{"id":6786,"date":"2012-03-19T22:37:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T22:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=6786"},"modified":"2012-03-20T18:03:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T18:03:21","slug":"which-world-is-more-vivid-this-or-the-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=6786","title":{"rendered":"Which world is more vivid? This, or the next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — bin Laden, Abu Bakr, Bernard of Clairvaux, Qur’an burning, Tora Bora, David Ignatius, Emptywheel, and impassioned belief ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nimage: Paulo Uccello<\/strong> (1443) depicts the Resurrection<\/a> —
life after the grave, seen through a glass, darkly<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We keep on stumbling over this one.<\/p>\n

To the western mind, mostly, this world is axiomatically more vivid<\/strong> than the next. But there are those for whom the next life is axiomatically the more vivid \u2013 even if their day to day practices are geared to success and continuity in this life.<\/p>\n

And this has consequences for our own lives, in the world around us — and for security.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some who are of this mind \u2013 bin Laden<\/strong> in this video<\/a> among them — may quote or paraphrase Abu Bakr<\/strong>‘s message to Khosru<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

I have come to you with an army of men that love death, as you love life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That particular quote is from the rich tapestry of Islam \u2013 but Jewish history speaks also<\/a> of Kiddush ha-Shem<\/em>, martyrdom for the glory of God, which became in the time of the crusades “the exemplary answer of Jews threatened in their life and faith” when offered the options of conversion to Christianity or death. <\/p>\n

And in Christendom, there is St Bernard of Clairvaux<\/strong>, who is quoted as writing in his letter to the Templars<\/a> at the time of the Second Crusade:<\/p>\n

The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War is sure of his reward, the more sure if he himself is slain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and for good measure in his sermon promoting the Crusade<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Christian warriors, He who gave His life for you, to-day demands yours in return. These are combats worthy of you, combats in which it is glorious to conquer and advantageous to die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is with this difference in axiomatic understanding<\/strong> in mind, that we should approach such issues as the relative importance \u2013 in our own minds, and in those of many Afghans \u2013 of the loss of human life in a night raid, as compared with the burning of copies of the Qur’an [In Reactions to Two Incidents, a U.S.-Afghan Disconnect<\/a>]:<\/p>\n

The mullah was astounded and a little angered to be asked why the accidental burning of Korans last month could provoke violence nationwide, while an intentional mass murder that included nine children last Sunday did not.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you compare the dishonoring of the Holy Koran with the martyrdom of innocent civilians?\u201d said an incredulous Mullah Khaliq Dad, a member of the council of religious leaders who investigated the Koran burnings. \u201cThe whole goal of our life is religion.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a quick note here — this is an issue I’ve raised before, eg in Burning scriptures and human lives<\/a>, in Of Quantity and Quality I: weighing man against book<\/a>, and more recently in On fire: issues in theology and politics \u2013 ii<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The same understanding also explains bin Laden’s retreat to the Tora Bora caves<\/strong>. As I said in an early guest post here on ZP<\/a>, with a hat-tip to Lawrence Wright<\/strong> and his book The Looming Tower<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When bin Laden, at the lowest point of his jihadist efforts, leaves the Yemen for Afghanistan and betakes himself to the Tora Bora caves, he will inevitably remind some Muslims of the Prophet himself, who at the lowest point of his prophetic vocation left Mecca for Medina and sought sanctuary in a cave \u2014 where by the grace of his God, a spider\u2019s web covered the entrance in such a way that his enemies could not see him.<\/p>\n

Our natural tendency in the west is to see Tora Bora in terms of military topography, as a highly defensible, almost impregnable warren of caves deep within some of the world\u2019s most difficult mountain territory. What we miss may be precisely what Muslim piety will in some cases see \u2014 that bin Laden\u2019s retreat there is symbolically aligned with the \u201csunna\u201d or life of the Prophet, and thus with the life of Islam itself \u2014 in much the same way that Christians, in the words of Thomas a Kempis, may practice \u201cthe Imitation of Christ\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

It was in fact Emptywheel<\/strong>‘s piece about bin Laden’s comment re killing President Obama <\/strong> (and thus promoting Joe Biden<\/strong>) that caught my attention today and prompted this post. <\/p>\n

Emptywheel quoted the same passage from David Ignatius<\/strong><\/a> that had triggered my own post On the \u201chead of infidelity\u201d and the tale of Abdul-Rahman ibn Awf<\/a> late yesterday —<\/p>\n

“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency\u2026 “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— and commented: <\/p>\n

OBL was going to kill Obama not for the sake of killing the US President, but because Biden, who served in the Senate for 36 years, almost 12 of which he served as one or another powerful committee Chair, \u201cis totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I just don’t think that’s right. I think it’s wrong, in fact, but [and here’s the important part] subtly<\/em> wrong<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I believe that OBL lived at the confluence of worlds — one that we might call mythic or spiritual, and one that’s the one we call the “real” world. I believe that it was his myth, archetype, spirit based reality that was the more vivid to him, the one to which he was entrained, and that he found means in the practical world of strategies and tactics to adhere to the demands of that other world.<\/p>\n

A world that was both invisible to us, and to him axiomatically victorious \u2013 at least as much so in death as in life.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — bin Laden, Abu Bakr, Bernard of Clairvaux, Qur’an burning, Tora Bora, David Ignatius, Emptywheel, and impassioned belief ] . image: Paulo Uccello (1443) depicts the Resurrection — life after the grave, seen through a glass, darkly We keep on stumbling over this one. To the western mind, mostly, this world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[527,205,191,531,459,526,471,525,483,51,501,562,66,533,718,676,691,211,523,1,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-al-qaida","category-anthropology","category-barack-obama","category-bin-laden","category-charles-cameron","category-cultural-intelligence","category-epistemology","category-extremists","category-history","category-myth","category-perception","category-primary-loyalties","category-religion","category-rethinking-thinking","category-scriptures","category-symbolism","category-terrorism","category-theology","category-uncategorized","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6786"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6834,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786\/revisions\/6834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}