Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 38
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Popular Culture Review
“intransigent hatred” against the West. The doctrine of hatred is intrinsically tied
to invisibility where it converts modem day Jihadists into cold, ruthless and
covert killing machines. Ernesto Che Guevara’s exposition of this doctrine is a
precursor of the Jihadi manifesto:
Hate is a factor in the struggle . . . We must carry the war as
far as the enemy carries it: into his home, into his places of
recreation, make it total. He must be prevented from having a
moment’s peace . . . Attack him wherever he may be; make
him feel like a hunted animal wherever he goes (1987, 357).1
If the jinn provide a cultural category for understanding the “bogeyness” of Al-
Qaeda, it is the Chimera which evokes the hyperbole of Jihadism. Warner’s
analysis is insightful here.
Warner’s attention to Chimera as a prime embodiment of “protean
elusiveness” (243) is symptomatic of the West’s fascination with the fantastic
(Desprez 1998, 243).2 According to Greek myth, the Chimera was a female
hybrid monster: part lion, part goat and part snake. Although she is finally killed
by the hero Bellerophon astride the white magical steed Pegasus, it is the
metaphor of Chimera as a “monstrous embodiment of illusion itself’ (Warner
1998:18) which encapsulates the contemporary western mindset of Jihadists.
Probably nowhere has the elusive quality of Chimera been more
cogently expressed in modem times than by the ideology of Jihadism. Jihadism,
as espoused by Bin Laden, embodies the phantasmagoric powers of Chimera.
Drawing from an ancient Islamic paradigm which divided the world into two
distinct domains—Dar-ul-Islam (domain of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (domain of
war)—Bin Laden has reconstrued the latter to mean the domain of apostates
(munafiqun). In this way, even pious Muslims living in non-Muslim countries
are considered as being complicit with the “evil Westerners”; therefore, they too
are worthy targets for Al-Qaeda. It is now clear why the Al-Qaeda terrorists who
demolished the World Trade Centre were so indifferent to the prospect of
Muslim casualties. Yet the sheer scale of this wanton act of carnage was so
unimaginable, so grotesquely diabolical, that it could only have been committed
by a modem day Chimera.
To some degree, Al-Qaeda draws its inspiration from the ancient sect
of terrorists called Nizari. The Nizari saw themselves as purifiers of Islam which
they believed was becoming increasingly corrupted from within. To support
their actions, the Nizari professed the Prophetic tradition which obligated all
Muslims to fight injustice through either physical or verbal means. The Nizari
took this one step farther by using terror as an instrument for accelerating their
desired objective. Terror was considered as a legitimate form of arbitrary power
that was capable of eradicating unwanted denizens in order to restore the social
status quo. Terror provided a logical prescript for ushering ambivalence by