
Abdal Hakim Murad (Tim Winter) on the western (not islamic!) basis of suicidal bombing: Bombing without Moonlight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism. (Interessant auch seine Veruteilung des Terrorbombardements deutscher Städte in WWII durch ein Großbritannien, das zwar hochethisch war (im GG zu Dtland), aber mit dem Rücken zur Wand stand).
Flying into a skyscraper to save the world is closer to the line which links Samson to Captain America, with a detour through the Book of Revelation, than to any Muslim conception of futuwwa.
The antinomian quality of this furious insurrectionist method confirms Gray’s suggestion that Islamism is simply another modern weapon against religion. For theists, the ethical can never be suspended; on the contrary, it is needed most when most under strain. Yet the militant transgressions of radicals form only part of a much wider picture of covert but deep surrender to Enlightenment thought.
John Gray on Al-Qeida’s bases in the modern world:
No cliche is more stupefying than that which describes Al-Qaida as a throwback to medieval times. It is a by-product of globalisation. Its most distinctive feature – projecting a privatised form of organised violence worldwide – was impossible in the past. Equally, the belief that a new world can be hastened by spectacular acts of destruction is nowhere found in medieval times. Al-Qaida’s closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of late nineteenth-century Europe.
He also quotes Buruma and Margalit, in their important study of Westernised anti-Westernism:
Bin Laden’s use of the word ‘insane’ is more akin to the Nazis’ constant use of fanatisch. Human sacrifice is not an established Muslim tradition. Holy war always was justified in defence of the Islamic state, and believers who died in battle were promised heavenly delights, but glorification of death for its own sake was not part of this, especially in the Sunni tradition. […] And the idea that freelance terrorists would enter paradise as martyrs by murdering unarmed civilians is a modern invention, one that would have horrified Muslims in the past. Islam is not a death cult.




