The `Islamic Problem' Is a British Creation
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
At the conclusion of the Forum for Strategic and Security Studies in New Delhi, India on Dec. 3, 2008, Lyndon LaRouche was asked for his views of the the problem of radicalized Islamic fundamentalism. Here are his remarks. (See also his main remarks.)
The Islamic problem is, largely, in my view, a creation of, primarily the British, but also the complicity of certain forces in the United States. But the British, of course, are the prominent ones. I think it's not really an impossible problem. I think that the problem is that the authority, the cultural authority, the appeal of European civilization has been undermined. And also, we look at the number of cases, in which the Islamic problem is essentially a British problem. It's British-created. It was created partly—as we know in the history of this—by the British East India Company, as part of these specific operations. It was also created as a part of Sykes-Picot! Again, from the World War I period, the aftermath of World War I.
So that the problem is not, in itself, intrinsically an Islamic problem. It's that someone decided to use this potential for conflict. Of course, the special case is the case of Saudi Arabia.
Now, most of the evil we have to contend with in the world, in the Islamic problem, comes from Saudi Arabia. And it's used by the British. The primary thing is, you can't talk about the British Empire: You have to talk about the British-Saudi Empire. Because, in terms of the military expenditures, most of the military expendituresx on the Arab side, are coming through Saudi Arabia. Yes, they'll say they don't do much in military affairs, but we're not even sure what they do in their bedroom affairs! In fact, we don't want to know.
But the fact is, most of these things come through the Saudis schools, through the educational systems: Just the very idea, that the word "Taliban" tells you that. What is Taliban? It's a system of education, it's the Saudi system of education. So the system is artificial: You take people who are poorly educated, and you incite them and manipulate them, and you make them a force. And you put in charge of them, you put some very nasty people in charge of it. You take the killings among Islamic populations, as a control mechanism; it's an important feature of this thing.
My view on this, is very simply, you just simply have to understand this: Create an environment, a world environment, in which those of us who are responsible, sort of control the world environment.
9/11: A British-Saudi-U.S. Operation
For example: Just take 9/11: I know, 9/11 was done by a British-Saudi-American operation, on behalf of George Bush. I know that. We have the names and addresses. We have inside information from some of our intelligence friends who have done the inside job investigating this. We know it! Imagine: The United States government, under President George W. Bush, in conjunction with the Bush family friends, the Osama bin Laden operation, staged, using a British operation, the BAE operation—which is a British-Saudi operation, with the largest, single off-the-books funding in the world—ran this operation as a mechanism for making the Bush Administration viable for the job assigned to it: of making a mess of the world.
And we find ourselves going into a situation, where we take the potential of this kind of thing—for example: Who runs the international drug operation? Who runs it? Who has always run the drug operation? What about the funding of the operation, running through Afghanistan? What is Afghanistan? It's growing drugs for what? For the world!
Q: India, also.
LaRouche: Yes, well, it's the same thing.
So that, we have an effect, of Islamic populations, which have been degenerated, both through the Sykes-Picot operation, number one—the French-British operation in the first place; and then through the India-based operation, which became the spill-off of Pakistan, which is a creation of the British, of the operation in Central Asia—what happened to Afghanistan, created by the British; problems in Iran, created by the British.
Most of this, you should be able to know, those of use who are literate in history. What happened? The British visitors would go about in areas of the world, and they would take little cards or little notebooks; and they would go to a village, or go to an area, define the structure of the area culturally, and then another British visitor would come back a couple of generations later, and the same notebook copied; look at the family structures, and in this process they would find the people they were going to influence, or who were susceptible, whom they will use for getting things going when they want to get them going. This is what we run into, in every part of the Arab world, and every part of the Islamic world.
The Roman Empire Is the Model
So there is no endemic Islamic problem of the type that is generally talked about. There is an orchestrated problem, and you look at this—for example, the British Empire and its precedent in terms of the Roman Empire. Look at the case of Julian the Apostate, the figure who is the central figure of recommendation in the famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Julian the Apostate! Julian the Apostate is the model, recommended in this manner, which is the foundation of British intelligence! And this is the operation they ran! The operations of Julian the Apostate! Who ran religious cults and religious wars, one against the other, as a way managing a certain phase of the Roman Empire.
And the recommendation to Lord Shelburne, in the book, and emphasized, and adopted by Shelburne, was that! The British Foreign Office, which was created in 1782 by Shelburne, in a brief period when he was Prime Minister, in which he put people in charge of this operation: British intelligence has always operated on the basis of the model of Julian the Apostate! Of creating various kinds of religious and similar kinds of cult formations, planting these and developing these in areas, as ways of orchestrated conflict. And that's the British Empire!
And therefore, my view is very simple: We have to create, among rational forces in the world, we have to create what Roosevelt understood he had to create: We have to create an alliance among sovereign nation-states, to recognize this kind of problem, and to create a control mechanism, such that these things can't operate.
Why do drugs operate? Why does the drug traffic operate? Without the drug traffic, you don't have this problem! How would you eliminate it? Well, why don't you eliminate it? Because the British don't let you eliminate it! The British run it! British intelligence runs it, always does! In South America we have it; we know exactly how it's run. I've been involved in these operations, I know these operations! And if you allow, if you say: "We're going to eliminate the legalization of narcotic substances, across borders; and we're going to take censure measures against any government which allows these things to go on on its own territory, willingly," then the problem is solved. Without these drug-related operations, we don't have a serious problem.
But we have to understand, we have to have an international agreement: We're going to shut down this drug problem! And if you look at the history of the problem, we wouldn't have a problem if we didn't have a drug problem. The British, from the beginning, in setting up their imperial system, relied upon drugs. Nobody has dared, yet, to crush that! Nobody in the United States government has done anything about it. George Bush was a beneficiary—the former President—George H.W. Bush—George Bush's crowd has been a friend of that. The Bush Administration has been friend of that.
For example, the U.S. election was run by drugs. What was the drug operation? Who runs drugs? Well, Lord Malloch-Brown runs drugs, of the British Foreign Office operations. George Soros, who works for him, runs the drug operations throughout the Caribbean area, and into South America. The governments of South America, except for Colombia, are controlled by the drug kingpins.
Why don't we do something about it? Because the British Empire won't let us. Why do we have a problem in the Middle East? Because the British Empire won't let us.
We could shut it down. But you need a consent of the major powers of the world, to agree to shut it down. You shut it down, and you don't have a problem.
