From: "Mohammed BEN JELLOUN" <mohammed.benjelloun-AT-mail.bip.net> Subject: Re: Postmodern Jihad Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 14:14:41 +0100 Indeed, this is the most exotic piece I ever seen on this list. I guess the footnotes could be even much more entertaining. Thank you Saeed. Mohammed ----- Original Message ----- From: "saeed urrehman" <saeed.urrehman-AT-anu.edu.au> To: <postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 9:11 AM Subject: Postmodern Jihad > Thank you, Salil, for your cogent discussion. Yes female intellectuals > in/from the islamic world should have been heard long time ago. > > Here is another piece inviting discussion. I would love to hear the > opinions of listmembers on this essay below. > > Thanks, > Saeed > ________________ > "Postmodern Jihad: > What Osama bin Laden Learned from the Left" > By Waller R. Newell > > MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about Osama bin Laden's Islamic fundamentalism; less > about the contribution of European Marxist postmodernism to bin Laden's > thinking. In fact, the ideology by which al Qaeda justifies its acts of > terror owes as much to baleful trends in Western thought as it does to a > perversion of Muslim beliefs. Osama's doctrine of terror is partly a > Western export. > > To see this, it is necessary to revisit the intellectual brew that produced > the ideology of Third World socialism in the 1960s. A key figure here is > the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who not only helped > shape several generations of European leftists and founded postmodernism, > but also was a leading supporter of the Nazis. Heidegger argued for the > primacy of "peoples" in contrast with the alienating individualism of > "modernity." In order to escape the yoke of Western capitalism and the > "idle chatter" of constitutional democracy, the "people" would have to > return to its primordial destiny through an act of violent revolutionary > "resolve." > > > > > > > Heidegger saw in the Nazis just this return to the blood-and-soil > heritage of the authentic German people. Paradoxically, the Nazis embraced > technology at its most advanced to shatter the iron cage of modernity and > bring back the purity of the distant past. And they embraced terror and > violence to push beyond the modern present--hence the term > "postmodern"--and vault the people back before modernity, with its > individual liberties and market economy, to the imagined collective > austerity of the feudal age. > This vision of the postmodernist revolution went straight from Heidegger > into the French postwar Left, especially the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, > eager apologist for Stalinism and the Cultural Revolution in China. > Sartre's protege , the Algerian writer Frantz Fanon, crystallized the Third > World variant of postmodernist revolution in "The Wretched of the Earth" > (1961). From there, it entered the world of Middle Eastern radicals. Many > of the leaders of the Shiite revolution in Iran that deposed the > modernizing shah and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979 had > studied Fanon's brand of Marxism. Ali Shari'at, the Sorbonne-educated > Iranian sociologist of religion considered by many the intellectual father > of the Shiite revolution, translated "The Wretched of the Earth" and > Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" into Persian. The Iranian revolution was a > synthesis of Islamic fundamentalism and European Third World socialism. > > In the postmodernist leftism of these revolutionaries, the "people" > supplanted Marx's proletariat as the agent of revolution. Following > Heidegger and Fanon, leaders like Lin Piao, ideologist of the Red Guards in > China, and Pol Pot, student of leftist philosophy in France before becoming > a founder of the Khmer Rouge, justified revolution as a therapeutic act by > which non-Western peoples would regain the dignity they had lost to > colonial oppressors and to American-style materialism, selfishness, and > immorality. A purifying violence would purge the people of egoism and > hedonism and draw them back into a primitive collective of self-sacrifice. > > MANY ELEMENTS in the ideology of al Qaeda--set forth most clearly in Osama > bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of War Against America"--derive from this > same mix. Indeed, in Arab intellectual circles today, bin Laden is already > being likened to an earlier icon of Third World revolution who renounced a > life of privilege to head for the mountains and fight the American > oppressor, Che Guevara. According to Cairo journalist Issandr Elamsani, > Arab leftist intellectuals still see the world very much in 1960s terms. > "They are all ex-Sorbonne, old Marxists," he says, "who look at everything > through a postcolonial prism." > > Just as Heidegger wanted the German people to return to a foggy, medieval, > blood-and-soil collectivism purged of the corruptions of modernity, and > just as Pol Pot wanted Cambodia to return to the Year Zero, so does Osama > dream of returning his world to the imagined purity of seventh-century > Islam. And just as Fanon argued that revolution can never accomplish its > goals through negotiation or peaceful reform, so does Osama regard terror > as good in itself, a therapeutic act, quite apart from any concrete aim. > The willingness to kill is proof of one's purity. > > According to journalist Robert Worth, writing in the New York Times on the > intellectual roots of Islamic terror, bin Laden is poorly educated in > Islamic theology. A wealthy playboy in his youth, he fell under the > influence of radical Arab intellectuals of the 1960s who blended calls for > Marxist revolution with calls for a pure Islamic state. > > Many of these men were imprisoned and executed for their attacks on Arab > regimes; Sayyid Qutb, for example, a major figure in the rise of Islamic > fundamentalism, was executed in Egypt in 1965. But their ideas lived on. > Qutb's intellectual progeny included Fathi Yakan, who likened the coming > Islamic revolution to the French and Russian revolutions, Abdullah Azzam, a > Palestinian activist killed in a car bombing in 1989, and Safar Al-Hawali, > a Saudi fundamentalist frequently jailed by the Saudi government. As such > men dreamed of a pure Islamic state, European revolutionary ideology was > seldom far from their minds. Wrote Fathi Yakan, "The groundwork for the > French Revolution was laid by Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu; the > Communist Revolution realized plans set by Marx, Engels and Lenin....The > same holds true for us as well." > > The influence of Qutb's "Signposts on the Road" (1964) is clearly traceable > in pronouncements by Islamic Jihad, the group that would justify its > assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 as a step toward > ending American domination of Egypt and ushering in a pure Islamic order. > In the 1990s, Islamic Jihad would merge with al Qaeda, and Osama's > "Declaration of War Against America" in turn would show an obvious debt to > the Islamic Jihad manifesto "The Neglected Duty." > > It can be argued, then, that the birthplace of Osama's brand of terrorism > was Paris 1968, when, amid the student riots and radical teach-ins, the > influence of Sartre, Fanon, and the new postmodernist Marxist champions of > the "people's destiny" was at its peak. By the mid '70s, according to > Claire Sterling's "The Terror Network," "practically every terrorist and > guerrilla force to speak of was represented in Paris. . . . The > Palestinians especially were there in force." This was the heyday of Yasser > Arafat's terrorist organization Al Fatah, whose 1968 tract "The Revolution > and Violence" has been called "a selective precis of 'The Wretched of the > Earth.'" > > While Al Fatah occasionally still used the old-fashioned Leninist language > of class struggle, the increasingly radical groups that succeeded it > perfected the melding of Islamism and Third World socialism. Their tracts > blended Heidegger and Fanon with calls to revive a strict Islamic social > order. "We declare," says the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah in its "Open > Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World" (1985), "that we are a > nation that fears only God" and will not accept "humiliation from America > and its allies and the Zionist entity that has usurped the sacred Islamic > land." The aim of violent struggle is "giving all our people the > opportunity to determine their fate." But that fate must follow the > prescribed course: "We do not hide our commitment to the rule of Islam, . . > . which alone guarantees justice and dignity for all and prevents any new > imperialist attempt to infiltrate our country. . . . This Islamic > resistance must . . . with God's help receive from all Muslims in all parts > of the world utter support." > > These 1980s calls to revolution could have been uttered last week by Osama > bin Laden. Indeed, the chief doctrinal difference between the radicals of > several decades ago and Osama only confirms the influence of postmodernist > socialism on the latter: Whereas Qutb and other early Islamists looked > mainly inward, concentrating on revolution in Muslim countries, Osama > directs his struggle primarily outward, against American hegemony. While > for the early revolutionaries, toppling their own tainted regimes was the > principal path to the purified Islamic state, for Osama, the chief goal is > bringing America to its knees. > > THE RELATIONSHIP between postmodernist European leftism and Islamic > radicalism is a two-way street: Not only have Islamists drawn on the legacy > of the European Left, but European Marxists have taken heart from Islamic > terrorists who seemed close to achieving the longed-for revolution against > American hegemony. Consider Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, two > leading avatars of postmodernism. Foucault was sent by the Italian daily > Corriere della Sera to observe the Iranian revolution and the rise of the > Ayatollah Khomeini. Like Sartre, who had rhapsodized over the Algerian > revolution, Foucault was enthralled, pronouncing Khomeini "a kind of mystic > saint." The Frenchman welcomed "Islamic government" as a new form of > "political spirituality" that could inspire Western radicals to combat > capitalist hegemony. > > Heavily influenced by Heidegger and Sartre, Foucault was typical of > postmodernist socialists in having neither concrete political aims nor the > slightest interest in tangible economic grievances as motives for > revolution. To him, the appeal of revolution was aesthetic and voyeuristic: > "a violence, an intensity, an utterly remarkable passion." For Foucault as > for Fanon, Hezbollah, and the rest down to Osama, the purpose of violence > is not to relieve poverty or adjust borders. Violence is an end in itself. > Foucault exalts it as "the craving, the taste, the capacity, the > possibility of an absolute sacrifice." In this, he is at one with Osama's > followers, who claim to love death while the Americans "love Coca-Cola." > > Derrida, meanwhile, reacted to the collapse of the Soviet Union by calling > for a "new international." Whereas the old international was made up of the > economically oppressed, the new one would be a grab bag of the culturally > alienated, "the dispossessed and the marginalized": students, feminists, > environmentalists, gays, aboriginals, all uniting to combat American-led > globalization. Islamic fundamentalists were obvious candidates for inclusion. > > And so it is that in the latest leftist potboiler, "Empire," Michael Hardt > and Antonio Negri depict the American-dominated global order as today's > version of the bourgeoisie. Rising up against it is Derrida's "new > international." Hardt and Negri identify Islamist terrorism as a spearhead > of "the postmodern revolution" against "the new imperial order." Why? > because of "its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-American hegemony." > > "Empire" is currently flavor of the month among American postmodernists. It > is almost eerily appropriate that the book should be the joint production > of an actual terrorist, currently in jail, and a professor of literature at > Duke, the university that led postmodernism's conquest of American > academia. In professorial hands, postmodernism is reduced to a parlor game > in which we "deconstruct" great works of the past and impose our own > meaning on them without regard for the authors' intentions or the truth or > falsity of our interpretations. This has damaged liberal education in > America. Still, it doesn't kill people--unlike the deadly postmodernism out > there in the world. Heirs to Heidegger and his leftist devotees, the > terrorists don't limit themselves to deconstructing texts. They want to > deconstruct the West, through acts like those we witnessed on September 11. > > What the terrorists have in common with our armchair nihilists is a belief > in the primacy of the radical will, unrestrained by traditional moral > teachings such as the requirements of prudence, fairness, and reason. The > terrorists seek to put this belief into action, shattering tradition > through acts of violent revolutionary resolve. That is how al Qaeda can > ignore mainstream Islam, which prohibits the deliberate killing of > noncombatants, and slaughter innocents in the name of creating a new world, > the latest in a long line of grimly punitive collectivist utopias. > > Waller R. Newell is professor of political science and philosophy at > Carleton University in Ottawa. > > > > > > > --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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