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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (20630)	11/23/2001 7:49:09 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

>>Bin Laden Now a Target in Arab Media - Criticism Emerges as Scholars Emphasize Distance From 'Distortion of Religion' By Nora Boustany Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A31 A cartoon this week showed fugitive Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden inside a dark cave "somewhere in Afghanistan," using a flute to charm a mushroom cloud out of a basket, as a serpent recoiled in horror. The cartoon represented one of the first alarms in the official media of Saudi Arabia and Egypt about the fervid support bin Laden attracts. The cartoon, by Lebanese Mahmoud Kahil in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, and an opinion piece in Egypt's semi-official Al Ahram yesterday, mark a belated reaction to the threat presented by Islamic extremists and an effort by Islamic scholars to set the record straight on the distance between their religion and terrorism. The Al Ahram article, by Nabil Luka Bibawi, a professor of criminal law, cited extensive passages from the Koran preaching religious tolerance and prohibiting attacks against innocent non-Muslims, calling them attacks against the prophet Muhammad and God. "Terrorists don't know the methods of rational, calm debate . . . terrorists impose darkness on the climate of the intellect because they try to force their backward ideas on public opinion under the veil of religious correctness," Bibawi wrote. "They construe religious thought to suit their political objectives to reach power." He accused such extremists of "disfiguring religious tolerance with insane acts. "There can be no worse distortion of religion than that. If world Zionism spent billions of dollars to tarnish the image of Islam, it will not accomplish what the terrorists have done with their actions and words." In a series of editorials in the Arab press and even on the occasional talk show on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television network, there has been a clear effort to discredit bin Laden in religious terms and shed light on his criminal bent, political aspirations and pretensions of piety. The delicate and narrow Islamic dictates on who has the right to issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, are being laid bare to viewers and readers, indicating bin Laden and his associates lack the theological authority they claim. "While Osama bin Laden and his followers claim to have lofty ideals, they have forgotten that it is their leader's own words which now point the way to damnation," wrote Jamal Khashoggi, the deputy editor of Arab News, in an undated online commentary offering the Saudi perspective on the war against terror. Referring to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, sanctioning the killing of U.S. and British citizens and military personnel because of their support for Israel, Khashoggi pointed out: "There is no respected Islamic scholar here in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Muslim world who would support such a fatwa. . . . With bin Laden's religious upbringing, he should know that only the most knowledgeable Islamic scholars have the right to issue fatwas. "It seems that bin Laden has become a revolutionary in a world of his own imagination. He would not hesitate to break any taboo. How did he come to create this fantasyland of terror?" This initial chorus, however, does not mean that the scrutiny of U.S. actions is waning. With Taliban fighters and their Arab, Pakistani and Chechen sympathizers besieged by the Northern Alliance in Kunduz, some columnists cautioned against what they called a "green light" from the United States to kill so-called Afghan Arabs. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's comments that he would prefer bin Laden and his followers to be killed rather than captured received top billing in front-page news stories and commentaries yesterday. Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, a columnist in the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Hayat newspaper, wrote that the Northern Alliance could not claim -- as the Americans do -- that their war is not against Arabs or Muslims. "This is the filthy dramatic end to the jihad story for the sake of liberating Afghanistan," he wrote, noting that the alliance was no different from the Taliban militia in its cruelty and lack of respect for prisoners of war. Badrakhan insinuated that the alliance has been "encouraged and incited by the Americans" to deal with the Arabs, Pakistanis and others in Afghanistan. The conduct of the alliance cannot be understood as the trespasses of individuals, but as the outcome of clear instructions from its commanders, he added. "No one ever had any illusions that any war could be moral. Neither were the attacks against New York and Washington moral, nor is the response to these attacks supposed to be moral," the columnist said. The alliance has forgotten how such "shameful" targeting of Arabs and Muslims is going to enrage entire populations and governments that have offered a lot in the past to Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld has forgotten that his president is saying the aim behind the war is to bring the terrorists to justice, Badrakhan said.<< washingtonpost.com