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Some cherished quotations deserve to live on even after the evidence exposes them as apocryphal. Did Chinese premier Zhou Enlai really say, "`E0 propos the tell"? Sadly, no: it turns out that his allusion, in 1971, to the French student upheavals of 1968 got somewhat dignified in translation. No matter, it would have been true had he said it, with the meltdown of the Euro project simply the latest phase of a perennial Napoleonic dream. And what goes for 1789 applies overwhelmingly to 2001.
Given that the long shelf of 9/11 tomes are doomed to obsolescence, they should at least find something worthwhile to say. Since no current book will have been commissioned with either the Arab revolutions or Osama bin Laden's death in mind, they can survive the pace of events only by overturning cliches and entertaining fresh ideas. Too few do, but a brace of studies from Oxford signpost enough new directions to warrant respect. They are Fawaz A Gerges's The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda and Charles Kurzman's The Missing Martyrs. The latter's subtitle, "Why there are so few Muslim terrorists", catches the drift of both. Despite the odd, tragic spectacular attack in the wake of the 9/11 fluke, Al-Qaeda has failed utterly. Its global jihad against the West never materialised. Muslims in their countless millions, including most religious zealots, turned away from any sympathy with terror.
"Turn down the volume on the terrorism debates," advises Kurzman, who calls on the West to "give credit to Muslims" as primary defenders against jihadi violence. "All the war on terror really does," adds Gerges, "is legitimise al-Qaeda's' failed ideology." If the breakneck timetable of the Arab spring has galloped ahead of publication schedules, its unfolding ratifies these books' proposals. Gerges, in a preface, sums up the case. For him, "the revolutions have reinforced what many of us have already known: Al-Qaeda's core ideology is incompatible with the universal aspirations of the Arabs", who seek via revolt against tyranny "democratic institutions" rather than the rule of Islamist saints. From Bali to London, Madrid to Casablanca, the few major post-9/11 strikes by Al-Qaeda or its semi-freelance followers spread such understandable grief and dread that monstrous phantoms took the place of cool risk assessment. "Disproportionate fear" drove western policy, both writers argue. It handed the Bin Laden crew a pyschological victory though fellow-jihadis scorned their catastrophic strategy. And, even though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stoked anti-Western sentiment, recruitment dwindled, while the quality of would-be "warriors" plummeted. Given occasional strokes of luck, even a few fanatic bunglers can wreak havoc, of course. Neither book minimises the suffering that post-9/11 terror has inflicted, or still could. But the researches of both point, convincingly, to a downward curve of terror. As do the snapshots of a conspiracy of clodhoppers, who have more than a little in common with Chris Morris's Four Lions satire — an oddball ragbag of blunderers, fantasists and nit-pickers, like the Al-Qaeda controller who rejected a $-470 expenses claim for a new fax from a Yemeni militant. Why didn't he buy second-hand? No wonder the leadership began to despair. Kurzman quotes a video from 2008 that scorns the passivity of "my brother in Allah", wailing that, rather than join the struggle, Muslims have chosen to "live as a rabbit, and die as a rabbit". From Tripoli to Damascus, the "rabbits" have now risen to pursue a truly enduring freedom. For Gerges, "only a miracle" can "resuscitate transnational jihad". Meanwhile, will western states — as both authors desire — see sense and bankroll hope and reform, rather than persist in the self-defeating "terrorism narrative"? On that score, to half-quote Zhou Enlai, it really is too soon to tell. — The Independent
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Ten years after 9/11,
publishers shovel out anniversary histories by authors, who well
understand that their interim reports will swiftly read like the
cancelled first draft of a tentative first chapter.
Kurzman calculates that,
around the world, less one Muslim in every 15,000 has over the past
quarter-century had any contact with a radical jihadi group. And only
the backdraft from clumsy and brutal western interventions offers any
oxygen to murderous militancy.