Mujahideen Desecration: Beheadings, Mutilation & Muslim Iconoclasm
20th March 2013
Wartime atrocities are typically attributed to psychological warfare, military strategies or individual acts of brutality. Although infinite varieties of cruelty have transpired in every war throughout history, the intense media coverage of the war on terrorism and the calculated dissemination of information on the internet has made us all witnesses to unimaginable violence. Suicide bombings, beheadings, mutilation, cutting out tongues, cutting off ears, amputations, gouging out eyes, genital mutilation, and dismembering dead bodies is common and widespread. Although our natural inclination is to relegate these horrific acts to another century, when interpreted in the context of religious ideologies, sacred customs, and cultural traditions it is obvious that they are not anachronisms.
These inexplicable acts need to be understood as sacred violence and comprehended in religious concepts such as sacrifice, blood ritual, iconoclasm and desecration. They are ritualistic acts with distinct functions, meanings, objectives, and justifications. They determine an individual’s status in life, death and the afterlife, relegate punishment of community members and enemies, serve as rites of passage and initiation, and signify fidelity, honor, and courage in a warrior culture. The fact that these chilling acts also serve to terrorize the enemy is a secondary objective, what is commonly referred to as a bonus.
The primary function of ritual in the community is that of providing the proper rules for action in the realm of the sacred and the secular. For that reason it takes a fully committed true believer to commit such heinous acts; if any aspect of the faith is questioned, than the thin line between holy warrior and barbarian dissolves. Ritualizing violence legitimizes it, allowing the perpetrator to stand on solid moral ground. Mujahideen have the full support of their community in a manner the significance of which Americans cannot fully grasp. American soldiers are court-martialed, imprisoned, and publicly humiliated for unacceptable violent acts, while the Mujahideen are glorified and praised in direct proportion to the amount of blood they have on their hands. From a strategic perspective, publicly dishonoring our own soldiers undermines the war on terrorism, invalidates our military in the eyes of our enemies, negatively affects morale, and makes us tactically vulnerable; from a ritual perspective the sacred status of the holy warrior is debased, sacrificial blood is polluted, communal rituals fail to have meaning and a sacred crisis ensues. Moral ambiguity causes more damage than weapons of mass destruction; it destroys the community from within. Authentic warrior cultures understand that to question their soldiers’ actions in war is sacrilege. The Mujahideen fighter thinks in sacred terms and every act of violence is theologically and communally sanctioned. These Jihadi soldiers are not completing a tour of duty, they are all lifers groomed from birth in a continual recruitment process comprised of a series of ritual initiations whose ultimate fulfillment is to die as a martyr in holy war. Violent mutilations are not arbitrary and capricious barbaric acts; to fully comprehend them, they must be understood in the context of Jihadi blood rituals and Muslim iconoclasm. In this paper I am going to focus on the ritualistic crimes of beheadings, torture, and mutilation. It will be demonstrated that these brutal acts are ritual manifestations of Mujahideen Desecration.