[lit-ideas] Re: Amis Antithesis

  • From: "Simon Ward" <sedward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 20:43:53 +0100

"Zawahiri's text is based upon Qutb, and it is going to help prepare minds to 
react and take offense in accordance with what Qutb and people like Zawahiri 
have prepared them for?"

React to what Lawrence? Take offense to what? If it's all ideology, if the west 
is so evil, what is there to react against. 

This isn't a quibble, it is, if I can use the word, fundamental. If young 
muslims see the west behaving in accordance with the teachings of their Imam, 
who are they going to believe. If, on the other hand, the west goes out and 
fixes problems in the world without recourse to force, will the Imams have the 
same audience. 

Don't you think the Zawahiri's of this world rejoiced when the US invaded Iraq?

Simon

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lawrence Helm 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 8:29 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Amis Antithesis


  Why is it?  It is because there aren't just 10,000.  The Qutb ideology is 
extremely widespread.  Fundamentalist Islam may be the majority religious 
viewpoint in the Middle East nowadays.    



  You are the ones who assume I read things based on an author's political 
position, but I don't generally even know that.  What is Gilles Kepel for 
example?  Maybe you know, but I don't.  In his book The War for Muslim Minds, 
he credits Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden's second in command) with the 
propaganda coup that advanced Al Quaeda's cause and denigrated, even more than 
the Western Leftists, America's cause (which ought to be the West's cause, but 
that's another subject).  His book, Knights under the Prophet's Banner became 
very widely known.  Long extracts were published in the London-based Saudi 
newspaper Al-Aharq al-Awsat (The Middle East) . . . 



  "First, Zawahiri presents a worldview comparable -- but in reverse -- to 
Samuel Huntington's famous clash of civilizations.  According to this 
perspective, 'the battle is universal' and 'the Western forces hostile to Islam 
have clearly identified their enemy -- which they call 'Islamic 
fundamentalism.'  Their former enemy, Russia, has joined them.'  They have at 
their disposal six main instruments to combat Islam: the United Nations; 
humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); the corrupt leaders of the 
Muslim peoples; transnational corporations; data exchange and communications 
systems; and finally press agencies and satellite television channels.  Of the 
items on Zawahiri's list, the jihadists efficiently turned at least three 
against their enemies: the Islamic humanitarian NGOs, the Internet, and to a 
certain extent Arab television networks that broadcast from the Gulf."



  "A deep fear of isolation runs through Zawahiri's text.  The jihadist 
vanguard carries out military actions, but operations must take on exemplary 
value and be easily decipherable by targeted populations capable of identifying 
with them. Once those two pieces were in play -- vanguard operations and 
support from the masses -- some unspecified process would lead to the collapse 
of 'apostate' regimes and the creation of Islamic states.  These states would 
form he core of an Islamic caliphate what would eventually rule the planet.  
Anticipation of such a glorious future would bring on board not only believers 
but also other parties who were nostalgic for a dictatorship of the 
proletariat.  (In a tragicomic illustration of this possibility, Carlos, the 
Marxist-Leninist terrorist, would convert to Islam and declare himself a 
disciple of 'Sheikh Osama.')"



  Now do you really think a reaction to Bush is going to cause Muslims to 
become suicide bombers?  Or is it more likely that the large numbers steeped in 
Qutb ideology has prepared them for that.  Zawahiri's text is based upon Qutb, 
and it is going to help prepare minds to react and take offense in accordance 
with what Qutb and people like Zawahiri have prepared them for? 



  Lawrence




------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of Simon Ward
  Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 10:44 AM
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Amis Antithesis



  I always find Lawrence's responses interesting and indicative. The latter 
mostly. If he comes across a centrist or rightwing analysis he considers it, 
dedicates a few hundred words of rhetoric and gives his considered opinion. If 
it's in anyway from the left we just hear him laughing. At best he scoffs. He's 
heard it before.



  Here's Lawrence's argument. Muslim terrorists are motivated by ideology. 
That's it. There's no chance, no chance at all that they've moved from one 
stance to another via a process that involves their experience with or 
perception of western civilisation or the US in particular. It's all about 
ideology and the whole edifice seems to rest on it. It's why Lawrence is 
insistent that the US is safer now that it was (for argument's sake) on 10th 
September 2001, safer because since that time a good few thousands ideologues 
have been killed and since, as we must surely know, that process won't have 
motivated any more people into becoming terrorists, then there must be less now 
than there was then. Simple!



  It's why it's all (or mostly) the fault of this guy called Qutb. It's his 
fault because it's all about ideology and nothing to do with experience and 
perception. 



  Now if that's the case, why is it that Muslims are prone to get angry when, 
for example, The Pope get stupid and includes a quote that would have been 
better left out? Why do they get angry when Israel bombs the shit out of 
Lebanon? Why do they get angry when the US invades Iraq? Why do they get angry 
about what the west does when it's got nothing to do with experience and 
perception and everything to do with ideology? Is there any chance, any remote 
chance that this anger will make young Muslims sit up and listen to the 
rhetoric spouted by their local Imam? Is there any chance that there are now 
more muslim fundamentalists, more of which would be willing to use violence, 
than there were before 9/11. 



  Of course not. Stupid idea. Because if there were, the Bush administration 
wouldn't have the licence to march around the globe as they like. 
'Intellectuals' wouldn't have the licence to imagine scanrios where they 'push 
the fundamentalists deeper into Africa'. Never mind about those Africans of 
course, doesn't really matter about them, so long as the Americans are safe. 
Secretaries of State can talk about 'the birth pangs of a new Middle East', 
while innocents get blown up. And of course, Bush and Rumsfeld can talk about 
'The Long War', can talk about how every American family is threatened (even 
Matt Lauer's), can talk about being safer (but don't forget you're not that 
safe and that's really important because there's a guy in a cave somewhere...).



  Lawrence, just so you know, you're not wearing any clothes! 



  Simon

  PS I posted a link to the Judt article on 13th September





  ----- Original Message ----- 

    From: Lawrence Helm 

    To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

    Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 12:28 AM

    Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Amis Antithesis



    Well, Simon, I read per your request this article by the young Indian 
novelist Pankaj Mishra, but I suspect I wasn't as impressed as you were.  The 
thrust of his article is to blame the West for causing the Islamic militantism 
that is plaguing it at present.  He invokes that Leftist Holy of Holies, the 
Vietnam war,  in the way the Leftist love, i.e., that this is the ultimate 
definition of Western war.  So here the U.S. is doing it again.  When will it 
ever learn?   He is scathing against Amis supposed ignorance about the true 
nature of the Muslims who are engaged in Militantism, but perhaps because of 
his journeying back and forth between London and India he hasn't had time to 
delve into their ideological beliefs.  They don't seem to be self-motivated.  
They have no volition of their own. They are merely reacting, Vietnam-wise, 
against the corrupt, greedy, imperial, evil USA and its poodle, Britain.  



    Pretty silly Simon -- in keeping with what James Bowman would call the 
"Infantile Left."  [IMHO]



    Lawrence








----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Ward
    Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 2:57 PM
    To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Subject: [lit-ideas] Amis Antithesis



    Following Amis' essay (link provided in a previous post), this week Pankaj 
Mishra provides a counterthrust. And I can confidently say that this won't 
appeal much to Lawrence and Eric, but that doesn't mean to say they shouldn't 
read it.



    Extract:



    "It is as if the rage, fear and contempt that have overwhelmed many people 
in the non-Western world have also overwhelmed some of the brightest people in 
the West, distorting their vision to the point where some extraordinarily crude 
fantasies - insulting Islam into a Reformation, boosting an American Empire, 
bombing entire societies into democracy - appear to them as practical solutions 
to the problems of living in an overcrowded world with people who are not and, 
perhaps, do not wish to be like them."



    
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,1874132,00.html#article_continue



    Simon

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