Collateral Language: A User's Guide to America's New War by John Martin Collins & Ross Glover

Author:John Martin Collins & Ross Glover [Collins, John Martin & Glover, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Iraq War (2003-2011), Language Arts & Disciplines, Rhetoric, Political Science, History & Theory, Terrorism
ISBN: 9780814723548
Google: y1PSxwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 21985760
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2002-01-15T07:30:41+00:00

Jihad after September 11

A crucial question that arises in the wake of September 11, therefore, is how Muslims understand the sacred, transcendant obligation to undertake jihad in this new era of international crisis. In one sense, the conflict between Osama bin Laden and the United States centers on jihad. How can each side utilize jihad for its purposes? On the other hand, from the perspective of the United Nations and the call for a dialogue “between civilizations,” the power of 9/11 transcends the boundaries of Islam and reduces the role of jihad.

Within the world of Islam, since the events of 9/11, Osama bin Laden has expanded his political diatribes against the United States to include not just the demand that the United States abandon its bases in Saudi Arabia and terminate its support of tyrannical princedoms in the Gulf states; he has increasingly embraced the Palestinian cause against Israel as the linchpin of his politics so as to win wider support among (mostly Arab) Muslims, primarily in the Middle East. The recent decision by the Bush Administration to place Hizbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad on its list of terrorist organizations only strengthens his case, as many newspapers in the Middle East immediately denounced the decision and called into question the administration’s definition of terrorism.

From the vantage point of many Muslims in the region, the jihad espoused by these organizations represents national liberation movements. Thus, the U.S. government’s decision runs the risk of fulfilling an apparent strategic goal of bin Laden: namely, to forge stronger ties between these local militant jihads in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, and beyond the Middle East, as in Indonesia, in a bid to foment a larger unified jihad focused against the United States. Surely the hydra-headed al-Qaeda network, which allegedly operates in sixty countries, provides logistical support and personnel for such an endeavor. From their vantage point, these militant struggles in their local incarnations and more generally directed against the United States are defensive, as bin Laden understands the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf, its support of sanctions against Iraq, its heretofore unilateral support of Israel, and its war against the Taliban all represent offensive positions or campaigns against the Muslim world.

At the same time, bin Laden seems keenly aware that the vast majority of Muslims do not support his acts of violence directed against the infidel United States. Rather, insofar as he has assiduously cultivated the image of a holy warrior, clad in military fatigues, wielding a kalashnikov, and speaking his mind by rock facades in the manner of a humble but defiant religious leader, he represents himself as one dedicated to the violent removal of the United States from Muslim lands, the ultimate martyr for the faith. Casting himself in this role, how can he not insist to the world that he has nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the nuclear threat posed by the United States?11 But he also seems to understand that this

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