Today I read Reza Aslan’s How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror and took ten pages of notes. I’ve talked about my fancy for flow charts before; it’s a bit of a compulsive reading habit. Anything less than half a composition book is not copious notes by my standards but that in itself speaks to the accessibility of the book. It’s a commendable work, mainly because Aslan leaves the reader with the chance to give his or her own perspective on why this is or isn’t so. It’s pretty open-ended. I’ll try to be be quick; here are my first thoughts…
I’ll talk a little about the non-Islam connections that I didn’t expect to see since I don’t get a chance to brag about reading books on war often but also because it fits with the most important critique that Aslan makes in the book, and he makes many. However, I think the way in which is he criticizes hate as belonging to enemy, mainly terrorists and Al-Queda is universal and profound. We end up with a common question, but no common ground to move forward. In that the west, we’re left befuddled, asking “Why do the terrorists hate us?”
Well, the book goes into the mindset of these groups, but if you look at surveys on individual level, most people in the Muslim world don’t hate the US and admire the culture and democratic values. Needless to say this is a global question and even in the west, it’s complicated. Aslan recounts the story of young man who decides to take his life as a suicide bomber in Britain, I think. Later, he talks about going to visit the family. What we can fail to realize in the west is that he wasn’t motivated first out of hate for the west, but rather love for the enemy. Misguided love, but, nevertheless deep.
One of the best books about war and the existential self is War and Existence by Michael Gelven. Don’t read it if you don’t have to; it’s really long and Reza Aslan’s is way more current. In it, Gelven takes a more philosophical look so-called Cosmic Wars. He even goes so far to start with a frame of war with a “us” vs. “them” dichotomy too. Later in the book, he outlines four potential ways we can think about war. He’s trying to unearth our relationship with war, how it is illuminated as such in our collective mindset. I point it out because at the end of Cosmic War, Aslan pulls a bit of a Cat Power with a “Maybe Not” message and says the only way we can win the war on terror is with words and ideas. Gelven has some ideas to add to the mix too.
So, there’s hatred and there’s love and they’re related somehow. I actually think this is the most universal dichotomy in the book. As Gelven, in his ever so structured yet badass street-like drop of of the word hater says,
Bondage is indeed a part of love, though admittedly not usually in such a radical form; and a sense of masterful purpose often results from hatred. We cannot escape the full significance of these truths merely by redefining the terms “love” and “hate” so as to exclude these variations. We are seeking to understand ourselves as possible haters; we are not trying to dictate definitions that would keep our prejudices intact.
He goes on to say that we always feel bad for someone who is in the depth of hate, but also points out, deep down we know that in a profound sense, we cannot love if we don’t have a capacity for hate too. This is what makes the story about the young suicide bomber so painful, yet powerful too; it’s so human. And the war continues as long as radical hate and love emerge as manifestations of a cosmic war between the west and global Jihadists. Really, as long as the west uses force. Leaders of such radical groups, as Aslan keenly keeps mentioning, are actually leading a social movement, not just on a religious mission. We must think about it in these terms as well.
The point is that we have to stop separating the way we think about the world into two universes, love and hate, profane and sacred, social or political and religious. When this happens, the true world ceases to really make any sense. So, we look for purpose and seek meaning in place of finding common ground that can sustain the relationship.
This is the point of the book for me, it establishes a way for the world to think about the war on terror, Islam, the west, jihad, from the basis of common ground instead of over generalizing or missing the mark entirely. Or going way over the top, as fundamentalist Christians and evangelicals are doing, albeit in very sneaky ways he says. I found similar objections and points to be pretty straightforward, but that’s Twitter for ya. Anyway.
So, how do we win the war on terror? Well, we don’t fight one is Aslan’s answer. Instead, we stop living and thinking as if we’re in the depths of an identity crisis. Instead of getting lost in the world in a cosmic duality, we look to more inclusive values like freedom and pluralism as the essence of how we consider terrorist threat in the future. As it is, the battle cannot be won by military means because people like Bin Laden see the war as transcending any earthly ambitions. To fight a war on terror, just like a war on drugs, we have to see it for what it is: a social and political issue too.
The banality of it all is that many in the west have been terrified, and after thinking about it for about seven years I’ve decided they’re probably a little addicted to fear and pitfalls after Bush’s administration. We don’t want to tear down the wall between the Muslim community and the west, because of what we’ve been told in media coverage of real crises, and by Mr. Samuel Huntington, and going back even further. What happens is we get stuck in two world models like it’s primordial. And as Neitzsche said when he declared “God is Dead,” we then bury these truths in the past, and have no way of navigating the world without because we lost touch with the one true world.
Aslan’s cosmic framework is introduced as a part of globalization. He quotes that globalization refers to “the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.” But therein lies the common ground, I think. And even if Huntington’s clash of civilizations was an empty concept, he pointed to a common problem, it’s a place to start if you can see it. The last essence of war that Gelven brings up, and the one I see as becoming a meaningful relationship between the west and Muslim world, is freedom.
Freedom means a lot of things, actually, in saying that I really mean freedom is being free to make one’s life meaningful. Now. America can’t give the world freedom, which is a serious lesson from the Bush years and we shouldn’t forget it anytime soon. If you give someone freedom it’s the same as taking it away, not to mention it’s a hit to the self-worth of that person. That only feeds into the threat and appeal of global terrorism movements, which as Aslan points out, depend on a loss of individual self before someone is actually willing to join in.
In fact, Aslan sets America apart and says the US is the only country with the power to end this war. This isn’t meant to go to our heads, I don’t think, but to accept that it’s intrinsic in US society to have diversity and learn, over time, through social movements and reform how to it adds value. This goes back to reclaiming our freedom as a national player in the world. We know how to do this. To ping pong back to Gelven quickly, he relates nationality and freedom as an individual to prove it:
I am fated in many ways, among them my nationality, but in affirming who I am, what is given becomes curiously self-given. I can reject or affirm how I am thrown into this world, and this fundamental realization is mine in the most original sense of the term. Indeed, no other sense of mineness is as original and all other senses of mineness follow this. To retreat from this awareness, to surrender this meaning to others, is capitulation of the worth of self; it is fundamental, that is, existential slavery.
Aslan finds reason for hope in cases like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who tried to push for reforming emergency laws put in the books 30 years ago to “stabilize” the government. When the laws expired the government extended them, saying they were still developing anti-terrorism legislation. What has happened is we’ve created a problem by stifling reform in the name of global stability. Every time the US fails to live up to the vision of pluralism, religious freedom, democratic virtue, all of the things we are so proud of and are part of the story Americans tell, the world is listening and worse, it reinforces what terrorists and those with anti-western attitudes are saying.
Even though the global Jihadist movement is ultimately sort of ridiculous, and cannot be won in any certain terms, America has been reinforcing it as a reality with the war on terror. We end up suppressing violence but promoting police state brutality in exchange for national unity. We’re not going to make many friends that way. This is the problem that I realized Hannah Arendt had pointed out right before heading to DC for Obama’s Inauguration. I was joking when I said she wrote his address decades ago, but it turns out, this is a real shift that is happening, and either we choose our fate as the responsible nation to lead reform efforts, and a new era of responsibility.
I think what the point of Reza Aslan’s new book How to Win a Cosmic War (available on amazon - plug!) is to reclaim the situation we’re given as a world today, without self-imposing any concepts, or framework onto the real conflicts, and loss involved in a changing world. So, yes the world is new in many ways, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore past mistakes or keep making them without expecting other groups with radical or fundamental motives to take advantage of that lack of awareness. Aslan says too that sometimes this obscures reality completely for these two types of groups. I think we all remember the Al-Queda video that was out of left field about Obama being a house slave and other random things that don’t fit in the American narrative today. It was awkward. Also, on the other hand, Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals too I suppose, see the entire problem as a conversion debate. I can tell you now that opening up to the Muslim world won’t make you convert. That’s cold war brainwash scare mentality or something, who knows.
The point is, as long as one’s relationship with the world is self-imposed, it won’t be based in reality. We’re not under attack from the Muslim world, we actually share the disbelief that the west and the Muslim world can have a better relationship, but as the Muslim West Facts Project found, but both sides value the quality of the relationship and it’s important to the majority of people. These discrepancies are not bad, but Americans, the eternal optimists of the world, haven’t made them into a good thing either yet. Differences stimulate dialogue and clarify the way we all act and speak in the world today. Perhaps, the differences we see are more meaningful to us than disappearing borders and a loss of a sense of place and community.
All I’m saying is that it seems that these shared differences might give us a better sense of what is really happening in the world, rather than guessing, or self-imposing, or using prejudices without realizing what we’re doing. So, the war on terror isn’t what we gave ourselves, but it’s what we’ve been modeling for the world, and have had some success catchin those bad guys but the threat is real, and needs to be reevaluated. Read Aslan’s book if you’re interested in doing so, he does a great job without thinking too much or being over the top. I would defend Huntington, because I don’t think his legacy is empty as Aslan says, but that will reveal itself in time and in the west, and in how we related to the Muslim world.
If you want to hear what Reza Aslan has to say about the book, here he is on blogging heads:
So, sorry that wasn’t as quick as I had intented. Spiel away in the comments if you like to get revenge. Also featured in this post: War and Existence: A Philosophical Inquiry