Augmenting the willingness of this death culture’s members to die for Allah and their desire to slaughter an enormous number of opponents is its members’ unabashed rhetorical ease of trumpeting fantasies of killing real or imagined opponents, which is but the most spectacular manifestation of their robust, transnational eliminationist discourse. Political Islamic protesters threatened the West with mass-murderous language, which has not, as far as I know, been seen in Western European capitals since World War II. Marching in London, they brandished murderous banners, including: “Massacre those who insult Islam,” and “Butcher those who mock Islam,” and “Britain you will pay, 7/7 on its way” (7/7 was the date of the London Underground genocide bombings that murdered fifty-two people) and “Europe you will pay, your 9/11 is on the way.” In Gaza, demonstrators demanded that the hands of cartoonists be cut off, and an imam at the Omari mosque declared to nine thousand faithful, “We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible.”21
Toward Israel and Jews, the Political Islamists’ exterminationist and eliminationist discourse is explicit, powerful, and robust, with such lurid images and imaginings as commonplaces. Hamas leader Mashal affirmed after Hamas’ election victory leading to their takeover of Gaza that Hamas has an unalterable plan to destroy Israel. Mashal said this in a long, chilling address after the Friday sermon at a Damascus mosque aired throughout the Islamic world on Al-Jazeera television, which lays out Hamas’ fanatical Political Islamic vision to conquer and slay its enemies. After his speech moved his audience of religious worshipers to interrupt him with the chant “Death to Israel. Death to Israel. Death to America,” Mashal lapsed into blood-curdling reverie: “Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day. . . . Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.”22 And shortly after Hamas’ election victory, its official Web site began to carry two Hamas genocide bombers’ video testaments, one of which included: “My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood.”23 From the “high” Mashal to the “low” mass-murdering bomber, when speaking among themselves it all sounds the same—and just like Hamas’ blueprint, its genocidal charter. More than the members of any other major modern political movement, Political Islamists, including their highest leaders, exhibit an archaic bloodlust, speaking with evident relish and unmatched openness of killing their enemies, decapitating people, ghoulishly toying with blood and body parts, and watching them suffer.
Rafsanjani combined this death culture’s three components with his public admission that he would contemplate suffering potentially millions of casualties of his own citizens to destroy Israel for Islam’s greater glory. What leader, other than from Political Islam, has openly told such a thing to his people? As shocking as this might sound, it comes as no surprise from a regime that, during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, committed mass murder by sending hundreds of thousands of children to their deaths as human mine sweepers and in unarmed human wave attacks, promising the innocent victims and their families a glorious place in paradise.24
In the past hundred years, no major political movement, except Nazism and perhaps imperial Japan, has equaled this culture of death. Regarding Jews, this should also come as no surprise, for whatever Political Islam’s religious and other differences with Nazism, it embraces Nazism’s hallucinatory antisemitism and its murderous logic, merging it with a violent, totalitarian, and messianic reading of Islam. Like the Nazis, Political Islamists irrationally pursue their death culture’s violent maxims, heedless of their frequent self-destructiveness.
Like other regimes governing according to nondemocratic dispensations, Political Islamic regimes, tyrannical in nature, are inherently proto-eliminationist and actually prone to practicing eliminationist politics. Political Islamist regimes are more prone to adopting eliminationist politics than many other tyrannical regimes because of their uncompromising totalitarian desire to govern virtually all spheres of public and private life according to fundamentalist notions of Islam. Two additional features, or constellations of features, one inherent to the movement and the second by now embedded in it, further exacerbate this heightened inherent eliminationist bent. The first is Political Islam’s hyperaggressive call not only for the world’s conversion to its political-religious creed, but also for the world’s subjugation, including or especially by violence. Sustaining and emboldening Political Islamists in this quest is the most coherent and deadly mass-murderous ideology since Nazism, to which many Political Islamists avowedly look with admiration and for inspiration for conceiving of and treating Jews. Built upon and now undergirding this powerfully violent and murderous orientation is the second constellation, born of the economic and technological backwardness of most countries where Islam predominates, and of their conventional military, diplomatic, and economic weakness. This has produced a volcanic resentment against the West for allegedly keeping down Allah’s faithful who, in Political Islamists’ minds, should be ascendant. It has also produced a paranoiac sense of Islam under siege. The drive to vanquish, attack, lash out against the putative agents of this world-turned-on-its-head is that much more intensive.
Throughout the Political Islamic world, leaders (and followers), embedded in an eliminationist discourse and animated by views suggesting to them that exterminating or utterly vanquishing their many real or imagined enemies is politically necessary and a sacred duty, see eliminationist and exterminationist practices as a real option, have practiced it, declare their ideals and firm intentions to do it, and devote enormous energy and resources to bringing about conditions to make acting on their intentions feasible. All this is most naked when they discuss Israel. Like the Nazis they so admire, Political Islamists are verbally unrestrained regarding Jews, in part because their eliminationist and hallucinatory antisemitism suggest to them that much of the world sides with them once people realize the Jews’ putatively real predatory nature.
Political Islamists have a strategy for triumphing. In Iran, Political Islam’s greatest power, the leaders’ pronouncements lay out its contours with a belligerent and global missionary zeal. A renascent and ascendant Muslim world would first acquire nuclear weapons, attaining strategic parity with the West. Then, using either conventional means—especially rockets—to terrorize and demoralize Israel, causing ever more Israelis to abandon the country, or using its nuclear option, Political Islamists would annihilate Israel. Aided by Islamic forces throughout the world, already showing strength in Europe, Political Islamists would proceed to assail, weaken, and ultimately subdue the West. Shortly after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Khomeini, the founding father of today’s Political Islamic Iran, and Khamenei’s, Ahmadinejad’s, and the Iranian leaders’ continuing spiritual inspiration, declared, “The Muslims must rise up in this struggle, which is more a struggle between unbelievers and Islam than one between Iran and America: between all unbelievers and the Muslims. The Muslims must rise up and triumph in this struggle.”25 Ahmadinejad, as the voice of the Iranian regime, sets forth in his speeches the overarching ambition for Political Islamists’ revenge against the West in unabashedly taunting and insulting terms. Western nations, he proclaims, have stood against the resurgence of Islam, but the Muslim nations will give them their just desserts. Ahmadinejad boasts of a “wave of Islamic awakening and a gradual collapse of western hegemony.” And in an unabashedly eliminationist reverie, he foresees a world “without America and without Zionism.”26
The idea of Iran, together with sundry Islamic regimes, scattered terrorist bands, and an activated Muslim street in Europe, defeating the West should not be dismissed as a Lilliputian megalomaniacal fantasy. Obviously, many Musl
ims, including Iranians, and their countries will not sign on, and Political Islamists, some of whom face potentially powerful opposition within their countries, cannot ultimately prevail against a resolute West. Yet they can do enormous damage. Al Qaeda, for all the death and destruction it has caused in the United States, Afghanistan, Britain, Iraq, and elsewhere, and for all its openly lethal eliminationist strivings, is an eliminationist threat (unless it acquires nuclear weapons) overshadowed by Iran. As the most powerful Political Islamic state, Iran exports terrorist violence through its proxies and, with diplomacy and petrodollars, supports Political Islamic regimes and insurgencies. And nuclear weapons are the great equalizer. Even without them, Al Qaeda, a relatively weak nonstate actor, colossally damaged the American people and economy. Ahmadinejad, conscious of the skepticism his grandiose visions might meet, recalls that the Soviet Union’s collapse had also been unimaginable. Yet that superpower crumbled and disintegrated. And so, he declares, “They say it is not possible to have a world without the United States and Zionism. But you know that this is a possible goal and slogan.”27 Ahmadinejad’s brazen pronouncements of the West’s impending doom echo Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s bullying prophecy: “We will bury you.”
Such beliefs and reveries appear common among Political Islam’s ranks, leaders and followers alike. Bin Laden preached to his followers: “People used to ask us ‘How will you defeat the Soviet Empire?’ . . . where now is that strong force that God sent to us and our mujahidin brothers?”28 The United States will similarly crumble: “America appeared so mighty . . . but it was actually weak and cowardly. Look at Vietnam, look at Lebanon. Whenever soldiers start coming home in body bags, Americans panic and retreat. Such a country needs only to be confronted with two or three sharp blows, then it will flee in panic, as it always has. . . . It cannot stand against warriors of faith who do not fear death.”29 A placard in the London anti-cartoon demonstration proclaimed: “Europe you’ll come crawling when Mujahideen come roaring!” Lashkar-e-Taiba (the Army of the Pure), South Asia’s most potent Political Islamic movement, which in 2008 launched the coordinated mass-murderous attacks in Mumbai, India, hoping to slaughter five thousand, targeting especially Americans and Britons, calls for jihad to conquer a large part of the globe and humanity:Muslims ruled Andalusia (Spain) for 800 years but they were finished to the last man. Christians now rule (Spain) and we must wrest it back from them. All of India, including Kashmir, Hyderabad, Assam, Nepal, Burma, Bihar and Junagadh were part of the Muslim empire that was lost because Muslims gave up jihad. Palestine is occupied by the Jews. The Holy Qibla-e-Awwal (First Center of Prayer) in Jerusalem is under Jewish control. Several countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan . . . were Muslim lands and it is our duty to get these back from unbelievers. Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris and some of the forests and mountains of Switzerland were home to Muslim mujahidin but are now under the occupation of unbelievers.30
Such are Political Islamists’ expansive eliminationist desires. Among the measures the annihilationist Lashkar-e-Taiba explicitly calls for as part of this far-reaching conquest are to “eliminate evil” and “to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers,” which in conquering unwilling billions would mean slaughtering untold numbers. Hamas too dreams of reconquering Seville and extending Islamic power into Europe. Its leader, Mashal, in his Al-Jazeera-televised sermon, after commanding Europe to apologize to the Islamic nation, warned, “Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing.”31
Some people will see this foreboding picture as overdrawn. They will say much of the Islamic world does not support, let alone take part in, these developments. They will say the mass-murderous and eliminationist rhetoric is mere domestic political posturing, or a hyperbolic verbal culture’s harmless product. They will say the Islamic world is hardly threatening. Islamic countries are militarily and politically weak, and Muslims in Europe are a discriminated-against minority. They might add that Islamic countries, many lagging economically and technologically, and in their intellectual and political cultures’ development, lack the vibrancy necessary to challenge let alone subdue others.
However weak Islamic countries may be, such thinking is wrong about Political Islamists’ and their threats’ strength and gravity. Much of the Islamic world is in Political Islam’s throes, even if much of it is not. (It’s a big world.) Political Islamists control governments and threaten others, and non-Political Islamic leaders cynically successfully deploy their creed in various Islamic countries and societies. Although all tyrannical regimes are inherently unstable and can be overthrown from within precisely because they exist in a modern world that has—as the recent disputed elections in Iran remind us—enshrined democracy and popular representation as a cardinal principle, the countries that many of them rule suffer under their repressive, often totalitarian, and murderous grip (little recognized are the countless Muslims suffering under their tyranny and the countless more threatened). Political Islam has highly motivated and effective terror groups. Coming from diverse centers of Islamic politics, Political Islamists speak a clear, menacing message. Anyone indiscriminately targeting civilians in genocide bombing, or applauding such proto-genocidal killing; anyone calling for cartoonists’ and their publishers’ murder, or applauding such calls; anyone threatening mass murder, while working to conquer the territory or acquire the weaponry making it possible, or applauding such calls, understands in this age of Al-Jazeera and the Internet that this is all part of a widespread Political Islamic assault on the West. In particular, no politician acts or speaks in such a manner frivolously. (If the apologetic argument really is that political leaders threaten mass murder just for domestic consumption, or that Political Islam’s power among its people scares governments into becoming more Political Islamic themselves, then this just proves the point about the murderous aspirations and danger of Political Islam’s legions of followers.) Adolf Hitler prophesied the Jews’ annihilation, saying in January 1939 that a world war would result in the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Most treated this as empty bluster. The history of our time’s genocide and eliminationist politics shows—from Lothar von Trotha to Hitler to bin Laden—that in the rare instances political leaders publicly threaten to annihilate enemy peoples, they mean it.
In discussions of contemporary political issues, politics overwhelms regard for truth. So stating certain undeniable central facts about Political Islam seems sensible:• Political Islamic leaders have a mass-murderous and more broadly an eliminationist orientation toward those groups, peoples, and countries they deem their enemies. (As do a startlingly large number of followers, who, departing from ordinary people’s past practices, themselves openly dream eliminationist and genocidal dreams.)
• Political Islamists ground these stances in the Quran, imbuing them with a sacred quality, making their fulfillment a divine command and a practice securing their practitioners places in heaven.
• Political Islamic leaders, invoking their creed, have perpetrated several annihilationist and eliminationist assaults, killing millions.
• Political Islamic followers, sharing this creed, have willingly carried out these mass slaughters and eliminations.
• Political Islamists govern several countries, with Iran striving to build nuclear weapons, and threaten to take over others, including nuclear Pakistan.
An eliminationist logic linking up to eliminationist acts is at Political Islam’s core. Political Islam, like earlier eliminationist movements and civilizations, contains all the elements that produce actual mass murders and eliminations: a powerful eliminationist discourse; a demonized conception of large groups of enemies making their eradication seem good and necessary, indeed a moral and sacred duty; leaders willing to initiate mass murders and eliminations; legions of eager followers wi
lling to carry out such assaults; and existing and foreseeable future opportunities (which some Political Islamists are determined to create) to undertake such assaults against real or imagined enemies. During our time this classic common eliminationist formula has led regimes and peoples all over the world to annihilate millions upon millions of people.
The issues open for discussion and disagreement about Political Islam are about the factors that produced this powerful new totalitarian and eliminationist political movement, and whether it can be tempered or hemmed in, and if so, to what degree and with what means, measures, and policies. But even if partly tempered or contained, Political Islam, with its eliminationist core, will continue, like other aggressive tyrannies, even more than most, to threaten the people it already rules and the many people it wishes to vanquish in political Allah’s name.
Political Islam is the only contemporary political ideology with global or large regional aspirations, and preaching the use of violence to reshape many countries’ politics, society, and culture and, for many Political Islamists, ultimately the world. This is the Political Islamists’ core project—as their leaders in country after country tell us. In this sense Political Islam resembles our time’s now-defunct globally or regionally violent eliminationist civilizations, Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China. Yet it differs from Nazi Germany and imperial Japan by formally preaching a universalism, and from the Soviet Union and China, because it has no transformative economic vision. In its aspirations and danger, it most recalls the twentieth century’s imperial totalitarian regimes in Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, which, according to their ideological blueprints, sought to extend their power over vast regions, used military means for conquest, and were willing, indeed eager, to kill an enormous number of people to secure their power and reshape the societies and ultimately the world. Political Islam melds modernity’s eliminationist mindset to an archaic political ideology to make war on modernity itself, or at least many of its central aspects, producing an eliminationist elixir unlike our, or any, time’s other major destructive political movements.
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