From 1990s Algeria to 9/11 and ISIS: understandingthe history of "Homo islamicus fundamentalensis"

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Todays brutal jihadists like Islamic State follow in the footsteps of fundamentalists who have afflictedMuslim majority societies since the 12th century. Algerian anthropologist Mahfoud Bennoune revisitedthat history in order to strategize against jihadists - a task which remains essential.

This is the second of a three part series of articles. Read part one. Read part three.

On this thirteenth anniversary of the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, as the international community pondershow to respond to the now unfolding orgy of theocratic killing by the entity claiming to be Islamic State,it is instructive to revisit this study by Algerian Anthropologist Mahfoud Bennoune. Written in 1994 whileBennounes country weathered a similarly nihilistic jihad of doom, the questions he asked then abouthow such violence had been unleashed, and about the history of the Muslim fundamentalist ideologybehind it, have, sadly, never been so relevant. Originally published in Algeria by the newspaper ElWatan (No. 1245, 7 November 1994) after Bennoune had received repeated death threats, and thepapers editor had survived an assassination attempt, this three part article is a testament to thedetermined struggles - which continue today from Iraq to Nigeria - of many people of Muslim heritageto speak out, whatever the cost, against the terror of those claiming to act in the name of God. It is alsoa reminder that today, as Algerian terror victims rights activist Cherifa Kheddar has said, instead ofjust battling terrorism, we must fight fundamentalism. Fundamentalism makes the bed of terrorism.

Part two: What factors have determined the savage nature of fundamentalist terrorism?

How could a son of Algeria, who was carried in the womb of an Algerian mother, nursed and raised byher, and born into a family immersed in both Muslim and universal values, become a killing machinewho destroys, pillages and rapes? Is he simply the product of violence inherent in Algerian societyand culture, as claimed by some, or the product of a brain-washing to which he was subjected byfundamentalist groups whose goal was to create a homo islamicus fundamentalensis?

In fact, the nucleus of the Algerian terrorist groups is estimated to be made up of between 600 to 900men who fought in Afghanistan in the 80s and early 90s, and have gone through extraordinary militarytraining, made available by the US army at the request and under the control of the CIA, in Pakistanand in Afghanistan. In addition, this terrorism has also been shaped by a kind of thoroughbrainwashing. This indoctrination rests on ideas developed by the founders of Muslim fundamentalismlike Sayed Kotb and his successive disciples, whose historical roots go all the way back to the 12thcentury when a wave of fundamentalism swept across the Muslim world. It resulted in a substitution offaith and belief for knowledge and Averroesian rationalism.

The historical roots of fundamentalism

According to Iranian writer Fereydoun Hoveyda, From the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, thefundamentalist sheikhs proceeded to destroy systematically the works of Muslim philosophers andscientists. While science and philosophical research succumbed at the beginning of the 12th century inthe Mashrek, they would be denounced, condemned and banished at the end of that same century inthe Maghreb, especially in Andalusia, and at the beginning of the 13th century in Egypt. In the MiddleEast, the works of philosopher/physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1027) and philosopher/musician AlFarabi (870-950) were burned. In Syria, mystical philosopher Sohrawardi was executed for heresy, inAleppo. In Cordoba, they destroyed manuscripts that had been collected in the great librariesestablished by the Omayyad Caliphs.

In 1192, they burned the library of a great doctor in Cordoba who was accused of atheism. A sheikhpublicly presided over this rampage. A witness described the scene: I saw in the sheikhs hand anextremely rare work of astronomy by Iraqi-born Ibn El Haythem ( 965-1040) which depicts the circle theauthor used to represent the celestial globe. The sheikh exclaimed: Here is a huge disaster, and as hesaid that he ripped up the book and threw it into the fire.

Even the great scholar Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was a victim of triumphant fundamentalism in the 12thcentury. The prediction that a hurricane would wipe out all of humanity had become widespread acrossMuslim lands. Terrorized, the populace even contemplated taking refuge in caves. The Sultan ofCordoba gathered all the scientists and theologian-philosophers to seek their advice about this matter.Ibn Rushd expressed his doubts, and said that they should examine this prediction in the light ofphysics and the natural sciences. A sheikh shouted a question at him: Do you not believe in thedestruction of the tribe of Ad by a hurricane as was related in the Quran? The philosopher replied thatit was only a myth. This answer was used by the sheikhs of the day to accuse the greatest thinker ofthe era of heresy. They forced him to appear before an actual inquisition which condemned him to exileand to the burning of his books.

According to the great Iranian historian and writer Hoveyda: Overcome by a veritable anti-intellectualfury which was encouraged by the authorities and theologians (fundamentalist) from one end of theirworld to another, Muslims hastened to throw their own scientific and philosophical achievements intothe rubbish bins. The religious fanatics shouted, 'the Quran contains all the truth necessary to guidebelievers in this world and to open the doors of paradise for them'". This fundamentalist frenzy led tothe decline of the Arabo-Muslim world, which made it vulnerable, and in the long run colonizable.

The role of fundamentalism in the decline and colonization of the Muslim world

From the 12th century onward, the Muslim world, closed to all new influences and stripped of itsintellectual and scientific riches, did not stop regressing, with rare exceptions such as the work ofphysician Ibn Nafis in the 13th century, and the founder of sociology Ibn Khaldun in the 14th. century.The fundamentalists, in alliance with despots, pushed the Muslim world into an intellectual hara kiri. AsHoveyda notes, Never before had we seen the people of a civilization reject all their own advancesachieved over four centuries. While the party (of endogenous purity or fundamentalism) savored itsvictory, science and philosophy flourished in Europe, where they would lead to the most tremendousscientific and technical revolutions. In the Middle East and North Africa, on the other hand,underdevelopment took hold of the societies and pushed them backwards. We witnessed a true braindrain (a pattern of flight that recurs with each new rise of fundamentalism). Indeed, the fundamentalistvictory of the 12th century contributed to the flight of both books and brains from the Muslim world toEurope.

Between the 12th century and the advent of national liberation movements in the 20th century, andunder the negative influence of fundamentalism, Muslims largely gave up the search for the truth andfor knowledge, and both artistic and scientific creation, and they lived for seven centuries preoccupiedexclusively with the hereafter. Thus, the triumph of fundamentalism reduced the Muslim world to aneasy prey, and one that would be the victim of the spirit of enterprise, the worship of knowledge and thewild accumulation of capital by the West. Later, the national liberation movements of the 20th centurytried in vain to achieve a beneficial synthesis of faith and belief with science and technology, in otherwords the realization of the Averroesian philosophy whose results were at the root of the Westernrenaissance.

Since the decolonization of Muslim majority countries, the founders of post-colonial fundamentalismconcentrated their theorizing toward the goal of refuting that Averroesian synthesis that has beenenriched and perfected by the great Western thinkers and scientists. According to Sheikh Sahnoun,one of the founders of Algerian fundamentalism, our Arabo-Muslim heritage ( with its rationalistelements - as represented by Iraqi mathematician/physician El-Kindi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd ) is goodenough for us. Some have gone so far as to reject Western science and to suggest that we should

only keep its Islamic aspects!, sometimes with the encouragement of certain Westernersthemselves who supported intellectual inertia and torpor among Muslims.

The obsession with protecting endogenous purity against all exogenous subversion is a shared featureof all religious fundamentalisms: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu Thus, like Calvin, the theoreticianof fundamentalist Protestantism who believed that Ottoman conquest of certain European countrieswas at the origin of the corruption and defiling of Christian Europe in the 16th century, the supporters ofcontemporary Muslim fundamentalism ascribe sin and debauchery - which in their eyes is widespreadin the post-independence states of Muslim majority countries - to colonialism and a cultural invasion.They attribute the root of this evil to the influence of foreign cultures and institutions.

For the Muslim fundamentalists, the problems of Muslims are, in part, produced and nourished by thematerialist and secular West, as well as by a Zionism they consider satanic and subversive. Theybelieve that Muslim maladies are due to the values introduced through modernization in the Muslimworld, a world that was awakened from its centuries old lethargy by the destructuring and restructuringthat went along with the exploitation and humiliation inflicted on it by imperialism. At its root, therejection of modernization and Westernization is nothing more than a continuity of the refusal of theAverroesian synthesis that reconciled faith and religious belief with reason and scientific logic.

This article has been abridged and annotated for English-language readers by the translator, KarimaBennoune. A compilation of the full original text of ' How Fundamentalism produced a terrorism withoutprecedent ' is available in English and in French.

From 1990s Algeria to 9/11 and ISIS: understanding the history of "Homo islamicus fundamentalensis"