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September
11: A Second Take
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By
V&A Editorial Staff |
11/09/2003
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Two
years after September 11, the danger of ignorance has become apparent in
everyone’s life. Today, the lack of information and its abuse within the hands of
the influential for the manipulation of the weak means the loss of thousands
of human lives.
With
an orchestrated attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September
11, 2001, global politics took a sharp turn. International media suddenly became
a platform for loosely defined, much abused antonyms: liberator vs. terrorist,
freedom vs. oppression, democracy vs. tyranny, and the more basic yet chilling
good vs. evil.
And
for two years, the Muslim world has become the target of America’s “War on
Terror”: a full scale war based primarily on basic knowledge of those
acronyms.
IslamOnline’s
Views & Analyses addresses September 11’s second anniversary with the
following three analyses...
September
11, 2003: The Rogue Superpower Two Years Later
Legitimized
in the name of moral absolutism, the “war on terror” has not only neglected
the root causes of the Muslim world’s gripe with America, but it has in fact
exacerbated the threat that the swelling masses of angry young militants pose to
non-combatants around the world. Yet, Pentagon policy makers would seem
unconcerned. If the Bush administration appears aloof to the latest upsurge in
global militancy it is simply because winning the “war on terror” amounts to
little more than the public relations façade, albeit an effective one at that,
to a far more significant geopolitical objective. Noor ad-Deen Theodore takes us into the roots of America’s foreign policy agenda.
Two
Years After September 11, Two Worlds at War
September
11 signaled the beginning of the 21st century’s first war, and ushered in an
unprecedented era of polarization between the West and the Islamic World. And no
one seems to realize that imposing draconian measures to arrest, detain and
torture suspects internationally with the help of allies with dubious human
rights records will perpetuate the same conditions that led to September 11th.
More importantly, America’s occupation of two Muslim states, the freezing of
charity assets, and the orchestrated anti-Islamic media campaign has offended
many Muslims and alienated so-called “moderates” from America’s cause. Kareem
Kamel takes stock of two years of the “War on Terror.”
“Forgive
Me Government for I Have Sinned”
Militant
Islam was present long before September 11. One of the most well-known militant
organizations in the Middle East was Egypt's Gamma Islamiya. This article
investigates the present conditions of the Gamaa. Today, the Gamaa is desperately trying to reassure
the state of its new moderate line. Hossam el-Hamalawy investigates the
changes taking place within the disintegrating organization’s ranks,
highlighted by the recent “apology” of one of its members for the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
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