Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern

A critique of ideas animating recent International Relations. Gray proffers a number of insights (well articulated, if not all wholly original) that ought to be repeated out loud every few months or so—

Both the End of History thesis and the Clash of Civilizations thesis are bullshit. Check.
Myths persist, even after they have been disproved. Yep.
The rise of science was not inevitable.
The advance of science and the growth of knowledge do not produce virtue and happiness.
All protagonists in the current conflict are driven by beliefs that are opaque to them.
The modern world only believes that it has left the past behind.
There is no universally compelling way to be or to think.

A very important book. The first thing I’ve read that systematically gets Al Qaeda right, as far as I can tell. That is, that Al Qaeda is essentially Western; another breakdown in Western society in response to Modernity, in the same way anarchism or nihilism or militias or other extreme movements were. It has the same vision of a revolutionary vanguard that will remake the world that Marxism, Fascism, and other radical modern political movements have had. It’s like a fusion of Fundamentalist Islam and Bakunin.

Grey correctly locates the fundamental danger of the modern world in the urge on the part of any group to use technology to radically remake society. Also, he emphasizes Al Qaeda is another consequence of post-nation-state globalization(and probably the first of many similar movements), and must be addressed as such. It is an ideology and a movement, not a discrete group of people and not ultimately defeatable by attacking states or killing individuals. He paints a bleak picture of the coming decades, but I’m afraid a largely correct one. ( )

Read this for an undergraduate political science class. A very good read. Short and to the point, this book gets to the bottom of the situation really quickly and lets us know that we're dealing with a different people here and one that we're not likely to sway quickly if at all. ( )

An interesting read, showing how Al Qaeda is a product of the modern world. It also goes into the history of "modern", and how the ideas behind the modern, Western, world evolved. That makes for a very interesting read, explaining the break between the medieval outlook in which the future was expected to be exactly the same as the past, and the modern view based on science and progress.

I will need to re-read this book before I can say I've really understood its message. Fortunately, it is written in a pretty readable style, so that shouldn't be a problem. Now I've just got to find the time... ( )

Is Al-Qaida modern en doet dat er wat toe? Is de Verlichting eigenlijk christelijk en maakt dat wat uit? Het zijn vragen die opkomen bij het lezen van dit merkwaardige boek van John Gray. Lees verder.... ( )