Fields of Blood

by Karen Armstrong

  42. Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 3:262.

  43. Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford, 2007), p. 59.

  44. Quoted in Joanna Bourke, “Barbarisation vs. Civilisation in Time of War,” in George Kassimeris, ed., The Barbarisation of Warfare (London, 2006), p. 29.

  45. Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shii Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shiism (New Haven, CT, and London, 1985), p. 251; Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 93–94.

  46. Azar Tabari, “The Role of Shii Clergy in Modern Iranian Politics,” in Nikki R. Keddie, ed., Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiism from Quietism to Revolution (New Haven, CT, and London, 1983), p. 63.

  47. Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Islam: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, NY, 1980), pp. 58–59.

  48. Majid Fakhry, History of Islamic Philosophy (New York, 1970), pp. 376–81; Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry, trans. Marion Farouk Slugett and Peter Slugett, 2nd ed. (London, 1990), pp. 90–93; Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798 – 1939 (Cambridge, UK, 1983), pp. 130–61; Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 3:274–76.

  49. Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt, 2 vols. (New York, 1908), 2:184.

  50. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, pp. 224, 230, 240–43.

  51. John Esposito, “Islam and Muslim Politics,” in Esposito, Voices of Resurgent Islam, p. 10; Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of Muslim Brothers (New York and Oxford, 1969), passim.

  52. Mitchell, Society of Muslim Brothers, p. 8. The story and speech may be apocryphal, but it expresses the spirit of the early Brotherhood.

  53. Ibid., pp. 9–13, 328.

  54. Anwar Sadat, Revolt on the Nile (New York, 1957), pp. 142–43.

  55. Mitchell, Society of Muslim Brothers, pp. 205–6, 302.

  56. John O. Voll, “Fundamentalisms in the Sunni Arab World: Egypt and the Sudan,” in Marty and Appleby, Fundamentalisms, pp. 369–74; Yvonne Haddad, “Sayyid Qutb,” in Esposito, Voices of Resurgent Islam; Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, pp. 96–151.

  57. Qutb, Fi Zilal al-Quran, 2:924–25.

  58. Harold Fisch, The Zionist Revolution: A New Perspective (Tel Aviv and London, 1968), pp. 77, 87.

  59. Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. R. Patai, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1960), 2:793–94.

  60. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, trans. Willard J. Trask (New York, 1959), p. 21.

  61. Meir Ben Dov, The Western Wall (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 146, 148, 146.

  62. Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem: The Torn City (Jerusalem, 1975), p. 84.

  63.Ibid., p. 119.

  64. Psalm 72.4.

  65. Michael Rosenak, “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israeli Education,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms and Society (Chicago and London, 1993), p. 392.

  66. Gideon Aran, “The Father, the Son and the Holy Land,” in R. Scott Appleby, ed., Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East (Chicago, 1997), pp. 310, 311.

  67. Interview with Maariv (14 Nisan 572 [1963]), cited in Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago and London, 1993), p. 85.

  68. Ian S. Lustick, For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (New York, 1988), p. 85; Aran, “Father, Son, and Holy Land,” p. 310.

  69. Samuel C. Heilman, “Guides of the Faithful, Contemporary Religious Zionist Rabbis,” in Appleby, Spokesmen for the Despised, p. 357.

  70. Ehud Sprinzak, “Three Models of Religious Violence: The Case of Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalism and the State (Chicago and London, 1993), p. 472.

  71. Gideon Aran, “Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Bloc of the Faithful in Israel,” in Marty and Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed, p. 290.

  72. Ibid., p. 280.

  73. Ibid., p. 308.

  74. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 160–80.

  75. Mehrzad Borujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse, NY, 1996), p. 26; Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 156.

  76. Michael J. Fischer, “Imam Khomeini: Four Levels of Understanding,” in Esposito, Voices of Resurgent Islam, p. 157.

  77. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 154–56.

  78. Ibid., pp. 158–59; Momen, Introduction to Shii Islam, p. 254; Hamid Algar, “The Oppositional Role of the Ulema in Twentieth Century Iran,” in Keddie, Scholars, Saints and Sufis, p. 248.

  79. Willem M. Floor, “The Revolutionary Character of the Ulama: Wishful Thinking or Reality,” in Nikki R. Keddie, ed., Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiism from Quietism to Revolution (New Haven, CT, and London, 1983), appendix, p. 97.

  80. Hamid Algar, “The Fusion of the Mystical and the Political in the Personality and Life of Imam Khomeini,” lecture delivered at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, June 9, 1998.

  81. John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, “Christianity and Social Progress” in Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, 1740 – 1981 , 5 vols. (Falls Church, VA, 1981), 5:63–64.

  82. Camilo Torres, “Latin America: Lands of Violence,” in J. Gerassi, ed., Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings and Messages of Camilo Torres (New York, 1971), pp. 422–23.

  83. Thia Cooper, “Liberation Theology and the Spiral of Violence,” in Andrew R. Murphy, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (Chichester, UK, 2011), pp. 543–55.

  84. Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York, 2012), pp. 502–25.

  85. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (Philadelphia, 1963), p. 50.

  86. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 282–83; Mehntad Borujerdi, Islamic Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse, NY, 1996), pp. 29–42.

  87. Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran, pp. 129–31.

  88. Algar, “Oppositional Role of the Ulema,” p. 251.

  89. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 215–59; Sharough Akhavi, “Shariati’s Social Thought,” in Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran; Abdulaziz Sachedina, “Ali Shariati, Ideologue of the Islamic Revolution,” in Esposito, Voices of Resurgent Islam; Michael J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1980), pp. 154–67; Borujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals, pp. 106–15.

  90. Sayeed Ruhollah Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, trans. and ed. Hamid Algar (Berkeley, CA, 1981), p. 28.

  91. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, p. 242; Fischer, Iran, p. 193.

  92. Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Fateful Encounter with Iran (London, 1985), p. 30.

  93. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, p. 243.

  94. Fischer, Iran, p. 195.

  95. Momen, Introduction to Shii Islam, p. 288.

  96. Fischer, Iran, p. 184.

  97. Momen, Introduction to Shii Islam, p. 288.

  98. Fischer, Iran, pp. 198–99.

  99. Ibid., p. 199; Sick, All Fall Down, p. 51; Keddie, Roots of Revolution, p. 250. The government claimed that only 120 demonstrators died and 2,000 were injured; others claimed between 500 and 1,000 dead.

  100. Fischer, Iran, p. 204.

  101. Ibid., p. 205. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, pp. 252–53, believes that only one million took part.

  102. Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (London, 1985), p. 227.

  103. Baqir Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (London, 1999), pp. 227–28.

  104. Daniel Brumberg, “Khomeini’s Legacy: Islamic Rule and Islamic Social Justice,” in Appleby, Spokesmen for the Despised.

  105. Joos R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge, UK, 2007), pp. 22–36.

  106. Homa Katouzian, “Shiism and Islamic Economics: Sadr and Bani Sadr,”
in Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran, pp. 161–62.

  107. Michael J. Fischer, “Imam Khomeini: Four Levels of Understanding,” in Esposito, Voices of Resurgent Islam, p. 171.

  108. Sick, All Fall Down, p. 165.

  109. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York, 1963), p. 18.

  110. Kautsky, Political Consequences of Modernization, pp. 60–127.

  111. William O. Beeman, “Images of the Great Satan: Representations of the United States in the Iranian Revolution,” in Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran, p. 215.

  12 ♦ HOLY TERROR

  1. Rebecca Moore, “Narratives of Persecution, Suffering, and Martyrdom: Violence in the People’s Temple and Jonestown,” in James R. Lewis, ed., Violence and New Religious Movements (Oxford, 2011); Moore, “American as Cherry Pie: The People’s Temple and Violence,” in Catherine Wessinger, ed., Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Circumstances (Syracuse, NY, 1986); Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently: Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate (New York, 2000); Mary Maaga, Hearing the Voices of Jonestown (Syracuse, NY, 1998).

  2. Moore, “Narratives of Persecution,” p. 102.

  3. Ibid., p. 103.

  4. Huey Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York, 1973).

  5. Moore, “Narratives of Persecution,” pp. 106, 108, 110.

  6. George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture (New Haven, CT, 1971), p. 32.

  7.Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY, 1989), pp. 77–92.

  8. Joanna Bourke, “Barbarisation vs. Civilisation in Time of War,” in George Kassimeris, ed., The Barbarisation of Warfare (London, 2006), p. 26.

  9. Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (London, 1985), p. 85.

  10. Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994).

  11. Ibid., pp. 107, 109. There may be as few as 50,000 members.

  12. Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right, p. 213

  13. William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford, 2009), pp. 34–35.

  14. C. Gearty, “Introduction,” in C. Gearty, ed., Terrorism (Aldershot, UK, 1996), p. xi.

  15. C. Gearty, “What Is Terror?,” ibid., p. 495; A. Guelke, The Age of Terrorism and the International Political System (London, 2008), p. 7.

  16. Richard English, Terrorism: How to Respond (Oxford, 2009), pp. 19–20.

  17. A. H. Kydd and B. F. Walter, “The Stratagems of Terrorism,” International Security 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006).

  18. P. Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response (London, 2001), pp. 19, 41; Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA, 2001), p. 5; J. Horgan, The Psychology of Terrorism (London, 2005), p. 12; English, Terrorism, p. 6.

  19. Hugo Slim, “Why Protect Civilians? Innocence, Immunity and Enmity in War,” International Affairs 79, no. 3 (2003).

  20. B. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (London, 1998), p. 14; C. C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London, 2008), p. 7; D. J. Whittaker, ed., The Terrorist Reader (London, 2001), p. 9.

  21. Harmon, Terrorism Today, p. 160.

  22. Martha Crenshaw, “Reflections on the Effects of Terrorism,” in Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism, Legitimacy, and Power: The Consequences of Political Violence (Middletown, CT, 1983), p. 25.

  23. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London, 2007), p. 132.

  24. Cavanaugh, Myth of Religious Violence, pp. 24–54.

  25. Muhammad Heikal, Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat (London, 1984), pp. 94–96.

  26. Gilles Kepel, The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt, trans. Jon Rothschild (London, 1985), p. 85.

  27. Fedwa El-Guindy, “The Killing of Sadat and After: A Current Assessment of Egypt’s Islamic Movement,” Middle East Insight 2 (January/February 1982).

  28. Kepel, Prophet and Pharaoh, pp. 70–102.

  29. Ibid., pp. 152–59.

  30. Heikal, Autumn of Fury, pp. 118–19.

  31. Patrick D. Gaffney, The Prophet’s Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1994), pp. 97–101, 141–42.

  32. Johannes J. G. Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East (New York and London, 1988), pp. 49–88, 169.

  33. Ibid., p. 166.

  34. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, NJ, and London, 1957), p. 241.

  35. Ibid., pp. 90, 198, 201–2.

  36. English, Terrorism, p. 51.

  37. Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, “Activist Shi‘ism in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago and London, 1991), pp. 404–5.

  38.Alastair Crooke, Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution (London, 2009), p. 173.

  39. Martin Kramer, “Hizbullah: The Calculus of Jihad,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms and the State (Chicago and London, 1993), pp. 540–41.

  40. Sheikh Muhammad Fadl Allah, Al-Islam wa Muntiq al Quwwa (Beirut, 1976), in Crooke, Resistance, p. 173.

  41. Kramer, “Hizbullah,” p. 542.

  42. Sachedina, “Activist Shi’ism,” p. 448.

  43. Interview with Fadl Allah, Kayhan, November 14, 1985; Kramer, “Hizbullah,” p. 551.

  44. Fadl Allah, speech, Al-Nahar, May 14, 1985; Kramer, “Hizbullah,” p. 550.

  45. Kramer, “Hizbullah,” pp. 548–49; Ariel Meroni, “The Readiness to Kill or Die: Suicide Terrorism in the Middle East,” in Walter Reich, ed., The Origins of Terrorism (Cambridge, UK, 1990), pp. 204–5.

  46. Crooke, Resistance, pp. 175–76.

  47. Fadl Allah, interview, Al-Shira, March 18, 1985; Kramer, “Hizbullah,” pp. 552–53.

  48. Fadl Allah, interview, La Repubblica, August 28, 1989; Kramer, “Hizbullah,” p. 552.

  49. Crooke, Resistance, pp. 175–82.

  50. Ibid., pp. 183–87.

  51. Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York, 2005), pp. xiii, 22.

  52. Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel’s Far Right (Oxford and New York, 1991), p. 97. In the event, only two of the targeted mayors were wounded.

  53. Ibid., pp. 94–95.

  54. Ibid., p. 96; Aviezar Ravitsky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago and London, 1993), pp. 133–34.

  55. Sprinzak, Ascendance, pp. 97–98.

  56. Gideon Aran, “Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism,” in Marty and Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed, pp. 267–68.

  57. Mekhilta on Exodus 20:13; M. Pirke Aboth 6:6; B. Horayot 13a; B. Sanhedrin 4:5.

  58. Sprinzak, Ascendance, pp. 121, 220.

  59. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London and New York, 2006).

  60. Raphael Mergui and Philippe Simonnot, Israel’s Ayatollahs: Meir Kahane and the Far Right in Israel (London, 1987), p. 45.

  61. Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, trans. Haim Watzman (New York, 1991), pp. 515–17.

  62. Sprinzak, Ascendance, p. 221.

  63. Ehud Sprinzak, “Three Models of Religious Violence: The Case of Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,” in Marty and Appleby, Fundamentalisms and the State, pp. 479, 480.

  64. Ellen Posman, “History, Humiliation, and Religious Violence,” in Andrew R. Murphy, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (Chichester, UK, 2011), pp. 336–37, 339.

  65. Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict (Chicago and London, 1996), p. 15.

  66. Daniel Gold, “Organized Hinduisms: From Vedic Truth to Hindu Nation,” in Marty and Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed, pp. 532, 572–73.

  67. Kakar, Colors of Violence, pp. 48–51.

  68. Paul R. Brass, Communal Riots in Post-Independence India (Seattle, 2003), pp.
66–67.

  69.Kakar, Colors of Violence, pp. 154–57, 158.

  70. David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2005), p. 114.

  71. Beverley Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London and New York, 1996), pp. 73–116, 118.

  72. Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 114.

  73. Samuel C. Heilman, “Guides of the Faithful: Contemporary Religious Zionist Rabbis,” in R. Scott Appleby, ed., Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders in the Middle East (Chicago, 1997), pp. 352–53, 354.

  74. Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution (Bloomington, IN, 1997); Jeroen Gunning, “Rethinking Religion and Violence in the Middle East,” in Murphy, Blackwell Companion, p. 519.

  75. Gunning, “Rethinking Religion and Violence,” pp. 518–19.

  76. Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics, p. 148.

  77. Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg, The Road to Martyrs’ Square: A Journey to the World of the Suicide Bomber (Oxford, 2005), p. 71.

  78. Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 116.

  79. The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, sec. 1, cited in John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford, 2002), p. 96.

  80. Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 116.

  81. Covenant, Section 1, in Esposito, Unholy War, p. 96.

  82. Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing: The Wellek Lectures (New York, 2007), pp. 46–47.

  83. Dr. Abdul Aziz Reutizi, in Anthony Shehad, Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam (Boulder, CO, 2001), p. 124.

  84. Esposito, Unholy War, pp. 97–98.

  85. Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” Atlantic Monthly (September 2, 1990); Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York, 2006).

  86. Gunner, “Rethinking Religion and Violence,” p. 516.

  87. Asad, Suicide Bombing, p. 50.

  88. Pape, Dying to Win, p. 130. These figures differ slightly from those quoted earlier from another survey, but both arrive at the same general conclusion.

  89. Robert Pape, “Dying to Kill Us,” New York Times, September 22, 2003.

  90. May Jayyusi, “Subjectivity and Public Witness: An Analysis of Islamic Militance in Palestine,” unpublished paper (2004), quoted in Asad, Suicide Bombing.