TRIGGERnometry - Is the West at War With Islam? - Aimen Dean

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

Aimen Dean is a founding member of al-Qaeda who then became a spy for MI6. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/trigger... https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is the show for you. If you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our incredible guest today is a former member of Al-Qaeda, who then became a spy for MI6. Amund Dean, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Listen, man, what a fascinating background. A lot of people are going to be like, whoa! Let's listen to this guy. One thing I should probably mention is you're the co-host of the conflicted podcast and your co-host, Thomas Small, we had on the show, probably one of our most fascinating interviews that we've ever done, talking about the Middle East and all that sort of thing. So before we get into the interview, which is going to be absolutely fantastic, I can't wait, just give everybody a little bit more of the flavor of your background, how are you where you are, what's been your journey, because it sounds like an incredible one. Okay, I will try to condense it into one minute. So you can say basically that I am a Saudi born and raised Bahraini, half Lebanese, and there are Turkish and Persian and other ethnicities there.

It's, you know, Middle Eastern salad, really. And so from Saudi Arabia, I grew up there, pretty much a religious, you know, young lad, you know, memorize the Quran at a young age, wanted basically to become an. but much to the relief of my would-be congregation, I didn't, you know, end up being an imam. I ended up joining the jihad in Bosnia when I was 16. There, basically, the journey started towards darker and darker motives. And in 1997, I ended up joining Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. They sent me to their program for WMD, including explosives, chemical weapons, biological weapons,

and I was trained on that. And then there was a moment of disillusionment after the East Africa bombings when Al-Qaeda targeted American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. I just couldn't continue with the group, and I decided I want to leave. through the process of leaving, I ended up basically in the lap of the British intelligence services who, you know, well, it was supposed to be six months debriefings, ended up basically eight years of espionage and Sad al-Qaeda in 2006. Through the wisdom of some American administration officials, they leaked my identity to a journalist in the US because they wanted to talk about the successes they had in terms of espionage against al-Qaeda,

even though I wasn't their spy, I was the British, but then, you know, Basel state, you know, all of that. And so I, of course, basically had to leave the service of the British intelligence agencies, and I ended up basically exchanging one form of terrorism to another. I became a banker. Well, seriously, I was banker. So I joined the offices of a global bank looking after issues related to terrorism finance, well, and of course basically looking into issues of security, geopolitical stability.

And after that, basically, I left to work for even more evil organizations. It's the oil industry. And, yeah, you know, basically, to this day, I still work as a consultant for the energy industry as well as for, you know, other governments, you know, and some other evil entities. So, yeah, that's really my life in an action. So a minute of summarizing the life of immorality of aviation. I suppose the question we want to ask in, who's got more psychopaths, the oil industry, banking or Al-Qaeda? Difficult. Well, fantastic. I would say that the, I would say that the banking industry got a fair share of psychopaths for sure.

Absolutely. Of mass destruction. Well, look, we're joking around. And of course, it's a fascinating story condensed very briefly. You talk about it in great detail on the conflicted podcast, which I recommend everybody to listen to. It's just incredible how good it is. But let's talk a little bit about some of the stuff that particularly interests and

affect people here in the West, which is. which is, you know, it's never really made too much sense to me kind of logically looking at it, why a guy who grows up in London or in Bradford or whatever it might be might want to become so extreme in their thinking that they would go and fight and die in Syria or in Afghanistan or in Iraq. In your case, it was going from Bahrain to Bosnia. I mean, I don't know much about Bahrain, but I imagine living in Bahrain was better than doubtful. fighting and dying in Bosnia, right? So like that, that kind of, you know, why do people become

extremists? Why do people become Islamists? Why are they willing to die and leave the prosperity and the comfort and the freedoms of the West and go and do this kind of thing? I think that's a question that would, that puzzles all of us in some ways, doesn't it? Well, there are, I mean, I mean, the answer to this could take us several podcasts and several interviews just basically to get to the depth of it. You've got five minutes, mate. Welcome to the mainstream media, Raymond. You know, I faced worse challenges before.

Yes. All I can tell you, if I want to condense it, is that there are several layers of reasons. One of them basically is identity crisis, where people basically, you know, cease to identify with their own, you know, immediate society. One of the questions I always get asked by people, is that, you know, why there is a war between Islam and the West and that, you know,

which is basically this is a narrative that is prevalent out there. I always say that there isn't, you know, there isn't a war between Islam and the West. There is a war within Islam itself. There is a civil war within Islam in which, pitting the people who believe in the modern nation state against people who don't believe in the modern nation state. This is really what's happening. The forces with the modern nation states right now in the Middle East basically are fighting for survival, for their own survival against transnational ideologies like the Muslim

brotherhood, like Sunni militant Islam, like Al-Qaeda and Isis and Shabab, like the political and militant Shi'a Islam, the Wailat al-Faqi system or the Ayatollahs of Tehran and their allies like Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. All of these forces are trying to bring down the nation state. Now, why I'm saying that this is related to identity crisis, because. Because we shape our own identity around the modern nation state. You're all British. I mean, basically, I would describe myself as British now

because basically I believe my allegiance is to this state, to this modern nation state, and therefore, basically, I have allegiance to this nation state. These people who have identity crisis is because they have ceased to believe in the modern nation state and started to believe in transnational ideologies that want to bring down the modern nation state and create an empire in a bubble.

So just to pause you just for one moment, and there's plenty more time, I was only joking when I said, you only have five minutes. Just to put it in simple language for people, what you're really talking about is someone growing up in Bradford, let's say, but not actually feeling British.

They don't feel British, they don't feel an allegiance to this country. What they really feel is they are part of a movement whose job it is to, let's say, recreate the caliphate. just as an example. Exactly. This is exactly what it is. The idea is that there is a, you know, this romantic vision of imperial Islamic past

that need to be resurrected, and that's the only way basically Muslims can feel strengthened and emboldened and empowered, which is, you know, far away from the truth. The truth is basically that there is a lot of romanticization of Islamic history which misled many young people into believing that the past is so glorious, that the only way forward is to repeat that past with all its false and shortcomings, mostly hidden because of the way we teach history, unfortunately. And as a result, you have people who basically cease to believe in their own nation state, whether adopted or even their original nation state from their countries of origin.

And as a result, they start to believe that what Al-Qaeda is selling, what ISIS is selling, what the Iranian revolutionaries are selling is the future. And as a result, they flock into these conflicts because they believe that by recreating the caliphate, they will restore Islamic glory. And this is where, you know, you have the other side of Muslims who say, no, we have a functioning modern nation state. And this is the best guarantee for security, safety, stability, law and order, prosperity. Why do we have to abandon this vehicle for peace, just only basically to pursue a dream that will end up and result in oceans of blood and mountains of skulls? So identity crisis is the first step towards that dark path. People don't believe anymore in their nation states and end up believing in transnational ideologies.

So just on that, on that, I mean, let's just go before Francis, he's got a whole different other things that he wanted to talk to you about. But just we stick with that for a moment. Just summarizing what you've said there, is it fair to say then that the identity crisis and the temptation that some young Muslims in the West feel, and not only in the West, but also in the Middle East and elsewhere, feel to join these organizations, these extremist organizations, is a failure of integration in the West. fair to say, and a failure perhaps of what has been kind of described as multiculturalism, but basically the idea that rather than us all becoming British or us all being American under one nation state, what we are is communities. You've got the Asian community, the this community, that community, which are not encouraged to become British in a way. They encouraged to think of themselves as being still kind of in the space from which they came. This is one of the inaccuracies, I would say, of the narrative that has been pushed by some academics, unfortunately, to say that it's the failure of integration that led to people becoming more or less disillusion to the point of joining terrorist organizations.

If that is the case, why would thousands of young Saudis, Algerians and Tunisians, can't even, you know, integrate into their own societies, you know, even though they lived there for, you know, for, you know, 100 generations before? It's really not that simple. It's not like about alienation. It's a fact that people just divorcing themselves from the concept and the institution of the nation state. It's, it's really that simple. But why are they doing that, Eam? And that's what I'm trying to get at. Uh-huh. Then we have to reach into the, we start to depart now the rational into the irrational.

We will, we will, unfortunately, depart, you know, the realm of the rationality into the realm of irrationality. When we start to talk about the fact that they have also the religious and spiritual element here, we can't talk about, you know, Islamic-inspired terrorism without talking about Islam itself. we'll be kidding ourselves. And by the way, before anyone, you know, start saying basically anything, I mean, I'm a devout Muslim myself. You know, I, you know, not a day goes by without me reciting the Quran and saying my prayers. So please, like, I mean, do not think for a moment I'm attacking my own religion here. I'm just basically trying to dissect objectively, you know,

why people end up misinterpreting everything, basically they read and then they go and commit acts of terrorism. the reality is that irrationality takes hold here. Islam, we have to understand, is just like Catholicism is a guilt-based religion. It means basically that you feel guilty about so many things you do. And therefore, you know, Islam regulated the relationship between the individual and the creator through three channels or three pillars, as we call them. These pillars of worship are love. hope and fear. So you love the Lord. You, okay, so you, you know, so basically you,

apologies. I hope this isn't someone coming for you to shut you down. It's like YouTube going, shut this shit down. He's talking about Islam. No, no, no, no. So, so basically, you have three pillars of worship here, which is love, fear, and hope. Love for the Lord, hope for his reward, and fear of his eternal damnation. It's supposed to be balanced. So in a sentence, basically, that you love the Lord, you hope for his reward, but you fear his eternal damnation. That is how balanced the relationship between me and God, for example, should be.

However, because of the advent of globalization over the past generation, many clerics across the Muslim world decided to rely on fear and the preaching of fear and the aspects of fear within Islam in order to deter their congregations from indulging in acts that are sinful, whether drinking, sleeping around, consumption and selling of drugs, and all these other things joining gangs. And that was more prevalent actually in the West also, but it was equally practiced in the Arab world and the Muslim world in general.

So you end up basically with the balance of preaching in prices because the preachers are using fear which derives people into guilt, which drives them into looking for solutions. And one of the solutions is looking for redemption, and redemption is in jihad and martyrdom, according to groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda and other nefarious groups. They want to recruit people who basically believe

that the only way they can redeem themselves of sins is through jihad and martyrdom. You see, we don't have a priesthood in Islam where they can't absolve you of your sins if you confess. unlike Catholicism. So therefore, we have this crisis in, you know, in how religious principles being transmitted to young people in Friday prayers, where they feel that, okay, if you drink hell, if you smoke, hell, if you take drugs, hell, if you sleep around hell, there isn't that message of hope that if you refrain from all of this, you will end up going to heaven, God will reward you

with a heavenly abode forever and ever. So basically this crisis in religious preaching resulted in many people becoming more and more guilty. Now, that is not enough yet to push them over the edge, but then comes the even more irrational, which is prophecies. All jihadists who join the jihadist groups, whether there are Isis Al-Qaeda,

Shabab or even more so Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen and the Iranian IRGC, they are all motivated by prophecies of an awaited Messiah, a Mahdi, as they call him. The idea that there will be these black banners rising from Afghanistan and eastern Iran, marching all the way towards Jerusalem, slaughtering all the Jews, and basically ushering in an era of a new caliphate, You have, you know, these prophecies talking about great wars in Afghanistan, in North Africa, in Syria, in Iraq and Yemen. All of these are being packaged, even though they are all fabrications from history. You know, but I don't want to go into details about that.

But they are fabrications, if you look deep into them. However, they are sold like drugs, like, you know, spiritual intoxicants, as I would call them, which will then basically tell people who already feel sinful and in need of redemption and they feel alienated in need of belonging and empowerment. And on top of all of this, they already have this identity crisis. They need to be part of a purpose that you have a destiny. You can free your own inner sadist, inner violent individual to go and fight for God in order to fulfill a blue person.

for a war ordained 1400 years ago. It's intoxicating for many people. And that's why many academics are still baffled about why prisons in particular are a fertile ground because that's where their most guilty consciences live. That's where most downtrodden people are. And that's where people basically who have inner sadism and violence that need to be released.

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Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. And Aiman, how does the process work for a lot of these people who get indoctrinated in this kind of mentality. Is it that they go to a particular type of mosque? Is it a preacher? Is it normally a family friend? How does it work normally? There isn't a single methodology. I mean, it could be peer to peer. This is one popular method. And it would be through social media. In the past, it used to be through either mosques or universities. And then it became mosques, universities and prisons. Now it is mosques, universities, prisons, peer-to-peer, and social media, all coming together,

basically, in the past, basically, if I wanted to recruit someone, I would have to go to a mosque or a Islamic society in a university. Now these days, I could basically record the video, and I could invade 100,000, you know, personal phones, bedrooms, and living rooms, and preach my message. I don't need even to be alive. I could record many things. I could write many things like people like Anwar Laoulaqi, for example, the famous English-speaking Al-Qaida preacher,

and leave them there for eternity online keeping people being recruited. So the thing that I found very interesting and incredibly worrying was when I was reading some of your articles, was you saying how incredibly difficult it is to de-radicalize people who have been indoctrinated? One of the things that people need to understand is that once you go down the path of believing that you are fulfilling a divine destiny that's going to end up empowering people, if you believe that the world is run by a cabal of corrupt, you know, bloodthirsty creeps, and that your mission is to pave the way for a messiah-like figure to come along, then you have already gone down too far down the path of irrationality to bring them back.

The problem is that the spiritual aspect of jihadism and Islamic inspired, political violence, really, you know, take hold of the mind to the point where people cannot believe that everything they've done, everything they fought for, everything they've let for was wrong. And to try, you know, and to try to tell them that, because you see, the preaching within jihadi circles, jihadi camps, jihadi, you know, online, you know, forums, you know, really focus on taking you upward, as if, like, you are spiritually ascending above what they call the mundane realities of the world. You know, you see your fellow humans as nothing but cattle. You know, they just live every day, you know, basically mundane lives. They eat, they graze,

you know, they breathe, you know, they sleep, no purpose in life. You, however, that's what they tell you, You, however, have a far more divine purpose. You are far above them. You see, that's why, you know, when people say, how could these people behead and execute other people without feeling any sense of remorse? And the answer is because they have already gone too far in their superiority complex, rising above everyone else in their spiritual ascendance, as they call it, to see everyone else below them as ants that can be trodden on,

And therefore, basically, they don't feel the human connection with their fellow human beings who are not seeing part of their ideology. So this is why, how can you bring someone down to Earth? You tell them basically that, okay, can you switch off that spiritual part of your mind and just switch on the logical and irrational one to just for a minute, consider maybe everything that you've heard. was either wrong or misinterpreted, or basically it was a fabrication from history that have seeped into the books in which picked up in recent decades by people who basically have an agenda against the modern nation state.

It's extremely difficult to just switch off that, you know, ever buzzing, spiritual engine and their mind telling them that they are on a divine, mission. More like if you ever watched that, you know, movie from the 1980s, which was one of my favorites, the Blues Brothers, you know, we are on a mission from God.

I'm going to be honest, you, Eamon. I didn't expect you to start talking about the Blues Brothers, mate. I'm going to be... There's a bit of a left-field note there. But look, here's a question. So we're now talking about the case of Shemima Beggam. The 15-year-old girl, for those of the people

who are not from the UK, so 50 million, year old girl who was radicalized, went to the caliphate to fight and support ISIS, now wants to come back. What did we do in the cases of those people who have declared themselves allies, believers, all the rest of it? How do we bring them back into society? Can we do it? And also, what do we do with these people who are identifying with this way of life and belief system? If I know the answer to this, I'll be extremely rich man by now. Mate, you've worked in a bank and for the oil industry.

If you're not extremely rich already, you're doing something seriously wrong, man. I would say, you know, okay, I would remove the extreme and just put in a keep the, you know, the rich part. Okay, so I would say that it is extremely difficult to extract them from that mentality and just to bring them back. into reality unless if they themselves feel disillusioned, that's one. And remember, by that time, I mean, she spent, what, five years now in that part of the world, both as a, you know, as a jihadi bride, as a militant possibly, you know, and also as a prisoner in that prison camp, she would be extremely apart from damaged, especially she lost three children, apart from the fact that she would be, you know, damaged mentally,

you know, the question is, how do you take her back into believing that all the things that you have seen around her, all the friends that she knew, are actually not destined to heaven, but to hell? And that all of the people who, you know, she had developed affinity to, were just mistaken, as we call them in Islam,

the mistaken, you know, dogs of hell. How can you convince her of that? I mean, it needs to be done in a closed, in a confined, you know, comfortable space. The question is, do we have the will or even the resources to do it? Do we have the trained personnel to do it? Do we have to spend millions and millions and millions of taxpayer money, just basically trying to rehabilitate people who are going to be extremely difficult to rehabilitate? I mean, this is why one of the statements by Rory Stewart, the former Conservative Minister

and MP, he said once, and I supported him fully on this, he said, it's much kinder if they just die there, you know, in the war zone and just, you know, be done with it, just die there. And I know many people will be shocked, but this is the Islamic way to do it, actually. This is exactly why Imam Ali, who was revered by both Shia and Sunnis, he had to deal with the sect like this. The first breakaway sect in Islam was the Khawaraj. The Khawaraj are the first zealots in Islam who basically thought that not, you know, that Ali and Imam Ali and everyone else were not true Muslims and they were not implementing Islam as it is. So they rebelled against him. And they wanted basically, they were just exactly like ISIS, you know, bloodthirsty, murdering creeps.

So Imam Ali adopted an effective methodology with them. You first debate and then eradicate. That's the only way you can deal with them in a war zone. In a civil society, I would say you first debate and then incarcerate. indefinitely. Because when Imam Ali debated with them

one third of them basically just recanted. So they were admitted back into society in the questions asked. The other two thirds fought and they were annihilated and they were

chased and killed in a war zone. However, in a civil society, I would advocate that we debate powerfully, we debate, but then those who are not convinced keep them locked up until basically we see enough evidence that they have completely transformed themselves, and this could take years and years and years. I mean, I have to say this appeals to my Russian heart very much, kill them all.

I'm not being bullards. But I mean, I'm sure you're a smart man. You appreciate how difficult that sort of messages politically for people today. digest. I'm surprised. I didn't hear Rory Stewart say that. But, you know, any politician who, like, proactively advocates for that would be absolutely destroyed. Can you imagine me saying it with my voice? Go for a mayor. I want to see you super careful. Educate or eradicate, mate. Well, yeah, I like this. This is a slogan. This is a form of a slogan. Well, this video is getting demonetized right fucking now.

No, look, I'm not advocating in Guantanamo. I'm not advocating, you know, particularly like in that we have to go and slaughter them if there is no need in a war zone. But I said in a war zone, of course, basically your aim is to, you know, eliminate your enemy. But in a civil society, your aim is to keep the society safe. And no one can say that they know these people better than. than we do. I don't take lectures from any non-Muslim, non-Arab academics or political activists or journalists. I don't, I take no lectures from them. You know, these people are as dangerous to our societies in the Middle East as well to our societies here in Europe, as well as to their own

families sometime. We've seen people when they return back to Saudi Arabia and murder their own cousins, brothers and fathers. And it's well documented. But, I mean, part of the problem, we're talking about educating, but from what I remember, one of the London Bridge terrorists was he was on a deradicalization? I'll repeat that. He was on a de-radicalization program, was he not? On the day that he killed people. Exactly. You see, at that day, I remembered I was confronted in 2013.

at that time I wasn't known to be a former spy or anything, but I was confronted by a well-meaning academic from Oxford. She kept insisting basically that we could reach out to them, we could reach out to them through human connection. And I keep saying, no, no, no, no, because I know these people. I know how far they are disconnected from their human links. And, you know, and then I said, I smiled at her and I said the naivity of the lambs. You know, the silence of the lambs, the naivity of the lambs here.

I mean, basically, it's just, you know, the lamb always think basically the human, you know, basically, oh, he's looking after me, he's feeding me. Oh, look at the cute dog, basically, shepherding me. And then one day, of course, basically, they will end up on the shelves, you know, in pieces. So you see, here is the same thing. it's the feeling basically that you are getting through to them, but then they surprise you by something like this. And it's not the first time, not the second time, not the third time.

It happened multiple times. I mean, if you watch the film Zero Dark 30, one of the agents, a Jordanian agent, who turned against the Jordanian intelligence and CIA, and basically he was, he ended up basically just coming back with a car full of explosives and killed them all. killed the five handlers, basically, he was dealing with. So it's not the first time that we see this.

And this is why the counter-radicalization programs, as they call them CVE, counter-violence extremism, are riddled with naivities and naive ideals, you know, that secular, you know, principles, you know, liberal, democratic, you know, notions, could penetrate into their minds. Nothing penetrate into their minds than actually convincing them soundly

that, theoretically, and spiritually, they are on the wrong way. Amen, so look, it's quite a serious thing that you're saying, and I'm sure you realize that it is quite serious. Do you think that essentially, I mean, but it makes sense at the same time, because if someone is willing to blow themselves up or to stab innocent people in the streets of London.

I mean, they're going to be pretty extreme in their thinking, I'd imagine. I'm not sure I've never been someone who's done that. But I imagine if you were, for me to do that, I'd have to be pretty, pretty extreme in my ways of thinking. I'm not sure I could be talked out of it with some nice, you know, liberal or values or whatever. So do you think we in the West have this slightly idealized vision of human beings now, where we think, well, human beings are all innately good and fluffy, and if we just talk to them the right way, they'll all behave the way that we want. And we're very naive in that way.

I think the reason because the West lost touch generally with spirituality, they think basically, you know, on a logical, rational level, cynical, I would say, to the point of cynicism, they don't believe that there are other people who are deeply spiritual, you know, deeply concerned more with the afterlife than this life. And as a result, you know, they just don't communicate on the same wavelength. They think that, you know, this is a human, so I can get to him through human rational, logical argument, forgetting basically, that that other human basically is not on the same wavelength as he is. And if you try to understand the world through your own cynical lack of spiritualism, then, unfortunately,

you are going down a rabbit hole and you can't find a way out of it. You know, this is why whenever I talk to people about prophecies and they say, oh, come on. No, no, excuse me. Don't apply your own cynicism on situations that are

actually, you know, deeply spiritual and deeply religious and superstitious. Do not apply your own rational, logical thinking there. It's not going to work. So, for example, whenever I tell people that you can't convince extremely, the only way you can get them on the path of,

I'm not saying de-radicalization, I'm saying disengagement from violence, that principle I believe in. To disengage from violence, you don't need to convince them, you need to confuse them. You need to sow the seeds of doubt in their mind. Why?

Because you said, how could someone strap a bomb to themselves or take a knife, knowing certainly they would be killed after they stop few people by police bullets? How could they just do that? Because they have 100% certainty that the moment they, you know, click that, you know, switch or when they, when the bullets hit them, that they are going to end up in heaven, they will cross that eternal bridge, you know, into the afterlife. Now, if you upload that little virus of doubt and just create one or two or three percent of doubt in their minds, then they will be transcending from being certain, committed, driven militants into confused militants.

And a confused militant will hesitate. And there has been examples of people hesitating. And that hesitation was due to doubt because of a statement they heard before. because of an argument with a friend or a loved one before. So it happened and it's well documented even that they have basically stepped backward from killing hundreds of people or dozens of people. I mean, in one incident, basically,

it was someone with a shoe bomb about to board a plane and basically he just went back home, hit the shoe under his bed and basically didn't want to take part of it. Why? Because doubt due to statements he heard, heard before, you know, basically made him disengage from that fatal moment. He could have killed 250 passengers. So it's, you know, this is why I don't believe in de-radicalization. I believe in basic, what I call disengagement from violence, because these people will

never turn into liberal Democrats, you know. Look, I'm still a conservative, you know, after all these years, you know. I voted Boris twice in the London mayor election. Well, Eamon, you shouldn't have said that, made the new story in The Guardian tomorrow is going to be former Al-Qaeda operative comes out in support of Boris Johnson. Yeah, they will remove the former spy for my six, yeah. Just former al-Qaeda operative.

Former terrorists support Boris Johnson, that's it. So we've been talking about this subject now, and we could continue to explore it. We're going to be moving on to something that I think is you have wanted to talk about, and it's a subject that has captured the minds and hearts of people around the world, which is the plight of the Uyghur Muslims in China. Now, for those people who may not be aware of what is happening, could you just give us a brief rundown of what is going on in China at the moment?

If you try to imagine the Chinese map right now in your head, and if you don't basically just pull up your smartphone. Well, you've got it behind you, mate. So if you look at the map of China and you look at the northwest of China, there is a large province. That province is almost six times the size, seven times actually the size of the United Kingdom. So it's massive, it's huge. But it's really not that much populated, 35 million people, I think. And roughly about between 13 to 15 million people of them are from the ethnicity called the Uyghurs.

The Uyghurs are Turkic people. linguistically and ethnically, they are quite close to the Kazakhs, people from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and they speak a language similar. In essence, they are similar in names and culture. So they've been part of China on and off for almost 2,000 years. So the land has been changing hands all the time. But for the majority of that time, basically, they were Chinese province,

sometimes basically Basel states, sometimes independent kingdom, and sometimes basically, you know, and sometimes basically, It's their map is off and on and, you know, to the sideways. Much more like the Armenians, poor Armenians. So they're like Scottish people, basically. Given I live in Scotland, I wouldn't comment.

So basically, the, you know, the Uyghurs, you know, in recent years, being subject to intense, I would say, crackdown by the Chinese authorities. Now, basically, I must confess here, basically, that I work with many Chinese oil companies and telecommunication. And, you know, I visit China basically six, seven times a year. I have many friends in Beijing, both from the private sector, the public sector, from think tanks, including the Confucius Institute, even in the jockey club, the horse racing club there. So I, you know, was always trying, basically, to see the conflict there. into Sanjang before. So I tried to, the province we were talking about where the Uyghurs are.

So I try to see the conflict from both sides here. Now, it is important, one of the things that alarmed me, alarmed me really in the last several weeks is the fact that there is a talk of a new jihad front to be created in that part of the world, in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, known to the locals as East Turkestan, as they call it, or Dugu Turkestan in their local language. Now, not many people know that, but if I ask you, Constantine, if I ask you and ask you, Thomas, what are the largest, in which nationality constitute the largest jihadist contingent in Syria?

Well, I mean, I'm completely uneducated guess. I would say somewhere, I don't know, like Iran. Okay, Constantine. Are you going to say like Chechens or something? Well, Chechens formed about 5,000, I would say. And they were large for a while. Tunisians, there were about 6,000 of them. Basically, Chinese citizens make up the largest contingent of jihad.

foreign jihadists in Syria. Wow. There are 8,500 of them right now in Idlib, as well as, if we add the women and the children, it will be 21,000 in total. They have a community of 21,000, and they are living in multiple villages and towns, which used to belong to Christians,

places like Hullus and Yaobia and Janudia and Zambaki, and they have populated these areas. Now, there are 8,500,000. militants. And these belong to a group called the TIP or the Turkestan Islamic Party. The Turkestan Islamic Party was always aligned to the Kaida. I knew them basically since the days of Afghanistan when I was there. Some of them were members of the Al-Qaida Shura Council. So they are extremely aligned to the Kaida. And while they are there actually in Syria, they are aligned not only to HTS, which is

an offshoot of Al-Qaeda that is now more independent, they are also allied to a group called Harassuddin, which is a Ta-a-da's official branch within Syria. And also they have an incredible close relationship

to the Turkish military intelligence and the Turkish intelligence. Now, the problem here is only in recent because of the Chinese, you know, it's It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Chinese are always afraid of TIP,

that they will come back and they will carry out attacks. And actually, some of the Syrian returnees, you know, people who returned from Syria to China, committed in Yunnan province, committed an act of terrorism where in Kunmin, a train station, they took up knives, basically, and killed 47 people and wounded more than 140 others. So already there was, you know, acts of terrorism taking place,

in China. So since 2014, suddenly the repression started, they doubled down in repression. So the Chinese reacted the same way. They always react against any separatist movement, whether it is Buddhists in Tibet or Christians in the mainland China or against Hong Kong democracy activists or against Taiwan's aspiration to be independent. They acted in that way. But also because we have to understand also conflicts, you know, from different angles here. You know, there are two types of resource conflicts. You know, there is resource grab and there is resource protection. Resource grab, of course, we know all about it, basically nations going into other nations

to try to grab. We're experts on it, mate. We're experts on it. Yeah. And there is, you know, basically wars where people trying to protect their own resources. For example, look at the Kashmir conflict. It's about water. You know, basically Kashmir is where the glaciers of India, basically, are located, some of them.

And therefore, basically, the water flowing from there is important for India. And they are not going to concede that to Pakistan, no matter what, just forget it. The war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis on the side of the Yemeni government is about water security and the security of the energy exports. and the food security in terms of export and import. So, you know, people are vicious. You know, look at these wars, they are vicious. People are vicious. Governments are vicious when they are trying to protect their strategic interest.

In the past, it used to be the back door of China. But since President Xi Ping decided that it's going to be the new front door of China, that is going to be the place where, you know, through it, the railways of the new Silk Road, The Belt and Road Initiative, yeah. It's going through because Xinjiang is going to be the junction where one part of the railways will go through Kazakhstan and then Russia into the heartlands of Europe.

That will take only 16 days for freight trains, as opposed to shipping through the South China Sea all the way to Europe through the sea. That takes 42 days. So it is faster, cheaper, less insurance and less vulnerable to a U.S. blockade in the South China Sea. So it is strategically important. And the second aspect of it is the SIPAC or the China-Pakstan Economic Corridor, which will take railways into Gawadr, you know, port.

Gohawadr port basically is on the southern shores of Pakistan, which will enable a huge amount of trade to go from China and into China from the Middle East, especially the which Arab Gulf countries. Now, 12 million Uyghurs will not stand, you know, basically, you know,

a chance against 1.4 billion Chinese Hans. And this is something that I want to, you know, basically people to understand that, you know, the focus, you know, in the past several months about, you know,

encouraging an uprising in Xinjiang, encouraging, and I know of certain forces, you know, secretly working to transport some of these militants back to China to carry out acts of terrorism to, in the world of some of these, you know, agents to give China its own Afghanistan is dangerous. And I want to say to people, please stop before it's too late, because if you try to create a new Afghanistan in China in that part of the world, you will end up radicalizing thousands of Kazakhs, of Kyrgyz, of Uzbeks, of, you know, more Afghans and Pakistanis going to join. And then we will end up basically seeing European Muslims and other Middle Eastern Muslims, you know, flying into there and joining this new jihad theater. And it will be another Syria in the middle of Asia. In the cynical way, I mean, I can see why there are people in the West that might want that.

I mean, the way that you describe it. But look, it's a very complicated situation. I guess what I'm hearing out of that is essentially China sees this as a trade route area and it can't afford to have 12 million people running around, stabbing people or blowing shit up, right? That would be the summary of it. Yes, but they are going about it the wrong way. Sure, sure. I always, look, I always told my Chinese friends.

What you're doing is making things worse in a, you know, in a problem. basically, you know, the repression is going to cause more and more, you know, militancy. But at the same time, there are other forces who are stoking the fires of militancy from abroad. You know, it is becoming, the Uyghurs now are becoming the victim of Beijing and certain powers in certain countries like Turkey and the West, who are trying basically to give China the headache in Xinjiang in retaliation for what, you know, trade war, COVID-19, you know, Hong Kong, you know, crisis. I would say that, please, we tried this in Afghanistan, we tried this in Syria, and look what we are doing right now. Look what, you know, reward we are reaping right now.

We are not supposed to encourage another theater of jihad. What is the solution? I know, and this is, again, what is the solution? The solution is not by adding sanctions and pressure. The solution is by festering dialogue. The World Uyghur Congress, you know, I know that they have leaders in the U.S. like Rabia Qadir, I know they have leaders in Turkey like Sayyid Tim Turk. Well, if Sayyid Tim Turk is listening, Sayyid, you invited me to your home in 2013 for Iftar and Ramadan.

You know, I have the greatest respect for you. All I can tell you, and I can tell every Uyghur, the solution is in sitting down with Beijing and entering into dialogue, not necessarily with the government, but at least start with the academics, start with the think tanks, try to find a solution to gain, mostly, you know, try to find a solution to gain religious freedoms in exchange for security. I think this is, in my opinion, the best way to go around it, and not to encourage militancy. The path that the TIP, the Turkestan Islamic Party, the Aqaeda-aligned TIP,

is taking the Uyghur-Ker call. this path is going to lead to nothing but destruction. The Chinese, you know, the Chinese juggernaut will stop at nothing. They will basically take these 12 million and disperse them all over China and replace them with Hans. That's what's going to do. I'm saying this because I have fear for them. I fear for their culture. I fear for the survival.

All I want them to do basically is to just stop, take a breather and basically just sit down with Chinese academic. diplomats, reach out to their, even to the Chinese private sector, reach out to Jack Ma, even, you know, the former CEO of Alibaba, you know, reach out to these people, reach out to Saudi diplomats, reach out to UAE diplomats, reach out basically to the think tanks of the world and try to arrange that kind of dialogue at this low level, to reach a higher level later to find a solution centering around peace for religious freedoms. And, I mean, so you're appealing for them to be peaceful. Can you, because it still seems vague to a lot of people,

what is actually happening to these people as we speak at the moment? What is the CCP and the army inflicting upon them? As far as the Chinese Communist Party is concerned, they saw the problem of Islam in San Jank. That's how they see it, that the problem there is mixture of Islam, and Uyghur separatism. So they were saying, okay, we don't have a problem with the Hewi Muslims.

You know, there are more Hewi Muslims than Uyghur Muslims in China, by the way. So, but relatively they are not harassed as much as, you know, the Uyghur. So they thought, okay, we have the man who pacified Tibet, you know, and modeled the Tibetan Buddhism according to our vision of China.

So how about we model the Uyghur Islam to conform with the vision of the Chinese communist nation state? And so they sent the same man who was the governor of Tibet to go and govern Xinjiang and pacify it the same way he did with the Tibetans also, except that Islam is not Buddhism. Islam, you know, basically do contain jihad, unlike Buddhism. So, you know, this is where... Amen, are you saying not all religions are the same? Of course not. Whenever someone says to me, basically, but Amen, Islam is the religion of peace, and I say, please don't say it.

You know, is this disservice to Islam to say Islam is the religion of peace, it's not. You know, basically, Islam is, well, it is not inherently violent. it is basically a practical religion. It is a jihad is the prerogative of the state. It is violent within a state structure, but peaceful within an individual structure. So it needs to be always understood this way, that it can deploy violence if necessary

in a just cause, but provided it is done by a state, not by an individual. Only in the past 50 years throughout Islamic history, we saw the subversion of the right of the state to deploy jihad, and suddenly we see individuals, like what happening in Sanjan, then Iraq and Syria and Kashmir, places where individuals are actually deploying violence, deploying jihad,

while it is not their right under Islamic theology. The right to deploy jihad is to the nation state. Then what is happening? The de-legitimization of the nation-state. Right, we come back to the beginning. Yes. So take us back to the Uyghurs. in this province, they bring this governor in who treats it like he treated the Buddhists in Tibet,

and then what happens? And then that's it. You know, okay, so we have to re-educate them all. You know, so take them into these camps, you know, basically, you know, make them sing the national every day, read the Mao red book every day, tell them about Marx, you know, theories every day, even though, you know, the Chinese economy and Marx are, you know, basically, balls apart, and then feed them, you know, basically the love and loyalty to the nation-states in China. But the problem is that they are going about it basically the same way they always

do with everything else, the industrial way. You know, it's just industrial. That's how they understand it. Because they are not, you know, deeply religious people. They are, you know, they are a little bit of like an enigma. You know, basically they are communist in their thinking, but they are also capitalist consumerists in their practice, in their daily lives. You know, and, you know, and because of course, basically the normal relations of brotherhood, basically, and sisterhood has been, you know, more or less dismantled over the past generation or two because of the one child policy. So you end up basically with more and more selfish generations, you know, being born, who don't understand basically the collective will of the Uyghurs. But the way the Uyghurs,

were always allowed as a religious minority to have more than two or three children. Not many people know that. In one, you know, some of the minorities were allowed to do that. And they were always represented as one of the minorities of China. In fact, if you take a Chinese currency, there are four scripts on it. So there are four, you know, calligraphy, Chinese calligraphy, Mongolian calligraphy, Tibetan calligraphy, and Uyghur calligraphy. it's all represented in the Chinese currency.

But it's the industrial way of, you know, okay, we have a problem. So what do we do, basically? Okay, take the millions and put them in the camps. When the split between the Soviet Union and China happened and the Soviet Union decided to pull away the nuclear program assistance for China, you know, the Russian engineers, before they left, they shredded, you know, the nuclear program documents and left. So the Chinese gathered, you know, the 8 million pieces, you know, in the 1960s, they gathered the 8 million pieces of shreds and employed 1 million Chinese to put them together

in the biggest. Oh, is it shit, man. And that's how China have a nuclear bomb. So it's the industrial mindset. So it's CVE or counter-violent extremism on an industrial scale. They deal with it, okay, if you tell the Chinese this is a nut, forget basically a sledgehammer. They will bring a bulldozer, you know, basically, it's not. So we have, you know, because why for them, they see Xinjiang as, you know, their Achilles here, their vulnerability, their buffer zone being, you know, basically a subject of a conspiracy, you know, internally and externally.

So the paranoia takes in, the industrial repression mindset takes hold, and they move in in this way. Now, this is why I'm saying that the only solution for this is dialogue only. The repression will continue, unfortunately, until there is a dialogue that guarantees for China is security and guarantees for the weakest their religious freedoms. Well, I mean, that is incredibly bleak, I mean, because we know that with China, when it comes to human rights, whether it's Tibet, whether it's Hong Kong, I think it's be fair to say that that's, they're not, that's not one of their strong points, is it? Really. Indeed, but the solution is not to create another Afghanistan that will suck in thousands upon thousands of young Muslims from the West, from the Middle East, from South Asia, from Central Asia, and also this will impact Russian security. It will impact on the security of the Central Asian republics.

It will impact the security of India. It will impact the security of Pakistan. We don't want that, please. Amon, how close are we to that situation happening, do you think? How close are we to that catastrophic event? I think we will see it in 2021. Wow. If those who are planning it, and I know who they are,

if those who are planning it do not basically put the, you know, hit the pose button right now and understand that they're playing with fire. And how much truth is there to some of the things that we're hearing out of China? You talk about this industrial approach essentially where, you know, human beings are cogs in a machine, much more than they are individuals to be looked after and thought of it as people. How much truth is there is there to concentration camps? We see these images of people with shaved heads. We read stories about exports of human hair going to the United States from China.

We hear forced sterilization programs. We hear forced organ donations, all of this stuff. To people in the West, that sounds pretty horrific. and because it is. Is all of that true? Is that happening? All I can tell you is that in regard to the concentration camps, they are true. I mean, basically. However, we're not talking about people basically staying there forever. People staying there between an average of eight months, and then they, so-called graduate. Whether that's true or not, I don't know.

I shouldn't laugh, but it's just crazy, man. The average is eight months. before, basically, they are released back into society. And, you know, if you drive through Xinjiang, you will find there are some towns that are empty, and there are some towns that are completely bustling, full and thriving. The towns that are empty are the towns that, you know, basically they suspect of being rebellious, and the towns that are thriving are the Muslim towns they suspect of, or they are absolutely sure they are loyal and cooperative. it seems that the Chinese are dividing the Uyghurs into,

you're loyal, you're not, you know, we trust you, we don't. So it seems to me basically that the prison camps, basically, they are exactly what they are, prison camps, but they are no different from what you see from the rest of China. Because even in the rest of China, they make people even write postcards, print postcards, they make people basically, you know, work on, you know, producing goods and services and toys even.

There are toy factories that actually prisons, you know, in many of the toys, basically, that you see sometime on the shelves, were made there by prisoners because prisoners need to work in order to earn, you know, their living, which is not far away from what is practiced in the United States, actually, in some prisons where, you know, if you call, you know, the hotline, you know, basically to order a pizza, you know, most likely the one processing your order is a prisoner, in a prison call center. It had happened in the U.S.

So it is happening already in China. China have, you know, basically this huge efficiency of you are in prison. We're going to shave your hair, use your hair, you know, for whatever we want. If you die in prison, you know, you are organ donor, you know, straight away. If, you know, basically we, and whatever you work for, yes, we're going to sell it abroad or in the internal market. However, this is what you are going to spend. We give you the money in the prison to spend on toothpaste and toothbrush and extra food and pen and paper and books basically you want to read. So it is a brutal prison system, but it is not that much different from what you see in the US in some states.

Wow. I mean, the thing is taking my breath away a little bit, Eamon, what you've just been talking about. everything from Afghanistan and to, you know, the treatment of the Uyghurs. And I think one question that we're all probably wondering is what can we do? Is there anything we can do in the West? Is there any particular organizations who are trying to represent the Uyghurs, maybe trying to help or ease their plight in some way, shape or form? I think foreign ministries in the West should be in touch with the World Uyghur Congress, especially their leadership in Turkey,

they are more powerful than their leadership in the US and try to basically find a way to both put the pressure on the World Warwick a Congress and on the Chinese government to actually sit down together and work out a solution to this crisis because this cannot go forward. Also, I really, really wish

if the two most powerful men in the Arab world. I'm talking here to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and to the Crown Prince of the Abu Dhabi, Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zaid. We've got a big audience,

but I'm not sure those two are watching right now. But they have incredible clout with China. They could basically also find a way to basically bridge the gap between the two. The problem is, is the cause of the Uyghurs has been hijacked, especially by the Muslim Brotherhood and by the Turkish government in particular, which doesn't see eye to eye with the two people I just, you know,

mentioned leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So unfortunately, the Muslim and Arab world is so divided, even basically to find any meaningful support for the Uyghurs, and therefore basically the best way to do it is to, you know, organizations like the European Institute for Peace, the EIP, institutions like the EU, for example, institutions like the United Nations, these institutions, they can find a way to bridge the gap

at least start at an academic level. You know, there is a film called Endgame, which William Hart and, you know, other, you know, amazing stars in 2009 came together to create this film, about how, you know, basically a, you know, an employee from a gold company in the UK based in London was the spark in the mid-1980s to make some, you know, academics, white academics in South Africa, sit down with ANC officials in London, in a house in Somerset, for four years in dialogue, which resulted in finally the release of Nelson Mandela and the start of the handover of the,

the dismantling of the apartheid and the democratic elections in South Africa. So, you know, it all started at an academic level. So if we could basically get academics, you know, from both sides, Chinese academics and Uyghur academics to sit down together in neutral locations, you know, in Malaysia, in Singapore, in, you know, in Switzerland, if we could, in Norway, if we could get them to sit down together and talk about, you know, how can they, basically. basically manage each other's expectations, you know, bring down the demands slowly, slowly, gradually, basically until there is a common ground. Once there is a common ground, then, you know,

things could start to translate into officials sitting together. And the end result would be restoration of some degree of autonomy, religious freedoms in exchange for security, stability, and loyalty to the Beijing government. If that were to happen. And of course, basically, then the Uyghurs will share in the prosperity that awaits, you know, the Xinjiang province as a whole because of the massive investment in the Silk Road projects. You know, more than $900 billion are being poured into that particular project. So the Uyghurs could become basically the Chinese ambassadors to the Muslim world instead of being, you know, the enemy within that the Chinese basically perceive them to be.

Well, that makes a lot of sense and I do hope Mohammed Benzellman was listening and he's going to take your advice. And also, mate, if you are listening, seeing us a couple of quid, right? Looking for a new studio. Yeah, sign up to the Patreon, mate. That's what we want.

MBS on our Patreon. That would be terrific. That's what you want. Top dog Patreon, mate. Only 200 bucks a month. Come on, you can afford it. You can afford it, mate. We'll even meet with you and have a meal with you for $200.

My advice, don't pick up the check from the consulate. But even, listen, it's been absolutely fantastic talking about you. There's been a long time in the making. Both you and Thomas of the conflicted podcast or some of our favorite guests, I'm sure we will be having you back to talk about other things as they happen. But before we let you go, we've got one more question for you, which is the question that we always ask at the end, which is what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really shouldn't be? The nation states. just the crisis of the nation state is affecting everyone. Basically, it's not just only an Islamist, you know,

desire to bring down the nation state. Now, unfortunately, we start to see our young in the West turning their back on the nation state. The only, you know, model to guarantee safety, security, stability, prosperity, law and order, everything we take for granted. They haven't seen, you know, how collapsed society's law, like, you know, and how people, you know, they are desperate for things we take for granted here right now. So, you know, we have to fight for the nation state and make the case again

for the nation state. You couldn't agree with you more. I could not agree with more. Amon, if people want to follow your work, where do they go to listen to Conflicted and any other things that you are doing? Well, for now, I'm doing conflicted. And if they want to, you know, read more about my life. Basically, my book is out there. My life as MI6 spy inside Al-Qaeda. Fantastic. Guys, make sure you check both of those out. Conflicted is probably the best podcast after Trigonomoisia, obviously, that I've ever listened to. It's really, really brilliant. So make sure you check it out. Thank you for watching. Amen, thank you for joining us very much. And we'll see you all very soon with another brilliant episode like this or a live stream.

and please remember guys that episodes and live streams always go out at 7 p.m. UK time. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their crumudgeonly, Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Remarkably bright creatures is now playing only on Netflix.

Alex.