Al-Qaida: Wrong answers to real problems

[justinsb]

Al-Qaida: Wrong answers to real problems
By Soumayya Ghannoushi


Once again I watched the nauseous devastation and massacre, this time in the heart of my city, near the universities and libraries, where I have spent much of my adult life.

Madrid and Bali, Casablanca and Riyadh, I have come to predict al-Qaida's responsibility for a given criminal act through the following test. If I find myself at a loss for an answer to the questions: "Why the innocent?" and "For what purpose?", then, in all likelihood, the crime is of al-Qaida's doing.

The absurd, random mass carnage of young and old, male and female is its trademark. Residential buildings, tourist resorts, rush hour trains and crowded buses turn into grand spectacles of mass murder where no heed is paid to the victim's identity and the extent of his/her responsibility for the policies of a country defined as the enemy. The boundaries between the world of politics and that of organised crime are blurred, as political demands get wedded to criminal methods.
 
Al-Qaida, it must be said, is no pioneer in this field. For although it founds its ideology on religious references and speaks a language overwhelmed by religious symbols, al-Qaida falls largely within the modern tradition of revolutionary anarchists - from the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks down to latter-day Marxist guerrillas like the Baadr-Meinhoff Gang. 
 
much more at : http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/25D45C98-471B-4A36-8253-F2120BEA180F.htm

[BillZBubb]

1. Ghannoushi sounds like a wingnut.

The Jacobins were revolutionary anarchists???? Please. They were revolutionaries but not anarchists by any stretch. Same for the Bolsheviks.

And calling Al Qaida anarchists shows he doesn't have a clue about what they are after.

This guy is a moron.

[justinsb]

3. Had you actually clicked on the link

you'd know it was a woman and since she comes from a different culture and educational background she may have different interpretations of those terms. I think you missed the point of the article.

[K-W]

5. those arent valid interpretations in any culture

I dont know french history well, but bolshiviks and Jihadists are in no way shape or form anarchists.

[BillZBubb]

6. I didn't bother with the link, what you showed was enough.

I can't waste my time reading everything. Particularly, nothing with clueless comments about the French and Russian revolutions. That was enough for me.

[K-W]

9. The article turns into a rather unnotable support for international law nt

[NorCalDem]

4. I think he has a point

so his version of history doesn't agree with yours, but do you not agree with the basic argument that were both guilty parties here.

When Al-qaida resorts to terrorism like we do, they lose their moral high ground. Brutally killing people, especially innocents, is never the correct way to go about things. I think that's what he was trying to say.

[K-W]

8. Her version of history doesnt agree with history.

That is the problem. And the opinion at the end of the column is good, but not inspired. Yes certainly they shouldnt be killing civillians, and certainly the US should get out of the middle east, and Isreal should end the occupation, but the top of the article is just bad analysis made in obvious ignorance of the topics it addresses.

[NorCalDem]

2. Recommended!

Good read.

[K-W]

7. This article is Bullshit.

These arent random attacks, that is idiotic. And she has no idea what revolutionary anarchists are.

She's building an opinion off of a terrible understanding of the terrorists and a terrible understanding of history... and suprise suprise it comes out terrible.

She also has no idea what nihilists were/are.

She is playing the old propaganda argument that people attack for the sake of attacking, which is moronic.

Now towards the end of the article she makes some good points about violence discrediting and illegtimizing their movement, but her analysis is aweful.

[justinsb]

10. That doesn't seem like what she's doing to me

but read it anyway you want. Personally I don't give a crap what "revolutionary anarchists" are.

[K-W]

12. Of course it doesnt, you dont give a crap whether what she says is true.

If you did give a crap whether what she said was true, you could go find out that it isnt and that what it "seemed like to she was doing to you" was dead wrong.

Like I said, her opinion is a good one, but her analysis is blatently ignorant, and it isnt a matter of interpretation, she is proveably wrong.

[Jack Rabbit]

11. In spite of some flaws, an excellent read

The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush's hammer and Bin Laden's anvil, hostages to an extreme right wing American administration, aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups, lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding.

Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that they are working in unison, one providing the justifications the other desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.

No wonder, it didn't take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them. Their puritanical missionary belief in being God's instruments on earth and grand imperial ambitions could now be realised through shameless emotional blackmail and bogus moral claims.

The two share a shallow, myopic, dualistic conception of the world populated by 'us' and 'them' in Bush's language, 'believers' and 'non-believers' in Bin Laden's. Al-Zarqawi and his fellows then brandish the sword of excommunication (takfir) against the Muslim body itself in an endless orgy of maiming and mutilation.

[CJCRANE]

13. Good extract n/t