On 9/11 and the Arab Spring

Today Reza Aslan wrote on the “two fires” that have illuminated and burned throughout the decade following 9/11. As its anniversary nears, he reminds us American readers that the intended audience of 9/11 was never really us, but to Muslims around the world to “wake up” and do something about oppression, poverty, and inequality in their home countries. There were ostensibly many reasons why Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. – economic imperialism, the American failure to sign the Kyoto Agreement, American foreign policy in the Middle East – but Reza offers a somber observation: that although these are all legitimate reasons among others, the primary motivation of the 9/11 terrorists was not to punish America, but to “awaken” the “Muslim youth” to take action, to find inspiration in a symbolic assault to power. Aslan writes,

When I say the attacks of 9/11 were not about us, I mean that while we were the victims of that theatrical display of public violence, we were not its intended audience. The audience was the Mohamed Bouazizis of the world: the young and dispossessed of the Middle East, those who agree with bin Laden that “death is better than a life of humiliation.”…. The brazen attack on New York and DC was not meant as a punishment for America’s actions in the Middle East. And it certainly was not an attempt to change American foreign policy. It was a call to action, an attempt to awaken the political activism of young Muslims by channeling their vague feelings of anger and disaffection over their miserable lot in the world toward a single, tangible, easy-to-define symbol: 9/11…Angry about Israel? The answer lies in 9/11. Oppressed by a bloodthirsty dictator? Look for the solution in 9/11. Can’t get a job? 9/11.

As an act of terrorism, the falling of the two towers was an end in itself. It symbolized a threat to power that could not be ignored or overlooked. As we at home or on the streets or on the news watched in horror as the towers crumbled piece by piece, person by person, the spectacle created a social relationship that extended all over the world, mediated by this one immortalized image. In the post 9/11 world there were only terrorists and non-terrorists, good and evil, Muslim and non-Muslim.

In other words, it was meant to start a revolution. The steel and glass fortresses, seemingly invincible in its figuration of American economic and political power, were the tragic mediums in which Al Qaeda launched its call to arms not against America and its allies per se, but against all forms of power which subjugated people into unlivable, inhuman conditions. Aslan writes that it is a miracle that more conflicts did not happen given the United State’s efforts in fueling hatred – the unnecessary war in Iraq, the intolerant, xenophobic Bush speeches – and despite the U.S.’s progress in eradicating Al Qaeda, the key factor in overcoming Al Qaeda were the people it supposedly sought to liberate, not the “Western war on terror”. The youth of the Middle East, disenchanted and tired of violence, decided not to use 9/11 as a symbol to rally around. They chose not to find an answer in violence, in 9/11.

So ten years later, when Mohamed Bouazizi, decided to set fire to himself in front of the Tunisian government building, he epitomized a new call to arms that swept across the Middle East. The fire he lit sparked another kind of purging that the young, educated youth of the Middle East would take on and march with in toppling dictators, renewing public trust, and dismantling old regimes. Rampant unemployment, poverty, and corruption in some respects left the educated youth no other choice but to fight for democracy and freedom through public protests, social media, and most importantly, their voices. The Arab Spring was, as Aslan writes, a call for change that continues today.

But just as the attacks themselves had little to do with America, so did America play little role in the defeat of al-Qa‘ida’s ideology. It was not the invasion of Iraq, or nation-building in Afghanistan, or Bush’s “freedom agenda” that deafened young Muslims to al-Qa‘ida’s call. It was al-Qa‘ida’s bloodlust in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the fact that between 2004 and 2008, Muslims accounted for 85% of the casualties from al-Qa‘ida attacks (between 2006 and 2008, that number surged to 98%). Above all it was the youth themselves — the very kids that the 9/11 attacks were meant to mobilize. Though fed up with their dictatorial regimes and spurred by 9/11 to do something about it, by the end of the decade, these kids had discovered a far more effective model for action, a different symbol to rally around: that of young Mohamed Bouazizi, standing in the middle of traffic, holding a small, flickering flame in his hand.