Caught in web of a hostile campaign

The war against terrorism, spearheaded by U.S. President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, has in fact turned out in the eyes of many to be a visible and invisible global war against Muslims and Islam. This campaign has had its multi-faceted impact in the Muslim world.

Under the guise of "hunting down terrorists" the U.S. administration, backed by a media with its own axe to grind against Muslims and Islam, have instilled a sense of fear in all Muslims, although they have nothing to do with what happened on September 11. So far only 19 people are suspected of involvement.

A year after the tragic event, condemned by all Muslims, this campaign has made all Muslim countries, individuals, organisations especially religious ones and charities, mosques and religious schools and Islamic banking and financial institutions and anything and everything related to Islam, as objects of suspicion.

Already Muslim men with beards and women with headscarves are afraid to move freely in many countries and most people from the Gulf and the Middle East, instead of travelling to the U.S. and Europe for their summer holidays, turned to Malaysia and other Asian countries to avoid the harassment and hardships Muslims are subjected to in the U.S.

Muslims governments were forced to explain their innocence and disclose details of Al Qaida activities, if any, in their countries. They were under pressure to change syllabi in their school and university curricula.

In fact every Muslim religious school is under scrutiny and old religious schools have been subjected to what many consider as, unwanted harassment.

Under this campaign almost all Islamic banking and financial institutions were brought under scrutiny shaking their very foundations. The Islamic banking and finance industry, estimated to be around $150 billion and growing at the annual rate of around 15 per cent is considered a threat to the conventional banking industry and was subjected to many difficulties.

Investors all over the world who had turned in large numbers to Islamic banking face difficult times as some of these institutions were found linked to Al Qaida and the Taliban, and their assets frozen.

On the other hand billions of dollars in Arab investment in the West, especially in the U.S., appear under threat of being frozen under some pretext.

The investments of Gulf residents' in the West alone is estimated to be around $800 billion and the move by the relatives of 900 victims of September 11 events to file lawsuits claiming $100 trillion naming three Saudi officials, Sudan and several Saudi and Gulf banks and charities, was described as a well thought out plan to extort Arab wealth abroad.

According to reports Saudi investment in the U.S. is estimated to be around $750 billion. There were reports of Saudi investors transferring $200 billion from their private equity, stocks, bonds and real estate from the U.S. into European accounts. Besides a group of Saudis are also planning to sue the U.S. government, civil and media organisations for the psychological and financial damage they suffered in the aftermath of September 11.

Already Saudi Arabia had complained to the U.S. of a smear campaign and the 60-year-old Saudi-U.S. ties are passing through a period of strain as 15 of the 19 accused in the September 11 events were Saudis. This has had anti-Arab lobbies trying to exploit the situation.

The overall smear campaign, has managed to turn the world against Muslims, and has hijacked the freedom struggle of Muslims who too have been portrayed as Islamic terrorists.

A recent Time magazine report stated that America had detailed plans under Clinton administration, a year before September 11, to send special forces to Afghanistan to "roll back" Al Qaida and capture Osama bin Laden. This plan was approved a week before September 11, after a lengthy policy review ordered by Bush.

Already Cynthia McKinney, the outspoken Congress politician from Atlanta, had claimed that Bush had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks and suggested his friends in the defence industry could benefit from a war.

Does this mean that Bush administration wasted no time in exploiting September 11 to implement their already prepared design on Al Qaida, Taliban and Afghanistan?

It so happened that, while the world watched with shock and disbelief the unfolding events on September 11, Bush accused within 48 hours Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida of being behind the attack and the Taliban government of sheltering them. This accusation was made even before launching an investigation to find out the real culprit.

Within 27 days he mobilised a coalition of countries to launch an offensive on Afghanistan, already battered by more than two decades of war, using some of the most sophisticated and destructive weapons.

In the process thousands have been killed. According to a London-based journalist the estimated visible and invisible death toll was 49,600 men, women and children and the aged – dismissed simply by U.S. Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld as "collateral damage".

Most Muslim countries were helpless spectators while some joined the coalition under secret deals. There was no Soviet Union to neutralise or check the U.S.. Nor was there a Non Aligned Movement or Afro Asian Solidarity Organisation forum for developing countries to jointly express their views. Most third world countries opted to remain silent to avoid the consequences of antagonising the U.S..

With the collapse of the former Soviet Union people all over thought that wars would come to an end and the world would be a better place. But they were disappointed. Because the defence industry, which constitutes extremely essential part of many Western economies, cannot be dissolved, deprive lucrative arms trade and throw millions out of jobs.

Thus they need to create wars to ensure the continuity of the flourishing defence industry. They picked up Muslims and started a sinister campaign to project Muslims as violent people.

Since 1990 Muslims all over the world watch nightly how age-old religious and political disputes are unearthed and Muslims systematically massacred while Muslim refugees fleeing their homes became common on television networks. Muslims watch as helpless spectators the injustice against them and rue their inability to take any concrete initiative to undo the damage.

They saw how Muslims in Bosnia were systematically tortured, raped and killed for four long years while the world simply watched. It happened in Kosovo where the Nato military strike to evict Serbs turned out to be a calculated disaster as it brought death and destruction to Kosovo Muslims who fled to Albania which, though a European country, was deprived of development and remains in the middle ages.

They also saw how, on July 11, 1995, around 7,000 Muslim men, women and the aged were massacred in Srebrenica in Europe's worst-ever atrocity since World War II, while UN Dutch soldiers turned a blind eye. This happened in Srebrenica which was a United Nations-declared "safe heaven."

They had seen how Algerians were denied the fruits of their victory in the general elections triggering off a devastating civil war. Since then the country has been bleeding with thousands being killed.

They remember the devastating consequences of the mainly U.S. and UK sponsored United Nations sanctions on Iraq and Libya, Sudan and Iran and how Iraq was deprived of its weapons of mass destruction while promoting and protecting Israel, which has the largest weapons of mass destruction in the entire r