Short article: MYTHS & FACTS ABOUT AL QAEDA
- From: GLOBALIST <free.tuneup@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:20:00 -0700 (PDT)
Sun, Aug 30, 2009
Myths and Facts About Al Qaeda
Karin Friedemann
The media myth of a global Islamic conspiracy never got much traction
in America before 2001 because the minority Muslim American population
simply did not seem like much of a threat, because Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf States are loyal U.S. allies, and because Americans
generally have a positive attitude toward wealthy investors.
" Qutb would have prioritised the struggle of Egyptian Muslims to
transform Egypt into a virtuous Islamic state, while Azzam argued that
every individual Muslim had an obligation to come to the aid of
oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Afghan, Kosovar,
Bosnian, Thai, Filipino or Chechen "After 9/11 pro-Israel
propagandists exploited public ignorance and created a nightmarish
fantasy of Al Qaeda in order to put the US and allies into conflict
with the entire Islamic world. What is Al Qaeda? What do they believe?
What do they actually do?
Osama bin Laden first used the term “Al Qaeda” in an interview in
1998, probably in reference to a 1988 article written by Palestinian
activist Abdullah Azzam entitled “Al Qa‘ida Al Sulba” (the Solid
Foundation). In it, Azzam elaborates upon the ideas of the Egyptian
scholar Sayed Qutb to explain modern jihadi principles. Qutb, author
of Social Justice in Islam, is viewed as the founder of modern Arab-
Islamic political religious thought. Qutb is comparable to John Locke
in Western political development. Both Azzam and Qutb were serious men
of exceptional integrity and honour.
While Qutb was visiting the U.S.A. in 1949, he and several friends
were turned away from a movie theater because the owner thought they
were black. ‘But we’re Egyptians,’ one of the group explained. The
owner apologised and offered to let them in, but Qutb refused, galled
by the fact that black Egyptians could be admitted, but black
Americans could not,” recounts Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower..
Qutb predicted that the struggle between Islam and materialism would
define the modern world. He embraced martyrdom in 1966 in rejection of
Arab socialist politics.
Azzam similarly rejected secular Palestinian nationalist politics as
an impediment to moral virtue. He opposed terrorist attacks on
civilians and had strong reservations about ideas like offensive
jihad, or preventive war. He also hesitated to designate any Muslim
leader as an apostate and preferred to allow God to make such
judgments. Inspired by the courage and piety of Afghan Muslims
struggling against the Soviets, Azzam reinterpreted Qutb’s concept of
individual and collective obligation of Muslims in his fatwa entitled
“Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Iman
(Faith).” Qutb would have prioritised the struggle of Egyptian Muslims
to transform Egypt into a virtuous Islamic state, while Azzam argued
that every individual Muslim had an obligation to come to the aid of
oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Afghan, Kosovar,
Bosnian, Thai, Filipino or Chechen.
John Calvert of Creighton University writes, “This ideology… would
soon energise the most significant jihad movement of modern times.”
At Azzam’s call, Arabs from many countries joined America’s fight
against Communism in Afghanistan. No Arab jihadi attack was considered
terrorism when Azzam led the group, or later when bin Laden ran the
group. Because the global Islamic movement overlapped with the goals
of the U.S. government, Arab jihadis worked and traveled friction-
lessly throughout the world between Asia, Arabia and America. Azzam
was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, but legends of the courageous
sacrifices of the noble Arab Afghans energised the whole Islamic
world.
" Al Qaeda has never been and certainly is not today an immensely
powerful terror organisation controlling Islamic banks and charities
throughout the world "After the Soviets left Afghanistan, bin Laden
relocated to Sudan in 1992. At the time he was probably undisputed
commander of nothing more than a small group, which became even
smaller after he lost practically all his money on Sudan investments.
He returned to Afghanistan in 1996, where the younger Afghans, the
Taliban welcomed him on account of his reputation as a veteran war
hero.
There is no real evidence that bin Laden or Al Qaeda had any
connection to the Ugandan and Tanzanian embassy attacks or any of the
numerous attacks for which they have been blamed. Pro-Israel
propagandists like Daniel Pipes or Matthew Levitt needed an enemy for
their war against Muslim influence on American culture more than
random explosions in various places needed a central commander. By the
time the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Arab fighters
surrounding Osama bin Laden were just a dwindling remnant living on
past glories of Afghanistan’s struggle against Communism. Al Qaeda has
never been and certainly is not today an immensely powerful terror
organisation controlling Islamic banks and charities throughout the
world.
Al Qaeda maintained training camps in Afghanistan like Camp Faruq,
where Muslims could receive basic training just as American Jews go to
Israel for military training with the IDF. There they learned to
disassemble, clean and reassemble weapons, and got to associate with
old warriors, who engaged in great heroism against the Soviets, but
did not do much since. Many Al Qaeda trainees went on to serve U.S.
interests in Central Asia (e.g. Xinjiang) in the 1990s, but from
recent descriptions the camps seem to currently provide a form of
adventure tourism with no future enlistment obligations. Although
Western media treats Al Qaeda as synonymous with Absolute Evil, much
of the world reveres the Arab Afghans as martyr saints. Hundreds of
pilgrims visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily, believing that the
graves of those massacred in the 2001 U.S. bombing of Afghanistan
possess miraculous healing powers.
* Published in UAE's KHALEEJ TIMES on August 30, 2009. Karin
Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and U.S..
politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and
Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women.
Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.
===================
In other words it is not the huge boogey man we were told, but we did
help recruit them more members, due to our killing of hundreds of
thousands of innocent Arabs, who did not have a damned thing to do
with 911.
.
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