By Robert Harris

Article copied from the Daily Telegraph - UK

IF you want to understand Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda organisation, my advice is to put the newspapers aside for a while and get hold of a novel published in 1907. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad describes the activities of a small group of state-sponsored terrorists, plotting an atrocity against a world-famous building - in this case, the Greenwich Observatory.

Instead of Osama, Conrad gives us the terrorist leader Ossipon, alias "The Professor". Ossipon is a walking suicide bomb. He has explosives strapped to his body, concealed beneath an overcoat, which he can detonate at any time by releasing an india-rubber ball that he grasps lightly in a pocket. This astonishingly prescient novel ends with one of the most brilliant final paragraphs in English literature, as Ossipon walks alone along a London street:

"And the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable - and terrible in the simplicity of his idea, calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on, unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men."

Ossipon is a 20th-century anarchist; Osama a 21st-century religious fanatic. But essentially, these philosophical trappings are only useful drapery - like the professor's overcoat - designed to conceal what really motivates both men: a vast rage against the all-powerful Western world. When Conrad describes Ossipon as having "a frenzied puritanism of ambition: he nursed it as something secularly holy", he might be writing of Osama.

Violence is their instrument. Ossipon broods on it: "Next time, or the time after next, a telling stroke would be delivered - something really startling - a blow fit to open the first crack in the imposing front of the great edifice of legal conceptions sheltering the atrocious injustice of society." It has taken 93 years, but what Ossipon dreamt of, his soul-mate Osama has made reality.

Watching bin Laden's video statement on Sunday night - the self-assured fanatic, calmly sipping tea in an Afghan ravine - it was hard not to think of the cafes of Zurich and Geneva before 1914, where one could have seen similar characters lingering over their coffee and cream buns, plotting the destruction of authority. Like bin Laden, the violent anarchists and the extreme Marxist revolutionaries of a century ago were usually well-to-do, exiled opponents of autocratic regimes: men whose private incomes financed a lifetime indulgence in political struggle.

The photograph of bin Laden that still seems to me to sum him up best is that family group-shot taken in Sweden in 1971. There is the 14-year-old bin Laden, near the fringe of the picture - a fashion disaster in a lime-green top and blue flares - yet immediately recognisable as the bearded, gun-toting revolutionary in embryo. "We're all a bit worried about Osama," a friend of the family told a friend of mine a few years later. "He's socially rather awkward." They might have been describing Hitler in Vienna in 1908.

And so they grow up, these socially awkward, intelligent misfits, looking for an outlet for their frustrations and, in 999,999 cases in a million, they somehow settle uneasily into ordinary life: the ill-tempered loner in the bedsit, the crank who writes green-inked letters to television celebrities, the theorist who reduces life to a single conspiracy theory (the Jews run the world, the blacks are undermining the white race, there are alien bodies in cold storage in New Mexico). And then, very, very occasionally, the crank finds the right cause at the right moment, and the consequences are disastrous.

Conrad describes Ossipon's mental process acutely: "The extreme, almost ascetic purity of his thought, combined with an astounding ignorance of worldly conditions." Bin Laden, by all accounts, is the same, projecting a world-view of absolute certainty, buttressed by startling naivety. According to the journalist Robert Fisk, who interviewed him four years ago, "his understanding of foreign affairs is decidedly eccentric. At one point, he even suggested to me that individual US states might secede from the Union because of Washington's support for Israel." One is reminded of Hitler's invincible, lunatic prejudice that the Americans, as "a mongrel race", would never pose a serious threat to Germany in the Second World War.

What is to be done with such people? The first point, surely, is to recognise that there can be no negotiation with them. When bin Laden, in his videotaped statement, gives thanks for the death of 5,000 civilians in New York, then, in a sense, he does us all a favour: no one can seriously argue any more that he wasn't behind the atrocity, or that he wouldn't arrange something even worse if he could.

Which leads to the second point: that we are dealing here with a phenomenon quite separate from Islam, or the Arab world in general. Set aside his religion and his race. Bin Laden is a recognisable type in history, made untypically monstrous by the technological sophistication and openness of the modern world he so despises. The fictional Ossipon had to be content with a botched assault on the Greenwich Observatory, but only because there were no aeroplanes, and no 100-storey skyscrapers he could crash them into.

The final and abiding impression left by that James Bond-villain videotape was of egomania. "He beheld all his enemies," wrote Conrad of Ossipon, "and fearlessly confronted them all in a supreme satisfaction of his vanity. They stood perplexed before him as if before a dreadful portent." That, I'm sure, is what bin Laden would like us to do: to take him on his own terms, as the just instrument of divine wrath, instead of seeing him for what he really is - a spoilt rich kid, a social misfit, a vainglorious crank, a bigot, a pest in a street full of men.

Robert Harris, the British author of "Fatherland" and "Enigma" nails it again. Just another British contribution to the war effort. ;)

Perhaps we ought to send this article to Osama and tell him - "we know what you are".

COMMENT:

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: "Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be." - Winston Churchill, 1940

This then, my lords and gentlemen, is the message which we send forth today to all states and nations, bound or free, to all the men in all the lands who care for freedom's cause. To our Allies and well-wishers in Europe, to our American friends and helpers drawing ever closer in their might across the ocean, this is the message-lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind. - Winston Churchill, 1941

COMMENT:

Excellent article, thanks for posting it! I knew that name Robert Harris sounded familiar, I've read his books.

COMMENT:

He certainly is! And instead of spending all that money feeding the Muslims he cares so much about, he uses every red cent to cause bloodshed!

COMMENT:

And so they grow up, these socially awkward, intelligent misfits, looking for an outlet for their frustrations and, in 999,999 cases in a million, they somehow settle uneasily into ordinary life: the ill-tempered loner in the bedsit, the crank who writes green-inked letters to television celebrities, the theorist who reduces life to a single conspiracy theory (the Jews run the world, the blacks are undermining the white race, there are alien bodies in cold storage in New Mexico).

What's interesting is that this describes Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber as well. Both smart middle class kids who went terribly wrong.

COMMENT:

Yes, exactly, and he brings to mind some other spoiled rich kids, Che Guevara and Carlos the "Jackal".

COMMENT:

What is to be done with such people?

Many become liberal Democrats etc. trying to correct the world from the dissatisfaction that has befallen them.

COMMENT:

The bin Ladens sound like the Islamic Kennedys.

The photograph of bin Laden ...taken in Sweden in 1971.

Anyone have that picture?

COMMENT:

I've seen that picture but don't have it myself - bin Laden as a child looks, well...normal, actually. Maybe a little awkward.

COMMENT:

And so they grow up, these socially awkward, intelligent misfits, looking for an outlet . . . writes green-inked letters to television celebrities, the theorist who reduces life to a single conspiracy theory (the Jews run the world, the blacks are undermining the white race, there are alien bodies in cold storage in New Mexico).

A good read but approaches the same kind of dangerous over-simplification of which he writes. 

During this time of patriotic imperitve we shun the question, "Why?".

But we ignore at our own peril the study of the "pathology of hate".

COMMENT:

The article persuades me. I think BinLaden currently sees himself as Allah, particularly after his successes on September 11, 2001.

COMMENT:

Is this the one you're looking for?

The guy in the circle is bin Laden at age 14, in 1971. He is on vacation with 22 of his brothers and sisters in Sweden.

COMMENT:

Have you ever seen the T.V. adaptation of " THE SECRET AGENT " , starring David Soucet ? It does the book proud.

yes, bin Laden IS rather like Ossipon. So were the members of " THE WEATHEMEN " ; back in the late 60's early '70's, here. The so called " peace protestor " / anti-globalist whatever , in Seattle and Italy are also VERY Ossiponian as well. Spoiled brats, who used to be called " remitance men", way back when.

COMMENT:

I'll go along with this, except for the title... 

"Forget Islam: bin Laden is no more than a spoilt rich kid"

I don't see the two as being necessarily mutually exclusive.

I'm also interested in a little exploration as to the kind of relationship a son with 52 siblings could possibly have with his father. We're all aware of the criminal and antisocial pathologies that arise from a bad father/son realtionship.

COMMENT:

The difference is that the Unabomber had no followers, McVeigh had only a few, but Hitler and BinLaden have millions. It will be necessary to kill a good share of them for the others to lose their appetite for bloodshed. And even then, there will be BinLaden cohorts needing their necks stretched.

COMMENT:

Adolf Hitler wasn't a Christian, and Osama isn't acting like a Muslim (if he thought he'd be going to heaven to meet up with 72 virgins, I don't think he'd be running from the US, hiding in a cave).

But the Germans who cheered on the Holocaust were Christians, just as the throngs of people in the streets celebrating the WTC attack are Muslims.

COMMENT:

Good article BUT. Do not underestimate binladen. Sometimes the misfit loner is really a dark lord. This guy is very possibly the Napolean of the Arab world. If he's not a genius his organizational skills and ability to hold men to him and get them to do what he wants them to do .... is remarkable. His discipline and diligence in pursuit of his cause ... is amazing. If we don't get this guy he is going to unite the entire Moslem world and rule one fourth of this planet ... and come after the other three quarters. The moderate state's leaders are scared stiff.

COMMENT:

Great post.

Of course...the grotesque family album; the rich brat; the vacations in Sweden; the little brother trying to outdo his older siblings for fame and attention. It was inevitable.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. When one contemplates a creature like this, the truth of this statement is overwhelming.

COMMENT:

phenomenon quite separate from Islam, or the Arab world in general. Set aside his religion and his race.

Perhaps what the author says about Osama's mental state is true. But to try to pin all of this on one man is dangerous and stupid. Their are 1.3 billion of the Islamic believers in the world and a larger number than we think read the Koran the same way he does.

I personally don't care if a person worships turnip greens, that's their right. But any belief system that spreads by the use of terror and force, celebrates the use of it's children for cannon fodder, teaches then to hate others to the point that they will commit suicide to kill non-members of that faith and treats their women like cattle, is evil personified and needs to be condemed.

Look around the world and see what they have done and are doing. Maybe people like him are a minority of that system, but a minority of 1.3 billion can be a hell of a lot of fanatics.

COMMENT:

My own view is that while pictures and videos of anti-U.S. demonstrations in Islamic countries might lead one to believe that there are million of such suicidal fanatics, I doubt that the real number comes to several thousand worldwide. Just look at those countries... most Islamic countries are third-world pestholes. I imagine many of the protesters are looking at a dismal future with no chance for even a poor middle-class kind of life as experienced by people in the West.

Like a number of losers in Western countries, these would-be fanatics need something to keep them going. Your own country and personal life are both extremely substandard, so why not latch on to something you can get excited about and release all your pent-up frustrations at your nothing existence. Hate is just as big of a motivational factor as love. These people have plenty of hate and they probably hate themselves most of all. Many are easily led by pied pipers of murder like Bin Laden. But when and if push comes to shove, doubtless many of the fervent will shrink back into their previous states of smoldering inaction. That is if they are not dead from the actions of the real but much-smaller percentage-wise hardcore fanatics who will get thousands if not millions killed from their rebellion against the West and civilization.

COMMENT:

I agree with your statement. My only point is that there are a number of areas in the world in which Islam is trying to establish their domination through force. Sudan, Macedonia, Kosovo, Phippines, Afghanistan.You have a number of so called moderate Islamic states that the more radical fringe are trying to take over Saudi, Jordan, Lebenon.

Their has to be more than a few to cause the kind of trouble and fighting that is taking place. Their's been more than a million christians killed in the last five years in the Sudan alone.Their are over 30 different radical groups in the city of Damascus. All of these are using the cause of advancing Islam as their battle cry. Their leaders may be few but the follwers are many.

How many of them are democracies? This is why we fought communisum nazi's etc. because they enslave people.The people they rule under Theocracy are just as bad or worse off. Every aspect of their daily lives are controlled by one or a group of group religous leaders that keep them in the poverty of the six century world.

Once Islam gains control in a country, even so called moderate Islam, tolerance goes out the window. You have three choices convert, or if you are a "people of the book" ie: [Jew or christian] live as a dimi [slave], or die

COMMENT:

Moorish Spain had an advanced civilisation, including public lighting, libraries, great architecture, advances in mathematics. These people claimed to be acting in the name of Islam too.

The point being is that Islam is a template upon which some really splendid things can be placed or some really dreadful things can be placed. It has been, on balance, been the template more for dreadful things than good things.

Bin Laden is using this template for a particularly evil end. He is trying to use Islam to find meaning for a particularly empty life....which I think is Mr. Harris' point.

COMMENT:

And so they grow up, these socially awkward, intelligent misfits, looking for an outlet for their frustrations and, in 999,999 cases in a million, they somehow settle uneasily into ordinary life: the ill-tempered loner in the bedsit, the crank who writes green-inked letters to television celebrities, the theorist who reduces life to a single conspiracy theory (the Jews run the world, the blacks are undermining the white race, there are alien bodies in cold storage in New Mexico).

Similarities between bin Laden and others garbanzo named are striking. But there is one other factor.

When somone of this type is charismatic, they draw hosts of Ossipians to their side, and that is very, very dangerous. Hitler was able to do this, and he nearly destroyed Europe.

COMMENT:

Also circumstance has to be in their favour. Had the monarchy in France remained stable, Napoleon would have remained an artillery officer for the rest of his life. In 1928, the Nazis got under 4 percent of the vote - then the Great Depression came around and changed circumstances so that people were looking for a radical solution.

bin Laden is dangerous - but do circumstances favour him and his survival?