ADRIAN MORGAN: BIN LADEN DEAD, BUT HIS LEGACY OF TERROR WILL SURVIVE
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9398/pub_detail.asp
Osama bin Laden is Dead,But His Legacy of Terror Will Survive
ADRIAN MORGAN
Last night, at 11.35 EDT, President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. The full text of the speech (and video) can be seen on the White House website. The news brought elation, and crowds of people went to the White House and to Times Square to celebrate the death of the terrorist leader and ideologue. For the relatives and loved ones of those killed on 9/11, the demise of bin Laden can never bring full closure, but at least there is some sense of justice being done, although belatedly.
The presidential speech that was delivered contains the glib comments that everyone has come to expect of this administration. According to the speech, “we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam,” and “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.”
The fact that Islamic purists do maintain that they are war – either ideologically or in practice – with the precepts of democracy and the West is overlooked by such bland pronouncements. The president also overlooks the fact that throughout history Muslims, Christians, Hindus and others have waged religious war against those of the same faith, who practiced the same faith as them, albeit in a slightly different manner.
Why was Osama Never Denounced as an Apostate?
Despite what was implied in the president’s speech, Osama bin Laden was a Muslim leader. He may have led only a small faction within global Islam, but he was a leader, and he was a Muslim. Proof that Osama bin Laden was viewed by many Muslims as a real Muslim can be found on chat forums. It will be highly unlikely for anyone to be condemning Osama bin Laden as a “bad” Muslim. A Muslim who is misguided, a Muslim who is behaving badly perhaps, but he is a Muslim nonetheless.
It is an easy tactic for those in the West to declare that an ideologue such as bin Laden is not a “real” or “true” Muslim. For devout Muslims, there is a stumbling block that prevents them from saying that Osama bin Laden was not a Muslim – and that is enshrined in Islamic tradition. This is the concept of “takfir” – to declare another Muslim (usually a ruler) to be an apostate, or an enemy of Islam. In Sahih (authentic, verifiable) Hadiths, such as in Chapter 27 of Book One of the Kitab al-Iman (Book of Faith), Muslim wrote:
Book 1, Number 0116:
It is reported on the authority of Ibn ‘Umar that the Apostle (may peace and blessings be upon him) observed: When a man calls his brother an unbeliever, it returns (at least) to one of them.
And
Book 1, Number 0117:
It is reported on the authority of Ibn ‘Umar that the Messenger of Allah (may peace and blessings be upon him) said: Any person who called his brother: or unbeliever (has in fact done an act by which this unbelief) would return to one of them. If it were so, as he asserted (then the unbelief of man was confirmed but if it was not true), then it returned to him (to the man who labeled it on his brother Muslim).
Muslim (Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Nishapuri), who lived in the 9th century, was following oral traditions passed down from the time of Mohammed. The concept of takfir sprang up as soon as Mohammed died. During the 13 months in which his successor (Abu Bakr, the first Caliph) ruled the Ummah, many Arab tribes who had formed allegiances to Mohammed decided to abandon Islam. As a result, for most of his period in power, Abu Bakr engaged in the Ridda Wars, or Apostasy Wars, using the sword to bring these groups back into the Ummah.
The more serious applications of takfir were to lead to the great schism between Sunnis and Shia. The Kharijites – also called Khawarja – gained influence in North Africa shortly after Mohammed died (632 A.D.). These believed that leaders should be denounced as apostates and killed if they did not follow Islam to the letter. Even though Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of Mohammed, was originally supported by the Kharijites, he fell out of their favor in 657, and would be murdered by Kharijites in 661. His son Hussein was also murdered by Kharijites. This group continued in the region of Iraq until at least the 10th century.
The ethos of “takfir,” as implemented by the Kharijites would also take place in sub-sects of Shia Islam, such as the Ismaili, who gave rise to the Assassins, who were operating in Persia and Iran between the 11th and 13th century.
Muslims today refuse to denounce Osama bin Laden as a heretic or apostate from true Islam not because they support him, but because it is regarded as a great tabu to denounce other Muslims as being “outside the Ummah.” The first two centuries after Mohammed died saw great conflict (fitnah) between the Ummah, with even Mohammed’s youngest wife Aisha leading battle against other Muslims. It is rare today for a Muslim to denounce another Muslim: to do so could remove their ability to enter Paradise.
This refusal to condemn ideologues of terror has a sound basis, not dissimilar to the Christian notion of “Judge not lest ye be judged.” However, it is deeply problematic when leading Islamic scholars fail in their duty to condemn terrorist ideologues. To the rest of the world, it appears that they condone the terrorist. Even for the most devout Muslim scholar, the adherence to the solidarity of the Ummah is more important than the simple statement that a person who murders fellow Muslims cannot be a true Muslim.
This concept of takfir flies in the face of Western post-Enlightenment “reason” but it is one that needs to be understood – and challenged – if Islam and the West are to be able to work peaceably together and to share the same spaces on the same planet.
Bin Laden was a voice for many Muslims who live with a feeling of “victimhood,” and while there is no universal body (a Caliphate) that unites Islamic sects and peoples, there is no body with any “supreme authority” that exists who could lead the Ummah. Sadly, there appear to be no Islamic scholars morally forthright enough to risk the scorching of eternal Hellfire by denouncing terrorist ideologues such as bin Laden. For that reason alone, Islamic terrorism will continue, just as Islamic traditions maintain that those who try to reform Islam are de facto “apostates.”
When Muslim leaders do condemn terrorism, they should be publicly asked to go one step further, and condemn Muslim terrorists as “apostates” or “heretics” of Islam.
The Politics of Appeasing bin Laden’s Terrorism
Unverified reports from the BBC and other news sources were saying that even though the dead body of bin Laden was captured in the attack upon his compound in Abbottabad, his corpse was subsequently buried at sea. This action – if confirmed to be true – was carried out in accordance with Islamic traditions of burying bodies before sundown on the day subsequent to the time of death.
If this action has been performed, it raises numerous questions. It is bad enough that Muslims are duty-bound to respect Osama bin Laden as a (good or bad) Muslim, but for an American administration to similarly treat his body in accordance with Islamic traditions is bizarre and hypocritical.
It appears now that American officials are confirming that bin Laden was given a burial at sea at an undisclosed location. According to the LA Times,
senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said.
In Muslim’s Khitab al-Iman (Book One, Chapter 10) it is clearly stated that “polytheists” (unbelievers) who do not become Muslims before their death are doomed to become denizens of Hell and no power on earth can change that. Therefore, there should be no reason to treat the body of a mass-murdering terrorist such as bin Laden with deference to his “faith.” When the victims of 9/11 were murdered on his orders, bin Laden would have assumed that those who were not Muslims were being consigned, not only to an early and undeserved end, but to burn forever in Hell. Why should the mortal remains of someone who believed this be granted such respect by the administration of a nation that was excoriated by the horrors of bin Laden’s brand of Islamic terrorism?
On Thursday October 13, 2005, Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev (who had previously masterminded the attack upon Beslan that killed 176 children) organized an attack upon the city of Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria in the Russian Caucasus. More than 200 mujahideen tried to take over the city in a well-planned military strategy. More than two thirds of the terrorists were gunned down by Putin’s forces. Relatives demanded that the terrorists’ bodies be returned. Their requests were ignored for some weeks, and when some bodies were returned to relatives, they were in a state of extreme decomposition. This action was unpleasant, but appears to have been effective. No similar military offensive has been carried out since that time. Under Russian law, terrorists are buried in unmarked graves, and at the time Nikolei Shepel, deputy prosecutor general, had ruled that the law would be upheld.
A week after the Nalchik attack, Nihad Awad of CAIR was demanding an investigation into why American troops had incinerated the bodies of Taliban enemy combatants in Afghanistan. Stephen Dupont, an Australian reporter, had been embedded with U.S. troops. He had filmed the bodies of two Afghan terrorists being burned outside the southern village of Gonbaz, near Kandahar. The bodies were already putrefying and for hygiene reasons, they were set on fire. The soldiers had told Dupont that they were burning the bodies facing West (towards Mecca). Awad, showing more concern for the immortal souls of terrorists than for the safety of American troops, was outraged. He argued that the bodies should have been given an Islamic burial.
The photograph above was taken on August 13, 2000 in Afghanistan. It was displayed on the RAWA site. It shows the rotting corpses of people killed by the Taliban, who had ordered that anyone who tried to bury them would be killed. No niceties of being washed and wrapped in a white sheet. This is how the Taliban “respected” their Muslim opponents. At that time, bin Laden was already in Afghanistan, protected by and supporting the Taliban regime.
Osama bin Laden’s body has been given an Islamic burial. That should come as cold comfort for hundreds of relatives of victims of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 for whom there is not even a shard of a loved one’s bone to bury.
Problems of Logistics
As reported by AFP in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, the killing of bin Laden will be “a political boon to Obama.” This is true. However, there are some questions that need to be answered.
In the president’s speech last night, he stated:
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
If there were leads from nine months ago, it seems to have taken a long time for action to have been taken. During the gap between rumor and confirmation, there could have been ample time for bin Laden (if informed) to have slipped away.
The compound where Osama bin Laden had lived was in Abbottabad, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of Islamabad, the capital. The walls are said to be 18 feet high, and it was apparently constructed in 2005 specifically to provide refuge for bin Laden. There was no internet or phone connection inside the compound, which would explain why most of al Qaeda’s public announcements have been made by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s second-on-command.
A resident of the town had been Tweeting about the helicopter and gunfire that he could hear. When the news came that the target was bin Laden, 33-year old Sohaid Athar tweeted:
“Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There goes the neighborhood.”
What is surprising is that Abbottabad is a garrison town for the Pakistani military. Hiding in plain sight is a well-tried tactic, but for bin Laden to inhabit a large compound and avoid detection is remarkable.
There are also questions about whether or not the Pakistani authorities were aware of the operation to attack the compound. Apparently, Pakistan’s president, Ali Asif Zardari has said that he was not informed of the impending operation.
Relations between Pakistan and America are at a lopw point. The use of drones has drawn antagonism from Pakistani officials since the current government gained power in February 2008. It has been known for some years that members of Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI (inter-Service Intelligence) have been doing deals with the Taliban. It should never be forgotten that the Afghanistan Taliban, the firm allies of al Qaeda, were created directly by the Pakistan ISI. The current head of the military,
There are concerns that there may be revenge attacks now, but that should not change the resolve of the West. Already the Pakistan Taliban has announced that it will wreak revenge upon both America and upon Pakistan.
There is much more that could be written on this subject and I will return to this. I will also be co-authoring an article with FSM contributing editor Gary H. Johnson Jr. on the reaction to bin Laden’s death in the global media, particular within the Muslim world.
Bin Laden murdered untold people, and for those crimes he had to pay the price. Those who believe he is a “martyr for Islam” should console themselves that in their warped and amoral eschatological viewpoint, bin Laden will be enjoying 72 virgins as his “reward”.
There are many more questions that need to be answered, but for now, we should feel that for the victims of 9/11 there is some justice.
Bin Laden is dead, but his murderous legacy lives on. The extreme Salafist ideology that he clung to will continue around the globe. Bin Laden found his purpose as a Muhajideen in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation. The Mujahideen who flocked to Afghanistan at that time went back to their home territories – Indonesia, Bosnia, Europe, etc. Ideologues who studied with bin Laden are now training new generations of terrorist in North Africa (Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, or AQIM) and also in Yemen (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP) and in Somalia (Al-Shabaab.)
Until leading Islamic scholars can gain the moral courage to denounce as “un-Islamic” not only terrorism, but those individuals who carry out terrorism in the name of Islamism, the ideology of extremism will continue. It will continue nourish itself on the mythos of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it is to expected that bin Laden, like the murderous Che Guevara before him, will become an icon of rebellion, even among the disaffected left.
Celebrate today, for tomorrow the battle will continue…
Adrian Morgan
The Editor, Family Security Matters.
Comments are closed.
