The Philosopher of Islamic Terror

[Ben Kenobi]

Che:
It's not just Falwell,
Solzhenitsyn said the same thing. The troubles of Russia in the 20th century have all come about because Russians moved away from God. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 was just the start.

[Ramo]

Excellent article.

I think one thing that needs to be commented upon is the connection between legalism and Islam. Throughout Islamic history, you see basically a cult of legalism. Mohammed was revered as a lawgiver. Suleiman was revered as a lawgiver. I'd been reading Chronicles of the Crusades a few weeks ago, and in the Arab Chronicles, one constantly sees praise for guys like Saladin, not for their military victories, but because of their adherence to the Law.

In the context of changing times, that Qutb and the rest of the Islamic world has lived through this past half century, with modernization, globalization, new social relations, new states, new regimes, etc., etc., Qutb was looking towards a revival of the Law. Islamic Law. Social relations needed to be re-established back from the time of the Caliphate. So, you see Qutb and his followers doing just that. The secular state was disenfranchising the poor, so the Moslem Brotherhood built a social welfare network outside of the state. Later groups like Jamaat-i-Islami have done that as well. The secular state was letting foreigners take over their country's economy at the detriment of the native middle class, so groups like al-Qaeda would kick them out.

The funny thing is, is that it's all crap. Of course the fanatic totalitarianism is crap, but the whole idea behind Islamism is crap. Moslems would have to unite behind the authority of God, but Islamism has consistently failed as a political ideology and could never keep up the contradiction of being for the poor and for the middle class. Look at Iran where the entire population would love to get rid of the Mullahs, and are well on their way to doing just that.

[Az]

It's great to see that noone is pushing their agenda in this thread.

But yes, I agree, things are moving too fast. My problem with the current world is not that there is no belief in god , but there is nothing to unite people. Some sort of true human comaradery. The grinding pace of life, coupled with the dog eat dog world, is turning people into: "successful" workaholics, "mediocre" people that either are "lazy" or have families, and always feel a certain amount of failure in the proffessional life, the "common people", and the complete dropouts.

This should, cannot, MUST NOT go on.

God? A female friend of mine started going to a reform synagogue. When I asked her how could she believe in god, she's a rational person, after all, she said that she enjoyed the feeling of purposefullness, and the feeling that she was taken care of. When I confronted her by saying that this is radically different from what she believed in before, she said that she didn't even want to think about it, since it make her feel more secure and ok with herself. She is still working her ass off in the dinner hall, and she's still studying Mech. engineering, and is generally very busy. BUT she has a purpose.

But, this is not a "god thread". I was only presenting this in order to show that feeling of purpose is one of people's needs. And a need that was NOT fullfilled by the modern world.

Do you people have a purpose in your lives?

[Berzerker]

chegitz -

It's not hard to realize that the modern world is fundimentally alienating to human beings. Just about everyone in the world realizes and understands that this is a problem. There are some, though, who think this is the best of all possible worlds.

I'm one, the quality of life has never been better for so many people. I don't understand these people who perceive some spiritual void in themselves and lay blame with the modern world.

For the rest of us, who realize something is fundimentally wrong with this world, the question is: what? For Qutb and others of his ilk, from bin Laden to Jerry Falwell, the answer is obvious, people have turned away from God. For communists, it's the capitalist system. For conservatives and liberals, it's lack of personal morals (but each side accuses the other for not having them). For libertarians, it's living in socialism.

Conflicting world views have existed for eons.

Regardless of who is right (we commies are, just for the record), almost everyone feels the world is wrong. If I had to put my finger on it, the single main source of the problem is the pace of change in the world. Things change so fast we don't have time to adapt, let alone get settled. The world has changed a lot in my 36 years, and I still want to relate to it the way I learned in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Today's leaders lament that the world isn't like they knew it growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Ah, future shock. We should all be riding horses and plowing fields from behind an ox.

Tune in, turn on, and drop out wasn't merely a mantra for hippies. People have been doing it since capitalism began. Look at the trends in yuppie culture: dreaming of retiring to Tuscany or Provance, the slow food movement, etc.

Then you'll have to explain all those tuned in, turned on, and dropped out alcoholics in the Soviet Union. Hey, maybe we can blame the collapse of the Roman Empire on capitalism too.

[Az]

actually, the rate of alcoholism rised precisely when the pressure from the socium rised. ( as well as some rather stupid policies by the soviets, but this is a different issue).


That is, besides the bringing of alcohol en masse by the Tzars.

[GePap]

I think the biggest flaw in the Qutb annalysis, and among fundamentalist mulahs and imans is that they see Islamic law as already set: the sort of investigation and refitting of Islamic law for them has ended. I fail to understand why they believe that for some reason, a bunch of men in the 12th and 13th century had already figured the thing out. In a sense they are guilty of what they accuse the Jews of being guilty of...replacing faith for ceremony.

I personally don't feel any sort of alienation, but only because I don't think there is some sort of "way" we are supposed to be; it alays help to maintian a sense of wonder about things, what was, what is, and what could be.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I don't think there is some sort of "way" we are supposed to be

Ah, I agree with you (I seem to be doing that waay too much lately ). The problem is that people feel we should belong to something. They want easy solutions, such as it is God's plan or the dialectic, etc, etc. They do not wish to accept that a lot of things in life are murky and there is no 'way' that is required of us. It is understandably why people want that. They want to feel they are a part of something. They wish to feel they mean something more than being just evolutionary advanced animals.

I think the main problem in those people who are 'alienated' wish to look at the past or future to the solution to all their problems. From these areas, the answer will not come.

Perhaps when we get away from this thinking, people will stop feeling alienated because things that they knew are changing. I hope this comes soon, because they should realize that the changes that have occured in modernity have been wonderful! Look at the level of technology we have around it. It is jaw dropping. And it is the best of all possible worlds, no matter what Voltaire wants to say about that .

[GePap]

Bah..

All this modernity is just a new set of toys. man has felt alienated since ancient times, though not as much as today. I agree with Qutb's notion that it stes form an attempt to seperate the "spiritual" form the corporal, the life of mind form the life of flesh. The thing is, the life of Flesh changes just as the life of mind does. Qutb blames Christianity for making the separtion, but his fix is becoming fixed to a set of regulations that have unfortunitelly not being updated to fit the times. No woders I use Nietzsche as my avatar...

[Az]

I personally don't feel any sort of alienation, but only because I don't think there is some sort of "way" we are supposed to be; it alays help to maintian a sense of wonder about things, what was, what is, and what could be.

"supposed" is such a wrong word for this. it can be seen as the representation of fanatical idealism, or even worse, nostalgia to a certain way of being. What's really funny is that, by far and large, these ways never existed before.

[GePap]

Well, in some ways a 'way" did exist. for most of the history of our species we had a 'way" of relating to each other and of organizing our social groups. Then came agriculture and then, well, we know what came then.

The thing is, we had, form the beginning, the ability to discover agriculture. Perhaps this alienation is one of those unwanted side effects of abstract thought.