Islamoyankee recently got on my case because of my lack of posting, so I am pretending to work, listening to Dylan, and feeding this up instead.
Sadik J. Al-Azm,Emeritus Professor of Modern European Philosophy, University of Damascus, and a recipient of the 2004 Erasmus Prize, has written a thoughtful article straight from the heart of the Arab world. The article entitled, “Time Out of Joint” can be viewed in this months Boston Review. In it, Al-Azm questions his own reactions to 9-11 and Huntington’s theory. It is indeed refreshing to read an article that addresses the issues rationally and approaches the subject head -on. Al-Azm postulates that 9-11 was not a rally cry to war, but the last wimper of a failed ideology.
In the article, Al-Azm states, “…hard-core Islamists’ spectacular terrorist violence reflects a no less desperate attempt to break out of the historical impasse and terminal structural crisis reached by the world Islamist movement in the second half of the 20th century. I predict this violence will be the prelude to the dissipation and final demise of militant Islamism in general. Like the armed factions in Europe who had given up on society, political parties, reform, proletarian revolution, and traditional communist organization in favor of violent action, militant Islamism has given up on contemporary Muslim society, its sociopolitical movements, the spontaneous religiosity of the masses, mainstream Islamic organizations, the attentism of the original and traditional Society of Muslim Brothers (from which they generally derive in the way the 1970s terrorists derived from European communism), in favor of violence.”