Ideofact contains a running commentary on Sayyid Qutb's Milestones. For those who haven't heard of this patron saint of al Qaeda, he's often considered to have written the Mein Kampf of the Islamist movement. It's more accurate so say, however, that he wrote its Kapital. Bill's commentary on Chapter 4 of Milestones contains the following quote from the book:
As we have pointed out, Islam is a declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men. Thus it strives from the beginning to abolish all those systems and governments which are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to another. When Islam releases people from this political pressure and presents to them its spiritual message, appealing to their reason, it gives them complete freedom to accept or not to accept its beliefs.
This is simply a reworking of the Marxist concept of "false consciousness," part of the larger doctrine of "alienation" that also includes Marx's rather idiosyncratic definition of "ideology" (anything non-Marxist meant to pull the wool over the eyes of the worker). Marxism, itself, wasn't an ideology. Nosiree!
There are literally dozens of belief systems that map more or less one for one into Marxism, and Qutbism appears to be another. The appeal of these ideologies must come from a deep human longing to cheat our recently discovered limitations of rationality... to return to the segmented societies of our tribal past where anything goes, while making the tribe writ-large and universal. Which in turn seems like a stroke of progressive genius.
Posted by Demosophist at January 30, 2004 10:05 AM | TrackBackThis is the iron chain that binds Marxism and Moslem terrorism together. The two ideologies are, at base, not so very different. Both fundamentally reject the Western concepts of free will, personal responsibility, cause and effect, and consequences, and this opens the door to every horror and madness.
If Allah protects the righteous, then clearly it is not merely permissible but a moral obligation to take an airplane full of hostages and ram it into a skyscraper, because if they were righteous, Allah would not allow them to come to harm. Allah akhbar! Death to the unbelievers! This is also why the term "moderate Moslem" is an oxymoron, but that is a topic for another day.
If the fundamental reality of human existence is "the inevitable forces of history," then it is perfectly acceptable, even laudable, to kill and torture as many people as necessary to bring about "the dictatorship of the proletariat." The inevitable forces of history demand it. Death to the bourgeouis pigs!
This, I think, is why the late, unlamented Soviet Empire was so enthusiastic in its support for Islamist terrorists. Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, the PFLP, the Hukbalahaps and New People's Army in the Phillipines, and a rogue's gallery of others were all created at Soviet orders with Soviet money, and trained on military bases in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Syria, Libya, and Iraq by Soviet troops. And this is why leftist ideologues in the US and Europe are so adamantly opposed to US efforts in the ongoing World War against Islamist terrorism. This is why people who proudly proclaim their hatred for the religious traditions of the West trip over their own feet in their eagerness to lunge forth and apologize for bin Laden, Arafat, Qaddafi, et al, the violent adherents of a far more savage and bloodthirsty superstition.
Posted by: my name is unimportant at January 30, 2004 04:59 PMI think "my name is unimportant" has no knowledge of either Marxism or Islam. Plus, he writes: "This, I think, is why the late, unlamented Soviet Empire was so enthusiastic in its support for Islamist terrorists. Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, the PFLP, the Hukbalahaps and New People's Army in the Phillipines"
And then what explains the US being so enthusiastic in support of terrorists such as the Shah of Iran, the Samoza regime, the Guatemalan military, Saddam Hussein, and the moslem rebels in Afganistan?
Over the years, most terror has been imposed in the name of fundamentalist religion, whether it be Islam, Roman Catholicism (the Inquisition and Ireland), fundamental Protestantism (Ireland and the Nazis), or Eastern Catholicism (Milosevic in Serbia). Countries and religions act in their own self-interest, regardless of ideologies, and have always been willing to use terror to support that self-interest.
And then what explains the US being so enthusiastic in support of terrorists such as the Shah of Iran, the Samoza regime, the Guatemalan military, Saddam Hussein, and the moslem rebels in Afganistan?
The Soviet Empire? Or did you, like Chomsky, just kind of conveniently forget about that small detail, which murdered over 100 million people outright during the 20th Century in concentration camps (dwarfing the numbers killed by the Nazis) and enslaved at least 100 million more in Eastern Europe alone? Furthermore "terrorism" is a specific tactic used by totalitarian movements either before they achieve regime status, or shortly after they've been deposed. During the period while they're in power they use "state terror" and have little need for the tactic of "terrorism" (of which, unlike "my name is unimportant," you seem to have no knowledge).
Finally, Islamism is not coterminus with the religion of Islam but either an apostate or false religion heavily influenced by Marxist ideology, or a Marxisant ideology under the guise of religion. Or both. And that's the point of my comment, and of Ideofact's commentary.
Posted by: Scott (to Paul) at February 2, 2004 07:23 AMScott,
Do you really think you have enough knowledge of Islaam to characterize the views of Sayyid Qutb or anyone else as being apostate or false?
I don't know how seriously you were making the comment and I know you may have thought you were being kind to Islam in doing so, but to Muslims those are very serious comments which one would not make without a depth of Islamic scholarship and specific examples of in what way Qutb's thought contradicted fundamental principles of the religion.
What do you mean by terrorism? I see you say terrorism is used by totalitarian movements before they become governments then they violence by them is called state terror. Is this all violence by regimes you don't like or only killing of innocent civilians.
What do you call it when a regime you don't see as totalitarian (like the U.S. or Great Britain I presume) kills, kidnaps and tortures innocent civilians? Or does this just not happen in your world?
Peace,
Abu Noor al-Irlandee
Posted by: Abu Noor al-Irlandee at February 2, 2004 01:42 PMAbu:
Do you really think you have enough knowledge of Islaam to characterize the views of Sayyid Qutb or anyone else as being apostate or false?
How much do I need to know? I apparently know a great deal more than you about Marxism and "liberation theory" and I daresay I can't map traditional Islam into those belief systems with anything like the ease and facility with which I can map Islamism into them. Do you know enough about Marxism to be aware of the essential precepts passing under alternate names? Explain the concepts of "alienation" and "false consciousness" and how they differ consistently from Qutb's version of the same concepts (other than that they're simply masked as religious doctrine).
And the keystone of Qutb's strategy is suicide/murder, which he has in common with virtually all of the totalitarian movements of the 20th Century as well as a few in antiquity, and with almost no pre-20th C movements (with a few exceptions, like Sparta). If you claim that suicide/murder, especially against innocents and other Muslims, is a traditional and sanctioned belief of Islam then I'd have to class Islam along with those other totalitarian belief systems. And I just don't think that's required at this point. Islam appears to be "susceptible" in the way that a victim of a virus is susceptible. That's all.
What do you mean by terrorism? I see you say terrorism is used by totalitarian movements before they become governments then they violence by them is called state terror. Is this all violence by regimes you don't like or only killing of innocent civilians.
I don't like them, no. Are you saying I should? That a few of them are "enlightened," or something? Which ones? Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism? Nazism? Fascism? Phalangism? The Tamil Tigers? Hezbollah? Some, particularly the last two, aren't recognizable as totalitarianism if you're only focussed on ideologies with regime status, but suicide/murder is a kind if signature that holds up historically. (A few examples: The Japanese Kamikaze, the German "Operation Wierwulf," the suicide bombers in the early stages of the Russian Revolution, etc. This does not include "last stand" efforts like Masada or the Alamo, nor does it include ill-considered military efforts like Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, or the "Bloody Angle" at Spotsylvania Courthouse, which may also have been considered "suicidal" in a sense. These all occured in the midst of desperate battles in which the participants would have been more than happy to have survived.
And I'd have to say that your unwillingness to perceive this distinction suggests that you're under thrall, at least to some extent, already. It is a tempting strategy, isn't it? Terrifying and yet, somehow, compelling? Did you think you were the first to find it so?
There's too much bad occidental philosophy in that "oriental religion" for it to have been entirely coincidence. But, of course, I'm only a policy person so my opinion about the apostate character of Qutbism carries no weight outside of our own strategies concerning what to do in response. But I suggest that if you hitch your wagon to that star, you'll end up with it on the "ash heap of history." The strategy has been defeated every single time it was employed.
Posted by: Scott (to Abu Noor) at February 3, 2004 10:26 AMScott,
Only time for one point now. More later, God Willing.
Sayyid Qutb neither killed anyone in his life nor did he commit suicide.
Your allegations are nothing more than allegations.
Show me one passage where Qutb called for anyone to commit suicide.
If you think that anytime someone says one should be willing to lay down one's life for a cause than that person is glorifying suicide then you're being so silly that there is no point of talking to you.
Suicide and murder of innocents have nothing to do with Islaam nor do they have anything to do with the writing of Sayyid Qutb. Again, quote for me a single passage where Sayyid Qutb calls for the murder of innocent civilians.
It's very easy to make up things about someone and then charge them with being what you'd like them to be.
What do you know about traditional Islam, it was just a question. Although it appears less relevant now than the fact that you know very little about Sayyid Qutb.
Sayyid Qutb was just a human being. He could be wrong or right. I'm not hitched to anyone's star.
We're all going to end up in the ash heap of history someday. I'm just worried about where I'll stand with my Lord when I do.
Peace,
Abu Noor al-Irlandee
Posted by: Abu Noor al-Irlandee at February 3, 2004 12:05 PMFrom his posts at ideofact.com, Abu Noor has read and reflected extensively about Sayyed Qutb's writings. I will take him at his word that there are no passages in, say, Milestones where Sayyid Qutb calls for the murder of innocent civilians.
On the other hand, I doubt that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mussolini wrote such passages in any of their popular works, nor even that you'd find such a tellingly explicit quote in Mein Kampf or the Little Red Book. Etc.
It thus seems fair to wonder, as Scott does in post and comments, whether Qutbism promotes the same reasoning that led its adherents of other movements to justify and promote murderous impulses, and killing.
Judging from Ideofacts' excerpts, from the ensuing discussions in his comments, and from the way that Qutbist-inspired groups make the front pages: this philosophy does indeed present the same sort of threat as did other 20th century totalitarian movements, including implied justifications for killing those who obstruct its path.
Posted by: AMac at February 4, 2004 05:30 PMAnyone who's read this far should ignore my comment immediately above (heh), and continue instead to the exchange between Scott and Abu Noor three posts up, "Between the Lines of a Prison Masterpiece."
Wonderfully insightful discussion, thanks.
Posted by: AMac at February 4, 2004 10:46 PMYou guys detect a certain affinity between the fanatic Islamists and Marxism. You need to go farther. Whereas Marx himself was not keen on Islam --consider his article on the origins of the Crimean War in the New York Daily Tribune of 15 April 1854, which speaks of "Mussulman intolerance"-- Stalin in late 1917, shortly after the Bolshevik coup d'etat in Russia, issued "An Appeal to the Muslim Toilers of Russia and the East." Here he endorses Muslim territorial claims against non-Muslims, in particular the Armenians who had just suffered genocide at the hands of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Hitler too had an affinity to the Muslim notion of jihad [see the book by J.M.S. Baljon in Modern Muslim Koran Interpretation]
Posted by: TexSouthPhilly at May 16, 2004 04:07 AM