“Al-Qaedaism: The Threat to Islam, The Threat to the World”
Published in English, Dublin 2005, and in Turkish, Ankara, May 2006
The author Richard Whelan says:
In July 2003, having spent over 30 years studying international politics and strategic studies, I began preparing a briefing note to use as the basis for a newspaper article on the Al-Qaeda terrorist threat to America. Still researching one year later, I had a very different understanding. I saw this threat as an ideology, a belief system – Al-Qaedaism – that primarily threatened Islam.My book sets out to inform people of the real issues involved here and the very dangerous threat Islam and the world now faces.
The book begins with a detailed analysis of what the Al-Qaedaists are saying. I then compare their statements with their actions. Their message, and the threat, become very clear, but are being missed by most. I then propose a detailed plan of action to deal with this dangerous threat.
In summary, Al-Qaedaists simply want to get the USA out of their way. They believe they will then be able to hijack Islam and then use it firstly to take over the parts of the Sunni Islamic Caliphate of old that are currently in Islamic hands, and then take back the remaining “occupied territories” in Europe and elsewhere, such as Andalusia, Sicily, Lebanon, much of Eastern Europe, Somalia, the Philippines, Timor Leste, Burma etc.
The Al-Qaedaists, a self-confessed “minority of a minority of a minority”, believe that 1,500 years of Muslim tradition, practice and belief are all wrong, and they know best. They have set out to cause mass casualties to achieve their objectives and have openly expressed the desire to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction to inflict even greater suffering.
The theme of my book can be broken down into three simple points:
- What we are dealing with is not just a nihilistic terror group. There is a belief system an ideology which underpins that terror. Terror is a tactic – the real issue is the belief system which generates that terror. While most serious experts now agree with this analysis, unfortunately the governments in the West responding to the tactic of terror have not even begun to address the ideas and beliefs that motivate same. Until the West does so it will continue to lose the “war on terror”.
- My second point is that this belief system is primarily and initially a threat to Islam. This is still a minority view, although an increasing number of experts are beginning to understand and accept this point. Simple statistics do tell something of the tale – the approximate number of those killed by the al-Qaedaists as I term them since they started their militant activities in the early 1990’s is: Westerners – 4,000; Muslims – 175,000.The best description of these terrorists in Muslim terms is “takfiri” terrorists. This refers to their approach of declaring that anybody who disagrees with them is automatically excommunicated from Islam – takfir – and may be killed. They take the view, and have clearly acted on same, that the vast majority of Muslims who disagree with them, and everybody else in the world including innocent, neutral or non-combatant men, women and children all are legitimate targets and may be killed at will. They have repeatedly stated that all Islamic and non-Islamic states and regimes today are illegitimate, including the PLO. The only truly Islamic state in their eyes was the Taliban – controlled Afghanistan, a regime which the vast majority of Muslims saw as abhorrent.
- There are a number of reasons why I see Al-Qaedaists as a serious threat to the world.
They have openly expressed a desire to cause mass casualties and to obtain weapons of mass destruction (“WMD”) to achieve same. My analysis indicates that there is some possibility (the experts are divided) that they will over time be able to get nuclear weaponry. More seriously, expert opinion now agrees that bioterrorism is inevitable, simply because of ongoing commercial and medical research.Anyone who is trying to radicalise 1.3 billion Muslims and provoke a clash of civilisations between them and the rest of the world is a serious threat.The real struggle here can be simply summarised as takfiri terrorists against all those who believe in pluralism. – Richard Whelan, September 2006, Dublin, Ireland
Click here to see what the critics said about the English version.
Richard Whelan, a senior partner in an international financial services company, is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Belgian Royal Institute for International Relations, and has studied international politics and strategic studies independently for over 30 years.