Beyond Caricatures
By Sukant Chandan
21 March,
2008
Countercurrents.org
As George Bush announced ‘strategic
victories’ in Iraq by helping to foment the ‘first Arab
uprising against Al-Qaeda’, Bin Laden again stole the limelight
by issuing a five minute audio statement in time for the fifth anniversary
of the invasion of Iraq and of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed.
Leaving aside Bush’s dubious claims about successes in Iraq
(which even analysts very close to the US political elite have been
warning against) Bin Laden directs his comments to the European governments
and people. Bin Laden’s Islamist views and violent struggle
may very well be reprehensible to many but Bin Laden remains one of
the most high profile Islamist voices that is expressing the opinions
and feelings of many Muslims across the world. There are issues raised
in Bin Laden’s statement that European would do well to address,
being mainly the problem of European troops in Afghanistan as well
as in Iraq, the high-handed and provocative way in which Europe deals
with Muslim sensitivities. It is incumbent that Europe does so as
these issues impact directly on race-relations in Europe and Europe’s
relationship with the Muslim world, a relationship which is tense
and often violent and will continue to be so if current attitudes
and policies remain unchanged.
In what is becoming increasingly common practice Al-Sahab the media arm of Al-Qaeda provide their own English subtitles to the statement so as to make their messages readily understood by Westerners and Al-Qaeda’s English speaking supporters. The audio message is readily available to view on many video sharing sites and news outlets on the internet and shows Bin Laden brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle in a training camp in Afghanistan from some years ago and.
Although there are many subjects that Bin Laden touches upon in this latest statement the one issue that the Western media has homed in on are the comments around the re-publication this year of the Islamophobic Danish cartoons and Bin Laden’s threat to hit back ‘not with what you will hear but with what you will see’. While it is true that Bin Laden sees the atrocities committed by European forces against Muslim civilians in Afghanistan as ‘paling in comparison’ to the re-printing of these cartoons in Danish newspapers, there are a number of other issues that Bin Laden raises that are just as important but which is given little to no airtime in the mainstream media. The media’s coverage of Bin Laden’s comments on the re-publication of the cartoons does not give an accurate representation of the way in which Bin Laden is presenting the subject. By focusing only on the Danish cartoons issue in Bin Laden’s speech, the media continues its culture of caricaturing Muslims; taking issues out of context, portraying Muslims as people who do not respect freedom of speech and who are irrationally intolerant.
In fact Bin Laden’s statement puts the cartoon issue into context by talking of Europe’s military action in Afghanistan which results in the killing of innocent men, women and children in mud huts; that the cartoons and the aggression against the ‘weak and oppressed in our countries’ are together evidence of the ‘continuation of the war’ against Muslims. Bin Laden argues that Europe has violated the rules of war by killing innocents deliberately and in so doing means Al-Qaeda too is not tied to any rules. He derides Europe’s lack of ‘etiquette’ in the war between them and points out that amongst the billion and a half million Muslims across the world, not one of them has insulted the Prophet Jesus which is a revered prophet in Islam. These themes of European insult and hypocrisy are the main themes in this latest statement.
Perhaps unsurprisingly what most of the media seem very reluctant to report are Bin Laden’s comments about the allegations of bribery from the Saudis to Britain over British BAE deals to Saudi Arabia, and how a probe into these allegations was stopped by Blair at the insistence of the Saudi King. Seen by many as a tenuous excuse for a cover-up Blair cited security concerns for halting all investigations. A little over a month ago the British Campaign Against the Arms Trade told a judicial review in London that the government acted unlawfully when it told the Fraud Office to stop looking into alleged bribes to Saudi officials by BAE. Last year the British media reported that more than $2 billion from BAE ended up in Prince Bandar’s bank accounts in Washington, money which is said to be linked to an arms deal negotiated in 1985 worth $43 billion.
The Bin Laden statement points out the hypocrisy of the British and the Saudis. One the one hand Bin Laden states that while the ‘crownless’ King of Saudi Arabia can stop this British investigation, he cannot stop the re-publication of the offensive cartoons, something which Bin Laden argues he is capable of doing. On the other hand Bin Laden argues that while the Europeans are happy to use the ‘sacredness’ of their freedom of speech to literally add insult to injury on Muslims, they are not so keen on these freedoms when it comes to investigating possible corruption. Bin Laden links the cartoons issue with European hypocrisy and corruption with Saudi Arabia, a state which has been one of Al-Qaeda’s main targets for guerrilla operations in recent years.
Bin Laden raises another issue which has hardly seen a murmur of protest is the appointment of Blair to the Quartet. After Blair’s infamous role in being the closest and most loyal ally of Israel and Bush in the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, he has been appointed by the EU to be the head of the Quartet in dealing with the Middle East. Bin Laden explains that this is confirmation of Europe’s attitudes towards Muslims. Bin Laden has raised an important issue as Blair’s appointment does indeed signal a worrying sign to Muslims that Europe is failing to put distance between itself and the US military and propaganda campaign against independence movements of the Middle East. Soon after the appointment of Blair in June last year, one of the most respected Arab journalists raised the same issue. Abdel Bari Atwan editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi wrote in his opinion piece that the selection of Blair indicates “once again the insistence of the western states and the US in particular in provoking the feelings of the Arabs and Muslims and continuing to adopt wrong policies which led to the current state of bloody chaos in the Middle East. Blair, whom President Georges Bush wanted to reward for blindly following his administration, completely lost his credibility and is considered the most hated person by Arabs and Muslims after President Bush”. Furthermore Atwan wrote that rotten eggs were the only befitting welcome for Blair when visiting Arab capitals, especially Jerusalem.
What seems to be lost in the headlines and selective reports about this latest statement is that Bin Laden is essentially arguing that the re-publication of the cartoons are significant in that they are a sign to Muslims that not only will Europe treat Muslims in Afghanistan and other countries with military terror, but will also treat them with extreme insensitivity, failing to recognise that there are certain ‘moral rules’ even in war that great powers in history have followed. Bin Laden opens his address “to the intelligent ones” in Europe, indicating that he is again, like his previous offer of a security covenant, trying to reach out to those in Europe who want to distance themselves from the war against Arabs and Muslim peoples, and thus contribute to a more peaceful world. For those who ridicule the possibility of people and governments responding positively to Bin Laden, one can point to the recent comments by Jonathan Powell, former senior aide to Blair who argues for keeping lines of communication open with even the most bitter of enemies: "There's nothing to say to al-Qaida and they've got nothing to say to us at the moment, but at some stage you're going to have to come to a political solution as well as a security solution. And that means you need the ability to talk." Judging from the latest Bin Laden message, Al-Qaeda have got something to say to us. If the British could start talks without pre-conditions with hooded guerrilla fighters from the Irish Republican Army who were blowing up bombs left, right and centre in English towns, then developing negotiations towards a peaceful and just agreement with today’s hooded gunmen who happen to be Muslim and want to expel foreign troops from their countries is not so much of an unimaginable prospect as it might appear to some. The prospects for peace are grim, and one hopes that we do not come to our senses about our flawed foreign policies only after tragic events such as those in Madrid in March 2004.
*Sukant
Chandan is a consultant for Conflicts Forum, a freelance journalist
and independent publisher. He runs two websites: Sons of Malcolm,
and OURAIM.
He can be contacted at: sukant.chandan@gmail.com
