The ideas of Gilles Kepel, a French academic who has written a counter-intuitive book on Islamic extremism, deserve more attention than they are receiving. In a new essay, he crystallizes his message that Al Qaeda is a failed movement. The following extract, which is a bit lengthy, is worth reading because it calls into question much of what we read in the mainstream media, and it isn’t nonsense.
“The Islamic movement continues to exist, but it is deeply divided and militarily defeated…It seems clear that al-Qaida’s aim was to engineer a very spectacular attack, which would prove that the enemy was weak and not worthy of being feared. The masses they wanted to reach out to, it was hoped, would join in the jihad against the West to liberate themselves. But the problem is that such a closely-knit conspiratorial movement is both the basis of their success and, at the same time, the reason for their ultimate failure. They have no way to reach out to the masses. They have no charities. They do not spread the word. They have no way to deal with grassroots politics. So, they cannot mobilise. They can only use the exemplarity of symbols, and the media, to convey a message to the masses. Bin Laden became a mastermind in using the media–particularly after he singled out the new Arab media, such as the al-Jazeera channel, as the main medium of his political message.
“This led to a striking phenomenon. I have travelled widely in the Middle East since 11 September, and I have frequently noticed a widespread enthusiasm for Osama bin Laden–the man who ‘stood for us’–particularly among the youth, in (for example) Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and the Emirates. They were not sure about the massacre of civilians at the World Trade Center; it could not be him, ‘it must have been Mossad, probably’. The suicide attacks against Israel were a different matter, because Israel is a country that has invaded Muslim lands. But what is crucial is that they were not convinced by the ‘violence argument’ as such. They did not go for that.
“In my view, this is a sign that in spite of the appearance of strength in the violent events of 11 September, with many people massacred, and the very visible threat to the West of these Islamist movements–in spite of this, the very violence of these movements is not a symbol of strength, but precisely shows that they cannot reach out to the constituencies they need to mobilise, in order to seize power.”
