Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America by Yossef Bodansky

Author:Yossef Bodansky [Bodansky, Yossef]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79772-8
Publisher: Prima Publishing
Published: 2011-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

BIN LADEN’S ASCENT was not taking place in a vacuum. Moreover, his ostensible expulsion from Sudan did not mean that Khartoum had given up on the leadership of Sunni Islam. With the immediate operational considerations shifting to Tehran—the establishment of the HizbAllah International and the running of the first series of operations—Hassan al-Turabi could return to his preoccupation with his favorite calling: the contemplation of grand doctrines for Islam. Turabi spent much of late 1996 and early 1997 formulating the next phase in the rise and expansion of the Islamist trend. His vision was grand and all-encompassing—searching for and defining the modalities for the contemporary relations of Islam with the rest of the increasingly Westernized world and the path of Islam toward its inevitable, ultimate triumph. Much of his vision was elucidated in a series of discussions Turabi had with the French author Alain Chevalerias. Transcripts of these discussions were collected in a book fittingly titled Islam—the Future of the World.

Turabi elaborated on his vision of where the modern Muslim world was heading in the confusing era of post–Cold War modernity. For the Arab world, Turabi noted, the key challenge was the accelerating decline of pan-Arabism as a political doctrine. In every area politicized pan-Arabism had entered an era of regression. This was an inevitable by-product of the decline of the Arab state in the Muslim era. Many of the ardent supporters of pan-Arabism were currently looking for ties of a different kind to unify the Arabs and revitalize their self-respect. Growing numbers of them had already entered a profound discourse with the Islamist parties in an effort to find common language and objectives. Consequently, Turabi argued, many of these formally pan-Arab entities had evolved to such a degree that it was difficult to distinguish if they now held a pan-Arab or a pan-Islamic position.

Obviously all of these entities, whether pan-Arab or pan-Islamic, had continued to adamantly refuse any foreign rule. Nationalistic rhetoric notwithstanding, this was in essence an Islamic principle. Turabi stressed that as such this principle exceeded the confines of the Arab world to include the entire Muslim world. Beyond their Arabness, a term stronger than simply “Arab identity,” all these peoples needed to unite—the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians, and the like. This was a widely recognized reality, for Islamism constituted the sole expanding positive and promising ideology. Turabi noted the rapidly growing number of thinking people—including diehard Marxists and thoroughly Westernized intellectuals—who were discovering, returning to, and adapting Islamism. Turabi emphasized that the present-day dynamics in the Muslim world should be examined and studied with this perspective.

Turabi twisted and turned on the issue of the rights and obligations of the Islamist movements in their quest to establish Islamist rule in Muslim states. In essence, he explained, there was no justification for a violent rebellion that caused casualties among the civilian population even if the government were far from being Islamic or even legitimate. The need to abstain from inflicting hardship and casualties on the innocent would override the urgency of enforcing the Sharia.

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