By Brian Carnell

Thursday, December 30, 2004

A couple years ago I mentioned the controversy over Northeastern University and terrorist sympathizer M. Shahid Alam (see this 2002 article). At that time, Alam had written a screed in CounterPunch complaining that he was unfairly being tagged as a supporter of Palestinian suicide bombings. In fact, the criticism was fair since Alam had clearly defended Palestinian suicide bombers in an earlier article published at Counter Punch.

Anyway, Alam is back defending suicidal terrorists, this time offering words of praise for the 9/11 hijackers. In an article published at Dissident Voice, Alam writes (emphasis added),

On April 19, 1775, 700 British troops reached Concord, Massachusetts, to disarm the American colonists who were preparing to start an insurrection. When the British ordered them to disperse, the colonists fired back at the British soldiers. This “shot heard ‘round the world” heralded the start of an insurrection against Britain, the greatest Western power of its time. And when it ended, victorious, in 1783, the colonists had gained their objective. They had established a sovereign but slave-holding republic, the United States of America.

The colonists broke away because this was economically advantageous to their commercial and landed classes. As colonists, they were ruled by a parliament in which they were not represented, and which did not represent their interests. The colonies were not free to protect and develop their own commerce and industries. Their bid for independence was made all the more attractive because it was pressed under the banner of liberty. The colonial elites had imbibed well the lessons of the Enlightenment, and here in the new world, they had an opportunity to harness liberty in the service of their economic interests. Backed by the self interest of their landed and commercial elites, and inspired by revolutionary ideas, the colonists had a dream worth pursuing. They were prepared to die for this dream – and to kill. They did: and they won.

On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die – and to kill – for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity. The manner of their death – and the destruction it wreaked – is not merely a testament to the vulnerabilities that modern technology has created to clandestine attacks. After all, skyscrapers and airplanes have co-existed peacefully for many decades. The attacks of 9-11 were in many ways a work of daring and imagination too; if one can think objectively of such horrors. They were a cataclysmic summation of the history of Western depredations in the Middle East: the history of a unity dismembered, of societies manipulated by surrogates, of development derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed. The explosion of 9-11 was indeed a "shot heard 'round the world."

Al Qaeda, of course, supports the Taliban-style version of Islam which, the last time I checked, had very little to do with people living in freedom and dignity (unless, of course, you find publicly hanging prostitutes in stadiums to be dignified).

The Founding Fathers sought to move the cause of human freedom forward by replacing a colonial monarchy with a democracy (albeit a very flawed democracy from our vantage 2 centuries later). Comparing them to the Al Qaeda and similar movements is obscene.

Source:

America and Islam: Seeking Parallels. M. Shahid Alam, Dissident Voice, December 28, 2004.

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