The Great Hoax

The Arab Spring &

The Greater Middle East
Initiative

The Tunisian Case

Hizb ut-Tahrir
1434 AH / 2012
Foreword

Ever since the dawn of Islam when the Messenger of Allah was sent, Islam
and Kufr have been at loggerheads with each other. This divergence will
continue until the Day of Judgment; Islam and Kufr can only engage in the
arena of intellectual struggle or in the battlefield.

Although military battles result in the killing of people, destruction of

equipment and properties, the battle of ideas, however, are far more
dangerous since their knock-on effect on nations, peoples and individuals
could last for decades and even centuries in some cases. These battles result
in steering the behaviour of nations, peoples and individuals thus reversing
their way of life and transforming their raison dtre by changing their
viewpoint towards life.

The real and decisive battle that toppled the Islamic Khilafah under the
leadership of the Ottomans was a battle of thoughts. The cultural invasion
and the creeping of the Western thoughts into the minds of the Muslims who
had been in a state of intellectual decline led to the overthrow of the Islamic
State.

Partition, Colonisation and Independence

Once the Khilafah was destroyed, the Islamic lands were fragmented and
shared among the Kafir colonial powers in accordance with the Sykes-Picot
agreement; they were turned into internationally recognised statelets and
emirates with artificial borders.

Once the colonial Kuffar had consolidated the separation between the
Muslims and turned it into a fait accompli, the circus of independence
began. In the wake of the First World War, Russia, in her quality as a
communist state, adopted the notion of resisting colonialism.

She launched a scathing attack on colonialism and exhorted the nations of

the world to resist and get rid of it. No sooner had the Second World War
broken-out, than public opinion against colonialism became overwhelmingly
rife.

~1~
Since colonialism has always been an intrinsic part of the Capitalist ideology
and even the sole method to spread and execute its idea, America pounced
on the notion of independence and proceeded on its basis. She exerted
pressure on the conventional colonial forces to vacate their colonies with the
aim of replacing them, but with a new colonial method. This entailed
establishing regimes that were either puppets or under her influence whilst
this new method was labelled Colonial Evolution.

In his book War or Peace published in 1950, John Foster Dulles wrote in the
chapter entitled Colonial Evolution Vs. Violent Revolution, There was a self-
liquidating feature. The colonial position of the West has always been
considered by Soviet leaders to be its Achilles' heel - the point through
which a mortal blow could be struck. He added When the fighting in World
War II drew to a close, the greatest single political issue was the colonial
issue. If the West had attempted to perpetuate the status quo of colonialism,
it would have made violent revolution inevitable and defeat inevitable. The
only policy that might succeed was that of bringing independence peacefully
to the more advanced of the 700,000,000 dependent persons.

Changing the Style of Colonisation

Once the Kafir West was satisfied that the division and the segregation of the
colonies in the Muslims lands had become ingrained, it adopted a new style
of colonialism. The political and economic dominion was effectuated through
agents and hirelings rather than military power. Peoples lived under the
yoke of neo-colonialism, governed by appointed rulers who in fact were
watchdogs of the Western interests in the nascent states. Each one of these
states had a capital city, a flag and an independence day which was
celebrated in order to conceal the effective fragmentation of the Islamic
lands.

The Muslims failed to reap the fruits of their resistance to colonialism

despite the tremendous sacrifices they had made. The fruits of their Jihad
were snatched and they failed to break free from the shackles of colonialism.
The West groomed a host of agents and promoted them as chieftains who
were then appointed as rulers and whose main concern was to safeguard the
interests of their masters.

~2~
Hence, the Kafir West worked towards perpetuating the colonisation of the
Muslims lands through the notion of independence which it had used as the
means to change the method of colonisation. The Muslims fell for this
beguilement after they had been intoxicated with patriotism. The sincere
children of the Ummah suffered the negative consequences of this setback
for 50 years; they then worked towards reversing the situation and help the
Muslims awake from their slumber.

The Call to Resume the Islamic Way of Life

In the second half of the 20th century, i.e. 25 years after the demise of the
Khilafah, the call to resume the Islamic way of life by restoring Islam to the
realm of life and establishing the Islamic State emerged through the rise of
several Islamic movements. Although some of these lacked a sound
perception of Islams idea and method, they nevertheless acted as a wake-
up call to the Ummah who had been oblivious to its Deen.

The Islamic Awakening

In the late seventies and early eighties, the call for implementing Islam in the
realm of life gathered momentum, especially after the Iranian revolution and
the emergence of a movement proclaiming for the first time that its
reference point was Islamic which led the West to dub that era as the Islamic
Awakening. From the Ummahs perspective, the rise of Islam to tackle ruling
matters in a country governed by secularism had instilled a sense of
confidence in Islam and its rules in addition to the possibility of
implementing Islam in the realm of life amongst the Muslims.

Meanwhile, America was working towards destabilising the Soviet Union

which had been lured into the quagmire of the Afghan war as she targeted
the riches of the Caspian Sea. No sooner the 20th century drew to an end
than the Soviet Union earth-shatteringly collapsed. Consequently, the
Communist ideology disappeared from the face of the earth. This also
signalled the demise of the main adversary to Western liberal democracy led
by America and the Western European powers. Those events were a formal
declaration of victory over communism that paved the way for America, the

~3~
champion of liberal democracy, to become the leading superpower of the
world and to dominate the international scene single-handedly.

Confronting the Islamic Awakening

The Kufr states headed by America, completely understood that if the

momentum of the Awakening in the Islamic Ummah continued at this quick
pace, it would place them on a collision course with the Islamic Ummah.
Hence, they set about consolidating the victory of liberalism over
communism and to turn it into a decisive victory over all political projects
that radically contradicted the liberal democratic project. They alleged that
this project represented the optimum political system ever known to
humanity and ever likely to be attained, and that history had come to a
standstill. This is why the American author and radical liberal theorist,
Francis Fukuyama, announced the end of history under liberal democracy.
He said: As mankind approaches the end of the millennium, the twin crises
of authoritarianism and socialist central planning have left only one
competitor standing in the ring as an ideology of potentially universal
validity: liberal democracy, the doctrine of individual freedom and popular
sovereignty.

In the wake of the collapse of communism, Islam became the only political
project built on a sound doctrine standing up to the Kufr states. The Muslims
are one Ummah united under one spiritual and political doctrine, alone
capable of taking on and overwhelming the liberal democracy dominating
the world today. This doctrine is predisposed to unite peoples and nations
because it stipulates that sovereignty is exclusively to the ideology. Although
its implementation ceased as its adherents were defeated and its State was
destroyed, it is still however vivacious and even effective and influential.

The Islamic Awakening and the Youth of the Ummah

Under the theme of what had been dubbed as the Islamic Awakening, Islam
returned to rekindle the zeal of the Muslim youth to acquaint themselves
with its essence and to work towards restoring it in the realm of life by
establishing the rule on its basis. This sent shivers down the spine of the

~4~
Kafir West headed by America who hastened to plan the curbing of this new
reality.

Countering the reality of the Islamic Ummahs heed towards her Deen began
at first through the use of force. America instructed her agents from among
the gang leaders she had appointed as rulers in the Muslims lands to
tyrannise the sincere children of the Ummah who were eager to aid the cause
of their Deen. They were thrown into jail, some of were tortured and others
were even killed whilst others were displaced and denied their rights to earn
a living and lead a decent life. The rulers executed an extensive radical
operation as part of a plan they dubbed as drying up the sources of
extremism.

However, this did not dampen the steely resolve of the sincere Daawah
carriers. If anything, it toughened them up and made them even more
indomitable in pursuing their endeavour to bring Islam back into the life of
the Ummah. This phenomenon exasperated the American politicians who are
still struggling to sneak-in the secular concepts and to persuade Muslims to
accept them, let alone ensconce them in their psyches. It also generated an
atmosphere of aversion to the American interests in the Islamic world.

As America failed to dampen the resolve of the sincere Daawah carriers, she
resorted to using a velvet glove policy to achieve her interests. Hence,
having carried out a profound and extensive study of the Islamic worlds
reality, America embarked upon planning her next move. The study covered
the events taking place in the Islamic world, the dispositions of those in
charge of the existing movements and the possibility of luring and
cooperating with them. The study was assigned to a host of research centres
that focused their efforts on monitoring the Islamic Awakening, to what it
might lead and review the styles and means designed to tackle it. They also
proposed what might be used in terms of intelligence operations and media
orientation through the tremendous media machine America possessed.

~5~
The Starting Point

It was as if lightning had struck twice. During the First World War, specifically
between 1916 and 1918, the British deceived the Arab Muslims and drove a
wedge between them and their non-Arab brethren by propagating and
spreading nationalism. They incited the Arabs against the Ottoman Islamic
State and tempted them with an Arab Khilafah. Hence, al-Sharif Hussein and
his son, led by Lawrence of Arabia, perpetrated the high treason they
labelled the Great Arab Revolution. Britain planned and bankrolled the so-
called revolution only to reap the benefits of the war for herself. When the
treachery of Hussein ended, Britain threw him to the dogs and banished him
to Cyprus.

The deception to dominate the Ummah continued in order to stray her from
the path of revival and true liberation. The Kuffar adopted the notion of
ending colonialism and granting the masses independence only to initiate a
new style of colonialism between the late forties and early sixties. They
withdrew their armies but maintained their hegemony over all the faculties of
the masses through their surrogates from among the rulers who obligingly
complied with their masters orders. They signed a host of military, political
and economic treaties in order to keep the will of the Ummah perpetually in
the hands of her enemies.

Planning the Greater Middle East Initiative

When the Republicans took office in the United States of America, they
continued the deception with some minor changes in the wake of the 9/11
events. This was used as an opportunity to rob the Ummah of what had been
built up in terms of inclinations towards change on the basis of Islam, strip
future generations of their Islam and crush all attempts at thinking about
reviving the Ummah. They hoped to achieve this by sneakily implementing
the so-called creative chaos which in relation to the Greater Middle East
Initiative is deemed as the most devastating style and means to the
components of unity within the Islamic Ummah since the deception is
designed to touch on intellectual, political, cultural and economic aspects.

~6~
Accordingly, America set about inciting the world against Islam as she
considered it the only ideology that posed a threat to Western civilisation.
America used the war on terror as the pretext to attack Islam and alienate
it from temporal life. It was only a fait accompli for the American Arab Spring
to target the region of the Middle East since it was the geographic and
demographic cradle of Islam.

The Emergence of the Greater Middle East Initiative and its Boundaries

At the G8 Summit held on 9-10 June 2004 and after extensive debates on
the French and German projects, the US version of the project was
announced under the title of the Greater Middle East Initiative. The initiative
designated, according to the document, the Arab world, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and Israel, thus all the countries of the Islamic
world, from Afghanistan in the east to Morocco and Mauritania in the west,
and from Turkey in the north to Yemen and Sudan in the south, as targets of
the Initiative.

Consolidating Democracy and Fighting Islam

The Greater Middle East Initiative takes account of the proviso to implement
democracy in the region as it was no longer a choice because America and
Europe are currently facing a new enemy, namely religious extremism; this
warrants the effort towards the concentration on reducing the role of
religion in public life in the region. Religion should not form part of the talks
and slogans except within the confines of religious rituals. The influence of
the clergy who attempt to mix religion with politics should be curbed lest
some use this as a pretext to abort the political reforms and all other types
of reforms. Religion should not form part of the political, economic and
governance issues in general. Hence, the notion of separating religion from
the state should be supported while stressing that this would not endanger
the faith but it may rather lead to strengthening it.

~7~
The Initiatives Stages of Implementation

Therefore, the Greater Middle East Initiative has been designed to destabilise
the Muslims hierarchy of values which is the biggest threat that the
American initiative poses to the Ummah. The project involves recycling a
host of secular collaborating regimes shrouded with an Islamic cloak with
the aim of generating profound changes in the thought, politics and culture.
These changes would, it is hoped, prevent the emergence of the Islamic
civilisation anew to rival the Western civilisation this century. America had
paved the way for the implementation of this initiative by demanding a
number of extensive reforms from the rulers, especially in political life.
America encouraged the establishment of civil society organisations and the
expansion of their role in ruling matters in addition to demanding reforms in
the education and judiciary sectors among others.

The implementation of the Greater Middle East Initiative stipulated the

following main steps:

1- Changing the regimes of the region through popular uprisings in a

manner that gives the masses the impression that they themselves had
achieved the change. Thus, the trepidation of the Islamic Ummahs children
towards the regimes that come to power riding an American tank would be
bypassed. Richard Nixon had expressed this approach in his book entitled
Seize the Moment. To quote from the book: "At the same time, we must not
embrace the modernist states so tightly that our relationship becomes a
target for their domestic critics. Because the memories of colonialism in
much of the Muslim world make Western influence a sensitive issue, our
special relationship must not be patronizing. We should address modernist
leaders not as errand boys, but as full and equal partners. The quickest way
to nail their coffins shut would be to create the impression that they are
merely convenient mouthpieces for the West."

2- Ensuring that those partaking in the uprising are discouraged from

raising Islamic slogans that allude to calls for the implementing of the
Islamic Shariah by using the pretext of the need for maintaining national
unity. With the help of a number of measures that would give the
participants in the uprisings the impression that matters are in the hands of
the masses, democracy would be promoted and the necessity to have a civil
state would be proclaimed.

~8~
3- Helping those described as moderate Islamists accede to power through
deals concluded with them, according to which they would agree to
maintaining the countrys independence, establishing a civil state and by
undertaking a host of changes to the constitution and laws which in turn
would not affect the secular aspect of the state. The accession of the
moderate Islamists to power would at best be viewed as a prelude towards
an Islamic rule, thus the secularisation of the state would be guaranteed and
the emotions of the masses who love their Islam would be soothed. Hence,
the great hoax concocted against the Muslims would be achieved by
diverting the masses away from the call to resume the Islamic way of life and
putting their awakening to bed for good.

4- Paving the way through evil and deceptive styles to occasion a number of
geographic divisions on sectarian and ethnic grounds in the Islamic lands.
This would generate a fundamental amendment to the Sykes-Picot
agreement which was referred to by the former national security adviser as
correcting the limits of Sykes-Picot, in order to tighten Americas grip on
the region.

The Rulers Compliance with the Initiative

Soon after America demanded from the rulers of the Arab region to execute
the reforms aimed at paving the way for the implementation of her initiative,
several Arab states rushed to declare their adoption of democracy, human
rights, general freedoms, pluralism, civil society and educational reform.
Additionally, they declared their support to other American-dictated
measures even though they effectively continued to proceed radically
contrary to those slogans.

The toppled Tunisian president insisted on the amendment of the Treaty of

Entente and Solidarity which was earmarked to be debated during the
cancelled Arab summit that had been scheduled to be held in Tunis on 29-
30 March 2004. He insisted on putting on record that the Arabs were
determined to adhere to the values of tolerance, understanding and the
principle of dialogue between civilisations, and to emphasise their
categorical rejection of extremism, chauvinism, violence and terrorism, and
to wholeheartedly confront these phenomena within the framework of
international cooperation and solidarity to abolish their causes, in addition

~9~
to consolidating democracy, supporting the civil society and bolstering the
role of women.

The amendment clearly contained quotes from the American Greater Middle
East Initiative. This was not surprising since the toppled ruler had strong
links with America and the US intelligence services. He also visited America
on 17 February 2004, about a month and a half prior to the date of the
summit.

President Bouteflika, for his part, spoke about change during the conference
organised by the Arab Thought Institution in Beirut where he said, If we
want to achieve a new revival, we should stop confining it to the religious
sphere; only then will the Arab world be able to reconcile with global values
i.e. the values of America and Europe. Bouteflika also attributed distaste for
an Arab and Islamic renaissance, mainly to our religious visualisations and
our viewpoint towards the world and life change is no longer a domestic
requirement, but rather a prerequisite we ought to execute before it is
imposed upon us from outside

The slain Libyan leader, Gaddafi, handed the American Initiative aimed at
reshaping the region an easy victory when he announced that he would open
Libya to foreign inspectors having taken the decision to get rid of his
Weapons of Mass Destruction, thus doing America a great favour. The Libyan
regime had chosen submission to the requirements of the US foreign policy
which was a useful boost to the domino effect that caused the dilapidation
of the regimes voluntarily. The Arab leaders expressed their compliance by
publicly agreeing to all the requisites of what America referred to as reforms
and good governance without the need to shed one single drop of blood of
any American soldier. Accordingly, Gaddafi set about grooming his son, Saif
al-Islam, to succeed him and worked towards projecting him as a moderate
and pro-Western figure. In 2006, Saif al-Islam announced his endeavour of
reform in which he called for the drafting of a constitution and rebuilding the
country according to law-based institutions protected by the constitution.

Hence, the regimes in the Muslims lands were all engrossed in fighting
terrorism, modernising the education curricula and promoting democracy,
human rights, general freedoms and market economy, not because they had
the desire to generate modernisation and change, but rather because they
submissively complied with the American demands.

~ 10 ~
America proceeded on the plane of political, economic and cultural reforms
in the Islamic region. This stance did not in fact reflect a moral commitment
towards the masses, but rather a stance in which America took into
consideration her own interests in the first instance. She was oblivious to the
interests of the masses, Islamic and non-Islamic alike. Otherwise, why had
she been backing those despotic regimes and supplying them through her
intelligence services with all the expertise in interrogation techniques, as
well as all the means of torture and oppression through training
programmes for the operatives of those regimes?

Circumventing the Ummahs Wishes

Americas Greater Middle East Initiative has been designed to derail the
desire of the masses to rid themselves of the oppression and tyranny of the
criminal regimes. This desire has started to threaten the interests of America
should the Ummah succeed in achieving it by taking control of her own
affairs. This threat prompted America to turn against the dictatorial regimes
she had established and backed for decades. The map of the political forces
overseeing the affairs of the Ummah and the existing forms of governments
in the Islamic lands, including the Arab lands, are no longer consistent with
the regional and international political developments. Therefore, America
started to dictate the transitioning towards democracy and the upholding of
human rights and general freedoms to the regimes. This was to consolidate
the pillars of ruling in the Arab countries whose rulers are being replaced
and to topple the rulers whose shelf-life had expired with their notoriety for
injustice and oppression embedded in the minds of the masses. America had
already decided to thrust them aside and do away with their services but not
before exhausting them to consolidate her reforms.

The leader of the Kafir West, America, has perceived that the use of physical
force to destroy Islam and its civilisation is futile. The crusaders have used it
before to destroy the Islamic State and the Islamic Ummah, but all their
attempts failed to achieve their aims. In the past, every time the Muslims
were defeated in a battle, they would rally their ranks, gather their forces
and eventually achieve victory. In recent years, America encountered a fierce
resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan despite all the cruelty she had perpetrated
and strife she ignited amongst the Muslims.

~ 11 ~
The Battle for Hearts and Minds

In her fight against Islam, America has trodden a far more dangerous path,
namely the battle for hearts and minds. She has embarked on fighting the
Muslims intellectually and emotionally by plotting, distorting and changing
the basic concepts in order to concentrate her secular concepts and
viewpoint towards life. She has become instrumental in this endeavour,
thanks to what she possesses in terms of styles, means, intelligence services
and a tremendous media machine.

Through the military actions she has been undertaking in the Islamic world,
America has maintained a fundamental objective, namely the psychological
war she had designed to paralyse the ability of the Ummah to fight her
enemies. Stratfors article issued in the US in mid-October 2002 stated that
the USs persistence to strike Iraq, despite the objection of most of the
countries of the world, was aimed at undermining the Islamic psyche,
inflicting it with dejection and desolation and making it feel helpless.
America wanted to ensure the Ummah was incapable of threatening the US
interests in the region in the short and long term and of resisting the
political, economic or cultural Americanisation projects.

For his part, former CIA director, James Woolsey, stated during a debate held
by the Students Union at Oxford University In November 2002 under the
theme of the War on Terrorism, that the US would work towards changing
the regimes of all the Arab countries starting with Egypt and Saudi Arabia
once the task in Iraq was complete. He also added that the war America
intended to launch on Iraq was not necessarily linked to the issue of WMD
but rather to spreading democracy in the Arab and Islamic world.

The Falsehood of the American Moderate Islam

With the aim of deceiving the Muslims further, America set about
propagating the great fallacy known as moderate Islam and the civil
democratic Islam, namely an Islam that endorses democracy, human rights,
general freedoms, pluralism and the civil state. In other words, it is an Islam
constructed as a spiritual religion that has no connection to temporal life,
and according to the leader of al-Nahda Movement in Tunisia Rashid al-

~ 12 ~
Ghannoushi, this involves making the relationship between the Islamic and
secular moderate trends successful and achieve harmony between them.

The project of moderate Islam was tabled in the annals of the American
policymaking mechanism where America devised her plan for the Islamic
world. Accordingly, she determined the objectives, tasks, roles and tools,
and she decided that the plane of the battle in our region was a battle for
hearts and minds. Hence, the Kuffar focused their attention on deceptively
generating a conviction among Muslims that they should keep Islam pure
and unblemished by keeping it away from the dirty political wrangling,
deception and hypocrisy of the politicians.

The fallacy of moderate Islam, from an American viewpoint, is the optimum

formula to drain Islam from its civilisational purports. It is the strategic
ambush with which she will secure the dependency of the Islamic world upon
her and impede any civilisational revival on the basis of Islam, thus
perpetuating her tight grip on the region.

Exploiting Moderate Muslims

America had been strengthening her ties with the moderate Islamists and
nurturing them through a number of huge networks that spoke on their
behalf and expressed their views before she integrated them into
mainstream politics. The RAND Corporation explained the moderate
Muslims are those who share the key dimensions of democratic culture. They
believe that the essential core of Islamic belief not only will remain
undamaged but will be strengthened by changes, even very substantial
changes that reflect changing times, social conditions, and historical
circumstances. Their core valuesthe primacy of the individual conscience
and of a community based on social responsibility, equality, and freedom
are easily compatible with modern democratic norms.

Hence, America set about promoting those modernist Muslims and raising
their profile as being the preachers of moderation, righteousness, tolerance
and rationalism in contrast to those dubbed as terrorists, extremists and
intransigent fundamentalists. America approached some of the leaders and
icons of the Islamic movements that inclined towards that philosophy and

~ 13 ~
struck several deals with them whereby America would help them accede to
power and support them in exchange for the following:

First: Encouraging and supporting democracy and the internationally

recognised human rights, including gender equality and the freedom of
religion. This requires adhering to democracy as it is conventionally
perceived in the West, and agreeing to the principle stipulating that political
legitimacy could only emanate from the volition of the masses which would
be expressed through free and democratic elections. This was embedded as
a vital prerequisite in the definition of moderate Islamists.

Second: Recognising a source of law that is not built on sectarian bases in

reference to the Islamic Aqeedah. The dividing line between the moderate
Islamists and the fundamentalists is the call for the implementing of
Shariah, and the fact that the conservative interpretations of Shariah
contradict democracy and human rights. In this context, the moderate
Islamists describe themselves as those who aspire to establish a civil state,
not a religious one, thus overlooking the fact that a civil state entails having
civil law as the source of legislation.

Third: Respecting political, religious and cultural plurality while accentuating

the need to uphold the rights of women and religious minorities. Hence, the
moderate Islamists should welcome womens movements, religious
plurality and interfaith dialogue. They should acknowledge that the dictates
of the Quran and the Sunnah that discriminate between man and woman
such as the female receiving only half of the males entitlement to an
inheritance - must be reinterpreted to take into account the changing times
and situations. Furthermore, the moderate Islamists should endorse the
complete equality before the law for all the citizens, Muslims and non-
Muslims alike, especially in respect of abolishing the concept of Jizyah.

Fourth: Rejecting terrorism as perceived by the West, any other form of

violence against civilians and deeming suicide operations as illegitimate
terrorism. The ultimate objective behind this is to chip away at the concept
of Jihad and to criminalise it internationally as an initial step towards
removing it from the culture and the thought of the Muslims, especially in
the educational curricula and the Friday sermons.

This is the new American strategy in the Islamic world. It is based on the
velvet glove policy through backing the moderate Islamists and focusing on

~ 14 ~
the economic, political, civil and intelligence presence, and ruling through
the embassies instead of military deployment.

This is how America proceeded with the moderate Islamists in Turkey,

helping them accede to power and supporting them. They in turn opted for
the secularity of the state, implemented capitalism in the economy and
proceeded meticulously according to liberal democracy. America turned
them into a role model that al-Nahda Movement in Tunisia and the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt have emulated with the rest expected to jump on the
bandwagon.

The shrewd US politician and Middle East expert, former US Secretary of

State Henry Kissinger, said in September 2012: We have informed the
U.S. military that we are compelled to occupy the seven countries in the
Middle East because of its strategic importance to us, especially as it
contains oil and other economic resources. and they have nearly
completed their job.

The Reality of the Arab Spring

What has been dubbed as the Arab Spring and what has been witnessed in
terms of the uprisings that ensued, toppling some of the dictatorial regimes
in the Arab region and pursuing their cries for change up until now, is not in
fact as the international and regional media have been portraying to the
masses through lies and deception. There is a fair amount of misgivings
surrounding those reports on those events.

Now that the storm has subsided and people have started to reflect away
from the pressures of the events and the dominance of the narrow single
vision, in addition to the emergence of the components of perception and
analysis that allow for a meticulous and temperate reading of the scene, we
can confirm that what happened is the closest thing to a plot. Every sensible
person perceives clearly that the crisis that America has dubbed as the Arab
Spring is proceeding on the tracks of the Greater Middle East Initiative. It is a
major conspiracy aimed at producing a new culture in politics and in
economic, educational and cultural structures, which America seeks to
institute through what is known as the revolutions of the Arab Spring that
she had embraced and bankrolled secretly until the outlines of the

~ 15 ~
conspiracy started to emerge and the evil Western and American impressions
started to surface.

The picture became clearer through the analysis of the British newspaper,
the Guardian, which concluded the west never gives up its drive to control
the Middle East, whatever the setbacks. It brought back the memory of the
era of direct Western colonisation of the Muslim world and confirmed that,
as elections bring one Islamist party after another to power in the Arab
world, the US and allies are trying to tame them on foreign and economic
policy, rather than interpretations of Shariah.

What we should never forget is that the West has not and will not relinquish
its interests easily in the Middle East. Hence, when the West realised that the
shelf-life of the moronic rulers who had been despotically safeguarding
those interests was about to expire, it decided to anticipate the events and
adopt a fresh method to maintain its hegemony; thus the notion of peaceful
revolutions was put in motion during the tenure of George Bush Jr.

America started to show interest in the moderate Islamists who had turned
from the strange ones and the terrorist and obstinate enemy into the
desired alternative once America had struck a host of deals with them, and
they abided by her instructions.

Scores of intellectuals, politicians, analysts and authors have researched,

analysed and addressed this issue from every possible angle; they
concluded, without any shade of a doubt, that foreign powers had had a
hand in the events and steered them towards their desired objectives with
the help of those masses who had been suffering for years from the injustice
and oppression of the corrupt regimes. They have also confirmed that the
so-called Arab Spring has been nothing but a myth, and that America,
thanks to her intelligence services and huge media machine, had been
behind it in order to reshape the region anew. This reshaping process
required the demolition of the thrones of those rulers whose shelf-life had
expired at the hands of their peoples; and when the new rulers arrived, the
masses believed they were the ones who brought them into power. This is
why the youth of the Ummah were encouraged to carry the Western concepts
such as democracy and civil state and made to believe that such concepts
did not contradict Islam. The masses were also deliberately made to believe
that they had chosen those concepts and slogans.

~ 16 ~
Training for Peaceful Protest

Hence, the energy and the enthusiasm of the Ummahs youth were exploited;
some of them received training in Serbia on how to disseminate disturbances
and incite the crowds. According to AFP sources, the US administration spent
$50 million in the two years that preceded the first spark of the so-called
Arab Spring to help the activists protect themselves against arrests and
persecutions of the dictatorial regimes. Egyptian strategic expert,
General Hussam Soueilem, told al-Hayat satellite channel that, the report of
the Washington International Institute for Globalisation Research stated that
the CIA and the Pentagon had prepared a number of plans to change the
regimes through unconventional methods, which begin by stimulating a
number of youth groups linked through electronic means, whose task would
be to practise disturbances and guerrilla tactics and move together like
swarms of bees, with the aim of bringing about regimes loyal to America,
which would contribute to executing her plans.

What happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and now Syria falls within
this trend; it was neither incidental nor unintentional. Political awareness and
observation of events necessitate the presence of theorisers, planners and
tools behind such operations. What has been occurring in these countries
cannot be a revolution and cannot be described as such. A revolution in
society should be preceded by a sweeping intellectual revolution that paves
the way for it. The intellectual revolution for its part should prepare the
ground for a public opinion emanating from a general awareness about an
idea with the resolve to establish it in the realm of life, in place of the
prevalent conditions. Accordingly, a revolution is not instantly made; it is
rather preceded by a host of intellectual indications that pave the way for it.
It would be impossible for a revolution to succeed with such a style, since it
is viewed as the act of occasioning a radical and comprehensive change that
cannot be achieved at the push of a button by foreign powers, which none
of us should envisage that they are seeking to liberate the masses; they are
merely seeking their own interests.

~ 17 ~
The Arab Spring and the Tunisian Case

If we looked at Tunisia as a parable since it was the country from which the
spark of the so-called Arab Spring revolutions was ignited, the events were
not triggered instantly on 17 December 2012 soon after al-Bouazizi
immolated himself. This deduction is corroborated by a thorough
observation and a review of the events that paved the way for the general
outburst.

The events in Tunisia started when a broad platform of parties, law

associations and organisations of the so-called civil society gathered under
one single front known as the 18 October Movement for Rights and
Freedoms. This movement was founded in 2005 and backed by America to
rival for the eradicationist tendency that dominated the country and to be an
effective force in the political life in line with the American requirements.

The view stipulating that the 18 October Movement for Rights and
Freedoms has been Americas hand in the political change in Tunisia is
corroborated by two points:

First: The programme that the movement adopted was proceeding according
to what America had demanded in terms of advocating freedom of
expression, free press, the freedom of association for all with no
restrictions on the activities of all parties and associations and the release of
political prisoners, as well as the return and the rehabilitation of all exiles
within the framework of a general amnesty law that includes all those who
had been oppressed.

Second: The movement includes a broad platform of parties, civil and law
associations that are either linked to America or proceeding according to her
agenda; it also adopts the process of political reconciliation with the
moderate Islamists. The parties affiliated to this movement are the
Democratic Progressive Party, Congress for the Republic, Tunisian Workers'
Party, Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties, Unites Nasserist Party,
Movement of Socialist Democrats and al-Nahda Movement. As for the
associations, they are the International Association in Support of Political
Prisoners, the Tunisian Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers,
the Tunisian Committee against Torture, the Tunisian League of Free Writers,
the National Council for Freedoms and the Amicale of Ex-Combatants. The

~ 18 ~
18 October Movement also includes several personalities operating in their
individual capacity.

Americas aim behind supporting the founding of 18 October Movement was

to categorise the moderate Islamic milieux that believe in partial reform
and political participation within the legislative structure of the current
regimes, the Islamic milieux that call for a radical change on the basis of
Islam, and the milieux that believe in armed struggle as the only way to
establish the Islamic State. This categorisation is at the heart of Americas
plan to fight Islam under the theme of fighting terrorism as mentioned in
the research compiled by the RAND Corporation entitled The Civil
Democratic Islam. What makes this deduction conclusive is the fact that the
founders of 18 October Movement set up from the onset The Forum for
Intellectual Dialogue whose purpose was to bridge the gap between the
secularists and al-Nahda Movements Islamists on some essential political
and intellectual issues. They also announced on September 2006 in a
communiqu issued by the movement that they were determined to launch
a host of initiatives and national campaigns between the homeland and
abroad over the rights and the three freedoms. This is also corroborated by
the surprise visit that a team from the US embassy paid at the end of
October 2006 to the residence of the senior official of al-Nahda Movement
and the current head of the interim government, Hamadi Jebali. Some
officials of the former regime were taken aback by the visit which lasted
three hours and during which several issues concerning al-Nahda Movement,
its future role in the change America wanted in Tunisia and the stance of the
movement vis--vis the American policy in the region were discussed.

The Islamists Accession to Power without Islam

Despite her backing of the moderate Islamists to accede to power without

Islam, America does not proceed haphazardly; the annals of US decision-
making would not adopt such policies and initiatives without a study of all
the hypotheses and probabilities, since any slipup or sloppiness in adopting
policies that do not serve her plans would induce her to intervene directly or
indirectly.

About two years ago, the masses in Tunisia rebelled against oppression and
tyranny, and against the policy of starving the masses and spreading poverty

~ 19 ~
which the tyrant of Tunisia and his cronies had been perpetrating. As the
masses kept edging him out, he kept retracting; he first labelled them the
aberrant hooded gangs and then the terrorists. Then he conceded by
saying I have understood you before being forced to flee from the land of
Islam in Tunisia for good. This was after he had played mischief with Tunisia
for about 25 years during which he inflicted misery, starvation, poverty and
banishment on his subjects, stripped them of their dignity and suppressed
their adherence to their Islam with all his might and influence with the help
of his cronies from among the eradicationist seculars.

The Muslim youth of Tunisia demonstrated to their Ummah and to the world
a host of heroic and steadfast stances in the face of the deposed American
agent after al-Bouazizi had immolated himself. That incident and the
troubles that ensued were exploited by some elements to stir up the masses
thanks to the fertile ground for an uprising against humiliation, degradation,
hunger, poverty and grave injustice inflicted upon them by the tyrant and his
cronies. It was time for that decayed regime to be replaced as the stench of
its collaboration filled the air and America realised that it had aged and its
sell-by date expired, with a new regime that would be as collaborating but
this time produced by the masses. This is because America has realised that
the children of the Ummah are allergic to the regimes that come from the
gates of the American embassy.

America was already preparing the ground for the changes in Tunisia,
through her spy centre embassy and with the help of several Tunisian figures
inside the country and abroad, to take effect by the time the tenure of the
tyrant would have ended in 2014. However, she feared that matters could
get out of hand and thus hastened, again through her embassy in Tunis and
her numerous agents all over the country, to make precipitous arrangements
in order to bring the situation under control. She also worked towards
replacing her agent, Zain al-Abideen, with new popularly-approved rulers
according to the American standards of ruling.

On 24 January 2011, former French president Nicholas Sarkozy told

France24 satellite channel: I am not saying that understanding what is
happening in Tunisia is easy, but I can see that many people [he means the
Americans] were fully aware of what was going to happen. And I wonder,
what would they have lost if they had kept us posted beforehand? This
would have spared us the guesswork.

~ 20 ~
The army commanders were ordered not to defend the senior figures of the
regime and not to interfere with the masses during demonstrations and
protests so as to project a good image of the army in the peoples minds,
thus enabling them to protect and defend the new regime. Once the armed
forces were deployed throughout the country, the police chiefs were ordered
to withdraw from the streets. This paved the way for America to execute her
plan of occasioning the change in Tunisia by forming an interim government
whose task was to prepare for the elections of the Founding National Council
and elect a president of the republic. Hence, America bequeathed the ruling
of Tunisia to the new agents whom the masses approved after she had
deceived them.

The Revolutions and Political Deception

America has been practising the most dangerous act of political deception,
not only against the Muslims of Tunisia but against the Ummah as a whole,
especially when the so-called revolutions erupted and spread across the
Arab region with the aim of shaping the future of the Islamic Ummah to fit in
with her initiative. The so-called Tunisian Revolution had given America an
opportunity to forge ahead with her Greater Middle East Initiative in the
whole region. This explains the statements of Democrat Senator John Kerry,
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said: The flight of
Ben Ali will resonate far beyond Tunisias borders. Middle Eastern countries
have some of the world's youngest populations, who yearn for a future free
of political repression, corruption and economic stagnation."

In light of what occurred in the Middle East in terms of political

developments that led to the collapse of some regimes and to the presence
of commotions in others, the media sought to highlight and focus on the
revolution of the masses in the region as being a call for changes in all
aspects of life on the basis of democracy, plurality and general freedoms;
this is exactly what America wanted. The media also emphasised that the
reforms America is seeking are concordant with what people want within her
designs for a Greater Middle East. America is eager to stress that democracy
and plurality are what the people of the region want, and she deems this to
be the legitimate and sole request that she and the Western powers can
defend along with its champions even if this led to the use of all she had in

~ 21 ~
terms of force. In other words, America has been working towards executing
the initiative through the masses by goading them into calling for the
American projects in their quality as a part of the masses demands.

It has become very conspicuous and without any shade of a doubt that the
protests that have been taking place in more than one country of the region
had not been spontaneous; they had rather been prearranged. The protests
have been monitored and steered with the use of several sophisticated styles
and means, namely satellite channels such as Aljazeera and al-Arabiya, the
internet, weekly magazines and daily newspapers plus the instructions given
to several agents to lead the protests in the streets and to the scholars,
campaigners, moderate Islamic groups, syndicates, army commanders and
well-known Zionist figures headed by Bernard Henry Levy, who brought back
memories of the evil role that Lawrence of Arabia played in the region during
the First World War.

It is very regrettable that most of the Arab masses still believe that what has
been happening in Tunisia and elsewhere is a revolution; this is due to the
intellectual and political deformation to which they have been subjected for
decades. These masses have not perceived yet that people in Tunisia, for
instance, carried out a formidable popular uprising that led to the toppling
of the tyrant who would not have relinquished the reins of power had it not
been for both the determination of the masses together with the American
rebuff of the ruler combined. The problem is that the deception did not only
dupe the majority of the masses in Tunisia, but also many politicians,
intellectuals, parties and movements; they failed to link the so-called Arab
Spring to the American Greater Middle East Initiative.

America, who is the decision-maker in the region, has been working ever
since she became the unilateral superpower in the international situation
towards reshaping the Middle East region in a manner that would consolidate
her influence and dispel the notion of the region ridding itself of her
shackles now that Islam had become animated within Arab societies,
threatening the dictatorial regimes whose sell-by date had expired and had
become a burden on the West and a threat to its interests.

The Islamic Ummah is being lured into a tenacious trap under the theme of
creating and managing crises through the plots of the so-called Arab
Spring and the Greater Middle East Initiative that are two sides of the same

~ 22 ~
coin. She has been the target of a conspiracy aimed at keeping her in a state
of constant turmoil for successive generations, starting with the era of direct
colonialism through to the era of imperialism, then the dictatorships and
finally the governments of the moderate Islamists who have thrown Islam
behind their back and committed themselves to not implementing it and to
proceeding with democracy and secularism under the falsehood of
moderate Islam.

The Dangerous Turning Point

As the impact of the political concepts of Islam is intensifying among the

Muslims, and as the call for the resuming of the Islamic way of life is
growing louder, the region stands at a dangerous turning point and a
delicate phase of its configuration, threatened by the intellectual and
political trends that pull it back and forth, the incoming political agendas
and the attempts at severing its ties with its history and civilisation in order
to subjugate it to the Greater Middle East Initiative, which could encompass
areas beyond the Middle East itself but not the sound Islam and its
ideological Daawah carriers. This is what the Ummah must perceive. She
must set her own agenda to achieve revival instead of importing her way of
life from the West. The Ummah has amassed in her intellectual, legislative,
political and civilisational heritage that which enables her to awaken from
her slumber and revive no matter how manifold the tribulations and how
numerous the collaborators and traitors.

Ditching the rotten regimes trampled in the mud of treason and

collaboration to the Westerner, just like the toppled regime in Tunisia, would
come about when the Ummah embraces the leadership of her real reference
point, namely Islam, and when the aware and sincere group from among her
children undertakes the serious and productive work together with the
sincere and influential individuals to occasion the change on the basis of
Islam. This work must be paralleled with a factual perception of the Kufr
powers and their capabilities, and the way they, together with their puppets,
should be confronted, i.e. by exposing their scam and conspiracies and by
naming and shaming their puppets. Otherwise, the winds of change would
not blow in favour of the sincere forces. Hence, we ought to direct the
attention of the Ummahs sincere children in Tunisia and in other parts of

~ 23 ~
the Muslims lands towards the fact that addressing the malpractices and the
injustices cannot be achieved through armed struggle but rather through
aware and serious thinking about the way to remove those regimes and get
rid of them for good.

The Real Plane of the Struggle

The Ummah must perceive that the real plane of the struggle is the one
between Islam and Kufr. These dangerous initiatives that America and her
agents and allies are endeavouring to impose upon the peoples of the region
are but one battle in this long-running struggle that is yet to be settled. The
Islamic Daawah carriers and the wise men from among the Muslims should
perceive the gravity of their task in standing up to America and her agents
and in bulwarking the Islamic Ummah impregnably against all the initiatives
plotted against her. They ought to be vigilant lest they are dragged into
tangential arenas of the struggle because any diversion towards this would
be a squandering of efforts and energies to no avail. Our battle must not
deviate towards the abyss of the sectarian struggle or towards that of the
struggle with the movements, parties and groups hungry for power. That is
not the plane of the real struggle. It is rather a distraction from it. The real
struggle the Ummah should perceive and assume, with the wise and
influential individuals from among her children alongside her, is the struggle
between Islam and Kufr.

In its quality as an ideology, i.e. a rational Aqeedah from which a system for
all aspects of life emanates, Islam must take its position in the arena of
struggle with the Kufr represented by the liberal democratic capitalist
ideology that the whole West embraces. The Ummah must enter the
battlefield in her quality as an Islamic Ummah and entity, and confront this
enemy who stands as an obstacle in the face of implementing Islam. Hence,
the Ummah as a whole must perceive that the enemy lying in wait is indeed
this Kafir West. The Islamic Daawah carriers must explain to the Ummah that
it is forbidden for any Muslim who professes that there is no god but Allah
and that Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah, to take a neutral stance in
the battle of Islam against Kufr. The Ummah and every single Muslim should
take an antagonistic position vis--vis Kufr, the Kuffar and their

~ 24 ~
subordinates. Allah (swt) says: Indeed Satan is your enemy; so treat him as
such. TMQ [35 - 6]

The Ummah should realise that the Kafir West, its subordinates, puppets and
those smitten by its culture have been promoting democracy as being a
ruling system that does not contradict the Shurah in Islam, that democracy
means granting people the right to choose the ruler and bring him to
account and that the alternative to democracy is repression and despotism.
The choice they have been propagating as being either democracy or
despotism is inequitable because there is a straight path free of any
crookedness that is completely different from these two; that is Islam as a
doctrine and a resulting system that stems from it to tackle all of lifes
problems. It is the Islam mentioned in the Shariah texts and implemented
for fourteen centuries under the banner of the Khilafah. Allah (swt) says:

Indeed this is My path, which is straight; so follow it and follow not other
paths: they will scatter you about from His path TMQ [6-153]

This is the real battle of the Islamic Ummah, the battle of Islam and Kufr. So
would the Ummah and her children step up to the challenge?

The great deception against the Ummah would be to deviate from the sound
objective that our noble Shariah stipulates that is summed up in the work
towards resuming the Islamic way of life by establishing the Islamic Khilafah
state, and to accept the succession of the Islamists to power but devoid of
Islam. If the Muslims discern that the Kuffar are endeavouring to deceive
them by steering them away from the sound objective they should be
targeting, and if they become aware of what the Kufr states are concocting,
they would be taking the first step towards thwarting the projects of the
Kuffar. They would be proceeding towards building the desired entity, the
Khilafah, which would beyond doubt salvage the Muslims from their
excruciating reality and before that, save them from the wrath of Allah (swt)
when they embark upon conveying the message of Islam to the world to
bring it out from the darkness to the radiance of Islam.

Allah (swt) says: O you who believe! Respond to Allah and His Messenger
when He calls you to that which gives you life. TMQ [8-24]

Hizb ut-Tahrir 13 December 2012

Tunisia www.hizbuttahrir.org 1st Safar 1434h

~ 25 ~