070530-1800: Impossible Dreams

Ahab harpoons his whale only to have it carry him out to sea.

There's a terrible beauty and lesson in that. In fact, we hear about it all of the time: "Be careful what you wish for--you might just get it".

Had no one cautioned Ahab?

Islamic martyrdom has that ring to it: the medieval cause transformed into the destruction of modernity-that's the whale, and each part of its attainment a part of the carrying away, and whether into heaven or thin air, it hardly matters.

Today's reading:

Milson, Menahem.  “Reform vs. Islamism in the Arab World Today.” Special Report No. 34.  The Middle East Media Research Institute, September 15, 2004.

“Ibn Taymiyyah.”  Wikipedia. May 30, 2007.

Among statements read too often, the Arab stereotype of the perpetually quarreling and murderous brothers persists, and yet in order for Al Qaeda (AQ) to set off bombs in Morocco, it's turning out that it recruits through channels elsewhere in North Africa.

Whitlock, Craig.  “From Iraq to Algeria, Al-Qaeda’s Long Reach: Suicide Bombings in Algiers Suggest Network’s Influence in Recruiting, Training North Africans to Fight at Home.  The Washington Post, May 30, 2007; Page A07.

What kind of fighting between brothers is that?

The gist of the gist: AQ recruits from wherever (in North Africa, the Maghreb, or area along the coast from Mauritania to Libya, according to Whitlock) to kill wherever (in the adjacent region, Iraq)-nothing really new there but a good reminder of how divorced the movement has been from state politics since the routing of the Taliban from Afghanistan.

Such may be the want of affinity with a cause and the hubris that is faith in garnering the attention of Allah, that for a price and the promise of martyrdom and passage to heaven, one may recruit a two-legged bomb construction or bomb delivery device and get it to deliver itself among strangers some thousands of miles distant.

While there's little question of responsible governments fighting terrorism, the problem of how to do it has not been solved except through a variety of physical tactics--combat outright, road closings, checkpoints, etc., that and detective and police work.

Alternatively working into the content of Islamic warrior-scholar aspirations and dreams seems relatively better armored by states struggling with freelanced violence on one hand and the installation of authoritarian and racist tenets, credited to the Koran and Hadith, on the other.

You can't put out fire by throwing gasoline at it, but that has been rather the drill.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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