The Enemy Is Not Islam. It Is Nihilism

Weekly Standard ^ | October 22, 2001 | Charles Krauthammer

[samtheman]

EUROPE'S GREAT RELIGIOUS WARS ended in 1648. Three and a half centuries is a long time, too long for us in the West to truly believe that people still slaughter others to vindicate the faith.

Thus in the face of radical Islamic terrorism that murders 6,000 innocents in a day, we find it almost impossible to accept at face value the reason offered by the murderers. Yet Osama bin Laden could not be clearer. Jihad has been declared against the infidel, whose power and influence thwart the triumph of Islam, and whose success and example--indeed, whose very existence--are an affront to the true faith. As a leader of Hamas declared at a rally three days after the World Trade Center attack, "the only solution is for Bush to convert to Islam."

To Americans, who are taught religious tolerance from the cradle, who visit each other's churches for interdenominational succor and solidarity, this seems simply bizarre. On September 25, bin Laden issues a warning to his people that Bush is coming "under the banner of the cross." Two weeks later, in his pre-taped post-attack video, he scorns Bush as "head of the infidels."

Can he be serious? This idea is so alien that our learned commentators, Western and secular, have gone rummaging through their ideological attics to find more familiar terms to explain why we were so savagely attacked: poverty and destitution in the Islamic world; grievances against the West, America, Israel; the "wretched of the earth"--Frantz Fanon's 1960s apotheosis of anti-colonialism--rising against their oppressors.

Reading conventional notions of class struggle and anti-colonialism into bin Laden, the Taliban, and radical Islam is not just solipsistic. It is nonsense. If poverty and destitution, colonialism and capitalism are animating radical Islam, explain this: In March, the Taliban went to the Afghan desert where stood great monuments of human culture, two massive Buddhas carved out of a cliff. At first, Taliban soldiers tried artillery. The 1,500-year-old masterpieces proved too hardy. The Taliban had to resort to dynamite. They blew the statues to bits, then slaughtered 100 cows in atonement--for having taken so long to finish the job.

Buddhism is hardly a representative of the West. It is hardly a cause of poverty and destitution. It is hardly a symbol of colonialism. No. The statues represented two things: an alternative faith and a great work of civilization. To the Taliban, the presence of both was intolerable.

The distinguished Indian writer and now Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul, who has chronicled the Islamic world in two books ("Among the Believers" and "Beyond Belief"), recently warned (in a public talk in Melbourne before the World Trade Center attack), "We are within reach of great nihilistic forces that have undone civilization." In places like Afghanistan, "religion has been turned by some into a kind of nihilism, where people wish to destroy themselves and destroy their past and their culture . . . to be pure. They are enraged about the world and they wish to pull it down." This kind of fury and fanaticism is unappeasable. It knows no social, economic, or political solution. "You cannot converge with this [position] because it holds that your life is worthless and your beliefs are criminal and should be extirpated."

This insight offers a needed window on the new enemy. It turns out that the enemy does have recognizable analogues in the Western experience. He is, as President Bush averred in his address to the nation, heir to the malignant ideologies of the 20th century. In its nihilism, its will to power, its celebration of blood and death, its craving for the cleansing purity that comes only from eradicating life and culture, radical Islam is heir, above all, to Nazism. The destruction of the World Trade Center was meant not only to wreak terror. Like the smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas, it was meant to obliterate greatness and beauty, elegance and grace. These artifacts represented civilization embodied in stone or steel. They had to be destroyed.

This worship of death and destruction is a nihilism of a ferocity unlike any since the Nazis burned books, then art, then whole peoples. Goebbels would have marvelled at the recruitment tape for al Qaeda, a two-hour orgy of blood and death: image after image of brutalized Muslims shown in various poses of victimization, followed by glorious images of desecration of the infidel--mutilated American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of the USS Cole, mangled bodies at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Throughout, the soundtrack endlessly repeats the refrain "with blood, with blood, with blood." Bin Laden appears on the tape to counsel that "the love of this world is wrong. You should love the other world...die in the right cause and go to the other world." In his October 9 taped message, al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman abu Ghaith gloried in the "thousands of young people who look forward to death, like the Americans look forward to living."

Once again, the world is faced with a transcendent conflict between those who love life and those who love death both for themselves and their enemies. Which is why we tremble. Upon witnessing the first atomic bomb explode at the Trinity site at Alamogordo, J. Robert Oppenheimer recited a verse from the Hindu scripture "Bhagavad Gita": "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." We tremble because for the first time in history, nihilism will soon be armed with the ultimate weapons of annihilation. For the first time in history, the nihilist will have the means to match his ends. Which is why the war declared upon us on September 11 is the most urgent not only of our lives, but in the life of civilization itself.

[samtheman]

In my opinion, Islam essentially is Nihilism. So to a certain extent I disagree with Krauthammer. I do believe this piece is worth reading.

[moneyrunner]

”In my opinion, Islam essentially is Nihilism. So to a certain extent I disagree with Krauthammer. I do believe this piece is worth reading.”

Thanks for posting this. An excellent read.

I disagree with you. Islam is not inherently nihilistic, or it would not have existed as a culture for over a thousand years. The particular strain we are facing is. The danger to civilization is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that can be bought or captured if the nihilists are not stopped now.

Even now it may be too late to stop some act of mass terror that will make 9/11 look like a warm-up. It depends on how fast, how hard and how effectively we strike.

Pray for success.

[ChadGore]

Yes! . .this is an excelent point.

[ChadGore]

bttt

[samtheman]

You make good points, especially about the coming dangers we all face.

You're probably right about mainstream Islam not being Nihilistic per se, though it certainly lends itself easily to manipulation by Nihilism, to the point where the vast majority of Muslims support the nihilistic actions of "the extremists".

Anyway, I'm willing to modify my statement:

Islam is virulent Barbarism that lends itself quite easily and willingly to maniacal Nihilism.

[InkStone]

Dr. Laura recently had a guest on her show. Dr. Hatoot (sp?) is an Islamic scholar. He was there to "set the record straight regarding the 'peaceful' Islamic faith." But it turned out quite differently...by the time the hour had passed I was more worried than ever. Remember the old advertising adage: "You see things the way you are, not the way they are."

[x]

What evidence do you have to back up your claim? What features of Islam form the basis of your characterization of it as nihilism?

Islam is a radical monotheism. Would any radical monotheism then be a nihilism? I would have thought monotheism to be strongly opposed to nihilism, but since you make the charge, you might want to deal with that question.

Krauthammer's association of the terrorists with Nazism is of interest. But it's not so much that bin Laden is the new Hitler, as that they both grow out of that European atmosphere that produced the anarchists, nihilists and Bolsheviks of a century ago, the Nazis, fascists and Freikorps of the following generation, and the revolutionaries of the 1960's and 1970's. These groups feed off an apocalyptic current that you can trace through history from at least as far back as the Middle Ages and late Antiquity down to Jim Jones and other cultists. There are also certainly precedents for what happened in Islamic history. One can't deny that at various times there has been a fanatical current there, but it's not something that hasn't also been present in Western History. Another parallel would be with the Kamikazis of WWII, though they weren't attacking non-military targets.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

ni·hil·ism (n-lzm, n-)
n.

1. Philosophy.
   1. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
   2. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
4. also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.
5. Psychiatry. A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body, or self does not exist.

Nihilism n 1: a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake 2: complete denial of all established authority and institutions

[2sheep]

>>>The Enemy Is Not Islam. It Is Nihilism

No, the enemy IS Islam.  Truth is being annihilated.   Lies said often enough are still lies.

See, The Allah that Failed:  The 10 Pillars of Totallahtarianism by Robert Locke

[Prodigal Daughter]

Bookmarked to read later. Isn't Krauthammer editor of National Review, the magazine that fired Ann Coulter for telling the truth? (we should convert them, etc.) Islam and paganism are nihilistic by nature.

[Jimmy Valentine]

The Nihilism I'm worried about is centered in the United States primarily on the Left among the influential elitists. Coupled with an Existential cynicism in that same group it is a very toxic value set.

These people need to be purged from our educational, cultural and governmental institutions. They are the intellectual cousins of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Regards,

[politeia]

The comparison of Islamic fundamentalism with Nazism and with all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century is indeed appropriate. According to Speer's account, in the final days before allied armies entered Berlin, Hitler ordered the destruction of the city. His attitude was that the German people, his own people, didn't deserve to live after losing the war. He wished them all dead along with himself. The city must be destroyed too. His hatred of all life, all civilization, and of all peoples was total. This is the psyche of a murderous, self-loathing bully writ large and empowered with an idology that justifies hatred and with the modern technology to try to accomplish his societal death wish. I believe Islamic fundamentalism is fueled by the same self-loathing and the same hatred of life. When Bin Laden's cause is lost, he will turn against his own people with the same zeal he has directed against the West.

The West's greatest vulnerability is its reluctance to recognize this evil...to call it by its name and to return its ferocity in our own fight for life and for freedom. Its the "Can't we all just get along attitude." It is a naive view of human nature that believes that all humans are naturally good and, if treated reasonably and compassionately, will cooperate with each other peacefully and with good intentions. The West maintains this default "Pollyanna" view of human nature despite all the evidence of the 20th century of the susceptability of the human mind to the power of an evil and totalitarian idology. It speaks well for our humanity but works against our survival. Witness our naive and suicidal immigration policy that welcomes terrorists bent on our destruction into our midst.

Whether it is Nazism, Communism, hatred of Jews or Islamic fascism, it is the ideology that justifies the hatred and the murderous acts and it is the ideology that must be defeated along with the armies of its adherents. I keep remembering the scene in the movie "Independence Day" when the alien was in the operating room and the "President" tried to negotiate saying we could learn from each other and finally asking "What do you want us to do?" The answer from the alien was simple and direct -- "Die." Even though the aliens has already attacked 15 large cities, it was only then that the apocalptic nature of the evil was accepted and only then that will to pull out all the stops in the fight for survival was summoned.

[gitmogrunt]

Never mind all the religious and philosophical goble-de-gook..

THE ENEMY IS ISLAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No if's, and's or but's about it!!!!

[ChadGore]

This story needs to be bumped all day.

[x]

Interesting article here: Modernizing Tendency.

[Focault's Pendulum]

Great post.

[GuillermoX]

Sorry. Islam IS the enemy. Too bad Bush doesn't recognize this, he's to busy proclaiming Islam to be a "peaceful and beautiful religion".

[moneyrunner]

”His attitude was that the German people, his own people, didn't deserve to live after losing the war. He wished them all dead along with himself. The city must be destroyed too. His hatred of all life, all civilization, and of all peoples was total. This is the psyche of a murderous, self-loathing bully writ large and empowered with an idology that justifies hatred and with the modern technology to try to accomplish his societal death wish. I believe Islamic fundamentalism is fueled by the same self-loathing and the same hatred of life. When Bin Laden's cause is lost, he will turn against his own people with the same zeal he has directed against the West.”

Excellent essay.

However, I disagree with your analysis of Hitler’s personality. He was the very opposite of self-loathing. He was totally self-centered. The war was about HIS vision of the world. And, as a totally self-centered personality, he was able to commit any crime to achieve his aims.

And, in the end, when all was lost, he wanted the German people to die because they did not live up to his standards. They did not help him achieve his goals. In other words, they were not good enough for him.

By the way, it is this aspect of the Clintons that is so dangerous. It’s totally about them, and their vision of the future. Nothing else, no one else, matters. That’s what makes them sociopaths.

I agree with you that bin Laden cares not a whit about his people except as a means of achieving his vision. When he loses, he will wish them all dead, because they were not good enough for him.

Not self-loathing … egomaniacal.

[blam]

"Isn't Krauthammer editor of National Review."

No. Rich Lowry is editor. Krauthammer does not even show up on their list of contributors.