ABSTRACT
This statement by Muammar al-Gaddafi is one among many that Western observers find difficult to understand. Libya-or, as it is officially called, The Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya-continues to cause anxiety and yet to fascinate through its contradictions. To begin with, one finds contradictions between Libyan day-to-day reality and the stereotypes about which newspapers in the West write. One reads in them of ‘Gaddafi’s hell’ or of a ‘Terrorists’ state’, but meets instead a calm people immersed in Islam, wearing traditional bedouin dress, even in the cities. One expects to find a whimsical man’s military dictatorship, yet meets instead a ‘revolutionary thinker’ officially freed of all state commitments, who at times withdraws himself to the desert to meditate; and one can from time to time approach him physically very closely without being searched for weapons.
