RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bravo for life’s little ironies.

The idea that poverty causes terrorism is a familiar assumption on both the Left and the Right; it is, ultimately, the guiding assumption behind the U.S. military’s making itself busy in Afghanistan building roads, schools and hospitals. The fond belief is that a sufficient amount of money will transform Kabul into Kansas City, and then all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Ten years of American blood and treasure squandered in Afghanistan should have put paid to this fantasy long ago, but of course it hasn’t.

Besides integrity, the scarcest commodity in Washington is accountability, and so none of the learned analysts who so confidently predicted that all this infrastructure would raise the Afghan standard of living and win Afghan hearts and minds, thereby destroying the impetus for terrorism, are ever called to account for the obvious howling failure of everything they attempted, and the falsehood of all they predicted. Nor are the reputations rehabilitated of those whose predictions proved true that none of this would work, and that the Afghans would continue waging jihad against all outsiders and against each other, as they have done from time immemorial. They are, as ever, “Islamophobes,” “extremists,” not to be trusted. Washington doesn’t operate according to the canons of reasoned discourse. It operates by the rule of clubs and clans; if you’re in with the group in power, your ideas will be accepted and implemented. Failure is not an impediment to continuing to exercise power.

And so it is that Bill Clinton, laden with honors, lauded, respected and adulated everywhere he goes, in with the most powerful and influential clubs and clans of all, almost certainly didn’t think that he was saying anything remotely controversial when he said that “inequality” was “fueling” the Nigerian jihad. He probably has no idea that the Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for trying to light a bomb hidden in his underwear and blow up a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, was one of the nation’s wealthiest young men. Abdulmutallab’s father is Dr. Alhaji Umaru Abdul Mutallab, former head of Nigeria’s largest bank, the First Bank of Nigeria PLC, as well as a former government minister.

Some reports say that Dr. Alhaji Umaru Abdul Mutallab actually warned Western officials about his son, and abhors what he did – despite the fact that he has been one of the most energetic promoters of Sharia in Nigeria, and has reported ties to Wahhabi jihadists in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Dubai, Yemen, and Egypt. But whether or not he approves of what his son did, the fact is that he raised him in a well-to-do environment. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab did not know the gnaw of hunger and poverty or harbor resentment for the wealthy and comfortable around him. He did not turn to jihad out of a hopeless desperation of finding any other recourse, and a determination to redress social inequalities. No, like other fantastically rich men such as Osama bin Laden and Aymen al-Zawahiri, as well as the jihadist physicians in Glasgow, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab turned to jihad because he believed that it was his responsibility before Allah to wage war against Infidels, and that Allah would reward his killing large numbers of them. When he pled guilty in October, Abdulmutallab said to the court: “In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them, some parts of the Koran say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

He recited the familiar litany of grievances: “I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.” However, this is all to frame his jihad as defensive, since in the absence of a caliph no jihad can be offensive at this time. If these pretexts vanished, however, contrary to the fond assumptions of Bill Clinton and so many others like him, the jihad imperative would remain.

Abdulmutallab added: “Participation in jihad against the United States is considered among the most virtuous of deeds in Islam and is highly encouraged in the Koran; however, according to U.S. law, which is unjust and oppressive according to the Koran, my actions make me guilty of a crime in the United States, in particular, the following counts in my indictment.” Hence he pled guilty.

Would a redress of “inequalities”  have dissuaded Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from waging jihad against the United States? Not likely. For even though he couches his actions as a matter of fighting those who fight you, in Islam there is also an imperative to fight against those who “believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden,” including, specifically, Jews and Christians (Koran 9:29). No amount of American largesse will ever dissuade a believing Muslim from considering that a divine responsibility.

This is a lesson that official Washington should have learned again and again, since every jihadist speaks the way Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab does, belying the non-Islamic explanations for jihad that pour endlessly out of Washington’s think tanks. But it won’t be learned this time, either.

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