Widespread media reports show that the Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent or AQIS has issued a letter warning of attacks in Indian cities in the aftermath of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders’ comments against Prophet Mohammed, reports have said.The Hindu has reported that the purported statement calls for attacks in Delhi, Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.Indian Express has reported that central intelligence agencies are on alert after the warning and the states have been notified of the threat.

On June 5, Bharatiya Janata Party suspended national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled Delhi media unit head Naveen Jindal after unprecedented diplomatic backlash from Muslim countries.

“In response to this affront, the hearts of Muslims all over the world are bleeding and are filled with feelings of revenge and retribution,” the statement, issued on Monday, June 6, has said. AQIS, launched in 2014, has, in the past, carried out attacks in Bangladesh, especially against secular writers and bloggers, the Hindu report mentions.

Related:

A fitting reply to Al Qaeda chief: Muskan’s father
We Indian Muslims need no sermons from the Al-Qaeda
टाइम्स नाउ पर डिबेट में नूपुर शर्मा ने पैग़म्बर मुहम्मद पर की आपत्तिजनक टिप्पणी, ट्रोल हुईं
After Times Now debate Nupur Sharma gets online threats from trolls 
Student leader, Abdul Rehman arrested for protesting against hate-monger, Nupur Sharma

The post Threat letter from Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent Issues after BJP Leaders’ Comments appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Let me at the outset categorically junk the lurking innuendo evident in the latest diatribe of Al-Qaeda head Ayman Zawahiri. We Indian Muslims have never looked for external support to defend our rights guaranteed under the Indian Constitution. This is like a savage murderer crying out sermons on the value of human life.

Unlike your theocratic dictatorial regime, Ayman Zahiri, where the space for individual liberties is smothered to death invoking misconstrued religious dictates, India is the largest temple of democracy and pluralism. My country has the adequate fluidity to absorb and mitigate her inner contradictions.

Betraying the news of natural death, the Al-Qaeda’s supreme commander Ayman Zawahiri has recently released a standalone statement on the Hijab controversy in India. This comes from the head of a dispensation who has clipped the freedom of women by banishing them from schools. After initial progressive signs of moderation, the Al-Qaeda regime that was emboldened after the bungled withdrawal of American bootsfrom Afghanistan, has blatantly succumbed to pressures from hardliners. It has demonstrated, once again, that it still clings to outdated tribal Islam with a crass regard for civil liberties and multiple religiosities.

Although India has already found fleeting references in his speeches earlier, his broadcasted messages solely on an Indian issue today demand critical attention. This shows the designs the Al-Qaeda has entertained in the region in manipulating the occasional discontent innate to a democracy. In their pipedream of establishing an Islamic Caliphate, India with its large Muslim population has been a vital cog. Community leaders and security experts should proactively engage to distill the incipient trends of radicalism, especially based in the cyber world.

Al-Qaeda’s version of Islam

Understanding of blinkered understanding of the Al-Qaeda’s religious views will help better read the messages in context. Al-Qaeda believes in ethnic tribal Islamic traditions nurtured by hardcore Salafism exported from the Middle East. It is antithetical to divergent religious interpretations and follows contrived rigidity of Islamic Sharia totally expunging the spirit of religion, Sufism. Following tribal traditions of patriarchy and sustenance through war spoils, they believe in the harsh interpretations of Islam.

Islam, like any religion, embraces changes in terms of laws and cultural evolutions. Al-Qaeda refutes timely accretions to the religion discrediting them as profane innovations as they believe in a puritanical form of religious version. In their scheme of a polity, Pashtun ethnicity is endowed with hegemony. They follow a highly illiberal patriarchal social system and thus women are prevented from appearing in public.

They resort to violence to destroy and tarnish anything they deem as ‘Shirk’ (forbidden things in Islam). This is a scriptural stricture in the Al-Qaeda’s interpretation of Islam. They conveniently dump into oblivion the plural and multi-cultural teachings of Islam. To establish a Pan-Islamic Khilafat to prop up their radical ideologies is central to their political idea. According to the Al-Qaeda, also identical to political Salafism, Islam cannot survive without political establishment. 

Indian Muslims reject the Al-Qaeda’s dogma

Al-Qaeda has no moral right to guide Indian Muslims. Al-Qaeda is at loss without the rudimentary understanding of Indian democracy. Indian democracy is celebrated not for the absence of inner contradictions; but for the pragmatic forte to accommodate and diffuse differences.

The sermon of Zawahiri, although focused on the Hijab issue, is a sinister ploy to discredit democracy and send out innuendoes of subverting the system. It has in fact tried to preach misogynistic and theocratic political messages. The allegations of Indian democracy supporting pagan Hinduism is plainly misleading, and a rigid theocracy like the Al-Qaeda cannot digest the notion of mutual coexistence.

Whether Hijab is essential to religion is contentious within the religion. But, for a muscular patriarchal Al-Qaeda, Hijab is indispensable- to limit the visibility of Muslim women. The Karnataka High Court’s verdict banning Hijab from schools with compulsory uniforms, itself shows the diversity of the Indian system to accommodate diverse opinions in a rainbow polity. Indian judicial system has ample space for grievance redressal through peaceful means.

The militant ascendancy of Right-wing Hindutva poses existential threats to the idea of the nation, but the country has enough checks and brakes to prevent such aberrations from being the norm. While the recent shift to majoritarian nationalism spawns doubt, the nation has the consciousness to implement the Constitution which guarantees equal justice irrespective of religious affiliations. But the exhortations of Al-Qaeda’s supremo to disparage Indian nationhood based on this fickle aberration are like blaming the eclipse on the sun. This has actually hurt the cause of the Muslim community, evident from the statement of the Karnataka home minister who attributed the Hijab protests to ‘outsider influences’.

Indian Islam is one among the multiple interpretations of Islam. It is fundamentally different from puritanical bare dogmas of the Al-Qaeda in its inclusiveness, localism and syncretic moorings. Indian Islam is malleable and adaptive to timely evolutions as a religion is supposed to be. It reposes faith in multicultural society and plural cultural ethos. Indian Muslims are not hapless lots to seek guidance from the rugged terrains of uncertainties.

The Zawahiri’s call to arms should not be taken as such and dismissed, as the wails of a self-styled evangelist. It is part of a larger plot to promote radical insurrections in multi-religious societies. Indian Muslims have earlier repudiated the call to join ISIS to fight the infidel state. The Muslim community has to maintain extra vigilance from radical overtures from ‘outsider forces’. Along with this, governments have the constitutional onus to assuage the grievances of the minority communities to assure safety to all.

*Mubashir is a journalism student at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi currently on internship with SabrangIndia

Related:

Muskan’s father gives fitting reply to Al Qaeda chief
Now Al Qaeda intrudes into the Hijab controversy
Hijab row: Udupi girls dubbed terrorists by BJP leader
Karnataka: Minority dept bars hijab, saffron scarves in govt schools, PUs

The post We Indian Muslims need no sermons from the Al-Qaeda appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Clearly and strongly dIstancing himself and his family from the video statement released by Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri (late night of April 5), Mohamned Hussain, father of Muskan, a second year B-Com student condemned the contents. 

In a video message “praising” Karnataka college student Muskan Khan for defending hijab, her father on Wednesday termed the comments of the terror outfit’s leader as ‘wrong’, and said he and his family were living peacefully in India.

He also observed that such incidents have the potential of disturbing the peace of the family, he said. He also added that the police and state government can initiate any inquiry to ascertain the truth.

PTI quoted him as saying that, “We don’t know anything about it (video), we don’t know who he is. I saw him today for the first time. He has said something in Arabic…..We are all living here with love and trust like brothers,” Mohammad Hussain Khan reportedly said to the media in response to a question on Zawahiri’s video.

When asked about Zawahiri praising Muskan, he said, “People say whatever they want….this is unnecessarily causing trouble. We are living peacefully in our country, we don’t want him to talk about us, as he is not related to us… it is wrong, it is an attempt to create division among us.”

In the Arabic video clip, with English subtitles provided by SITE Intelligence Group that tracks online activity of white supremacist and jihadist organisations, Zawahiri also reads out a poem, which he says he wrote for ‘our Mujahid sister’ and for her ‘brave feat’.

“May Allah reward her for exposing the reality of Hindu India and the deception of its pagan democracy,” the Al Qaeda chief said in the video, also ending speculations about his death due to natural causes.

Observing that Muskan too has seen the video, Khan said whatever Zawahiri has said is ‘wrong’.

“… she (Muskan) is still a student, she wants to study,” he said.

When asked about demands from politicians and a section of people for an inquiry to “find any links”, Khan said let it be done, there is law, police and government for it. 

Earlier, reacting to the video release, Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra had, predictably, said, it proves involvement of ‘unseen hands’ behind the row.

He further said the Home and Police department officials are keeping a watch on developments and track things in this connection.

At the peak of hijab row in February, Muskan Khan, a second-year BCom student in Mandya was heckled by a group of students, wearing saffron shawl, for entering the college with hijab.

As they shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’, Muskan retorted by shouting ‘Allah-hu-Akbar’.

Following this, college authorities had intervened and brought the situation under control. 

The post A fitting reply to Al Qaeda chief: Muskan’s father  appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With Karnataka’s hijab controversy far from over, global terrorist group Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri demanded on April 5, 2022 that Indian Muslim react against “this oppression”, said Times of India.

In a nine-minute video, titled ‘The Noble Woman of India’ the terrorist leader praises Muslim student Muskan Khan for yelling “Allahu Akbar” outside her college in response to a group of right-group shouting “Jai Shri Ram” in the beginning of the hijab row. Zawahiri recited a poem of his own composition to praise Khan whom he called “a sister”.

Muskan and many other Muslim girls in Karnataka have been demanding a right to wear a hijab inside classrooms since the beginning of 2022. Little did they know that a demand they considered a part of their constitutional rights would be used by a group like Al Qaeda to lash out at India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries who have banned hijab in some form.

According to the Hindustan Times, Zawahiri called the ban a “war on Islam” tried to incite Indian Muslims to rise against the “pagan democracy”. The video alleging the aforementioned countries of being “allies of the West” also provides the first proof that since November that the most wanted terrorist is not only alive but invested in current events.

Around March 17, BJP leader and Vice President of Pre-University College Development Committee (CDC) Yashpal Survarna accused the six students of belonging to terrorist organisations. Accordingly, Karnataka Home Minister Araga Janendra said that the Al Qaeda video proves involvement of “unseen hands” behind the hijab row. BJP Spokesperson Amit Malviya built this further claimed that the terror outfit was using students to further its agenda.

Sources of the Times of India said that Zawahiri is located somewhere in Afghanistan. He was considered dead of natural causes in 2020 before an undated video suggesting he was alive.

Meanwhile, Muslims girls continue to face the consequences of the hijab ban. On March 28, journalist Imran Khan tweeted about a government college student in Ikkal who had to choose between writing her exam and taking off her hijab before entering the educational premises. As per the CDC norms, students only have to remove their headgear on entering classrooms or areas specified by the department.

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Jamia students protest hijab ban, gov’t deploys paramilitary forces

Hijab row: Udupi girls dubbed terrorists by BJP leader

Karnataka: Minority dept bars hijab, saffron scarves in govt schools, PUs

The post Now Al Qaeda intrudes on the hijab controversy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In other words, al-Qaida should not have survived the 16 years since 9/11.

So why has it?
 

The ties that bind

A fighter from the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front holds his group flag in front of the governor building in Idlib province, north Syria. Twitter/via AP

Much of the credit goes to al-Qaida’s extraordinary ability to both form alliances and sustain them over time and under pressure.

In my forthcoming book “Alliances for Terror,” I examine why a small number of groups, such as al-Qaida and IS, emerge as desirable partners and succeed at developing alliance networks.

Understanding terrorist alliances is critical because terrorist organizations with allies are more lethal, survive longer and are more apt to seek weapons of mass destruction. Though terrorist partnerships face numerous hurdles and severing al-Qaida’s alliances has been a U.S. objective for over a decade, the fact is that these counterterrorism efforts have failed.

It was allies that enabled al-Qaida to survive the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Afghan Taliban stood by al-Qaida after the attack, refusing to surrender bin Laden and thereby precipitating the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fleeing, al-Qaida was able to turn to allies in Pakistan to hide its operatives and punish the Pakistani government for capitulating to U.S. pressure to crackdown on the group.

It was alliances that helped al-Qaida continue to terrorize. In October 2002, for example, al-Qaida’s ally in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, struck a bar and a nightclub in Bali, killing more than 200 and injuring more than 200 more, to brutally commemorate the first anniversary of 9/11.

And it was alliances that allowed al-Qaida to project viability. With the “prestige” that came with conducting 9/11, al-Qaida was able to forge more of them and indeed create affiliate alliances in which partners adopted its name and pledged allegiance to bin Laden.

Al-Qaida’s first and most notorious affiliate alliance, al-Qaida in Iraq, was formed in 2004 with Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Using the standing he accrued through his role in the insurgency in Iraq, Zarqawi then helped al-Qaida acquire its second affiliate in 2006, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. Then, in 2009, al-Qaida designated its branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Its alliances spanned the Middle East and helped it to project power, despite the U.S. war on terrorism.
 

A lower profile

While al-Qaida still sought affiliates, by 2010, it modified how its alliances work.

Al-Qaida forged an alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia, but did not publicly announce it or ask al-Shabaab to change its name. Bin Laden justified to al-Shabaab’s leader the shift to a less visible form of alliance as a way to prevent an increase in counterterrorism pressure or a loss of funds from the Arabian Peninsula. He privately expressed concerns that al-Qaida’s name “reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam.” Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the move as bin Laden capitulating to members of al-Qaida who worried about “inflating the size and the growth of al-Qaida.” After bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri publicly announced al-Qaida’s alliance with al-Shabaab, though al-Shabaab still did not adopt al-Qaida’s name.

Though al-Qaida’s alliance arrangements have varied, these relationships have helped it to survive the loss of its founding leader in 2011 and the ascent of a far less capable leader. Zawahiri’s rise to the helm of the group was the consequence of an alliance, specifically between his original Egyptian group, al-Jihad, and al-Qaida. The alliance culminated in a merger in 2001, with Zawahiri becoming bin Laden’s deputy and successor.

However, Zawahiri lacks bin Laden’s cachet or diplomatic savvy. He is a better deputy than a leader. His poor handling of the strife between jihadist group al-Nusra in Syria and its parent organization, the Islamic State in Iraq (previously al-Qaida in Iraq and now IS), led to the alliance rupture between al-Qaida and its affiliate in Iraq.

Though al-Qaida had an acrimonious break with IS, it gained al-Nusra as an affiliate in the central conflict in the Sunni jihadist movement: Syria. As was the case with al-Shabaab, this alliance with al-Nusra did not include a rebranding and was initially kept secret. In addition, al-Nusra subsequently changed its name, an effort to gain more legitimacy within the conflict in Syria by publicly distancing itself from al-Qaida, though seemingly with al-Qaida’s consent.

Al-Qaida has not acquired another affiliate since the alliance rupture and rise of IS as a rival in 2014. It organized existing members into a new branch, al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent, that year. The branch in South Asia reflected al-Qaida’s success at expanding beyond its predominantly Arab base, particularly in Pakistan.

Critically, with the exception of IS, al-Qaida’s alliances have been resilient over time. This is true despite ample reasons for its partners to abandon ties, such as the heightened counterterrorism pressure that comes with affiliation to al-Qaida; the death of its charismatic leader; and the Islamic State’s efforts to court al-Qaida allies. Even the Afghan Taliban remains unwilling to sever ties, even though doing so would eliminate one of the major reasons that the United States will not withdraw from the “forever war” in Afghanistan.

There is a window now for the U.S. to damage al-Qaida’s alliances: It has a weak leader and major rival. But that window may be closing as the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate crumbles and al-Qaida grooms bin Laden’s son as its future leader.
 

Tricia Bacon, Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Why al-Qaida is still strong 16 years after 9/11 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Pinterest

The post Open Letter: To Islamist Extremists, from the Other Muslims of the World appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Photo from ISIS taken in Ninive area, Iraq, in 2015 and published by the group on their web pages. Picture by Balkis Press ABACA/PA Images. 

The world is currently facing a vicious, new form of international terrorism. The Islamic State (IS) has expressed its plans to attack Europe while recruiting a growing number of foreign fighters. In fact, a significant number of EU citizens are already engaged with IS both in Syria and in the EU. The attacks on Paris underline the scale and complexity of the current threat in Europe. Such brutal acts by religiously motived groups in western countries cause global outrage. People feel that their values and sovereignty are attacked. But how can this rise in religiously motivated violence be explained?

The literal meaning of the word ‘terror’ indicates the aim to change a political situation by spreading fear rather than causing material damage to the target. Looking at conventional warfare, material losses are the main goal, spreading fear is just the byproduct of these actions. ‘Terror’ on the other hand creates more fear than it causes material loss for the enemy. Spreading fear is therefore the whole story for terrorist groups and shows the disproportion of strength between the terrorists and their target, and the fear they, therefore, want to inspire.

Are terrorist attacks a new modern phenomenon?

In the 21st century there is visibly an increase in religiously motivated terror attacks. Many of the radical groups identify themselves with radical Islam, but how did violence and religion evolve to this point? Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and ISIS, just to mention the most popular ones are causing fear and anxiety throughout the world. But are terrorist attacks a new modern phenomenon? Why are so many attacks religiously motivated?

The role of religion in politics has always been a difficult one. With the Peace of Westphalia being established in 1648, a new international system was introduced. Before that, religion was the main source of conflict and competition between states or kingdoms. The Westphalian order banished religion more and more from the political sphere, which was exacerbated by the processes of modernization and secularization, leading to the view that religion would soon disappear completely from politics and even from the lives of people.

One can say that without the banishment of religion, the modern state and the development of the present-day international system would not have been possible [1]. The state took the marginalization of religion and the loyalty of the population to God and transferred it to the State. The rising confidence in national institutions make the belief in a supernatural power obsolete.  

The core features of the modern state are a reliable monetary system, a stable legal system and an apparatus, that can guarantee internal security [2]. As it is well known, the concept of the modern state has not emerged uniformly around the globe. The process of the modern state has a long history and has led to the disarmament of people and the centralization of executive power as well as the use of violence.[3]  This reorganization of public violence and the state’s monopoly on violence is the central instrument to ensure everyday safety of citizens from random acts of force.

Terror attacks undermine this monopoly and create fear among the population. According to Zygmund Bauman, in modernity we build a moral distance. Due to the huge bureaucratic apparatus and its monopoly on violence, the modern state can use violence without its people really knowing. Hannah Arendt argues in a similar way in ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, where she describes that evil is not personified in one person, instead crimes can be committed by anyone, who follows orders and stops reflecting on their own actions.

The views of radical Islamist groups are as much shaped by western ideology as by their religious beliefs.

To use violence on a big scale you need a high degree of rationalization and process optimization. Waging war in modernity is all about logistics. The healthy soldier is the basis for the logistics of the military. The history to transform networks is fundamental to the history of warfare. Nazi Germany committed the worst acts of violence in history. The aim was to breed a new type of human being. The processes used there were highly modern. The gas chambers were part of modernity. Even though some people believe that being modern has only a positive connotation, in fact, there are many ways of being modern and some of them are monstrous.[4]

Like other modern political ideologies such as communism and Nazism, radical Islam is modern. The views of radical Islamist groups are as much shaped by western ideology as by their religious beliefs. The positivist view of modernity explains that when societies fail to inherit the findings of science, they become chaotic and divided. The progress of a society is based on its progress in science. As knowledge advances, so does humanity. Hence, every society has to go from a religious worldview to a metaphysical outlook, and from that to a scientific or positivistic world view.[5] At the end of this process the moral and political conflicts of the past will disappear.[6]

Unfortunately, reality is a little different, modern war is a by-product of the modern state. In history, wars were waged in the battlefield. The main goal was to raise mass armies, but not to target the civilian population. 9/11 has produced a new kind of warfare. These new conflicts arise from the interaction of old religious and ethnic divisions and the increased competition for natural resources and are waged by very unconventional means. This situation leads to a moral problem, due to the verticality here, it becomes challenging to distinguish civilians from combatants.

Countries in the Middle East inherited the modern state from Europe, but their societies weren’t adequately prepared for that change. The reason violence is still so dominant in those societies, has nothing to do with human beings having an irrepressible instinct for aggression, but the simple fact that no substitute for this arbiter in international affairs has appeared in the political scene.[7] Political-religious crises occur especially where old segregation patterns erode without being replaced by effective new ones. This is especially true when the balance of power between different groups shifts or new actors and elites emerge, who no longer respect the current power distribution.  One of the main examples of such an erosion of established religious conflict is the emergence of radical fundamentalist movements in the 20th and 21st centuries.[8]

Hannah Arendt argues that the proliferation of techniques and machines menaces the existence of whole nations. According to her, violence can destroy power but not create it. The fact is that the decrease of power will increase violence. Governments and organizations, fearing their power is slipping away, won’t resist the temptation to use violence in trying to restore their power.[9]

The less the population is used to political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock after an act of terrorism.

However, the terrorists hope that even though they can barely dent the enemy’s material the so inspired fear and chaos will cause the enemy, to misuse its strength.[10]  To achieve their aim, they present the modern state with an impossible challenge. The less the population is used to political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock after an act of terrorism. Killing 130 people in Paris draws far more attention than killing thousands in Nigeria or Iraq. Yuval Noah Harari calls this the paradox of the modern state: the very success of modern states in preventing political violence makes them particularly vulnerable to terrorism.[11]

The power of the state is defined by its monopoly of the legitimate use of force.[12] In other words, state action and policy always relies upon the deployment of police, military, the prison system and so on. Without the legitimate ability to deploy violence, modern states cannot function.[13] 

Violence can be separated into objective and subjective violence. Subjective violence can be seen in the crimes that dictators and authoritarian regimes commit. You can easily locate the evil, the subject, which caused the violence. Objective violence is more difficult to locate. It is more difficult to identify the guilty subject in these crimes, e.g. in the million who died as a result of globalization.[14] 

The use of terror by Islamist organizations has very little to do with traditional Islam, but is more related to asymmetric warfare used by modern revolutionary movements

For many scholars, radical Islam is a western construction. During the Cold War, religious movements in the Middle East were funded, armed and used as buffers against the Soviets.[15]  Even though Islamists define themselves as anti- modern, radical Islam is evidently a by-product of the late modern globalization. You can see that in Al- Qaeda’s use of technology, offshore financial institutions and in ISIS´s use of the internet.

The use of terror by Islamist organizations has very little to do with traditional Islam, but is more related to asymmetric warfare used by modern revolutionary movements.[16] Therefore, suicide bombing has nothing to do with anything religous, but falls into strategic terrorism, justified by religious ideology.[17]  Cheap and highly effective, suicide bombing is the technique of choice for groups confronting overwhelming conventional military force.[18]

Those who join violent extremist groups rarely have formal training in the religion they are trying to defend. Often they don’t even have a deep understanding of the religion and their knowledge is shaped mostly by online sources or discussions with other extremists.

Reports say that those drawn to religious violence are usually raised in secular families and households.[19] However, many foreign fighters were diagnosed with mental problems before joining ISIS. An aggravating factor is that most of the recruits have had criminal records before joining the organization, starting from petty crimes to more serious ones. 

Terrorist cells ready to perpetrate a terrorist attack are mostly domestic and locally based in European countries. ISIS’s training of recruits consists of imported warfare techniques in the use of weapons, explosives and specific killing techniques.

With the shift of conventional warfare to asymmetric warfare the techniques and technology that terrorists use, are very modern and contemporary. The inability of the west to establish functional democracies in regions like the Middle East, enabled radical religious groups to emerge. With the further development of globalization these ideas were easy to be spread and members easy to mobilize. Even though Islamists define themselves as anti- modern, the way they wage war is evidently a by-product of the late modern globalization.

(Feodora Hamza studied Islamic Studies in Freiburg, Germany and finished her Masters in Religion and Conflict at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She is living in the Hague).

This article was first published on openDemocracy.
 

[1] Thomas, Scott M.: Taking religious and cultural pluralism seriously – The global resurgence of religion and the transformation of international society in International Relations Theory and Religion, Palgrave MacMillian, New York 2003 S.25
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kössler, Reinhart: The Modern Nation State and Regimes of Violence: Reflections on the Current Situation, http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/acd/cg/ir/college/bulletin/e-vol.2/kossler.pdf, Date: 21.02.2017, p.3
[4] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p2.
[5] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p. 29
[6] Ibid.
[7] Arendt, Hannah: On Violence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, p.5
[8] Ibid.
[9] Arendt, Hannah: On Violence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, p. 87
[10] Harari, Yuval Noah: The Theatre of Terror, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/31/terrorism-spectacle-how-states-respond-yuval-noah-harari-sapiens?CMP=share_btn_tw Download: 21.02.2017
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Zizek, Slavoj: Blasphemische Gedanken: Islam und Moderne, Pocket Book, 2015, p.12
[15] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p. 16
[16] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p. 18
[17] Ibid.
[18] Kricheli, Ilana; Rosner, Yotam; Mendelboim, Aviad; Schweitzer, Yoram: Suicide Bombings in 2016: The Highest Number of Fatalities, Download: 21.02.2017 http://www.css.ethz.ch/en/services/digital-library/articles/article.html/7e6eb677-ec57-4ad8-bde5-3b62c173898f
[19] Senzai, Farid: Isis and its Violence, Islamic Monthly, Download: 21.02.2017, http://theislamicmonthly.com/isis-and-its-violence/

The post Is Religious Terrorism a product of Western Modernity? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

File photo: Ayman al-Zawahri and Osama bin Laden, 1998. Mazhar Ali Khan/AP/Press Association Images.

The combined Russian-Syrian bombardment of eastern Aleppo continues to be intense and often indiscriminate. In this the operation resembles the destruction of Grozny in the two Chechen wars of the 1990s. Strong opposition in western states includes a demand that relevant actions be designated as war crimes.In practice, such calls will not resonate much in the Middle East, for two reasons. The United States-led air-war against ISIS has caused 1,500-plus civilian casualties, a fact little acknowledged, while western support for the Saudi-led assault in Yemen – using weaponry sold by Britain – further erodes the credibility of British parliamentarians who criticise Russia.

Just as the supposed main Islamist threat from ISIS diminishes, al-Qaida’s modified ideology is flourishing.

Meanwhile, the United States-led coalition still remains focused on ISIS, and largely ignores the future of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Plans for the seizure of Mosul, the last major ISIS-controlled stronghold in Iraq, are rolling. But even if the city is taken in the coming months it is far from clear that ISIS will be repressed in Iraq, let alone Syria (see "Mosul, the next target", 29 September 2016 ). This is because of two collateral problems.

The first is ISIS's capacity for technical innovation. Its reported construction of defensive underground structures under Mosul could present major problems for the attackers, as could its use of armed drones and other ingenious forms of defence. Its deployment of reconnaissance drones is familiar, but armed versions are now appearing on the battlefield. The killing of two Kurdish soldiers by an unexploded drone they were examining is a case in point. 

The second problem derives from the sheer complexity of the coalition being created to take control of Mosul. At the moment the various forces involved (Iraqi government, Kurds, Iraqi Shi’a militias, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, some Sunni militias, western contingents) have a common interest in seeing ISIS defeated in the city. After that, though, there is every chance that pre-existing antagonisms will emerge. Turkey's determination to be involved, both in the assault and afterwards – to Baghdad's intense opposition – may prove especially disruptive.

Let's assume that Mosul does fall, and that ISIS is repressed in Iraq and forced to retreat in Syria and Libya. Would the difficulties posed by extreme Islamist paramilitary movements then decline? Almost certainly not, if only because of an entirely different development: the surprise re-emergence of al-Qaida as a major force. 

A new approach

When Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011, to be succeeded by his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, there was a period of several years when al-Qaida seemed in abeyance. It retained the allegiance only of scattered and mostly weak groups, while itself regularly losing mid-level leaders to US drone and special-force operations, not least in north-west Pakistan. Then, from 2014, what was left of al-Qaida was overshadowed and eventually eclipsed by the rise of IS.

More recently, and to the surprise of many western security analysts who thought that al-Qaida was finished, it has staged a comeback – less in Iraq or Afghanistan than in Syria, Yemen and other theatres of conflict. 

There seem to be four reasons for this, the last being probably the most significant:

* Major western states have placed most emphasis on defeating ISIS, especially but not only in Iraq and Syria, using far less military force in operations against al-Qaida’s regional associates
* The sheer brutality of many of the actions of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has driven some paramilitary supporters away from ISIS and towards other militias, which are more likely to be linked to al-Qaida. The latter can present a more moderate face, though it is still resolutely determined on an Islamist transformation
* Some of the more secular anti-regime militias in Syria, responding to the destructive air-war waged jointly by the Russians and the Assad regime, have joined up with competent and determined groups, some of them too with al-Qaida connections
* Al-Qaida’s organisational approach has undergone a subtle but quite fundamental change. The movement, under bin Laden, had an all-or-nothing element – committed to a particular view of revolution which paid no deference to cultural variations in the communities in which it was operating. It appears now that the supposedly ineffectual al-Zawahiri has quietly imposed a shift towards paying more attention to the aspirations of peoples in those areas where it is garnering support. In the process the movement is willing to adapt its message and thereby increase its support.

The experienced analyst Bruce Hoffman puts it this way: “In all of al Qaeda’s main theatres, very unfortunately and tragically, it is gaining credibility and gaining respect, and amassing additional power at a time when we thought we could just write off al Qaeda as having strategically collapsed, if not decisively defeated.”  In short, just as the supposed main Islamist threat from ISIS diminishes, al-Qaida’s modified ideology is flourishing.

Once again, superficial western progress in its war on terror is masking yet more challenges, not least an enduring failure to understand how al-Qaida and other “revolts from the margins” gain support. This is part of a more general yet mistaken belief that they are susceptible to conventional military power. Even after 15 years the lesson has not been learned.

This Article was first published on Open Democracy
 

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“Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.” – Albert Einstein

A spate of attacks by Islamic fundamentalist groups in recent days has shocked us.

These attacks shock us and cause immense sadness. How can anyone not sympathise with the innocent victims and their families? They also fill us with rage. How could such dastardly acts be committed, by whom and most importantly how can such acts be stopped in future?
 
However, it is important to resist the urge to latch on to simplistic answers which a highly successful propaganda machinery and ample bigotry which surrounds us, throw at us. Such answers play into the hands of those who are actually responsible for such a state of affairs.
 
The roots of this madness go back 60-70 years. In the post World War II era, newly independent Arab states were filled with hope of a better, modern future outside of colonial influence, in solidarity with other newly independent countries and the non-aligned movement and based on a secular progressive agenda. But this was a threat to US and Western powers and their goal of control over oil.

The roots of this madness go back 60-70 years. In the post World War II era, newly independent Arab states were filled with hope of a better, modern future outside of colonial influence, in solidarity with other newly independent countries and the non-aligned movement and based on a secular progressive agenda. But this was a threat to US and Western powers and their goal of control over oil as these Republics sought to nationalise oil production to use the profits to benefit their own people and not Western corporations.
 
Also, as workers and socialist movements made inroads in to the Arab world, the US looked for ways to curb the spread of socialism there. It was also a threat to the Saudi monarchy which saw the idea of secular republics as an existential threat to itself. And hence an alliance was born between the Saudis and the West which continues to this date to put an end to the "dangerous" idea of secular republican Arab nationalism by propagating an obscure virulent form of Islamic fanaticism.
 
This is one of the main pillars of US foreign policy for the Middle East. The other pillar of US policy in the Middle East has been its unrelenting support for Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territories in complete violation of international law and many United Nations resolutions. The brutal siege of Gaza, arbitrary arrests and the detention of thousands of Palestinians in West Bank and Israel without trials, targeted assassinations and periodic full-fledged wars, including aerial bombing referred to as “mowing the lawn” by Israeli officials, show Israel’s total contempt for international law and the US support for it.
 
The earliest regime change manoeuvre at curbing Arab nationalism was in Iran. The democratically elected government of Mossadegh was toppled in 1953 by a CIA backed coup. Mossadegh had sought to nationalize Iranian oil.

The earliest regime change manoeuvre at curbing Arab nationalism was in Iran. The democratically elected government of Mossadegh was toppled in 1953 by a CIA backed coup. Mossadegh had sought to nationalize Iranian oil. In his place, the hated Shah monarchy was installed. Egypt's president and one of the most prominent voices of Arab nationalism and Non-Aligned Movement, Nasser was sought to be contained by the US using the Muslim Brotherhood. After Nasser's death, Egypt was co-opted by the Americans by effectively giving its military an annual bribe of $1 billion since the 1970s.
 
The Iranians overthrew the Shah monarchy and established an Islamic Republic in 1979. This posed a challenge to both US and Saudi Arabia. The new Republic needed to be punished for daring to topple the US puppet Shah regime. For the paranoid Saudi monarchy, the concept of an Islamic ‘Republic’ called into question their own raison d'être. Iraq's Saddam Hussein was then bankrolled by the US-Saudi Alliance to start a war against Iran. He used chemical weapons against the Iranians which resulted in more than 100,000 deaths.
 
Declassified documents ^[1] show that the Americans knew about these attacks but still continued to support Saddam. Interestingly, Saddam was an American friend when he used weapons of mass destruction but became an enemy and Iraq was invaded in 2003 when he didn’t possess any such weapons. Another interesting part of this story is when Iran was getting attacked with chemical weapons, their supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa that the use of such weapons was un-Islamic and so Iran never retaliated with chemical warfare. So, the "greatest democracy on earth” sanctioned the use of chemical weapons while a Muslim mullah ruled out its use even as a defensive move.
 
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia had started an organisation called the World Muslim League in 1962 in direct reaction to Nasser's pan-Arabic nationalism. It still exists today. It is funded and controlled by Saudi Arabia. It exports Wahhabism to all the countries where it has a presence. One would see an amazing correlation between places where WML has its offices (like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.) and places which are current hot-beds of Islamic fanaticism. All this information is readily available in the public domain. However, Saudi continues to be one of the closest allies of the US till date. The US has effected regime change in country after country in the name of its ‘War on Terror’. Yet it continues to ally, fund and arm Saudi Arabia.       
 
The US poured in billions of dollars, training and provided logistical support to the mujahideen (jihad warriors) in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. Saudi Arabia exported its own disgruntled youth indoctrinated with Wahhabi fanaticism to fight the Holy Wars in far off lands.

Afghanistan provided the first major opportunity for large scale use of these Islamic terror groups for regime change. The US poured in billions of dollars, training and provided logistical support to the mujahideen (jihad warriors) in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. Saudi Arabia exported its own disgruntled youth indoctrinated with Wahhabi fanaticism to fight the Holy Wars in far off lands, the youth who may have otherwise challenged the oppressive Saudi monarchy at home. Among the ‘holy warriors’ who left Saudi Arabia to fight in Afghanistan was one Osama Bin Laden, one of the sons of the wealthy Bin Laden family, intimately connected to the Saudi monarchy.
 
Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted the US organised and supported Bin Laden and the other originators of Al Qaeda in the 1970s to fight the Soviets.
Brzezinski told the Mujahideen.^[2]

We know of their deep belief in god – that they’re confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over – there is yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because your cause is right, and god is on your side.

British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, wrote that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies.^[3] Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of ‘the database’ in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

The extent of American indoctrination for the jihad can be inferred from a Washington Post article in 2002:^[4]

The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings ….

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books ….

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US sought to project itself as the sole superpower and redraw the map of the Arab world. In the late 90s, before 9/11, a neo-conservative think tank – Project for the New American Century (PNAC) –issued a draft calling for regime changes in countries like Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and other countries.^[5] Many of the signatories of this document went on to hold important positions in the Bush administration.
 
Post 9/11, GW Bush used the ruse of ‘War against Terror’ to effect regime change in country after country. Destroying working states and funding extreme elements like Al Qaeda in Libya, ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In this regime change doctrine, the US and Saudi Arabia funded and armed extreme Islamist groups.

Post 9/11, GW Bush used the ruse of ‘War against Terror’ to effect regime change in country after country. Destroying working states and funding extreme elements like Al Qaeda in Libya, ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In this regime change doctrine, the US and Saudi Arabia funded and armed extreme Islamist groups to fight the regimes which were targeted to be changed and then to control the countries which had been rendered stateless.
 
Each such regime change would completely destroy the country – its infrastructure, state machinery and produce inhuman living conditions for vast majority of the population in these countries. It is these soulless conditions, this hopelessness which would provide fertile ground for recruiting the next set of ‘holy warriors’.

American ambassador Joe Wilson wrote to Hillary Clinton in a confidential cable:^[6]

"My trip to Baghdad (September 6-11) has left me slack jawed. I have struggled to find the correct historical analogy to describe a vibrant, historically important Middle Eastern city being slowly bled to death. Berlin and Dresden in World War II were devastated but they and their populations were not subjected to seven years of occupation that included ethnic cleansing, segregation of people by religious identity, and untold violence perpetrated upon them by both military and private security services. I have not been to Gaza but suspect that the dehumanizing effects are somewhat similar. The occupation and especially the walling off of neighborhoods have destroyed the very fabric of the urban society."
 
In such conditions, with the state machinery destroyed post regime change, the invading US backed Western forces would seek to regain control by funding the worst, most extreme Islamic fundamentalist groups.
 
The secular Arab republics had a contract with their own people. These regimes would provide a basic living standard to its people through state support and in return the people had no political rights. Over time this contract got violated with oil price shocks, increasing neo-liberalism and cronyism, the state support decreased and people grew increasingly frustrated. Given the lack of political and democratic rights there was no outlet to vent out this frustration.

In early 2011, a series of people's revolts erupted across the Arab world in what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. This set the stage for the next set of US led Western interventions in the Arab world. US sought to curb the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Saudi troops crushed the rebellion in Bahrain. But these protests were used as a pretext to implement regime change in countries such as Libya and Syria. For those interested, Vijay Prashad’s excellent book, The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution, analyses the events around and post Arab Spring in great detail.^[7]
 
Sidney Blumenthal, close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary Clinton’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, wrote a since declassified intelligence email to the former US Secretary of State.^[8] The email identified French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
 
Further the email confirmed what has become a well-known theme of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected of links to Al Qaeda. Blumenthal relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs. Blumenthal further voiced concern about the very militias these Western special forces were training because of “radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”
 
Libya and its neighbour Tunisia, with which Libya has a porous border, have since become major recruiting grounds for ISIS. Many ISIS operatives move about freely in Libya and through the porous border into neighbouring Tunisia.
 
Once the Gaddafi regime was toppled in Libya, the US set its eyes on toppling the Assad regime in Syria. While Obama talked about crossing of Red Lines as a pretext for regime change, the real reason was to contain the old nemesis of US and Saudi Arabia – Iran which ironically had got more powerful as its enemies on the West (Saddam Hussein) and on the East (Taliban) were taken out by US invasions. The Assad regime was close to Iran and toppling it was seen as a way to contain Iran. Respected investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote of a CIA “rat line”^[9] of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels. A declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, effectively welcomed the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq.^[10]
 
In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the document identified Al-Qaida in Iraq (which became ISIS) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” and stated that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. It is now well established that the US, Saudi and Qataris funded, armed and provided logistical support to fanatical groups such as Al-Nursa and Al-Qaida which went on to become the ISIS.

NATO Ally, Turkey opened it borders with Syria for jihadists to fly in from Libya, Tunisia, Chechnya and other parts of the world to Turkish airports like Mardin, cross the border and join ISIS to fight the Syrian government. Meanwhile ISIS oil flowed into Turkey to be sold on the black market. The US and its allies turned a blind eye as these groups committed horrific crimes against women, minorities and religious ‘others’ such as Shia Muslims, Yazidis, Alawites, Christians, etc. Anyone who opposed them or didn’t live up to their most barbaric laws was fair game for beheadings and cruellest punishments.
 
It is only after the ISIS went ‘overboard’ by publicly beheading Westerners, threatening Baghdad and announcing an Islamic Caliphate, which would include all Islamic countries including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, that they became the “bad guys” and US started attacking ISIS. Even then it was the Russian entry into Syria in support of the Assad regime which forced the US to finally get serious about hammering the ISIS.
 
It is only after the ISIS went ‘overboard’ by publicly beheading Westerners, threatening Baghdad and announcing an Islamic Caliphate, which would include all Islamic countries including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, that they became the “bad guys” and US started attacking ISIS. Even then it was the Russian entry into Syria in support of the Assad regime which forced the US to finally get serious about hammering the ISIS.
 
The discussion on the ‘Global War on Terror’ would be incomplete without also understanding its effects on the US domestically. This perpetual low intensity war is great for US military-industrial complex which wields enormous amounts of political power in the US. In a world where capitalism is facing an acute shortage of demand globally, you can just funnel enormous amounts of people's money into military, defence, security, IT and reconstruction sectors. Its public knowledge that US spends more on defence than next 10 or so countries combined or that Halliburton (which had vice president Dick Cheney on its board) got no bid contracts for Iraq reconstruction projects.
 
For most big name IT companies, US military, homeland security, etc. are huge customers. Normally, this money should go to people's welfare. However, US healthcare is one of the worst in developed world, Education standards are falling, road infrastructure is not what it used to be. So, how do you justify this to their people, while funnelling huge amounts of money to rich white folks on Wall Street? By keeping them very scared about terrorism and through fanning the flames of Islamophobic hysteria.
 
Conclusion:
With each terror attack, we see an outpouring of sympathy and messages of solidarity with the victims. We also hear calls for Muslims to take “personal responsibility” and for all Muslims to condemn the terror attacks, as if the vast majority of Muslims have anything to do with the terror attacks. We hear calls for reform movement within Islam. This is indicative of the rampant Islamophobia in society and the complete success of the propaganda machinery of US led Western Imperialism. Such calls are clearly misguided since they seek to blame the victims rather than the real source of such terror networks.
 
In such a bleak world is there any reason for hope? Imperialism has now ravaged the world for the last 500 years. Yet there also have been astonishing victories in the fight against imperialism. The post war period saw a wave of anti-colonial struggles successfully overthrow colonial rule. Similarly, Latin America was in the US stranglehold and a laboratory for neo-liberalism. In the 1970s, CIA backed coups installed brutal military dictatorships in many Latin American countries which oversaw violent elimination and mass killings of the civil society and Left activists in those countries. And yet, Latin America has seen a resurgent wave of leftist governments come to power in country after country and which have managed to take Latin America out of the US stranglehold.
 
Clearly, given its oil resources the Middle East is especially precious to US led Western Imperialism. However, the only way to fight these imperialist terror networks is for people the world over, including in the US and the West, to organise people's and workers’ movements which can provide hope to the people for a better future. Through these struggles for better living and working conditions people's unity can be built to tackle such powerful forces. History has shown that only such people's movement have been capable of taking the fight and beating back imperialism. I conclude with Rosa Luxemburg's prophetic words written 100 years back: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism."
 
Notes:
[1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-us-knew-iraq-was-using-chemical-weapons-helped-out-anyway-1792375/?no-ist
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4lf0RT72iw
[3] Cook, Robin (8 July 2005). ‘The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means’; https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development
[4] Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, From US, the ABC's of Jihad: Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Efforts, Washington Post, March 23, 2002.
[5] PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century; https://web.archive.org/web/20130817122719/http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
[6] Zaid Jilani, Joe Wilson to Hillary Clinton in 2010: Baghdad Has Been Bled to Death”; https://theintercept.com/2016/03/02/joe-wilson-to-hillary-clinton-in-2010-baghdad-has-been-bled-to-death/
[7] Vijay Prashad, The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution http://mayday.leftword.com/book/the-death-of-the-nation-and-the-future-of-the-arab-revolution/9789380118369/
[8] Brad Hoff, Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/
[9] Seymour M. Hersh, The Red Line and the Rat Line. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
[10]  http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
 

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An unintended gift to the faith

Behind the ugly reality, there is poetic justice. Osama bin Laden was finally bearded in the world’s most ‘happening’ terror den: Pakistan. Osama is no more but who does not know that the cult of violence that he practised and preached in Islam’s name is alive and kicking in Pakistan as nowhere else? This article however is about Osama’s unintended gift to post-9/11 Islam.

Step back just a decade and you’d think that Muslims engaged with the ‘Islam and Modernity’ paradigm were few and far between. The dominant voices in the world of 20th century Islam, especially its latter half, were those of Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami on the Indian subcontinent), Sayyid Qutb (leading theologian of the Egypt-born Muslim Brotherhood) and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (who gave birth to Wahhabism, the rigid, intolerant Islam of Saudi Arabia).

Born and bred as a devout Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia, it was easy for Osama to embrace the shared belief of Maududi and Qutb that all man-made ideas and systems – pan-Arabism, democracy, socialism, communism – were bankrupt: only Shariah law, ruthlessly enforced by an Islamic state, could restore divine order in the world. Thanks to an intermixture of Wahhabism, Qutbism and Maududism, what would otherwise have been an Afghan national liberation movement against the occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s turned into a laboratory of violent, global jihad. Osama was the most lethal product of this cross-fertilisation. And then there was 9/11, al-Qaeda’s own welcome message to the 21st century and the new millennium.

Call it the Hegelian dialectic: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Some Muslims rejoiced over this “humiliation” of the only global superpower (so soon after the mujahids had facilitated the demise of the rival superpower). Others insisted that 9/11 was a mean CIA-Mossad conspiracy to fan Islamophobia. But saner members of the ummah were horrified that such a monstrosity could be committed in the name of a faith that literally means peace. The poison that Osama and al-Qaeda injected into Islam found its antidote within Islam. Thank you, Hegel.

“Islam was hijacked on 9/11”, declared the American convert Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. The UK-based scholar Ziauddin Sardar was as prompt in issuing his ‘fatwa against the fanatics’. With such opening salvos, the last decade has seen an ever growing number of Muslim voices eager not only to reclaim their faith from the extremists but also, in the words of Sardar, to “rebuild Islam brick by brick”.

Though Osama has now been rendered inactive, the terror machine is yet to be dismantled, the theology of violent jihad is yet to be pushed out of the marketplace of ideas. But there are reasons to nurture hope. You can today build a small personal library just with books entitled Seeds of Terror, The Nuclear Jihadist, Terror in the Name of God, Sacred Rage, Talibanisation of Pakistan, Descent into Chaos and so on. But should you feel so inclined, you will need to multiply shelf space several times over to add the books and videos infused with the spirit of a New Age Islam.

A decade ago the theologians of a tolerant, plural, gender-just, rights and freedom-friendly, pro-democracy Islam were few in number. Today not only is their tribe growing rapidly but an ever increasing number of Muslims, both men and women, are reading and interpreting the Koran and the traditions of the prophet in sync with modern sensibilities.

Sadly, we in India aren’t familiar with them yet. But they are important, influential names across much of the world. The US-based Dr Khaled Abou El Fadl, for example, is a strong proponent of human rights, a staunch advocate of gender equality and is among the most critical and powerful voices against puritan and Wahhabi Islam today. Then there is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California. Jordan’s Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre includes him in its list of the top 50 most influential Muslims in the world. The magazine Egypt Today described him as a kind of theological rock star, “the Elvis Presley of western Muslims”.

Or take Tariq Ramadan, the UK-based author of Radical Reform. An online poll by the American Foreign Policy magazine in 2009 placed Ramadan at the 49th spot in a list of the world’s top 100 contemporary intellectuals. And let’s not forget Amina Wadud, Islamic feminist, imam and author of Inside the Gender Jihad. In March 2005 she stirred up quite a storm in the Muslim world after leading a Friday prayer for over 100 male and female Muslims in New York.

In the first year of the 21st century Osama stretched the dominant Islamic thought of the 20th century to its extreme. A decade later, there is a growing body of books, lectures and the World Wide Web propounding an Islam that is at home with the modern world and vice versa. And in the last few months such intellectuals and scholars have struck common ground with the masses on the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain…

Osama must have had many a nightmare during his last days of hiding.

Archived from Communalism Combat, June 2011.Year 17, No.158 – Bin Laden

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