-Caveat Lector- THE TELEGRAPH Revolutionaries who reject their privileged youth By Patrick Bishop in Amman (Filed: 19/09/2001) THEY call the huge span joining the mainland of Saudi Arabia to the small Gulf state of Bahrain Johnny Walker Bridge. For the Saudi males who cross it at weekends, it is the threshold to a world of whisky and women that is denied to them - in public at least - in the puritanical realm where Muhammad was born. The fun-seekers in their crisp white dishdashas have become a stock image of Arab maleness: the hypocritical high-roller who outwardly practises Islamic austerity while privately wallowing in Western vices. If the stories of his wild youth in Beirut are true, Osama bin Laden once conformed to this stereotype. Now he fits a different model, starring in the other great Arab male character role, the Kalashnikov-waving fanatic burning with religious zeal, who hates everything about the West and would like to blow up Johhny Walker Bridge. This may seem an odd change of spiritual direction. But judging by the backgrounds of many of those implicated in the bombings it is one that a tiny but significant number of Arab men are taking. Most of the suspects are middle class and educated, as are those who surround bin Laden himself. His number two is a doctor. The court at Kandahar is largely composed of engineers and lawyers; professional men who had the option of living in air-conditioned luxury but instead chose danger, hardship, social banishment and the fear and hatred of most of mankind. It is not a particularly unusual journey. In the West extreme nationalistic and ideological movements have often had upper-crust prophets and leaders. Marx was married to an aristocrat. Lenin was a minor one in his own right. Many of the young men and women of the violent European revolutionary movements of the 1970s sprang from the middle classes they wanted to destroy. Some of the Baader-Meinhof gang, like bin Laden's men, were willing to commit suicide for the cause. What these middle and upper class renegades appear to share is a quasi-pathological enthusiasm for violence and a self-righteousness that stifles normal notions of decency and humanity. What differentiates them from the merely criminal is an overwhelming sense of injustice that is sincerely felt. In bin Laden's case it was awoken by religion, and in the Muslim world religion means politics. By bin Laden's own account, two crucial events in his formation were the Islamic revolution in Iran in the 1970s and Egypt's decision to make peace with Israel. At the beginning of the 1980s he identified his first great enemy: the army of the Godless Soviet Union bearing down on his Afghan brothers in Islam. Abetted by the Americans, with whom he then had no quarrel, he went, in a very effective fashion, to war, organising funds and fighters. With victory his zealot's gaze switched homewards. He was prepared to fight Saddam Hussein for patriotic and religious reasons - Iraq was then a secular state. But the Saudi decision to allow the Americans into the land of the great holy places of Islam turned the great venom he can muster against the royal regime. Since then his hatreds have been all-encompassing. Corrupt Arab governments, Israel, regional moderates, the Americans. All are the enemy. The very power of the United States, though, has pushed it to the top of his hit list. To Westerners the demonisation of America and Americans may seem illogical to the point of insanity. To bin Laden and his middle class cadres, it all makes comfortingly circular sense. For some of them, America once offered the chance of personal fulfilment and a value system that could heal the illnesses of their own societies. "They saw America holding up a model, saying this is the way you should live your lives with democracy, human rights and the rule of law," said an American long resident in the Middle East. "Then they saw them supporting regimes, Israeli and Arab, which ignored these things." Like capitalism to the middle-class communists of Russia, America became the seductive but evil enemy whose hand could be detected in every woe. These feelings can be heard, albeit at much lower volume, throughout the Middle East at every level from refugee camps to university common rooms. It is the voice of those who believe that they share western values and opened themselves up to America, only to be rebuffed and ignored. Bin Laden's men have crossed a moral boundary that puts them beyond the society, but not beyond the ken, of the people they sprang from. The events of last week have been greeted with a horror that is accompanied by a recognition of motivation. Even the revellers heading for Johnny Walker Bridge suspect that the bombers are fighting a holy war, albeit a perverted one. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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