(Part 5)
By Abu Umair al-Afghani
The twenty-first century began, socialism collapsed, and the West once again found itself confronting a new adversary. The West’s strategy changed; socialism was no longer its primary target. Instead, it identified Islam and Islamic thought as its foremost enemy. What plan had the West devised for this confrontation? Orientalists were no longer producing effective results. Therefore, as it had done for centuries, the West divided its strategy into three components:
1. Direct military intervention
2. Propaganda warfare
3. Intelligence warfare
To achieve this objective, they targeted Islamic thought and promoted the following concepts:
1. Jihad = Terrorism, the killing of innocent people, oppression, and destruction.
2. Islamic governance = Authoritarianism and coercion.
3. Islamic laws = Backwardness and an obstacle to progress.
4. Democracy and secularism = Progress, justice, and human rights.
5. The West = A friend of Muslims, a benefactor of the world, a just ruler, and a champion of humanity.
To substantiate this claim, they made Afghanistan their primary target, because the inspiration for jihad and Islamic governance had been drawn from Afghanistan. Seeking to prove that jihad was synonymous with terrorism and brutality, they used their agents to divide Islamic movements within Afghanistan into various factions and, through their proxies, set them against one another.
In order to discredit jihad and Islam, they labelled all of these factions as “Mujahideen” in the propaganda and media sphere. Although, at that time, many remnants of the communist regime had also joined the Mujahideen, and a considerable number of American agents were likewise associated with these groups.
Western media devoted its full attention to this issue in order to discredit jihad in the minds of Muslims and to demonstrate in practical terms that jihad meant terrorism, fear, and the killing of innocent people, while Islamic thought represented coercion and oppression. Some individuals within these movements committed unlawful acts, and Western media presented them as Mujahideen.
These same people killed around 60,000 innocent residents of Kabul, and Western media referred to this as jihad. Some among them were involved in moral corruption and illicit relationships; they established illegal checkpoints, drove nails into people’s heads, engaged in practices such as “Raqs-e Murda” and other reprehensible acts, destroyed public and state infrastructure, and demolished buildings. In short, there was scarcely any act of oppression, brutality, or wrongdoing that they did not commit. Western media conveyed all of these acts of oppression, violence, and destruction to the world under the labels of “Mujahid” and “Jihad.”
A Mujahid from the period of the Soviet occupation once told me a story. He said that during the jihad, an Arab would kiss his hands out of reverence and blessing. However, when that same Arab saw him during the period of the internal conflicts, he would spit at him, curse him, and even speak ill of jihad itself, which is one of the important pillars of Islam.
This Western narrative continued successfully for a time, but in 1994, Allah the Almighty brought about another miracle in support of the Islamic system and jihad. In Afghanistan, a man named Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahid (RH) initiated a new movement under the banner of an Islamic system. With the help of Allah, this Islamic Emirate eliminated all of those misfortunes, unlawful practices, and injustices.
He (RH) demonstrated to the world that an Islamic system was an effective remedy for eliminating all forms of misery and disorder. In practical terms, he inspired Muslim youth by presenting the Islamic system as a foundation for the protection of humanity, the prevention of oppression, and the promotion of Muslim unity, freedom, and justice. Within a very short period, he proved all of the West’s propaganda to be false.
Within a few years, he convinced Muslims around the world that jihad was the only means of protecting the honour, property, and dignity of Muslims. Once again, movements began to emerge, and the ideas of Islamic governance, jihad, and the caliphate spread among Muslim youth. Muslims from various countries started migrating to Afghanistan in order to live under the shadow of the Islamic system. As a result, the cause of global jihad also gained strength. When the West saw that all of its propaganda had been swept away, it ultimately resorted to a direct military invasion of Afghanistan.