Jihadists are self-negating nihilists

ARTICLE: State Sponsors of Jihadism: Learning the Hard Way, By Kamran Bokhari, Stratfor

Agree with it.

That's why I don't share Robb's pessimism. I find the jihadists self-negating because of their absurd goals. They are true nihilists, and they fit the time (an expansive, frontier-integrating period of globalization), because we last saw them in droves roughly a century ago, including here in America (the escapism of the ghost dancers). I instead see them as a natural and somewhat useful function in the network, much like the Architect views Neo and Zion in the Matrix. They simply have to be.

Thanks to Dan Hare for sending this.

Comments

[Vinay Gupta]

Hm. I think that there are two forms of jihadis: the kind focussed on overthrowing the West (absurd) and the form focussed on the formation of Sharia-based Muslim states and state like enclaves. The second variety are actually doing pretty well.

[stuart abrams]

The true nihilists like al Qaeda can't fit into a state. Since they believe that Islam provides all answers and is all-encompassing, they see no need for a state in the modern sense. The only place in which they have fit in was the Taliban's Afghanistan, where they really did dismantle the state in favor of all-encompassing Islam. However, the Taliban couldn't make a go of it as a state, as shown by the relatively ease with which they were ousted and the fact that they have not made much of a comeback, in spite of the, in my opinion, almost criminal lack of attention the US has paid to Afghanistan. Groups like al Qaeda really are nihilists like that guy with the unpronounceable name who shot McKinley.

[Michal Shapiro]

taking my info from an old recording of the song "McKinley" I believe it's pronounced ZOHL-gotz.