Well, Al Qaeda seems to be losing badly, regardless of who gets the credit. Two important articles have appeared in recent days that establish that conclusion. One is in The New Republic, the other in The New Yorker. Both argue that Osama bin Laden has lost the Islamic world, and even the most militant parts of that world.
The most commonly stated reason for this is that Al Qaeda has been much better at killing Muslims than at anything else. The New Republic article opens with the case of one Noman Benotman, a leader of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
This past November, Benotman went public with his own criticism of Al Qaeda in an open letter to Zawahiri, absorbed and well-received, he says, by the jihadist leaders in Tripoli. In the letter, Benotman recalled his Kandahar warnings and called on Al Qaeda to end all operations in Arab countries and in the West. The citizens of Western countries were blameless and should not be the target of terrorist attacks, argued Benotman, his refined English accent, smart suit, trimmed beard, and easygoing demeanor making it hard to imagine that he was once on the front lines in Afghanistan.
Although Benotman's public rebuke of Al Qaeda went unnoticed in the United States, it received wide attention in the Arabic press. In repudiating Al Qaeda, Benotman was adding his voice to a rising tide of anger in the Islamic world toward Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose victims since September 11 have mostly been fellow Muslims. Significantly, he was also joining a larger group of religious scholars, former fighters, and militants who had once had great influence over Al Qaeda's leaders, and who--alarmed by the targeting of civilians in the West, the senseless killings in Muslim countries, and Al Qaeda's barbaric tactics in Iraq--have turned against the organization, many just in the past year.
The New Yorker article begins with "Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, he was the former leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Al Jihad, and known to those in the underground mainly as Dr. Fadl."
Twenty years ago, he wrote two of the most important books in modern Islamist discourse; Al Qaeda used them to indoctrinate recruits and justify killing. Now Fadl was announcing a new book, rejecting Al Qaeda’s violence. “We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that,” Fadl wrote in his fax, which was sent from Tora Prison, in Egypt.
Well that looks like progress. Imam met Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, when they were both teenagers. Now they are denouncing one another over the internet. Apparently, the Jihadists are splitting apart faster than Democrats.
Of course a second and perhaps more effective reason that Al Qaeda is losing ground among militant Muslims is that losing on the ground in Iraq. While they were busy alienating the Iraqi people, they were also curling up like plastic wrap on hot charcoal under the pressure of the American surge. That military defeat has opened a space in which rethinking among Islamic militants is possible. Let us hope that the space remains open, and the rethinking continues.
Recent Comments