The Resistance & Islamic Movements – Interview with Alastair Crooke
Press TV’s Sobh Program, interview by Bahman Nooraei (Interview posted 14 July 2025)
LINK TO INTERVIEW:
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/07/12/751093/Resistance---Islamic-Movements-with-Alastair-Crooke
· On working in international diplomacy and geo-politics by seeing with your whole being and hearing by bringing all your senses to bear as a way of trying to understand what’s happening -- as Islamic philosophers Ibn Arabi’ and Mulla Sadra have written. Holistic seeing and thinking, rather than attenuating down to component elements.
· On reading Henri Corbin, Shi’i thinkers and the pre-Socratics which led to Crooke writing his book, Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution.
· On the ancient (pre-Socratic) foundations - and the split between Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sinna - as the historical legacy underlying contemporary Islam.
· On how ‘narratives’, as such, have surpassed real ground events (military, economic or geo-strategic) to become the western approach to politics with the ‘whole of society’ talk-points as means to manage western society.
· On understanding analogical logic and analogical ways of thinking (as opposed to mechanistic rationality.
· On shifting from IAEA and international oversight of Iran’s nuclear program to a regional Arms Limitation Treaty that would include inspection of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
· On building ceasefires, de-escalation initiatives and momentum for change between Israel and Palestinian resistance movements Hamas & Islamic Jihad on behalf of the EU.
· On opening channels of communication with Islamist Resistance Movements at the height of the War on Terror, and being removed from office at the behest of the then US President.
· On how, for decades, radical jihadist groups have been used to “kick Communist [or Assad’s or the Resistance’s] ass”.
· Alastair Crooke: “We are in a period of huge turmoil, and I think it will get worse. The western collapse is going to radiate tension and polarisation as it goes through this catharsis that it is facing. We are not going to come through this until we have moved beyond post-modern nihilism and understand the need for a vision that transcends the nihilistic vision which has so damaged our [western] societies. And whoever can take the lead or play a part [in this] will be doing a service to all at this time”.
It's all there in Alastair's book "Resistance." It's a shame so few in the West read it.
Thank you for an unusually philosophical discussion. Sorry to be long winded, but:
A liberation concept that hypothetically could transcend the nihilistic vision with the least transgression to standing cultures, governments, religions and whatever else of similar durability could be a dedication to save the biosphere from the damage humans have brought and continue to promote as the only means to the future (such as AI, ever faster connectivity, rocketry, nuclear anything and the inequality that allowing for billionaires makes inevitable.) Without change, earthly processes as corrupted by humanity will do us in before too long no matter what religion, government, culture or careers are around. Neither Putin, Xi, nor Mr. T can stop the processes in progress, the endless chemical poisoning, nuclear poisoning, bombing and burning that appear to be inseparable from and, frankly, the evolved purpose of modern power structures. In brief, clean up past and present poisons and respect the friggin’ planet or none of our politics will matter. We will be transcended.