Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [411]
The horrifying events of September 11, 2001 are instructive for our discussion of the role of the afterlife in motivating extremist actions. Some of the terrorists may have been agents of terrorist groups like ḥamas,57 Hizballah,58 or Al-Qa’ida.59 Whether or not Iraq has had a role in the World Trade Center attack (which has neither been proven nor disproven), Iran has certainly been bankrolling ḥamas and Hizballah for decades while they engaged in terrorist acts against the United States and the West, as well as against Israel. Iraq, a ferocious secular despotism inspired by Nazi fascism, has been giving aid, support, and training to a variety of terrorist groups, without regard to the religious roots of their extremism. In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.60
Islamic extremism (or “Islamism”) has been especially good at blaming the scandalous state of human rights in the Arab world on the existence of two mythologically evil opponents of Islam: Israel and the United States.61 This is not predominantly a political statement although, obviously, there is some truth to the opposition of Israel and the United States to Islamicist goals. The United States has had a stake in supporting the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel, though it is hardly the reason why any particular regime has remained in power.
The United States, along with most of Europe, also supported the regime of the Shah, which was a very Western-oriented government, but did not prop it up when it was in danger of falling. In point of fact, the United States has stayed away from extreme forms of domestic interference since the embarrassments of CIA involvements in the 70s and 80s. It is also true that Israel has curtailed the rights of Palestinians in response to violence against its citizens. As a result, they have also strengthened the conditions of deprivation and hopelessness which underlie the production of martyrdom. To the dualist minds of Islamicists, this demonstrates the Israelis’ satanic purposes.
If the West is not blameless, neither is the Arab world. In spite of attempts to help the Arab world develop, the economies of the Arab states are in shambles, because capital usable for development is siphoned away by the despotic and the wealthy. The entire Arab world ranks far below Israel in exports, goods, and services. Arguably anti-Western attitudes are part of the problem. The interference of the United States operates as much as an excuse as a real reason for the problems of the area. Certainly the Arab world has been no friend of American foreign policy in the modern period either. It gave significant aid and support to the Nazis during the Second World War and then to the Soviets in the Cold War. It consistently applauds the successes of terrorist actions against the United States and then irrationally blames the very same actions on Israelis or the CIA. It cannot find its way out of the quagmire of irrational hates. Favorable public opinion of the United States in the Arab world is steady at 4 percent. In spite of this, the American State Department continues to court both Arab governments and the people, both in the moderate and despotic states. In spite of considerable American aid to moderate states, Arabs judge the United States seemingly by one standard, its support of Israel, which has been positive but far more evenhanded than is ever admitted.
Islamicists merely provide one more excuse to ignore the real internal reasons blocking Arab development. By blaming the United States and Israel and characterizing them as Satan, they target them for destruction rather than try to understand how to use capitalism as a tool for economic development. Islamicists actually aid secular despotisms by ignoring the internal reasons for the current deprivations of the Arab world. They use the one positive symbol in these totalitarian states that has survived complete control of the despots, Islam itself. But they manipulate Islam so that it is often not recognizeable as a universal