Just who does he think he is? The new Mohammed? The mahdi—a Muslim holy warrior who arrives in history to stir up the faithful and attack the infidel? Or is he simply a modern mullah with a bent to murder?
I think I know. Osama bin Laden sees himself as the manifestation of Hasan-iSabbah, known to history as the Old Man of the Mountain, the founder of the 11th-century sect of the Assassins. The Assassins were “a militant wing of a heterodox Sh’ia sect, the Isma’ilis,” says British historian and writer William Dalrymple, one of my favorite authors who takes off into strange lands and comes back with great stories of the past from Jerusalem to Beijing, from Samarkand to Delhi.
The Isma’ilis were persecuted by the Egyptian Fatimid caliphs. In response they formed the Assassins, and became the “original terrorist group,” says Dalrymple in his book Xanadu that re-creates the late 13th-century journey of Marco Polo and his two uncles to the summer palace of the mighty Kublai Khan. They carried with them a phial of holy water from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to present to the Great Khan as a follow-up to the rumor he was interested in converting to Christianity, thus creating a formidable alliance against the dominant power of Islam.
Polo did not stop in Syria in Masyaf near the headquarters of the Assassins, but he mentioned the cult: “The Old Man kept at his court a number of youths of the country and to these he used to tell tales about paradise …” going on to describe how the youngsters were lulled into gardens filled with “wine and milk and honey; and numbers of ladies and all the most beautiful damsels in the world … who danced in a manner that was charming to behold.”
Our word hashish comes from the Assassins, and is purported to be the narcotic the Old Man used to drug his subjects into believing that paradise was theirs if they followed his orders without question. Says Polo: “the Old Man would say to such a youth: go and slay So and So; and when thou returnst my angels shall bear thee to paradise.”
The crusader prince Henry of Champagne visited the Grand Master of the sect who, according to Dalrymple’s source, “asked the prince if he had any subject as obedient as his own, and without waiting for a reply made a sign to two of his fida’i. They immediately jumped off the tower on which they were standing, and plunged straight to their deaths on the rocks below.”
Is this not what we see today whenever bin Laden orders death from his mountain stronghold? Are not suicide bombers and Al-Qaeda devotees convinced paradise is the reward for their murderous bombings and attacks on innocent people? Bin Laden is indeed the modern-day Old Man of the Mountain who extracts blind obedience from his followers. And his goal is to assassinate the enemies of Allah, most especially the American infidel.
The first Old Man of the Mountain was finally terminated (as we like to say today) by the Mameluke sultan Baibars in 1273. He put the sect to the sword and built a victory tower 20 feet high made out of the skulls of the Assassins.
CALL IN THE ISRAELIS
If bin Laden is the modern equivalent of the Old Man of the Mountain, the Israelis are the Mamelukes of today, highly disciplined and expert in waging war. The recent incursion into Lebanon typifies the warrior state: They act while their enemies talk. Hezbollah, a sh’ia sect financed by Iran and Syria to threaten Israel on its northern border with Lebanon, typifies the Arab modus operandi: spout outrageous rhetoric laced with eschatological religious fervor; and fight dirty using assassinations and bombings devised to kill innocent people to raise the level of terror.
This is the signature of cowards. And characteristically they cut and run if confronted with actual military attack. As soon as Israel acts, as in the past, they scatter, as do the world’s political leaders who have stood by as anti-Israeli rhetoric has reached a crescendo over the past 10 years as the “chattering classes” took on the Palestinians as their cause du jour. But now that Israel has moved into Lebanon, the G-8 grandees support them uniformly, as if the anti-Semitism festering in their own diplomatic corps and media did not exist.
As the walls “come tumbling down” so to speak, is it not the right time to encourage the IDF to move on and do the rest of the dirty work for us by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Syrian bases that continue to supply terrorists in Iraq and go after Al-Qaeda and the Old Man of the Mountain while they are at it?
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
... The attack in the daily press on the NC State Ports Authority for organizing an outing on a state-owned ferry boat during the Pepsi Americas’ Sail event July 1 seems “disproportionate,” the same term trotted out by the BBC and US mass media to criticize Israel for acting in Lebanon. Actually, entertaining politicians and big shots is appropriate, especially during a major event that spotlights the NC coast, in this case Beaufort and Morehead City. The outing had what we need more of around here: a sense of occasion.
This over-reaction to the ferry outing is indicative of the desperation in the old mass media. Many are losing ads and readers by the hour and their response is often erratic, and in the case of the New York Times, downright treasonous. The Grey Lady twice recently published classified data on how the US is investigating terrorists and this on the heels of the mortifying result of their orchestrated attack on Karl Rove in the Valerie Plame incident. As the old political saying goes: They have all the qualities of a dog, except loyalty.