Graham Fuller, the CIA’s former head of long-term strategic planning, writes in the lead story of this month’s issue of Foreign Policy, a global politics magazine, that a terrorist attack on the US like 9/11 would likely have occurred even if the “Muslim religion had never existed”.
“In the bluntest of terms, would there have been a 9/11 without Islam?” asks Fuller, the adjunct professor of History at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
Fuller, who spent most of his career with the CIA in Muslim countries advising US government officials, says that Islam “provides a convenient scapegoat for those trying to explain the origins of terrorism”.
“If Muhammad had never founded Islam in seventh-century Arabia, the Middle East would likely have become dominated by Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which has had a history of violent conflict with the West and the Roman Catholic Church,” Fuller writes.
Fuller, the author of The Future of Political Islam, adds:
“Principal horrors of the 20th century came almost exclusively from strictly secular regimes: Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It was Europeans who visited their world wars’ twice upon the rest of the world - two devastating global conflicts with no remote parallels in Islamic history.”
Comments (7)
Fuller doesn't know history facts.
Hitler was not secular and neither was his regime. Hitler was a devout christian (and vegetarian). And on the beltbuckles of the SS was the creed "Gott mit uns" (God with us).
The thing that these regimes (Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot) seem to have in common is socialism as basic ideology.
Posted by Erwin | February 8, 2008 10:31 AM
Posted on February 8, 2008 10:31
So why worse than 9/11 didnt happened to "Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot."
?
Posted by lucklucky | February 4, 2008 12:59 PM
Posted on February 4, 2008 12:59
Al Qaeda did not justify its attacks of 9/11 in anti-imperialist terms, although it has later changed its public explanation with western audiences because it finds such arguments have a sympathetic hearing among some. When it addresses Muslims, and presumably what its members themselves believe, it gives its motives as being based in Islamic teachings on jihad. The chief motive with bin Laden seems to have been anger at the presence of American troops in the Arabian peninsula in the light of Mohammed's dying command that there should only be one religion in Arabia.
Hitler and Mussolini, like Saddam were brought down by Western (and Russian) armies while Leopold's atrocities in the Congo were ended by international protest when it was found out what was going on (compare with OIC ineffectuality and virtual silence over Darfur - let alone anything that happened in South Sudan.)
Living in a Muslim country for too long seems to have made him go native enough not to recognise West Pakistani behaviour in E. Pakistan, in 1971, the Indonesian wiping out of a third of the population of East Timor (and the butchering of between 500,000 and a million non-Muslims in 1965), the Armenian massacres and use of gas against civilians by Saddam, as worth including among any list of 20th century horrors.
Posted by jim | January 30, 2008 2:24 AM
Posted on January 30, 2008 02:24
Hello All
I find it quite nauseating that all of the persons that have cntributed to this thread seem to assume that the author has some hidden agenda. Further more it seems a though you might beleive that the author is a hidden muslim. Just because he beleives that the imperial tendencies of the British and US empires would have meant attacks any way, you seem to beleive that he is a muslim sympathiser.
Posted by Sajid Risat | January 29, 2008 3:32 PM
Posted on January 29, 2008 15:32
Well if Graham Fuller was the head of long term strategic planning at the CIA no wonder the American foreign policy is such a mess.
They cannot read the present because they cannot read the past.
Posted by william | January 29, 2008 11:10 AM
Posted on January 29, 2008 11:10
I suspect some ulterior motive in this man's adoption of such a point of view. If I remember, the Byzantines called upon western European Christains to help them against the Seljuks - resulting in the First Crusade.
The 14thC Byzantine emperor quoted by the Pope to the anger of Muslims, came as far as England, looking for support. Also no form of Christianity, Eastern or other has a doctrine of jihad embedded in its canonical texts, ready for resurrection at different points in history.
The spasmodic horrors of twentieth century tyrants and aggressive states were augmented by modern technology, absent in periods of maximum Islamic power ( e.g. at the time of their numerous massacres in India): besides, many people compare the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's to the western front and the Ottoman's took part in WWI as earnestly as anyone else. I notice the Armenian massacres were not included in his list.
Posted by Jim | January 28, 2008 11:41 PM
Posted on January 28, 2008 23:41
The premise of Christianity is peace, forgiveness and loving your enemies.
The premise of Islam is enforced belief through violence.
The statement by Simon Fraser is not logical and is perhaps propaganda.
Posted by M24 | January 28, 2008 10:49 PM
Posted on January 28, 2008 22:49