The Mind of a Terrorist Read online

  “The Crusaders and their Murtadd [apostate] allies know that the day they come up with a definition the same second we will point out to them a hundred instances of terrorism committed by them for every one of which we are accused. Terrorism and torture is their specialty, they have been doing it for a millennium and our Security officials go there to learn it from them. Yes, Inshallah, it is beautiful and full of Blessing to terrorize the Terrorist,” Headley wrote.

  Yet when one of his friends used the word “terrorism,” Headley broadsided him, asserting that he never used that term to describe actions by Israel or NATO that resulted in civilian casualties, no matter how many.

  “On the other hand you judge actions by Muslim fighters very harshly. You are prolific in using words like ‘Islamists,’ which were coined by Jews very recently, in your statements, just like we use words like Crusaders and Zionists. You feel ‘terrorists’ are ‘brain washed’ by viewing videos of atrocities against Muslims without realizing that you yourself have been hoodwinked into believing Western causes as your own by watching FOX news or CNN…. Your views have been conditioned by your life in the USA,” Headley wrote to a friend who had moved from Pakistan.

  * * *

  For Headley, jihad was a way to become clean.

  A large portion of Headley’s past—his drug smuggling, his drinking, his womanizing—was one great Muslim sin, one that he could remedy through jihad.

  Jihad was “the most selfless act” a true Muslim could devote himself to, and Allah promised jihadists a place in Paradise.

  A friend wrote that he wished the worst on those who took part in jihad.

  Another classmate replied that the friend understood nothing about the world.

  “Jihad in the way of Allah (SWT)* will continue till the entire earth comes under the fold of Islam. This is the verdict of Allah (SWT), not mine,” wrote one.

  This classmate had been known as a partying sort of guy among his American friends, and he had “amply seen and mostly enjoyed” everything the Western world had to offer. But he had come to see it as a “hollow as well as stinking filth under the deceptive glitter of a superficial veneer.”

  His best days were in the beginning of 1992, when, by “Allah’s grace,” he participated in the mujahideen’s battle in Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed regime and was there when Kabul was captured.

  “Those were my happiest and most contented days, despite the fact our diet was minimally austere and sometimes we didn’t even know if and when we got the next meal,” he wrote, describing how the mujahideen were shelled all day long and bombarded from the air with cluster bombs and napalm, and how they sometimes had to sleep in shifts on the open plains in the nighttime frost in order to secure the front line against the communists.

  “Allah (SWT) gave us sakeenah [serenity] and peace in otherwise most frightful conditions. The feeling of fear was totally absent from us. All we desired first and foremost was shahadat [martyrdom] in the way of Allah (SWT). Some got it then and there. Others later and in other places like Kashmir. And some unlucky ones like me are still around,” he wrote, saying he found that Allah fulfilled his wishes without him even needing to pray for them.

  “Whenever we got up from our sleep, we found our hearts to be amazingly delighted as if we had been to or seen something most wonderful in our dreams.”

  Headley read the email as he prepared his plans for the attack on Denmark.

  “Mash’allah … I am proud to know you and have you as my brother. And I wish extinction for every Kafir who despises Islam and our Prophet SAW, and all of their supporters and tax payers and financers, all their stooges, all those who cooperate and assist them, all of those who sympathize with them, all those who emulate them and aim to make their kids brown versions of them, all those impressed by them, all those dying for their acceptability, all those who embrace their values, all those who feel inaad [hatred] for Islam and hold Keena [vengeance] in their hearts for its teachings, all those who seek to change or modify it, all those who resent Mu’mineen [believers], all those who speak against them and wish evil on them, all those attempting to make innovations in the perfect deen [faith].* I pray for their unhappiness in this world and the next. I pray to see them collected in Jahannam [hell] with their leaders,” Headley wrote.

  “Please write more about your visits to Afghanistan … it strengthens my faith.”

  * * *

  As a rule, Headley did not shun any weapon in the war against injustices. The West—not least of all the United States and Israel—had written off their chances for a fair fight.

  “For a Muslim the correct aqidah [creed] is that he present himself in the battlefield in the face of Zulm [tyranny] with whatever means are available to him and not wait for the ‘right time,’” Headley wrote, explaining that he followed the Medina Convention, instead of the Geneva Convention.

  Everything was allowed. Even killing civilians, cheating, and lying.

  Headley referred to a hadith about an incident near Medina in the year 627, where a Muslim who had secretly converted from Judaism asked permission from Muhammad to mix with the Jews in order to gather information for his new master.

  “War is deceit,” the Prophet had replied, and gave him permission to spy. That was how Headley presented that hadith, anyway, and he remarked that Sun Tzu had reached the same conclusion in The Art of War many years earlier.

  And when American or Pakistani imams or Islamic parties wouldn’t officially approve that tactic, it made no difference to Headley.

  “Even if the whole world opposes it, the Hadith will still be true,” he wrote.

  Several of his friends considered jihad a cowardly act. But Headley wouldn’t accept that.

  “You may call it barbaric or immoral or cruel, but never cowardly…. You will never find a European Broiler soldier [i.e. a big chicken, a coward] lying next to a bomb. This courage is, by and large, exclusive to the Muslim Nation. For these NATO criminal vermin, courage is dropping a 22000 lbs bomb on unsuspecting and unarmed Afghan villagers or napalming southeast asian farmers or nuking large (innocent) civilian populations,” wrote Headley.

  In many of the emails, there was no doubt that his own birth country, the United States, was his main enemy, even if Israel and many of the Western countries were “born from the womb of Satan.”

  He suspected the American government of being in the process of developing new, mini atomic bombs specialized for “our brothers in Afghanistan,” and he called it an “undeniable fact” that the US is “the most vicious and barbaric power the world has ever seen.”

  He cited as evidence, as he had many times before, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, which he went on to contrast with the attacks on September 11, 2001.

  “Do you also then agree that an entity that kills 2900 civilians at the World Trade Center would be a ‘lesser’ terrorist than an entity that obliterates 250,000 civilians in Hiroshima? If so, then should we not all join forces to combat the greater evil?” Headley wrote in a heated debate, adding that all major powers in the world embraced the principle of the right to retaliate for the killing of civilians, and it was hypocrisy to deny that right to Muslim fighters.

  But there was no reason to fear the Americans.

  “But don’t worry, Inshallah their head is now in the meat-grinder, and our brothers have got a hold of the handle,” Headley wrote.

  A victory over the United States and Europe wouldn’t be necessary, though, much less achievable in the first place.

  “Not to mention the Glory awaiting the Believers in the Hereafter, that of course, will be the real Victory, the Supreme Triumph and the day of ignominy for those who opposed the Holy and Pure Shariah of the Almighty,” Headley wrote.

  One of Headley’s friends—a professor from Islamabad who is now responsible for a large part of the state-run educational system in Pakistan—wrote that jihad wasn’t only about fighting.

  “Let us become good musli
ms first. A good muslim is educated, looks after his neighbor and would therefore work on providing clean drinking water, basic health, justice, employment and security. Should a Jihadi organization not work first to improve the conditions of the people? What stops them from building e.g. a sewage system so that water and sewage is not mixed?” he wrote, declaring that one’s faith is measured only by one’s willingness to give his or her life to Islam.

  “When you are dead, it is over and there is nothing more you can do. Why not live and achieve something? Is it easier to take a bullet or work hard everyday for fifty years so that your fellow people benefit and improve their standard of living?

  “Why this talk of death? Any moron or brainwashed idiot can strap a bomb and blow himself up. It will take much more to build a great, just Islamic Society. This new world order can not be built on the ruins of a terrorized Pakistan.”

  Headley replied that there quite simply wasn’t a choice.

  “We will not be working on providing basic health and employment when our lands are being occupied, our mosques are being demolished, our blood is being spilt mercilessly. We will, in this instance, bring death and destruction on Allah’s enemies as they have done to us,” Headley wrote.

  That was how it would be in any correct interpretation of Islam, and that was how it had always been, he claimed.

  Another former classmate—who today is a professor at a university in the United States—wrote to Headley that, after having written at such length, he had given up trying to persuade him through reason.

  A literal interpretation of the Qur’an would require one to accept slavery, even in our times, the professor wrote.

  “If this is the ‘Islam’ you want, please count me out. I labor under the delusions that mercy is better than retribution and that slavery is evil. What was or was not done 1400 years ago was in the context of those times. We live in the 21st century even if some people want to take us back to the 7th. As for mass murder by Western powers, I don’t disagree with you that acts such as Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes against humanity, as were the actions taken by Germany and Japan. Man’s inhumanity to man has been amply demonstrated throughout history; we don’t need to add to the count in the name of Islam.

  “However, I am encouraged by the extreme nature of your point of view, which guarantees that it will never succeed with the public at large. Such rigid fringe movements have erupted in that part of the world several times before, and have never amounted to much in the end, though they may enjoy some success for a while. Your heroes too will end up in the trash heap of history,” he wrote.

  Headley wrote that his friend from the States was “reciting poems” rather than presenting arguments, that the burden was on him to prove that anything in the Prophet’s example was not Islamic. “The ‘delusions that you do labor under’ regarding Mercy, Retribution or Slavery cannot be used as an argument against our religion and are of absolutely no consequence. All these issues have been explained verbally and practically shown by the most merciful man SAW who ever lived. If his SAW sunnah is the Islam you want to be ‘counted out of’ then what ever you do follow is a creation of your own mind.”

  He also disagreed with the statement that his heroes would end up on the rubbish heap of world history.

  “My ONLY hero is Muhammad Mustafa SAW and whatever he gave us will prevail and every thing else that stands against it is doomed to be decimated and end up in the trash heap of history, as you put it.”

  Despite the violent disagreement, Headley was still very determined to keep his friend in the debate.

  “I hope you don’t get angry even when you totally disagree with me and do still and always consider me as your friend as I consider you,” Headley wrote to him.

  “No, I am not angry at what you say—just sorry that this is what you have come to think,” the professor wrote back, and went on:

  “There is no point in my providing ‘evidence’ for my viewpoint, since we disagree on the basic premise here. Evidence requires that the parties agree on the terms of what constitutes evidence. You are operating from the viewpoint that ‘true Islam’ requires a literal reading of the Qur’an and exact emulation of the Prophet’s (SAW) actions. I don’t think that literal reading of a text across centuries is even possible, let alone desirable. And I think that religions, like everything else, have to change with time, retaining only their abstract spirit, not their outer forms. Nor do I think that religion should be the basis of the state. So what you call ‘evidence’ and ‘precedent,’ I just call history—to be noted with interest and to be learned from, but not to be copied. Just because something was done a certain way at a certain time does not, to me, mean that it must be done that way forever. Just because the Prophet (SAW) allowed slaves does not mean that we must allow slavery today; or just because he had a beard does not mean all Muslims must quit shaving. I don’t regard such literalist, mindless following as Islam, but as a caricature of it. You regard it as the True Path. Therefore we have nothing to discuss [or] to argue. Of course, I do hope that your interpretation does not succeed, because I regard it as atavistic, violent and destructive.”

  The professor added that he would rather see an Islam where the focus was on the Prophet’s goodness, attitude, perseverance, and his care for the weakest among his followers.

  “If your only hero is the Prophet (SAW), then you don’t need to worry since history’s verdict about him is already pretty clear. However, I don’t think that is what history has in store for the Zawahiris and Mulla Omars of this world. They will end up where they belong,” the professor wrote about Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man and the leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

  Another former classmate joined the discussion and said that the professor from Ohio was practicing a “very liberal” interpretation of the Qur’an, for which he had a hard time finding any support in Muslim scriptures. The professor replied:

  “I do not disagree with you that this a very liberal interpretation of Islam. I am a very liberal person. The point is that I don’t seek to impose my interpretation of Islam on anyone else, to call them ‘kafir’, or to try and hurt them for that reason. That is all I ask of others. I don’t care if they personally believe that shaving is haram or that the Earth is flat. Just don’t kill me for believing otherwise. Thank you.”

  Headley wrote back coolly.

  “Nobody will argue that you don’t have the right to believe what you want, but the problem arises when you want to pass off your whims as Islam. Nobody has that right, not Rumi not Baba Farid and definitely not you or me,” Headley wrote, repeating that the prophet Muhammad’s laws and rules applied word for word, “even if the world survives another 10,000 years.

  “But I do agree with your words that the Zawahiris or Mulla Omars will end up ‘where they belong.’ As will you.”

  * Hegira, a journey, i.e., countries they have traveled to. Also hijrat.

  * The honorific Subhanahu wa ta’ala in Arabic, which means, “May He be glorified and exalted.”

  * Deen is a central concept of Islam having to do with the believer’s relationship with Allah.

  11

  BRIGADE 313

  Waziristan, Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan

  February 2009

  The small house in front of him was empty. The man apparently hadn’t arrived yet.

  Headley was staying in North Waziristan, an out-of-the-way but inhabited little corner of northwestern Pakistan, not far from the border with Afghanistan.

  He was happy to wait if it meant a chance to meet the man in the house. The man was someone Headley might be able to use in his terrorism plans in Denmark. A man with some powerful contacts.

  The house was near Miranshah, the capital of the province, and likely a bit south of the city of Razmak, which had previously been home to a large terrorist training camp controlled by the man Headley had come to visit: Ilyas Kashmiri.

  Kashmiri’s deeds have been recounted
over and over by Muslim jihadists in the last twenty years, to the point where it’s difficult to discern what is true and what exaggeration. Even Interpol had gleaned only a few details about him—including both that he had black eyes and that he had brown. He had apparently been born in the Samhani Valley of Kashmir in the mid-1960s. Kashmiri himself gave the date of February 10, 1964, though intelligence circles have pointed to at least three other possible birth dates for him.

  What’s certain, though, is that Kashmiri pursued media studies at Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan but abandoned his studies when he became a mujahid and devoted his life to armed struggle.

  In the most widespread stories, the young Ilyas Kashmiri then received his physical training in the Pakistani military’s special forces, the Special Services Group. Here, he quickly rose through the ranks and impressed everybody with his brutality. Kashmiri himself denies that he ever received so much as a day of training in the military.

  It’s clear, however, that Kashmiri lost one eye and an index finger while fighting Soviet forces during the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. After that, he seems to have dedicated himself to the fight against the superior Indian forces. In the 1990s, he was imprisoned for two years in India, and when he escaped—likely with some help from friends—he became a hero and continued fighting.

  One day in 1994, a milkman knocked on a door in a small town just outside of New Delhi. He delivered the milk but noticed that the house’s owners had a suspiciously large number of weapons, so he contacted the police. The authorities broke in and found one American and three British hostages. Ilyas Kashmiri had—so the story goes—left the house to run an errand just before the police stormed in. His good friend Omar Sheikh was arrested during the operation.