THE FEDAYEEN-----WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?

A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE FEDAYEEN ON THIS DAY OF CREATION OF THE IRAQ STATE. These guys are now volunteer Muslim killers who just show up ready to kill anyone they are directed to kill; terrorist attackers with guns and modern arms instead of backpacks. The Fedayeen have a thousand year history of murder. They started out being called Hashshashin (also Hashishim) or Assassins in the 11th century. They were a religious militant sect active through the 14th century starting as a group of robbers on the medieval Afghanistan Silk Road. Their own name for the sect was ad-dawa al-jadida which means "the new doctrine" and they called themselves fedayeen from the Arabic fida'i which means one who is ready to sacrifice his life for the cause. The name Hashshashin was given to them by their Muslim enemies, the Sunnis.

The Fedayeen (Assassins) were the first to transform the act of murder into a system and an ideology directed against Muslim rulers that they saw as unpious usurpers; if a ruler wasn't Islamic enough they killed him. They were careful to kill the targeted individual, seeking to do so without any additional casualties. Their weapon of choice was a dagger, rejecting poison, bows and other weapons that allowed the attacker to escape. Their "style" was to kill up close and personal in blood drenched ritual murder. If caught during or after their ceremonial slaughter, under no circumstances did they commit suicide. They wanted to be killed by their captors because that kind of death guaranteed paradise.

The name "assassin" is commonly believed to be a mutation of "hashshashin" (Arabic: haffáfn), or "hashish-eaters" (Arabic: haffáf). This is an elaborately told fiction started by Marco Polo. Can you imagine a raid conducted by guys stoned on shit? The evolution of the Fedayeen from robbers to Assassins is usually marked as 1090 when Hasan-i Sabbah established his stronghold in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea at Alamut. A Yemeni emigrant and an Ismaili Shiite, Hasan set the aim of the Assassins to destroy the power of the Abbasid Caliphate by murdering its most powerful members.

The group inspired an aura of fear out of all proportion to their power. Legends stated that the Assassins were trained using ideology and drugs to convince them that they were assured a place in paradise if they were successful in murder with their golden daggers. They subdued, kidnapped, drugged and seduced the fiercest caravan guards, convincing them with elaborate means that they had died and awakened in Paradise. Thereafter, on subsequent raids, they fought furiously, believing that their death would only return them to that Paradise. The training technique was sophisticated for its time, especially the use of Islamic dogma, drugs, and sex in combination.

Most of the original victims of the Assassins were Sunni Muslims. The modern Fedayeen proudly trace their beginnings back to this "noble" beginning. They look forward to dying in battle or dying after they are captured. They are totally focused on fighting, much like the old Samurai in Japan or the Knights of Medieval times. The Samurai were killed (almost)to the last man by the Japanese government in the 1860s sick of the parasitic murderers running around the country and stopping all progress, a story entertainingly mis-told in the movie The Last Samurai. The knights, who contributed nothing to society besides killing, were wiped out by the technology of both the long bow and the gun; the gun meant their horses could be slaughtered at long range leaving the armor clad knights helpless on the ground.

The Fedayeen is the last parasitic fighting force in the world, a fitting tribute to the 10th century religion and tribal culture they inhabit. Like the Samurai, what women they have possess no rights, like the Samurai they produce nothing, feast off whomever they choose, and do nothing but plan and practice to kill. Realize that Japan could not have progressed at all had they not killed off the Samurai. The knights, if allowed to continue, would have stopped all progress in Europe as well, but they fell victim to the evolutionary rule of natural selection, fast.

No society infested with this army of fanatical killers can advance, either socially or economically. Progress is the actual enemy of the Fedayeen. They must be killed to the last man. (a few Samurai corrections courtesy of emailer Daniel D. Remaining Samurai worked in regular jobs)