McJihad: Islamism In Western Hegemony
By Sazzad Hussain
25 April, 2013
Countercurrents.org
During the Cold War era it was said that the biggest threat to western capitalism was the Communist Soviet Union. Later in the post-Cold War world scholars like Benjamin Berber followed this simple dictum by calling the present time as Jihad vs. McWorld. But recent research has found that it is actually the Jihad or Islamism which has been the driving force for global dominance of the west—the McWorld. Global capitalism led by America has been in rhyme with extreme form of Islam called Wahhabism since the early 1930s to ensure the dominance of its corporate world, mostly the oil giants in the world. This partnership later blossomed into the strategic interests that included the businesses of oil, arms, bank loans to underdeveloped countries and war.
The Islamism that we know today emerged during the first quarter of the twentieth century in Nejd, Arabian peninsula at a very critical juncture when European colonialism was losing its ground and the richest empire of the world, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling following Turkey’s defeat in WW-I. Like many contesting tribal Arab chieftains Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud started armed campaigns with British help in the Arabian Peninsula. He took the support of the religious reform movement led by Mohammad Abdul Ibn Wahhab who had wanted to establish the Unitarianism of God or Tawhid in Arabia where Islam was by that time was “corrupted’ by extreme veneration of the Prophet and was deviating from its original form because of its exposure to western colonialism. Similar reform movement in Islam also started in Deoband, India almost at the same time. With the followers of Wahhabism or Muwahhidun and its armed militia, the Ikhwan (brotherhood), Ibn Saud swept the entire Arabian Peninsula and by 1932 conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world to be named after a dynasty. The interpretation of present Jihad—“The duty to struggle against unbelievers” originated at that time by this political-religious axis to re-establish the decaying nomadic lifestyle of the Bedouins who were fast getting settled by engaging in agricultural works and to ensure complete eradication of “vices”, “dangerous ideas” and anti-regime assemblies in that newly founded kingdom.
Ibn Saud signed an agreement with an ex-ICS officer John Philby who was an agent of SOCAL, Mobil, Ford and other American companies in Jeddah in 1930 for sale of oil. Philby, who converted to Islam and embraced Wahhabism was responsible for the conversion of the entire oil companies to radical Islam as the Muwahhidun was given a freehand to expand its homogenous ideology in the kingdom in exchange of the presence of MNCs. This was the genesis of McJihad. The onset of the global recession from 1930 onwards reduced the number of annual Haj pilgrims to Saudi Arabia for which Ibn Saud invited American oil companies directly to explore the fields and formed the ARAMCO which built roads, bridges, telephone lines and other infrastructures in that newly formed kingdom. The private state of Saudi Arabia which has no democracy, parliament and a national exchequer its oil revenues are deposited in the personal accounts of the house of Saud. To protect it from domestic dissent and growing nationalism and socialism in the Arab world, mostly in Nasser’s Egypt and Baathist Iraq and Syria, Saudi royal family looked for US help and so the UASF established its base in Dharan in 1945. Thus began the (un)holy nexus between Jihad and McWorld.
Since oil is the main running force of global economy McJihad was used as a tool to maintain the unhindered presence of global oil giants in Saudi soil and unhindered supply of the crude oil. So from 1940 onwards ARAMCO trained Saudi royal guards to crush any opposition culminating it the violent crackdown on the strike by oil workers demanding political constitution, labour union and formation of political parties in 1956. To thwart the progressive movements including land reforms, education and health care services and women’s rights in socialist Arab states ARAMCO pumped billions of dollars to spread Wahhabism since late 1960s. Riyadh used its Sunni clout and Haj gatherings to extend these activities beyond its borders and transformed Pakistan from a diverse multicultural Islamic land to a barren homogenized Wahhabi junkyard since Gen. Zia took over power in 1977. After Pakistan it was Afghan Jihad, Somalia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and so on where the entire landscape of Islam was transformed to Wahhabism to suit the McWorld. Thus the McWorld has become the McJihad.
McJihad has not only made life miserable for ordinary Muslim across the globe but also contributed other crisis of the post-Cold War world. The abolition of ARAMCO and formation of OPEC made the Saudi regime very rich and due to the four-fold price rise of oil from 1970s, they began to buy sophisticated arms and military hardware from US and European companies leading to escalation of conflicts in the entire Middle-East—from Lebanese civil war to Iran-Iraq war, Israel’s incursion of the Palestinian territories and the Gulf War of 1991. The Saudi royal family also started buying huge amount of US treasury bonds and other European bank bills. The deposit of huge petro-dollars in western banks prompted them to offer loans to poor nations of Africa and Latin America from that time onwards. When these nations defaulted “structural adjustments” were made to ensure the return of the loan amounts at the cost of education, healthcare, agriculture and transportation.
After the revolt of Muwahhiduns like Osman al-Utaibi during the Haj of 1979 (crushed by the Saudi king with French paratroopers), McJihad was exported to the Af-Pak border in July much before the Soviets made their entry to Afghanistan in December. When Moscow wanted to pullout its forces from Afghanistan, it was US which prolonged the Afghan Jihad by underming the peace-talks initiatives of 1982 at Rabat (Morocco) and 1983 (by the UN). At that time it allowed Israel to invade and pound Lebanon and facilitated Jihadis like bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri to join Afghan Jihad. The rest of the story leading up to 9/11 we all know. The radical Islamism which we all are facing is nothing but an American device.
(The writer teaches English at Lakhimpur Commerce College, Assam, and a freelance writer. e-mail: [email protected]).
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