Wishful thinking or spin?

One quick thing:  I'm struck at how quickly so many people are rushing to the conclusion that bin Laden's message "fell on silent ears" or demonstrated his isolation.  Based on what evidence?  That the Sudanese government and Hamas - both explicitly criticized by al-Qaeda - rejected his statements?  That some Arab newspapers - explicitly criticized in the speech - criticized the speech?  That the American government said so? 

Bin Laden doesn't necessarily care about the same things that Americans do. The full transcript of his speech, as I pointed out yesterday, suggests that the battle to shape identities and to sharpen the frame of a clash of civilizations takes top billing - not Iraq or any of the particular issues (Darfur, Hamas) which are dominating our headlines and op-eds.   I'd direct attention back to the whole Danish cartoons episode (as did bin Laden, at great length):  it came out of nowhere for most Western and mainstream Arab analysts alike, and incredibly quickly came to dominate the public agenda for weeks and weeks.  The potency of that issue, the speed with which it caught on and the intensity with which it was felt, suggests that the project of reshaping Arab/Muslim identities and reframing the politics of meaning is proceeding rather well.... even if bin Laden and al-Qaeda face intense competition in the struggle to assert leadership over the Islamist project.

Maybe bin Laden's rhetoric failed to reach Arab or Muslim audiences, but to conclude that right now is pure wishful thinking.  Or else it's spin, which is fine - in a battle of perceptions, of course each side will and should try to control perceptions - but only as long as we understand it for what it is.

(Oh, one other thought:  whether or not to intervene in Darfur is a tough question, with good arguments on both sides.  Doing so because bin Laden said we shouldn't is... stupid.   Doesn't anyone remember bin Laden's November 2004 speech, when he bragged about how it is "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies"?)

Comments

[Nur al-Cubicle]

Looking at commentary in Le Monde, there is no talk of "deaf ears". The reporting included the observation of Diaa Rashwan of the Al-Ahram Institute for Politics and Strategy that the OBL's latest message is not "harmless".

The French are concerned by OBL's attack on their law outlawing the wearing of the headscarf and Radio Medi 1, a joint French and Moroccan station to broadcast from Tangiers across the Mahgreb to counter Islamist propaganda.

BTW, Gilles Kepel of the Institute of Political Studies (Paris) has a new book called Al-Qaida dans les Textes [Al-Qaeda in Text] in which he analyses al-Qaeda texts that have been uploaded to the web. Kepel makes a point that really caught my attention: That the Internet is key to al-Qaeda, not for instant messaging or steganography, but for dissemination of literature. Now the money: when al-Qaeda uploads 8th century texts urging violence against non-believers, such texts are without commentary, glossary or criticism. The readership is captivated by the impression that they are transported across space and time directly to the source and by the fact that the texts come out of an ultramodern digital device --the computer.

I've actually seen such fascination at work. While earning a second degree in IT at an unnamed state university, I became aware that some extremely devout Christian classmates were running ancient Hebrew texts through some algorithm to derive numbers, which they then related back to the Hebrew alphabet to produce what they believed was the direct Word of God!

[Ghurab al-Bain]

Without minimizing the power and poison of Bin Ladin's remarks, I think what some saw was a slightly desperate attempt to find something, anything, that would stick as the next big issue, the next club, to beat the West and his opponents in the region and keep the jihad bubbling along, hence the long list: Danish cartoons, Sudan, Somalia (?), Palestine, Iraq. It isn't that his message fell on deaf ears but that his message now has to fight for a place along with so much else going on in the region.

[davesgonechina]

You mentioned the Al-Jazeera translation is severely truncated and not very good. Do you know of any good full translations on the net?

[The Lounsbury]

The French are concerned by OBL's attack on their law outlawing the wearing of the headscarf and Radio Medi 1, a joint French and Moroccan station to broadcast from Tangiers across the Mahgreb to counter Islamist propaganda.

Medi 1 countering Islamist agitprop?

What a queer thing to write.

Medi 1 is a Franco-Moroccan JV founded in 1980, and while like most media it's certainly secular in outlook, the way Nouralcubicle characterises Medi1 (really a pop station with news) is just bizarre. In origin Medi 1 has a lot more to do with Franco-Moroccan paranioa about Algeria than Islamism.

[the aardvark]

GB - I agree with that, with one big caveat. I think you're right about the field being crowded now and OBL trying to find a place. That's one of the reasons I supported the democracy promotion stuff - it fills up political space and reshapes the political debate.

That said, I heard OBL's speech as more than a laundry list (although the State of the Union stuff came close) - the clash of civs stuff seems like a coherent and well-argued organizing theme. Whether that resonates with anyone these days I don't know... but I also don't know that it doesn't. That's why the Danish cartoons incident is so sobering - it suggests that there are much larger reservoirs of that sentiment than some people want to think.

[Nur al-cubicle]

Sorry, that was Medi-1 Satellite television, which is to start in July.

[The Lounsbury]

Well, I will believe Medi1 TV is off the ground when it actually happens. That project has been kicked around for a long time.