[lit-ideas] Islamists, Jihadists, or Islamic Militants (was Max Boot)
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 10:19:03 -0800
Mike quotes a Wikipedia article that provides a definition of Islamism. I
suppose it is true that Islamism has come to mean what the article says it
does, but I believe the first to claim the term were the radicals. They
objected to the term writers in the west were using, "Islamic
Fundamentalism." Even so, there no longer seems any point in insisting
that the term must be applied only to the radicals. I note that such
writers as Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy, and Francis Fukuyama prefer the term
"Jihadist," but that term seems far too restrictive. You weren't a
Communist in the 30s and 40s only if you were engaged in activism of some
sort. You were a Communist if you subscribed to its precepts. Here we get
into a sensitive area, but it is not impossibly so.
If a Communist was merely someone who held the beliefs of Lenin and the
Communist writers who followed him -- but if such a person neither did
anything about these beliefs nor advocated doing anything about them then we
could tolerate any number of Communists in our society, but unfortunately
that was not the case. The line between the pacifistic-Communists and the
Jihadist-Communists was a nebulous one. At any time a true believer could
move from pacifism to Jihadism, and that seems to be true of Islamism as
well.
So if not "Jihadism," then what? I have joined those who are taking the
easy way out by calling them "Islamic Militants." This term isn't as
restrictive as Jihadists. It isn't perfect because Sunnis fighting against
Shiites and Shiites fighting against Sunnis are both "militant," but if one
adds the proviso, "militant against the West or its allies," then one comes
close to what it is we are concerned with. Islamic Militants have already
declared war against us, and are actively supporting some form of military
or para-military action against us or our. We have grown too used to
flamboyant speech in the West. Here we can say almost anything we like; so
why should take seriously a crackpot like Osama bin Laden who declared war
on America? We should take such seeming crackpots seriously because they
learned from such teachers as Mohammad Qutb that the War is afoot. True
believes must engage in getting rid of the infidels leading Muslim
countries. They must drive Westerners and their influence from the Middle
East. After the Middle East is in the hands of the True Believes, they will
have the power to reclaim all land ever held by Muslims, such as Andalusia.
After that they will push, as the first Mohammad did, Islamism into all the
nations of the infidels.
I've been reading Gilles Kepel's The War for the Muslim Minds, Islam and the
West. On page 174 Kepel describes how Sayyid Qutb's brother, Mohammad
settled in Saudi Arabia with some of the other Muslim Brothers after he was
released from an Egyptian Jail in 1972. The Muslim Brothers liked it in
Saudi Arabia. They were prohibited from proselytizing but mere
communicating (something they were not prohibited from doing) can be a form
of proselytizing when the more intelligent communicates with the less so.
And that is what happened. The indigestible Wahhabism became more palatable
when mixed with the Muslim Brother sauce. Mohammad brought out a new
edition of his brother's works toned down to better accommodate Wahhabi and
Salafist prejudices. So, is the resultant product militant or not? The
Wahhabis deny that it is so, but the effects of this teaching say something
else. We see what happened when one of Mohammad Qutb's students, Osama bin
Laden, carried these teachings to Afghanistan where he helped fight against
the Soviet Union. Now Roy or Kepel might say at this point that it was
only when Osama bin Laden engaged in "Jihadism" in Afghanistan and later
with his Al Qaeda that anything about this ideology became dangerous, but is
that true? Didn't it become dangerous with the Muslim Brothers, with Al
Banna and Sayyid Qutb? Wasn't it dangerous when Mohammad Qutb honed his
brother's teachings into a sharper and more potent ideology? Perhaps no one
could have anticipated that it would have caught on as it did, but now we
see evidence that it did. The brothers Qutb taught a new generation what it
was they needed to fight against, and they have been Militant ever since.
They fight against those in Islamic nations who don't hold to their narrow
beliefs, but they also fight against the West, against those they term the
"Crusaders."
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Geary
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 8:02 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Max Boot
EY:
> You're right. I don't see that. I am not, for example, advocating the
> formation of extragovernmental societies that target random civilians for
> sudden death. That you see al-Qaeda and counterterrorism as "mirror
> images" is surprising to me, sort of like someone who confuses a flu with
> a flu shot, or a poison with its antidote.
Let's back up. I agree that Al Qaeda is a terrorist group and should be
opposed militarily -- just as the IRA was, just as ETA is, just as
Baader-Meinhof was, just as the Symbionese Liberation Army (all 13 of them)
was. I don't know the legal definition of 'terrorism' or if there even is
one, but by its very nature I consider it a crime against humanity and that
it demands rigorous, relentless prosecution. Are you using the word
'Islamist' as a synonym for 'terrorist' in such postings as: "I like flowers
and kindness and hugs and deep friendships and seeing every Islamist turned
into particles and vapor. It all goes together."? If so, you're being
extremely sloppy and bringing these attacks down on himself. An Islamist is
not, by definition, a terrorist. According to Wikipedia:
"Islamism is a set of political ideologies that hold that Islam is not only
a religion, but also a political system that governs the legal, economic and
social imperatives of the state according to its interpretation of Islamic
Law. Islamists thus demand the return of the society to Islamic values, and
the return of the state to sharia law. A society governed by Islamic
principles and law is seen as the true and sole answer to problems caused by
the realities of modern life, including social and cultural alienation
through urbanisation and migration, and political and economic exploitation.
Islamism is a multi-faceted ideology, with a large variety of
islamic/political thought. The phenomenon includes moderate and relatively
liberal groups as well as radicals, including salafis, wahabis,
fundamentalists, neo-fundamentalists, and traditionalists. This variety of
often competing streams of thought implies that a clear distinction between
the one and the other under the term 'Islamism' alone is not given."
Christian fundamentalists distress me to no end. I see their ascendancy as
a real threat to freedoms of this country, but do not want to vaporize them.
I prefer to come to understand their fears and find ways to ally those fears
so that they don't feel threatened. If that fails, then vaporize them.
Mike Geary
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