Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Kourosh Ziabari, Kevin Barrett

Kevin Barrett is a renowned American journalist, writer and former university lecturer. He has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. Being a Muslim convert, Dr. Barrett is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance (MUJCA) and member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 (SPINE).

According to Salem News, In July 2004 he rashly rejected a plum post-doc at the University of California because it was funded by the 9/11-disinformation-sponsoring CIA-linked Ford Foundation. "In the summer of 2006, Republican state legislators and Fox newscasters demanded that Barrett be fired from his job teaching an introductory Islam class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but the University refused to buckle, and Barrett got high marks from his students."

In fall 2006 Barrett began hosting an Internet talk show weekly on Republic Broadcasting Network titled "Truth Jihad Radio." Twice a week he had another Internet talk show on the Genesis Communications Network called "The Dynamic Duo."

Dr. Barrett is internationally renowned for his well-substantiated researches on the 9/11 which he describes as a false-flag operation and inside job that took place with the foreknowledge of the high-ranking personalities inside the U.S. executive structure.

He wrote three articles for the Madison's Capital Times newspaper in which he tried to reveal the truth behind the 9/11 attacks; however, the newspaper was shortly closed after running his articles.

Kevin Barrett kindly accepted my interview request and joined me in an in-depth conversation, answering my questions regarding the 9/11 attacks and the influence of Israeli lobby over the U.S. policymakers. What follows is the complete text of my interview with Dr. Kevin Barrett, journalist, writer and university lecturer.

Kourosh Ziabari: You have selected the title "Truth Jihad" for your personal website. Although being functionally and semantically a sublime and precious concept in Islamic thought, Jihad has been constantly vilified and denigrated by the extremist neo-cons and Zionists who want to portray a distorted and black image of Islam. They claim that Jihad is tantamount to terrorism and Muslims who follow the principle of Jihad are terrorists as well; however, the reality is that Jihad is a mobilized, logically sustained and concerted confrontation with those who want to plunder your values and treasures and violate your rights. Although you're a Muslim convert, you are a Western citizen; however, you have selected an Islamic name for your website. Would you please explain about this selection for me and my readers?

Kevin Barrett: Being a Western citizen and a convert does not make me any less of a Muslim. Islam, after all is a deen, a religion and a way of life, not a race or ethnicity.

In any case, jihad is a noble religious concept. As you know, the word means "effort" or "striving." In one sense, jihad is the complement of "Islam" whose root meaning is "surrender" to God. So jihad means to exert effort in the cause of God.

One very intense form of effort, exertion or striving in the cause of God is armed struggle in defense of the community. Those who wage this form of jihad risk everything in an all-out struggle in service to the community and to God.

Today, Islam as a deen, and the world Muslim community, is under attack. 9/11 was a mass human sacrifice designed to ritually inaugurate a New World Order of global government by satanists and atheists. With Christianity and the other big religions co-opted or neutered, only Islam stands between the perpetrators of 9/11 and their goal of a New World Order. Under these circumstances, is incumbent upon Muslims to wage effective jihad in self-defense and in defense of our religion, and in defense of all of our fellow human beings and our planet, fi sabili llah [in the way of God].

After thinking things through, I have concluded that the most effective way that I can wage jihad is by wielding the weapon of truth -- especially the truth about 9/11. The 9/11 perpetrators seem to have made several big mistakes and left unmistakable evidence incriminating themselves. Their single biggest mistake, apparently, was failing to demolish World Trade Center Building 7 on the morning of 9/11; presumably due to some logistical problem, they had to wait to demolish it until late that afternoon. Anyone who spends a few minutes informing themselves about WTC-7 must either choose intellectual dishonesty, or admit that 9/11 was an inside job. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmdYOorqs0

When Americans and Westerners face the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, their attitude toward Islam, and the New World Order's war on Islam, changes radically. They realize that they, and Muslims, share a common enemy. They become deserters from the war on Islam, and join the oppressed peoples of the world, and the bearers of the scriptures, in a common struggle for justice.

While I am very serious about waging this "truth jihad," I realize that Western culture fears and loathes the word "jihad." So I use a technique common in certain forms of comic literature -- for example, the novel Don Quixote -- of being simultaneously serious and humorous. I make fun of myself by using hyperbole (exaggeration) in order to play the role of the "crazy radical jihadi for truth." What is most hilarious, and most deeply serious, is that this "crazy radical jihadi" character I'm playing, like King Lear's fool, is the only sane character in the play, the only one who understands and tells the whole, painful truth. The humor makes my uncompromisingly honest message palatable for Western audiences. As the saying goes, "If you tell the truth, make it funny or they'll kill you."

By accepting this role, which Allah's qadr seems to have prepared for me, I am straddling the boundary between Islamic and Western culture, between seriousness and humor, between reality and imagination, in a unique way. As an American Muslim literary scholar with an odd Irish sense of humor, and a whole lot of outrage about 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, this is my way of waging jihad fi sabili llah.

Ziabari: What's your precise stance on the 9/11 attacks? Do you believe that the U.S. officials had foreknowledge of the incident? Do you think that it was an inside job or a false flag operation? Have you traced any sign of the Israel's involvement in the attacks?

Barrett: To know means to believe based on sufficient evidence. So I know, not just believe, that 9/11 was a false-flag attack, that many individuals at or near the top of the US Executive Branch, military, and intelligence apparatus were complicit in the attack, and that the state of Israel and its American agents were heavily involved. This is the inescapable conclusion of anyone who reads David Ray Griffin's books on the subject, alongside Bollyn's Solving 9/11, with an open mind.

Ziabari: Your publication "Bin Laden's Dead, the Tape is Phony" is considered to be the first pro-9/110-truth op-ed ever written and published in a mainstream media outlet. You have written three such op-eds in "Capital Times" of Madison. Why don't the mainstream media publish op-eds and articles revealing the truth of 9/11 attack? Why do they shun the publication of materials which are critical of the mainstream interpretation of the attacks?

Barrett: The American mainstream media are owned by just a few huge corporations, and thoroughly penetrated by the CIA. Google "Operation Mockingbird". The owners and key decision-makers of these outlets are disproportionately Jewish and pro-Zionist (see Philip Weiss's "Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What if We Do?"). Deep down inside, a great many of these Zionists suspect the truth about 9/11, and are terrified that if revealed it could trigger an anti-Jewish pogram and/or the destruction of Israel. Additionally, many Americans, Jewish and otherwise, who are not Zionists, feel threatened by the possibility that the truth about 9/11 would reveal them as fools, and perhaps even annihilate their whole world-view. It is difficult for journalists who are trained to believe that America is an exceptional nation, and that America's leaders always have good intentions, to believe that their own leaders would conspire in the ritual slaughter of thousands of their own people. The few who are cynical enough to realize how evil their leaders are, are also cynical enough to know on which side their bread is buttered. Everyone in the media knows that breathing a word of truth about 9/11 will kill your career. It may not be coincidental that shortly after publishing my three 9/11 truth op-eds, the Capital Times was closed down by the company that owned it, leaving Madison with only one newspaper: The lying, corrupt Wisconsin State Journal.

Ziabari: In October 2004, the 9/11 hero William Rodriguez filed a lawsuit against the then President George W. Bush and 155 other parties and accused them of complicity in the 9/11 attacks. He claimed that the Twin Towers were devastated by means of "controlled demolitions" which the members of New York fire department were ordered on instructions of the CIA. Is it true that FDNY conspired with Larry Silverstein under the patronage of CIA to deliberately destroy the Twin Towers?

Barrett: The short answer is "yes." But it should be noted that the NY Fire Department was not complicit as a whole department. Rather, its leadership is penetrated by the CIA and perhaps Mossad, in the same way that state governments, state and local police departments, the FBI and other agencies are penetrated by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. According to Jesse Ventura, upon his inauguration as Governor of Minnesota, a group of state government officials who were also undercover CIA officers summoned him to a briefing in which it was made clear who was really running the State of Minnesota. The FDNY is undoubtedly infiltrated as well. Larry Silverstein's hesitation in mentioning the "er...Fire Department Commander" who decided to "pull" WTC-7 suggests that this "FDNY Commander" was actually a high level intelligence operative whose job may have included a cover position in FDNY.

Ziabari: Physicist Dr. Crockett Grabbe has pointed out in a 2007 article that the NIST account of the 9/11 attacks has been thoroughly erroneous, unrealistic and fallacious. He has pointed out that "the rapidly expanding huge concrete dust clouds from the towers, the very-quick appearance of multiple squibs on all 3 collapsing buildings, and the destruction of hundreds of autos for several blocks around the World Trade Center from these squibs" indicate that the Twin Towers did not simply collapse as a result of the planes crashing into the towers, but due to explosive materials. Jim Hoffman's article also attests to the same fact and admits the presence of unignited aluminothermic explosives in dust samples from the Twin Towers, whose chemical signature matches previously documented aluminothermic residues found in the same dust samples. What does this fact signify? Who should be held accountable if we admit that the explosive materials brought down the Twin Towers?

Barrett: Everyone who is lying about it and who should know better -- meaning the entire GW Bush Administration, the top levels of the military and intelligence command, all of the NIST people responsible for the scientific fraud represented by NIST's reports on the WTC, and a great many others (see www.whodidit.org/) should be immediately arrested and aggressively interrogated, with relatively leniency offered in exchange for the whole truth delivered in a timely manner. If our judicial system cannot do this, citizens, including honest police and military, should arm themselves in preparation to make citizens arrests in what will amount to a second American revolution. Likewise, foreign nations ought to demand the truth about 9/11, and to cut off all relations with the USA until war crimes prosecutions reveal the full truth about 9/11 and the 9/11 wars.

Ziabari: You are a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christina Alliance which is aimed at improving interfaith dialogue, coexistence and understanding in light of the 9/11 events. It's a very fantastic goal to bring together the followers of divine religion and improve mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence between them; however, there are people who don't tolerate this religious convergence and want to sow the seeds of incompatibility, dissention and strife between the Muslims, Jews and Christians. They are extremist and radical conservatives who follow the Marx's viewpoint that religion is the "opium of masses", hence downgrading interfaith dialogue and undermining it. How is it possible to realize an all-out, all-encompassing interfaith dialogue while the media moguls, hawkish statesmen and warmongering politicians want to bring about conflict and disagreement between the followers of divine religions?

Barrett: That is a very good question! I am disappointed at the slow progress of 9/11 truth in the Jewish and Christian communities, and by the failure of the global Muslim community to offer its full support to the 9/11 truth movement. The New World Order atheists and satanists have cleverly pitted the revealed religions against each other, while fostering an atmosphere of hopelessness and despondency that prevents many from taking action. Since Muslims by and large are better acquainted with the facts, both about 9/11, and about the brother- and sisterhood between good followers of the revealed religions, I think Muslims need to take the initiative in reaching out to those Christians and Jews who will listen. An excellent resource is the work of Mark Siljander, a conservative Christian who has come to understand the considerable similarities between Islam and Christianity. http://www.marksiljander.com/

Ziabari: The United States and its European allies invaded two Muslim countries following the 9/11 attacks under the pretext of eradicating terrorism and combating religious fundamentalism in these countries. They branded Iran as a part of the so-called Axis of Evil and threatened Tehran of a military strike several times during the years since 9/11 attacks. Who is, in your view, the real terrorist? Who has spread violence and unrest in the Middle East? Does the United States have enough credibility and reputation among the nations of the region to assert that it looks for their well-being and safety? Who has murdered 1 million Iraqis in 8 years and displaced thousands of others? Who turned Afghanistan into the world's number one smuggler of narcotics and drugs? Overall, what's your estimation of the military expedition of the United States to the region and its consequences?

Barrett: The question answers itself! Seriously, the US completely lacks credibility and moral authority, and has no business threatening anybody, or even offering anybody advice, until it solves its internal problems, starting with the crime of 9/11. The US and its psychopathic settler colony, Israel, should leave the Middle East and prepare to pay trillions in reparations to the people of that ravaged region. So who will fill the vacuum? Iran and Turkey are the two countries in the region that have developed a degree of moral authority and leadership, and their respective forms of Islamic democracy will be the obvious models as the US-puppet Arab dictators fall. I hope these two great Islamic democracies will engage in close cooperation rather than competition, perhaps leading to the restoration of the caliphate in the form of a loose federation that would eventually expand to include all of the Muslim-majority countries.

Ziabari: What's your estimation of the plight of Palestinian people under the Israeli occupation? We already know that both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claim that the Land of Israel historically belongs to them and that they are the genuine inhabitants of the Land and should be allowed unrestricted freedom to live in a state which they've been endowed with by the Almighty God. Who says the truth? Who is righteous in this conflict? Do the Israelis have the right to occupy the Palestinian lands under the pretext that six million Jews were massacred by the Nazi regime in the Second World War? What's your take on that?

Barrett: Clearly, whatever the Germans did to the Jews cannot possibly justify the theft of even one square foot of Palestinian land. Those struggling against Zionism, including the real Jews of Naturei Karta, are the righteous ones in this conflict. I believe that Zionism's days are numbered, and that the Palestinians will reclaim their land within my lifetime or my children's, God willing.

Ziabari: Please tell us a little about the situation of press freedom in the West. We are usually told that the American media are unrestrictedly free to publish materials critical of the government and propagate ideas which the regime is not content with. Is it true that the United States, as proclaimed by former President Bush, is a "beacon of freedom" with equal rights for the minorities, political dissidents and non-conformist thinkers?

Barrett: Here in the USA, those of us in the genuinely alternative media are remarkably free to express ourselves. I can say nearly anything I want to say on my radio shows and in my blog posts. But the "genuinely alternative media" is kept very small and under-funded. When someone from the genuinely alternative media develops a broad audience, like Alex Jones, he will be pressured to tone it down -- especially by the Zionists. It's no accident that the one line Alex Jones will not cross is the borderline of anti-Zionism. Because he has such a large audience, if Alex Jones were to try to steer his audience toward anti-Zionism, something bad would probably happen to end his career, and perhaps his life.

It does seem strange that the biggest limit on press freedom here concerns speaking out against Zionist interests. Helen Thomas and others have found that out the hard way. In today's USA, it is much easier to criticize American interests and get away with it than to criticize Zionism. Apparently the Zionists have the USA in a stranglehold, a real death-grip, thanks primarily to the 9/11 coup d'état. And they are doing their best to force the US into a war against Iran. Such a war would serve Israeli interests, but badly damage American interests, and the interests of humanity. So far, the American leadership has refused to take this suicidal step. By helping educate the American people about 9/11 and other Zionist false-flag attacks, and by helping them free themselves from Zionist control and Zionist conditioning, we can help save both the Iranian and American people from a lot of unnecessary suffering.

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- Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist. He has interviewed political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky, member of New Zealand parliament Keith Locke, Australian politician Ian Cohen, member of German Parliament Ruprecht Polenz, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former U.S. National Security Council advisor Peter D. Feaver, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize laureate in biology Robin Warren, famous German political prisoner Ernst Zündel, Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff, American author Stephen Kinzer, syndicated journalist Eric Margolis, former aSiddiqiistant of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud, former President of the American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sid Ganis, American international relations scholar Stephen Zunes, American singer and songwriter David Rovics, American political scientist and anthropologist William Beeman, British journalist Andy Worthington, Australian author and blogger Antony Loewenstein, Iranian geopolitics expert Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, American historian and author Michael A. Hoffman II and Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon.