Author: Ali Hassan Massoud
Publication: Strike The Root
Date:
URL: http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/massoud/massoud1.html
Ali Massoud is a father, political
theorist, apostate Muslim, small business owner, college graduate, crack
rifle marksman, a blogger, cat lover, shrewd investor, US Army veteran,
and currently single. He lives in Michigan.
"I'm just an American boy - raised
on MTV
And I've seen all those kids in
the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me
So I started lookin' around for
a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that
made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him."
~ John Walker's Blues by Steve Earle
As is often the case, artists feel
and express the true nature of things in this world way before the media
and academics do. With his ballad about John Walker Lindh, the notorious
"American Taliban," alternative country music artist Steve Earle captured
the essence of what motivates the middle class terrorists and revolutionary
zealots of our day.
According to a declassified intelligence
report just released to the English press, the former head of Scotland
Yard's counter-terror unit says that Al-Qaida is heavily recruiting middle-class,
UK-born college students.
The verisimilitude of this insight
leads me to believe it is probably true for two principal reasons.
First, converts are nearly always
more zealous and unquestioning about their faith than people who were born
to and raised in it. The converts, living in London or its suburbs, only
know Islam from the Imams and proselytizers. The average non-elite working
class Muslim immigrant is under no illusions. An auto-mechanic from Egypt
or Yemen knows the nature of Islamic society, because he or she has lived
in it. They've seen it as it is, warts and all.
We have all seen these kinds of
people. The pseudo-Native American Colorado University professor Ward Churchill
is a good example. He glommed onto a false identity as a Native American,
for which he has no evidence other than it seemed cool to him.
Or some of the gangsta rap artists
who masquerade as former OG's "straight outta Compton " who in fact are
the middle class sons and daughters of college-educated professionals.
When what they are really is phonies and bullshitters who claim have the
street cred of a ghetto ex-gang member.
The second reason the Al-Qaida recruiters
would seem to have an easier time with the college types is that all the
sneaking around, carrying secret messages, hiding out in safe houses, smuggling
arms and explosives, and the rest of it all seems really cool to a certain
kind of adolescent mindset, especially that of many young men.
I know it was for me. I went through
US Army Basic Combat Training after my sophomore year of high school because
making milkshakes at the neighborhood Dairy Queen for minimum wage or something
similar (as my friends all were) seemed so boring and lame. Shooting automatic
weapons, running through obstacle courses, throwing hand grenades and such
seemed so much cooler. I hate to think what I'd do if I were 17 years old
today.
As with the 1960's terrorist inclined
radicals such as the Students for a Democratic Society offshoot the Weather
Underground, the thought of getting a BBA degree and then being an accountant
or a middle management wage slave at General Motors or Detroit Edison for
the next three decades doesn't have the same allure or romance associated
with it as does being a Warrior for God or some other ideology does, plus
it pisses off mom and dad too.
The thought of being in control
of a cell of computer literate, multilingual, educated, and well-mannered,
but very gullible and uncritical operatives must seem like a dream come
true to the Islamist zealots and sociopaths who would try to recruit them
for Al- Qaida and the other groups.
The nature of war being what it
is, the degreed men and women will be the officer class of the struggle.
The actual suicide bombers and the rest of the cannon fodder will still
be the depressed, poor, and desperate underclass denizens for whom heavenly
rewards, not to mention a $25,000 "death benefit" paid to their families,
is the principal motivation. Very chic, eh?
It makes sense to me. Usama bin-Laden
is a college educated engineer, his principal advisor is an Egyptian-born
eye surgeon, and so forth all down the chain of command too. Relatively
safe in his cave fortress in eastern Pakistan , bin-Laden can direct his
minions around the world via e-mail, satellite phone, fax, and all the
rest of the global communication infrastructure the infidels of the West
have constructed. What amusing irony they must see in all that too. Plus,
it is safer than actually doing something dangerous yourself.
Like America 's own Chicken-Hawk
and Neo-Conservative political classes think, why fight yourself when you
can bribe, manipulate, or compel your underclass to die in your place?
This al-Qaida and Western elites have in common with each other.
