Al-Qaida: Wrong answers to real problems
By Soumayya Ghannoushi
Monday 11 July 2005, 19:36 Makka Time, 16:36 GMT
Once again I watched the nauseous devastation and massacre, this time in
the heart of my city, near the universities and libraries, where I have
spent much of my adult life.
Madrid and Bali, Casablanca and Riyadh, I have come to predict al-Qaida's
responsibility for a given criminal act through the following test. If I
find myself at a loss for an answer to the questions: "Why the innocent?"
and "For what purpose?", then, in all likelihood, the crime is of
al-Qaida's doing.
The absurd, random mass carnage of young and old, male and female is its
trademark. Residential buildings, tourist resorts, rush hour trains and
crowded buses turn into grand spectacles of mass murder where no heed is
paid to the victim's identity and the extent of his/her responsibility
for the policies of a country defined as the enemy. The boundaries
between the world of politics and that of organised crime are blurred, as
political demands get wedded to criminal methods.
Al-Qaida, it must be said, is no pioneer in this field. For although it
founds its ideology on religious references and speaks a language
overwhelmed by religious symbols, al-Qaida falls largely within the
modern tradition of revolutionary anarchists - from the Jacobins and the
Bolsheviks down to latter-day Marxist guerrillas like the Baadr-Meinhoff
Gang.
Destruction as a passion
Like these modern revolutionary nihilists, al-Qaida warriors subscribe to
an instrumentalist logic that recognises no distinction between the
legitimate and illegitimate, thereby sanctioning acts of terror for the
attainment of their ends. Like them, they are more interested in the act
of destruction than its effects. As the father of Russian anarchism
Mikhail Bakunin put it, 'the passion for destruction is also a creative
passion'.
Al-Qaida is also a revival of the radical currents that surfaced in
Islamic history from time to time only to be defeated by moderate
mainstream Islam led by the Ulama (scholars). In particular, they appear
to be a continuation of Kharijite thought with its dualistic puritanical
conception of the world and the community of Muslims and of Gnostic
underground organisations like the Assassins and Qaramita, who sought to
disrupt the stability of Muslim societies through acts of terrorism.
Al-Qaida would be best seen as a mixture of these political and
ideological strands. Apart from the ideological justifications it takes
recourse to, one would, indeed, be hard put to find much that
distinguishes it from Latin American anarchist groups. Their acts share
the same destructive ferocity, the same absurdity. The difference is that
where one finds its ideological legitimacy in Marxism, the other seeks it
in the Islamic religion.
Islam misinterpreted
How can the murder of the innocent be perpetuated in the name of a
religion that likens the loss of one human life to the loss of humanity
at large? How can Islam be said to sanction such acts of aggression when
it openly forbids revenge and declares in no less than five Quranic
chapters that: "No bearer of a burden bears the burden of another"?
How can the killing of ordinary men and women going about their business
be permissible when even the battlefield has been regulated by the
strictest moral code: "Destroy not fruit trees, nor fertile land in your
paths. Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all
religious persons who live in hermitages or convents and spare their
edifices"?
Perhaps the one thing al-Qaida militants have proven good at, apart from
the shedding of innocent blood, is fanning the flames of hostility to
Islam and Muslims. From the darkness of their caves and hiding places,
these self-appointed spokesmen for about one and a half billion Muslims
worldwide have excelled in stirring latent negative images of Islam
within the Western psyche. Through their senseless crimes, Islam, in the
minds of most, has become a euphemism for mass slaughter and destruction.
Thanks to them, racism, bigotry and Islamophobia could rear its ugly head
unashamedly in broad day light.
The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly
trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush's hammer and Bin
Laden's anvil, hostages to an extreme right wing American administration,
aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over
the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups,
lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding.
'Us' and 'them'
Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that
they are working in unison, one providing the justifications the other
desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.
No wonder, it didn't take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to
spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them. Their
puritanical missionary belief in being God's instruments on earth and
grand imperial ambitions could now be realised through shameless
emotional blackmail and bogus moral claims.
The two share a shallow, myopic, dualistic conception of the world
populated by 'us' and 'them' in Bush's language, 'believers' and
'non-believers' in Bin Laden's. Al-Zarqawi and his fellows then brandish
the sword of excommunication (takfir) against the Muslim body itself in
an endless orgy of maiming and mutilation.
Some are to be expelled, because they are Shia, others because they are
Sufis, or Mu'tazilites (rationalists) and so on in a perpetual
elimination process that spares no one but a handful of puritan elects
from its deadly reach.
The vast stock of common denominators is ignored, that which tears and
divides is sought. These would rather see the world turn into an ever-
raging battlefield, Muslim societies into blazing scenes of sectarian
schism and civil war in a region rich in ethnic, religious, sectarian and
linguistic diversity.
I daily use London's trains and buses and could have been one of Thursday
bombings' victims. I hardly think that killing or maiming me would have
aided the causes the bombers claim to defend. The truth is that these
narrow-minded fanatics are a scourge to the causes they purport to
champion.
Ask any Iraqi or Palestinian if the bombing of the innocent in Bali,
Casablanca, or London has helped alleviate their suffering. If anything,
they have handed their oppressors with an open permit to butcher and
destroy, safe in the knowledge that blame has been shifted from them to
their victims.
Just causes, unjust means
So, Sharon demolishes the homes of Palestinians, expropriates their lands
and sends his helicopters to massacre them in their hundreds in the name
of combating terrorism. Arab regimes stifle dissenting voices, imprison
and assassinate in the name of resisting terrorism. American tanks and
gunships invade, occupy, kill and rampage, all in the name of terrorism.
Al-Qaida's mindless acts have turned the aggressor, who colonises,
massacres and pillages, into a victim. For all their material
vulnerability, victims have a very powerful asset: their moral case as
innocent victims. Perhaps, this is the cruellest dimension to these
senseless crimes: That the powerless has been stripped even of his
victimhood. Even this has been appropriated by the powerful.
The causes al-Qaida extremists speak for are certainly just causes. The
sanctioning of genocide and occupation in Palestine, slaughter of
hundreds of thousands in Iraq through exposure to depleted Uranium and
years of barbaric sanctions first, then through bombing and shelling
without bothering to count the dead, brutal invasion of the country,
destruction of its infrastructure and humiliation of its people
undoubtedly rank among modern history’s bloodiest crimes and darkest
tragedies.
But the mindless killing of the innocent in Madrid, or New York is the
wrong answer to these real grievances. These are illegitimate responses
to legitimate causes. Just as occupation is morally and politically
deplorable, so, too, is this blind aggression masquerading as Jihad.
Soumayya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School
of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. The opinions
expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the
editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.
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Comment by AbuOmar
The above article is typically apologetic and grossly oversimplifying
global events just by lumping it into Bush’s or Ben Laden’s world. Our
minds and thoughts are being led by intrigue, shady and unscrupulous
intelligence agencies, media spins and conspiracies. There has never been
any open trials, nor convictions in a truly just an independent court to
establish the facts. But the victims of the terrorism in the end have
always been Muslims. In the case of Britain, homegrown British Muslims
are under severe threat in the most open and welcoming city for Muslims
in the Western world.
Subscribing to the view that the whole problem is just between the
extremes of Bush and Ben Laden is only falling for the Zionist view of
things. It is the classic trap to further put the Muslim mind to sleep.
Look out for words such as Muslim “grievances”. How toned down injustice
and crimes of humanity has been made into. As if murder, genocide,
imprisonment without due process, deprivation, torture, forced exile,
economic poverty by subjugation, illegal occupation are just
misdemeanours where as if moderation means looking the other way.
The writer has to come out of her comfortable armchair in London and face
the facts. The miserable peoples of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan could
not care less what happens in London. They are already condemned in their
own desolate homes, shacks and face the severe humiliation and oppression
of foreign occupation. The thousands imprisoned without trial all across
the American concentration camps all over the world are facing severe
torture every minute of their precious lives to worry about a free and
bright young person worrying about how safe it is to board a train.
Finally, the writer has never nor has any Muslim writer researched,
interviewed, seen Ben Laden, Al Qaeda, Zarqawi or any conveniently
selected terror affiliate. Almost all of the sources are secondary. This
is not surprising because even Afghans and Iraqis have never seen Ben
Laden nor Zarqawi in recent times but are made to believe that they are
in their midst. Everyone from London to Kabul has become parrots!
It is not suggested that we start believing the conspiracy theories in
order to unravel the mysteries in order to articulate the Muslim response
to terror. But we must not be push overs for set piece propaganda, mind
control and media spins. For the Muslim, thinking reigns supreme!
Abu Omar
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