The End of Al-Qaeda

[StarfarerBill]

Shadi Hamid, Deputy Director, Brookings Doha Center

Al-Qaeda is spent as an ideological force in the Arab and Muslim world, so we might as well come out and say it, and, hopefully, act like it too. It's not so much that al-Qaeda is irrelevant - it isn't - but, rather, that it is, and has increasingly become, beside the point. Having lived in Jordan in 2008 and now in Doha, it's really quite remarkable the extent to which al-Qaeda doesn't figure into Arab conversations about the future of the Arab world. Except it's not remarkable.

Al-Qaeda never intended to win the hearts and minds of Muslims and become what might be called a membership organization. In fact, it preferred less, rather than more, active supporters. There have generally been two predominant models of Islamist activism - one of bottom-up society and institution-building, exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood, and another that focuses on top-down seizure of power, through a mobilized, ideologically-committed vanguard. Al-Qaeda and its offshoots have always been of the latter category. Its model is simple - to use small numbers for big effect, and, in this, there is little doubt they succeeded, at least for a time.

How does a small, relatively weak organization strive for big effect, particularly when facing the world's superpower? It draws the stronger power in, provoking it, and, more importantly, provoking it to respond in ways it would otherwise not. This was the point of September 11. By making al-Qaeda into the pinnacle of evil - by insisting that it threatened our very existence as a nation - we unwittingly helped make al-Qaeda into what it wished to become.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shadi-hamid/the-end-of-al-qaeda_b_412936.html