The Message: Year 1979 in Contemporary History

By Femi Abbas

“No sensible human being ever restricts his itinerary to a particular habitat; to keep moving, by migrating from place to place, is the secret of human progress….”. (By an Arab Poet)

Monologue

Today, ‘The Message’ column is migrating, if psychologically, from the insanity of Nigeria’s political, economic and religious calamities, to the globally escalating tempest of disastrous diseases, including the current Corona Virus pandemic codenamed COVID-19 and its entailed commercial vaccine. Such a migration by ‘The Message column’ may bring a temporary respite to readers of this column especially in respect of the current combination of suffocating economic heat with incessant incidents of terrorism and banditry in the country. Such is a way of ventilating a relative atmosphere of peace for peace-loving Nigerians.

Preamble

It is not by accident that today’s world is in a sweeping turmoil. That turmoil is rather by design. But most people do not know its genesis especially as it coincides with the advent of the 21st century.

Perhaps, this is an opportunity to recall the fact that the multifarious calamities currently ravaging the entire world, to the detriment of peace and tranquillity for mankind, is a product of long term plan for which the European colonial mentality is well known.

Since the end of the 19th century, when the once lucrative European venture of colonizing certain countries and utilizing their resources to the benefit of the colonizers, began to fade out, due to agitations for freedom and independence of those colonies, the Caucasian race of Europe had started to plan new ventures that could enable them to continue the domination of the world’s economy.

Thus, an ambitious blueprint for the current millennium was theoretically prepared at the beginning of the 20th century. It was then practical effect of that blueprint that precipitated the current ongoing turmoil that began with three fortuitous incidents 41 years ago (1979).

Incidentally, the year 1979 happened to be the turn of the Islamic Hijrah century 1400 AH.

The first of the dramatic incidents in that year was the undreamt Iranian revolution that toppled the then Imperial Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, after 38 years of reign (1941-1979) on Iran’s imperial throne.

The man reigned as the Emperor of Iran from September 16, 1941 to February 11, 1979. The revolution that stripped Pahlavi of despotic throne occurred on February 11, 1979.

Reminder

It must be remembered that Shah Pahlavi was the monarchical agent of the West, planted in the midst of the Middle East monarchs who were averse to Western model of democracy. His main duty as an agent was to hobnob with other kings in the region and spy those kings for his Western masters.

The second frightening incident, in 1979, was a failed coup d’état that was staged during the Hajj time, in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, on November 20, 1979.

Third Incident

The third incident was the invasion of Afghanistan by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on December 24, 1979. That invasion, which eventually led to the emergence of an Osama Bn Laden phenomenon, through his founded Al-Qaeda Islamic Group, was part of the struggle for supremacy among the Western powers.

Osama was recruited by the US to assist in getting Islamic mercenaries who could resist USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.

American Hidden Agenda

It was the same US that engineered the establishment of the Taliban government in that country, as a counter force to the Soviet aggression. All these were in a bid to counter socialism/communism in Asia Minor and the Middle East.

But after the USSR had been flushed out of Afghanistan by the Muslim the US proposed a confrontation with certain Muslim countries to which Osama objected. And, that was the beginning of the rift between the US and Osama Bn Laden. A former American Presidential candidate, who was also a onetime American First Lady, (Hilary Clinton), confessed to American plot against Islam recently, in her campaign for American presidential seat.

Explanation

Although the above listed incidents occurred separately in different countries and at different times of the year, they were, nevertheless, interconnected through two major factors. One of those factors was the religion of Islam which linked the peoples of the affected countries who were predominantly Muslims.

The other factor was the then raging cold war between the the capitalist West and the socialist East which had engendered an unpredictable ideological cold war that engineered global enmity among human races in the 20th century. If these two factors are deeply viewed from divergent angles, Islam will be discovered to be the main target of both blocks.

A Grand Design

Long before the above mentioned incidents began to rear their ugly heads, a dangerous graph of desperation had been designed, by the West, in anticipation of perpetual domination of the world.

That grand design was first expressed in 1902 by a British Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman when he observed as follows: “There are people who control spacious territories with manifest and hidden resources.They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations.

“No natural barriers can isolate them from one another….If, per chance, these people were to be unified into one state it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and separate Europe from the rest of the world.

“Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.

Analysis

Although, Prime Minister Bannerman did not mention his targeted race and religion, it was obvious that he was talking about the Arabs of the Middle East and Islam. The subsequent developments in that region later proved that the religion in reference was no other than ISLAM.

Follow Up

Sir Bannerman’s observation was in further pursuit of an earlier demand by an Austrian Jewish Lawyer/Journalist, Theodor Herzl, who founded the Zionist movement in 1879 with a cogent demand from the Western powers. In his demand at that time, Theodor Herzl said: “Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe, large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage by ourselves…”

In response to that clandestine demand, some years later, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour, issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name. The declaration which was issued on November 2, 1917, (one year before the end of the World War I), conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home.

The Letters of the Declaration

That (Balfour) declaration, which was aimed at enabling the British government to gain direct access to the Suez Canal in Egypt, with Israel as her Policeman in the Gulf, has since put the Middle East in an incessant turmoil till today.

The declaration read thus in part: “…His majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective….”

“The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

Implementation

To facilitate the implementation of that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be incapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, some juicy chunks of their lands.

Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria just as Kuwait was excised from Iraq. The strategy was to cause an irresolvable dissention among the citizens of those countries with the intention of breaking the yoke of the Muslim unity which Sir Bannerman had targeted in his infamous observation of 1902, quoted above.

Iranian Status

Now, how does Iran come into the above painted picture when she is not an Arab country?
That is a logical question that anybody who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up would ask.

Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And, by culture here, we mean ISLAM.

Iran is a foremost Islamic country even if her official language is farsi and not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects her must affect other Muslim countries. Iran is the only non-Arab country in the Gulf area of the Middle East that resists the Western aggression with a radically progressive posture.

Turkey’s Role

The role of Turkey in trading off Islam is another good example of a non-Arabic speaking country that has a direct but clandestine link with the Middle East. It is well known, in history, that Turkey was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate until 1924 when a diabolical agent of the West came on stage as Head of State in that country.

His name was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a man who wanted to prove to the West that it was possible for a non-Catholic to be “Holier than the Pope” especially when it came to adopting the so-called Western Civilization.

On March 3, 1924, just one year after he assumed office as the new ruler of Turkey, Ataturk introduced a Bill to the Turkish Parliament, seeking to secularize his country by abolishing the office of the Caliph without any consideration for the feelings and sensibility of the people he wanted to rule.

Presenting the Bill, Ataturk said: “Ottoman Empire was built and existed on the principle of Islam. Islam is Arabic in character and in concept. It shapes from birth to death, the lives of its adherents; it stifles hope and initiative. The Republic (of Turkey) is threatened by the continued existence of Islam in its midst….”

Thus, with the passage of that Bill, albeit under duress, Turkey was recognized as a secular state. Consequently, politics was separated from religion and Islam was relegated to a personal matter rather than the state religion that it was before then.

The Caliphate was abolished and Islamic law was abrogated. Ataturk borrowed the new Turkish civil law from Switzerland, he borrowed the criminal law from Italy and the international law of trade from Germany. The Muslim personal law was harmonized with the European civil law.

Religious instruction in public schools was prohibited. Islamic Purdah system was abolished and declared illegal while co-gender education was compelled in schools.

The use of Arabic alphabets was prohibited and replaced by the Latin Script. Adhan (the call to prayer) was no longer to be made in Arabic but in Turkish language while the national costume was changed to that of the Europeans even as the wearing of hat was made compulsory. What Ataturk did not do was to abrogate the tenets of Islam completely.

Thus, by one man’s whim, Turkey lost her values and heritage of centuries in a bid to adopt the so called ‘modernity’ brought by ‘Western civilization’. One can imagine what Islam would have become today, if countries like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan had adopted the same misfortune in the name of civilization.

The Iranian Revolution

No one believed, in 1979, that a mere mass protest by armless Mullahs could snowball into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’, capable of sweeping an imperial monarchy like that Muhammad Pahlavi into permanent oblivion. By the time the foggy dust finally settled down in February 1979, a new Iran surprisingly emerged from the debris of the old. Thus, against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic Republic.

The drama was quite electric. But, characteristic of the West, all hands still remained on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic Republic did not succeed the despotic monarchy headed by Shah Pahlavi which was heavily backed up by the oppressive West.

In particular, America was most active in that ambitious but vainglorious plot. She would not easily allow the massive material benefit that she had been enjoying for decades in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on American embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of Iran. The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government had warranted the siege.

The Failure of American Strategy

While a number of American F15 jet fighters were approaching Iran, the then US President, Jimmy Carter, tactically engaged his country’s press men in a media chat without giving any hint of the impending military operation in Iran. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and, even that of the entire American populace from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an.

Qur’anic Notion

Almost 1400 years before the American plot in Iran, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemes. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.

Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing his media chat, information would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran to reinstall Shah Pahlavi as the imperial ruler of that Country. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press as the epilogue of his media chat. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s Presidential election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would have it, instead of the expected news, what he got was a shocker of his life.

The Failure of American Might

It was like a miracle when two of the F15 fighters deployed for a surreptitious operation, by the US, collided in the air and crashed with their contents, just at the point of entering the territory of Iran. And, the crash consumed the lives of 16 top air force officers inside those jets while the other jet fighters had to turn back after realizing the futility of continuing their mission.

When the news of that devastating occurrence reached Carter, it was too much for him for him to hide, as it quickly went viral through the throbs of the media.

Thus, the mighty America failed woefully, with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze convincingly till date. Allah Akbar!

Jimmy Carter’s Fate

With the failed plot analysed above, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of America’s Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. Of course, he lost the election to the cowboy-turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, for about 444 days thereafter, the 52 American diplomats that were held hostage in American Embassy, in Tehran, remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level international diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.

Yet, America was not done. She still went ahead to freeze Iran’s foreign reserve of about $80 billion in her custody. In addition, she imposed economic sanctions on that country with the intention of running that country’s economy aground. But trust Iran, she recovered her money from American banks through unimaginable means.

Thus, the relation between both countries further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy through a boot to her electricity. America responded with a threat to Iran, saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in that Gulf country because she (America) could not trust that Islamic country with nuclear power. Yet, in the same Gulf region, Israel had acquired nuclear power without any opposition from America.

The Secret of American Power

The secret of America’s military successes in various parts of the world is neither due to technological advancement nor military superiority per se. The failed American rescue mission, in Iran, in 1979, has historically confirmed this assertion. Rather, those seeming successes were due to her ability to cause schism among some other nations. That is why many American Presidents have won or lost elections at home due to the foreign policy of the reigning President.

Iran has never been a direct prey to any Western military aggression, because she has never played a fool, dancing to the sour music of a predator in an open market.

Coup in Saudi Arabia

In the same 1979, some disgruntled elements, in Saudi Arabia, fortuitously staged a coup against the monarchical reign of King Khalid Bn Abdul Aziz. The aim of the coup was not to change the system of government but to hijack the monarchy in the name of a fictitious ‘promised messiah’ (Al-Mahdi). That incident caused a stoppage of salat and Umrah for almost four months (from November 1979 to March 1980). It took the intervention of the French military strategy to liberate the sacred Mosque of Makkah from the rebellious renegades that invaded it.

Invasion of Afghanistan

Also, in 1979, the now defunct Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with the intention of annexing the latter. It was that incident that led to an unprecedented jihad which paved way for the emergence of Al-Qaida and that of the Taliban government in that country.

All these incidences of 1979 jointly formed the foundation for today’s global turmoil that is now pervading the world and threatening human existence. The details of the 1979 coup attempt in Saudi Arabia will be discussed in this column at another time soon, in sha’Allah.