Once again the world is said to be at war; not between the allied and axis powers, but with a fierce network of veritable killers. There is a boom in what seemed to have been subdued; terrorism. On December 25, America shook at another bout of attempted terror attack from a Nigerian, Yemen bred suicide Farouk Abdulmutallab. Time magazine wrote that the Detroit headed airbus survived not by any magic in intelligence, but by luck and the incompetence of the lad on whose shoulders this hard mission hang.
If the mission were to succeed and America was to react, President Barrack Obama would be organising or fighting pressure to send American troops to Yemen in another extension of the war on terror. He would be combing for more allies as well. If not, there would be stricter sanctions on Yemen, tough talk to Nigeria etcetera. The American President would be singing how the world is threatened and his readiness to do anything possible to avert catastrophe. But even with the failed plot, these things have been done, except a military attack on Yemen which is most unlikely. And of course the question has remained in circulation: Is America safe?
For so many years now, terror attacks are believed to be a product of Muslim rage. And in the words of Pope Benedict XVI “Islam has an intrinsic relationship with terrorism.â€
In 1990, American Islamic historian Bernard Lewis traced the burst of Muslim anger towards the West. In his article, The Roots of Muslim Rage, he called the conflict a “clash of civilisationâ€, launching that Muslims/Qur’an doctrines on women freedoms (regarding dress, education and polygamy) and democracy are threatened by the freer and highflying notions of the west: Where Muslim women are segregated/separated from men, the doctrines from west allow mutual engagement, mixing and crisscrossing; where Islam institutionalises polygamy, the west castigates it; where Islam preaches a marriage of religion and the state, the west signs a divorce agreement where the two work with little and often ignorable dependence on each other.
He concludes that Muslims feeling threatened by this whirlwind of attractive doctrines have chosen to find precedence and approval in Quran and the life of their prophet for kidnapping and assassination and mass murder as a way of guarding their religion.
In 2001, another American scholar, Fareed Zakaria wrote a Newsweek magazine lead story wondering why Muslims hate America. He said it was anger, not analysis. Fareed Zakaria was outspoken and quite confrontational, unlike Bernard Lewis, in castigating Islam. This hateful ditty put aside, his story is agreeable: Muslims are angry. But he can’t tell the story of the cause of this angry monologue turned into a craving for mass murder.
No year has presented a grimmer picture of the global insecurity as 2009. For the fifth year, in December, the world remembered the devastation Tsunami caused to thousands of people in Indonesia. In the same month, we made a year since we added another 1600 people that died under a systematic attack by Israel on Palestine. We wake up on breaking news from the suicide attacks that leave many dead on the streets of Kabul and Baghdad and Islamabad. Christmas was celebrated quite chillily and with raised heartbeats at airports all across Europe and America after a failed terror attack from a middleclass and well educated youth, who sought heaven in killing Americans. Why was this? Can it be explained as a clash of civilizations? Partly yes, but largely, it is anger.
How else can one explain the war in Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein from office and a disorganised country it has become that foreigners (Americans) are trying to organise? How else can one explain the double standards of the world’s single super power as regards Gaza where even vehicles carrying medical and food aid are held at the borders in a region where women and children suffered war crimes and are now seeping in tents on the streets?
It is true the men, who were behind 9/11, were Muslims, but it is also true these men were not fighting for Islam as Bernard Lewis seems to imply in his article. They were not creations of Islam or its cultures, but rather creations of CIA and the cold war. No doubt, they use Quran for their actions, but since no Muslim owns Islam, it is left for all to find guidance in it. But as well, all Muslims abhor the sight of disgracing their religion, or the sight of a fellow Muslim being denied freedom/justice with no justifiable cause. Speaking of mass murder as a creation of Islam makes an appeal to this wider, amorphous, and passionately followed civilisation, Islam. This is what Osama bin Laden was craving for, and the Americans helped him tie terrorism to Islam. It was a sad blunder.
In the earlier days of terrorism, its appeal reached a small but committed minority, which included, for most the directly hit, say in Palestine or Pakistan and Afghanistan that suffered the cold war. With the boost in education and research, expansion of journalism and improved flow of information, thousands are getting exposed to uncensored American unfairness. This has put the world’s largest superpower in a more precarious position. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in The Post American World, the hostility aroused by earlier US Presidents was polite chatter compared to that aroused by George Bush. He should have added, that Bush ruled against the same men with the same cast, but with a watchful digital and information vampire. The entrance of the young and black African Farouk Abdumutallab is a testimony of the free flow of information.
I will try to suggest what America can do to try guaranteeing its safety and that of air travel. It should start by keeping its money. America is broke right now as a world superpower. News has been dominated by the economic crisis in America that has left so many Americans unemployed, sick and whining. As a Ugandan, I have always found it strange when the media reports the existence of a “global†financial crisis and not the “American†financial crisis. Any Ugandan, for example, whose unemployment started from the economic crisis, must have been working for an American/Great Britain aided company or a multinational based in any of the chief allies on the war on terror. It could also be that s/he was running a business funded by remittances from a relative in the ally nations. America wasted money on war, and buying allies. As President Ronald Reagan’s speech writer Peggy Noonan pointed out while on CNN’s GPS, “America has engaged in two wars that are a lot expensiveâ€. This money has not been doing productive business and so America’s debt from China multiplied and plunged its economy into a ditch. I suggest there are cheaper ways of fighting terror.
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