Once Again, for Muslims, It's 'Us Versus Us'

By Mona Eltahawy

The title of this column, "Kifaya"(Enough), is inspired by the reform movement in Egypt.

Look no further than the triple bombing last month at the Sinai resort of Dahab, where most of those killed and wounded were Egyptians, to fully appreciate the lie behind Osama bin Laden's latest message that the West is on a crusade against Islam.

If anyone is on a crusade against Muslims it is Al Qaeda itself, whose sympathizers most likely carried out the attack in Dahab, the third in Sinai in 18 months.

Attacks by bin Laden's henchmen and others espousing violent Islamist thought are ostensibly carried out to oppose U.S. foreign policy. But it is Muslims who bear the brunt of their violence. The previous attacks on Sinai - in Taba in October 2004 and Sharm el-Sheik in July 2005 - were supposedly to avenge the U.S. invasion of Iraq and America's support of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. But who were the main victims of those attacks? Egyptians, the majority of whom are Muslim

In Iraq, Wahhabi-inspired Sunni Muslim terrorists slaughter Muslim Shiites, whose death squads in turn execute Sunnis. In Palestine, which bin Laden claims to be so concerned about, Muslim Hamas is at loggerheads with Fatah, many of whose members are Muslims. In Darfur, too, where bin Laden urged his followers to go to fight a proposed UN force, genocidal Muslim Arab forces backed by Sudan's Islamist regime are killing Muslim blacks.

There is hatred for America in the Muslim world, to be sure, but it must not blind us Muslims to the danger that Al Qaeda poses for us.

As a liberal Muslim, I am just as concerned by the short-sightedness of U.S. foreign policy in much of the Muslim world as I am by the murderous ideology of bin Laden and his cohorts. But ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, when Americans began to ask "Why do they hate us?" my reply has been a resounding "They hate me too."

This was abundantly clear in bin Laden's latest message when he is said to have "blasted liberal- minded Arab writers for taking part in the Western cultural invasion of Muslim lands."

Al Jazeera, which broadcast excerpts from the bin Laden tape, did not play that segment. Why not? Because it seems more concerned with highlighting bin Laden's interminably repeated messages of "the West is out to get us" than it is with showing bin Laden's hatred for Muslims who disagree with him.

We Muslims must counter bin Laden's insistent focus on "them" - the West or America or Israel - and shift focus back to the Muslims who suffer as a result of that insistence. Muslims must not let themselves be prevented by bin Laden's "us versus them" message from seeing the "us versus us" reality, in which most of the victims of jihadi fighters are actually Muslims.

What did the three Sinai attacks achieve? They killed mostly Egyptians and ruined the livelihoods, again, of mostly Egyptians. They exposed once more the utter inability of the Egyptian regime to protect its people. President Hosni Mubarak is so obsessed with settling scores with his opponents that just hours before the Dahab bombings his security forces were busy brutally breaking up a sit-in protest by judges demanding independence.

Mubarak will no doubt happily use the Dahab bloodshed to justify further extending the emergency laws that have been in effect since he became president in 1981. They have been ineffective in combating terrorism but all too potent in jailing opponents, beating up demonstrators and stifling opposition.

Thanks to Hamas's electoral victory, the Bush administration seems to have lost its stomach for reform and democracy in the Arab world and it is unlikely to hold Mubarak accountable. Its acquiescence in the face of Mubarak's despotism will continue to whip up hatred for America which in turn makes it all too easy for bin Laden to continue to spin that scratched "us versus them" record.

For those of us in the Muslim world fed up of the bloody toll of bin Laden's lies, the solution is to highlight, clearly and unequivocally, who bears the brunt of his message.

I saw an interesting example of doing just that in the aftermath of November’s Jordanian bombings. Seventeen members of a wedding party killed in the blasts were from a village
in Jenin on the West Bank.

A correspondent for al-Arabiya TV went to a community centre at the village to report on families receiving condolences. He ended his report by saying "bullets of (Israeli) occupation killed 12 people from this village, but in less than five minutes the Amman bombings killed 17."

That is the bloody truth behind the attacks of al-Qaeda.

A shorter version of this article first appeared in the International Herald Tribune. Mona Eltahawy is a New York-based commentator. Her website is at www.monaeltahawy.com