Radical Islamism is yet another manifestation of totalitarianism
In Fallujah, a celebration of the declaration of an Islamic state in
June in Iraq. The danger of terrorist mass murder remains. Associated Press
Posted:
Sunday, September 7, 2014, 7:52 AM
Original link: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20140907_Radical_Islamism_is_yet_another_manifestation_of_totalitarianism.html
As we mark
the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, alarming gains by
the terrorist group ISIS, along with continued threats from al-Qaeda and
others, make it clear that the danger of terrorist mass murder is by no
means a thing of the past.
While these groups and their leaders seek to recover a mythical golden age from a distant past, they also are propelled by an inescapably modern - and terrifying - idea. Surfacing in the last century, decades before 9/11, that idea has come to be known as totalitarianism. If we are to defeat the violent Islamist radicals who are today threatening the world, we must shine the brightest of spotlights on this malignant idea at the heart of their ideology. And we must counter it, not just with the force of arms, but with a compelling defense of the anti-totalitarian idea of morally ordered freedom.
What defines totalitarianism is a list of shocking and unprecedented demands:
The rise of this extremist ideology to prominence coincided with a
deep crisis of faith that engulfed Europe after the carnage of World War
I nearly a century ago. In response to this crisis, totalitarianism -
initially in communist and fascist forms - rose to fill the void. Its
vision amounted to the state's replacing God as central to all things,
while anointing certain people and their movements as humanity's new
leaders, deserving the ultimate powers once reserved for the deity.While these groups and their leaders seek to recover a mythical golden age from a distant past, they also are propelled by an inescapably modern - and terrifying - idea. Surfacing in the last century, decades before 9/11, that idea has come to be known as totalitarianism. If we are to defeat the violent Islamist radicals who are today threatening the world, we must shine the brightest of spotlights on this malignant idea at the heart of their ideology. And we must counter it, not just with the force of arms, but with a compelling defense of the anti-totalitarian idea of morally ordered freedom.
What defines totalitarianism is a list of shocking and unprecedented demands:
- Give fanatical leaders and movements absolute and permanent authority.
- Make these leaders and their followers into virtual gods, charged to take control of history and transform humanity itself.
- Release them from accountability to any law and institution, belief and custom, moral norm and precept.
- Grant them complete control of every facet of human existence, from outward conduct to the innermost workings of conscience and belief.
For the better part of a century, totalitarianism has donned its share of masks and hijacked key vehicles in its efforts to subjugate the world.
In the 1930s and 1940s, it threatened humanity through Nazism and other forms of fascism that exploited the concept of race and the ideology of nationalism as vehicles for its unlimited aims. After World War II, with Nazism defeated, totalitarianism posed its greatest threat in the form of communism, which hijacked the concepts of class and class consciousness and the strivings for social justice for the same purpose.
By the close of the 20th century, these movements had committed every crime under the sun, triggering the deaths of nearly 150 million human beings. They also waged unceasing war on the rights and duties of conscience, leaving behind a grim legacy in which more than 75 percent of the world's people live under regimes that seriously violate freedom of conscience and religion or stand by and let mobs or extremists persecute religious and other minorities with impunity.
The same totalitarian impulse that drove Nazism and communism has hijacked religion as its latest vehicle, creating radical Islamism.
From ISIL to Iran's mullahs, and from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, these new totalitarians pose similar threats to freedom, dignity, and peace. Displaying characteristic contempt for the rule of law and the crucial distinction between combatants and noncombatants in the conduct of war, they have deliberately targeted civilians and resorted to mass murder, precisely as the Nazis and Communists did.
From Afghanistan, they launched the 9/11 attacks and seek to regain power and destroy every human right, from religious freedom to the rights of women. In Iran, they run the government and regularly execute religious dissenters while supporting terrorist groups around the world. In Iraq, they indiscriminately slaughter men, women, and children and threaten the lives and liberties of religious minorities and most of the Muslim majority. In Pakistan, they have assassinated leaders and target both Muslims and religious minorities who dare to dissent from their beliefs.
Many observers presume that these movements and their leaders simply represent Islam taken to an extreme. Some even maintain that it is "the true Islam." They are mistaken.
While the history of nearly every religion includes periods of despotism and bloodshed, no religion, including Islam, ever stood in principle, as the Nazis and Communists did, for what amounts to nihilism. No great world religion ever granted any human being, group, or government the perpetual right in principle to flout any rule, break any law or taboo, or commit any atrocity with impunity.
In other words, the struggle we face today does not pit one religion against others, nor is it a battle of religion against humanity; rather, it is a struggle pitting lawlessness and tyranny against freedom and dignity. The irony is that this time it is being trotted out in religion's name.
In this struggle, Muslims have a duty to their faith and to humanity to stand resolutely against Islam's hijacking by people driven by the same diabolical impulse that unleashed the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot on the world. They must rip away its religious mask and reveal its idolatrous soul before the world.
But by the same token, those of us who are not Muslims also have responsibilities. We have a duty to engage the enemy in the most important but oft-neglected battle of all, the one for hearts and minds. We must reaffirm and promote freedom's creed - that people have inherent dignity, worth, and rights that no movement or government can ever take away.
In this newest front in the twilight struggle against totalitarianism, humanity itself hangs in the balance, as it did in the heyday of Nazism and communism. At stake is nothing less than the future of freedom and dignity.
For America, 9/11 was a call to engage in the fight. Let us keep answering the call, for our own sake and for that of posterity.
Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. rgeorge@princeton.edu
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