By Lloyd Levy
LONDON–The death of Osama Bin Laden had been long in the coming, and many people celebrate that he has reaped what he has sown. Nevertheless I do believe that his portrayal in the “West” has been deliberately misleading.
Blaming something called Al-Qaida, for the world’s terrorism is a deception, a politically correct subterfuge for a wider problem.
Al-Qaida means “The Base”. In other words, it was an organisation headed up by bin Laden certainly, but its role was to germinate Jihadist ideology , and to provide finance and training to other Jihadist groups. In other words, he was a facilitator, and inspirer of terror, but the Jihadist ideology was not invented by bin Laden. Neither was he some sort of aberration from an existing world view in parts of the Arab world.
The Christian West and Muslim East, have been at war 1400 years, especially for control of Europe. It was only the last 100 years, since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the “West”, that has seen a semblance of peace and the apparent lack of conflict. However this tension has now reemerged, but it is not politically correct in USA and Europe to discuss it. Therefore what has happened, is that the Media and politicians place all the blame on bin Laden and al-Qaida, to cover up the fact that they are merely part of a larger picture. Rather than blame “Muslim extremists” for the London tube bombings, or the Madrid train bombings, or the 9/11 horror, it is convenient to blame it on some sort of entity called “al-Qaida” or “bin Laden “, seemingly outside normal human activity. It saves having to discuss the fact that a Clash of Civilisations has re-emerged.
*
Levy is a freelance writer who divides his time between London, England, and Eiliat, Israel. He may be contacted at lloyd.levy@sdjewishworld.com