The Hindu, 25 September 2001

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Avoid Osama's trap

By Bernard Haykel

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/09/25/stories/05252523.htm

THE WAR America is engaged in after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania is a war for the hearts and minds of average Muslims around the world. Osama bin Laden, if indeed he is the mastermind behind the attacks, has set a trap for the United States into which it must not fall.

By attacking the U.S. as part of a jehad, Osama bin Laden is in fact claiming to Muslims to represent their grievances and to represent real Islam. He is saying: Muslims, I share your grievances and unlike your corrupt and authoritarian governments I am the only one doing something about it. I have destroyed the symbols of American capitalism and stopped the heartbeat of world finance which the U.S. dominates.

The U.S., as well as moderate Muslims the world over, must unite and deny him this symbolic victory and must not accept to engage him in combat on these terms. As a professor of Islamic law I have researched the law of jehad and can state unequivocally that the combat Osama bin Laden has engaged us in cannot be labelled a jehad.

Furthermore, I believe a strong case can be made that he has acted contrary to the tenets of Islam and can be ostracised from the community of believing Muslims. Moderate Muslims will agree with me, certainly, as they are horrified by this attack and are desperate to have it disassociated from their religion. The West must provide moderate Muslims a way out of Osama bin Laden's trap.

According to Islamic law there are at least six reasons why Osama bin Laden's barbaric violence cannot fall under the rubric of jehad: 1) Individuals and organisations cannot declare a jehad, only states can; 2) One cannot kill innocent women and children when conducting a jehad; 3) One cannot kill Muslims in a jehad; 4) One cannot fight a jehad against a country in which Muslims can freely practice their religion and proselytise Islam; 5) Prominent Muslim jurists around the world have condemned these attacks and their condemnation forms a juristic consensus (ijma`) against Osama bin Laden's actions. This consensus renders his actions un-Islamic; 6) The welfare and interest of the Muslim community (maslaha) is being harmed by Osama bin Laden's actions and this equally makes them un-Islamic.

Americans have been baffled by reports that Muslims do not like the U.S., and even hate their country. Muslims do not hate America. As proof of this we have: seven million Muslims living in the U.S.; foreign Muslims, like many others around the world, clamor to obtain U.S. immigration visas; Muslims consume American products and emulate American fashions (intellectual, social and sartorial); Muslims place the bulk of their money in U.S. financial institutions; the list goes on and on.

What many Muslims undeniably resent about America, however, are American foreign policies towards Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine and a complicit policy of supporting corrupt and authoritarian regimes all over the Muslim world.

Yet, despite this resentment, only 4,000 Muslims actively seek to destroy America. These 4,000 Muslims are Osama bin Laden's foot soldiers. Let us remember that in 20 years of recruitment Osama bin Laden has only been able to recruit 4,000 men. This group, otherwise known as the Arab-Afghans, have theological and legal beliefs that are at odds with the remaining one billion-plus Muslims in the world today. (As a Muslim sect they are known in the Arab world as Salafis and their intellectual centres lie in Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf states and Jordan. The essence of the Salafi ideology and message is to interpret the sources of revelation literally (a.k.a. strict constructionism), to reject much of the medieval Muslim legacy of commentaries and opinions, and to reestablish a Utopian Islamic community. They are not Luddites, however.)

They are also at odds with those of their supporters, the Taliban, who are fanatical Hanafis of the Deoband school. Surely, 4,000 men do not represent the entirety of the Islamic peoples? We should hammer this point home continually. We should also deny Osama bin Laden the opportunity of feeding off Muslim resentment and his claim to represent them.

There are very practical steps the U.S. Government can take that will blow the wind out of Osama bin Laden's sails and sidestep the trap he has laid. I will begin with the most obvious. They are:

We should not send U.S. or Western troops and Special Forces into Afghanistan with the aim of arresting or killing Osama bin Laden. He has thought about this scenario and desires it. A military attack on him would provide a double victory: if he is killed he dies a martyr and symbol of resistance to Western domination; he also gets to kill a number of U.S. soldiers and tarnishes the image of America in the minds of ordinary Muslims.

Afghanistan is the most backward and probably the poorest country in the Islamic world; the image of the most powerful nation stomping on it will be a public relations disaster and will destabilise Arab regimes.

We must stop using inflammatory language, such as the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush's statement that this is a crusade. Such a word evokes nasty historical memories in the minds of Muslims, namely barbaric Europeans rampaging through the Eastern Mediterranean.

Crusade means essentially Christianity versus Islam and this is not the right message. The infelicity of this locution has presumably been brought to the attention of the President.

We must publish a list of all the Muslims and women and children who died in the World Trade Center attack, since Islamic law categorically prohibits this.

(Continued, Part 3...)