Benazir Bhutto Died for Our Sins

Perhaps it is just human nature to seek meaning in the meaningless, hope in the hopeless; but I hope some good may come of the sad and evil assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It is now pretty clear that Al Qaeda is responsible—they have publicly taken credit, and the Pakistani security services concur.

This may be the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda.

Having lived here in the Gulf for a few years, I think I now understand a little about Arab (not Muslim, but specifically Arab) culture. Arabs value courage and daring highly. They also value courtesy and gallantry.

Say what you will, there was courage and daring in blowing up the twin towers. Arabs tend to admire Hitler for the same reason. Evil, sure, sure, but the man had chutzpah, didn’t he?

But there is little gallantry in blowing up a woman.

Indeed, there were already signs the tide of public opinion had turned against the militants. It’s not just that violence is down in Iraq; there were photos at Christmas of midnight mass at Baghdad’s Christian churches, with the local Muslim clerics sitting in the front rows. The pope received a congratulatory Christmas message signed by Muslim religious leaders around the world. Considering how difficult it is to get Muslim religious leaders to agree on anything, this was quite remarkable—and it was the second such message he has received recently. It was as though the true religious authorities, were—some might say belatedly, but don’t discount the courage involved--deliberately and publicly disassociating themselves from any anti-Christian or anti-Western sentiments.

Here in the Gulf, I believe I have seen a similar attitude shift on the ground. This Christmas, for the first time, my own nearest shopping mall featured a large Christmas tree. Christmas decorations were everywhere; though the nation is officially Muslim, and it was illegal to attend a mass only a few years ago. A few years ago, there might have been a public uproar about this, suggesting it meant a decline in public piety. Instead, this year, the newspapers report that the “celebration of Christmas is catching on in the Emirate.” The same paper recently printed an article by a leading cleric explaining that Christians, as followers of a prophet and worshippers of the true God, went to heaven.

In sum, Al Qaeda may have already managed to give anti-Western and anti-Christian feelings a bad name, among the general public as well as among Muslim thinkers. It is one thing to contemplate them blowing up people of a different culture far away in New York City or London. But these days, Al Qaeda has been almost exclusively blowing up fellow Muslims. They are no longer a problem for America so much as for Iraq and Pakistan; it is quite a different thing to worry about yourself being blown up at the local souk or public park. This is bound to be less popular.

Does George Bush deserve some credit for this turnaround? Probably, yes. He may have been right: it is better to pin down the terrorists in the streets of Baghdad (or Rawalpindi) than let them take the fight to New York City. It shows the locals their true colours. It is also probably true that his relative forcefulness played well to an Arab gallery. The Americans responded to Al Qaeda’s daring attack with their own display of courage and daring. To have reacted less decisively might have earned contempt in the Arab world, where the martial virtues are still admired.

So Benazir Bhutto may well not have died in vain. I am hopeful she will be remembered by history as almost a saviour figure, oddly Christ-like, whose self-sacrificing death ultimately expunged an evil that had infected Dar-al-Islam.