Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Lucien van Liere

Revenge, Terror and the Last Sacrifice in the Context of 9/11 

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PAPER

I. Introduction

In 1670, the Muslim population of the village of Waai on the Maluku Islands was forced to convert to Christianity. Reports about that event are extremely hard to get. However, this forced conversion remained as a ‘historical fact’ in the memories of certain parts of the Indonesian Muslim community. 330 years later, the Laskar Jihad, a group of Muslim radicals, forced the population of Waai to re-convert to ‘their original religion’: Islam. 25 people were killed. Thousands of people fled their village. Ustad Ja’far Umar Thalib, the leader of Laskar Jihad, stated that his organization was on a ‘humanitarian mission’ to rescue the village from what he considered being a historical crime: the forced, ‘illegal’ conversion to Christianity in 1670. The village was destroyed and Ja’far wanted to build a totally new village instead: Waai Islam.[1] To my knowledge this Muslim village and a planned almost 3000 m2 mosque were never built.[2] According to Ja’far’s logic, it has never been a question whether this act of violence was justified or not. It was a ‘righteous’ act to restore what had been destroyed hundreds of years ago.

Vengeance seems to have a long memory.

What is at stake in this example are the mimetic rivalries between two important religious groups (Islam and Christianity) producing reciprocal violence that has strongly been influenced by an extremely long memory of a history of violent acts.[3] This mimetic process of violent acts is not able to stop itself. It can only ‘quote’ a preceding act of violence through the addition of a similar act of violence.

The framework of my paper is terrorism and the war on terror. This almost global situation reveals three strongly related subjects, supplied by the Waai-narrative. These subjects are vengeance, sacrifice, and remembrance. I will concentrate myself on vengeance and sacrifice within the context of terrorism. Remembrance, the third subject supplied by the Waai-narrative, is extremely complex. It needs to be scrunitized more deeply than I am able to do within the limits of this paper. However, because of the influence remembrance has on vengeance and sacrifice, I cannot neglect it. Therefore I will touch the subject regularly throughout this paper. Vengeance and remembrance are heavily related as one depends on the other. ‘Vengeance’ is the effort to remember by repeating or quoting the violence done before. ‘Sacrifice’ is generally more used as a diffuse word within the context of the Christian West. However, the use of the word is meaningfull within the ritual context of remembrance, as I shall show.

After exploring these themes in three related contexts (9/11, Indonesia and The Netherlands), I will pay attention to these within the context of Christology. In my opinion it is possible to think about terrorism and the war on terror from a Christological point of view. This ‘Christological point of view’ differs heavily from the traditional theology of reconciliation in which certain concepts of vengeance and sacrifice have enourmous importance. Whereas the doctrinal tradition of the death of Christ absorbs the discussed themes, I shall focus on a Christology that reveals the violent consequences of the explored themes. This I shall do by exploring the brave perspectives on the ‘death of Jesus’ from René Girard and Karl Barth. By doing this, a Christological perspective on terror(ism) and the war on terror(ism) appears.

II. On Vengeance

After 9/11, the ‘spirit of revenge’ destabilizes great parts of Western society and some parts of non-Western society. According to Girard, the ‘spirit of revenge’ conserves the cycle of violence.[4] Revenge is backward-looking punishment for something that has already been done by others. It ‘quotes’ a painful atrocity. It repeats the violence that was inflicted. Revenge, however, can never be the last act of violence. It is always a prelude to things to come. In this way, revenge is a specter. The future is haunted by this specter. Violence taints memory and brings it into the modus of revenge. Revenge is a ‘punishment’ upon a former ‘punishment’, unwillingly promising another ‘punishment’. If revenge tries to get rid of revenge, when, in other words, revenge tries to prevent that someone might avenge the dead, violence can take on total forms.[5] Revenge creates a memory in which categorical thinking or thinking in identities is dominant. This kind of thinking helps the specter to be the future’s promise and fear.

9/11, according to Al Qaeda, was a day of ‘punishment’. In New York, Washington and Pennsylvania people were killed because of what ‘America’ had done to Islam. In explaining the atrocities of 9/11, Al’Qaeda focused on America’s indifference concerning Palestinian victims in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, America’s indifference concerning the many dead (mainly children) in Iraq as a result of the UN boycott, and America’s military presence in the Middle East.[6] On October 7, 2001 Osama bin Laden argued that America was tasting a ‘copy’ of what the Islamic people already tasted before.[7] However, 9/11 was not only a ‘punishment’ of Western attitudes towards Islam or a ‘punishment’ of Western indifference, it was also a ‘punishment’ of an (imagined) dominant anti-Islamic ideology. 9/11 wanted to punish the alleged ‘dirty Christian mind’ of ‘the indifferent West’.

The spirit of revenge was set. Once this spirit haunts a society, nothing is left alone. The destabilization this specter brings is extreme. 9/11 was the beginning of a duality between terror and anti-terror as two sides of the cycle of vengeance that took seize of political ideology, religion and huge parts of organized society. Although the ‘war on terror’ that succeeded 9/11 may ideological and juridical be legitimate by emphasizing the (forward-looking) creation of a safe, democratic world, its direct legitimation is based on (backward-looking) revenge. Without 9/11 the ‘war on terror’ would have had different objectives.

In the context of 9/11, the term ‘preemptive strike’ reveils the influence of the specter’s logic. The attempt to justify preemptive strike in the US, shows how far the idea of ‘if we don’t strike, they will’, inscribed the war on terror into the endless cycle of violence. Preemptive violence has two sides. It receives its inspiration from a violent history on the one hand and it creates what it tries to prevent on the other. It shows a certain degree of indifference towards the victims, affirming the terrorist’s argumentation concerning the reasons for 9/11. 

Should 9/11 have been kept within a strictly juridical framework, preemptive strike would not have entered the vocabulary. In a juridical logic, punishment for 9/11 should only be exceeded to the perpetrators (who are all dead) in a fashion in which the punishment must be severe enough to fit the crime, must not exceed the crime in severity, and must be personal.[8] However, there cannot be any juridical retribution in the war on terror, especially not because the killing of thousands of civilians in ‘far-away’ countries cannot retribute the victims of 9/11.

I tentatively conclude that the war on terror has two components. First it is legitimated by revenge, because only revenge exceeds the original crime of violence.[9] The other component is the creation of a world without terrorist threat. This component can be doubted as naive because to my knowledge, creating a world without violent threat through violent action is unprecedented in history. The war on terror is inscribed into the web of violence and creates more violence to come. It is, however, within the specter’s realm.

Networks of violence

Revenge is not limited to an act that ‘quotes’ a former act. An act of revenge initiates a chain-reaction. Girard speaks about a ‘cycle of violence’, conserved through vengeance. This means that vengeance always repeats itself. If we are indifferent towards the various subjects and objects of revenge, it becomes possible to say that vengeance always breads vengeance as its pure effect. However, revenge does not go round in one circle alone. Revenge creates centrifugal circles that absorb whole systems, contexts, religions and ideas. It creates networks of vengeance that run from Northern Africa to Indonesia and from Russia to The Netherlands. The world seems to be swallowed by these networks.

9/11 was not the beginning of it. 9/11 became its centripetal locus for a day, immediately ‘breathing out’ into thousands of networks. As I already stated, 9/11 was meant as a ‘quote’ of the effects of what is called ‘American imperialism’.[10] It was ‘a copy’, according to bin Laden. ‘Copy’ indicates the exact meaning of revenge. 9/11 was, however, not a copy of acts done by Western powers to the population of the poor countries, as some Western intellectuals think. Moreover, it was a copy of acts done to Muslims, such as the 1991 invasion of Iraq[11] and the treatment of Palestinians. Hunger and AIDS in Africa are no topics in Al’Qaeda ideology. It is even a question how much bin Laden really cares for the Iraqi children he likes to use as a base for his vengeance. However, detecting indifference towards helpless victims who stay out of media-attention can fuel rage and anger. Creating a copy of these victims at the central heart of the indifferent world in front of all the camera’s not only copies the victims but also copies of indifference that affirms the reason why these victims in far-away places stay unattended.

After 9/11, the cycle of violence carried on with enormous dynamics. The question was how to ‘destroy’ terrorism without the chance of vengeance. This can only be done by killing everybody who could avenge somebody killed by the US and its allies. This problem became evident during the consideration to use weapons of mass-destruction just after 9/11. The willingness of some people to use these weapons against the Taliban shows how much they feared any response from the people they were about to attack.

In this context, sacrifice is not a real option because the two conflicting parties do not share the same rituals. This doesn’t mean that appearing tensions within society as a result of the specter are not dissolved through sacrificial practices, as I will show later on.

Another interesting development has to do with law and justice that have replaced the function of traditional, structural, ritual sacrifice within Western society, as Girard writes. But what happens if law and justice become haunted by the specter of vengeance? What happens if justice is not blind but counts the victims from one part of the planet differently compared with others?

The attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon preceded its quote. The attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan was inevitable.[12] The specter of vengeance already spread its wings. Thousands of networks became infected. Every single person can trace these networks, from 9/11 down to his or her own street. From here, I shall follow just one of those networks. This one leads to Indonesia. The bombardments of Afghanistan came to the knowledge of Imam Samudra through the Internet in Jakarta. After seeing children who’s heads were blown off by American bombs, Samudra decided to avenge the children. The role played by injured or dead children is remarkable in the logic of terrorists.[13] Samudra joined the Al Qaeda linked Jamaah Islamyiah and planned, together with other members of the group, the attack on two Balinese cafes.[14] From here I follow Samudra. But I am aware that this attack changed the lives of many people in South-East Asia and Australia, changing and creating networks shaped by fear, revenge and hope. One of these lines became clear to me during a visit to the world’s most isolated city: Perth, Western Australia, in July 2005. Although there has never been any terrorist attack on or in this city, or even in Australia, in every train one could find government pamphlets warning for terrorists, alerting the reader to inform the local government if he had seen ‘anything suspicious’. It was like there could be violence around every corner of the street. It was like the city was under attack of an invisible enemy. This was the specter of vengeance, destabilizing the community of an Australian city. I leave this line because steps towards and away from this pamphlet are missing in my knowledge.[15] I go back to Indonesia. When the Indonesian police was able to catch Imam Samudra and his friend Amrozi bin Nurhasyim (the ‘smiling bomber’[16] who was nota bene wearing a t-shirt from an American multinational[17]), they faced corporal punishment and were sentenced to death. The reading of the sentence caused another act on violence; the bombing of the Marriott-hotel in Jakarta, which, again, resulted in the death penalty for Achmad Mohammad Hasan en Iwan Darmawan.[18] I am not sure whether the death penalty these men face, influenced the attack on Jimbaran.[19] These men all called for vengeance during their trials.

I have followed just one line in the global network of terror. Other lines are heading towards other places: Madrid, Casablanca, Istanbul, London, Moscow, etc. Indonesia tried to hunt down members of Jamaah Islamyiah and used this hunt to intensify state control. This reveals another aspect of global terror: it destabilizes local communities. The centripetal dynamics of the cycle of vengeance touches other conflicts (political, social or religious) and shapes these conflicts to the new model of the war on terror. In Indonesia, the police burst into student campuses and used its anti-terror effort as an excuse. Communism was identified with terrorism to demonize (imaginative) political enemies.[20] Americans left the country. Street communication was swayed by a simplistic construct of ‘Western powers contra Islam’-duality. The social atmosphere became tense. Latent sympathy for Al’Qaeda’s cause transformed quickly into expressive sympathy for the Taliban and, more generally, for the Afghan (Muslim) people.[21] Bin-Laden’s portrait was on t-shirts and busses. A white skin represented aggressive American-like Christianity. It became identical with a blunt perspective on the human rights of people living outside the Western world. Thus, the cycle of vengeance absorbed existing sympathies, antipathies, political ideologies, social structures and global dualities. It gave direction to a mimetic rivalry between big parts of a diffuse society, resulting for example in the beating-up of a student from Manado because ‘he was from Manado’, thus ‘he was a Christian in favour of the Americans’. The lines of terror and anti-terror became more complex but also more revealing.

In the US, fear for terror was lift up high.[22] In her fascinating study on the origins of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt writes that under the banner of terror, nobody is safe because the law continually changes.[23] Networks of terror and anti-terror are an almost natural threat to law and justice. I agree with Jenny Edkins in her comment on Girard[24] when she writes that he leaves the sovereign power of the state that enforces the monopoly of vengeance through the establishment of juridical power, unexplained.[25] Where does the power of the state derive from? How does this power legitimate itself?[26]

The goal of terror is to absorb everything. Human rights can be abolished in the name of safety.[27] Law in the face of terror is weak. ‘Primitive’ practices like torture can be reinvented to assure the safety of the community. [28] The ‘law’ needs to be changed. In this way, the network of global terror terminates law and justice. In The Netherlands, the network seizes upon the immigration policy. Traditional and general fear for immigrants translates into fear concerning ‘the Muslim immigrant’ as a possible terrorist. Popular politicians of the so-called ‘new right’ movement using this fear to inaugurate the slogan of political dissatisfaction that ‘something has gone deeply wrong with our nation’, ‘we are a society of orphans’[29] and that ‘enough is enough’. These slogans are far from political reality but nevertheless appeal to a certain affection that lives amongst the people. It doesn’t matter what object this affection finds, what scapegoat it finds, as long as it finds one. After 9/11 this scapegoat is in The Netherlands most definitely ‘the’ Muslim.

Categorical thinking

The specter of vengeance rouses people to think in categories and identities of peoples that differ from themselves. The videotape, distributed in early May 2004 through the website of Muntada al-Ansar showed Nicolas Berg, a 26-year-old American from Philadelphia, beheaded by an Iraqi dependence of Al Qaeda. The beheading was a ‘revenge’ for Abu Ghraib. The videotape was titled: ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American’. ‘An American’ shows the total indifference of the specter of vengeance towards its victims. It kills a representation of a category (‘American’) without any respect for, or knowledge of the individual.

Thinking about whole groups of people in terms of categories and identities, is the specter’s condition. Without the imagined gap between Us and Them, the specter fades away. Distance grants it its existence. Categorizing ‘Them’ means that people appear deindividualized and become representatives of certain dangerous and threatening identities or categories. This is why I have second thoughts with Paul Gilbert’s definition of revenge. According to Gilbert, revenge is “retaliation designed to subject another to a similar humiliation as that which he has imposed on one or, perhaps preferably, a worse shame”.[30] The problem with Gilbert’s definition is that he assumes that the victim of the act of vengeance is himself the actor of a former violence. This is only true for personal vengeance, but not for the spectral vengeance of 9/11. The victim of the act of revenge is more often someone who evokes a category that is acknowledged as an important element or quality defining a former actor of violence. Imam Samudra and his group believed they were killing ‘Americans and their allies’ on Bali, killing mainly Australian and Indonesian people.[31] The Americans believed they were attacking terrorists in Afghanistan, killing thousands of civilians. The Bush administration had to push Sadam Hussein, maybe the biggest dictator of his time, into the category of extremely dangerous, global ‘terrorism’ before Iraq could be attacked. Hussein was mainly dangerous for his own people, not for the US. Revenge is mostly focused on alleged representatives of a category ascribed to the former actors of violence. Revenge, in other words, exceeds the personal. The network of vengeance runs most effective if vengeance is impersonal and can make use of categories like ‘Americans’ in Indonesia, ‘Terrorists’ in the US, ‘Muslims’ in The Netherlands. If these categories run well, the specter of vengeance utilizes -what Judith Butler calls- ‘hate-speech’. Hate-speech is (mainly political) speech that uses categories without any explanation of these categories. It is speech without context. The categories are already ‘set’ in the minds of the people receiving the message. Hate-speech presupposes the forgetting of both subject and object in language. The meaning of hate-speech becomes speech itself and the effect of speech. It appeals to popular sentiment and thus leaves the categories it uses unexplained.[32] For example, the use of the word ‘Islam’ by popular right-wing politicians in the Netherlands appeals to popular fear and leaves unexplained what is really meant. ‘Islam’ became identical with ‘primitive’ ‘undeveloped’ ‘uncivilized’ and ‘violent’. ‘Islam’ became an aggressive foreign religion ready to seize power. It became the enemy within. Muslims were sketched as ‘goat-fuckers’.[33] Theo van Gogh, who entered this last word into the Dutch social realm and paid with his life, nevertheless repeatedly emphasized the difference between ‘Islam’ (which he hated) and ‘Muslims’.[34] In Van Gogh’s perspective Islam was a dangerous religion, initiated by a mad-man, terrorizing masses of people. It was not fear that motivated van Gogh, it was a classic radical (be it simple) enlightened perspective on the role of fundamental religion (Christian or Islamic) in contemporary society. However, the popular way he used the word ‘goat-fucker’ for Muslims without granting them a chance to comment, appealing to the so-called ‘healthy knowledge’ (gezonde verstand) of ‘the Dutch society’, revealed how close he was to what Butler calls ‘hate-speech’.

I would like to draw the following conclusion.  The specter of vengeance is not born. It does not have a beginning. 9/11 is not the beginning of the specter, although 9/11 made this specter somehow visible in the eye of Western media. The specter of vengeance is a specter of the past. It haunts the present and longs for the future. It can be invisible for hundreds of years to appear suddenly without clear sign of its coming. Nevertheless, this specter can be chased. Certain features do abode its coming. I have tried to discuss some of these features.

The first feature is the way the specter seizes upon existing problems, getting grip upon existing prejudices.

The second feature is its centrifugal power in which networks of fear are created. Within these networks the specter is totally indifferent towards its victims, as long as there are victims. Through these networks, the specter tries to copy itself. The specter’s indifference can be shown by its use of categorical language and its identification of whole groups of people in which the individual disappears. Nevertheless it is the individual who grants the specter its right to exist. Without legitimation the specter disappears. The specter appeals to some right, justice and retaliation to do what it does.

A third feature is analysed by Girard: the specter is not able to stop itself. It can only go around in circles of violence.

The end of vengeance runs parallel with what Arendt describes as the end of terror: total death. Acknowledging this, Girard describes sacrifice as an act of violence without the risk of revenge.[35] Although vengeance is not able to stop the cycle of violence; sacrifice however is. It can instill violence for a certain time, never abolishing the remembrance; the hiding place for the specter when it is chased.

The question raised by Girard’s analysis of vengeance and sacrifice is what function sacrifice has in the context of the specter that became visible in the West at 9/11?

II On Sacrifice

In the aftermath of 9/11, the word ‘sacrifice’ was used over and over again. At the Internet, more than one million hits refer to this combination. Sacrifice was generally put into the romantic framework of the hero. “Firefighters, police officers, courageous airline passengers, military personnel, and the victims of 9/11 and their families” all made a sacrifice.[36] In the context of 9/11, ‘sacrifice’ refers to someone who died (being a hero or without being a hero) or who takes his life at risk in the national cause to defend freedom (generally without any object).[37] The sacrifices these people made, shed a ‘brilliant light’.  Sacrifices being made are ‘ultimate’[38] or ‘supreme’.[39] It results in the determination to win the war on terror. Through this determination, to win this war and (thus) to defend ‘our freedom’, sacrifice is ‘honoured’.[40] ‘Freedom’ becomes the magic word to justify the indiscussable value of ‘sacrifice’. ‘Freedom’ functions as a generally undefined but commonly accepted word that is worth defending in such a manner that killing is permitted and being killed can enter the national framework of sacrifice. For the sake of freedom, people are bringing sacrifices.[41] America brings a sacrifice by sending their sons and daughter to Afghanistan, Iraq and all those other places to fight a war on terror for the safety and long-lasting peace of the whole world.

I detect four striking elements in the sacrificial language used predominantly within the US after 9/11.

In the first place the victims of ‘the enemy’ have ‘made sacrifices’ by loosing their lives. This use of the term sacrifice is a bit awkward because it presupposes that a person who is put to death by an enemy becomes the sacrifice of the suffering party.

In the second place, putting ones life at risk for saving another is sacrificial.

In the third place, avenging the sacrifices by waging war and defending a certain national (‘our’) freedom is an act of sacrifice.

The fourth element consists out of a national sacrifice brought for the sake of freedom.

These four elements are four ways in which the word sacrifice is used after 9/11. The question is of course whether this use of the word sacrifice is just common or religion based? The least to say is that the word is used within ‘ritual acts of remembrance’ as I will show later. This use has certainly a base in Christian religion. The inconsistent and pretty diffuse use of the word sacrifice can be derived from a blunt Christian perspective on sacrifice. The Christian perspective on Jesus’ death contains the idea that Jesus gave his life so that ‘we’ could be saved through his blood. Although biblical evidence to support this position is extremely poor, it has become dominant within Christian churches. Jesus himself states in John 15:13 that nobody has greater love than he who ‘gives his life’ for his friends. The con-text, however, is not sacrificial but mimetic. In the context of 9/11 it sounds like: nobody has greater love than he who gave his life for our nation. This neglects and even contradicts Jesus’ rebellic order to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, to ‘love your enemy’ and to ‘forgive seven times seven’. In biblical terms, not sacrifice but rather the mimesis of Jesus through love is of constructive importance. Thus, although the use of the word ‘sacrifice’ after 9/11 derives from a Christian tradition, it is not supported by biblical evidence. The question remains: what function does this perspective on sacrifice contain?

I think the use of the word ‘sacrifice’ is meaningfull and revealing. It is generally used in a context of remembrance. This remembrance has taken up the form of a ritual. Shrines appeared in New York and people gathered to pray, debate and mourn. Remembering the victims was taken up by the government and put into the already existing framework of the war on terror. In the hands of the government, the victims became safrifices in its rush towards war and the thrive towards more state-control. This way, the victims became sacrifices, structuring and motivating the thirst for more sacrifices of people sharing features with the Al’Qeada terrorists. They had become sacrifices in a certain cause.[42]

Halal blood

How do Muslim fundamentalists interpret 9/11? Do they use sacrificial language? The specter of vengeance is obviously present in Muslim fundamentalism. 9/11 was also approved of by moderate Muslims (and even by people of others faiths) as a punishment for US foreign policies. When the Jakarta-based (Catholic) Tempo Magazine interviewed its well-educated readers on 9/11 and asked shortly after the event whether they could ‘understand’ why Al Qaeda attacked WTC and the Pentagon, 74% of its readers said ‘yes’. This shows the complexity of the specter and how it uses prejudices and categorical thinking to stay alive.

Although the specter of vengeance is per definition a two-sided blade, sacrificial language is generally more used at the ‘Western’ side. It is not possible to see the same sacrificial language we see on the Western side of the specter at work in Islam. This is mainly due to the fact that in Muslim religion, ‘sacrifice’ (qurban) does not have a human being as its object. A qurban is not human; it is an animal prepared for the offering during the great feast of idul adha.[43] Although in common language the word qurban can be used for victims of traffic accidents and wars alike, just like the word slachtoffer in Dutch, in religious perspective the word refers to an animal. The radical Islamic framework used to interpret 9/11 and many other atrocities linked to terrorist attacks is that of jihad and martyrdom. Although commonly within the Muslim world, jihad refers to the believer who obtains perfection, sometimes it refers to the struggle to defend Islam when it is attacked with the objective to destroy Islam.[44]

A Muslim attacking a Western target is not sacrificing his life, but rather dies as a martyr within the cause to establish sharia. The perpetrators of terrorist attacks are called mudjuahidin, combatants.

Although sharia is often mentioned (as the Islamic version of a long lasting peace through the implementation of religious laws), fundamentalist language shows more empathy with the specter of vengeance. The act of killing Westerners is given a place in the religion of the perpetrators. In Jakarta, the alleged leader of the Jamaah Islamyiah, Abu Bakhar Ba’ashir stated (according to witnesses) that the blood of westerners is halal and so are their belongings. This grants religious permission to kill westerners and to steal from them.[45] There is no differentiation whatsoever between Westerners. If there is an attack, like the two on Bali (Kuta and Jimbaran) or the two in Jakarta (Mariott Hotel, The Australian Embassy in Kuningan) also the Muslims left dead (almost 70 in my count) are not even grieved for by the attackers. They died in the cause to kill Westerners. They are not remembered. They are accidental victims. Their death is not sacrificial. They did not bring a sacrifice to establish sharia.

There exists an interesting correspondence between members of Al’Qaeda like Ayman al-Zawahiri, Azmiraay al-Maarek and Osama bin-Laden concerning several hot issues, including the victims of 9/11. This correspondence and some documents, found accidentally on the hard disk of an IBM-computer in Afghanistan by journalist Alan Cullison, contains an unfinished ideological legitimation for the random killing of civilians during the 9/11 attacks.[46] Not without reason, the question within the fundamentalist network was raised concerning the killing of innocent people. The document was written by Ramzi bin al-Shibh. He writes: “...the sanctity of women, children, and the elderly is not absolute”.[47] The legitimation to kill ‘innocent’ people is to get rid of their innocence. Within the logic of the specter of vengeance this is easily done to reduce people to categories. In this particular case they are ‘infidels’, belonging to a country that has slaughtered millions of innocent people in Iraq. In a democracy, the logic goes, everybody is responsible. Interestingly, bin al-Shibh says that in killing Americans, Muslim combatants (mudjahidin) must not exceed four million people or render ten million homeless because according to Al Qaeda’s count this is the amount of Iraqi victims. This is all halal (permittable) according to sharia, bin al-Shibh writes. Thus, no sacrificial language but rather the categorical interpretation of the past as blueprint for a future that makes room for vengeance is dominant in this fundamentalist perspective. This specter seizes upon religious language.

It is of course striking to see how bin Laden on the one hand uses children to legitimate his attack on the West, on the other hand avenges these children by permitting the killing of even more children.[48] The specter of vengeance does not see children; it only sees representatives of imagined categories that need to be attacked.

Triggering violence

The question remains what kind of sacrifice will be chosen to pacify the community? “The purpose of sacrifice”, as Girard states, is “to restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric”.[49] However, as Girard also says, in our world, ritual sacrifice does not have the function it use to have in distant times. Violence remains the same but does not find a religious turning point. The appetite for violence is present as always. In Girard’s anthropology, violence describes the human condition. When the true object of anger remains untouchable, the appetite for violence increases. During the ‘Reformasi’-period in Indonesia (1998-) that started when dictator Suharto had to step down (or: to ‘step aside’ according to his own perspective) because of continuing student-protests, almost 2.400 Chinese civilians were killed, sometimes after extreme humiliation, rape and torture. Although these Chinese had nothing to do with the rising fuel prices the students were protesting against, they were bearing the marks of the substitute victim: investment, well-being and a different colour. After 1998, almost 2.000 petty criminals were killed in the streets of Jakarta alone. These killings of mainly poor people were generally sadistic outbursts by ‘the people from the neighbourhood’. It was called ‘street-justice’ (peradilan jalanan). These criminals (maling-maling) became willing victims of a frustrated nation that had discarded the quasi-totalitarian law of the Suharto-regime.[50]

Although Indonesia has plenty of rituals, ranging from ancient Hindu, Buddhist and ‘primal religion’ rituals to modern Islamic rituals, these were insufficient to quench the thirst for violence during the Reformasi-period. However, both ‘the people’ and the police approved of these killings. They were done in the presence of public. These killings were social events. This gives them a strongly ritualistic character.

After the first Bali-bombing, the inhabitants of the Hindu-island performed rituals to restore peace and harmony on the islands of the Gods. These rituals were of great importance not only for the Balinese inhabitants but also for economic confidence concerning the tourist-industry. Parrallel to these rituals, Balinese Muslims were prosecuted and humiliated. Although the rituals were necessary according to Hindu belief, they did not prevent the specter of vengeance to set itself into the memory of the Hindu-population.

In The Netherlands things are different. Although the thirst for violence is not different from the Indonesian situation, the political and economic conditions are. Girard is putting more stress on culture and religion as he states in 1999 that ‘[b]ecause of Jewish and Christian influence scapegoat phenomena no longer occur in our time except in a shameful, furtive, and clandestine manner”.[51] However, the influence of economic prosperity in a country like The Netherlands cannot be underestimated. The Netherlands is facing a mild form of the victim mechanism. This form reveals itself mainly in newspapers and magazines, in talk shows on TV and in documentaries. A ‘wave of opinion’ was triggered by bored Moroccan youth living in Amsterdam suburbs.[52] These opinions combined criminality with immigration, immigration with Islam, Islam with ‘primitive thinking’, and this primitive thinking was contradicted with an (imaginary) superior Western, enlightened, liberal, post-religious culture. In Elsevier, a leading Dutch magazine, suggestive photo’s about typically dressed Muslims were shown this May, stating that ‘this’ is ‘the contemporary situation on Dutch streets’. Without even referring to a question like ‘why do people immigrate’ or to global situations, journalist Syp Wynia  enumerates twelve reasons why ‘more immigration to the Netherlands’ is undesirable, among them mainly financial reasons, but also reasons concerning social cohesion, criminality and innovation.[53] The destabilization of the nation is due to the poor, underdeveloped, unfortunate immigrant, pictured like classic beard-wearing Muslim men or like veiled Muslim women in dirty Dutch streets. These streets, the pictures seem to say, be ‘our streets’. Now they have become dirty because of its new inhabitants. This subtle victimization of a population that do not enter public debate, do not lead directly to sacrificial practices. Immigrants are not killed in the Netherlands. Up till now, two leading figures from the new right were killed: Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. Dutch society, in my opinion, is still ‘tolerant’. However, new items like ‘loyalty to the nation’ has become politicized, from time to time laws are under fire and right-wing liberals are celebrated as national heroes. The fact that Fortuyn was murdered by a left-wing animal activist and van Gogh was killed by a radical Muslim, grants ‘new right’ its right to speak.

III. On The Death of Christ

Is it possible to develop a perspective on vengeance and sacrifice from a Christological point of view? Girard shows how much Christ’s death reveals, rather than establishes, the scapegoat-mechanism leading to the crucifixion. Is it possible to take Girard a bit further and state that Christ’s death not only reveals the mimetic subject as a violent subject but also reflects the impossibility of this subject’s violence through the objective death of its victim? This perspective not only contains an epistemology of the scapegoat-mechanism but also appeals to the responsibility of the subject. I would like to take this perspective even a second step further and re-enter it into a more doctrinal framework: the death of Christ does not show the scapegoat-mechanism as a general social truth, but rather shows my individual role into this mechanism as an actor of mimetic rivalry. To put it blunt: Christ’s death individualizes my responsibility for my victim. Generally, this victim is not ‘objective’, but becomes objective (be it: ‘textual objective’) in Christ’s death. The epistemology of this individualization is doctrinal within Christian theology. Thus, I will work on a Christian response towards 9/11, the specter of vengeance and the culturally felt need for sacrifice.

I will develop this perspective by using the insights of both Girard and the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). Although Girard thinks as an anthropologist and Barth thinks as a leader of a Christian community, both thinkers have a lot in common concerning the interpretation of the crucifixion. They both ‘break’ (for Barth up to a certain degree) with the senseless bloody Christian tradition of Christ’s sacrifice as a retribution for human sin or as a satisfaction for a bloodthirsty and angry God.[54]

Girard

First, let me have a look at Girard. Girard starts with general anthropology and reasons towards the single victim. In his perspective, the death of Christ on the cross reveals the scapegoat mechanism. Surrounding the story of Jesus’ death in the bible are the elements of persecution and mimetic rivalry. The crowds demanding Jesus’ death are the Gospel’s comment on the mimetic behaviour of crowds.[55] Jesus is killed by unanimous consent. The crowds, hailing him as a king a few days before, now grant his killing. The unification of Roman and Jewish powers through Jesus’ death is symbolized in the Gospel as the surprising friendship between Pilate and Herod. Jesus’ death is “first and foremost a decision of the crowd, one that identifies the crucifixion not so much with a ritual sacrifice but (...) with the process that (... is) at the basis of all rituals and all religious phenomena.”[56] It is “the most revealing indication of mankind’s radical incapability to understand its own violence”.[57] How does Jesus’ death reveal this noetic blindness?

In the first place, Girard’s emphasis is on the absolute non-sacrificial meaning of Jesus’ death. This means that the cycle of violence, conserved through sacrifice, comes to an abrupt end. Secondly, the subject of violence becomes problematic throughout the Gospels. Violence always seems to be able to conceal the truth about itself.[58] However, Christ’s death shows a violent human subject, unable to be self-reflective. The cross shows the mimetic convergence of all against one, revealing the violent, contagious mechanism that unites people towards a single victim. This mechanism is so strong that people do not even see the innocence of their victims. Because this mechanism is imbedded in myth, the victim is always ‘mythically’ guilty. The ritual that demands its death is always ‘mythically’ just. The people uniting in the killing, restoring the peace within their community do always have their ‘mythical’ objectivity that claims the victim guilty and silences every protest.

It is interesting to see that Girard’s perspective on the cross in not only deductive, starting from general anthropology reasoning to the crucifixion of a single victim, but also inductive, starting from the crucifixion of Jesus, reasoning towards all victims of the principalities and powers of our world.[59] The cross is the breaking point in human history. It is centripetal and centrifugal at the same time, binding all principalities and powers to the cross.

Although Girard emphasizes the non-sacrificial death of Jesus[60], in an interview with James Williams, he changes his perspective on Jesus’ death and turns to more traditional theological language. He states, “Jesus never yields an inch to mimetic pressure”, and continues: “I now accept calling this ‘sacrifice’ in a special sense. Because one person did it, God the father pardons all, in effect. I have avoided the word ‘scapegoat’ for Jesus, but now I agree with Raymund Schwager that he is scapegoat for all – except now in reverse fashion, for theologically considered the initiative comes from God rather than simply from the human beings with their scapegoat mechanism.” In this phrase, Girard comes incredibly close to Karl Barth. I will shift to Barth’s theology to explore not only the possibility to compare but also and most of all to see a certain addition Barth’s theology has for studying Girard. The possibility to bring both together although they stem from a very different tradition and time[61] is given because of the role of God in Girard’s ‘reverse’ perspective. Whereas Girard uses to put emphasis on the role played by the masses, this new emphasis on God’s role in Jesus’ crucifixion is striking.

Barth

Barth wrote about the death of Christ as the objective universal token of what people do and think. He does not mention the scapegoat-mechanism and I think he was pretty oblivious concerning this mechanism. Barth’s negative perception of Humanity was focused on violence unable to stop itself. Human thinking and acting cannot be without this violence. Every thinking and acting is a grasping of its object: the other, the self or God. Every human ‘willing’ and ‘wanting’ thinks in categories that puts people opposite, next to or above each other. This disposition of objects is violent in definition. But humankind cannot do without it. It is unable not to think and unable not to act. Barth’s perception of humankind, developed to the background of World War I, is extremely negative. ‘We are the dead’, he says in 1914.[62]

Barth stresses the death and resurrection of Christ as the self-revelation of God. The importance of the initiative of God in Christ is twofold. If Jesus had been only the victim of human aggression, his death would have been ‘normal’ or ‘banal’. Daily, humankind crucifies its victims without moral disgust. The death of Jesus would have entered human history as just another nameless victim. He would have been forgotten just like millions of other victims. If the reason of Jesus’ death had been solemnly human, his death would have remained without meaning. Human epistemology is not able to see through its own violent mechanism that determines its thinking and acting. Jesus’ death would have been senseless, only receiving ‘sense’ in the context of myth. The fact that Jesus’ death was not only human initiative but also and primarily God’s initiative means that it was God who gave himself in Christ. God’s ‘giving’ contrasts human ‘taking’. Because he gave himself, this violent human taking comes to the fore. However, God’s giving is also His merciful giving. This untraceable and incomprehensable grace contains the forgiveness. Forgiveness makes any addition to the cross impossible. It means that vengeance cannot take place. Vengeance appears to be stopped at the cross, most strikingly exclaimed by Jesus words: ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing’. The impossibility to avenge his death because of his grace is the second implication of God’s initiative of Christ’s death. Christ’s death breaks with common history as the history of vengeance.

One of the most striking and interesting features of Barth’s theology is his emphasis on the particularity of the Christ-event. Christ is the ab-solute irreducible particularity since he is not the result of human history. His narrative is not inscribed into general violent vengeance. Because of this, he reveals what is at stake in human history: the effect of vengeance that repeats itself over and over again. This particularity is not non-communicative or incommensurable. It is rather the particularity that surrounds and reveals general history.[63] How people treat each other is shown in how they deal with the ‘free power’ of Jesus[64], how they deal with what ‘irritates’ them.[65] As a particularity that cannot be integrated by history, the appearance of Christ arouses murderous resistance. Christ abides with this resistance that become evident in his death. Subjectively taking up history in his own body, he reflects history. In doing so, he does not only ‘show’ human violence, but also re-flects it. The murderous thrive to kill the irritating other comes back to the perpetrator: you are the killer, this is you, it is your responsibility, it is the result of what you are and, the most confronting of all, this dead man is you! [66] This means that the cross is the object of my aggression, it is the nature of my being and it is me. The cross is my individual drama that is shown to me from the outside. In Christ I become my own object.[67] This can only be true if the object of my aggression stays subject throughout. Because of this, the cross is not only my result, but is God who gives himself to me and undergoes the logic of my world. Because it is God’s initiative, the object of my aggression stays subjective. Thus, he forgives the perpetrator. In doing so, he breaks with the history of vengeance. The specter flees. No quote is possible. No death to be avenged.

The particularity of this event is thought-provoking. Jesus, Barth states, is ‘the individual’ who contradicts the powers of the world. His particular, independent presence is a discontinuity within history. However, this free particularity surrounds general history through individualizing it. Now, speaking about history is only possible through the cross and resurrection of God-in-Jesus. This means that no history is ‘general’ and no history is ‘common’. The effect of vengeance can only be shown through emphasizing the individual victim, telling her or his narrative, be it the subject or the object of violence. The cross challenges to think inductive from the reality of the particular up till the imaginative principalities and powers of the world. It shows the reality of suffering and dying.[68]

Because this event is God’s initiative, the particularity of Christ particularizes every human being through a positive mimetic process. The human being is not able to repeat or avenge the death of Christ. He stands at the other side of the cross: the resurrection. Although in ‘following Jesus’, the cross is permanently in front of him as the consequence of human acting and thinking, he nevertheless has no excuse whatsoever to dwell in this now objective history of vengeance. Another reality is apparent. In this reality, the human subject constantly recognizes himself in the crucified; constantly, the Crucified is present in his acting and thinking about... The crucifixion is the crucifixion of ‘my’ acting and thinking. It is the end of sacrifice that takes the other into the process of victimization. Sacrifice has become reflective. Sacrifice comes back to the actor. The spectacle of the cross is ‘my’ spectacle, non-transferable to others. I have become my own victim. The mimetic process develops through realizing my role in the crucifixion, taking up responsibility for that and in doing so, taking up responsibility for the suffering other. Taking up this responsibility can only be done through the positive mimetic process of forgiveness as narrated by the Gospels in the Jesus-story.

In my perspective, this responsibility goes extremely far. How far this goes is very well illustrated in Derrida’s work on Genesis 22. In Donner la Mort, Derrida writes an interesting text about the impossibility not to sacrifice. Sacrifice, as he understands it, is always the other side of a decision. He takes the famous text of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac as an example. In this text, Derrida argues, Abraham is forced to sacrifice either his son or his God. Every decision leads to the sacrifice of the other. He has to choose between his love for God and his love for Isaac. Whatever decision he makes, it is the wrong one. Taking the narrative of Genesis 22 as a blueprint, Derrida shows how a decision always sacrifices the other side.[69] Because I spend time to write this paper, I am unable to play with my children: I sacrifice my children in order to write.[70] But this is just a simple illustration. The decision to support national economy sacrifices millions of people at the other side of the global spectrum. Food and medicine enough, but the decision to run a ‘healthy national’ economy implicitly sacrifices the lives of an uncountable amount of people. Derrida calls this a ‘sacrificial war’.[71] This sacrifice stays out of the global picture. It is used by Osama bin Laden to attack ‘America’. However, bin-Laden entered it into the logic of vengeance. The results are disastrously quoting what they claim to avenge.

Conclusions

Girard and Barth are offering a different, be it rebellic, way out of the specter of vengeance without neglecting how strong this specter haunts human history. Nevertheless they are denying this specter any legitimacy. It is what it is: a specter. In Barth’s understanding this specter becomes untrue only in the total light of Christ’s death and resurrection. The process to demythologize this specter starts from this particular point of view. The cycli of the specter is broken once it is reduced dramatically untill the breakpoint in history where Jesus bears and shows the consequences of this specter out of unconditional love.

Barth’s only way out of the specter’s logic is his emphasis on the revelation of the wholly other God in Jesus Christ. The Christ-event can only have a meaning that breaks with human violence if another logic is erected in this world through the objective suffering and dying other. In order to reveal human violence, God undergoes this violence in Christ. Although Barth may be emphasizing over and over again that Christ reveals the logic and future of forgiveness and grace, he nevertheless cannot go further than the cross. Speaking about God’s initiative in Christ is inscribed in human history and therefore in the circle of violence. The only possible think to do is to refer to the Crucified as permanent object om my responsibility towards all those other perpetrators and victims imprisoned by the imaginaned specter of vengeance.

According to Girard, the cross reveals the all-against-one mechanism. The cross is inscribed in human history, but its meaning is given by the context in which Jesus speaks about what he is about to accomplish. Girard realizes that the crucifixion cannot solemnly be the result of the violent masses. In order to become meaningfull the cross is also God’s initiative: his will to become a victim of the masses and thus revealing the violent contagion of mimetic desire. This brings Barth and Girard together, as I have shown.

Taking Girard’s and Barth’s theories into account, another conlusion can be made. This conclusion puts back the christological insights of both thinkers into the context of terrorism and the war on terror. Within this context, thinking and acting ‘through the cross’ means to develop an absolute, unconditional solidarity with the individual perpetrator and the individual victim of terror. The specter of vengeance can only develop through the stress on categorical thinking. Narratives of perpetrators and victims can abolish the imaginative distance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and create a human nearness that breaks with the specter’s logic. What really happened in the village of Waai can only be narrated. Through narrating, the specter becomes visible in his effect on personal prejudices, personal fear and personal pain. Relating this personal context to the specter demythologizes it.

A final point is to be made. Girard underlines the ‘good mimesis’ the Gospels are emphasizing. This mimesis leads to the end of vengeance through the acknowledgment of the final sacrifice: the sacrifice of sacrifice. This is however not an ontological or metaphysical truth. Such a truth would only trigger mimetic rivalry. Barth nor Girard can ‘proof’ anything. Their theories are ‘references’ to a cross that ‘shows’ and does not proof. It appeals to the reader in a challenge to choose the ‘way’ of grace and forgiveness. For only this ‘way’ can reveal the specter that haunts our present.