Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Podcast

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Two Podcast One

Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. It was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis. This reading is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This comes from chapter two and will examine “Eurabia” – the crossroad of a secular Europe and an impassioned and mushrooming Islamic cohort there.
 
Eurabia
 
            Many Europeans were initially nonchalant about the cultural shift, but some later regretted this indifference. Many late-middle-aged and elderly intellectuals today miss the artistic and cultural freedoms of their youth in the 1950s and 1960s. Today’s Continental literati reminisce on a long-faded, culturally confident, and economically prosperous Europe. For years after the Second World War, Europe was exciting and liberal, and it arts scene burst with creative energies. But the freedoms then turned to restraint, which turned to self-censorship driven by fear of angering Muslims. European journalists have been threatened with death for unfavorable commentary on the Caliphate. Often, journalists cannot ask man-in-the-street questions in heavily Muslim areas because they are attacked. Some have been killed.
 
            British moderate Muslims also face challenges. In 2009, Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury literally had egg on her face after pleading with her coreligionists to embrace women’s rights. A convert to Islam pelted her with eggs while he and others chanted in Urdu and English for more Sharia in Britain. More cynical public intellectuals foresee a European future, sometime later this century, in which churches are replaced by mosques, civil law by Sharia, and the liberal values of the Enlightenment by a strict Islamic code of conduct.
 
            A prominent man of letters, Bernard Lewis, warned that Europe was becoming “part of the Arab West, the Maghreb.” Some Muslims gloat at the prospect. An example appears in a YouTube video by a man who crowns the march of Islam in Germany as inevitable: “Islam is coming to take over Germany whether you want it or not.” The tool of conquest, he says, is not war but reproduction, because “Muslims have seven or eight children each.” He says, “What does the German man have? One child and maybe a little pet dog!” And for the future? “Your daughters will wear the hijab.”
 
            The surge of migrants entering Europe in 2015 and 2016 brought shocks to the continent. In several countries, young women, some of whom had welcomed Middle Eastern and Eurasian migrants, were molested. Local police advised fair-skinned, blonde women, particularly in Northern Europe, to change their lifestyles and appearances. Police counseled them to dress modestly and dye their hair dark. Local municipalities established separate hours for male and female use of public swimming pools. For the first time in modern memory, train station waiting rooms had separate areas for men and women. Many Continentals no longer trust their local police or government. In 2015 and 2016, applications for firearm permits and membership in European shooting clubs increased perceptibly.
 
            All this terrifies vulnerable minorities. The Islamic State is just one of many outlets that churn out anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and anti-homosexual literature. Jews in traditional religious clothing and identifiable homosexuals can no longer stroll through some of Europe’s streets without fear of being spat on, beaten, or slashed. This increasingly dark world has become untenable for some Europeans, who feel there are few safe zones left. Many are emigrating to escape what they see as the unremitting buzz saw of Muslim immigration. Michel Houellebecq (pronounced “Wellbeck”) writes about this with a very sharp pen, as shown below.
 
Profile Two: French “Bad Boy” Michel Houellebecq—No Submission!
 
            Some see him as a poseur; others see him as a literary prophet. Editors of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo placed him on the cover with the words “The predictions of the Great Houellebecq.” The famous novelist was dressed as a magician and said, “In 2015, I will lose my teeth. In 2022, I will celebrate Ramadan.” Others see him as an alarmist Islamophobe and call him the bad boy of French letters. But most of the French intelligentsia are simply fascinated by his maverick novels and poetry. Le Figaro and Le Monde published a series on his life, views, ambitions, and the impact of his work on France. Some wondered whether this late-middle-aged, mild-mannered intellectual was determined to have a fatwa placed on his head.
 
            For years, Michel Houellebecq had been France’s enfant terrible of salon culture. He draws his literary inspiration from Albert Camus, and one American literary critic compares his style to Martin Amis’s, “at heart a deeply braised moralist, an unflinching observer of ugly human nature.” One literary highbrow described his style as a fusion of Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, and Dennis Miller.
 
            If French antihate laws muzzle his open criticism of Muslims, Houellebecq grants his fictional characters unfettered freedom. In his novel Platform, a character relishes the deaths of Palestinian terrorists or children because “it meant one less Muslim.”38 The same character adds, “Islam could only have been born in a stupid desert among filthy Bedouins who had nothing better to do than—excuse my language—shag their camels.” In a physiological metaphor, he describes Muslims as “clots” in Europe’s “blood vessels.”
 
His sixth novel, Submission, catapulted him to international literary fame. Readers are asked to imagine France in 2022, when the ruling French Socialists partner with Islamists to govern the country. The Sorbonne is now an Islamic university. France has absorbed Francophone North Africa, becoming a Muslim superstate. France itself is governed by Muslims, collaborators, and unctuous civil servants. The narrator of Submission, François, is a middle-aged literature professor. He is underpaid, jaded, pathetic, and lonely.
 
Within days of the book’s publication, Prime Minister Manuel Valls assured the nation that “France is not Submission, it’s not Michel Houellebecq, it’s not intolerance, hate, or fear.” France would not sell the Sorbonne to Saudi Arabia, period! The French left erupted in outrage! But the timing of the publication boosted sales. The book was first available on January 7, 2015—the same day Islamists slaughtered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
 
Contested Zones in the West—Breeding Grounds for the Caliphate
 
“It does not take people long to discover that the Global Village is in reality the dark incarnation of Gotham City without Batman.”  Geert Wilders, Dutch parliamentarian, 2016
 
            Some Europeans have left the cities for the non-Muslim suburbs, and others have emigrated to the United States or Israel. But others lack the resources or inclination to escape what they perceive as pools of social pathology stagnating at the outskirts of their own cities. They call these places “no-go zones,” and some members of the Caliphate have grown up there.43 This hotly debated expression refers to the Muslim-dominated, chaotic neighborhoods that saturate Western Europe. London, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin are home to more than 900 areas where authorities have limited control.
 
            In France, areas of high immigrant density are called banlieues or quartiers, originally built to house immigrants from former French colonies.45 European leaders dislike the term “no-go zone,” and so do many journalists and scholars. Some refer to them as “cultural islands.” Daniel Pipes considers the “no-go” term gratuitously derogatory and prefers the official French nomenclature: “sensitive urban zones.”
 
            In January 2015, American journalist Steven Emerson claimed, “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in,” and was roundly censured. Some are gritty metropolitan areas hidden from tourists. An example is Nice, France. Dozens of its Muslim residents have traveled to Syria to fight for the State. In Germany, the Berlin Wall that separated the East from the West has long since crumbled, but there is a new civilizational divide, according to local Germans; they call it the “Arab Street.” A play on words, “Arab streets” are geographic locations in Europe where Muslims outnumber non-Muslims. It is also a synonym for Arab public opinion.
 
            But whether called “no-go zones,” “sensitive urban zones,” or occasional armed camps, these Muslim-only areas serve as recruiting pools for criminal syndicates. These areas are ideal for grooming foot soldiers for the Caliphate, and the Caliphate’s leaders have promised to use Muslims from those zones to attack Western targets. They provide sanctuary for the Caliphate’s cells, some of which fester in Dewsbury, in the next reading
 
This concludes a reading from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon, by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. If you enjoyed this, please consider subscribing and pressing the “like button.” Jihad and the West is available for purchase online and in select bookstores worldwide. Nothing in this reading or any other reading in Jihad and the West represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag Over Babylon Chapter One Postcast Five

Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon written by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. It was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis. This reading is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security.  This reading is from the first chapter and begins with the full life and tragic death of Khaled al-Asaad, also known as Mr. Palmyra.
 
Walid al-Asaad, son of Khaled al-Asaad
           
Khaled al-Asaad, “Mr. Palmyra,” a beloved eighty-two-year-old antiquities scholar, devoted his life to exploring, preserving, and studying the town’s treasures. Holding degrees from Damascus University, he named his daughter Zenobia after the warrior-queen of Palmyra’s folklore. He directed the Antiquities and Museums Department’s archaeological site for forty years, then retired to read, write, dig, and educate the world about Palmyra. The Caliphate knew of him, and they beat and tortured the old man. Held for twenty-five days, he could neither speak to nor see his family, but there is no evidence that he betrayed a single artifact. The vandals demanded gold, but there was no bullion he could offer. As his son Mohammed said, “There was nothing to tell them; the gold in Palmyra is in the statues and the architecture.”
 
            The scholar could have escaped earlier, even after the Caliphate had conquered Palmyra. With his celebrity and prestige, he could have taken refuge in the West and lived near a prestigious university. But he told a fellow scholar, “I am from Palmyra, and I will stay here even if they kill me.” And they did.
 
            Trundled into a van, he was tossed into the town’s main square. He was not in an orange jumpsuit; he wore his ordinary clothes. Caliphate leaders read the charges against him, and the
Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. It was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis. This reading is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security.
 
The town’s greatest antiquities scholar was branded a “director of idols.” He also represented Syrian scholars at international “infidel conferences.” They found him guilty and beheaded him. Afterward, they strung what remained of his corpse to an ancient Roman column. Palmyra mourned.
 
Palmyra Tomorrow
 
            There is still life in Palmyra. Its territory is contested between pro-government and Caliphate forces. In March 2016, the Caliphate was expelled. One month later, Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra traveled to Palmyra and performed works by Bach and Prokofiev in the amphitheater the State had used to kill its enemies. The conductor declared it a concert against barbarism, and a Russian visitor paid tribute to the life of Khaled al-Assad.94 Nonetheless, an Islamic State spokesperson reveled in the devastation they had left: “We captured a whole town and houses from them, and they recaptured sand and destruction.” He was partially correct.
 
            But today Palmyra is more than sand and ruins. Omar Al-Farra’s warm poems and elegiac verse will likely be recited for years, albeit in hushed tones. They will remind Palmyra’s future generations of a sweeter, if bygone, life in Syria. The books of Palmyra’s bard, Khaled al-Asaad, will be read by lovers of history, art, and Syria. True, the proud Lion of Palmyra has been turned to dust. But it is not entirely lost. Its bold visage endures in photographs, and it will live on in memory.
 
In the World of Islam
 
            In the Islamic world, some nationalities support the Caliphate—its agenda, philosophy, and tactics—while others do not. In Pakistan, fewer than one-third of the population holds negative views of the Caliphate. This is particularly alarming to some observers given the country’s ever-growing nuclear arsenal. Other states with sizable support for the Islamic State include Nigeria, where 20 percent of the Muslim population supports it, and Malaysia, where 12 percent of Muslims support the State. Although the proportion of Muslims is often small, the combined number of Muslims who support the Caliphate is troubling. A Pew poll in 2015 found that in eleven nation-states with significant Muslim populations, there are between 63 and 287 million people who either support the Caliphate or are ambivalent.
 
Summary
 
            Mesopotamia, a home of empires and a host to religious monuments, has enduring ties to the West. A succession of empires has risen and fallen there, and one Islamic civilization became world-renowned for both science and piety. Europeans have engaged Muslims as both enemies and allies at different times and in different places. The balance of power in that part of the Middle East has shifted several times and in many ways. But today’s Caliphate is a unique challenge to Western interests, power, and prestige.
 
            In 2003, Saddam Hussein warned that the West would “open the gates of hell” if he were removed.97 He was removed, and the gates were flung wide open for the Islamic State. The Caliphate is devastating the treasures of ancient civilizations in Iraq and Syria that had survived for millennia. In summer 2016, it dynamited the 2,500-year-old temple of Nabu in Iraq. One week later, it boasted that it would soon destroy the pyramids of Egypt. As for today, the State is struggling to hold its Mesopotamian ground while infiltrating its cadre into Europe and throughout the West. This and more is the subject of the next reading of Jihad and the West.
 
This concludes the final reading from Chapter One of Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon, by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. If you enjoyed this, please consider subscribing and pressing the “like button.” You can purchase Jihad and the West on line, if you would like. Nothing in this reading or any other reading in Jihad and the West represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter One Podcast 4

 
Welcome to an excerpt of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter One.
 
Ideological Divergence
 
While all four ideologies converge on seven points, they diverge on three issues, namely, the role of religion, the distribution of wealth and property, and the nature of utopia. In terms of the first, communism is atheistic, and fascist ideologues tolerated Christianity out of political necessity. In Islamism and Shia revivalism, religion defines legal and social norms in all elements of life. For example, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accorded the Twelfth Imam a special place during his weekly cabinet briefings.
 
Another point of divergence is the distribution of wealth and property. Communism advocates an equal distribution of wealth and the abolition of private property. Fascism and Islamism do not make that requirement.  Shia revivalism appeals to aid the poor but does not require that the means of production be placed in the hands of capital producers. As Fredrick Kagan has remarked, “The Islamic Republic’s ideology has virtually no significant economic component. It is an amalgam of anti-colonialism. . .anti-Zionism, Persian nationalism, and adherence to an idiosyncratic form of political Shiism.”
 
Finally, the ideologies diverge in their conception of utopia. While all four are utopian, their images of heaven differ markedly. Fascism saw utopia through the lens of racial and national power and purity. Both Islamic ideologies have found utopia in the first generation of Muslims, as recounted by the sacred Islamic script.
 
Khomeinism and a New Golden Age of Islam
 
What finally emerged in 1979 was a revolutionary political and religious philosophy that fused Islamism with Shia revivalism and elements of fascism and socialism. Known as Khomeinism, it echoes Qutb’s view that today’s world is one of ideological darkness and Shariati’s rebuke of a materialistic world. Khomeini was an aggressive rebel within a mostly quietist clergy who became an autocrat in 1979. When he came to power, his countrymen likened him to the prophet Abraham, who “smashed idols, was willing to sacrifice his son, and rose against tyrants.” Once in command of Iran, he crafted religious practices to create a “New Golden Age” of Islam. Like Islamism, Khomeinism is political Islam. Khomeini lectured that Islamic governance is the only valid system of rule because of conditions outlined in the Koran and the canonized history of Mohammed. He wrote, “An Islamic government is based on the laws and regulations of Islam and can, therefore, be defined as the rule of divine will over humanity.”
 
At the heart of Khomeinism is the concept of velayat-e faqih, or Islamic rule by guardian jurists. Although anticommunist, Khomeini promoted the redistribution of wealth under the slogans “Islam is for equality and social justice” and “Islam will eliminate class differences.” He also held that leaders are duty-bound to provide employment for workers, farmers, and laborers. However, the rights of workers to strike can be circumscribed by the jurists.
When he came to power, Khomeini seized private funds and placed them in the hands of bonyads, vast charities under religious leadership, which will be discussed in chapter 8. Many of these organizations are controlled by the Guards. Many care for the indigent and war handicapped. Constitutionally, the bonyads stand above the law and are answerable only to the supreme leader. In Khomeinism, the clergy rule by divine revelation. According to Shia  Islam, Mohammad vested the duty and responsibility of guiding and leading the community in the clergy.  The purpose of the state is to implement Islamic law. Khomeini, like other believing Muslims, held that all scriptures are free of error because they are the exact word of God. At the same time, Khomeini did not believe that Muslims could go directly to the text to understand scripture the way many Protestants think they can bypass a church hierarchy.  Khomeinism is a theocratic autocracy.
While Khomeinism contains elements sympathetic to fascism, it differs from Italian or German fascism on issues of race and religion. Khomeinism demands conformity and obedience to authority. It views democracy as weak and arrogant. Like fascist societies, Khomeinism upholds an inflexible leadership principle. Finally, Khomeinism includes elements of Shia revivalism. Both despise all religions and ideologies that diverge from Shia fundamentalism. Khomeini declared that every non-Shia system was a form of idolatry.
The presence of these ideological strands within Khomeinism explains why U.S. policymakers initially struggled to assess Khomeini. Observers of Iran recalled years later that “few U.S. policymakers knew much about him other than that he was.”76 Because Westerners could not understand Khomeini, they could not adequately grasp the collective mindset of the Guards.
 
From Khomeini to Khamenei
 
Khomeini’s legacy, revolutionary zeal, and philosophy were passed to his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Born in 1939 into a poor, religious family of eight siblings, three of whom became clerics, Khamenei recalls in his autobiography that he loathed the shah and the British and was inspired by the radical Islamist Navvab Safavi, who was later killed by the shah’s security forces after speaking at Khamenei’s school. He studied in Qom, sometimes spelled Qum, from 1958 to 1964 under Ruhollah Khomeini.77 Few were surprised when he was given the mantle of national leadership after Khomeini died. Fewer still were surprised when he bolstered the strength of the Guards. Khamenei’s view of leadership is sometimes called principlism, an umbrella term used by Iranian leaders to describe many forms of religious conservatism. In summer 2018, a Guards-affiliated journal encapsulated principlism as “an anti-hegemony, anti-aristocracy and pro-dispossessed revolution. Whoever embarks on this path will have the revolutionaries behind him.”7 For revolutionaries, the author could have substituted Guards.
 
Subsequent chapters will examine how the Guards seek to protect Khomeini’s revolution at home, or principlism, and to export it worldwide.79 Former IRGC commander Major General Jafari claimed that Khomeinism is solid in Iran and that “we are on the path that leads to the rule of Islam worldwide.” Jafari promised to use the Guards to “shape the picture of the Islamic world.”80 Jafari’s successor, Major General Salami, has openly shared this vision of transforming Iran into a global player.
 
Summary
 
Iran has a multi-religious and imperial past. Its fortunes faded after being conquered by Alexander and then the Arabs. But Iranians held fast to their language and built a literature of poems and songs that they still adore. The short-lived Pahlevi dynasty tried to modernize Iran but alienated religious leaders and civil society. The shah tried, too late, to appease both liberal and radical opponents and to lessen the incendiary atmosphere. In the early days of the revolution, some reformers were optimistic. Abbas Milani, a former political prisoner, recalls his release from Evin prison: “The gate opened, and with a strange sense of hesitation and exhilaration, I walked to freedom.”
Within a few years, the new regime vaporized civil freedoms. Gone was the salon set’s chirpy romanticism of ancient Persia and the love sonnets of its poets. Great works of the Western canon were pulped or burned to ashes by the Basij. By the mid-1980s, they were read only in secret, if at all. What remained was the mullahs' primitive religious architecture.
 
In 1944, George Orwell ventured, “Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’” Thirty-five years later, people would ask, “What is Khomeinism?” There was no quick answer. The question bedeviled successive generations of Iranians and Iran watchers because Khomeinism changed the world. Islamism, communism, fascism, and Shia revivalism overlapped in some respects, and elements of each found their way into Khomeinism. However it is defined, Khomeinism struck the world like lightning. The shock troops of the Revolution were the Guards, who rooted out dissent at home and thrust the spear of the mullahs throughout the greater Middle East.
 
This concludes the reading from the introduction of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by Mark Silinsky. If you enjoyed this reading, please consider subscribing. This reading does not represent the official position of any agency or individual within the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
 
 
 

Jihad and the West Black Flag Over Babylon - Chapter One Podcast Three

            I am Cyrus, who founded the Persian Empire and was King of Asia. Grudge
me not, therefore, this monument. —Inscription on the tomb of Cyrus the Great
Iran sits at the strategic center of the greater Middle East. Once boasting the most powerful kingdom of its day, Iran’s influence waned over the centuries. By the nineteenth century, its military and industrial capabilities could not match those of Western empires. In the twentieth century, many powers courted Iran until Iranian leaders broke from the Western orbit in 1979 to create a unique political philosophy rooted in fundamentalist Shia Islam. A newly formed Praetorian Guard would seek to export this philosophy worldwide. Iran is perched between two large oil fields in and around the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf and is awash in fossil fuel resources. In land area, it is second only to Saudi Arabia in the greater Middle East. It is twice the size of Texas and has a population of more than 70 million. Iran has been linguistically and ethnically diverse for many centuries. Persian is the mother tongue of only half of Iran’s population; one quarter is ethnic Azeri; the remaining quarter comprises Arabs, Baloch, Kurds, Turks, and others. Iran is a mountainous country, and its rugged terrain has served as a strategic barrier to would-be invaders.
 
The earliest traces of human civilization in Iran date to about 8,000 BCE. Cyrus I established the Achaemenian dynasty and laid the foundation for the Persian Empire in 630 BCE. His grandson, Cyrus the Great, conquered much of Greece. In the fifth century BCE, Persia was a global superpower. Many Iranians are proud of their ancient heritage and travel to King Cyrus the Great’s tomb in southwestern Fars Province to pay their respects to this legendary figure. The Greeks referred to “the West” as all land west of Persia, and the Greeks and Persians clashed for decades. The ancient Greeks forged many of their democratic freedoms in response to the Persian challenge.
 
The Greek dramatist Aeschylus wrote The Persians in 472 BCE, casting civilized Greece against authoritarian Persia. In 338 BCE, Alexander the Great’s army reached Persepolis and was astounded by its beauty. Nonetheless, he leveled much of the city in retaliation for the Parthenon’s torching years earlier.
 
A Glorious Past
 
The ravages of the Greek army did not extinguish Persia’s artistic and literary beauty. The stories of Omar Khayyam and iconic Persian poetry, such as Ferdowsi’s “Shahnameh,” recall the glories of pre-Islamic Persia. In the arts, the Parthians excelled in miniature painting and carpet weaving.2 The Mongols ravaged all lands under their control, including Persia. Yet artistic creativity survived and Thrived, and the works of Rumi and Hafez are still praised for their magnificence. Today in Iran, the works of the golden age are censored and redacted by the Guards to protect moral piety.
 
The Persian Empire declined and was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century, and its inhabitants converted to Islam. But Persians retained their language and much of their culture. By the nineteenth century, the West had become militarily, economically, scientifically, and technologically dominant worldwide. Britain and Russia expanded their imperial and commercial reach to the borders of Persia.
 
Persia’s oil reserves made the country a central focus of international relations from the early twentieth century. Western oil firms tapped the country’s petroleum wealth, and Western cultural influence grew more prominent there. During World War I, rival Western powers competed for Muslim support. As part of the “Kaiser’s Jihad,” Germans spread the rumor that Kaiser Wilhelm had converted to Islam. For their part, the British circulated a story that an ancient Muslim holy figure would reemerge to lead Muslims in battle against German armies.
 
Some Iranians took sides in Western power jockeying, but many more avoided foreign meddling. The more pious Persians sought to resist the advance of European and American values by retreating into Islam and mysticism. To escape harassment by Iranian authorities, leading ayatollahs quietly moved to Najaf in newly created Iraq. They, like nationalists, embraced a romantic nostalgia for a long-lost empire and its prestige. Some intellectuals turned to Western dictatorial philosophies, such as those of Nazi Germany.
 
National Socialism challenged British imperialism, promoted anti-Semitism, and elevated the Aryans to a status of racial supremacy. Fritz Grobba, Berlin’s envoy to the Middle East, was often called “the German Lawrence of Arabia” for promising a Pan-Arab state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran. He built ties between Persian elites and the Nazi foreign office. One of those smitten by the Third Reich’s pomp and power was Reza Pahlevi.
This reading does not represent the official position of any agency or individual within the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Jihad and the West Black Flag Over Babylon Chapter One Podcast two

Iran sits at the strategic center of the greater Middle East. Once boasting the most powerful kingdom of its day, Iran’s influence waned over the centuries. By the nineteenth century, its military and industrial capabilities could not match those of Western empires. In the twentieth century, many powers courted Iran until Iranian leaders broke from the Western orbit in 1979 to create a unique political philosophy rooted in fundamentalist Shia Islam. A newly formed Praetorian Guard would seek to export this philosophy worldwide. Iran is perched between two large oil fields in and around the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf and is awash in fossil fuel resources. In land area, it is second only to Saudi Arabia in the greater Middle East. It is twice the size of Texas and has a population of more than 70 million. Iran has been linguistically and ethnically diverse for many centuries. Persian is the mother tongue of only half of Iran’s population; one quarter is ethnic Azeri; the remaining quarter comprises Arabs, Baloch, Kurds, Turks, and others. Iran is a mountainous country, and its rugged terrain has served as a strategic barrier to would-be invaders.
 
The earliest traces of human civilization in Iran date to about 8,000 BCE. Cyrus I established the Achaemenian dynasty and laid the foundation for the Persian Empire in 630 BCE. His grandson, Cyrus the Great, conquered much of Greece. In the fifth century BCE, Persia was a global superpower. Many Iranians are proud of their ancient heritage and travel to King Cyrus the Great’s tomb in southwestern Fars Province to pay their respects to this legendary figure. The Greeks referred to “the West” as all land west of Persia, and the Greeks and Persians clashed for decades. The ancient Greeks forged many of their democratic freedoms in response to the Persian challenge.
 
The Greek dramatist Aeschylus wrote The Persians in 472 BCE, casting civilized Greece against authoritarian Persia. In 338 BCE, Alexander the Great’s army reached Persepolis and was astounded by its beauty. Nonetheless, he leveled much of the city in retaliation for the Parthenon’s torching years earlier.
The ravages of the Greek army did not extinguish Persia’s artistic and literary beauty. The stories of Omar Khayyam and iconic Persian poetry, such as Ferdowsi’s “Shahnameh,” recall the glories of pre-Islamic Persia. In the arts, the Parthians excelled in miniature painting and carpet weaving.2 The Mongols ravaged all lands under their control, including Persia. Yet artistic creativity survived and thrived, and works by Rumi and Hafez are still praised for their magnificence. Within Iran today, the works of the golden age are censored and redacted by the Guards to protect moral piety.
 
The Persian Empire declined and was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century, and its inhabitants converted to Islam. But Persians retained their language and much of their culture. By the nineteenth century, the West had become militarily, economically, scientifically, and technologically dominant worldwide. Britain and Russia expanded their imperial and commercial reach to the borders of Persia.
Persia’s oil reserves made the country a central focus of international relations from the early twentieth century. Western oil firms tapped the country’s petroleum wealth, and Western cultural influence grew more prominent there. During World War I, rival Western powers competed for Muslim support. As part of the “Kaiser’s Jihad,” Germans spread the rumor that Kaiser Wilhelm had converted to Islam. For their part, the British circulated a story that an ancient Muslim holy figure would reemerge to lead Muslims in battle against German armies.
Some Iranians took sides in Western power jockeying, but many more avoided foreign meddling. The more pious Persians sought to resist the advance of European and American values by retreating into Islam and mysticism. To escape harassment by Iranian authorities, leading ayatollahs quietly moved to Najaf in newly created Iraq. They, like nationalists, embraced a romantic nostalgia for a long-lost empire and its prestige. Some intellectuals turned to Western dictatorial philosophies, such as those of Nazi Germany.
 
National Socialism challenged British imperialism, promoted anti-Semitism, and elevated the Aryans to a status of racial supremacy. Fritz Grobba, Berlin’s envoy to the Middle East, was often called “the German Lawrence of Arabia” for promising a Pan-Arab state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran. He built ties between Persian elites and the Nazi foreign office. One of those smitten by the Third Reich’s pomp and power was Reza Pahlevi.
 
 
 

Jihad and the West Chapter One Podcast One

Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, founded the Muslim Brotherhood to fill material and spiritual voids in civil society. Along with other pious Muslims, he was crestfallen at the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Much like Shia clerics in Persia, he saw Islam threatened by atheism, imperialism, and the widening scientific gap between the West and
the Islamic East. Al-Banna was a Sunni Muslim, but he had no quarrel with the Shia, whom he regarded as fellow Muslims. Instead, he advocated a solid Shia-Sunni Islamic front against non-Muslims, and he particularly detested the British. Iranian Islamic revolutionaries praised the Brotherhood and mourned al-Banna when he was killed in 1949.
 
After al-Banna’s death, the Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb, sometimes spelled Sayeed Qutb, became the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading theorist until Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered his execution in 1966. In the late 1940s, Qutb attended a teachers’ college in the United States and penned a phantasmagorical account of his experience titled The America I Saw. He loathed America, describing its women as vixens, its men as vulgar, its society as void of religion, and its cultural tastes as unrefined and salacious. Iranian mullahs echoed his descriptions of America. Qutb was not a cleric, and his commentary on Islamic scripture does not carry authority among the more pious. However, he shone as a general strategist and opinion-maker for the Muslim masses. Future supreme leader of Iran Ali Khamenei translated Qutb’s works into Persian.
 
The Persian activist-intellectual Said Jamaleddin Asadabadi, sometimes called Jamal al-Dinal-Afghani, was a principal architect of the first wave of religious revivalism. Revolutionary Iran’s founders, including Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Khamenei, were profoundly influenced by the militant Navvab Safavi, who promoted the work of Egyptian Brotherhood leaders, notably Qutb. Iranian Ali Shariati is often called the ideologue of the Iranian Revolution. He promoted Islam as a complete lifestyle and advocated purging Iran of all nonreligious elements. This appealed to Iran’s religious, weak, and alienated.31 Shariati took avant-garde leftist designs for social justice and wedded them to Shia Islam. Shariati was influenced by the radical, trendy ideas popular in Paris, where he lived in the 1950s and earned a doctorate in religious studies from the Sorbonne. His prose was fluid and energetic. Said a friend, “He was a Gramsci, Guevara, Fanon, Malcolm X and Iqbal rolled into one.”
 
Stirred by the revolutionary zeal he found among Europe’s progressive salon set, Shariati sought to revitalize Shia Islam. He described two versions of Shia Islam—a “red” or authentic Shia and a “black” Shia, which was stagnant and worn. Shariati was part nationalist, Islamist, and revivalist, and his message inspired scores of activists during the 1960s and 1970s.33 Above all, he was an advocate of Shia Islam. He believed Shia Muslims should stop passively waiting for the return of the Twelfth Imam. Instead, they should create conditions that would hasten his return, writing, “Every day is Ashura; every place is Karbala.” He argued that the clergy’s role was to guide society through a synthesis of Islamic values and left-oriented activism.34 His work remains foundational in Iran today.
 
Khomeini, like Shariati, was part Islamist and part revivalist, writing with flair and verve. He defined himself primarily as a Muslim and secondarily as an Iranian, insisting that the 1979 Revolution be primarily Islamic, not Iranian or Shia.35 He loathed the West, especially the British, Americans, and Israelis, and excoriated Iranians he deemed collaborators. Khomeini shared Qutb’s view of nationalism as idolatry. If Qutb vilified Nasser as the “Pharaoh,” Khomeini saw both Pahlevis as anachronisms and impediments to valid Islamic rule. Khomeini included these ideas in his manuscript The Jurist Guardianship—Islamic Government, which circulated widely in the 1970s.36 Years later, the Guards would project these ideas abroad and use them to rally Shia in the greater Middle East.
 
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Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Dr. Gorka's Preface

 This is the foreward by Sebastian Gorka.    The word “jihad” is misunderstood and misrepresented. It is a human concept (rather than a heavenly mandate) with historical, political, and religious contexts, and has been applied in different ways by different users over the centuries.
Today its most important application is by the members of the Global Jihadist Movement, most specifically Al Qaeda and the Islamic State which grew out of Al Qaeda. For Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and the tens of thousands of young men who have joined his cause, “jihad” refers to the last Holy War against the Infidel, a war to be waged in the eschatologically highly significant territory of Syria and Iraq as well as on the soil of infidel lands, be it a nightclub in Orlando, a concert hall in Paris, or on the streets of Boston.
 Dr. Silinsky has done the Western world a great service by writing Jihad and the West: Black Flag over Babylon. In fact, his contribution must be read by as many national security professionals, policy-makers, and leaders as possible if we are to truly understand the threat we face and soon vanquish the new totalitarianism that is Global Jihadism.
The facts about the religiously-bounded ideology and strategy our foe follows is available for all to unearth without even having to learn Arabic. Al Qaeda has its English-language internet magazine Inspire, and the Islamic State, as I write these words, is already on the fifteenth issue of its End-Times-suffused Jihadi magazine Dabiq. These publications are the “field manuals” of modern Jihad. But the story of where these ideas came from and how they evolved over time is far richer than can be gleaned from reading today’s internet propaganda alone. The information is available, but it is dispersed, scattered around the globe. What Dr. Silinsky has done is bring all the disparate threads together in one tome, backed up by the latest news reports and on-the-ground information, which allows us to do the most important thing any nation can do in a war: understand the enemy as they understand themselves.
 With decades of practical experience inside the “machine” that is the US Intelligence community, Dr. Silinsky only writes of that which is relevant. This is best exemplified by the numerous case studies and three dozen profiles his book is built around. If the fact is not relevant to the war, it is not important. This is how such works should be written and is an exemplar for others.
Dr. Silinsky must also be commended for braving the political correctness that has so infected and distorted Western threat-assessment in recent years. Denying that Jihadism is but “Fascism with an Islamic face” will not secure our nations or help undermine our enemy. Lastly, I have a personal thank you to make. As someone who makes his living by reading and using such works, I am indebted to the author for making Jihad and the West: Black Flag over Babylon such an enjoyable text. As Dr. Silinsky subtly injects quotes from fine literature and stage plays to get his points across, he achieves that which I thought was nigh impossible: making a book on the horrors of Jihad eminently readable.