When bin Laden enters the modern age
1 / 2 / 2010
Abdullah Iskandar
Osama bin Laden has added a new mission for his supporters around the world. Indeed, in addition to “continuing to fight the oppressors in Iraq and Afghanistan, to uphold righteousness, abolish falsehood and stand up for Muslims, especially in Palestine and in defense of the oppressed and the disaster-stricken in Asia, Africa and South America”, bin Laden calls for combating global warming and resolving the global financial crisis, as he announced in an audio recording two days ago.
Bin Laden’s call to “carry on jihad” falls at the core of his traditional ideological and political discourse and contains nothing new. But announcing his concern with the environment and the economy indicates that the man seeks to show that he has discovered the problems of the modern age, and is not just focused on restoring a bygone golden age, i.e. that he has come to understand “globalization and its tragic implications”, as he said.
Having entered this new level of thinking, the missions he calls for, in order to resolve the problems of the modern age, are no longer restricted to “mujahideen” alone, but rather should engage “all the people of earth”. Indeed, he addressed the latter, saying: “it would not be fair and just, nor would it be wise and reasonable, for the burden to be left to the mujahideen alone in the issue of climate change, the harm of which affects the whole world”.
Bin Laden thereby places himself in a position of global leadership to defend against the problems of the modern age, especially as he is addressing “all the people of the earth” and as the battlefield he is suggesting stretches across the globe.
This means that for bin Laden to show awareness of some of the problems of the modern age – in this case the environment – is the way for him to lead a new global front, added to the one which he launched at the end of last century against the Western World, which has come to be known by the name of “al-Qaeda”. So does he now feel that this organization’s traditional slogans have begun to erode and no longer attract “mujahideen” like they did in the past? Or has the international campaign against him come to besiege him, or to thwart some of his plans?
Assuming that this “modern awareness” of bin Laden’s is real, and that the man is preoccupied with the fate of the earth and the well-being of its inhabitants, then to what extent does such awareness entail reexamining the entirety of his former strategy of “constant jihad and fighting”, and everything it involves in terms of terrorism that reaches the very people whose well-being he seeks? And to what extent does such awareness entail understanding the complexities of the modern world and the way they are intertwined?
Bin Laden shows, as it becomes clear from his latest audio message, that the awareness he displays is simplistic to the greatest extent. Indeed, he restricts the reason to the owners of large corporations, who “are the real culprits”, although they receive support from the US Administration. This would mean that the source of the problem is only the United States and the Western World, and does not concern the developing countries that are producing the largest amount of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in Asia and Latin America.
The solutions which bin Laden suggests are no less naïve than restricting the problem of climate change to corporations, as he deems it sufficient to boycott Western products, which would put these corporations out of business and thus decrease the emission of greenhouse gases.
Bin Laden also calls for backing such boycott by abandoning the use of the US dollar, for which he predicts a massive collapse that would bring with it the collapse of the United States, this by forcibly eliminating all economic and financial laws as well as international engagements.
Bin Laden reached the peak of his openness to the modern world by referring to American thinker Noam Chomsky, known for his critical views on the exercise of power in the United States and in contemporary capitalism. It is as if the leader of al-Qaeda wants to say that he has not entered the modern age merely through the fields of ecology and economics, but also through that of culture. Indeed, he is well-versed on contemporary cultural theories as well, and he supports some of them, as he does Chomsky in comparing U.S. policies to those of the Mafia. Yet he does not show that such erudition on modern culture has left an impact on his methods, thought and politics, or else he would have divided the world into more than two groups.
*Published in the London-based AL-HAYAT on Jan. 31, 2010.
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