Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series) (50 page)

See Bernard Lewis, “Democracy and the Enemies of Freedom,”
Wall Street Journal
, December 23, 2003. Interestingly, Osama bin Laden’s critique of the al-Saud family’s rule is consonant with Lewis’s suggestion that there is an Islam-based alternative to the European fascism of Arab rulers. “Governing,” bin Laden wrote in 2004, “is a contract between the Imam [ruler] and the people who will be ruled by him. This contract contains rights and obligations for both parties. It also has provisions for cancellation and making it null and void. One of the provisions which nullify the contract is betraying the Deen [religion] and the Ummah. And that is exactly what you [the al-Sauds] have done. This is of course if we assume that the contract was a valid one to begin with. But we all know that you have forced yourself upon people without consulation or acceptance.” See “Osama bin Laden’s December 16, 2004, Statement to the Saudi Rulers,” http://jihadunspun.com.

4.
Ian Buruma, “Ghosts of the Holocaust,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 3, 2007. The Islamic world’s historic lack of a fixed and consistent interest in “Christendom” is well and concisely discussed in Andrew Wheatcroft,
Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam
(New York: Random House, 2004), 36–55.

5.
The urban legend that Osama bin Laden is a Muslim-come-lately in his focus on the Palestine-Israel war is often stated but not supportable. In his 1996 declaration of war on the United States, for example, he refers to the Palestine-Israel war on seven different occasions, and throughout his public remarks he refers to the motivation he has derived to attack the United States from Israel’s attack on Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra, Shatila, and Qana in Lebanon. See bin Laden, “Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans”; John Miller, “Talking to Terror’s Banker,” www.abcnews.com, May 28, 1998; Peter Arnett, “Osama bin Laden: The Interview,” www.cnn.com, May 12, 1997; and “Mujahid Osama Bin Laden Talks Exclusively to
Nida’ul Islam
About the New Powderkeg in the Middle East,”
Nida’ul Islam
, January 15, 1997.

6.
Bin Laden, “Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans.”

7.
For bin Laden on the proper per-barrel price for oil, see “Osama Bin Laden’s December 16, 2004, Statement to the Saudi Rulers,” www.jihadunspun.com, and Hamid Mir, “Interview with Osama Bin Ladin,”
Pakistan,
March 18, 1997.

8.
“‘Islamists win’ in key Saudi poll,” www.new.bbc.co.uk, February 11, 2005; Steve Coll, “Islamic Activists Sweep Saudi Council Elections,”
Washington Post
, April 24, 2005, A-17; and Faiza Seleh Ambah, “Saudi Crackdown on Dissenters,”
Christian Science Monitor,
May 16, 2006.

9.
Jordan is the linchpin of Washington’s efforts to secure a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, and so rising Islamist militancy is a significant problem for its efforts. See Rana Sabbagh-Gargour, “Jordan Carefully Measures Its Democratic Openings,” www.daily star.com.lb, December 12, 2006; “Jordan Turns Its Sights on Muslim Brotherhood,”
Financial Times,
June 22, 2006; Suleiman al-Khalidi, “Jordan Says Islamist MPs Face Incitement Charges,” Reuters, June 12, 2006; “Jordan Detains Islamist Deputies,” Al-Jazirah Satellite Television, June 12, 2006; Borzou Daragahi, “Jordan’s King Risks Shah’s Fate, Critics Warn,” www.latimes.com, October 1, 2006; and Jamal Halaby, “Jordanian Elections,” Associated Press, August 1, 2007.

10.
“Mubarak says Brotherhood Are Threat to Security,” Reuters, January 11, 2007; Dina Abdel Mageed, “Analysis: Egypt’s Cat and Mouse Game with the Brotherhood,” www.metimes.com, January 28, 2007; and Jonathan Wright, “Egypt’s Mubarak Defends Constitutional Changes,” Reuters, March 24, 2007.

11.
On the nationalist motivations of Hezbollah, see Pape,
Dying to Win,
129–39.

12.
Roger Hardy, “Thailand: The Riddle of the South,” BBCNEWS.com, February 15, 2005.

13.
William F. Buckley, “In Search of Anti-Semitism,”
National Review
, December 30, 1991.

14.
David Gergen, “There is No Israel ‘Lobby,’”
New York Daily News
, March 26, 2006.

15.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,”
London Review of Books
, March 23, 2006, also available at www.imemc.org

16.
Those in the West seeking to downplay the threat posed by bin Laden do so in the very Western way of pointing to results of personality polls, and there is no doubt that the al-Qaeda chief’s personal popularity has dropped since 9/11. I would argue, however, that the truly telling polls are those that measure attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy across broad sections of the Muslim world, and those polls have consistently shown increased negatives for U.S. policy since 9/11, especially since the invasion of Iraq. I would speculate that another al-Qaeda attack in the United States would restore bin Laden’s personal poll numbers—and then some—because of the deep hatred of Muslims for U.S. government actions in their world. For details of the University of Maryland poll, see Tony Blankley, “A Rising Tide of Fury,” www.Real ClearPolitics.com, May 3, 2007, and for the argument focused on bin Laden’s personal popularity, see Ed Johnson, “Muslim Support for Osama bin Laden Is Falling, Researchers Say,” www.bloomberg.com, July 25, 2007.

17.
Michael F. Scheuer, “A Fine Rendition,”
New York Times,
March 11, 2005.

18.
In the hours after 9/11 CIA’s bin Laden unit was tasked to define several operations that could be quickly run to strike back against al-Qaeda and its supporters. One of the most lucrative ideas suggested was to ask each country to raid an Islamist NGO on its territory and seize whatever electronic media and hard-copy data there was on hand. We were well aware that Islamist NGOs—especially those sponsored by Saudis and Kuwaitis—had been essential in the growth, disguise, and geographic dispersal of the international organization of al-Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups. The suggested raids would have netted far more relevant data on how the NGO-al-Qaeda-Islamist system worked than we ever had before. The raids, of course, could do nothing about 9/11, but the thought was that they might produce information allowing us to stop the next attack. The White House rejected the idea because they were concerned it would offend Muslim opinion.

19.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, “The Zionist-Crusader aggressions on Gaza and Lebanon,” www.muslim.net, July 28, 2006.

20.
Quoted in Hamid Mir, “U.S. Using Chemical Weapons—Usama bin Laden,”
Ausaf,
November 10, 2001, 1, 7.

21.
“Statement by Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, May God Protect Him [and] the al-Qaeda Organization,”
al-Qal’ah
(online version), October 14, 2002.

22.
Ibid.

23.
Ibid.

24.
Osama bin Laden, “Message to Muslims in Iraq,” December 28, 2004, www.dazzled.com/soiraq’pdf/Iraq.zip.

25.
Tariq Ramadan,
In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), ix–x.

26.
This is absolutely not to say that bin Laden has replaced the ulema as the religious instructor and guide of Muslims. He has not. Bin Laden has never shown the least inclination to play such a role, and he has consistently said that the clerics who have been imprisoned in Muslim countries and the United States are the rightful leaders of jihad and reformation in the Islamic world. Just as some Westerners have claimed bin Laden “hijacked Islam,” other Westerners incorrectly claim that bin Laden aspires to be the new “mahdi” or even the “caliph” of the Islamic world, claims that are made nowhere in the corpus of his rhetoric and writings.

27.
Dr. Madawi al-Rashid, “Islam Today: From the Jurisprudence Scholars to the Men of the Cave,”
Al-Quds Al-Arabi
(online version), February 6, 2006.

28.
Ibid. Dr. al-Rashid’s argument that senior Islamic scholars are being discredited and left behind may help to explain two recent high-profile efforts they have made to reassert their leadership. In the first, Shaykh Salman al-Awdah, renowned Saudi scholar and former mentor of bin Laden, published a public letter to the al-Qaeda chief beseeching him to reconsider his martial approach to rectifying the Muslim world’s problems. Al-Awdah, however, was neither willing to attack bin Laden personally nor to claim that he was not a good Muslim; indeed, al-Awdah addressed him as “My brother Usama.” In the second effort, 138 prominent Islamic scholars—including the grand muftis of Egypt and Syria—addressed a letter to Pope Benedict VI and other Christian leaders in which they called for a dialogue between the leaders of the two faiths. Neither effort shows much confidence on the part of the Muslim scholars. Shaykh Awdah’s noncombative letter to bin Laden testifies to the respect the latter continues to command among Saudis and to al-Awdah’s fear of alienating his flock. The Muslim scholars’ letter to the pope also had a pleading air to it, urging the need for Christian-Muslim dialogue, but strongly intimating that negating the bin Laden–inspired Islamist movement would be impossible if Christians continued to “wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes.” See Shaykh Salman Bin-Fahd al-Awdah, “Letter to Usama bin Ladin,”
Islam Today WWW
, September 17, 2007; and “An Open Letter and Call From Muslim Religious Leaders to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, et al.: A Common Word Between You and Us,” October 11, 2007, ww.brandeis.edu/offices/ communications/muslimletter.pdf.

29.
Reza Aslan, “A Coming Islamic Reformation,”
Los Angeles Times
(online version), January 28, 2006.

30.
For example: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States”; “He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only”; and, “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” See John Rhodehamel, ed.,
The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence
(New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2001), 128.

31.
Osama bin Ladin, “Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques: Expel the Heretics From the Arabian Peninsula,”
Al-Islah
(online version), September 2, 1996. Like Jefferson’s treatise, bin Ladin’s also stressed (a) the burden of government-imposed taxes (in a tone that may resonate with American taxpayers today) and (b) that resort to arms came only after a long series of peaceful remonstrances by Saudi reformers to the king, each of which had been rejected.

32.
George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address, http://whitehouse.gov, January 20, 2005. For all the scorn that has been launched in condemnation of President George W. Bush’s supposedly inferior intellectual capabilities, it must be noted that Mr. Bush was absolutely right when he said that all human beings yearn for freedom and liberty. Like most Americans, however, Mr. Bush’s accurate insight was boxed in by the “free society” we have established on the North American continent. The quote marks around the term “free society” are meant not to be demeaning but rather to denote ownership—as in “our” free society. When Mr. Bush and most Americans (with the notable exceptions of the Democratic party’s core factions and most of the academy’s social science faculties and law schools) use the term, they are talking about a republican form of mixed government, a constitution grounded in the British constitution, the common law, the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, and a polity whose most enduring and protective mores are guided by Protestant Christianity. With these tools Americans have built history’s freest, fairest, and most economically prosperous republic. Sadly, whether America turns out to be history’s most durable and longest-lived republic is an open question.
     The clear success of America’s republican experiment rightly inculcates pride and a sense of accomplishment among most Americans, but it also induces an odd combination of Pollyanna-ishness and intolerance regarding the concept of freedom held by others in the world. The intolerance, not surprisingly, becomes most pronounced when we are examining the attitudes toward freedom of those outside the Anglo-American tradition. Born of a revolution meant to secure freedom and liberty for themselves and their posterity, Americans have a history of running hot and cold regarding the revolutions of others that are proclaimed to be efforts to attain freedom. And that is the way it should be. Revolutions, even if staged in the name of freedom, are not all by definition beneficial to the national-security interests of the United States, which must, of course, always be the deciding factor in determining the U.S. response to revolution.
     Both ends of the Cold War provide a good glimpse of the dangers and promise inherent in supporting other peoples’ revolutions. Woodrow Wilson (about whom not enough negative can ever be said) took a half-hearted swing at the Bolshevik Revolution but backed out almost as soon as he began, believing that any new Russian government had to be better than that of the evil, freedom-hating tsar. Today we may be standing squarely athwart an incipient revolution that may or may not benefit us if we succeed but that is surely damaging us mightily as we seek to suppress it. That revolution is the one being led and inspired by Osama bin Laden and that is meant, ultimately, to overthrow every authoritarian Muslim government in the world except for a restored Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

33.
Even given this authoritarian record, however, the Islamists’ governing philosophy is less despotic than that of most of the governments they intend to overthrow. The brilliant, commonsense American strategist Ralph Peters, who is not remotely a softy regarding America’s Islamist enemies, has accurately assessed the Islamists’ philosophy and found that reality does not mesh with the neoconservatives’ iron rule that the destruction of the current U.S.-protected Muslim tyrannies will inevitably lead to Islamofascist regimes. “The power of Islamic fundamentalist regimes in power has been deplorable,” Mr. Peters writes.