From 9/11 to 2011: Al-Qaida's Battle of Blame

[Valin]

Washington Examiner:

Austin Bay
09/06/11

Osama bin Laden justified 9/11's great evil on the basis of fixing blame for the Islamic world's cultural and political decline. He was angry with the last seven centuries of history — history gone wrong for Arab Muslims in particular.

Modernity was at fault, so he despised it. Modernity is a fuzzy notion, but it is definitely an earthly condition that rewards creativity unchecked by clerics and ayatollahs. America is this unbridled modernity's boldest experiment, this modernity al-Qaida approved Islam does not dominate. So in the name of blame he murdered 3,000 people in New York and Washington.

(Snip)

The battlefield defeats al-Qaida suffered between fall 2001 and fall 2007 (Iraq surge) undercut the terror gang's claim to possess God's sanction. The mass murder of Iraqi Muslims utterly tarnished its reputation. Now, Arab Spring's pragmatic demands for jobs, education and individual rights — demands for the fruits of the modernity bin Laden despised — challenge al-Qaida's violent and utterly unproductive utopianism. Al-Qaida has so little to say about expanding and sustaining an economy in a world where every teenager wants a cellphone.

Where the Arab Spring revolutions will lead no one knows, and violent Islamist utopians definitely intend to undermine them. But we are witnessing more than a drastic change in rhetoric. Instead of playing the blame-someone-else game, Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans and Syrians are taking responsibility for changing their political and social conditions.

(Snip)