Al-Qaeda: the revenge of Abel?

by Narkissos 10 Replies latest jw friends

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  Narkissos

  A silly idea occurred to me the other day, as I was listening to the news. The "new Islamist terrorism," as has been repeated countless times, is very difficult to control because of its unprecedented structure: it is not based anywhere -- no headquarters, no fixed residence, no country. Bin Laden and his gang conspicuously live as nomads. From nowhere and everywhere their network targets big cities, high buildings, big technological facilities. It can strike anywhere and remains elusive.

  At that point my Bible-deformed mind could not help thinking of the ideal of nomadism which many Bible texts have built in opposition to the actual sedentary way of life of their writers and readers: Abel the sheepherder vs. Cain the landowner and farmer, whose progeny invents cities and technology; the Patriarchs; the sojourn in the wilderness between the Exodus and the Conquest; the Rechabites who lived in tents and drank no wine (a French cannot miss that). Even John the Baptist in the N.T. All models of "purity" vs. the so-called moral corruption of settled and urban life.

  A great part of this ideology has been inherited by Islam: the Arab eponym Ismael lives in the wilderness and by his sword. Mohammad lived as a nomad until he took over Mecca, and a great part of his teachings reflect nomadic ideals.

  So it seemed to me that we long-settled Westerners might be experiencing the violent comeback of an alternative pattern of civilisation which we have spiritualised but practically banned -- an alternative which is symbolically attractive, in spite of the lack of any socio-economical proposal (contrary to Communism), to those who do not find their place in our settled and technical "world".

  Pleeeaaaase don't make it a political thread in the worst sense of the term. I'm not discussing good vs. evil, just wondering if this tentative paradigm could help, partly, to understand what is happening.
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  stillajwexelder

  certainly makes some sense to me
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  CaptainSchmideo

  Naw, it's more like the revenge of Ishmael, Abraham's discarded son. These family quarrels have a tendency to go on way to long, especially if the families are large and extended.
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  Carmel

  I believe it was Medina, not Mecca.

  carmel
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  Leolaia

  The Dinah/Shechem story also comes to mind....
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  avishai

  
  Yeah, well because I have jewish ancestry people have called me a christ killer, etc. and worse. And the muslims say ipart of the reason they are doing the terrorism thing is because of the crusades, etc.

  But do I think it's some ancient paradigm reasserting itself? Hell no. There's tons of muslims who ARE'NT arab, so that lets out genetic memory. Personally? I think all that Ismail/christ killer/"you started the crusades, etc. is'nt something based on a na ancient feud or memory. It's an excuse for something far more Human and base. Hate.
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  Jankyn

  I think that's a very interesting metaphor. You should develop it a bit more fully; it would make an interesting op-ed piece about the conflict between societies/ideologies.

  Leolalia's idea about the Dinah story would help, too.

  It made me think of the section in the James Michener novel The Source where the nomadic "Habiru" people who worshipped El-Shaddai (Michener's passage is, in many ways, a re-telling of the Dinah story) tried to live side-by-side with the town of Makor, and ended up killing them all to preserve their religion.

  Jankyn
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  Elsewhere

  I don't agree. The main reason Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are so hard to kill off is because wars are not fought the same way they were in the past. Basically when there was a war between two peoples, one would completely slaughter the other population.... men, women, elderly, babies and children.

  When one group defeated the other group's army the winner would go into the cities of the defeated and completely wipe out all of the inhabitants. When you do that no one is left to form any resistance or terrorist groups.

  I believe another poster started a thread the other day about this.
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  Narkissos

  Thanks for the input.

  Carmel, that was certainly too shortly put, but I was referring to the taking over of Mecca after the hijra (when Mohammad had to flee Mecca and find refuge in the oasis which became Medina). Anyway, the exile and nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life was an important part of his story and values, even from childhood; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad

  Leolaia / Jankyn, yes the Dinah / Shechem is very important as it is an exception in the general portrayal of "nomadic 'Israelites'" (or legendary ancestors) as peaceful. Nomadic violence, on the other hand, is a common topos, cf. the Ismaelites, Amaleqites or the Sabean raiders in the book of Job.

  CaptainSchmideo, Avishai, what I was trying to point out is definitely not an ethnical issue, not even a clash of antagonistic cultures -- conflicts between sedentary and nomad groups have been occuring everywhere they have been in contact with each other -- but rather the way an idealised way of life becomes a very efficient symbol and weapon.

  Elsewhere, my turn to disagree . Genocide, I think, has been morally condemned very early in human history, and certainly earlier than the 20th century (cf. Clausewitz). Even the Bible "genocides" are (terrible and potentially very harmful) fictions. What you seem to miss (but, then, you are not alone) is that the present issue is not "countries" or "peoples" fighting each other -- that's precisely what Al-Qaeda would have the West believe, and to an extent it has been successful. But Al-Qaeda was neither Afghanistan not Iraq, as is now plain for all to see. Every action against "countries" and (mostly settled) "populations" on the other hand reinforces the mythical nomadic identity of the Moslem community and brings it closer to the extremist group which manipulates the concept. Moreover, as the myth is partly shared by the target civilisation (through the Bible!) it is all the more powerful.
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  Leolaia

  How about the ideal of itinerancy in some streams of early Christianity, which was in part a socioeconomic critique of the material comforts of the settled diaspora/Greco-Roman world. "Be passersby," as the Jesuine logion from the Gospel of Thomas states, and the ideal of self-imposed poverty in the synoptics (and in the Ebionite community and the idealized original Christian community in Acts). If there is a parallel to the modern "West" vis-a-vis the Middle East in the Roman world, it would be the pagans (and Christians) of the settled West who had comfortable homes in Italy while interferring in local affairs in the East (in the Pax Romana), and occasional armed struggles in the East for sovereignty. The higher standard of living in Rome compared to...say...Nablus/Neopolis or the rural lands of the Galilee region would have been striking (I recall that Cicero spent the equivalent of several million dollars for a citron-wood table), and certainly some Jewish and Christian writers fully expected the complete destruction of Rome at the hands of God or its enemies (cf. Revelation and the Sybilline Oracles), just as Al Qaeda would like to see New York or the US itself destroyed. How does Al Qaeda compare to the Sicarii, except that instead of daggers people today have more sophisicated weapons and terrorist techniques? Some commonalities with Al Qaeda borne by various first-century Jewish groups may include: (1) They were not merely upset at the wealth of the West but its interference in local affairs (i.e. supporting unpopular governments in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, just as the Romans supported the Herodians and interferred in the Temple cult), (2) the West had a military presence in the East, including in sacred places (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Roman soldiers at the Temple Mount in the Castle of Antonia), (3) the Jews saw the pagan Romans as infidels while they have God on their side, and.... what else??