Usama bin Laden, aka Emmanuel Goldstein has been officially “deaded” by the US mainstream media, followed swiftly by a confirmation from the American Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Hussein Obama.
Of course, Bin Laden could have died anytime in the last 10 years. We know he is not alive. We know this because it would be very inconvenient if he resurfaced alive after being declared dead by the US President. For those still wondering about Benazir Bhutto’s statement about him being murdered, well she clearly referred to him being alive both before and after that legendary video, and the person she was referring to was obviously Daniel Pearl, the journalist. That’s why nobody made a song and dance about it.
That we have not seen a single authentic video of him in around a decade means that he has become an irrelevance to everyone bar the infantile Americans who were celebrating last night. He just became a bogeyman. His life made no difference in the last ten years, except to serve as some kind of humiliation to those chasing him, in some kind of decade-long real-life running of the A-Team, and to some people who saw him as the only man standing up to American imperialism. His death will make little difference. There will always be a reaction to American imperialism. That is the way of the world. And there was no real Al-Qa’ida organisation either.
Any rag-tag bunch of terrorists, usually backed by Western agents in a sting-operation or a false-flag operation could go around calling themselves Al Qa’ida. To them, Bin Laden was an idea. The idea was simple – a figurehead of opposition to the West.
Now this put many Muslims in an awkward position. For a decade, our loyalty has been questioned. We have answered through our deeds and our actions, for the most part, quietly, and in my case, vocally on the old Suspect Paki blog. My angle was always that I had nothing to prove, that I resented having to prove myself, or defend myself. Again. After years of racism and going through the hatred of foreigners in the 70s and 80s, there was somewhat of a lull in the 90s. Then 9/11 happened and suddenly, Islamophobia became the acceptable face of bigotry.
So the question we Muslims were asked by President Bush was “are you on our side, or are you on the side of the terrorists?”. Easy question for those jingoistic, flag-waving, dumbstruck Americans to answer, who went on to spawn the hateful likes of Malkin, Geller, Coulter et al, but as most of the smart Americans (and that’s about half the country, even if Murderoch’s Fux News sometimes makes you think otherwise) – and the rest of us, especially Muslims, resented the false dichotomy.
We are neither on the side of the Muslim killers, the rapists of Muslim women, the dismember-junkies of murdered Afghan children, the permanent despoilers of lands through the use of depleted uranium, the holocausters of Fallujah in a hellish haze of white (like the angel of death) phosphorous, nor were we on the side of those who also kill civilians, but in smaller numbers and with less sophisticated weaponry. We were on the side of peace. And we didn’t appreciate lies being told to support wars whose only beneficiary was, is and will continue to be the Military Industrial Complex.
Muslims, as I am fond of telling friends, are not like the Borg. Although we feel the pain of others in the Ummah, the family of Muslims, we do not all think the same way. This should be no surprise. We should learn the lesson of early 20th century Europe and where such a mindset leads us. Muslims, like Jews, like Christians, like those with no faith, or any faith, are as varied as the rainbow in their thoughts and feelings. So when you read me, you should know that although there will be others in the Ummah who share my view, many won’t.
Usama Bin Laden (there is no ‘O’ when you transliterate Arabic), whatever he did right, whatever he did wrong, was a Muslim. When a Muslim dies, we say “inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji`oon”, which means “To God we belong and to God we return”. We don’t pass judgment on his eventual destination, it is only God who can do that, whatever the wishes of those crude jingoists on the Whitehouse lawn last night.
When we hear some people talk of justice, we wonder about the million your armies caused to die in Iraq, and that was after Albright said it was worth killing half a million Iraqi children through the brutal application of sanctions and a no-fly-zone. And that was after destroying the infrastructure of the once-proud and advanced civilisation of Iraq in Desert Storm, a pretext for establishing permanent bases in the Holy Land (near Mecca and Medina) and keeping the balance of power tipped in the favour of the West. We hear of your justice and wonder how many millions were internally displaced in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Somalia, in Afghanistan. How many children killed. How many drone strikes against families. How many bombed weddings. How many raped girls. How many burned boys. How many women and children raped by your sick-psycho-soldiers in Guantanamo that so upset Seymour Hersh and compelled that lying, upwards-chin-pointing President of yours to hide the facts in case your sick-psycho-soliders got some comeback. God forbid that any of this could enrage young men with time on their hands and a recession to face and nothing to do bar look at painful videos on YouTube or read harrowing accounts on blogs whilst wondering why the bankrupt, paid-off mainstream media could stay so disgustingly, cravenly silent.
I respect Bin Laden for two things. The man had more charisma than any American leader of recent times bar Clinton and Obama. In other words, compared to the Bushes and Reagan, Bin Laden seemed like a gentleman. I’m sorry if that offends you, but that’s just how he came across in his interview for Esquire magazine a few years ago – that’s not to say I agree with his views or his stance on attacking civilians, but to ignore his message and his appeal to a minority is to miss the wood for the trees. And I respect him for openly standing up to his family’s decision of allowing the Americans to settle in the Holy Land. If he was genuinely guilty of 9/11, then that was indeed terrible, but has America not committed a thousand 9/11s in return? Is that not enough blood? For every victim of 9/11, America’s blood lust has led to the creation of another 9/11, like some sick, exponential, asymptotic death wish. And what will that beget? Bin Laden becomes irrelevant in the face of so much blood, but indeed, the blood of Muslims has become cheap. Too cheap.
Nearly all Muslims, myself included, disagree strongly with the targeting of civilians, by Western Crusader forces (and yes, they are Crusades, Americans roll with crosses on their tanks and give Pashtun Bibles to Afghans, whilst screaming of the superiority of Christ in your gulags) and by so-called-terrorists, many of whom work at the behest of sell-outs and handlers, hell-bent on creating terror through the planting of a false-flag flower, pregnant with savage destruction.
To us Muslims, all terrorists are the same. Anybody taking civilian life is a terrorist. That makes America the biggest terrorist state the world has ever known. Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of terror. Deforesting and raping Vietnam was an act of terror. Sanctions on the whole Iraqi nation was an act of terror. Killing a million civilians and fomenting the first Sunni-Shi`a sectarian war in Iraq was an act of terror.Afghanistan, an act of terror. Pakistan, an act of terror.
And what has the last decade done to our values? We have presidents who think torture is OK. If that’s what it has done to our presidents, what do you think has happened to the people? It’s created leaders like Sarkozy who ban a minority dress item to pander to racists. Hitler would have been proud. It’s created leaders like Blair who casually drop “Evil Ideology” into a speech. And it has created David Cameron, who panders to the worst excesses of the EDL. That’s just our leaders.
So we put things into perspective. We agree with you, if Bin Laden had done the things you say he has done, we would have liked to have seen YOUR justice applied to him. That is, he should have been brought to a court of law and the evidence against him brought forth. Then he should have been tried by a jury. Any jury. Even though it would have been a sham, even though it would have been a Nuremberg, it would have been something.
Instead, we have an operation against a fancy home. No body. No video. Fake photos. Burial at sea. All rather convenient. Why now? And if intelligence accomplished this, why the need for all those wars? Buried according to Muslim custom? I rather doubt that was the motive. And besides, his body wasn’t buried. Nobody knows what happened to his body, but the truth is, it doesn’t much matter.
I’ll tell you what offends me and upsets many Muslims I know. You call us fifth columnists because you know we feel pain when you murder our fellow Muslims and rape them and press crucifixes into their tortured faces and chop bits off their corpses to parade as trophies. That hurts. You taunt us with this, knowing full well that you are complicit in mass murder and the vilest atrocities human beings ever committed in the name of the tarnished idols of “freedom” and “democracy”. You took a word like “liberty” and another like “terrorism” and you utterly stripped both of meaning. You used these wars of aggression, the ones that conform to Brezizinki’s Grand Chessboard to bolster the fear you created at home, stripping us all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike of our civil liberties and our dignity.
People just went along. They read the mainstream media, full of prostitutes masquerading as journalists (with the notable exceptions of Pilger, Hass and Fisk) pimping your lying bullshit and they lapped it all up. You saw the impending train-wreck of the financial crisis looming and decided to use Islamophobia to distract people. That’s what you powermongers do. When times are tough, divide and rule. Turn the poor against each other. And every time you opened your mouths, Muslim cemeteries were trashed in the North, Muslim women were beaten up by gangs, mosques were vandalised, we are demonised, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and now look, it’s a decade and it gets worse every year.
So when we see your people whooping and cheering and shouting “USA, USA”, we remember the girls you raped, the boys you raped, the countless hundreds of thousands you brought to a savage, premature end, the countries you despoiled, the lies you told, the hate you sowed, the lies you sold, the future you blighted, a world left unsighted and punch-drunk to get to this comma of a day, it’s only a comma, it was never meant to be a full-stop, it’s just a comma, because your murder will go on and people will stay blind and drunk and Muslims will continue to die so that the dollar can last just a little bit longer.
The enigma that was Usama bin Laden was not created in a vacuum. there was a context and we need to reconsider that entire context. Usama bin Laden is dead. But neither his living, nor his dying, was ever the point.
inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji`oon
Subhan’Allah:D Great article/blog of which viewpoint i fully back. It’s time to stand up to the hypocrisy & not be scared of voicing our opinions. After a day spent reading tweets i feel more sorry for those fooled into thinking this means the end of terrorism, poor deluded souls, by definition western imperialism is the terrorist hijacking anyone or anything that stands in the way of their bloodlust, greed & lies. May Allah(swt) will the people to understand the meaning of justice, of law, of peace and wake up to the harsh reality of what is the world today.
Your eloquent article was exactly what I thought. No matter what he may or may not have done (and remember, everything we knew about him came from the likes of CNN and Fox), he was still a Muslim. There’s a certain ‘adab, or respect, that goes along with that. I’m not happy when I see people (including some very, very confused Muslims!) cheering on the death of Usamah bin Ladin in some sort of a morbid fiesta. The bottom line is that no one should be pleased to see the death of Usamah bin Ladin by America, an entity that has far more blood on its hands than the former.
And for those who think the war with al-Qa’idah is over, then that’s a terrible misunderstanding. Usamah bin Ladin was nothing more than a silent, iconic figure. The U.S may have scored a propaganda victory, but the man definitely had no operational (if that’s the word) value within his organization anymore. Even if he had some sway, who’ll be next on the Americans’ hit-list? Ayman al-Zawahiri? Or will it be the ideologues that have even more influence (Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Abu Yahya al-Libi, Anwar al Awlaki, etc). Either way, I doubt there’ll be peace anytime soon.
What do you mean that Anwar al Awlaki is a part of Al Qaeda? Are you serious? The guy’s a normal preacher and he hasn’t said anything “radical”. I don’t disagree with your comment, but you can atleast check your facts before you put such a strong label on someone.
Assalaamualaikum. JazakAllah khair. Insightful piece, eloquently stated. Wassalaam.
Assalamu alaikum,
Nice insightful article coming from someone who i would assume has not traveled either to the conflict zones mentioned in the article and nor to the ghettos in middle east, India or Pakistan. But still i would appreciate your intelligence in having not swept in the media propaganda and amidst the scarcity of honest reporting, you have still maintained a very balanced world view. I almost agree with everything you say above except the thing on al-qaeda being not existent and of the false flag operations.
most muslims away from the conflict areas assume al-qaeda to be a western bogey but i can assure u bro thats not the case. there is a cause powerful enough that brings people together for the sole purpose of resistance and desire for martyrdom. anyone having visited the tribal areas of pakistan, afghanistan or iraq can testify to the presence of a powerful force called men made up of extremely religious men infact visits to the prisons in saudi can bring you face on with thousands of men whose only crime being part of resistance in iraq along with al qaeda has guaranteed them lives in prison.
As regards to the false flag ops, even though its disturbing its a fact that there are enough such youths among muslims who are so consumed with rage over whats happening in muslim lands that they wouldnt think twice before killing some hindu or american for what their countries have done and this can be attested by just casual visit to sabarmati jail in india or belmarsh in britain.
Thats it from me.your muslim brother
Take care
Excellent analysis.
One that you wont sadly find doing the rounds in the mainstream media.
It’s safe to say we had a lot of converging points, though I took a rather more sideways look at the situation: http://hotterthanapileofcurry.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/job-vacancy-for-worlds-1-terroristbogeyman-opens-up-as-u-s-stage-osama-bin-ladens-death/
One point we do concur on & that is America cannot survive as a nation unless it’s Military Industrial Complex, special interest (Israeli & weapon) lobby groups and The Pentagon are not on a foreign war of choice – scaring their own people to believe that their way of life is at risk if the bad guy’s are not hunted down and killed – with a pliant media in tow repeating the lie’s told by the state department.
Eventually America will be destroyed, not by any foreign power, it will be their own over reaching agenda that will do it – just like the collapse of the USSR – there are definite similarities.
The Akh
Hi. I tweet with Shahid and I’m one of those ugly Americans he talks about here. Yes, conservative and Republican and Christian. I’ve enjoyed tweeting back and forth with Shahid for while.
Shahid,
I think you hold the same prejudices against us that many Americans hold against Muslims. We need to stop sterotyping each other. We are not what you see us as, just as most Muslims are not how they are portrayed here in America.
This is war. Deaths on both sides. Terrible things are done in war. Both sides do terrible things. You can’t blame Americans for that any more than we could blame you for the atrocities of Osama bin Laden and Al Queda. Do you think most of us would condone any of it? Of course not.
We are like you, we watch our government do these things and feel helpless. We aren’t sure what is right or wrong anymore.
I try to get those in America not to breed hatred toward Muslims because of 9-11 or Daniel Pearl, or Lara Logan. Do you not think that I could list the atrocities committed on us just as you have done for your people?
All that does is stir up hatred. You are doing what you would HATE for me to do about Muslims.
We should blame those who committed those atrocities NOT AMERICANS. NOT MUSLIMS. Do you see?
You name some conservatives here in your piece, but the irony is that it conservatives like myself who have much more in common with Muslims. We share family values. We share a dislike for immoral personal behavior. We believe in marriage and children. We share much more than we don’t on a personal level.
I follow you and other Muslims so I can understand better your point of view. I think it’s time you do the same.
You look at America as one who starts war of aggressions. I can see your point on that. But have we taken over any country? We could have. We have the military might to do this. You know that. But we don’t. They yelled “blood for oil” about the Iraq war, yet we never got the oil. One can argue that we went into Iraq or Libya or anywhere for the wrong reasons, but we never took any country as our own. Don’t believe everything you read or what you’ve been told. If I did that, then I would think you were some backward barbaric person, and clearly you are not. We are not what you think we are either.
So be careful when you use the words “You did this or you did that” in describing Americans. What we do is the same as you do, we love our families, we raise our children to be caring people, we have faith in God. Don’t confuse our government with us. Don’t confuse propaganda about Americans with us.
We cheered over Osama because of the pain we felt on 9-11. Nothing else. We are not “crude jingoists” anymore than you are a terrorist.
We live in this world together. We now have a way to reach out to each other with no govt involvement. We can reach through the internet and really get to know each other. Stop with the namecalling. I think it is with this avenue of communication, we can stop future wars and atrocities. How? By finally getting to know one another and seeing that we are not that different.
We are all God’s children.
I read your tweets. I think you are a good man who loves his family. But you need to let go of this hatred. Even when warranted. Hatred only hurts those who let it dwell inside them. I don’t hate Muslims for 9-11. I understand that they were not you. You need to understand that we are not what you think we are either.
Kathleen
Hi Shahid – a beautifully written and insightful piece. I don’t see hatred in it – I see anger and compassion. Your anger is rightly and righteously directed, as it should be, at the barbaric slaughter and foul injustices perpetrated in this war of terror. A perpetual war being fought for full spectrum dominance of the American dollar.
Mujahideen need to make pieces of this crusading dogs and then mail their remains back to Obama’s (lanatullah) bedroom
Insha’Allah not a single terrorist murderer will take breath in Muslim lands
Kathleen
In one sentence you attempt to distance yourself from the actions of your government and say ‘We watch our government do these things and feel helpless. We aren’t sure what is right or wrong anymore.’
Yet, in another sentence you ask ‘But have we taken over any country? We could have. We have the military might to do this’
So, it would seem that you sometimes do associate with what your government does or doesn’t do overseas
Your criticism of Shahid therefore falls done at that point
As does your asertion that the actions of the US State and those who oppose its overseas aggression are somehow equivalent
They are not. If a thief forces his way violently into my house and I throw him out violently we are not the same
Your government spends as much on war and death as the rest of the world combined. There is also plenty of evidence that many of the atrocities carried out by the supposed Evil Doers are instigated by elements within Western Governments, including the US, to serve their geopolitical ambitions. Do I really have to list for instance how many countries the US has bombed, invaded or otherwise destabilised in the last 50 years?
And, large as the US military is it most defnitely does not have the capacity to ‘take over’ the world through military means. The US military has the capacity to kill a tremendous number of people but it cannot occupy a country even as relatively small as Iraq, or Vietnam, without getting chewed up in the process. Invaders are just visitors. The people being occupied have nowhere else to go
Yes, the majority of Americans want the same for themselves and their families as everyone everywhere else wants. However, average Americans (and Brits) are standing by whilst wholesale murder is being commmitted overseas in their name and their own country and constitution are being simultaneously destroyed by their own leaders, not the Muslim bogeymen
Do yourself a favour. Dissociate yourself completely from the actions of the US state and get out of the habit of saying ‘we’ do this or ‘we’ do that when talking about the actions of the state. It’s part of the conditioning.
[hasbara spam deleted, I saw this comment stupidly cut and pasted in loads of blogs]