Terminologies of Terrorisms?

Terrorism

Here's an odd headline from the NYT (March 20, 2019):

Unmasking the roots of white terror

I wonder who comes up with these wordings? Can roots be 'masked'?  And shouldn't the word "terror" be "terrorism"? Maybe this is better:

Uprooting the roots of white terrorism

If you don't like "uprooting," how about "digging up" or "pulling up"? I'm not just being persnickety. I want to get the terminology right when I talk about something.

I know what the terrorism of ethnic nationalism is, and I know that it comes in every color of the rainbow coalition. The expression "White Terrorism" is obviously problematic if used to refer to Serbo-Croatian attacks against each other. Serbs and Croats are both white, but they do not band together against the also white Bosniacs.

So, we need to think about our terminology when we begin talking about such things as 'White' terrorism.

Terrorist as non-state actor?

Adam Garfinkle
FPRI

Way back on September 20, 2002, Adam Garfinkle reflected on "What Our Children Should Learn About 9/11/2001" (Foreign Policy Research Institute), and among other things, he put forward this generally accepted point:

A pertinent example: Those who shun moral judgment often say that "terrorist" is a meaningless word because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." But a terrorist can be defined with reasonable precision, as a non-state actor (i.e., an actor unaccountable, democratically or otherwise, to a larger community) who deliberately kills innocent civilians to advance a cause. Whatever the cause and however one feels about it, there is still nothing amiss with our children reaching the moral judgment that such behavior is always wrong.

In light of the Islamic State's existence, can we still define terrorists as non-state actors? Reality is in constant flux, as Heraclitus would often note, so our definitions necessarily change over time. That would seem to have be the case in this example, because the IS has sent jihadists to Europe to attack whatever they can.

Douglas Murray on an even more indecent left . . .

Douglas Murray
Wikipedia

Douglas Murray, writing for The Spectator (November 27, 2015), says "It's all over for the 'decent left', and they have only themselves to blame" when their Labour Party finally speaks its mind on attacking the Islamic State (aka ISIS):

Two weeks after Paris we finally have some clarity from the political left. The current stance of their leadership (as expressed in the Parliamentary Labour party) is that while there is no justification for bombing ISIS, there are many reasons to bomb London.

How so? Because:

On the same evening that [Labour Leader] Jeremy Corbyn told his party that he could not support airstrikes on ISIS his old comrade (and head of the Labour party's new 'defence review') Ken Livingstone shared his view on Question Time that the 7/7 bombers 'gave their lives' in an act of supremely selfless objection to the 2nd Iraq War.

Why should Livingstone stop with the four terrorists' supreme sacrifice? Surely he ought to include the 52 civilians who also "gave their lives" in a sacrifice even more supreme!

But what I'd like to know is why the British neglect to insert perfectly defensible commas, i.e., after "Paris" and after the second mention of "ISIS."

'Adnan Hussein: "We . . . Arabs and Muslims . . . cannot shake off our responsibility for . . . terror"

'Adnan Hussein
Memri

In Memri's Special Dispatch 6221 (November 16, 2015) appears a "harsh article" by 'Adnan Hussein, editor of Iraqi daily Al-Mada, titled, "This Is Our Terror, We Are Responsible," and he argues on the need for Arabs and Muslims to recognize the truth:

We cannot shake off our responsibility for the new and terrible terror attack that recently struck Paris, the French capital. We, the Arabs and Muslims, cannot renounce our direct role and our close connection to the terror attacks that have been flooding all the countries of the world, including our own countries, for two decades or more. [We cannot do so because:] . . . In religion and history classes in elementary school, junior high, high school and later [even] in the university, they insisted on teaching us that we are the chosen [people], the best and most glorious of nations, that our religion is the true religion and that we are the right group that will be saved [from hell], whereas others are people of falsehood, infidels who belong in hell and are doomed to hellfire, whose killing is permissible and whose property and wives are ours for the taking. In these classes they presented us with examples, such as Koranic verses and Prophetic hadiths . . . taken out of their historical context, so that we got the impression that the ruling was absolute and must be applied in every place and every time until the Day of Judgement . . . . [And at] the mosque or the husseiniyya [Shi'ite congregation hall and place of worship], they would sharpen our sectarian inclinations by inciting against the members of other religions and even of other [Muslim] sects, [calling them] Khawarij [Islam's first religious opposition group], rawafid [a Sunni derogatory term for Shi'ites], nawasib [a Shi'ite derogatory term for Sunnis], deviants and apostates . . . . [O]ur children and grandchildren receive in their schools, universities, mosques and husseiniyyas very large and strong doses of [that] sectarian religious [drug] that is spiritually and mentally deadly, while the sectarian religious television and radio stations, which broadcast around the clock and receive funds at the expense of schools and hospitals, strengthen its [effect even further]. Our children and grandchildren are engaged in a holy world war against all others, no matter what their religion, sect or nationality. This environment gave rise to the extremist Islamic groups, which were fertilized by poverty, unemployment, marginalization, the usurpation of human rights and individual and collective freedoms, and the violation of honor, which were sometimes carried out in the name of pan-Arabism and sometimes in the name of religion or sect . . . . [Therefore, we] cannot escape our responsibility for terror, and no excuses will avail us. First we must recognize [our responsibility], and apologize . . . and correct our ways from now on. We cannot do this without thoroughly rethinking our curricula and changing them from the root, from elementary school to university [level]. There will be no forgiveness unless we change the way religion is presented in the curricula, in universities, in mosques and in husseiniyyas, and on the radio and television stations. For the religion [as presented there] is not a religion of tolerance, peace, harmony, mutual responsibility and compassion. The religion [presented] in our curricula, universities, mosques and husseiniyyas, and on the radio and television stations, is a barbaric religion characterized by beheadings and bloodshed and which incites to steal, usurp, enslave and rape. The other, [compassionate,] religion, which some . . . claim is the true religion, has no presence in our lives. At best, its voice is feeble and heard almost by nobody, especially among the oppressed new generation that is marginalized and whose humanity is being compromised by poverty, rejection and injustice, and by the crazy curricula and fatwas.

There's a quantum of solace to hearing some words of responsibility by Muslims themselves for these terrorist times that we live within . . . and die within.

Islamist Response to Graeme Wood's Article

Graeme Wood

Website

Some readers may recall my remarks on Graeme Wood's article "What ISIS Really Wants" in The Atlantic. Turns out, I wasn't the only person responding. So did some Islamist supporters of ISIS: "'What ISIS Really Wants': The Response." One ISIS supporter wrote to say:

[The piece] is grounded in realism, and argues that not understanding what is happening is very dangerous, especially if fighting a war, one must fight the war that is real, not the invented one that one wishes to fight. Perhaps ironically, your [writings] . . . are most dangerous to the Muslims (not that it is necessarily meant to be so on your behalf), yet they are celebrated by Muslims who see them as pieces that speak the truth that so many try to deny, but also because [Muslims] know that deep down the idealists of the world will still ignore them.

What stands out to me that others don't seem to discuss much, is how the Islamic State, Osama [bin Laden] and others are operating as if they are reading from a script that was written 1,400 years ago. They not only follow these prophecies, but plan ahead based upon them. One would therefore assume that the enemies of Islam would note this and prepare adequately, but [it's] almost as if they feel that playing along would mean that they believe in the prophecies too, and so they ignore them and go about things their own way. . . . [The] enemies of the Muslims may be aware of what the Muslims are planning, but it won't benefit them at all as they prefer to either keep their heads in the sand, or to fight their imaginary war based upon rational freedom-loving democrats vs. irrational evil terrorist madmen. With this in mind, maybe you can understand to some degree one of the reasons why many Muslims will share your piece. It's not because we don't understand what it is saying in terms of how to defeat the Muslims, rather it's because we know that those in charge will ignore it and screw things up anyway.

This Muslim supporter of ISIS doesn't worry over the fact that Mr. Wood is correctly explaining why the Islamic State is "very Islamic." The supporter admits that the infidels could plan for the future based on the ISIS group's ideologically based prophecies and thereby fight against ISIS more effectively. But he doesn't worry because he thinks that the infidel leaders will ignore what Mr Wood says.

We'll see about that. New leaders can arise.

Islamist Terrorist in Sydney Café: Nothing to do with Islam

Islamist Flag

Daily Mail

My sympathies to the victims and their families.

This terrorist incident had nothing to do with Islam, of course.

It has to do with Islamism, which different than Islam.

The difference is that Islam is a religion that uses Islamic law to set up a political system, whereas Islamism is a political system that uses Islamic law to set up a religion.

That's why this terrorist incident in which two female hostages were forced to display the Islamist flag of the Islamic State had nothing to do with Islam.

Joseph Braude Talks to "A Saudi Psychologist on Jihadism, Clerical Elites, and Education Reform"

Joseph Braude
FPRI

In an E-Note from FPRI, Joseph Braude reports on the Saudi attempt to rehabilitate jihadists, "A Saudi Psychologist on Jihadism, Clerical Elites, and Education Reform," which makes for interesting reading even if one retains skepticism about long-term results. For example, I found of interest this passage on the use of Islam as justification for terrorism, an explanation by the Saudi Psychologist:

It is a matter of how a group of so-called clerics interpret, or misinterpret, Islam. In Surat Al 'Imran of our Holy Book, it says, "No one knows [the Qur'an's] true interpretation except God, and those who are well-grounded in knowledge say, 'We believe in it. All of it is from our Lord.'" But some clerics stop in the middle of the verse, and just say, "No one knows [the Qur'an's] true interpretation except God and those who are well-grounded in knowledge." Then they put it to you that they alone are well-grounded in knowledge, and go on to use the half-sentence as a divine mandate for their own authority. If we claim that our religion is a peaceful religion, calling for peace between nations and between religions, then these false foundations need to be addressed.

A problem with this is that in insisting that no individual can rightly interpret the Qur'an, one means that reason plays little role, so one simply believes through an act of abject fideism. But even if the Qur'an is obscure, there are the hadith, which are often quite clear and very violent.

Nevertheless, the article (an interview, actually) is worth reading.

Jacob N. Shapiro - The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations

Google Images

This book by Professor Jacob N. Shapiro (Yale) sounds like an interesting, insightful, and useful book on terrorism's dilemma: how to run a terrorist organization's bureaucracy while simultaneously maintaining secrecy. I don't know if I'll have time to read it, but I found a useful interview in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Here, for example, he speaks on how to exploit the weaknesses in terrorist operations:

There are several things being done already, such as aggressively tracking down various leads, following the signals that are created, and giving them relatively higher priority. It is not the case that the threat prior to 9/11 went undetected, because it was detected. What happened is the signals were not treated with sufficient gravity, and that has been rectified. What I think could be done, or what is not being done in a particularly aggressive way, at least as far as I know, is sowing more seeds of discord within organizations: getting on the chat-rooms and black websites that various militant organizations use and stoking ideological disagreements. Stoking disagreements about what's tactically acceptable. Providing misinformation about technical matters. All kinds of things that increase the need for communications within organizations are going to lower the production possibilities frontier that organizations can get to, given their levels of activity.

I think the other thing that is not being done enough is working to publicize the externalities that groups cause. We know that people in many countries get angry at the consequences militant groups cause for civilians, and it lowers support for them. We know that in most cases, these guys are tremendously vulnerable to information shared by noncombatants, by civilian and by nonparticipants who happen to notice something going on. And that suggests that there is a lever that can be used by policymakers, which is really aggressively getting the word out about just how bad the activities of many of these groups are. And it happens to some extent, but not as much as I think would be valuable. If the Voice of America says it, in many populations, it doesn't have the credibility of a local press outlet saying it. But there are lots of ways you can subsidize NGOs and other organizations that make it easier for local press outlets in lots of countries to report on what groups are doing. I think a lot of our public diplomacy is very centrally focused and coordinated on getting out the message of the U.S. government, as opposed to making it easier for the people to get basic facts about what the groups that we find problematic are doing. (Interview by Ian Philbrick and Henry Shepherd, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, October 10, 2013, Washington, D.C.)

I'm struck by the fact that the first of these two can be done freelance, by private individuals who have the necessary skills for passing as a terrorist and infiltrating online communities to disrupt them. I wouldn't recommend this, however, because if one is too skilled in passing as a terrorist, one might end up arrested by the government on the charge of terrorism.

As for the second of these two, blogs such as my own can play a role in critiquing Islamism, not that Islamist terrorists care about what infidels think, but they do care what Muslims think, and I know that some Muslims read my blog . . .

Jihadis Killing One Another: More of this, please . . .

Ahmed Godane

Google Images

Probably, most readers recall that Osama Bin Laden was killed in May 2011, though Al Qaeda still seems to be active, albeit more decentralized, and in an article titled "ISIS's Rise After al Qaeda's House of Cards," Part 4 of "Smarter Counterterrorism" (Geopoliticus: The FPRI Blog, March 22, 2014), Clint Watts explains the decline of Al Qaeda as an organization that is, in part, devouring itself:

To understand how al Qaeda has faltered since Bin Laden's death and to anticipate where jihad will go in the future, we must examine the leadership transition to Ayman al-Zawahiri. Through the summer of 2011, senior al Qaeda leaders and conduits to affiliates were being eliminated every month, Anwar Awlaki in Yemen, Ilyas Kashmiri in Pakistan and strangely the elusive Harun Fazul in Somalia. Fazul, once Bin Laden's personal secretary, died at a Somali government checkpoint similar to ones he likely passed through easily dozens of times before. In the following months, rumors swirled that al Shabaab's leader, Ahmed Godane, had arranged for Fazul's timely death to settle a score with the 'Old Guard' al Qaeda leader floating in his turf. The mysterious pattern of al Qaeda foreign fighters being killed in Somalia continued through 2011 and 2012 and rumblings of internal rifts in Shabaab's ranks grew while a plan for formal membership to al Qaeda was in the works. With Bin Laden gone, al Qaeda princes across many affiliates were making their own plays in a 'Game of Thrones' where politics and power became the priority over ideology and al Qaeda's grand strategy . . . . Stories of al Qaeda foreign fighters being killed in Somalia by Shabaab's leader, Ahmed Godane, continued to surface via the social media pleas of American foreign fighter Omar Hammami. While not the most important foreign fighter or American in Shabaab's ranks, Hammami's rants proved fortuitous of larger splits in al Qaeda's ranks. Shortly after Hammami's public complaints came a call from an original Afghan mujihadeen member in Somalia, Ibrahim Afghani, begging Zawahiri to unseat Godane. Al Qaeda stood silent as Godane's loyalists killed off both Hammami and Afghani. Shabaab has since crumbled under Godane's leadership and Zawahiri has publicly ignored these upheavals in Somalia.

These flaws in Al-Qaeda -- the jihadis killing each other over power despite identical, or nearly identical ideologies -- should be widely publicized, especially among Muslims, so as to show the potentially radicalizable ones just how corrupt so many jihadi leaders are.

Make this publicizing part of the "Smarter Counterterrorism" promised above.

Sam Harris on Islamic Misuse of Ecstatic States

Mecca
(Photo by Camera Eye)
Sam Harris

As my cyber-friend Malcolm Pollack notes, Sam Harris has recently posted an interesting blog entry, "Islam and the Misuses of Ecstasy" (June 9, 2013), though he might better have titled it "Secular Misunderstanding of Islam's Misuse of Ecstasy," for he recounts the following anecdote in which he minces no words on Professor Scott Atran's views (and character):

I once ran into the anthropologist Scott Atran after he had delivered one of his preening and delusional lectures on the origins of jihadist terrorism. According to Atran, people who decapitate journalists, filmmakers, and aid workers to cries of "Alahu akbar!" or blow themselves up in crowds of innocents are led to misbehave this way not because of their deeply held beliefs about jihad and martyrdom but because of their experience of male bonding in soccer clubs and barbershops. (Really.) So I asked Atran directly:

"Are you saying that no Muslim suicide bomber has ever blown himself up with the expectation of getting into Paradise?"

"Yes," he said, "that's what I'm saying. No one believes in Paradise."

At a moment like this, it is impossible to know whether one is in the presence of mental illness or a terminal case of intellectual dishonesty. Atran's belief -- apparently shared by many people -- is so at odds with what can be reasonably understood from the statements and actions of jihadists that it admits of no response. The notion that no one believes in Paradise is far crazier than a belief in Paradise.

I would have avoided calling Atran "preening and delusional," but perhaps Harris is fed up with Atran's views, about which I know too little. Be that as it may, Harris proceeds to show embedded videos of various Muslim rituals and recitations (and one Hindu video) that induce ecstasy in those who participate, the last video offering a beautiful Arabic recitation of a Qur'anic verse on "the recompense of the enemies of Allah: The Fire." Of this video, Harris remarks:

This video has everything: the power of ritual and the power of the crowd; tears of devotion and a lust for vengeance. How many of the people in that mosque are jihadists? I have no idea -- perhaps none. But their spiritual aspirations and deepest positive emotions -- love, devotion, compassion, bliss, awe -- are being focused through the lens of sectarian hatred and humiliation. Read every word of the translation so that you understand what these devout people are weeping over. Their ecstasy is inseparable from the desire to see nonbelievers punished in hellfire. Is this some weird distortion of the true teachings of Islam? No. This is a recitation from the Koran articulating its central message.

I don't know that this is the Qur'an's central message, but it does seem a prominent one. Anyway, Harris concludes:

Islam marries religious ecstasy and sectarian hatred in a way that other religions do not. Secular liberals who worry more about "Islamophobia" than about the actual doctrine of Islam are guilty of a failure of empathy. They fail not just with respect to the experience of innocent Muslims who are treated like slaves and criminals by this religion, but with respect to the inner lives of its true believers. Most secular people cannot begin to imagine what a (truly) devout Muslim feels. They are blind to the range of experiences that would cause an otherwise intelligent and psychologically healthy person to say, "I will happily die for this." Unless you have tasted religious ecstasy, you cannot understand the danger of its being pointed in the wrong direction.

I have no difficulty grasping Harris's point about ecstasy in religion and its potential for misuse, and also like him, I cannot understand people such as Atran (assuming Harris reports accurately) who cannot see that true believers do exist and who deny that suicide bombers actually believe that they will enter Paradise.

Some people will always seek outside of religion to find the reason for radicalized believers, but if so, why do some religions produce more radicals than other religions? There must be something amiss in a religion's ideology if it does so.

Understanding Chechen Radicalism?

Michael A. Reynolds
Foreign Policy Research Institute

In a column, "America's Enemy Within" (Project Syndicate, May 2, 2013), Ian Buruma has a worthwhile point about American overreaction in shutting down the city of Boston as a response to the fear of terrorism, which can only inspire more potential terrorists who hope to terrorize and disrupt, but he also writes:

Barring any unexpected new revelations, there is not much to be learned from the Tsarnaev brothers, better known as "the Boston bombers." We can dig into their family histories in strife-torn Dagestan, or examine, once again, the lethal appeal of Islamist radicalism. But I doubt that this would be enlightening.

To see just how wrong wrong can be if Buruma thinks that Hans Magnus Enzensberger's concept of "the radical loser" is all that one needs to explain the Tsarnaev brothers' actions and that the North Caucasus complex of identity and religion offers no clues to understanding these brothers, he needs to read an FPRI article on this very subject by Michael A. Reynolds, "The Northern Caucasus, the Tsarnaevs, and Us" (E-Notes, May 2013), for example, this from the conclusion:

The Tsarnaevs' North Caucasian roots, of course, did not cause them to attack the population of the United States. But their choice to embrace a radical and militant interpretation of Islam and to carry out bombings and attack the police becomes more comprehensible when placed into the historical and cultural context that helped form them. The peculiar historical legacy and the current state of the North Caucasus render it especially vulnerable to jihadism. It is not a coincidence that, alone in the post-Soviet space, this region has been a site of chronic jihadist insurgencies. The highlanders' distinctive culture of defiance and the formative struggle they waged in the name of Islam against the Russian empire coupled with the suppression of traditional religious authorities in the Soviet era, the devolution of the region's economic and political institutions, and a system of governance that stifles constructive initiative provide . . . conditions favorable to militant Islam. Current conditions give young men in the North Caucasus, of whom there are many, limited prospects. These conditions will persist for another generation, perhaps longer. Today, rebellion in the name of Islam offers these men a simulacrum of highlander tradition, a reassuring reaffirmation of roots at a time when so much of that tradition has evaporated, while also holding out the possibility of glory. The North Caucasus will, therefore, likely remain an incubator of jihadism for some time to come.

And, implies Reynolds, that North Caucasus radical Islamism will also continue to inspire young, alienated men of the Chechen diaspora, and the Chechens are a formidable, rebellious people, as we see from these words Reynolds cites from Solzhenitsyn on the Chechens in exile from the Caucasus and their refusal to submit to the Soviet authorities:

There was one nation that would not give in, would not acquire the mental habits of submission -- and not just individual rebels among them, but the whole nation to a man. These were the Chechens . . . . The Chechens never sought to please, to ingratiate themselves with the bosses; their attitude was always haughty and even openly hostile . . . . They respected only rebels.

And here is an extraordinary thing -- everyone was afraid of them. No one could stop them from living as they did. The regime that had ruled the land for thirty years could not force them to respect its laws.

This traditional characteristic of the Chechens is worthy of respect . . . and also of fear. It's precisely the sort of rebellious warlike tradition that alienated young men like the elder Tsarnaev brother would imagine themselves to embody, and lead them to gravitate toward the radical Islamism that appeals to warrior traditions among otherwise nominal Muslims.

Or so I understand Reynolds to argue. Read the entire piece and decide for yourself . . .

On not going out on a limb . . .

Fragment of Pressure Cooker Bomb
Wikipedia

When I first heard that two bombs had exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the second bomb about thirteen seconds after the first, I instantly formed an opinion about the probable identity of who was responsible but kept it mostly to myself and refrained from posting a blog entry. After the two brothers who carried out the attack were identified as Islamist terrorists, I read what my friend Kevin Kim had posted about the news:

As I tried to say earlier, theories that the Boston Marathon bombing were somehow linked to home-grown Tim McVeigh types or to Kim Jeong-eun (for God's sakes, what??) were asinine, as were the calls for "open-minded" consideration of who the guilty parties might be. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this was another instance of Islamic extremism, and sure enough, the perpetrators -- caught with incredible swiftness by local and federal law-enforcement authorities -- turned out to be two disaffected Chechen Muslims who were both biological brothers and brothers in arms. One sibling is now dead; the other was caught while bleeding from wounds suffered during a firefight.

I then left the following comment to Kevin's post:

Because there were two explosions, the terrorist attack fit the Islamist method of operations -- kill innocents by surprise, then kill the innocents running to help.

I mentioned the point to a colleague at work, but I didn't blog on the point because I didn't want to chance being wrong and accused of prejudice.

Kevin replied in a follow-up comment:

I think the only people who'd have accused you of prejudice are members of the PC brigade who deliberately refuse to put 2 and 2 together. You've zeroed in on exactly the evidence that convinced me this attack was Islamist.

I'm gratified to have good company. When I told my wife about the bombing, I said that I suspected Islamist terrorists because of the two bombs. A couple of days later, I spoke with an Ewha colleague who'd studied at Harvard and thus knows the bombed area, and I mentioned my observation to her. She's also not a "Politically Correct" type, so my reasoning immediately clicked with her.

I therefore agree with Kevin that the Islamist character of this terrorist attack was clear from the start, and most of us know this, if not for the pattern -- the two bombs -- then for the sheer likelihood of the act itself, given that the vast majority of terrorist attacks these days are carried out by Islamists, a fact that has surely forced itself into everyone's mind by now even if people disagree on "root causes."

As for root causes, those would differ from individual to individual, but the crucial question is this: what is there in Islam that makes its teachings apparently so susceptible to misconstrual and misuse by fanatics?

Sheikh Nader Tamimi: Let the Sheikh speak . . .

Sheikh Nader Tamimi

MEMRI

Special Dispatch No.4372

December 20, 2011

. . . because we need to note his words concerning what the coming Muslim leader, the Caliph, will stand up and announce to the West:

"To the rulers of the West, this is the religion of Allah. Either you pay the jizya poll tax, or else we will bring the sword to your necks . . ."

Pleasant words, of course, and we ought to appreciate the good sheikh's advance notice, posted to the internet on December 15th, 2011. This sheikh is also a prophet, apparently, for the same report offers these words from October 20, 2000 concerning Bin Laden's words to the West prior to 9/11:

"What did bin Laden do? He said: 'I will strike the West' . . . . Has he become a terrorist?! . . . He says 'I want to fight the Jihad for the sake of Allah.' This must burst forth from the nation [of Islam], and not from the (rulers) palaces and corruption . . . . [My brother, our God said, 'Kill them where you find them' . . . . All the Muslim people must attack the common enemy. America is against us all. America must realize this. I issue a religious ruling now, and I am a mufti.] This is a religious ruling, so what is there for me to talk about? Anyone capable of doing so must strike at the target. He must strike at it -- otherwise everybody will sin."

The sheikh's words in brackets are from the same remarks made by him on October 20, 2000, but uttered a minute or so earlier. I moved them to clarify his point about being a mufti and therefore authorized to pronounce a religious ruling -- a fatwa, I presume. Be that as it may, I suspect that readers can see why I say that this sheikh is a 'prophet' whose words need to be noted.

That being the case, I reckon the Caliphate will be re-established sometime in the coming year . . .

Malise Ruthven on the Rightwing Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik

Leaving Oslo Municipal Court, Norway

July 25, 2011

Rex Features/AP Photo

(Image from New York Review of Books)

Malise Ruthven has a useful, insightful article, "The New European Far-Right," in a blog for the New York Review of Books (August 9, 2011), and I largely agree with his analysis of the rightwing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik:

Judging from his manifesto, Breivik is an obsessive man, with an idée fixe about the evils of Islam and multiculturalism. He believes that European leaders, especially those belonging to social democratic parties, are cultural traitors who are inflicting irreversible damage on their countries. Hence his attack on Utoya island, where the flower of Norway's social democratic youth -- reservoir of its future leaders -- were gathered. He wants to see all Muslims expelled or repatriated unless they allow themselves to be converted into believing or "cultural Christians." These aims may seem impracticable -- but given the history of population expulsions and exchanges that he cites at some length in his document, they are neither utopian or millenarian.

The right is being awfully quick to disown the fellow -- and understandably so -- but Ruthven acknowledges the parallels, even to the mainstream right:

His anxieties may be vastly exaggerated, but his ideas are presented systematically, and are generally consistent with the critiques of Islam and multiculturalism appearing in the mainstream press, as well as right-wing blogs. It would be premature, even dangerous, to suppose that the source of his action can only be understood by reference to synaptic glitches in an individual psychopath's brain.

Many on the anti-Islam right have been adamant that their writings could not have influenced Breivik because he has been planning an attack since the latter 1990s, several years before most of them were even concerned about Islam. But can we believe Breivik's claim? Do we have any writings from him that date to the latter 1990s? And even if we do, we can't assume that he learned nothing later from the anti-Islam right in Europe and the US. His advocacy and practice of violence, however, do distinguish Breivik from most of the anti-Islam right. His emphasis upon Western Civilization, on the other hand, is something that he shares with the anti-Islam right, and it distinguishes him from the nationalist, racist, and fundamentalist right. His call for war, though, reminds one more of Al-Qaeda and other Islamists. Ruthven notes many of these points:

As Thomas Hegghammer, the Norwegian expert on Islamism, has argued, Breivik is in some respects an occidental mirror of Osama bin Laden -- a dangerous monster, perhaps, but not necessarily an irrational one. Breivik's manifesto, Hegghammer explains, departs from established categories of right-wing extremism such as ultra-nationalism, white supremacism, or Christian fundamentalism, to reveal "a new doctrine of civilizational war that represents the closest thing yet to a Christian version of al-Qaeda." The concept of "civilizational conflict" or "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West, first articulated by Bernard Lewis, is shared by many on the right and some in Europe's liberal mainstream.

Both Breivik and the leaders of al-Qaeda see themselves as engaged in a conflict that extends back to the Crusades, with both of them using references to medieval chivalry. Both have resorted to catastrophic violence on behalf of transnational entities: the Ummah or "community" of all Muslims in the case of al-Qaeda, and "Europe" in the case of Breivik. Both frame their struggle as wars of survival, with the emphasis placed on defending a religiously-based culture rather than a distinctive nationality or ethnicity. Both hate their respective governments for "collaborating" with the outside enemy. Both use the language of martyrdom. Where Islamists refer to suicide bombings as "martyrdom operations" Breivik refers to an individual "martyr cell" in anticipation of his attack on defenseless youngsters. Both, as Hegghammer notes, lament the erosion of patriarchy and the emancipation of women.

Just as al-Qaeda represents an extreme, activist variant of political views held by a much wider constituency of Muslim radicals, most of whom would never consider crossing the boundary between thinking and action, so Breivik (judging from his manifesto) holds a broad range of positions common to what might be called the "counter-jihadist" or "paranoid right." This is represented -- among others -- by Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Pamela Geller in the US, the controversial Dutch legislator Geert Wilders, and Bat Ye'or and Melanie Phillips in Britain. All these writers -- most of whom have denounced the Utoya massacre in the most unequivocal terms -- subscribe to variants of the thesis that Europe is sleepwalking into cultural disaster or (in the case of Phillips) enabling Islamist terrorists to gain a foothold.

I disagree with Ruthven's designation of most of these "counter-jihadists" as the "paranoid right," though I find Geller so emotionally over the top that I can't bring myself to read her writings, and I find Ye'or interesting but bordering on a conspiracy-theory interpretation in her Eurabia history. As for Spencer, he is full of information, but consistently sarcastic -- not my style, though I do read him. I also regularly read a site unmentioned by Ruthven, Gates of Vienna. The couple who maintain this blog are more to the right than I am, but they're refreshingly honest, even in acknowledging the parallels between Breivik's views and their own, minus the violence:

In fact, that's one of the disturbing things about Anders Breivik -- when simply voicing his opinions, he sounded a lot like normal, non-violent people who oppose the Islamization of the West. And this is not all that surprising, given that he plagiarized quite a number of us for his manifesto, but it's still disconcerting to read about it.

I could acknowledge some of the same things. Breivik shares a lot of ideas in common with things that I've written about on this blog, excepting the advocacy of violence against Muslims and the nondistinction between Islam and Islamism. My opposition to radical Islamists is partly grounded in my views on the evil of terrorism, especially its killing of innocent people. I also maintain a distinction between Islam and Islamism, the latter being the political use of Islam, though I acknowledge that the line distinguishing the two is not easy to draw.

But to return to Breivik . . . in my view, he is both sane and rational, and therefore to be judged in moral terms as evil, just as Osama Bin Ladin was evil, for the shooting of dozens of young people on the island of Utoya and the use of passenger planes to kill nearly 3000 innocent civilians in the World Trade Center were both evil acts.

I think that most of us should be able to agree upon this.

Who is Anders Behring Breivik?

Anders Behring Breivik

(Image from BBC)

A question currently posed by many of us who analyze terrorist motives but have been more accustomed to focusing on Islamism is: "Who is Anders Behring Breivik?"

One of my long-time readers, who goes by the online pseudonym "Erdal," is a secular European Muslim of an 'unorthodox' Islamic background (Alawite?) with ancestral roots in Turkey (though not necessarily Turkish) who has long taught in the German university system, and he has offered his thoughts on this query by attempting to place Breivik not within an ideological camp but within a new generation that is coming of age in Europe:

I think the media is full of misreadings about all this, because they operate in a world with questions of ideology, discourse and (in-)consistency thereof, conviction and political maneuvre that is outdated.

Breivik is young -- he formed his world view in his twenties, in the 21st century. This (and a bit younger for students starting out) was the generation I was last in close contact with before retirement, and I found them to be unlike any generation before.

Their demeanour is usually decried as they indeed do function in a quite unfamiliar way: They put forward conclusions (if pressed), while their process of reasoning appears opaque and unorderly. People usually mistake this for a lack of method, knowledge and discipline (I remember a post of yours that argued roughly in the same direction).

I've come to think this view is entirely backwards and that this generation is way better informed, much stronger in its convictions, and has independently thought a great deal more and deeply that any of their predecessors. They appear passive because their convictions are not the result of open discourse -- a discipline they are indeed not good at -- but that is just beacuse most older educators (and indeed most media personnel) are just bad at spotting their interaction, which is way more subtle than it was in their day.

The period of shared and prepackaged static ideology that you aquired along a canon of public, organized and bookish learning, to defend with discursive methods as you progress, is past. The young activist people you find that still adhere to this traditional method are usually just eager to please the elders.

But most, the rest, have instead a very rigorous intuition, formed by much data, strategic playfulness, experience and inner struggle, and they can very eloquently communicate the results of their thought processes with cultural markers that are simply overlooked or considered inadequate by the old paradigm.

Brevik's text is instructive because is very much like that, because it is -- its size excepted -- so very typical. It signals its convictions as markers that draw from shared cultural core material of his generation: Tolkien's LOTR [Lord of the Rings], WOW [World of Warcraft], "levels" [as in computer games], autodidactic progression from an unstructured, fluid, episodical mass of information and solipsistic reasoning, a sense of mission and rootedness in themselves and an idealized heritage that they aquire with great gusto like forbidden fruit.

When Breivik speaks [in his manifesto] of his Knights Templar and traces his steps through levels mastered, of insights with tokens aquired, of his tactics and strategies, he fully inhabits this metaphorical world of his generation -- and does not suffer some weird reactionary infatuation with medieval militias. His phantasy uniform designs are neither a sign of madness or self-aggranzizement, nor an article of clothing ever to be worn in real life gatherings, but just a metaphorical currency of his own otherwise intangible progression. He is not political in a way that has sytematic public organization at its core but in a way schooled by his generation's experience that you can contribute on very sizable and ambitious projects without any formal organization to lead you, just by establishing a code that you renegotiate permanently by signaling with markers shared or rejected, but always at least unconciously understood by the participants that you need to never know. You know they exist, because you know the signals don't arise spontaneously. You don't argue because you expect it to be futile: The infrastructure isn't built for it, there's too much noise along with the signals. You don't go looking for agreement, because you can expect it to be there, based on the general nature of signals you receive.

He grasps quite correctly -- and apparently without prior knowledge of the common name of the effect -- that ultraviolent extremism will indeed inevitably shift those that share his outlook, but not necessarily his method, further into the ageing mainsteam and give their position more weight. (It's called the anchor effect, btw.) I think the defensive whining in the established antijihadist quarters, that their cause has been harmed, just shows the complainants' naivety and old-school upbringing.

This guy acted alone, but in the certain, and probably correct, conviction that there are many others like him. He has no need to know them, he knows they are there and that they are very many among his age cohort, because he can read their signals. They were many even in the humanities, a bastion of tradition[ally] organized politics; in technical fields, his type is the male default. They may decide to emulate him or not, on their own terms, along the lines of their own assessment of the situation, in permanent contact with the general vibe. This is not illness, not misunderstanding of ideology, not being a victim of demagoguerie, just rational extremism, a logical extension of widespread self-perception and world view.

I think the ageing media and policymakers have no idea of the potential trouble they're in, because they're deaf to this generation, ignorant of a huge discourse they assume doesn't exist because the channels it manifests itself in are not their channels. They think their march through the institutions was the greatest achievement ever, and that they are safely on the steering wheel. They are very wrong. Their categories no longer apply.

Types of Brevik's generation and general worldview are a pan-European phenomenon, well educated, well travelled, with shared experiences, without nationalistic prejudices, without fixed ideology, without sacred beliefs, without class attitude, without the need for visible organization, without illusions. And now they are grown up, nurtured by jihad, Tolkien and WOW, patient to progress stubbornly along the levels, certain of the significance of myth and quick on the trigger, and they will start rocking the boat. I can't see them not winning.

Well, they do have youth on their side, and they probably dislike the baby boomer generation that they're expected to support through their taxes (which might partly explain their generally anti-Leftist views). Anyway, that's Erdal's generational analysis of Breivik. In short, this younger generation, growing up on World of Warcraft and related computer games, familiar with the Lord of the Rings and similar stories (Harry Potter?), forging identities symbolized by avatars and enhanced by ascending through "levels" marked by acquired "tokens," shares not so much a fullfledged ideology as a situational worldview.

What remains unexplained is Breivik's turn to terrorism, and particularly his choice of young people, including teenagers, as his target. Erdal gestures in the direction of jihad on this point, perhaps implying that Breivik has learned from observing the jihadists that terrorism often has the effect desired by the terrorists. Erdal's reference to the "anchor effect" probably finds its application here.

Perhaps Erdal will respond and clarify this point.

Anders Behring Breivik: Rightwing Christian Terrorist?

Anders Behring Breivik

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Marmot's Hole blog had a discussion going on as to whether or not Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway shooter, was an insane spree killer or a rightwing terrorist. My initial assumption was that he was a crazed killer, but I soon began to re-evaluate that, and noted why in a comment:

He might be insane, but the sole reason that I would have for thinking so would be that he did something most of us would think is crazy.

But so did the Unabomber, the Oklahoma Bomber, and the 9/11 terrorists. They all did things that I would at first judge as crazy. But I don't think any of them were insane.

What currently makes me lean toward judging this recent killer sane is that he spent nearly ten years planning this atrocity and that he has written a manifesto to explain his actions. The ideas come from the right, the violence from the extreme right. I'm pretty sure of this because I've been reading since 9/11 on Islamism, the Left, and the Right in an attempt to get a handle on what's happening and where we're headed, and I recognize many of his expressions.

I suppose that he could be a political terrorist and insane, but "evil" [rather than "insane"] might be a better designation.

We'll see for sure as we learn more from his writings.

After posting that comment, I learned a bit more, so I posted another comment:

Time Magazine has a short article on the motives of Anders Behring Breivik. Two terrorism experts are cited concerning Breivik's manifesto: 2083: A European Declaration of Independence.

Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College calls the manifesto "a complete mirroring of al-Qaeda, a cut-and-paste image of a jihadist manifesto."

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism expert at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, agrees: "The document mirrors al-Qaeda ideology in a few important ways. The principal aim is to expel Muslims from Europe, just as al-Qaeda wants to expel Westerners from the holy lands."

I've read articles by Ranstorp and Hegghammer, and I've always found them levelheaded on terrorism.

None of this would mean that Breivik suffers no psychological problems. He might indeed have problems, but these wouldn't necessarily preclude his being a terrorist. Mohamed Atta had weird views about sexual purity, but that doesn't exclude him from the ranks of terrorist.

Breivik is quoted elsewhere as saying that killing too many is better than killing too few. He chose his target with the aim of generating as much horror as possible, much as the 9/11 terrorist chose their target and method.

From what I've seen of Breivik's writings by now, I don't see how I can do other than conclude that he draws upon the right, including the extreme right, for his political ideology. But he's wrong to believe that his action will galvanize the right in the way that 9/11 galvanized Islamists.

Most of those on the right whom he cited in his manifesto have expressed revulsion at what he did. He'll find little support for political violence except among the extreme right, i.e., people like him.

I'm still waiting for easy access to Breivik's manifesto. I won't have time to read all 1500 pages, but if I can search for key words, I know what to look for. Breivik has been called a "Christian Fundamentalist." I don't think he's quite that, but the question of his connection to Christianity does arise. Here's a quote, courtesy of Time Magazine, from his interview with himself:

Around 2000, I realized that the democratic struggle against the Islamization of Europe, and European multiculturalism, was lost. It is simply not possible to compete with democratic regimes that import millions of voters. Forty years of dialogue with the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists had ended up as a disaster. It would now only take 50 to 70 years before we, Europeans, were the minority. So I decided to explore alternative forms of opposition. But the biggest problem then was that there were no options for me at all. There was no known armed culturally conservative, or Christian, anti-jihad movement.

Note that Breivik's wording uses "Christian" and "culturally conservative" interchangeably. This doesn't sound like personal Christian piety, but rather an identification with Europe's Christian identity, focused on a time when European Christians were fighting holy wars against Islam, the time of the Crusades. In the Time Magazine article "Killer's Manifesto: The Politics Behind the Norway Slaughter" (July 24, 2011), William Boston tells us more about Breivik's fascination with the Crusades:

The secret society Breivik describes aims to re-create the Knights Templar. Known by their trademark white mantles bearing a red cross, the Knights Templar were skilled fighters during the Crusades who wielded enormous political and economic influence during the Middle Ages. Breivik wrote that there was a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to rebuild the order and that nine people representing eight European countries attended.

Breivik's Christianity looks to be militant and political, not especially pious, but there is this, one of the recent entries in his journal, courtesy of The Telegraph, from the article "Norway shooting: Anders Breivik's diary of terror":

Saturday June 11 I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail.

This isn't the manner in which pious Christians usually pray to God -- pious Christians don't presume to explain things to an omniscient God -- and Breivik admits that he hasn't prayed "in a very long time," but he sounds sincere. Six weeks later, he bombed Norway's Labor Party government in Oslo and shot dozens of the Labor Party's youth on Utøya Island. Some might wonder why Breivik didn't target Muslims if his aim was to expel Islam from Europe. I think that I can answer that question. Many on the right have noted the far Left's alliance of convenience with Islamism, but some have gone further and denounced the entire Left as composed of traitors to European civilization. The step from calling Leftists traitors to the conclusion that they deserve execution is not a very large one since the traditional penalty for treason has been death. I've not seen bloggers themselves calling for death to Leftists (though I don't doubt that such bloggers exist), but I have occasionally encountered comments that come close to demanding such extreme measures.

Counterterrorism will need to take such folk more seriously from now on . . .

Osama bin Laden Unarmed?

Boeing 767

(Image from Wikipedia)

The news that Osama bin Laden was unarmed has given pause to some who otherwise would have supported the targeted kill of this terrorist mastermind.

But consider this. Generally speaking, a Boeing 767 like the first one to strike the World Trade Center is a mid-sized, wide-body, twin-engine airliner that can carry upwards of 350 passengers, it has an overall length of around 160 feet and a wingspan of about 155 feet, and it contains a fuselage with a width, height, and length of approximately 17 feet, 18 feet, and 150 feet, respectively, that will hold up to 25,000 gallons of highly combustible jet fuel.

Thus although true that Mr. Bin Laden looked to be unarmed, even his 'mansion' -- capacious though it may be -- is no aviation hangar and would not readily have housed a Boeing 767, so even though he might have appeared to be entirely unarmed during the recent raid on his home, Mr. Bin Laden may likewise have seemed unarmed on September 11, 2001, probably also having no airliner ready to hand even in his far more capacious Al Qaeda headquarters in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, he was heavily armed with a passenger airliner that day -- in fact, with four of them -- and such a resourceful individual should be considered armed and dangerous despite appearances.

Osama bin Laden Killed

Dead Man No Longer Walking

(Image from Yahoo News)

The news came to me yesterday afternoon that Osama bin Laden had finally been hunted down and shot dead, so I scrounged around on the internet and found this on Yahoo News:

A screen grab from FBI's Most Wanted website taken May 2, 2011 shows the status of Osama bin Laden as deceased. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden waskilled in a U.S. helicopter raid on a mansion near the Pakistani capital Islamabad early on Monday, officials said, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide hunt for the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. officials said bin Laden was found in a million-dollar compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, 60 km (35 miles) north of Islamabad. After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden was among several people in the mansion killed. A source familiar with the operation said bin Laden was shot in the head.

Head shot, eh. From my familiarity with horror films, I understand that's the only thing that'll take down a zombie, which is what bin Laden had been for the past ten years, a dead man walking.

To be honest, I'd half-figured that he was already dead past any walking since we'd heard so little from him since 9/11, and the few words attributed to the man were so out of touch that he scarcely seemed alive.

I find celebration difficult, and not merely because I know that we'll be inundated with conspiracy theories about how this wasn't really bin Laden but more because I know that this war against Islamist jihadis is far from over . . .

Robert Reilly on Lafif Lakhdar: Call for Islamic Rationalism

Robert R. Reilly

(Image from American Foreign Policy Council)

In looking for more information about the Tunisian Muslim reformer Lafif Lakhdar, whom I quoted in a post two days ago, I came across some of his remarks on rationality and Islam cited in an interesting interview that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch conducted with Robert R. Reilly, author of a recently published book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, which dates that intellectual closing to Islam's early rejection of Mu'talizite rationalism and emphasis upon Allah's nature as pure, omnipotent will, limited by nothing, not even by rationality.

Mr. Spencer had asked about the possibilities for reviving the "period of Mu'talizite domination in Islam," which by virtue of its rationalism was"a kind of golden age of philosophical reason, intellectual innovation, and openness" in the Muslim world. Specifically, Mr. Spencer asked if there were any "Islamic thinkers today who are trying to do this," i.e., to revive Muslim rationalism. In response, Mr. Reilly cited Mr. Lakhdar as an example of one such Muslim thinker:

Reformist Tunisian-born thinker Latif (sic. Lafif) Lakhdar calls for a revival of "Mu'atazila and philosophical thought that subjected the holy writings on which the religion is based to interpretation by the human mind." He said "it is absurd to believe the text and deny reality."

Mr. Reilly is quoting from two different articles. The first is from Aluma Dankowitz's summary of Mr. Lakhdar's views in "Tunisian Reformist Thinker: Secularism is Vital for the Future of the Arab and Muslim World" (Memri, May 19, 2005, No. 222):

In addressing the question whether secularism means disconnection from Islam, Lafif Lakhdar explains that it is disconnection from the negative autocracy and theocracy in the Muslim world, but is also a revival of the connection with other elements in Islam -- such as mu'atazila [rationalist] and philosophical thought that subjected the holy writings on which the religion is based to interpretation by the human mind.

The second is from the article by Mr. Lakhdar that I cited a couple of posts ago, "Moving From Salafi to Rationalist Education" (Meria, Volume 9, No. 1, Article 3, March 2005):

Open religious rationalism -- subjecting the religious text to rational investigation and research -- ought to become the core of the aspired religious education in the Arab-Islamic region, since it is absurd to believe the text and deny reality.

Both of these Lakhdar citations appear to be related, given their chronological proximity (Spring 2005) and their mutual emphasis upon rationality applied to religious texts. Mr. Reilly -- in speaking of the 'de-hellenization' (expulsion of reason) that took place in Islam with the rejection of Mu'talizite rationalism -- goes on in the interview to make a point that I have also made:

If reason is illegitimate, how are differences to be adjudicated? Force will decide. The stronger will decide. Why does Islam use violence to affirm its theology? Because it is the theology of power, of the doctrine that "right is rule of the stronger," raised to the level of God. The primacy of the will always seeks success through force.

Benedict XVI told his audience in Regensburg that not only is violence in spreading faith unreasonable and therefore against God, but that a conception of God without reason, or above reason, leads to that very violence. This is the problem in Islam. That which is unreasonable is against God only if God is reason. This is not so in majority Sunni Islamic theology. He is pure will and power, unconstrained even by his own word. Therefore, there are no solid barriers between the statement that God is pure will and power, and the startling declaration of Abdullah Azzam, which Osama quoted in the November 2001 video, released after 9/11, that "Terrorism is an obligation in Allah's religion." This can only be true -- that violence in spreading faith is an obligation -- if, as Benedict XVI said, God is without reason. This is why the problem we are facing is primarily a theological one.

In September 2006, I made much the same point as Mr. Reilly:

The Pope's larger theme lay in his subtle argument that Islam might have a problem with violence because it has a problem in its theology. If God's nature is defined centrally by his radically free will, then believers cannot appeal to reason in their aim to convert nonbelievers but must demand submission to an arbitrary God who cannot be rationally understood. If the force of reason cannot be used in converting nonbelievers, then the force of violence will be.

If Mr. Reilly and I are correct, then this problem at the heart of Islam will be very difficult to rectify, for an appeal to reason can be met by a resort to force, so how does one go about restoring rationality to the irrational?

Let us not give up hope, however, for even Christian theology had to overcome a radically voluntarist conception of God . . . and generally succeeded.

Mervyn F. Bendle: Email Response

Islamism

Blogger must be acting up again, for my old cyber-friend Kevin Kim has informed me by email of his unsuccessful attempt to post a comment to my blog entry on Mervyn F. Bendle's "Existential Terrorism," quoting me in bold font and concurring with my point:

"I'd really want to see how Islamism is heir to Augustine."

I think you hit the nail on the head. When I was about halfway through your blog post, a similar question was burbling through my mind.

Well, in the meantime, I had shot off an email on this very point, along with a second query on Leftist influence on Islamism, asking Dr. Bendle himself, who replied:

Thank you for your email and the interest with which you have read some of my published work. In response to one of your questions I think that you yourself provided an insightful assessment when you said:

"Clearly, this interpretation of Augustine's two cities is a controversial one . . . . I'd really want to see how Islamism is heir to Augustine. Is there supposed to be a direct line from Augustine to Islamism, or some influence via Leftist ideology (or via Fascism?), or is the "Augustinian paradigm" an ideal construct describing a system of thought that can arise within different traditions without direct or even indirect influence?"

I suspect that the latter is the case and that the underlying totalizing tendency (along with an associated obsession with 'purity') is inherent in this (monotheistic/monist) tradition and remains so. The alternative -- that this is a world-view that originated with Augustine -- seems unlikely to me -- given its archetypal quality. At any rate, there is a difficulty with tracing through a direct/indirect chain of influence from Augustine to early Islam and thence eventually to contemporary Islamism in that we cannot be very sure about the early history of Islam -- whether it emerged as it claims to have or whether, e.g., it emerged as a 'believers movement' within a matrix of heterodox Jewish and Christian communities, only claiming to have been a new revelation a century or so later (cf. Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (2010)).

Regarding your other question, I think that Islamisim been most definitely directly (and indirectly) influenced by the Left ideologically, especially in its analysis of imperialism (of which it sees the Muslim world as a victim), in its organizational structures, and in its adherence to Comintern techniques of agititation-propaganda ('agitprop'). After all, for much of the 20th century substantial proportions of the Muslim world (esp. its intellectuals) were directly or indirectly informed by Marxist-Leninist thought, only swinging away from this form of secularism following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the shift to an Islamist ideological paradigm (cf. Rapoport's 4 waves of terrorism).

With regard to Donner's work on early Islam, there's a lot of current scholarly investigation into pre-Islamic sources and speculations on Christian and Jewish communities as the matrix for early Islam (cf. Christoph Luxenberg), so that's something that I'm generally familiar with. Such Christian communities probably weren't Augustinian, though, so the "Augustinian paradigm" turns out to be something like what Max Weber called an "ideal type," I suppose. Augustine gets some bad press in some significant strands of intellectual history. Hans Blumenberg sees Augustine as having left a profoundly Gnostic imprint upon Western Christianity that had to be overcome in the late Medieval period for a 'Promethian' Modernity to emerge. The expression "Augustinian paradigm" thus might fit the West as more than simply an ideal construct. I wonder if it might better be jettisoned in analyses of Islamism. But what should one replace it with? Would Weber's ideal type of "sect" fit better? Is Islamism what Weber might call a "world-denying" sect? It certainly devalues the world, seeing whatever is not Islam as mere jahiliyya, i.e., ignorance of Allah, and therefore unworthy of preservation, deserving of destruction. But Islamists seek worldly power, so the expression "world-denying" can also be misleading.

Perhaps some knowledgeable readers can help me out on this?

As for the Left's impact on Islamism, I'll have to look further into this to see the kind and degree of influence. Dr. Bendle has not only directed me to Rapoport's article, he has also kindly sent me a couple of his own articles that might enlighten me on this point, and if so, I'll report back.