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| The Islamic martyr gives his life and blood for Allah. Soldiers of the First World War gave their lives and blood for entities or gods called “Russia,” “Germany,” “France” “Romania,” “Italy,” “Turkey”—and “the British Empire.” Death in the name of a sacred object defines "history." One may study most historical episodes by posing the following question: what was the nature of the sacred object that human beings were dying and killing for at that particular moment in time? The object is fungible, but the mechanism is the same: Dying confers reality upon the sacred object. That which we die for is true. |
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| British Prime Minister David Lloyd George observed that during the First World War every nation was “profligate of its manpower and conducted the war as if there were no limit to the number of men fit to be thrown into the furnace to feed the flames of war.” The war was a perpetual, driving force “shoving warm human hearts and bodies by the millions into the furnace.”
P. H. Pearse—founder of the Irish Revolutionary movement—was thrilled by the carnage of the First World War: The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this—the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country. Lives "given gladly for love of country." Nothing to do with " male aggression," on the contrary the First World War was a religious or spiritual quest. The purpose of the war was to offer "homage" to one's country by warming battlefields with red blood. The purpose of the First World War was to produce massive numbers of casualties in the name of glorifying nations. Each nation proved its metal by sending young men to be slaughtered. The “greatness" of the nation was measured in terms of the number of its soldiers who were slaughtered. An Islamic merchant speaking to a European sociologist provided a rationale for violence occurring in the Middle-East: “The blood shed by the Iranian martyrs Is like the water of an irrigational canal which gives life to the crops. From it the religion will grow.” Moslems die for Allah, Westerners for countries. What is the difference between the Islamic suicide bomber and the soldiers of the First World War who were slaughtered endlessly when they ran into machine-gun fire and artillery shells? (2) Islamic leaders, for the most part, asked their men to die one-by-one. Generals of the First World War sent their men to be slaughtered en mass. (3) Far more men died during four years of the First World War than Islamic suicide bombers have died in the past one-hundred years. Far, far more men. The Islamic leaders and martyrs, whatever one may think of their suicidal project, were conscious of what they were doing. Westerners, who pride themselves on "rationality," were unconscious of what they were doing. Richard Koenigsberg __________________________________________________________________________________________________ White, Matthew — First World War Casualties Source: Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century.  |