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Eamonn Fitzgerald in his post discussing the excerpt of Martin Amis' The Last Days of Muhummad Atta published in the Observer last Sunday also highlights what he agrees with in Amis' review in the Sunday Times of Lawrence Wright’s new book Looming Tower. While I'm an Amis fan I take issue with what appears to me to be an attempt to take the most significant event in recent world history only to pour it through the prism of his muscular and highly articulate prose, not necessarily for the sake of truth but for the sake of record - his record that is. But maybe that's just a reaction to a literary giant having the audacity to fictionalize a monolithic event that has cast such a long shadow over the World for the last five years.

In the review Amis has many fine points, such as "[t]hese men are fabulists crazed with blood and death; reality for them is just something you have to manoeuvre around in order to destroy it." But I found myself taking issue with him when talking about the "Hamburg contingent (Atta et al)":

"These men were superficially Westernised, and superficially rational: possessed by just the right kind of functioning insanity." These men's functionally insane minds were: "a death-brimmed bog of paranoia and credulity, [...] the state of mind of the armed fabulist. The conspiracy detected here is the infidel campaign to obliterate the faith. It all began with the retreat of the Turkish armies from Vienna and the confirmation of Islamic decline: the year was 1683 and the day was September 11".

Of course, there is the usual eloquent self-satisfaction: ‘the right kind of functioning insanity’. Right kind? As opposed to what, ‘wrong kind’? If they suffered from the wrong kind of functioning insanity may be they'd blow themselves up on abandoned waste ground rather than in built up areas.

Throughout the article Amis is arguing that al-Qaeda is trapped and dwindling: "Expert opinion in the West is now largely persuaded that al-Qaeda is more or less finished. The “base” — justly so called in the adjectival sense — has become, we hear, “a state of mind”. There is much to indicate that al-Qaeda has largely failing in terms of its ability to install Taliban-style theocracies across the Muslim world. But by attributing its motivation entirely to a state of mind, of 'funtioning insantity' of either the 'right' or 'wrong' varieties smudges the political realities behind it and generalize it as simply 'mad' - an mental dysfunctionalism that can be contained once the santiarium is fortified with just the right amount of congressional legislation.

Clearly I’m not a psychiatrist but a quick look on PubMed provided the results of this interesting research paper which deals with functioning insanity:
“Intellectual functioning of the people manifesting delusional disorders in the course of committing attributed deeds, was on an average level. The patients' social functioning was on a low level”.

Atta and his co-conspirators were not known for getting into the community spirit while living in Germany but they were able to attend college and not draw attention to themselves through anti-social behaviour. That is, they were ‘functioning’ member of society.

Attributing the actions to ‘insantity’ ducks around the political motivations behind the attacks just as easily as that catchall superstition ‘evil’, which Heads of Governments are fond of attributing to Dictators who have wrestled free of the leash. I’d like to think that Kim Jong-Il is both 'insane' and 'evil'. That would be so easy. But the argument that his actions result from his almost limitless political power over North Korea seems a much more rational explanation for his mendacity.

Like a Medieval philosopher Amis’ numbers game is worth taking to task: “It all began with the retreat of the Turkish armies from Vienna and the confirmation of Islamic decline: the year was 1683 and the day was September 11."

As to the date, it’s inaccurate, as a comment left by Henry Barth on Eamonn's blog points out. Henry quotes from “ A True and Exact Relation Of the Raising of the siege of Vienna And the Victory obtained over the Ottoman Army, the 12th of September 1683. (London: 1683)” specifies:

“After so many new Retrenchments, Pallizadoes, Parapets, new Ditches in the Ravelins, Bastions, Courtins, and principal Streets and Houses in the Town: Finally, after a Vigorous Defence and a Resistance without parallel, Heaven favourably heard the Prayers and Tears of a Cast-down and Mournful People, and retorted the Terror on a powerful Enemy, and drove him from the Walls of Vienna, who since the Fifteenth of July last early in the Morning, to the Twelfth of September, had so Vigorously attacked it with Two hundred thousand Men; and by endless Workings, Trenchings, and Minings, reduced it almost to its last gasp.”

But more importantly Amis is arguing that the ‘insanity’ behind the attacks was motivated by a reaction to Islamic decline instigated by the rationality of Western Enlightenment – ‘These men were superficially Westernised, and superficially rational’. In making this argument, however, Amis is subscribing to a muted version of Samuel Huntington Clash of Civilisations, except in his case it is posited as the rational (Western Intellectualism and Enlightenment) against the irrational (the ‘functioning insanity’ and reality dodging mindless blood rites of religious fundamentalism).

In this month’s Prospect magazine Peter Bergen examines the possible reasons behind why Al Quida attacked the twin towers, distributing the many explanations offered since the attacks into two categories: the seemingly plausible but flawed, and the more credible. Amis’ argument comes close to two provided in the plausible but flawed camp. Bergen referring to the notion of Binladenism as a millennial religio-facist ideological construct similar to Nazism or Communism and quotes the most plausible proponent of this idea, Paul Berman. In his 2003 book Terror and Liberalism Berman says:

"9/11 was an event in the 20th-century mode. It was the clash of ideologies. It was the war between liberalism and the apocalyptic and phantasmagorical movements that have risen up against liberal civilisation ever since the calamities of the first world war."

Peter Bergen expertly argues:
“While this idea has some attractions, Binladenism does not pose the existential threat to the west presented by the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. And although it is certainly an ideology, it has precious little to do with either communism or Nazism, both of which abolished the very notion of God. Binladenism is not just another totalitarian ideology of the kind which we have seen before. Al Qaeda may use modern technology but it is animated by a 7th-century view of the world that has nothing in common with Hitler or Stalin.”

But Amis also subscribes to another of the plausible but flawed theories, mentioned by Bergen, that of the 9/11 attacks being the last swansong of political Islam. Except that Amis pictures Bin Laden as a cornered failure, ‘a terrorist financier who had run out of cash, and was now entirely at the mercy of the local Islamist power’ and whose success with 9/11 can be attributed solely to America’s reaction: “Although Islamic reaction worldwide was unanimous disgust, it was, definingly, the American reaction that empowered bin Laden”. Leaving aside Bin Laden’s current status, this ignores the fact that Jihadism in general is being nicely fuelled by another reaction, that of US involvement in Iraq not to mention the political realities that stem from the election of Hamas in Palestine.

By arguing that the attacks were a reaction to a decline in Islam ignores the argument that there are those, admittedly more traditional and mainstream, within Islam who consider the brand of Islam espoused by Al Quida, and originally promulgated by Sayyid Qutb is a distortion of their religion, which currently is the second largest religion in the World with 1.3 Billon followers.

However, rather than nit-picking on this I prefer to accept the wisdom of Peter Bergen who concludes:
"9/11 was collateral damage in a civil war within the world of political Islam. On one side there are those, like Bin Laden, who want to install Taliban-style theocracies from Indonesia to Morocco. On the other side there is a silent majority of Muslims who are prepared to deal with the west, who do not see the Taliban as a workable model for modern Islamic states, and who reject violence. Bin Laden adopted a war against "the far enemy" in order to hasten the demise of the "near enemy" regimes in the middle east. And he used 9/11 to advance that cause. That effort has, so far, largely failed.

Yet Bin Laden and his attacks on the US have shaped an ideological movement that will outlive him. Binladenism has drawn tremendous energy from the war in Iraq, and will probably gain further adherents from the conflict in Lebanon. Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was prescient when he warned in 2003 that the Iraq war would spawn "100 new Bin Ladens." It is that new generation of militants that is Bin Laden's legacy."

This article started out as a comment on Eamonn's blog, which I never left. I'm sure Eamonn's relieved I didn't.

Possibly related: Kevin of Disillusioned Lefty does a bit on Amis on Atta as well.