Max Scheler and the psychopathology of the terrorist

Modern Age, Summer, 2005 by Manfred Frings

A major reason why Islam's successes and progress during this period came to a halt was its ominous neglect of the achievments of the Renaissance. (8) An unstoppable rise of science and technology was in operation in Europe between 1400 and 1600 and, of course, later on. Muslims had been too self-confident about their achievements during the antecedent ages. They were especially self-confident after their victories over the Christian Crusaders, but ever since 1400, Islam was irrecoverably lagging behind the growth and achievements of the Western world. (9)

In short, it can be said that the vertical religious view of both Christianity and Islam, spanning hell below and God above, turned in Western culture into a horizontal and secular view of world and earth.

The historical effects of this turn from the dominant cultural role of faith and of the dominance of reason can only be touched upon here. The dominant horizontal role of reason brought about the discovery that the earth is not the center of the solar system (Galileo), that the universe has no center (Bruno), as well as the discovery of new continents (Columbus, Marco Polo, Vespucci), and groundbreaking new techniques in the science of medicine (Paracelsus) and many other disciplines. The enormous growth of science and of technology spans today the powers in the atom (Planck) and the closed infinity of the universe (Einstein). Politically, this development included an equally rapid extension of the Western idea of democracy in Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, Japan, Latin America, New Zealand, and Russia--in all "Lands of the Unbelievers" led by the "Great Satan," the United States, as it was labeled by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.

In the labeling of the United States as satanic there is an obvious resentment in the form of envy referred to above. The United States was founded and developed in a little more than 200 years. Other Muslim, Western, and Asian countries have existed for thousands of years. On the scale of calendar-time the economic, geopolitical, medical, military, scientific and technological achievements of the United States have no match. Indeed, Americans were the first to split the atom and the first to land humans on the moon and bring them back. During World War II, the United States waged the largest two-front war in history. The list of achievements has no end.

And where has Islam been since the Renaissance? It possesses no comparable economic, geopolitical clout. It has no navy, no air force, no army to speak of; no indigenous technology and medical industry, no oil not discovered and developed by Western know-how. (10) Already these few items would indicate to us that Islam's powerless horizontal status is out of balance with its powerful vertical ties to Allah.

My study calls for some conclusions and an advisory comment: There can hardly be a doubt that Islam's resentful class-hatred of the West and Russia will last for some time to come, perhaps until the present generation of resentful Muslims has died out. Muslim resentment is based on age-long geopolitical impotency and stagnation. In more recent times it has awakened from its long slumber to find itself comparing, passively and actively, with the enviable global successes of the Western infidels.