Is Fighting the U.S. Osama Bin Laden's Front for a Different Objective?

"...He wants the U.S. to strike back disproportionately, because he believes that will outrage Muslims and inspire them to overthrow their governments and build an Islamic state."

- Michael Doran, Princeton University

Like the Khawarij of former times, groups such as Jamaa'atul-Jihaad (The Jihad Party) of Egypt, some of whose members would later become associated with al-Qaeda, originally focused all their efforts on overturning the present day governments throughout the Muslim lands. However, the groups following the teachings of Sayyid Qutb, the Qutbists, failed miserably in achieving any of their goals, with most of them being jailed or forced to flee to remote lands.

It is from these lands that they restructured and changed their tactics in bringing about their ultimate goal of establishing a new government overnight. The New York Times' Robert Worth refers to the Qutbists' change in tactics:

"Mr. Bin Laden does seem to have deviated from the radical tradition in one sense, by focusing his attacks on the United States rather than Arab regimes. In his 1996 declaration, he went so far as to say that Muslims should put aside their own differences so as to focus on the struggle against the Western enemy - a serious departure from the doctrine of Qutb and even Sadat's killers, who argued that the internal struggle was the one that mattered."

"But that may be merely a shift in tactics not in overall strategy," says Worth. Regarding this change in tactics, Worth quotes Michael Doran, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University: "Bin Laden is using the U.S. as an instrument in his struggle with other Muslims," Mr. Doran said. "He wants the U.S. to strike back disproportionately, because he believes that will outrage Muslims and inspire them to overthrow their governments and build an Islamic state..."

- abridged from the book: The 'Wahhabi' Myth

Robert Worth, The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror, The New York Times, 13th October 2001.