Murawiec was slimed as a "neo-con" and hounded from the Pentagon in 2002. Nice to see he's still in there swinging.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2002%20Opinion%20editorials/August%202002/Perle's%20stealth%20attack%20on%20Saudi%20Arabia.htm

Posted by: MarcH at June 1, 2006 4:05 PM

MarcH:

I have some recent experience with being slimed as a "neocon," and so I know how charges, no matter how counter to fact, can have legs, but I must admit to some puzzlement: I thought "neocons" ran the Pentagon. What are they doing hounding one away?

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Posted by: jihadwatch at June 1, 2006 4:10 PM

That seems to have become a universal and near-contentless term of abuse for the left. The intellectual background to that piece isn't in "neo-conservatism" but in Eric Voegelin's work, which goes back to the pre-War period.

Posted by: Yojimbo at June 1, 2006 4:11 PM

Laurent Murawiec writes:

"I am saying that [jihadis] are possessed of a disease of the mind and the disease is the political religion of modern Gnosticism in its Islamic version."

Now we're cookin' with gas! Finally, someone seems to be applying Eric Voegelin's political science categories of pneumopathology and modern Gnosticism to the problem of Islam.

I haven't read the whole piece yet, but other Voegelinian terminology needs to be employed as well, including immanentization of the Eschaton, Ecumenic Imperialism, and hypostatic deformation of symbolisms.

Posted by: Television at June 1, 2006 4:52 PM

Yojimbo,

Eric Voegelin himself was frequently tarred with the brush of "fascist" and "right-wing"; he stayed above the fray, only dipping down occasionally to note wryly (backed up with his usual astounding breadth and depth of scholarship) that such words as "left" and "right" and their satellite terms are evidence of the corruption and deformation of a classical science of politics.

Posted by: Television at June 1, 2006 4:56 PM

That's just what we need more of... more oblique non-terms -- more hermeneutic heuristics to go with all the "Janjaweed" "militias"(Arab terrorist shocktroops), the "fatwas"(holy Islamic terror laws), the hudnas(Holy Islamic terror tricks), Jihads (Holy Islamic terror worship) and the allahuakbars (Holy Islam's battlecry to terror)...

All of eat meaningless to the persons who will fight this battle and win it, or be kept ignorant by the malign liars of Islam and all these fanciful curlicues and arabesques.

Posted by: jsla at June 1, 2006 5:05 PM

By the way -- this pdf just comes up as a jumble on my computer -- Anybody know what might be going on? Thanks!

Posted by: jsla at June 1, 2006 5:06 PM

jsla, I had a similar problem with the pdf. I copy-pasted the gobbledy-gook into a Word file and came up with one page of readable material, from which I culled my quote. I am going to try to open the pdf from another computer when I get a chance.

This is 2006. You'd think pdf's would be uniformly accessible by now. Why do people still use pdf's anyway? I can see the use of a pdf when you have a 1,000-page document with complex graphic; not when you have a simply essay like this one.

Posted by: Television at June 1, 2006 6:06 PM

Television l had similiar problems, will try your method. any using neo-con is over rated, and the left loves to brandish anyone with a different opionion as racist. l find that disgusting.

Posted by: Lulu at June 1, 2006 6:20 PM

My only real problem with this piece is that the terms "Gnostic" and "Gnosticism" have been used in so many different ways by so many different academics that it has lost much of its meaning at this point. I am not claiming that his analogy is inaccurate - indeed, the groups he quoted sound extremely similar to the average jihadi - I'm just saying that his use of a term with no universally-identifiable meaning can cause problems. For instance, I'm sure that these groups had a different understanding of the concept of gnosis than this author, who has a different understanding than either the Ecclesia Gnostica or the Apostolic Gnostic Church.

However, this article makes a key mistake, one which undermines his comparison a bit. The modern jihadi can look to the Koran and the Hadith for a veritable cornucopia of justifications for terrorism and other such barbarisms. If one were to look through the contents of the Nag Hammadi Library, however, they would find little to nothing to back up such behaviour.

... I in no way consider myself a scholar of either of these faiths; I'm just mentioning a discrepancy I noticed.

Posted by: Campisi at June 1, 2006 7:29 PM

Campisi

You make valid points about the author's use of Gnosticism to make his points about the islamic jihad.

The jihad can be dealt with in any number of ways - either by selective targetting of jihadis and their masters or by the much simpler method of shutting immigration of muslims to the West - which by the way is not illegal, as we have the right to refuse entry to anyone. The trouble is that whatever policy we adopt, we must carry it out thoroughly.

Posted by: DP111 at June 1, 2006 7:40 PM

And given the exigencies of the Modern World -- is it even possible any longer for the West, or more accurately, for America to carry things out thoroughly? We would like to be joined in the fight. But where are those democrats in Germany and France, Russia and elsewhere stepping in and making sure the Iraqi project doesn't unravel? The world undermines our every move and every effort.

Despite the rhetoric of war and declarations of principals we find we can't do anything thoroughly.

"We don't negotiate with terrorists." Then Ms. Rice is strongarmed by Europe to renounce this position. We joined our European "friends" and now agree to negotiate with Iran. Europe's insistence that 'soft power' be used with Iran has guaranteed that a more damaging war will ensue, and that in the end, Iran may just end up with nukes in the interim.

"You are either with us, or you are against us." The world HOWLED, and most said they at best want to be both with us and against us. After that global human calamity and act of cowardice, that harbinger of what awaits us, The American President saw he few choices, and said "This will have to do. OK. You can be both with us and against us."

His formulation for the war has been wrong, I agree. But I know that had his formulation been perfect, our "friends" would still not have come along to help -- not in any meaningful "thorough" way.

I know I piss many of my European "friends" off -- and perhaps this time I can forestall some blowback -- America isn't doing enough. America is not doing any better of a job recognizing and contending with the heinousness of Islam. We too are slow on the uptake.

But at least we didnt' take this sitting down. I must ask therefore: How do you get those who have already surrendered stand up and start to fight? It is this above all things which must be encouraged, provoked, or demanded.

Posted by: jsla at June 1, 2006 8:41 PM

principles. sry.

Posted by: jsla at June 1, 2006 8:42 PM

Campisi-

I think the author's use of "gnosticism" concerns the root influence on Mohammad's vision of Christianty, based on early heretical aspects of Jesus, that appear to have survived in Arabia, and then been adopted, in even more distorted form, by Islam.

I find it almost useless in the present argument, unless the author wants to waste time working backwards and explaining too much, when what we need are battle cries and clear formulations of how to defeat theocratic maniacs (whatever their original inspirational sources), not foggy, energy-diffusing exegesis.

Give me "ISLAMIC IMPERIALISM MUST END!" over scholastic analytics that try to re-invent the wheel in order to say the same thing.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 1, 2006 8:46 PM

Mr. Spencer-

The PDF is only visible, from this site and from the Hudson Institute's also, as a series of black and red dots. I found more of the article through a blog, but still not the entire piece, at:

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/

Scroll down a few segments.

It gives the intro, but when you click on his "read it all" the same bizarre dots appear, constantly illegible by my adobe reader no matter what I try.

Anyone got a better link for the whole piece?

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 1, 2006 9:08 PM

I just checked it again, and it works over here -- so there's nothing I can do. My apologies.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Posted by: jihadwatch at June 1, 2006 9:14 PM

Campisi,

The author seems to be using the term "modern Gnostic" in the sense that the philosopher of history Eric Voegelin used it. Voegelin was often criticized for his use of the term. I'd suggest that it's a complex issue, needlessly complicated at times by the specialist tunnel-vision of certain scholars. Before dismissing its use, I'd recommend reading a little book called Science, Politics and Gnosticism by Voegelin; then if you're more ambitious, read his fourth volume of Order and History subtitled The Ecumenic Age. Both of these works, incidentally, contain the only material Voegelin ever wrote about Islam -- woefully scanty. It is up to Voegelinians now to apply his methodology to the problem of Islam; unfortunately, if the official Voegelin discussion forum is any indicator, they are as benighted by PC givens as is the mainstream. (Barry Cooper is, to my knowledge, the only Voegelinian scholar who has written a study on terrorism, and in it he finds nothing wrong (or relevant to the issue of terrorism) with Islam per se: he basically subscribes to the "tiny minority of modern extremists who happen to be Muslims" theory.)

Posted by: Television at June 1, 2006 9:20 PM

Television:

From what I've gathered in relation to Voegelin's work "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism" (which, apparently, is much more well-known than I realized), Murawiec used the term "Gnostic" in relation to anyone that felt dissatisfied with the world, which could be changed into a utopia through the perfection of humanity. Such a definition makes it abundantly clear that Voegelin only had secondary sources from which to gain an understanding of Gnosticism; his understanding and influence then shows through Murawiec's work.

However, times have changed since the days of Voegelin, and new discoveries have completely revised our understanding of both the term Gnostic and the system through which it is revered, Gnosticism. These discoveries have been publicly available for three decades now, long before Murawiec wrote his piece. Just like how the definition of the terms were fluid in Voegelin's days, so they have changed now into what we now know to be the truth. Murawiec's use of the term cannot stand now; indeed, the fact that I, the reader, had to undergo some research to even understand his definition of a word that I know to mean something different shows that Murawiec's use is flawed.

I have dragged this discussion off-topic as it is; I shall refrain from further discussion, unless prompted. I thank Television and Profitsbeard for clarifying the issue for me.

Posted by: Campisi at June 1, 2006 11:11 PM

TV-

Is 1.2 billion "tiny" in Voegelinian speak?

I find Heidegger dense enough.

I prefer the literary ability of an Henri Bergson or a Nietzsche (although not many of his tentative philosophical conclusions... since he was too young -when he stopped writing- to restrain his vitriol, and would likely have controlled his intellectual bomb-throwing in time and with experience of modern warfare and the effects of the machine gun and poison gas...) over all of the flatulent Hegels, desiccated Charles Sander Pierces, formula-fixated Wittgensteins, quasi-historical Foucaults or obtuse Luce Irigarays you can throw at an idea.

I like polysyllabic talk over dinner, but in a fight, I lean toward crisper formulas.

Of what I can read of Murawiec's piece (still can't get the glitchy PDF to work), I'm for his conclusions, if not his exact directions.

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 1, 2006 11:19 PM

The Idea that we have a war on terror is like calling wwII the war on Blietzgrieg. The war is against our enemy and to win WE must put him on his knees. First we must point at him and call him by name, "Islamist." Second, we destroy his ability to project force. Third we must point out over and over again to the moderates that we in no way inteded to impune their good name, and if all that is done right, we should be feared, but not by all those bellievers in the moderate side of the Religion of Peace. If the Modarates believe that they should be scared we could ask them why. If the answer to the question of why? is not clear, history tells us we start the whole process over again. At night I pray that this is not the truth, and I don't believe I am the first in Christiandom to pray that prayer. As Christians and Jews we tend to believe that our enemy will like us once he is no longer scared. As bleak as it sounds the real truth is that our enemy does not mind if we are scared, in fact, that is his tactic but his druthers are that we be dead.

Posted by: froggyone at June 2, 2006 3:09 AM

henry, I'll repeat my post to you here, since it's more on-topic in this thread than the "Don Rickles" thread:

henry,

I don't think dualism is a necessary ingredient of Gnosticism. At any rate, when you poke beneath the seemingly monolithic monotheism of Islam, you find a tension between Allah and Satan (same tension you find in all monotheisms, only with Islam it's a much more intense tension because of their monomaniacal monotheism). From another angle, we see the perennial tendency toward dualism which all religions harbor to one degree or another assert itself in Islam in the Dar-al-Islam/Dar-al-Harb duality and the Muslim/Infidel duality (both of which are predicated on the struggle between Allah and Satan).

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 3:14 AM

Cambisi,

"Murawiec used the term "Gnostic" in relation to anyone that felt dissatisfied with the world, which could be changed into a utopia through the perfection of humanity. Such a definition makes it abundantly clear that Voegelin only had secondary sources from which to gain an understanding of Gnosticism"

Voegelin knew perfectly well that ancient Gnostics weren't trying to change the world into utopia. Voegelin in this regard was referring to modern Gnosticism, which has lost the connection to transcendence, and therefore transforms the soteriological goal into a world-immanent one. The common thread between the ancient Gnostic and the modern Gnostic is their shared antipathy for the cosmos and its structures and limitations. The former seeks (and thinks or "knows" he has found) escape from the cosmos and its evil demiurge; the latter seeks (and "knows" he has found the key or "system") to transfigure the intolerably imperfect cosmos through a variety of means, including revolution, violence, totalitarianism, closure to (and suppression of) differing opinions and to existential questions, etc.

Under this definition, we could say that Islam is the first modern Gnosticism, a pre-modern variant. This need not vitiate the category at all, since a timeline is not critical to its definition: it just so happened that political science only knew modern forms of this type of Gnosticism, and remained unaware of one giant Elephant in the room all along -- one that began far before the modern era began (7th century A.D.), that perdures successfully (albeit with hideous blemishes and ghoulish humps) into our present, and which has had a history of being spectacularly powerful in military-imperial terms, far outdistancing the other two modern Gnosticisms (Communism and National Socialism) in this regard.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 3:29 AM

Campisi, sorry, misspelled your name in the last post.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 3:29 AM

Here is the article for anyone who can't get it to display in PDF form.

********************************************

BESA Center for Strategic Studies Bar-Ilan University
Radical Islam: Challenge and Response
Thursday May 25, 2006
Embargoed for publication until May 25, 2006

DETERRING THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY DEAD?

Laurent Murawiec
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

Deterrence works because one is able credibly to threaten the center of gravity of the enemy: the threat of inflicting unacceptable losses upon him, whether in a bar brawl or in nuclear escalation. The calculus deterrence relies upon is: is it worth it? Is the Price/Earning Ratio of the contemplated action so hugely negative that it would wipe out the capital? Deterrence works if the price to be paid by the party to be deterred hugely exceeds his expected earnings. But deterrence only works if the enemy is able and willing to enter the same calculus. If the enemy plays by other rules and calculates by other means, he will not be deterred. There was nothing the Philistines could have done to deter Samson. If the calculus is: I exchange my worthless earthly life against the triumph of Allah on earth, and an eternity of bliss for me, if the enemy wishes to be dead, if to him the Apocalypse is desirable, he will not be deterred.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the Mayor of Tehran, he insistently proposed that the main thoroughfares of Tehran should be widened so that, he explained, on the day of his reappearance, the Hidden Imam, Mohamed ibn Hassan, who went into the great occultation in 941 AD could tread spacious avenues. More recently, he told the Indian Foreign Minister that “in two years, everything will be settled,” which the visiting dignitary at first mistook to mean that Iran expected to possess nuclear weapons in two years; he was later bemused to learn what Ahmadinejad had meant, to wit, that the Mahdi would appear in two years, at which points all worldly problems would disappear.

This attitude, truly, is not new, nor should it surprise us: religious notions and their estranged cousins, ideological representations, determine not only their believers’ beliefs but also their believers’ actions. Reality, as it were, is invaded by belief, and belief in turn shapes the believer’s reality. The difference between the religious and the ideologically religious is this: the religious believer accepts that reality is a given, whereas the fanatic gambles everything on a pseudo-reality of what ought to be. The religious believer accepts reality and works at improving it, the fanatic rejects reality, refuses to pass any compromise with it and tries to destroy it and replace it with his fantasy.

As Pat Moynihan memorably told an opponent, “you are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your facts.” Ahmadjinedi inhabits his beliefs rather than the common earth. With him we do not share the same facts, even though we share a planet. The sharing takes the form of bombs and bullets.

Ahmadjinedi wants to hasten the reappearance of the Hidden Imam, whose coming, in traditional Muslim, and especially Shiite, apocalyptics, will be the Sign of the Hour, that the End of Days is nigh. Ahmadinejad’s politics cannot be labelled ‘radical,’ as opposed to ‘moderate.’ His politics are apocalyptic and eschatological. Its vanishing point is not earthly but otherworldly. Famously Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We have not made a revolution to lower the price of melon.” The task of the Mahdi, when he reappears, will be to lead the great and final war which will bring about the extermination of the Unbelievers, the end of Unbelief and the complete dominion of God’s writ upon the whole of mankind. The Umma will inflate to absorb the rest of the world.

The politics carried out by the complex in power in Tehran—Ahmadinejad, the Pasdaran, the Basiji, the ministry of Intelligence, Supreme Guide Khamenei—is apocalyptic and millenarian—but it also is autistic: in the world, nothing that contravenes their perverted sense of what is and what ought to be, may be allowed to exist; conversely, anything in the world that contradicts their representations must be eradicated: the only things allowed to exist are their representations. In their revolt against the Order of the world, they are determined to impose upon that world an Order that incompatible with most institutions and people. They are disposed to destroy a world that refuses their dawa, as it stubbornly clings to its own ways, in order to make way for their fanciful views.

Contemporary jihad is not a matter of politics at all (of ‘occupation,’ of ‘grievances,’ of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and Zionism), but a matter of Gnostic faith. Consequently, attempts at dealing with the problem politically will not even touch it. Aspirin is good, and so is penicillin, “ they are of little avail to counter maladies of the mind. I am emphatically not saying here that the jihadis are “crazy.” I am saying that they are possessed of a disease of the mind, and the disease is the political religion of modern Gnosticism in its Islamic version.

Let us flash back in time, if you will, to Sept. 28, 1971, in Cairo. The prime minister of Jordan Wasfi al-Tell, who had been threatened by the Palestinian movement in retaliation for the so-called Black September of 1970, walks into the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel. “Five shots, fired at point-blank range, hit [him]… He staggered… he fell dying among the shards of glass on the marble floor. As he lay dying, one of his killers bent over and lapped the blood that poured from his wounds.” The multiplicity of similar incidents tells us that they are neither some ‘collateral damage’ nor incidental occurrences. They do not belong in the sphere of traditional politics, they are instead located in an ‘elsewhere’ of geopolitics.

Soldiers kill. Terrorists kill. Modern Jihadis lap the blood. Inseparable from contemporary Arab-Muslim jihad are the idealization of blood, the veneration of savagery, the cult of killing, the worship of death. Gruesome murder, gory and gleeful infliction of pain, are lionized and proffered as models and exemplary actions pleasing to Allah. These are no merely reflections of a pre-modern attitude toward death. I have collected, as can anybody, dozens of examples of human sacrifice inflicted by the Islamic jihadi of all stripes. This pornography of crime is endless, from the gratuitous killing of a Leon Klinghoffer to Mohammad Atta’s instructions, “You must make your knife sharp and you must not discomfort your animal during the slaughter,” and the Behesht Zahra, the ‘Paradise of Flowers’ graveyard near Tehran with its Fountain of Blood, or this report on the killing of an Algerian intellectual: “Dr. Hammed Boukhobza who was killed by a group of Islamist terrorists in the city of Telemly. (…) He was not just killed in his apartment, but his wife and children who wanted to escape were forced to watch how he was literally cut to pieces, his entrails slowly drawn out while he was just barely alive. The terrorists obviously liked to watch the suffering, and they wanted to family to share their enjoyment.”

The accumulation of such deeds shows that they are not an epiphenomenon but are central to the purpose of the jihadi. They are aired 24/7 on TV channels such as al Jazeera and many others. They are avidly watched and celebrated, private and family screenings are arranged. Think of images and videofilms of assassinations, Daniel Pearl, Paul Johnson, ‘live’ killing for the viewing public. Perhaps the worst symbol of it all was the picture taken on Oct. 12, 2000 in Ramallah: a young man shows his red hands dipped in the blood of two murdered Israeli soldiers to an exultant Palestinian crowd. There is a public demand to meet the supply: snuff movies are served as identity markers. They bespeak the triumph of a theology of death, a ‘manufacture of death’ as the Baathist ideologues used to say (the purported division between supposedly ‘secular’ Arab or pan-Arab nationalists and religious types is meaningless when the matter is life and death, as it is), and an ‘industry of death,’ as leading Saudi ulama proudly say. Listen to the hypnotic threnody of the Muslim Brotherhood’s chanted motto: Allah ghayatuna/Al Rasul zaimuna/Al Quran dusturuna/Al Jihad sabiluna/Al mawt fi sabil Allah asma amanina/Allah akbar. These are words to be taken seriously, even literally, as events have shown. Hassan al-Banna repeatedly praised to heaven his Brotherhood’s “art of death” (fann al-mawt). This is thanatolatry, martyropathology or nihilism: when an entire society orients itself in this direction, that society is becoming suicidal. A society that gears especially its young toward killing and actively seeking death, it is making choices that bring about its extinction. “We love death more than you love life.”

If you depreciate and deprecate life and conversely focus all your desires upon death, the devoutly-wished passage into the glorious afterlife by means of shahada, ‘trading’ (as Quran says) one’s own earthly life for one’s afterlife is much easier, and taking the life of others is a mandate, it is an obligation, an offering. Suicide-killing as practiced so much against Israel, India and more recently the United States, is caused by this collective pathology of the mind, the Gnostic religious ideology. There are secondary, contributing causes, but they are just that, auxiliaries to the ideology.

The believers—here, the jihadis—are the Elect: they, and only they, know God’s plan for the world; they have been chosen by Him to fight and win the final, cosmic battle between God and Satan, and bring about perfection on earth, in this case, the extension of God’s writ and dominion, the dar al-Islam, to mankind as a whole. Everybody else is wrong and evil, jahili, and an enemy who can and should be killed at will. Reality, Creation, that is, is irretrievably perverted. The Perfect are “an elite of amoral supermen” (Norman Cohn), who know what reality ‘really’ ought to be. They are engaged in transforming the world so that it conforms to the ‘second reality’ that they alone know, thanks to their special knowledge, gnôsis. In order to get from A to B, from the evil today to the perfect tomorrow, torrents of blood have to be shed in exterminatory struggle, the blood of all those whose actions or whose very being hinder the accomplishment of the Mahdi’s mission. Owing to their extraordinary status, the Perfects are above all laws and norms. Everything they do is willed and sanctioned by God. Their intent (niyyah) vouches for their acts. They alone are able to determine life and death. The power this ideology confers upon its believers is intoxicating. They love death more than we love life.

For five hundred years, from 1100 to 1600, Europe was wracked by Gnostic insurrections, from the Flanders to Northern Italy, from Bohemia to France: Pastoureaux, Taborites, Flagellants, Free Spirits, Anabaptists, etc. The belief-structure just described was theirs. They mobilized hundreds of thousands of people, threatened kingdoms and overthrew dukedoms, they slaughtered Jews, priests and rich people, they created their own, grotesque, bloody, totalitarian ‘republics.’

“Soon we shall drink blood for wine,” one of the leading insurgent writers stated, “those who do not accept baptism… are to be killed, then they will be baptized in their blood.” And another one: “Accursed be the man who withholds his sword from shedding the blood of the enemies of Christ. Every believer must wash his hands in that blood… every priest may lawfully pursue, wound and kill sinners.” And “the Just… will not rejoice, seeing vengeance and washing their hands with the blood of sinners.” Hear Thomas Müntzer: “curse the unbelievers… don’t let them live any longer, the evil-doers who turn away from God. For a godless man has no right to live if he hinders the godly. The sword is necessary to exterminate them… if they resist let them be slaughtered without mercy… the ungodly have no right to live, save what the Elect choose to allow them… Now, go at them… it is time… The scoundrels are as dispirited as dogs…Take no notice of the lamentations of the godless! They will beg you… don’t be moved by pity… At them! At them! While the fire is hot! Don’t let your sword get cold! Don’t let it go lame!”

By and large, the same screeds are heard from a variety of Islamic radicals. “Die before you die!” Ali Shariati tells the Shiite believer. “He who takes up a gun, a kitchen knife or even a pebble with which to arm and kill the enemies of the faith has his place assured in Heaven. An Islamic state is the sum total of such individual believers. An Islamic state is in a state of war until the whole world sees and accepts the light of the True Faith,” said Ayatollah Fazlallah Mahalati, organizer of Iranian assassination squads. “To allow the infidels to stay alive means to let them do more corrupting. To kill them is a surgical operation commanded by Allah… we have to kill… war is a blessing for the world and for every nation, It is Allah himself who commands men to wage war and kill… It is war that purifies the earth,” said Ruhollah Khomeiny. And article 15 of the Hamas charter, explains: “I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill!” As I said, a soldier kills, a jihadi loves to kill. And what was the dismal arithmetic conveyed by some jihadi that since the Americans had purportedly killed a lot of Muslims, the Muslims were “entitled” to kill 4 million Americans, children included? Torah recounts the end of human sacrifice: it forcefully states that God’s Law is THOU SHALT NOT MURDER that was adopted by Christians. Today’s jihad is a giant regression to pre-Abrahamic times, to Moloch and Baal.

In modern times in the West, as Eric Voegelin and Norman Cohn have shown, the ideology morphed and took on secular forms—Nazis and Bolsheviks in particular. Islam, was heavily burdened by Gnostic contents, and historically shaped by a tribal matrix that inherently fosters Manichean tendencies (“them”-vs.-“us”). The jump from mere religion to religious ideology was easy. It was achieved in the 19th century by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. It was followed by Abu Ala Mawdoodi, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati, Ruhollah Khomeiny, Osama bin Laden. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Deobandi of South Asia, the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyya, the Talibans, the Wahhabi, share this outlook.

Knowing this, how do we deter the modern Gnostic warriors, the jihadi?

Mainly, we do not. Those who are dead already, who consider themselves dead to the world and only alive to the Afterworld, those who wish to die, generally cannot be deterred. Faith has been described as a belief in things invisible. Gnosticism is belief in a fantasy that is taken to be more real than the common reality: they do not believe what they see, they see what they believe. This cannot be deterred. Imagine Osama bin Laden is in front of you: how do you deter him? Or Zawahiri, or Zarqawi ? Deterrence? Don’t even think about it. Deterrence might have worked way before contemporary jihad was able to reach critical mass, sometimes perhaps in the early to mid-1990s.

If our enemy was merely ‘terrorism,’ we could defang it, admittedly at great cost: by destroying the Saudi-Wahhabi nexus and their grip on power, by wiping out the Iranian Ayatollahs’ strength, and by squeezing hard the noxious Pakistani military-intelligence establishment—all in all, the linchpins of Muslim terrorism. Once this infrastructure of terror collapsed, much of terror would. But terror itself is nothing but the principal para-military instrument of jihad: the operative concept is jihad, not terror. The jihadis’ purpose (in Clausewitzian terms, Zweck), in the very words of the Quran, is to strike terror in the hearts of unbelievers, it is a quasi-military objective: once terrorized, the Unbelievers, the schismatics and the polytheists will convert, submit or die. The strategic aim (Ziel) of jihad is the Gnostic takeover of the world. To some extent, we may be able to lessen, hinder or hamper the Zweck. But the Ziel is unconditional and cannot be altered. Can we de-fang jihad by pulling its terrorist teeth?

Some workarounds work. The way in which Israeli military and security forces have ruthlessly sapped the strength of Islamic terror, notably by a high-tempo attrition of its leadership cadre, is exemplary and should be studied and emulated elsewhere, different conditions obtaining.

Contemporary jihad, like its emanation, terrorism, is an integral chain: as long as it is islamico-glamorous to be a cleric who issues fatwas calling for the murder of Israeli civilians or American GIs, the cleric will go on. Once dead, he will stop. So will the chairman of a charity that funnels money to jihad. So will the senior intelligence officer who trains or smuggles them, the predicator who incites, the madrasa or university professor who brainwashes, the prince who lies for terror, the ayatollah who sends out teams of killers, etc. This is deterrence after the French expression the have been shot pour encourager les autres. Jihad is the operative ideology of a number of states; states can be pinned down and hit. This approach is a variant of the notion of decapitation, or of the formulation of nodal targeting given by air power theorist Col. John Warden. Less than the jihadi hardware, it is the jihadi software that has to be hit—“ not by soft power.

What did Europe do to crush the insurrectionary Gnostics in the Medieval and late-Medieval era? Churchill once said: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Likewise I’ll have a kind word for the Inquisition (not the Spanish one, though), which did quite a job cleaning up the mess. They rounded them up and they killed them. Thomas M&252;ntzer was defeated, captured and beheaded in 1525. The ‘King’ of the Anabaptists of Münster, John von Leyden and his aides, were executed in 1535. As a terrible warning, their bodies were suspended in iron cages from the tower of St. Lambert's church in the town. Those who survived hit in wait for better days. What they had found is that their insurgency was hopeless, that it was useless, and that sticking one’s neck out was a sure way to lose it. Their will had been broken. Enough of a trauma had been inflicted to do so.

One martyr will have followers, ten martyrs will be admired and emulated. One thousand dead martyrs who died unheralded die in vain. If Ahmadinejad and others die in vain and uselessly they will not die as martyrs but as slobs. For the Gnostic, for the jihadi, his death is the only thing that matters to him: take that away and nothing is left. It does not mean, as the jurors of the Moussaoui trial were apparently led to believe, that “you cannot make a martyr out of him, since this is what he wants.” Make his death a lonely, useless, ignored death. Unextraordinary, unromantic, trivial deaths shatter the glory of the jihadi’s death. It was George Patton who said: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” The recipe is not pretty nor is it easy.

The defeated European Gnostics went underground, their sole hope resided in the clandestine conveying of their beliefs, especially to their children. Society cannot eliminate the Gnostic beliefs, but can make the strain dormant instead of virulent. Jihad is integral to Islam and derives from its most fundamental tenets. The severing of that link is not going to happen soon. But throughout history, when Islamic conquerors met their match, they stopped. When they met crushing defeat, they retreated, and found the ulama and the faqih to justify that, like prophets who announced the Rapture for yesterday, 8:09 am, and reschedule it for next year. But let us remember that most of the faithful are not turned off by the ludicrous failure of their prophet’s prophecies, precisely because they live in the ‘second reality.’

Once their leaders had been exterminated, the Medieval insurgents of Europe disbanded and scattered. Applying high-tempo attrition and nodal targeting to the jihadi apparatus worldwide (by which I emphatically do not mean ‘terrorists’ alone or even in the first place) seems to me to be a modern equivalent. If I may say in homage to the chain of command that orchestrated his elimination, Sheikh Yasin was not in the habit of wielding pistols—he wielded death. It is those who deploy the undead who must be the priority targets.

********************************************

Posted by: Yojimbo at June 2, 2006 3:35 AM

profitsbeard,

"Is 1.2 billion "tiny" in Voegelinian speak?"

No, the problem Islam is causing is "tiny" -- and only tenuously or accidentally related to Islam -- in the Newspeak most everyone persists in speaking (including, apparently and sadly, most Voegelinians).

Voegelin spent a lot of time deconstructing Hegel; in one interesting article, he called Hegel a "sorceror", meaning that quite seriously and technically.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 3:38 AM

No problem with the misspell, Television; you'd be amazed how often it's misspelled. You were actually much closer the first time than most people EVER seem to get.

"The former seeks (and thinks or "knows" he has found) escape from the cosmos and its evil demiurge; the latter seeks (and "knows" he has found the key or "system") to transfigure the intolerably imperfect cosmos through a variety of means, including revolution, violence, totalitarianism, closure to (and suppression of) differing opinions and to existential questions, etc."

The Ancient Gnostics, as well as the Neo-Classicist Gnostics, didn't consider the demiurge to be "evil" in the classic sense of the word; they considered it to be imperfect and willfully ignorant of the True God that created it. For them, evil was nothing more than the opposite of what one considered to be good. This is why some referred to the demiurge as Satan; the literal meaning of the term "satan" simply meant antithesis, as in to the True God and its perfection.

The "latter" as referred to above isn't Gnostic as much as it's just oppressive and revolutionary. It's describing nothing more than an idealistic insurrection; with but a twist or two of logic and/or language, almost anything political or socioeconomical can be made to fit it.

I realize that proper Gnostics and proper Gnosticism and the "Gnostics" referred to in this work are nothing more than homonymns. I guess I was just a tad irked by the improper use of the name, and felt compelled to post.

Posted by: Campisi at June 2, 2006 3:48 AM

If Robert agrees with Laurent Murawiec's assessment and analysis, I am now even more puzzled, if that is possible, by his disinclination to condemn Islam.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 3:49 AM

TV,

Yeah, I know Voegelin was attacked from all sorts of positions. He had an amusing list somewhere in one of his books of all the different things he'd been labelled as - basically every ideologue out there who'd actually read anything of his was disturbed by what he wrote and stuck his favourite label on it.

My specific point was that the article had nothing to do with neo-conservative ideology. Actually, the idea is laughable. Those cheerful naive fellows with their simplistic faith in democracy and freedom as what everyone really wants have no conception of the horrific depths of spiritual corruption that people like Voegelin were aware of.

Posted by: Yojimbo at June 2, 2006 3:52 AM

Thank you for ruining my day Robert, I have never read an article that defined the problem with such icy precision. Here we have an enemy that will not compromise, and bent on world conquest, to beat them we have to be like them. What sort of people will we be like if and when we are successful in destroying this political religion? Will we still be able to maintain our present day set of Western values, or will become a mirror image of our enemies like the Spanish after 1492 who went on to destroy the indigenous culture of South America with the same ruthlessness and religious obsession that Islam did in destroying the indigenous cultures of Egypt Persia and Afghanistan and in about the same time frame? I am inclined to paraphrase the quote of Lord Grey at the beginning of WW1 “ the lights are going out all over the World and we wont see them lit in our lifetime.”

Can I make a suggestion to all you people who are having trouble downloading the pdf. Try downloading the latest Adobe Reader from Adobe and install that, the nice thing with the new Adode Reader is that it has a built in search engine so you can search the pdf. or any other pdf. you might have on your computer as a file, great if you are writing an essay or doing research, secondly Download and install Open Office. Open office is an Office program like Microsoft office with virtually all the attributes if not more and as far as I know is totally compatible. The nice thing about Open Office is that it has a pdf. button on the tool bar so you can make pdf. out of your document. Ideal if you are doing research on the internet, you just copy the page or text of the site past it into Open office make a pdf and you have a searchable document. Open office can be downloaded from Open Office.org it is open source software so it is completely free Sun microsystems are one of the firms involved.

Posted by: Holger Dansker at June 2, 2006 8:20 AM

Also see: Al-Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology

http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html

Posted by: fides at June 2, 2006 9:36 AM

what a brilliant article! I have been trying to convey the idea that this type of fanaticism isn't new in Europe, but may seem very strange to Americans. I think the conclusion (kill those who worship death) is appropriate. As much as we fear this policies impact upon the west, we have recovered before to re-establish liberal values / rule of law.
However, to those who comment about restricting Muslim immigration, I think this article illustrates that it is the ideology that must be suppressed rather than the peoples. After all, with white converts, home-grown jihadists etc, immigration policy does not make us safer from the death worshipers

Posted by: albion at June 2, 2006 10:57 AM

Campisi,

"The Ancient Gnostics, as well as the Neo-Classicist Gnostics, didn't consider the demiurge to be "evil" in the classic sense of the word; they considered it to be imperfect and willfully ignorant of the True God that created it."

With all due respect, this is quibbling. If the central and all-consuming existential preoccupation of ancient and neo-classicist Gnostics was a soteriology based on escape from the cosmic system fashioned by a demiurge -- a cosmic system that causes suffering and that intolerably imprisons the divine spark within the person --, does it really matter what nuances of negative terminology we use to describe that demiurge and his cosmos? The point is the pathos of feeling the cosmos is intolerable and must be escaped from, and can be escaped from with a gnostic solution to the mystery of reality -- to a transcendence. The modern Gnostics share the pathos of feeling the cosmos is intolerable: they differ only in that they do not fixate and obsess on an Escape from the cosmos to a transcendence (transcendence defined precisely as outside the Everything that is the Cosmos) through some esoteric key of knowledge -- if only because they have lost faith in a transcendence -- and have turned inward to immanence to provide an alternative solution to the intolerability of the cosmos: immanent transfiguration through physical and intellectual violence. (Islam seems to represent a unique variant -- not so much violently immanentizing the eschaton, but the flip side of the same coin: violently eschatologizing immanence.)

"The "latter" [modern Gnosticism] as referred to above isn't Gnostic as much as it's just oppressive and revolutionary. It's describing nothing more than an idealistic insurrection; with but a twist or two of logic and/or language, almost anything political or socioeconomical can be made to fit it."

No: anything political or socioeconomical that tolerates the imperfections of life while realistically and maturely pursuing the perfection that mysterious exists in tension with that imperfection -- keeping that tension in balance as much as possible -- does not and cannot be made to fit the description of the latter project. The political or socioeconomical systems that tolerate and work within the limitations of the tension of existence have been in modern times as common, if not more common, as the ones that don't. The ones that don't tolerate the tension of existence make a bigger splash because they tend to mass-murder and try to destroy ancien regimes and convulsively and precipitously transform traditional structures.

"I guess I was just a tad irked by the improper use of the name, and felt compelled to post."

I'd say that the use is improper only in the terms of a narrow scholarly subspecialty categorization. Voegelin ran into this frequently during his career: he noticed and analyzed common grounds and trends in different areas within a culture, in different cultures, in different epochs: when such commonalities are rejected on a priori principle, no philosophy of history is possible, and history becomes an aggregate of unrelated and unrelatable clumps.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 12:18 PM

"Here we have an enemy that will not compromise, and bent on world conquest, to beat them we have to be like them. What sort of people will we be like if and when we are successful in destroying this political religion?"

Nonsense. We did what had to be done with the evil Axis powers during World War II -- often tragically horrible things we had to do --, and we not only preserved our morally superior ethos, we have become, in many ways, even better societies since then (with the exception of the strengthening of PC multiculturalism -- but then, no society is perfect).

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 12:23 PM

Television - agreed ... our grandfathers returned to civility after visiting The Empty Place during World War II.

The argument that "we can't stoop to their level because we'll become the very thing we fight" should be reserved for the 2am college bullshit sessions when everyone is drunk and feeling self-indulgent.

The argument has been disproven.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at June 2, 2006 1:10 PM

Interesting background on the author, Laurent Murawiec (being a Slate article, take it with a grain of salt and judiciously pick out the many tendentious fruits and nuts in the dish):

http://www.slate.com/id/2069119/

Apparently, according to this article, Murawiec has advocated conditions under which our invading Saudi Arabia and commandeering Mecca and Medina would be strategically useful.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 2:11 PM

Before we get too far from the main topic, let me attempt to illustrate my contention with the article. Take this article, and anywhere you see the word Gnostic or Gnosticism, replace it with "Christian" or "Christianity." "Jew" and "Judaism" would work equally as well, as would "Buddhist"/"Buddhism", "Hindu"/"Hinduism", or any other major religious group. This name swap doesn't actually change the definition of the term that Murawiec is using; it just illustrates the weight of the unintended baggage his choice of phrasing has for people unfamiliar with the works of Voegelin.

Posted by: Campisi at June 2, 2006 4:57 PM

Campisi, the substition/equivalency would not work, because Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism demonstrate in their mainstream traditions an acceptance of the tension of existence; whereas Gnosticism mostly does not.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 6:19 PM

Campisis (at 7:29) "My only real problem with this piece is that the terms "Gnostic" and "Gnosticism" have been used in so many different ways by so many different academics that it has lost much of its meaning at this point."

I agree. And in fact all my exposure to gnosticism in a casual way over time indiciated to me that it in fact meant the precise OPPOSITE of the way it is portrayed in this piece.

As I understood the term, it meant something which had actually incorporated/ infused a number of so-called spiritual traditions from kabbalah, to Zen, to Sufism, to Krishnamurti - any trend towards mysticism actually (I've also seen it referred to as the "perennial philosophy"). Jesus and Buddha would appear to be the the very select few who actually made the journey from "not knowing" to "knowing". And from what I've read, gnostics themselves heralded Jesus.

But perhaps I mistakenly took the term gnosticism to mean what I actually think of as AGNOSTICISM.
I'll repost here something I posted on a previous thread - the Gospel of Thomas (very short and worth a read):

http://www.misericordia.edu/users/davies/thomas/Trans.htm

That is apparently viewed as a heretical Gnostic text. But its just straight zen. Look at just the very 1st few out of 114 "sayings":

1."Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

3. "..the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father..."

5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you."

6.…”...After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed…"

But there's actually nothing in the entire thing which suggests that one actually "knows". Rather it strikes me as about the "possibility of discovery" - a promise in a sense , that one CAN discover what it is that Jesus discovered - but nothing more.

I suppose there IS an element of "faith" in the notion that anyone could actually delve into the meaning of every one of those 114 sayings imputed to Jesus (or do what the Buddha did or understand what Krishnamurti understood or any number of examples)

- but none of that promise suggests CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE. In fact it's about the very opposite! Knowledge in a sense yes - but not in an intellectual sense. More a knowledge of the soul for lack of a better description.

On the contrary, the Catholic Church itself seems to me to have been more strictly "Gnostic" in the sense of "I know" - more in line, in fact, with what this author is describing as Gnosticism as the essence of Islam - "I KNOW".

Which then strikes me as a bit ironic that the church persecuted the so-called "gnostics".

I am wondering how any orthodox traditions, all of whom adhere to the concept of "I KNOW" , managed to spin what strikes me as actually "agnostic" - "I DON'T KNOW and I'm not about to take the word of ANY authority to tell me" - into "gnostic".

In short, I am entertaining the idea that the so-called "gnosticism" which this author talks about - Islam being the primary example - is a basic fundamentalist misunderstanding of the "perennial philosophy" - which is essentially "agnostic" in nature - and presumably was in wide circulation at the time of Muhammad.

In short, I concur with Campisis in thinking that the term "gnosticism" should not be flung about so loosely. Because clearly the Gospel of Thomas, which is apparently considered to be a gnostic (or gnostic-influenced) text, has absolutely NOTHING in common with the Koran. And Buddhism is also by some accounts viewed as a "gnostic" philosophy.

If this author thinks that Islam is the epitome of gnosticism and other people think Buddhism is, something is clearly wrong with the term. I think the misunderstanding turns on the "AG" (agnostic vs gnostic) and the different ways in which these 2 terms have been used historically.

(It is frustrating sometimes when you don't have the learning nor the the language to express what you want to convey. Argh!...especially when you've spent all this time trying to convey your nebulous thoughts and you see that TV has posted something which you will now have to struggle to understand in order to continue on in this discussion...)

Posted by: Caroline at June 2, 2006 9:48 PM

way to engage folks! great ideas!

Posted by: jehana at June 2, 2006 10:20 PM

Television: "The common thread between the ancient Gnostic and the modern Gnostic is their shared antipathy for the cosmos and its structures and limitations. The former seeks (and thinks or "knows" he has found) escape from the cosmos and its evil demiurge; the latter seeks (and "knows" he has found the key or "system") to transfigure the intolerably imperfect cosmos through a variety of means, including revolution, violence, totalitarianism, closure to (and suppression of) differing opinions and to existential questions, etc."

I understand the point about "antipathy for the cosmos" or in more concrete terms the "material world" or in other terms "maya". But it still strikes me that one can think that there is something wrong (or illusionary) about the material plane and not confuse that with egoistically thinking that one KNOWS with ABSOLUTE certainty the way out (whether by clinging to and identifying oneself with those who claim to know from a religious perspective (the Muslim ummah being the perfect example) nor by adhering to scientific or political beliefs along the lines of those who believe they KNOW how to transform this imperfect cosmos into a utopia (Marxists being the prototypical example).

I think there is something besides all that that the “true” gnostics were trying to convey. But ironically it strikes me that the more accurate term to convey what they were actually getting at is the term "AGnosticism". "I DON"T KNOW". But with the added caveat that they had faith, in a sense, that it was indeed possible TO KNOW - but that to do so would take the kind of extraordinary humility that the average person simply doesn't have.

I can't help but wonder about the possibility that the terms gnosticism and agnosticism may have gotten all messed up by propoganda over the centuries. I am inclined to entertain that possibility merely for the reason that I have personally witnessed in my own lifetime the Orwellian reality of the meanings of things being literally turned on their head - and so I find myself a bit more circumspect than I otherwise would have been about history, and especially about terminology and the ways in which words are manipulated to influence the perception of things.

Posted by: Caroline at June 2, 2006 11:15 PM

Caroline,

Well, first of all, the term Gnostic has been used by historians to refer to a specific subculture of cults that flourished in a certain geographical area (mostly the ancient Mediterranean and Asia Minor, roughly between 200 B.C. and a few centuries A.D. -- Campisi can correctively tweak this timeline). As time went along and scholars did more research on texts (many were only recently discovered in the last 50 years and were in difficult ancient languages), the historians (and other scholars, anthropologists, philologists, etc.) decided that subculture had too many ragged edges -- in terms of time period, geographical area, and in terms of belief-system -- to be able to really use the term "Gnostic" in a precise way: thus, you could have supposedly "Gnostic" texts that in terms of ideas ranged all over the place. One solution would be to maintain a relatively precise definition of the core belief-system of "Gnostic", and then when a specific text (like the Gospel of Thomas) seems to fail to meet that definition, then you conclude that text is not Gnostic -- you don't conclude there is no meaningful, actual existence of Gnostics. But, unfortunately, the academic scholarly consensus is that "Gnostic" is too ragged to be used meaningfully and with precision anymore: Voegelin knew about this consensus, and he disagreed.

Secondly, scholars like Voegelin who used the term "Gnostic" with more latitude and with poetic flair would say there are Gnostic "tendencies" in many writings and movements that are, on the whole, not Gnostic per se: Voegelin (and others), for example, concluded that the Gospel of John in the Bible had considerable Gnostic "tendencies", but in the end, was not Gnostic per se. Indeed, Voegelin (following others, particularly the obscure French writer Simone Petrement) argued that human nature itself has Gnostic tendencies -- i.e., the Gnostic pathos is universal; or more precisely, it is a universal temptation to bewitchery and to a magical solution to the problems of life to which some individuals and groups succumb, while others manage to resist in a variety of ways. (Voegelin and others concluded that, for example, some forms of medieval mysticism maintained a resistance to the temptation toward Gnosticism, while other forms of medieval mysticism succumbed to that temptation -- indeed, the Catholic Church had a rather sophisticated (and I think mostly correct) litmus test to distinguish the two.) You are thus correct that mainstream religions will sometimes have Gnostic-type orientations here and there: but on the whole, I would argue (and so did Voegelin) that mainstream Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism all may flirt with the Gnostic temptation in one way or another, but don't succumb to it (which doesn't mean that individuals among them don't sometimes succumb, using their own tradition to back their Gnostic choices up).

Finally, the term "agnostic", as far as I know, was never really coined in conscious contrast to "Gnostic". It's just a linguistic coincidence.

Islam, on the other hand, strikes me as being powerfully, overwhelmingly Gnostic in its attitude about the Koran, in its attitude about the saving knowledge delivered to Mankind in the Koran, in its culture of intolerance for the imperfections and impurities of existence, and in its active program (which it believes without a doubt will work) to transform this intolerably imperfect and mysterious existence in which humans find themselves.

Posted by: Television at June 2, 2006 11:52 PM

Television: "One solution would be to maintain a relatively precise definition of the core belief-system of "Gnostic", and then when a specific text (like the Gospel of Thomas) seems to fail to meet that definition, then you conclude that text is not Gnostic -- you don't conclude there is no meaningful, actual existence of Gnostics"

Good point. And indeed I have seen quite a bit of discussion about whether the Gospel of Thomas is or is not Gnostic. There seems to be quite a bit of contention on that point.

Television - "the term "agnostic", as far as I know, was never really coined in conscious contrast to "Gnostic". It's just a linguistic coincidence."

I'll take your word for that but not without noting how absolutely puzzling that would be - given that both words are used in a religious sense and a simple "a" separates their apparent meanings!

Apparently I need to read Voegelin to get up to speed but in several places in your previous post you refer to the "temptation towards gnosticism". I am wondering if you can sum that up - in what does this "temptation" or "flirtation" consist? What do you mean that some traditions of Christian mysticism succumbed to it and some didn't? What is the essential distinguishing factor between those who succumbed and those who didn't? And what WAS the Catholic church's "litmus test" for distinguishing between those who succumbed and those who didn't?

It's 12:40am here. No rush. I can wait til you get around to it (if ever). I'm just really curious about this topic and you seem to be quite well informed so it is difficult indeed to resist the temptation to pick your brain...:-)

Posted by: Caroline at June 3, 2006 12:43 AM

Greetings all!
Long-time reader, long-time supporter of Mr. Spencer, first-time poster.

Murawiec's comments about the Gnostic nature of Mohammadism brought to mind the writing of the magnificent Catholic scholar Hilaire Belloc and his book "The Great Heresies," wherein he describes Mohammadism as a heretical sect and cites Arianism (which disputed Christ's divinity) as a precurser. Reading his book, which dates from around 1930, one is astonished by his prescience.

His chapter on Mohammadism can be found here:

http://www.trosch.org/bks/mohammed.html

(Disclaimer: I have no connection with the above website.)

Posted by: catoneinutica at June 3, 2006 9:14 AM

catoneinutica,
Welcome aboard.

Posted by: arjun.sevak at June 3, 2006 11:28 AM

I realize in retrospect that my use of the term "agnosticism" in the above post is confusing - but apparently that's because the term itself is somewhat confusing, as this entry from Wikipedia makes clear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

"Agnosticism is distinct from, but compatible with, atheism. It is also compatible with theism. This is because agnosticism is a view about knowledge concerning God, whereas theism and atheism are beliefs (or lack thereof) concerning God. For example, it is possible to believe in God but to believe that knowledge about God is not obtainable.”

[note - the belief that such knowledge is absolutely unobtainable would be "strong agnosticism"]

"Agnostics may claim that it isn't possible to have absolute or certain spiritual knowledge or, alternatively, that while certainty may be possible, they personally have no such knowledge.

It is in the latter sense, or what the article refers to as "weak" agnosticism or "open" agnosticism that I was using the term in my previous post when I noted that Gnostics could paradoxically be viewed as “agnostics” – or that “agnosticism” would be a more appropriate term. In other words – believing that it certainty IS possible, but acknowledging that that they DO NOT, in fact have such certainty because they don’t have that direct knowledge. But some people do and HAVE indeed had that direct knowledge – Jesus included.

In this respect, gnosticism is part of what has been called “the perennial philosophy” – apparently a term coined by Aldous Huxley (who also apparently coined the term “agnosticism”, according to this Wikipedia article).

Now it may be true that Gnostics did not believe in the literal death and resurrection of Jesus or even in his divinity (in a literal sense). It appears to be the case that they didn’t believe that Jesus came to “die for our sins” but rather that he came to show us the way to achieve “enlightenment” – but the fact that Islam might happen to share with early Gnostics a denial of Jesus’s divinity doesn’t translate into Islam being a “Gnostic tradition”.

I still think that gnosticism has more in common with Christian mysticism, Buddhism, Taoism, (and presumably Kabbalism – though I don’t know much about that) – then it has in common with Islam. In fact, I can’t imagine any bona fide Gnostic who could possibly have thought that Muhammad was who the hell he said he was. They would have simply thought he was a fraud. The main reason being that gnostics appear to have rejected authority altogether in favor of maintaining that one must find out the truth DIRECTLY for oneself.

On what grounds then could such folks have possibly submitted to the absolute authority of Muhammad or the Koran? It doesn't make sense.

Posted by: Caroline at June 3, 2006 3:23 PM

Caroline,

"how absolutely puzzling that would be - given that both words are used in a religious sense and a simple "a" separates their apparent meanings!"

There might have been the coinage of "agnostic" by early Christian writers, like Ireneaus (2nd century A.D.) who were writing against Gnostics (as well as myriad other heresies) to denote people who are properly not Gnostic, but apparently it never caught on. Apparently the widespread use of "agnostic" only began in the 19th century with Thomas Huxley, to denote anyone who is not certain of religious truth in general. The "alpha privative" (using the prefix letter "a" to denote negation) is common in Greek: my (abridged) Classical Greek dictionary lists many words that have an "a" prefix to words derived from "gnosis" -- agnos (unknown, obscure), agnosia (ignorance, state of not knowing -- this term is actually in the Bible in I Peter 2:15), agnostos (unknown, ignorant). Complicating matters is that in the Bible, the disciple Thomas exhibited what we now call an agnostic attitude: "[Thomas] said unto them [his fellow disciples], except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." (John 20:25)

"you refer to the "temptation towards gnosticism". I am wondering if you can sum that up - in what does this "temptation" or "flirtation" consist?"

In a nutshell, it is the temptation to come to think that one has found a solution or answer to the mystery of life and to the basic existential questions that perplex all humans. Contrary to what some people may think, Christianity does not solve the mystery of life: it offers salvation in spite of the mystery remaining unsolved. The Christian view is that life and history, with all their unexplainable pain and suffering (as well as good stuff), are parts of a mystery which must be endured patiently in faith. Faith is not knowledge: it is a placing of trust in the absence of (sufficient) knowledge. Voegelin (who never went to church during his life and never claimed membership in any branch of Christianity) said the Christian grasp of this paradox of faith was masterfully summed up in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 11:1 -- "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Of course, Christianity has developed doctrines, but I'd say those doctrines function as a framework to protect the mystery, rather than as answers that supposedly dissolve the mystery into knowledge.

The Gnostic goes beyond this tenuous, difficult-to-bear situation of existence to a surer grasp of the knowledge of the answers to the existential questions that remain unanswered. Usually, Gnostics tend to congregate in small, esoteric groups who distinguish themselves from the majority by the fact that they are the only ones who "know" the real secret to the mysteries of existence. Also, Gnostics tend to have extraordinarily complicated mythologies and rituals, filled with thousands of symbolisms derived from many different streams of thought. In my view, the entangling complexity of Gnostic mythologies functions to obfuscate the obvious fact that their "key" to unlock the perennial questions of existence really isn't there at all. The complexity also serves to hypnotically fascinate the follower as he penetrates deeper into the layers beneath the surface of our collective ignorance (cf. the movie The Matrix, a kind of pop Gnosticism -- or The Da Vinci Code, for that matter).

"What do you mean that some traditions of Christian mysticism succumbed to it and some didn't? What is the essential distinguishing factor between those who succumbed and those who didn't? And what WAS the Catholic church's "litmus test" for distinguishing between those who succumbed and those who didn't?"

Examples of medieval mystics who did not succumb are Julian of Norwich, Jan Van Ruysbroek, the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila. Those who showed signs of succumbing (remember, there is sometimes a fine line between succumbing and not succumbing: the same person can vacillate back and forth) were Jakob Boehme, Meister Eckhart, later in time Swedenborg. The medieval mystics who did not succumb had, to put it in a nutshell, visions of the saving truth that is known to save in spite of not knowing exactly how or why. When Julian of Norwich had her visions of Christ assuring her of salvation (not only her salvation but of the world), Christ appeared bloody, sometimes the room she was in was filled with blood (she also lay in a bed sick from some illness at the time). Obviously, a bloody (suffering) Christ is hardly an assuaging Answer in and of itself: thus her vision was paradoxical: in the mystery -- unsolved -- of Christ's suffering, the end of all suffering was revealed to her. This maintenance of paradox in the midst of vision is what distinguishes the orthodox mystic from the heretical mystic: the latter is obsessed with a way out of the paradox, a special key that unlocks escape from this intolerable situation we all have to live in, of not having the final definitive answers to all the questions of life, answers that finally dispel and banish the questions.

The Catholic litmus test was basically the standard by which to distinguish orthodoxy and heresy (not all heresies are Gnostic; some may only have Gnostic "tendencies"). Again, superficially, it would appear that the Catholics (and Greek Orthodox) when applying their standard seem to be just as "Gnostic" as the heretics -- they seem to know the truth; but I would maintain that their orthodox standard is a framework that protects the ultimately mysterious and un-solvable "facts" of salvation. Salvation from what? The orthodox position is paradoxical: why would God need to save his creatures from a Good Creation He Himself created in the first place? Nevertheless, the existential situation we are in points to the "fact" that Creation is flawed: there is evil, suffering, ignorance: we have an innate appetite, a longing to be saved. This is a paradox, and into this paradox came the Gospel that God will save us. The Gnostic position finds this paradox intolerable: the Gnostic answers the above question -- which orthodoxy preserves unanswered -- why would God need to save his creatures from a Good Creation He Himself created in the first place? The Gnostic answer is elaborated in a complex mythology, an esoteric, fascinating, secret key filled with weird symbolisms and stories, basically revolving around the answer that an evil, or ignorant, "lower God" created the Cosmos in order to entrap us and prevent us from returning to the "higher God", who is our "true Home"; etc. There are many complicated variants among different Gnostic traditions of this "Answer" to why Creation has evil in it -- they can all be boiled down to:

1) dissolving the paradox of a Good Creation that is also flawed and from which creatures need to be saved by the same Creator who created this Good Creation

2) an intolerance of the flawed nature of Creation so intense, it leads the Gnostic to try to find a way out of Creation -- an escape plan through a special, secret knowledge

3) blaming God Himself for the evil of Creation -- then splitting God into two Gods -- an evil or ignorant "demiurge" or "lower God", and a good God utterly disconnected from Creation, or at least so remotely connected from Creation (he might be connected through a long complex chain of associations that ultimately lead to the evil "lower God") that He is absolved of the evil of Creation.

Posted by: Television at June 3, 2006 3:32 PM

Caroline,

In light of your last post, I'd want to emphasize that Islam is a type of Gnosticism: it doesn't mean that any other Gnostic anywhere would necessarily find Islam attractive. You're right, there are many Gnostic types that are sort of eclectic New Agey types who would probably not be attracted to Islam (though, on the other hand, they would probably be the types who would "celebrate" the "diversity" of Islam in that typically ignorant multiculturalist sense).

What makes Islam Gnostic in my view is its absolute assurance that a special "key" (the Koran) that delivers an absolute salvation from the mystery of the persistence of imperfections in life was given to man -- Mohammed -- and that this key forms the basis for a special group that has a special membership of people who all share this key of knowledge, as opposed to everyone else who does not. There is no doubt permitted in Islam: the inner "struggle" (jihad) in Islam is not, as it is in Christianity or other non-Gnostic faiths, a spiritual struggle to try to patiently abide by and even suffer the inescapable existential situation we all must bear of imperfections and questions that are not answered -- the inner jihad for the Muslim is, rather, precisely a wrestling to subdue and suppress and squelch all traces of doubt and questioning: the Muslim mind is struggling against the paradox; the non-Gnostic religious person is trying to learn to bear the paradox. And, in the outer jihad, the Muslim finds in the Infidel Enemy an external manifestation of the paradox -- the evil imperfections and impurities which Satan has woven into Allah's Creation -- and in fighting this external manifestation, the Muslim continues his struggle against the paradox, against everything that stands in the way of the Gnosis.

Again, I'm not saying non-Muslim religious people have never had attitudes similar to this, nor am I saying that non-Gnostics are a separate race from Gnostics. The Gnostic temptation is part of human nature. And it matters when you have a massive belief-system based on Gnosticism, like Islam, that positively encourages the Gnostic attitude.

Posted by: Television at June 3, 2006 3:49 PM

Television - I must say your 3:32 post is simply awesome. It clarifies a great deal for me.

"Contrary to what some people may think, Christianity does not solve the mystery of life: it offers salvation in spite of the mystery remaining unsolved."

I see what you're saying. I am one of those "some people" who somehow assumed the opposite but given your excellent explanation, I now understand in what way I had this reversed. By your explanation, I suppose Christianity would actually be closer to "agnosticism" in the sense in which I was using it above.

It's interesting that the 2 Christian mystics you cite as succumbing to gnosticism - Boehme and Eckhart - are indeed the 2 names that I have stumbled across most frequently in the "new age" literature.

As to your comments about Islam and gnosticism, I had noticed that several of the names that come up as the great champions of "perennial philosophy" -
Frithjof Schuon is one - were apparently converts to Sufi Islam. I didn't really get this connection but given your second post about Islam and gnosticism, - yes, it makes a whole lot more sense. As does the whole attraction of Sufi Islam to the new agers.

All I can say is you've given me a great deal of food for thought and I really appreciate you taking the time to write out such a marvelously succinct response to my questions.

Posted by: Caroline at June 3, 2006 8:14 PM