The Salafi

Jamal ud Din Al Afghani

Beginning in the 1820’s, a group of missionaries was appointed by a combined movement of Oxford University, the Anglican Church, and Kings College of London University, under Scottish Rite Freemasonry, as part of a plot to foster the creation of an occult brotherhood in the Muslim world, dedicated to the use of terrorism on behalf of the Illuminati in the City of London.^[1] The leading promoters of the Oxford Movement were Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Palmerston of the Palladian Rite, and Edward Bullwer-Lytton, the leader of a branch of Rosicrucianism that developed from the Asiatic Brethren. The Oxford movement was also supported by the Jesuits. Also involved were the British royal family itself, and many of its leading prime ministers and aides.

Benjamin Disraeli was Grand Master of Freemasonry, as well as knight of the Order of the Garter. It was in Coningsby, that he confessed, through a character named Sidonia, modeled on his friend Lionel de Rothschild, that, “the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” Of the influence of the secret societies, Disraeli also remarked, in Parliamentary debate:

lt is useless to deny. . . a great part of Europe the whole of Italy and France, and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries are covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government. They do not want ameliorated institutions; they do not want provincial councils nor the recording of votes; they want. . . an end to ecclesiastical establishments. . . ^[2]

Benjamin Disraeli

Bulwer-Lytton was the Grand Patron of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), founded in 1865 by Robert Wentworth Little, and based on the Asiatic Brethren. Many members of the Asiatic Brethren, or Fratres Lucis, had become members of a German Masonic lodge called L'Aurore Naissante, or “the Nascent Dawn”, founded in Frankfurt-on-Main in 1807. It was at this lodge where Lord Bulwer Lytton was initiated.^[3] Bulwer-Lytton, who served as the head of Britain’s Colonial Office and India Office, was also a practicing member of the cult of Isis and Osiris. He wrote the Last Days of Pompeii, and The Coming Race, or Zanoni, in which he set the foundations for later Nazi racist theories. He became the grandfather the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of John Ruskin, the Metaphysical Society of Bertrand Russell, and occult societies like the Golden Dawn of Aldous Huxley, and the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

In Egypt, the Oxford movement centered on the creation of a “reform” movement of Islam, known as the Salafi, to serve the Illuminati in protecting their growing interest in the Suez Canal, which would later become crucial to the shipment of their oil cargo to Europe and elsewhere. In 1854 and 1856, Ferdinand de Lesseps had obtained concessions from Said Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, who authorized the creation of a company for the purpose of constructing a maritime canal open to ships of all nations. The canal had a dramatic impact on world trade, playing an important role in increasing European penetration and colonization of Africa.

In 1875, the mounting debts of Said Pasha’s successor, Ismail Pasha, forced him to sell Egypt’s share in the canal to the British. Thus, the British government, under Benjamin Disraeli, financed by his friend, Lionel Rothschild, aquired nearly half the total shares in the Suez Canal Company, and though not a majority interest, it was for practical purposes a controlling interest. A commission of inquiry into the failing finances of Ismail in 1878, led by Evelyn Baring, First Earl of Cromer, and others, had compelled the viceroy into ceding his estates to the nation, to remain under British and French supervision, and accepting the position of a constitutional sovereign. The angered Egyptians united around Ahmed Urabi, a revolt that ultimately provided a pretext for the British to move in an “protect” the Suez Canal, followed by a formal invasion and occupation that made Egypt a colony.

The agent provocateur revolt against Ismail was organized by movement of Jamal ud Din al Afghani, the founder of the so-called Salafi “reform” movement in Islam. Aghani was the person through which the British mission acted to, not only subvert Egyptian rule, but to spread its occult influence throughout the Middle East.

Edward G. Brown
dressed as Persian

Edward Scawen-Blunt
in Pilgrimage to Najd

Throughout his forty-year career as a British intelligence agent, Jamal ud al Afghani was guided by two British Islamic and cult specialists, Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Edward G. Browne.^[4] E. G. Browne was Britain’s’ leading Orientalist of the nineteenth century, and numbered among his protégés at Cambridge University’s Orientalist department Harry “Abdullah” St. John B. Philby, a British intelligence specialist behind the Wahhabi movement. Wilfred S. Blunt, another member of the British Orientalist school, was given the responsibility by the Scottish Rite Masons to organize the Persian and the Middle East lodges. Al Afghani was their primary agent.^[5]

Very little is known of Jamal ud Din al Afghani’s origins. Despite the appellation “Afghani”, which he adopted and by which he is known, there are some reports that he was a Jew.^[6] On the other hand, some scholars believe that he was not an Afghan but a Iranian Shiah. And, despite posing as a reformer of orthodox Islam, al Afghani also acted as proselytizer of the Bahai faith, the first recorded project of the Oxford Movement, a creed that would become the heart of the Illuminati’s one-world-religion agenda.

In 1845, Afghani’s family had enrolled him in a madrassa (Islamic school) in the holy city of Najaf, in what is now Iraq. There, Afghani was initiated into “the mysteries” by followers of Sheikh Ahmad Ahsai. Sheikh Zeyn ud Din Ahmad Ahsai was the founder of the Shaikhi school. Ahsai was succeeded after his death by Seyyed Mohammad Rashti, who introduced the idea of a “perfect Shiah, called Bab, meaning “gate”, who is to come. In 1844, Mirza Mohammad Ali claimed to be this promised Bab, and founded Babism, among whose followers Afghani also may have had certain family connections.^[7]

One of the Bab’s followers, Mirza Hoseyn Ali Nuri, announced that he was the manifestation the “One greater than Himself”, predicted by the Bab, assuming the title of Baha Ullah, meaning in Arabic “Glory of God”. Baha Ullah was descended from the rulers of Mazandaran, a province in northern Iran, bordering the Caspian Sea in the north. These were an Ismaili dynasty, who had intermarried with descendants of Bostanai, Exilarch of the seventh century AD.^[8] Referring to himself, Baha Ullah stated, “The Most Great Law is come, and the Ancient Beauty ruleth upon the throne of David. Thus hath My Pen spoken that which the histories of bygone ages have related.”

Baha Ullah founded the Bahai faith, which drew on a mix of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, but claimed to supercede all other religions in a “one world faith”. The principal Bahai tenets are the essential unity of all religions and the unity of humanity. Bahais believe that all the founders of the world’s great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. Therefore, according to the Bahais, despite their differences, the world’s great religions teach an identical truth.

Baha Ullah

However, the Bahais quickly found themselves disliked in Persia for their extremism. In 1852, a Bahai leader was arrested for the attempted assassination of the Shah of Persia, after which the movement was suppressed, and many members were exiled to Baghdad and Istanbul. Throughout this time, as reports Robert Dreyfuss, the Bahai leaders maintained close ties to both Scottish Rite Freemasonry and various movements that began to proliferate throughout India, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and even Africa.^[9]

Al Afghani is thought to be from Asadabad, a town in Persia, near Hamadan, an area of Ismaili settlement. Like the Ismailis before him, Afghani believed in the need of religion for the masses, while reserving the subtler truth of atheism for the elite. According to Nikki R. Keddie, in her study of Afghani, “much as esoteric Ismaili doctrines had in earlier centuries provided different levels of interpretation of the same texts, binding masses and elite in a common program, so Jamal ud Din’s practice of different levels of teaching could weld the rationalist elite and the more religious masses into a common political movement.”^[10]

Several of those who witnessed Afghani’s teachings confirm his deviation from orthodoxy. Among them was Lutfi Juma, who recounted, “his beliefs were not true Islam although he used to present they were, and I cannot judge about the beliefs of his followers.” And again, Dr. Shibli Shumayyil, a Syrian admirer of his, writes that, when he heard that Afghani had written a treatise against the “materialists”, he commented, “I was amazed, because I knew that he was not a religious man. It is difficult for me after my personal experience of the man to pass definite judgment regarding what I heard about him afterwards, but I am far more inclined to think that he was not a believer.”^[11]

In addition, Afghani had acquired considerable knowledge of Islamic philosophy, particularly of the Persians, including Avicenna, Nasir ud Din Tusi, and others, and of Sufism. Evidence also proves that he possessed such works, but also that he showed interest in occult subjects, such as mystical alphabets, numerical combinations, alchemy and other Kabbalistic subjects. Also demonstrating Afghani’s interest in mysticism, of a Neoplatonic type, is a twelve-page treatise on Gnosticism copied in his handwriting.

There is much controversy as to Afghani’s activities during the period of 1858-1865. However, according to one biographer, Salim al Anhuri, a Syrian writer who later knew him in Egypt, Afghani’s first travels outside of Iran were to India. It was there, he maintains, that Afghani acquired his heretical bent. His studies in religion, relates Anhuri, led into atheism and pantheism. Essentially, Afghani believed in a philosophy akin to Lurianic Kabbalah, of a natural evolution of the universe, of which the intellectual progress of man was a part. As Anhuri described, Afghani believed:

Man began by saying that he would pass on after his death to an eternal life, and that the wood or the stone were what would lead him to his highest place if he showed reverence to it and showered devotion upon it, and there arose from this worship liberation from the bitterness of thought about a death with no life after it. Then it occurred to him that fire was more powerful and greater in benefit and harm, so he turned to it. Then he saw that the clouds were better than fire and stronger, so he adhered to and depended on them. The links of this chain, wrought by the two tools of delusion and desire together with the instinct and nature of man, continued to increase until man culminated at the highest state. The result of natural laws was a reaction leading to the conviction that all the above is idle talk which originates in desires, and that it has no truth and no definition.^[12]

In 1866, Afghani appeared in Qandahar, Afghanistan, less than two decades after the unsuccessful attempts of the British, in league with the Aga Khan. And, according to a report, from a man who must have been an Afghan with the local government, Afghani was:

...well versed in geography and history, speaks Arabic and Turkish fluently, talks Persian like an Irani. Apparently, follows no particular religion. His style of living resembles more that of an European than of a Muslim.^[13]

At the end of 1866, Afghani became confidential counselor Azam, the ruler in Afghanistan. That a foreigner should have attained such a position so quickly was remarked upon in contemporary accounts. Some scholars have speculated that Afghani, then calling himself “Istanbuli”, was, or represented himself to be, a Russian agent able to obtain for Azam Russian money and political support against the British, with whom Azam was on bad terms. When Azam lost the throne to one of his rival, Shir Ali, he was suspicious of Afghani, and had him expelled from his territory in November 1868.

Throughout his stay in Afghanistan, Afghani had maintained ties to the Bahais, British Freemasons, and certain Sufis based in India, where he also met with Nizari Muslims. According to British intelligence reports of the time, during his repeated travels to India, Afghani went by the name of Jamal ud Din Effendi. It is then that would visit the Aga Khan, the leader of the Ismailis. And, despite posing as a Sufi Sheikh of the Mawlavi order, or Mevlevi, who follow the very influential Iranian mystic and poet of the thirteenth century, Jalal ud Din ar Rumi, he was also proselytizing for the Bahai faith, purportedly having been sent on such a mission by Baha Ullah himself.

One of such report, dated 1891, is from an unnamed Indian Muslim, acting as a British agent, who pretended to become a Bahai in order to gather more information, and reads:

The following is the substance of a statement made by an apparently well informed person, as to the real objects of the presence in India of Saiyid Jamal-ud-din, who is described by the informant as a Persian, but who calls himself a Turk of Constantinople:-

In the city of Akka (? Acre) shore now lives one Husen Ali, a Turk, who calls himself Baha-ullah Effendi alias Jamal Mubarik [the Blessed Beauty]. This man declares all religions to be bad, and says that he himself is God. He converted a number of people and collected them at Baghdad. About four years ago they rebelled against the Shah, but they were suppressed and gradually withdrew from Persia to Turkey in Asia. Baha-ullah is now under surveillance at Akka, which is called “Az Maksud” [Ar Maqud, a common term among Iranian Bahais for the Holy Land] by the converts. Balla-ullah’s agents go about to all countries and endeavour to persuade people that he is visited by messengers of God, and that his converts will become rulers of the earth. Baha-ullah’s son, Muhammad Ali, came to Bombay on this mission, and then returned to Akka. Agents are appointed everywhere, Saiyid Jamal-ud-din is one of these agents. He came to Kailaspur and stayed 10 days with me. He told me all about Baha-ullah and his own mission, and proposed to appoint me as his agent, and asked me to go with him to Bombay to see Muhammad Ali. I agreed to become a disciple of Baha-ullah in order to discover why Saiyid Jamal-ud-din had come to India. I agreed to become his agent for the same reason, and he now often writes to me. I have not got his letters with me, but can produce them if wanted. He is now in Farukhabad, and I believe that he has obtained a number of converts in India. He has plenty of money and spends it freely, and goes first class by railway. There is in Bombay a man named Agha Saiyid Mirza [Afnan], a merchant of Shiraz, who supplies him plentifully with money.^[14]

...On the 21st September 1891, the same informant wrote direct to the General Supdt., T. and D. Department [General Superintendent, Thagi and Dakaiti Department, responsible for monitoring criminals and trouble-makers], as follows: "The man Saiyid Jamal-ud-din Shah is no 'Rumi,' he is a man from Astrabad Mazinderan in Persia, and his name is Mirza Muhammad Ali. He is no Muhammadan [Muslim] but a “Babi,” and his head-quarters are at Akka in Palestine.^[15]

Afghani then appeared in Istanbul in 1870, brought there by Ali Pasha, himself a Freemason, and Grand Vizier five times during the reign of Sultan Abdul Majid and Sultan Abdul Aziz. Afghani was severely disliked by the clergy for his heretical views, however. Hasan Fahmi, a leading scholar of his time, and the Shaikh al-Islam of the Ottoman Empire, pronounced a Fatwa declaring Afghani a disbeliever, and he was expelled.

In 1871, Afghani went to Cairo, sponsored by Prime Minister Mustafa Riad Pasha, who had met him in Istanbul, and who then placed him on a generous salary, and had him appointed to the prestigious Muslim university of Al Azhar. Initially, Afghani remained strictly orthodox, but in 1878, he moved into the Jewish quarter of Cairo, where he began open political organizing. Afghani then announced the formation of the Arab Masonic Society. And, despite their public profession of orthodox Islam, the members of Afghanis inner-circle evinced their adherence to the Gnosticism of the Ismailis. Afghani would refer to his Masonic brethren as ikhwan al saffa wa khullan al wafa, in deliberate reference to the tenth century Ismaili brotherhood by the same name.^[16]

With the help of Riad Pasha and the British embassy, Afghani reorganized the Scottish Rite and Grand Orient lodges of Freemasonry, and began to organize around him a network of several Muslim countries, particularly Syria, Turkey, and Persia.^[17] For the next few years he attracted a following of young writers and activists, among them Mohammed Abduh, who was to become the leader of what is often regarded as the “modernist” movement in Islam, otherwise known as the Salafi, and Sad Pasha Zaghlul, self-professed Freemason, and founder of Wafd, the Egyptian nationalist party.^[18]

The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor

H.P. Blavatsky

Afghani would have purportedly been a representative of a mysterious Egyptian quasi-Masonic secret society, which supposedly represented a survival of the Sabian teachings of the Grand Lodge of the Ismailis of Cairo, which became known among Western occultists as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (H.B. of L.), also thought to have had originally been the influence behind the creation of Samuel Honis’ Rite of Mizraim.

One of Afghani’s closest associates was James Sanua. Sanua was born in Cairo to a well-connected Italian Jewish family of Sephardic origin. Sanua was raised as a Jew by his father, who had been born in Italy, and went on to become a valued advisor to the Egyptian royal family. In addition to his Jewish upbringing, and fluency in eight languages, Sanua became so well-versed in the Koran and Islamic lore that he earned himself the title “sheikh”, a factor which led to rumors of his conversion to Islam.

As a youngster, Sanua had studied in Italy, where he was introduced to the ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini. When he returned to Cairo, he was wholeheartedly devoted to the teachings of Mazzini. Sanua was also responsible for establishing the foundation of the modern Egyptian theater, a forerunner to its well-known film industry. However, his plays became suspect in the eyes of the Egyptian authorities. And, when he learned of a plot to poison him, he fled to France, where he preferred to be known as Abu Naddara. In Paris, Sanua founded a journal dedicated to the principle, much like that of the Bahai, of a one-world-religion, often featuring articles by Afghani.

Sanua’s girlfriend Lydia Pashkov, was a woman of Russian origin and correspondent for Le Figaro in Paris. Through their circles, Afghani became friendly with the directors of the Illuminati regional headquarters in southern Lebanon, like Sheik Medjuel el-Mezrab, who married British dilettante, Jane Digby, and Lydia Pashkov. Between 1870 and 1875, the Illuminati apparently began a project to replicate the Italian Carbonari in all the countries of the Middle East.^[19]

Both Sanua and Lydia Pashkov were also friends and traveling companions of Helena P. Blavatksy, who in 1856, Mazzini had initiated into the Carbonari. Helena P. Blavatsky, the famous medium and mystic, was the godmother of the occult revival of the late nineteenth century. After writing monumental works such as Isis Unveiled, and The Secret Doctrine, the Theosophical Society was formed in 1875, to spread her teachings worldwide. The Theosophical Society had Freemasons Henry Steel Olcott and George H. Felt appointed president and vice-president respectfully. Among the early members was also Albert Pike. According to Manly P. Hall, a leading Masonic historian:

The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled are Madame Blavatsky’s gifts to humanity, and to those whose vision can pierce the menacing clouds of imminent disaster it is no exaggeration to affirm that these writings are the most vital literary contribution to the modern world. No more can they be compared with other books than can the light of the sun be compared with the lamp of the glowworm. The Secret Doctrine assumes the dignity of a scripture.^[20]

Blavatsky claimed to receive her revelations from “Secret Chiefs”, or disembodied “Ascended Masters”, who were aiding humanity to evolve into a race of supermen. At first, Blavatsky attributed names to these Masters, like “Tuitit Bey”, “Serapis Bey”, and “Hilarion”, who purportedly belonged to the “Brotherhood of Luxor”. According to Joscelyn Godwin, in The Theosophical Enlightenment, if we interpret the “Brotherhood of Luxor” to be the coterie of occultists with which Blavatsky was associated in Egypt, then we ought to assume Jamal ad-Din al Afghani to have been one of its members.^[21]

Although there is no direct evidence of Blavatsky having met with Afghani, according to K. Paul Johnson, in The Masters Revealed, circumstances would suggest such contact. Not only was Afghani familiar with her associates Sanua and Pashkov, but he and Blavatsky were both in India in 1857 and 1858, both in Tbilisi in the mid-sixties, and both in Cairo in 1871. Again, Afghani left Egypt for India in late 1879, the same year that Blavatsky and Olcott arrived there. After leaving India in late 1882, he resided in Paris throughout 1884, the year in which Blavatsky spent the summer there.

Through Jamal ud Din al Afghani, Blavatsky acquired her central doctrines, derived from Ismailism, which she would then communicate the Western occult community. As Johnson points out, in Blavatsky’s article, The Eastern Gupta Vidy and the Kabbalah, she claims the “real Kabbalah” is to be found in the Chaldean Book of Numbers. Although it is unknown to scholars, Blavatsky cites this book frequently in her tomes, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. She claims to have received it from a “Persian Sufi”, and as K. Paul Johnson points out, Afghani is its most likely source.

According to Johnson, a fundamental structure in Blavatsky’s doctrines can only be attributed to one source, which is also related to the ideas of another occultist, Gurdjieff: Ismaili Gnosticism. The Chaldean Book of Numbers teaches a sevenfold cosmology similar to the eclectic Ismaili mysticism. “The centrality of the number seven”, notes Johnson:

...is a major clue which points to Ismaili gnosis as an important source for both Blavatsky and Gurdjieff. Henri Corbin’s Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis describes the doctrine of a sevenfold cosmic evolutionary process, repeated in a sevenfold historical scheme, paralleled by a sevenfold initiatory path for the individual adept. This corresponds exactly to the Mahatma letters [of Blavatsky] teaching that “the degrees of an Adept’s initiation mark the seven stages at which he discovers the secret of the sevenfold principles in nature and man and awakens his dormant powers.” The doctrine of the Resurrection acquires a specific meaning in Ismaili gnosis which relates it to Blavatsky’s teachings. Each of the seven principles of the individual is “resurrected” by the influence of the next higher principle. HPB’s sevenfold breakdown of human principles was presented variously as Chaldean, Tibetan, and Chaldeo-Tibetan. But in fact its closest historical analogue is Ismaili.^[22]

John Yarker

Blavatsky’s teachings also influenced the establishment of a prominent secret society known as the Golden Dawn, which would emerge out of Afghani’s contacts with the leaders of Egyptian Rite Freemasonry. Having gone underground for some time, until 1848, the “Year of Revolutions”, the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry then revived its activity in Paris, and by 1856 had also established itself in Egypt, America, Romania, and other countries. In 1872, when the Egyptian Rite came to be known as the Antient and Primitive Rite, the Grand Mastership of the order was assumed by John Yarker, having been handed to him by Marconis de Negre. Yarker was also familiar with Blavatsky, having met her in England in 1878, and appears to have conferred on her a Masonic initiation, though there have been attempts to refute her involvement in Freemasonry.

In Paris, Yarker met Pascal Beverly Randolph, an African-American occultist who had traveled to Egypt, where he was supposedly initiated by a secret priestess of the Ismaili Muslims. Paschal Randolph was a noted medium, healer, occultist and author of his day, and also counted among his personal friends Bulwer-Lytton. Randolph’s Brotherhood of Eulis claimed descent from the Rosicrucian Order, by charter of the “Supreme Grand Lodge of France”, and taught spiritual healing, western occultism and principals of race regeneration through forms of sex magic. Through Randolph, Yarker passed on the tradition of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, that was reborn as the Hermitic Brotherhood of Light, a continuation of the Frates Lucis, or Asiatic Brethren.

Max Theon

In 1873, Carl Kellner, an associate of Randolph, was another of the many occultists associated with Egyptian Freemasonry, who had traveled to Cairo in the time of al Afghani’s activity. There he met, for the first time, a mysterious young man, then going by the name of Aia Aziz, also known as Max Theo. Actually, this Max Theon was the son of the last leader of the Frankist sect, Rabbi Bimstein of Warsaw, Poland.

Max Theon traveled widely, and in Cairo worked with Blavatsky, and also became a student of Paulos Metamon, a “Coptic magician”. Paulos Metamon was also Blavatsky’s first “Master”, whom she had met in Asia Minor in 1848, and again in Cairo in 1870, and it was he who introduced her to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Interestingly, the sevenfold cosmology of Ismailism was common to both Theon and Blavatsky. In 1873, Metamon passed the Grand Mastership to Aziz, who, adopting the name of Max Theon, moved to England to propagate the same order.

It was Carl Kellner and Thoedore Reuss, another member of Bulwer-Lyttons’ Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, who would put together the ritual of Egyptian Rite Freemasonry, chartered to Reuss by John Yarker, to convey the inner secret of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Regarding Kellner, Reuss wrote:

In the course of his many and extensive travels in Europe, America and the Near East, Bro. Kellner came into contact with an organisation which called itself The Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. The stimulus which he received through his association with this body, as well as other circumstances which cannot be mentioned here, gave rise to Bro. Kellner’s wish to found a sort of Academia Masonica which would make it possible for questing brethren to become acquainted with all the existing Masonic degrees and systems. In the year 1895 Bro. Kellner had long discussions with Bro. Reuss in Berlin about how this idea of his could be realised. In the course of talks with Bro. Reuss he abandoned the proposed title Academia Masonica and produced reasons and documents for the adoption of the name Oriental Templars. At that time in 1895 these deliberations did not lead to any positive result because Bro. Reuss was then busy with his revived Order of the Illuminati and Bro. Kellner had no sympathy for this organisation or for the people who were active in it with Bro. Kellner.^[23]

Aleister Crowley

It was John Yarker who supposedly provided a charter for the founding of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or O.T.O., effected by Reuss, which attempted to revive the traditions of the Ancient Mysteries, the Knights Templars, the FreemasonsRosicruciansand the Illuminati. Ordo Templi Orientis meant “Order of Eastern Templars”, in reference to the Johannite myth of Sabian or Ismaili influence. The occult inner circle of the O.T.O. would be organized parallel to the highest degrees of Egyptian Rite Masonry, and the esoteric Rosicrucian doctrines of the H.B. of L.

Reuss was succeeded as head of the O.T.O. by the notorious Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowleya thirty-third degree Mason of the Scottish Rite, had also been a member of the Isis-Urania Temple of Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn. Known simply as The Golden Dawn, the order was founded in 1888, by Masons and members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia of Bulwer-Lytton. This Isis Cult was organized around the 1877 manuscript Isis Unveiled by Helena Blavatsky. The Order of the Golden Dawn included, among others, William Butler Yeats, Maude Gonne, wife of Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Edward Waite. The Golden Dawn was led at the time by McGreggor Mathers, who traced the spiritual ancestry of the order to the Rosicrucians, and from there, through to the Kabbalah and to Ancient Egypt. And, it was while in Egypt, in 1904, that Crowley made contact with an entity by the name of Aiwass, which dictated to him the content of his Book of the Law, containing the famous dictum of modern occultism, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

The Salafi

Mohammed Abduh

After Afghani’s departure from Egypt, his pupil, Mohammed Abduh, was inexplicably named the chief editor of the official British-controlled publication of the Egyptian government, the Journal Officiel. Working under him was fellow-Freemason, Saad Zaghul, later to be founder of the Wafd nationalist party. In 1883, Abduh joined Afghani in Paris, and then went to London, where he lectured at Oxford and Cambridge, and consulted with British officials about the crisis in Sudan against the Mahdi.

In Paris and London, Abduh assisted Afghani in administering both a French-language and Arabic journal in Paris, called Al Urwah al Wuthkah, or the “Indissoluble Bond”, also the name of a secret organization he founded in 1883. Among the members of Afghani’s circle in Paris were Egyptians, Indians, Turks, Syrians, North Africans, as well as many Christians and Jews, and Persian Bahais expelled from the Middle East.

When the French suppressed the Al-Murwah al-Wuthkah, Abduh traveled for several years, throughout the Arab world, under various disguises, particularly to Tunis, Beiruk, and Syria. In each city, he would recruit members into the secret society of Afghani’s fundamentalism.^[24]

Like his teacher, Abduh was associated with the Bahai movement, which had made deliberate efforts to spread the faith to Egypt. Bahais began establishing themselves in Alexandria and Cairo beginning in the late 1860. Abduh had met Abdul Baha when he was teaching in Beirut, and the two struck up a very warm friendship, and agreed with his one-world-religion philosophy.^[25] Remarking on Abdul Baha’s excellence in religious science and diplomacy, Abduh said of him that, “[he] is more than that. Indeed, he is a great man; he is the man who deserves to have the epithet applied to him.”^[26]

Abduh was known for his reformist views about Islam. But, in How We Defended Orabi, A.M. Broadbent declared that, “Sheikh Abdu was no dangerous fanatic or religious enthusiast, for he belonged to the broadest school of Moslem thought, held a political creed akin to pure republicanism, and was a zealous Master of a Masonic Lodge.”^[27] Like the Ismailis before him, he would advance his students progressively into deeper levels of heresy. To the higher initiates, he would reveal the doctrines of the Scottish Rite and the philosophy of one-world government. However, for those Abduh deemed were much more disposed, he would introduce to an officer of British intelligence from London.^[28]

Rashid Rida

From 1888, until his death in 1905, Abduh regularly visited the home and office of Lord Cromer. In 1892, he was named to run the administrative Committee for the Al Azhar mosque and university, the most prestigious educational institution in Islam, and the oldest university in the world. From that post, he reorganized the entire Muslim system in Egypt, and because of Al Azhar’s reputation, much of the Islamic world as well.

In 1899, Lord Cromer, made Abduh the Grand Mufti of Egypt. He was now the chief legal authority in Islam, as well as the Masonic Grand Master of the United Lodge of Egypt. Lord Cromer was an important member of England’s Baring banking family, that had grown rich off of the opium trade in India and China. His motive in making Abduh the most powerful figure in all of Islam was to change the law forbidding interest banking. Abduh then offered a contrived interpretation of the Koran, to create the requisite loophole, giving British banks free reign in Egypt. Of Abduh, Lord Cromer related, “I suspect my friend Abduh was in reality an agnostic,” and he said of Abduh’s Salafi reform movement that, “They are the natural allies of the European reformer.”^[29]

The Salafi movement then became allied with the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, through another Freemason, Mohammed Rashid Rida, who, after the death of Afghani in 1897, and Abduh in 1905, assumed the leadership of the Salafis Rida had become a member of the Indissoluble Bond at a young age. He was promoted through Afghani’s Masonic society through his reading of Al-Urwah al Wuthkah, which he later confessed was the greatest influence in his life. Rida had never met Afghani, but in 1897, he had gone to Egypt to study with Mohammed Abduh. Though Rida did not share his master’s opinions about the Bahai movement, it was through his influence that the Salafi movement became firmly aligned with the State of Saudi Arabia.

Footnotes:

^[1] Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini, p. 113. [pdf]
^[2] Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, quoted from Paul A. Fisher, Their God is the Devil, pp. 18-19.
^[3] Ruggiu, Jean-Pascal. “Rosicrucian Alchemy and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn”.
^[4] Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini. p. 118.
^[5] Ibid. p. 123 and 121.
^[6] Ibid. p. 118.
^[7] Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani”: A Political Biography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, (1927) p. 87
^[8] David Hughes, Davidic Dynasty.
^[9] Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani”: A Political Biography p. 116.
^[10] Ibid. p. 87.
^[11] Ibid. p. 91.
^[12] Ibid.
^[13] Ibid. p. 45.
^[14 North West Province Special Branch, 29 August 189. quoted from Momen, Moojan, “Jamal Effendi and the early spread of the Bahai Faith in Asia”, Bahai Studies Review, Volume 8, 1998.
^[15] (C.S.B.) Report of D.E. McCracken, dated 14 August 1897, in file Foreign: Secret E, Sept. 1898, no. 100, pp. 13-14; national archives of the government of India, New Delhi.
^[16] Raafat, Samir. “Freemasonry in Egypt: Is it still around?” Insight Magazine, March 1, 1999.
^[17] Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini, p. 122.
^[18] Ibid. p. 122.
^[19] 1941: Iraq and the Illuminati.
^[20] Manly P. Hall (33rd degree mason), "The Phoenix, An Illustrated Review of Occultism and Philosophy", 1960 The Philosophical Research Society, p. 122
^[21] p. 280
^[22] The Masters Revealed, p. 146.
^[23] Howe, Ellic, Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23, 16 February 1978; Grand Lodge of BC and Yukon, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23".
^[24] Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini, p. 136.
^[25] Ibid. p. 279.
^[26] Cole, Juan R. I. “Rashid Rida on the Bahai Faith: A Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religions”, Arab Studies Quarterly 5, 3 (Summer 1983): 278.
^[27] Raafat, Samir. “Freemasonry in Egypt: Is it still around?” Insight Magazine, March 1, 1999.
^[28] Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini, p. 136.
^[29] Goodgame, Peter. The Muslim Brotherhood: The Globalists' Secret Weapon.