Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Looming Tower" provides the most readable narrative history on the origins of al-Qaida, especially his discussion of Egypt's Sayid Qutb, the modern father of jihadist violence. When I reviewed the book last year, I wrote: "Al-Qaida's dark genius ... has been to connect the Muslim world's angry, humiliated and isolated young men with a utopian fantasy preaching the virtue of violence. That utopian fantasy seeks to explain and then redress roughly 800 years of Muslim decline."
How to defeat the ideology, with its fantasy narrative? Recently, Dale Eikmeier published an essay in the U.S. Army War College's Parameters Magazine. The essay, titled "Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic Fascism," suggests "five lines of operation" for attacking Qutbism, which he calls al-Qaida's "ideological center of gravity."
First: Attack the message -- an ideological offensive by moderate Muslims. Eikmeier says Yemeni Judge Hamoud al-Hitar has a particularly effective theological counter to Qutbism.
Second: Attack the Messenger -- "Many of Qutbism's proponents are individuals with questionable religious credentials."
Third and fourth: Attack Islamo-fascism's supporting institutions, and support mainstream Islamic institutions -- mirror images. Attack al-Qaida's educational, financial, and informational structures. Support those of Muslim moderates.
Fifth: Inoculation. Eikmeier says this requires education regarding the Qutbists' "anti-human rights and religiously intolerant agenda." Eikmeier says the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Bill of Rights are the alternatives.
Which takes us back to democracy, doesn't it?
Austin Bay
Austin Bay Austin Bay is author of three novels. His third novel, The Wrong Side of Brightness, was published by Putnam/Jove in June 2003. He has also co-authored four non-fiction books, to include A Quick and Dirty Guide to War: Third Edition (with James Dunnigan, Morrow, 1996).
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