One western official who had studied it described the Project as ‘a totalitarian ideology of infiltration that represents, in the end, the gravest danger for European societies’: The Project, which will become a danger in 10 years, he said, will see emerging in Europe the demand for a parallel system, the creation of ‘Muslim Parliaments of the sort that already exists in Great Britain ... thus beginning the slow destruction of our institutions, of our structures.’ For this official, who asked not to be named, the Project is not a simple philosophical text, but a ‘road map’ of which certain elements have been put in place in the real world: notably, it anticipates the start of the war against Israel in the Palestinian territories, and the support given these past years by the Muslim Brotherhood to several armed Islamic groups, from Bosnia to the Phillipines.
The discovery of the Project also raises many questions which, for now, remain unanswered. The identity of its author, for example, remains unknown. Youssef Nada, the keeper of the Project for nearly 20 years, simply told the Swiss investigators that he hadn't written the text. Approached several times by Le Temps, he finally explained that the document had been drawn up by some ‘Islamic researchers’ but that it didn't represent the official position of the Islamic Brotherhood. ‘I don't agree with but 15 or 20% of the text’, he said. Why in that case, did he keep it at his house? ‘I don't know. I should have thrown it away’.
The importance of the Project lies as much in its history, and those of the men surrounding it, as with its content. Its intellectual origins date back to the 1960s, when the ‘theoretician-in-chief’ of the Muslim Brotherhood, Said Ramadan, found refuge in Geneva. In September, 1964, his newspaper El Muslimoun published an article calling for the launch of an ‘ideological war’ against the West. He thus acted in response to the creation of the state of Israel, considered by Islamists to be an element in a vast plot against the Muslim religion and its faithful. ‘That is why we're convinced the that sophisticated ideological plan has to be countered by an ideological plan just as sophisticated, and that it is necessary to respond to these ideological attacks, to this ideological war, with an ideological war.’
The article makes explicit reference to ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, a document fabricated by Tsarist police and which describes a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Even though it's a forgery, the antisemitic text continues to be taken seriously in Islamist circles.
Last August, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the ‘Protocol’ was cited during a recent meeting of the ‘European Council of Fatwahs and Research’, an organisation designed to counsel the Muslims of Europe regarding their daily lives. According to a participant in the meeting, the Protocol demonstrates the existence of a Jewish conspiracy designed to destroy the moral values of Muslim families. It is understood that, inspired by such ideas, the Islamists wanted to react by developing their own Project.
The lead thinker of the Council of fatwas, Yousouf al-Qaradawi, was one of the principal shareholders of the Al-Taqwa bank of Lugano. He is without doubt the most popular preacher in Europe and the Arab world, and some of his ideas are in line with those of the Project. Thus, in a document published in 1990, he proposed to develop the presence of the Islamic Movement at the heart of ‘jihad groups’, in order to eliminate ‘all foreign influences’ in Islamic lands, from Morocco to Indonesia.
One must bear in mind the possibility that ‘The Project’ is an elaborate hoax. But this clearly merits careful scrutiny. Thanks to Burgess’s work, we can now begin to dig away.
