Libya’s competing revolutions as a backdrop for a war on terrorism victory in Libya

By Anisa Abd el Fattah

There are two revolutions vying for power in Libya. One is the historic green revolution of Moammar Qaddafi, the leader of Libya who came to power through a bloodless coup in 1962, and the other is the popular revolution which began in February 2011 as a call by the people of Libya for political reforms, that resulted in a call for regime change.

The competition between the two is complicated by the US and Europe’s desire to capitalize on the present unrest in Libya and to use it as an opportunity to possibly occupy Libya with the hope of owning and controlling Libya’s oil. A UN resolution, calling for a no fly zone over Libya, unleashed Western allied troops to initiate what almost immediately turned into an all-out war on Qaddafi’s army of mercenaries, and equipment such as tanks and fighter jets. The mercenaries had been provided by other Arab and African governments who united behind Qaddafi to put down the popular Libyan revolution with brutal violence, resulting in the armed conflict we see today.
Following Hosni Mubarak’s removal from office in Egypt, many in the world wondered which Muslim majority Arab country would be next to experience a popular revolution. People suspected that there would be other revolutions in the region, since it had been made clear by protesters that their actions were based upon a common situation, shared by many of the citizens of the Arab Muslim world. It didn’t seem possible that only one group or population of people would throw of the shackles of repressive and violent governments, while others in close proximity would resign themselves to the status quo. Also, since both Egypt and Tunisia had accomplished regime change without taking up arms against their government, it made it that much easier for the average person to imagine that they could do the same.'

Shortly after the people of Libya began their peaceful protest, they came under attack by the Qaddafi regime. It was reported that those attacking the Libyan people were mercenaries from African countries, who had been recruited and facilitated by countries such as Algeria and even Syria. In one incident, a Libyan plane was shot down by revolutionaries and the pilot was carrying Syrian identification.

After several military and diplomatic defections, the Libyan people who are now referred to as the rebels, made many gains against the regime, capturing the eastern provinces, and moving towards the capital Tripoli with the intent to perhaps pressure Qaddafi into surrendering power and going into exile, thereby ending the initial stage of the revolution, which is to force the presiding regime from power. There were several moves taken by Qaddafi that stalled this process and put Libya on track for not only regime change, but also for possible invasion by a NATO led coalition of western powers, including France, the US, Britain, Canada and some countries from the Netherlands.

As the revolutionaries began to gain control over more and more of Libya’s villages in route to Tripoli, it was reported that Moammar Qaddafi’s son Saif Al Islam, sent an emissary to Israel to ask for assistance. Reportedly, Israel agreed to send military advisors and also some special troops to assist Qaddafi in his bid to put down the revolution. Later, it was reported that Qaddafi had sent emissaries to the European capitals, seeking military assistance, including weaponry. Shortly after those reports surfaced, videos were placed on youtube showing that Israeli manufactured weapons had been provided to Qaddafi, along with troops and military advisers.
Today we learned that the US and NATO are considering a ground invasion of Libya, and that US President Barack Obama has sanctioned the use of drones in Libya.

Those of us who watched closely the US led invasion of Iraq and all of the preparation that went into that invasion, see very stark similarities between that run up to an all-out invasion, war and occupation, and the present situation in Libya.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq there was a call to intervene on behalf of Kurds and Shia supposedly suffering tremendously under a barbaric Hussein regime that had gone so far as to use chemical weapons against its own people. No one bothered to mention that the Hussein had been given biological weapons by the US. When that failed to get as much support for war as was hoped, “the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of an unpredictable tyrant” did the job. With no real proof that Huseein had nuclear or biological or chemical weapons program of any type, an invasion of Iraq took place, resulting the deaths of more than 4 million people, and no weapons of mass destruction, as they came to be called, were ever found. Those who had argued that coalition forces would be treated and liberators of the oppressed peoples of Iraq, and who had said that it would be a quick regime change and a cake walk were all proven wrong. Iraq became a 7 year war of attrition that has left nothing but death and destruction in its wake.

Today we see the same tactics and rhetoric being employed to justify an invasion of Libya. Qaddafi like Hussein before him is being portrayed in the media as a madman who is holding the world’s economies hostage to threats of destroying oil refineries and refusing to pump oil, thereby driving up the cost of oil. He has been charged with carrying out massacres against his own people and using banned weapons against them such as cluster bombs. He is being called insane and delusional due to his insistence that Libyans have been exposed to water containing hallucinogens and other drugs. He claimed that Al Qadea was attempting to establish an Islamic Republic Libya and that threatened to fight against this effort to his last drop of blood. Hussien rejected the Western accusation that Al Qadea terrorist were operating in Iraq, and that they had any relationship with the government or people of Iraq. So in this respect, the two men differed. Hussein did everything in his power to protect Iraq from being a target in the so called war on terrorism, while Qaddafi seems to have said everything he could to make sure that Libya would become a casualty of the West’s war on Islam carried out under the banner of war on terrorism. The two men also enjoyed varying degrees of popular admiration and respect among Muslims and Arabs due to their supposed support for the Palestinian people and their struggle to end the illegal Israeli occupation of their lands.

Along with similarities in the rhetoric employed by the Western powers to justify war on Libya, there are also some pretty glaring military similarities.

Prior to the actual invasion and subsequent war in Iraq, the US had established a no fly zone over Iraq and imposed economic and military sanctions. This prevented Iraq from being able to purchase weapons, or to purchase foods, etc. thereby creating a humanitarian crisis which became the cause for UN intervention, and programs on the ground, which translates very often into intelligence gathering. The US also routinely targeted Iraq for attacks, bringing down its jets, destroying military installations and destroying its radar and other defense mechanisms. This all served to make the invasion very easy since there was no radar, very few fighter jets to mount counter attacks, and the people had been physically weakened and morally broken by years of economic sanctions and a previously devastating war known as Desert Storm that was also substantiated by false information and false claims against Iraq related to an Iraqi military invasion of disputed land claimed by both Iraq and Kuwait, that had been tacitly approved by the US.

Now Libya has been prepared for invasion. Under the dame guise of providing humanitarian assistance a no fly zone has been established and Libya’s military weakened. It is important to note the military is only being weakened and not destroyed. This was the same with the Iraqi military. Even after the invasion, Iraq’s military did not really engage the coalition forces on the ground, and were in fact allowed to disband, carrying their weapons with them. Why is this important? It is important since later, after the invasion was complete and the occupation underway, the war of attrition that was to take place in Iraq along with the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, was carried to a great extent as internecine violence, carried out as a sectarian war, Sunni against Shia, and led by guess who? Al Qadea…of course. At least for a time, it seems that Iraq’s military was transformed into Al Qadea just long enough to kill enough Iraqis, Sunni and Shia, while creating a competition for US approval and also for money being doled out by the US military on the ground to buy loyalty from various tribes and factions that created political paralysis in the country that prevented the formation of an independent and fully representative and legitimate Iraqi government.

Looking now at the situation as it develops in Libya, we can see that Libya is possibly being prepared for a similar experience. The UN passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a no fly zone and arms embargo. The UN has followed up with a call for UN sponsored humanitarian projects to assist refugees. Libya’s army is being weakened and not destroyed, while its ability to strike back at coalition forces has been eliminated. Again the coalition forces have positioned themselves politically and militarily as being on the side of the people, but in respect to Libya, they are pretending to be neutral in respect to regime change. They did learn a few lessons from their experience in Iraq that they want to avoid in Libya. The UN’s refusal to recognize an interim Libyan government shows that they are waiting to see who will prevail before offering fealty to any potential leader.

If these observations are indications of what is to be expected in Libya, they suggest that we will see a coalition invasion and occupation. We are also likely to see the war between the Qaddafi faction and the opposition get more intense as coalition forces on the ground play both sides, one against another, creating civil war and chaos that will result in UN intervention that will put UN peacekeepers on the ground and the country split between East and West, just as Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Palestine have been divided, with the oil and resource rich territory being where the Western support will be found. Whichever faction is able to capture and hold the oil rich regions that will be the faction, who in the end will enjoy Western support. If the Western powers decide that they can work with Saif Al Islam, there is also a chance that they will eliminate his father and put him in power, and utilize the Libyan army, what is left of it, along with more AU mercenaries to eliminate the opposition and to kill the rebels and those who supported the opposition.

The only way to avoid this scenario is for a fourth player to enter. It was Edmund Burke in his brilliant writings on the French Revolution (Reflections on the French Revolution) who made the brilliant observation, that whenever two powers become locked in conflict, and a third player enters the situation, all power will devolve into the hands of the third player, which is in this instance and all of the war on terrorism situations, is a US led coalition of Western powers. Since the two opposing factions are not going to reconcile and unite against the coalition, sparing Libya an Iraqi like experience, another interest must be identified and allowed to operate. In my opinion, that fourth interest will be the Islamic movement.

Should Islamic movement leaders recognize the strategic importance of Libya and come to understand how the fall of Libya into the hands of a US/Israeli puppet such as Saif Al Islam Qaddafi and NATO would destabilize the region while strengthening Israel, they will enter this situation and change the dynamic completely.

Who speaks for Muslims in the US; and who should?

In the 80s and early 90s prior to the establishment of the now defunct American Muslim Council (AMC), many mainstream Muslims were discussing how desperately we needed a Muslim organization that could compete with AIPAC. Others wanted a political organization that would unite Muslim Americans around social rather than political issues, and there were still others who wanted to organize and establish a national human rights organization. Whatever the particular point of view, or cause to be adopted, it was clear to many of us then, that Muslims lacked a representative voice that was not only able, but also willing to step into the ugly and sometimes very intimidating world of public policy in the US, hoping to speak truth to power from an Islamic perspective. The mission to organize and participate was seen less as a mission to garner Muslim power or influence, and was seen more as a mission to fulfill what appeared to many as a duty to help our country formulate moral policies that not only served the interest of Muslims, but also our country.

The objective of Muslim American Muslims to organize, though met with its share of suspicion by both Muslims and non Muslims, was sincerely intended by most, to be a first step in the presentation of a type of non traditional dawah or Islamic teaching that would allow our government and fellow citizens to recognize the important role that Muslims could and would play, providing sometimes missing facts, and unique perspectives, particularly in respect to US foreign policy, and humanitarianism. Contrary to what people like Steven Emerson would have our government believe, the first major foreign policy issue to galvanize US Muslims was not Palestine. It was apartheid in South Africa.

Muslim Americans of all races and ethnicities joined millions of other Americans who were calling for US divestment from the South African apartheid state. Under the tutelage of Muslim brothers and sisters, mostly African Americans who had served as activists in the civil rights movement, Muslim Americans united behind the call to end apartheid in South Africa, and joined coalitions led by non Muslim African American civil rights organizations and personalities. There was very little activism or interest in the issue of Palestine, or the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine as was feared by outsiders, and there were no prominent Palestinians at the forefront of Muslim American political activism.

It wasn’t until the mid nineties, and after the release of the deceitful shockumentary Jihad in America, that Muslim interest in organized political and even humanitarian activism was publicly mischaracterized as conspiracies to commit terrorism, or support for terrorism. Steven Emerson, who produced the propaganda piece, suggested in his production, that all Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists, and that US mosques had been radicalized by Afghani Mujahedeen and Palestinian activists, and turned against the US. Nothing was further from the truth. What was happening was that Palestinian Muslims and other Muslims had began to attend one another’s mosque and lectures, and to fellowship with one another outside the mosque. This became an opportunity for many to learn the truth about the negative impact of our country’s foreign policies on the lives of fellow Muslims in other countries. Whereas this new awareness seemed harmless to Muslims, it was very threatening to US Jews who already knew and were perpetuating the horrors that we now know as an illegal and brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, as well as a myriad of other injustices against Muslims in other countries, all mostly associated with the illegal occupation.

The Jewish American solution to what they feared would become a serious challenge to their monopoly over political influence, that was denied to minority groups in the US, religious and racial minorities, was to create such mistrust of US Muslims that our government and also our fellow citizens would not only come to fear us, but also to hate us. Other anti-Muslim and anti-Islam activists soon joined Emerson the Jewish American Goebbels, in his campaign to create hatred of Muslims, just as the Third Reich had created enough hatred of Jews in Germany to substantiate a Holocaust.

Muslims in the US did not experience a Holocaust, perhaps only because there is a US Constitution that protects rights, and a respect for rule of law that lingers in the hearts of US citizens, preventing us from too easily accepting that we should deconstruct 250 years of successful republicanism to accommodate the fear of exposure, and competition being suffered by American Jews. It appears that the Jewish American leadership, rather than to reach out to US Muslims in an effort to find ways to achieve peace in the Holy Land, decided they would rather employ a campaign of defamation, intimidation and psychological terrorism in the US, all as mentioned earlier, in an attempt to create fear and hatred of Muslims in the US.

At the inception of this insidious campaign, very few US Muslims had access to the media, or enough knowledge of US foreign policy and the situation in Palestine to respond to the myriad of terrifying accusations being made by the Jewish and Israeli operatives employed to undermine Muslim political activism and to poison relations between Muslims and the US government. A new organization, founded by a Palestinian and an American who was a former news reporter, an organization named CAIR, Council on American Islamic Relations, took the challenge presented by Emerson and others, and moved to the forefront of organized US Muslim activism. CAIR became the heroes of the US Muslim community, a community that had experienced only the first of a series of unexpected and vicious attacks to be launched at us by the Zionists in this country. This position was hard for CAIR to hold onto, since other Muslim organizations formed, many relocating from smaller towns to Washington DC, most hoping to earn their share of heroism, donations, and community support as CAIR had.

Following 9/11 and the inception of a horrendously evil and hateful campaign mounted by Christian Zionist and Zionist Jews in the US who had hoped to place the final nail in the coffin of Islam in America; Muslim Americans, sensing almost immediately that there was a lack of leadership, began to reach out to our government and people of other faiths, sometimes on their own, and in an unprecedented way. They were hoping to initiate dialogues with our government and law enforcement officials, and other citizens to ensure them that Muslim Americans are not a threat to our country, and that we are not a threat to Jews or Christians in the US as had been falsely charged.

Interfaith groups, and encounter groups were formed in almost every mosque, community center, Islamic center and even by Muslims generally who felt the urgency to speak out in an attempt to rebut the false accusations and slander against Islam that had become a backlash against US Muslims that included mosque burnings, violent attacks against women in hijab, and the detention of Muslims who were being entrapped in government stings for voicing anger, or making meaningless threats.

Shamefully, this was also a period in time where many Muslims turned against one another, and used the backlash against other Muslims. Sometimes this was done to seek revenge against other Muslims for all types of reasons including professional and romantic jealousy, professional competition and sometimes simply because Muslims adhered to a different school of Islamic thought than another Muslim. Not due to any fault of their own, US law enforcement became confused, and began to wonder who to believe and what to do to protect innocent Muslims from the wrath of other Muslims, as well as from what was eventually recognized as a campaign undertaken by some Christians and Jews to also defame and to levy false accusations against more vocal, and prominent Muslims and activists.

This, along with hundreds, if not thousands of interfaith dialogues where so many different renditions of Islam have been presented, has caused our government and others outside the US Muslim community to ask “who really speaks for Muslims in the US?” Even some Muslims are beginning to feel that it is necessary to reign in some of these non representative spokespersons, and to issue the call for organized and united activism that is represented by a single Muslim personality and voice, meaning that as a community we have come full circle since the founding of the first national Muslim organization. Now rather than looking for an organization, we are longing for a leader who will be given the mission to carry the Muslim political and humanitarian voice into the US market place of ideas.

There is no simple answer to the question, “Who speaks for US Muslims?” while there is a very simple answer to the question “who should?” The Qur’an and the teachings of the beloved prophet Muhammad (sa) give us a tremendous amount of guidance in respect to this question, and his Sunnah provides us with a perfect model for Islamic community and leadership. Some might ask if this is so, why we find ourselves in a situation where we lack a representative voice for our national community that is able to articulate our concerns and to protect our interests without sacrificing our rights, while simultaneously educating us and also guiding us into the mainstream market place of ideas, without frightening and intimidating our fellow citizens with our powerful message.

Before we look critically at those who are obviously vying for the positions of spokespersons for, and leaders of the US Muslim community, we must first look at ourselves and ask ourselves the question asked by a prophet who was sent to people who had been forced from their homes and who suffered from oppression at the hands of a tyrannical people. The story and the question is found in the Holy Qur’an, in Surah Al Baqarah, Chapter 2, verse 247. It says,

They said to a prophet among them, “Appoint for us a king that we might struggle in the cause of God.” He said, “Is it possible if you were commanded to struggle hard that you would not?” They said, “How could we refuse to struggle in the cause of God seeing that we were turned out of our homes and out of our families?” But when they were commanded to struggle, they turned back, except a small group of them. “Their prophet said to them “God has appointed Talut as king over you. “ They said; “How can he exercise authority over us when we are better fitted than he to exercise authority, and he is not gifted with wealth in abundance?”


The Qur’an also says, “and when they gave up hope in everything except God, God sent them leaders…”

In the Sura Nur, or “Light,” God gives us another example of a people who would not be rightly guided, not because of the deficiencies of their leaders, but because of their own lack of faith, and the diseases of their own hearts. Chapter 2, verses 46-57 say;

We have indeed sent down signs that make things manifest; And God guides whom He wills to a way that is straight. They say “We believe in God and in the apostle, and we obey” but even after that, some of them turn away, they are not really Believers. When they are summoned to God and His apostle, in order that he may judge between them, behold some decline to come. But if the right is on their side, they come to him in all submission. Is it a disease in their hearts, or do they doubt, or are they in fear that God and His apostle will deal unjustly with them? No, it is they themselves who do wrong.

The answer of the Believers when summoned to God and His apostle, in order that He may judge between them, is no other than this; they say, “We hear and we obey.” It is such as these that will attain felicity. It is such as obey God and his apostle and fear God and do right that will win. They swear their strongest oaths by God, if only God would command them, they would leave their homes, say; “Swear you not, obedience is more reasonable; verily God is well aware of what you do.


The mantle of leadership in Islam is conferred by God, and good leaders are given to communities who are ready to be guided. We must give up hope in all false gods including people, power and money and place our hope and faith in God only. God has promised us that He will send us leadership that will guide us to our desired victories when we are humble enough to be an obedient people, who fear none other than him, who have faith in His signs, or scriptures, and who are ready to take up the struggle in God’s cause, which is the struggle not only for inner purity and enlightenment, but also the outer struggle against tyranny and injustice and oppression. This is our challenge today, to become these people to whom God has promised to “change their state after the fear in which they lived, to one of security and peace” ( 24:55).

May Allah guide us to that end, and make us worthy and ready to receive the righteous leader of His choosing. And may God open the eyes of our hearts that we might recognize our leader when that time arrives.