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Press TV has interviewed political analyst and director of Truth Jihad.com Kevin Barrett to discuss atrocities committed by different extremist Takfiri groups against Muslims.

Press TV: We know that attacks by these extremists or Takfiri groups have been taking place in Syria, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and as we said again at the beginning of the program, they’re killing Shias and Sunnis. Who do you think these Takfiri groups are? Why are they killing Muslims? Do you believe in the distinctions made by our guest in London?

Barrett: Well, I think our guest is suggesting that these Takfiris are really the George W. Bush school of Islam. That is, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.

This kind of Manichean distinction between absolute black and white, absolute good and evil is not part of Islam. It’s part of various other religious heresies and so on. If we actually look at the true Sunna of the prophet Mohamad (PBUH), you will see that none of these Takfiri tactics and strategies were part of the original Muslim ummah. On the contrary, Prophet Mohamad peace upon him, united people. He did not declare we who have the correct belief will never make any alliances with any of these other people, instead we are going to cut off all their heads. On the contrary, there were alliances with the Christians of Abyssinia, then with the people of Medina, who were not part of the original Muslim community with Jews, with Christians, with Arab tribes.

This notion that only people of absolute pure belief are right and everybody else should have their head cut off declared as Kafirs and so on, is a modernist heresy and if we want to talk about where this comes from, it really came from this infiltration of the Islamic world by the West during the time of imperialism with the British making common cause with the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and using them against the Islamic empire at the time, the Ottoman Empire.

That’s where these Takfiri groups are coming from and they have been manufactured over the past several centuries, increasingly so, and today we have al-Qaeda being really largely a CIA data base of Mujahedeen being sent by the CIA and their Saudi proxies to fight in Afghanistan against the Russians and that has grown up into sort of a western intelligence data base of Islamic fighters, some of them with good intentions and some of them who are just criminals and drug smugglers and these people are being used to divide and conquer the Muslim world, and that’s why they are killing Muslims. They are not going out after Israel. They are not going after the people of injustice. They are not going after the unjust rulers of Saudi Arabia, instead they are just going after their fellow Muslims, especially the Muslims that are actually accomplishing anything.

So I think that our guest here in London, whatever his good intentions, his niah, his absolute devotion to purity and everything, he is really taking the wrong path, and as have these people in Syria who are committing so many atrocities in the name of Islam, this is like a big Public Relations campaign to smear Islam. And only the naïve, credulous, often young, excitable Muslims fall for it, and increasingly the rest of the Muslim community has seen correctly that this is not real Islam. Al-Qaeda has only about 20 percent approval in the Muslim world and that’s after this horrific war on Islam post 9/11 that has been murdering millions of Muslims. You would think that all Muslims would be in favor of fighting militantly, but they see correctly that these Takfiri extremist groups are not real Islam.

Press TV: Mr. Barrett, our guest here in London is saying that what we are seeing of those who have been held hostage, the 200 and more girls, images we saw of them praying, shows that they have embraced Islam and that they are being treated nicely, but what does this say about Boko Haram? Is Islam saying then as our guest in London is saying, implement the Shariah that you have to impose it on people? Take people hostage and force them to accept the Shariah?

Barrett: This Boko Haram group does appear to be at least in part, a false flag designed to legitimize US imperial intervention in Nigeria. They may be treating this particular group of kidnapped girls nicely, and that’s wonderful, but in the past this group has conducted a number of atrocities or there have been atrocities committed perhaps by mercenaries, by Blackwater people that have gotten attributed to this group.

Its real function is to legitimize US intervention in Nigeria and even the name “Boko Haram” which means education is haram or forbidden is a ridiculous misnomer, almost as absurd as the word “al-Qaeda” in at least one Arabia dialect means “the toilet. This is hardly a good name for such a group. Likewise, Boko Haram meaning “knowledge is forbidden,” that’s ridiculous.

In Islam, we say Prophet Mohamad (PBUH) said to seek knowledge all the way to China. All forms of knowledge and education are not forbidden, they are mandatory in Islam. The ink of a scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr. This notion of running around, burning down schools, burning all the books, except for those your own particular narrow sect of Islam says you should read, is absurd and it’s completely unIslamic. Nobody in the great periods of Islamic empires and Islamic learning would have had anything to do with that. If a learned people of the greatest golden ages of Islam could look at these groups and see what they are doing, they would be shaking their heads that these are the people that are claiming to be the real Muslims today and again, this obscurantism, this fanaticism, this tendency towards violence, towards violence against civilians, towards legitimating violence against people who simply believe something that is different from what you do. None of this is part of Islam. This is all a modernist heresy and it’s been encouraged and funded by the enemies of Islam to create these public relations operations like the one in Nigeria today.

And we Muslims, and yes sir, I am a Muslim. I am not a Takfiri, I am a Muslim. We are under attack all over the world because of these public relations operations mounted against us by our enemies. So, why are our people calling themselves Muslims, helping stage these anti-Islam public relations operations? And I think that’s what you seem to be doing from your base in London. And I am not surprised that the authorities in London are having you do this.

Press TV: Your response to that quickly, if you can. We are running out of time.

Barrett: Well, yes there are atrocities being committed on all sides. In fact, the atrocities committed by the avowed enemies of Islam are vastly graver in number and vastly worse than the atrocities of these Takfiris and that is true in Nigeria and everywhere else as well. But the fact is, that’s simply because we worship Allah alone that does not mean that we cannot participate in democratic government. We don’t worship that democracy, yes, that’s idolatry... There are all sorts of knowledge out there and we need to partake in that knowledge and seek justice, not to be driven into these narrow kinds of extremisms that only lead to destruction and pain.