BS: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror

Subject: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST,Robert Worth
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 10:59 AM

Long before Osama bin Laden appeared on television screens with an AK-47 by his side, he released earlier videotapes in which he appears in the guise of a holy man, sitting peacefully in front of a wall of books. That scholarly backdrop is an important symbol for Mr. bin Laden's terrorist movement as he tries to legitimize his extremist views of Islam.

"Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is just a violent cult leader," said Michael Doran, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. "But the truth is that he is tapping into a minority Islamic tradition with a wide following and a deep history."

Although many Muslims are horrified at the notion that their faith is being used to justify terrorism, Mr. bin Laden's advocacy of jihad, or holy war, against the West is a natural extension of what some radical Islamists have been saying and doing since the 1930's. These radicals were jailed, tortured and often executed in their home countries, particularly in Egypt during the 1950's and 60's, for their attacks on Western influences and their efforts to replace their own regime with an Islamic state.

The Muslim extremists, members of Islamic Jihad, who assassinated the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, for instance, left behind a 54-page document titled "The Neglected Duty" that provided an elaborate theological justification for what they had done. Addressed to other Muslims rather than to the West, the document drew on earlier thinkers in arguing that rebelling against one's rulers — which is forbidden by most Islamic authorities — is in fact a duty if those rulers have abandoned true Islam.

Mr. bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda movement merged with Islamic Jihad several years ago, has taken the same tack, drawing on medieval authorities to argue that killing innocents or even Muslims is permitted if it serves the cause of jihad against the West.

The roots of Mr. bin Laden's worldview date back to a school in medieval Islam that spread throughout the Arab world in the 20th century, known as the Salafiyya, said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Islamic law at New York University. Its name comes from the Arabic words al-salaf al-salih, "the venerable forefathers," which refers to the generation of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. The salafis believed Islam had been corrupted by idolatry, and they sought to bring it back to the purity of its earliest days.

"Salafis are extreme in observance, but they're not necessarily militant," Mr. Haykel said. The official Wahhabi ideology of the Saudi state, for instance, as well as the religious doctrine of the Muslim Brothers falls under the banner of Salafiyya.

Early salafi reformers believed they could reconcile Islam with modern Western political ideas. Some argued that Western- style democracy was perfectly compatible with Islam, and had even been prefigured by the Islamic concept of shura, a consultation between ruler and ruled.

That optimism began to fade after World War I, when the Western powers carved up the remains of the Ottoman empire into nation-states. A crucial step came in the 1930's, when some radicals began to argue that Islam was in real danger of being extinguished through Western influence, said Emmanuel Sivan, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has written extensively on modern Islam. It was then that Rashid Rida and Maulana Maudoodi developed the notion that modern Western culture was equivalent to jahiliyya (the word is the Arabic term for the barbarism that existed before Islam).

But if one man deserves the title of intellectual grandfather to Osama bin Laden and his fellow terrorists, it is probably the Egyptian writer and activist Sayyid Qutb (pronounced SIGH-yid KUH-tahb), who was executed by the Egyptian authorities in the mid-1960's for inciting resistance to the regime.

As Fathi Yakan, one of Qutb's disciples, wrote in the 1960's: "The groundwork for the French Revolution was laid by Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu; the Communist Revolution realized plans set by Marx, Engels and Lenin. . . . The same holds true for us as well."

In his most popular book, "Signposts on the Road" (1964), Mr. Qutb wrote: "This is the most dangerous jahiliyya which has ever menaced our faith. For everything around is jahiliyya: perceptions and beliefs, manners and morals, culture, art and literature, laws and regulations, including a good part of what we consider Islamic culture."

Mr. Qutb, who began his career as a modernist literary critic, was radicalized by a roughly yearlong stay in the United States, between 1948 and 1950. In a book about his travels he cites the Kinsey Report, along with Darwin, Marx and Freud, as forces that have contributed to the moral degradation of the country.

"No one is more distant than the Americans from spirituality and piety," he wrote.

He also narrated, with evident disgust, his observations of the sexual promiscuity of American culture. Describing a church dance in Greeley, Colo., he writes: "Every young man took the hand of a young woman. And these were the young men and women who had just been singing their hymns! Red and blue lights, with only a few white lamps, illuminated the dance floor. The room became a confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together."

Ultimately, Mr. Qutb rejected democracy and nationalism as Western ideas incompatible with Islam. Even pan-Arabism, which was tremendously popular in the Arab world, was simply an obstacle to the foundation of an Islamic state.

Perhaps even more important, Mr. Qutb was the first Sunni Muslim to find a way around the ancient prohibition against overthrowing a Muslim ruler. "Qutb said the rulers of the Muslim world today are no longer Muslims," Mr. Haykel said. "He basically declared them infidels."

He did so, Mr. Haykel added, in a particularly persuasive way, by reinterpreting the works of a medieval intellectual named Ibn Taymiyya. A towering figure in the history of Muslim thought, Ibn Taymiyya lived in Damascus in the 13th and 14th centuries, when Syria was in danger of domination by the Mongols.

Mr. Qutb equated Ibn Taymiyya's intellectual and political struggle against the Mongols with his own struggle against Gamal Abdel Nasser and the other Arab rulers of his day. It was a risky move, because Islamic tradition states that if one Muslim falsely calls another an infidel, he could burn in hell, Mr. Haykel said. It may also have sealed his death warrant, because Egypt's rulers did not take such threats lightly.

But decades after his death, Mr. Qutb's equation continues to inspire radicals like Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of conspiring to blow up the United Nations and other New York City landmarks, and Osama bin Laden. Mr. bin Laden quotes Ibn Taymiyya in the same way, arguing that the Saudi government — which earned his wrath by expelling him and serving as host to American troops during the Persian Gulf war — is illegitimate.

"By opening the Arab peninsula to the crusaders, the regime disobeyed and acted against what has been enjoined by the messenger of God," Mr. bin Laden wrote in his 1996 "Declaration of War against America." In so doing, the Saudi leaders ceased to be Muslims, he concluded.

That message resonates even with Muslims who do not share Mr. bin Laden's extreme views, largely because many Arabs see not just the Saudi regime but the entire political order in the Arab world today as tyrannical and corrupt, said John Voll, a professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

"Part of the appeal of bin Laden is that he can look people in the eye and say: `I know you live in a police state, I know you're living in poverty, and the reason for it is clear: Satan is doing this to you. So come join my holy war,' " he said.

Mr. bin Laden himself, however, has very little religious education. "He's a playboy from a very rich family, so he needed other people to relay the message to him," Mr. Sivan said. The two people who influenced him most directly were Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian who was killed by a car bomb in 1989, and Safar al- Hawali, a Saudi who has periodically been jailed by the authorities. Both men were steeped in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, Mr. Sivan said.

Mr. bin Laden does seem to have deviated from the radical tradition in one sense, by focusing his attacks on the United States rather than Arab regimes. In his 1996 declaration, he went so far as to say that Muslims should put aside their own differences so as to focus on the struggle against the Western enemy — a serious departure from the doctrine of Qutb and even Sadat's killers, who argued that the internal struggle was the one that mattered.

But that may be merely a shift in tactics, not in overall strategy. "Bin Laden is using the U.S. as an instrument in his struggle with other Muslims," Mr. Doran said. "He wants the U.S. to strike back disproportionately, because he believes that will outrage Muslims and inspire them to overthrow their governments and build an Islamic state."

---

Note:

Robert Worth wrote this article for the New York Times, and it is highly unlikely that he is the person who posted this article at Mudcat. The article is available from other sources, including this site. Generally, Mudcat does not permit copy-pasting of lengthy non-music articles. In the future, please post a link to the article, plus a summary of the information in your own words.
I'll leave this article here, but the general procedure is that copy-paste articles are deleted.
-Joe Offer, 13 November 2002-

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 12:06 PM

Many thanks for a highly informative post.

It makes it clear that the rootsd of the problem are longer and deeper than most of us realized.

A

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 12:21 PM

I appreciate your very long and informative post as well.

I would have appreciated it more if it had come from a Mudcat member I know. I would REALLY have appreciated it if it had come with the use of the BS: prefix that desginates non-music threads at this music-oriented forum.

There is a large number of members here who use a filter that eliminates non-music threads from the thread list displayed, and this filter is of no use when thread-naming conventions are not followed.

I would respectfully request that the originator of this thread (if he is a Mudcat regular and not a post-and-run spammer visting multiple discussion forums) apply in the Help Forum for a re-naming of the thread to include that prefix.

It has been suggested that certain topics are not BS-- the point is not whether the topic is bullsh*t, it is whether the discussion entails discussion of music or BS-ing about non-music topics. IMO, BS-ing is a good thing, about any topic anyone wishes to raise. However the wishes and concerns of site members who prefer a music focus at a music forum also deserve civility and consideration.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 12:48 PM

Thank you, Robert Worth. That is highly informative and enlightening.

One should never forget that even the most heinous of villains considers himself to be a hero.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Mark Clark
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 02:19 PM

Robert Worth is a columnist for the New York Times and, prior to that, The Washington Monthly. The post at the top of this thread is the text of his column from October 13, 2001.

I too am grateful for his information and insight. I'm doubly delighted to see that Mr. Worth is also a folk music enthusiast and thought enough of the folks here at Mudcat to take the trouble to repost his column personally.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 02:24 PM

Actually, some one has been clipping articles and posting them as threads here without giving the proper attribution--it annoys me, becaus the articles are good, but you can't really cite them because you sound like an idiot unless you know where they are from--thannks for posting the vital statistics, Mark!

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 02:29 PM

The title makes it very clear what the thread is about, fer cry-i.

No-one ut a puredee Dodobird would walk into this thread looking for music!! Cmaaaaawn!

A

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: marty D
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 02:30 PM

Thanks indeed for posting that insightful piece. You'll find the VAST majority here appreciate thoughtful input, whether from a member or not.

marty

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 02:50 PM

My point, Marty, is that when you post articles, put the name of the article, the author, the publication, and, for the sake of them, the copyright notice--not to difficult, and very helpful--I save a lot of these things, and occasionally send them to others--

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 03:16 PM

I posted this before but prefix or not it belongs here:

Some People Call Them Wahhabi Islamo-Fascists By Stephen Schwartz 10-6-1

---

Click here

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 04:21 PM

This shows that wE can't whitewash any kind of religous extremism. The Crusades were bloody and some Christians historically have done their share. This is true about any of the perverted wars of the major religions.

It's the same root. Those who feel divinely inspired to destroy others in the name of their preverted view of God.

It's great that these articles are coming to light about those that know more about America than we do about them.

Time for us as Americans to wake up and recognize that there are others out there who believe a lot differently than we do.

Also, great argument again for separation of Church and State, a distincly American phenomenon. Thank God we don't live in a theocracy.

Frank

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Mark Clark
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 04:45 PM

Amos, I have no quarrel with the subject or the content of this or any other thread. I simply feel, as does M.Ted, that anyone posting content that is clipped or quoted from another source should cite the source and, if applicable, copyright info.

I also feel that people posting here or anywhere should have enough courage and integrity to use their own name or well known handle. If someone feels they absoutely must post annonamously they, at a minimum, should refrain from using someone else's identity.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 06:11 PM

Anyone have problem with the statement that Arafat and Hussein are atheist "Leftists" posing as Muslims? And where is it writ that you are automatically a "leftist" if you are an atheist? Or vice versa? The Spectator.....hmmm!

Frank

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: BH
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 07:07 PM

Thanks to R. Worth for a wonderful posting Full of insights and really eye opening.

I would add just a few thoughts---not in any contradiction, but rather as a confirmationan and further thought.

Some of the issues---Palestine/Israel among them---are really red herrings. Modernism that cannot be comprehended or accepted by "zealots" who insist that a pure interpretation of their faith is only possible through their dominance. No matter that culture evolves and is accepted by some of their believers---they feel they have to eradicate that.

Some people---especially on a particulare NYC radio station--seem to equate this as a struggle between races. Betweet Rich & Poor. Not so! Poverty is not one of the attributes of the leaders of this movement---they finance it and use their "poverty stricken" as their "cannon fodder".

Where Hitler brainwashed the youth of Germany in his maniacal race for world conquest---so do these megalomanic organizers.

Should their culture spread over time in a peaceful way and be accepted by society it would be perfectly acceptable. They cannot understand that other cultures are accepted in the world. It must be theirn cultlure. Take it ---but do not leave it or suffer the consequences.

I doubt that they can really understand that even here in the U S ---or Britain===their faith can be practiced along with the others. Even in prisons we bend over backwards---by act of Congress---to allow murderers and rapists to practice their faith. Did you know --- some prisons even have tents set up for Native Americans to cleanse themselves in the heated areas(I forget the name for it), no pork is served to practitoners of Islam, and so on.

Certainly our past is not pure as driven snow---but at least this "civilized" society tries.

Finally----bombings have killed some civilians in Kabul. Sad. We did not, however, aim for them----5,000 here were aimed for.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 02 - 08:37 AM

This copy-paste article can be read at any number of sites, but not at Mudcat. Click here and take your pick.
See policy stated at the bottom of the first message of this thread.
Thank you.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: mooman
Date: 05 Nov 02 - 09:15 AM

Thank you from me also ,Robert, for a useful and informative posting.

Best regards,

moo

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: DougR
Date: 05 Nov 02 - 10:46 AM

Donuel: Just a suggetion: if you had broken the lengthy article you posted into paragraphs, I think you would have attracted more readers.

DougR

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Mr Happy
Date: 05 Nov 02 - 10:54 AM

check the refreshed date of this thread

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 08:32 AM

This lengthy article can be read here (click). See my statement in the first message.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 10:31 AM

Guest, 12 Nov 02 - 08:32 AM, if Christians and Jews were to be judged by the same standards as you are using to judge Muslims, they would be in big, big trouble.

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST,Les in Manchester UK
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 02:09 PM

Whilst it remains true that people do dreadful things to each for all kinds of reasons, religions do offer a special case.

Is it true to say that people, usually men invent or declare religons? Most(?) people would judge that L Ron Hubbard invented Scientology. Others that The Church of Latter Day Saints was invented by Joseph Smith, in the same way. As an Atheist I believe that all religions were invented like this and that all sets of ideas are invented or contructed similarly.

This is not the problem. Within religions people declare things to be true and ask others to believe them from faith, not evidence. Virgin birth, words on stones as the word of god, pick your own. If People outside the faith challenge these ideas they will clearly fail because they are not based in evidence or logic or whatever.

This means that people in religions can do and say what they like.

Geographers, mathematicians, musicians and most parts of philosphers don't behave like this and it makes it very difficult to discuss things like right and wrong with people who say what they like.

Very old religions may have the wisdom of thousands of years of peoples experience but some religious people in this century will still do and say what they like and what others say may not matter. People may claim religous reasons for doing things when most of us would judge them to be simply self-serving.

I think this takes us back to the only base line: democracy and the rule of law as the best of a bad choice.

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 10:18 PM

"For centuries, theologians and philosophers understood that conscience is the anvil of virtue and character. They took it for granted that God places his moral law in the heart, or conscience, of every person. Yet they were not naive. Individuals can know what is right, yet deliberately embrace what is evil. And when wickedness is chosen often enough, the moral senses become dulled, hardened, rendered useless." – Joseph Laconte

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 03:51 AM

Thanks for Worth's short summary of Islamism = Islamic fundamentalism.

The "Neglected Duty" is a short work of Muhammad Abd-as-Salam Faraj, the book I have at hand was published about 1981, no place or date given. The interested reader may look into an English translation by Johannes Jansen: the Neglected Duty : the creed of Sadat's assassins and Islamic resurgence in the Middle East / Johannes J. G. Jansen. - New York : Macmillan, 1986. - ISBN 0-02-916340-4.

The concept of al-Jihad [fi sabil Allah]= the Effort [on the way of God] was introduced by Muhammad first in a defensive way when he and his followers were fought by the jahilis. Jahiliya shouldn't be translated as barbarous; it denotes the pre-Islamic aera of "not knowing" [scil. Allah and the Quran], including the Arabic ancestors, whom their descendant Muhammad wouldn't call barbarous.

An aspect easily overlooked is the modern support of Israel (seen as a "land robber") by the Western States, especially the U.S.A. as the most powerful. Here the digging out of the old principle of Jihad makes sense for some terrorists.

Democratic structures aswe know them can't be expected in Eastern lands because of their history; interested readers may consult Karl August Wittfogel: Oriental Despotism : a comparative study of total power / by Karl A. Wittfogel. - New Haven : Yale Univ. Pr., 1957.

I definitely affirm the post of CarolC; what religious fervour used for political reasons can do we have experienced in the Thirty Years War some 350 years ago. It isn't forgotten yet.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST,Richard Bridge (cookie and format C)
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 11:58 AM

Very interesting.

Thread drift setting in now. Are all terrorist campaigns based on religion (or, if you prefer, inextricably linked with religion) or is religion in any or every case prayed in aid of a secular cause? (Pace the Irish issue)? How to fit the Russian revolution into this, or can one argue that atheism is a religion?

Or, would we be better people or better off without religion? What, then is humanism?

Second, can it be argued that it is beneficial for religions to come to terms with capitalism, or should we assert that capitalism is the oppressor, and thus seek to justify the violent overthrow of capitalism without necessarily introducing a theist element?

Subject: RE: BS: Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
From: GUEST,Les in Manchester UK
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 01:59 PM

We can all debate on some common ground but religion is not common it is exclusive.It was invented by them men over their. They will nothave us in