My thesis is that the threat bin Laden poses lies in the coherence and consistency of his ideas, their precise articulation, and the acts of war he takes to implement them
Interesting how he says this but does not believe in bin Laden's religious motivations at all. He doesn't even mention them. Might I suggest that this is understanding bin Laden in terms that make sense to us, which don't necessarily have anything to do with the way he sees the world?
Islamism's basic engine is the war against the infidels, the war to restore Islam to its rightful place in the world. It gets its marching orders from the Koran, as they interpret it. Actual policy questions are fuel for the fire, but they follow, they don't cause. Religious belief is the motivator - he even quotes bin Laden saying the war is religious! Well, if it's religious it doesn't NEED policy reasons, does it? We didn't do anything bad to Afghanistan in the 1980s to make the Taliban hate us; we aren't the Russians, we were even helping the Afghans against the Russians. It doesn't matter. We helped the Muslim Kosovars against the Christian Serbs; that doesn't matter either. If our actual "crimes" are lacking, they will be made up, as when Nasser accused the US of flying with the Israeli Air Force in 1967. And there's always the Palestinian issue, an issue that makes zero sense to even matter to 90% of the Muslim world except as a religious issue. I mean, what do the Afghans care if Israel exists? How does it affect them in any way, shape or form?
We're still infidels, we're the greatest power in the West, we are therefore the Great Satan, and what we actually do matters only marginally. (Like the fact that we were in Saudi Arabia to prevent conquest by Saddam Hussein, an eventuallity that I don't think bin Laden supported) This philosophy needs an enemy and the chief question remains, do they pick the 'far enemy' (us) or the 'near enemy' (their own corrupt governments)? Naturally, the governments have been doing everything in their power to make it the 'far enemy', and have chanelled all political discontent in that direction.
Most of all, Islamism is currently the only Arab political philosophy with true belief behind it, and the Koran as well. Where is Socialism? Where is Nasserism? Where is Pan-Arabism? Where is Ba'athism? who believes in them anymore? Nobody.
See also comments at
europundits.blogspot.com |
