Free Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies by Ian Buruma, Avishai Margalit

salvation was at hand for a chosen few, through secret knowledge known by the holy leader, or Imam. Ensconced in fortresses in Syria and Persia, the Assassins showed absolute obedience to their leaders by elaborate displays of ritual suicide. If ordered to do so, they would hurl themselves off a cliff without hesitation. They also treated their murders as a sacred duty. The dagger was the only permissible weapon, and an honorable Assassin expected to die after his deed was done.
    Various theories have been put forward to explain the motives of this murderous sect: it stemmed from a Persian rebellion against Arab domination, or a war between rural landowners and their serfs against the rulers in the growing cities. But whatever the reasons for this peculiar way of violence, it ended in failure. By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Assassins were finished, crushed by the might of the invading Mongol armies. A pattern was set, however, for religious rebels appealing to the poor, the oppressed, and the discontented to fight to the death to restore God’s kingdom on earth. Leaders of Islamic death cults almost invariably ended up in the prisons of the rulers they tried to overthrow.
    From the nineteenth century onward, when ruling elites in Egypt and other parts of the Islamic world began to adopt European ideas of secular law and constitutional government, the West became directly associated with the worship of money. Muslim radicals in India, Egypt, and elsewhere called for a holy war against Westernization and its Jewish agents, a war against the Muslim leaders who had been “corrupted” by Western ways. The Muslim Brotherhood, a radical movement founded in Egypt in 1928, stated its goals precisely: “God is our objective; the Qur’an is our constitution; the Prophet is our leader; Struggle is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations.”
    Japanese kamikaze tactics were reinvented by the Hezbollah in Lebanon, after the Israeli invasion of 1982. In October 1983, 241 U.S. servicemen were killed by a suicide bomber driving a truck filled with explosives. Ten years later suicide bombing was adopted by Palestinians as well. Those who strap themselves with bombs are often motivated by revenge. But those who dispatch them see this as a battle between holy warriors who are ready to die and people addicted to Komfortismus. The latter are regarded with contempt. As the Hezbollah leader Sheik Hasan Nasrallah explained days after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000: “Israel may own nuclear weapons and heavy weaponry but, by God, it is weaker than a spiderweb.”
     
     
     
    NEITHER CAPITALISM NOR LIBERAL DEMOCRACY EVER pretended to be a heroic creed. Enemies of the liberal society even think that liberalism celebrates mediocrity. Liberal societies, according to the prewar German nationalist Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, give “everyone the freedom to be a mediocre man.” 20 Importance is given “to everyday life rather than to exceptional life.” This is not wholly wrong. Tocqueville made a similar observation. Of course liberal societies also give people the opportunity to have exceptional lives, marked by exceptional achievements. But these are individual achievements. Individuals are rewarded for their exceptional talents with money and fame. Liberal capitalism is by definition inegalitarian, for not everyone is equally gifted or equally lucky. Sometimes these talents, singled out by success in the marketplace, are meretricious, and more profound gifts fail to be recognized. This is a reason not to see the market economy as a panacea. But most people, in any case, are indeed destined to lead unexceptional lives. Liberals, in line with a Puritan tradition, have learned to accept this. More than that, as witnessed by seventeenth-century Dutch painting and English novels, they recognize that the unexceptional, everyday life has dignity too and should be nurtured, not