Radical Islamism: 'bastard child' of Marxism

In his stirring speech to the British on Sunday justifying the Anglo-American bombing of Kabul and Kandahar, Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against any tendency to blame all Muslims for the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and the Taleban.

"This is not a war with Islam," he declared. "It angers me, as it angers the vast majority of Muslims, to hear bin Laden and his associates described as Islamic terrorists. They are terrorists pure and simple. Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion, and the acts of these people are contrary to the teachings of the Qur'an."

Mr. Blair was here repeating what President Bush, other political leaders and almost all the responsible opinion-formers in the Western world have been saying since the 11th of September. Indeed, they have sometimes sounded more worried about the likelihood of ordinary Americans attacking Muslim immigrants than about Muslims supporting the terrorist war on Americans.

Our political leaders have good diplomatic reasons for maintaining this position. They seek to avoid even the hint of a war between the once-Christian West and the quarter of the world that believes in Islam. They hope to prop up the pro-Western Muslim and Arab governments in the Middle East and Asia, and to use military bases on their territories. And, of course, they genuinely want to prevent any harassment of Muslims in America -- not only for humanitarian reasons but also to ensure Muslims locally will offer no shelter or support to bin Laden's terrorist network.

Yet, however prudent these official assertions of general Muslim benevolence may be, they are not strictly true. Osama bin Laden's brand of radical Islamism plainly has a very large following among Muslims, even among Muslims in the United States and especially among Arab Muslims. Although Islam has no central religious authority like the Vatican in Catholicism, there are many mullahs who endorse his jihad against America and happily pronounce fatwas (religious sentences of death) on moderate Muslim leaders like President Musharraff of Pakistan. As Paul Johnson recently demonstrated in these pages, there are passages in the Qur'an that lend themselves very easily to a justification of holy war against the West and Israel.

And, finally, there are undoubtedly some Islamic traditions that in the past have promoted aggressive hostility towards non-Muslim believers and that today underlie and justify the cultural resentment of many Muslims towards a West that has supplanted Islam as the main world civilization.

Western governments tacitly acknowledge these realities when they fear that pro-Western governments in the Middle East and the Gulf will be overthrown by the "Arab street" if the war goes wrong in some way.

At the same time, Blair's soothing words about peaceful Islam are not wholly false either. There are peaceful and progressive traditions in Islam which seek to reconcile it politically and economically, if not religiously, with science, liberalism, market capitalism and the modern world in general. In recent years, however, they have been on the defensive before the rise of radical Islamism -- the politico-religious philosophy driving bin Laden's terrorism. This doctrine combines a desire to impose a "purified" fundamentalist Islam on "corrupt" Muslim regimes with a rejection of a West seen as decadent internally and greedily oppressive externally. Because it strikes us in the West as antediluvian and absurd, we tend to assume that it must be the creed of ignorant and impoverished people.

But it is a creed held by people with Western PhDs, advanced technical skills and vast financial resources as well as by unemployed youths -- by Muslim intellectuals as well as by Third World proles.

And that should awaken a sense of familiarity within ourselves. For the truth is that radical Islamism does not derive solely from Islam. It has Western as well as Islamic roots. Indeed, it has been well-described by one commentator as the "bastard child" of Islamic fundamentalism and neo-Marxist Western scholarship. Its Islamic roots are in the puritanical Wahabi sect that set out to purify Islam more than a century ago in what is now Saudi Arabia and that is spread today throughout the Islamic world by financial subsidies from wealthy Saudi believers.

Its Western elements rest upon the theory ( first conceived by the English Liberal economist, Hobson, popularized by Lenin in Imperialism-the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and refined in the 1950s and 1960s into the theories of neo-colonialism and "comprador capitalism") that the wealth and power of the West are based upon its robbery and exploitation of the Third World.

No economic historian believes in this nonsense any more -- it is amply refuted by the fact that the Western colonial powers such as Britain and France actually became much richer after giving up their colonies -- but it is preached by radical Islamist mullahs from Dearborn to Dubai. In this context it justifies overthrowing the corrupt client governments that help the West to rob Muslim believers, such as the Saudi regime, in order to usher in a new age of Islamic independence and prosperity. And that is plainly Osama bin Laden's main aim in the terrorist war he has launched.

In short, radical Islamism is a violent, heretical and politicized perversion of Islam -- in exactly the same way that Communism and Nazism were violent, heretical and politicized perversions of enlightened Christian democratic humanism in the West. It perverts traditional religious ideas and sentiments into new political ideologies; it derives its energy from the resentments of those who feel economically or culturally dispossessed; it employs the most modern techniques in the service of essentially primitive concepts; and it sanctions unrestrained violence and ruthlessness in pursuit of totalitarian power -- exactly as Nazism and Communism did in all these respects.

Because all three ideologies are what Burke called "armed doctrines," however, they have to be defeated not only intellectually and spiritually, but also on the battlefield. Nazism and communism were both the cause of long civil wars in the West. Once they were defeated on the battlefield or in strategic/economic competition, however, they soon faded away as philosophical forces -- though Marxism enjoys a lingering half-life in the corrupt literature and politics departments of some Western universities.

Radical Islamism is similarly waging an unacknowledged civil war within Islam. But the signs are that Islamic civilization on its own lacks the necessary resources to overcome this perversion of itself. Resentment of America and the West is so strong in the Islamic world that many Muslims feel a sympathy for almost any Islamic force that challenges them. Before Islam is ready to confront and defeat the spiritual claims of radical Islamism, therefore, the West must first destroy its prestige by defeating it on the battlefield.

And the West can and will defeat radical Islamism on the battlefield; it is just a matter of time. The mosque can then begin to demolish its spiritual claims. But not before then, alas.

Thank you for this interesting, but essentially false analysis, by Mr O'Sullivan.

It is always difficult to see things from the perspective of others. Mr. O'Sullivan correctly points out that there has been a resurgence/revitalization of fundamentalist Islam, but he fails to look at it from the perspective of fundamentalist Islam.

Every culture survives on the allegiance of its members. Retaining that allegiance is a fundamental task of every cultural leadership. What is the cultural basis of Islam? Not merely the Koran, but the Hadith -- a collection of sayings and actions by the Prophet. It is normative in that it relates the proper way of life for an moslem. The Hadith is a part of the sunna -- the sunna is the record of the life and sayings of the Prophet. The Sunni part of Islam -- approximately 90% of Islam -- derives its name from the fact that its followers follow the example of the sunna .

From the Hadith:

Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:

Narrated Ibn 'Umar:

Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform at that, then they save their lives an property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."

When one examines the events of the Industrial Revolution one sees an incursion by the West into the oil producing regions of the Arabian Peninsula. This incursion produced a much needed counterpoint for fundamentalists in Islam. It gave them something to fight against -- something that could attract the allegiance of folks to the fundamental ways of Islam.

Islam was always political and imperialistic as a religion. It is not heretical when it seeks to fight the West -- any manifestation of the West.

Marxism was heretical vis-a-vis Christianity, but not heretical vis-a-vis the enlightenment project.

So, a proper analysis of Islam reveals that it is not heretical and perverted in the same way Marxism was, nor is it a "bastard child" of Marxism.

Kindest Regards

You really are walking on a slippery slope. There are many verses in the Bible that promote the rape, murder, and genocide of Gentiles. Jesus himself referred to Gentiles as dogs. The Talmud also has some pretty horrible things to say about all non-Jewish tribes.They are far worse than anything you will find in the Quran.

The word dogs appears in four different passages in the Gospels (the singular dog does not appear). If you think these passages bear any resemblance to Mohammed's commandment to seize and kill, then we're wasting our time talking to one another.

Matthew
Chapter 7
King James Version
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
Matthew
Chapter 15
King James Version

21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.
22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
Mark
Chapter 7
King James Version

24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid.
25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs.
29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
Luke
Chapter 16
King James Version

19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,
21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:
28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

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