The Harsh Judgment of History: The Terrorist Worldview and Intellectual Values
Collier, Charles
"The men of Islam are preparing for you what would fill your hearts with terror ... " —Osama bin Laden IS THERE A perspective from which contemporary terrorism can be seen as part of...
...Faced with the choice between an inherently improbable event (or miracle) and the all too human sources of belief in it (whose fallibility would not be at all improbable), Hume advises: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish...
...No competent criminal investigator would proceed in this way to dismiss the important element of motive from consideration altogether...
...WHAT ROLE should terrorist ideas play in current intellectual discussion...
...This political program— the shared property of terrorists and those who support them—can now be seen as fully consistent with and indeed partly defined by the terrorist actions taken to implement it...
...Mozart's music is still beautiful even if it offends Taliban sensibilities...
...Is there any chance that the French government would protect the terrorists or refuse to apprehend them...
...Consider first the poor Taliban, unable to distinguish among church, state, political party, Copyright © 2003 by Charles W. Collier...
...These are not gray areas in which the answers could easily go either way...
...Suppose for a moment that the attacks of September 11 were conclusively shown to be the work of Catholic terrorists operating out of France...
...Richard Rorty is correct to point out, "You don't get to be representative of something by saying you represent it...
...But the present problem goes deeper than the Taliban...
...Their religion plays an essential and defining role in TERRORIST WORLDVIEW informing their actions...
...Should we even care whether they have a coherent worldview...
...when change is at work upon it, with all the wild energies of a restless and indiscreet spirit of improvement...
...Today's terrorists, like those of yesteryear, do not simply profess a particular religious belief—they convert it into a political program, and they act (usually boldly) on it...
...In other words, what now is merely a convenient, politically correct fiction would then be a reality: we would indeed be at war only with a small, misguided band of terrorists who just happened to profess a particular religious belief...
...In short, "Always reject the greater miracle...
...By fundamentalism I mean nothing more than the dictionary definition: "strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles...
...You and I do not get to decide what those actions and ideals mean, and it is pointless to complain that Osama bin Laden has "betrayed" or "perverted" Islamic fundamentalism (or to disavow the terrorist implications of fundamentalist Islamic politics, as the Palestinian authorities have attempted...
...Measured against Hume's standard, the fundamental tenets of Islam are no more empirically implausible, no more rationally preposterous, than those of Christianity or Judaism...
...There is no higher tribunal to which an appeal may be taken...
...Nevertheless, some people feel so strongly about the matter that "eleven thousand Persons have, at several times, suffered Death, rather than submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End...
...Meanwhile a reign of terror was descending upon some of the less enlightened corners of the world, as Catholic monarchs all across Europe busily hunted down suspected "heretics," found them everywhere (especially among critics and enemies), and subjected them to various forms of barbaric inquisition (including torture and burning at the stake...
...Their controversy has its roots in the ancient practice of breaking eggs at the larger end before eating them, and in a contrary edict of the emperor "commanding all his Subjects, upon great Penalties, to break the smaller End of their Eggs...
...If only for practical, tactical reasons (for example, catching the criminal), we need to understand terrorists...
...No one could (seriously) object if President Bush said he wanted them "dead or alive...
...In his September 2001 address before a joint meeting of Congress, President George W Bush spoke directly to Muslims throughout the world, saying: "We respect your faith...
...Those who, after careful consideration, still seek a thoughtful and constructive engagement with terrorist doctrines should first put themselves in the position of passengers on an airplane that has just been hijacked by terrorists...
...The evidence suggests, in particular, that religious fundamentalism (in its contemporary incarnation as Islamic fundamentalism), though long passed over by history, is once again squarely at issue...
...In some realms this is obviously untenable...
...The citation of authority for a word," notes the Oxford English Dictionary, is "one of the essentials for establishing its meaning and tracing its history...
...Osama bin Laden IS THERE A perspective from which contemporary terrorism can be seen as part of intellectual history...
...It would not matter that the terrorists were Catholic or that they came from France...
...The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, whether or not this conflicts with al-Qaeda geometry...
...If so, what is the place of the terrorist worldview in the history of ideas...
...There is also in the main shrine of Islam a sacred black stone, a meteorite that was miraculously sent down from heaven...
...And what role should terrorist ideas play in current intellectual discussion...
...Terrorizing "infidels" or "unbelievers" because they do not DISSENT / Winter 2003 n 63 TERRORIST WORLDVIEW share in an unlikely assortment of inherently unverifiable beliefs meets the dictionary definition of farce as "a ridiculous sham" that "depends upon a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character...
...Charles Richardson refers in his great nineteenth-century dictionary to "the many 'vicissitudes of mutation' which the language has sustained in its descent to these times...
...A fitting parable for our contemporary "clash" between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism unfolds in Gulliver's Travels, when Swift's protagonist finds himself in the midst of "a most obstinate War" between two mighty empires...
...Should we seek to understand terrorists...
...64 n DISSENT / Winter 2003 But answering "Yes" to the above questions suggests the broader possibility that the ideas and opinions of terrorists should influence and even alter our own thinking...
...they are influential in the sense that millions of people accept them unhesitatingly, regardless of their merits...
...He remains an enormously popular figure," notes Bernard Lewis, "not only with the extremists and radicals who form his main support group, but in much wider circles in the Muslim and more particularly in the Arab world...
...For better or worse, religion and politics are socially constructed systems of meaning in which things mean what prevailing historical opinion and practice dictate, not what critics and kibitzers on the sidelines might suggest or what objective evidence and disinterested scientific observation might indicate...
...IF TODAY'S Catholics are no longer conducting inquisitions it is at least in part because, with an eye to the historical record, they have learned from their mistakes...
...The evidence suggests that religion is ambiguous," writes James Carroll, "a source of consolation, hope and compassion but also of intolerance, contempt and even violence...
...this is not a specifically "postmodern" insight—it is as old as Aristotle...
...In their worldview, women, music, and ancient Buddhist statues are on pretty much the same shaky footing...
...For long periods during the Middle Ages, the world's most cosmopolitan, tolerant, intellectually sophisticated, and scientifically advanced civilization was being assembled on Arab and Islamic soil...
...Centuries of bloody strife and persecution," suggests Lewis, "almost compelled Christians to secularize their states and societies in order to escape from the vicious circle of persecution and conflict...
...MANY PEOPLE condemn terrorist actions but still sympathize with the underlying religious and political ideals that inspire them...
...Today's terrorists, having learned nothing from those tragic and often absurd mistakes of others, are thus condemned, as George Santayana said, to repeat them...
...His views are important because they directly affect the course of world history...
...In these realms, they have privileged access to the truth about the meaning of their own self-expression, self-identification, and personal ideals...
...Should we try to learn about their motives, grievances, political causes, and religious aspirations...
...Having once seized the historical moment, the terrorists cannot now expect to escape the harsh judgment of history...
...They are not even ready for the seventeenth century, when John Locke's principles of religious toleration and John Milton's views on freedom of expression were first published...
...Here the philosopher David Hume provides a useful test...
...Answering "No" suggests that terrorists should be treated as a blind force of nature dangerous, certainly, but comprehensible only in terms of causal laws governing the physical and biological worlds...
...We now know, in ways that we could not have known a year and a half ago, just how deeply and inextricably terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism are connected judging by the actions and views of their most prominent adherents...
...The danger of fundamentalism arises when religion is taken seriously and literally...
...And what is the basis of that belief...
...In terms of intellectual history, the Taliban are just about ready for what is called, in both popular and scholarly accounts of Christian Europe, the Dark Ages...
...Then let the dialogue begin...
...But if enough people agree with you, you do...
...In light of the terrorists' own actions, we should revise our opinions of those views accordingly, potentially rejecting some that we might previously have been inclined to accept...
...Hijacking airplanes and intentionally killing thousands of innocent civilians is wrong, even if Osama bin Laden recommends it highly...
...Of course not...
...We should, therefore, give full and careful consideration to the ideas and opinions of terrorists, particularly as they concern religion and politics...
...Clearly, the Taliban are not ready for the eighteenth century, with its enlightened philosophy and enduring political achievements such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the U. S. Constitution...
...According to the New York Times, Osama bin Laden enjoys "significant" support even among moderates in Saudi Arabia, where he is considered "the conscience of Islam...
...And would the TERRORIST WORLDVIEW pope issue edicts blaming the United States for bringing the whole tragedy upon itself...
...For most of the Middle Ages," writes Lewis, "it was neither the older cultures of the Orient nor the newer cultures of the West that were the major centers of civilization and progress, but the world of Islam in the middle...
...Other administration officials and political allies around the world have consistently maintained that we do not oppose Muslim people as such, or the Islamic religion, culture, or civilization...
...The political causes espoused by terrorists must likewise come under renewed scrutiny and reevaluation in light of the recent terrorist attacks...
...Anthropologists and ethnologists have studied the cultural processes by which particular persons, places, and historical events become invested with sacred or mythological significance...
...and another famous shrine was erected over the site in Jerusalem to which Muhammad made a miraculous journey, left a footprint in a rock, and ascended into heaven...
...One's concept of objectivity, precision, or exactitude should always be appropriate to the realm in which it would be applied...
...In none of these cases are the ideas and opinions of terrorists even relevant...
...The coin of these realms—these fabled lands of make-believe—is influence and importance, just as it is in language...
...These political ideals now take on new, ominous, and substantively suspect meaning through their deep and inherent association with the worldview of terrorism...
...The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself...
...Unfortunately, the controlling sacred text is ambiguous: That all true Believers shall break their Eggs at the convenient End, "and which is the convenient End, seems . . . to be left to every Man's Conscience, or at least in the power of the Chief Magistrate to determine...
...It appears that many of our professed modernist allies are not really ready to emerge from their medieval gloom either...
...Or perhaps Marx's observation is more apt: that history always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce...
...And no one would suggest that, in deference to Catholic sensibilities, our military should not style its campaign against them "Operation Infinite Justice" or conduct operations during the Christmas holiday season...
...It was there that . . . governments and societies achieved a degree of freedom of thought and expression that led persecuted Jews and even dissident Christians to flee for refuge from Christendom to Islam...
...The evidence, however, suggests otherwise...
...It was not always so...
...All rights reserved...
...Acceptance of the Islamic faith is held to imply belief in (1) God, (2) the angels, (3) the inspired books, (4) the prophets, (5) the day of judgment, and (6) God's predestination of good and evil...
...CHARLES W. COLLIER is professor of law and philosophy at the University of Florida...
...We should take the terrorists at their own word and understand their actions as striking instances of self-expression and as defining features of their own religious and political views...
...More generally, articles of faith and political causes are defined by their most important and influential expositors, just as English usage is defined by Shakespeare and Milton...
...On account of this deep involvement, we can now say much more confidently that the terrorists do not "just happen" to be Islamic fundamentalists...
...and the danger is realized when absolutely fantastic propositions having no basis in empirical fact, and admitting neither of proof nor disproof, become the basis for fighting words and ultimately provoke something like a "clash of civilizations...
...What originally might have seemed to reflect "the solemnity of the remorseless working of things" (in Whitehead's gloss on tragedy) has become, at this late date and after a thousand years of highly instructive intellectual history, "something fit only to be laughed at, perhaps contemptuously...
...We now possess relevant and valuable new information as to the true meaning of the terrorists' political agenda (roughly speaking, returning to that happy state of affairs prior to the discovery of America...
...DISSENT / Winter 2003 n 65...
...We should therefore listen attentively, if not respectfully, when Osama bin Laden articulates his version of Islamic fundamentalism, because he counts as an authoritative expositor of that faith...
...62 n DISSENT / Winter 2003 law, and morality, or more generally between the public and private realms...
...There are, however, two realms in which the current terrorists speak with a certain undeniable authority: religion and politics...
...Would Italy refuse to allow its airspace and military bases to be used against the terrorists, on account of its own large Catholic population...
...As a result, the boundaries drawn in the shifting sands of Arabia between "mainstream" Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, and terrorism are becoming increasingly difficult to discern...
...Through their highly influential and widely accepted actions, the terrorists have finally succeeded in redefining their religious and political ideals as terrorist doctrines (roughly speaking, Islamic fundamentalism, militant medievalism, and the inseparability of church and state...
...That distinction is no longer available...
...We are said to be at war only with a small, misguided band of terrorists who just happen to be Muslims...
...But determining what lawyers term the "evidentiary basis" of religious belief is a matter of assessing the reliability of sources, usually ancient legends, sacred texts, and oral tradition...
Vol. 50 • January 2003 • No. 1
