Grabbing my usual early-morning breakfast in front of the TV and taking hold of the day headlines before jumping out of the house, I saw this hard interview on Stephen Sackur’s BBC Hard Talk programme. More than the half of my day, it kept ducking me into pondering again and again! Aimen Dean, a former Al Qaeda, worked for Britain as a double agent in Islamic Centres within Britain to uncover information about terrorist’s activities that could help the government in averting extremism. Why would Aimen take this dicey job and decide to come out on air at this critical time? Most importantly, how would the different worlds around him interpret his adventure? These were some of the questions that preoccupied my thought, and finally, I decided to share them with you.
After many years of disguise among people who believed him to be a fellow comrade or even sometimes a leader, Aimen Dean now appears on BBC television disclosing his mission and, despite admitting the danger of what he was doing, remained firmly confident and convinced that he was and still on course! He believed this could be the way to expose the people that hijacked Islam and wrongly portrayed its canons.
Though some people might see his action as similar to that of Edward Snowden, religious leaders and Muslims around the world have for long condemned extremists’ activities as un-Islamic, be it Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, ISIS/ISIL in Syria and Iraq or Boko Haram in Nigeria. As these organisations employ horrific measures such as brutal killings and ransom to terrorise their targets, so also susceptible and insusceptible countries alike work out a strategy, such as the deployment of agents the likes of Aimen, to help them detect and destroy terrorists’ networks and organisations.
Aimen did one of the most precarious jobs, and why he decided to jump into the fire just to prove his innocence is what remains inconceivable. I hope given the extent people continue to plunge into endangerments as a result of a loss of hope, soon mankind will find a solution to the daunting challenges posed by the insurgency across the globe.
Click to watch the full interview.
Lawan Dalha 