From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri Jan 18 2002 - 00:44:42 MST
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Osamas Library
Lisbeth Lindeborg, Dagens Nyheter (liberal), Stockholm, Sweden, Oct. 25, 2001
In a TV interview this week, we could see Osama bin Laden in front of his
bookshelves. Maalim fi al-tariq (Milestones) is probably among the titles. This
best seller by Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of Islamic fundamentalism, is
said to have been published in close to 2,000 editions.
What Sayyid Qutb has to say makes Samuel P. Huntingtons controversial The
Clash of Civilizations appear relatively tame. After the complete breakdown of
democracy, Western civilization has nothing else to give humanity....The
dominance of Western man has reached its end. The time has come for Islam to
take the lead, writes Qutb.
Most of Qutbs books can no longer be ordered at bookstores. Just recently,
they were banned by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But millions of pirate
copies are being distributed. In Germany, copies are available from Islamic
religious associations. The common theme in Qutbs writings is his prognosis
that the Western, secularized world, which is deeply inferior to Islam, must be
replaced by an Islamic world order.
Qutb made this assessment upon his return to Egypt after completing his
academic education in the United States in 1950. But for former Egyptian
President Gamal Nasser, such trains of thought were all too subversive, and in
1966 he had Qutb executed.
This is explained by Bassam Tibi, a professor of political science at Gttingen,
Germany, and at Harvard. Tibi is one of the worlds leading authorities on
Islamic fundamentalism. As a Muslim born and raised in Syria, and as a student
of Max Horkheimer at Frankfurt on the Main, he had the early advantage of
living and working in two civilizations. In a large number of books, he analyzes
the development of Islamic fundamentalism in relationship to other movements
within the Muslim world. He also points to the political implications this
development brings with it for the worlds 55 Islamic nations, for Europe with
its 23 million Muslim immigrants, and for global development. In book after
book, Tibi repeatedly stresses the importance of distinguishing between Islam
and Islamic fundamentalism or Islamism. The latter is a new phenomenon with
ideological roots in Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928.
The humiliation of the Six-Day War in 1967 [against Israel] gave rise to a
repoliticization of Islam with revolt against the West as the leading train of
thought. But according to the Islamists, the West isnt only found in the West.
Since a considerable portion of the Muslim world adopted elements of
modernity, Islamists are directing their fight equally as much against the
Westernization of their own civilizationa type of Muslim civil war. This war
against their fellow believersalbeit apostateis being waged with terror,
especially in Algeria, where approximately 100,000 people have been murdered.
The explicit goal is to spread Islamism across the entire Muslim world.
According to Tibi, after the election victory of the fundamentalists in Algeria in
1991, a strategy was drawn up for the complete Islamization of the
Mediterranean region, complete with maps.
Yet, even if most of modernity is rejected as ungodly, an exception is made for
technology and science, such as weapons technology. Our goal is to learn how
to handle modern weapons, how to produce and develop them further, so that
we can conquer our enemies, proclaims the Egyptian Islamist Hasan al-
Sharqawi in another best seller al-Muslimun ulama wa-hukama (Muslims and
Scientists) from 1987.
In his books and interviews, Tibi goes straight to the heart of the matter: The
goal of the Islamic fundamentalists is to abolish the Western, secular world
order and replace it with a new Islamist divine order....The goal of the Islamists
is a new imperial, absolutist Islamic world power.
One of the Muslim worlds most widely read social theorists, Tibi points out, is
Pakistani Abu al Ala al-Maududi (1903-79), a follower of Sayyid Qutb. One of
the central themes for al-Maududi is his plea for Hakimiyyat Allah, in other
words, the supremacy of Godin contrast to democracy. But democracy, a
dreadful system, according to al-Maududi, is incompatible with Islam. That
people should govern themselves instead of God and his representatives is a
heretical idea. Democracy is therefore a symptom of kufr (lack of faith), writes
al-Maududi in his best seller al-islam wa al-madaniyya al-haditha (Islam and
Modern Civilization).
The same trains of thought are presented by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a sheik from
Egypt, who is considered to be Islams foremost contemporary ideologue. In
three comprehensive volumes, Hatmiyyat al-hallal-Islami, al-Quaradawi
presents an Islamic solution in contrast to imported solutions. In addition to
abolishing democracy, he also contends that the rise of nation-states has
contributed to the decline of Islam. Instead, a return should be made to the
Islamic community, the umma.
Since they seldom find support for their ideology in the Quran, the Islamists
have created new interpretations of well-known and accepted terms. Besides
new interpretations of jihad, or holy war, Tibi points to the term imam,
which in addition to its usual meaning of a priest for a mosque congregation,
also refers to a spiritual and worldly leader with the task of holding the worlds
Muslims together.
The Islamists, explains Tibi, have now expanded the term imam. For them an
imam is a leader who has gone underground, such as Bin Laden. By calling him
imam, the fundamentalists implicitly grant him the highest status within the
Islamic public.
A common theme for Islamists is their desire to close off their world from the
Western world. This is behind the demand of Bin Laden and other prominent
figures to exclude non-Muslims from the Muslim world. The same self-chosen
ghettoization can be found among Islamists in the Muslim-European diaspora, a
deeply disturbing trend, observes Tibi.
Under the cover of religious congregations, the Islamists are invisible to the
outside world. In this way active Islamists are abusing the right to asylum and
religious freedom in Europe for their own interests. The logistical center of
militant fundamentalists is not in the Middle East or Central Asia, but in Western
Europe, explains Tibi.
For example, German security police were able to stop an Islamist terrorist
group in Frankfurt on the Main from blowing up a Christmas market in
Strasbourg in December 2000. In 1998, another group led by Metin Kaplan,
the Caliph from Cologne, planned a terrorist attack in Ankara during the 75th
anniversary of the Turkish republic. If Turkish security police had not suspected
mischief, the Caliphwho met with Bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1997could
have turned the celebrations into a bloodbath. Kaplan is currently sitting in
prison, but the group, with approximately 8,000 members, is still active.
Even larger than the Kaplan group is Milli Grrs, with 30,000 members. Tibi
estimates the number of fundamentalists at roughly 100,000 in Germany alone,
in a Muslim population of 3.5 million.
But how many of these people are terrorists, so-called sleepers, no one
knows. They hide themselves in the above-named organizations, in certain
mosque congregations, and in charitable organizations. Despite the fact that the
German Office of Constitutional Protection warned of these activities for many
years, politicians are only now reacting. After Germany, Tibi claims that
Sweden, Holland, and Belgium have the most sleepers in Europe.
How widespread is Islamic militancy? According to Tibi, a distinction must be
made between worldview fundamentalists, who may embrace the hope for
Islams future supremacy, while rejecting terrorand militant activists or
terrorists. In Pakistan for example, Tibi estimates the number of fundamentalists
at half the population, but the percentage of those ready to resort to violence is
roughly 3-5 percent.
Tibi himself commutes between West and East as a sort of messenger of peace
and is among a handful of prominent Muslim intellectuals who are demanding
the separation of religion and politics. He views the events in September as a
considerable setback. Today, I must admit that the fundamentalists warup
until now a war of valueshas taken on a military dimension that has
manifested itself in the jihad-soldiers terrorism.
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