The assassination of Osama Bin Laden in the early hours of Monday morning comes almost ten years after the Americans vowed to hunt him down in retaliation for the World Trade Center attacks on 11 September 2001. However, the end of Bin Laden is little more than a symbolic victory for the West, and the activities if the various al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist groups will continue unabated, according to the University of Melbourne’s professor of Asian politics, Shahram Akbarzadeh.
The reason is that Bin Laden did not in fact exert leadership over many groups. For most of the past 10 years he has been on the run or in hiding. The power he exerted was simply by virtue of being an inspiration to people who subscribe to an extremist world view. His death will not end the influence provided by his extremist example; indeed some will now revere him as a martyr and may feel inclined to seek revenge for his killing.
On the other hand, we can take some comfort in the fact that Bin Laden’s philosophy is not relevant to the current uprisings in the Muslim world. The pro-democracy demonstrations and riots in the Middle East and northern Africa arise from concerns about human dignity and political accountability; they are not about the clash of religions or civilizations, and they are not contests between religious extremists and moderates.