18 - 24 October 2001
Issue No.556
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 October 2001 Issue No.556 |
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The good, the bad and Bin Laden
Since the events of 11 September, US foreign policy has undergone contradictory changes. Disagreements within the American administration regarding the life-and-death issue of "terrorism," as well as the tension and fear Americans feel at the possibility of further terrorist attacks, have caused disturbance in many parts of the world.
Perhaps the worst that can happen in a case like this is for shock and grief to triumph over rational thought. Calls for revenge and accusations of conspiracy erupt if anyone suggests that terrorism is not Bin Laden's invention but a trend with international dimensions, whose roots in the Middle East must be examined before the mountains of Afghanistan are attacked.
The terror that gripped the US administration in the wake of the 11 September attacks has placed American public opinion in the hands of a few bigots who are contributing to the list of blunders US policy has made. The logic of propaganda and mobilisation is favoured over analysis and review, for the Americans believe only malice and jealousy motivated the terrorist violence that emerged from the Islamic world -- resentment of the freedom, democracy, technological sophistication and economic prosperity America represents. It has nothing to do with the Arab- Israeli conflict, for example. In the same perspective, Arab regimes are reluctant to support America simply because they have failed to provide their peoples with what the Western democracies have given theirs.
This point is constantly reiterated, in various ways, by a wide range of commentators. It is intended to justify the paucity of politics and ethics American policy exhibits. When the Western media fail to differentiate between Muslims like Bin Laden and the Taliban, and Muslims whose governments condemned terrorism and fought it at a time when Washington and London condoned and endorsed it, they turn the battle into a fight with Arab and Islamic governments, all of whose countries America hopes to turn into military bases with which to besiege Afghanistan and attack the Taliban.
This is why it was not strange for the West's policy-makers and media to abandon logic, democracy and freedom, directing their bile against Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab and Islamic world. Egypt, for instance, is accused of fighting terrorism "undemocratically" at a time when Muslims and Arabs in America and Europe are being deprived of their rights, searched, persecuted and detained on the slightest pretext.
But the most remarkable change in the American outlook is perhaps evident in America's outrage against media that have sought to convey the events from within Afghanistan. Some have demanded that Western television networks censor Al-Qa'ida's statements as well as images of destruction in Afghanistan -- both of which are broadcast by Arab channels. Media freedom is thus curtailed following what America perceives as its strategic interests, even though it accused the Arab media of pandering to their governments' agendas in the past. Now, these governments are asked to contain the rage of their peoples (who oppose the US strikes on Afghanistan), and Muslim men of religion are called upon to defend "real" Islam, which does not undermine America's interests, against Bin Laden's terrorist Islam, which hates Western civilisation.
Sadly, neither form of Islam exists. Only Muslims do -- Muslims who admire the US, the way they admire Japan, Germany or France, and Muslims who are angry enough with US policy to form extremist organisations and who, under the name of Islam, embrace terrorism as a way of fighting American hegemony.
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