Justin E. H. Smith

[An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing can be found at www.jehsmith.com]

I would probably not consider myself in any position to hold forth on God, were talk of this sort not all the rage in Hollywood, and were I not such a slave to trickle-down fashion. But I remain an ordinary mortal, and would do well to proceed cautiously. I should perhaps begin by defining my terms.

It seems to me that God is nothing other than the inflation to infinity of our experience of paternal authority. I was never all that impressed with paternal authority. I preferred maternal solicitude, which inflated to infinity gives us not God but, well, infinite longing for more maternal solicitude. Our access to this begins decreasing around the time we stop breastfeeding, and when it is reduced to a mere residue at puberty we begin to look for alternative sources of it. For the most part, we look in vain, but the absence of what we long for does not cause us to supernaturalize the elusive object of our longing(save for a few neo-pagans who have made the category mistake of suggesting that God may be a woman).

I’ve digressed, you say, but my point is precisely that I have not. God is not a universally necessary a priori concept, and it is not the case that for logical or metaphysical reasons beyond dispute there simply “has to be something,” as the self-described “non-religious but very spiritual” types like to say. It is not the case that everyone everywhere possesses the concept, and it is not the case that we ourselves cannot dispense with it. Rather, supernatural entities are an abstraction from our natural and emotional ties to humans and other animals, and these are largely determined by our culture’s values.

We may individually value the women in our lives, but this is something we are expected to keep to ourselves, and when it comes to candidacy for that infinitely high public office of divinity, only a patriarch will do. In many cultures, the supernatural does not extend beyond dead ancestors, conceptualized as ghosts. Members of these cultures will agree that “there has to be something,” but this something is not an omnipotent omniscient creator. It’s just grandpa. Our culture, however, has a habit of infinitizing what it values, of projecting our human attachment to fathers and kings into infinity.

I am no more ready to argue, on metaphysical or logical grounds, against the existence of God than I am ready to argue against the existence of the ghosts of ancestors that some Mongolian peasant holds dear. It is simply not my business. Any serious engagement with the problem of God will be not metaphysical but anthropological. Engaged in this way, the question is not whether God –the concept of which is taken for granted– exists or does not exist, but rather why it is that a society conceptualizes the ultimate grounds of its own existence in one way rather than another.

What we learn when we put the question in this way is quite a bit about the place of fathers and kings and big inflated things in our culture, but very little about the place of, or the logical need for, an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator in the universe. To remain content with learning this much may seem an all-too humble scope of interest, but it is not clear that it constitutes a true change of subject. For talk of God, as Durkheim rightly discerned, is really just talk of society. Society is God, as the great sociologist put it, and to this extent, at least, I can confirm that he exists.

In certain times and places, such as second-century Alexandria or nineteenth-century Denmark, philosophers have taken an interest in the concept of God, and attempted to defend it by stripping away the naive anthropomorphisms that the vulgar habitually attach to it. God, they argue, cannot be a man, let alone a man with a long white beard; God cannot really have a face, let alone a backside, even if the masses were pleased to hear that on Mt. Sinai Moses caught a glimpse of the latter; God cannot really have any human traits at all. Indeed, God cannot even be described in human language.

The problem, though, is that when these rigorous demands are pushed as far as they can go, and one by one all the features projected from human experience are stripped away, we find that not all that much is left, and the apophatic path leads us to something that looks troublingly like atheism. God is an old man on a throne or he is, quite literally, nothing. For this reason, tiresome academic debates such as that between Bertrand Russell the “atheist” and Father Copleston the “theist,” the one denying that there is some entity x such that x equals God, and the other denying the denial –which for some reason undergraduates always want to reenact, though much less eloquently, in my introductory philosophy classes– really don’t get to the heart of the matter. (I suppose I should not be hard on the youngsters. They’re still learning. But grown men should know better.)

To opt for agnosticism is no solution: it is to accept the terms of the debate as laid out by the dithering old dons of a century ago, but to lack the conviction to side with either of them. Agnosticism says that there is something it would be nice to know, but that due to our limited grasp of things we are unable to know it. Agnosticism is failed theism, and I want to say that there is nothing to theism but the projection of what we already value from our mundane experience. It is either this or the empty space left by negative theology, which is hardly worthy of worship either. And it is for this reason that the truly pious disposition can only be atheism: not as the denial of the existence of some entity, à la Russell –as though the problem of God were of a pair with the problem of Bigfoot–, but as a cultivated recognition of the humanness of our projections, and of the cosmic irrelevance of what one’s own culture would like to imagine divine. If I may put this point slightly more paradoxically: it seems to me that the true path to illumination, the one sole hope for arriving at an unio mystica with the ultimate source of our being, is to insist unto death on the exclusive truth of the materialist party line.

Consider in this connection the expression of the religious sentiment in art. Pier Paolo Pasolini, before he was murdered by an underage hustler he had unashamedly picked up in some back alley of Rome, managed to make one of the most beautiful pieces of religious art of the 20th century: his film rendition of The Gospel According to St. Matthew. The best religious art of the last 100 years was created by a homosexual communist.

Perhaps the worst religious art (using that term generously) of the same period was created by an aggressive and empty-souled goon with outsized daddy issues who, when on break from belching hatred, remains unable to shut up about his personal relationship with the divine. Rent his Passion of the Christ together with Pasolini’s masterpiece sometime, and watch them back to back. Then ask yourself whose side you want to be on come Judgment Day.

It’s easy to reduce our political leaders to the sum of their policies, to regard them as no more complex than the glib pronouncements of op/ed contributors. It’s much more difficult to acknowledge the totality of their humanity, to regard them as family men and women, as enthusiasts and hobbyists, individuals of many interests and varying depths. The Bush Administration in particular is susceptible to this reductive tendency. The attacks of September 11th shattered America’s image of itself as invulnerable superpower, and the Bush Administration, in responding to the new challenges of asymmetric warfare with non-state terrorist entities, exposes itself to caricature on a daily basis. But dangerous times require bold new policies, and the men and women that formulate and implement those policies make easy targets for late-night talk-show hosts and comedy-prone pundits. What follows is a small attempt to correct the one-dimensional views so much in fashion these days. Of course, it is only a beginning, and a superficial one at that. Readers will be at fault to imagine that the depths of the four individuals briefly discussed below are so easily plumbed. 

Much has been made of Condoleezza Rice’s musical talents. She is a gifted pianist who, at one time, planned to make a career of music. Today, as Secretary of State, she has less time to devote to her first passion, but still she maintains her skills, regularly meeting with four lawyer friends in her home in downtown Washington, D.C., to practice and perform chamber music. A recent profile in the New York Times Magazine quoted her response to a frequently asked question, namely, does playing music relax her? “It’s not exactly relaxing if you are struggling to play Brahms,” she answered. “But it is transporting.” Commenting on their choice of music, Robert Battey, a former professor of cello at the University of Missouri and current member of the group, said, “We generally like to start off with a nice finger-buster for the secretary.” But for true relaxation, Ms. Rice depends on an altogether different hobby, though one that is no less demanding of precision. For more than a decade, she has exercised her nimble fingers and her nimbler mind with Origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding. Throughout her apartment in the tony Watergate complex, nestled between the family photographs, advanced degrees and other mementoes of a life of academic and inside-the-Beltway achievement, are samples of her meticulous work: a prancing Pegasus, a foil-backed crane, even a remarkably detailed rendering of an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. Recently, Ms. Rice has expanded her repertoire to include Kirigami, a branch of the art that allows cuts to be made in the paper in order to create symmetrical objects, such as snowflakes and pentagrams. As with her music, the secretary is not reluctant to share her paper-folding talents. Upon Margaret Beckett’s appointment to the position of Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Foreign Secretary) for Britain in May, 2006, Ms. Rice presented her with a stunning orchid blossom. She has made similar gifts for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and the Bush family, upon the college graduation of daughter Jenna.

Richard Bruce Cheney, 46th Vice President of the United States, is often characterized as a vicious political in-fighter and soulless pragmatist. He is a leader of the neocon movement currently in power in Washington, and has been at the center of America’s conservative elite since the mid-seventies, when he became the youngest chief of staff in U.S. history, serving in President Gerald Ford’s administration, along with his political fellow traveler Donald Rumsfeld (see below). He is thought to be the driving force behind an effort to expand executive power to an unprecedented degree, exemplified by the Bush administration’s regular use of signing statements to selectively ignore constitutional and legislative restraints, its fight for warrantless wiretapping, and its skirting of international standards of humanitarian treatment of war prisoners. An intensely private man, little is known about his family life with wife Lynne, and still less about his recreational preferences (except the hunting of oxygen-deprived quail). But to the residents and shopkeepers of Mackinac Island, Michigan, there’s no mystery to this Vice President. Mr. Cheney is just another “fudgie,” one of the thousands of fudge enthusiasts who descend on the tiny island each summer to sample its famous candy. According to classmates at the University of Wyoming, Mr. Cheney regularly spurned frat parties and college mixers in favor of concocting new fudge recipes in his dormitory’s kitchen, and endeared himself to his fellow students for his generosity with the product of his efforts. He has made several pilgrimages to Baltimore, Maryland, and Poughkeepsie, New York, both of which lay claim to the title Birthplace of Fudge, and he boasts senior membership in the North American Fudge Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preparation and enjoyment of what has been called “America’s favorite sinful snack.” But Mr. Cheney’s affinity for sweets extends beyond the world of fudge, to include peanut brittle, taffy and even some varieties of hard candy. He is widely believed to reward political allies and business associates with small “sampler” gift boxes of homemade sweets, anonymously delivered, each one bearing the mischievous inscription “Love, DLC.”

Curiously, Origami is not the only secret Bush administration talent with roots in the early Edo period (1603-1867) of Japan. John R. Bolton, current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, is a practitioner of the Japanese tea ceremony, and a devoted student of sadō or chadō, literally “the way of tea.” Mr. Bolton, known for his gruff demeanor and blunt criticism, makes for a highly unlikely ambassador, and is infamous for remarking that the U.N. would be no different if ten of the Secretariat building’s 38 stories were lopped off. In addition, he is known for his leadership position among the neoconservatives who encouraged the invasion of Iraq, and for his part in the manipulation of intelligence relating to Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium for the creation of a nuclear weapon. With these facts in mind, it’s all the more remarkable that he should devote himself to the delicate complexities of the tea ceremony, which requires substantial knowledge of calligraphy, ceramics, flower arrangement and incense. A friend of Mr. Bolton, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quick to point out that his personality is widely misunderstood. “He values simplicity and refinement above all,” this friend said, “and he’s got a very eastern notion of beauty. Very formal, very restrained.” Mr. Bolton and the members of his tea circle gather at least once a month to engage in the ceremony, usually at his residence in New York. The Ambassador wears kimono and hakama, which is the most traditional of prescribed wardrobes, and prepares the tea room with tatami, a calligraphic scroll, and a simple arrangement of seasonal flowers. Whenever possible, a facilitator or teacher is invited to participate, and provides instruction on various aspects of the ceremony, including the hanging scroll, tatami placement, and the elaborate service motions required of the skilled practitioner.

There is a bit more obvious justice to Donald Rumsfeld’s secret talent. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is widely known for his oracular speaking style, unique vocal cadence and undeniable charisma. Indeed, in the early days of the Iraq War, he managed to charm many in the press corps and the public with his witty pronouncements on the status of the conflict, notwithstanding the grim subject matter. So it is perhaps not a surprise to learn that Mr. Rumsfeld is a widely respected Laurel (a title of achievement in the Arts & Sciences) in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), Middle Kingdom (comprising Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and parts of several other states). The SCA is familiar to many for its presence on American college campuses, and is best described as a Medieval and Renaissance-themed arts revival organization. Members of the SCA gather for festivals and demonstrations in full costume, and participate in combat tournaments, arts exhibits, classes, workshops, dancing and feasts. Mr. Rumsfeld, whose SCA persona is Wilhelm von Steublen, is renowned in the Bardic Arts, specifically poetry and storytelling. He excels in creating ribald, historically appropriate ballads, set to Gregorian Chant tunes and performed during regional and national festivals. He is also noted for his “fyrewalking” at nighttime events, in which a performer moves from campsite to campsite offering entertainment, in exchange for food, drink and other, bawdier refreshments. The secretary is unusual within the SCA for joining as a full-fledged, dues paying member at the late age of 44, in 1976, during his first tenure as Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford. But it wasn’t long before he was fully invested in the organization: Honored with the title of Laurel in 1980, he quickly became the Middle Kindom’s principal authority on the Bardic Arts (including poetry, storytelling and early music), and has received numerous awards and honorary titles since then. In 1992, he was selected to sit on the SCA’s Board of Directors, and continues to serve in that position to this day.

On the seventh day She said, “Let there be light.” But nothing stirred: not a blade of grass, not a leaf. Then on the eighth day She said, “Let there be Caffeine.” And the whole world came into being; life found a purpose: the trees trembled, the fish floated, the birds buzzed, the women went shopping and the men went to war.

Well, all men except Mr. Cafenos, a toothpaste salesman who believed he was born to achieve more than sell lies about the whitening magic of his toothpaste. Always searching for a break from the white lies, he had an intuition: if packaged properly, caffeine could trumpet the wake up call for the sleepwalkers of the world. He brewed the business plan in his mind. “It is all in the packaging” he uttered the cliché and claimed it as his original thought. He set out to unravel the science and art of his product and he found the following information.

Caffeine – a white bitter powder when dried – is chemically a xanthine alkaloid. Two other xanthines (theophylline and theobromine:’theos’) live as a close family with caffeine in coffee, tea, cacao beans, mate, cola nuts and guarana.

The quantity of these three related compounds varies in different plants. Caffeine concentration is up to 4% in tea leaves and coffee but tea has more of the other two ‘theos’, which explains its occasional stronger kick. The ‘theos’ relax the smooth muscles of the breathing tubes (bronchi) while caffeine stimulates the heart and jolts the brain.

Cola nuts have lower caffeine content while cocoa contains eight times more theophylline than caffeine. Guarana soda is popular in Brazil and it wakes up the brain minus the coffee jitters. It is likely that guarana and mate deliver their unusual punches with some other compound besides caffeine.

A 7 oz cup of coffee has the following caffeine (mg):

Drip 115-175
Brewed 80-135
Instant 65-100
Tea 30-70
Espresso 100mg/2oz

Coffee is safe in moderation and it takes 50-200 cups to kill a man. Theobromine is not as assertive as its two other cousins except for chocolate devouring dogs – in excess it is a ruthless poison and a pound can kill the dog.

For the chemical sleuths the alias of caffeine is: 3,7-dihydro- 1,3,7-trimethyl- 1H-purine- 2,6-dione.

With all these discoveries Mr. Cafenos began his caffeine enterprise. The unwanted effects of caffeine that he had learned, he kept to himself – like a well groomed salesman.

He built a bohemian coffee shop and his Sumatra Mandheling-Lintong drip coffee, extracted by clean soft water at precisely 95 degrees Celsius, was an instant hit. His obsessive quality controls demanded freshly roasted ground beans from the finest crops of the world. And he insisted on cleaning the equipment after each brew, for clean equipment is as important as the bean quality to yield the right flavor. Oil and resins stick to the pot and spoil the taste.

With the stirring success of his first venture he expanded and soon his shops were proliferating faster than the dandelions in your backyard.

He brewed exotic beans of the world. His varietals/staights included Brazil Bourbons, Celebes Kalossi, Colombia Excelso, Colombia Supremo, Costa Rica Tarrazu, Ethiopian Harrar-Moka, Guatemala Antigua, Indian Mysore, Jamaican Blue Mtn/Wallensford Estate, Java Estate Kuyumas, Kenya AA, Kona Extra Prime, Mexico Pluma Altura, Mocha Mattari (Yemen), New Guinea, Panama Organic and Tanzania Peaberry.

His blends and dark roasts were Colombia Supremo Dark, Espresso Roast, French Roast, Vienna Roast and Mocha-Java.

Mr. Cafenos appeared on every billboard, magazine, prime time TV, football game, radio, newspaper and the Internet.

His caffeine laced the products on every grocery shelf; he got the drug into you either through his brew or his grocery adulteration.

Mr. Cafenos’s caffeine empire ruled. But every thing must change and so did his luck.

A lonely chemist from his R&D department – who like every other ‘lonely’ had excess spare time – invented a technique to remove the buzz from the coffee. But no one cared, which added depression to his loneliness. So the lonely, unwanted, depressed chemist published his invention in a scientific journal, describing the bad effects of coffee on health, hence, the importance of decaffeinating. He, in his scientific honesty and business naiveté, mentioned the bad effects that Mr. Cafenos had assiduously suppressed.

He wrote,” Caffeine causes thinning of the bones (osteoporosis), decreases the motility of the sperms, increases irritability and may harm the pregnant mother. Caffeine is habit forming and sudden cessation causes withdrawal symptoms.”

His candor cost him his job like many other scientists before him. And an unemployed scientist is a disabled parasite; he needs the crutch of a laboratory to feed his stomach.

The lonely, unwanted, depressed and now jobless chemist had only one asset: he knew the process of decaffeinating. The asset was valuable for a detractor of Mr. Cafenos, who offered business partnership to the chemist and thus was born the ‘decaf coffee’.

They borrowed all the leaves from Mr. Cafenos’s business plan and countered his every concoction with a decaf version. Decaf, they declared, was pure, non toxic and virtuous and they were surprised by the number of gullible neurotics who paid for their decaf. And as their luck would have it, the neurotics multiplied as fast as their products.

We all know, capitalists accommodate competition only if it can’t be killed. Mr. Cafenos tried both and failed; his profits plummeted. To make matters worse, his wife discovered a new emotion unknown to her so far: her love for him matched his balance sheet. She decided – like a faithful wife – to announce her declining love for him. But she did not get a chance.

He had disappeared without a trail or trace.

Decafs got into action and declared him dead due to caffeine poisoning; it suited them. The wife accepted widowhood with alacrity; it suited her. The prime time TV cashed high ratings on his death; it suited them.

The happy widow promptly proceeded to annex the caffeine empire and then a strange thing happened.

After twenty-three days, Mr. Cafenos reappeared in a purple robe and a brown cap – oh, never mind the color mismatch.

The marketing genius, Mr. Cafenos, called a prime time press conference and declared in front of the ogling cameras that he had meditated on the roof of his ninety-five storeys high rise building for twenty-three days and he had a revelation.

He had known from history of religion that there are higher chances of communion with God, if you climb on a higher ground or something; in his case he chose a city sky scrapper. Yes, the God had spoken to him and She had said “Let there be caffeine.”

He demonized all the decafs as blasphemous, heretic pagans who will be roasted like coffee beans in the life after.

But that did not solve his immediate problem here on earth: cash flow at the coffee shop. So taking the help of his new found religion, he announced “The Caffeine Manifesto.”/p>

He made it simple and articulate, but you should be kind enough to overlook the intellectual dishonesty. (Why shouldn’t you; you have done it before.)

The new religion said:

• Caffeine is God’s gift.
• Caffeine energizes and thus increases economic productivity.
• Productivity is the source of all profit.

He proceeded to sermonize from the pulpit of the press conference, the corollaries derived from the new axioms: “The Decafs are parasites on the economic system; they thrive on the profits created by the sweat and toll of the “caffeinated” worker; Down with the pop gulping, wine sipping, beer guzzling, cognac sniffing decafs; All the caffeinated workers of word unite!”

When a reporter asked, “Why the purple robe and the brown cap?” He replied, “It is all in the packaging!”

This all infuriated the decafs and thus started the protest phase of the caffeine war.

They mounted pressure with all persuasive techniques created by mankind: media saturating advertisements after midnight, rallies on bridges and beaches; civil disobedience in all wrestling arenas; bikini competition in all grocery stores; car washes in snow storms.

The reincarnated Mr. Cafenos retaliated by renaming his coffee shops as ‘Temples of Caffeine’. His newly converted clergy delivered vitriolic sermons at the temples on Thursdays. His followers wore purple wristbands and coffee-bean-shaped brown caps.

And both camps checked their profit and loss statements every quarter. And it seemed the decafs camp was having more fun in life and also winning at the cash register.

When Mrs. Cafenos discovered no turnaround and mounting losses, she reactivated her plan A. She eloped with a decaf, filed for divorce and demanded half the assets of Mr. Cafenos before the balance sheet got redder.

This infuriated desperate Mr. Cafenos and in his next Thursday sermon he announced his next plan. He demanded a new nation carved out of the old one and called it “CaffeiNation” The productive, hard working caffeinated workers will be free from the tyranny of the decafs. He promised a nation based on the new religion and caffeine.

Right after the sermon a faithful follower, inebriated on the new religion and propelled by extra-strong-no-cream-double-colombia-excellso in his blood marched briskly to Mrs.Cafenos’s lover’s house and burned it down. Next morning the fire fighters found two charred bodies but none was of Mrs. Cafenos or her lover.

The decafs called it the death of innocent civilians and appealed to the Human Rights activists, who at that time were in a conference in Bahamas discussing “water as a female right.” They replied by email, “We do not involve with gang violence unless one of the gangs is the Government. We will investigate the situation when we return. Please ensure press coverage.”

Both sides declared this a vindication of their stand and the Decafs proceeded to retaliate by burning down a Temple Of Caffeine.

Thus started the second phase of the caffeine war – the violent phase.

History reminds us repeatedly that love does not beget love in spite of all the gurus, but violence attracts violence unfailingly and urgently, which the masses seem to enjoy more compared to this love-thing. So the bystanders in the caffeine war promptly chose and joined their preferred violent gang. The decision was easy as it was made by the limbic system of the brain and not by the cortex. And biology tells us, when limbic system plays, rational cortex is a dumb spectator.

Thus started the next phase of caffeine war – the limbic system war that is the most brutal, bloody, destructive, unrelenting and unstoppable. The rescue from this vortex is possible only by an external force, as suggested by one of Newton’s laws.

Mr. Cafenos understood this all and as he witnessed relentless charring of his temples, he appealed to The United Notion and demanded its intervention to secede and form an independent “CaffeiNation.”

One member of The United Notion said, “Independence is not the same as freedom.”

The second said,” Violence over caffeine is stupid.”

The third said,” We should not even discuss this ridiculous appeal.”

The other Notional members agreed not to discuss it except the wise president of The United Notion. He said,” We will discuss this serious issue in the assembly without delay. Those who consider this matter stupid and ridiculous apparently haven’t tuned into the CNN world news lately.”

Eqbal Ahmad was a shining example of what a true internationalist should be. Eqbal was at home in the history of all the world’s great civilizations. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of states past and present, and he knew that states had a rightful role to play. But he also knew that states existed to serve people, not the other way around, and he had little to do with governments, except as a thorn in their side. To friends, colleagues, and students, however, he gave unstintingly of himself and his time, his example and his memory will inspire many to carry on his work.
                                        —Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations

By complete coincidence, a few weeks ago, just after I had been thinking about writing a few words about Eqbal Ahmad, and had called his daughter Dohra (a friend) to speak about him, I received an email from Columbia University Press offering me a review copy of The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad (edited by Carollee Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo, and Yogesh Chandrani; Foreword by Noam Chomsky). The book arrived two days ago by mail. Even though Eqbal died in 1999 at a relatively youngish age (he was 66), his political analyses are so sharp and prescient, and perhaps even more important and relevant today, that I decided immediately to introduce him to those 3QD readers who may not know of him, and also to recommend getting the book.

Like his close friend Edward Said (whose book Culture and Imperialism is dedicated to Eqbal, and who followed him to a too-early grave at about the same age a few years later), Eqbal was one of that rare breed of academics: those who bring their intellectual insights into the public sphere and directly engage a much wider world than the professoriate. While Eqbal’s activities and achievements were immensely wide-ranging (teaching, academic writing, political activism, journalism), possibly the most impressive thing about him was his uncannily precise feel for politics, and his ability to dispel the clutter of argument around political issues with a plainspoken insight of lucidity and obvious truth. As Noam Chomsky points out in his foreword:

… Ahmad was able to identify currents of modern history that few perceived. To mention only one distressingly timely illustration, he recognized at once that Washington and its allies were creating a terrorist monster when they exploited Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion by organizing and training Islamic fundamentalist extremists for their own cynical purposes. He warned that these initiatives were reviving a form of violent jihadism that had disappeared from the Muslim world centuries earlier and were also helping to implant similar forces in Pakistan under the brutal Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship, with a devastating impact on Pakistani society, Afghanistan, and beyond.

Indeed Eqbal pointed out that, as he welcomed them to the white house in 1985, President Ronald Reagan actually called the Afghan Mujahideen (the future Taliban) “the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers.” At the time, they were battling the Evil Empire, so no degree of hyperbole in their praise could be considered excessive. These “moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers” are now, of course, terrorists. Speaking of which, in one essay, Eqbal brilliantly unpacks the term “terrorism.” As Carolee Bengelsdorf and Margaret Cerrulo explain in their introduction:

“Terrorism” in [Eqbal’s] analysis is a floating signifier attached at will to our enemies to evoke moral revulsion. The vagueness and inconsistency of its definition, he insists, is key to its political usefulness. Official discussion will eschew, indeed disallow, any search for causes or motives, to the point where former secretary of state George Schultz, asked about the causes of Palestinian terrorism, insisted “there is no connection with any cause. Period.”

Or consider Eqbal’s foresight in these few sentences (written in 1993) on the Oslo Accord:

Trouble awaits for the accord. Hamas will continue to question its legitimacy and may be joined by other nationalist elements. Attacks on Israeli occupation forces and other acts of resistance shall occur, giving Israel ample arguments against Palestinian statehood. It may stall even on extending limited autonomy to the West Bank. After all, its cooperation is premised on the PLO’s ability to maintain order, especially in Gaza. No one should be surprised if Yasser Arafat ends up as the Pasha of Gaza…

Eqbal was also able to correctly forecast (in 1988) that the birth of Jihad International would coincide with a disastrous rise in tensions between the Sunni and the Shia, with proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran taking place on various battlegrounds, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and as we can now clearly see, Iraq.

                                ————————- *** ————————–

Born in the village of Ikri in the Bihar province of India in either 1933 or 1934 (record-keeping of births was not a priority in the subcontinent until recently so that even I have no birth certificate), Eqbal witnessed the murder of his father one night when only a few years old, who died while trying to protect Eqbal from the blows of his assassins. It was a land dispute.

His grandfather was a wealthy man who had established the Khudabaksh Library in Patna where to this day it remains one of the finest collections of medieval Persian manuscripts. When he was about 14, Eqbal migrated to Pakistan upon its creation with his older brothers. (In 1996, the BBC produced a documentary about this difficult trek in a refugee caravan from India to Pakistan as part of a 5-part series entitled “Stories My Country Told Me.” The others profiled were Edward Said, E.J. Hobsbawm, Desmond Tutu and Maxine Hong Kingston.)

After graduating in economics from the Foreman Christian College in Lahore, Eqbal served briefly as an officer in the Pakistan Army before leaving for Occidental College in California as a Rotary Fellow in 1957, and soon transferred to study political science and middle eastern history at Princeton, where he eventually obtained his doctorate in 1967. While he was conducting thesis research on trade unions, Eqbal lived in North Africa from 1960 to 1964, and became a student and active supporter of the Algerian Revolution. It is not clear if he ever met Franz Fanon, but Fanon certainly knew of Eqbal and they shared a mutual respect. [Photo shows Eqbal at Princeton.]

I recently saw the brilliant Gillo Pontecorvo film The Battle of Algiers (rent it!) and was surprised to learn that Eqbal was a consultant on the film. He helped research the script and was present during the filming. Selected Writings contains an edited transcript of a fascinating lecture Eqbal gave to undergraduates at Hampshire College about the making of the movie. Even though it is a short thing (7 pages), it is a paradigmatic illustration of how packed with strategic insight even the most informal of Eqbal’s writing could be, and I’d like to dwell on it here for a bit. One of the key lessons that Eqbal took away from Algeria was that before revolutionary movements are ready to fight a state entity, they must take away its moral legitimacy by outperforming it at its main task: administration. Here’s Eqbal:

… to be successful, the revolutionary movement must outadminister the enemy before it starts to outfight it. The Battle of Algiers gives you that insight from both sides, Algerian and French. The film closely follows the actual battle, but the emphasis is not on violence; it is on organization…

…Ali is shown leading an angry mob, calling for blood in response to the [French] bombing. In a critical early moment in the film, he goes to see the resistance commander, Colonel Mohammed Jafar, and has an argument with Jafar saying, “We must strike back.” Jafar answers, “No, Ali, not yet; we are not ready. We must first organize the Casbah before we engage in violence. We must clean up the numbers racket, the gambling racket, the prostitution; we must institute discipline; we must offer services to people…”

… A second critical moment in the film is the marriage scene, presided over by an FLN [resistance] militant. It signifies that French rule is over inside the Casbah, that the revolution has outadministered the French. Colonial law stipulated that marriages must be registered with the French government… [but] The French have been cut out of the process…

This, no doubt, has already reminded you of the recent successes of a certain organization today which has taken these lessons to heart and has made itself the sole provider of public services in southern Lebanon. Yes, of course: Hizbullah. Also, interestingly enough, the Pentagon screened The Battle of Algiers for the heads of its Special (counterinsurgency) Forces in August 2003. Another of Eqbal’s points in this lecture is that a revolutionary movement must allow the larger population to appear neutral in the conflict until close to the end, and that the call for a general strike by the resistance leadership was an early mistake in the Algerian Revolution:

… In order to protect people, revolutionaries must maintain the fiction of popular neutrality. The incumbent power (whether colonial or local) has the compulsion to say, “The people are behind us; the revolutionaries, the guerrillas, are merely terrorizing them. We are protecting the people,” as indeed the French said. That rhetoric reduces their ability to attack the whole population. Therefore good revolutionary tactics always create an environment in which the people are overtly neutral, while covertly larger and larger numbers of them support the revolution by various means. In Algeria, therefore, you didn’t do anything to expose the entire people to attack by the other side. No decent revolutionary movement would call a general strike in a situation of warfare until almost the end, when it was winning, and it just need the last push.

This was not the case in Algeria… When the FLN declares the general strike, [French commander] Colonel Mathieu is very happy and says, “Now we can lick them. They have made their first bad move.” Why? Because they are announcing themselves to be on the side of the revolution. He can plan his operation: arrest everyone who is on strike and torture the bloody lot. Interrogate them. Some of them will turn out to be activists, some of them will turn out to be neutrals. But now he has a large pool from which he can get information… Seventy-seven thousand people in a period of just about twelve days were tortured, badly, in the city of Algiers… Six of the French who carried out the operation were eventually censured for torture.

The third point that Eqbal makes is that because of this mistake, the FLN was decimated in Algiers and its leadership had to move to weaker positions in Tunis. This insecurity caused them to raise a conventional army there (the Armee de Liberation Nationale, or ALN), complete with tanks, and even a small air force. When independence finally came in 1962, the ALN under Colonel Houari Boumedienne, which was not a revolutionary force, turned on the FLN leaders. By 1960 everyone knew the Algerian people were going to win; there was no need for the conventional army. Eqbal’s disappointment is palpable here:

Without that conventional army, the revolution would have been at least partially successful. It has not been even partially successful. It only succeeded in getting rid of France; it failed at building a democratic, revolutionary society.

In the mid-to-late 60s, Eqbal taught at various American Universities and became “one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of American policies in Vietnam and Cambodia.” In November of 1970, after reports to congress by J. Edgar Hoover, Eqbal was indicted along with the antiwar priest Daniel Berrigan and six other catholics on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger in an attempt to end the war in Vietnam. The group came to be known as the Harrisburg 8. [Photo shows a press conference for the Kissinger trial. Eqbal is seated at extreme left.] One measure of Eqbal’s unwavering integrity and unerring moral compass is that in April of 1971, during his trial on these trumped up conspiracy charges, he took note of the worsening situation in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and the Pakistani army’s shameful atrocities there. At a time when hardly any other Pakistani raised a voice in protest, and under all that personal stress, Eqbal took the time to write a “Letter to a Pakistani Diplomat” which is included in Selected Writings. After laying out a seven-point argument for why the Pakistani government’s actions would only end in disastrous secession (which, of course, they did within the year), he writes:

I know that I shall be condemned for my position. For someone who is facing a serious trial in America, it is not easy to confront one’s own government. Yet it is not possible for me to oppose American crimes in Southeast Asia or Indian occupation of Kashmir while accepting the crimes that my government is committing against the people of East Pakistan. Although I mourn the death of Biharis by Bengali vigilantes and condemn the irresponsibilities of the Awami League, I am not willing to equate their actions with that of the government and the criminal acts of an organized, professional army.

After their deliberations, the jury declared a mistrial in the Harrisburg 8 case in April of 1972. For the next decade, Eqbal continued writing while a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., also serving as the first director of its European affiliate, the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. He also held various visiting professorships during this time, and further consolidated his reputation as an intellectual’s intellectual. (“I’ve spent much of my adult life, it seems, reading and learning from Eqbal Ahmad.” —Seymour M. Hersh) From 1982 Eqbal was a professor of political science at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts until his retirement in 1997. But from 1992 onwards, he had started dividing his time between Amherst and Islamabad. Eqbal Ahmad died on May 11, 1999.

                               ————————- *** ————————–

Starting in the early 90s, Eqbal’s dream was to start a new secular university of the highest academic caliber in Pakistan, which he wanted to name Khaldunia after the famous fourteenth century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun. I only met Eqbal Ahmad once: after the screening of the BBC documentary about his migration to Pakistan (which I have mentioned above) at Columbia University. Akeel Bilgrami introduced me to him and we all went to dinner together. (I’m quite sure Robin Varghese was also present.) There, I asked him how the Khaldunia project was going, and he replied that he would tell me but first I must commit to teaching there for two years. Of course, I immediately and happily did, but alas, Khaldunia never came to be. The corrupt Pakistani bureaucracy put hurdles in Eqbal’s path at every step and finally even rescinded the land grant they had given him years earlier. Still, Eqbal kept trying, and during these years also became a columnist for Karachi’s largest English daily, Dawn. He wrote his last column on April 25th, 1999, and died two weeks later. Eqbal really was one the most widely beloved and respected men I can think of. Edward Said spoke at his memorial service, ending thus:

Bantering, ironic, sporty, unpedantic, gracious, immaculate in dress and expression, faultlessly kind, an unpretentious connoisseur of food and wine, Eqbal’s themes in the end were always liberation and injustice, or how to achieve the first without reproducing more of the second. He saw himself perceptively as a man of the eighteenth century, modern because of enlightenment and breadth of outlook, not because of technological or quasi-scientific “progress”. Somehow he managed unostentatiously to preserve his native Muslim tradition without succumbing either to the frozen exclusivism or to the jealousy that has often gone with it. Humanity and genuine secularism in this blood-drenched old century of ours had no finer champion. His innumerable friends grieve inconsolably.

You may read the rest of Said’s speech here, and other tributes can be seen here. Over the years, Robin, who knew Eqbal Ahmad intimately and worked with him for a while, has frequently entertained and edified me with anecdotes of Eqbal. Rather than try to recall these and give a second-hand account, I urge Robin to set down some of his personal reminiscences of Eqbal himself here at 3QD in the near future. But for now I give the last word to Arundhati Roy who speaks for many in saying: “Ahmad is a brilliant man with brilliant insights. My only complaint about him is that he is not here now, when we need him the most.”

[All photos of Eqbal Ahmad are taken from this website and were provided by Emily Roysdon of Hampshire College.]

My other Monday Musings can be seen here.