Al-Qaeda as Death Cult Revisited: Captain’s Quarters v. Lee Harris

Captain’s Quarters provides a lengthy rebuttal to Lee Harris’s argument, noted here, that al-Qaeda understands itself to be engaged in a “blood feud.” He much prefers Harris’s earlier argument about al-Qaeda’s “fantasy ideology,” whose acts must be understood as gnostic theatrics that are disconnected with reality, and not analogous to the later essay’s seeming “Hatfield v. McCoy” argument.

Read CQ’s entire post.

I agree that Harris’s “fantasy ideology” is more accurate. It certainly fits with my reading of Islamicist ideologues like Sayyid Qutb. It also fits with statements that al-Qaeda leaders have made about their goals.

CQ expands his argument by advancing the thesis that al-Qaeda is a “death cult”:

I think it quite possible that the leaders of the jihadis are actually death cultists; perhaps they believe that their bizarre version of Allah grew weak from hunger, and that is “what went wrong,” to respond to Lewis. In this scenario, by sacrificing mass numbers of people, the militant Islamist leaders believe they feed Allah, and he grows strong. Perhaps he will then respond by reaching forth his hand to crush the infidels, restore the Caliphate, and expand the ummah to blanket the world. Alternatively, perhaps the leaders believe that Allah is angry that they have not been killing infidels and apostates, as he ordered them to do… and if they kill enough, Allah will be mollified and again lead them to supernatural victory.

Perhaps. But CQ’s “death cult” argument is in fact too “rational” and contradicts the “fantasy” element of the al-Qaeda ideology. What makes it fantastical, which CQ misses (as does Harris) is that the leaders (and influencing intelligentsia like Qutb) make notoriously circular arguments and assertions about the future that are unverifiable. Consider Qutb’s “milestones”: he wants a vanguard of pious Muslims but at all points in his argument he disclaims any standards by which one can articulate what a pious Muslim does (except jihad, which Qutb turns into the 6th pillar of Islam). Instead, Qutb tells his readers that Islam is a religion of praxis and that it’s truth gets revealed in the actions of the pious.

See the circle? The pious tell the followers what Islam is about, and what one counts as pious is what the pious tell them.

This is closer to what the “fantasy ideology” is really about. For more details, take a look at Barry Cooper’s book, The New Political Religions, An Analyis of Modern Terrorism, which treats the “jihadists” in terms of “secondary reality.”

However, both of Harris’s arguments, as well as CQ’s “death cult” analysis to a degree, have explanatory power. I think CQ’s argument might explain a certain level of al-Qaeda activist, but not its highest leaders. I’m skeptical bin Laden really believes he’s feeding energy to Allah. I suspect the only energy he’s interested in is his own. The leaders use theatrics to awe their followers, and they likely impress themselves with them.

But one needs to consider how they use circular arguments when they appear to justify themselves, but in fact simply justify their own dreamworld.