The 9/11 Islamist Attacks a Decade Later

[Ed Hudgins]

The 9/11 Islamist Attacks a Decade Later
By Edward Hudgins

September 9, 2011 -- The first decade of the twenty-first century was defined by Islamists, who used planes as weapons against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and who would have done the same to the Capitol or White House if not for the brave passengers who died in the process of stopping them. There is much being said about the lessons the past ten years have taught us—about war, about national security, about Middle East policy. But the most important, which is too often ignored, is that ideas have consequences.

Evil ideas

And irrational ideas are the most destructive forces in the human world, killing more people over the centuries than hurricanes, earthquakes, and natural disasters. The hijackers actually believed and took seriously the religious poison in the name of which they slaughtered nearly 3,000 innocent people. Some on the political left and the libertarian right have attributed the 9/11 attacks and subsequent assaults in London, Spain, and elsewhere to blowback for supposed economic or geopolitical wrongs committed by the U.S. But the hijackers were middle class, educated, and living in the West, where they could believe or do pretty much as they wanted. Yes, there are legitimate questions concerning American Middle East policy. But policy complaints do not justify nihilistic violence.

Islamists defend their criminal practices by appealing to the Koran. But their most dangerous idea is that any idea should be accepted on faith. One must not question, think critically, or use reason. One must not ask, “Why should I accept this or any alleged religious ‘revelation?’ Does this stuff make any coherent sense? Am I honestly seeking the truth or rationalizing and evading in order to believe this stuff?” Such faith-based believing is the ultimate root of all immorality, including that manifest in the smoldering ruins at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

The modern versus the primitive

As Atlas Society founder David Kelley has observed, the Islamist assault on America and the West is a manifestation of the struggle between the ideas of modernity and the pre-modern. This struggle occurred in past centuries in the West with the rise of the Enlightenment ideas “that reason, not revelation, is the instrument of knowledge and arbiter of truth … that the pursuit of happiness in this life, not suffering in preparation for the next, is the cardinal value … that the individual person is an end in himself with the capacity to direct his own life … that individuals have equal rights to freedom of thought, speech, and action.”

Islamic culture is still mired in a pre-modern mentality. The Arab Spring uprisings reveal a frustration with the economic failures and political repression in the Middle East, made more stark in comparison to the West.

If these uprisings are not to result simply in more such failures and repression, what that region’s culture sorely needs but lacks are strong advocates of Enlightenment values. Instead, Islamists—who target those who speak for modernity—offer a return to millennium-old primitivism, with Shar’ia law chaining the bodies and spirits of individuals to greater repression and superstition.

Islamists in the West

In the West, the outcome of this battle of ideas will affect more than how long the security lines are at airports and how much oil prices spike on the occasions of Middle East instability. Here’s why:

Some 90 percent of the population growth in Western Europe since 1990 has been the result of Islamic immigration. In France, 30 percent of children under 20 years old are Muslim. In 40 years the majority in France could be Muslim. In the Netherlands, about half of newborns are Muslim. In 15 to 20 years the majority in the Netherlands could be Muslim. In Germany, a government report from the Federal Statistics Office says that the Fatherland could be majority Muslim by 2050.

The problem here is not with immigrants as such. Part of the problem is that European nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment can still trump Enlightenment values. No matter how many generations removed from their home country, descendents of immigrants are sometimes never accepted as “true” Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and so on. Add to this the fact that many Muslim immigrants to Europe in past decades have brought with them pre-modern notions and one can understand why they have not assimilated.

Thus we see no Enlightened Islam arising in Europe. But we did see actual celebrations by Muslims in Britain of the 9/11 mass murders, and thousands in the streets screaming for the deaths of Danish cartoonists who drew pictures of Mohammed. If such moral sentiments eventually inform the majority in Europe, then the continent that gave rise to the Enlightenment could sink again into a dark age.

The West’s moral mess

In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, many in the West have blundered in the battle of ideas.

First, many on the political left were revealed to not be simply honest critics of aspects of society in America and Europe. Rather, they responded as knee-jerk haters of the West. Noam Chomsky, for example, doubted that the Taliban was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Well into the American response in Afghanistan, he declared that the war’s aim “was totally illegal. It was more, criminal.” Only a few on the left—Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, for example—have broken from that camp and have stood up for truly liberal values such as civil liberties, freedom of conscience, and the right of women to be treated not like children or chattel but as equal citizens before the law.

Second, many so-called liberals are paving the way for Islamist theocracy by silencing its critics. During the Danish cartoon controversy, many argued for the “right” of the most close-minded, bigoted, and murder-minded Muslims not to be offended—even though the cartoonists mainly meant to educate, not offend. In the Netherlands politician Geert Wilders was tried for voicing his opposition to Muslim immigration. Free speech is okay for those who want to destroy freedom but not for those who wish to defend it.

Third, many on the radical religious right also blamed America first. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell “pointed the finger” for the 9/11 attacks at gays, the ACLU, and those who favor legalized abortion. And Dinesh D’Souza stated that “The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 ... the cultural left and its allies … are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.”

While many on the religious right have not gone to these absurd extremes, they want to oppose the tenets of Islamic religious faith with the tenets of their own faith rather than to oppose faith as such with reason and Enlightenment values.

An enlightened future

The best defense for the West is to get its own house in order. We need to stand up more consistently for rationality and individual freedom. These are the truths that will liberate and heal the wounded cultures of the world, and that will help the West continue to lead the way to a better, more peaceful, more prosperous future.
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For further reading:

Edward Hudgins, “Are the People of the Middle East Fit for Freedom?” May 14, 2004.
http://www.atlassoci...le-east-freedom

Edward Hudgins, “The Jihad Against Free Speech.” The New Individualist, Winter, 2005.
http://www.atlassoci...nst-free-speech

[Ed Hudgins]

Here's the link to the piece:

http://www.atlassociety.org/911-decade-later

(Edit function not working right.)

[studiodekadent]

Ed,

I hope this doesn't come off as disrespectful but I'm going to be contrarian here...

And irrational ideas are the most destructive forces in the human world, killing more people over the centuries than hurricanes, earthquakes, and natural disasters.

I know you were probably writing polemically rather than precisely, but ideas aren't self-enacting. They aren't 'forces' and they aren't even remotely analagous to natural disasters. They must be enacted by people in order to have their destructive effect. As I said, I know you were probably writing dramatically, but be careful to remember David Kelley's critique of Piekoff's abuse of the Objectivist theory of history.

Some on the political left and the libertarian right have attributed the 9/11 attacks and subsequent assaults in London, Spain, and elsewhere to blowback for supposed economic or geopolitical wrongs committed by the U.S. But the hijackers were middle class, educated, and living in the West, where they could believe or do pretty much as they wanted. Yes, there are legitimate questions concerning American Middle East policy. But policy complaints do not justify nihilistic violence.

Policy complaints don't justify nihilistic violence, but that doesn't mean they cannot provide a rationale or motive for such violence. Human behavior doesn't have "causes," it has motivations.

That said, you seem to be employing a false dichotomy in your thought between the "blowback hypothesis" and "they hate Enlightenment values." At least as I understand the blowback hypothesis, the logic is as follows;

1) US foreign policy interventions generate resentment towards America

2) Said resentment motivates religious radicalization and encourages some Muslims to embrace fundamentalism and see a conflict in terms of God's Faithful Warriors vs. Godless Heathens

3) Said radicalized Muslim fundamentalists commit terrorist attacks against the West.

Now, this seems to be both perfectly consistent with the Blowback Hypothesis as well as the They Hate Enlightenment Values hypothesis. It also makes empirical sense; when any group (national or ideological or religious or racial) begins to feel "under attack" from the outside, said group easily becomes more radicalized and more willing to commit violence and more deeply alienated from the world around them. Look at how Conservative Christians go on about the evil godless secular world threatening to destroy Good Wholesome Christian America. Look at how the Ayn Rand Institute loves to fetishize the evil and depravity of the "non-Objectivist world" beyond its Ivory Tower. There are countless examples here, but the point is that "Blowback" doesn't discount philosophical motivations; rather it provides a convincing logic as to the genesis of these motivations.

You're right that the hijackers were often educated and middle-class and radicalized in the West, but I don't see how this negates the "Blowback" hypothesis... said hijackers identified not with the West but with the nations/groups they saw as "invaded" and thus were angry over the intervention. Additionally, radicalization is a process that requires external motivation; it seldom 'just happens.' Radicalization presupposes the existence of advocates that can radicalize other people. Perhaps it might be fair to speculate the following sequence of events;

1) Intervention generates resentment

2) Resentment amongst people generates a core of radical religionists as per the process above

3) Said core of radical religionists reach out to people in the West in order to radicalize them and spread the radicalization

I agree with you that the ultimate solution is to consistently practice and promote Enlightenment values, so we do not disagree there. The way that the left have generally refused to stand up for Enlightenment values, as well as the way the right have attacked the West's lack of religiosity (becoming no more than another version of the Taliban) are both obscene. However, I don't think that the "Blowback" hypothesis is to be discounted and I don't believe it somehow lessens the role of ideas in history.

Ideas do not enact themselves; they must be enacted by people that adopt these ideas. Ideas, and particularly complex religious and philosophical ideas, aren't adopted outside of a context. And if one is in a context where one sees a foreign nation intervene in the affairs of one's people/nation, supporting harsh nationalist regimes and propping up Dictators (and make no mistake, the US government has done PLENTY of this in the middle east), would not one be much more likely to adopt ideas which vilify the perceived invader, attack the perceived invader's (nominal) philosophical foundations, and cast one as one's people's God-appointed avenger?

[Mark]

The Atlas Society is usually thought of as an alternative to the Ayn Rand Institute, but Edward Hudgins’s talk/article is no different from what ARI puts out.

They hate us ’cuz we’re free, and only leftists say otherwise. (With a nod to evangelical self-appointed leaders, who in fact say the same thing).

It’s all so in your face stupid. They hate us because we’re free? Sure, "they" – meaning some muslim intellectual creeps – hate the West for its rational elements. But take a random Arab, not an intellectual but a merchant or farmer, someone who trades or works with his hands, an olive farmer or whatever, does he hate the U.S. government and those who support it because Americans are better off than he? Or does some behavior of the U.S. government make him hate us? Such as killing and maiming the people around him, for whatever benevolent goal?

Does Hudgins think the U.S. government is defending our freedom with its domestic police state measures? With government institutionalized torture?

Hudgins very first utterance plays into the awestruck attitude of a lickspittle for power: "The first decade of the twenty-first century was defined by Islamists, who ..." Why the hell should we let "Islamists" – or some power-lusting politician – define ten years of our lives? And counting.

It’s long past time we recognized who the real enemy was and is, neoconservative think-tanks like the Clarion Fund and elements within our own government.

[studiodekadent]

Mark,

Whilst I generally agree with you on foreign policy matters, this article is (with all due respect) better than ARI's crap.

There's no "NUKE TEHRAN!" here. And the article does implicitly acknowledge that there are reasons to disagree with US foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as the fact that current Western governments aren't living up to Enlightenment ideals. It also advocates a reasonable solution; we must actually practice what we preach and thus strive to embody the Enlightenment foundations of current Western civilization.

It doesn't justify the 9/11 Police State (although I do think it should've been more open in condemning it). It doesn't wax lyrical about the glories of neoconservatism.

For the record, I've often been disappointed in TAS's foreign policy commentary too. I believe that at times it has misapplied the Objectivist theory of history (using it in a methodologically collectivist and philosophically determinist manner) and fell into the trap of seeing US administrations as embodiments of Enlightenment values, as if the real world were a Dostoyevsky novel where everything is merely a symbol of high ideals.

But this piece is a clear improvement, and certainly better than ARI's "KILL THE TOWELHEADS!" propaganda,