In Search of a Consultancy from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T)?
Upon reading the blog posting of Quilliam International titled: “Will they return; ISIS 5.0 in Trinidad and Tobago?” my immediate conclusion is somebody hustling for a lucrative consultancy with the T&T government as an expert of re-integrating or otherwise Islamic extremist returnees to their country of origin. The entire paragraph devoted to MUJAO in West Africa was simply to point to what returnees can do using one example of the worst case scenario without any reference to the history and sociology of Islam in T&T and the tactical terrain of T&T. Simply western extremism applied to feed Islamophobia maybe for some unstated personal end or is it an organisational end? A hustle then immediately comes to mind. The author a former US government analyst and expert has stressed his credentials but is he Muslim? Is he one of those “experts” looking outside in at Islam or is he rooted in the Din engaged in a battle within the spaces of Islam for it’s incumbent on him as Muslim? A most important existential condition to differentiate and then use to discern motive and motivation!
What is painfully apparent from the discourse of the posting are the lack of operational knowledge of the history and sociology of Islam in T&T and the operational and logistical structures that enabled the hijrah from T&T to Islamic State. If the author is knowledgeable of these realities their influence on the discourse of the post is not apparent in the post. The content of the post then illustrates the inability of its author to inject himself into the terrain of T&T and be a relevant actor in this terrain towards effecting the desired change necessary to preserving a social order in which the overwhelming majority of Muslims present no clear and discernible threat. During his visit to T&T did the author discern the level of necessary strategical support for the agenda of returnees intent on waging war on T&T will garner from the Ummah of T&T? Did he explore the reality that returnees will be making war on members of their extended family and determine their willingness to do so? Did he grasp the price the Ummah of T&T will pay for such an agenda of war carried out against the kaffirun by Muslims in T&T?
The entire post utilised discursive instruments that insist on denying the specificity of Islamic discourse and as a result it denies the worldview and the range of human perceptions that flow from this worldview or simply put the human constituted by the discourse of Islam. This attempt to essentialise Islam using western enlightenment discourse and its worldview by the author indicates that it’s a discourse being wielded in the service of western extremist discourse which propagates Islamophobia as it locks western extremist discourse and Islamic extremist discourse in a dance of dualities commonly shared. A dance in search of hegemony between two discourses which are ultimately concordant thereby mutually supportive. Wilfully generating scenarios and landscapes of mutually assured destruction to justify strategies of the “final solution” whilst being inseparably vital to the existence of each other. They are joined at the hips and of the shaitan!
This action to essentialise Islam enveloping it with a western enlightenment “soul” that is purportedly in dire opposition to Salafi Jihadi discourse is a discourse being peddled to the west as the necessary interventionist instrument for victory over the process of “radicalisation” in the west. Another hustle as Salafi Jihadi discourse of the 21st century is the product of colonial imperial and neo colonial contestations for hegemony between the essentialising discourse of the west in its assault on Islam. The discourse of essentialised Islam western enlightenment styling then breeds Salafi Jihadi discourse of the present variety and creates the terrain and drive towards producing soldiers for the cause of Salafi Jihadi discourse in the west.
The author and publisher of the post are then foot soldiers seeking to sell their favours in the western war against terrorism intent on using a discursive instrument that propagates the enemy rather than defeats it. But this justifies the use of the “final solution” so loved by western extremists as the neo Nazis and fascists. The munafiq in the house!