ISIS: Paganism with an Islamic Face?
The comparison between the genocidal cruelty of the SS and ISIS, while natural, is limited by a very important distinction. However zealous their ideological fanaticism and dedicated in their murderous mission to exterminate European Jewry, the SS lacked the context of moral certainty and the psychological reinforcement effects of religious exaltation enjoyed by ISIS killers. Even the malevolent Heinrich Himmler, in his secret speech to Nazi gauleiters and SS leaders, regarded the Final Solution as a terrible burden that the SS shouldered on behalf of the Fuhrer to assure Germany’s future; a “glorious” crime that Himmler believed must be kept forever hidden from history and the German people.
Not so ISIS, which revels in its bloody terror. Worse, the repetition of garish executions as public celebrations by ISIS, with a vague but constant religious context, devoid of any shred of Islamic legality, inevitably acquire over time the theological characteristics of Halbertal’s “sacrificing to” – what began as harsh jihadi jurisprudence and psychological warfare mutated under conditions of lazy, sociopathic brutality and totemic invocations of Islam into ritual “offering” by ISIS of its prisoners of war as human sacrifices in the manner of the ancient pagans. A perverse blasphemy, but one that draws on a powerful archetype deeply buried in the human psyche.
ISIS leaders have not only looked into the Abyss, they have descended into and become one with it.
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david ronfeldt:
October 9th, 2015 at 12:45 am
An epic post, Mark. Wow. Much appreciated here. Especially for illuminating again, as in prior posts, the terrible tendencies toward paganism and fascism. Quite a mass of research and analysis in one post.
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For years I’ve figured these neglected themes need more attention. I occasionally wonder whether it could be shown that ISIS has much in common with the “Pagan Arabs” around Mecca (e.g., the Quraysh) whose tribes turned to fight Muhammad way back then.
zen:
October 9th, 2015 at 3:40 am
Much thanks David! You bring up a good point, as human sacrifice in pre-Islamic Arabia was just as much the norm for pagan Arab tribes as it had been in Mesopotamia for the Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians. Not sure if I linked to that anywhere but I came across that in reading for this post
Charles Cameron:
October 9th, 2015 at 5:32 am
The jahilliya, eh, David?
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That would be a curious turn-and-turn-about, since the basic Qutbian insight was that the world at large had somehow managed to get back into the state it was in just prior to the coming of the Prophet, ie that we are the people of the jahilliya.
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And here you’re suggesting that that’s where IS is!
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King Abdullah II of Jordan calls them “the khawarej, the outlaws of Islam that operate globally today” — and that’s pretty strong language all by itself.
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But then JM Berger takes things a step further, and agrees with you!
david ronfeldt:
October 9th, 2015 at 8:44 pm
Zen, I tried raising a similar point a year or so hereabouts, evidently in a May 2014 comment for a Zenpundit blog post about Boko Haram that I can’t search out anymore. Here’s what I remarked (edited for typos):
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“BH [Boko Haram] claims to be Islamic, the IRA to be Christian. But their alleged fundamentalism is so extreme, so savagely tribal, so pre-modern, so syncretic, so at odds with the bright sides of Islam and Christianity, that what’s going on with them seems like some other kind of religion is at work underneath. Islam and Christianity are but veneers.
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“I’m wondering — and I ask — whether what lies beneath is tantamount to a kind of paganism. BH might then be more accurately described as Islamo-paganist, the IRA as Christo-paganist. I know little about paganism; and a quick look around indicates that my suggestion may not meet technical specifics about paganism. But I’d rather ask you. A re-characterization might help deprive such vicious actors of their presumptuous religious narratives.”
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Charles, as for “jahilliya”, I had to look it up via Wikipedia. But the implication fits: We should be trying out counter-narratives that identify ISIS et al as more like pre-Islamic tribalists than as Islamic fundamentalists.
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[Zen, I miss the old days here, when the search button worked for locating comments as well as post texts.]
david ronfeldt:
October 9th, 2015 at 9:58 pm
ooof, that comment should read LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army], not IRA — an error i made while converting lower-case into upper-case lettering.
carl:
October 10th, 2015 at 12:42 am
I read a book review of Abram de Swaan’s book ‘The Killing Compartments’, though I’ve not yet read the book. The review quoted Mr. de Swaan as stating that, for various reasons, “Many survivors of mass annihilation campaigns suffer the psychic consequences for the rest of their lives. Some of the bystanders remain traumatized for scores of years. A significant proportion of combat veterans develop ‘shell shock,’ as it was once called, or ‘post-traumatic stress syndrome.’ Not the genocidaires. Most of them did just fine.” Also cited was some work done by some Israeli researchers that could find almost no, no as in just one, SS killer who was troubled by what they did. In the book ‘The Battle for China’ there was a chapter about the IJA 37th Division (I think it was the 37th). None of those guys seemed upset by what they did as don’t, from what little I know about it, do most of the Rwandan killers.
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The point I’m trying to make, poorly, is that few if any of the ISIS butchers will be troubled in the future by what they are now doing. I think Berger and Stern are wrong. The ISIS killers kill within the context of their organization but once that organization is done with its killing (if it ever is) they will go back to being good neighbors and citizens, as did most all the SS killers, the IJA killers and the Rwandan killers. There isn’t any empathy to blunt. The people ISIS kills, in the view of ISIS, aren’t really people anymore so empathy doesn’t play into it. That is another point Mr. de Swaan made in his book the review said.
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They will kill until they run out of victims or are physically stopped and in the future they won’t feel bad about what they did.
jean rosenfeld:
October 10th, 2015 at 9:10 pm
I’m just now reading Stern’s and Berger’s comprehensive text on IS. What has struck me from the initial documents I read on al Qaida (by Abdullah Azzam) is how essentially nativist jihadism is as a movement.
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Nativism tends to have a religious basis, since it is a type of “nation-ism” and in further studying American “patriots,” such as CSA, I detected the undercurrent of fascism. A type of ultra-nationalism that legitimizes violence as a method of conquest and social control, fascism can have “softer” forms and go unrecognized. However, when one hears a black candidate for president trumpet his argument that gun control would result in government control over all forms of citizen resistance, one realizes that he is simply repeating the conspiracy theory of the radical racist right (see the opening scenes of The Turner Diaries). I presume that Ben Carson has no idea where this conspiracy theory originated.
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Thus, the tropes of a marginal movement, such as the racist right, can be assimilated unwittingly into the conventional political scene. There is a sequence of moves that can undermine an elective system of government (and have in various 20th century states) and can result in government by fascism.
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IS has strong fascist characteristics, most important, the hierarchy of the “worth” of categories of people and a religious justification for the eradication of certain categories, as well as the use of terror to enforce social control and to justify a national ideology of supremacy of the native elite.
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It is important to face this “f word” and examine and analyze it, so that we can recognize it in its various national forms as it progresses towards its goal.
larrydunbar:
October 10th, 2015 at 10:10 pm
I tend to agree with carl. I mean if one of our generals is correct and “killing the bad guys is fun”, maybe ISIS is just making it “funner” and more exciting, much like an episode of a Trump reality show.
I mean, and it is only an opinion, if Trump could have gotten one of the Apprentices to douse him/herself with gasoline and set themselves on fire in the studio, the only question might be, “what are we going to do for next season”, because his ratings probably would have gone through the roof.
As it was with the ones I saw, most of the “losers” simply marched out the door with their heads held high, and, after awhile, I imagine, people just stopped watching, because it became boring.
I know it takes me back a little when I read that Trump was once a part of the reality show orientation, because I try to purge that image from my mind.
zen:
October 11th, 2015 at 5:20 am
Carl – You very well may be right. The people who are troubled are usually a step or two removed. If you read Speer’s memoirs or his critical postwar biography by Gitta Sereny, he sought to intellectually evade his full measure of responsibility, while accepting some for appearances sake. This was unlike Eichmann or his deputy, Alois Brunner. Brunner told the Chicago Sun Times or Tribune from his Damascus home in his 80’s or 90’s that he would have done it all over again.
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David and Charles – “islamo-paganist” fits. Radical Islam is a lightly worn cultural identity with ISIS rank and file, kind of like Brevik writ ten thousandfold or like Kony as David suggested.
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Hi Jean – I find myself in strong agreement with you. The original Fascism of the 1930’s raised the question of paganism and the blededing in of crank/conspiracy ideas. Many early Nazis, like Kurt Ludecke, identified explicitly with paganism and rejected Christianity in the wake of WWI long before Himmler and the SS promoted neo-paganism. It fit in with the fascination of the earlier fin-de-siècle period with the occult, the mythic, the theosophic, secret societies, anti-Semitic mythologizing and various kinds of fringe charlatanism. Radical Italian Fascism had this quality as well ( D’Annunzio, Julius Evola) as did the very mystical and grotesquely brutal Romanian Iron Guard, which began as the Legion of the Archangel Micheal
Charles Cameron:
October 11th, 2015 at 6:39 am
I don’t know whether I told you, Zen, but at the Boston conference I had a chance to talk a bit with Paul Berman, who made the original Qubt-Fascism connection if I’m not mistaken. I need to dig out my notes, he had some related comments to make about apocalyptic and romanticism in poetry.