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Jamal Ud Din
al Afghani
The emergencee of the Salafi movement was the result of the
deliberate spread of Scottish Rite Freemasonry to the Middle East. This
strategy was spearheaded by what has been referred to as the Oxford
Movement, established in the 1820s, with a group of missionaries appointed
by a combined grouping of Oxford University, the Anglican Church, and
King’s College of London University.78
The leading promoters of the Oxford Movement were Pike’s fellow
member of the Palladian Rite, Lord Palmerston, along with Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli, and Edward Bullwer-Lytton, the leader of a branch of the
English Rosicrucians, a branch of Rosicrucianism developed from the Asiatic
Brethren.
The Oxford movement was further supported by the Jesuits. Also
involved were the British royal family itself. The kings and queens of
England head a circle of individuals who represent the pinnacle of
centuries of intermarrying among the aristocracy of Europe and Armenia, and
more recently, of the family of Frederick II the Great of Prussia, and the
descendants of Karl of Hessen-Kassel, the Grand Master of the Asiatic
Brethren, Catherine the Great, and Queen Victoria.
The reigning British monarch is the Holy Grail, as it were, the
vessel which carries the “holy blood,” the culmination of centuries of
intermarriage of Kabbalistic bloodlines, believed to derive in several
directions from King David. According to L.G. Pine, Editor of the
prestigious Burke’s Peerage, Jews “have made themselves so closely
connected with the British peerage that the two classes are unlikely to
suffer loss which is not mutual. So closely linked are the Jews and the
lords that a blow against the Jews in this country would not be possible
without injuring the aristocracy also.”79
The British monarch is not only the Grand Patron of Freemasonry, but
heads the Order of the Garter. The Order of the Garter is the parent
organisation over Freemasonry, worldwide. When a Mason reaches the 33rd
degree, he swears allegiance to that organisation and thereby to the
British Crown. According to researcher Dr. John Coleman, who interviewed a
Grand Master at Oxford, the Knights of the Garter are the inner-sanctum,
the elite of the elite of Her Majesty’s Most Venerable Order of St. John of
Jerusalem, the Knights of Malta. The Knights of the Order of the Garter are
the leaders of the Illuminati hierarchy, and the reigning monarch’s most
trusted “Privy Council”. 80
Benjamin Disraeli was Grand Master of Freemasonry, as well as knight
of the Order of the Garter. It was in Coningsby, that he confessed, through
a character named Sidonia, modelled on his friend Lionel de Rothschild,
that, “the world is governed by very different personages from what is
imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” Of the influence of the
secret societies, Disraeli also remarked, in Parliamentary debate:
It is useless to deny. . .
a great part of Europe – the whole of Italy and France, and a great portion
of Germany, to say nothing of other countries – are covered with a network
of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now
being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not
attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government. They
do not want ameliorated institutions; they do not want provincial councils
nor the recording of votes; they want. . . an end to ecclesiastical
establishments…
Bulwer-Lytton, who served as the head of Britain’s Colonial Office
and India Office, was the Grand Patron of the Societas Rosicruciana in
Anglia (SRIA), founded in 1865 by Robert Wentworth Little, and based on the
Asiatic Brethren. Many members of the Asiatic Brethren, or Fratres Lucis, had
become members of a German Masonic lodge called L'Aurore Naissante, or “the
Nascent Dawn”, founded in Frankfurt-on-Main in 1807. It was at this lodge
where Lord Bulwer Lytton was initiated. 81
Their primary agent for the spread of Scottish Rite Fremasonry to the
Middle East was a notorious impostor by the name of Jamal ud Din al
Afghani, regarded as the Salafi’s founder.82 Initially, the creation of the
Salafi reform movement would serve as an early example of the methods in
which Islamic terrorists were used in the future, in helping to provide a
pretext for invasion. Essentially, the Salafi were employed in the
protection of Britain’s growing interest in the Suez Canal, as it would
later become crucial to the shipment of their oil cargo to Europe and elsewhere.
In 1854 and 1856, Ferdinand de Lesseps had obtained concessions from
Said Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, who authorised the creation of a company
for the purpose of constructing a maritime canal open to ships of all
nations. The canal had a dramatic impact on world trade, playing an
important role in increasing European penetration and colonisation of
Africa.
In 1875, the mounting debts of Said Pasha’s successor, Ismail Pasha,
forced him to sell Egypt’s share in the canal to the British. Thus, the
British government, under Benjamin Disraeli, financed by his friend Lionel
Rothschild, acquired nearly half the total shares in the Suez Canal
Company, and though not a majority interest, it was for practical purposes
a controlling interest. A commission of inquiry into the failing finances
of Ismail in 1878, led by Evelyn Baring, First Earl of Cromer, and others
had compelled the viceroy into ceding his estates to the nation, to remain
under British and French supervision, and to accept the position of a
constitutional sovereign. The angered Egyptians united around Ahmed Urabi,
a revolt that ultimately provided a pretext for the British to move in and
“protect” the Suez Canal, followed by a formal invasion and occupation
which made Egypt a colony.
The agent provocateur revolt against Ismail was organised by the
movement of Jamal Afghani. Throughout his forty-year career as a British
intelligence agent, Jamal ud al Afghani was guided by two British Islamic
and cult specialists, Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Edward G. Browne. 83 E. G.
Browne was Britain’s’ leading Orientalist of the nineteenth century, and
numbered among his protégés at Cambridge University’s Orientalist
department Harry “Abdullah” St. John B. Philby, a British intelligence
specialist behind the Wahhabi movement. Wilfred S. Blunt, another member of
the British Orientalist school, was given the responsibility by the
Scottish Rite Masons to organise the Persian and the Middle East lodges. 84
Very little is known of Jamal Afghani’s origins. Despite the
appellation “Afghani”, there are some reports that he was a Jew. On the
other hand, some scholars believe that he was not an Afghan but an Iranian
Shiah. And despite posing as a reformer of orthodox Islam, al Afghani also
acted as proselytiser of the Bahai faith, which Robert Dreyfuss
characterised as “the first recorded project of nineteenth-century British
aristocracy… in Persia.”85
Al Afghani is thought to be from Asadabad, a town in Persia, near
Hamadan, an area of Ismaili settlement. Like the Ismailis before him,
Afghani believed in the need of religion for the masses, while reserving
the subtler truth of atheism for the elite. According to Nikki R. Keddie,
in her study of Afghani, “much as esoteric Ismaili doctrines had in earlier
centuries provided different levels of interpretation of the same texts,
binding masses and elite in a common program, so Jamal ud Din’s practice of
different levels of teaching could weld the rationalist elite and the more
religious masses into a common political movement.”86
Several of those who witnessed Afghani’s teachings confirm his
deviation from orthodoxy. Among them was Lutfi Juma, who recounted, “his
beliefs were not true Islam although he used to present they were, and I
cannot judge about the beliefs of his followers.” And again, Dr. Shibli
Shumayyil, a Syrian admirer of his, writes that, when he heard that Afghani
had written a treatise against the “materialists”, he commented, “I was
amazed, because I knew that he was not a religious man. It is difficult for
me after my personal experience of the man to pass definite judgment
regarding what I heard about him afterwards, but I am far more inclined to
think that he was not a believer.”87
In addition, Afghani had acquired considerable knowledge of Islamic
philosophy, particularly of the Persians, including Avicenna, Nasir ud Din
Tusi, and others, and of Sufism. Evidence also proves that he possessed
such works, but also that he showed interest in occult subjects, such as
mystical alphabets, numerical combinations, alchemy and other Kabbalistic
subjects. Also demonstrating Afghani’s interest in mysticism, of a
Neoplatonic type, is a twelve-page treatise on Gnosticism copied in his
handwriting.
There is much controversy as to Afghani’s activities during the
period of 1858-1865. However, according to one biographer, Salim al Anhuri,
a Syrian writer who later knew him in Egypt, Afghani’s first travels
outside of Iran were to India. It was there, he maintains, that Afghani
acquired his heretical bent. His studies in religion, relates Anhuri, led
into atheism and pantheism. Essentially, Afghani believed in a philosophy
akin to Lurianic Kabbalah, of a natural evolution of the universe, of which
the intellectual progress of man was a part. As Anhuri described, Afghani
believed:
Man began by saying that he would pass on after his death to an
eternal life, and that the wood or the stone were what would lead him to
his highest place if he showed reverence to it and showered devotion upon
it, and there arose from this worship liberation from the bitterness of
thought about a death with no life after it. Then it occurred to him that
fire was more powerful and greater in benefit and harm, so he turned to it.
Then he saw that the clouds were better than fire and stronger, so he adhered
to and depended on them. The links of this chain, wrought by the two tools
of delusion and desire together with the instinct and nature of man,
continued to increase until man culminated at the highest state. The result
of natural laws was a reaction leading to the conviction that all the above
is idle talk which originates in desires, and that it has no truth and no
definition.88
In 1866, Afghani appeared in Qandahar, Afghanistan, less than two
decades after the unsuccessful attempts of the British, in league with the
Aga Khan. And, according to a report, from a man who must have been an
Afghan with the local government, Afghani was “...well versed in geography
and history, speaks Arabic and Turkish fluently, talks Persian like an
Irani. Apparently, follows no particular religion. His style of living
resembles more that of a European than of a Muslim.” 89
Afghani then appeared in Istanbul in 1870, brought there by Ali
Pasha, himself a Freemason, and Grand Vizier five times during the reign of
Sultan Abdul Majid and Sultan Abdul Aziz. Afghani was severely disliked by
the clergy for his heretical views, however. Hasan Fahmi, a leading scholar
of his time, and the Shaikh al-Islam of the Ottoman Empire, pronounced a
Fatwa declaring Afghani a disbeliever, and he was expelled.
In 1871, Afghani went to Cairo, sponsored by Prime Minister Mustafa
Riad Pasha, who had met him in Istanbul, and who then placed him on a
generous salary and had him appointed to the prestigious Muslim university
of Al Azhar. Initially, Afghani remained strictly orthodox, but in 1878, he
moved into the Jewish quarter of Cairo, where he began open political
organising. Afghani then announced the formation of the Arab Masonic
Society. And, despite their public profession of orthodox Islam, the
members of Afghanis inner-circle evinced their adherence to the Gnosticism
of the Ismailis. Afghani would refer to his Masonic brethren as ikhwan al
saffa wa khullan al wafa, in deliberate reference to the tenth century
Ismaili brotherhood by the same name.90
Footnotes:
78 Dreyfuss, Robert. Hostage to Khomeini, New York: New Benjamin
Franklin House, 1980. p. 101.
79 Tales of the British Aristocracy. 1957, p.219.
80 Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300.
81 Ruggiu, Jean-Pascal. “Rosicrucian Alchemy and the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn”
82 Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini. p. 118.
83 Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini. p. 118.
84 Ibid. p. 123 and 121.
85 Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini. p. 115.
86 Ibid., p. 87.
87 Ibid , p. 91
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid, p. 45
90 Raafat, Samir. “Freemasonry in Egypt: Is it still around?” Insight
Magazine, March 1, 1999.
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Mohammed
Abduh and Rashid Rida
After Afghani’s departure from Egypt, his pupil,
Mohammed Abduh, was inexplicably named the chief editor of the official
British-controlled publication of the Egyptian government, the Journal
Officiel. Working under him was fellow-Freemason, Saad Zaghul, later to be
founder of the Wafd nationalist party. In 1883, Abduh joined Afghani in
Paris, and then went to London.
In Paris and London, Abduh assisted Afghani in
administering a journal in Paris, called Al Urwah al Wuthkah, or the
“Indissoluble Bond”, also the name of a secret organisation he founded in
1883. Among the members of Afghani’s circle in Paris were Egyptians,
Indians, Turks, Syrians, North Africans, as well as many Christians and
Jews, and Bahais expelled from the Middle East.
Like his teacher, Abduh was associated with the
Bahai movement, which had made deliberate efforts to spread the faith to Egypt,
establishing themselves in Alexandria and Cairo beginning in the late
1860s. Abduh had met Abdul Baha, who became leader of the Bahai’s after his
father’s death, and agreed with his one-world-religion philosophy.
Remarking on Abdul Baha’s excellence in religious science and diplomacy,
Abduh said of him that, “[he] is more than that. Indeed, he is a great man;
he is the man who deserves to have the epithet applied to him.”96
Abduh was known for his “reformist” views about
Islam. But in How We Defended Orabi, A.M. Broadbent declared that, “Sheikh
Abdu was no dangerous fanatic or religious enthusiast, for he belonged to
the broadest school of Moslem thought, held a political creed akin to pure
republicanism, and was a zealous Master of a Masonic Lodge.”97
Like the Ismailis before him, he would advance
his students progressively into deeper levels of heresy. To the higher
initiates, he would reveal the doctrines of the Scottish Rite and the
philosophy of one-world government. However, those Abduh deemed were much
more disposed, he would introduce to an officer of British intelligence
from London.
From 1888, until his death in 1905, Abduh
regularly visited the home and office of Lord Cromer. In 1892, he was named
to run the administrative Committee for the Al Azhar mosque and university,
the most prestigious educational institution in Islam, and the second
oldest university in the world. From that post, he reorganised the entire
Muslim system in Egypt, and because of Al Azhar’s reputation, much of the
Islamic world as well.
In 1899, Lord Cromer made Abduh the Grand Mufti
of Egypt. He was now the chief legal authority in Islam, as well as the
Masonic Grand Master of the United Lodge of Egypt. Lord Cromer was an
important member of England’s Baring banking family which had grown rich of
the opium trade in India and China. His motive in making Abduh the most
powerful figure in all of Islam was to change the law forbidding interest
banking. Abduh then offered a contrived interpretation of the Qur’an to
create the requisite loophole, giving British banks free reign in Egypt. Of
Abduh, Lord Cromer related, “I suspect my friend Abduh was in reality an
agnostic,” and he said of Abduh’s Salafi reform movement that, “They are
the natural allies of the European reformer.”98
The Salafi movement then became allied with the
Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia through another Freemason, Mohammed Rashid Rida,
who, after the death of Afghani in 1897 and Abduh in 1905, assumed the
leadership of the Salafis. Rida had become a member of the Indissoluble
Bond at a young age. He was promoted through Afghani’s Masonic society
through his reading of Al-Urwah al Wuthkah, which he later confessed was
the greatest influence in his life. Rida had never met Afghani, but in 1897
he had gone to Egypt to study with Mohammed Abduh. Though Rida did not
share his master’s opinions about the Bahai movement, it was through his
influence that the Salafi movement became firmly aligned with the State of
Saudi Arabia.
Footnotes:
96 Cole, Juan R. I. “Rashid Rida on the Bahai
Faith: A Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religions”, Arab Studies
Quarterly 5, 3 (Summer 1983): 278.
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