Thursday, April 17, 2003
Paulp Berman exposes the theory and dangers of radical Islam
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The war against Iraq has deeply split the liberal community. The stalwart anti-Vietnam War protester Nat Hentoff, in a Village Voice article “Why I Didn’t March This Time “ describes the inhumanities of the Saddam regime that make his removal imperative. Human rights activist Michael Ignatieff and other liberals do likewise, some quoting Amnesty International’s citations of tortures and execution
A most potent exposition of the philosophies that created the MidEast dictatorships and alQaeda, as well as of the future expectations in our relationships with the Muslim countries comes from Paul Berman, political and cultural critic (New Republic, NYTimes, Slate). In Terror and Liberalism (W.W. Norton, 2003, $21) he traces the origins of the MidEast conflict to the same roots that tore up Europe in the 20th century, in the battles between liberalism and its totalitarian enemies, and gives insights into a magisterial opus, the inspirational basis for Muslim terrorist activities and their denial of Western values.
At the heart of al Qaeda is the formidable Qur-an interpretation of Sayyid Qutb (KUH-tab), the philosopher of Muslim Brotherhood. He was hanged by Egypt’s Pan-Arabist leader Abdul Gamal Nasser in 1966, after 12 years in prison, during which he wrote a 15-volume commentary on Qur-an. To summarize, he places the heart of civilization in Jerusalem, not ancient Greece, as the Occidentals do. The Jews had divine revelation from Moses, but let it wither into “senseless ritual.” Jesus tried to breathe spirituality back into it, but failed, due to squabbles with the Jews, and the message of the Gospels was distorted. Christianity failed, by dividing the world into the sacred and the secular (“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”}, to placate rulers. Only prophet Mohammed in the 7th century restored the unity of the spiritual to the physical world, and Arab scientists at Islamic universities opened the way to a unified scientific method, subsequently usurped by the Christians. The progress of science further separated the two sides. European scientific and technological discoveries allowed them to dominate the world, and export their “hideous schizophrenia” through the world. The Muslim countries remained relatively spiritually intact. When in 1924 the Turkish leader Ataturk overthrew his Ottoman rulers and installed secular modernity, certain Muslims were prompted to follow his example. The birth of Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s was an attempt to get Arabs back on the right spiritual path.
However, parallel to Muslim Brotherhood, rose a latecomer secularist pan-Arab movement, originating in the early 1940s.This was in emulation of the Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler and other European leaders’ revolutions, bringing national pride back to their countries ( Berman cites a long lead-in history of revolutionary assassins of monarchs who turned into Anarchist terrorists, supporting the philosophical turning away from Russian and other monarchies, starting in the mid 19th century, that evolved into attacks on liberal democracies.) This, the Ba’ath movement in Syria and Iraq, initially suppressed after the Axis powers lost WWII, was revived in the 1950s. Nasser’s 1952 United Arab Republic’s union with Syria did not last long, and all three countries went their own secularist ways, at times cooperating with the USSR.
Qutb, who learned the Qur-an by heart at ten, and earned an MA at the Colorado College of State Education in the 1940s, was horrified of the corruption of Western life. His persuasive condemnations inspired the terrorists who act to preserve Koranic purity in the Muslim world. In the main as well as in his lesser works the manic Qutb blames Christianity and, particularly, Judaism, for plotting to destroy Islam and its spiritually principled life. Enemies abound:: feminism detracts from the spiritual function of childbearing and rearing; liberals gladly confine Islam to the spiritual, yet bar its participation in the activities of life, and deny it its rightful predominance of every secular human activity.
Qutb’s arrest in 1953 was due to the Islamists’ attempt on Nasser’s .life. The voluminous “In The Shade of the Qur-an,” only partially translated in English, was written in jail, between tortures, and is taught in Saudi and other universities by such as Qutb’s brother Muhammad, a distinguished professor and teacher of young Osama bin Laden . It matches the Saudi fundamentalist Wahhabi teachings.
Berman’s dazzling analyses of public opinion spins by Sharon, the terrorists, and of suicide as the ultimate PR tool (my term) need to be read. En passant, he skewers Noam Chomsky, both as a geopolitician and linguist. His solutions of “new radicalism” and US involvement are worth exploring.
The war against Iraq has deeply split the liberal community. The stalwart anti-Vietnam War protester Nat Hentoff, in a Village Voice article “Why I Didn’t March This Time “ describes the inhumanities of the Saddam regime that make his removal imperative. Human rights activist Michael Ignatieff and other liberals do likewise, some quoting Amnesty International’s citations of tortures and execution
A most potent exposition of the philosophies that created the MidEast dictatorships and alQaeda, as well as of the future expectations in our relationships with the Muslim countries comes from Paul Berman, political and cultural critic (New Republic, NYTimes, Slate). In Terror and Liberalism (W.W. Norton, 2003, $21) he traces the origins of the MidEast conflict to the same roots that tore up Europe in the 20th century, in the battles between liberalism and its totalitarian enemies, and gives insights into a magisterial opus, the inspirational basis for Muslim terrorist activities and their denial of Western values.
At the heart of al Qaeda is the formidable Qur-an interpretation of Sayyid Qutb (KUH-tab), the philosopher of Muslim Brotherhood. He was hanged by Egypt’s Pan-Arabist leader Abdul Gamal Nasser in 1966, after 12 years in prison, during which he wrote a 15-volume commentary on Qur-an. To summarize, he places the heart of civilization in Jerusalem, not ancient Greece, as the Occidentals do. The Jews had divine revelation from Moses, but let it wither into “senseless ritual.” Jesus tried to breathe spirituality back into it, but failed, due to squabbles with the Jews, and the message of the Gospels was distorted. Christianity failed, by dividing the world into the sacred and the secular (“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”}, to placate rulers. Only prophet Mohammed in the 7th century restored the unity of the spiritual to the physical world, and Arab scientists at Islamic universities opened the way to a unified scientific method, subsequently usurped by the Christians. The progress of science further separated the two sides. European scientific and technological discoveries allowed them to dominate the world, and export their “hideous schizophrenia” through the world. The Muslim countries remained relatively spiritually intact. When in 1924 the Turkish leader Ataturk overthrew his Ottoman rulers and installed secular modernity, certain Muslims were prompted to follow his example. The birth of Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s was an attempt to get Arabs back on the right spiritual path.
However, parallel to Muslim Brotherhood, rose a latecomer secularist pan-Arab movement, originating in the early 1940s.This was in emulation of the Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler and other European leaders’ revolutions, bringing national pride back to their countries ( Berman cites a long lead-in history of revolutionary assassins of monarchs who turned into Anarchist terrorists, supporting the philosophical turning away from Russian and other monarchies, starting in the mid 19th century, that evolved into attacks on liberal democracies.) This, the Ba’ath movement in Syria and Iraq, initially suppressed after the Axis powers lost WWII, was revived in the 1950s. Nasser’s 1952 United Arab Republic’s union with Syria did not last long, and all three countries went their own secularist ways, at times cooperating with the USSR.
Qutb, who learned the Qur-an by heart at ten, and earned an MA at the Colorado College of State Education in the 1940s, was horrified of the corruption of Western life. His persuasive condemnations inspired the terrorists who act to preserve Koranic purity in the Muslim world. In the main as well as in his lesser works the manic Qutb blames Christianity and, particularly, Judaism, for plotting to destroy Islam and its spiritually principled life. Enemies abound:: feminism detracts from the spiritual function of childbearing and rearing; liberals gladly confine Islam to the spiritual, yet bar its participation in the activities of life, and deny it its rightful predominance of every secular human activity.
Qutb’s arrest in 1953 was due to the Islamists’ attempt on Nasser’s .life. The voluminous “In The Shade of the Qur-an,” only partially translated in English, was written in jail, between tortures, and is taught in Saudi and other universities by such as Qutb’s brother Muhammad, a distinguished professor and teacher of young Osama bin Laden . It matches the Saudi fundamentalist Wahhabi teachings.
Berman’s dazzling analyses of public opinion spins by Sharon, the terrorists, and of suicide as the ultimate PR tool (my term) need to be read. En passant, he skewers Noam Chomsky, both as a geopolitician and linguist. His solutions of “new radicalism” and US involvement are worth exploring.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:03 PM 
