The Deep Intellectual Roots ...

[Dave Monroe]

And from Robert Worth, "The Deep Intellectual Roots of
Islamic Terror," New York Times, Saturday, October
13th, 2001 ...

   "'Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is
just a violent cult leader,' said Michael Doran, a
professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton
University. 'But the truth is that he is tapping into
a minority Islamic tradition with a wide following and
a deep history.'
   "Although many Muslims are horrified at the notion
that their faith is being used to justify terrorism,
Mr. bin Laden's advocacy of jihad, or holy war,
against the West is a natural extension of what some
radical Islamists have been saying and doing since the
1930's. These radicals were jailed, tortured and often
executed in their home countries, particularly in
Egypt during the 1950's and 60's, for their attacks on
Western influences and their efforts to replace their
own regime with an Islamic state. 

[...]

   "The roots of Mr. bin Laden's worldview date back
to a school in medieval Islam that spread throughout
the Arab world in the 20th century, known as the
Salafiyya, said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Islamic
law at New York University. Its name comes from the
Arabic words al-salaf al-salih, 'the venerable
forefathers,' which refers to the generation of the
Prophet Muhammad and his companions. The salafis
believed Islam had been corrupted by idolatry, and
they sought to bring it back to the purity of its
earliest days.
   "'Salafis are extreme in observance, but they're
not necessarily militant,' Mr. Haykel said. The
official Wahhabi ideology of the Saudi state, for
instance, as well as the religious doctrine of the
Muslim Brothers falls under the banner of Salafiyya.
   "Early salafi reformers believed they could
reconcile Islam with modern Western political ideas.
Some argued that Western-style democracy was perfectly
compatible with Islam, and had even been prefigured by
the Islamic concept of shura, a consultation between
ruler and ruled.
   " That optimism began to fade after World War I,
when the Western powers carved up the remains of the
Ottoman empire into nation-states. A crucial step came
in the 1930's, when some radicals began to argue that
Islam was in real danger of being extinguished through
Western influence, said Emmanuel Sivan, a professor at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has written
extensively on modern Islam. It was then that Rashid
Rida and Maulana Maudoodi developed the notion that
modern Western culture was equivalent to jahiliyya
(the word is the Arabic term for the barbarism that
existed before Islam).
   "But if one man deserves the title of intellectual
grandfather to Osama bin Laden and his fellow
terrorists, it is probably the Egyptian writer and
activist Sayyid Qutb (pronounced SIGH-yid KUH-tahb),
who was executed by the Egyptian authorities in the
mid-1960's for inciting resistance to the regime. 

[...]

   "Mr. Qutb, who began his career as a modernist
literary critic [!], was radicalized by a roughly
yearlong stay in he United States, between 1948 and
1950. In a book about his travels he cites the Kinsey
Report, along with Darwin, Marx and Freud, as forces
that have contributed to the moral degradation of the
country.
  "'No one is more distant than the Americans from
spirituality and piety,' he wrote.
   "He also narrated, with evident disgust, his
observations of the sexual promiscuity of American
culture.
   "Describing a church dance in Greeley, Colo., he
writes: 'Every young man took the hand of a young
woman. And these were the young men and women who had
just been singing their hymns! Red and blue lights,
with only a few white lamps, illuminated the dance
floor. The room became a confusion of feet and legs:
arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests
pressed together. 
   "Ultimately, Mr. Qutb rejected democracy and
nationalism as Western ideas incompatible with
Islam....
   "Perhaps even more important, Mr. Qutb was the
first Sunni Muslim to find a way around the ancient
prohibition against overthrowing a Muslim ruler. 'Qutb
said the rulers of the Muslim world today are no
longer Muslims,' Mr. Haykel said. 'He basically
declared them infidels.'
   "He did so, Mr. Haykel added, in a particularly
persuasive way, by reinterpreting the works of a
medieval intellectual named Ibn Taymiyya. A towering
figure in the history of Muslim thought, Ibn Taymiyya
lived in Damascus in the 13th and 14th centuries, when
Syria was in danger of domination by the Mongols. 
   "Mr. Qutb equated Ibn Taymiyya's intellectual and
political struggle against the Mongols with his own
struggle against Gamal Abdel Nasser and the other Arab
rulers of his day. It was a risky move, because
Islamic tradition states that if one Muslim falsely
calls another an infidel, he could burn in hell, Mr.
Haykel said. It may also have sealed his death
warrant, because Egypt's rulers did not take such
threats lightly.
   "But decades after his death, Mr. Qutb's equation
continues to inspire radicals like Sheik Omar Abdel
Rahmen, who was convicted of conspiring to blow up the
United Nations and other New York City landmarks, and
Osama bin Laden...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/13/arts/13ROOT.html?todaysheadlines

Now back to our regularly scheduled slapfight, er,
literary discussion ...

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