re: #168 Salamantis

What is Old and What is New in the Terrorism of Islamic Fundamentalism?
Jeffrey Herf
[Link: www.bu.edu…]

excerpt:

Islamic fundamentalism is closer to the fascist and Nazi traditions in its celebration of values which depart from rationality. Marxism-Leninism was a doctrine whose erroneous interpretation of history, politics, and economics nevertheless contained elements of rationality and possibilities of empirical assessment. Moreover, while Communists certainly fostered a cult of martyrdom, they did not make death a virtue. The elements of rationality within Marxism-Leninism combined with the self-interest associated with possession of the huge state of the Soviet Union. As a result the Soviet leaders believed that they had more to lose than to gain by unleashing a nuclear war with the United States. Because the Communists possessed this minimum of rationality, it was possible for the West to arrive at a nuclear stalemate with Moscow for half a century. Nuclear deterrence rested on the assumption that both players preferred survival to self-destruction. Given Hitler’s fundamental contempt for rationality and his celebration of the will, combined with the paranoid structure of his interpretation of international politics, the chances that such a peaceful nuclear stalemate could have been sustained with Nazi Germany for half a century would have been far less likely. A Nazi leadership would have been far more likely to go over the brink to war, even if that meant the nuclear devastation of Nazi Germany.

However enamored Hitler and the Nazis were of an apocalyptic end, Nazism as an ideology celebrated the victory of the “master race,” not its death and revival in heavenly paradise. It was a secular totalitarianism. On the other hand, terrorists inspired by Islamic fundamentalism have an attitude towards their own death which is quite different precisely because it is inspired by a religious radicalism that envisages a heavenly paradise in the next world. Radical Islam convinces its adherents that a martyr’s death is a prelude to this paradise. Their otherworldly visions clearly inspired the murderers of September 11th just as they have inspired the one hundred suicide bombers who have attacked Israel since 1993, thirty in the past year. They are visions with a profound consequence for the future of world peace and security. Should a radical Islamic group or state come to possess weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, or nuclear) and the means to deliver them, there is no reason to assume that the prospect of nuclear retaliation by the United States would deter war. This is so because, in their view, their own death is a prelude to certain entry to a better life in the heavenly paradise to come. For people with such belief, nuclear retaliation may be a blessing rather than a threat.

Nuclear deterrence rested on the assumption that both players preferred survival to self-destruction

The KEY sentence.