Islamic Terrorism Was Born on This Mountain 1,000 Years Ago

Are the Ismailis really the beginning of Islamic terrorism? it almost seems like their method of assassination might be comparable to today's loan wolf attacks. Be sure to click on the link and read the whole thing, it's fascinating.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...as-born-on-this-mountain-1-000-years-ago.html

Islamic Terrorism Was Born on This Mountain 1,000 Years Ago
Long before ISIS or Al Qaeda, killers from a secret base attacked great cities all over the world and invented “assassin.” It took a feisty British explorer named Freya Stark to find them.
LONDON — Where did the idea originate of indoctrinating scores of young men into committing themselves to targeted, suicidal killings?
Given the barbarism of the ancient world, that might be too specific a question to answer, but there is no doubt about where a particular kind of Islamic death cult began—nor about the fact that it gave the world a universal term for what was a new kind of terror, delivered without warning. This was not Al Qaeda or ISIS, but their distant forebears, zealots from a sect named the Ismailis. When they appeared in the 10th century they became known as the hashshashin, Arabic for those who take hashish. Or, in a word that passed into our language, assassins.
They were sent to the major cities of the time with precise orders to kill. They took their time, often as long as a year. They studied the daily routines of their targets. They took on new identities, adopted disguises. The hardest targets to reach were those at the top—in a few cases, the very top. They had to get close enough to touch. Once the killing was done there was little chance of escape.

Their campaign lasted for a century and a half. It was conducted with high efficiency and depended on maintaining a remarkable level of secrecy about where it was based—every one of the killers came from the same base. Many attempts to locate it were unsuccessful. The Ismailis felt forever invulnerable at the top of a remote mountain accessed by a single, secret path.
Only in the 1930s was the location of the base established beyond doubt.
In a way, the person who made the discovery was as single-minded and exceptional as the Ismailis. She was Freya Stark, one of that group of obsessive British explorers who suffered from desert lust—the ecstasy that came from binging on the hard-won intoxication of some of the Middle East’s most remote landscapes. Stark came a generation after that of Gertrude Bell, the Arabist scholar who, in 1921, arbitrarily decided the borders of a new nation, Iraq, [Gertrude of Arabia, 06.17.14] and of Lawrence of Arabia.
AY4N7F Gertrude M L Bell
Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo
Gertrude Bell on an expedition picnic with King Faisal of Iraq, 1922.
Stark has never had anywhere near the same renown as Bell or Lawrence, and had no taste for their kind of political meddling. Yet she ventured where few Westerners had ever been and had a novelist’s eye and ear for characters. Through sheer persistence she brought back the first widely read account of the eyrie where terrorism as we know it was conceived.
Stark had a British father and an Italian mother and spent most of her childhood in Italy, often ill and lacking focus. Then, on her ninth birthday, she was given a copy of One Thousand and One Nights. From that point she was hooked on “the Mysterious Orient.”
In 1931, at the age of 38, fluent in Arabic and Persian, Stark had already made three trips into remote and dangerous regions of western Persia. Now she set her sights on a place named Alamut, the “Eagle’s Nest,” in the largely unmapped mountains that divided the Iranian plateau from the Caspian Sea.
Alamut was, by legend, the Ismailis’ secret fortress. The sect and their leader were featured briefly in Marco Polo’s account of his travels, as The Old Man of The Mountains, but even in the early 20th century its location was unclear.
Stark knew the outline of the Assassins’ story. Ten centuries earlier Persia was under the rule of the Seljuks, part of a repressive Sunni empire. The Ismailis were a breakaway hard core Shia sect who believed in a kind of communist utopianism. They were waiting for the coming of The Promised One who would liberate the world from oppression. (When Persia became the primary Shia power in the 16th century the Ismailis played no part and remained a fringe heretical sect, surviving today, passively, under the leadership of the Aga Khan. Ironically, it is now Al Qaeda and ISIS acting as Sunni enforcers, with the same fanaticism as the Assassins, who visit terror on the Shia as apostates.)
And so, while they were waiting, they devised and executed a novel program of terrorism.
A single, anonymous killer was assigned a target and could, using patience and intelligence, reach and destroy some of the highest-placed officers of the Seljuk court—one assassin even killed a sultan and another a powerful vizier. There were, of course, no suicide belts. These assassins had to get up close and knife their victims. If they died—before or after the strike—they were promised a place in paradise.
If taken alive they were invariably tortured to death. But (waterboarding anybody?) any names they revealed under torture, supposedly of comrades, were actually those of enemies, frequently achieving—by proxy—another of their murderous objectives.
If they survived and made it back to Alamut they were treated as heroes for the rest of their lives. And smoked as much hash as they liked.
It proved to be a very effective exercise in asymmetric power. And, as today, in propaganda terms it was a force multiplier: as the killings steadily increased whole cities and their ruling regimes lived in fear of the sudden flash of a long knife from beneath a cloak. The Assassins didn’t bring down any regime, but they exacted the costs to societies we recognize: of contagious fear and the indiscriminate suspicions that come with it, as well as the diversion of resources required for security.
What made the cult appear to be invincible was that nobody seemed able to fix the location of its leadership, which for a considerable time was in the hands of one man, Sheikh al-Jabal—“master of the mountains”…or Marco Polo’s “Old Man.” Numerous expeditions set out for the mountains, but none found the right one.
When Stark returned to Persia in 1931 to search for Alamut the country, under the control of Reza Shah, was in the early throes of being converted to a secular republic on the model of Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey, but in many ways it remained a 19th century tribal society. The idea of a woman giving out orders to men was close to blasphemy, and in this case it was a white woman with the attitude and voice of an English governess. Undaunted, she set out with a small escort of guides and helpers she had recruited locally (none of whom had met a European before).
The reason for the elusiveness of Alamut soon became clear. In her account of the journey in The Valleys of the Assassins, a book published 80 years ago (it was her first and it established her as a great traveler) she wrote:
“Six people would each give me a different name for the selfsame hill: when in doubt they invented or borrowed one from somewhere else to please me.
“This explained the difficulty of locating Alamut, which is neither village nor castle but the main valley.”
DD54WX epa03834977 Iranian and foreign tourists visit the remains of the Alamut citadel, located in the middle of the Elburz mountain, in Qazvin province, Iran, 23 August 2013. The place is historically known as birthplace of suicidal operations in the 11th century, when secret warriors of the Assassinenian tribe led by Hassanie Sabah were the first to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Islam. The warriors were then promised to go to paradise through such suicidal operations. The castle is currently under Iranian cultural heritage protection and a tourist attraction. EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH
EPA European Pressphoto Agency/Alamy
Alamut citadel, located in the middle of the Elburz mountain, is historically known as birthplace of suicidal operations in the 11th century.

 

yeah and B.L. matter terrorist is a creation spinoff by the blacks being slaves in the us in the 1700 and 1800s. whoa those Muslims like some of the blacks in the states, sure have large Egos, not to let go~~ of the past.

 

Yeah well the apartheid era of the US only ended in the 1960's. The Arians and Jews who profited from that from centuries... can we say they ever gave it even a try to set the record straight?

 

thanks for sharing

 

who ever said life is fair? deal with it.. i have..

 

It's just as fair as keep on reminding what them arians and jews did.
Deal with it. You haven't.

 

What is this Arian and Jew thing you keep talking about?

 

Come on now, they were just practicing "Work Place Violence".

 

Yeah well. Let's name ethnic groups responsible for the mass slavery of black people in the US. So what's exactly the problem? The taboo to name who did what 100's of years ago is still to great to mention it? Get lost with your petty feelings.

 

The Jews? really? The same Jews that were held as slaves by Egypt for 400 years? Those Jews? The ones (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s make believe were big in the American slave trade because it makes them feel good? You mean the Jews the American southerners hated and wouldn't deal with yet you and the KKK claim were big in the slave trade? Those Jews?

 

Never happened.

Indeed... those Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_slavery#Atlantic_slave_trade

 

Do you have proof that Jews were majority of slave owners? And lets not forget that the Muslims had slaves long before whites came on the scene. In fact there were black slave owners.

 

Fascinating.

I wonder if they put something in the hash in those days. It's difficult to imagine a bunch of guys getting mellow and then going on a killing spree.

 

budda budda budda! (uzi sounds) "Oh! my baby! my baby!
That's the sound of black on black violence.
Yes your baby may be next.Sad but true.
Question:How many women in that pic have real hair and aren't wearing a weave?

 

Jews were slave owners and part of that massive haul of slaves from Africa to the new world. It's an undisputed historic fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_slavery#Atlantic_slave_trade

 

I didn't asked if they were slave owners, I asked if they made up the majority of slave owners. Also here's an article about slavery in the Bible.

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/slavery_bible.html

 

This is what your source says about Jewish slave owners in the US.

The Jewish role in the American slave trade was minimal. According to historian and rabbi Bertram Korn, there were Jewish owners of plantations, but altogether they constituted only a tiny proportion of the industry. In 1830 there were only four Jews among the 11,000 Southerners who owned fifty or more slaves.

 

I find that rather irrelevant. They took part of the trans atlantic slave trade where they could.
Also, Jews are a minority through western europe where the atlantic slave trade was forged.
I fail to see how you could make a point that a minority not playing a major roll is something.
I also fail to understand why you think I must reply to your question just because you're asking it.
Answer your own questions. Use google. I aint your slave to do as you please.

 

Same part:
Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade increased through the 17th century because Spain and Portugal maintained a dominant role in the Atlantic trade and peaked in the early 18th century

They took part in it where they could. The Jew role in the Brazilian slave trade was significant.
I see no problem in pointing at the arian and jew role in the slave trade.
It's historically correct. How about get freaking over it already?

 

You're the one bringing up what happened 300 years ago.

 

what? I noted that:
Yeah well the apartheid era of the US only ended in the 1960's. The Arians and Jews who profited from that from centuries... can we say they ever gave it even a try to set the record straight?

And instead of answering the question, I only saw knee jerking reactions about people being offended that the Jewish heritage comes with plenty of stains just like other groups.

 

This is a debate forum. I provide stuff for my side and you provide stuff for your side. Also I find your response irrevelant. Blacks owned slaves too and also Muslims but you only focus on the Jews. Why?

 

Oh I mentioned Araian and Jews,... so it's actually you who is only one that is focused on the Jews. Besides that, I provided proof Jews were at it. Get over it already instead of your ungoing knee jerking reaction to demand the Jew must have a clean sheet on all accounts when they do not have it.

 

You do know, of course, that there have been death cults around a lot longer than Islamic death cults, and they used the same tactics. In fact, it's funny that you would use the term 'zealots' as coming from a sect of Ismailis, when the original 'zealots' were actually Jewish terrorists living in what is now Israel. The zealots had to get up close and personal to the Roman legionnaires before stabbing or slashing them to death in suicide missions. So Islamic terrorism already had a birthplace by the time Mohammad was around and easily by the 11th Century.

 

Was Israeli terrorism born at Jericho, where the slaughter of every man, woman, child and even animal was executed as coercive threat against other cities.

Was Irish terrorism born in Ireland, or did it come from some older source?

Where and when were the roots of Mandela's terrorism?

Where and when was ETA terrorism born?

Where was Japanese terrorism vs. China born?


IMHO, terrorism was born when the first human was born.

This idea that there is some differential based on race, religion, ethnicity, etc., is without any kind of rational support.