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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (17357)	4/23/2004 4:14:30 AM
From: Chas.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Interview - Bin Laden's last stand The Arab regimes, not the west, are the priority goal of the terrorists, says the philosopher Sadik Al-Azm Elizabeth Knoblauch asked the questions die ZEIT: Since the attacks of 11 March in Madrid many Europeans feel more strongly threatened by the Islamic terror. Did the fundamentalist forces in the Arab world increase in the past two years? Sadik Al-Azm: Not at all. Quite the opposite: They are weaker. They are fighting their last fight. ZEIT: How do you then explain the attacks of 09/11 and of 03/11 2004? Al-Azm: I believe, Osama bin Laden attacked America, because the attacks on the local regimes in the Near East did not lead to any success. The Islamics believe that these attacks failed, because Americans and generally the West supported regimes in the Near and in the Middle East. 1979 for example there was a rebellion in Saudi Arabia, when they occupied the holy shrine, Kaaba in Mekka. The rebellion was struck down. Bin Laden is just a more advanced, more aggressive form of the leader at that time, of Juheiman Al-Utaiba. His uprising went awry, also because of the American support for the Saudis. Al-Utaiba attacked 1979 the main symbol of the independence of the Saudi ruler family: the Kaaba. Bin Laden went further in 2001 and destroyed WTC, the symbol of the supporters of the Saudi regime. ZEIT: So what you say, is that America was only the second most important reason for the attacks. Primary concern of the Islamics were the Arab regimes? Al-Azm: Yes. Bin Laden argued this way: Americans must leave the holy country. He believes, like many other fundamentalist critics, that the Saudi regime is not a truely Islamic, that it just pretends to be one. His focus is on Saudi Arabia. But he can not realize his program without attacking the Americans. He probably took Somalia as a model and thought, that if he hits hard the moral of Americans, that they will immediately withdraw. I think, that he thought wrong. ZEIT: If the Americans would leave Saudi Arabia, then the Saudi government would be very much weakened and a person like bin Laden could get to power? Al-Azm: Yes, the fundamentalists, which are still more extremistic as the governing family, would take over to islamize the Saudi society according to their conceptions. ZEIT: And not just the Saudi society, but all Arab societies? Al-Azm: Yes, this is very probable. The illusion formed quite some time ago. When in 1981 the fundamentalists killed the Egyptian president Anwar aluminum Sadat, they hoped , this murder would start a fundamentalist revolution, and that the entire region would catch fire. But they did not succeed. ZEIT: You said once that the Islam is in principle too weak for a serious confrontation with the West. Al-Azm: That is my view, yes. Seen from a long-term point of view, in any case. ZEIT: But the west is not threatened by the fact that Islamic extremists are getting new members? Al-Azm: No, the Islam is on the retreat. The Islamism does not have a positive model, which it could copy. Look at Sudan or Iran. The model that the Islamics give us, are the Taliban in Afghanistan. And as the Taliban were toppled, not a single tiny dissenting vote was heard from the Islamic world. Not one proponent of the Islam spoke publicly against it and for the preservation of the Taliban regime. All were of the same one opinion that the Taliban had to disappear. The Islamics produce only negative models. And if they try to topple governments by force they never succeed, as the case of Algeria shows. On top of that the Americans are now seeking out and destroying terror groups all across the world. . ZEIT: But that provokes counterreactions, does it not? Al-Azm: Naturally, if a group is attacked, then it tries to regroup and strike back. ZEIT: But the Muslims will defend the Islam, also in its more extreme variants, if only for the simple reason that they feel attacked. Al-Azm: However, that has nothing to do with force. It is only sympathy. The real increases are within the conservative, nearly reactionary groupings of the Arab society. On top of that,, that is just one of the tendencies. The Islamic movement created it only to steer our society into a more conservative direction – regarding values and clothes. Otherwise they achieved nothing at all. Look at Egypt, the Muslim brothers. In 50 years they have achieved nothing at all politically. They did not even bring out a leader of some importance. The boss dies with 85, then the next one steps in, he is 83 years old, and so on. The condition these groups are in is ridiculous. (C) DIE ZEIT 22.04.2004 NR.18 zeit.de PS: Sadik al-Azm is the Professor Emeritus of the modern European philosophy at the Damaskus university. In May the 70 years old scholar is about to receive Leopold-Lucas prize of the University of Tübingen