Bin Laden icons -- iconography or idolatry?
Steve Hayes
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Friday October 19, 3:28 PM
Osama bin Laden products blitz Pakistani markets
QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct 17 (AFP)--From chocolates to mobile phone
messages and posters to t-shirts, the bearded image of Osama bin
Laden is everywhere in Pakistan and fans of the West's most wanted
man can't buy enough.
Small businessmen said bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban regime
had always enjoyed limited support in Pakistan, partly because of
the official three million Afghan refugees who live here.
But the US bombings of Afghanistan in response to the September 11
terrorist attacks of New York and Washington blamed on bin Laden
have bolstered the Saudi dissident's standing in the eyes of many.
In one popular poster, bin Laden is riding a wild stallion and
wielding a silver sword.
Another poster shows him in army green camouflage sporting a digital
watch with a compass. In other posters he is carrying uzi and Ak47
machine guns and rocket launchers.
But the most popular glossy is a finger waving posture of bin Laden
as he appears ready to launch into a lecture. This poster has proved
a trademark at militant rallies.
"Osama is very good for one side of business," said Ghulam Farook,
a vendor based outside the Mutton Market in Pakistan's southwest
city of Quetta, where thousands of Taliban and bin Laden supporters
have gathered for rallies over the past two weeks.
Farook said he was selling 100 colour glossy posters of bin Laden
a day for a few US cents each. He could sell more but the printers
were not able to keep up with demand.
The posters hang in street stalls beside cricket and body-building
magazines, or above bin Laden wrapped sweets at the lollie shop
near the Quetta railway station.
But Farook added that poverty meant people were restricted in their
spending habits and bin Laden was cannibalising other potential
sales.
"We have lost elsewhere in sales because people can not afford to
buy their traditional magazines, books and newspapers, whether they
are Islamic orientated or not," Farook said.
Another vendor, in Quetta's Central market, Sabil Jamail, said
white t-shirts with a black bin Laden print were selling by the
thousands for about four dollars each.
"They are all over Pakistan -- Karachi, Peshwar, Islamabad and
Lahore and they are very popular, we don't have any, anymore. The
people who support bin Laden are very dedicated," Jamail said.
Meanwhile, product sales in the jihad, or holy war, market is also
strong.
Al Bador, a Quetta-based recruitment office for holy wars in
Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine and Chechnya has its own products
of grisly posters and bumper stickers available for a "donation".
The donations are used to fund training camps and Al Bador official
Shahbaz Baloch said their campaign, coupled with the US strikes on
Afghanistan, had attracted hundreds of Islamic fighters.
Outside the jihad recruitment offices and the madrassas (Islamic
schools), another key source of holy war fighters, there is no
shortage of consumers with opinions.
"The Taliban is Islamic and America wants to attack Islam and not
Osama bin Laden," said Abmat Unnah, who runs a nearby kitchen
utensils shop.
"America is going the wrong way and we want the Taliban. This war
will take two years to finish, and we will win."
That message is echoed when his friend answers a text message on
his mobile phone. As the phone rings a graphic of bin Laden appears
on the screen with the words Sher-e-Islam -- Lion of Islam.
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A question:
Is the USA more Islamic than Pakistan?
The US flag is an abstract symbol, like traditional Islamic art.
But don't these icons of Bin Laden run foul of the Islamic
prohibition on idolatry?
Some people asked similar questions when people in Iran were
waving posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the answer was that
these were Shi'ite heretics, and that Sunni Muslims did not do
such things.
But surely that does not apply in this case?