Apocalypse Now?

When the World Trade Center collapsed like a ghastly flower opening, many of us thought immediately of apocalypse. That metaphor seemed and still seems apt for the hideous images of people plummeting a thousand feet and dust-coated ghosts emerging from the hellish air of ruined buildings. The metaphor is more than that. This war is in all earnest an apocalyptic battle, at least where our enemies are concerned, and we might do well to be aware of that fact. This is not the first time the West has confronted apocalyptic movement within Islam. We have seen in the media a good deal of discussion about the history of Afghanistan and its apparently invincible resistance to invaders, notably the Soviet Union. This history is of course relevant to the conflict with the Taliban and al Qaeda, but there have been other events involving confrontation between the West and emergent Muslim leaders that also deserve some consideration.

In the late nineteenth century the Sudan was a restless and rebellious territory of Egypt, whose despotic overlordship under the Ottoman Empire made most of its citizens distinctly unhappy, not least with the presence of hard-drinking European officials appointed as local governors. These unbelievers in power, regardless of however humane their policies might have been, can only have been seen as oppressive pagans in Islam’s terms. In this situation there arose a devout student of Islam whose career offers certain striking parallels to bin Laden’s. Muhammad Ahmad passed up opportunities for high office in favor of a life among the Sudanese peasantry as a mystic follower of the Sufi sect. His first teacher disowned him for over-enthusiasm. Bin Laden disavowed his life as a playboy and heir to one of the world’s great fortunes to enter jihad in Afghanistan.

Ahmad rallied Sudan's multitude of disaffected subjects under the banner of al Mahdi: he proclaimed himself the prophesied last ruler of Islam who is foretold to unite it in the last days, rid it of foreign oppressors and rule over a united and peaceful kingdom devoted to sharia: Islamic law. This doctrine is described as"essential" in Shi'a Islam, though Sunnis disclaim it. Bin Laden is a Sunni, so it would come as some surprise were anyone to declare him the Mahdi, but his charisma at present is scarcely less than Ahmad’s.

In 1881 Ahmad gathered a militant band of followers armed with sticks. By 1883 they had conquered the Sudan, defeating four Egyptian armies in the process and destroying a British force under the hero"Chinese" Gordon, whom they killed in a general massacre at Khartoum, the territory's capital. They achieved this feat in part through skillful use of Western firepower they captured from the Egyptians and British, along with substantial amounts of money. The attacks on the U.S. used our own tools against us in highly imaginative ways, and its"soldiers" even acquired from us the skills to use them. Bin Laden’s fortune ultimately derives from U.S. oil companies. Bin Laden earns respect if not praise in the Western media for his masterful use of its resources to one-up President Bush. (http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,564715,00.html compares bin Laden to Che Guevara in his media skills.) Not the least of the Mahdi's military skills was a mastery of the arts of propaganda.

Following his capture of the seat of power, Ahmad ruled by fiat, proclaiming the law of sharia and himself as the successor to the prophet of god, in the sense that he took his task to be continuing Mohammed's work on earth. The Sudan was not retaken by an Anglo-Egyptian force until 1898, and Ahmed's successor, Abdallah, was finally killed in battle in 1899.

Bin Laden learned his puritanical fundamentalist strain of Islam under Sheik Abdullah Azzam, described by his admirers as a man who devoted his entire life to jihad, described as"the clear responsibility of each and every Muslim." Azzam aimed at nothing less than the conversion of the entire planet to Islam, according to an on-line sketch of his life (Abdullah bin Omar,"The Striving Sheik," Nida ul-Islam, July-Sept. 1996. ). This aim to cleanse the world is precisely an apocalyptic program. As we have seen among our own homegrown devotees of this agenda, and among foreign groups as well in recent years, the love of death and its eager acceptance baffles the rest of us, but may ultimately become for believers the whole point of their existence. It is literally impossible to scare people devoted to this idea. The Koran (9.52) makes this point explicit: it urges fighters preparing for jihad to ask the reluctant"Are you waiting for anything else but one of two good things for us, (victory of martyrdom)?" Jihad is a no-lose proposition: victory serves God and death earns a martyr’s crown.

Obviously there are enormous and significant differences between the likes of Heaven’s Gate and the Branch Davidians on one hand and bin Laden’s school of Islamists on the other, though they had similar aims. For one obvious and terrifying difference, the two American groups considered themselves, and were, friendless outcasts in a sea of secular disbelief, where bin Laden and his cohorts swim in a sea of enthusiastic support, and they have learned to make themselves invisible in the open net of the Western world.

The Koran requires war against unbelievers as a duty of Islam. This is repeated many times in its early chapters. Doubtless these verses are taken by moderate Muslims to refer to an internal struggle against one's own disbelief, an idea referred to as the greater jihad, while actual warfare is called the lesser, but the words are there, and they aren't ambiguous. The believer is enjoined to kill unbelievers"wherever [he] finds them," though he may make peace with them as long as they submit to Islam. This is precisely the kind of rhetoric that appeals to apocalyptic believers of the fundamentalist strain, and fundamentalism is arguably apocalyptic in all its forms: the return to a primal state of purity that fundamentalists yearn for is inherently an apocalyptic aim, in the political aspect of that term. Apocalypse aims, not for the end of the world, but the end of the world order. It wants to suppress the inevitably corrupt powers of the world, and nowhere, perhaps, is this more radical than in Islam, which ultimately dreams of a stateless, nationless world of Ummah, a realm of perfect peace and universal Islam. (In http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,564733,00.html a Qaeda contact warns the West of"final disaster" following a third world war with Islam. According to http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ladin.htm ,"Al-Qa'ida's goal is to 'unite all Muslims and to establish a government which follows the rule of the Caliphs.' Bin Laden has stated that the only way to establish the Caliphate is by force. Al-Qa'ida's goal, therefore, is to overthrow nearly all Muslim governments, which are viewed as corrupt, to drive Western influence from those countries, and eventually to abolish state boundaries.")

So when bin Laden's people destroyed what they likely took to be Twin Towers of Babel in New York, and caused reflexive shudders throughout the world economy it must have seemed to them that the Day of Judgment-belief in which is a primary test of Muslim faith-was at hand in all earnest. What this means in terms of strategy and tactics in our necessary response to the attacks (the Koran (2.179) makes the point:"In retribution there is life and preservation") is not clear to me, but it should make yet more aware that this will not be a quick or easy war, and its unintended consequences are likely to be grave.

Shortly after I finished this piece, there appeared in my email an article by Ali Baghdadi called"Bin Laden.. a Messiah or a Devil?" (ArabJournl@aol.com). It contained this passage:"The great majority of Arab and Muslim kings, presidents and emirs, who continues [sic] to beg Washington to address the Palestinian problem, not blame Islam for terrorism and present evidence about the assault on New York and Washington in a desperate effort to silence their dissatisfied and uncontrollable subjects, do not represent or speak for their people. Bin Laden, the new Saladdin, the long awaited for Messiah, does. ... Bin Laden's voice has become music that touches the hearts of Muslims who fully agree with his demands to end Zionist occupation of Palestine, lift the sanctions and stop the aggression on Iraq, and withdrawal of foreign troops from all Muslim lands."