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Militant Islamism As a Revolutionary Movement

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Militant Islamism As a Revolutionary Movement Revisiting the Pyramid: Militant Islamism as a revolutionary movement by Gordon L. Bowen, Ph.D. Professor of Political Science Mary Baldwin College Staunton, VA 24401 [email protected] 1. Introduction1 Let us return to September 11-12, 2001, to the personal shock and anger we felt as we realized that nearly three thousand civilians and soldiers had been murdered on U.S. soil. Americans assured themselves, and were assured by our mass media, that across the globe a collective outrage toward the perpetrators had been the reaction of a civilized world. This was self-delusion. Humanity did not, in fact, stand as one against the most monstrous terrorist act in American history. Most Americans were spared images of a far different kind from those searing days, images such as those of cheering crowds of Muslim Arabs in Lebanon, joyfully celebrating the mass murder of American civilians.2 As we mourned in shock, those joyful crowds, those spontaneous mass celebrations, also really occurred. Such celebrations of an act of war primarily directed against civilians, committed by nineteen young, Muslim, Arab men, should not have eluded so many of us. As analysts of social and political phenomena, a search for meaning even in such celebrations, is necessary even as we wrestle at personal levels with anger and other emotions not customarily part of the research processes in the social sciences. Any attempt to study terrorism must acknowledge at the outset the impossibility of a fully disinterested, dispassionate approach to the topic. Anger under circumstances such as presented by September 11, 2001, is not a symptom of some malady within us, whether as social scientists or as citizens. Anger in 1 Portions of this article appeared previously in the Southeast Review of Asian Studies (Fall 2006). Prof. Bowen’s research related to this article, including travel and study in the Middle East, was sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Washington, D.C. 2 Washington Post (Sept. 12, 2001): A25. Virginia Review of Asian Studies Summer 2006 Bowen, 2 the face of mass murder is not something pathologic to be treated by therapy, or perhaps a pill. Anger can spur us to struggle to pursue answers about why our tidy, self-flattering flattering orthodoxy from the 1990s has proven so inadequate.3 From that struggle can emerge a new capacity to discern our actual world more clearly, guiding us to recognize the limitations inherent in lazy nostrums that too often can fill the interpretive matrixes that structure and shape our perception. This study, in its broad contours, presents a guide to the difficult road where that struggle can take us. • It begins with basic definitions, focusing on the apparently simple issue of “what is terrorism?” We start the inquiry here because without definitional clarity, further steps toward better knowing how to respond to our enemy may falter. We need first to answer what terrorism is so that we can refine focus onto our applied needs: who are the terrorists, and how can we stop them? • The analysis that then follows will be organized around the broad categories found in Madeline Gruen’s model of “The Pyramid of Terror,”4 a model that closely adheres to the traditional division of labor used for generations in the study of revolutionary movements.5 Ultimately, significant modifications in this model will be shown to be warranted. 3 Here I am thinking of the conceit first associated with Frances Fukuyama, “The End of History,” National Interest (Summer 1989); and the run of subsequent triumphant tomes such as Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the 21st Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2002). 4 Madeleine Gruen, “Terrorism Indoctrination and Radicalization on the Internet,” in Russell Howard and Reid Sawyer, eds. Terrorism and Counterterrorism second edition (Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill, 2006): 355. 5 E.g., Thomas Greene, Comparative Revolutionary Movements (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974) divided his short volume into key chapters on Leaders, Followers, Ideology, Organization, Techniques, and External Support. Virginia Review of Asian Studies Summer 2006 Bowen, 3 Using Gruen’s foci to structure the analysis, the study will examine several parts of the terrorism problem, depicting: (1) its leadership: how leaders’ life experiences have shaped the guiding ideology of militant Islamism into a global movement that relies on terrorism; (2) its foot soldiers: what operational terrorist cells do, using a brief case study of the 9/11 attacks, or “Planes Operation,” to explore subsequent trends that represent something substantial that truly is “new;” (3) its supporters: the roles played by supporters of militant Islamism, exploring the ways societal leaders indirectly support terrorism; and (4) its popular base: the levels of sympathy for militant Islamism that exist among publics in key states in the Muslim world, in terms of support for the leaders of militant Islamism, their goals, and the tactics employed by the operational cells. This study has an applied purpose. In discovering the influences that shape these often not young, not always Arab, but invariably Muslim men and women into shock troops who are readying to again commit mass murder of Americans, the complexity of succeeding in the task of Virginia Review of Asian Studies Summer 2006 Bowen, 4 opposing militant Islamic terrorism will emerge. We best can orient thinking about how to arrive at this important goal by addressing key assumptions in how the U.S. currently is proceeding. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in testimony to the U.S. Congress early in 2006, stated (emphasis added): “… An important part of Al-Qaeda’s strategy is to encourage a grassroots uprising of Muslims against the West. Emerging new networks and cells . reflect aggressive jihadist efforts to exploit feelings of frustration and powerlessness in some Muslim communities, and to fuel the perception that the United States is anti-Islamic. Their rationale for using terrorism against the United States and establishing strict Islamic practices resonates with a small subset of Muslims,”6 but “most Muslims reject the extremist message and violent agendas of global jihadists.”7 Thus, the central theme driving this study grows directly from Negroponte’s assumption, which is a reigning assumption in much of the literature about terrorism: is it true that the movement we confront is a “small subset of Muslims” and that “most Muslims reject” either the jihadists’ message or their use of terrorism? Overall, the reader of this study will confront striking evidence to the contrary: much suggests that the Militant Islamic terrorist movement is neither “small,” nor a fringe group with marginal appeal. Rather, evidence tending toward a quite opposite conclusion will emerge: a broad and supportive social base, not a “small subset” of Muslims, may be nourishing an evolving and growing contemporary jihadist movement, one that has significant breadth in its appeal. With U.S. Armed Forces now apparently overstretched, we may wish to believe that the problem is narrow. But the social harbors discussed in this study appear to sustain an enemy more far flung than the current venue in which the U.S. military primarily are engaged -- Afghanistan and Iraq-- , and far more diverse in their support than appropriately should be characterized as “rejected” societal outcasts or misfits. 6 John D. Negroponte (U.S. Director of National Intelligence), “Annual Threat Assessment,” statement to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, (February 28, 2006): 5. http://armed- services.senate.gov/statemnt/2006/February/Negroponte%2002-28-06.pdf 7 Negroponte: 6. For an academic presentation that adhered to congruent assumptions, see: Neil Smelser and Faith Mitchell, eds., Terrorism: Perspectives from the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Washington D.C.: National Academies Press, 2002): “We emphasize, however, that Islam-inspired terrorists are a minority of terrorists, considered worldwide, and that the vast majority of Islamic peoples have no connection with and do not sympathize with terrorism..." (27). Virginia Review of Asian Studies Summer 2006 Bowen, 5 Definitions Definitions are a primary starting point in order to study all political phenomena. Legally, under U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 23, the United States is at war with terrorists who committed the acts of Sept. 11, and those who assisted or harbored them, either directly or indirectly, so to prevent a future attack.8 What is terrorism? It is premeditated violence, or the threat of violence, directed against civilian or military targets for political effect. As terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman memorably put it: “terrorism [is] the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change.”9 Which terrorists so defined are of concern to American security, and thus concern this inquiry? In responding to September 11, 2001, Pres. George W. Bush demarked the set as those terrorists with “global reach.” These persons who soon would fill the cross hairs of an increasingly military U. S. foreign policy were, to Bush, “[t]hose who plan, authorize, commit, or aid terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests — including those who harbor terrorists. [They] — threaten the national security of the United States.”10 This statement identified the immediate threat in Fall 2001, but can it answer sufficiently the
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