From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun Aug 11 2002 - 20:12:36 MDT
A New Round of Anger and
Humiliation: Islam after 9/11
by Daniel Pipes
Edited by Wladyslaw
Pleszczynski
Our Brave New World
2002
Published in Our Brave New World: Essays on the Impact of
September 11
Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2002, pp. 41-61.
"The world has changed" Westerners often say, commenting
on the events of September 11, but few Muslims echo that
view. In dueling statements issued on October 7, the day the
war in Afghanistan began, President George W. Bush and
Osama bin Laden exemplified this contrast. While the former
referred to the "sudden terror" that had descended on the
United States just twenty-seven days earlier, the latter
reported that the Muslim world had experienced more than
eighty years of "humiliation and disgrace" at American hands,
during which its sons were killed and its sanctities defiled.
Twenty-seven days versus eighty years sums up the difference
between a stunned American sense of ruptured innocence and
the brooding militant Islamic feeling of epochal betrayal and
trauma. For this and other reasons, the Muslim world was not
nearly so jolted by the death of over three thousand Americans
as was the West.
More broadly, to understand the impact of September 11 on
the Muslim world requires putting aside the response in the
West and immersing oneself in Muslim sensibilities. The best
place to begin is with an understanding of the deep resentment
against the West that bin Laden articulates and so many
Muslims share.
Islamic History and Hostility to the West
This anger has deep roots. From the Islamic religion's origins
in the seventh century and for roughly the next millennium,
the career of Muslims was one of consistent worldly success.
By whatever standard one judged - power, wealth, health, or
education -Muslims stood at the pinnacle of global
achievement. This connection between accepting the Islamic
message and apparent reward by God endured in so many
aspects of life in so many places for such a long time that
Muslims readily came to assume that mundane well-being was
their due as a sign of God's favor. To be Muslim meant to be
on the winning team.
But then, starting about 1800, things went awry. Power,
wealth, health, and education moved elsewhere, and
specifically to Europe, a place long scorned as backward. For
two long centuries, Muslims have watched as other peoples,
especially Christians, surged ahead. Not only did France,
England, and the United States do so on the grandest scale, but
more recently East Asia has outpaced the Muslim world. As a
result, a sense of failure has suffused Muslim life. If Islam
brings God's grace, many Muslims have asked themselves,
why then do Muslims fare so poorly? This traumatic history of
things going all wrong is the key to understanding modern
Islam.
It has spurred deep questions about what needs to be done to
find the right direction but few satisfying answers. Despite
extensive soul-searching, Muslims have not yet found an
answer to the question "what went wrong?" Instead, they
have bounced from one scheme to another, finding satisfaction
in none of them. A succession of false starts have left Muslims
deeply perplexed about their predicament, and not a little
frustrated. In all, Muslims sense their own conspicuous lack of
success in emerging from the humiliation of their current
circumstances.
This sense of failure goes far to explain the acute hostility to
the West that prevails in most Muslim societies. Muslims
vaguely realize that a thousand years ago, as Martin Kramer
puts it, "the Middle East was the crucible of world
civilization" whereas today, it "sulks on the margins of a
world civilization forged in the West."1 That sulking has
translated into anger, envy, hostility, irrational fears,
conspiracy theories, and political extremism. These emotions
go far to account for the appeal of a host of radical ideologies,
both imported (fascism, Leninism) and home-grown (Pan-
Arabism, Pan-Syrianism). Each of these movements in turn
confirms the sense that the West is the enemy.
These days, the strongest vehicle for such emotions is militant
Islam (also known as Islamism), a political movement that
takes the religion of Islam and turns it into the basis of a
totalitarian ideology that shares much with prior versions,
namely fascism and Marxism-Leninism. Like them, for
example, it seeks to replace capitalism and liberalism as the
reigning world system. The appeal of militant Islam goes far to
account for the anti-Western hatred coming from Muslims in
many places around the world, including Muslims resident in
the West itself.
Islamists discern a long list of countries “ Algeria, Turkey,
Egypt, and Malaysia are prominent examples “ where they
believe local Muslim rulers are doing the West's dirty business
in suppressing their movement. They also have another list “
Kashmir, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Sudan rank high here “
where they see the West actively suppressing noble Islamist
efforts to establish a just society. Whenever Muslims move
toward the emergence of an Islamic State, an Islamist explains,
the "treacherous hands of the secular West are always there
in the Muslim world to bring about the defeat of the Islamic
forces."2 Islamists see themselves surrounded and besieged by
the West. Around the world, they feel, they are stymied by an
arrogant and imperialist West.
Hatred of the United States
In particular, Islamists see the United States as an aggressive
force that seeks to steal Muslims' resources, exploit their labor,
and undermine their religion. A wide consensus exists that
Washington and Hollywood have joined forces to establish a
hegemony over the world (the "new world order"). In the
words of Ayatollah Khomeini, perhaps the most influential
modern interpreter of Islam: "The danger that America poses
is so great that if you commit the smallest oversight, you will
be destroyed. . . . America plans to destroy us, all of us."3 In
the words of an Egyptian, the Americans "have us by the
throat."
This outlook has the crucial implication that violence against
Americans is viewed as defensive in nature. That in turn
justifies Muslim attempts to harm Americans or even destroy
the United States. Ikrama Sabri, Yasir Arafat's man running
the Palestinian Authority's religious hierarchy in Jerusalem,
often inveighs against the United States in his Friday sermon
at Al-Aqsa mosque, a prestigious and influential position. For
example, he made this choice plea to God in 1997: "Oh Allah,
destroy America, her agents and her allies!"4
To dehumanize Americans, fundamentalists portray them in
beast-like terms - vermin, dogs, and bacteria - thereby making
these into enemies deserving of extermination. The Westerner,
in the view of ˜Adil Husayn, a leading Egyptian writer, is
"nothing but an animal whose major concern is to fill his
belly."5 Immoral, consumerist, and threatening, he deserves to
die. The conspiracy theories that so many Middle Eastern
religious establishments espouse also dehumanize Americans,
turning them into cunning plotters grasping at Muslim lands,
wealth, and women.
One result is the expression of delight on hearing about
American fatalities. Ahmad Jibril, a Palestinian leader,
publicly shared his joy on hearing about the loss of life due to
the San Francisco earthquake in 1989, then added: "I don't
know how I would have managed to take revenge on the
United States, but it seems that God did it for me."6 One also
finds such vicious views expressed by Muslims living in the
United States itself: responding to the news of a U.S. Air Force
accident not long after, Islam Report, a San Diego-based
publication, published a headline that read, "O ALLAH,
LOCK THEIR THROATS IN THEIR OWN TRAPS!"7
This litany of statements points to two facts: Osama bin Laden
is not a unique figure but echoes views promoted by some of
the most authoritative and influential Islamic authorities; and
this viewpoint resonates among Muslims around the world,
even including some living in the West.
This context helps explain why the Muslim world responded as
it did to the September 11 atrocities, even before it was clear
who had perpetrated them. In most of the world, initial
reactions to this news was mournful. Peoples and governments
alike responded with heartfelt grief and with the sense of
common humanity. But among Muslims, the killing of
thousands of Americans prompted less a sense of grief than
one of pleasure.
"Bull's-eye," commented Egyptian taxi drivers as they
watched reruns of the World Trade Center collapse. "It's
payback time," said a Cairene. Other Egyptians expressed a
wish for George W. Bush to have been buried in the buildings
or exulted that this was their most happy moment in decades.
And so it went around the Middle East. In Lebanon and the
West Bank, Palestinians shot guns into the air, a common way
of showing delight. "We're ecstatic," said a Lebanese. In
Jordan, Palestinians handed out sweets in another expression
of joy.
Outside the Middle East, a good many Muslims expressed the
view that Americans got what they deserved. Nigerian papers
reported that the Islamic Youth Organisation in Zamfara
province organized an event to celebrate the attacks.
"Whatever destruction America is facing, as a Muslim I am
happy," came a typical quote from Afghanistan. A Pakistani
leader said that Washington is paying for its policies against
Palestinian, Iraqi, Bosnian, and other Muslims, then warned
that the "worst is still to come."
Around the Muslim world, nearly identical anti-American
slogans were heard over the next weeks: "U.S., Go to Hell!"
(Indonesia), "Go To Hell America" (Malaysia), "Death to
America" (Bangladesh), "Death to America" (India),
"America is the enemy of God" (Oman). "America is a great
Satan" (Yemen), "U.S. go to hell" (Egypt), "Down, down
USA!" (Sudan).
Most Muslim governments were on best behavior after
September 11, decrying the loss of American lives. But here
too, there were cracks. Iranian officialdom, for example, found
it very hard to be sympathetic to Americans and insisted on
bringing the Arab-Israeli conflict into the discussion. Some
analyses connected the terrorism to America's "blind support
of the Zionist regime" and others actually accused Israel of
organizing the attacks, in a supposed effort to deflect world
opinion from its own conflict with the Palestinians. (This
subsequently became an accepted verity in many Muslim
countries, with elaborate conspiracy theories about the
Mossad's role.) In Iraq, not surprisingly, the state-controlled
media approved of the violence, commenting that the "the
American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes
against humanity." It also announced that the "myth of
America was destroyed along with the World Trade Center."
Love of bin Laden
Even before September 11, Osama bin Laden enjoyed a very
high reputation due to his unremitting hostility to the United
States. His biographer, Simon Reeve, wrote in 1999 that
"Many who had never met him, whose only contact was
through one of his interviews, a radio broadcast or Internet
homepage, pronounced themselves ready to die for his cause."8
Hasan at-Turabi, the powerful Sudanese leader, found that bin
Laden had developed "as a champion, as a symbol of Islam for
all young people, in the whole Muslim world."9
When he emerged as the man behind the September 11
attacks, his reputation soared to extraordinary heights around
the Muslim world. "Long live bin Laden" shouted five
thousand demonstrators in the southern Philippines. In
Pakistan, bin Laden's face sold merchandise and massive
street rallies left two persons dead. Ten thousand marched in
the capitals of Bangladesh and Indonesia. In northern Nigeria,
Bin Laden had (according to Reuters) "achieved iconic
status"10 and his partisans set off religious riots leading to two
hundred deaths.11 Pro-bin Laden demonstrations took place
even in Mecca, where overt political activism is unheard of.
Everywhere, the Washington Post reported, Muslims cheered
on bin Laden "with almost a single voice."12 The Internet
buzzed with odes to him as a man "of solid faith and power of
will."13 A Saudi explained that "Osama is a very, very, very,
very good Muslim."14 A Kenyan added: "Every Muslim is
Osama bin Laden."15 "Osama is not an individual, but a name
of a holy war," read a banner in Kashmir.16 In perhaps the
most extravagant statement, one Pakistani declared that "Bin
Laden is Islam. He represents Islam."17 In France, Muslim
youths chanted bin Laden's name as they threw rocks at non-
Muslims.
Palestinians were especially enamored. According to Hussam
Khadir, a member of Arafat's Fatah party, "Bin Laden today
is the most popular figure in the West Bank and Gaza, second
only to Arafat."18 A 10-year-old girl announced that she loves
him like a father.19 Nor was she alone. "Everybody loves
Osama bin Laden at this time. He is the most righteous man in
the whole world," declared a Palestinian woman.20 A
Palestinian Authority policeman called him "the greatest man
in the world ¦ our Messiah" even as he (reluctantly)
dispersed students who marched in solidarity with the Saudi.21
Survey research helps understand these sentiments. In the
Palestinian Authority, a Bir Zeit poll found that 26 percent of
Palestinians considered the September 11 attacks consistent
with Islamic law.22 In Pakistan, a Gallup found a nearly
identical 24 percent reaching this conclusion.23 Even those who
consider the attacks on September 11 an act of terrorism (64
percent of both Palestinians and Pakistanis) showed respect
for these as acts of political defiance and technical prowess.
"Of course we're upset that so many died in New York. But at
the same time, we're in awe of what happened," said a young
Cairene woman.24 An online survey of Indonesians found 50
per cent seeing bin Laden as a "justice fighter" and 35 per
cent a terrorist.25 More broadly, I estimate that bin Laden
enjoyed in those first weeks the emotional support of half the
Muslim world.
With the exception of one government-staged anti-bin Laden
demonstration in Pakistan and very few prominent Islamic
scholars, hardly anyone publicly denounced him in September
or October 2001. The only Islamic scholar in Egypt who
unreservedly condemned the September 11 suicide operations
admitted that he is completely isolated. 26 Further, not a single
Muslim government came out publicly in support of the
American bombings against him. American officials were
waiting in vain for Muslim politicians to speak up. "It'd be
nice if some leaders came out and said that the idea the U.S. is
targeting Islam is absurd," notes one U.S. diplomat.27 They did
not do so because to so meant to contradict bin Laden's wide
adulation.
But then a remarkable change took place.
Disappointment with bin Laden
The U.S. government began its military campaign in
Afghanistan on October 7. For a month, there were no visible
results. As late as the morning of November 9, the Taliban
regime still ruled the territories that had been under its
control for several years “ or almost 95 percent of
Afghanistan. But then the Taliban rule collapsed. Days later it
controlled just 15 percent of the country and by December 7, it
had lost control of Kandahar, its last city, and was on the run
in the hills and the caves of Afghanistan, a spent force
repudiated widely by joyous Afghans.
This quick change of fortunes resulted in large part from the
powerful use of air power by the United States, but also to the
lack of perseverance on the part of Taliban troops. Awed by
American power, many of them switched sides to the U.S.-
backed Northern Alliance. According to one analyst,
"Defections, even in mid-battle, are proving key to the rapid
collapse across Afghanistan of the formerly ruling Taliban
militia."28 American muscle and will made militant Islam a
losing proposition. The force that had ruled their country was
disintegrating before their eyes and the Taliban's own forces
realized they were on the losing side, having no desire to go
down with it, and decided to do something.
This readiness to switch sides fit into a larger pattern that
became evident within days of November 11; Muslims around
the world sensed the same shift of power away from militant
Islam and they responded similarly.
This was especially evident in Pakistan, where enthusiasm for
the Taliban cause had been extremely high in September and
October 2001. Here is a report, in the Los Angeles Times,
starting with an account of the scene in Quetta, near the
border with Afghanistan, on Oct. 8, or one day after hostilities
began. After demonstrators "burned effigies of the American
and Pakistani presidents, set fire to cars, stormed the police
station and smashed shop windows," firebrand religious
leaders addressed 10,000 people in Ayub Stadium each Friday.
They
had vengeance in their bellies, they had outrage in their
hearts, their anger came out in such a flood of words
that some of them got hoarse. "The time will come
when the American heads are on one side and our guns
are on the other!" one shouted. "Prepare yourself for
jihad, and I assure you that success will be ours!"
But then, as American military success became clear, the anti-
American zealots lost their nerve. The same stadium that a
month earlier held 10,000 two months later had less than 500
people. "A lone, badly wrinkled poster of Osama bin Laden
bobbed in the front row. After a parade of religious leaders
fumed at the microphone about jihad, or holy war, the crowd,
which had sat almost silent through two hours of speeches,
could barely muster a chorus of Allahu akbar (God is great) at
the end." In Swat Valley, some 20 percent of the 10 to 15
thousand men who were inspired by cries of jihad to go off to
fight the United States in Afghanistan did not return. In some
cases, the losses were much higher: one Pakistani reported
that 41 out of 43 of his comrades lost their lives in
Afghanistan.29 These losses generated intense resentment of
the militant Islamic leaders who prodded them to go off to
war, unprepared and even unwelcome, while they themselves
stayed back in the comfort of their native villages.
Pakistanis turned against the militant Islamic groups,
especially those that encouraged devout Muslims to travel to
Afghanistan and help the Taliban. For example, Tehrik Nifaz
Shariat-e-Mohammedi has acknowledged that two to three
thousand of its volunteers are missing and feared dead; the
organization's leader, Sufi Muhammad, found himself jailed
by the Pakistani authorities when he returned from
Afghanistan in November. There is also a widespread anger
against him. "We curse Sufi Muhammad for sacrificing so
many innocent lives," said one tribal elder. "It is because of
him that so many children have become orphans and women
widows."30 More broadly,
The battle fervor that swept this region at the
beginning of the war has largely evaporated, as
thousands of foreign volunteer fighters - many of them
Pakistani - were left in the gun sights. ¦ In these
frontier communities, where the mullahs have always
had more pull than the government, there is a
deepening resentment of the religious leaders who
called away so many young men to a certain death.31
To put it mildly, this is hardly the expected reaction to the
American air campaign in Afghanistan, which many analysts
predicted would convulse Pakistani society and perhaps even
lead to an overthrow of the government by those sympathetic
to militant Islam. Instead, a convincing demonstration of U.S.
power led to the cowering and retreat of militant Islam.
A similar sequence can be seen in the Arabic-speaking
countries. Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel,
noted that in the first week after the U.S. airstrikes began on
Oct. 7, nine anti-American demonstrations took place. The
second week saw three of them, the third week one, the fourth
week, two. "Then “ nothing," observes Indyk. "The Arab
street is quiet."32 This is all the more remarkable given that
the Arab-Israeli conflict, perhaps the most emotional
touchstone of Arab life, heated up considerably at about the
same time. A well-traveled reporter came to a similar
conclusion:
nearly two months into an intense military campaign,
and halfway through the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, the Arab "street," or public opinion, appears
to have responded to bin Laden's call for an anti-
Western uprising in the same way it has reacted to
similar calls in the past from Islamic militants, Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and others - by changing the
channel and proceeding with business.33
In fact, the mood rapidly shifted in the opposite direction. For
example, in Kuwait, where the law code was close to being
brought into line with Islamic requirements and punishments
before September 11, the reality of U.S. strength led to a rapid
change in mood. "America's swift reaction to the Sept. 11
terror attacks, and the scenes of Afghan joy at abolishing the
very same religious restrictions, quickly damped enthusiasm"
for such changes, reported the Wall Street Journal.34 A leader
of Kuwait's militant Islamic party forthrightly acknowledged
the connection: "The secular people, they are triumphant now,
they feel they are getting power.¦ Now, the secular people
want to abolish all Islamic rules that are applied in Kuwait or
Saudi Arabia. There are even some voices about permitting
alcohol."
In similar fashion, the Arab media turned on bin Laden when
he began looking like a loser. Generalizing about this trend,
the Washington Post found that "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."35
Indeed, some analysts went so far as to suspect that the
damage bin Laden had caused Islam was an Israeli plot! "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."36 So far had bin Laden fallen
that he was now no better than a tool of the alleged Jewish
conspiracy.
The same patterns can be found throughout the Muslim world,
in such countries as Indonesia, India, and Nigeria, where the
overwrought passions of September quickly became distant
memories.
American military success so encouraged the authorities that
they began, finally, to crack down. This was again most
evident in Pakistan. "There has been a profound shift in the
politics of religious extremism in Pakistan over the last few
weeks," reported the Los Angeles Times, which went on to
explain that the government for years had permitted militant
Islamic groups to operate with almost total freedom, seeing
which way the wind was now blowing, it began to "rein in the
jihad organizations and check their pervasive influence on the
nation's educational, political and social welfare systems."
Those Swat Valley preachers, for example, found themselves
behind bars. The most significant step came on 12 January
2002, when President Pervez Musharraf attacked militant
Islam in a major speech ("The day of reckoning has come. Do
we want Pakistan to become a theocratic state?") that one
observer suggested "has the potential - the potential - to be the
kind of mind-set-shattering breakthrough for the Muslim
world that has not been seen since Anwar el-Sadat's 1977 visit
to Israel."37 Making good on his word, in just the first week
after this historic speech, Musharraf had government forces
close hundreds of religious offices and arrest over two
thousand people. Militant Islamic groups aired much
displeasure with these steps but did almost nothing to obstruct
them ("We cannot fight against our own state, we can only
wait for a better time").38
This pattern was replicated in other countries. The effective
ruler of Saudi Arabia admonished religious leaders to be
careful and responsible in their statements ("weigh each word
before saying it")39 after he saw that Washington meant
business. Likewise, the Egyptian government moved more
aggressively against its militant Islamic elements. In Yemen,
the government cracked down on the Islamist foreigners
coming into the country. Similarly, in China, the government
prohibited the selling of badges celebrating Osama bin Laden
("I am bin Laden. Who should I fear?")40 only after the U.S.
victories began. Ironically, the same strengthening of resolve
could be seen even in the United States itself; after monitoring
the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic "charitable"
foundation, since 1993, the federal authorities only closed it
down in December 2001 when it felt the confidence that came
from its own successful military campaign.
9/11 vs. 11/9
The events of the brief three-month period following
September 11 send a powerful and unambiguous message
about the fortunes of militant Islam and the exercise of power.
If militant Islam achieved the acme of its achievement on 9/11,
then 11/9 could be when the movement began its descent. The
first date marked the peak of militant Islam, its day of greatest
success in humiliating the West, causing death and panic. The
second date, when the Taliban lost their first major city,
marked an apparent turning point, with the West finding its
resolve and its strength to deal with its new main enemy.
The marked contrast between these two dates has several
implications for understanding the Muslim world. First, public
opinion in the Muslim world is volatile, responding to
developing events in an emotional, superficial, and changeable
way. Second, as the Los Angeles Times notes, "popular support
for militant Islam is not nearly so broad as was once
believed."41 The movement is loud and it is vociferous, but it
does not command more than a small minority of the Muslim
world's active support. Third, that militant Islam is a bit of a
paper tiger “ ferocious when unopposed but quite easily
intimidated. Fourth, the so-called street has little bearing on
developments. It rises up with much noise but without much
consequence, unable to force governments to take its preferred
actions. It dies down when its favorite causes fare poorly.
This is not to deny that much anger continues to be directed
against the United States ("Jihad will continue until
doomsday, or until America is defeated, either way")42 or that
in some circles bin Laden retains his appeal (one Afghan: "to
me, he is a god").43 It is only to say that American strength and
resolve makes these sentiments less likely to become
operational.
U.S. Policy Implications
For two decades “ from the time Ayatollah Khomeini reached
power in Iran in 1979 with "Death to America" as his slogan “
U.S. embassies, planes, ships, and barracks were assaulted,
leading to hundreds of American deaths. These attacks took
place around the world, especially the Middle East and
Europe, but also in the United States itself. In the face of this
persistent assault, Washington barely responded. The policy
through those years was to view the attacks as no more than a
sequence of discrete criminal incidents, and not as part of a
sustained military assault on the country. This approach had
several consequences. It meant:
* Focusing on the arrest and trial of the dispensable
characters who actually carried out violent acts,
leaving the funders, planners, organizers, and
commanders of terrorism to continue their work
unscathed, prepared to carry out more attacks.
* Relying primarily on such defensive measures as metal
detectors, security guards, bunkers, police arrests, and
prosecutorial eloquence - rather than on such offensive
tools as soldiers, aircraft, and ships.
* Seeing the terrorists' motivations as criminal, ignoring
the extremist ideologues involved.
* Ignoring the fact that terrorist groups (and the states
that support them) have declared war on the United
States (sometimes publicly).
* Requiring that the U.S. government have levels of proof
that can stand up in a U.S. court of justice before
deploying military force, assuring that in the vast
majority of cases there would be a subdued response to
the killing of Americans.
As Muslims watched militant Islam hammer away at
Americans and American interests, they could not but
conclude that the United States, for all its resources, was tired
and soft. Not knowing the nature of democracy “ slow to be
aroused but relentless when angered “ they marveled at the
audacity of militant Islam and its ability to get away with its
attacks. This awe culminating in the aftermath of September
11, when Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader called
openly for nothing less than the "extinction of America."44 At
that time, this did not seem beyond reach.
These ambitious claims shed light on the goals of the
September 11 attacks. Although one cannot be sure of their
purpose, it makes sense that they were intended severely to
weaken the United States. Judging from militant Islam's
previous successes, Al-Qaeda must have thought that it would
get away with this attack with no more than the usual criminal
probe. Further, having seen both the American unwillingness
to absorb casualties and the damage the Afghanistan-based
Islamists did to the Soviet Union a decade and more earlier,
Al-Qaeda probably thought that its hits would demoralize the
American population and lead to civil unrest, perhaps even
beginning a sequence of events that would eventually lead to
the U.S. government's collapse. If this was their thinking, they
probably counted on the American police protecting
government buildings, not tracking down Al-Qaeda operatives.
How could bin Laden and his colleagues know that their acts
would lead to a rousing call to arms? Why should 240 deaths
in a Beirut barracks lead to no retaliation and just over three
thousand deaths on the east coast mobilize the country in a
way not seen since Pearl Harbor? One can hardly fault them
for not having foreseen this shift. It has something to do with
the mysterious forces of democracy and public opinion, about
which they are highly ignorant.
Even less could they have understood that a paradigm shift
took place on September 11, whereby terrorism left the
domain of criminality and entered that of warfare. This
change had many implications. It meant no longer targeting
just the foot soldiers who actually carry out the violence but
the organizations and governments standing behind them. It
meant relying on the armed forces, not policemen. It meant
defense overseas rather than in American courtrooms. It
meant organizations and governments sponsoring terrorism
would pay a price, not just the foot-soldiers who carry it out. It
meant dispensing with the unrealistically high expectations of
proof so that when reasonable evidence points to a regime or
organization having harmed Americans, U.S. military force
can be deployed. It meant using force so that the punishment is
disproportionately greater than the attack. It also meant that,
as in conventional war, America's military need not know the
names and specific actions of enemy soldiers before fighting
them. There is no need to know the precise identity of a
perpetrator; in war, there are times when one strikes first and
asks questions later.
It might seem mysterious that the military model was not
adopted earlier, it being so obviously more appropriate than
the criminal one. But the fact is, it is also much more
demanding of Americans, requiring a readiness to spend
money and lose lives over a long period. Force works only if
part of sustained policy, not a one-time event. Throwing a few
bombs (such as was done against the Libyan regime in 1986
and against sites in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998) does not
amount to a serious policy. Going the military route requires a
long-term commitment that demands much from Americans
over many years.
The pattern is clear: So long as Americans submitted passively
to murderous attacks by militant Islam, this movement gained
support among Muslims. When Americans finally took up
arms to fight militant Islam, its forces were overwhelmed and
its appeal quickly diminished. Victory on the battlefield, in
other words, has not only the obvious advantage of protecting
the United States but also the important side-effect of lancing
the anti-American boil that spawned those attacks in the first
place.
The implication is clear: There is no substitute for victory. If
the U.S. government wishes to weaken its strategic enemy,
militant Islam, it must take two steps. First, continue the war
on terror globally, using appropriate means, starting with
Afghanistan but going on to wherever militant Islam poses a
threat, in Muslim-majority countries (such as Saudi Arabia),
in Muslim-minority countries (such as the Philippines), and
even in the United States itself. As this effort brings success,
secondly Washington should promote moderate Muslims. Not
only will they represent a wholesome change from the
totalitarianism of militant Islam but they, and they alone, can
address the trauma of Islam and propose ideas that will ease
the way for one sixth of humanity fully to modernize.
Ironically, while Muslims did not feel the impact of September
11 as intensely as did Westerners, it is they in the long run
who might well be far more profoundly affected by it.
1 Martin Kramer, "Islam's Sober Millennium," 31 December
1999.
2 Shamim A. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah Ilallah in
American Perspective (Brooklyn, N.Y.: The Forum for Islamic
Work, 1989), pp. ix-x.
3 Imam Khomeini, Islam and Revolution trans. Hamid Algar,
(Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan Press, 1981), pp. 286, 306.
4 Voice of Palestine, on 12 September 1997.#1e
5 Ash-Sha`b (Cairo), 22 July 1994. #101
6 The Sunday Independent, 26 November 1989. #37
7 Quoted in Steven Emerson, "The Other Fundamentalists,"
The New Republic, 12 June 1995, p. 30.
8 Simon Reeve,The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin
Laden, and the Future of Terrorism (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1999), p. 203.
9 Quoted in Reeve, The New Jackals, p. 213.
10 Reuters, 19 October 2001.
11 Reuters, 14 October 2001,
12 The Washington Post, 9 October 2001.
13 Reuters, 8 October 2001.
14 Time, 15 October 2001.
15 The New York Times, 13 October 2001.
16 Reuters, 11 October 2001.
17 The New York Times, 30 September 2001
18 The Boston Globe, 10 October 2001.
19 The Independent, 11 October 2001.
20 The Guardian, 9 October 2001.
21 The Independent, 11 October 2001.
22 IRI, 11 October 2001.
23 Newsweek, 14 October 2001.
24 The Washington Post, 9 October 2001.
25 Reuters, 17? October 2001.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,1870,77031,00.htm
l
26 Newsweek, 15 October 2001.
27 The Washington Post, 9 October 2001.
28 Associated Press, 17 November 2001.
29 The New York Times, 27 January 2002.
30 Associated Press, 11 December 2001.
31 Los Angeles Times, 3, 10 December 2001.
32 Newhouse News Service, 16 November 2001.
33 Howard Schneider, "Arab ˜Street' Unmoved by News," The
Washington Post, 30 November 2001.
34 31 December 2001.
35 The Washington Post, 23 November 2001.
36 Nabil Luka Bibawi in Al-Ahram, cited in The Washington
Post, 23 November 2001.
37 Thomas L. Friedman, "Pakistan's Constitution Avenue,"
The New York Times, 20 January 2002.
38 Reuters, 18 January 2002.
39 Arab News, 15 November 2001.
40 Associated Press, 17 November 2001, quoting Beijing Youth
Daily.
41 Los Angeles Times, 3, 10 December 2001.
42 The New York Times, 27 January 2002.
43 The Times (London),, 19 January 2002.
44 Associated Press, 15 November 2001.
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