A photo of a Lebanese girl holding an Al-Qaeda flag, not in a Burqa mind you, but dressed and made up like Kim Kardashian. A French reporter is baffled by the fact that French-North African Sunni militants in Syria don't even know how to perform Muslim prayers. Militant, closed-minded, claustrophobic, and in cases downright terrorist Islamist groups resorting to branding, advertising, live feeds, podcasts, and Twitter accounts to spread their cause.
These are all observations of a trend years in the making. While the US was fighting its war on terror by inexplicably invading and decomposing the secular Arab state of Iraq; Al-Qaeda, its mother the MB, and their offshoots were creating a new definition of Islamism that cut deeply into Muslim societies and broke down walls in recruitment never before breached.
We should all have seen it coming. The main culprits in the 9/11 attack did not come from very religious backgrounds; particularly the Lebanese and Egyptian members. This much is well known and understood. However, what should have been interesting but for some reason wasn't is that they were not themselves religious, or even observant at the time they carried out the terrorist attacks. Why would they kill themselves attacking innocents in a holy war if some of them not only came from secular backgrounds, but were also secular themselves?
Islamism since the late nineties has been going through a metamorphosis. In a way, it has been preparing itself to replace Pan-Arabism. Sunni Islamists are trying to reorient their goals and repaint them in pan-nationalist streaks. To do so, a new sense of ethnic and national identity was carefully implanted into the minds of a whole generation. This sense of identity draws on romanticized tales of the Islamic days of glory when everything between Morocco and Borneo was one country. It is, perhaps, irrelevant that this pan-Islamist state never actually existed, and that Islamic civil wars started as soon as the prophet died and never stopped. What is relevant is that the idea is attractive.
Slick televangelists croon about the dream of one Islamic state with a passport more respected than EU passports, stroking the egos of millions of frustrated youths with rejected visas. Beady eyed Salafist preachers tell of (nonexistent) days when Muslims were the masters of the Earth and had countless sexual conquests. Al-Qaeda produces high definition videos of its operations and state-like paraphernalia in areas of Syria it managed to occupy. And in Syria, as in Afghanistan before, you see people from allover the Muslim world pouring in and becoming one. But unlike Afghanistan, not everyone is bearded, not everyone even prays, and many have a Twitter account.
Bush and Obama have succeeded in decapitating Al-Qaeda. But what happened is that it morphed. And it also blurred the lines between it and native Islamists in the Arab world. Perhaps the US doesn't care, because whether consciously or subconsciously Al-Qaeda has diverted its efforts away from the West. The new enemy is now the Shiia. An easy and somehow weak target, and one that allows Al-Qaeda a lot of rapprochement with Arab regimes and societies, both supremely sectarian. It is in this centuries old sectarian war and particularly in the desert plains between Iraq and the Syrian highlands that the new not-necessarily-religious but oh-so-gruesome brand of Islamism is being synthesized. And it is in its re-contact with Saudi Wahabism, but also in its contact with its spiritual roots in Egyptian and Syrian MB that Al-Qaeda's metamorphosis and fusion is maturing.
Think of this new brand of Islamism as a form of NAZI philosophy. It is a doctrine of a supreme people who have been done a historic injustice and who should be allowed to fulfill their ultimate potential. This achievement must be reached through various forms of expansion/Anschluss and cleansing of religious minorities, particularly the Shiites who are "worse than Jews"! But that's where the similarities stop. Emergent Islamism has absolutely no form of achievement through which to claim legitimacy. It also (at least now) lacks a charismatic leader. In some ways, this emergent form of Islamism has anarchist trends.
That's why it will ultimately be rejected in the Arab world. In fact, the wave of rejection is building up and will reach Syria very soon. In fact, even though Sunni Islam is the predominant religion in the Arab world, the continuous and demonstrable failure of Islamists has inoculated a large portion of the Arab world against full penetration.
And that's where the West should be worried. Where this new brand has achieved near universal acceptance is among Western Muslims (who form a hefty minority in many countries). The West will not have to deal with the consequences for some time as the focus is now on the "Arab Spring". However, ultimately an entire generation of Muslim youth saturated with Qutbist ideology, not necessarily exhibiting any signs of being religious, well-versed in modern psych-ops, and with a highly blurred views towards terrorism, will blow up in everyone's faces.
The Obama plan to subdue terrorism through the "Arab Spring" will backfire badly.
These are all observations of a trend years in the making. While the US was fighting its war on terror by inexplicably invading and decomposing the secular Arab state of Iraq; Al-Qaeda, its mother the MB, and their offshoots were creating a new definition of Islamism that cut deeply into Muslim societies and broke down walls in recruitment never before breached.
We should all have seen it coming. The main culprits in the 9/11 attack did not come from very religious backgrounds; particularly the Lebanese and Egyptian members. This much is well known and understood. However, what should have been interesting but for some reason wasn't is that they were not themselves religious, or even observant at the time they carried out the terrorist attacks. Why would they kill themselves attacking innocents in a holy war if some of them not only came from secular backgrounds, but were also secular themselves?
Islamism since the late nineties has been going through a metamorphosis. In a way, it has been preparing itself to replace Pan-Arabism. Sunni Islamists are trying to reorient their goals and repaint them in pan-nationalist streaks. To do so, a new sense of ethnic and national identity was carefully implanted into the minds of a whole generation. This sense of identity draws on romanticized tales of the Islamic days of glory when everything between Morocco and Borneo was one country. It is, perhaps, irrelevant that this pan-Islamist state never actually existed, and that Islamic civil wars started as soon as the prophet died and never stopped. What is relevant is that the idea is attractive.
Slick televangelists croon about the dream of one Islamic state with a passport more respected than EU passports, stroking the egos of millions of frustrated youths with rejected visas. Beady eyed Salafist preachers tell of (nonexistent) days when Muslims were the masters of the Earth and had countless sexual conquests. Al-Qaeda produces high definition videos of its operations and state-like paraphernalia in areas of Syria it managed to occupy. And in Syria, as in Afghanistan before, you see people from allover the Muslim world pouring in and becoming one. But unlike Afghanistan, not everyone is bearded, not everyone even prays, and many have a Twitter account.
Bush and Obama have succeeded in decapitating Al-Qaeda. But what happened is that it morphed. And it also blurred the lines between it and native Islamists in the Arab world. Perhaps the US doesn't care, because whether consciously or subconsciously Al-Qaeda has diverted its efforts away from the West. The new enemy is now the Shiia. An easy and somehow weak target, and one that allows Al-Qaeda a lot of rapprochement with Arab regimes and societies, both supremely sectarian. It is in this centuries old sectarian war and particularly in the desert plains between Iraq and the Syrian highlands that the new not-necessarily-religious but oh-so-gruesome brand of Islamism is being synthesized. And it is in its re-contact with Saudi Wahabism, but also in its contact with its spiritual roots in Egyptian and Syrian MB that Al-Qaeda's metamorphosis and fusion is maturing.
Think of this new brand of Islamism as a form of NAZI philosophy. It is a doctrine of a supreme people who have been done a historic injustice and who should be allowed to fulfill their ultimate potential. This achievement must be reached through various forms of expansion/Anschluss and cleansing of religious minorities, particularly the Shiites who are "worse than Jews"! But that's where the similarities stop. Emergent Islamism has absolutely no form of achievement through which to claim legitimacy. It also (at least now) lacks a charismatic leader. In some ways, this emergent form of Islamism has anarchist trends.
That's why it will ultimately be rejected in the Arab world. In fact, the wave of rejection is building up and will reach Syria very soon. In fact, even though Sunni Islam is the predominant religion in the Arab world, the continuous and demonstrable failure of Islamists has inoculated a large portion of the Arab world against full penetration.
And that's where the West should be worried. Where this new brand has achieved near universal acceptance is among Western Muslims (who form a hefty minority in many countries). The West will not have to deal with the consequences for some time as the focus is now on the "Arab Spring". However, ultimately an entire generation of Muslim youth saturated with Qutbist ideology, not necessarily exhibiting any signs of being religious, well-versed in modern psych-ops, and with a highly blurred views towards terrorism, will blow up in everyone's faces.
The Obama plan to subdue terrorism through the "Arab Spring" will backfire badly.
