Islam and 9/11: Before and After
Mohammad Seddon traces the connections between The US, Islam, terrorism and Iraq.
This paper was originally delivered to an audience of 450 17 and 18 year olds attending the Religious Studies Department Open Day at Lancaster University, England on March 7, 2003.

Introduction

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share a religious proximity that is rooted in history, geography, genealogy, philosophy and theology. These three great world religions claim a common prehistoric ancestry to Adam and Abraham. In Judaism Abraham provides a genealogical foundation as a founding tribal father. In Christianity Abraham’s sacrifice of his son provides a similitude of the sacrifice of Jesus. In Islam, genealogy and sacrifice are retained, but it is Abraham’s unequalled monotheism and unparalleled love of the one true God, even beyond the love of his own flesh and blood, that provides the theological paradigm. Islam’s central tenant is the oneness of God and it positions Abraham as the spiritual father of all believers in the unicity of God. In this sense Islam, an Arabic word which means ‘peaceful submission to God’, claims finality in the prophetic and revelatorary process between God and man. Islam therefore shares and inherits the Old Testament Prophets, their beliefs, rites and rituals and their practices. In the traditional geography of the holy lands these three monotheistic religions have lived historically side by side, sharing the same culture, customs and traditions.

In the west, where until relatively recently, Christianity has enjoyed an exclusive position in the religious domain, this Judaio-Christiano-Islamic heritage is either unknown or somehow by-passed. Engagement with Islam has largely been through the restricted experiences of the historical Crusades or the more recent impact of colonial and imperial rule in the Muslim world. As a result, the recent emergence of Islam (and to some degree, Judaism), via the minority communities of Muslims, has arrived within the western domain of Christendom as a cultural, geographical, genealogical, philosophical and theological ‘stranger’.

The emergence of superpowers

For a number of years Muslim and non-Muslim academics alike had been speculating the possibility that two great world civilisations namely, western Christendom and the Muslim world, might be on a collision course of confrontation and unimaginable military hostilities. Samuel Huntingdon’s book The Clash of Civilisations is now seen as the classic example of this confrontation theory. What led scholars to this conclusion was not in increase in religious intolerance between Christianity and Islam or any revisit of medieval crusader confrontations which preoccupied the early middle ages. It was in fact, the coincidental decline of two great global forces: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline in the world’s oil reserves. How then have these two seemingly unconnected occurrences created a potentially catastrophic situation of unknown proportions between the so-called Christian world and the Muslim world?

Before the demise of the former Soviet Union, now Russia, Marxist socialism or communism was globally propagated, supported and funded by the Soviets. The dominance of world socialism acted against and as an alternative to global capitalism which was and still is globally propagated, supported and funded by the United States. These two opposing political world views vied with each other for world domination each believing that their political philosophy was the best for the global population. These two so called ‘superpowers’ effectively kept each other in check not just by trying to counter the effects that each had on the rest of the world but by threatening each other with the proliferation of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. By creating the ability to annihilate each other and the rest of the world by use of their ‘weapons of mass destruction’ the Soviets and the Americans locked the world into their power game.

Unwilling to confront each other directly out of a real and genuine fear of complete annihilation of everyone on the face of the earth, these two superpowers played out their confrontations on the battle lines drawn up in the countries of the developing world. This was done by supporting and funding socialism in one country by the Soviets and supporting and funding capitalism by America in the next. In reality the developing world literally became pawns in the political chess game of the Soviets and the Americans. The result was famine; strife, dissention and war for all those countries caught on the frontline of this global power game.

The wars in Korea, Angola, Vietnam, Yemen, Salvador and Afghanistan are all examples of how the superpower struggle was played out. In the terminologies developed to identify the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ in this struggle to establish Soviet socialism or American capitalism were the terms ‘rebels’ and ‘freedom fighters’. Whether one was a ‘rebel’ or a ‘freedom fighter’ depended very much of course on whose side you were on. For the Americans, if you were fighting the oppressive regime in Salvador, South America, backed by America you were of course a ‘communist rebel’ but if you were fighting the also brutal and aggressive regime in Afghanistan, in central Asia, backed by the Soviets you were of course a ‘freedom fighter’. We will return to Afghanistan very shortly.

The control of oil

Both the Soviets and the Americans found that in the process of establishing world domination based on their particular philosophical and political ideas, which ran in complete opposition to each other, propagating, supporting and funding their ideologies throughout the developing world brought not only the power they so needed to become the leading or hegemonic force, but other materialistic advantages. The developing world is home to a great wealth of natural resources and mineral wealth and many of these countries have huge deposits of oil, gas, plutonium and uranium in addition to their ideal climates for producing foodstuffs and cash crops. Superpower domination and influence paid dividends in vast quantities of subsidised mineral resources and cash crops.

In order to maintain their influence and exploit the cheap supply of much needed natural resources both superpowers patronised regimes and leaders in these developing countries that abused and suppressed their own people in savage and unbelievably inhumane ways. These ‘puppet’ regimes and ‘tin pot’ dictators blatantly flaunted and violated international human rights under the protection and patronage of the two superpowers. This was the pay-off for their influence and exploitation. The superpowers remained untouched and unharmed by the localised tensions and hostilities they created around the world in their efforts to exert their domination provided they did not get directly involved and instead maintained their position as agents provocateurs.

America suffered humiliating defeats in Korea and Vietnam when it committed its own armed forces to the frontline struggle of capitalism against the invading communist influence. The soviets had been more fortunate. That was until they entered Afghanistan in 1980. Wherever one of the superpowers had established their political and ideological influence covert and subversive methods were employed by the other superpower by sponsoring opposition. This opposition might be political, ideological or by armed struggle depending on the situation.

In the case of Afghanistan covert methods were employed by the United States through its intelligence service, the CIA, to support, train and arm an effective opposition to the Soviet regime. In Afghanistan the American backed ‘freedom fighters’ adopted a religious modus operandi and instead became the ‘Mujahideen’.

Jihad

The Mujahideen took their name from the Arabic word ‘jihad’, which literally means ‘to strive or to struggle’. In Islamic theology jihad has a much wider context and meaning, from the esoterical, or inner struggle, concerned with conquering ‘the self’ or ‘the ego’, to the exoterical, outer experiences, the strife of establishing a life devoted to submission to God (Islam) and the religious obligation of fighting oppression and transgression through armed struggle. Most Muslims have some concept and practical experience of jihad through the devotional dimensions of their religious lives although very few are ever engaged with the jihad of armed struggle.

The Islamic imperative to fight oppression and transgression is also met in defending ones own property, land or country from invasion or occupation and in seeking liberation from such forms of aggression. There are a number of verses in the Qur’an that refer to the reasons and rules of arm engagement but the instruction to take up armed struggle comes in this verse, ‘And fight in the way of God, those who fight against you, but do not transgress the limits. Truly God has no love for the transgressors.’ (Qur’an, 2:190). This is why Muslims generally see a ‘just cause’ in for fighting occupation in Kashmir and Palestine. In the case of the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, a clear case for armed struggle jihad could be made. Soviet communist political ideology, devoid of any attachment to belief in God and religions, represented the face of aggressive atheism for the majority of traditional Afghani Muslims. Further, America was quick to exploit the theme of ‘belief versus atheism’ amongst other traditional Muslim societies, particularly Saudi Arabia, in its efforts to encourage petro-dollars to help fund the Afghan Mujahideen uprising. As money poured in from the rich Arab oil states many bored young Saudi men financed their own enterprising mini-jihad breaks in Afghanistan during their long summer breaks from university. They were very soon joined by a more permanent Arab Muslim contingent from less wealthy North African countries such as Eygpt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. These young men were much more serious, their participation was not undertaken to ‘kill time’ between University semesters.

The North African Jihadis were disparate, angry and disillusioned young men who had experienced their own form of oppression and occupation by European colonial and imperial powers. They, unlike their Gulf Arab counterparts, had suffered from the direct results of cultural and economic ravage and exploitation. Although the imperialists had departed from North Africa a generation earlier, their societies had not recovered from the destructive impacts of imperial and colonial cultural domination. Left disconnected from their traditional culture, language and religion under the guise of modern secular nation-states, many of the youth in these former colonies sought to reconnect and re-identify themselves with their traditions.

Whether this shift towards tradition was as a political protest and reaction to enforced modernisation or a genuine search for spiritual and religious expression is not clear. However, the growing number of disenfranchised and religiously radicalised youth throughout the Muslim world began to identify with the Afghan struggle. If the Muslim youth could not free Palestine from the grips of Zionist Israeli occupation and genocide, backed by powerful America dollars and weapons, perhaps the Soviets might present an easier challenge.

Osama Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia into the wealthy, Yemeni-origin, Bin Laden family. His father was one of the richest non-Saudi family businessmen in the Kingdom, who owned amongst other businesses; a massive construction company which was responsible for the multi-million dollar holy mosques in Makkah and Madinah expansion project and the contract cleaning company which served both holy sites. Osama trained as a civil engineer under the tutorship of Dr. Abdullah Azzam, a leading Palestinian Muslim activist who later joined the jihad and Afghanistan and went on to command the Arab Mujahideen there. Osama was very impressed and affected by Azzam’s character and commitment to Islam which no doubt inspired his own involvement in the Afghan struggle.

Bin Laden’s high profile and charismatic persona - he was very tall and charming - became an inspiration for many young Arab Muslims. The CIA recognised the obvious potential of Bin Laden’s pulling power and they therefore actively projected his personality through the mass media. Portraying him as deeply sincere and devoutly religious, they projected the image of an ideological freedom fighter who had abandoned all the trappings of his luxurious lifestyle to help free the poor Afghan Muslims from the evil communist aggressors. Bin Laden was better than Rambo and he was real - the Americans loved it. The Gulf petro-dollars poured in and young Muslim jihadis were literally queuing up to take their place amongst ‘Gods soldiers’.

Ultimately, with Arab money and American military training the Afghans were not only able to repel the Soviets - they humiliated the mighty superpower. Many commentators say that the invasion of Afghanistan was the final curtain call for Soviet domination and world socialism. Perversely, the saviour of the modern western free capitalist world from the scourge of atheist communism was not the military might of the United States, but the traditional tribal peasants in the isolated regions of Afghanistan. Bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia a national hero and confident of the American government. How then did this hero fall? What happened that caused the darling of American ‘freedom fighting’ to become the ‘world’s most wanted man’?

The Gulf War

In 1991 the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussain, a tyrant and friend to the American government was given what he interpreted to be the green light from the United States government to invade and annex Kuwait on to Iraq. The result of this folly by Saddam resulted in the biggest allied military operation since World War II. The outcome was catastrophic for the Saddam and the ruling elites of the Gulf. Whilst most agreed that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was an un-Islamic act of aggression, the involvement of non-Muslim’s in the conflict, particularly Americans, and the use of other Arab Muslim states as bases from which massive air strikes and armed offences was launched, did not meet with the agreement of the mass Arab Muslim population of the region.

After the allies has repelled Saddam and liberated Kuwait, their huge armed presence in the neighbouring countries was reluctant to return home. Osama Bin Laden shared the common sentiment, that the liberation of Kuwait had been used as a premise to establish permanent Western military bases in the region. He was outraged at the west’s involvement in the crisis, believing that the Arabs themselves could have resolved the whole affair, and with the Saudi regime’s endorsement of the whole project. He called for a jihad to expel the Americans and their allies from the region. The call was heeded and several attacks on government and allied military bases were undertaken.

Exile in Sudan

Bin Laden was becoming an embarrassment for the Saudi regime and also a threat. They feared his popularity might present itself as a serious challenge to their own sovereignty and so they convinced Bin Laden’s family to send their brother into exile in the Sudan. Bin Laden complied at the behest of his family but once in Sudan he began helping to rebuild the country in partnership with the recently established Islamic government after a long civil war. He applied his civil engineering skills to the construction of new buildings and roads in the Sudan. However, when the American’s threatened the Islamic government in neighbouring Somalia, Bin Laden once again declared an armed struggle Jihad against America. By the time the Americans had committed their troops to Somalia, Bin laden had already trained a Somali militia to defend their country. The American invasion of Somalia was a sham and within a few humiliating weeks they were forced to leave, brought down by Bin Laden’s ‘crack’ troops.

Bill Clinton was outraged by the embarrassing defeat in Somalia and he personally vowed to destroy Bin Laden and his followers. In an act of frustration, and trying to extract revenge on Bin Laden, he bombed ‘soft’ civilian targets in Sudan and Afghanistan claiming they were a chemical warfare plant and a guerrilla training camp respectively which had both been set up by Bin Laden. Bin laden was now in a similar position to Saddam Hussain in relation to his position with the American government.

Saddam had been used against the anti-America Iranian Islamic Republic which was established after the former Shah of Iran was deposed by his own people in a pro-Islamic revolution in the late seventies. Iraq declared war on Iran and was backed and supported by American military hardware and unconventional weapons such as chemical and biological. Iran had not only rid itself of the Shah who they considered to be nothing but an n American puppet, they then replaced their extremely secular form of government and instead established a religious Islamic republic. Further, they then demanded that America pay in full for the subsidised oil that the shah had been providing them with for years. America was afraid of an Islamic resurgence in the region and it backed Saddam in an effort to bring down the new government in Iran. The Iran-Iraq war lasted for almost ten years and it claimed the lives of almost two million people and cost billions of dollars. It was resolved by a peace treaty and the status quo remained –Saddam and the Americans achieved nothing against the Iranians. When Saddam was no longer useful and instead he became a liability by invading Kuwait and threatening to destabilise the whole region, he had to go.

Equally, Bin Laden was also becoming a liability, not just by exposing the involvement of the CIA in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan but, more importantly, his open declaration of Jihad against the western allied troops in the Gulf was capturing popular Arab mood and sentiment. Like Saddam, Bin Laden’s purpose and time had expired. Wanted posters carrying Bin Laden’s photograph were issued by the American government and their former hero and ally was now branded a ‘dangerous terrorist’. In response to the attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan Bin Laden vowed he would take revenge on America directly.

September 11th 2001

On the fateful morning of September 11th 2000, in what at first appeared to be a ‘freak’ accident, an aircraft crashed into one of the Twin Towers of the Worlds Trade Centre in New York. Reality was far more shocking and horrifying than any disaster fiction Hollywood could produce. Minutes later another plane crashed into the other tower and almost simultaneously another slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, it was clear this was no accident. Within an hour and these two iconic symbols of global capitalism and he so-called ‘free world’ came crashing down like carded wool. Due to the design of these massive super structures there was no realistic means of evacuating the two and a half thousand people trapped in the multiple high-rise floors.

But who could have perpetrated such an outrageous act of wanton destruction and murder? No one has ever claimed responsibility for these attacks but when it appeared that Arabs were involved in the attacks, the Americans made the connection with Osama Bin Laden. Surely, if anyone new Bin Laden’s capabilities it was the Americans after all, they trained him. A connection was made with the newly established ultra-orthodox religious regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden.

After the US bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan, Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan to hide out from his American enemies. However, no one was ruled–out and minority Muslim communities throughout Europe and America became the subjects of suspicion and mistrust. Anti-Muslim sentiment and fervour saw a number of attacks on Muslim individuals and Islamic institutions and places of worship.

In America a Sikh was murdered by an angry mob that mistook his turban and long beard for an Osama Bin Laden ‘lookalike’ Muslim! Blair and Bush tried to calm things down by simultaneously declaring that the war on terror was not a ‘crusade’ against Islam. Muslims were not convinced especially when Bush had already used the terms ‘crusade’ and ‘Islamic terrorists’ on a least two very recent occasions. In the newly declared ‘war on terror’ specific anti-terrorist laws were rushed in, allowing arrest without trail, and thousands of innocent Muslim ‘suspects’ were arrested as ‘terrorists’. The spectre of Bin Laden’s ‘al Qaeda network’ began to produce apparent imminent terrorist attacks using chemical ‘weapons of mass destruction’. As America and Britain got more and more scared of this unknown, unseen and unquantifiable terrorist network, it seemed anyone could be a potential ‘shoe bomber’, underground gasser and kamikaze hijacker.

Democracy in Afghanistan

The Taliban had seized power and control in the country after the anarchy and inter-tribal warfare that broke-out after the Soviet defeat. The Taliban enforced a ‘Pol Pot style’ regime, which thrust the country into a bizarre form of pre-modern feudalism. T.V., music films, videos, theatre etc., were all forbidden under the Taliban’s strict interpretations of an ‘Islamic State’. Further, schools were closed and education for girls was not allowed. Literal interpretations of the Qur’an were enforced which also saw public executions for certain crimes.

Human rights activists and feminist groups had been lobbying the American government for some time regarding the repressive Taliban regime. Until they wanted to get Osama, the American government had paid little attention to the human rights abuses of the Taliban. Suddenly, justification for a military strike against the Taliban was found through the anti-Taliban human rights lobbyists and America went to war to free the Afghanis from the oppressive Taliban and destroy Bin Laden’s terrorist network – the previously unknown and unheard of – Al Qaeda.

In the pursuing weeks leading up the invasion of Afghanistan, a plethora of new ‘evidence’ was produced, sometimes evidence which seemed completely contradictory, all pointing to and proving Bin Laden and his ‘network’ were responsible for the terrorist attacks in the US and the compliance of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

American diplomacy amongst the world community seeking endorsement of the invasion of Afghanistan shifted into ‘overdrive’ and when it seemed to fail President Bush adopted a more aggressive and polemical ‘with us or against us’ rhetoric as he declared a ‘crusade’ against terrorism. After lengthy ‘carpet bombing’ by American and British planes which claimed the lives of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians, the US was losing the propaganda war for its attack on Afghanistan and so ground troops were employed. Within a few months America declared its operation a success and it declared the demise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It soon began talking about rebuilding Afghanistan and establishing democracy. It is still in the process of beginning to undertake the tasks two years on. But where human rights was once an issue with the Taliban, thousands of prisoners captured by the Americans during the war were shipped off illegally to Guantanamala Bay. They were incarcerated using sensory depravation methods, only to then be told they were not actually prisoners of war and therefore there was no war crimes charge or trail against them. They were effectively non-status captives with no rights at all.

The War on Terrorism

In identifying rogue states, President Bush, in one of his numerous post-September 11th ‘war on terrorism’ speeches, singled-out a small specific number of countries which he claimed supported terrorism and acted as an ‘axis of evil’. These states he said were preparing or already had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and the number one state of ‘evil’ was his father’s old enemy, Saddam Hussain’s, Iraq. Again a justification was propagated for a pre-empted attack and invasion of Iraq which covered a number of issues from possibly possessing ‘weapons of mass destruction’, human rights, democracy and the ‘link’ with al Qaeda.

Most people and countries of the world were unconvinced by America’s propaganda and it seemed that the declaration of being ‘with us or against us’ was beginning to haunt President Bush. His only ally Prime Minister Blair flitted frantically between America and Europe trying to drum –up support for the Bush initiative. But the hard sell of ‘evil Iraq’ posing a serious terrorist attack on the rest of the world was almost impossible to buy and although no one disputes Saddam is a tyrant, he is beginning to appear like another Osama Bin laden – a former American ‘good guy’ simply passed his sell by date and ‘gone bad’.

In addition the news and images coming out of Iraq present a feeble, suffering and innocent people who appear as powerless pawns in a war that is looking more about oil than terrorism. Even if the war is not about oil, Saddam Hussein has not attacked anybody or any country and is only suspected of possessing ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

North Korea on the other hand has announced its restart of developing nuclear energy and possibly therefore nuclear weapons. At the same time it has threatened America that any attempts to stop this process would be met by forceful opposition. Many impartial observers are of the opinion that if the threat of war should be used against any state it might be more appropriate used against a state that goes beyond the mere possibility of possessing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and actually has them. The soft ‘diplomatic route’ that the US is employing with North Korea seems too many to be simply hypocrisy and for many more to make the war against Iraq really about oil.

Conclusion

This analysis of events cannot really be concluded in any real sense at the present time. Instead, we can only round up the current situation in the light of the deconstruction of the events that have led up to the present situation. We began by looking at the theological proximity between Judaism, Christianity and Islam yet we noted that Christianity had held an almost exclusive position within the western world or Christendom to the point that Judaism and Islam were apparent ‘strangers’. Identifying Islam as a religious, geographical and cultural other had influenced some academics to write about an imminent clash between the Christian west and the Islamic east. But it appears that Islam became a threat to the west only as a result of its traditional foe, communism, dwindling and becoming an irrelevance against global capitalism lead by America.

In addition, depleting natural resources around the world had made the Middle East the focus of attention in controlling the world’s largest reserves of oil and other energy sources. During the so-called ‘cold war’ between the superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, the developing world was used as an enormous political ‘chess board’ upon which each side tried to exert their global dominance. In this way the Americans found themselves backing the fundamentalist Islamic ideology of the Taliban in their fight against world socialism. As a result a ready mad ‘good guy’ in the form of Osama Bin Laden became the ideal ‘freedom fighter’ hero. But America is not shy in changing its relations with people when its own interests are challenged or compromised and the Gulf war saw both Saddam and Bin Laden transformed from ‘good guys’ into devils incarnate.

It is fair to say that the Gulf war was largely about oil. Saddam initially invaded and annexed Kuwait in order to control its oil fields. America saw its position in the region weakened and compromised by Saddam’s outrageous invasion and moved in to restore order with a huge allied military presence. Bin Laden’s objections to the massive military presence of western forces in Saudi Arabia and beyond began to create ripples which meant he not only had to be removed but possibly ‘liquidated’. Both Saddam and Bin Laden became fugitives and the Sudan and Afghanistan was bombed in an effort to remove Bin Laden. Iraq has been continuously bombed for over ten years after the Gulf war to get rid of Saddam.

The September 11th attacks on the US have been laid at the feet of al Qaeda and Bin Laden but in the course of pursuing the terrorist attack perpetrators an amazing twist of events has taken place. Seemingly unconnected events and situations have been woven into a master-plan to set the world right in accordance to America’s views, ideas and philosophy of what represents freedom and democracy. The invasion of Afghanistan was originally to route out the terrorists. It soon became a project to establish democracy which cost thousands of innocent civilian lives.

Paradoxically, removing the oppressive regime of the Taliban in the name of democracy meant capturing and incarcerating hundreds of its foot soldiers in a way that denied them the most fundamental human rights – in fact they have no human rights at all. The war on terrorism has been made a ‘with us or against us’ situation that has tremendous implications on the democratic ideas of freedom, liberty and the right to dissent or disagree. Whilst ridding the world of fear at the hands of radical and fanatical sub-groups can only help to create peace and stability, at what price is this endeavour achieved? Must we abdicate all our sense and proportion of what is morally acceptable and just to our political leaders without any accountability? Further, whilst only America and British leaders are convinced that Iraq is a serious threat to global peace, the rest of the world is brought together against the possibility of a war with unknown effects and results.

Two million people marched against war in Britain alone. The rest of the world echoed the same sentiment, ‘no war in my name’ and ‘no war for oil’. The ‘clash of civilisations’ discourse does not appear to be between the great religions of Christianity and Islam, the west and the East. Rather, the clash of civilisations is becoming a clash between American global economic, political and culture dominance and the rest of the world that seeks equality, peace and justice.