Athena, who writes the blog
Terrorism Unveiled, has a
July 12 post called “Islam and Socialism.” It discusses this very interesting November 2001
Weekly Standard essay by Richard Newell called,
Postmodern Jihad: What Osama bin Laden learned from the Left. In it he argues that European postmodernist philosophy has as much to do with al-Qaeda terrorism as with any interpretation of Islam. The intersection of Western philosophy and the ideology of modern Islamic terror fascinates me, although I think Newell’s piece fails to get at the heart of it. See this
Amazon List for a series of books that provide some background.It is because of this intersection that I prefer the term, coined by Christopher Hitchens,
islamofascism, rather than
islamism. It was
Hitchens who first started to draw the linkage between Islamic fundamentalism and fascism in the wake of September 11. While many think of it solely as a perjorative, I think it is more precise in a
descriptive sense. It isn’t just drawing a parallel or analogy between Islamic fundamentalism and European fascism, saying that bin Laden’s ideology is
like fascism. Instead, it appropriately indicates the European origins of the nihilistic totalitarianism espoused by bin Laden. The debt is direct if anything, “islamofascism” doesn’t tar all of Islam, but I think rather shows how far astray these terrorists are from it, as well as points to the modernistic nature of Islam in a way obscured by the descriptive, “fundamentalist.” Trying to draw the distinction between Islam and islamism is, however, probably too nuanced to succeed in differentiating terrorist fanatics from evolutions in
mainstream Islam. It is for those reasons I prefer and use the word islamofascism to indicate the terrorist ideology exemplified by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.As for Newell’s conjugation of postmodernism and islamofascism; he argues that beginning with unapologetic Nazi Martin Heidegger, and through successors like Maoist Sartre and his protégé racist Franz Fanon, the same icons of leftist postmodernism inspired Islamic movements like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (upon whose
“Neglected Duty” bin Laden relied for inspiration) and Khomeini’s Shi’a revolution in Iran. However, his loosely reasoned chain of links is simplistic and insufficient, and misunderstands the relationship of islamofascism to European philosophy. The intent is clearly an attack on leftist ideology, as Athena rightly points out. That this was such a priority for Newell only two months after the attacks (Newell’s piece is from Nov. ’01) is kind of sad. Instead of direct links between select philosophers and terrorist ideology {x, then y, then z}, the relationship between European continental philosophy is both broader and deeper, and relies on important, often disregarded or misunderstood themes that came out of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. The same ones behind the rise of European fascism. The same Enlightenment that gave us human rights, rational knowledge,
liberté, égalité, et la fraternité also gave us absolutism, nihilism, intolerance, colonialism, bureaucracy, and ultimately totalitarianism.The philosopher to start with, I think, would be Fichte and his understanding of human authenticity, although many would argue that we could go back to Descartes’ original
cogito ergo sum to understand the modern individual’s alienation from the world. Fichte took Cartesian individuality in radically new directions. Fichte’s romantic idealism had a particular, absolutist understanding of the rational individual. Freedom is understood as synonymous with an uninhibited exercise of will and reason. The self, in order to be autonomous, is distinct from any external limitation on reason or volition (will). Reason
is truth. Nothing legitimately exists beyond it. The rational self is absolute; in Fichte’s words, the absolute I. Thus, one’s internal world is a unified whole, rationality accepting no inconsistency. Externally, freedom and reason exist in constant tension with anything that is “other.” Morality is totally subordinate to this. We can easily see in this the seeds of a totalitarian psychology. Whether exhibited through an individual, a state apparatus, or by some other unified entity, the dynamic that evolves is internal homogeneity, and external conflict and rejection. Annihilation, as this restrictive and sense of rationality envelopes reason, and ultimately inhibits reason-ability. Rationality becomes the unquestioned religion of the West.It was no accident that the introduction of the word
nihilism into modern philosophy was in response to and a critique of Fichtean idealism. We can see in the evolution of wildly different strands of Continental political philosophy this strain of absolutist rationality: anarchism, Leninism, fascism, industrial economics, Marxism, nihilism, scientism, bureaucratic rationalism, Jacobinism, and nationalism and its offshoot colonialism. All of these movements and trends were revolutionary in nature, obsessive, cosmological and totalitarian in their understanding (epistemology), and appealed to rationality—rejecting superstition and myth—for justification. These movements, often bloody, radical, extremist, and ultimately irrational, found their ultimate expression—their logical end—in the bloody totalitarianism of total war, eugenics, and the Final Solution in the twentieth century.Therefore, in pointing to twentieth century philosophers like Foucault, Sartre and Heidegger, Newell ignores the vast evolution in the restrictive understanding of rationality and authenticity that evolved over the late eighteenth and nineteenth century in Europe. The collision of religious belief with absolutist rationalism not only inspired a revolt against reason (and science), embodied by Christian fundamentalist movements of the late nineteenth century, but required fundamentalism to take up the same absolutism in order to both counter its detractors and acceptably explain itself. Karen Armstrong’s
The Battle for God effectively explores this paradoxical collision.The European ideologies that early islamofascists like Qutb took with them from Europe was not merely a particular postmodern Marxism, but rather the entire rationalist epistemology of enlightenment. The incredible book,
A Fury for God, does an effective job of getting into the development of Qutb’s ideology.It is this same tension between internal and external, this same restrictive and totalitarian understanding of human authenticity, this obsession with power that informed the development of Islamic fundamentalism as anti-colonial movements, and informs Osama bin Laden’s radical and totalitarian ideology. What’s different is the structure and symbolism that denote authenticity. The islamofascist ideology is a direct descendant of nineteenth century changes in Europe and Egypt. The re-emergence of the
Wahabbist school that developed in Saudi Arabia, relying on ninth century
Hanbalism (now Saudi Arabia’s state religion), took a marginal, ignored school of thought and synthesized it with the radicalism of European modernity. The willingness of al-Qaeda to take even that to its political and aesthetic extremes reinforces even more its totalitarian heritage. Therefore, this is not merely about taking the world back to the eighth century, but a very modernistic understanding of the self and the world, and a very modernistic reaction to modernity. Athena’s argument that bin Laden’s viewpoint is “traditional” is only half the story, ignoring both the complex history of Islamic traditions and explanations of why like Ahmad bin Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab suddenly became important to modern Muslim militants like Qutb.Al-Qaeda’s peculiar nihilism is evident in its death cult; in its group narcissism. (The difference from Qutb, who actually wrote on Islam and social justice issues, is distinct.) Herein lies its explicit fascism. While it clearly, and violently, adopts the totalitarian’s understanding of authenticity, it doesn’t seem devoted to any particular tangible, concrete understanding of a purified world. Instead, it is through zealous aesthetic acts, and an aesthetic, anti-materialist understanding of the self and external world that it derives its authenticity. Authenticity is achieved through violence; self-affirmation comes through a peculiarly self-destructive annihilation. This is as close as it comes to what Newell means by postmodernism, yet the relationship is only somewhat analogous, and indirect. Also, framing the argument, as Athena appears to, as concerning whether socialism’s economic doctrines play a role misrepresents the ideological relationships that contribute to islamofascism.Athena also errs in thinking that the West is somehow culpable because of these intellectual relationships, or at least in thinking that that is part of the argument being advanced. Hardly. It would be fatuous to blame Fichte for September 11, for instance, or to think that bin Laden can’t be responsible since Foucault once said
x. That’s not the point.
Ideofact has it right when in saying:
I'm not persuaded that Qutb speaks for Islam, but if Athena is right, and I'm wrong, and the Islamism of Qutb is demanded by Islam, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands. But my own reading and experience suggests that Qutbism is an aberration; tracing its intellectual roots (and finding that some of them come from outside of Islam) is not an act of appeasement, but rather a worthwhile endeavor in the context of the broader war that was joined on September 11.
