From Communism to ISIS

How can we grasp the psychology of the Paris terrorists? In Witness, first published in 1952, Whittaker Chambers, a Communist who became a Christian, explained what was behind the biggest 20th century threat: “Communism makes some profound appeal to the human mind. You will not find out what that is by calling Communism names. That will not help much to explain why Communism whose horrors, on a scale unparalleled in history, are now public knowledge, still recruits its thousands and holds its millions.”

What about the current 21st century “success”? ISIS has recruited thousands of foreign fighters, including 3,000 from the West. Why? Chambers wrote, “Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die—to bear witness—for its faith.” Chambers called Communism “man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. … The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.”

That’s not the vision of radical Islam. Man without God doesn’t have staying power because every human knows, deep down, that there is a God—but we differ on what kind. Radical Islam is a vision of Man with God, but Allah is a warrior. None of the “last shall be first” ethos of Christianity, with those who attain influence urged to become servant-leaders, but FULL SPEED AHEAD, and slice the throats of those who disagree. Other kinds of Islam do include compassion as one of Allah’s attributes, but ISIS leaves that out, and for some true believers is more powerful than Communism, because they believe they have an eternal stamp of approval.

This Islamist vision is thus not the great alternative faith of mankind, but man’s third religion, the alternative to the alternative. First comes the truth of God as God. Second comes the alternative, Man without God. Third comes a more potent alternative, the vision of Man with God who commands followers to have not only human tenacity but also a superhuman willingness to kill dissenters.

After hearing of the Paris disaster I went back in my notes to 2002, when former UPI religion correspondent (and occasional WORLD contributor) Uwe Siemon-Netto summarized his interview with Muslim reformer Bassam Tibi about the Western world’s “wishful thinking” concerning dialogue with Islam. Tibi said, “The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other.”

Syrian-born political scientist Tibi explained that particular words used by many Muslims mean different things to them than they do to non-Muslims: “The word ‘peace,’ for example, implies … the extension of the Dar al-Islam—or ‘House of Islam’—to the entire world.” In Islamist understanding, only if the entire world is converted to Islam will it also be a “Dar a-Salam,” or a house of peace. ISIS says it will give the world peace, forever, with all bowing to Allah.

Chambers dramatically wrote in 1952, “In this century, within the next decades, will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed or completely changed. It is our fate to live upon that turning point in history.”

He was mostly right. Freedom won, temporarily, and dictatorship lost. But new dictatorships always emerge. Every point in history is a turning point, and the face of ISIS shows us ours.