Western Resistance

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June 25, 2007

Jihadists In Switzerland

From Switzerland

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199906002&subSection=News

A husband and wife charged with running Web sites that supported terrorists by providing them information on how to make bombs went on trial in Switzerland Wednesday.

Moez Garsallaoui, a 39-year-old Tunisian based near Fribourg, in western Switzerland, and first detained in February 2005, is accused of running Internet discussion forums used by terror groups to share information and to publicize claims of responsibility for attacks and threats against Westerners. Swiss prosecutors demanded two years of prison for Garsallaoui, six months of which would be suspended.

Malika El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian-born widow of an al-Qaeda suicide bomber and Garsallaoui's wife, stands accused of operating an Islamist Web site. The widow of one of the suicide attackers who killed the anti-Taliban Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, El Aroud is facing a 12-month suspended prison sentence.

Both Garsallaoui and El Aroud this week pleaded innocent to the charges against them

The article went on to inform that in a previous case, which like this one has little or no precedents, the defendants were cleared of "belonging to and supporting al-Qaeda". This is like saying a seller on e-bay has no interests in capitalism and commerce. In 2005, David Witzthum, then editor-in-chief of Israel Television, commented that the "...media is itself a weapon of the conflict - used by governments, rebels or terrorists alike, to achieve their goal - which is to show the effects of terror and violence. Their conviction is that the actual effect of terror is its representation in the media, without which its value and effect as weapon is meaningless and limited." The ultimate intent of the Internet is to disseminate information, raw or refined. It was originally academia's tool in the United States, funded by the Department of Defense starting in the late 1950s, for research purposes and the need for a "survivable communincations" system during and in the aftermath of a nuclear war. After the Internet, as a concept and as a tool, became available to the general public, most of the content rapidly became entertainment and commerce oriented. Few were and still much less are about social, political and religious issues. But aside from entertainment and commerce, influential cyberspace law professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School remarked about the Internet, particularly of the American perspective: "We have exported to the world, through the architecture of the Internet, a First Amendment in code more extreme than our own First Amendment in law."

The First Amendment "in law" enable and protect diverse viewpoints and opinions, even those that we find disagreeable. Only in extreme circumstances, such as credible physical threats, would we believe it is acceptable to control or even suppress anyone's right to expression. Long ago, anyone with an alternate viewpoint and who wish to express himself would have to stand on a "soapbox" in the village square. Then came mass printing, radio and television. The architectures of these methods not only allowed diverse opinions to be more easily and quickly presented, but also encouraged people hungry for diversity to seek and reach out for what they finally found. However, one can only stand and speak loudly on the "soapbox" for so long and the target audience is uncertain. With radio and television, one would still have find from among limited choices of enablers sufficient sympathy and access time to express one's opinions, often for a fee. People tired of "The Big Three": ABC, NBC and CBS, compelled the creation alternative sources of entertainment and news. Thus cable television was borned. Then came the Internet, with the technology and the architecture seemingly favored slightly the seekers over the sources, the symbiotic relationship became even more beneficial for both sides. The information hungry public no longer need to schedule a time for a walk to the proverbial village square or the local book dealer just for a chance of seeing something interesting. Now we certainly can find many interesting viewpoints and opinions about any subject matter at any hour of the day, not just from someone in the neighborhood, but even as far as from the other side of the world, usually for free. The U.S. Supreme Court, in 1997 with Reno v. ACLU, opined that the Internet endowed "...a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox."

This is not new to the jihadists...

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God.

The above religious edict, a fatwah issued by Osama bin Laden, was presented to 1.5 billion muslims on the World Islamic Front website back in 1998. We can safely assume that this sentiment is common among al-Qaeda's followers. Certainly not every muslim will be able to read this fatwah and certainly for among those who read it there must have been strong disgreements about the content and the religious legitimacy of the fatwah's issuer. After all, bin Laden is known more as an agitator and at least for the Americans, a terrorist, and not as a credible Islamic scholar, called a ulema, of any degree by the Muslim community. But the lack of any religious legitimacy conferred by some religious institution upon bin Laden did not stop 19 like minded men to sacrifice their lives in a "martyrdom" operation against the United States on September 11, 2001. Three years before bin Laden issued his fatwah, on November 13, 1995 in Saudi Arabia, four Saudi muslims with no admitted direct association to any religious extremist groups, attacked a U.S. military facility in Ridyadh using explosives, killing seven Americans and wounding scores. Later, three different groups, no al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the car bombing. For bin Laden and al-Qaeda's followers, the fatwah is effectively a formal declaration of war, not just any ordinary war, but a religious war. No distinctions between combatants and noncombatants were allowed in that ruling. The result is over 3,000 American "combatants" died. Since then, al-Qaeda as an organization have been militarily defeated and ousted from its santuary in Afghanistan. But also since then, the 19 muslim men have been eulogized and memorialized as honored soldiers for Allah on too many to count muslim websites. Their deeds are readily and quickly available for the world's estimated 1.5 billion muslims to see, should any of them have access to a computer and the Internet.

The InformationWeek news article may have looked chiefly on the legal problems and conflicts between an accessiblity provider and its customer but it cannot hide the greater implication that this is no longer about al-Qaeda but about the ism of al-Qaeda. David Witzthum warned us that the jihadists considers the Internet a weapon and uses it against the West and this news article bears him out. Like the four Saudis that attacked a U.S. base in Ridyadh this couple claimed to have no direct ties to any terrorist groups. The question is that with the ism of al-Qaeda in their hearts and souls, does it really matter of any official links to any official terrorist groups? Legally, yes and it must remain so if we are to continue as a society of laws. But behind legalities it is about time we admit to ourselves that the acquisition and acceptance of a group's ism, and not necessarily club membership, is precisely what Osama bin Laden himself and other "bin Ladens" of the Islamic community really want. The muslim who brazenly in broad daylight murdered Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh is imprisoned but the ism that motivated the murder is still being circulated among the muslim community in Holland. Let the state focus on the formal legalities of how to convict criminals while we turn our attention on the informal social factors and long term impact jihadist movements will create among us.

Group dynamics tells us that in joining a group, be it in joining The Boy Scouts or emigrating to another country, an individual usually seeks to function productively within a society. We should rightly give the benefit of the doubt about otherwise motives. Once admitted, the individual should and would learn to internalize a group's ethics and social boundaries. In doing so, the individual should accept that certain beliefs, practices and actions may not be appropriate and should be willing to concessions. This is a vital part of assimilation. So which should the Swiss, the people and not the state, should focus their attention: the legalities that this couple is not a club member of any terrorist organization, or their sympathies for the ism of al-Qaeda, which calls for the subjugation of the entire world, by force if necessary, under a 7th century Islamic ethics?

Group dynamics also tells us that political structures are about political power and the lack thereof in some subgroups. It is an inevitability that when a political power exist, a countervailing force will be created. Someone will always challenge the status quo about some issue, minor or major. There are dentists who disputes the American Dental Association's prevalent view on the flouridation of a city's drinking water. Some oppositions will tend towards violence, such as anti abortionists who have no reservations about killing doctors who performs abortions. But overall, our many functional democracies have largely succeeded in being tolerant of the diverse viewpoints and opinions of many subgroups. It is also a credit to ourselves that the large majority of subgroups have succeeded in internalizing the ethos of discussions and compromises and of peaceful persuasions instead of forceful coercions while remaining productive members of the greater society.

The ism of al-Qaeda and assorted militant Islamic jihadist groups is blatantly anti democratic, not merely undemocratic for it is possible that a certain political practice or procedure or figure that are labelled so can be changed or eliminated. Being undemocratic is usually temporary. Being anti democratic is about wholesale rejection of everything that constitute the accepted norms of the democratic processes, ethics and culture. It is blatantly misogynistic and we have been living on this planet long enough with mysogyny politically and socially institutionalized in varying degrees in the entire Middle East. It is scientifically regressive as it requires the tenets of science be submissive and unconditionally supportive of the Quran instead of being objective. The muslim world have not produced anything of scientific innovative worth in over a thousand years. Strange for a society that claim to possess a book of scientific knowledge that so much of modern science is supposedly confirming daily, anything from embryology to wireless communication.

The true test of a functional democratic society is the willingness and ability to tolerate diversity among its members, but is it obvious that such tolerance automatically imply that tolerance is a two-way street? So what should this functional democracy do when faced with a group whose viewpoints and opinions calls for the total destruction of that democratic society? Is the West unable to discern what is beneficial and what is not for ourselves? For this question, of course we are able to make such distinctions. But are we willing to do so? The dentists who are at odds with the ADA are not calling for the disbandment of that organization. The anti abortionists who advocate killing abortionists are not calling for the abolition of the medical profession. For the former, we leave them to the judgement of sound science and that is what they want anyway. For the latter, we let the law and the police at the local level do their jobs. But what are we willing to do when we see the Internet being used by sophisticated jihadists like the couple in this InformationWeek news article in propagating the ism of al-Qaeda?

If the law failed in its attempt to convict these jihadists, that failure does not absolve the Swiss in particular and the rest of the West in general, the responsibility of defending ourselves at the ideological level. The Internet is the West's creation. Our creation. We are no less sophisticated than the jihadists in its employment in any causes. Exposing Islamism should be one cause, making comparisons between the oppressiveness of Islamic societies and the respects for human rights and freedoms in ours another. Open criticism, the foundational freedom of the West, of sacred cows in and of Islam, should be encouraged, after all, the freedoms our women enjoys and would fight tooth and nails to protect, gives Islamists religious justifications in calling them "whores" and "uncovered meat". The American Catholic Church was shaken to the core because of sexual scandals and financial levies from legal judgements. Political corrrectness was not a factor then so why should it matter regarding Islam? It should not. Islam must be criticized and Islamism should be exposed. The Internet can be just as much a weapon for us as it is for the jihadists.

Posted by Xingzhe at June 25, 2007 4:29 AM

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