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Bad, but not mad or medieval

IN trying to understand the threat posed by terrorism committed in the name of Islam, the most misleading word, much used, is "medieval". The phenomenon of Osama bin Laden and his like is a modern phenomenon.

The now famous picture from the early 1970s shows the young Osama in the milieu in which he grew up. On holiday with his large family in Sweden, he stands in front of a pink Cadillac, wearing the flared jeans and big-collared shirt that were the Western fashion of the day. This boy did not come out of the desert and stare uncomprehending at the glittering wealth of a Western world of which he knew nothing. He was a beneficiary of that wealth and he was brought up with it. All his brothers and sisters, we are told, live at ease with it. For reasons that we do not know ("In the childhood of Judas, Jesus was betrayed", perhaps), he came to hate it, to rebel against it and now to wage war on it.

This pattern of rebellion is quite a common one in the Romantic and post-Romantic age. Rousseau provided a prototype. Byron, dressed as a Greek patriot, made it sexy. Marx sat in the Reading Room of the British Museum and analysed the rottenness of his own bourgeois society. Lenin imbibed these doctrines and was sent by capitalist Germany in a sealed train to begin in Russia the overthrow of the liberal order in which he had passed his life. Hitler, with the rage of the second-rate artist, saw the destruction of his own civilisation as a beautiful thing. Even a much, much better man, Mahatma Gandhi, only acquired the clothing and the spirituality of the East after a rigorous training in the legal profession of the West.

Bin Laden's turban and beard are supposed to proclaim his Islamic authenticity, but his mind is that of the modern Western revolutionary. His rage is not that of the "primitive" tribesman, but of the student protester who wants to blow up Daddy's company. Not for nothing does the word taliban mean "students". Not for nothing were the attacks in America the "perfect" modern crime: the deed understood Western fears, trumped Western films, expressed a Western fantasy.

Bin Laden's claim to speak for Islam, therefore, is just as bogus as was Lenin's to speak for "the people". "Hostility toward America is a religious duty," he told Time magazine in 1999. Yet that "duty" is no more in the Koran than the idea that God is an Englishman is in the New Testament. He may well be sincere in his interpretation of his faith, but we waste our time if we seek the roots of such fundamentalism in the scriptures that its adherents so often invoke. The Islamic fundamentalists are like 19th-century nationalists or 20th century communists: they have a political creed of violence and their purpose is to overthrow whatever great power in the world they regard as unjust.

They therefore use modern methods, as witness the high level of sophistication and education among those who planned and executed the attacks. And just as the word "medieval" is inappropriate, so is the word "mad". There is, perhaps, an ultimate madness in a creed dedicated to the destruction of entire nations, but this does not mean that each terrorist action is irrational. One of the great mistakes people made about Hitler was not to take Mein Kampf seriously; yet in it he set out pretty clearly what he believed. Once in power, he pursued his programme faithfully.

It seems sensible to credit Osama bin Laden and his associates with a comparable sense of malign purpose, rather than to throw up our hands in uncomprehending dismay. It is interesting to note how bin Laden, who is a Saudi, returns again and again to the alleged offence of infidel American troops being based on the "sacred" soil of his country (that soil is not, in fact, sacred to Islam. There are holy places such as Mecca, but no idea of a holy land.) And it is alarming to see that it is fear of this precise accusation that prevents Saudi Arabia from granting the Americans the bases they need. Bin Laden is at present in the exiled phase of a revolutionary's life, experienced by Lenin and by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The next phase, surely, is triumphant return to his homeland. Such a return would guarantee the power and prestige necessary to win support right across the Islamic world to overthrow existing regimes ("These countries belong to Islam and not the rulers," bin Laden has said), and begin the final conflagration with the West which he seeks.

The West has faced such enemies before, and has too often been lazy in working out what they are trying to do. If we make this effort, however, we can certainly defeat them.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2001