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Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam
For a generation, Muslim extremists have targeted Americans in an escalation of terror that culminated in the September 11 attacks. Our shared confusion -- Who are the attackers? Why are we targets? -- is cleared away in a book as dramatic as it is authoritative.
Updated with new chapters on Afghanistan and the the broader Islamic movement, Sacred Rage combines Robin Wright's extraordinary reportage on the Islamic world with an historian's grasp of context to explain the roots, the motives, and the goals of the Islamic resurgence. Wright talked to terrorists, militant religious leaders, and fighters from Beirut to Islamabad and Kabul. Their voices of rage reverberate here -- right up to the attacks in New York and Washington.
Across continents extends a challenge we fail to understand at our peril. Sacred Rage now casts light on the war being fought in the shadows.
Updated with new chapters on Afghanistan and the the broader Islamic movement, Sacred Rage combines Robin Wright's extraordinary reportage on the Islamic world with an historian's grasp of context to explain the roots, the motives, and the goals of the Islamic resurgence. Wright talked to terrorists, militant religious leaders, and fighters from Beirut to Islamabad and Kabul. Their voices of rage reverberate here -- right up to the attacks in New York and Washington.
Across continents extends a challenge we fail to understand at our peril. Sacred Rage now casts light on the war being fought in the shadows.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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163 people want to read
About the author
Robin Wright
48 books53 followersRobin B. Wright is an American foreign affairs analyst, author and journalist who has covered wars, revolutions and uprisings around the world. She writes for The New Yorker and is a fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Wright has authored five books and coauthored or edited three others.
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May 18, 2024
A JOURNALIST LOOKS AT THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC EXTREMISM
Journalist Robin Wright wrote in the Introduction to this 1985 book, “I began this book, now in its third version, when Islamic militancy first emerged in the Middle East in 1979. [The book] chronicles the rise of extremism from Iran to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia to Sudan, Algeria to Kuwait---and the rage that has played out through a religion for a generation. It concludes with Afghanistan in 2001. Osama bin Laden and his wider al-Qaeda network … were only bigger, flashier and deadlier than what has been a steady progression of extremism in the Islamic world over the past three decades… To win the war on terrorism---or at least seriously diminish the assaults on American or Western targets—the new global coalition will also need to deal with the context that produced Saudi Arabia’s bin laden or Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and, more importantly, their militant followers who vented political rage through suicide bombings, hostage taking and other extremist acts. This will have to be the second half of the ‘wear’ on terrorism. And that may well be the harder part.”
In the first chapter, she states, “I am neither an Islamic expert nor an Arabist… I am merely a Western reporter who lived in the region during the fundamentalist explosion… This book is an attempt to trace what has been happening, why, and how the crusade operates, not to implicate any specific person or group…This book probes some of the events and people involved in order to put the trend in perspective. It also attempts to point out some of the mistakes, particularly by the West, that have only provoked the Muslim fundamentalists rather than coped realistically with what they represent. The stakes have never been so high, the potential for misunderstanding and further violence never so great.” (Pg. 24-25)
She outlines, “So far, attempts to understand the crusade have led to suggestions that a wrathful Muslim world is rising up in a holy war against Christianity of Judaism, capitalism or communism… First, it is unfair to attribute the entire phenomenon to Iran, for Islam … was headed in a militant direction long before the Iranian revolution. Indeed, since the faith was founded thirteen hundred years ago, almost every century has witnessed sporadic outbursts of fundamentalism… Second, Islam does not promote terrorism. Indeed, in its doctrines, Islam is the most tolerant of the world’s monotheistic religions. It accepts Christians and Jews as ‘people of the book’… Third, the crusade is not a coordinated phenomenon…. Yet it is true that the Islamic crusade is the greatest single threat to the status quo in the region, as well as to Western powers that rely on the strategic position and the mineral resources of moderate Muslim states… No single trend has so threatened the interests of Arab, Israeli, Western and, to a lesser degree, Eastern governments. Nor has any movement sparked such visible fear.” (Pg. 19-20)
She explains, “In Arabic, jihad originally meant ‘effort.’ It was a rallying cry … against unbelievers. But as time and causes passed, it came to mean, more loosely, a ‘righteous war,’ which would be fought even against other Muslims who disobeyed the Sharia, the religious code of conduct and obligations. In struct interpretation, jihad is no longer possible, except perhaps against Israel, for the original Islamic empire has broken down into diverse and disparate political entities… In practice, many Shia have broadly interpreted jihad, especially in the late twentieth century. To Ayatollah Khomeini, the war with neighboring Iraq has been a jihad. Capturing the U.S. Embassy … was kind of jihad… The word has lost much of its original meaning, and in the process has done unprecedented damage to Islam. It has… led many Muslims to see their primary loyalty to a political leader rather than to the faith.” (Pg. 55)
She observes, “Through … two events---the first Shia military victory and the intervention by the United States in Lebanon’s domestic war---the U.S. had lost its credibility and neutrality in Lebanon… The physical strength of the U.S. forces… was powerless against the little snipers, the car-bombers and the assassins. It was not an issue of quantity or quality as much as of commitment, the suicide fanaticism of Shia commandos that has often given them an edge over more conventional arms and tactics.” (Pg. 79)
She points out, “The Shia financial system has been one of the main sources of their autonomy from the ruling Sunni religious establishment… Contributions of up to a fifth of individual incomes of the faithful support both the mosques and the Shia sheikhs… Shia councils provide clinics, schools, relief funds and other social services. Where feasible, the Shia have used the income to form, in effect, a state within a state… It has more recently financed the Islamic crusade. The centuries-old system is largely untraceable.” (Pg. 129)
She states, “The dual fundamentalist threat, from both Sunni and Shia, was devastating to the Saudis---and to those in the United States who were attend to the delicate political shifts in the region. Saudi Arabia was a key strategic ally as well as a vital source of oil: the possibility of ‘losing’ Saudi Arabia sent shivers down the spines of many Americans who remembered the mere psychological toll on the United States when the oil price had quadrupled in 1973… Ironically, Middle East pundits had predicted throughout the 1970s that the crisis facing the kingdom was modernization. The popular scenario called for the House of Saud to accept major reforms… The status of women was the best example to Westerners of how badly out-of-date the Saudi system was… The two overlapping crises at the end of the decade proved the experts wrong… the biggest single threat to the stability and longevity of the Saudi monarchy was… from religious fundamentalists, those who felt that … [it] had already gone too far in liberalizing and diluting Islam.” (Pg. 150-151)
She recounts, “In the thirty-seven year Arab-Israeli dispute, the Shia of south Lebanon were the first Arabs to make real headway against the stubborn Israelis, forcing a voluntary retreat… The issue was not just the vulnerability of the Israeli military, but the strength of the opposition. The Shia had set an example… under the banner of militant Islam, which had the potential to attract others. The rhetoric of distant and Persian Iran may have been in inspiration to fundamentalist radicals closer to Israel in Lebanon. But this ‘victory’ by Arab Shia served as concrete proof that militant Islam could be the path of success.” (Pg. 238)
She says, “Unlike the extremism that dominated the first phase in the 1980s, the second phase in the 1990s was characterized by a growing number of attempts, albeit often tentative an uneven, to work within systems rather than outside them. Some militants began to shun extremism; the fanatics’ bullets were gradually forsaken for ballots. In the early 1990s, Islamic activists from groups ran for parliament in Jordan, Algeria, Kuwait, Turkey and Yemen… Cooperation by no means fully replaced confrontation. Where Islamic parties were excluded, they responded, often brutally…. But when included, activists no longer simply struck out angrily at what they did not like. When systems opened up or provided opportunities, they more often than not participated.” (Pg. 277)
She concludes, “the United States needs to make [a] pivotal distinction… to translate the idea expressed by President Bush into a consistent policy… the campaign to stop Osama bin laden and … al-Qaeda … is not a long-term solution to the broader issues that gave rise to an extremist fringe… The second distinction that needs to be made is between Muslim militancy and Islamic activism. One is malignant; the other can be benign---potentially even positive. As Islamist sentiment grows, policy makers in the West face two stark alternatives. One is to … press Muslim-dominated countries on political pluralism… and then to accept the results of free and fair elections even if the Islamist parties gain significant votes. By having sided with democracy from an early stage, the West is then in a stronger position to hold the parties and the new governments accountable if they abuse or abandon democratic principles… The other alternative is to try to counter Islamist movements by backing or aiding governments that repress them… As in the Cold War, the United States might also have to cultivate some unsavory allies along the way.” (Pg. 288-289)
This book will interest those seeking commentaries on the Middle East and terrorism.
Journalist Robin Wright wrote in the Introduction to this 1985 book, “I began this book, now in its third version, when Islamic militancy first emerged in the Middle East in 1979. [The book] chronicles the rise of extremism from Iran to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia to Sudan, Algeria to Kuwait---and the rage that has played out through a religion for a generation. It concludes with Afghanistan in 2001. Osama bin Laden and his wider al-Qaeda network … were only bigger, flashier and deadlier than what has been a steady progression of extremism in the Islamic world over the past three decades… To win the war on terrorism---or at least seriously diminish the assaults on American or Western targets—the new global coalition will also need to deal with the context that produced Saudi Arabia’s bin laden or Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and, more importantly, their militant followers who vented political rage through suicide bombings, hostage taking and other extremist acts. This will have to be the second half of the ‘wear’ on terrorism. And that may well be the harder part.”
In the first chapter, she states, “I am neither an Islamic expert nor an Arabist… I am merely a Western reporter who lived in the region during the fundamentalist explosion… This book is an attempt to trace what has been happening, why, and how the crusade operates, not to implicate any specific person or group…This book probes some of the events and people involved in order to put the trend in perspective. It also attempts to point out some of the mistakes, particularly by the West, that have only provoked the Muslim fundamentalists rather than coped realistically with what they represent. The stakes have never been so high, the potential for misunderstanding and further violence never so great.” (Pg. 24-25)
She outlines, “So far, attempts to understand the crusade have led to suggestions that a wrathful Muslim world is rising up in a holy war against Christianity of Judaism, capitalism or communism… First, it is unfair to attribute the entire phenomenon to Iran, for Islam … was headed in a militant direction long before the Iranian revolution. Indeed, since the faith was founded thirteen hundred years ago, almost every century has witnessed sporadic outbursts of fundamentalism… Second, Islam does not promote terrorism. Indeed, in its doctrines, Islam is the most tolerant of the world’s monotheistic religions. It accepts Christians and Jews as ‘people of the book’… Third, the crusade is not a coordinated phenomenon…. Yet it is true that the Islamic crusade is the greatest single threat to the status quo in the region, as well as to Western powers that rely on the strategic position and the mineral resources of moderate Muslim states… No single trend has so threatened the interests of Arab, Israeli, Western and, to a lesser degree, Eastern governments. Nor has any movement sparked such visible fear.” (Pg. 19-20)
She explains, “In Arabic, jihad originally meant ‘effort.’ It was a rallying cry … against unbelievers. But as time and causes passed, it came to mean, more loosely, a ‘righteous war,’ which would be fought even against other Muslims who disobeyed the Sharia, the religious code of conduct and obligations. In struct interpretation, jihad is no longer possible, except perhaps against Israel, for the original Islamic empire has broken down into diverse and disparate political entities… In practice, many Shia have broadly interpreted jihad, especially in the late twentieth century. To Ayatollah Khomeini, the war with neighboring Iraq has been a jihad. Capturing the U.S. Embassy … was kind of jihad… The word has lost much of its original meaning, and in the process has done unprecedented damage to Islam. It has… led many Muslims to see their primary loyalty to a political leader rather than to the faith.” (Pg. 55)
She observes, “Through … two events---the first Shia military victory and the intervention by the United States in Lebanon’s domestic war---the U.S. had lost its credibility and neutrality in Lebanon… The physical strength of the U.S. forces… was powerless against the little snipers, the car-bombers and the assassins. It was not an issue of quantity or quality as much as of commitment, the suicide fanaticism of Shia commandos that has often given them an edge over more conventional arms and tactics.” (Pg. 79)
She points out, “The Shia financial system has been one of the main sources of their autonomy from the ruling Sunni religious establishment… Contributions of up to a fifth of individual incomes of the faithful support both the mosques and the Shia sheikhs… Shia councils provide clinics, schools, relief funds and other social services. Where feasible, the Shia have used the income to form, in effect, a state within a state… It has more recently financed the Islamic crusade. The centuries-old system is largely untraceable.” (Pg. 129)
She states, “The dual fundamentalist threat, from both Sunni and Shia, was devastating to the Saudis---and to those in the United States who were attend to the delicate political shifts in the region. Saudi Arabia was a key strategic ally as well as a vital source of oil: the possibility of ‘losing’ Saudi Arabia sent shivers down the spines of many Americans who remembered the mere psychological toll on the United States when the oil price had quadrupled in 1973… Ironically, Middle East pundits had predicted throughout the 1970s that the crisis facing the kingdom was modernization. The popular scenario called for the House of Saud to accept major reforms… The status of women was the best example to Westerners of how badly out-of-date the Saudi system was… The two overlapping crises at the end of the decade proved the experts wrong… the biggest single threat to the stability and longevity of the Saudi monarchy was… from religious fundamentalists, those who felt that … [it] had already gone too far in liberalizing and diluting Islam.” (Pg. 150-151)
She recounts, “In the thirty-seven year Arab-Israeli dispute, the Shia of south Lebanon were the first Arabs to make real headway against the stubborn Israelis, forcing a voluntary retreat… The issue was not just the vulnerability of the Israeli military, but the strength of the opposition. The Shia had set an example… under the banner of militant Islam, which had the potential to attract others. The rhetoric of distant and Persian Iran may have been in inspiration to fundamentalist radicals closer to Israel in Lebanon. But this ‘victory’ by Arab Shia served as concrete proof that militant Islam could be the path of success.” (Pg. 238)
She says, “Unlike the extremism that dominated the first phase in the 1980s, the second phase in the 1990s was characterized by a growing number of attempts, albeit often tentative an uneven, to work within systems rather than outside them. Some militants began to shun extremism; the fanatics’ bullets were gradually forsaken for ballots. In the early 1990s, Islamic activists from groups ran for parliament in Jordan, Algeria, Kuwait, Turkey and Yemen… Cooperation by no means fully replaced confrontation. Where Islamic parties were excluded, they responded, often brutally…. But when included, activists no longer simply struck out angrily at what they did not like. When systems opened up or provided opportunities, they more often than not participated.” (Pg. 277)
She concludes, “the United States needs to make [a] pivotal distinction… to translate the idea expressed by President Bush into a consistent policy… the campaign to stop Osama bin laden and … al-Qaeda … is not a long-term solution to the broader issues that gave rise to an extremist fringe… The second distinction that needs to be made is between Muslim militancy and Islamic activism. One is malignant; the other can be benign---potentially even positive. As Islamist sentiment grows, policy makers in the West face two stark alternatives. One is to … press Muslim-dominated countries on political pluralism… and then to accept the results of free and fair elections even if the Islamist parties gain significant votes. By having sided with democracy from an early stage, the West is then in a stronger position to hold the parties and the new governments accountable if they abuse or abandon democratic principles… The other alternative is to try to counter Islamist movements by backing or aiding governments that repress them… As in the Cold War, the United States might also have to cultivate some unsavory allies along the way.” (Pg. 288-289)
This book will interest those seeking commentaries on the Middle East and terrorism.
January 29, 2008
Excellent book that covers the reasons behind Militant Islam from a reporter that has spent a good deal of time in the Islamic communities. Helps one understand a good amount of the historical background of Islam and the factions that exist withing that demographic. Updated shortly after 9/11.
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May 19, 2013I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
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January 18, 2016
The Middle East right after I came home from saudi Arabia.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews