No matter how often they chant ancient slogans, the Islamists are a product of modern times. In their yearning for a rigid set of morals they echo the totalitarian states of the 20th century.
How long the apocalyptic dream of the Islamic State will continue to terrify the Middle East is a strategic question for the nations opposing it, including Canada. But there’s a larger puzzle that may outlast the life of ISIS: How did it get this far? How has it persuaded thousands of young men to kill so often, and so proudly? What obsession makes them travel thousands of miles to throw themselves into a deadly battle?
Some may be foolish adventurers, but many have been taught to act this way. They may have been instructed that Allah will reward them for committing homicide and, if necessary, suicide. A stream of thought, flowing through the Middle East for almost a century, teaches them that no sacrifice is too great, no killing too wanton, if done in the name of Allah.
In the 1930s, the Muslim Brotherhood came to life in Egypt, preaching anti-Zionism, Egyptian independence and the revival of the Islamic caliphate as a powerful empire. The Brotherhood offered something else. Those who despise the West, with its hateful freedoms and rampant immorality, can look forward to a new way of life.
In Brotherhood eyes the modern world has corrupted the Arab lands, leaving individuals bewildered and lost. The Brotherhood promises that a return to medieval ways will purify them. In the West, the burning to death of the Jordanian pilot was quickly labelled “medieval,” which seems a recognition of what the Islamists want.
But no matter how often they chant ancient slogans, the Islamists are a product of modern times. In their yearning for a rigid set of morals, they echo the totalitarian states of the 20th century. Their pervasive anti-Semitism is in part imported from Europe. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an elaborate lie, is as popular in many Arab cities as in Hitler’s Germany or, before that, in czarist Russia. Like the Nazis, the Islamic State favours genocide, in the case of minorities like the Yazidis.
The Brotherhood’s chief philosopher, Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in Egypt in 1966 for plotting the assassination of president Gamal Abdel Nasser, wrote about the development of a new Arab personality in terms that make this paragon sound like the New Soviet Man predicted in the 1930s. The reliance of government on theology sounds like fascist Spain’s support from the Roman Catholic Church in the same period. The more we learn about the 1930s, the more we recognize the truth of W.H. Auden’s phrase, “dead, dishonest decade.”
There’s a theory that in 1967 the argument for Islamist ideology was strengthened by the swift defeat of the Arab nations in the Six Day War with Israel. The Arabs had far more soldiers than Israel and support from the Soviet Union. How could Allah have allowed them to be beaten? Some Arabs reasoned that Allah had ignored their plight because they had strayed too far from piety. To many who were disillusioned, an extreme Muslim belief in an ironbound sharia law seemed a necessary reform.
The ISIS fighters have learned to take pride in their viciousness. They make sure the camera is running if they behead someone or burn him alive. They do it to spread fear and rage among the infidels. When they murdered Kenji Goto, they turned Japan against them. Some Japanese say this is their 9/11 — but what does one more enemy mean to ISIS? The taped burning of the Jordanian pilot was another way of boasting about their casual savagery.
The Islamic State is equally careless with its own troops. It lost about 1,000 soldiers (some of them under age 18) in the failed siege of Kobani, an unimportant Kurdish town. It was clearly a symbolic battle,
The burning of the Jordanian pilot was called ‘medieval.’ Yes, exactly. That’s what ISIS wants to be
a way of impressing potential recruits with the daring and bravery of ISIS. Outrageous behaviour raises the morale of true believers.
When the news of the Charlie Hebdo killings reached the cells of a maximum-security prison in France, the prisoners (according to Le Monde) began screaming with joy — “Allahu Akbar.” They were so energized that they kept crying out for two triumphant days. When released from prison they’ll probably look for an Islamic State recruiter.
There are people in every country who find this war attractive. The news this week from Ottawa about a group charged with trying to arrange for Canadians to join ISIS reinforces stories about recruiting from the U.S., Britain and elsewhere. This week an anonymous reader’s online comment summed it up in four chilling words: “They walk among us.”