This 5 minute interview illustrates one of many radical reactions to the Western model of development:
“We are trying to show the people that Islam is the solution to their problems, said Mohammed Zahawi, the head of Ansar al-Sharia. “As for those bankrupt calls for Western democracy, liberalism and secularism, what did democracy give to the West? Social collapse, moral collapse, economic collapse?”
The West, he said, has nothing to offer Libya. As other Libyans celebrated the country’s first free elections, this group rejected the democratic process entirely. In their interpretation, only God’s law applies.
Ansar al-Sharia follows the most literal interpretation of Islam — a narrow view that would ban mingling of the sexes and what they consider Western vices. Their rejection of any U.S. hand in reshaping Libya is so vehement that they’re willing to relinquish Libya’s lifeblood: its vast oil reserves — the reason they believe the Obama administration helped them in the first place.
“They can have the petrol if they want, so long as they just leave us alone,” Zahawi said. “We waive our rights to petrol, let them take it, just don’t intervene in implementing our religion and Islamic law.”
“The liberals and secularists were all raised in the West. They were raised in openness, nakedness and decay. They know that in an Islamic state, they can’t get to their vices. That’s why they are waging a war against Islam,” Zahawi said.
