1775 and 2001: M Shahid Alam* traces links across the years History is made by people who seize the moments that circumstances offer and bend them to their purposes. When conditions are adverse, they nurse their purposes, their dreams of freedom, dignity and power, so that when their moment arrives they are ready to seize it, even at the cost of their lives. On 19 April 1775, 700 British troops reached Concord, Massachusetts, to disarm the American colonists who were preparing to start an insurrection. When the British ordered them to disperse the colonists fired back at the British soldiers. This "shot heard around the world" heralded the start of an insurrection against Britain, the greatest Western power of its time. And when it ended, in 1783, the colonists had gained their objective. They had established a sovereign slave-holding republic, the United States of America. The colonists broke away because this was economically advantageous to their commercial and landed classes. As colonists, they were ruled by a parliament in which they were not represented, and which did not represent their interests. The colonies were not free to protect and develop their own commerce and industries. Their bid for independence was made all the more attractive because it was pressed under the banner of liberty. The colonial elites had imbibed well the lessons of the enlightenment, and in the New World they had an opportunity to harness liberty in the service of their economic interests. Backed by the self interest of their landed and commercial elites, and inspired by revolutionary ideas, the colonists had a dream worth pursuing. They were prepared to die for this dream -- and to kill. They did, and they won. On 11 September 2001, 19 Arab hijackers demonstrated their own willingness to die -- and to kill -- for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity. The manner of their death -- and the destruction it wreaked -- is not merely a testament to the vulnerability to clandestine attack created by modern technology. After all, skyscrapers and airplanes have co-existed for many decades. The attacks of 9/11 were in many ways a work of daring and imagination too, if one can think objectively of such horrors. They were a cataclysmic summation of the history of Western depredations in the Middle East: the history of a unity dismembered, of societies manipulated by surrogates, of development derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed. The explosions of 9/11 were indeed a "shot heard round the world". Most Americans heard the shot clearly -- and what they heard was deafeningly clear to them. They had heard this message before: that Islam is a problem; that Muslims are terrorists; that they have failed to modernise; that they hate America for what it is, for its freedom, its progress and promise of democracy. They declared that 9/11 had changed their world forever. They demanded vengeance for the world they had lost, a secure world, a haven, eternally protected from that other world they should be forever free to ravage. And they are still not satisfied -- with more than 100,000 Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghans dead. How did Muslims hear this shot? Did they hear the accusations pointing to the dereliction of Muslims: their dereliction in defending their homeland; their failure to live honourable lives, as sons and daughters of Adam, as free agents, accountable now and forever for their choices, their actions, their lives? Have they strained their bodies, hearts and minds to carry out the trust that their Creator first offered to the mountains and which the mountains sensibly refused? Have they heard the cry of the strangers -- the men, women and children in the oppressed city -- crying for the Muslims to redeem them? Have they heard the cry of the female child buried alive? Have they fed the indigent? Have they freed their slaves? Have they taken care of the orphans placed in their care? Have they opposed the bondage, the pulverisation of human lives, produced by a system that places capital and profits above human need? Above all, the question that the hijackers of 9/11 pose to their Islamic compatriots is this: "What have you risked to oppose your own tyrants, your own ruling cliques and tribes so easily co-opted by foreign powers, who have worked so treacherously to enslave their own peoples, who sell off their national treasures and who have secretly worked with Israel to complete the dismantling of Palestinian society?" "We engage in this violence against the United States," they say, "because you force us to, because you have failed to act against the American surrogates in your own countries. Because you have failed to act politically and with courage, we send you this message of horror, of shame. We advertise your shame before the world. We announce the failure of a billion and a half people -- keepers of the Qur'an and heirs to a moral civilisation -- to overthrow the craven ruling classes who commit treachery against their own societies, their own history, every day that they cling to power." "Mobilise now," they repeat, "and we will join again your political struggle at home -- in the Islamic lands stretching from Mauritania to Mindanao, from Bosnia to Borneo, from Jerusalem to Jakarta, from Tangier to Tanzania, and from Karachi to Kasghar. If you are willing to struggle, to fight, to secure your own homes, your own societies, your enemies cannot bind you through surrogates. America and Israel will have to fight you in your lands. Is America ready to fight a billion and a half people in their own streets, their own squares, their own backyards?" "God," the hijackers taunt, "does not change the condition of a people unless they want to change it themselves." If Muslims don't change their conditions the Americans and Israelis will set in motion the machinery that will re-arrange their world. One thing is certain now: the Islamic world will change. Will it be the change the Americans and Israelis want? Will the Islamic world be smashed into a collection of micro-states -- ethnic, sectarian and tribal entities -- allied to and dependent on the US and Israel for their survival? Or will Muslims oppose this new civilising mission and regain the freedom to shape their destiny in ways that allow the integral Qur'anic society, just, inclusive, creative, seeking knowledge, taking the middle road, to once again enrich our common human sojourn on earth? * The writer is professor of economics at Northeastern University.
