Episode 34: My life in Al-Qaeda, a conversation with Aimen Dean

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 129 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Aimen Dean was once a fervent young jihadi fighter, a passionate believer in radical Sunni Islam who had memorized the Quran by 12 and was fighting in the Bosnian jihad by 16.

Haviv talked to Aimen about the religious and psychological journey of a young jihadi, his experiences in the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya, his recruitment by Bin Laden himself in the mountains of Afghanistan, and his sudden and powerful disillusionment, both political and religious, that led him to become an MI6 spy in Al Qaeda's ranks.

They talked about present-day Islam, the "deradicalization" that Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa underwent in recent years, possible better futures for Gaza and whether Israeli-Palestinian peace was still possible. We also talked about why he thinks it's time to end Western experiments in reforming Middle Eastern governance and fall back on what he sees as the most natural and inclusive form of government for the region: The paternalistic monarchy.

This episode was sponsored by David and Karen Divine, who asked to dedicate it to someone we lost on October 7. This episode, we remember Abed Rahman Ziyadne, 26 of Rahat, part of Israel's Bedouin Arab community, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on the Zikim beach, north of Gaza, on October 7, 2023, along with his girlfriend, Yulia Chaban.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody. Welcome to a fascinating new episode of Ask Habib Anything. This one is really extraordinary. We have talked in the past, as any fans of the podcast, regular listeners or viewers will know, in abstract theoretical terms about some of the major themes and ideas of political Islam, Islamism, Salafism.
0:24.4	We talked about Muhammad Abduh, the Grand Mufti of Egypt in the 1890s, and his students, Rashid Rida,
0:31.0	and the lineage through the Muslim Brotherhood that produced Hamas.
0:34.5	We talked about that, of course, because it is profoundly significant to the ideas that drive some of the Palestinian discourse in Hamas, certainly in Gaza today.
0:44.3	But more broadly, it affects how the Middle East talks to itself, what the Islam in the Arab world is thinking.
0:51.3	You have to know, you have to understand how it all works.
0:54.9	And that was the idea.
0:55.9	And so we took some historical deep dives.
0:58.3	Today we're going to do something completely different and, frankly, much more interesting
1:02.4	to me.
1:03.8	I am joined by Aimandine, who was a card-carrying member of Al-Qaeda.
1:10.6	They have these nice little, they don't have cards.
1:13.6	Do they have cards? No, they never had. They never had cards.
1:18.7	It's evidence. Every club I've ever been part of had little magnetic cards. And it's going to be
1:24.8	a conversation that really dives into lived experience.
1:28.4	What is it like to be there?
1:30.1	What is it like to join a Western espionage agency to then try and head off some of the terror attack being produced by some of these organizations?
1:40.8	Before we get into the conversation, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by David and Karen Devine and dedicated to the memory of, as many people have done with this podcast, and I really profoundly appreciate it. It feels profoundly meaningful to someone who died on October 7.
1:57.9	Today we remember Abid Rahman Ziyadhni, 26 of Rahat, part of Israel's Bedouin
2:04.5	Arab community, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on the Zikim beach north of Gaza on October
2:11.5	7, along with his girlfriend, Yulia Shaban, who is 24 from Arad. He and Yulia were camping together along the beach when the
2:19.0	Hamas attack began. They fled the site. They tried to hide in the sand dunes. Eventually,
	...

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