranian people want an Islamic state or not. And the results are something like 93% yes. Now, to what extent that's rigged or not, I have no idea. But the fact that the Iranian people didn't rebel against this notion, didn't rise up against Khomeini if these pro-Westerners were there, if they were significant for us, why is it the Khomeini that managed? I think what happens is you've got an array of Islamists. You've got very moderate, somewhat moderate, somewhat radical, really radical. And when you've got all of your options are bad, who's gonna win out? The most consistent, the most consistent. And that's what Ayatollah Khomeini was. He was the most consistent. And he was considered the, you know, the clergy, the, you know, the Ayatollah, the authority for all of Shiites. I mean, you couldn't challenge it. I'm in Glendale and found love in the South Bay. Yes, I find myself in an LA long distance thing. Yes, who helped make it work, AT&T. I bought one phone, got another one on them and romance is alive on the 101. Come into an AT&T store, buy a smartphone and get one on us. More for your thing, that's our thing. 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Did the Sunnis ever, did any of the Sunnis ever accept the authority of Shiite Kalini, a clerical authority? Well, we're gonna, my next topic in a sense. No, they never accepted the fact that they would be ruled by a sheet. Other than Muslim Brotherhoods, originally at least and I think many of them still to this day and even within al-Qaeda, as I said, there's this conflict. Don't view the conflict between Sunnis and Shiite as a big deal. And really admire Humeini and Iran for what happened, for the establishment of that state. I think that it's only in Iraq, and we can talk for a long time about what's happening in Iraq and how that's evolved, only in Iraq have you seen this rise of the kind of sectarian violence, ideological, presented by these radical Sunnis. You don't see that in anything Qutb or Obana or Maldudi or any of these intellectuals wrote. I mean, the Wahhabis don't like the Shiites. But you don't see it, at least in the Egyptian or the Pakistani line, you don't see a hatred of Shiites and they're wrong. But they're still Muslims, if they ruled under Islamic law, and indeed, and this is our next topic, Iran served as enormous inspiration, incredible inspiration. Ayatollah Humeini's victory in 1979 inspired not only Shiites, but the entire radical Islamic movement. And not just radical Muslims, but moderate Muslims who now became radical Muslims because here was an example of success. Ayatollah Humeini had done it the first time since the Wahhabis and the Sauds, if you will, joined together in the 18th century. For the first time, you got the establishment of an Islamic state from scratch. Yeah. What was the part played by Jimmy Carter and the Americans in getting Humeini into power? Well, I mean, I think that the party played was a kind of supporting the Shah. Oh, the question was what part did Jimmy Carter play in getting Humeini there? I think it was a helping this pretty brutal regime of the Shah, and originally, and allowing him to be as brutal as he wanted to be as long as he was a friend of the United States. Then when Jimmy Carter got into power, suddenly telling the Shah, you got to loosen up, you got to open stuff up, you got to let dissent, you know, we're not going to support you anymore. So went from the one side all the way to the other from supporting him or letting him do what he want to oppress his people to the point of, open it up, you have to have more dissent. So now he opens it up and Ayatollah Humeini is just ready. He's right there, he's ready to pounce. And that's 77 to 79, you know? That's Jimmy Carter. And then, of course, not supporting the Shah when he leaves. So I don't think they did anything to literally support Humeini, but they created the environment, both the original support of the Shah and then kind of abandoning him that just made it possible. And what about the hostage crisis? Are you going to get to that? Well, I'm trying to move forward. Because the hostage crisis is on November 4th, 1979. The American embassy and all the personnel in the American embassy, 52 people are taking hostage. They stay hostages, I think it's 444 days until January of 1981 when Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president. What does that do for the revolution? It basically shows the impotence of the West. It shows the pathetic nature of American power, the fact that we're not willing to stand up, the fact that we're not willing to do anything, as Einrann said in a Q&A. The fact that we did not act within days of the hostage taking is a fact that we will pay for for many, many, many years. She said that in 1970, 1980, and she's absolutely right because there's no question of what that message said to the Muslim world is, you can hood Americans. You can damage American. America will do nothing. Just stand back and do nothing. One pathetic rescue attempt that failed, and that was it. And even that was months later. But nothing immediately. The Iranian revolution from the Islamist perspective is a huge success. They establish a theocracy. They establish Sharia. They dominate the country. They're an incredibly authoritarian regime. Every aspect of life is controlled by the central government. And it serves as enormous inspiration for the rest of these radical Muslims. Here is an example of success. It works. It can be done. Let's go out and do it. And we'll see that these attempts continue and they continue to this day. And an obvious question is, why did it succeed in Iran and didn't succeed and doesn't succeed in other countries? And I think it has to do with what we talked about in terms of the Shia. The fact that the clergy have such a central role in Iranian life before the revolution. And the fact that the revolution was instigated by the clergy, by the religious authority itself. It wasn't an outside force. So for example, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are outsiders. And then there's al-Azhar, which is this theological university which represents the established religious authority. And then there's the political authority. And the Muslim Brotherhood are confronted continuously by religious authority and political authority. If al-Azhar, if the religious authority went over to the Muslim Brotherhood, I think the likelihood of success would rise dramatically. But that has not happened yet. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was the leader of the religious establishment. And therefore, that was the origin of the revolution. And therefore, everybody in Iran rallied towards it. In Egypt, when the Muslim Brotherhood declares something, the people go, OK, well, what's al-Azhar going to say? Well, they say the opposite. OK, now I'm torn. Who do I go with? You know, there's options. In Iran, the clergy, every religious authority spoke with one voice. With Ayatollah Khomeini's voice. There was unanimity. It was from within. The revolution was from within. And I would also argue that Iran was probably more Islamic than Egypt and many of these other countries in the sense of the people, the masses, the middle class, at least as Islamic, if not more. So you had a good foundation with everybody being Muslim, religious, and looking to authority, religious authority, and then the authority, the religious authority, all speaking with one voice against the political establishment. And that, in the Sunni world, on the other hand, that doesn't exist. And as a consequence, almost all the attempts failed. In 1981, during a military procession, as a jeep passes in front of the presidential, where the president sits, four soldiers jump out of the jeep with semi-automatic weapons and start firing towards President Sadat, killing him instantly. Sadat, the Pharaoh, is killed. At the same time, a military group takes over one of the cities on the Nile. And the Muslim brothers, or at least this radical fraction of the Muslim brothers, await for the Egyptian people to rise up against the political establishment. Never happens. The uprising is suppressed immediately. The al-Haza comes out strongly against it. The political establishment rallies around Mubarak, the new president of Egypt, who still is, who was the vice president under Sadat. So there's a clear line of succession. The groups responsible for this, again, they wound up all the Muslim brotherhood, thousands of them, El Jihad, which is a specific group responsible for the assassination. Those responsible are immediately arrested. And over the next few years will be tried. And again, you go through this one of these other periods where it seems like the Muslim brotherhood is going to disappear. But there's never this uprising. There's the people never rally towards us. Again, if you look at El Jihad, again, who was the leader? Who was the guy who inspired this assassination? Who was the guy who decided Sadat had to die and this is how we're going to do it and this is the plan? It was an electrical engineer, middle class, well-educated, not from the religious establishment. An electrical engineer who wrote a book, very similar to Said Kud, quoting for Kud, quoting from Ibn Taymiyah that we talked about, quoting from all these scholars and saying, Sadat is the Pharaoh, he needs to go and then creating a group around him to execute on the plan. He and the people who actually do the shooting are hung. Massive arrests, as I said. But Mubarak and Al-Azhar re-established their control. One of the things Mubarak decides to do, and again this is following kind of the Sadat pattern, very quickly releases many of the prisoners, talks to Al-Azhar about how can we Islamize, bring Islam into the Egyptian society more slowly, less radically, and indeed increases the influence of Islamic law in the country and you're still seeing that. It's like little steps. But in a sense, think about what this is doing to the Muslim brothers and to the people who believe in the radical agenda. It legitimizes them. It's saying they're right, we just don't want to move that fast. We don't want to be that radical. But in essential terms, Islam is the truth. Islam is the law. We just don't want to get there quite that fast. And we, the authority are going to move you there slower and as we'll see, Muslim brotherhood's political power has grown substantially and is quite significant, quite significant today. Let me just mention one person just as an aside. His name is Omar Abdel Rahman, R-A-H-M-A-N. You might be familiar with this name, maybe not. Omar Abdel Rahman was the spiritual leader of Al-Jihad, of the group that assassinated Sadat. He was imprisoned, tried, acquitted, released. He then spent some time in Afghanistan with fighting in the mid-1980s, came back to Egypt, continued to rally, was part of the Muslim brotherhood, continued to rally the more radical elements within the Muslim brotherhood, was again arrested by Mubarak, released. Ultimately, he believed that his life was in danger, escaped to Sudan in the late 1980s, which had established Sharia Islamic law by then. In Sudan, approached members of the CIA who he had known from the Afghanistan days, these were the trainers in Afghanistan, and asked for asylum in the United States. He was indeed granted asylum through these contacts that he had. He moved to the United States. Set up shop at a mosque in New Jersey, was preaching there, and was arrested. In late 1993, as part of, as really the inspiration and the chief conspirator behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center, people get around. And today is serving, I think, a life sentence in an American jail, from which just recently, about a year ago, he is still communicating with Muslim brothers around the world, sending fatwas, and indeed his lawyer, who was transmitting these messages, was tried recently for doing that, and I think was found guilty. She was sending out his fatwas and messages to the Muslim brotherhood around the world in his name. So, see how this network is just everywhere, and how it all comes from the same source, the same origins. I have like one minute or two minutes, yeah. What was he granted asylum? He was granted asylum because, why was he granted asylum by the United States? I don't know, I think these are pretty classified records still, but the story is that I read, believe it or not, I don't know, is that he had contacts with CIA people from his days in Afghanistan, and asked for a favor, and they gave it to him. And generally, the CIA still did not view the Islamic totalitarianism as the threat. They still viewed them as allies from the Afghan days, and he was allowed into the United States, as were many others. It was, Talbot? I can just tell you a story about him. After he was convicted, they were flying by in the helicopter past the World Trade Center. The FBI agent, escorting him, said, look, it's still standing, and he responded for now. So, the story is that as he was being transported from jail, suddenly he was in a helicopter, and the FBI agent pointed to the World Trade Center and said, look, it's still standing, and he turned around and said, for now. This is a really well-established network. They know what their agenda is, and it's really interesting to me that nobody's made the tie, or very few people have made a tie between the first World Trade Center bombing and the September 11th bombing, and the relationship between the two. I don't think it's the same people necessarily planned them, but it's important that that is the primary target, was the primary target of Islamic totalitarianism in the United States for two separate units within this larger group, and both of them with origins in the same ideology. Both of them came through Afghanistan. Both of them with deep, deep roots in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Thank you. This course continues with lecture four. Now open in L.A. Refer to the latest terms and conditions of service at TotalWireless.com. 30-dollar activation, additional fees, taxes, and restrictions apply.