by Pierre Andre Tagief
Excerpted from a lengthy text by Pierre-André Taghieff on jihadist Islamo-Palestinianism, the ideology that arms the murderous Hamas, the three leaders who shaped the violent characteristics of that ideology, and the pogrom of 7/10/2023. The full text is published in the forthcoming Books' Journal.
In the Call to the Islamic World of August 1937, the "grand mufti" began by laying out the principle of the guilt of the Jews throughout history, the alleged cause of their universal rejection:
From the beginning of their history, the Jews have always been an oppressed people, and surely there must be a good reason for this. The Egyptian Pharaohs were forced to take active measures against the Jews, who were exploiting the Egyptian people and corrupting the morale of the people with usury and various other crimes. […] Very quickly, the Romans recognized the danger that the Jews represented to the country and adopted serious measures against them. [...] That is why the Arabs are in a particularly good position to understand that even in Germany active measures were taken against the Jews and they were expelled like rabid dogs. Nevertheless, the Arabs are their victims, since the Jews, largely from Germany, settled in Palestine. Here the Jewish scum of all countries gathered to take over the land of the Arabs.
But Al-Husseini would not be long in going to what he considered the essence of the problem:
Jews hate Muhammad, Islam and anyone who wants to support their own people and fight against Jewish avarice and corruption. The struggle between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina, where he laid the foundations for the development of Islam. Even at that time, the Jews were the great rulers of the economy, and they immediately felt that Muhammad's influence represented a danger to them, both in the spiritual and commercial fields. They therefore developed great hatred against Islam and this hatred grew more and more as Islam became stronger.
In today's Islamo-Palestinian discourse addressed to the West, "Jews" are transformed into "Zionists" and "Israelis." However, the fundamental charge remains the same: "Jews (Zionists, Israelis) are guilty"... Therefore, they are accused of being responsible for everything that happens to them, be it pogroms or genocidal violence. The theme of accusation circulates at the time of every attack against Jews or Israelis: "They went on a rampage." When they appear to be innocent victims, it is actually because of their own crimes. Thus, at Harvard, a prominent site of American university wokism, 34 student organizations signed an open letter on October 8, 2023, denouncing the "apartheid regime" they consider to be the state of Israel, claiming that "the Israeli regime is the only responsible for the atrocities committed," clarifying that "Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years."
Since the Israelis are the "rulers" and the "oppressors", all anti-Israeli violence is attributed to the Israelis: guilty no matter what.
In addition, however, these acts of violence are glorified as acts of "resistance" to repression. The existence of anti-Israeli hatred boils down to proof that this hatred is justified and that the jihadi carnage it inspires comes from a just and pure war.
When Palestinians slaughter Israelis, it is never the Palestinians who are guilty of the slaughter, but the Israelis themselves. They are denounced as the cause of all the evils that befall them. They are guilty by nature. They are ontologically non-victims.
Whereas the Palestinians, no matter what they do, cannot but be victims, by cultural heritage. Their culturally inherited victim identity and their transmitted status of "refugees" shields them from all criticism: they can only be innocent victims or admirable "resisters".
To make them suffer and to like to make them suffer: to delight in brutality.
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's great novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880), in the fourth chapter entitled "The Mutiny", the atheistic intellectual Ivan Karamazov gives his brother Alyosha examples of atrocities committed by the Turks and Circassians in Bulgaria, before making the following comment :
Sometimes they compare the brutality of man with that of beasts; it is an insult to the latter. The beast can never be so wild as man, so artistically, so graphically wild. All the tiger does is bite, tear, that's all it knows. It would never cross her mind to impale people by the ears, even if she could do it. These Turks also tortured the children with pleasure. They used the sword to tear open their mother's belly and take them out. They would throw cannonballs into the air and let them impale on a spear. And all this in front of the parents. The pleasure was exactly that the mothers saw them too.
To the gentle Alyosha who asks him: "Brother, why do you say all this?", the sullen Ivan answers: I think that if there is no devil and if consequently man created him, then he certainly created him in his image and likeness.
These profound observations, attributed by the Russian novelist to Ivan, allow us to think about the massacre of October 7 beyond the reactions of indignation and the feeling of horror that they rightly provoked. Because this premeditated and carefully prepared slaughter takes its meaning by being inscribed in the Islamic tradition, transmitted by the Koran and the hadiths.
We can therefore speak of the sanctification of savagery, in accordance with the aim of jihad: to inject terror into the heart of the enemy to facilitate his destruction. The exercise of brutality towards "unbelievers" or "infidels" takes on its true meaning and religious value in the code of conduct established by Muhammad in the case of jihad.
The battle of Heibar (a rich oasis 150 kilometers from Medina), in May 628, which ended with the surrender of the Jews who lived in the oasis and the plundering of their goods by Muhammad and his Muslim followers, is from this view exemplary, even foundational, in that this battle was the first great victory of the Muslims against the Jews. "Heibar" became a war cry, found mainly in the song chanted by the jihadists:
Heibar, Heibar, O Jews,
Muhammad's army returns!
The praise of sophistication amidst brutality during jihad is found many times in the Qur'an. Here we learn that it is not enough to punish the "infidels": we must make them suffer eternally, and with art. This is evidenced, for example, by verse 56 of verse 4, which refers to those whom God cursed "because of their unbelief":
We will soon cast into the fire those who do not believe in Our signs, and as many times as their skins are burned We will give them other skins so that they may taste the punishment.
Returning to the fate reserved for the "unbelievers", verse 74 of verse 9 is equally clear: "God will punish them with a painful punishment both in this world and the next."
In the face of the mega-pogrom of October 7, ordinary moral outrage is not enough, even if we have strong reasons to be both horrified and scandalized by the carnage. Because we must also take into account the pleasure of the murderers, their accomplices and accomplices, and the excited spectators of the carnage.
Extreme violence can produce extreme pleasure: this is the lesson we can extract from a cold reading of the event.
The jihadist attack was not only characterized by the brutality of the perpetrators, but also by the pleasure they took in committing this massacre, with a mixture of sophistication and savagery in the torture they subjected the Israelis to.
Let's summarize the events that caused our astonishment: seeing fanatics gleefully committing a massacre of Jews, seeing them participating or attending the massacre laughing and shouting "Allahu Akbar" while being filmed, seeing them rejoicing in public , to the point of singing and dancing in the streets of Gaza. To see them make the slaughter a spectacle given over to pleasure, and especially to joy.
In this respect, the mega-pogrom of October 7 reminds us that, in world history, the worst acts of brutality have often been accompanied by delicacy and, by their staging, produced pleasure.
Making them suffer and liking to make them suffer often go hand in hand for those who commit atrocities and extreme violence under the influence of a religious fanaticism, which urges holy war, thus justifying the most heinous criminal acts.
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*The text is an excerpt from the speech base of the philosopher, sociologist and historian of ideas Pierre-André Taguieff [Pierre-André Taguieff, Les trois sources de l'islamo-palestinisme jihadiste (Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb) et le massacre du 7 octobre 2023] at a conference of the Dhimmi Watch organization on "France after October 7" held in Paris (11/4/2024) and published on the website of the review Revue Politique et Parlementaire (https://www.revuepolitique.fr/les-trois-sources-de-lislamo-palestinisme-jihadiste-haj-amin-al-husseini-hassan-al-banna-sayyid-qutb-et-le-massacre-du-7-octobre-2024/).
translation: Andreas Pantazopoulos
SOURCE: The Books' JournalLa Javie, 07.10.2024