The Philosopher of Islamic Terror

[Drake Tungsten]

we at the moment are lacking a powerful rationalization to justify killing of all muslims, which is what the last bit of the article seems to be getting at.

Actually, I think the last bit of the article implied that we might lose this battle of ideas because many in the West dont really believe in the rightness of our ideals. In order to triumph over Islamic fundamentalism, we need to have a strong belief in the superiority of our system. I think the author has doubts about our faith in Western values. I'm inclined to agree with him.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I feel that agony all the time, the sense that the things our modern society expects of us are in some way antithetical to the things we should really be doing. I have my own struggles with reconciling my desire for spiritual fulfillment with the spiritual void that is modern life. When I think about my own struggle with these issues, I can understand how people like Mohammed Atta come about. Honestly, if I had been born in Saudi Arabia, I could have been Mohammed Atta. That's a truly horrifying thing, to know that a mere twist of fate in your place of birth could turn you into the evil you hate and fear most...

i never thought i would say this but:

[Berzerker]

Actually, I think the last bit of the article implied that we might lose this battle of ideas because many in the West dont really believe in the rightness of our ideals. In order to triumph over Islamic fundamentalism, we need to have a strong belief in the superiority of our system. I think the author has doubts about our faith in Western values. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Let me see, freedom (albeit greatly limited by left and right wingers)...or a brutal theocracy where people are tortured for minor infractions of religious dogma. Sorry, but I have NO doubt about which system is better and have NO ambivelance about allowing the "sinful" behavior this guy laments to have our freedom. A big problem is we've sacrificed our freedom for security in all sorts of areas, but even with the loss of that freedom, the west is still far better than Islamic states and will be as long as Muslim theocrats reject religious freedom. If we in the west were having to live in an Islamic state, you'd see just how much we believe in western values, but it's hard to see that loyalty we have to western values when we aren't faced with the alternative Muslim theocrats might have waiting for us. What's the saying? You don't know what you have until you lose it? We can speak out about what we don't like and do so quite a bit, but do people living in Islam have that same freedom? Nope. I wonder how much people living in those states actually believe in the Islam being practiced over there. Just as there are competing values in the west, there are competing values in Islam, and one set of values matches how most of us feel about Islam - live and let live. They are in a "civil war" over their own religion and they are going to conquer the west because we supposedly don't believe in our values? Nah...

[Agathon]

Qutb wrote that, all over the world, humans had reached a moment of unbearable crisis. The human race had lost touch with human nature. Man's inspiration, intelligence and morality were degenerating. Sexual relations were deteriorating ''to a level lower than the beasts.'' Man was miserable, anxious and skeptical, sinking into idiocy, insanity and crime. People were turning, in their unhappiness, to drugs, alcohol and existentialism. Qutb admired economic productivity and scientific knowledge. But he did not think that wealth and science were rescuing the human race. He figured that, on the contrary, the richest countries were the unhappiest of all.

Pretty much true really.

The idea that rationality cannot be sufficient for knowledge independently of God is an old one - Al Ghazali writes about this in "Deliverance from Error"

[Imran Siddiqui]

What's the saying? You don't know what you have until you lose it?

I think that is the point the author and Drake were making. We take things for granted in the West.

[Berzerker]

I think that is the point the author and Drake were making. We take things for granted in the West.

That's what I said, but they are saying more than that. They are saying that because we take our values for granted, we are in danger of losing the battle of values with Islam. That's why I said we take our values for granted and that doing so should not be viewed as a weakness since we aren't in danger of losing those values to Islam.

[Drake Tungsten]

The threat isn't that we will lose our values to Islam, but that we will lose Islam to the values that Qutb espoused. It is in all of our interests to ensure the Islamic fundamentalism does not dominate the Islamic world, but I'm not sure if we in the West have the faith in our own values that is crucial in any attempt to spread our values to the Islamic world...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I hear MtG coming. It should be enlightening...

I've been a "fan" of Qutb for years. It's interesting that it's taken so much of the west so long to bother looking into the mindset of our enemies.

Unfortunately, I don't think our leadership has yet felt the need to bother doing so. If we want to "win" this "war on terrorism," though, we have to realize it's a literal war for the minds of the Islamic world.

[Drake Tungsten]

If we want to "win" this "war on terrorism," though, we have to realize it's a literal war for the minds of the Islamic world.

I couldn't agree more.

[Berzerker]

Drake - [quote]

The threat isn't that we will lose our values to Islam, but that we will lose Islam to the values that Qutb espoused.

Ah, I see.

I feel that agony all the time, the sense that the things our modern society expects of us are in some way antithetical to the things we should really be doing. I have my own struggles with reconciling my desire for spiritual fulfillment with the spiritual void that is modern life.

That led me to believe you viewed western values as inferior in some way to Islam and worthy of rejection by Muslims. Let's face it, people in the past were more religious because they didn't have our toys. Besides, we know why a volcano goes off, they didn't, so only "God" could explain the world to them.

It is in all of our interests to ensure the Islamic fundamentalism does not dominate the Islamic world, but I'm not sure if we in the West have the faith in our own values that is crucial in any attempt to spread our values to the Islamic world...

The battle you speak of is for Muslims to fight, not us. The outcome may be in our interest, but we aren't going to convert Muslims to our values without them wanting our values in the first place. And if we have to give up some of our values to accomodate Muslims, that fight isn't worth having. It's bad enough we have Christian fundies trying to run our lives without having to give away freedoms to get the approval of other fundies. All we can do is kill the SOB's when they try to kill us for being infidels, but in reality, most Muslims could care less about how we live our lives. They want the freedom to worship and as long as we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone. But we haven't been leaving them alone, that's why some of them have been attacking us.

[Berzerker]

MtG -

If we want to "win" this "war on terrorism," though, we have to realize it's a literal war for the minds of the Islamic world.

There's the paradox, Al Qaeda uses the attack on Iraq for recruitment while the Iraqi people liberated from Saddam rejoice at the arrival of coalition forces. Will the average Muslim see how Iraqis react and think about their reaction? We can only win a war on terrorism by killing the terrorists and eliminating the reasons for terrorism. We can do the former with some success but wont do the latter because the Democrats and Republicans have higher priorities than the safety of Americans.

[Ben Kenobi]

This conflict with modernity, while most prevalent in the moslem countries, is also present here in the west. Many people, myself included, have felt that there are things missing in our life lived by the tenets of secular western liberalism.

The question is not whether we can convert the moslems, but how to reconcile these two diametrically opposed belief systems, not just for the islamic peoples, but for ourselves as well.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well one way is not something 'we' can do, at least as an action. That is the Muslim world needs some decent people to be able to look upto! Perhaps if we spread democracy, we can allow the flourishing of this kind of person.

When your leaders are the Al-Saud's and Hussein, you will naturally rebel from that.

[chequita guevara]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Qutb has an answer, and an easy one at that. As the Italian and German Communists found, much to their chagrin, the easy answers of Fascism beat the complicated ones of socialism all the time. This is gonna be a long struggle.

[Drake Tungsten]

Regardless of who is right (we commies are, just for the record)