00:00:26.320It's a pleasure to have you here. Listen, man, what a fascinating background.
00:00:29.440A lot of people are going to be like, whoa, let's listen to this guy.
00:00:34.080One thing I should probably mention is you're the co-host of the Conflicted podcast.
00:00:39.560And your co-host, Thomas Small, we had on the show probably one of our most fascinating interviews that we've ever done,
00:00:46.100talking about the Middle East and all that sort of thing.
00:00:49.040So before we get into the interview, which is going to be absolutely fantastic, I can't wait.
00:00:53.780Just give everybody a little bit more of the flavor of your background.
00:00:57.220How are you, where you are? What's been your journey?
00:00:59.860Because it sounds like an incredible one.
00:01:02.220Okay, I'll try to condense it into one minute.
00:01:04.260So you can say basically that I am a Saudi-born and raised Bahraini, half Lebanese, and there are, you know, Turkish and Persian and other ethnicities there.
00:01:17.600It's, you know, Middle Eastern salad, really.
00:01:19.760And so from Saudi Arabia, I grew up there, pretty much a religious, you know, young lad, you know, memorized the Quran at a young age, wanted basically to become an imam.
00:01:31.720But much to the relief of my would-be congregation, I didn't, you know, end up being an imam.
00:01:39.420I ended up joining the jihad in Bosnia when I was 16.
00:01:43.320And there, basically, the journey started towards darker and darker motives, you know, and in 1997, I ended up joining al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
00:01:54.860They sent me to their program for WMD, including explosives, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and I was trained on that.
00:02:05.160And 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.
00:02:18.040I just couldn't continue with the group, and I decided I want to leave.
00:02:23.240Through 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.
00:02:34.160I ended up basically eight years of espionage inside al-Qaeda in 2006.
00:02:41.040Through the wisdom of some American administration officials, they leaked my identity to a journalist in the U.S.
00:02:48.660because 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.
00:02:56.300But then, you know, vassal state, you know, all of that.
00:02:59.680And 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.
00:03:17.680So 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.
00:03:36.100And after that, basically, I left to work for even more evil organizations.
00:03:43.620And, 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.
00:03:52.700So, yeah, that's really my life in action.
00:03:55.360So a minute of summarizing the life of immorality of AIP.
00:04:40.180But let's talk a little bit about some of the stuff that particularly interests and affects people here in the West, which is, you know,
00:04:48.780it 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.
00:05:09.260In your case, it was going from Bahrain to Bosnia.
00:05:12.260I mean, I don't know much about Bahrain, but I imagine living in Bahrain was better than fighting and dying in Bosnia, right?
00:05:17.840So like that, that kind of, you know, why do people become extremists?
00:05:25.560Why 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?
00:05:34.320I think that's a question that would, that puzzles all of us in some ways, doesn't it?
00:05:38.940Well, there are, I mean, I mean, the answer to this could take us several podcasts and several interviews just basically to get into the depth of it.
00:06:30.980There 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.
00:06:42.000The forces of 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-Qaida and ISIS and Shabab, like the political and militant Shia Islam, the Walaat al-Faqih system or the Ayatollahs of Tahran and their allies like Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.
00:07:08.300And all of these forces are trying to bring down the nation state.
00:07:12.100Now, why I'm saying that this is related to identity crisis?
00:07:15.300Because the, you know, we shape our own identity, you know, around the modern nation state.
00:07:23.660I mean, basically, I would describe myself as British now because basically I believe my allegiance is to this state, to this modern nation state.
00:07:29.580And therefore, basically, I have allegiance to this nation state.
00:07:32.720These 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, you know, and rubble.
00:07:47.620So just to pause you just for one moment, and there's plenty more time.
00:07:51.460I was only joking when I said you only have five minutes.
00:07:54.280Just 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.
00:08:05.200They don't feel an allegiance to this country.
00:08:07.200What they really feel is they are part of a movement whose job it is to, let's say, recreate the caliphate, for example, just as an example.
00:08:18.480The idea is that there is a, you know, this romantic vision of imperial Islamic past that need to be resurrected.
00:08:27.380And that's the only way basically Muslims can feel strengthened and emboldened and empowered, which is, you know, far away from the truth.
00:08:35.460The 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.
00:08:51.860And as a result, you have people who basically seems to believe in their own nation state, whether adopted or even their original nation state from their countries of origin.
00:09:09.260And 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.
00:09:21.040And as a result, they flock into these conflicts because they believe that by recreating the caliphate, they will restore Islamic glory.
00:09:29.100And this is where, you know, you have the other side of Muslims who say, no, we have a functioning modern nation state.
00:09:39.600And this is the best guarantee for security, safety, stability, law and order, prosperity.
00:09:45.140Why 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?
00:09:55.720So, identity crisis is the first step towards that dark path.
00:10:02.320You know, people don't believe anymore in their nation states and end up believing in transnational ideologies.
00:10:08.920So just on that, Eamon, let's just go before Francis, he's got a whole different other things that he wanted to talk to you about.
00:10:15.840But just we stick with that for a moment.
00:10:18.120Just 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.
00:10:39.000Is that 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.
00:10:55.380You've got the Asian community, the this community, the that community, which are not encouraged to become British in a way.
00:11:02.800They're encouraged to think of themselves as being still kind of in the space from which they came.
00:11:08.760This 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 disillusioned to the point of joining terrorist organizations.
00:11:30.600If 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 with their, you know, for, you know, a hundred generations before?
00:11:45.080It'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 really that simple.
00:11:58.000But why are they doing that, Eamon? That's what I'm trying to get at.
00:12:01.540Then we have to reach into the, we start to depart now the rational into the irrational.
00:12:08.920We will, we will, unfortunately, depart, you know, the realm of the rationality into the realm of irrationality.
00:12:15.840When we start to talk about the fact that they have also the religious and spiritual element here.
00:12:23.180We can't talk about, you know, Islamic-inspired terrorism without talking about Islam itself.
00:12:30.820And by the way, before anyone, you know, start saying basically anything, I mean, I'm a devout Muslim myself.
00:12:35.740You know, I, you know, not a day goes by without me reciting the Quran and saying my prayers.
00:12:40.480So please, like, I mean, do not think for a moment I'm attacking my own religion here.
00:12:45.860I'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.
00:12:57.580The reality is that irrationality takes hold here.
00:13:01.200Islam, 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, you know.
00:13:13.020And therefore, you know, Islam regulated the relationship between the individual and the creator through three channels or three pillars, as we call them.
00:13:22.760These pillars of worship are love, hope, and fear.
00:13:58.360Like, you know, so in a sentence, basically, that you love the Lord, you hope for his reward, but you fear his eternal damnation.
00:14:04.980That is how balanced the relationship between me and God, for example, should be.
00:14:09.940However, 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.
00:14:29.880Whether drinking, sleeping around, consumption and selling of drugs and all these other things, joining gangs.
00:14:36.500And that was more prevalent, actually, in the West also.
00:14:39.160But it was equally practiced in the Arab world and the Muslim world in general.
00:14:44.200So, you end up basically with the balance of preaching in crisis because the preachers are using fear, which drives people into guilt, which drives them into looking for solutions.
00:14:58.660And one of the solutions is looking for redemption, and redemption is in jihad and martyrdom, according to groups like ISIS and Al-Ta'idah and other nefarious groups.
00:15:09.340They want to recruit people who basically believe that the only way they can redeem themselves of sins is through jihad and martyrdom.
00:15:17.200You see, we don't have a priesthood in Islam where they can't absolve you of your sins if you confess, unlike Catholicism.
00:15:24.180So, therefore, we have this crisis in how religious principles being transmitted to young people in Friday prayers, where they feel that, okay, if you drink, hell.
00:15:41.940So, 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.
00:15:48.800God will reward you with a heavenly abode forever and ever.
00:15:53.580You know, so basically this crisis in religious preaching resulted in many people becoming more and more guilty.
00:16:02.160Now, that is not enough yet to push them over the edge, but then comes the even more irrational, which is prophecies.
00:16:09.840You know, all jihadists who join the jihadist groups, whether they are ISIS, Al-Qaida, Al-Shabaab, or even more so Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen and the Iranian IRGC,
00:16:25.920they are all motivated by prophecies of a awaited messiah, a Mahdi, as they call him.
00:16:32.400The idea that there will be these black banners rising from Afghanistan and eastern Iran, you know, marching all the way towards Jerusalem, slaughtering all the Jews and basically ushering in an era of a new caliphate.
00:16:45.660You have, you know, these prophecies talking about great wars in Afghanistan, in North Africa, in Syria, in Iraq and Yemen.
00:16:53.980All 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.
00:17:02.880But they are fabrications, if you look deep into them.
00:17:07.780However, they are sold like drugs, like, you know, spiritual intoxicants, as I would call them,
00:17:13.440which will then basically tell people who already feel sinful and in need of redemption,
00:17:20.240and they feel alienated in need of belonging and empowerment.
00:17:24.660And on top of all of this, they already have this identity crisis.
00:17:28.140They need to be part of a purpose that you have a destiny.
00:17:31.620You can free your own inner sadist, inner violent individual to go and fight for God in order to fulfill a blueprint for a war ordained 1400 years ago.
00:18:38.600In the past, it used to be through either mosques or universities.
00:18:42.280And then it became mosques, universities and prisons.
00:18:47.780Now it is mosques, universities, prisons, peer to peer and social media all coming together, basically, you know.
00:18:54.780And, you know, 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.
00:19:01.440Now, these days, you know, I could basically record a video and I could invade 100,000, you know, personal phones, bedrooms and living rooms and preach my message.
00:19:19.080I could write many things, like people like Anwar al-Hawlaqi, for example, the famous English-speaking Al-Qaeda preacher, and leave them there, you know, for eternity, you know, online, keeping people being recruited.
00:19:34.280So, 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.
00:19:49.840One 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,
00:20:06.680if 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,
00:20:20.620then you have already gone down too far down the path of irrationality to bring them back.
00:20:27.500The problem is, 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,
00:20:46.880everything they fought for, everything they've led for was wrong.
00:20:49.400And 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,
00:21:02.180you know, really focus on taking you upward as if like, you know, you are spiritually ascending above what they call the mundane realities of the world.
00:21:12.860You know, you see your fellow humans as nothing but cattle, you know, they just live every day,
00:21:19.400you know, basically mundane lives, they eat, they graze, you know, they breathe, you know, they sleep, no purpose in life.
00:21:27.720You, however, that's what they tell you, you, however, have a far more divine purpose.
00:21:35.260You see, that's why, you know, when people say, how could these people behead and execute other people without feeling any sense of remorse?
00:21:45.420And 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,
00:21:55.520to see everyone else below them as ants that can be trodden on.
00:21:59.720And therefore, basically, they don't feel the human connection with their fellow human beings who are not seeing, you know, part of their ideology.
00:22:09.640So this is why, how can you bring someone down to earth to 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,
00:22:26.460consider 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, you know,
00:22:41.420decades by people who basically have an agenda against the modern nation state.
00:22:45.760It's extremely difficult to just switch off that, you know, ever buzzing spiritual engine in their mind, telling them that they are on a divine mission.
00:23:00.160More 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.
00:23:09.160I'm going to be honest with you, Eamon, I didn't expect you to start talking about the Blues Brothers, mate.
00:23:15.780I'm going to be, there's a bit of a left field note there.
00:23:21.340So we're now talking about the case of Shamima Begum with the 15 year old girl.
00:23:25.640For those of the people who are not from the UK, it's a 15 year old girl who was radicalized, went to the caliphate to fight and support ISIS, now wants to come back.
00:23:35.380What did we do in the cases of those people who have declared themselves allies, believers, all the rest of it?
00:23:44.260How do we bring them back into society?
00:24:09.520I would say, you know, okay, I would remove the extreme and just keep the rich part.
00:24:17.160Okay, so I would say that it is extremely difficult to extract them from that mentality and just to bring them back into reality.
00:24:28.100Unless if they themselves feel disillusioned, that's one.
00:24:32.300And 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.
00:24:47.820She would be extremely, apart from damaged, especially she lost three children, apart from the fact that she would be, you know, damaged mentally.
00:24:56.960And 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.
00:25:08.740And that all of the people who, you know, she had developed affinity to were just mistaken, as we call them, you know, in Islam, the mistaken, you know, dogs of hell.
00:25:22.720I mean, it needs to be done, you know, in a closed, you know, confined, you know, comfortable space.
00:25:30.900The question is, do we have the will or even the resources to do it?
00:25:34.640Do we have the trained, you know, personnel to do it?
00:25:37.100Do 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?
00:25:47.500I mean, it's, you know, 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.
00:26:01.400He 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.
00:26:10.660And I know many people will be shocked, but this is the Islamic way to do it, actually.
00:26:15.760This is exactly why Imam Ali, who is revered by both Shia and Sunnis, he had to deal with a sect like this.
00:26:24.920The first breakaway sect in Islam was the Khawarij.
00:26:27.680The Khawarij are the first zealots in Islam who basically, you know, 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.
00:26:42.260So they rebelled against him and they wanted basically, they were just exactly like ISIS, you know, bloodthirsty, murdering creeps.
00:26:51.060So Imam Ali adopted an effective methodology with them.
00:27:03.040That's the only way you can deal with them in a war zone.
00:27:06.220In a civil society, I would say you first debate and then incarcerate indefinitely.
00:27:16.300Because without, you know, when Imam Ali debated with them, one third of them basically just recanted.
00:27:25.120So they were admitted back into society in the questions asked.
00:27:28.160The other two thirds fought and they were annihilated and they were chased and killed in a war zone.
00:27:37.120However, in a civil society, I would advocate that we debate powerfully, we debate.
00:27:45.140But then those who are not convinced, keep them locked up until basically we see enough evidence that they have completely transformed themselves.
00:27:55.440And this could take years and years and years.
00:27:57.220Eamon, I have to say this appeals to my Russian heart very much.
00:28:00.760Kill them all or throw them in prison.
00:29:18.000You 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 sometimes.
00:29:27.100We've seen people, when they return back to Saudi Arabia, murder their own cousins, brothers and fathers.
00:29:34.000And it happened and it's well documented.
00:29:35.920But, Eamon, 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 de-radicalization, read it, I'll repeat that.
00:29:48.720He was on a de-radicalization program, was he not?
00:29:54.900You see, at that day I remembered, I was confronted in 2013, at the time I wasn't known to be, you know, a former spy or anything, but I was confronted by a well-meaning academic from Oxford.
00:30:14.020She kept insisting, basically, that we could, you know, reach out to them, we could reach out to them, you know, through, you know, human connection.
00:30:21.740And I keep saying, no, no, no, no, because I know these people.
00:30:26.260I know, you know, how far they are, you know, disconnected from their, you know, human links.
00:30:33.160And, you know, and then I said, I smiled at her and I said, the naivety of the lambs, you know, you know, the silence of the lambs, the naivety of the lambs.
00:30:42.160I 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.
00:30:50.360Oh, look at the cute dog, basically, shepherding me.
00:30:53.220And then one day, of course, basically, they will end up on the shelves, you know, in pieces.
00:31:13.720I mean, I, if you watch the film Zero Dark Thirty, 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.
00:31:31.120Killed the five handlers, basically, he was dealing with.
00:31:33.380So, it's not the first time that we see this.
00:31:36.860And this is why the counter-radicalization programs, as they call them, CVE, counter-violence extremism, are riddled with naiveties and naive ideals, you know, that secular, you know, principles, you know, liberal, democratic, you know, notions could penetrate into their minds.
00:32:02.820And nothing penetrates into their minds than actually convincing them soundly that theologically and spiritually they are on the wrong way.
00:32:11.700Amen, so, look, it's quite a serious thing that you're saying, and I'm sure you realize that it is quite serious.
00:32:20.540Do 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,
00:32:31.960I mean, they're going to be pretty extreme in their thinking, I'd imagine.
00:32:36.420I've never been someone who's done that.
00:32:38.400But I imagine if you were, for me to do that, I'd have to be pretty, pretty extreme in my ways of thinking.
00:32:44.300I'm not sure I could be talked out of it with some nice, you know, liberal values or whatever.
00:32:50.360So 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,
00:33:01.820and if we just talk to them the right way, they'll all behave the way that we want.
00:33:07.920I 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.
00:33:21.420They don't believe that there are other people who are deeply spiritual, you know, deeply concerned more with the afterlife than this life.
00:33:28.700And as a result, you know, they just don't communicate on the same wavelength.
00:33:33.580Wavelengths, they think that, you know, this is a human, so I can get to him through human, rational, logical argument.
00:33:41.340Forgetting basically that that other human basically is not on the same wavelength as he is.
00:33:46.160And 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.
00:33:58.800You know, this is why whenever I talk to people about prophecies and they say, oh, come on, no, no, no, excuse me, don't apply your own cynicism on, you know, situations that are actually, you know, deeply spiritual and deeply religious and superstitious.
00:34:15.880Do not apply your own rational, logical thinking there.
00:34:20.660So, for example, whenever I tell people that you can't convince extremists, the only way you can get them on the path of, I'm not saying de-radicalization, I'm saying disengagement from violence, that's the principle I believe in.
00:34:35.480To disengage from violence, you don't need to convince them, you need to confuse them.
00:34:39.500You need to sow the seeds of doubt in their mind.
00:34:44.300Because you said, how could someone strap a bomb to themselves or take a knife knowing certainly they would be killed after they stabbed a few people by police bullets?
00:34:57.240Because 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.
00:35:12.600They will cross that eternal bridge, you know, into the afterlife.
00:35:16.520Now, if you upload that little virus of doubt and just create one or two or 3% of doubt in their minds, then they will be transcending from being certain committed, driven militants into confused militants.
00:35:35.820And a confused militant will hesitate.
00:35:37.560And there has been examples of people hesitating.
00:35:40.560Hesitating, you know, 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.
00:35:49.980So it happened, and it's well documented even, that they have basically stepped backwards from killing hundreds of people, you know, or dozens of people.
00:36:00.460I mean, in one incident, basically, it was someone with a shoe bomb about to board the plane, and basically he just went back home, hid the shoe under his bed, and basically didn't want to take part of it.
00:44:13.800The war between Saudi Arabia, you know, 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.
00:44:35.740Governments are vicious when they are trying to protect their strategic interests.
00:44:39.460Xinjiang province, in the past, it used to be the backdoor of China.
00:44:42.500But since President Xi Jinping 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, is going through.
00:45:00.700Because 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.
00:45:11.980That 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.
00:45:31.840And the second aspect of it is the CPEC or the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which will take railways into Gawadar, you know, port.
00:45:43.020Gawadar 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 rich Arab Gulf countries.
00:45:56.220Now, 12 million Uyghurs will not stand, you know, basically, you know, a chance against 1.4 billion Chinese Huns.
00:46:10.160And 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 and apprising in Xinjiang, encouraging.
00:46:24.140And 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 word of some of these, you know, agents, to give China its own Afghanistan is dangerous.
00:46:43.660And 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.
00:47:04.840And 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.
00:47:12.800And it will be another Syria in the middle of Asia.
00:47:17.100In a cynical way, Eamon, I can see why there are people in the West that might want that.
00:47:25.980But look, it's a very complicated situation.
00:47:28.780I 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?
00:47:45.560I always, look, I always told my Chinese friends, what you're doing is making things worse.
00:47:53.060You know, basically, you know, the repression is going to cause more and more, you know, militancy.
00:47:59.700But at the same time, there are other forces who are stoking the fires of militancy from abroad.
00:48:04.980You 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.
00:48:28.000I would say that, please, we tried this in Afghanistan, we tried this in Syria, and look what we are doing right now.
00:48:34.980Look what, you know, reward we are reaping right now.
00:48:38.980We are not supposed to encourage another theater of jihad.
00:48:45.220I know, and this is, again, what is the solution?
00:48:47.540The solution is not by adding sanctions and pressure.
00:48:51.180The solution is by festering dialogue.
00:48:53.860The World Uyghur Congress, you know, I know that, you know, they have leaders in the U.S. like Rabbi Akadir.
00:48:59.900I know they have leaders in Turkey like Sayyid Tumturk.
00:49:03.620Well, if Sayyid Tumturk is listening, Sayyid, you invited me to your home in 2013 for Iftar in Ramadan.
00:49:10.340You know, I have the greatest respect for you.
00:49:12.280All I can tell you, and I can tell every Uyghur, the solution is in sitting down with Beijing and entering into dialogue.
00:49:21.420Not necessarily with the government, but at least start with the academics, start with the think tanks, try to find the solution to gain, mostly, you know, try to find the solution to gain religious freedoms in exchange for security.
00:49:36.420I think this is, you know, in my opinion, the best way to go around it and not to encourage militancy.
00:49:43.820The path that the TIP, the Turkestan Islamic Party, the Al-Qaeda aligned TIP is taking the Uyghur cause, this path is going to lead to nothing but destruction.
00:49:55.860The Chinese, you know, the Chinese juggernaut will do, will stop at nothing.
00:50:00.760They will basically take these 12 million and disperse them all over China and replace them with hands.
00:50:12.940All I want them to do basically is to just stop, take a breather and basically just sit down with Chinese academics, 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
00:50:37.560and 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.
00:50:49.220And I mean, so you're appealing for them to be peaceful.
00:50:53.220Can you, because it still seems vague to a lot of people, what is actually happening to these people as we speak at the moment?
00:51:00.820What is the CCP and the army inflicting upon them?
00:51:05.080As far as the Chinese Communist Party is concerned, you know, they saw the problem of Islam in Xinjiang.
00:51:14.180That's how they see it, that the problem there is mixture of Islam and Uyghur separatism.
00:51:20.920So they were saying, OK, we don't have a problem with the Huey Muslims.
00:51:24.900You know, there are more Huey Muslims than Uyghur Muslims in China, by the way.
00:51:29.140So, but relatively, they are not harassed as much as, you know, the Uyghurs.
00:51:34.760So they thought, OK, we have the man who pacified Tibet, you know, we, you know, and modeled the Tibetan Buddhism according to our vision of China.
00:51:47.220So how about we model the Uyghur Islam to conform with the, you know, the vision of the Chinese Communist nation state?
00:51:59.880And 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, with the Tibetans also, except that Islam is not Buddhism.
00:52:14.240Islam, you know, basically do contain jihad, unlike Buddhism.
00:52:44.660It is, a jihad is the prerogative of the state.
00:52:47.540It is violent within a state structure, but peaceful within an individual structure.
00:52:52.860So it needs to be always understood this way, that it can deploy violence if necessary in a just cause, but provided it's done by a state, not by an individual.
00:53:02.260Only in the past 50 years throughout Islamic history, we saw the subversion of the right of the state to deploy jihad.
00:53:10.160And suddenly we see individuals, like what's happening in Xinjiang and Iraq and Syria, you know, and Kashmir, places where individuals are actually deploying violence, deploying jihad, while it is not their right under Islamic theology.
00:53:26.620The right to deploy jihad is to the nation state.
00:53:38.040So take us through, so take us back to the Uyghurs.
00:53:40.820In this province, they bring this governor in who treats it like he treated the Buddhists in Tibet, and then what happens?
00:53:49.580And 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 anthem every day, read the Mao Red Book every day, tell them about Marx, you know, theories every day,
00:54:06.180even though in the Chinese economy, even though in 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.
00:54:20.800But 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.
00:54:31.580Because 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 consumerist in their practice, in their daily lives.
00:54:48.640You know, and, you know, and because of, of course, basically the normal relations of brotherhood, or brotherhood, basically, and sisterhood has been, you know, more or less dismantled over the past generation or two because of the one-child policy.
00:55:01.080So 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.
00:55:09.280By the way, the Uyghurs were always allowed as a religious minority to have more than two or three children.
00:55:14.360Not many people know that in one, you know, some of the minorities were allowed to do that.
00:55:19.260And they were always represented as one of the minorities of China.
00:55:24.260In fact, if you take a Chinese currency, there are four scripts on it.
00:55:29.340So there are four, you know, calligraphy, Chinese calligraphy, Mongolian calligraphy, Tibetan calligraphy, and Uyghur calligraphy.
00:55:39.680So it's all represented in the Chinese currency.
00:55:42.460But it's the industrial way of, you know, okay, we have a problem.
00:55:49.320Okay, take the millions and put them in the camps.
00:55:52.380When the split between the Soviet Union and China happened, and the Soviet Union decided to pull away the nuclear program assistance for China,
00:56:02.100you know, the Russian engineers, before they left, they shredded, you know, the nuclear program documents and left.
00:56:09.980So the Chinese gathered, you know, the 8 million pieces, you know, in the 1960s,
00:56:15.840they gathered the 8 million pieces of shreds and employed 1 million Chinese to put them together in the biggest history.
00:58:24.100If we, 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,
00:58:33.700hit the pause button right now and understand that they're playing with fire.
00:58:38.940And how much truth is there to some of the things that we're hearing out of China?
00:58:43.980You 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 as people.
00:58:57.220What, you know, how much truth is there to, you know, concentration camps?
00:59:02.180We see these images of people with shaved heads.
00:59:05.840We read stories about exports of human hair going to the United States or from China.
00:59:36.220However, we're not talking about people basically staying there forever.
00:59:39.580People staying there on average of eight months, you know, and then they so-called graduate.
00:59:45.820Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
00:59:48.100I shouldn't laugh, but it's just crazy, man.
00:59:50.960The average is eight months before, basically, they are released back into society.
00:59:56.620And, you know, if you drive through Xinjiang, you will find there are some towns that are empty.
01:00:02.080And there are some towns that are completely bustling, full and thriving.
01:00:07.040The towns that are empty are the towns that, you know, basically they suspect of being rebellious.
01:00:12.600And the towns that are thriving are the Muslim towns they suspect of or they are absolutely sure they are loyal and cooperative.
01:00:19.980It seems that the Chinese are dividing the Uyghurs into, you're loyal, you're not, you know, we trust you, we don't.
01:00:27.660You know, so it seems to me basically that the, you know, the prison camps, basically, they are exactly what they are, prison camps.
01:00:36.660But 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, they print postcards.
01:00:45.320They make people basically, you know, work on, you know, producing goods and services and toys even.
01:00:52.140There 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.
01:00:59.080Because 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, you know, in a prison call center.
01:01:23.460China, 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.
01:01:31.940If you die in prison, you know, you are an organ donor, you know, straight away.
01:01:37.860If, you know, basically we, and whatever you work for, yes, we're going to sell it abroad or in the internal market.
01:01:45.720However, you know, 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.
01:01:58.140So it is a brutal prison system, but it is not that much different from what you see in the U.S. in some states.
01:02:05.540Wow. I mean, the thing, it's taken my breath away a little bit, Eamon, what you've just been talking about, everything from Afghanistan to, you know, the treatment of the Uyghurs.
01:02:21.640And I think one question that we're all probably wondering is what can we do?
01:02:25.740Is there anything we can do in the West?
01:02:27.120Is 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?
01:02:36.920I think foreign ministries in the West should be in touch with the World Uyghur Congress, especially their leadership in Turkey.
01:02:46.760They are more powerful than their leadership in the U.S.
01:02:49.920And try to, you know, basically find a way to both put the pressure on the World Uyghur Congress and on the Chinese government to actually sit down together and work out a solution to this crisis, because this cannot go forward.
01:03:07.340Also, I really, really wish if the two most powerful men in the Arab world, I'm talking here, you know, to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed.
01:03:27.160We've got a big audience, but I'm not sure those two are watching right now.
01:03:32.560But they have an incredible clout with China.
01:03:35.940They could basically also find a way to, you know, basically bridge the gap between the two.
01:03:42.720The problem 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 mentioned, leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
01:03:59.100So, unfortunately, the Muslim and Arab world are so divided, even basically to find any meaningful support for the Uyghurs.
01:04:06.880And therefore, basically, the best way to do it is to, you know, organizations like the European Institute for Peace, the EIP, you know, institutions like the EU, for example, institutions like the United Nations.
01:04:19.380These institutions, they can find a way to bridge the gap, at least start at an academic level.
01:04:27.040You know, you know, there is a film called The Endgame, which William Hurt and, you know, other, you know, amazing stars, you know, in 2009 came together to create this film about how, you know, basically a, you know, an employee from a gold company in the U.K.
01:04:48.120based 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,
01:05:05.020which resulted in finally the release of Nelson Mandela and the start of the handover of the, or the dismantling of the apartheid and the democratic elections in South Africa.
01:05:16.060So, you know, it all started at an academic level.
01:05:19.200So 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 manage each other's expectations, you know, bring down the demands slowly, slowly,
01:05:46.040gradually, gradually, 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.
01:05:55.580And the end result would be restoration of some degree of autonomy, religious freedoms in exchange for security, stability and loyalty to the Beijing government.
01:06:09.220If 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.
01:06:27.040So, 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.
01:06:39.000Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I do hope Mohammed Ben Salman was listening, and he's going to take your advice.
01:06:45.040And also, mate, if you are listening, sing us a couple of quid, right?
01:06:50.280Yeah, sign up to the Patreon, mate. That's what we want. MBS on our Patreon. That would be terrific.
01:06:56.320Top dog Patreon, mate. Only 200 bucks a month. Come on, you can afford it.
01:07:00.300You can afford it, mate. We'll even meet with you and have a meal with you for $200.
01:07:04.080Don't pick up the check from the consulate.
01:07:08.900But, Eamon, listen, it's been absolutely fantastic talking with you. It's been a long time in the making.
01:07:13.680Both you and Thomas of the Conflicted Podcast are some of our favourite guests.
01:07:17.380I'm sure we will be having you back to talk about other things as they happen.
01:07:21.460But 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?
01:07:34.640The crisis of the nation-state is affecting everyone. Basically, it's not just only an Islamist desire to bring down the nation-state.
01:07:46.820Now, unfortunately, we start to see our young in the West turning their back on the nation-state.
01:07:52.440The only, you know, model to guarantee safety, security, stability, prosperity, law and order, everything we take for granted.
01:08:00.820They haven't seen, you know, what collapsed societies look like, you know, and how people, you know, are desperate for things we take for granted here right now.
01:08:11.920So, you know, we have to fight for the nation-state and make the case again for the nation-state.
01:08:19.640I couldn't agree with you more. I could not agree with you more.
01:08:22.840Eamon, if people want to follow your work, where do they go to listen to Conflicted and any other things that you are doing?
01:08:30.140Well, for now, I'm doing Conflicted. And if they want to, you know, read more about my life, basically, my book is out there.