Decisive Words

With the purported voice of Osama bin Laden now seemingly championing ecological activism and citing Noam Chomsky, one can almost make out the dim roar of 10,000 neo-conservatives and other proponents of the status quo squealing in delight. Who better to discredit the left than Osama bin Laden?

I heard this latest bit of news at a timely moment, having just finished reading Simon Critchley’s fantastic work, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, which includes some reflections on the nature of al-Qaeda’s “activism.” According to Critchley, al-Qaeda is a “covert and utterly postmodern, rhizomatic quasi-corporation outside of any state control” that represents the “quintessence of active nihilism.”

For Critchley, as for Nietzsche before him, nihilism — the realization that previously legitimizing grounds of meaning and norms of conduct are now incapable of performing their former functions — represents the defining question of the modern world. Nihilism manifests itself in both the religious and the political realms, but it is the latter that Critchley is concerned with in this work. One possible response to the specter of nihilism in the arena of politics is to acknowledge the truth of nihilism and simply give up any attempt at effecting meaningful change. This is passive nihilism. On the other hand, “The active nihilist also finds everything meaningless, but instead of sitting back and contemplating, he tries to destroy this world and bring another into being.” This is the impulse he finds represented in al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda is not alone. Active nihilism is also reflected in Bolshevism, Situationism, and the Weather Underground in the US, amongst many others.

He goes on to say:

“In my view, one should approach al-Qaeda with the words and actions of bin Laden resonating against those of Lenin, Blanqui, Mao, Baader-Meinhof, and Durruti. The More one learns about figures like Sayyid Qutb, who was murdered by the Nasser government in Egypt in 1966 after a period of imprisonment when he wrote many texts that would later influence intelectuals like al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s mentor, the more one sees the connection between Jihadist revolutionary Islam and more classical forms of revolutionary vanguardism. Although bin Laden’s language is always couched in terms of opposing the ‘Zionist-Crusader chain of evil’ and ‘global unbelief’, the political logic of jihadism is an active nihilist revolutionary vanguardism which is far more deeply committed to martyrdom and the rewards of the hereafter than the establishment of any positive social programme.”

Infinitely Demanding provides a more than adequate response to both passive and active nihilism, and I highly recommend it. But, rather than rehearse Critchley’s fine arguments, I’d like to cite a response to such movements (also referenced by Critchley) that was articulated by Subcommandente Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation: “I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of the planet.”

What stands out most in Marcos’ communique is a strong faith in “the word.” Against the vanguardism and violence of the Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) organization, Marcos proposes only a faith in the efficacy of truth. He writes:

“We know you are angry because we haven’t taken you seriously, but it is not your fault. We don’t take anyone seriously, not even ourselves. Because whoever takes themselves seriously has stopped with the thought that their truth should be the truth for everyone and forever. And, sooner or later, they dedicate their force not so that their truth will be born, grow, be fruitful and die (because no earthly truth is absolute and eternal) rather they use it to kill everything that doesn’t agree with this truth.”

The Zapatistas have at times taken up arms, but only to win their right to the word, to speak the truth. Marcos explains: “Our weapons are not used to impose ideas or ways of life, rather to defend a way of thinking and a way of seeing the world and relating to it, something that, even though it can learn a lot from other thoughts and ways of life, also has a lot to teach.”

In the Muslim community there are often discussions about takfir. I remain uninterested in such discussions. But I am interested in faith, and so I will say that whether or not bin Laden is a kaafir in the juristic sense of the term, he lacks the faith in truth that Marcos describes. And may God save this ummah from such a lack of faith.