"Clash of civilizations" and Marxism. (Insider Report).

As momentum builds for a potentially apocalyptic "clash of civilizations" between fundamentalist Islam and the secular West, Americans must understand the true roots of Islamic militancy. Writing in the July 27th London Independent, British academic John Gray confirms THE NEW AMERICAN'S analysis that Muslim "fundamentalism" is actually an outgrowth of revolutionary Marxism.

"Islamic fundamentalism is not an indigenous growth," writes Gray. "It is an exotic hybrid, bred from the encounter of sections of the Islamic intelligentsia with radical western ideologies." The concept of a "vanguard," so common to radical Muslim terrorist movements, "does not have an Islamic pedigree." Citing religious scholar Malise Ruthven's work, Gray notes that Muslim terrorists imported the vanguard concept" 'from Europe, through a lineage that stretches back to the [French Revolutionary] Jacobins, through the [Soviet] Bolsheviks and latter-day Marxist guerrillas such as the Baader-Meinhof gang.'"

Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian proponent of Wahabbi Islam (embraced by Osama bin Laden and much of the Saudi elite) was probably "the most influential ideologue of radical Islam," asserts Gray. But Qutb was hardly a "fundamentalist" seeking to bring the world under the jurisdiction of God, as Muslims understand Him. "Qutb's thought -- the blueprint for all subsequent radical Islamist political theology -- is as much a response to 20th century Europe's experience of 'the death of God' as to anything in the Muslim tradition." And Khomeini's Iranian revolution, which gave modem Islamic militancy its first foothold, "gained much early support from western-educated Marxists" who saw the Khomeini regime as a revolutionary vanguard.

In brief, the version of "Islam" embraced by Khomeini, bin Laden, and their comrades is the Muslim equivalent of "Liberation Theology": Marxism translated into a specific religious context. This is important because, to protect our nation from an enemy, we must properly understand him. Conflict and tension between the Muslim world and the West may be inevitable, but it is the Marxist element of the equation that created the current threat.