Ushering these people into power could be one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in history.
(National Review) — Mustafa Abdul Jalil’s announcement last month that Islamic sharia would form the basic source of legislation in the new Libya, and that all laws contradicting the sharia were immediately null and void, came as a surprise for Western observers. Given that the chair of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) wears the sign of his piety on his forehead in the form of the darkened “prayer bump” or zabibah created through vigorous prostration during prayer, it probably should not have.
Western observers had always been determined to see the anti-Qaddafi rebellion in Libya as a “democracy movement.” They were encouraged to do so by English-language NTC statements replete with soothing — if not indeed downright soporific — boilerplate that had undoubtedly been composed with the aid of Western advisers or PR agencies. But from the very start of the rebellion, clear evidence was available that the most fervent opponents of Qaddafi rejected his rule not as undemocratic, but, above all, as un-Islamic. […]
The sunna are the traditional Muslim practices that derive not from the Koran, but rather from accounts of Mohammed’s acts and teachings: the so-called hadith. The term “Sunni Islam” refers to the sunna, and strict fidelity to the sunna is at the heart of contemporary fundamentalist movements in Islam. It is hardly surprising that an Arab leader who rejects the sunna would be regarded as a very great heretic indeed. Toppling Qaddafi had long been a goal of Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the local Libyan al-Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
It is now known that LIFG cadres played key roles in the anti-Qaddafi rebellion. The rebel leaders in question include — but are not limited to — the head of the Tripoli “military council,” Abdul-Hakim Belhadj. In 2007, in a recorded message, al-Qaeda’s chief ideologue and current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, announced the incorporation of the LIFG into the al-Qaeda network. He was joined by the now-deceased Afghan-theater al-Qaeda military commander Abu Laith al-Libi — “Abu Laith, the Libyan” — who explained that the “banner of jihad” had been hoisted against Qaddafi’s “apostate regime.”
Further evidence of the Islamic and/or Islamist wellspring of the revolution is available on the German-language web of the Misrata-based pro-rebellion organization Wefaq Libya. The video collection of Wefaq Libya German includes a clip of Qaddafi nonchalantly removing a woman’s face-covering or niqab and another of an outraged Tripoli resident berating Qaddafi for having (implicitly) compared himself to Mohammed. “You dog! You Jew!” the man screams.
Perhaps most significant, however, is a video with German subtitles dated July 14. The clip shows a group of rebels, arms in hand, singing a jihadist anthem in which they pledge “to bring back the purity of Islam to Tripoli.” “We will take up our fight with them,” the men sing:
We will go in groups to stop them
We will bring back the purity of Islam to Tripoli
After all our humiliations, after all our humiliations.As the remainder of the video makes clear, the corresponding line in the original version of the song runs instead, “We will bring back the purity of Islam to al-Quds,” i.e. Jerusalem.