How Will Posterity Treat Osama Bin Laden?

For almost a decade he was the top of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List and the media’s pet bogeyman in the West. 

His death from ”Ballistic Trauma” (being shot in plain English) became a global media event instantly. Planes flying into the twin towers in Manhattan - this iconic image has spread globally and is probably forever associated with Osama Bin Laden. 

What kind of role would posterity give him?

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How Osama Bin Laden Became the Big Baddie

Daddy bin Laden was a collossal achiever by any measure. Osama bin Laden’s father, was in illiterate poor lad from a poor area called hadramaut or ”death is among us” in Yemen. This poor lad became the personification of the American dream. He reaches Jeddah, begins as a porter and starts his own construction business to eventually become the favourite royal architect and the richest non-royal in the country. Religious and very loyal to his regal patrons (In 1964 he saved the broke royal house by lending them money when Prince Feisal deposed King Saud), he gave a personal touch to recycling. He divorced almost all of his 22 wives, never keeping more than four at a time.

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Daddy bin Laden (on the right) with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in mid 1990s

He divorced his tenth wife, Osama’s mother, soon after the kid was born. Then daddy (with 54 children) recommends his mother to an associate, who marries her and they have four children. So Osama grows up in a household with three half-brothers and one half-sister. Though attending university, he never got a degree or acquired a profession. Being born very wealthy in Saudi Arabia, one doesn’t even have to think of such banalities as earning one’s living by working.

Photo source: Osama in Oxford, UK on a visit with family in 1971. (second from right)

At 17 Osama or Usama marries his first cousin, a Syrian woman, the first of his six wives, two of whom he would later divorce. He would father 20-26 children with his wives. Here is a link to his family tree.

Photo source: 17 year old Osama Bin Laden with family in Falun, Sweden (second from right)

Osama is seen as handsome, has polite and refined manners, loads of money and is considered gifted. Here begins the central problem of all gifted persons – what do with this gift? He has no role model except daddy, against whom he has to rebel. He can’t direct the fire, the daemon in himself to a cause. He doesn’t have the Moses-like quality of transforming an entire civilization like Kemal Ataturk. He is not willing to personally suffer the hardship of long marches like Mao Tse Tung as he travels always with his retinue of wives and children. 

Osama’s charisma is compelling but he definitely wasn’t an intellectual speaking many languages after personally experiencing the injustices of foreign powers like the swashbuckling Che Guevara in his travels. He seems to lack the spiritual depth of T E Lawrence fighting for the Arab cause. Compared to Muhammad Ahmad (1844-1885), the Mahdi or the Bin Laden of the British Empire, Osma also did not personally lead successful battles. 

Photo Source: Muhammad Ahmad, The Mahdi

So the directionless 19-year-old lad arrives in Afghanistan to join the defensive jihad of the Palestinian Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. The Mujahideen, set up and funded by the USA welcomed him, his sincere and principled devotion and his money. After Soviet Union withdraws in ignominy from Afghanistan, Osama returns to Saudi Arabia a hero. Disappointment creeps in when it dawns upon him that the regime in his own country doesn’t want him. He turns against them. Expelled to Sudan, he becomes the ultimate outsider with no country, no tribe no social class or group to call his own and fight for. He finds his home in an idea of Jihad where innocents can also be slaughtered. 

Though the outsider’s angst and miseries are a prophet’s teething troubles, few become prophets. A person destined to be a prophet, rejects the bustle of society, ventures alone into the desert and descends into himself.  The loneliness may not bring him proximity of his chosen vision of divinity, but he hears in the solitude something more than the echo of the impulse that brought him there.

Osama's Main Target Becomes America

Osama chooses to appear as a prophet, without the schooling of the lonely dark night of the soul. 

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He takes over from Ayatolla Khomeini to rant against the moral corruption of America and their allies. His enemies want him to assume that role more than anyone else as it gives them a justification for wars and acts of retaliations. Ironically he becomes more of their creation than his own. Rather than growing to take in life as it is and could be, he becomes a pipe through which events unfold, often in spite of him. His existence and his death ultimately serve them more that his followers.

The war he joins is one of preaching and not of fighting because in preaching he finds his cause. Egoistically he aligns himself to the locus of the moving finger of history, where all great empires crumble under their own megalomania, mostly due to economic, social and moral corruption. This was the undoing of the Soviet Union, with the help of USA, and now it was to be America’s turn.

He would have liked to give America a chance to redeem itself by reconnecting its activities with the lofty idea that is America, the noble vision of the founding fathers. The rulers of America couldn’t care less, he felt, eerily like the unabomber Ted Kaczynski, PhD. This frustration echoes in Osama's statement. 

“We were fighting against the communists since 1979, and now the United States was pressuring us to cooperate with those very same communists. The United States has no principles. To achieve its own interest, it forgets every principle.” 

When a person resorts to violence or terrorism against a society, what else does the system do but return the favour! An individual can turn the other cheek, but can a state law enforcement system do so?

American propaganda leaflet in Afghanistan. Bin Laden second from left (note the raised finger).

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Towers, Airplanes and America as Important Symbols for Osama’s Life

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As a poor boy, Osama’s father had dreamt of building towers and that is how he became rich. He was the first private citizen in Saudi Arabia to own an airplane and was killed in an air crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967, due to the American pilot’s landing error. His eldest half-brother Salem (the next head of the family and who had a British wife) accidentally flew his plane into power lines in San Antonio, Texas and was killed. The iconic image of the planes crashing into the twin towers in New York in 9/11 sealed his fame as the world’s most known baddie.

What do the Jokes About Osama’s Death Reveal?

Most of the American jokes about Osama’s death continue the work of the seals, taking pot-shots at the favourite bogeyman to score domestic political political.

• "The Republicans are so happy about bin Laden they've granted President Obama full citizenship." —David Letterman
• "Osama Bin Laden's supporters want to rename the Arabian Sea where his body was dumped Martyr Sea. Really? Martyr Sea? Hiding in your bedroom for six years? How about Chicken of the Sea?" –Jay Leno
• Breaking News: Donald Trump is now on a quest to see his death certificate...
• Osama's last words: "Man, I just got my iphone 4, too! How did they find me?"

Here's a pre-Ballistic-trauma joke about Osama

• Osama Bin Laden seeks out a fortune-teller, since he knows there is a price on his head. The fortune-teller says, "You will die on a major US holiday." 
• Bin Laden says, "Which one?" 
• She replies, "Doesn't matter! Whatever day you die, it's gonna be a major US holiday."

The best Osama death joke is from DanaArikane who wrote: "They should have captured Bin Laden alive and made him continually go through airport security for the rest of his life." This would vibe with everyone who goes through airport security.

Deathers probably love this one.

• "What? Not only did we kill Bin Laden, we killed him in Abottabad! Abottabad sounds like name most New Yorkers would have invented for the fictional place they would have loved to kill Bin Laden." –Jon Stewart

Conspiracy theorists would love this one:

• Obama overheard during Bin Laden raid: "Are we shooting this in the same studio where we faked the moon landing?"
• There is a new Cocktail called Osama. 2 Shots and a splash of water!

This one is for people who hate President Obama:

• Obama - The first black guy that has ever had to convince the world he did do the killing.

In Pakistan and the sub-continent, the Pakistani army are the butt of local jokes.

• "No honking: the army is asleep" and another read as: "Public Service Message from the Army: Stay alert. Don't rely on us."
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• "Pakistan radar system for sale: $99.99, buy one, get one free (Can't detect US helicopters but can receive Star Plus.)"

Pakistani blogger Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi posted some of the best bin Laden jokes on his blog: 

• "It has been recently revealed that Osama bin Laden was a visiting faculty at Pakistan Military Academy, where he was teaching Global Terrorism 101"
• "Osama Bin Laden's Facebook status has not changed from RIP. It was Resting In Pakistan before".

Not Jokes but Prayers for Osama bin Laden divides Muslims

Though most Muslims did not like Osama or his negative message of hate and violence, some still continue to revere him.

In Kolkata, India, the Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan mosque, Maulana Nurur Rehman Barkati, held special Friday prayer for the "peace of the soul" of bin Laden.

In Chennai, the imam of a major mosque on Anna Salai Road announced prayers for bin Laden, and many people responded by praying.

The Al-Qaeda has vowed to avenge the killing and so the senseless killing of mostly innocents goes on and on.

Osama as The Frankenstein of the Media Age

When 9/11 happens, Osama denies twice and then almost reluctantly claims responsibility. Later he begins bragging about planning them. He continues his preaching and his stature grows as the media credit him with all kinds of evil acts and machinations. He became the justification for two ongoing wars, though the UK government officially admits that the case against him would not be a prosecutable case in a court of law. 

Interestingly, Osama has played a significant role in US presidential elections. He dutifully turned up when with some kind of diatribe and venomous preaching or evil action whenever there was a need to swing public opinion. So, now he can be killed, sorry, subjected to ballistic trauma, but he can’t be debogyfied. So the pathetic aging man (probably only a citizen of Bosnia at that time) sitting in his luxury home next to Pakistan’s West Point military academy and watching videotapes of himself reading hate messages will continue being the worst of the baddies.

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Would historians a century from now be tempted to say that Osama was successful in bringing down not one but two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the USA as the costs of these wars are many trillions of dollars and not even the mighty US economy can bear it for too long? This is extremely unlikely!

The likelihood that he will soon be forgotten and end up as a footnote in history is also very  probable.

Who is a Real Arab!

”I don’t understand your Arab culture.” 

is the phrase I overheard at a cafe as two men wearing Western clothes were discussing very animatedly in good cheer and laughing together occasionally. Then, so typically among good friends, they had the traditional argument about ’Let me pay the bill, I insist’. This set me thinking – who is an Arab?

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The stereotypical perception of an Arab in many countries is that an Arab is a Muslim, lives in the Middle East and is probably loaded with oil money. Unfortunately, another totally mistaken stereotype has started to become prevalent – the Arab terrorist. All these stereotypes are totally wrong.

What is the Definition of an Arab?

In Arab schoolbooks, the Arab world ranges from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean and from Syria to Sudan in Africa. 

• It was only in the 19th and 20th century that Arab nationalism created this concept of an Arab world. 

Before that, people usually identified themselves with tribes or with political structures like the Ottoman Empire. Pre-Islamic Arabic as a language dates back to the 4th century.

There are three methods of classifying as an Arab.

1. Linguistic – If your first language is Arabic as for about 200 million people.
2. Geneological – If you can trace your ancestry to the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.
3. Political - The League of Arab States or Jāmiʻat ad-Duwal al-ʻArabiyya has 339 million people living in 22 states. They define an Arab as “A person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is the citizen of an Arab country, whose father is an Arab, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples.”

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How the Arabs See Themselves

Only 32% of the 4100 people surveyed in six Arab countries by Professor Shibley Telhami’s group at the University of Maryland saw themselves as Muslims or Arabs. 35% considered themselves primarily as citizens of their own country. Only 1% had the idea of being a world citizen.

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Compare the situation to 2010.

Not all Muslims are Arabs. Arabs are only 24% of the 1,4 billion Muslims in the world. 85% of the population in Morocco and 55% in Algeria are Berbers (Famous Berbers: Zinedine Zidane, Saint Augustine, Emperor Septimius Severus) who are non-Arabs.

Most of the people living in Egypt do not consider themselves Arabs.

• In Sudan, there are more than fifty ethnic groups and only half the population can speak Arabic.

Is Arab 'Identity' a matter of Language, Religion or Ethnicity?

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This is a very complicated question and there are many opinions when one considers that there are so many different nation states, religious sub-divisions and ethnic variety among the 'Arabs'.

Does language and history define national identity for the Arabs more than religion?

• There are many serious scholars, like Abu Khaldun Sati al Husari (1881-1967) the Syrian/Ottoman theoretician of Arab nationalism and author of A Day in Maysalun, who believes that language and not religion, economy and geography are important for the formation of nationalism. Language is "the heart and spirit of the nation," and history is its "memory and feeling." 
• The British-Lebanese historian Albert Hourani in his book, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, agrees by claiming that Arabs are "more conscious of their language than any people in the world." 

The contrary view, that religion does play a major role, also has qualified support.

• Abd al-Aziz Duri, the eminent Iraqi social historian says "Islam unified Arabs and provided them with a message, an ideological framework, and a state." He goes on to clarify the link between Islam and Arabism as being "were closely linked at first, but subsequently followed separate courses."

Are Arabs Antagonistic to Western Civilization?

Many people assume that Arab civilisation is eternally antagonistic to Western civilisation. The ridiculous stereotype of the Arab terrorist in the West and the equally mistaken notion of America as the ‘Great Satan’ among the Arabs do betray a history of armed conflict. From the Battle of Tours in 732 CE through the Crusades onwards there has been no love lost between the civilisations. 

Ironically, Islam has very much in common with the Judaic and Christian traditions in the form of common religious figures, customs and traditions. They are all children of Adam, Moses and Abraham. 

• Arabs were very instrumental in transmitting scientific knowledge from the Orient to the Occident in centuries past.
• It was the Arabs who brought the numerals and the zero. 
• Many words in the English and Spanish languages are from the Arabic. Most people drinking alcohol wouldn’t care to know that it is an Arabic word. 

On the other hand, a significant portion of the educated people in the Arab world dress in Western costumes, are proud to speak fluent English and educate their children in Western universities.

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How People Living in Arab Countries Use the Internet

The use of the Internet has started changing Arab societies politically, socially and economically as it has done in many other countries. 

It is perhaps to hasty to draw conclusions if frequency of Internet use has any positive correlation to political freedom and dissent threshold in these countries. But frequency of Internet use most certainly has a large impact on all aspects of life for people living in these countries, unless they are immune to commercial and other forms of propaganda. 

Things have changed a lot in Arab countries. In the days of Saddam Hussein, people who could afford getting Internet connection (frightfully expensive in those days) also needed to sign the following declaration.

• The subscription applicant must report any hostile website seen on the internet, even if it was seen by chance. The applicants must not copy or print any literature or photos that go against state policy or relate to the regime. Special inspectors teams must be allowed to search the applicant’s place of residence to examine any files saved on the applicant’s personal computer.

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Currently Saudi Arabia follows a very strict approach. Every single cybercafe must install hidden cameras and record the names and contact information of each customer. Actually, this is not that uncommon around the world, even in a country like Italy.

OpenNetInitiative (ONI) reports that Saudi Arabia's 'filtering' centres on the following:

• pornography 86%
• gambling 93%
• religious conversion 41%
• sites which provide tools and methods to circumvent filters 41%

What Saudi Arabia seems to care less about are

• Israel 2%
• religion 1%
• alcohol 1%
• politics 3%
• gay and lesbian issues 11%

Wonder why the Saudi high concern with pornography is not visible in the gay and lesbian arena (86% -vs- 11%)? 

• Is it because they think that such matters are harmless and let them do it or
• They do it in any case so why bother or
• The incidence of gay sexual behaviour (but not identity) is so common that there is no point in making a noise
• What could men do with men and women do with women? - Is there a trace of Queen Victoria's supposed attitude that "Women do not do such things!" (actually it is a myth, she never said it)

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Suggestions for further reading:

• John Hayes, ed., The Genius of Arab Civilization: Source of Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983). Well-illustrated chapters on historic Arab contributions to the arts and sciences.
• Arab World and Islamic Resources
• Islamic Studies Resources

Why Should We Force Our Religious Views on Others?

A Christian bus driver in the UK refuses to drive a bus with an atheist slogan.

The advertisement "There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” runs on 200 buses in London and 600 vehicles in England, Scotland and Wales in an advertising campaign. The atheist Professor Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association officially back this anti-God campaign.

Bus driver Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, UK walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest. His employer, the bus company, First Bus said in a statement: 

"As an organisation we don't endorse any of the products or sentiments advertised on our buses. The content of this advert has been approved by the Advertising Standards Agency and therefore it is capable of being posted on static sites or anywhere else."

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Hanne Stinson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, expressed: 

"I have difficulty understanding why people with particular religious beliefs find the expression of a different sort of beliefs to be offensive. "I can't understand why some people seem to have a different attitude when it comes to atheists."

Do States Define the Religions of its Citizens?

Is this ad inherently different from the message of organised religions? A building, a church, a temple, or a mosque is also a loud proclamation of the faith of believers. Buildings and religious congregations satisfy the needs of members, but without attacking other people faiths. Stating your viewpoint and professing your faith need not undermine or attack anyone else’s faith.

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Most countries of the world are tolerant of different religions or religious views of inhabitants. States have however, often taken extreme positions of intolerance. For example, on February 27, 380 AD, the Byzantine emperor declared, "Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial religion, ending state support for the traditional Roman religion and tolerance for others. 



Track Record of the Catholic Inquisition

The Catholic inquisition is seen as a very bloody and gruesome affair. 

30 external historians working together with Vatican authorities, however found that more women accused of witchcraft died in the Protestant countries than under the inquisition.

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Outside Europe, the inquisition was a different story. The Goa inquisition, between 1560 and 1812, was designed to punish relapsed New Christians (Jews and Muslims). From the scant records not destroyed in 1812, it seems to have brought to trial 16 200 out of which 64 were burned and 57 executed.

The Inquisition Symposium, established in 2000 by the Pope, found that the Inquisition burned 59 women in Spain, 36 in Italy, and four in Portugal. At the same time in Europe, civil justice brought to trial 100,000 women and burned 50,000 of them. About 26,000 were condemned as witches in Germany.

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Theocratic States in the World Today

Though in Norway, Finland and Sweden the Lutheran Church and the state are joined, currently only Islamic states are theocratic. Saudi Arabia requires all Saudi nationals to be Muslims. The state recognizes individuals’ rights of non-Muslims to worship in private. Israel is also a Jewish theocracy, with a population 76.1% Jewish, 16.2% Muslim, 2.1% Christian, and 1.6% Druze, with the remaining 3.9% of other religions. But, Israel allows freedom of religion by law even to Israeli citizens.

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The first modern Islamic state, Pakistan was founded on 14^th August 1947. According to Section 295C of the Pakistan Penal Code you get the death penalty if you 

"by words . . . or visible representation . . . or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defile the name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad." 

You can be sent to ten years in jail for outraging the religious feelings of any group. As of mid-2002, only the testimony of a single Muslim is sufficient to prosecute a non-Muslim on blasphemy charges.

Religion of Ruler Defined by Law

There are only few countries where the religion of the ruler is defined by law. 

• Saudi Arabia requires all Saudi nationals to be Muslims. As a ruler of Saudi Arabia has to be a Saudi national, the ruler has to be a Muslim. 
• The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran with its Shi’a Islam of the Jaafari (Usuli) school of thought also has no choice about religion.

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• The Emperor of Japan is currently the only ruler with the title of Emperor. In 1946, with pressure from US General MacArthur, he renounced his claim to being divine in human form (akitsumikami), but he did not renounce being a Aahitogami (a Kami or spirit being born in human form) or a descendant of Amaterasu (Sun Goddess in Shinto religion). 

The 44^th US president Barack Obama can convert to Islam, Hare Krishna, Bahái, or any other faith. But, one other very liberal Western democracy has a religious straightjacket for its ruler. The constitutional law prevents the monarch of UK from being a Catholic. As the head of the Anglican Church and as the “Defender of Faith”, the monarch cannot but be an Anglican Protestant officially. This could be a toughie for Prince Charles (with his holistic views and penchant for alternative 'treatments') when his time comes.

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Further References:

• Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War, University of Hawai'i press, 1998, p.3
  
• Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
  
• Encyclopædia Iranica. Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University.
  
• Levack, Brian P. The witch hunt in early modern Europe, Third Edition. London and New York: Longman, 2006.
• Monter, William: Witch trials in Continental Europe, (in:) Witchcraft and magic in Europe, ed. Bengst Ankarloo & Stuart Clark, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2002, pp 12. 
• Salomon, H. P. and Sassoon, I. S. D., in Saraiva, Antonio Jose. The Marrano Factory. The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians, 1536-1765 (Brill, 2001), pp. 345-7.