Many analysts and academics hypothesized what the Egyptian Revolution and the Arab Spring of Revolutions meant to Osama Bin Laden. But now that Bin Laden is dead, I would like to ask the question, “What does Bin Laden's death mean to Egypt?” The reaction in Egypt to the death of Bin Laden was divers. My taxi driver told me that Bin Laden was a criminal and not a good Muslim, “Why should we mourn the death of a bad man?” But the Muslim Brotherhood condemned Osama Bin Laden's death, calling it an assassination. The Egyptian government and military forces refused to comment. And in Tahrir this Friday and Saturday, the 6th and 7th of May, Salafis and Egyptian Lawyers protested against the killing of Bin laden. But the answer to the question, what Osama Bin Laden's death means to Egypt, is one man, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. You know how the saying goes, “Behind every great man is a great…man,” Ayman Al-Zawahiri was the man behind Osama Bin Laden, and now he is Osama Bin Laden. Zawahiri is a man that was born, imprisoned, impassioned and radicalized in Egypt. Today, he is the most likely successor of Osama Bin Laden. An Egyptian, from the Cairo suburb of Maadi, replaced Bin Laden on the FBI's list of Most Wanted Terrorists with a reward of up to $25 million on his head. Zawahiri became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 14 and was inspired by the teachings and martyrdom of radical theologian Sayyid Qutb. After the execution of Qutb, Zawahiri became one of the organizing leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group. Following the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat in 1981, Zawahiri was imprisoned and tortured, becoming one of the earliest victims of Egypt's military Mubarak regime. After serving a three-year sentence, Zawahiri emerged a changed man and left Egypt to pursue the fruition of his radical ideologies. Zawahiri had come to believe that the only way to remove Egypt's corrupt oppressive regime and to set up a purist Islamic state was through the use of violence. Osama Bin Laden met Zawahiri in 1985 in Pakistan and over the years Zawahiri became Bin Laden's right hand man, and the brains and voice of Al-Qaeda. He brought the ideas born from the Muslim Brotherhood and from Egypt's prisons to Al-Qaeda. Lawrence Wright, author of Looming Towers, a Pulitzer Prize winner about Al-Qaeda says, “to understand Egyptian prisons is to understand the root of Islamic terror.” Indeed, it is from the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the darkness of Egyptian prisons, and the oppression of the Egyptian military regime that many, if not most terrorist organizations have been born. To answer the question, what Bin Laden's death means to Egypt, we must also ask ourselves the question that analysts have been pondering, what did Egypt's Revolution mean to Bin Laden? Egypt's January 25th Revolution stuck a knife into the back of Zawahiri's sworn enemy Hosni Mubarak and Egypt's military regime. But, Al-Qaeda was silent during the Egyptian Revolution. It was not until Feburary 18th, 7 days after Hosni Mubarak's removal that the silence was broken; Zawahiri released the first of five lengthy speeches titled “Message of Hope and Glad Tidings to Our People in Egypt.” In these speeches, he describes Egypt's present condition as “one of deviation from Islam including…corruption, immorality, injustice, oppression and dependency. There is ideological corruption, political corruption, economic and financial corruption, and societal and moral corruption.” Zawahiri outlines in detail the history of Egypt's oppression, corruption and secularization. He calls of Egyptian Muslims to continue their Jihad of resistance. From these speeches, it seems like Al-Qaeda is trying to hijack the Arab revolutions, Egypt's in particular, by claiming that their goals and the revolutions' goals have been one in the same. Zawahiri does have some very insightful things to say about the Egyptian situation; and his knowledge of Egypt's history and politics is incredibly informed and historical. His analysis of the Egypt's revolution is this: “What has taken place in Egypt until now can be summarized as a popular revolution that ended with military overthrow. The tyrant Hosni Mobarak handed the rule to his men in the armed forces.” Zawahiri knows that the regime that imprisoned him in 1981 is still in place. And in one sense, the removal of that regime is indeed a goal that the people of Egypt and Al-Qaeda share. But what Zawahiri does not understand, or does not want to acknowledge, is that the Egyptian people protested peacefully in the face of armed police retaliation and arrests, for a democratic government, freedom of expression, unity between religions, human rights, fair trials, jobs and honest wages. The Egyptian people did not protest for the downfall of America, the eradication of Israel, or the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. Zawahiri must have jumped for joy, along with the rest of Egypt, the day Hosni Mubarak was removed from office. He often described Mubarak as a criminal tyrant traitor and an Arab Zionist. But Mubaraks removal from office is only the tip of the iceberg of Egypt's struggle. The very core of Egypt's Revolution was bad news to Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda's philosophy of violence, armed resistance, suicide, the murder of innocents and terrorism is wholly against the peaceful revolutions that are sweeping across the Arab world. On the 25th of January 2011, the Egyptian people demonstrated to the world and to history that there is another way to fight oppression. Zawahiri and Bin Laden have spent a lifetime plotting and killing to overthrow oppression. The Egyptians peacefully overthrew the symbol of their oppression in 18 days. Daniel Bymen, expert on terrorism from Georgetown University says that Egypt's Revolution is a blow to Bin Laden's ideology “What Egypt shows is that peaceful demonstrations, peaceful protests can topple autocratic governments that are quite repressive.…This is a direct refutation of bin Laden's claim that only violence will work to effect political change.” Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution says that Bin Laden, “lived long enough to witness his worst nightmare, and that is to see peaceful young people, non-ideological, chanting the same values that America stands for – freedom, democracy, human rights – succeed where he and his group never did in the Arab world. And that had to be very disheartening for him before he died.” It must also have been very disheartening to Zawahiri, because he is Egyptian. Nevertheless, Al-Qaeda may see the Arab Spring as an opportunity to bring their goals to fruition in the Islamic world. NPRs Mike Schuster said that, “Egypt has been central to al-Qaida's narrative of repression and political change in the Arab world.” And today, an Egyptian, is the leader of Al-Qaeda. So it is worth asking the question, what does Bin Laden's death mean to Egypt? The answer to this question is something we should keep our eyes open for, because the future of Egypt is still uncertain. What is certain though, is that Egypt's fight is not over, it must continue to fight to be free from all forms of oppression, the oppression of corrupt dictators, of military governments and from the oppression of militant and radicalized Islam. BM
