Osama Bin Laden: man of love?
Sep 10th, 2008 by MESH
From Raymond Ibrahim
In many ways, Michael Scheuer is the paradigmatic case of an otherwise knowledgeable and experienced Western adult who takes Al Qaeda’s word at face value. According to his book, Imperial Hubris, his credentials and thus authority to speak about Al Qaeda and its goals are impressive: “For the past seventeen years, my career has focused exclusively on terrorism, Islamic insurgencies, militant Islam… I have earned my keep and am able to speak with some authority and confidence about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, [and] the dangers they pose and symbolize for the Unites States…”
The remainder of his book makes several fine points, articulating well—arguably even better than bin Laden—the grievances that Al Qaeda and the Muslim world have vis-à-vis specific U.S. policies. However, the book’s fundamental thesis is bin Laden’s own: Al Qaeda’s terrorism is simply a reaction to U.S. foreign policy. Writes Scheuer emphatically: “Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.”
He then proceeds to quote and accept, rather naively, several of bin Laden’s messages to the West, such as: “Therefore, I am telling you [Americans], with Allah as my witness, whether America escalates or de-escalates the conflict, we will reply to it in kind….” Bin Laden, of course, often begins every message directed at the West by saying “reciprocal treatment is part of justice”—i.e., “leave us alone, we leave you alone.”
Scheuer takes it one step further by concluding that Al Qaeda’s war revolves around “love”:
Bin Laden and most militant Islamists, therefore, can be said to be motivated by their love for Allah and their hatred for a few, specific, U.S. policies and actions they believe are damaging—and threatening to destroy—the things they love. Theirs is a war against a specific target, and for specific, limited purposes. While they will use whatever weapon comes to hand—including weapons of mass destruction—their goal is not to wipe out our secular democracy, but to deter us by military means from attacking the things they love. Bin Laden et al are not eternal warriors.
Thereafter, bin Laden is likened to heroes like Robin Hood or (of all people) Saint Francis of Assisi—a friar known for his benevolence towards animals. Surprisingly, Scheuer overlooks the theological underpinnings—offensive jihad, enforcement of “dhimmitude,” and enmity for non-Muslims—that dominate Al Qaeda’s worldview (and which are delineated over and over in The Al Qaeda Reader). These hostile doctrines, innate to Al-Qaeda’s worldview, clearly demonstrate that, contrary to Scheuer’s assessment, Al Qaeda and their kind do—indeed must—hate the United States for more than a “few, specific policies,” and that their war transcends “specific, limited purposes,” and thus that they are “eternal warriors.”
Here is bin Laden himself explaining the “true” nature of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, such as Americans, AKA, “infidels”:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: “We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah alone” [Qur’an 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable [in which case, bin Laden later clarifies, they should dissemble (taqiyya) before the infidels by, say, insisting the conflict is about “foreign policy,” nothing more]. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy!… Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion.
Note that, contrary to Scheuer’s assurances, at no time does bin Laden indicate that U.S. foreign policy is behind such animus; it is entirely a theological argument—transcending time, space, and circumstance. In his attack against “moderate” Muslims, bin Laden rhetorically asks and answers the pivotal question:
Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya [tribute], through physical though not spiritual submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.
How do these quotes accord with Scheuer’s statement that “None of the reasons [for Al Qaeda’s antipathy] have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy”? (My emphases.)
Nor is this worldview “peculiar” to bin Laden. Here’s his “second,” Ayman Zawahiri:
Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of Jihad, while the struggle between Truth and Falsehood transcends time.
That Al Qaeda’s messages to the West are being understood uncritically and taken at face value by the public is one thing; that a former CIA veteran whose expertise revolves around Islam buys into this calculated sophistry is quite another. Since, as Muhammad said, “war is deceit,” Scheuer and other analysts of like mind would do well to consider that perhaps when Al Qaeda sends a communiqué to the West, it is not necessarily sincere but meant solely to elicit a particular response; such as, that Al Qaeda’s war is predicated on a “few, specific, U.S. policies and actions.” This is tailor-made to accord with the West’s preconceived notions of “justice,” “equality,” “poverty causes violence,“ and especially “guilt,” and is intended to demoralize Americans from, for instance, supporting “the war on terror” which obviously directly affects Al Qaeda.
Here’s Osama, one more time, relying on an anecdote from Muslim history indicating what all non-Muslims can expect—even after they make concessions to Islam:
When the king of the Copts of Egypt tried improving relations with the Prophet by dignifying his messenger and sending him back on a beast of burden laden with clothing, and a slave-girl, did such niceties prevent the Companions from raiding the Coptic realms, forcefully placing them under Islamic rule?
The answer is no. As both Islamic theology commands and history attests, “concessions” or “niceties” are never enough: submission to Islam is the price for peace. Mr. Scheuer can be certain, then, that no matter how many political concessions the United States makes to the Islamic world, so-called “Salafists” like bin Laden—that is, Muslims who follow the letter of the law (sharia)—will continue the jihad “till all chaos ceases and religion is all for Allah” (Qur’an 8:38). Instead of thinking of them as Robin Hoods and Francis of Assisis, or simply idealistic, wayward children, it’s best to start seeing them as they see themselves: mujahidin—warriors of Allah out to make Islam supreme, as there have been for some 1,400 years.
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3 Responses to “Osama Bin Laden: man of love?”
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Being criticized and patronized by Raymond Ibrahim is high praise indeed.
Mr. Ibrahim’s Al Qaeda Reader is an excellent example of what passes for solid analysis and intellectual honesty among Neo-conservatives. These men and women are quite willing to see America fight an enemy that does not exist—that is, one they hates Americans and their liberty, not what their leaders do—until it is defeated by an Al Qaeda-led Islamist movement which is held together only by the Muslim world’s nearly universal perception that U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam and its followers.
In this highly selective collection, Mr. Ibrahim picks and chooses from the enormous corpus of writings, statements, and interviews by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to produce a slim volume which he claims will once and for all prove that Al Qaeda and its allies are bent on imposing a worldwide Caliphate to be governed by what the Necons are pleased to call Islamo-fascism. While the Caliphate is certainly a goal of bin Laden and other Islamists—because God has said the world will eventually be all Islamic—the Islamists know that it is as unlikely to appear in their or their grandsons’ lifetimes as Christians know that a uniform world of turning-of-the-cheek or loving-thy-neighbor is at best light years over the horizon. And though it must be agreed by all that the world is rife with Islamo-fascists, they all happen to be on the side of the United States, governing and terrorizing the Muslim populations of such states as Egypt, Algeria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Muslim states.
The problems with Mr. Ibrahim’s work are twofold. First, the book deliberately misleads an America public that is already lied to about the nature and goals of Al Qaedaism by the leaders of both parties. The small selection of writings included in The Al Qaeda Reader compounds the damage done by those lies. The volume’s contents are intended to reinforce the absurd, self-defeating idea that the United States and the West are confronted by 1.4 billion Muslim automatons eager to enforce fascist rule not only on Christians, Jews, and others, but also to lock it firmly on themselves.
Second, Mr. Ibrahim is obviously a very talented linguist, researcher, and political scientist. The endnotes to The Al Qaeda Reader offer readers an important, concise, and insightful discussion of many Islamic issues and points of doctrine.
It is, in my opinion, a shame that Mr. Ibrahim has used his obvious talents to be the cat’s paw of his former professor, Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar who was once a well-respected historian, but is now the Necons’ fantasist-in-chief in charge of misleading his fellow citizens.
Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University.
This statement, made by Mr. Scheuer, is incorrect.
Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and his successors attempted to establish the caliphate in Iraq, and even went to the lengths of appointing a candidate caliph.
The wealth of literature emanating from the jihadists in Iraq should not be de-prioritized over the pronouncements of Bin Laden/Zawahiri. The jihad in Iraq has stolen the limelight from the Afghan front for many years now, and its fading star nowadays is directly tied to battlefield and ideological losses being suffered by the jihadists.
I welcome Mr. Scheuer to review my paper, “The Caliphate Attempted” (here) to judge for himself if I, a self-styled neocon, can pass his standards for “solid analysis and intellectual honesty.”
Nibras Kazimi is a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute.
It is not my custom to engage in back-and-forth feuds and diatribes, but I bear no ill will towards Mr. Scheuer and believe his response to be sincere. So I write again.
For the record, our main quarrel revolves around the nature of men like bin Laden: are they motivated simply by grievances against U.S. foreign policy, or is it something more, something more abstract—something, dare I say it, more existential, that motivates them? In my original article, I quoted a number of statements made by Al Qaeda that unequivocally demonstrate the latter point—that, all grievances aside, certain theological doctrines held by Al Qaeda oblige it to see the United States as an enemy for nothing less than its religious freedom. This is a point Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri—not to mention the thousands of nameless jihadists—have made on numerous occasions.
Conversely, Mr. Scheuer seems to think their animus is wholly predicated on U.S. foreign policy—a point I have never discounted.
If so, why do I rarely spend time discussing Islamists’ grievances against the West, and instead focus on their theological arguments? Is it because, as Mr. Scheuer argues, I am a “neo-con” (whatever that is) and am trying to cover up or at least minimize their complaints in order to further some sort of political agenda? Not at all; I am an apolitical man—despite Aristotle’s contentions.
Still, if I do not dwell on their grievances, I have also never discounted them as false—except on those occasions when Al Qaeda fumes against the United States because of its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol (I explicitly stated this in my book, page 284). The ultimate, reason, however, that disinclines me from factoring the Islamists’ grievances is the fact that, as they plainly declare over and over—when addressing Muslims, that is—political grievances or not, we, the infidels, are de facto enemies. It’s a matter of priority, then: being hated for temporal grievances is secondary to being hated for existential realities. When the latter issues are addressed, then, and only then, will I consider the veracity of the former.
At any rate, in his response to me, Mr. Scheuer continues to ignore Al Qaeda’s straightforward, hate-infidels-for-being-infidels quotes (which, incidentally, are what the debate is all about). Instead, he writes:
To be sure, I never once claimed that my book is a comprehensive compendium of Al Qaeda’s statements (see page 5). However, to state that The Al Qaeda Reader is “highly selective” and that I willfully selected “certain” documents and statements in order to “deliberately mislead an American public that is already lied to about the nature and goals of Al Qaedaism” is demonstrably false. If this were true, would I have included the material that makes up half the book—the “Propaganda” section, which is basically dedicated to making the sort of anti-American policy arguments Mr. Scheuer has been making, sometimes even more skillfully?
Obviously, if I wanted to make Muslims appear as wild jihadists with no grievances, I would have totally excluded such communiqués from my book. In the interest of objectivity, however, and to make the book as holistic as possible, I did include these arguments. More importantly, by including both sets of writings—theological treatises written for Muslim eyes only, and propagandistic speeches for infidel ears, either way, both their words, not my conjectures—the careful reader will see stark contradictions; namely, that no matter what political concessions the West makes to Islam, nothing short of the former’s submission to the latter can ever lead to peace. (See here for more on this issue.)
The only way my book could fairly be accused of being selective, biased, or whatever, is if there exist Al Qaeda writings out there that clearly repudiate the Islamic concepts (that they otherwise support) of offensive jihad, the doctrine of loyalty and enmity, the need for a caliphate and sharia, etc. In other words, nothing short of Al Qaeda writings, directed to Muslims and insisting that the conflict has absolutely nothing to do with Islamic directives to place the world under Islamic authority, can ever demonstrate that my book is “selective.”
Does Mr. Scheuer know of such documents?
Odd, too, that immediately after making his above statement—that I insist “that al-Qaeda and its allies are bent on imposing a worldwide Caliphate”—Mr. Scheuer immediately goes on to agree by saying “the Caliphate is certainly a goal of bin Laden and other Islamists.”
If the Islamists are indeed motivated by the creation of a caliphate, and one of the caliphate’s primary functions is to wage jihads against the non-Islamic world, and Mr. Scheuer himself affirms this, what exactly is the logic of making political concessions—even if they are warranted? If you know for a fact that your weaker neighbor has complaints against you, but at the same time, hates you because you do not follow his religion, and, the day he grows sufficiently strong enough, he will undoubtedly attack you because of this theological point, why would you make any concessions to him now, when he is weak—especially considering that these concessions will only empower him that much quicker?
These are the questions Mr. Scheuer needs respond to. His response so far seems to be that, though Islamists are feverishly seeking to resurrect the caliphate, they also “know that it is as unlikely to appear in their or their grandsons’ lifetimes.”
Indeed, this is apparently Mr. Scheuer’s response to all the above, which he even makes clear in his book Imperial Hubris. After acknowledging the concept of offensive jihad to subjugate the world, he wrote, “At this point in history, we need worry little about the threat of an offensive and expansionist jihad meant to conquer new lands for Islam and convert new peoples to the faith” (page 7).
This is where we differ. I do not claim to know when Islamists will be capable of creating a caliphate and wage offensive/expansionist jihads. But I do not think we should passively wait around, or worse, make the sorts of political concessions Mr. Scheuer advocates—abandon support for Israel and other “friends” of America (even if they are autocratic), make land concessions, grant mullahs nuclear power, etc.—all things which would obviously only speed up the creation of a caliphate.
In fact, Mr. Scheuer seems to acknowledge that the U.S. will always be, at least theoretically, an enemy for nothing short of its religious freedom. There we agree. However, he doesn’t seem to think this warrants any attention, since, “at this point in history, we need worry little about the threat of an offensive and expansionist jihad.”
If ever any statement was deserving of the epithet “hubris,” surely this is it.
Raymond Ibrahim is a member of MESH.