A while back I had quizzed the author of a best-seller in the US by the name of Kyle Mills. I’d just read his spy novel Sphere of Influence, about Al-Qaeda, where he predicted how Al-Qaeda reformatted itself into a cost-efficient, decentralized organization post-9/11 (he wrote the novel before 9/11, and updated it immediately afterwards). He also mentioned in passing that the original hijackers had bin Laden ‘tattoos’. When I protested (naively) that tattoos aren’t allowed in Islam, Kyle said he’d most likely just made it up. After Zarkawi was nabbed, Kyle emailed me to say that they found tattoos on him.I was embarrassed, but it showed me how the novelist’s imagination can anticipate better than social scientists. People insist on expressing who they are, what they are, through physical signifiers, such as tattoos. Just look at Egypt’s countryside, with tattoos of crosses and the Virgin Mary on peasants and Upper Egyptians, or the obsession of Islamic fundamentalists with long beards and short galabeyas. Symbolism and expression is the very stuff of art; but religion’s got nothing to do with it because, when it comes to tattoos, they’re violating religious edicts and norms. This sheds light on the true nature of extremist violence. These people are eager to prove themselves, their worth to religion and the ’cause’, to the point of disobeying it, because they insist on proving themselves worthy, on their own terms. This is close to Durkheim’s sociologization of religion as a ‘totem-symbol’. A religious symbol, like any other, expresses through graphic illustration a religious notion, but it becomes a totem-symbol when it is assumed to have magical powers, literally embodying the divine notion it represents.Hence, what you see in vampire movies when crosses and holy water burn the ‘undead’, or light physically destroys evil demons that represent the forces of darkness – vampires included. The equivalent for Muslims is wearing a talisman with Quranic verses to ward off evil spirits.Durkheim was half right, though. Representation is a universal human instinct and our religious teacher at school always hated it when he saw a student wearing a Quran necklace. He would say that’s just a piece of metal with some scribbles on it. Reading what’s on it, understanding and applying it, that will save you. But it shows you how people drag religion down to their level and convince themselves, in a psychological feeding frenzy, that they are the true representatives of religion and that the Divine literally acts through them (the Hand of God, the Shadow of God on the earth). There’s also a Marxist dimension to it, which isn’t that far off from Durkheim because every class makes religion its own, a self-righteous instrument in social conflict. I was once talking to an Egyptian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He neither considered himself an Egyptian, nor a Saudi, because he grew up in the ‘compounds’ they have there with discos, bars, cinemas where native Saudis aren’t even allowed in. Then it hit me. The violence there is class-driven but understood, genuinely, in religious terms because these compounds are little hamlets housing ‘decadent’ Westerners where God’s law doesn’t apply. And while we’re on an artistic/sociological arch, take a peek at Deja Vu, where the terrorist who blew up the ferry with the Marines and their families had originally tried to enlist, but were turned down. He convinced himself afterwards that the reason they rejected him was because they’re no longer patriots, upholding Americans principles, whereas he, of course, does. And, surprise, surprise, he’s covered in patriotic and religious and tattoos, thinking what he did is God’s work and that consequently, he won’t even head off to trial. Sounds crazy but the guys who killed Sadat didn’t think they would see the courtroom either but that divine intervention would save them.So, a lot of what is driving hostility to the West, Islamists and secular nationalists, is rejection (real or presumed). We want to be Western, want the Westerners to make us Western, democratic, prosperous, organised, but when we’re rebuffed racially or find Western governments supporting repressive and/or regressive regimes, we rebel against the very thing we admire and desire, convincing ourselves we never wanted it to begin with.Was watching a docudrama once which claimed that Goths had only sacked Rome after being betrayed by them by not fulfilling citizenship and land rights. They wrecked Rome because the Romans wouldn’t let them be Roman, hence destroying and desecrating the very thing they cherished.Ergo, the extremists among us are munafiqeen, hypocrites, who pretend to be culturally and religiously ‘authentic’, while they’re actually spoilt brats craving recognition from the West, but on their own self-congratulatory terms. Thank goodness for enlightened Western spy novelists.
Emad El-Din Ayshais a Cairo-based commentator and lecturer at the American University in Cairo.
