Arab press denounces bin Laden Newspapers, broadcasters seek to distance Islam from terrorism

Nora Boustany, Washington Post Saturday, November 24, 2001

The cartoon of fugitive Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden -- showing him in a dark cave using a flute to charm a mushroom cloud from a basket, as a serpent recoils in horror -- represents one of the first alarms in the official media of Saudi Arabia and Egypt about the fervid support bin Laden attracts in the Muslim world.

This week's cartoon in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, and an opinion piece Thursday in Egypt's semi-official Al Ahram, mark a belated reaction to the threat presented by Islamic extremists and an attempt by Islamic scholars to set the record straight on the distance between their religion and terrorism.

Criminal law Professor Nabil Luka Bibawi, writing in Al Ahram, cited extensive passages from the Koran preaching religious tolerance and prohibiting attacks against innocent non-Muslims, calling them attacks against the prophet Mohammed and God.

"Terrorists impose darkness on the climate of the intellect because they try to force their backward ideas on public opinion under the veil of religious correctness," Bibawi wrote. "They construe religious thought to suit their political objectives to reach power." He accused such extremists of "disfiguring religious tolerance with insane acts."

"There can be no worse distortion of religion than that. If world Zionism spent billions of dollars to tarnish the image of Islam, it will not accomplish what the terrorists have done with their actions and words."

In a series of editorials in the Arab press, and even on the occasional talk show on the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network, there's been a clear effort to discredit bin Laden in religious terms and shed light on his criminal bent, political aspirations and pretensions of piety.

The delicate and narrow Islamic dictates on who has the right to issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, are being laid bare to viewers and readers, indicating bin Laden and his associates lack the theological authority they claim.

"While Osama bin Laden and his followers claim to have lofty ideals, they have forgotten that it is their leader's own words which now point the way to damnation," wrote Jamal Khashoggi, deputy editor of Arab News, in an undated online commentary.

Referring to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, sanctioning the killing of U.S. and British citizens and military personnel because of their support for Israel, Khashoggi said: "There is no respected Islamic scholar here in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Muslim world who would support such a fatwa. . . . With bin Laden's religious upbringing, he should know that only the most knowledgeable Islamic scholars have the right to issue fatwas.

"It seems that bin Laden has become a revolutionary in a world of his own imagination. He would not hesitate to break any taboo. How did he come to create this fantasyland of terror?"

This initial chorus, however, doesn't mean the scrutiny of U.S. actions is waning. With Taliban fighters and their Arab, Pakistani and Chechen sympathizers besieged by the Northern Alliance in Kunduz, some columnists cautioned against what they called a "green light" from the United States to kill so-called Afghan Arabs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comments that he would prefer bin Laden and his followers to be killed rather than captured received top billing in news stories and commentaries Thursday.

Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, a columnist in the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Hayat newspaper, wrote that the Northern Alliance could not claim -- as the Americans do -- that their war isn't against Arabs or Muslims.

"This is the filthy dramatic end to the jihad story for the sake of liberating Afghanistan," he wrote, noting the alliance was no different from the Taliban militia in its cruelty and lack of respect for prisoners of war.

Badrakhan insinuated that the alliance has been "encouraged and incited by the Americans."

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001