Al-Qaeda: Wrong Answers to Real Problems

[Jabhad]

Al-Qaeda: Wrong Answers to Real Problems *

 

By Soumayya Ghannoushi**

11/08/2005

 

 

 

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.

 

After Madrid and Bali, Casablanca and Riyadh, I have come to predict al-Qaeda'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-Qaeda'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 organized crime are blurred, as political demands get wedded to criminal methods.

 

Al-Qaeda, 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-Qaeda 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

 

 

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Al-Qaeda belongs to a tradition of revolutionary anarchists.

 

 

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Like these modern revolutionary nihilists, al-Qaeda warriors subscribe to an instrumentalist logic that recognizes 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-Qaeda 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 organizations like the Assassins and Qaramita, who sought to disrupt the stability of Muslim societies through acts of terrorism.

 

Al-Qaeda 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

 

 

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The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush's hammer and bin Laden's anvil.

 

 

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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 Qur'anic 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-Qaeda 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.

 

 

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It didn't take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them.

 

 

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"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 realized 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 Shi`ah, 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

 

 

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Al-Qaeda's acts have turned the aggressor, who colonizes, massacres and pillages, into a victim.

 

 

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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-Qaeda's mindless acts have turned the aggressor, who colonizes, 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-Qaeda 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.

 

 

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* This article was originally published on al-Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/06C38FCF-7A1B-4444-9DAB-757C9E1A6DA8.htm) on July 11, 2005, and is here republished without any changes.

 

**Soumayya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London

[Medley of extemporanea]

Sure is nice of this "researcher" of "the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies" in London to provide guidance to muslims.

[The Resistance Movement]

'Al-Qaida' is a term created by the CIA and others (e.g. agents). In fact Bin Ladin and co never used the term 'al-qaida' to name their organisation whenever they appeared on tv(I stand corrected).

 

Here is a snapshot of an article I read:

 

''Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud reckon it's time we 'defused the widespread image of al-Qaeda as a ubiquitous, super-organised terror network and call it as it is: a loose collection of groups and individuals that doesn't even refer to itself as al-Qaeda'.

 

Rest of article.

 

http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DFED.htm

 

To continiue.....

 

'Al-Qaida' whatever it is is not the problem and like you're article said 'not the answer to real problems' it is the CIA that created and feeds 'Al-Qaida' to exist.

 

The CIA lost to 'Al-Qaida' back in the late 70/80's Russia -Afghanistan war and want to blame, first off all Islam, and secondly the Muslim Ummah that they created 'Al-Qaida', they support and work with 'Al-Qaida' and that 'Al Qaida' is a spokesman for Islam and the Muslim Ummah so whatever 'Al-Qaida' does is justified by Islam and the Muslim Ummah.

 

The CIA and co succeeded exactly in what they wanted to create; an organisation that they created but acts under the banner of their enemy.

 

Smart.

 

*they=Islam and Muslim Ummah

[Simply_I]

Resistance dude,

I agree al-qaida is A FIOCTIONAL name and organisation.

 

It does not exist...........there is no al-qaida.

The only reason it was created is so that the kuffar can find an excuse to finish off islam.

What about bin-laden? they call themselves the super power, how come they were good enough to capture Saddam but still dont know whats happ? with bin-laden?

 

Simple their agenda is not complete yet and hence they need to pretend that he is out there to the public so that they can continue their evil agenda.

Its all an excuse.

[Taleexi]

"It does not exist...........there is no al-qaida.

The only reason it was created is so that the kuffar can find an excuse to finish off islam."

 

Simply I, Will they?. regardless how hard they try to vanish muslims on the face of the earth, The almighty will override their ills and bestow muslims to self-correct their manners and then their faith will increase till they reach where muslims will be able running their own affairs with the absence of the middle man. I personally see a correlation between our misery and how we practice islam

[Simply_I]

i agree toohe jr. islam is here to stay they may have succeeded secularising europe from christianity but Insha-Allah that wont happen with muslims. This time downfallkooda ee ka talinayaan.