It is clearly Bush that is seeking to changes the breeding ground for terrorism by promoting democracy and western-style reforms in the mideast. Al Qaeda understands this very well. That is why they are fighting against democracy in Iraq so fiercely:
Al Qaeda Leader Fears American Democracy, Not Its War Machine
Posted by Amir Taheri
Sunday, September 07, 2003
Amir Taheri appears on ChronWatch as a courtesy of Eleana Benador of Benador & Associates.
''It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy.''
This is the message of a new book, published by Al Qaeda in several Arab countries yesterday.
The book’s title is ''The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad.'' Its author is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama Ben Laden’s closest associates since the early 1990s. A Saudi citizen, Al-Ayyeri, also known under the nom de guerre of Abu Muhammad, was killed in a gun-battle with security forces in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, last June.
The book is published by The Centre for Islamic Research and Studies, a company set up by Ben Laden in 1995 with branches in New York and London (now closed.) Over the past eight years the company has published more than 40 books written by Al Qaeda ''thinkers and researchers'' including militants such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ben Laden’s number-two, and some Western converts to the organisation’s radical version of Islam.
All-Ayyeri first made his name in the mid-1990s as a commander of the Farouq camp in eastern Afghanistan where thousands of ''volunteers for martyrdom'' were trained by Al Qaeda and the Taleban.
Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of ''perpetual war between belief and unbelief.''
Over the millennia, both belief and unbelief have appeared in different guises. As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam which ''annuls all other religions and creeds.'' Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting the entire humanity to Islam and ''effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies.''
Unbelief (kufr), however, has come in numerous forms and shapes, but with a single objective: to destroy faith in God. In the West, unbelief has succeeded in making a majority of people forget God and worship the world. Islam, however, is resisting the trend because Allah means to give it final victory.
Al Ayyeri then shows how various forms of unbelief attacked the world of Islam in the past century or so, to be defeated in one way or another.
The first form of unbelief to attack the Muslim world was ''modernism'' ( hidatha) which led to the destruction of the caliphate and the emergence in the lands of Islam of states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than religious faith.
The second form of unbelief to confront Islam was nationalism which, imported from Europe, divided Muslims into Arabs, Persians, Turks and others. Al Ayyeri claims that nationalism has now been crushed in almost all Muslim lands. He claims that a true Muslim is not loyal to any particular nation-state.
The third form of unbelief mentioned by Al-Ayyeri is Socialism, which includes Communism. That, too, has been defeated and eliminated from the Muslim world, Al Ayyeri asserts.
Ba’athism, the ruling party’s ideology in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, is presented by Al Ayyeri as the fourth form of unbelief to afflict Muslims, especially Arabs. Ba’athism, which is also the official ideology of the Syrian regime under President Bashar al-Assad, offers Arabs a mixture of pan-Arabism and socialism as an alternative to Islam.
Al Ayyeri says Muslims ''should welcome the destruction of Ba’athism in Iraq.''
''The end of Ba’ath rule in Iraq is good for Islam and Muslims,'' he writes. ''Where the banner of Ba’ath has fallen, shall rise the banner of Islam.''
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The author notes as ''a paradox'' the fact that all the various forms of unbelief that threatened Islam were defeated with the help of the Western powers, and more specifically the United States.
The ''modernising '' movement in the Muslim world was ultimately discredited when European imperial powers forced their domination on Muslim lands, turning the Westernised elite into their ''hired lackeys.''
The nationalists were defeated and discredited in wars led against them by various Western powers or, in the case of Nasserism in Egypt, by Israel.
The West also gave a helping hand in defeating socialism and Communism in the Muslim world. The most dramatic example of this came when the US helped the Afghan Mujahedin destroy the Soviet-backed Communist regime in Kabul.
And now the US and its British allies have destroyed Ba’athism in Iraq and may have fatally undermined its position in Syria as well.
What Al Ayyeri sees now is a ''clean battlefield'' in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief.
This, he labels: ''secularist democracy.''
Al Ayyeri asserts that this new threat is ''far more dangerous to Islam'' than all its predecessors combined.
The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy’s ''seductive capacities.'' This form of ''unbelief'' persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the ''unalterable laws'' promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic Shariah ( jurisprudence) until the end of time.
The goal of democracy, according to Al Ayyeri, is to ''make Muslims love this world, forget the next world, and abandon Jihad.'' If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity which, in turn, would make Muslims ''reluctant to die in martyrdom'' in defence of their faith.
He says that it is vital to prevent any normalisation and stabilisation in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the U.S. does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government.
''If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target (for democratisation) would be the whole of the Muslim world,'' Al Ayyeri writes.
The Al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already affected by ''the beginning of democratisation'' and thus in ''mortal danger'' is Turkey.
''Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?'' he asks. ''Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in Jiahd and submit to secularism which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?''
Al Ayyeri says, Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of Communism. The reason is that most Americans are afraid of death while the overwhelming majority of Muslims love to die for the glory of Allah.
The idea is that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will “just run away” as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the Americans love this world and concerned about nothing but their own comfort while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom offers in paradise.
''In Iraq today, there are only two sides,'' Al Ayyeri asserts. ''Here we have a clash of two visions of the world and the future of mankind. The side prepared to accept more sacrifices will win.''
Al Ayyeri’s analysis may sound naïve; he also gets most of his facts wrong. But he is right in reminding the world that what happens in Iraq could affect other Arab countries, in fact, the whole of the Muslim world.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam. He is represented by Eleana Benador from www.benadorassociates.com.
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