Ideologies Become Real When They Are Irrigated by Blood
Ali Benhadj, a prominent Islamic revolutionary from Algeria, articulated his philosophy of terrorism as follows: “If a faith or belief is not watered by blood, it does not grow.” Principles are reinforced by “sacrifices, suicide operations and martyrdom for Allah.”
Faith is propagated by “counting up deaths every day; adding up massacres and charnel houses. It hardly matters if the person who has been sacrificed is no longer there.”
What is the relationship between the shedding of blood and affirmation of faith or belief? Blood sacrifice creates reality. Death affirms the truth of the entity in the name of which we kill, die and shed our blood.
Is there a common dynamic linking violence, death and belief regardless of the ideology or cultural context? Human beings confer power upon an idea or entity by making sacrifices in the name of tHIS idea or entity.
Ideologies become real when “irrigated by blood;” when human beings kill and die for them. Surely an idea for which so many people have killed or died, we assume, must possess validity.
Death and bloodshed—the sound and the fury—persuade us that our sacred ideals are real.
