By Antonella Frausto —
She got a BS from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then a PhD in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001. Then from the cusp of world success, she tread a downward path to terrorist operative plotting explosions and biological weapons for mass casualty attacks in the West.
Aafia Siddiqui was arrested in Ghazni, Afghanistan, in 2008. In her questioning, she grabbed an M-4 rifle and aimed it at a U.S. soldiers head, firing and missing. “Get the f–k out of her!” she shouted, and “Allahu Akhbar!” A translator bum-rushed her, and a second soldier drew his pistol and fired at her stomach. As she went down, she continued to shout she wanted “to kill Americans.”
For attempted murder against two U.S. soldiers and two FBI agents, Siddiqui today is purging and 84-year sentence in a Texas prison. She was found guilty by a Manhattan jury, after outbursts in courts about Jews “cruel, ungrateful, back-stabbing” people (her lawyers were at one point Jewish).
How does a brainy sweetheart get sucked into the ideology of terrorism? A rehash of the devolution of Lady Al-Qaeda is a case study for what is happening in Iran, why the Iranian Regime refuses to surrender, plays treachery constantly and is trying to kill its neighbors, fellow Muslim nations.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Aafia Siddiqui was born into a middle class family that was as devout as they were educated. Brains brought her to the United States, where she excelled at the highest levels. While her academic credentials piled up, so did her outrage over the mistreatment of pregnant Muslims in Bosnia when the Bosnia Serb militia tried to ethnically cleanse them 1992-’95.
Eventually, Western Allies, including the U.S., bombed the perpetrators of the genocide, but this didn’t seem to garner any love for the U.S. in Siddiqui’s mind. To the contrary, Al-Qaeda‘s strike against the World Trade towers in New York inspired her to eventually divorce her husband (who apparently didn’t want to join jihad), travel to Karachi and become a key member of an Al-Qaeda affiliate cell in Karachi.
On Christmas Day 2002, she flew into the States and opened a post office box under the name of Majid Khan, an alleged al-Qaeda operative accused of plotting to blow up petrol stations in the Baltimore area. The post box would help Majid gain entry to the U.S.
Then she married Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), in a small ceremony back in Karachi. In 2003, KSM was captured by the CIA in Pakistan and interrogated with water-boarding in the Guantanamo Bay prison. Presumably, under the torture, KSM ratted out his nephew’s wife, and FBI listed her as one of its most wanted.
When the FBI finally caught up with her in 2008, she had in her handbag several bottles of deadly chemicals, extracts from an “arsonist’s handbook” and details of several prominent American landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty. When the two FBI and two U.S. servicemen were called in to interrogate her, a misunderstanding about where she was allowed her to grab the rifle and fire at the U.S. soldier.
For all the accusations of terror, only the attempted murder counts were tried in court, possibly because the U.S. didn’t want to compromise their intelligence operations in the public evidence showings. She has been in jail ever since.
The path to radicalism followed the steps (following Fathali Moghaddam’s Staircase to Terrorism):
- an Islam under siege mentality
- fundraising for Bosnia for charities with ties to jihadism
- post 9/11, the hardening of her worldview into Islam vs. the West
- operational involvement and intent
- isolation from moderates, increasing dependence on ideological networks, reinforcing of grievance narratives
- the compounding effect of ideology + grievance + identity.
It is difficult for Westerners to understand the pathology of extremism. In large part this due to an abysmal ignorance of the scriptures and history of Islam. Osama bin Laden‘s 1998 fatwa against Jews and crusaders said that “the ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim.”
Osama bin Laden cited:
- Qur’an 2:190–193 “Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you… and fight them until there is no more persecution…”
- Qur’an 8:39 “Fight them until there is no more fitnah and religion is wholly for Allah.”
- Qur’an 9:5 “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them.”
- Qur’an 9:29 “Fight those who do not believe in Allah… among the People of the Book.”
Ideas can be deadly, especially when executing them carries the weight Allah.
These are the same Qur’anic verses that the Iranian Regime adheres to — but with an even harsher edge. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps adheres to Shi’ite Twelver eschatology, which believes that the not until Jews and Christians are wiped off the face of the earth will the messianic-like ‘twelfth” and final Mahdi appear to inaugurate the sharia utopia.
A key difference between Christian eschatology and Shi’ite eschatology is that Christians are waiting for God to bring the end, and Shi’ites believe their wars will bring the end.
Hence, the current mess of the Middle East.
Sources: The Guardian and others.
