Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was an Islamic revolutionary whose thought influenced  Bin Laden. In "Martyrs: The Building Blocks of Nations," he set forth a philosophy of history.

"History," Azzam writes, does not write its lines "except with blood." Glory, he says, does not build its lofty edifice "except with skulls." Honor and respect cannot be established except on a "foundation of cripples and corpses."

Collective forms of violence perform a validation function. Social groups generate political violence in order to establish the truth of the ideology with which the group identifies.

Leaders promote violence in the name of ideals such as "communism," or "Germany," or "Allah," or "freedom and democracy." Violent political performances (acts of war, genocide and terror)  confer reality upon these ideologies. Violence demonstrates that a society takes its ideals seriously.

"History" comes into being when a societal group produces death and destruction in the name of its ideology. Hitler, Stalin and Mao are remembered—not because of their contributions to civilization—but by virtue of the vast numbers of people they killed. As Azzam put it, the glory of an ideology or belief system builds upon an "edifice of skulls." The honor or respect accorded to an idea or ideal—its preeminence in history—grows out of a foundation of "cripples and corpses."

"Significance" is conferred upon a leader based on the quantity of people killed in the name of the ideology he represents. This is why historians are  keen to document the number of people that were killed in a particular war, battle, genocidal episode, or act of terror. Historians establish the importance of an event by "counting skulls." History is the record of sacrificial dying in relationship to ideologies that seek to transform the world.

Hitler, Stalin and Mao have established their places in history based on the prodigious number of people who died as a result of their political acts. Their reputations are built upon a foundation of "cripples and corpses." If history, as Saddam Hussein put it, is a record of "sacrifices made in blood," then men like Hitler, Stalin and Mao are the greatest history-makers—because they caused the greatest amount of blood to be shed.

Sheikh Abdullah Azzam wrote that the life of the Muslim Ummah is solely dependent on the "ink of its scholars and the blood of its martyrs." What is more beautiful, he says, than the writing of the Ummah’s history with "both the ink of a scholar and his blood"—so that the map of Islamic history becomes colored with two lines: "One of them black, and that is what the scholar wrote with the ink of his pen; and the other one red, and that is what the martyr wrote with his blood."

The creation of “History” requires: (1) Political leaders who persuade  human beings to perform acts of violence in the name of an ideology. (2) People (journalists and historians) who record performances of political violence. It is not as if the violent acts that constitute history are separate from the recording of these actions. Journalists and historians are active participants, not merely bystanders who observe what has occurred. Their role is to "witness" violent political acts; and to create “history” by recording these acts.

Human beings who strive to “make history” are not unaware of these dynamics. They know that their acts of mass-murder are being observed and recorded by journalists--and will be chronicled by historians after they have passed away. The worst thing that can happen to a political actor who seeks recognition is that he will be relegated to the the “dustbin of history” (Trotsky, 1917).

Events most likely to be recorded are those that result in the deaths of large numbers of people. Men like Stalin, Hitler and Mao are famous by virtue of the large number of deaths that they caused. Radical political leaders generate episodes of mass-murder and are recognized and remembered for the havoc they have wrought—in the name of ideologies they hoped would transform the world.

Leaders slaughter people to confer reality upon the ideologies they represent. Stalin and communism are not separate phenomena. Hitler and Nazism are not separate phenomena. Leaders murder in a spirit of righteousness because their actions are undertaken in the name of maintaining or regenerating or perpetuating a sacred ideal. Hitler declared: “We may be humane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.”

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a book entitled Human, All Too Human (1878). "History" is made by human beings who aspire to be more than human. Many of us embrace this domain of “history”—a realm of being that seems to consist of phenomena that go beyond ordinary human existence.

In the name of this superhuman domain of existence, human beings create transcendental ideologies—for which people die and kill. Sacrificial death seeks to prove that there is “something else” beyond mere human existence. Collective forms of killing and dying are undertaken in order confirm the existence of this something else.