Very Western Terrorism

One of the most enduring images of intercivilizational conflict these days is that of the Islamist terrorist and his war on the West. This is almost universally portrayed as a conflict between the traditional, the oriental and the quintessentially Islamic and the modern, culturally and intellectually superior occident. However, this perspective is dependent on a historical amnesia that affects so much of modern society today. Islamist terrorism is not a story of Islam versus the West, but rather of modern secularism falling upon its own sword.

We often attribute the violence of entities like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to superstitious primitivism. Far from being medieval throwbacsk, such movements have their ideological foundation in Western modernity. The most distinctive features of violent Islamism - the globalization of organized violence and the belief in the possibility of establishing a utopia via acts of destruction - are unfounded within traditional Islamic scholarship. Rather, they are the by-products of Enlightenment philosophy. The Islamist is just as likely to be middle-class and university-educated, rather than a stereotypical ignorant Third-Worlder. He often has spent time in the west, and received a western education. We only need to read the history of Muslim political radicalism to understand these facts.
The association between Islam and anti-Western violence is notable only because of its rarity. Except in cases of response to direct military invasion, such as African resistance to the redcoats of the British Empire, and more recently the conflicts in Bosnia and Cold War Afghanistan, the Muslim response to the challenges of the West was overwhelmingly informed by pragmatism, self-reflection and conciliation. The true weapons of the dissemination of Islam have always been through culture, religion and philosophy, hence its ability to spread to places like Southeast Asia, China and West Africa. Even during periods of military conquest by Muslim kingdoms, one would be hard pressed to find examples where it was actually motivated by religion.

However, many radicals see the traditional response as a flawed approach, and in espousing of violent insurrection reject the scholarship of tradition. In drifting away from Tauhid, the metaphysical Unity at the heart of Islam, they adopt the cosmology of the universe as Light and Dark, with the former’s imperative to conquer the latter. This Occidental archetype, this pursuer of victory against an Other, who if incapable of achieving this goal settles for the glorious and spectacular end, is an impossible role model if one follows the religion of a God who is the master of history, who sends the rain on good and evil alike.

How terribly modern the terrorist is! They justify the targeting of civilians as religiously-sanctioned, but how ironic is it that the self-styled warriors of God base their philosophy on secular modernism. From the bombing of German cities by the RAF to the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such violence is typical of the utilitarian Enlightenment ethic. For the religious, morality can never be subjected to the whims of convenience. On the contrary, the harder it is to follow, the more crucial it becomes. Within this attitude war is no longer an activity of defence, or a way to attain resources or power, but a veritable act of social engineering. This Utopianism, arising from the revolutionaries of France to be later passed down to innumerable inheritors, is obsessed with ideas of progress. That humanity can somehow be made better, and the fundamental evils and injustices wiped out through external action – armed conflict being an effective and legitimate way of achieving this. The ‘Greater Good’ conquers all.

Similarly, the fashion of the suicide attack is Islamically baseless in spite of its perceived normativity. Even the Hashashin preferred to be struck down by the bodyguards of their victims or be dragged off for torture than turn their blades upon themselves. If Christians would forgive me for the use of this polemic device; in the Quran there is no Samson. Jonah does not ask to be chucked overboard and Job does not pray for death. Though Islamic history and literature is replete with martyrs, one would be hard-pressed to find any who actively sought after martyrdom. There is neither Achilles nor Ajax, nor any of those who threw themselves at the Roman authorities begging for death, glorifying it for its own sake. Suicide bombing itself was pioneered by the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist group which carried out the most number of these attacks up to the Iraq invasion, and passed on this technique to groups in the Middle East which were also of Marxist persuasion.

The insurrectionist and revolutionary mentality of the philosophers of Islamism, is symptomatic of a Westphalian conception of statehood with no basis in religion. ‘Muslim’ no longer becomes a descriptor of one’s metaphysical world view, but the name of a member of a certain political party, and jihad is the token revolutionary struggle through which supremacy is established. The Islamist attempts to establish a state where, in contrast to the traditional proliferation of self-regulatory bodies and separation between the ulema and the political leadership, he mimics the ideological totalitarianism of the modern centralised entity. In such a state, political dissidence is identical to blasphemy and people fear the government rather than God. In these “Islamic” societies morality is relegated to the law courts and individual conscience is negated. Virtue thus becomes superfluous and Paradise is accessed through obedience rather than effort or devotion.

From the Jacobins to the Marxists to the neoconservatives, modern philosophy gave rise to the view, found nowhere within Islam, that a new world may be brought about through the use of systemic violence. It is one of the great ironies of our times how the Islamists have internalized the essence of the very things they profess to hate.