There is a great deal of evidence to support the notion that sportsmen should not be allowed to speak on camera Exhibit A.Tim Henman, PersilSafe, dependable and very dull. Despite recent dents to his public image, Beckham retains lucrative endorsement deals, in part due to a media profile which affects the sale of products globally. Gooch & Warne, Ocean Advanced Hair StudioTwo old lags making hay while the sun shines. As Seif al-Adal, al-Qa'ida's overall military commander recently put it: "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap."The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, by Fawaz A Gerges, has just been published by Cambridge University Press, £16.99. David Beckham, Pepsi Pepsi and Coke have taken football in different directions. Coke went the official route, buying up World Cup, Euro Championship and Football League sponsorships.
Pepsi's approach is to stuff their ads full of "galacticos" such as Zidane, Totti, Ronaldinho and Beckham, carefully covering every major market and rotating the ads to fit. The US and the international community could have found intelligent means to nourish and support the internal forces that were opposed to militant ideologies such as the Bin Laden network. The way to go was not to declare a worldwide war against a unconventional paramilitary foe with a tiny or nonexistent social base of support, and try to settle scores with old regional dictators.That is exactly what Bin Laden and his senior associates had hoped the US would do - lash out militarily against the Ummah. Had they listened carefully to the multiple critiques of al-Qa'ida by Muslim clerics and opinion-makers, they would have had answers to their oft-asked question: where are the Muslim moderates? Had they observed the words and deeds of Islamists, they would have known that the jihadist movement has been torn apart, and that al-Qa'ida does not speak for or represent Islamists - or Muslim public opinion.American commentators and policymakers would also have realised that the internal defeat of al-Qa'ida on its home front - the Muslim world - was and is the most effective way to hammer a deadly nail into its coffin. Had they tuned in closely to the internal struggles roiling Muslim lands, they would have had second thoughts about the military expansion of their "war on terror", and would have realised that al-Qa'ida is a tiny fringe organisation.
Bin Laden and his cohorts have certainly lost the war of ideas, the struggle for Muslim minds.And that was a critical achievement overlooked by American policymakers, who turned their attention to al-Qa'ida and like-minded militants, and overlooked the fault lines among jihadists, and the vast societal opposition to global jihad. In my book, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, I show that, contrary to the received wisdom, the dominant response to al-Qa'ida in the Muslim world was very hostile, and few activists, let alone ordinary Muslims, embraced its global jihad. For al-Qa'ida, the struggle seems to have shifted away from the battlefield to the media. Yet the Bush administration, along with the Blair government to a lesser extent, continues to fight the wrong war with the wrong tools, "the war on terror" now having been renamed the war against "Islamic radicalism". Its hearts-and-minds strategy consists of a public diplomacy full of sound and fury and devoid of any substance.Despite overwhelming evidence, there is little recognition among Bush administration officials that their expansive war on terror has damaged America's image, standing and interests in the international community. The "Global Islamic Media Front", an al-Qa'ida unit, said that its PR department would follow up submitted applications and communicate with interested candidates by private e-mail.Although this job announcement is more propaganda than real, it is instructive in one respect. Other vacant slots are for a video programmer and a researcher for news on Muslims worldwide.
