Publisher's Note  

21 June, 1995 Copyleft c Waqf Ikhlas, Istanbul , 1995.

Permission to reprint & distribute is granted only if this heading included, ...

Ihlas Holding A.S.
Cagaloglu-ISTANBUL
Tel: (90.212) 513 99 00

Confessions of a British Spy

Section One
 PART ONE

Hempher says:

Our Great Britain is very vast. The sun rises over its seas, and sets, again, below its seas. Our State is relatively weak yet in its colonies in India , China and Middle East . These countries are not entirely under our domination. However, we have been carrying on a very active and successful policy in these places. We shall be in full possession of all of them very soon. Two things are of importance:

...He said to me, "With the command of our minister and the committee in charge of Colonies, I shall tell you two State secrets. Later you will benefit very much from these two secrets. No one except a couple of confidential people know these two secrets."

Holding my hand, he took me to a room in the Ministry. I met with something very attractive in this room. Ten men were sitting around a round table. The first man was in the guise of the Ottoman Emperor. He spoke Turkish and English. The second one was dressed in the attire of the Shaikh-ul-islam (Chief of Islamic Matters) in Istanbul . The third one was dressed in an attirement identical with that of the Shah of Iran. The fourth one was in the attire of the vizier in the Iranian palace. The fifth one was dressed like the great scholar leading the Shiites in Najaf. The last three of these people spoke Persian and English. Each of these five people had a clerk sitting beside him to write down whatever they would say. These clerks were imparting to the five men the information collected by spies about their archetypes in Istanbul , Iran , and Najaf.

The secretary said, "These five people represent the five people there. In order to know what their archetypes think, we have educated and trained these people exactly like their archetypes. We intimate the information we have obtained about their originals in Istanbul , Teheran and Najaf to these men. And these men, in their turn, imagine themselves to be their originals in those places. Then we ask them and they answer us. We have determined that the answers given by these people are seventy-percent agreeable with the answers that their originals would give.

"If you like, you may ask questions for assessment. You have already met the scholar of Najaf." I replied in the affirmative, for I had met the great Shiite scholar in Najaf and asked him about some matters. Now I approached his copy and said, "Dear teacher, would it be permissible for us to wage war against the government because it is Sunni and fanatical?" He reflected for a while, and said, "No, it is not permissible for us to wage war against the government because it is Sunni. For all Muslims are brothers. We could declare war on them (Sunnite Muslims) only if they perpetrated cruelty and persecution on the Ummat (Muslims). And even in this case we would observe the principles of Amr-i-bi-l-maruf (28) and Nahy-i-ani- l-munkar (29). We would stop interfering with them as soon as they stopped their persecution."

I said, "Dear teacher, may I have your opinion concerning the matter that Jews and Christians are foul?" "Yes, they are foul," he said. "It is necessary to keep away from them." When I asked the reason why, he replied, "It is done so in retaliation for an insult. For they look on us as disbelievers and deny our Prophet Muhammad 'alaihis-salam'. We therefore retaliate for this." I said to him, "Dear teacher, isn't cleanliness an issue of iman? Despite this fact, the avenues and streets around the Sahn-i-Sharif [the area surrounding hadrat 'Ali's mausoleum] are not clean. Even the madrasas, which are the places of knowledge, cannot be said to be clean." He replied, "Yes, it is true; cleanliness is from iman. Yet it cannot be helped because the Shiites are negligent over cleanliness."

The answers given by this man in the Ministry were precisely concurrent with the answers I had received from the Shiite scholar in Najaf. Such accurate identity between this man and the scholar in Najaf amazed me utterly. In addition, this man spoke Persian.

The secretary said, "If you had met the archetypes of the other four personages, you would talk to their imitations now and see how identical they are with their originals." When I said, "I know how the Shaikh-ul-islam thinks. For Ahmad Effendi, my hodja in Istanbul , gave a detailed description of the Shaikh-ul-islam to me," the secretary said, "Then you can go ahead and talk with his model."

 I went near the Shaikh-ul-islam's model and said to him, "Is it fard to obey the Khalifa?" "Yes, it is wajib," he replied. "It is wajib, as it is fard to obey Allah and the Prophet." When I asked what evidence he had to prove this, he answered, "Didn't you hear about Janab-i-Allah's ayat, 'Obey Allah, His Prophet, and the Ulul amr from among you (30)'?" I said, "Does this mean that Allah commands us to obey the Khalifa Yazid, who permitted his army to plunder Medina and who killed our Prophet's grandson Husain, and Walid who drank alcoholic spirits?" His answer was this: "My son! Yazid was the Amir-ul-Muminin with Allah's permission. He did not command the killing of Husain. Do not believe in the Shiite lies! Read the books well! He made a mistake. Then he made tawba for this (he repented and begged for Allah's forgiveness and mercy). He was right about his ordering Medina-i-munawwara plundered. For the inhabitants of Medina had become quite unbridled and disobedient. As for Walid; yes, he was a sinner. It is wajib not to imitate the Khalifa, but to obey his commandments compatible with the Shariat." I had asked these same questions to my hodja Ahmad Effendi and received identical answers with slight differences.

Then I asked the secretary, "What are the ultimate reasons for preparing these models?" He said, "With this method we are assessing the mental capacities of the (Ottoman) Sultan and the Muslim scholars, be they Shii or Sunni. We are searching for the measures that will help us cope with them. For instance, if you know what direction the enemy forces will come from, you will make preparations accordingly, post your forces at suitable positions, and thus rout the enemy. On the other hand, if you aren't sure about the direction of the enemy assault you will spread your forces here and there in a haphazard way and suffer a defeat. ... By the same token, if you know the evidences Muslims will furnish to prove that their faith, their Madhhab is right, it will be possible for you to prepare the counter-evidences to rebut their evidences and shock their belief with those counter- evidences."

Then he gave me a book of one thousand pages containing the results of the observations and projects carried out by the aforenamed five representative men in areas such as military, finance, education, and religion.. He said, "Please read this book and return it to us." I took the book home with me. I read through it with utmost attention during my three-week holiday.

The book was of a wonderful sort. For the important answers and the delicate observations it contained sounded genuine. I think that the answers given by the representative five men were more than seventy percent agreeable with the answers that their archetypes would have given. Indeed, the secretary had said that the answers were seventy percent correct.

Having read the book, I now had more confidence in my State and I knew for certain that the plans for demolishing the Ottoman Empire in time shorter than a century had already been prepared. The secretary also said, "In other similar rooms we have identical tables intended for countries we have been colonizing as well as for those we are planning to colonize."