Bin Laden: Catalyst for Democracy
The latest Arab dictator, Usama bin Laden, has been issuing his edicts fast and furious. Bomb the oil pipelines. Bomb the Shiites and the Americans. Zarqawi is now the “Amir of Iraq,” and Iraqi Muslims should “listen to him.”
While the US may not have gone far in promoting the ideal of democracy in the Muslim world, bin Laden has done a remarkable job of stimulating forward thinking among Arabs and Muslims.
With each new diatribe and beheading video, with each car bomb and civilian massacre, al-Qaeda presents a challenge to the Arab world, an absolute vision of society and governance, and an estimate of its ultimate cost in blood. The Arab world has responded with a countervailing view and a renaissance of the Arab liberalism so hearty in the 19th and 20th centuries until the rise of Nassarism and Bathism.
Reform, elections, judicial independence, stemming corruption: these are the buzzwords on the Arab street today, and this is the essential work of the pioneering Iraqis. The transition of executive power in Egypt, Lebanese independence, minority rights in Syria, freedom of press in Yemen, youth enfranchisement in Saudi Arabia: these are the topics of modern patriots in the Middle East, their hope derived from free Iraqi labor unions and political parties and the anonymous anti-corruption hotline in Baghdad.
Opposite these concepts of reform are the nihilistic ideology of al-Qaeda and the bloody tactics of the “Amir of Iraq,” Zarqawi, who freely murders innocent children, patriotic Iraqis, and poor truckdrivers.
In bin Laden’s distorted mirror, tinges of Western Islamophobia are an unforgivable crime against billions of Muslims, but Eastern Anglophobia is a great revelation of truth. Hate speech vilifying a people is no sign of enlightenment at either end of the spectrum. (Read on …)


