Comments on: Guest Post: Speak the Languages, Know the Modes of Thought

By: Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:37:48 +0000

I was amused to come across this quote today, while reading Abdal-Hakim Murad’s King’s College London seminar-lecture America as a Jihad State: Middle Eastern perceptions of modern American theopolitics, as it describes journalists in the Arab world making just the kind of close reading I’ve been advocating here:
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One key channel has undoubtedly been Christian Arab journalists, whose cultural familiarity with the Bible and with Christian eschatology has allowed them to unravel the famous ‘doublecoding’ in presidential speeches, where apparently innocuous phrases turn out to trigger specific Biblical references important to the religious electorate. Particularly impressive was Al-Hayat’s coverage from Washington during the 2008 elections."
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Funny, the way these things turn up.

By: Karaka

Karaka — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:04:11 +0000

@Charles
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Thank you! I actually already purchased Rashid’s Descent, so at least I’m moving in the right direction! I appreciate your taking the time to respond.

By: YT

YT — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:27:34 +0000

Charles Cameron,
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Re: "connecting their morality around meth sales and use with a parallel narco-jihadist morality around heroin sales and use".
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We live in interestin’ times indeed.
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For more articles on ~~barbarians~~ interesting blends of religion, crime, and community building, I’d suggest the followin’ below:
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http://www.huguenotcorsair.com/

By: Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:01:58 +0000

I've no doubt there are people reading here who can provide suggestions that may question or supplement mine, but I would go with Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, for broad background on AQ up to 9/11, Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos for more recent illumination on Afghanistan and Pakistan, then zeroing in, Brynjar Lia's Architect of Global Jihad for jihadist theory, and Jamestown and the CTC Sentinel along with specialist bloggers such as Jihadica, Brachman and All Things CT for more up-to-the minute, detailed reports.

By: Karaka

Karaka — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:15:53 +0000

I’m not sure I know enough to answer that question! But perhaps works that would shed some light on al-Qaeda and also those on Afghan Taliban.

By: Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:45:24 +0000

Here is Bruce Lincoln's reading of the Atta letter, from his book, Holy Terrors. . What angle in particular interests you?

By: Karaka

Karaka — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:47:29 +0000

and I am not sure which audience you are asking about?
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You just identified the audience(s) I was curious about; I was imprecise, but I wanted to know more or less the parties that would read the text (particularly in a context-critical manner) and you did that. Sorry for my imprecision.
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But I find this quite fascinating, and I wish I knew more. I’m in the process of reading the Oxford edition of the Qu’ran, and The Legacy of Jihad–do you have any suggestions for further reading?

By: Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:42:56 +0000

Karaka:
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You ask, "Who is the audience" — and I am not sure which audience you are asking about? The audience or audiences of the jihadist (or other author of a given text), or the audience I hope will read that text with both linguistic and contextual/religious subtlety, or the audience for whom that scholar/analyst will be writing her or his analysis or brief?
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The jihadist may incorporate religious allusions in a text either because that’s a natural part of his or her thought process, without particularly noticing it, or deliberately, openly as a declaration of faith (as when quoting sura or hadith) or covertly, as a form of code.
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The Taliban put out an announcement recently containing the words, "The people refused to vote in the so-called American democratic process under the shade of tanks and mortars", which I discussed in a comment on Ibn Siqilli’s blog, noting what I take to be an ironic echo of the hadith in Bukhari’s collection which reads:
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Allah’s Apostle said, "Know that Paradise is under the shade of swords."
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Here, if I am right, the tanks and mortars of the "crusaders" are being contrasted with the (symbolic) swords of the mujahideen.

In this kind of perhaps casual, perhaps deliberate but indirect allusion, the primary audience would be mujahideen and their potential sympathizers, and the result would be an enhanced sense of bonding, of kinship.

Some of the more direct quotations in texts directed towards a "crusader" readership are intended to fulfill the Qur’anic obligation to offer peace with submission to Allah before engaging in battle - a serious obligation, that, and one for which bin Laden was chastised early on when he failed to provide such a call/offer/warning.
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As to the audience I hope will be performing the kind of close reading at which Bruce Lincoln is adpet — it takes both scholarship and empathy to do it right, and needs to command the respectful attention of those who are briefed on the results, so I suspect it needs to happen fairly high on the foodchain and treated with respect top-down. But I’m no intel expert, so I’ll leave it there for others to pick up and run with…

By: Karaka

Karaka — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:28:48 +0000

Charles, I think the examples you cite @26 hark back to the strongest point you make in this post, namely that the understanding of the context in which agents are speaking provides as great or greater understanding of the meaning of words chosen than translation–which remains very important–necessarily does.
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In the example from Bush’s rhetoric, his audience was not only the American people and to an extent the rest of the world, but specifically towards his Christian base who would grasp that underlying religious message in addition to the arguably secular one. But even without being a member of that base, it was probably somewhat recognizable as vengeful godful wrath to his listeners.
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In the second example, it speaks in a similar fashion, and I wonder how accessible that context is without the common understanding of Islam in the manner that Christianity tends to be understood in the United States. It’s why I wondered @4 who the audience is, because of the level of contextual coding inherent in religious and quasi-religious statements such as the two examples you give.
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But as you say in the post, reading in parallel should be the norm to fully comprehend the meaning both explicit and implicit in this; yet I wonder if it will remain an academic tactic, rather than one of intelligence.

By: Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:59:15 +0000

Zen:
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You wrote, &quot In genocide studies, perpetrators a priori are often found to have been using allusive ‘insider language’ by slang, metaphor and analogy to signal and rehearse eliminationist intent to initiated followers that escapes outside observers or at least provides some ambiguity or ‘cover’. Such discourse can go on for years, preparing the dehumanization of the intended victims intellectually, long before any concrete action is taken. It would seem that violent religious radicalization takes a similar rhetorical form."
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It’s really all around us. To give you a couple of examples…
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President George W Bush’s statement in his Address to the Nation on October 7, 2001, contained the phrase: "the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places". This, as Bruce Lincoln pointed out in his book, Holy Terrors, "reduced his adversaries to hunted animals, but also gestured toward a climactic scene of the Apocalypse." The scene in question is the one where the great and powerful "hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains", calling to the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from the wrathful face of the Lamb of God. "This vision of cowering evildoers, desperately trying to escape God’s judgment," Lincoln continues, "associates American military attacks with the wrath of the Lord — but it does so by means of "biblical allusions plainly audible to portions of his audience who are attentive to such phrasing, but likely to go unheard by those without the requisite textual knowledge."
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And that’s a perfect complement to bin Laden’s retreat into the caves at Tora Bora, which as Lawrence Wright points out in The Looming Tower, might look like a purely military-strategic choice, but would have profound symbolic resonance to many within Islam:     .
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The key symbol of bin Laden’s hijira, however, was the cave. The Prophet first encountered the angel Gabriel, who revealed to him, "You are the Messenger of God," in a cave in Mecca. Again, in Medina, when Mohammed’s enemies pursued him, he hid in a cave that was magically concealed by a spiderweb. Islamic art is replete with images of stalactites, which reference both the sanctuary and the encounter with the divine that caves provided the Prophet. For bin Laden, the cave was the last pure place. Only by retreating from society — and from time, history, modernity, corruption, the smothering West — could he presume to speak for the true religion. It was a product of bin Laden’s public-relations genius that he chose to exploit the presence of the ammunition caves of Tora Bora as a way of identifying himself with the Prophet in the minds of many Muslims who longed to purify Islamic society and restore the dominion it once enjoyed.     .     That too would be an allusion "plainly audible to portions of his audience who are attentive to such phrasing, but likely to go unheard by those without the requisite textual knowledge".