But I was stymied by yet another puzzle. I’d completed a compilation of every public statement ever made by Osama bin Laden, intending to publish it in book form, then realized that to the average Western reader Osama’s words were gibberish. Bin Laden spoke brilliantly on behalf of his militant beliefs. But he referred over and over again to a historical weave of names, places, and events I could not track down. He referred to places with obscure names, names that in some cases didn’t even appear in any English language encyclopedia—Assam, Fatani and Ogadin.[32] He referred to “knights of Mohammed the conqueror”[33] and the causes they fought for using names of ancient heroes and events that weren’t traceable on Google and didn’t show up in Western or modern Muslim histories of the Middle East. He referred to a past that gave a powerful but mysterious foundation to militant Islamic thought. What was this history? Why couldn’t I find it? Why was it not in the books I dug up in Islamic bookstores or in English-language Islamic websites? Why was it not in the Western histories of Islam? Why wasn’t it part of your basic education in history and mine?
My computer file of research materials on Islam kept growing. And I was tapped more than 20 times to go on national radio as an expert commentator on Islam’s nuclear capabilities, on the Iraq War of 2003, on the jihadist bombings in London and Madrid in 2004 and 2005, on the Muslim riots in France in 2005, on America’s showdown with Iran in 2006, on the hanging of Saddam Hussein, on Iran’s messianic Islamic beliefs and on a string of other events in which militant Islam fought—or defended itself from—the West. But I didn’t have the answers to a trio of basic questions—what’s the organizing key to the history of militant Islam? What’s the story of its foundation and rise? And why has Islam outdone every other form of colonialism and imperialism on the planet?
For four years, I hunted for the key that would unlock Osama’s use of historical allusions. Then I finally found it. The key was hidden in plain sight. And it unlocked everything from the mystery of militant Islam’s use of sex on earth and obsession with sex in heaven to its picture of a New World Order for which the pious have struggled for more than a thousand years and for which they must continue to battle this year and next. This hidden key also hinted at what militant Islam might do in the coming months, and how those efforts, if they succeed, will utterly change your life and mine. It was the Mohammed Code—the story of the life of Mohammed.
More specifically, the key to understanding the mind of Osama bin Laden and of militant Muslims from Iran to Indonesia and from Trinidad to Dearborn, Michigan, lay in something I’d avoided studying for nearly 40 years because I did not want my biases to get in the way of clear thinking. The key was in Mohammed’s extremely clever use of Jews.
But before we get to Mohammed’s story—and the vital role the Jews played in his life—let’s take a minute out to examine power flows that Mohammed harnessed in remarkable ways. The forces of history.