Confronting bin Laden

While most Americans made their minds up about Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks upon the United States, academics are still grappling with their views of the terrorist leader and his followers four years after the 9/11 massacres.

“Though dismissed widely, the best strategy for the United States may well be to acknowledge and address the collective reasons in which Al Qaeda anchors its acts of force,” according to Harvard’s Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou. “Al Qaeda has been true to its word in announcing and implementing its strategy for over a decade.”

“It is likely to be true to its word in the future and cease hostilities against the United States, and indeed bring an end to the war it declared in 1996 and in 1998, in return for some degree of satisfaction regarding its grievances.” Although Dr. Mahamedou, a policy expert in conflict resolution, diminishes the deaths of thousands of innocents with the use of the words “force” and “hostilities,” he does stop short of calling the victims of the 9/11 assaults “Little Eichmanns.” Moreover, Dr. Mohamedou does not point out that multimillionaires are articulating these “grievances.”

Bruce B. Lawrence, an Islamic Studies professor at Duke, has become the center of a raging controversy over his introduction to a translated collection of bin Laden’s essays. Dr. Lawrence gave his side of the story in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Other Islamic rejectionists advocate total separation between Islam as pure monotheism and Judaism and Christianity, both tainted with idolatrous practice, but few combine ideological conviction with the rhetorical subtlety and performative finesse that characterize Osama bin Laden,” Dr. Lawrence writes.

While this take makes one reel with its clausal observations on the West’s two leading religions, and relatively benign portrait of Al Qaeda’s leader, Lawrence does go on to point out what he sees as bin Laden’s negatives. His analysis at least puts him to the right of Dr. Mohamedou. “If I have learned one enduring lesson from months of reflection on the words of Osama bin Laden, it is that the best defense against World War III is neither censoring nor silencing him but reading what he has actually written and countering his arguments with better ones,” Dr. Lawrence concludes. “He has left a sufficient record that can, and should, be attacked for its deficiencies, its lapses, its contradictions, and, above all, its hopelessness.”

Dr. Lawrence faults bin Laden for lacking a specific set of public policy positions on political issues. “Morally, he denounces a host of evils,” writes Dr. Lawrence. “Some of them—unemployment, inflation, and corruption—are social.”

“But no alternative conception of the ideal society is ever offered.” To illustrate this point, Dr. Lawrence compares bin Laden unfavorably to “the Red Army faction of the Red Brigades.” The irony of unfavorably comparing bin Laden to a movement that killed millions is not explored by Dr. Lawrence.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.