 The Rise of Totalitarian Islam by Yaron Brooke. Good morning everybody. So this is the masochistic class where you come at 8.30 to hear really depressing stuff about a region of the world you'd rather not know about. So we'll try to make this as interesting and as fun as possible, but it's going to be tough. It's a depressing topic. I want to make this as open as possible for you to raise your hand, ask questions for the purposes of taping. I'll try to repeat the questions if I forget. Somebody remind me. We're trying to get this on tape. So feel free at any point in time if there are any questions or anything comes up, raise your hand and ask. Let me also give the disclaimers up front. I don't consider this the definitive statement on the rise of totalitarian Islam. I am not a professional historian. I, you know, Dr. McCasky says I don't read original sources in Arabic, don't know the language. My views on the rise of totalitarian Islam as of what are we? 1st of July, 2006. There's a lot of material here. We'll see how we get through it. Does everybody have an outline? Great. I will try to get you, in the next couple of days, I'll actually get you a timeline of a lot of the stuff that we'll be covering. Just to give you a sense of the period and something you walk away with with a kind of historical timeline. Okay. After September 11th, there was a lot of talk about why this happened, what happened, and who attacked us. I think there was a lot of confusion among Americans who, for them, this was the first encounter with such a thing as this kind of suicidal terrorism, this kind of terrorism with thousands of people died and where the terrorists didn't seem to care about their own lives, just blow themselves up. You can see it on the news in Israel or in Pakistan or in other countries, but it's remote. But when those two Twin Towers fell, it became very, very real for Americans. It became very, very real for us. An immediate question was who and why. And I believe that one of the most crucial, deadly misidentifications, historical misidentifications, was the identification of the who with terrorism, rather than with the ideology driving those particular specific terrorists. It was like identifying the enemy in World War II after Pearl Harbor as kamikaze pilots, kamikaze fighters, rather than Japanese imperialism and going all out war with Japan. And the consequence, in my view, had been horrific for the so-called war on terrorism, because if you don't know who you're fighting, you don't fight the right battles. You don't identify the right enemies. So one of the things we're going to be doing here is talking about who that enemy is. What are the historical roots? Where do they come from? Where are they heading? What are their goals? How have they evolved? One of the reasons this course is called The Rise without the decline of Islamic terrorism, because after September 11th, you would have expected a decline after the U.S. response, is a consequence of that misidentification. And I just want to give you a quick survey of the way I look at the state of the world outside of the United States today, just to give you a sense of the rise of Islamic terrorism and where they are today in the political map. It's not obviously just September 11th. We've seen terrorist attacks in London. We've seen terrorist attacks in Madrid. In London, I think the one year will be one year in a few July 7th, so while we're still here at the conference. Madrid was just a couple of years ago. Danish cartoons. The response in the Muslim world to those Danish cartoons, the burning of embassies, the killing of people as a response to cartoons. If you've been following the news, you know, for example, that Somalia, which for years has been in a state of anarchy, is now power is being consolidated. Who's it being consolidated by? It's being consolidated by what they're calling the Islamic courts. This is another form of the same elements, the same group. They want to impose the same thing as Osama bin Laden wants to impose. Sharia Islamic law on Somalia. If you read their literature, that's just the beginning. Somalia will be the first in many places that they will go from there. So Somalia seems to have gone from a state of anarchy, US involvement a long time ago to today, a state in which Islamic law is being imposed. The Hamas victory in the Palestinian Authority. Here is another movement, dedicated ultimately to imposing Islamic law to begin with on the Palestinian Authority, ultimately on the entire area that is today Israel, and ultimately beyond that, the entire Middle East and the world beyond. Iraq, who won the Iraqi elections? Well, the winner of the Iraqi elections, the group that headed the Shiite coalition that won the Iraqi election, is called Skiwi, the Supreme Council for an Islamic revolution in Iraq. That is the political party that won the election. Again, dedicated. Now, you know, they have to play their politics carefully because ultimately they're being occupied by American forces. But if you read their literature, ultimately dedicated to the establishment of Islamic law in Iraq. Shiites, in this case, versus Sunnis and Somalians will get to the differences between the two later on in the class. But the same dedication, Islamic law all over Iraq. And it's in their constitution. The opening to do that is already in the Iraqi constitution, even under an American occupation. You know, when you don't identify the enemy, you don't know what to look for in terms of signs of where that enemy really is. Look at Iran. A country dedicated obviously to Islamic law to show we're to this Islamic totalitarianism. They are more, they feel, at least, more powerful than ever, stronger than ever, snubbing the West, pursuing nuclear program, increasing influence in the Middle East. They just signed a joint defense deal with the Syrian government, which includes the positioning of Iranian troops opposite the Israeli troops on the Golan Heights. So increasing influence. Lebanon, the Hezbollah, which is a, again, Islamic totalitarian movement aligned with Iran. Just one more seat in the Lebanese parliament as a result of the latest election that in any other time, any other election, and actually for the first time in Lebanese history is actually has a seat in the cabinet, in the government of Lebanon. And then, of course, you read every day what's going on in Afghanistan, the rise, the resurgence of the Taliban, thousands of them, and, you know, the uncertainty, the increasing uncertainty around the Afghan president. But even in Afghanistan, think about the regime we have in place. Think about that case just a few weeks ago with the Muslim who converted to Christianity and they were going to hang him. They were going to kill this guy. And it's only enormous pressure, international pressure that got him. You know, kind of, they said, well, he's insane, he needs to go overseas or he's a Christian, he needs to move out of this country. But he was an apostate. He rejected Islam. There's nothing worse than that. So even in the Constitution, again, under American occupation, it was written with a big opening for Islamic law to dominate that country, for that religion, for the Sharia to dominate that country. We talked a little bit about Europe. We'll talk more about Europe in the last class. Let me just mention one case in Turkey. I don't know if, again, if you read just about a, I think it was a month ago. This lawyer walked into the equivalent of kind of a federal court room, secular courtroom. This lawyer walked in with a gun, shot at Allah Akbar and shot four judges, killing one of them, because they had ruled. They had followed the secular Constitution of Turkey and ruled against the teacher who wanted to wear religious garb while teaching and that's outlawed by Turkey and put aside whether that makes any sense or not as a law. But he felt, you know, he walked in and killed the guy for ruling on a law because it enforced the secularism of Turkish. And there was a lot of sympathy for this guy and indeed a lot of people accused a new prime minister of Turkey for inciting this, not for directly ordering this but for kind of the rhetoric that he's engaged in and we will see, we'll talk a little bit about Turkey and the fact that the new prime minister of Turkey is an Islamist, he's kind of a moderate, kind of hiding a little bit, but his political party is dedicated, ultimately long-term, to the same thing, Islamic law, Sharia in the most secular country other than Israel in the entire Middle East and that is Turkey. And finally, a country we will be talking a lot about because in my view, the country at the core, at the heart of the entire Islamic totalitarian movement, the country where this movement got its start and I think the pivotal country in the entire Middle East and that is Egypt, Egypt. Not Saudi Arabia, not Iran, but Egypt. Egypt just had elections a few months ago. The organization that we're going to be talking about a lot in this course, the Muslim Brotherhood, which again, in my view, is the fountainhead of the entire Islamic fundamentalist movement with some exception in Iran, but is the real source of much of the ideology that drives anybody from Khomeini to Bin Laden they are legitimate political party in Egypt. They did so well in the elections that Mubarak, the president, actually sent troops up to block voting in certain regions so as to limit the number of representatives they have in the Egyptian parliament, but they have today more representatives than ever in the history and fewer than if you actually held open elections, they would have got a lot more than if you actually held open elections in Egypt. So there's no question in my mind that in the Middle East, in Europe, the Islamic totalitarian movement, the movement dedicated, and I'll define Islamic totalitarian as at this point, as a movement dedicated to the establishment of Islamic law, of the Sharia by force or by so-called peaceful means, right? We'll get in peacefully, but once we get in, Islamic law does not allow democracy, it doesn't allow for elections. Islamic law has no concept of individual rights. Islamic law dictates the exact behavior of everybody, dictates all the way to the way women need to dress in public. So this movement dedicated to the establishment of Islamic law is on the rise, is growing, is gaining in political power, significantly. And what we're going to try and do in this class is find the historical origins of this movement and try to explain the revolution and try to explain why they are in the position that they're in today. Questions too early, huh? Now, there have been a number of attempts to explain what's going on. I'm just going to briefly go through a few of them. Oh, by the way, turn off cell phones. The standard explanations, you know, it's all, this is just a delayed response to Western colonialism. They still remember that the colonialists are the bad guys, the West are the bad, and this is their response to it, they're still thrashing out against colonialism, and it's all our fault ultimately because we were the colonialists, of course, the U.S. has never really been a colonial power in the Middle East, but, you know, we help the dictators, we're over there, and this is just a backlash to that. It's a backlash against modernity, against the Western values, against Western ideas. This is just a response, a self-defense mechanism for them, against everything that we represent, because we know everything we represent is so bad, particularly for them, right? You know, it's a fantasy ideology. It's just like communism and fascism, they have this utopian ideal. You know, nobody really explains why they're so attracted by this utopia, but, you know, they've learned it, I've read a number of books that say, this has nothing to do with particularly Middle East culture. They've really learnt this from Europeans. You know, it's just, you know, they've read a lot of the same philosophers that motivated the West, and they show that, which is true, that most of the leaders of the Islamic totalitarian movements are very well educated in Western ideas. So this is just one more totalitarian movement in a string of totalitarian movements. And, of course, nobody out there, you know, really has a solid explanation of why Nazis arose, or why communism rose. So this is just another one of these phenomena that just arise out of, you know, out of these bad ideas, out of a need of some people to form these utopian concepts and strive towards them. Poverty, right? The poor. Maybe the poorest region in the world other than maybe sub-Saharan Africa. And this is poverty, just speaking out. This is a typical Marxist reason, right? It's all about economics. The poor, they're lashing out against the West. And, you know, again, that completely denies the empirical evidence which suggests that most suicide bombers in the Middle East are from middle-class families. Most of the leaders and the, you know, the offices, if you will, in the Islamic totalitarian movement are middle-class, to upper-class, bin Laden, of course, is a multimillionaire. Zohiri, his number two, is a physician. You know, well-trained, middle-class. As we'll see, most of the intellectual leaders of the movement come from well-educated teachers. You know, these are not, this is not a movement of the proletarian. But, of course, the Marxists can only view it in those kind of concepts, in those kind of terms, in economic struggle terms. And finally, of course, it's oppressive Arab regimes, you know, which we support. These are just oppressed people. And when you're oppressed, this is their only outlet. Their only outlet is this radical form of Islam. They have no, of course, they couldn't advocate for real freedom. They couldn't advocate for real individual rights. You know, this is it. And given that they want to get rid of their dictators, which is a goal we should all support, right, because they're dictators, this is probably a good thing. They just let it kind of play out. They will moderate over time. When you think of Hamas' victory, right? Hamas won against the dictator. The Palestinian Authority corrupt decadent, you know, billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts, incredible poverty in the Palestinian Authority. And supposedly, the Hamas won because they are honest, more efficient, and they're going to take care of their people better. And really as a backlash against these authoritarian regimes, nothing to do with the specific Hamas ideology we are told. And once Hamas gets into power, they will moderate their views. They'll come to recognize Israel. They'll, you know, come to love the West. They'll become more open politically. You know, so, you know, we are told that all this will happen. Again, I think a complete lack of understanding of what Hamas really represents, what the ideology is, and why people elected them, what motivated that election. But that's how it's presented. So in all of these cases, I think, you know, many of them are just shallow. Many of them just, you know, they just don't even read the sources, you know, what these people write. They don't take ideas seriously because if they took ideas seriously, they could never come up with these theories. These ideas that motivate Bin Laden, that motivate Hamas, that motivate the Hezbollah and the, you know, the people rioting against the Danish cartoons. If you read the ideas that drive them, then none of these explanations would stand. None of these would be taken seriously. If you take ideas seriously, and of course we know that most of the commentators out there do not. What I'm gonna try and do is look at the history, look at where these movements came from and look at the ideas and how those ideas have evolved. The ideas at the start were not the same exactly in application in particular as the ideas at the very origins of these particular movements. I'll also be, you know, it'll just slip out, I'm sure, but I'll be using a number of different terms to identify these terms. Islamic totalitarianism, totalitarian Islam, radical Islam, Islamism. You know, to come out, you know, I once in a while might say militant Islam. You know, in all of these cases, I mean those Muslims, those Muslim organizations, those Muslims' ideas, advocating for the establishment of Islamic law, and we'll talk about what region they intend, whether it's, you know, their particular country, their whole Middle East, and ultimately the world. And almost all these ideologies would advocate ultimately the world. You know, they start in different places in terms of what their particular goals are at a particular point of time, but all of them, the ultimate goal is Muslim rule over the entire world, Muslim law dictating every aspect of our life over the entire world. Okay? Questions, comments? Yeah? Do you believe there is such a thing as moderate Islam at all? Absolutely. Yeah, I actually skipped one. You know, one explanation for all of this is it's Islam. You know, it's just Islam. It's just a religion. You know, this is what happens. Yeah, I should have repeat the question. Do I think that there's such a thing as moderate Islam? Yes, in this sense. Just like with any religion, you can interpret it in millions of different ways. There's no one way to interpret any religion. And there are forces, like for example, that have moderated if you want Christianity. Reason, right? Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, reason has moderated Christianity. There are definitely forces that have been applied to certain parts of the Islamic population that have moderated Islam. And there are Muslims who don't agree with this ideology. There are clearly Muslims who are not suicide bombers. There are Muslims, indeed, who are against them, who fight them. There are Muslims who take their religion more seriously and less seriously. Just like there are Christians who take their religion more seriously and less seriously. But generally, Christianity has moderated itself over the last thousand years to the point where they are not after an inquisition. Now, granted, if they get political power, all bets are off. And you get a separation of church and state, all bets are off. But at least there are Christians out there who don't hold the same ideas that they held during the dark ages to middle ages. The same is true among Muslims. Not every Muslim advocates for this type of ideology. Now, I believe that it is a growing movement. I believe that in essential terms, in the core of the ideology, something like 20-plus percent, probably, if the Muslims around the world believe in this, maybe more, and more of those are open to these ideas. That is, if this gains political power, if this grows, then you could see a much larger percentage of the Muslim population being drawn into this. I think many Muslims are open to this because religion plays a huge role here. The religion is at the core of it. The religion makes that possible. But this definitely is such a thing as a Muslim who doesn't advocate for this type of ideology. 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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. Are there Muslims who advocate against the establishment of Sharia law? Absolutely. There are absolutely Muslims who advocate Muslims who believe in the Quran, believe in that religion, who actively advocate against the imposition of Sharia law, that actually advocate for the separation of church and state. Anywhere from, you know, the fact is that the ruling regime in Egypt, and I would still argue, I don't know what percentage of the population, but a significant percentage of the Egyptian population does not want Sharia law imposed on. I think that the number of those people are shrinking, the number of people who do want Sharia law, do want Islamic law is rising, but there's definitely still probably a majority in Egypt that would vote against Sharia law if that was put up. Even in the Palestinian Authority for a long time, I think that's changed, but for a long time, a majority, a big majority, a huge majority were against the imposition of Islamic law. This is a recent phenomena among Palestinians, this radical Islamic thought. How do you spell Sharia law? S-H-R-I-A, A-R-I-A, sorry. Okay, history. In my view, as I've said, the key movement in the Islamic totalitarian movement, the key organization is the Islamic Brotherhood. If you look at Usam bin Laden, he teaches at school, at a university in Saudi Arabia, or Muslim Brothers. If you look at Hamas, Hamas is a movement that explicitly evolved from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Even the Iranian regime, in the 1950s, when Khomeini and even more radical elements within Iran in the 1950s were committing terrorist attacks against the regime assassinations, they were in close contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, were clearly reading the literature coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood, and were inspired by it. Everyone, you know, the Algerian Civil War, I don't know how many of you know about this, all over 100,000 people died during the Algerian Civil War. Brutal massacres, inspired again by this conflict between a secular regime and these Islamic radicals, were inspired, were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. So we're going to start by looking at this one organization. An organization was started, Muslim Brotherhood as an organization was started in 1928 in a city called, a town called Ismailiyah in Egypt on the Suez Canal. And it was started by a man named Hasan Elbana. Bana B-A-N-A. Hasan Elbana, who is a schoolteacher in Ismailiyah. It is said that a number of people came to his home one day, said, Hasan, we don't know anything. We're nothing. You obviously know the true path to God, to the truth, to the right way of bringing about change in this horrific country, in this country that is made by poverty. We give you our livelihood, we give you our money, our minds, our passion, everything. Please lead us in this struggle to change the world, to bring about Islamic, an Islamic culture in Egypt. And you know, Hasan couldn't resist. And he declared that the name of the organization be the Islamic Brotherhood because they were all brothers. They were all motivated by the same ideas. They were all brothers in religion. They were all motivated by Islam, by the rule of Islam, by the laws of Islam. Bana was born in 1906, a small village outside of Cairo. Born to a middle-class kind of clay. His father was an Islamic scholar. He was a preacher in the local mosque. He wrote some books about interpreting the Quran and interpreting some of the... You know, the Muslims have the Quran and then they have the Sunnah, which is kind of the sayings of Muhammad, which were written after his death. And, you know, which is considered law, which is considered a guide to action, guides to behavior. His father was a scholar. He would write about these things. He educated his father at the premier university in the Muslim world. The Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Al-Azhar is the establishment. That is the Muslim establishment. That is the so-called... We'll see how moderate they really are, but the so-called moderates today, the ones who cooperate with the regime, with the government as it exists today, is in Al-Azhar. The Muslim was very well educated. You know, he learned the Quran by heart at a very young age. By the age of 12, he was involved in a variety of different Islamic organizations in his town, his local, in a small village. One of these groups that he was the secretary of at the age of 13 would send letters to people who engaged in un-Islamic behavior, threatening them with sanctions if they didn't change the way they behaved, if they were addressed to immodestly, or if they listened to music, or if they did anything that this particular group felt was inappropriate. They would present them with threats. He was, again, very well read in Islamic thought, in Islamic mysticism. About the same time, this is the early 20th century, Britain was occupying Egypt. There were British forces, partially to protect the Suez Canal, partially because they had been, basically, anarchy in that part of the world. And Hassan, this is after World War I, Hassan developed, as did much of Egyptian culture, developed a real hatred of the British. Now, the British had been in Egypt for a long time. The British have had already a substantial impact on Egyptian culture. And there was definitely a rise in anti-British sentiment, particularly after World War I, trying to get them out of rise in Egyptian nationalism, which had always been around. We'll talk more about nationalism in a little while. Hassan was very anti-British from a very young age. British troops are stationed outside of the village. The people within the village were behaving immodestly. Just imagine how somebody completely fundamentally religious, completely obsessed with religion, would view the behavior of British soldiers. He viewed them as this. And these were infidels in Islamic land, occupying an Islamic country. This was just a reminder of the fact that Egypt was a failed country. It was unsuccessful, a reminder of the failure of his own religion, which really bothered him obviously and bothered many others. Probably his strongest influence when he was young was a philosopher, an Islamic philosopher from the 12th century. If you've taken my course on the history of the Middle East, which I recommend as a, you know, together with this course, Al-Ghazali is the name of this philosopher. And this is the philosopher that destroyed, in my view, destroyed the remnants of Aristotelian thought, of Greek thought generally, in the Muslim world. Al-Ghazali. Al slash G-H-A-Z-Z-A-L-I. And his dates are 1058 to 1111. At the time that he was teaching, Baghdad was a thriving city. Libraries, Greek works being translated left and right, competition between the wealthy. And who could have the best Greek library in the city? Aristotle, Plato, the Neoplatonics being taught all across the schools in Damascus and in Baghdad. Al-Ghazali was a teacher, one day, you know, and the Muslims, just like the Christians, struggled in those days with how do you combine Aristotle, logic, reason, and faith? How do you mesh them together? And if you read their philosophy, it's, you know, most of it is about how do we get reason and faith to work together, right? And Al-Ghazali, in my view, the pivotal, the greatest mind, I guess, of that era, goes away at some point after being one of these scholars who's trying to do this, who's teaching, goes away into the desert, disappears for a few years and comes back and says, I found the solution. I found the solution to struggle between, you know, this inability of ours to combine reason and faith. And the solution is we have to drop reason. Real truth, real truth comes from revelation. Real truth comes from faith, comes from the abandonment of reason. Truth is all about faith. We need to go back to the origins of our Muslim faith, back to the Quran. And within 50 years, I mean, literally, that fast, Baghdad, the Libyans have disappeared, the books have been burnt, it's gone. That whole civilization in that part of the world is gone. You know, within a few decades after that, the Mongols have sacked Baghdad. You know, usually people attribute the decline of Baghdad to the fact that the Mongols sacked it. But the fact is that it was a shell of itself by that point. The only remnant of this, you know, Islamic civilization is now in Spain, you know, and of course that gets sacked by the Christians later on. But El-Ghazali is that guy who says, reject reason, that philosopher who just destroys whatever civilization, and there was a real civilization in the Muslim world, particularly in the fertile crescent, the area between, you know, what is Israel today, Damascus and Baghdad and Dantabasra. That area was thriving cultural during that period. This was his hero as he was growing up. Now, what was Egypt liked during this period? And particularly, El-Bana, when he's about 16, goes to Cairo to further his studies. What's Cairo like? Egypt is a poor country. It still is. It's a very poor country. Particularly if you go out of the cities. I mean, the cities are pretty poor. But if you go out into the cities, devastatingly poor. In spite of the fact that it is an incredible fertile country, you know, the whole region along the Nile is some of the most fertile land anyway. It is today a country of some way between, I think, 40 and 50 million people. It is, but it's a country of abjunk poverty. It is also, at the same time, during the 1920s, it is a country in political unrest. Lots of conflict. What's going on in the 1920s is this rise in Egyptian nationalism. This rise in the identity qua Egyptians. And indeed, a rejection of religion. A rejection of Islam. Strong, western influences. You have demonstrations in the streets between the liberals, in the positive sense, right? The liberals, pro-freedom, you know, some semblance of individualism. And the fascists. This is the 1920s. Brown shirts, very much influenced by Mussolini. Later on into the 30s by the Nazi party. Huge demonstrations. These are the forces. And of course, the third group, a smaller group, but a substantial, nevertheless, are the communists. Socialism and communism are big. In Cairo, again, not an outskirt. It's not in the little villages. Big demonstrations, a lot of social upheaval. And much, quite a bit of rejection of tradition and Islam. According to Fahouda Jami, who is a Lebanese scholar who lives in the United States, during the 1920s, 1930s, Arab nationalism had fallen under the spell of German theories of nationalism. The unity of the folk. The bonds of race. The entire baggage of German populism. This strain of nationalism found particularly fertile soil in places like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. So to these people, it was all about the Arab race. It wasn't about Islam. It was about being an Arab. And we will see how that plays out later on in Egyptian history. As, again, Fahouda Jami writes, for every admirer of Locke, on the liberal side, and liberal thought, there was someone on the other side of the divide who was thrilled by the example of Mussolini and his black shirts. Indeed, the cult of Ilduce drew on dissatisfaction with, you know, what was going on in Egypt at the time and with British colonialism. They were struggling against the British and the, you know, liberal model. And the idea was the British were the bad guys, kicked them out. Mussolini was a hero because he had stood up to the West, in a sense. Welcome to the Total Wireless Store, where total confidence awaits. I need to keep up with my teens this summer without sweating high cell phone bills. Don't worry. You got this with Total Wireless. We have plans to fit all your family's needs starting at just 25 bucks on the nation's best 4G LTE network. I won't miss a thing. You could focus on the important stuff, like arguing about curfew. 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In addition to in Cairo in these days, there's a lot of, this is post World War I, there's this political upheaval, but there's also a lot of loosening up of all constraints, lots of nightclubs. There are a lot of British soldiers in town, a lot of prostitution, a lot of gambling going on, a lot of hedonism, elements of nihilism. There's just a letting loose, going crazy. And of course, this is the world in which this young Muslim fanatic walks in and sees this. This is the culture that he is encountering. There's really a revolt against religion, particularly in literary and social salons. They start establishing in Cairo in the 1920s these literary and social salons where people get together, read books, talk about ideas. This is really putting aside the fascist element. The Nazareth, this is a little renaissance happening in Egypt. Real authors writing really interesting books, secular books, so real ideas being debated. This is probably the best time Egypt has ever had. More newspapers are published during the 1920s, more different types of newspapers in terms of free speech than at any time in Egyptian history. And this was, of course, shut down very quickly once the British left. Under British rule during this period, there was a flourishing of what we would consider culture, what Hasan Albana would consider complete decadence. And indeed he writes of this period, no one but God knows how many nights we spent reviewing the state of the nation, analyzing the sickness and thinking of possible remedies. So disturbed will we that we reached the point of tears. Now, Albana also came under the influence during this period of two significant forces from the 19th century, two significant thinkers in the Muslim world in the 19th century. Muhammad Abdu, ABDU, 1849 to 1906, and Rashid Rida, our IDA, 1865 to 1935. Both of these were well educated. Both of them lived in Paris parts of their lives. Both of them struggling with this big question that was really the entire Muslim world during the 19th century was struggling. Where did we go wrong? We used to be the most dominant force in the world. The Muslim Empire at some point reached from Spain to India and beyond. The Ottoman Empire at some point was the mightiest military force on earth. And yet starting in the 1700s, the Ottomans reached Vienna. They had circled Vienna. They were about to take Vienna, central Europe, the heart of Europe. They were considered for a long time the biggest threat that Europe faced. And yet the defeat in Vienna was the beginning of a series of systematic defeats where they just get pushed back and back and back and back. And the question is why? What happened? And both Abdul and Rita thinking, what happened? And they are among the first to articulate the explanation. The problem is we're not, we weren't good enough Muslims. God has abandoned us. God has turned his back on us and given the power to the devil to teach us a lesson. And the West is the devil. The only reason the West is successful is because God is using them as a tool to punish us. And what we need, the Muslims need, is unity. We need to unite. We've been fragmented. We've been fighting with one another. And we need to unite around the one idea that makes us unique and the one idea that is the truth and that is Islam. We need to bring back Islam. And again, they were very, they wrote journals, they wrote articles, they ran a monthly journal. Rita did called Al-Ma'na, M-A-N-A-R. That was published in Cairo. Basically advocating for this return to Islam. Return to the principles of Islam. And even saying, look, kind of democracy, there's a certain appeal to this idea. And I'm using democracy. When I use democracy, I'm using it in the best possible interpretation. You know, there's an appeal to this, getting people's view of this, but it's not going to work. What we need is a benevolent dictator. What we need is a strong man to unite us and to bring about this unity and to help us stand up to the West. You know, they were moderates, if you will. They didn't advocate war with the West. They didn't advocate Islam being a system that takes over the entire world. This was, you know, just to preserve what they viewed as the crumbling Muslim world. You know, too much Western influences. I think they were among the first to coin the kind of idea of cultural imperialism. This idea of one of the ways in which the West takes you over is not by military force, but through their culture, through their ideas. We need to purify ourselves from all of that return. Of course, you know, they were wearing suits and ties and running around Paris and having a good time while they were doing this, but they were looking as intellectuals to the Middle East and telling, you know, we need a return to our core values. This is what will save us. So these are the ideas that are kind of, in Bonner's mind, when he becomes a schoolteacher, gets assigned by the Department of Education to Ismaelie. And Ismaelie is a town dominated by the British because it's on the Suez Canal. This is their headquarters of the Suez Canal Company running the canal. This is where they have a lot of troops because they are protecting the canal. The Suez Canal is a major economic interest for Britain and for France. So if there was an element of westernization in Cairo, there was certainly one in Ismaelie where from Bonner's perspective, the British, the people who worked closely with the British, they lived in these big homes up on a hill overlooking the beautiful canal, and the workers were in the slums all around, the Egyptians, the more religious elements of society were being suppressed and being exposed to all this infidel stuff that the British were bringing in with them. As a consequence, he forms and launches the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 to change all this. To Islamize Egypt. As he says, we are the brothers. We are brothers in the service of Islam. Hence, we are the Muslim brothers. But we are there in the service of Islam. The purpose is to bring about Islamic law and Islamic culture in Egypt. The first priority, kick out the British. They are a bad influence. They are destroying this country. They are bringing their western values and western ideas into here. We got to get rid of the British. And then over time, we will take over the political entity that is Egypt. And that of course is just a short-term goal because ultimately what we really want, when they say this, is a Muslim empire reaching out over all Muslim world. And ultimately, once that's established in a very, very, very long-term, and they are very realistic about the kind of centuries this will take, it is our goal to Islamize the whole world. Now the beginnings are very modest. The first three years, he builds up the membership in Ismailia, goes out preaching. It's kind of interesting, you know, a sanction of the victim. But it's documented that Hassan Ibanah receives, in order to build, I think, some schools, they immediately start building schools and mosques and so on. It receives a nice check from the Suez Canal Company. They applied for a grant and they received one. To build, I think it was a mosque, or a school for boys and girls. They branch out all over the area. By 1932, in 1932, Ibanah is transferred to Cairo. We established as the first branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. By 1939, it was 11 years later, the Muslim Brotherhood was, is one of the most important political entities in Egypt, within 11 years. Membership in the Muslim Brotherhood represents every part of Egyptian society, from the very wealthy, very well educated, to the middle class, to the civil servants, civil servants in this kind of society, an enormous number, all the way down to the poorest of the poor. In particular, the Muslim Brotherhood is strong among the middle class, the civil servant middle class, and among students. And they placed, from the beginning, a strong emphasis on universities, on academia. Just like we do. Just like we do, right? And they become, they become more and more active. Muslim Brotherhood hold regular lecture series, on a weekly basis, at the headquarters, and all in all their branches around the country. They use the network of mosques to go out and preach in these mosques. The local imams, the local mosque leaders, open these mosques up to them, allow them to preach there. Again, this is outside of the official, authorized religious infrastructure. I mean, Banna was not trained in religion. He was not a graduate of al-Assad. There was no, they were not part of the, kind of the more official imams and mosques, but they were allowed in. They were allowed in everywhere. In the mid-thirties, they established something called the rovers, or rovers, R-O-V-E-R-S, or the secret apparatus. These are groups of young men, trained in military tactics, trained with weapons. Originally, they were always to enforce the rules of the Muslim Brotherhood on the Muslim Brotherhood. We will see that later they are used to bring the Muslim Brotherhood's violent message to the rest of society. Now, during this period, during the 20s and 30s, British obviously still there. Egypt is a monarchy during this time. It's kind of a constitutional monarchy. There is a parliament that is elected. There is a prime minister who actually follows the executes, is the executive branch, really is kind of controlling things from behind. In 1937, a new king, King Farouk, I think the second, is crowned. And indeed, as World War II is approaching, 1939, the British become more entrenched in Egypt. This is a key strategic location for them. So if in 1930, the Muslim Brotherhood had five branches, in 1940 they had 500. They had tens of thousands of active members and a substantial political force. Let's look a little bit at some of the core ideas beyond this general abstraction of Islamic law. What were they about? What were they advocating for? Well, maybe one of the most important ideas shared by all Islamic totalitarian movement is this idea of the totality of Islam. Islam covers everything. Every aspect of life is dictated by Islam. To them, the notion of separation of church and state is just bizarre. If you've got these principles that God has given you, that are true, why would you say that a certain part of life should be ignored? The notion that, you know, give unto Caesar, you know, what is Caesar's and give it to God, what is God's, is to them an abomination. Everything is God's. Caesar is only Caesar because God allows him to be Caesar. He is just a spokesman for God. He's just a representative of God on earth. So what you give unto Caesar is what you would give unto God. He's just an intermediary, in a sense. He's just a representative. Islam, to them, is formulated by the Quran and the Sunnah. And that's it. There's very little room for interpretation. Most interpretations have already been done. Yeah, you have to modernize it because there are new situations that come up. But all the truths, all the principles to do that have already been established. You don't need new ideas. The ideas are already in the Quran, in the Sunnah. It's done. The work has been done. God has spoken. Remember that Islam says the Jews were God's people. And they failed. So God had a being about, you know, being Jesus. And of course, they say Jesus being God's son. I mean, that's just ridiculous. If there's only one God, there's only one God. You can't have three gods. You can't have two gods. You can't have sons of gods. That's just bizarre. And I have a lot of sympathy for that of you. If you're going to believe in a God, then there's just one of them. So God brought Jesus to kind of redeem the Jews and to spread the ideas out into the rest of the world because the Jews don't spread their ideas. It's just for them. They're special people. And then the Christians are the first monotheistic to actually advocate for spreading their religion. But they failed. They failed by creating this three entities. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. They became polytheists. The Muslims called the Christians polytheists. So God had to come back and talk to Muhammad who was the last of the prophets to give him the final word. And the first saying every Muslim says is there is one God and one God only. That is the thing they say, I don't know how many times a day, at least five, when they do their prayers. There's one God because they're fighting the Christians by saying there is one God and there's one God only. On the mosque in Jerusalem, the mosque that sits, there's the big fights on in Jerusalem. It sits on the place where supposedly the Jewish temple was right above the Wailing Wall. No accident that that mosque is right there. It is a political statement saying this is the new, that is the old. This is the city that's a holy place for Jews and Christians. We are placing our most glorious mosque, most important mosque, right here to show you who's the boss right now. And on the mosque it says, it's engraved, something like, I don't have the exact quote, but something like there is only one God. And that's a political statement to the Christians. It's all about stating that to Christianity. Shut up, you don't know what you're talking about. So Islam is this total system, covers everything. And it's all being already revealed. And they have the latest word, they have the latest word for God. They got the last transmission, it's gone silent since then. They have the truth, that's it. To them Islam is a way of life, an ideology, a religious group, a political organization. And the Muslim Brotherhood is all those, plus an athletic society, a cultural educational union, an economic company that actually bought assets and ran companies that funded the Islamic Brotherhood's activity. And a social idea. Quran writes to his followers, quote, You are a new soul in the heart of this nation to give it life by means of the Quran. You are a new light which shines to destroy the darkness of materialism through knowing God. And you are a strong voice, which rises to recall the message of the Prophet. When asked what it is for, what it is for which you call, reply that it is Islam. The message of Muhammad, the religion that contains within it government and has one of its obligations, freedom. We'll talk about what freedom means to them. If you are told that you are political, answer that Islam admits no such distinction. Of course, we're political. That's what Islam is. It would be bizarre otherwise. Hi, it's Jamie, progressives employee of the month, two months in a row, leave a message at the... Hi Jamie, it's me, Jamie. I just had a new idea for our song about the name of your price tool. So when it's like, tell us what you want to pay, hey, hey, hey. And the trombone goes, blah, blah, blah. And you say, we'll help you find garbage options to fit your budget. Then we just all do finger snaps. Well, choir goes, statement's coming at ya, statement's coming at ya. Yes? No? Maybe? Anyway, see you at practice tonight. I got new lyrics for the rap break. The insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. The Starlight Lounge presents an evening with a progressive box. Oh, what a great audience. Let's dim the lights for this next one. Nope, too much. There it is. Gotta get things just right. Like progressives, name your price tool. Tell us what you want to pay, and we'll help you find coverage options that fit your budget. And now, the mood is right. Wait, the lights are back on again. Trudy, can you? And now it's completely dark. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law. Now, the 1930s are also the first venture outside of Egypt. The Islamist, the Muslim Brotherhoods, first ventures out. The first contact outside of Egypt is with the Palestinian Mufti, the leader of the Palestinian people at the time. Amin Al Hussein, Hajj Amin Al Hussein, Husaini. Al Husseini was an explicitly pro-Nazi leader of the Palestinians. He was kicked out of Palestine a number of times by the British. He is indeed, they are photographs of him meeting in Germany with gibles in a Nazi uniform. And he was kind of the first contact of the Muslim Brotherhoods outside of Egypt. And he met with Hassan El-Bana's brother in Palestine in 1935. And indeed, in that year, they formed the first cell, the first organization in Palestine. It grew dramatically over the following years into the 1940s. The first office in Jerusalem was in 1945. By the time of the war of independence in Israel, there were well over 50 offices with 25,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhoods in Palestine. You know, these are Palestinian Muslim Brotherhoods. And we'll see that that is the foundation, that is the core, that is explicitly where the Hamas comes from. The founder of the Hamas was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza in the West Bank. From there, the Muslim Brotherhoods sped into Jordan. And they are indeed today a substantial political force within Jordan. The Muslim Brotherhood during this period, particularly as we get into 1947, 48, raised a lot of money to try and defeat the Israelis, the Jews during the war between the first war between the Palestinians and the Jews. And indeed, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt will send troops, will send arm men to fight on the side of the Palestinians during the conflict in 1948. And they are known, at least from my days when I studied the history. I haven't found any reference to this in any of the history books, but we were taught that they were the fiercest of all, fiercest of all the fighters. You know, because you got a bunch of Egyptians, right, in the Egyptian army who have no idea probably where Palestine is even. They're farm kids from poor families on the Nile fighting in a distant land. They're not motivated. But these Muslim Brothers who volunteered to go there were committed to kicking out the infidel from Muslim land. As I think Hamas still is committed to kicking out the infidel from Muslim land. And they were passionate about this. They were motivated. They weren't forced into this. It was something they volunteered to do. Okay, World War II. It's a little bit about World War II. During World War II, again, the British influence is significant in Egypt. A lot of sympathy for the Nazis. A lot of sympathy for the Nazis among the Egyptian people, particularly among the more educated Cairo nationalists. Anwar Sadat, who would later become president of Egypt, is arrested in 1942 for contacts with the Nazis. And this is in the military. He was in office in the military. He's in many of the Egyptian military talking with the Nazis, aligned with them, and would actually like to see a Nazi victory in North Africa. There's heavy British pressure on the king and government to crack down on the opposition. The Egyptian government officially states it's neutral during the war, and indeed in 1945, weeks or months before the war was to come to an end, the Egyptian prime minister in a speech in front of parliament is stating that they have taken sides, that they're going to be there with the allies, with the British, and he gets shot in the middle of the speech. He gets assassinated in the middle of that speech. So they come around at the end of the war, and of course, there's the significant forces that are rejecting this idea within Egyptian society. And communism is growing dramatically. Because communism is viewed, they're not quite the allies, right? They're not the British, they're anti-British, they're anti-the West, and they're not the Nazis. They're the good guys. So communism grows dramatically during this period. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood comes to view communism as a major, major enemy. Communism is explicitly atheist, and as a rising force where the Muslim Brotherhood want to have an impact, which is on the universities. Universities is where there's a communist hotbed like it was. Everywhere, I think during the 1940s, the Muslim Brotherhoods view them as competition. The Brotherhood opposes the British. They advocate for getting rid of them. They agitate against them. They want an Egyptian revolution. There's pressure building within the organization, not at the leadership, within, for armed resistance. Kick the British out, take over the Egyptian government by force. Indeed, many of the more radical members who want military action leave. Hassan al-Bana resists. It's not the time he tells them. There will be a time. There will be a time. Well, you will command me to lead the battalions into parliament, and we will take over. But it is not yet. We are too weak. We will lose if we do it now. He resists our cause for militarization at this point, but he doesn't reject the notion. During the 1940s, there are continuously clashes with the government. Hassan al-Bana is arrested. Other members are arrested, released, arrested, released. This is a pattern that the Egyptian government follows regularly. They round them all up. They try them. They hang a few of them. They release the rest. They land up having to arrest them a few years later, hang a few, release them. If you follow Egyptian news today, it's still going on, the same kind of pattern. In the mid-1940s, an explicit concept of jihad, of fighting, of using violence, is adopted by the organization, officially, as something that's okay. We're not going to do it yet, but it's now officially part of what we're going to do, this idea of an aggressive jihad. What's interesting is during this period, they started organizing on a communist model. They've studied Lenin, and they create cells of no more than five members, where who knows whom is very much controlled, particularly within the secret apparatus. They are organizing, clearly, for revolution. Small cells, they add in new members. They splinter off into another cell. If you look at the way much of al-Qaeda is organized today, much of the Islamic totalitarian movement is organized today. They've learned the lessons of history and how to organize in a way as to disrupt the organization. If particular people identify, the organization as a whole suffers little, because you're just cutting off a few leaves. There's no trunk. They don't have this central organizational infrastructure that you can just destroy in one fell swoop. It's all splintered, all arranged through these cells. As I said, the Egyptian prime minister is assassinated in 45. The Muslim Brotherhood is accused of it originally. It turns out there wasn't them. It was a nationalist, but they're all rounded up and arrested and then released again. After the war, the Muslim Brotherhood become increasingly aggressive. They are increasingly popular within the Egyptian society. At their peak, in 1949, they have 2,000 branches. They have active membership of half a million, half a million active members. They have at least a million sympathizers that are committed to the cause. And they start becoming more and more aggressive. Universities continue to be a strong emphasis. They influence increases. And indeed, between 45 and 48, violence on the part of Muslim Brothers increases. Assassination attempts, bombing of governments and British buildings, killing of British troops, a judge who sentences the Muslim Brotherhood to jail, is assassinated. Now, Albana would claim that he knew nothing of all this. This is just splinter groups and cells acting on their own. But there was substantial evidence that he was at least gave the nod, gave authorization to a lot of this. He felt strong. He felt powerful. In 1948, as a consequence in the midst of the war in Palestine, the Egyptian government disbands the Muslim Brotherhood. It makes it illegal. And indeed, the troops in Palestine, the Muslim Brothers fighting over there, are surrounded by Egyptian troops, required to hand in their weapons, and are told you can either go home or you have to fight under Egyptian command as Egyptian soldiers, as regular soldiers. Many say most go back to Egypt. We'll see that the attitude of the Muslim Brothers war with the Israelis changes later on. In 1948, there's a Islamic, kind of an Islamic revolution in Yemen. And the Muslim Brotherhood clearly supports that. That is viewed as against Egyptian interests. Egypt continues to climb down on the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming that they are planning a revolution in Egypt. While in prison, 4,000 Muslim Brothers in prison, they continue organizing, they continue studying together, and they continue operating. Outside of Egypt by 1950, the Gaza Strip is now part of Jordan. The West Bank is part of Jordan. The Muslim Brothers in the West Bank and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood combine. The Gaza Muslim Brotherhood, which is now part of Egypt, have the alliance to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who, of course, are illegal and still in jail. What's interesting is this organization is so popular. They are so prevalent within so much political pressure to resurrect them that by 1951, the Egyptian government basically reconciles themselves with the Muslim Brotherhoods, creates, you know, says it's legal again, you can freeze everybody from jail, and the Muslim Brotherhood, you know, is re-established as a substantial political force within Egyptian society. At this, now, two years earlier, and I think one of the reasons Egyptian government feels comfortable in doing this, two years earlier in 1949, on his way, Albana was never arrested, so all other members were arrested, and on his way to work one day, Albana is assassinated in 1949. Every indication is that the government was behind it in spite of all the denials, and later on, there were indeed trials, and a number of people were prosecuted for the assassination of Albana. But I think all the evidence points to the fact that the government was basically involved, the funeral was surrounded by tanks, the funeral procession surrounded by tanks so that only a few people could attend. It was very controlled. The Egyptian government really feared this man and feared the organization that he had created when he was gone, and the Muslim Brotherhood was reconstituted. They chose as a new leader what was considered a moderate of the time, a former judge. And another example, he was a judge who used to be secular, obviously well educated, he was a secular judge, not of a religious authority at all, who had been converted to the Muslim Brotherhood by Albana. He had seen Albana, been inspired by him, realized that his life was wasted, that Islam was the true light, and became part of his leadership and became indeed the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1951. Let's go through the next chapter. In 1952, Egypt goes through a revolution. A small group of officers led by Gamal Abdul Nasser, Sadat is kind of number two, number three guy, overthrow the Egyptian monarchy. This is a group of committed nationalists. Much of their agenda is about getting rid of the British. And Nasser has a bigger vision, and indeed Nasser becomes, for about a decade, he becomes a real hero of the Arab world, a real almost mythical figure within the Arab world. He is the guy who's going to unite all the Arabs, not the Muslims, all the Arabs. This is about nationalism. It's about the Arab race. He's an incredible speaker, motivator. He's also a committed socialist, social nationalism. Nationalized as much of the Egyptian economy during the 1950s, of course, with the obvious consequences. But when they first come to power, these free officers, these nationalists, realize that they need as many allies as possible, and they look around. And the obvious ally for them are the Muslim Brothers. They have a wide popular base. They have students who can demonstrate at the universities. They have political clout. They have clout with the religious establishment. They are a vital element for these free officers to engage in their revolution. And the Muslim Brothers have a long history of being anti-British. And much of what these free officers are about is about kicking out the British from Egypt. And indeed the Muslim Brothers jump on board. They think this is wonderful. They've been meeting with Sadat for years. Sadat assures them that their intentions is to establish a Muslim country that they're going to bring in Sharia, they're going to bring in Islamic law, that they're really good Muslims, that the nationalism is just words. They're not really committed to that. They're really committed to an Islamic agenda. And the Muslim Brothers buy into that completely. They are a substantial force holding up this revolution when it happens. Of course, within about two years, you know, the Nasser's forces, as they become stronger, as they become more entrenched, slowly start brushing off the Muslim Brothers slowly distancing themselves. Of course, they refuse. They refuse to impose Islamic law. And the Muslim Brothers become more and more disenchanted with them. And as these Nasser and his people become stronger, the Muslim Brotherhood weaker, they become more emboldened in attacking the Muslim Brotherhood. So very early on, they dissolve all political parties in Egypt, except for the Muslim Brotherhood. They keep the Muslim Brothers, they're the only organization of this new regime. But within a couple of years, by 1954, the Muslim Brothers are deemed an illegal organization. Indeed, the impetus for this is an attempted assassination on Nasser by a Muslim Brother who shoots at him, misses. Nasser turns this into a huge propaganda deal. He actually makes this into this heroic act. He survived this assassination. This is in north of Cairo. He has this whole procession where he goes from there into Cairo. And of course, the masses are out roaring. He's come back in spite of this attempt. He survived. And his popularity increases dramatically. He is now in a position to arrest the entire Muslim Brotherhood leadership in 1956. Six of the members are hung. And hundreds are sent to jail. And indeed, if you read scholars writing about the Islamic Revival in the Middle East, if you read them, books they were writing in the 1960s, even in the 1970s, they view 1954 to 1956 as the end of the Islamic Revival. If it's finished, it's done. With the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, with Nasser destroying them, the era of the Muslim Brothers is finished. The era of Arab nationalism is peaking. And this goes into the 1970s. And actually, if you read later editions of those books in the intros, in the, you know, forwards, they say, we thought, and look what happened. You know, we were wrong. They've come back. But in the 1970s, looking back, they were finished. They were dead. They were all in jail, all the leaders. The organization structure was destroyed. The nationalists basically took over whatever mosque, school infrastructure, social work infrastructures they had created were taken over by the nationalists. There was no real Islamic movement anywhere else in the Middle East as far as these experts were looking could see. Indeed, if you go to Iran during about the same period of time, the Fadayin-di Islamiyah, which were influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood who were committing assassinations and so on, were being crushed by the Shah over there. Everywhere where they had risen just a little bit, these elements were being destroyed. So there was nothing. So what happened right after this destruction is interesting. How did they rise up from what, at least, the academics, the people, the stallions who looked at it at the time would say was complete destruction and death. And as we'll see, we'll talk about this next time, a lot of it has to do with what these Muslim brothers did in jail. They used the jail time effectively. Indeed, one person in particular, in Egypt, a Muslim brother by the name of Said Qutb, was one of those jailed Muslim brothers that was placed in jail in 1954. He was relatively new to the Muslim Brotherhood, but joined just a few years earlier. He was very well educated, but he had joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 45. Very well educated. We'll talk more about kind of his background tomorrow. But Said Qutb spends his time writing in jail, writing books. Books that are probably the most well, most translated, most purchased books in the entire Muslim world. His commentaries on Islam in 30 volumes are supposed to be the best-selling book in the Muslim world since the 1950s. Still sells, if you go to any Arab country, or you go to London in certain areas in London, you will find stars, booksellers in the street selling books, and you will find Said Qutb is a big chunk of the books that they're selling, books by Said Qutb. Said Qutb, in my view, is intellectually, the real father of the radical, more militant, more violent brand of Islamic totalitarianism. Bin Laden, the Algerians, all the violent movements, all attribute, they themselves attribute their origins to this man, who spent the next from 54 until he was executed in 1966, basically writing for 12 years, that's all he did, sat in jail, wrote books, and unleashed these violent, radical forces within the Muslim world, gave them the ideological tools, weapons to justify not only killing Americans, not only killing Jews, but killing Muslims, killing Muslims. When you see these bombs going off in Iraq, or when you see suicide bombers walking into wedding ceremonies in Jordan, when you see resorts with Egyptians go to in Shah Mashaik or in Dahab in the Sinai Peninsula being blown up in Egyptians, Muslims dying, when you see Sadat being assassinated, where Egyptian leaders left, Muslim leaders attempted assassinations and Muslim leaders, and Muslims generally being killed, it is Saeed Khud who provided the justification for those killings. Power of ideas, the power of books. So, any, we've got like four minutes, questions. Yeah, Betty. Why did they let his books out? I think they let his books out, ultimately because they don't realize the impact of ideas. And it takes a while for that to get absorbed. So his one book, his most influential book, translated signposts or milestones, depending on how you translate it, was banned originally. Nasser actually supposedly read it, released it from being banned, and a year later was banned again. And of course, it was smuggled out of jail anyway. It was being read chapter by chapter by his followers in apartments and secret meetings all over Cairo, and was being distributed, photocopied and distributed throughout the Muslim world among these Muslim brotherhood cells all across the Muslim world. Because today, you know, in Europe, all these books are out there. So, you know, censorship doesn't work in the face of an organization like this that is going to distribute these ideas one way or the other, underground, whether it's up front or underground, will distribute these. Secondly, you have to remember that all of these Arab dictators, and we'll talk about this next time, all of these Arab dictators, including Nasser, who claimed to be a secularist, westernizing Egypt and, you know, nationalist and so on, all cozied up to Islam, all of them, tried to get the sanction from religion. And this is a key to part of why this movement keeps growing, why it's never oppressed, because everybody, including the secularists, including the so-called people who stand up for the West, don't really. They use Islam for their own purposes, for their own means. So, you can't. This is an Islamic book. You can't reject it. There was another question. Yeah. Do you think you're more committed to killing or converting infidels of restaurant? Well, I think in the short run, they're more committed to... So, are they more committed to killing or converting infidels to Islam? I think in the short run, they're committed to killing because conversion is too difficult, infidels are too far away, and it's too difficult. I think the long run plan, and this is if you go back to Islamic history, how they took over the world as they knew it at the time, was through a lot of conversion. And they were very successful in conversion, very, very successful. One of the few cultures I know where the Mongols conquered them and then converted to Islam. When the Mongols conquered Europe, they didn't convert to Christianity, but they did convert to Islam. So, they were very successful in converting faunas. Okay, a real quick one. Yeah. How much influence does Plato or Neoplatonism have on their... on Islam or their political interest? I don't... I haven't found any connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and Neoplatonism or Plato. There's definitely a connection between Ayatollah Khomeini and the Neoplatonists and Plato. There's no question that Khomeini read Plato, read the Neoplatonist, and if you read his political writings, if you read his writings about what an Islamic Republic will look like, it is clearly modeled after a platonic, you know, Plato-type Republican. If you think about the philosopher king, well, isn't Khomeini views himself as a philosopher king because he is the wisest, the smartest. He called it the rule of judiciary, the rule of the Islamic... the Islamic scholars. And that was the equivalent of the philosopher. And of course, he positioned himself as king. Quickly, John, though. Just to point out that the Iranian government has a council of guardians right from Plato. Yeah, the structure of the Islamic government is very much out of Plato's Republic. So there's no question that Plato had an influence on Khomeini. I haven't seen any influence on the Muslim Brotherhood, and Khomeini was influenced both by Plato, by Islamic Shiite thought, and clearly by Said Kub, who he read, and by the Muslim Brotherhood. So there was a number of influence on Khomeini. We'll get to him maybe tomorrow, probably the day after, okay? Thank you all. See you tomorrow morning. This course continues with lecture two. I bought one phone, got another one on them. And romance is alive on the 101. Coming to an AT&T store, buy a smartphone and get one on us. More for your thing, that's our thing. Welcome to the Total Wireless Store, where total confidence awaits. I need a smartphone with an awesome camera. Got anything to fit a new dad's budget? Don't worry, you got this with Total Wireless. And now you can get $50 off on select phones, $99 and up. My relatives won't miss a thing. Now you can focus on the important stuff, like diaper duty. 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