Making A Difference

Osama, The Che Of Islam?

In anti-imperialist fervour, yes, but Osama just wants to weaken the US

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Osama, The Che Of Islam?
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For long the staple of internet chatrooms, it was Defne Bayrak who gave sanctity to the question netizens had been asking for a long time: is Osama bin Laden Islam’s Che Guevara, the Latin-American revolutionary whose passion for violent change continues to captivate the world? Bayrak was the author of a book, Osama bin Laden: the Che Guevara of the East, a fact that was revealed only after her Jordanian husband Al-Balwai exploded himself at the CIA base camp in the Khost region of Afghanistan.

No doubt, Osama is an icon for many—T-shirts printed with his likeness were being worn on the streets of East Africa way back in 1998, when Al Qaeda bombed the United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. His image on TV screens often has people in West Asia exult. And now even experts on terror have begun to draw comparisons between Che and Osama. French author Olivier Roy, for instance, sees in Al Qaeda a continuation of the anti-imperialist struggles of Che and the Baader-Meinhof group.

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Oxford University’s Faisal Devji, too, compares the attraction the Communist ideology had for the youth to that of Al Qaeda. He, however, feels Osama is past his big moment. “Something seems to have changed,” says Devji, pointing to the rise of regional Islamic groups which have no material link to Al Qaeda. Also, many militant groups like the Hamas and Hezbollah have come to realise that Osama’s dominance post-9/11 has been inimical to their cause, compelled as they were to lie low in the wake of the worldwide outcry against violence and the fury of America.

This apart, there are many differences between Che and Osama. Che fought for the poor, his ideology was inclusive. And even though Osama has lately been trying to expand his agenda, he remains a progenitor of an idea which appeals to only a section of the Muslims. Che believed in establishing a Communist state, Osama just wants to weaken the West so that it can’t determine global affairs.

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But ideas have their own life-cycle. Fascism, for instance, continues to have a lure even after the death of those who practised it. “It just takes one person to pick up such an idea and put it into practice once again,” says Devji. There could be many more Faisal Shahzads hoping to teach the US a lesson.

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