Eradicating the Bin Laden mentality

May 5, 2011 - 0:0

The death of Osama bin Laden brought closure to many people around the world, especially those who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks or other terrorist acts that were conducted or inspired by Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network.

Bin Laden is associated with murder and terror.
Bin Laden claimed that his war was against those he called “infidels” but the victims of his shadowy Al-Qaeda network were mostly Muslims, and thus he and his death machine did the greatest injustice and harm to Islam and Muslims.
Thousands of children have been orphaned in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan just because Al-Qaeda decided to use these countries as battlefields for taking revenge against the United States.
Despotic Arab rulers and Western countries, especially the United States, are responsible for the emergence of people like Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Bin Laden and his Arab comrades were supported by the United States and certain European and Arab countries in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
To counter the Soviets in Afghanistan, the CIA provoked the people’s religious sentiments and used religious fanaticism as the strongest tool against forces that the CIA and other intelligence agencies called kafirs (unbelievers), and thus planted the seeds of extremism in the region.
However, those who called themselves mujahedin (holy warriors) later bit the hand that feeds and turned their guns against their former supporters.
The United States, through its blind support for Israel, has also made it easy for Al-Qaeda to recruit young Arabs and other Muslim youths.
The Afghans, who were supposed to finally get relief after years of Soviet occupation and civil war, instead have been brutalized by bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings, and other heinous acts of war.
The Al-Qaeda branch in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, committed more war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq than anywhere else.
Now Bin Laden is gone, but his way of thinking persists and the danger it brings.
In order to eradicate the Bin Laden mentality, many things must be done.
Specifically, efforts must be made to end injustice, to end dictatorship and corruption in the countries of the Arab world and other places that have become fertile ground for Al-Qaeda to recruit new members, and most importantly, to convince the United States and its Western allies to halt their unjustified support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the Zionists’ other crimes so that a fair solution can be found for the Palestinian question after over six decades.
If nothing is done, the Bin Laden mentality will persist and world peace will remain a distant dream.