At signandsight, a fine English language website out of Germany that covers the European scene, one can find all sorts of interesting material, including a recent interview with Olivier Roy, a French expert on Islam.
Roy makes an observation that reinforces thoughts I’ve had for more than a decade—that Islamic terrorism draws on Western images of revolutionary action. Here’s what Roy says:
Bin laden says comparatively little about religion, but he does talk about Che Guevara, colonialism, climate change etc. Al-Qaida is obviously a generational movement, it is made up of young people who have distanced themselves from their families and their social surroundings and who are not even interested in their country of origin. Al-Qaida has an astonishing number of converts among its members, a fact which is recognised but has not received sufficient attention. The converts are rebels without a cause who, thirty years ago, would have joined the Red Army Faction or the Red Brigades, but who now opt for the most successful movement on the anti-imperialist market. They are still in the tradition of a mostly western revolutionary millenarianism that has turned its back on the idea of establishing a new and just society.
Yes, the Red Army, Red Brigades, Baader Meinhoff gang—and one could add the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and the whole crowd of burn-down-the-house activists who have played a prominent role in Western politics since anarchist bombs were going off and Russian Czars assassinated in the late nineteenth century.
Nazism was strongly tinged with a millenialist nihilism that glorified violence. Communist revolutionaries entertained visions of a world remade in a moment of social explosion. The West was (and remains) romanced by political violence.
Roy’s observations suggest that Islamic terrorism reflects the Westernization of the Muslim political imagination. An interesting thought.
July 2nd, 2010 | 11:47 am
And that kinship goes a long way toward explaining the western Left’s dysfunctional acceptance – indeed legitimatizing – of AQ terrorism, et al.
July 2nd, 2010 | 12:20 pm
Who inspired Osman I?
Misinformation for $2000, Alex.
July 2nd, 2010 | 12:43 pm
Not sure I understand.
Which Western model was Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi following when he sacked Aquitaine and later lost to Charles Martel at Tours? Which model served the Arabs who conquered Antioch back around 637?
Did Islamic lust for bloody conquest begin as recently as the Red Brigades, Che Guevara, et alia?
July 2nd, 2010 | 1:29 pm
ahem and Maureen Mullarkey,
Is it your contention that military conquest is identical to terrorism?
July 2nd, 2010 | 1:44 pm
Violence, conquest, raping and pillaging — these are a old and common at the human race. What’s uniquely modern, I think, is a view of non-governmental violence, protest violence, revolutionary violence, as purgative, redemptive, and capable of remaking our social world anew. And uniquely Western, I might add.
For nearly all societies, the primary instinct is one of submission to whatever authorities are in place. There is something about Western modernity that creates imaginative space for little cells of activists to see themselves a grand public realities to be exalted and enlarged by grand acts of symbolic violence.
Muslim terrorists seem to have inherited this imaginative space.
July 2nd, 2010 | 2:18 pm
Agreed, violent conquest is as old as man. But the theological imperative toward violence is distinctly Islamic. The Western will to power—real enough— is accompanied by a bad conscience. The same cannot be said of Islam which authorizes slaughter at the catechetical level.
July 2nd, 2010 | 7:17 pm
Maureen, I’m no fan of terrorism but theologically inspired violence goes back way before Islam and can be seen vividly in the old testament. But you don’t have to go that far back– Christians forced barbarian conversions long before Islam not to mention the actions of Christian crusaders.
July 2nd, 2010 | 8:48 pm
Excuse me, but Islamic terrorism comes straight from the Quran, as does its Jew- hatred which is venomous. Read Andrew Bostom’s compilations of evidence. Please, can we get it clear that the Old Testament is a revelation with historical boundaries, but the Quran gives commands to slay the infidels which are in force for all time. The reason why the Left and Islam are buddies is because they are both totalitarian. The West did not teach totalitarianism to Islam. Islam is the granddaddy of totalitarianism.
What is it going to take for even the good people at First Things (except for David Goldman—he gets it) to understand???
July 2nd, 2010 | 11:49 pm
I completely agree with the above post and I think it is a partial defense of the term Islamo-fascism. Al-Qaeda — like earlier fascist movements — is a reactionary, revolutionary movement. It seeks to revive past imagined glories (the Caliphate or the Roman Empire) but inspires people with thoroughly modern revolutionary rhetoric and tactics by borrowing from the Jacobin, Marx and Lenin.
The analogy breaks down on the question of nationalism, though. Radical Muslims despise modern nationalism — after all, they want to establish a Caliphate stretching from Portugal to Indonesia. Radical Islam plays very effectively on anti-nationalistic and anti-racist sentiments. I do think these people genuinely believe they can unite Arabs, South Asians, Turks and Malays under one banner. That idea borrows heavily from Communism and even liberal cosmopolitanism (non-Muslims, of course, will be excluded from this grand show of multicultural unity).
These revolutionary ideas are very appealing to people who actually have to live in the corrupt autocracies in the Islamic world. This is an under-appreciated fact. Muslim radicals hate the Saudi monarchy even more than the most hawkish Americans do.
July 3rd, 2010 | 1:58 am
the Quran gives commands to slay the infidels which are in force for all time.
The Quran and the Hadith authorize wars of conquest on behalf of Muslim rulers against those who wage war on Islam and refuse to submit to the authority of a Muslim ruler. Once they submit and pay jizya, Muslim governments are supposed to leave them alone and let them practice their own religion, at least if they are Christians or Jews. The Mughal Emperors in India generally left the Hindu majority alone during peacetime and even appointed Hindus as senior government officials and administrators.
What is relatively new are stateless groups of people who engage in random acts of violence against both non-Muslims and Muslims who do not practice their version of Islam (e.g. Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq).
Until recently, violence in the name of Islam was carried out by armies under the control of a sovereign. Now, it is increasingly carried out by gangsters and even solitary actors.
The idea that individuals or entities not part of any official government can exercise the same power and authority that states can is a relatively new one and comes from Western revolutionary movements.
July 3rd, 2010 | 3:34 pm
Of course, it’s not based on historical fact and places the blame elsewhere. Sunni and Shi’ites have been at each others throats since Mohamed bit the dust in the desert. The only thing that has changed is that each sect has moved out of their tents and into the west in their endless pursuit of new victims, bringing along the 7th century mentality.
Too bad there wasn’t better border control then and even worse for us now, there still isn’t.
July 5th, 2010 | 12:51 pm
When Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi went to Aquitaine he took an army with him, with an intent of conquest. This intent was foiled at Tours, DG. But it was a strategic act of war – it was not nihilistic, not an act of pure, effectively aimless violence.
By contrast, flying airplanes into the Twin Towers or the July bombings on the London underground were acts of nihilism.
July 6th, 2010 | 1:14 am
Francesca, are you serious?
July 6th, 2010 | 5:48 am
The article has not references for the assertion ” Bin laden says comparatively little about religion, but he does talk about Che Guevara, colonialism, climate change etc,” which I frankly find unbelievable. However, I’m open to being proved wrong.
‘…the al-Qaida video footage of the execution of foreign hostages in Iraq is a one to one “re-enactment” of the execution of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, with the organisation’s banner and logo in the background, the hostage hand-cuffed and blind-folded, the mock “trial” with the reading of the “sentence” and the execution.’
The way I read “one-to-one” is that there exists a video of the “trial” and murder of Aldo Moro, on which the multitude of al-Qaida video executions were based. That is a flagrant lie. The al-Qaida victims weren’t executed by being riddled with bullets. AIUI, the “trial” and the murder happened many days apart. I was unaware that there was any video of the “trial” or the murder.
It’s so good to have an “expert” offering his opinions. It is such a refreshing change from the uninformed rantings of someone like, say. me.
July 9th, 2010 | 5:27 pm
[...] GEE, THANKS GUYS– Islamic Terrorism has Western Roots …. [...]
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