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Historical Parallels of Terrorism
Pankaj Mishra.
What if we are looking at the phenomenon of terrorism through the wrong lens? The vast majority of terrorism in the world today is coming from Muslims, that much is clear. But this observation must be tempered with its corollary that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Is it right, then, to look at modern terrorism strictly through the lens of Islam? Or are there perhaps prior historical patterns and precedents that hold up a warped mirror to our own predicament? Does modern terrorism stem directly from Islam, or is modern terrorism just an Islamic spin on another expression of deeper problem of modernity, a problem whose prior manifestations we might recognize? This is just a short post as I don’t have time for a more in-depth one and would need to read this book to have a fuller response.
I ask because of an interview I recently listened to through BBC History Magazine’s podcast, History Extra. The interview was with Pankaj Mishra, who has authored a book entitled The Roots Of Modern Rage. From the book’s description at Amazon (emphasis my own):
[Pankaj] shows that as the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises―of freedom, stability, and prosperity―were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. The many who came late to this new world―or were left, or pushed, behind―reacted in horrifyingly similar ways: with intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the nineteenth century arose―angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.
Pankaj sees in modern Islamism patterns very similar to Nazi Germany, revolutionary Russia, and many other groups besides. I do not have an interview transcript to quote directly, but in the interview he declares that the Islamism that guides terrorists of Isis and Al-Qaeda is a mish-mash of 19th and 20th century socialist philosophy with Islam thrown in, and thus itself of the same family as horrible philosophical responses to modernity that drove the Nazis and the Soviets. Far from actually reaching back to historical Islam for purity, it is far more akin to the Nazi obsession with old German pantheism, inventing a philosophical and religious past that never was and steering itself towards a purity that never could have existed.
I think he’s got a point here. Germany, after centuries of division as the battleground of the European powers, united, modernized, and industrialized extraordinarily quickly, and in feelings its oats while having a massive chip on its shoulder it sparked two massive wars, the second of which was sustained by an insane pagan racial ideology. Russia, being forced to modernize in a very short order, without having the educational or cultural foundation to sustain it, devolved through revolution into a brutal industrial dictatorship that threatened the rest of the world for many decades.
I’ve not had the chance to read his book in full, though, and as I recall from the interview he doesn’t necessarily have any good solutions for the problem, save that the West must have and express more faith in itself over its successes, the Islamic world must reconcile itself to modernity, and that the rest of the world and the West must together find a new a fusion of thought that respects the past while also facing up to the fact that it’s never coming back. Near the end of the interview, the author, himself an Asian, responds rather humorously to the query of whether Eurocentrism in philosophy should be set aside by saying that not only should it not be discarded, but that it should be embraced for its strengths.
For myself it has had me wondering if perhaps we ought to be taking the longer view too that Islamism will eventually burn itself out like the Soviets if we keep a firm resolve against it, or if it will by necessity be crushed like we had to do to the Nazis. Both solutions, though, have little to say on immigration itself and a lot to say in favor of having strength in our own history and culture as being paramount. Either way, If Pankaj is correct in his diagnosis, when Islamic nations and cultures do reconcile themselves with the modern world (and they’ll have to, though the process is proving extremely painful from within and without), the phenomenon of Islamism, with its terrorism, will eventually burn out or be crushed — either way it will not sustain itself.
I have no conclusions on this myself, but it does bear pondering and questioning.
Published in History
I hadn’t even considered the issue of oil.
Great game maneuvers are important, but if there were no great powers that were a threat to the US and there were no issues of terrorism and the Middle Eastern states could get along with each other, then the US would have no reason to be there.
Not quite what I was driving at. We don’t really need their oil anymore, and the only reason we import any is because the infrastructure to move our own oil around the country is still spotty. It’s cheaper for east coast refineries to import foreign oil than it is to buy domestic, solely for that reason. So we don’t need the resources the Middle East has to offer, which goes back to the question: why do we need to be there at all? Just to thwart Russia and China? If we left they’d be busy fighting each other over it (Russia to control the supply and keep the prices high, China because it needs the oil). Why do we need to be there?
The difference is that you and I disagree about what is Radical Islam. Radical Islam to me, has the best claim to the original interpretation of the religion, but in terms of symptoms desires violence as the best solution to religious difference. Whereas in Christendom Catholics, Copts, Orthodox, and Protestants do not slaughter each other because violence is not seen as the best solution. Conversion is.
If Radical Islam was no more then said religious hatred would be gone, along with considerable violence because for the most part said Muslims would feel less animosity and would engage in more rational and regular behavior between each other.
As to the bullet points
1 ) Radical Islam is not that big of an issue for Russia, in the grand scope of things. Its an issue in the Caucus area, but that area is literally unimportant to the greater Russian economy and political scene. Besides Radical Islam serves the interest of putin by ginning up Russian Nationalism against Islam. It helps putin stay in power by serving as a boogeyman to the Russian people.
2 ) As I said the first time the US would not need to maintain many troops in the region with sectarian violence resulting from religious infighting gone. With said Radical Islamic adherents there would be little reason for animosity within and between a few Arab nations (and relieve a major gap between Iranians and Arabs). It would definitely go a long way in pacifying the region. A few bases would not require that many soldiers overseas.
3 ) The Uyghurs are a problem for the Chinese like the Chechyans are for the Russians. They are a muslim minority in a sparsely populated region of the nation and serve as a boogeyman, some do commit terrorism, for the Chinese Government who no doubt use them to gin up nationalistic loyalty. The Silk Road plan is barely harmed by the Uighurs anyways because if they were a legitimate threat the Chinese Government would not be trying to push for the plan (I bet they would capitalize on a terrorist attack on the Silk Road for sympathy). Knowing the Socialists they would have no problem with “relocating” the Uyghurs by force to secure the Silk Road if need be.
4 ) Many of the Arab nations have good enough relations and do not engage in war with each other. In recent history Sunni majority nation states do not go to war with other Sunni majority nation states. The only Sunni leader, who wasn’t really Sunni, who did was Saddam Hussein and he’s gone. I would bet with Radical Islam gone they would be more amenable to both the West and between themselves. But if you still contest, might I ask what geopolitical issues are masked by Islam between Sunni nations?
Overall Islam is something Russia and China both benefit from when gains and costs are accounted for, America would benefit from Radical Islam disappearing.
One of the points of Pankaj is that it actually has a very poor claim to any historical Islam, and instead uses distinctly Marxist rhetoric and thinking to make its claims. In other words, it’s making a false appeal to mythic golden age by using european socialist arguments about history, leavened with European racial fascism, with a dollop of Islamish (sic) for appearances.
When the concept of Martyrdom is part of the equation isn’t it probable that they don’t see it as failing?
How does he explain Islam’s massive expansion during and after Mohammed’s death for another 600 years? Did violence have nothing to do with it? I would argue Pakaj is ignoring some pretty important facts in coming to his conclusion like Islamic Jurisprudence (the Hadith) and the Koran.
I don’t see why they would fight each other. China is the main customer, and they can choose amongst suppliers who would do anything to sell to them. I’m sure US companies would sell to them or the OPEC states would sell to them if there was ever an issue between Russia and China.
No, he’s not ignoring history but he is putting it into context. The Jihad preached by ISIS today bears little resemblance to the Jihad of the conquest. The ideology of ISIS is distinctly millenarian, and in both method and belief is far closer to the attempts by other nutcases to usher in a new golden age.
The historical conquest by Islam, however rapid it appears to our modern sense of time compression, took decades and was an actual opportunistic conquest made possible by the debilitations of the Justinian Plague, 30 years of warfare between Byzantium and Persia, a schism between the Monophysites and Orthodox Christians in Egypt, and the collapse and civil wars of the Visigothic kingdoms of Spain. Yes that conquest was very often brutal for the conquered, but the conquered largely survived, if subjugated.
ISIS has no interest in survivors, only extermination. ISIS has no capacity to absorb conquered peoples, nor has it the intellectual rigor to let be the monuments of the past (much as the Taliban blew up ancient statues of Buddha), all it can do is destroy the past so that it can claim to be creating the new age. It is very much a millenarian cult, like Pol Pot, the French Jacobins, the Soviets, or the Nazis.
Perhaps not left out of a discussion about terrorism, but certainly the IRA is irrelevant to a discussion of violent political movements with the aim of worldwide or broad regional hegemony, right?
All of the IRA’s grisly activities were circumscribed to effecting political change to 6 counties in the north of an island on the far periphery of Europe. Even the IRA’s broader agenda for the south was always comically overstated, as events over the past 20 years have shown.
Take a clear-eyed look at the deal which ended IRA terror: a power sharing agreement based on demographics within the existing political framework. Nothing remotely comparable will have any effect on Islamic radicalism or would have satisfied the Nazis or Soviets.
Well, how do we account for the mugshots of the actual terrorists perpetrating horrors in the US which seem to conflict with this big picture conceptualization?
Most of these terrorists haven’t been left behind or pushed behind the modern world. They are often from middle-class, sometimes upper-middle class, backgrounds, with university, often professional, degrees. Sure we spin out elegant psychological theories, but they seem very superficial (mine certainly are).
I think it is worth noting that defeating Nazism, Japanese fascism and Soviet Communism on the world stage, and successfully combating criminal gangs domestically, did not require a deep empathetic understanding of their motives or sociological antecedents.
We need the civilizational conviction to state that Islamism is a death blow to human liberty and that it must be uprooted and destroyed in the West.
Absent that, all the anthropologizing and psychologizing is moot, isn’t it? Sure, persuasive conservative/liberty big picture understandings are part of an effective attack on Islamism, but they accomplish next to nothing themselves.
Honestly, how much insight do we have into the wellsprings of individual human action anyway, let alone mass action of millions shaped by centuries of brutal historical and narrow theological conditioning.
Except for the fact that the alleged enemies of Allah keep winning. Martyrdom might be seen as a victory on an individual basis, but life still sucks for the Ummah.
Weirdly enough, it wasn’t until Berlin was in flames around him that Hitler decided that “god” was not, in fact, on the side of the German people. “God” in this case was not God, but a warped version of Darwinian fitness. Props to the guy (?!?!?!?!) for intellectual consistency; he said that if Germany was losing it was because Germany deserved to lose because Germany was, apparently, weak.
With that as a model… I guess we could conclude that when there is no other possible explanation, no hope at all… the entire Arab world in flames, nuked, irradiated, dead…. the Jihadis might turn to one another and say “hey… d’ya’think maybe Allah wasn’t on our side in this?”
Anybody here read Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer”? Sounds like Pankaj Mishra is talking roughly of the same phenomenon as Hoffer, but since Hoffer was writing back in the 1950s, his focus was largely on Nazism and Communism. But much of his theory could be applied to modern Islamism.
Here is Wikipedia on it for those who have not read the book:
Feeling their lives are “irredeemably spoiled” and believing there is no hope for advancement or satisfaction as an individual, true believers seek “self-renunciation.” Thus, such people are ripe to participate in a movement that offers the option of subsuming their individual lives in a larger collective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
Warning: the beginning of the Wikipedia article mentions Christianity in the same breath as the other mass movements. Don’t be put off by that; Hoffer distinguished between negative and violent mass movements, and positive and peaceful ones. That is clearer in the Wikipedia article further down.
Obligatory note: there was a time when Christians of most? all? those categories did slaughter each other and some other people. So it’s not unheard of.
The difference, as some will swiftly and (I hope) not too indignantly point out, is that was then and this is now. Christianity has more or less grown beyond Killing for Christ. Could we devolve back into it? Yeah, probably. Also, the difference —and I don’t take this lightly—is that there is far less justification for mass murder in the Jewish and Christian Bible (let alone the modern interpretations and uses thereof) than there is in the Koran. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Christians and Jews have got a whole lot more cherries to pick. Thank God. (I mean that.)
If they feel like their people have been left behind by the modern world, that could be sufficient.
Look at our own country: how many advocates for the country class are really country class? How many of us who now identify with the country class, the Fishtowners, the downtrodden “bitter clingers” are ourselves members of the Belmont elite? We’re expressing our resentment through politics, not terrorism. But I remember the rage on behalf of rust-belt towns and so on from the election, the fury from folks who didn’t actually have to live in those towns when someone was perceived as putting those towns down.
By the way, before our resident and beloved atheists chime in, Hitler killed for Darwin, not Christ.
If you want to claim he misunderstood Darwin…I’m with ya’. But those who murdered for Christ misunderstood Christ, too.
Basically murdering people is a bad idea.
Where have I seen that written? I vaguely recall a stone tablet…a mountain…
I wouldn’t blame either. Hitler basically worshiped Germanness.
And Germanness was not even a very old concept at the time. Germany and Italy both united late. Funny, that.
The nations as nations united late, but that doesn’t mean the concept wasn’t there before that.
First–I don’t understand all this paranoia about Russia. Please don’t start reciting the murderous habits of their rulers–yes I’m aware that members of the KGB , including Putin, were just as brutal as the Tsars, even favoring poison as in the bad old days of Empire. But, uh, now that they’re another Christian nation again,
what are we afraid they are going to do to us as a nation? That’s what I mean.
i aways thought the big worry was creeping Communism.
And as for the OP, it sounds like the author you quote is saying, hey, this could happen to anybody! And the resurgence of militancy and violence is not rooted in the religion.
i don’t agree. Islam was from the beginning a system of government as well as a religion. And it was a religion of world conquest. Mohammed was a general, who fought or led 15 military campaigns between his revelation and his death. And for over ten centuries after that, his converts did the same. They were turned back from the gates of Vienna in 1683 thanks to the Polish Hussars!
Oh yes, Christians have killed each other over doctrinal differences, and have killed non-believers.
But Jesus did not say to do so. He and his followers were itinerant begging preachers. When the disciples were sent out to preach, the command was that if people in a town did not receive the message, they were to shake off the dust of the place from their feet as they left it. (Not behead people.)
And the famously violent Old Testament? God does a lot of the killing there! The children of Israel are commanded to make war for territory, for their homeland, and often military foes are used by God to punish them-but they are not commanded to cconvert, on pain of death, people who do not believe in Yahweh, nor do they proselytize. They aspire to dominate only one sacred place–and that is still true.
So no. This resurgence of zeal for temporal power is not foreign to Islam. It is the pure creed.
They had a centuries-long nap, after the heyday of Ottoman power–until OPEC got the world by the short hairs in 1974. The “oil crisis” is the only reason the Western world started paying them any attention again. When they realize the backbone of their economic power is broken once more by the global glut of crude oil, it’s to be hoped they will lapse back into a benighted querousness confined to their own barren homelands.
An alternate possibility in the case of Islam (but probably not Germany or Russia) is that there are people “left behind” who are afraid of coming to enjoy the freedom and prosperity of the new order and are reacting against it. They have seen the new way and are not immune to its temptations, but don’t like it.
With Islam, the golden ages – in which the golden nature of which in part material, and which include still valid and now still observed religious laws governing the distribution of loot – was were achieved through violent conquest and the theology is such that anyone impeding resisting that
conquestkinetic proselytization is committing and act of violent aggression, and therefore overcoming that resistance is a religiously mandated act of self defense.Or perhaps bury us as the Chinese economy implodes.
And:
…In his 1993 paper entitled “The Financial Instability Hypothesis,” [Hyman] Minsky identified three financing regimes that economies can operate under: the first, which he called hedge finance, is a regime in which borrowers have sufficient cash flows to meet “their contractual obligations,” i.e. interest payments and principal repayment, usually by having a large equity component in their capital structure; the second, speculative finance, is a regime under which borrowers have cash flows that are sufficient to pay interest but not to repay principal, i.e. they must roll over their debts; the third, Ponzi finance, is a regime in which borrowers have insufficient cash flows to pay either principal or interest and therefore must either borrow or sell assets to make interest payments.
Also, fewer excuses to impose speech and thought controls on the internet and elsewhere.
Well, that was rather my point – German nationalism had to stick around a long time to accomplish that unification in the first place, which meant prolonged stirring up of nationalism. Italy, I know even less about, but “L’Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani” (Italy has been made, it remains to make Italians): sounds like that takes stirring up of nationalists sentiments, too. Persuading people to give up their regional identity in favor of this new national one means circulating nationalist propaganda that wouldn’t have to be in circulation in a country that had been a country for a very long time. If a country united relatively recently after a long agitation to unite, the memory of the nationalist propaganda used to support the unification would be relatively fresh.
When the Christian Church began it did not expand through mass conquest. It was treated with blatant disregard and used as a scape goat by several Roman Emperors. Such a faith did not expand by killing and subjugating the unbeliever but rather through conversion, predominantly through living in example of Christ. In the New Testament there is no advice given by Christ or even the Apostles about slaughtering the unbeliever (innocent or not) in the name of God, there just isn’t. Its about living by the example of the lord and spreading the good news.
That was more or less reflected, even at the beginning of the church. To name a few examples when the Schism of 451 occurred at Chalcedon mass execution of Copts did not occur. There was obviously a massive break in the church and hard feelings, that did abrupt in violence on a few occasions. But nothing approaching the violence that succeeded Mohammed’s death in the fight over succession of the Islamic Caliphate.
A second example would be when the Ostrogoths, who were Arians, invaded and conquered Italy. They did not have the gall to slaughter the Roman Catholic Church or to prevent its adherents from worshipping. There were political concessions made of course (which ended when the Romans reconquered Rome under Belisarius), but not even they were willing to try and annihilate a church they disagreed with on matters as essential as christology.
Another would be the Schism of 1054. The Church split again and even with this split the Roman Catholic Church was still willing to urge Catholic leaders to support a cause to regain territory for the Orthodox Eastern Roman Empire and to defend countless other, what would be heretical, christians like Monolethites, Nestorians, and Copts. Hardly a show of desire for sectarian violence.
It wasn’t until the 16 century that Christendom started to show real sectarian hate and that was when a number of Kings were reaching the height of their power (and in some cases had already been flexing their muscles). In most cases these Kings were more cognizant or desiring of the effects of religions benefits to the state. Where an Ostrogothic King or Eastern Roman Emperor was interested in having a say in the election of the Pope the Kings of Europe in some cases wanted to be the Pope (example Anglican Church where Henry the 8th declares himself head of state and church) or were trying to purge certain ethnic and religious groups for economic gain (looking at the crowns of France and Spain for their treatment of Jews). Or in the case of France they wanted their own Pope (the Avignon Schism for example).
When the Thirty Years War happened things were a bit different. State governments were very much interested in using the church to whatever end they wanted (remember that it was a Catholic French Monarch paying Protestant Swedes, and most likely Protestant Germans, to wage war with the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor). Real religious hate wasn’t the cause of that kind of violence, it might have amplified it as marauding mercenaries burnt numerous towns to the ground in the name of said faith but the nations fighting in that war were not split along religious lines.
The hatred that occurred because of the 30 Years War however, has not persisted as it has with Islam since the Succession Crisis of Mohammed. There are Shia and Sunni militias slaughtering those of other faiths (muslim or not) in Syria and Iraq. There is no equivalent of such in Christianity today.
To conclude, not only has Christianity not shown the same desire for violence, but it does not have the same history of violence that Islam has. Violence is very much a part of what Islam was when Mohammed created it, the same cannot be said for Christianity.
This is like the noble savage concept. It demeans the very people it tries to defend, in this case by lumping them all together. We see terrorism, oppression, and brutality from many different Islamic cultures. The common denominator is Islam. There is no shared historical heritage but that.
Someone shared a great quote recently about the Left believing in innumerable “genders” while insisting religions are all basically the same. They are not the same. As variations of communism/socialism have been embraced over the decades by many otherwise considerate and pleasant people, so the great number of neighborly Muslims doesn’t mean their worldview is benign.
Politics and religion are heated topics because they matter so much. Ignoring religious differences won’t make them inconsequential.
You might be surprised about many other countries. France was a collection of separate provinces until the French Revolution. England was one of the earliest to coalesce, but Britain and the United Kingdom less so. The Scots still aren’t sure, and the Irish mostly went their separate way. Most European countries had their borders coalesce and their national identities coalesce after the United States became a nation. The Czechs were Bohemians and Moravians and Silesians. Many of the European “nations” did not even have their own literature or standardized ways of writing their languages until the Nineteenth Century.
Better to intercept the ICBMs on the way up than on the way down.
Not to demean. But as a matter of fact did Mohammed not wage Jihad to bring Allah’s will to this world? Does ISIS under its Caliph not argue it is waging war to bring Allah’s will to this world? Did Mohammed not slaughter those who had resisted him in Medina? Did Mohammed’s wars of conquest not cause a number of millions to die and the expansion of slavery (especially sex slavery)? Does ISIS not practice sex slavery pretty heavily and murder those who oppose it?
As to comparing the Nazis to ISIS I would say the Nazis were not mass murdering all non Aryans in sight like ISIS does with non muslims (excluding their sexual slaves of course). If they did Poland, Czechslovakia, Ukraine, and other areas would have been obliterated as soon as the Heer had taken over, but they were not. Jews and several other small ethnic minorities were hunted. The reason for this was that the Nazis were practical enough to realize that building the liebensraum could not be undertaken in one fell swoop and that slave labor helped. They had plans to move and eliminate said Slavic populations after WWII was over of course but while they were at war they had use for them.
Likewise when the Islamic Caliphate invaded and conquered it too did not simply exterminate. In most cases it enslaved till either the unbelievers died in slavery or were subsumed (because all the males were dead and the females were in slavery or the Jizya tax had made Islam the only economically viable option) into the Ummah. A similar goal with slightly more humane means. This desire for war was so great that slave soldiers was a common practice within 100 years of the Caliphates founding. Ghulams (african slave soldiers) and Mamyluks (turkic slave soldiers) are excellent examples of this.
If your faith is so engulfed in war that you need to hire slave soldiers because you lack the manpower then your faith has war as a central tenet.