MORE ABOUT THIS EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER, SHEIK ABULLAH AZZAM, THE FATHER OF MODERN TERRORISM. A TERRIFYING CHARACTER EVEN TO ME, WHO HAS STUDIED HITLER HIS ENTIRE LIFE.

​​​​​​And something even more beautiful—when “the blood is one and pen is one”—so that the hand of the scholar expending the ink and moving the pen is the same as “the hand which expends its blood and moves the Ummah.” The “peak” achievement, in short, is when the martyr and man who writes about martyrdom are the same. Killing and writing about killing. Death and keeping a record of those who have died. What an extraordinary vision.

Perhaps not so extraordinary. Might not a significant dimension of Western civilization be characterized in these terms precisely? Don’t “history books” focus on war, genocide, and other episodes of cultural violence? Might we not write the history of the human race from the perspective of blood that has been shed in the name of various ideologies?

The discipline of history records episodes of societal violence: warfare, genocide and terroristic movements. “History” is constituted by the blood shed in the name of various ideologies. The historian’s job is to keep a record of these episodes of societal violence: the blood of the martyr and ink of the scholar. We call this a “history book!”