8 April 2005	Friday	28 Safar 1426

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ISLAMABAD, April 7: The Muslim world is in a state of quandary after the 9/11 as an element of ‘fitna’ has been injected into it. This was stated by former Foreign Minister Agha Shahi at a lecture programme titled ‘The war for Muslim minds’, given by visiting French scholar Prof Gilles Kepel at the Institute of Strategic Studies (ISSI) here on Thursday. The programme was arranged jointly by the Alliance Francaise, the French Embassy and the ISSI.

Mr Shahi in response to a question by a participant after the lecture, said that dissension had been injected into the Muslim world.

Prof Kepel had used the word ‘Fitna’ on the title of his book, The War for Muslim Minds. But his American publisher substituted changed ‘Fitna’ with the word ‘war’, since American readers would not understand the Arabic word.

Prof Kepel is head of Department of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. He also authored the books Jihad in 2003.

The French scholar said Osama Bin Laden (OBL) though caused spectacular damage to the Twin Towers in New York, he could not mobilise the Muslim masses. He fractured the Muslim world.

With the hindsight of three-and-a-half year of the 9/11 incident, he could say now that in reality OBL’s bizarre action had created nightmare and chaos.

OBL launched ‘jihad’ or holy war against the US and the Christian world but his folly backfired with disastrous consequences to the Middle East, in particular, and the Muslim world, in general. As a result the Americans have been successful in introducing dissensions among the Muslim world.

Osma was able to provide the US the false excuse of waging war on terror and against weapons of mass destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, and bolster strife between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq. Iran was also being cornered now.

The failure of al-Qaeda had encouraged the US to sell the package of ‘war on terror’ to the American people and Senate.

After initial success of Jihad in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda had failed every where — in Bosnia, Algeria, Chechnya. It had not been able to establish any regime or to inspire governments in Muslim states to follow Islamic laws and even the Taliban government was wiped away. But with the failure of successive operations in Algeria, Egypt and Bosnia, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s circle turned their attention to what they called martyrdom operations (suicide bombings).

Prof Kepel described al-Qaeda as a loose organization, which did business on internet. OBL was the logo of the organization for mass projection but the real ideologue is Zawahiri.

One significant fact that came from Mr Kepel’s lecture was that since the 1990s in the eyes of the neo-conservatives the demise of the Saddam Hussein regime was already deemed desirable. The US invaded Iraq because it saw it as counterpoint of Israel. Most Neo-cons have a peculiar agenda in relation to the Middle East, where all criteria except Israel’s security paled into insignificance.

Dissension had been perpetrated among the Kurds, Shias and Sunnis and one did not know whether the new democracy would hold or when the US would withdraw its forces from there.

He said there should be no doubt that Qum must yield to Najaf which was destined to be future centre of Shia confluence. Now, the big question is whether Iraq could pump the wished for five million barrels of oil per day and after the restoration of some form of planted democracy and whether oil prices would stabilise that jumped to $58 on Thursday and people were predicting that it would shoot up to around $100.

Traditionally, Saudi Arabia had encouraged jihadi elements to engage outside their own land. The Arabs have not really done any fighting any where. The trouble started when they returned to Saudi Arabia, and as a result we now see Saudi Arabia trying to widen its constituency and some reforms with new measures such as calling for women’s conference.

About the problem of integration of Muslims in Europe he said that religion was not public pressure in Europe and here they may be small in number but lived at the heart of modernity. The Muslim in Europe were trying to make Islam more compatible to the modern world.”

ISSI Director-General Dr Shirin Mazari in her concluding statement said a dialect was going on in the Muslim society between obscurantist and mainstream Islam.