What is al-Qaeda?

Wired Oct 2001: Osama has a new friend

"Abdullah Azzam, the chief ideologue of the non-Afghan militants and a spiritual mentor of bin Laden, used 'al qaeda' to describe the role he envisaged the most committed of the Muslim volunteers who had fought the Soviets playing once the war in Afghanistan was over. In 1987 he wrote: "Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and to put up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. This vanguard constitutes the strong foundation (al qaeda al-sulbah) for the expected society."" It's a deeper concept, than the simple, foreign nickname we call it. ""England is your favourite team and you are about to blow yourself up in the jihad against kufr (unbelievers)?" "Politics is one thing. Football is something else."" The interview with the captured suicide bomber is revealing, of how he is indoctrinated. Out of a Kurdish teenager's lack of direction, comes a believer in paradise. "...The "war on terror" has so far done nothing to eradicate the reasons for the volunteers wanting to travel to the training camps or to deal with the grievances..." This is true from my view point. There are no TV programmes explaining the Muslim world and how they view themselves while watching the latest Hollywood block buster. (Further reading: The Impact of Western Hegemony on Muslim Thought.) I wish the world was freed of the tyranny of religion. "...Increasingly, and this is a trend that is accelerating, the extremists are no longer perceived as the "lunatic fringe". Instead they are seen as the standard bearers. And their language is now the dominant discourse in modern Islamic activism. Their debased, violent, nihilisitic, anti-rational millenarianism has become the standard ideology aspired to by angry young Muslim men. This is the genuine victory of bin Laden and our greatest defeat in the "war on terror"." Blair's cock up in invading Iraq with no real justification has lost us the moral higher ground, now we are no better than the terrorists.

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