Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists (76 page)

BOOK: Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists
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  6
  A. Elliot (2007), “Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis.”
New York Times Magazine,
November 25.
  7
  Cited in M. Slackman (2005), “Victor in Iran Vows to Press Atom Work.”
International Herald Tribune,
June 27.
  8
  J. Esposito, D. Mogahed (2008),
Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think.
Gallup Press.
CHAPTER 4: CREATION OF THE WESTERN WORLD

 

  1
  C. Darwin (1871),
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.
London: John Murray, pp. 136, 156–57.
  2
  S. Washburn, ed. (1961),
The Social Life of Early Man.
New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
  3
  D. Young (1992),
Origins of the Sacred: The Ecstasies of Love and War.
New York: HarperPerennial.
  4
  D. Behar et al. (2008), “The Dawn of Human Matrilineal Diversity.”
American Journal of Human Genetics
82:1130–40.
  5
  H. Gross (1966), “The So-called Gottweig Interstadial of the Würm Glaciation.”
Current Anthropology
7:239–43.
  6
  J. Diamond (1997),
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies.
New York: W. W. Norton.
  7
  A. Toynbee (1972),
A Study of History.
New York: Oxford University Press.
  8
  As the Abbasid Caliphate weakened, Mamluks began to assert control. Mamluk dynasties ruled India during the thirteenth century. They took over Egypt from the Ayyubid Sultanate, a former patron, ruling from 1250 until their defeat by the Ottomans in 1517. It was the Mamluks who finally stopped the Mongols in Syria at the Battle of Homs in 1260. Napoleon Bonaparte was so impressed by Mamluk daring during his invasion of Egypt in 1798 that he used Mamluk cavalry in his European campaigns. On March 1, 1811, Egypt’s Ottoman governor, Mohammed Ali, invited hundreds of Mamluk leaders to his palace to celebrate a declaration of war against Arabia’s Wahabis, and murdered all but one to destroy Mamluk power for good.
  9
  C. Lévi-Straus (1966),
The Savage Mind.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10
  Aeschylus (472 B.c.; 1893), “The Battle of Salamis.” In
The Persians,
lines 384–432, in W. H. Appleton (ed.),
Greek Poets in English Verse.
Cambridge: Riverside Press.
11
  J. Maundeville (1322; 1848).
The Book of Sir John Maundeville.
In T. Wright (ed.),
Early Travels in Palestine.
London: Henry G. Bohn, pp. 207–27.
12
  R. Stark (1997),
The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.
New York: HarperCollins.
13
  N. Cohn (1962), “Medieval Millenarism,” in S. Thrupp (ed.),
Millenial Dreams in Action.
The Hague: Mouton.
14
  Cited in J. Burns (2001), “America the Vulnerable Meets a Ruthless Enemy.”
New York Times,
September 12.
15
  A. Toynbee,
A Study of History,
p. 201.
CHAPTER 5: SUBMISSION

 

  1
  Al Kindi, cited in A. Hourani (2002),
A History of the Arab Peoples.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 79.
  2
  A. I. Sabra (1976), “The Scientific Enterprise.” In B. Lewis (ed.),
The World of Islam.
London: Thames & Hudson, p. 182.
  3
  B. Lewis (1964),
The Middle East and the West.
New York: Harper & Row, p. 12; B. Lewis (2002),
What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 152–53.
  4
  S. Souceek (2000),
A History of Inner Asia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5
  The Mongol conquests of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were among the most brutal in recorded history. But unlike the conquest of Western Europe by fractious Germanic tribes, which shattered the
Pax Romana,
the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his heirs effectively established a
Pax Mongolica
from East Asia to Eastern Europe, including the Silk Road. The Moroccan judge Ibn Battûta (1304–ca. 1370) traveled in relative safety from the Atlantic, across the entire Islamic world and on through Mongol-held territory, to China and the Pacific, providing direct comparative knowledge of the social, cultural, and economic life of the vast African and Eurasian territories he explored (though some of what he related was fanciful). His near contemporary, the Venetian Marco Polo (1254–1324), was one of the first Europeans to journey the Silk Road’s entire length. Marco became a close confidant of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. In Kublai’s newly built capital of Beijing, Marco learned about block printing of paperback books and paper currency. He marveled at the imperial postal system, a pony express, and was intrigued by gunpowder and the art of making noodles (which Muslims in southern Italy were already thinning into spaghetti). Kublai gave Marco a letter for Pope Clement IV requesting one hundred learned men to teach his people about Christianity and Western science, though the pope wanted only a military alliance for a new crusade against the Muslims. Marco Polo’s account of Far East riches inspired Columbus to try to reach those lands by a western route, and realize the waking dream of connecting the whole world.
  6
  A. Klieman (1970),
Foundations of British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  7
  S. Atran (1989), “The Surrogate Colonization of Palestine,”
American Ethnologist
16:716–44.
  8
  G. Antonius (1939; 1969),
The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement.
Beirut: Librairie de Liban.
  9
  B. Lewis (1964),
The Middle East and the West,
p. 25.
10
  D. Painter (1986),
Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1941–1954.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 35.
11
  Ibid., p. 37.
12
  K. Deffeyes (2005),
Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak.
New York: Hill & Wang.
13
  During the last year of the Bush administration, both the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, and the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, conceded that the Iraq war was, in large part, about control of oil. But they had to backtrack: America couldn’t also go to war for something so mundane. Most of the other forty or so dictatorships around the world have no key resources we need, and the United States has ignored them.
14
  S. Atran (2003). “US Off Target in Terror War.”
Detroit Free Press,
March 7.
15
  In an ironic turn of events, after the United States defeated the Iraqi army in the Second Gulf War, the U.S. administration pressured the Mongolian government to send about 150 troops for the occupation. These were scheduled to enter Baghdad first, to showcase the “Coalition of the Willing,” until someone realized this was a dumb move. (Conversations with U.S. Foreign Service officials stationed in Mongolia, and with former CIA analyst Mike Scheuer.)
CHAPTER 6: THE TIDES OF TERROR

 

  1
  According to the U.S. State Department Report
Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001,
no single definition of terrorism is universally accepted, though for purposes of statistical analysis and policy making, “The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” By this definition, the Nazi occupiers of France rightly denounced the “sub-national” and “clandestine” French Resistance fighters as “terrorists.” Indeed, there is no principled distinction between “terror” as defined by the U.S. Congress, and “counterinsurgency” as allowed in U.S. armed forces manuals. The U.S. extends the concept of “state terrorism” only to enemy nations, never to itself or allies. In the 1980s, the International Court of Justice used the U.S. administration’s own definition of terrorism to call for an end to American support for “terrorism” on the part of Nicaraguan contras.
  2
  Flavius Josephus Ben Matthias (1985),
The Jewish War
[66–73 A.D.]. Dorset Press, 4.206.
  3
  D. Rapoport (2002),
Anthropoetics
8, Spring-Summer.
  4
  T. Roosevelt (1901), First Annual Message to Congress, December 3. www.geocities.com/presidentialspeeches/1901.htm.
  5
  Submission to 60th U.S. Congress, April 9, 1908, Doc. 426, by Ch. Bonaparte, Attorney General, on behalf of Pres. Th. Roosevelt. http:// tmh.floonet.net/articles/bonaparte.html.
  6
  T. Roosevelt (1904), The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, May. www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trmdcorollary.html.
  7
  Cited in S. Schama (2009),
The American Future: A History.
New York: Ecco, p. 117.
  8
  Ibid., pp. 118–119.
  9
  A. Bacevich (1982), “Disagreeable Work: Pacifying the Moros, 1903–1906.”
Military Review
62:49–61.
10
  H. Gomez Jr. (2000),
The Moro Rebellion and the Search for Peace: A Study of Christian-Muslim Relations and Its People.
Zamboanga City, Philippines: Silsilah Publications.
11
  S. Winchester (2003),
Krakatoa.
New York: HarperCollins.
12
  J. Ellis (1975),
The Social History of the Machine Gun.
New York: Pantheon Books.
13
  L. Wright (2006),
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
14
  Reuven Paz (2003), “The First Islamist
Fatwah
on the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
PRISM Special Dispatches on Global Jihad
1 (1), May. www.e-prism.org.
15
  Salafi, Wahabi, and Takfiri all refer to purist forms of Sunni Islam. But acts and celebrations of martyrdom, including suicide attack and flagellation to emulate the martyrdom of others, have always been more a mainstay of Shi’a society than of Sunni. A foremost contributor to the contemporary cult of martyrdom is the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the radical Shi’a doctrine of its ayatollahs. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), tens of thousands of young Iranian soldiers followed their buddies across the minefields in sacrifice for those to come after. Car bombings by Iran’s Lebanese protégés, beginning with the Islamic Dawa Party’s assault on the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in 1981 and Hizbollah’s bombings of the U.S. embassy and the U.S. Marine and French barracks in 1983, brought suicide attack to the international stage. In 1992, Israel sent hundreds of Hamas leaders into exile in Lebanon, where Hizbollah helped take care of them, along with exiled leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, where they learned Hizbollah terror tactics. In Sudan, Hizbollah also forged links with Al Qaeda affiliates, and Hizbollah videos were used to train Qaeda operatives. But Hizbollah, once it joined Lebanese state politics, stopped their suicide bombing campaign well before those of Hamas and Al Qaeda began.
16
  S. Qutb (1951),
As-salamu al-’alamiyah wal-Islam
[World Peace and Islam]. Maktabat Wihbeh.
17
  O. Bin Laden (1998), “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.” World Islamic Front Statement, February 23. www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm.
BOOK: Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists
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