Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Good post. Asking all the right questions. I appreciate your writing it.
That is not at all what he argues. What he argues is that when you have modernity rapidly imposed on a society that isn’t really ready for it and hasn’t grown into it organically, you get a lot of people who are, if not materially left behind, at the very least culturally adrift and thus easy prey for the demagogues and cultists.
Depends on who you ask, truly. Islam of the 600s was not the same as Islam of the 700s. In fact you could say that much of what we think we know of early Islam was invented by later Islam as a way of backfilling its own then-triumphant mythology. This is heretical among Muslims, but there is a good historical argument that much of the Koran was really written, compiled, and codified later as early Muslims encountered and absorbed cultural practices of other religions. Why else would you have a mix of beliefs and practices in Islam that are a hodge podge of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian tenets? Islam encountered the Jews first, then the Christians, then conquered the Persians, so you have layers.
In that light it is well possible that Mohammed himself waged war for one thing, then his successors took it a step further and rewrote or reinterpreted their own history to make it all fit. They wouldn’t be the first peoples to do that.
To keep somebody else you haven’t selected from controlling it.
Was waiting for someone to draw that connection.
But this was manifestly the case in Germany and Russia both. In Germany there was often a hearkening back to some innocence or Romantic ideal that the industrial age ruined, just as in Russia there was something of a fetish for “the good honest God-Fearing serf.”
Personal enemies and thus payback.
Slavery was already present. It did change in practice, but enslavement of conquered peoples of other religions was pretty normal through most of that region’s history.
Larger territory and the Germans were smarter than ISIS – war priorities and all that. They also had a broad definition of Aryan.
The Turks came very much later, during the decline of the original caliphate in the 800s and 900s. In fact, the Turks reinvigorated Islam and rose to subjugate their former Arab masters.
In thinking about this I want to expand on this point. I think ISIS knows it is actually doomed, they have all the signs of a transition from an extraordinarily violent millenarian cult to an outright death cult. The Nazi’s worst atrocities began when they began to lose the war. Sure they had the work camps and death camps before, but they didn’t turn to full on industrial killing until the Soviets were beginning to drive them back. This is fairly typical death cult behavior – when noose starts to tighten, that’s when try to take as many out as you can. I see that too with ISIS – they were awful in ascendency, but they’re brutal in retreat.
You could see it in smaller scale with Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians too – when the law moved in (or was about to), their atrocities got even worse.
It wasn’t there for that long before unification though. You can thank the idea of Nationalism as promulgated by the French in their revolutionary conquests for planting that seed in Germany and Italy.
I learned the provinces were under centralized control well before then. Who were those kings of France if not, approximately, kings of France?…
True, and there were Irish, orange and green, who committed terror because of it. I realize the Scots still aren’t sure – I don’t know how much the Scots Enlightenment, which spurred tremendous Scots success, might have had to do with the Scots feeling like they were respected by the English, but I imagine it probably helped.
Yes. We are weird for being an early daughter of the Mother of Parliaments, who has herself been pretty stable.
Indeed. And perhaps Europeans countries’ later coalescence, after romantic nationalism’s ferment, has something to do with the English and Americans finding it natural to express love of homeland as patriotism, while Europeans seem more likely than we are to favor nationalism. Nationalism seems an innovation the English and Americans arrived early enough to miss.
(There are Scots and Welsh nationalists, I know. Despite my liking the Welsh well enough to have studied their language some, I find Welsh nationalism faintly ridiculous – I hope that’s not too horrid of me.)
Keep catching up. ;)
Even here this is painting with a broad brush as though the history of Islam were purposeful and continuous, and this just isn’t the case. The objectives of the Turks at Vienna in 1683 were not entirely the same as at Constantinople in 1453, nor Mohammed nearly 800 years before. The Arab initial conquest was but one movement, then the Turks rose to dominate the region and adopted a far more European approach, even claiming the mantle as the continuation of the old Roman empire, and meanwhile treating their Arab fiefdoms as backwaters away from the center of power and culture in Anatolia and the Balkans. One could argue that the Turkish conquests were less about Jihad than about their own Great Power ambitions, with Islam just along for the ride as a tool of the state.
ISIS today is a largely Arab phenomenon, not really continuous or contiguous with the Turkish history.
They were Kings of France, not Kings of the French, and that was a very very important distinction at that time.
Simply horrid, my dear, scandalously horrid. Someone bring me my fainting couch.
At least until…was it 1830 or 1848? I don’t remember without looking it up. Similarly there was a King of the Greeks about that time. Nationalism was definitely in play.
Looks like the cats have been at it.
(I never liked Louis Philippe, anyway.) Okay, so it was 1830 to 1848 when he was overthrown that there was a King of the French. (Should have tossed him out around 1773.)
Cats would have been more professional, and wouldn’t charge you 2 grand for the services.
Uh, why? Just, why?
Could you explain to me what those differences were exactly? Still conquering the unbeliever, still expanding the practice of slavery (historical records of slavery indicate that at the outset of the birth of Islam slavery as a practice expanded considerably till the Zsanj revolts in southern Persia),still slaughtering those who will not submit, taxing them into dust,
What was the difference in goals. Is desiring total dominion over all of Arabia for islam and taking through force different than doing it for Persia or Egypt or the Levant?
So payback is okay now? Its a justification for mass murder? Slaughtering those you don’t like or in the case of the poor Jews in the siege of Mecca who remained neutral deserved to be slaughtered? Did Adolf Hitler not commit his evil plans as revenge (payback) on the Jews for their alleged evil actions against the Aryan race? Revenge is hardly a justification for what Mohammed did.
So that makes it okay? As I mentioned before during the early part of Islam slavery increased considerably, to the point that several slave revolts occurred in such a magnitude that they had to change slavery operations in the Ummah. They did not simply continue on but increased the practice and built up massive new networks for slavery that had not previously existed.
And neither was Mohammed. He simply killed the men, sold the children into slavery and used the women as sex slaves. That seems hardly just or right to me, the point is still extermination of the vicious group (unbeliever) through force.
The Turks did not conquer the entirety of the arabs and they hardly reinvigorated Islam, they lasted in power as long as their Arab masters before them till the Mongols came and converted eventually. The Fatimid (Shia) Caliphate rose to power before them and had held the lower Levant and a good chunk of North Africa (and western Arabia for a time) when they came to power and successfully held their own. But back to the point of my original sentence it speaks volumes to a religion and the cultures it influences if said cultures become so desperate for soldiers int the desire to wage war that they require not only North Africa for slave soldiers but also a chunk of the Steppe peoples too.
What kind of culture practices war to the point it doesn’t have the men to wage war and requires slaves from the northern quarter of a continent and a chunk of Asia? Not one which values peace and creation but one which values war. Mohammed started that religion and his “example” influenced it greatly.
You’re reading in things I did not say.
I am saying that Medina may well have been an act of personal revenge at the time, later justified under a gloss of religion.
You are very much reading in arguments I never made.
Did I say it was?
Which the Nazis would have eventually gotten around to if they had the time and resources. My point was that they didn’t make it a priority at that time because they didn’t have the resources.
I think it could be explained better here:
https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/2014/11/04/episode-56-why-did-the-arabs-win-part-1-the-sources/
I know my Roman history and I know why the Eastern Roman Empire was only able to deter the Arabs upto the Tartarus Mountains. But that does not answer whether or not Islam is the fiction you are arguing about, created by Mohammed yet corrupted by his successors.
Which speaks to how messed up Islam is in its natural state, how messed up Mohammed made it to be exact.
You missed my main point. The Nazis, ISIS, and Mohammed are deplorable. They were using force to accomplish goals which are antithetical to virtue and freedom. They are all equally disgusting and worthy of contempt. You attempted to create space between Mohammed and ISIS through comparison to the Nazis and I continue to point to the historical record that there is very little difference.
It would be more interesting if you would go back to your original response and tried to argue for it.
Which is again not something I argued. Don’t put words in my mouth.
You argued that it was well possible that Mohammed and his successors were waging war for different reasons and that the successors were rewriting history. You also stated that early Islam was a fictional invention in many cases by succeeding Muslims and that the Koran is a hodge podge writing of predecessor religions. I asked if you had anything to support this.
You are arguing that what Mohammed wanted and what his successors wanted as it regards to Islam is different. Where? Where is there distinct differences in the Hadith in regards to the Koran? Where is the evidence that supports your claims to this?
And I pointed you to a link to a historian who could do a much better job in presenting that argument.
So why did the Umayyads behave differently from the Ottomans behave differently from the Mughals?
Or are the differences minor? Iow, would Muslim rulers during the Middle Ages have more in common wrt statecraft and objectives with Benazir Bhutto and Mohammad than they did with Christian rulers of the Middle Ages?