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ZENIT, The world seen from Rome
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Intolerable Secularists

Interview With Author of The New Fundamentalists

In this interview with ZENIT, Deacon Brandenburg, who will be ordained a priest of the Legionaries of Christ this December, comments on his book "The New Fundamentalists: Beyond Tolerance," recently published by Circle Press.

Q: In a nutshell, what is the new fundamentalism that you address in your book?

Deacon Brandenburg: When we hear fundamentalism, what normally comes to mind is religious narrow-mindedness, perhaps with an irrational or even fanatical bent, like that displayed by some Muslim followers after Benedict XVI's Regensburg address.

The "new" fundamentalism that I describe in my book often displays the same intolerance, irrationality and extremism. The key difference, however, is that the new fundamentalists profess to be secular followers of no religion. Yet closer examination shows that the relativistic dogma underlying their worldview excites more religious fervor than do many tenets of the great world religions.

John Paul II's experience with Nazism and Communism -- two completely secular ideological systems -- led him to write in "Centesimus annus": "When people think they possess the secret of a perfect social organization which makes evil impossible, they also think that they can use any means, including violence and deceit, in order to bring that organization into being. Politics then becomes a 'secular religion' which operates under the illusion of creating paradise in this world."

I would say that what Nazism and Communism were in the past, relativism is today in our times. The methods are different -- softer and more subtle, working from the inside out -- but the effects on people and social structures and relationships do bear some comparison.

Secular religion did not die with those defunct systems. During an address last June 11, Benedict XVI touched upon the difficulties of passing on the faith "in a society, in a culture, which all too often makes relativism its creed. [I]n such a society the light of truth is missing; indeed, it is considered dangerous and 'authoritarian' to speak of truth."

We face a new fundamentalism -- a new secular religion -- that assumes there is implicit arrogance in any statement of truth, especially if it implies a value judgment about morality or the merits of one religion or worldview in comparison to others. The relativism of our time admits no rivals and is aggressively intolerant.

In the end, when truth is taken away or ignored, might makes right. That applies for any brand of secular religion.

Q: Your book opens with a case study of a college student named Jeff who is virtually blackballed on campus for standing up for his faith, even though he did so in a reasonable and respectful way. What is the urgency of combating secular fundamentalism on college campuses?

Deacon Brandenburg: Jeff's case is one of countless true stories, all of which call us to an essential point: It's not enough to understand the nature and dangers of this new fundamentalism. We also have to equip ourselves and others to oppose it, using the tools of logical argumentation and reasonable dialogue.

This is of the highest urgency, since relativism has a corrosive effect on almost every area of human life, from religion to morality to the organization of social and political life. The battle is not limited to college campuses, but extends to all levels of education, the media, politics and social life.

Q: What specific solutions do you propose as an antidote to the influence of relativism?

Deacon Brandenburg: Since this new fundamentalism is both a human and a religious malady, the medicine I prescribe at the end of my book has a human and a religious ingredient.

On the human level, I urge mutual respect, dialogue and honesty. This last point of honesty is vitally important, since it entails a constant attitude of openness to truth.

Sometimes it is uncomfortable to be continually challenged by truth. It might seem easier to dig our heels into what we already know and just settle into a familiar landscape of facts and opinions that we feel we have mastered.

But truth is not something we can possess and put in our pocket. It is something that masters us, possesses us, and constantly challenges us to grow. To avoid that challenge would be to run away from growing into our full stature as human beings ... and as children of God, who is truth.

On the religious level, I believe the remedy is authentic religion: a faith rooted in the personal encounter with a God who transcends and loves us, leading to deep attitudes that build on the best of human virtues and surpass them.

For example, authentic religion builds on the principle of mutual respect and elevates it to the virtue of charity. In a similar way, faith takes dialogue to a higher level of impact by opening man to the fullness of his spiritual nature. And honesty is brought to its full wingspan when man reaches after objective truth with all his strength.

Relativism and agnosticism clip man's wings by discouraging him from inquiring after the great questions and actively seeking the answers to his most profound longings. The liberation of faith is that it brings back that wide horizon of ultimate questions and sets man free to search for the answers.

Q: Your book occasionally cites insights from Alexis de Tocqueville, the early 19th-century Frenchman who wrote "Democracy in America." What do you think De Tocqueville would say if he could see the impact of relativism in America today?

Deacon Brandenburg: I think De Tocqueville saw the potential danger from the beginning. He was one of the first to say that a democracy is worth only as much as its people are, and that the character of a nation is dependent on the moral character of its individual citizens.

One of the points I argue in the body of the book is that the doctrine of tolerance is having a clear and measurable impact on marriage, family and the quality of social relationships as a whole; it is weakening the people who made our nation strong.

Q: What do you think are the key concepts that help us to engage effectively in debate and action?

Deacon Brandenburg: Many people might argue that tolerance is the key to interpersonal relations, but I would venture to say that charity and truth are much more important.

If I really care about a person -- charity -- I will seek the truth for them. A doctor does his ailing patient a disservice to tell him he has nothing wrong, just as a parent destroys his child's future by tolerating self-destructive activity like engaging in premarital sex or taking drugs. We need to go beyond tolerance and pursue truth; hence the subtitle of my book.

We can't be afraid to say that truth exists. The relativistic ethos of our society tends to frown upon statements of objective truth because it assumes that growth in intellectual maturity runs on par with growth in skepticism. For the modern mind, intellectual sophistication seems to require systematic doubt, an ability to see all sides without committing to any one point of view.

Of course, there is no doubt that there is a legitimate complexity to many things in life and answers are not easy to find. Yet this will never legitimate the lack of absolute answers to anything.

Maturity means moving from doubt to renewed conviction about what is good and true. Truth, in this context, is not just a soap box to stand on, or a state of intellectual stagnation to sit in. On the contrary, seeking after truth is dynamic, active, growing, and yes, critical and discerning, because it requires going beyond skepticism to a deepened and perhaps purified grasp of reality in all its dimensions. Again, it's a matter of allowing reality to challenge and change us.

We can respect people and tolerate their right to hold their own ideas while still affirming that some ideas are true, and others are just plain out of touch with reality. Part of dialogue entails this respect for the person and the willingness to engage in debate based on the objective merit of the ideas.

That's what this book is intended to drive forward: to provide the tools and means for committed Catholics -- like Jeff -- to engage in reasoned dialogue with the secular world without losing confidence in the truth they have received.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractorfor leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at t he neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she couldhave owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being sucha goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even noticethat the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

Foreign Policy Research Institute
July 31, 2007
Michael Radu, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of FPRI's Center on
Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. He is
currently at work on a book on Islamism in Europe. This
enote is available on line at www.fpri.org.

        AL QAEDA CONFUSION: HOW TO THINK ABOUT JIHAD
                      by Michael Radu

Al Qaeda is stronger now than at any time since 9/11, say
some; it is less strong than it could have become, answers
the administration. Congressional Democrats say that instead
of catching Bin Laden, Bush took his eyes off the ball and
got mired in an irrelevant war in Iraq; the White House
replies that if we don't fight the jihadis in Iraq, we will
have to do so in Manhattan.

And so American politics argue in what seems to remain a
cognitive vacuum, confusing the public and producing inane
statements from   our elected   leaders. Had   Al   Qaeda
consciously planned how to thoroughly confuse the infidels,
this would have been the ideal result. It is all the
persistent and inevitable outcome of executive delusions
(jihadis are "a small minority") and Democratic flippancy
("the war on terrorism is a bumper sticker," Sen. John
Edwards has   charged) against a background of popular
ignorance and an oversupply of lawyers and human rights
activists. The result is that six years after 9/11 we (and
the Europeans are generally worse) are still fighting a war
in a conceptual fog--and not getting any close to winning
it.

In reality, the nature and goals of the enemy, albeit
complex, should be quite clear, as should the ways to defeat
it. Until we understand a few key realities, we will
continue to tread water and remain on the defensive.

WHAT IS AL QAEDA?

Al Qaeda ("the base") is at the same time an Islamist
totalitarian terrorist organization and the particularly
violent part of a global Muslim revivalist movement. As the
name implies, it was established as a vanguard, elite
organization, not   dissimilar, conceptually,   from   the
previous Marxist Leninist self-selected vanguards of the
proletariat (Shining Path in Peru, Red Brigades in Italy,
etc.), seeking to reestablish Islam's historic (and mostly
mythical) supremacy and purity throughout the world via the
unification of the umma, the Islamic community, under a
single political and religious leadership and state--the
Caliphate. The means to accomplish this is jihad, strictly
defined by the followers of this ideology as warfare.

Al Qaeda   was not originally intended to exist as a
territorial base,   but the victory of the Taliban in
Afghanistan unexpectedly offered that opportunity. Al Qaeda
took advantage of that opportunity, but controlling those
lands was neither intended nor absolutely necessary. The
same applies now to the wild areas of Pakistan that Al Qaeda
uses for refuge and training--they are important but not
vital. That fact is still misunderstood and explains the
continuous surprise of some that after the Taliban's fall in
2001 and the heavy losses it incurred at the time, Al Qaeda
did not die.

While it incessantly claims to be defending an Islamic umma
under attack   from all   sides--the most   theologically
convenient way to justify jihad--Al Qaeda's ideology and
strategy are   aggressive   and   revisionist.   Al   Qaeda
aggressively attacks the home base of the "Crusaders" (see
9/11 or the attacks in the UK) and revisionistically seeks
to reintegrate into the umma the long-lost territories of
Islam, such as Al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula).

Al Qaeda's ideology is rigorously anti-nationalist. That
allows it   to attract alienated and poorly integrated
elements among Muslim communities in the West and explains
in part   the attraction   it has   among Muslim elites
everywhere. As Iraq today suggests, however, it could also
be a serious threat to the organization, since it also
clashes with the interests of established postcolonial
elites and regionalist or separatist groups (Kurds, Berbers,
many Palestinians).

The enemies, and thus the targets, of jihad are a) all
governing regimes in the Muslim world (the "apostates"); b)
their outside manipulators, controllers and supporters (the
"Crusaders" led by the United States but including all
Western states   and Israel;   c)   all   other   infidels
"oppressing" Muslims   (India for   Kashmir, Russia   for
Chechnya, China for Turkestan); and d) for the most radical
jihadis (the takfiris), all Muslims who do not actively
support the cause and, especially, the Shias. While these
are all enemies, the priority given to each depends on
circumstances, capabilities and opportunity.

AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

This latter fact is another cause of confusion in the West,
as demonstrated by the case of Iraq. While an Al Qaeda
associate group did have a small presence in Iraqi Kurdistan
prior to the spring of 2003, at least on a large scale Iraq
is a target of opportunity. Al Qaeda's growth (or present
decline) there depends on the chaos and confusion that
followed the 2003 invasion and the vacuum created by the
fall of Saddam. The scale of and media attention on its
presence in Iraq aside, Al Qaeda's role there follows the
same pattern as in Afghanistan and Chechnya in the late
1990s, or Somalia more recently - it tries to implant itself
wherever a   political vacuum or persistent instability
develop in the midst of military conflict. Lebanon, Gaza,
the Sahel, southern Thailand and Philippines are, or should
be expected to become, such areas of implantation. In all
such cases Al Qaeda interferes in an evolving conflict,
exacerbates it, and tries to channel the outcome towards its
own goals and translate local motivations into a coherent
ideological and global cause.

It is precisely this Al Qaeda piggybacking on existing
conflicts that makes the often heard distinctions between
our fighting   sectarian conflict or Al Qaeda in Iraq
nonsensical. Al Zarkawi stirred up the Sunni-Shia conflict
but did not invent it, and separating the two in practical
terms is not a serious proposition, any more than trying to
do so in Afghanistan between Taliban, Pakistani Islamist
spillover, and Al Qaeda.    For Al Qaeda such parasitic
behavior serves to magnify its influence, and it will try to
repeat it   in every   possible circumstance. This fits
perfectly in the organization's elite, vanguardist ideology.
It sees itself and behaves as the spearhead of global jihad,
not as its rank and file.

Ultimately, what seems to escape so many commentators,
especially among politicians, is that Al Qaeda is two things
simultaneously: (1) a violent Islamist organization with
worldwide tentacles   and a   small core   leadership of
ideologues and strategists, and (2) part and parcel of a
large and growing political-religious movement of Islamist
revival. The organization tries to channel and recruits from
the movement, and the latter looks to it for strategic
direction and, often, tactical purpose.

ISLAMIC REVIVALIST MOVEMENT

The Islamic revivalist movement that is by now dominant in
most of the Muslim world from Malaysia to Morocco, including
huge segments of the Muslim communities in the West, shares
some of Al Qaeda's basic ideological tenets: that Islam is
in crisis and under attack, from inside and outside by
alien, Western, mostly American influence and domination.
Roughly put, Islamic countries and Muslims generically are
victims of the West. The only solution is a return to the
"original" principles of the faith, those that gave it world
importance and power centuries ago, and to umma unity and
solidarity.

These basic perceptions are shared by a majority of Muslims
and Islamic   organizations everywhere, from the Muslim
Brotherhood, the largest, to individuals and smaller groups,
whether in Muslim-majority countries or in the West. While
refuge in   religious     revivalism as   an   answer   to
civilizational, political and military decline is far from
unique to Islam, its contemporary manifestation is largely
Islamic.

The interface between the general perception of Islam as
victim of the West--a perception often encouraged by Western
elites themselves--and Al Qaeda's (or the Salafi) view that
the victimization is largely due to naked aggression is
thin. This is demonstrated by a seldom noticed aspect of the
reaction of nonviolent, even anti-Al Qaeda groups and
personalities, including those in the West, to Islamist
terrorism. Those groups have steadfastly opposed not just
the conflict in Iraq, where the arguments used in favor of
the U.S.-led intervention could always be debated, but also
the 2001 U.S.-led attack on the Taliban. Indeed, almost
always in   Islamic critiques   of American and British
policies, whether they come from London or Riyadh, the
Muslim Brothers or others, Afghanistan is mentioned in the
same breath as Baghdad. Since the removal of the Taliban and
its Al Qaeda proteges was a clear-cut case of self-defense,
Muslim condemnations of the Afghan operations could only
mean that umma solidarity is more important to them than the
Taliban's crimes. Precisely the kind of attitude Al Qaeda
needs to thrive.

Where most of the Islamic revivalist movement and its
supporters depart from Al Qaeda's ideology is the method
whereby Islam is to be renewed. In that sense, Western
leaders' claim that "most Muslims" reject jihadism is
correct, but far from encouraging. Despite attempts, such as
those sponsored by Jordan's Crown prince Hassan to have
respected imams condemn jihadi terrorism (the method not the
ideas leading to it), not only has no important Sunni
scholar declared   Bin Laden   a non-Muslim   (the   most
influential, Al-Qaradawi, would rather let Allah decide),
but many large Islamist organizations, such as Hizb ut
Tahrir (an   international Party of Liberation) or the
Tablighis (Muslims missionary movement), could and do claim
to be seeking the Caliphate by nonviolent means while their
recruits often "graduate" to jihadism--again, same beliefs,
different methods, and all unhelpful. Thus, even when
revivalist Islamists sincerely claim to oppose jihadism,
they are voluntarily tying their own hands. Hence the
eternal and annoying "we condemn terrorism . . . but" that
so confuses Western politicians, media and publics.

Why, in this context, anyone in the West would expect such
Muslims, as a whole or organized ones, to condemn anything
other than acts of terrorism is a mystery.

AL QAEDA/MOVEMENT RELATIONSHIPS

The relationships between the different Al Qaeda parts of
the movement are dynamic, both centripetal and centrifugal
at the same time.

Centripetal. The centripetal expansion of the movement
follows general, indeed universal terrorist patterns of
recruitment and indoctrination. In the specific case of Al
Qaeda this means two distinct, but related methods.

The first is centered on the thousands of trainees who
graduated from the Afghan camps prior to the end of 2001,
who returned to their countries of origin--Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, and   countries in   North Africa, Central Asia,
Southeast Asia,   and Europe.   Once back,   they either
established cells   or founded   or radicalized existing
organizations (the cases of Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon).

These people know and share Al Qaeda core's ideology and
many retain ties, including personal ones, with it and with
each other.

A typical case is that of Saad Houssaini, a.k.a. Moustapha,
one of Al Qaeda's most prominent cadres in Spain and North
Africa. Born in Meknes, Morocco, from a middle-class family
(his father was a professor)--an almost universal pattern
among Al Qaeda cadres, Houssaini obtained a government
scholarship to study chemistry and physics at the University
of Valencia in Spain. It was there that he was attracted, or
recruited, to Islamism under the influence of Sheikh Rachid
Ghannouchi, the London-based ideologue and leader of Al-
Nahda (the Revival), Tunisia's major Islamist organization.
Already under Spanish surveillance, in 1997 he fled to
Taliban's Afghanistan where he underwent further training in
explosives in Al Qaeda camps, met other Moroccans, Bin
Laden, Al Zarkawi and Al Zawahiri--the latter was a witness
at his marriage. Following the U.S. attack in the fall of
2001, he returned to Morocco in April 2002, became a founder
of GICM (Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, now part of the
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb--AQIM) and trainer of its
bomb makers. By September 2006 he was running a network of
Moroccan volunteers to Iraq, until his arrest in March
2007.[1] It was under the influence of one of the many
"nonviolent" Islamist   ideologues in Spain harbored by
"Londonistan" that he was radicalized, shifted to jihadism,
established personal ties to the Al Qaeda core, and later
served as a force multiplier for the organization thousands
of miles away.

Second, Al Qaeda's central core (Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri,
Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, etc.) have sometimes accepted and
given their   "brand copyright" to organizations formed
independently, such as the Algerian Salafi Group for Combat
and Preaching,   which last   year became the AQIM, or
autonomously, like Al Zarkawi's group, now Al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia.

Like metastasized cancerous tumors, members and trainees of
these formal Al Qaeda franchises, and some informal ones,
like Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiah, spread the ideology
and expand the committed membership of the movement.

Centrifugal. There is, however, another dynamic within the
movement, a centrifugal one. This consists of thousands of
individual Muslims, many from the West and including a
disproportionate number of converts to Islam, who have no
personal ties to the Al Qaeda core or its main franchises,
but feel attracted to its ideology and the methods it uses.
With each spectacular jihadi attack or campaign, their
numbers grow and they flock to the latest battlefield, as
defined by Al Zawahiri in his Al Jazeera statements or by
the innumerable jihadi Internet sites and their do-it-
yourself jihad recipes.

There is not always a clearly defined line between the two
dynamics--Al Qaeda recruiting for its cause and would be,
self-recruited jihadis seeking a battle under its flag, or
at least its cause.

The case of Shaker Al-Abssi, the leader of Fatah Al-Islam in
the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared, near Tripoli,
Lebanon, lately under assault by that country's army, is
revealing. A Palestinian born in a camp near Jericho, his
family migrated to Jordan after 1967, and he joined Yasser
Arafat's Fatah as a teenager. The organization sent him to
study medicine, but he dropped out in favor of becoming a
pilot, receiving training in Libya and later serving as an
instructor in South Yemen. Later he participated in combat,
on the winning Sandinista side in Nicaragua and on the
losing Libyan side in that country's conflict with Chad.
Disappointed with Arafat's corruption, he joined dissident,
pro-Syrian factions   and moved   to Damascus, where he
discovered religion and became a fervent believer. Afterward
he became associated with Al Zarkawi's group in Iraq and
Jordan, and was sentenced to death in absentia for his role
in murdering an American diplomat in Amman in 2002. Why?
Because, says his brother Abdel Razak, a doctor, "The
Palestinians have tried Marxism and Arab nationalism. All
failed. I believe that for Shaker Islamism was the ultimate
solution." Now, claims his family, "we wait for him to
become a martyr, hoping that his death will be the fuel that
will set on fire the Palestinian cause."[2]

This, then, is a case of a rebel in search of a global
ideological and strategic anchor to articulate and justify
his fight for a particular cause. Associating with Al Qaeda
satisfied both needs. The fact that Fatah Al-Islam is seen
as both an Al Qaeda spin-off and a Syrian tool should not be
confusing, not in light of the organization's pattern of
tactically piggybacking other causes.

Another good example is a new jihadist group, Ansar al Islam
fi Sahara al Bilad al Mulazamin (The followers of Islam in
Sahara, the land of those lifting the veil). Made up of
Moroccans, Algerians, and Mauritanians, dissident elements
of AQIM, it first surfaced in June 2007. Ansar refuses to
obey direct orders from Al Qaeda's core, all the while
telling the latter that "You should know that we are in the
same trench." Indeed, it shares Al Qaeda's well-known
obsession with the "recovery" of Al-Andalus and hatred for
all North African governments and France.[3] This is a
perfect example of what French analysts call the "Al Qaeda
nebula"--a   multiplying    system    of    jihadi    groups
ideologically, but not always hierarchicaly, tied to the
core group. We are once again confronted with the interface
of movement and terrorist group.

CONCLUSION

German-Turkish author Nacla Kelek was right when he pointed
out that "Politicians and religious scholars of all faiths are right
in pointing out that there are many varieties of Islam, that
Islamism and Islam should not be confused, that there is no
line in the Koran that would justify murder. But the
assertion that radical Islamic fundamentalism and Islam have
nothing to do with each other is like asserting that there
was no link between Stalinism and Communism."[4]

But just as Stalinism (and Pol Pot or Mao) was made possible
by the mass of usually peaceful and naive believers in the
Marxist Utopia, Al Qaeda and its nebula are permanently
feeding up from the growing Islamic revivalist movement. To
separate the two should be the goal of Muslims and non-
Muslims alike, since they are all targets of jihadism. To
deny the intimate link between the two is to deny reality.
By making artificial distinctions between the two, one only
postpones and avoids the real struggle..

Notes

[1] For his career, see "Adil Boukhima, Portrait: Le
Marocain d'Al Qaida," TelQuel (Casablanca), May 17, 2007;
Craig Whitlock, "In Morocco's 'Chemist,' A Glimpse of Al-
Qaeda Bombmaker Typified Resilient Network, Washington Post,
July 7, 2007; Driss Bennani, Abdellatif El Azizi, Ismail
Bellaouali and   Lahcen Aouad, "Enquete. Au-dela de la
panique," Tel Quel, July 5, 2007.

[2] Cecile Hennion, "De la colere au djihad, le chef du
Fatah Al-Islam raconte par son frere," Le Monde, June 5,
2007.

[3] Antonio   Baquero and   Jordi Corach n , "Actividad
Extremista En El Desierto. Un nuevo grupo terrorista magreb¡
amenaza a Espana," El Periodico (Barcelona), July 12, 2007.

[4] Quoted by Peter Schneider, "The New Berlin Wall," New
York Times, Dec. 4, 2005.