Comment: Osama’s ideology thrives despite his death

Al Qaeda’s attack on the United Stated on 11 September 2001 was driven by Osama’s belief that imperialist American foreign policies had created a world of injustice and equality for Muslims. He believed it was the duty of every Muslim to wage a holy war to correct those wrongs. His aim was to establish an Islamic Caliphate where Shari’a was the only system of law and Wahhabism or other purist forms of Islam the only forms of belief practised. In such a war, waged across the world to protect Islam and its believers, and to further its cause, Osama believed there were no innocents.

This thinking of Osama’s was what came to inform most Western definitions, policies and actions in the last decade about terrorism, Islam, and what it means to be a Muslim in the twenty first century.

Analysts have in recent years found Al Qaeda to have been virtually destroyed by the War on Terror, its network of secret cells across the world dismantled in ten years of aggressive counter-terrorism policies. It may also be the case that Osama’s death will reduce further the number of violent acts committed in the name of the Islam. It does not, however, mean that the large numbers of his followers across the world have stopped subscribing to his ideology or that they will stop doing so. Osama’s ultimate goal, the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate comprising of Islamic states that practise Shari’a and practise the form of Islam that he followed, remains alive and well. The Maldives is a case in point.