[Marxism] "Studying" al-Qaeda?

[Louis Proyect]

Sukant Chandan wrote:
> It is surprising to see this hostility towards studying the Qaeda
> phenomenon...

People can read Sukant for themselves and decide whether he is merely 
"studying" Qaeda. I personally find this sort of thing nauseating myself:

Bizarrely, Bin Laden has become one of the most well-known personalities 
in the world that is championing anti-capitalist, anti-racist and 
environmentalist demands, and all the while favorably quoting one of the 
greatest radical minds of our times: Noam Chomksy. It is rare, even on 
anti-war demonstrations in the West, to find such radical pronouncements 
as those from Bin Laden when he calls on people who have ‘previously 
liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and 
feudalism’, to liberate themselves from ‘the deception, shackles and 
attrition of the capitalist system’, a system he continues to argue that 
‘seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations 
under the label of “globalization” in order to protect democracy.’

This Islamist leftist rhetoric has inspired annoyance in some left-wing 
and radical circles in the West. While they might share Bin Laden’s 
radical comments they perhaps don’t appreciate Bin Laden picking holes 
in their political strategies and movements so publicly. One has to wait 
and see whether Chomksy shares this sentiment or like William Blum, 
another leftist intellectual that Bin Laden has previously praised, will 
be ‘glad’ about Bin Laden’s name dropping. If Bin Laden quoting Chomsky 
as a great writer wasn’t surreal enough, he goes on to praise the author 
of the book Imperial Hubris, Michael Scheuer, currently one of the main 
writers on the conflict-analyst organisation Jamestown and former head 
of the CIA Bin Laden unit. Scheuer has said in the past that “the 
Islamic media’s correspondents and editors work harder, dig deeper, and 
think more than most of their Western counterparts.”

full: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/09/bin-laden-a-lefty/