May 20 , 2011
Can We Go Back to Normal?
Ten years ago, as I watched the World Trade Center burn and collapse on that Tuesday morning, my three-year old daughter asked me what was happening on the TV. I told her that it was nothing important and turned the images off, but I vividly remember thinking to myself that her life as a Muslim-American would be shadowed by the attacks I was watching for years and perhaps decades to come.
At that moment, it was completely unknown who precisely, and for what reason, had carried out the hijackings, but I already "knew" that it had to be some Muslim group engaged in their own version of "jihad" against the US. When Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was accused, it came as no surprise.
Over the next 10 years, the American response to this strike held enormous consequences for the world, and for Muslims, both American and elsewhere. The overthrow of the Taliban was a good act, but after that there was one misstep after another. The failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001 was a massive blunder, and allowed him another 10 years to maintain legitimacy. The disastrous invasion of Iraq, which cost tens of thousands of American casualties, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, would not have happened without 9/11. Meanwhile, America created a homeland security apparatus that wasted tremendous resources, although admittedly some things, such as strengthening aircraft security, were essential.
For Muslim-Americans, the last ten years have been a time of unrelenting attacks on their religion. While President Bush and Obama have not engaged in this, popular culture and an all-star lineup of Fox News figures among others have pressed the point that terrorism and violence are not the result of a few radical extremists, but part of the essence of the Muslim religion. Anything negative about Islam or Muslims was paraded as evidence of the inherent evil at the heart of Islam.
The Qur’an was quoted by those who had no understanding of it, and with malicious intent, and Muslims were judged not by their ideals but by the absolute worst examples of Muslim behavior from around the planet. Contrary evidence to this narrative was dismissed as propaganda, or "lying for the faith", as some critics put it. The relevant facts were sentence fragments from the Qur’an, and what happened on 9/11. Muslims were terrible to women, as we could see in Saudi Arabia or under the Taliban, but the contrary evidence that many Muslim countries had elected women Prime Ministers (Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan), or that the majority of university students in Iran were women, was irrelevant. Islam was declared incompatible with democracy, despite the fact that the majority of the world's Muslims lived in countries that had some experience with elected governments.
There were political reasons for the assault on Islam in the US in particular. Several groups, for their own narrow agendas, saw advantage in demonizing Muslims. Partisans of Israel's occupation of the Palestinians wanted to delegitimize the Palestinian desire for freedom, by painting the Palestinians as just an extension of murderous anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic terrorism. The Arab League Peace initiative, offering Israel full recognition and peace with all Arab countries if it just returned the land occupied in 1967, languished as an insignificant gesture. Pro-Indian groups too wanted to delegitimize the claims of Kashmiris to freedom from a heavy-handed and oppressive Indian rule, by associating their grievance with terrorism. Evangelical Christians in the US saw Islam as a rival proselytizing faith, and saw advantage in attacking it as bloodthirsty and backward, and neo-conservatives needed to maintain an image of hostile and backward Muslims to generate support for their campaign to extend " regime change" as a policy to buttress American influence in the Middle East.
Bin Laden was deeply instrumental in creating and sustaining this environment. He was masterful in his ability to wrap up a series of Muslim grievances into a package of complaints that he used to justify his terror. Terror for Bin Laden was not an act of unprovoked aggression against the US, but a defensive act meant to force an end to these policies. By acting as a spokesman for these issues, many of which reflected the views of average Muslims around the world, he created a dilemma that he exploited well. Muslims were not in favor of the mass terror he did, but in opinion polls they supported him in large numbers in many Muslim countries. These polls were quite alarming to the US, and reinforced the view that Al-Qaeda was not some extremist offshoot, but represented what Muslims "really thought". Whether it was the sanctions regime on Iraq, the support of dictatorships in the Middle East, the subjugation of the Palestinians, or the general sense that America had too much power and influence over their own nations and lives, Muslims often agreed with the specific issues that bin Laden would raise. Palestinian terrorism, particularly the wave of suicide bombings, minor echoes of 9/11, along with Kashmiri and Pakistani-based terror attacks on India, did nothing to advance those causes, and reinforced the predominant narrative about Muslims in general.
But bin Laden ultimately failed to go beyond this amorphous agreement with his complaints. Over the last ten years, those early polls of support gradually shrank away, often as a result of the mindless violence that Al-Qaeda perpetrated throughout the Muslim world. His other great weakness, one shared by all the jihadis, was his complete lack of any sort of coherent positive program of governance. What exactly was bin Laden trying to create? A Sunni version of Iran? Some sort of Caliphate that would stretch from Morocco to Indonesia? That was clearly bizarre and irrational on its face to any thinking Muslim, and not a serious proposal whatsoever. In ten years, Al-Qaeda never put forth anything that could be compared to the Communist Manifesto or some other ideal of rule. There were clearly huge problems of governance in the Muslim and Arab world, but bin Laden was no philosopher to address them.
Time marched on, and bin Laden was finally killed. But he was not killed simply in a compound in Pakistan; he was also more fatally wounded in Tahrir Square back in February. In the Arab Spring we have seen that everything bin Laden had claimed and fought for was rejected by the peoples of the Middle East. At the end of the day, they wanted freedom and democracy, and a say in their government and a peaceful change of power. There is no Muslim campaign to take over the world, just end the kleptocracy of the Mubaraks and their copycats in the other nations. Bin Laden and the jihadis have had nothing to say about these events because they prove how utterly irrelevant bin Laden had become.
My hope now is that the world can get back to normal. Perhaps we can stand down somewhat from our obsession with security and retreat from the deforming effect it has had on domestic and foreign policy. Bin Laden cost the US three trillion dollars in spending if we count the wars and other effects of his attacks.
Perhaps Muslim-Americans will no longer be treated with suspicion, even if one of the second-tier Republican candidates has promised not to hire Muslims if he became President. Perhaps America can act in its long-term interests with regards to the Palestinians and Israelis, and that interest is clearly to bring an end to the occupation. And perhaps Muslims can confront and fully defeat the forces of backwardness and extremism that still hold sway in many parts of the Muslim world, without being accused of being supporters of an American attempt to undermine our religion. Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
