This is the third in a three-part series of essays by MEI on the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden and is available for download: By Rana B Khoury

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, most Arabs were ambivalent about the role of Osama bin Laden an ambivalence independent of their approbation, condemnation, or dubious reception of the attacks themselves. Despite the continuation of activities of Al-Qa’ida in the decade since, that ambivalence has shifted towards rejection. After 9/11, America reacted forcefully. Washington classified Muslim and Arab states as either supporters of terror or supporters of the global war on terror, and American boots hit the ground in Afghanistan and then Iraq, where they remain today. Meanwhile, Israel widely considered an avatar of the US in the region reoccupied the West Bank (2002), waged a war on Lebanon (2006), and devastated Gaza (2008-2009), with impunity. Anti-Islamic sentiment in the US and Europe found a place in mainstream politics, and cold wars raged between cartoonists and veiled women, Quran-burners and community centers, and pro-American half-men Arab rulers and resistance bloc’ rejectionists.[1] In that decade, personalities like Osama bin Laden became more popular if only for the ire they drew from a warring West seemingly attacking Islam. But his popularity never translated into public confidence or a mass following. A Pew Global Attitudes Project found that confidence among Muslims in Osama to do the right thing in world affairs’ has dropped significantly since 2003. By 2011, minorities in the Palestinian Territories (34%), Egypt (22%), Jordan (13%), and Lebanon (1%) expressed such confidence. An Arab Opinion Poll by Shibley Telhami and Zogby International found that in 2010 Osama Bin Laden only received 6% of respondents’ support when asked which world leader (outside of their own country) do they admire most. Tellingly, those respondents showed the most admiration for the democratically elected and moderately Islamist Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, followed by Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Al-Asad, and even Nicolas Sarkozy. Arabs have not shown any penchant for Al-Qa’ida’s politico-religious ideology either. Despite its propagated theological underpinnings, their khariji Islam has yet to evolve beyond militancy, let alone to embody a body politic. These adherents of khariji, or outer’, Islam exalt the infallibility of the Quran (literally read) and entrust in it absolute authority. They do not trust the judgment of the nation or the people, as Sunni jurisprudence has authorized and indeed cherished, nor the Imam, whose absence has proven to Shi’a Muslims the maturation of the population on earth. Bin Laden’s interpretation of Islam thereby rejects popular governance, which the major sects of Islam validate. Arab publics have registered their preference for electoral politics, which intrinsically accepts the judgment of the nation/people, thusly rejecting the very basis of Al-Qa’ida’s political program.

For decades and under the most difficult conditions Arab publics have exhibited their desire for representative leadership, secular and Islamist alike, and the years since September 11 have been no different. In 2002, 52% of Moroccans voted in parliamentary elections in which 26 parties participated; the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party won seats alongside nationalist, socialist, pro-Berber, and other parties. In 2003, nearly 60% of Jordanians voted in parliamentary elections putting independent, tribal, and various party leaders into the legislature, including members of the Islamic Action Front. That same year 76% of Yemenis gave opposition candidates 42% of seats in parliament, about half of them going to the moderate Islamist Islah party. In 2004, Algerians voted for their president in what was considered the most legitimate election since independence. In 2005, Egyptians defied the structural domination of Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party by electing 80 members of the Muslim Brotherhood (running as independents) to the legislature. And in 2006, a remarkable 77% of Palestinians took to the polls, giving the Islamist party Hamas a plurality of their votes.

Nevertheless, their ambitions were thwarted by adaptive authoritarian regimes and international politics favoring stability’ over an unknown alternative. King Mohammad VI of Morocco retains the immense power of the executive and has done little to decentralize political authority as his overtures to reform have promised. The Jordanian parliament, holding meager power and disproportionately reflective of rural and tribal areas due to a 1993 election law, has been further undermined by the King’s repeated dissolution of the legislative body altogether. Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh adopted the same tactic, postponing parliamentary elections for years at a time. After Algerians gave president Bouteflika a fair win in 2004, he chose to abolish presidential term limits in 2008, further centralized power, and won the 2009 presidential election in a carefully choreographed and heavily controlled contest.[2] In the Egyptian parliamentary elections of November 2010, Mubarak ensured that candidates affiliated with the Brothers took only one seat, down 95% from five years prior. And in collusion with the US and Israel, Fatah, runner-up in the Palestine Authority elections of 2006, pushed Hamas out of its elected offices and the West Bank, holding onto power now more than two years after elections were scheduled for January 2009. As authoritarian regimes manipulated in their favor what Mona Al-Ghobashy calls the subversive potential of legal formalism, the West maintained priorities in the region that were indifferent towards or in direct conflict with representative governance in the Middle East.

But in December 2010, Tunisians broke the cycle of misrepresentation and inspired their neighbors to do the same. If there lingered a thought about mass subscription to al-Qa’ida style politics, it was not to survive the Arab Awakening. In the words of one prominent Twitter user: “@monaeltahawy Muslims already killed #BinLaden ideology in Dec2010, his death is just a confirmation the Muslimworld is on the right track.” That is not to say that Al-Qa’ida did not seek a role in the new Arab world. In the immediate aftermath of the Egyptian Revolution, Ayman Al-Zhawahiri, presumed successor of Bin Laden, appealed to Egyptians to establish an Islamic state. Here are some representative responses:

Much of the reaction to Bin Laden’s death was also contemplative, reflecting the continuation of the grievances Bin Laden oft-articulated:

Assassinated or martyred, neither Al-Qa’ida nor terrorism will die with Bin Laden. But Arab publics have long shown that they are not interested in his underlying political ideology, and an enterprise with few subscribers is doomed to irrelevance. Now that the decade since 11 September 2001 has been framed by the Arab Awakening, it would be fitting for the West and the Arab regimes not simply to downgrade the discredited Bin Laden model, but also join with the Arab people in their manifest desire for meaningful participatory government. Ms Rana B Khoury is a Masters student at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the head of publications at the Middle East Institute. She can be reached atrbkhoury@gmail.com. The views expressed herein are her own.

[1] Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad dubbed half-men’ those Arab rulers who criticized Hezballah during the Israel-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006. [2] As described in a Wikileaks cable from 13 April 2009, Algiers 00000370 001.14 of 004.