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Putting a Spin on the Arab Spring: Al-Qaeda Struggles to Prove Its Relevance ...

31.12.69

The wave of uprisings sweeping the Arab world has left Al-Qaeda with a major problem: this new reality has challenged not only the organization's relevance but even the very need for it, as the same dictators and dictatorial regimes it fought for decades are toppling under the pressure of peaceful and popular demonstrations. To be sure, Al-Qaeda's leaders, fighters, and supporters are genuinely content over the fall of their arch-enemies, such as Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak. [1] However, Al-Qaeda itself played no significant role in the popular protests that toppled the "apostate" rulers (or the "near enemy," in Al-Qaeda's terminology) in a mere matter of weeks. Moreover, the fact that the uprisings succeeded without its participation – or the participation of any jihad group dedicated to armed activity – has undermined one of Al-Qaeda's most fundamental assumptions, namely that tyrants can be ousted only by Jihad and the force of arms.

Not only did the uprisings marginalize Al-Qaeda's role in the actual political scene, they also brought to the fore ideas that marginalize Al-Qaeda's own ideology, such as the Arab peoples' public commitment to greater freedom and democracy. Moreover, Al-Qaeda was forced to lay out a new strategy for an Arab and Muslim world dominated by new, more pluralistic and democratic rules and values.

Source: Middle East Media Research Institute