"Clash of civilizations" and Marxism. (Insider Report).(Brief Article)

As momentum builds for a potentially apocalyptic "clash of civilizations" between fundamentalist Islam and the secular West, Americans must understand the true roots of Islamic militancy. Writing in the July 27th London Independent, British academic John Gray confirms THE NEW AMERICAN'S analysis that Muslim "fundamentalism" is actually an outgrowth of revolutionary Marxism.

"Islamic fundamentalism is not an indigenous growth," writes Gray. "It is an exotic hybrid, bred from the encounter of sections of the Islamic intelligentsia with radical western ideologies." The concept of a "vanguard," so common to radical Muslim terrorist movements, "does not have an Islamic pedigree." Citing religious scholar Malise Ruthven's work, Gray notes that Muslim terrorists imported the vanguard concept" 'from Europe, through a lineage that stretches back to the [French Revolutionary] Jacobins, through the [Soviet] Bolsheviks and latter-day Marxist guerrillas such as the Baader-Meinhof gang.'"

Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian proponent of Wahabbi Islam (embraced by Osama bin Laden and much of the Saudi elite) was probably ...