Excusing Terror

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Notes

This insight finds its most robust formulation in the work of the intellectual historian Quentin Skinner (Skinner 2002, esp. at pp. 128–144).

Here I adopt an example from P. F. Strawson via Skinner 2002: 133–134.

By “left” I specifically mean sectarian left. My intention is not to impugn the entire spectrum of leftist political thinking on the question of Islamist terror and violence. However, in the course of what follows I often allow myself the convenience of treating “left” as an abbreviation, where appropriate, for “sectarian left,” “extreme left,” or “far left,” etc.

For an illuminating synopsis of Qutb's thinking, see Berman 2003: 60–102, 115–118.

This is bin Laden, in conversation with Peter Arnett of CNN, available online at http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm

See The Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series No. 388, available online at http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP38802

Tom Freeman (2005) convincingly argues that they should be seen “not as a gasp of understandable fury and despair from the ‘Arab street’”, but as part of a broader (instrumental) strategy to bring pressure to bear on the British government to withdraw its troops from Iraq, thus paving the way for an Islamic theocracy in the region.