From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 04 Sep 2003 - 20:39:25 GMT
I post this simply because it is the clearest illustration of the Al
Quaedan memeplex, from the memebot's mouth, that I have recently
seen.
AL QAEDA'S AGENDA FOR IRAQ
By AMIR TAHERI
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/4879.htm
September 4, 2003 -- 'IT is not the American war machine that should
be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of
Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy." This is the
message of a new book, just published by al Qaeda in several Arab
countries.
The author of "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The
Fall of Baghdad" is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest
associates since the early '90s. A Saudi citizen also known by the nom
de guerre Abu Muhammad, he was killed in a gun battle with security
forces in Riyadh last June.
The book is published by The Centre for Islamic Research and Studies,
a company set up by bin Laden in 1995 with branches in New York and
London (now closed). Over the past eight years, it has published more
than 40 books by al Qaeda "thinkers and researchers" including
militants such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2.
Al-Ayyeri first made his name in the mid '90s as a commander of the
Farouq camp in eastern Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and the Taliban
trained thousands of "volunteers for martyrdom."
Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of "perpetual
war between belief and unbelief." Over the millennia, both have
appeared in different guises. As far as belief is concerned, the
absolutely final version is represented by Islam, which "annuls all other
religions and creeds." Thus, Muslims can have only one goal:
converting all humanity to Islam and "effacing the final traces of all
other religions, creeds and ideologies."
Unbelief (kufr) has come in numerous forms and shapes, but with a
single objective: to destroy faith in God. In the West, unbelief has
succeeded in making a majority of people forget God and worship the
world. Islam, however, is resisting the trend because Allah means to
give it final victory.
Al-Ayyeri then shows how various forms of unbelief attacked the world
of Islam in the past century or so, to be defeated in one way or another.
The first form of unbelief to attack was "modernism" (hidatha), which led
to the caliphate's destruction and the emergence in the lands of Islam of
states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than
religious faith.
The second was nationalism, which, imported from Europe, divided
Muslims into Arabs, Persians, Turks and others. Al-Ayyeri claims that
nationalism has now been crushed in almost all Muslim lands. He
claims that a true Muslim is not loyal to any particular nation-state.
The third form of unbelief is socialism, which includes communism.
That, too, has been defeated and eliminated from the Muslim world, Al-
Ayyeri asserts. He presents Ba'athism, the Iraqi ruling party's ideology
under Saddam Hussein, as the fourth form of unbelief to afflict Muslims,
especially Arabs. Ba'athism (also the official ideology of the Syrian
regime) offers Arabs a mixture of pan-Arabism and socialism as an
alternative to Islam. Al-Ayyeri says Muslims "should welcome the
destruction of Ba'athism in Iraq."
"The end of Ba'ath rule in Iraq is good for Islam and Muslims," he
writes. "Where the banner of Ba'ath has fallen, shall rise the banner of
Islam."
The author notes as "a paradox" the fact that all the various forms of
unbelief that threatened Islam were defeated with the help of the
Western powers, and more specifically the United States.
The "modernizing" movement in the Muslim world was ultimately
discredited when European imperial powers forced their domination on
Muslim lands, turning the Westernized elite into their "hired lackeys."
The nationalists were defeated and discredited in wars led against them
by various Western powers or, in the case of Nasserism in Egypt, by
Israel.
The West also gave a hand in defeating socialism and communism in
the Muslim world. The most dramatic example of this came when
America helped the Afghan mujaheeden destroy the Soviet-backed
communist regime in Kabul. And now the United States and its British
allies have destroyed Ba'athism in Iraq and may have fatally
undermined it in Syria as well.
What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a "clean battlefield" in which Islam faces a
new form of unbelief. This, he labels "secularist democracy." This threat
is "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined.
The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in
democracy's "seductive capacities."
This form of "unbelief" persuades the people that they are in charge of
their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape
policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the
"unalterable laws" promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and
codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims
love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established
in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead
to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant
to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.
He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in
Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not
succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic
government. "If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for
democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world," Al-Ayyeri
writes.
The al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already
affected by "the beginning of democratization" and thus in "mortal
danger" is Turkey.
"Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim
countries?" he asks. "Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad
and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?"
Al-Ayyeri says Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy,
just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of communism. The idea is
that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will "just run
away," as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the
Americans love this world and are concerned about nothing but their
own comfort, while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom
offers in paradise.
"In Iraq today, there are only two sides," Al-Ayyeri asserts. "Here we
have a clash of two visions of the world and the future of mankind. The
side prepared to accept more sacrifices will win."
Al-Ayyeri's analysis may sound naive; he also gets most of his facts
wrong. But he is right in reminding the world that what happens in Iraq
could affect other Arab countries - in fact, the whole of the Muslim
world.
===============================================================
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