Quietly Relieved

By Hamish McDonald, *Magic carpet a threadbare memory* - The Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney, Australia; Saturday, May 7, 2011

Osama bin Laden was an orientalist's dream or nightmare - the bearded, softly spoken messianistic figure in flowing robes, keeping a harem of wives, surrounded by fanatical acolytes, riding the modern magic carpet of the internet, vanishing like a
genie from the swarms of soldiers that tried to catch him. Now that he has been located, killed, and buried in the Arabian Sea, is that the end of the magic?

The answer from the history of violent utopian movements like his is: probably yes, now that the myth of invincibility has been punctured, though his image will live on in internet clips and bands of followers will try to perpetuate his declared mission.

The Muslim world's perceived propensity to be swept by suddenly-appearing sects led by charismatic redeemers is part of our Western stereotype of Islam. It goes back a long way.
In modern times, the British empire was shaken by the Great Indian ''Mutiny'' of 1857, in which Hindus and Muslims united to restore Mughal glory. Less than three decades later, the British hold on Egypt was threatened by the rise of a Sudanese warrior, Muhammad Ahmad, who had proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the ''Guide'' or prophesied redeemer of Islam who would rid the world of evil before judgment day.

Later, more confident Western imperialists tried playing with fire. John Buchan's prescient World War I thriller Greenmantle had both German and British intelligence services trying to ignite an Arab uprising to their advantage, using charismatic Islamic figures. ''There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark,'' one character says.

That was written as T.E. Lawrence was stirring up the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turkish empire. In the 1930s, his autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom became a textbook for officers in the Japanese Imperial Army staff, who sought to infiltrate bazaars from Java across to the Middle East to stir unrest against the British and Dutch.

Bin Laden himself was an example of such an operation rebounding horribly against its organisers. In the 1980s he had been one of the mujahideen or freedom fighters sponsored and armed by American and allied intelligence agencies against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Setting the East ablaze is a dangerous business.

Governments in the Islamic world are touchy about the risks. This week in Iran, Abbas Amirifar, a prominent cleric and aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was arrested for supporting a film titled The Coming Is Near, suggesting the Mahdi was about to appear. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not pleased.

Of course, millenarian movements are not confined to the Muslim world. America and other largely Christian nations like ours periodically see large numbers of people put into a frenzy by prophets of a ''second coming''. India always has its ''God Men'' who gather huge followings through their apparently supernormal abilities.

General Charles Gordon, the British army general overwhelmed and killed with all his forces in Khartoum in 1885 by the Sudanese ''Mahdi'' had won his fame and nickname ''Chinese'' Gordon by quelling the Taiping rebellion that swept China between 1850 and 1864, resulting in 20 million deaths. It was started by a Christian convert named Hong Xiuquan, who wanted all Chinese to adopt his version of the religion.

But to focus on Islamic utopian revolts, they tend to fade after the capture or killing of their charismatic founders, though they can sputter to life in mutated form long after appearing extinct.

In Indonesia, a guerilla commander named Kartosuwirjo turned from fighting the Dutch to rebellion against the new republic, with the goal of creating an Islamic state ruled by sharia law. His Darul Islam (House of Islam) movement faded out in its strongholds in West Java, Aceh and South Sulawesi within a few years of his capture and execution in 1962.

But the transition from authoritarian rule in 1998 saw both radical Islamism and manipulated Islamism. Ambitious generals helped Islamist militia groups attack Christian communities and Islamic sub-groups deemed heretical. ''Blowback'' from Afghanistan helped create Jemaah Islamiyah.

Among Muslims in Australia, there is a minority who still follow bin Laden's Salafist type of faith in jihad. Some refuse to believe he is dead. Some even cling to the belief he never existed, except as a CIA phantom enemy to justify the war on terrorism. Most are quietly relieved he is gone.

At Auburn Town Hall on Wednesday night, I met a 31st-generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad, Sheikh Afeefuddin Al-Jailani, who was preaching that all faiths should be respected since ''all of them come from one spring, one source''.

Jailani, who has taught in Malaysia for several years and preaches around the world, has tolerance in his ancestral line too. He's the descendant of a famous 11th-century sufi or mystical Islamic saint, and his great-grandfather was modern Iraq's first prime minister in 1921 who appointed a Jew as his finance minister and a Christian as health minister.

He was sharing a stage with a local Uniting Church minister, a Tongan woman named Mele Koloa Fakahua-Ratcliffe, and a guardian of Auburn's Sri Mandir Hindu Temple, Rajeev Kapoor. The purpose was to rally around the Hindu community, after their temple was recently hit by a drive-by shooting.

The initiative came from an educational exchange agency called the Affinity Intercultural Foundation, set up by two young Turkish-Australians, Mehmet Saral and Ahmet Keskin. They enhanced the eclectic atmosphere by inviting along the Australian Sufi Music Ensemble, who sing their mesmeric religious chants with a didgeridoo backing.

Jailani didn't talk directly about al-Qaeda. But he said faith on its own wasn't enough, it had to be matched by good actions, quoting from a Muslim text that urged: ''Make sure that your name is written in the book of good deeds.''

Jailani also urged his audience to look to ''respected and trusted scholars'' in their religions, and warned against ''spiritual diseases''. When I said later this latter point seemed to have particular relevance this week, he smiled and said: ''Those kind of diseases are the worst kind.''

A Muslim of Turkish-Australian background was more explicit. ''Bin Laden had sullied the name of Islam,'' he said. ''It's a relief to get that weight off our backs.''

Illustration: Simon Letch /SMH