al-Q made me do it
[Written and published in Innerface to Moiraverse on Thursday Jul 7 2005]
The explosions in London have barely stopped smoking when the blame hits the terrorist network al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda is an international terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden. It seeks to rid Muslim countries of what it sees as the profane influence of the West and replace their governments with fundamentalist Islamic regimes.
(Council on Foreign Relations: Backgrounder: al-Qaeda)
What exactly does it mean to be a terrorist network? The worst case scenario is a group of individuals and smaller groups, backed up by vast resources of money and connections, that communicate with each other efficiently enough to plan and execute devastating terrorist acts, but when caught cannot lead to the rest of the network. In al-Qaeda's case we also expect these individuals and groups to be militant Islamists who hate (as in destroy-it-all-literally) everything western or at least everything American (if there's a difference).
It also means that with such relatively loose and very covert but nearing all-powerful system, it's like any other conspiracy theory: bloated by rumours, easy to blame and next to perfect as a propaganda tool.
Obviously some party orchestrated the 9/11 attack. There probably have been and possibly still are people who identify themselves as belonging to something some call al-Qaeda. Perhaps they even have vast resources and unending hatred towards, say, what London represents to them. Still I can't help thinking that when the newspapers scream al-Qaeda, or when someone claims that "al-Qaeda" has claimed responsibility for something, it means nothing information-wise.
Unless it means some rather gloomy things that have to do with propagating the idea of evil terrorist, monstrous Muslims and suchlike to serve some agenda that likely has rather little to do with "national security". On an everyday level it's going to give new excuses for fearing or even hating the Arabian looking fellow at the airport, on the street or in the nearby shop they own.
I think that killing and wounding people is wrong. I believe that ends do not justify the means. I have some idea of what it's like when you're really, really scared. I can even imagine to some extent how it is when one honestly, suffocatingly, fears for everything they believe in -- whether it's the safety of using the train or the sacredness of your own culture or that people don't want to hurt each other.
Still, my own biggest fears have to do with the power of words and the images, beliefs and truths ("truths") that grow from them. I fear the statements that if you disagree with policy x or method y, you are siding with the terrorists. I fear the usage of "al-Qaeda" as if it would explain everything. I fear it how techniques of propaganda shape the world as an individual knows it when it blinds, deafens and indoctrinates. I fear the illusion of impartial, diverse information and selfless, wise politics.
I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.
-- bell hooks
Article on al-Qaeda in Wikipedia