Guest Post: Cameron on “A Difficulty in Translation”

Blogfriend and an expert on comparative religious studies, Charles Cameron has graciously offered a paper on comprehending the worldview of radical Islamist terrorists, which I have posted below in it’s entirety. Cameron is formerly the Principal Researcher for the Center for Millenial Studies and is currently writing a book on religious and apocalyptic violence:

A Difficulty in Translation

By Charles Cameron                                                                                                                                                                                       

It is not easy to get behind the veil that a natural hatred for those who attack and maim us draws across our ability to see OBL clearly, nor to understand what kinds of influence might lean some undecided Muslims, perhaps already prone to dislike American influence in world affairs, to move closer to a mindset that’s amenable to jihad.

Yet this in turn is something we have great need of, as Thomas Hegghammer made clear in an article on Jihadi Studies: the obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better, published in the Times Literary Supplement on April 2.

Hegghammer asks, rhetorically, “More than six years after 9/11, the study of jihadism is still in its infancy. Why has it taken so long to develop?” and answers himself, “the most important reason is no doubt that the emotional outrage at al-Qaeda’s violence has prevented us from seeing clearly.”

Understanding how the jihadist mindset works is not easily accomplished at a visceral level, without calling on some of our own most treasured memories and associations — as Michael Scheuer, ex-chief of the bin Laden desk at CIA, did in his book, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, Revised Edition:

The decision of bin Laden and his colleagues, I believe, deserves no less thoughtful consideration than that of the American revolutionaries we revere as heroes. Unfortunately, the West today hears the statements of bin Laden and his colleagues with precisely the same sort of ear with which the British Crown listened to the Americans … This is not to say bin Laden and his al Qaeda colleagues were correct or deserve sympathy; as I said, America will have to use military force to confront, battle, and defeat bin Laden, al Qaeda, and their allies. It is to say, however, that bin Laden has been a worthy enemy … and that those in the United States should to able to have some appreciation for his movement by reflecting on the origins of their own country.

That’s an astonishing “move” — linking bin Laden associatively with the heroes of the American Revolution — but it has the merit, if we will allow it, of helping us view bin Laden through other eyes than those of our own instinctual response to attack. I would like to attempt a similar maneuver here, correlating bon Laden’s visit to the Tora Bora caves with Martin Luther King’s final speech given some 40 years ago on April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. In making this linkage, I feel it necessary to express my strong appreciation for Martin Luther King’s life, which in some respects played a similar role to that of my own mentor, Trevor Huddleston.

I quote King in this context because an insight into his self-identified following in the footsteps of Moses may be transferable into an understanding of bin Laden’s stay in the Tora Bora caves, viewed as an act of piety through pious Muslim eyes. King said

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