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was
in Bratislava, Slovakia, about to give a lecture when news of the
bombing of the Twin Towers was brought to the lectern. In the days
that followed, my friends and I were deeply touched by the tears,
sympathy, and signs of solidarity we saw all around us. Weekend
football (soccer) games were canceled; a three-minute silence was
observed Friday morning just before noon; in Prague, vigil lights
and flowers were strewn on Wenceslaus Square, as they had been some
decades before in honor of the fallen Jan Palluch; ecumenical prayer
services were held in St. Vitus Cathedral, in the presence of President
Havel and the U.S. ambassador.
It was a little
harder, in Europe, to get the news. Basically, we had CNN and, in
the morning, the International Herald Tribune. I found myself
playing Sherlock Holmes, detail by detail, to try to arrive by inductive
logic at a picture of the whole.
I figured two
things out soon enough. First, the "root cause" of terrorism
is not poverty. The biographies of the perpetrators, like those
of the Students [Taliban] of Afghanistan, show that they
are from middle-class elites, educated, schooled, technically adept.
Second, their
governing ideology is a lethal and perverse mixture of political
nihilism — destroy, destroy, destroy — with a patina
of stray snippets of Muslim religiosity. Terror does not spring
from the essence of Islam, which it in fact contradicts. Instead,
it gathers together, in one lethal poison, every text and historical
incident of Muslim history that encourages both death to infidels
and military adventurism.
"Islam
has never in history taken over a nation by voluntary conversion,"
reads the terrorists' manual prepared by Osama bin Laden, "but
only by war." That manual (which I cite by oral memory, only
having heard it read aloud) calls for asymmetrical war — a
war not by armies arrayed, but by sneaky acts of terror — against
the leading powers of the West.
The impulse
of this war, I infer, is not religious, but political. Unlike the
wars of the 20th century, its goal is not even rhetorically "progressive."
Its goal is not to correct or improve the West. Its goal is not
even to make the Islamic nations more democratic or prosperous or
innovative. Its goal is to remove the goad that the existence of
the West — proactively democratic, proactively urging nations
to economic development — has presented to Muslim elites.
Radical elites
cannot stand that goad. It causes them unendurable torment. It places
them in a psychologically unbearable position.
Radical elites
in the Middle East have given up on the dream of building progressive
societies by their own devices. They cannot abide by the demands
of democratic living. Their socialist, anti-capitalist tradition
blocks them from even considering economic development based upon
private property, enterprise, innovation, and discovery. The ideal
of the equality of women and men profoundly disturbs their inner
peace. The practices of open dissent, loyal opposition, negotiation,
compromise, ambiguity in practice, and diversity of religious worship
and belief seem to them socially destructive.
Therefore,
the ordinary daily practices of the West fill the souls of these
radicals both with powerful inner attractions, to which they cannot
admit, and with deep feelings of fear, terror, and revulsion. If
Western ways triumph, their psyche, which is rooted in an altogether
different reality, comes under threat of extinction. If international
progress prevails, they will break apart inwardly under its pressure,
disintegrate, evaporate into nothingness. There is, they think,
no place for them in a world of progress, international style.
The Taliban
"government" is not, in fact, building up the infrastructure
of Afghanistan, laying out new roads, or even keeping existing roads
in repair. It is not building schools, clinics, or economic centers.
It has no plans for progress of any kind. The Taliban is not a government
at all, but a military-security force rooted in religio-political
ideology, not ethnic cohesion. Its leadership and many of its crack
cadres are disproportionately Arab, not Afghan.
The Taliban
ideal is to enforce an abstract idea — an academic's idea —
of the simple life of yesteryear, in an Arab rather than an Afghani
style. Its first emphasis is to keep women covered and uneducated
and out of the schools — as if they do not exist in public
life at all. It imposes the discipline not of the mountains but
of the desert, not of history but of abstract ideals. (The Buddhist
monumental carvings had endured for centuries, only now to be condemned
by a new set of standards.) Born from warlike resistance to atheistic
Communist invasion, the Taliban turned to hating the outside world.
If I understand
correctly, the Taliban are profoundly hated throughout Afghanistan,
nearly as much as the Soviets were hated. That is one reason I suspect
that the bombing of the World Trade Center was on a changeable time
line, awaiting the assassination of the main political and military
threat to the Taliban, the Panther of Panjshir: General Massoud,
the Invincible, whose lightly armed but undefeated troops had been
forced by the superior Taliban arms to retreat into the mountains
of the northeast. Only after the assassins, disguised as Belgian
journalists, managed to deceive Massoud and complete their dirty
work was the signal given for the operation in New York and Washington
— or so I imagine. If the New York bombings went first, Massoud
would have been on guard. Without Massoud, domestic opposition to
the Taliban is relatively leaderless.
A very large
section of the educated middle class in Middle Eastern countries,
unlike the Taliban and the Terrorists, has not given up on the dream
of economic progress — progress in literacy, schooling, and
medical care, among other things — in their region. Many see
in Islam resources for empowering economic growth. Of itself, Islam
is more powerfully anti-socialist than it is anti-property, anti-market,
or anti-innovation. Islam once inspired a great civilization that
far outshone the Christian West (then submerged by barbarian invasions)
in wealth, commerce, architecture, and the fine arts. This period
of Islamic preeminence lasted from about the 11th through the 14th
centuries. Its civilizing effects remain still a powerful social
memory. That is why the rough barbarism and political nihilism of
today's terrorists repulse and embarrass many. Bin Laden's is not
the face of Islam that they love and cherish. And they would love
to be free from the very real threat of terror in their own midst.
For the truth
is that nearly every traditional institution of the Middle East
is now under threat from the terrorists. It is quite difficult for
Islamic scholars and clergy to condemn the terror outright, or to
point out that it is a perfidious perversion of Islam. They do not
want to be kneecapped, or to have their children kidnapped on the
streets. (This is true even in such cities as London and Paris.)
Only when there is a huge social convulsion against the terrorists,
a thorough effort by all international and national institutions
to make war on terrorism, will more and more middle-class Muslims
resolve to join in. They will be grateful for liberation from the
daily fear they now experience. But they cannot move to insist upon
it until they feel they have a reasonable chance of success.
Many Americans
have also been ready to go on "suicide missions" in the
name of their country, following the flag, as the boys at Utah Beach
did, or as the men of New York's Fire Department did who climbed
the Towers floor by floor to their death. So too did the bomber
pilots flying into nearly solid walls of flak over German industrial
centers in World War II. We Americans, too, are willing to die for
our fellows and to call upon God as we fall.
The terrorists'
vision of the malevolent role of the United States in the world
must have been reinforced, or at least comforted, by the violent
anti-globalization rhetoric and actions in Seattle, Prague, and
Genoa.
I find it quite
easy to sympathize with the equanimity of Muslim terrorists facing
certain death. What I do not find quite credible is the view that
their motivation is chiefly religious, or that their comfort is
a vision of paradise for "martyrs." The evidence seems
to show a predominant will to destroy, and to rejoice
in the humiliation of those destroyed. One would not have to be
a Muslim to share in this will. Islamic faith has nothing essential
to contribute to it, and much with which to redirect it.
Among our journalists
(and law professors) we seem to find a disproportionate number who
might be described as secular fundamentalists. They never met a
religion they didn't dislike; their understanding of religion is
practically zero. They take any conviction for which people are
willing to die to be a kind of "fanaticism." "Martyrdom"
is not on their charts. The prospect of "paradise" after
death makes them nervous. Not understanding such terrain, they too
easily display their own gullibility, unable to make crucial distinctions.
The motivation
of the terrorists was not essentially religious, but only given
a religious cover to serve political purposes — to incite a
larger Islamic vs. Western war. They were trying to use Islam
for their own destructive purposes. They were not trying to make
Islam become better, greater, more beautiful, an ornament to the
human race. Their aim was to destroy the United States and its friends.
The terrorists
imagine the United States to be an enemy of their own souls. To
give their lives to destroy that enemy is a way of relieving the
unbearable inner pressure they feel.
I don't doubt
that they in part enjoyed their time in the United States, and in
other Western countries, and admired the free society even while
they also loathed and plotted to humiliate it. Sitting around a
swimming pool in Florida, having a drink in a bar, going easily
where they wished, being accepted and respected by colleagues and
friends — all this could not have been entirely unpleasant
to them, or wholly irksome. Being human, they are not immune to
the vision of the natural rights of all human beings. Yet they could
easily think of an America they hated.
That very inner
division of soul made living in peace with themselves intolerable.
In a flaming act of destruction, they brought themselves psychological
rest.
To be perfectly
clear about this inner division, let me distinguish its two phases.
First, America represents an intolerable goad to progress, political
and economic, in human rights and in innovation, demanding constant
change, the rule of law, equality between the sexes, and pluralism
of worship. When elites, or a portion of the elites, give up on
the possibility of realizing these goals in national life, they
do not cease feeling these restless imperatives in their own hearts.
One solution to the inner contradiction is to destroy the source
of that unrest — to display before one's astounded soul that
the United States is helpless and contemptible.
Second, even
for one who begins to believe that the condition of the poor in
the Middle East and elsewhere can be improved — and that justice
and due process can be brought back to political life, with an end
to secret police and repression and rule by political favor —
the pressure of modern ideals (lifting up the poor, the protection
of human rights) entails so much psychological change, such
a radical reconstruction of both the existing outer world and the
personal inner world, that as far as the eye can see there will
be only turmoil and strife, inhuman efforts, and a high probability
of failure. Wouldn't it be easier not to go forward into
the 21st century? Wouldn't it be easier to restore the calmer,
quieter world of the 12th or 13th century?
There was a
time when Arab culture was happy and at peace with itself, without
invidious comparison with others, without the imperative to become
what it is not — when one could eat, drink, and be merry; worship,
pray, and know inner peace; and dwell in peace and happiness in
home and harem. The soul that is asked to become modern (even postmodern)
suddenly, today, can recall (or thinks it can recall) a far
happier and better world than today's. Certainly, people were far
poorer. But poverty is not mutually exclusive with happiness; on
the contrary, wealth brings cares and unhappiness. The inner soul
longs for the world of the 12th century. It cannot bear the tensions
of the 21st.
In a word,
the imperative of progress injures the souls of the less-developed
world, especially the souls of educated elites. That imperative
introduces an at times unbearable tension into the soul.
Worse still,
this imperative has a single, symbolic source.
Among its symbols
yet to be destroyed are the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. Capitol,
the White House, the John Hancock Building in Boston, the Sears
Tower in Chicago, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and others.
To protect
their own egos from dissolution, certain souls today see no choice
but to destroy these symbols, and to render what they stand for
contemptible. They do not die for Islam, which of itself condemns
what they do; they die to save their own humiliated egos.
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