The Philosophy of Al Qaeda
People out there seem pretty interested in the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Three of my most recent hits have involved searches on those words. Mine is the top-ranked page when "Al-Qaeda" is spelled with a hyphen, and the second-ranked page when it is not. And my page was only referring to someone else's blog page in the first place!
So let's talk about the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Paul Berman wrote an excellent article about it. He identifies Sayyid Qutb as the most important philosopher behind the movement. Qutb is Qaeda's intellectual hero, its "Karl Marx". In this respect, Qutb's best known work is Milestones, his Das Kapital. Berman, however, calls attention to Qutb's deeper work, the enormous In the Shade of the Koran. It is full of literary beauty and deep ideas. Just because ideas are deep, however, does not mean that they are true, and many of Qutb's ideas, Berman argues, are indeed false. Qutb opposes the separation of church and state. He wants to return to a time akin to the Jewish worldview where religious traditions governed every aspects of our lives. The desire for tradition might be fair enough. But to impose that tradition upon everyone by law surely is not. Berman notes that the notion that one has a profound insight into the nature of things is so awe-inspiring and spiritually stirring that people will die for it. Ideas are what is motivating Al Qaeda terroists to die in the name of furthering their cause. Berman's argument is that to combat terror effectively we need our own deep ideas. We need philosophical articulations and justifications of the philosophy of liberalism. To this end, he has offered his own book Terror and Liberalism.
Well, I think I know what I'm going to be reading this weekend!
So let's talk about the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Paul Berman wrote an excellent article about it. He identifies Sayyid Qutb as the most important philosopher behind the movement. Qutb is Qaeda's intellectual hero, its "Karl Marx". In this respect, Qutb's best known work is Milestones, his Das Kapital. Berman, however, calls attention to Qutb's deeper work, the enormous In the Shade of the Koran. It is full of literary beauty and deep ideas. Just because ideas are deep, however, does not mean that they are true, and many of Qutb's ideas, Berman argues, are indeed false. Qutb opposes the separation of church and state. He wants to return to a time akin to the Jewish worldview where religious traditions governed every aspects of our lives. The desire for tradition might be fair enough. But to impose that tradition upon everyone by law surely is not. Berman notes that the notion that one has a profound insight into the nature of things is so awe-inspiring and spiritually stirring that people will die for it. Ideas are what is motivating Al Qaeda terroists to die in the name of furthering their cause. Berman's argument is that to combat terror effectively we need our own deep ideas. We need philosophical articulations and justifications of the philosophy of liberalism. To this end, he has offered his own book Terror and Liberalism.
Well, I think I know what I'm going to be reading this weekend!
Comments
i agree that imposing ideas forcefuly upon others is not correct as each of us has the right to choose.