The
Rational Argumentator
Ideas Matter: Why Civilizations Clash
Indeed, World War 4[1] is a war of ideas; it boils down to the difference between what Thomas Friedman has called the "Lexus" (globalism) and the "olive tree" (tribalism), or what Benjamin Barber describes as "jihad vs. McWorld." To be sure, we still need armies, but ideas matter-- Ayn Rand told us culture trumps politics-- and in the long run the bad ideas, if unchallenged, will only breed more 9/11 kamikazes.
Some say these bad ideas evince an epochal antipathy between what I will term "political Islam"[2] and the West, a "clash of civilizations" in Samuel Huntington's formulation, which shapes the essence of their mutual cultural alienation. Yet what is this essence? What is it that we, as Americans, stand for? Who hates what we stand for? And what do they stand for? If the answers have been ambiguous--for one, "terrorism" is a tactic, not an enemy-- Berman brings them into focus.
His most useful contribution to our understanding of this war lies in his commentary on, based on English translations of, the Egyptian theologian Sayyid Qutb (1906-66). A member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the prototypical terrorist organization that politicized a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, Qutb violently opposed Gamal Nasser's secular régime. In return, Nasser imprisoned and/or executed many of its members. Still, the organization remained active underground, and thirty-five years later Qutb's poisonous legacy shot up in four Boeing 767s, by way of a new Brotherhood, known as al Qaeda. (In fact, Qutb's younger brother Muhammad taught Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia, where one of his students was Osama bin Laden.)
Qutb denunciated modernity and lamented the dualistic "schizophrenia" of the secular and the sacred. But, rather than seeking transcendence in a way that would allow both to exist within a larger context, Qutb sought to erase secular life by engulfing life itself in religion. His acutest quarrel was not with America's failure to uphold its principles; his quarrel was with the principles.[3] Scorning our materialism, capitalism, individualism, humanism, rationalism, decadence, and moral laxity, Qutb upheld austerity, self-sacrifice, collectivism, faith or feeling above reason or science, and self-denial. In Qutb's view, the former traits not only induce mental confusion and spiritual corruption; they also graft that slavery onto the pure Islamic soul.
And so, for Qutb, the most offensive element of liberalism is its separation of state from church. His vision of "liberation" thus entailed unrelenting adherence to Islamic law, sharia, or, as Berman writes, "freedom from false doctrines that fail to recognize God." That bin Laden sees Saddam Hussein as an apostate is an extension of this worldview, which repudiates Zionists and Christian Westerners from without and secularists from within; the political Islamists want to marginalize or purge not only the Pan Arabists, but also any liberal Muslims.[4] The implications of are unmistakable; the necessity for enforcement echoes the totalitarian triumvirate of communism, fascism, and Nazism.
Hence, Qutb's disciples furiously beat back discotheques and Big Macs in Iran and Bali, they try to stone women to death for adultery in Nigeria, and they knock down those "towers of Babel," as Norman Mailer put it, in New York. For, as Dinesh D'Souza argues in What's So Great about America, freedom entails the freedom to choose one's virtue, to wear a burka on Mondays and a skirt on Fridays. But why the sword and not just the pen? As Berman implies, and historian John Lewis makes explicit, "Nihilism, the desire to destroy, is why the enemies of freedom fly planes into buildings."[5] For to them, anything this-worldly lacks moral value; only a supernatural paradise awash with virgins has meaning. Moreover, "commerce, mixed populations, artistic freedom, sexual license, scientific pursuits, leisure, personal safety, [and] wealth"-- all the infidel's creature comforts-- come with the "usual concomitant, power."[6] Thus, in order to stand a chance, jihad must accompany, in effect co-opting, the exercise in philosophical cleansing.
And yet, our enemy is not coextensive with any particular religion, like Islam, or any particular region, like the Arab or Muslim street. Rather, the enemy is wider -- the enemy is an idea, a political ideology that revolts against the liberal world order. Still, an idea needs ideologues, and in their twenty-first century incarnation these ideologues tend to web Islamism and politics. Further, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, our enemies also benefit from Islamic sanctuary in "Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Yemen, money from Saudi Arabia and pan-Arabic charities, and indirect political tolerance and at times covert support from members of the Saudi Royal family, the government of Basher Assad, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, elements of the Pakistani government, and Yasser Arafat."[7]
Here, I depart slightly from Berman, in that I situate this ideology in a larger context. For instance, who do you think wrote the following? "Man is made of mud and ashes. . . .Why are you proud, O mud? Wherefore art thou exalted. . . .O the vile ignobility of human existence! O the ignoble condition of human vileness. . . .Happy are they who die before birth, who experience death before tasting life."[8] If you thought Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden, guess again; Pope Innocent III wrote these words in the twelfth century AD. But would Qutb or bin Laden have disagreed? Indeed, whether they are American Evangelical Christians living in the Bible Belt, Orthodox Jews in the West Bank settlements, or political Muslims in Pakistani madrasas, our enemies all merely spin different variations on the same basic ideas.[9]
To concretize this anti-liberal revolt, recall the image of two passenger jets smashing into the World Trade Center, as portrayed by philosopher Harry Binswanger. "First, observe the target: the World Trade Center. What does the World Trade Center symbolize. . . .It is the core of Wall Street, which is the base of New York City. New York is the dynamo powering America-- the so-called Great Satan."[10] Second, the World Trade Center, Wall Street, New York, and America all symbolize capitalism. Naturally, then, our enemies damn capitalism, although the West now understands that capitalism means wealth and progress-- concepts our enemies further damn.[11]
Next, recall "the images of Osama bin Laden and his primitive, bearded barbarians squatting in the dirt around their campfires in Afghanistan." Now "[j]uxtapose that primitivism with the image of the World Trade Center, where[in] free, proud men" and women were hard at work on their laptops and cellular phones, "high above the towers of Manhattan-- until the terrorist planes destroyed them."[12] The meaning of the World Trade Center, as a symbol of liberalism, is therefore "individual freedom, the freedom to use one’s independent mind to produce material prosperity, a rising standard of living, and individual happiness on this earth. Freedom, wealth, happiness--life": liberalism's values are anathema to our enemies.[13]
Of course, it took centuries to liberalize the Western mind, for this attitude of tolerance to take root. This, however, is precisely what our enemies do not want. Of all people, Ayatollah Khomeini understood the aforesaid "essence" better than anyone. Khomeini said: "We are not afraid of economic sanctions or military intervention. What we are afraid of is Western universities."[14] Indeed, if one considers, as Khomeini and Qutb did, Western universities as a symbol of the unfettered mind, of reason given full play, of the right to question anything, then the terrorists are right to fear-- no, welcome-- the West.
There is just one last problem. "To arrive at a situation in which Nazis have conquered Europe," Berman explains, "you not only need to have the Nazis themselves, you need to have all the other right-wing movements that look on Nazis in a friendly light, and you need to have left-wing opponents like the anti-war French Socialists, who cannot se?e that Nazis are Nazis." Applying this pearl to our new enemies, we may conclude that to defend America "to defend Western civilization" we infidels need the proud, moral confidence and certainty to know that our ideas undergird life, that ours is the morality of liberalism and hence liberty. In the same way, we must recognize that our enemy's ideas undergird death, that theirs is the morality of terror and hence tyranny.
[1] The "Cold" War was in fact World War 3 and the war on terror is as global, as varied, and as important as prior world wars.
[2] To be "radical" is to grasp things by the root, to examine their origins, to engage in analysis of fundamentals. Thus, following Ayn Rand, I am a self-described "radical for [laissez-faire] capitalism." But "radical," like "extremist" or "fundamentalist," while accurate, misses the point in describing the Islamic terrorists. Daniel Pipes's formulation of "militant" Islam, while better, is in my view too broad and undistinguishing; to be a terrorist "of any variety" is by definition to be militant. Hence, "militant Islam" means "terrorist Islam," which lacks explanatory power. Rather, what binds together those who have, in President Bush's word, "hijacked" Islam, is their political ideology; hence, "political Islam." (It's really "ideological" Islam, but while alliterative "ideological" is too wordy to catch on.) Now, of course, a political Muslim is not necessarily a terrorist. And, yes, one can hold strictly to the sharia without resorting to force. But what makes a Muslim terrorist a terrorist is that he politicizes his religion.
[3] Chris Matthew Sciabarra, "Understanding the Global Crisis Reclaiming Rand's Radical Legacy," Free Radical, May/June 2003. <http://www.solohq.com/Articles/Sciabarra/Understanding_the_Global_Crisis__Reclaiming_Rands_Radical_Legacy.shtml>
[4] Sciabarra.
[5] John Lewis, "Hatred of Western Civilization: Why Terrorists Attacked America," Capitalism Magazine, September 20, 2001. <http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1098>
[6] Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, "Occidentalism," New York Review of Books, Vol. XLIX, No. 1 (January 17, 2002).
[7] Victor Davis Hanson, "The Truth Will Set Us Free," National Review, November 7, 2003. <http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200311070835.asp>
[8] Pope Innocent III, "On the Misery of Man," Two Views of Man (Unger).
[9] Today's political Muslims are just more much consistent than their brethren, who have and continue to adapt their beliefs to modernity and its midwife, liberalism.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] As quoted in Daniel Pipes, "Fundamental Questions about Muslims," Wall Street Journal (October 30, 1992).
___________
Jonathan Rick is the founder and the president of the Hamilton College Objectivist Club. He also writes a weekly column, "No Straw Men," for the school newspaper, the Spectator.
Click here to return to TRA's Issue XIX Index.
Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel, Eden against the Colossus, here.Read Mr. Stolyarov's comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, here.