I made very good headway last night. In fact I probably would have finished the book except that I was interrupted at about 12.45 by the cheering that went up around the neighbourhood. Actually there's a pub about half a kilometre away and there must've been a huge crowd there. So anyway I had to stop reading and listen to the last 8 minutes of Japan v. Australia. A very satisfying result.

I appears that, from the AQ point of view, Huntingdon's Clash of Civilizations is correct. This is a war of Islam against the Crusaders (OBL says about Bush: 'he used the word'). There is more interesting stuff about religion. I had no idea that God is Dead (the death of god marks the beginning of religion, or faith). The meaning of this is that Mohammed was the last of the prophets - these being people to whom to god spoke directly. Mohammed, therefore, has god's final word and the rest of us can only rely on this last prophet in order to know what we have to do. All the other prophets are part of Islam anyway, so only when everybody subscribes to Islam will god's word be fully observed around the world. The main point is that this war is a 'metaphysical' war which attempts to re-constitute "the Middle East or Arab world by narratives other than those of nation or region as distinct demographic and geographical entitities characterized by collective political or economic cultures" (p. 74). In other words, it is an "effort to define the terms of global social relations outside the language of state and citizenship" (p.76), i.e., in terms of religion.

Note that this analysis only applies to the monotheistic world - AQ is not interested in Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. - demonstrating again that AQ's ideology is a direct reflection of the 'West'. Devji also describes this war as a 'sociable' war: "After every battle among them, the bonds linking Christians, Muslims and Jews become stronger, because they exclude every other enemy as well as every other interlocutor" (p 83).

Devji has some very interesting things to say about the part of the globe that we call the Middle East. The most obvious point is that Arab, Arabic language and Islam are by no means coterminous with each other or that region - which is itself a Western category, possibly based on the location of the so-called 'Holy Land' or perhaps oil. He also points to the cosmopolitan nature of the cities in the region - not only the sacred sites, but the commerce of the area have long attracted immigrants from all over. "Juan Cole, for instance, points out that it was Indian money and pilgrims during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that made Najaf and Karbala the most important sites of pilgrimage and religious authority for Shiites around the world" (p. 66). The Bin Laden family comes from Aden (in Yemen) which was for long a prosperous trading port on the Indian Ocean. OBL's father moved to Saudi Arabia in search of better opportunities when Aden went into decline. The cosmopolitanism of the cities (Jerusalem, Mecca, Dubai, etc) comes about because, while the majority of the population may be non-Arab, they cannot become citizens or have rights of permanent residence - even the natives are not citizens, but subjects - therefore "all relations among these populations tend to be cosmopolitan instead of national" (p. 72). Indeed, their relations are the relations of the global market place. It is no accident then, that the global jihad emerged from such cosmopolitan enclaves, with all their mobility and lack of attachment to the politics of local needs and interests.

This absence of attachment to location also explains the jihad as "a series of global effects" that is more the product of the media than any lineage of Islamic authority. For example, one very popular theory in Saudi Arabia that held the US government responsible for the destruction of the WTC, had as its evidence a piece of dialogue from the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight! There is another astounding description (p. 91) of the James Bond-like behaviour of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after a bombing in the Philippines in 1994. Having immersed themselves in Hollywood fantasy, they use the media to create new images of Islam and the jihad which mirror the images of terror and devastation produced in Hollywood. It is, after all, only through the global media that the jihad becomes universal - otherwise it would be just a local murder or a local battle. Martyrdom itself "achieves meaning only by being witnessed in the mass media" (p. 94). It creates a global community because it is collectively witnessed in mass media. I'm reminded of Marshall McLuhan's 1960s work: "the medium is the message".

The act of witnessing also places responsibility upon the witness:

"... responsibility here does not depend on a knowledge of some truth, so that like the citizen who breaks the law without knowing it, the American who supports an anti-Muslim government without knowing it is held responsible for his actions. Rather than depending upon the knowledge of truth as an intellectual or epistemological entity, therefore, such responsibility depends upon an ethical choice made available only by the media's representation of martyrdom. In other words media images of the jihad, no matter how distorted or deceptive, force its audience of Americans and others into an ethical choice to support either its Muslim victims or their infidel oppressors - and all who make this choice are held responsible for it, having become participants in the jihad irrespective of their knowledge about its truth. The very spectacle of martyrdom imposes certain responsibilities upon its witnesses, and not the notion of some objective truth that might be found hidden behind it..." (pp. 100-101)

Thus AQ has no qualms about killing 'innocents'. There are no such people. However, ignorant we are and however little influence we have over our political leaders, we are all ethically responsible. This is a nice little straightjacket isn't it? Moreover, in our 'sociable' war, the anti-jihad makes the same demands: Bush says "you are either with us or against us" and makes the same appeal to metaphysics - we are either for or against an emotion called 'terror', while terror inflicted by 'our' side is no moral dilemma for 'us' either. Dead Palestinian children are responsible for their own deaths!

On a more optimistic note, Devji argues that, given its purely ethical character, the jihad could easily transform itself into a peaceful movement. "Violence... may be a necessarily short-term impact of the new Islam that is today best represented by the jihad. Among the long-term features of this new Islam are its fragmentation, democratization and individualism..." (p. 132). What the jihad does is to illustrate the limitations and failings of traditional (local) politics, which are goal-oriented and full of compromise, and the transformation of politics itself into a series of fragmented, democratic and purely ethical movements (such as environmentalism, anti-globalization, etc).

I would add that the violence of this jihad is very likely a response to the violence and repressiveness of local politics that lead to the humiliation of the Muslim individual of which OBL speaks much. In that sense, there is a clear linkage between the local and the global, so that the importance of local politics is not obviated. And I wonder what he means by 'short-term'. The separation of church and state and the rise of individualism in the West took a couple of centuries.

One more chapter and then I'm done. I'm disappointed at the lack of comments so far. Are you all waiting for the grand finale?

I finished chapters 1 & 2 last night. Devji regards AQ's jihad as part of the history of modern times because (a) its history "is a global history that depends upon the disintegration of traditional Muslim narratives and chronologies" and (b) its ideology simply mirrors the history of the West itself; it is "parasitical upon Western accounts of Islamic history" (pp. 29-30). The most telling evidence of this is in the way that AQ sees the jihad as deriving directly from the Cold War. They credit themselves, or more generally the Afghan mujahideen, with having brought about the demise of the Soviet Union by defeating its army in Afghanistan. Thus, according to this somewhat stretched view of reality in which the East Europeans or the Soviet economic system played no role at all, the jihad gained a global role by participating directly in the Cold War and, in the post-Cold War era, assumes the mantle of the former USSR in providing the only force willing to confront the 'absolute dominance' of the United States.

Chapter 2 contains a longish analysis of how the jihad has 'democratized' the holy war. In the Sunni tradition, the jihad's military function is reserved for the properly constituted authority of the state. However, AQ borrows the idea of 'martyrdom operation' from Shiism, treats holy war as an individual ethical obligation - making it "part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship" (OBL cited p. 34) - from yet another tradition, and bears a lot of comparison with Sufism and mystical brotherhoods in its appeal to a "rich and occult world of prophetic and other dreams, which are constantly spoken about within Al-Qaeda" (p. 42). In particular, Devji refers to the tradition of hijrat - retreat from lands where Islam is in danger - which, although it is often treated in the scholarly literature as an alternative to jihad, has often provided the basis for jihad emanating from the periphery of the Islamic states. "What is noteworthy is [the] self-conscious rejection of traditional Islamic centers and authorities, and a corresponding glorification of untamed Muslim peripheries as sites for an immeasurably more authentic experience of Islam" (p. 47). There are some quotes from AQ spokesmen that remind me of nothing so much as Mao's incitement that 'it is right to rebel' - which was similarly borrowed from an ancient author for modern purposes. In other words, the jihad's eclectic approach "signals a democratization of authority in the Muslim world" (p. 51).

Finally in this chapter we come to the causes of AQ's promotion of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia. Such violence, which seems to become an end in itself rather than being directed at any particular Shiite 'offence', initially seems odd given that Shiite doctrines are accorded much respect within AQ. But again, Devji's analysis reminds me of the old left. The Shia have become metaphorical Trotskyists to the Sunni Stalinism: "The only kind of Shiism that meets with regular and systematic Sunni disapproval... is the one closest to it" (p. 58). Since the two sects are brought close together in the new global ideology, the only way for this Sunni movement to reject Shiism as a distinct, autonomous tradition is to locate it outside Islam - in other words to accuse the Shiites of being "unfaithful to the very Prophet, scripture and religion they hold in common with Sunnis" (p. 59).

I'm in no position at all to comment on the veracity of Devji's references to the various traditions upon which he claims AQ draws, but the argument does make sense to me. I begin to see why many people have said that AQ's real target is the Saudi regime and the other Islamic states that collaborate in capitalism's post-colonial empire. But the parallels with previous attempts to globalize an ideology are also suggesting the ultimate failure of the project. I think it will be hard, in the long run, for this global network to overcome the local, national and sub-national, nature of the various struggles in which individual groups are engaged. However, it may succeed in its 'democratization' project - in other words in the project of delinking Islamic religious tradition from its association with state power (not that this is what OBL himself wants - with his references to Mullah Omar as the new Caliph). As with protestantism in Europe, it seems to me that the inevitable result of religion becoming an 'individual ethical obligation' is secularism in the state. Unfortunately, it also seems that we have to endure the religious wars in the process.

Last night I began reading Landscapes of the Jihad, by Faisal Devji (Hurst & Co., London, 2005). I only managed 21 pages before I became too sleepy to read on, but it is interesting. This chapter is called 'Effects without Causes' and basically argues that, for Al Qaeda, the effects are more important than the causes. In fact there isn't really a cause - unlike, say, the cause of Palestinian liberation - and this lack of a cause is what makes Al Qaeda successful. Lacking a cause, it can recruit all sorts of disparate people: "Since participants in the jihad are connected by the contingency of effects rather than by some common substance, therefore, they share neither a psychological profile nor require any cultic or ideological uniformity to bind them together." (p. 19)

The argument is bolstered by quotation from Osama Bin Laden's various tapes. In one, for example, where he discusses 9/11 "the destruction wrought is upstaged in his comments by the global impact of their diffusion" (p. 14), by which he means that Islam has come to the attention of the West in a way that it never has before. Suddenly, Bush et al. started talking about 'good' Islam and 'peaceful' Islam. Sales of the Koran skyrocketed and the media is saturated with discussions about Islam and Islamism. For OBL, this kind of 'proselytizing' is far more effective than, and indeed undermines, traditional (local) forms of preaching at the mosque; it not only attracts recruits to Al Qaeda, but does so without any direct contact between any of these groups. Moreover, at AQ training camps in Afghanistan it was apparently forbidden to discuss doctrinal matters at all. Such things are also absent from OBL's own speeches: abstraction from the textual analysis and exegisis that characterizes local preaching makes possible an understanding of the message of the 9/11 bombers "by both Arabs and non-Arabs - even by the Chinese" (OBL cited on p. 13). Devji likens Al Qaeda's global structure to something like Greenpeace that brings together "allies and enemies of the most heterogeneous character", who share no common history and don't even communicate with each other.

This lack of a cause also explains why AQ doesn't claim responsibility for its attacks. Instead OBL offers up a myriad of possible explanations as to why people might do something like the 9/11 attacks - it could be the clash of civilizations, or Israel or a CIA conspiracy, or revenge by American Jews against Bush for winning Florida... Claiming responsibility is only important if there is a cause to which the effect is linked. Why bomb the US embassy in Kenya, where there has never been a radical Islamist movement, other than to create a global effect which gives play to the dissatisfactions of almost anybody? In his preface, the author discusses the bombing of the US embassy in suburban Dar-es-Salaam, which most locals only heard about from the global media (CNN and BBC) - it was only later picked up by the local media.

One further interesting point arises from this analysis. The bombings in East Africa highlighted for the locals their marginality in global events. For them the distinction between the US and AQ was irrelevant. Where Tanzanians and Kenyans are 'outsiders', the AQ operatives are 'insiders': "Very few... for instance, have a religious education, most having been trained within secular institutions and in technical fields, and many are as familiar with the infidel West as with any other place. These men are already inside the world of their enemies and can no longer be described as an outside threat in any sense." (p. xiv)

The final section of chapter 1 shows how this movement is tearing up the traditions, the genealogies on which traditional (local) teachings have been based - creating an eclectic mixture which has no specific Islamic genealogy, but can be located in the history of modern times. More later.

slit has a very good piece on the Sharm El-Sheik bombing. I think she's wrong to pick Egypt, rather than Saudi Arabia is OBL's main target, but it is also the case that Al Qaeda is a loose coalition and generally her point that this terrorism is all about the Middle East rather than 'clash of civilizations' is spot on. Attacks on the West are justified, not because of our decadence, but because of the mutual dependence of the Saudi, Egyptian, Israeli and US/other-Western regimes.

Nor is it about the 'clash of fundamentalisms'. As somebody commented on her post, the appeal to the fundie Christians is about domestic US politics - something like an instrument the Bush administration uses to win support for it's geo-political strategy. (Though George himself may actually believe this is what it's all about - he seems like a simple sort of guy, it's hard to tell.)