What Osama bin Laden is really after: Empire
by
nickkopernik
09/11/2007, 2:38 PM #
For those who are really interested in understanding Osama's recent inviation to join Islam, below I'm reprinting a piece I wrote for Athens & Jerusalem (<link>), a cutting-edge blog that addresses the conflict between reason and revelation. Enjoy.
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Remembering September 11th: A Remark on Religion and Empire
R.D. Gold, Editor
Today is the 6th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the United States. Osama bin Laden, never one to miss a press opportunity, recently released a video inviting Americans to join Islam. In that video, bin Laden argues that the United States has failed to live up to its democratic ideals because large multi-national corporations control the political process and our economic system creates extreme inequality. Our commitment to democracy and capitalism makes us a godless nation. If we were to admit our transgressions against Allah, and wholeheartedly devote ourselves to Islam, we would find peace. However, if we fail to kneel down before Allah, annihilation is our fate. The message, then, is clear. But something else lurks behind bin Laden’s communiqué, something we ignore at our own peril. The truth we are not meant to see is that Islamic fundamentalism is yet another vehicle for the all-too-human urge to empire.
Consider the parallel between bin Laden’s message and the posture taken by the Great King Xerxes during the Greco-Persian wars. Persia, a country that became obscenely wealthy through enslaving much of the Asian and Greek world, was beset by two lone holdouts, Athens and Sparta. In 484 BCE, Xerxes decided to annex these rebellious, “terrorist” city-states once and for all. Yet Xerxes, a man who was about to invade other states to increase his own wealth and prestige, did not think himself a tyrant. As a devoted servant of Ahura Mazda, the “Lord of Light,” Xerxes saw himself as the one man who could bring Truth to all of Greece. As the chosen representative of the Lord of Light, King Xerxes had no moral qualms with seizing sovereign territories by force, even if doing so required burning cities to the ground and slaughtering countless innocents. As an inscription at Persepolis attests, everything Xerxes accomplished was deliberately undertaken for “the favor of Ahura Mazda.”
Eerily following in the footsteps of Xerxes, bin Laden cloaks all of his actions in appeals to a divine will. Since Allah rejoices in the death of infidels, al Qaeda is permitted to blow people to smithereens at its caprice. But what are infidels, really? Infidels are people who refuse to become part of the Muslim empire. This may sound strange, since Islam is rarely thought of as an “empire,” and infidels usually aren’t thought of as rebels. If anything, the West is usually seen as the oppressive empire, and Muslims are usually depicted as a minority resisting the tide of secular Western culture. But this prejudice on our part is a mistake, for bin Laden’s ambitions mirror Xerxes’: Driven by fidelity to an omnipotent, all-knowing deity, bin Laden intends to spiritually annex the rest of the world. And so, while bin Laden publicly plays the part of a sincere Muslim, like Xerxes he is really just trying to build an empire through coercion and carnage.
That’s how we see it. What do you think?
