Excuse Me While I Single-Handedly Neutralize Al-Qaeda

Alan, in his book, points out that Al-Qaeda is almost impossible to stop.  This is, in large part, due to the way its message works, and the way the work gets carried out.  And he's absolutely right.

So, in the service of national defense, I propose the following, in order to effectively neutralize the movement.  Let's get Al-Qaeda to...

1)  Complexify the message

Right now, it's so simple, it can pass from one to the next, and be easily grasped by the uneducated, the young -- everyone.  This is dangerous, because it's highly contagious, and people on the street feel capable of enlisting others in the cause. 

2)  Construct a less "flat", more hierarchical structure

Currently, small, underground groups can move nimbly and autonomously, complicating efforts to thwart them.  A more regimented, stratified approach, where some members are left thinking, "I can't know enough to do anything" would bring the movement to a halt.

3)  Foster "expert" culture, and barriers to entry to the expert class

Promote the idea that the message is not only highly complex, but only some can truly understand it.  Construct extensive barriers to entry to the presumed expert class.  Promote idea that cells lacking a certified member of expert class, it is not equipped to be activated.

4) Focus on knowledge, rather than doing

Complexification and expert-class development will make cells spend immense amounts of time studying the work, even debating theories of the work, rather than doing it.  Better yet...

5) Equate STUDYING the work with the work itself

The cells are called to ACT, of course.  But if we can convince operatives that the work, itself, is in trying to understand the complexity of the work?  They'll be effectively neutered.  We need to get them to spend large amounts of time in study, gathering to study, believing they don't know enough, hiring new experts to teach them again and again, and attending teaching events.

They'll actually believe they're doing their work when they attend events held by experts.  This will render the cell, and the whole movement, harmless!  Convince them that the most radicalized, militant among them are merely called to bring other non-activated members to the cell events.

6) Sabotage cell multiplication

VERY important!  Cells that operate under simple principles, with motivated operatives, devoted to multiplication?  Very, very dangerous, fast-growing, and pop-culture endangering.  We must stop this in its tracks, and this is done in multiple ways: 

A)  Foster egos and small-time celebrity.  By convincing operatives to set up individual fiefdoms, fewer autonomous cells will be activated.  Rather, the emphasis will be on building larger individual cells with numerous unactivated members.

B)  Make the basic structure highly difficult to replicate.  Al-Qaeda cells currently are, by necessity, simply-structured and easily replicated.  Propagate idea that for cells to begin, planning, experts and capital must be simultaneously accumulated.  Expert motivational speakers will be necessary, plus paid staff with highly specific training and talents.  Operatives will see massively "successful" large cells, and attempt to duplicate them, with very limited success because of the huge inputs required.  This will greatly inhibit growth.

C)  Convince philosophically-aligned, but non-active, members to choose from among most entertaining, high quality, cells that offer services for them. Not only will this engender a harmless, internal focus, it will require IMMENSE amounts of resources and energy.

7) Make operatives really, really busy. 

Replace simple, animating mission with lengthy lists, charts, and programs for cell maintanance.  Convince them that this institutional maintenance is, actually, the mission, itself.

This will leave them will no actual time for conducting actual mission.

8)  Get Al-Qaeda to seek governmental approval. 

Offer tax incentives if necessary.  The larger cells, requiring large edifices, will also require tremendous amounts of capital.  This will also allow a measure of control, to threaten the cell's tax status, thereby threatening funds for internal programs, when necessary.

Better:  They'll consider actual operational cells that exist without this governmental approval to be, themselves, invalid!

9)  Co-opt Al-Qaeda with the larger culture. 

Once members are convinced that cell maintenance and study are actually their "mission", the rest of their lives can be harmlessly integrated with the culture at large.  They'll be indistinguishable from non-members, and, because of their new understanding of "mission", effectively equivalent to non-members.

10)  Convince members to wear Al-Qaeda t-shirts with funny sayings and stuff.

Mission accomplished. 

It'll work to thwart an evil message.  It even works with the good ones.

Comments

[Jeff]

Screwtape? Is that you?!

Careful Brant… "Touch not the Lord's stratified hierarchies."

[Sarah Rooney]

Brilliant! And sad at the same time. God help us!

[T]

I think you ought to have this under a few more categories, namely, "Dep't of Things You Saw Coming", "Modest Proposals", "Modest Proposals, etc." and "Things Someone Will Forward to Homeland Security", and possibly a new one, like, "Maybe if I say it this way, you people who disagree with me will start to see I'm completely right."

[jared]

wow! nicely put. i agree with T. this should be under the "maybe if i say it this way, you people who disagree with me will start to see i'm completely right" category. enjoy your posts. keep it up.

[RevJeff]

And "DEATH TO THE INFIDELS!"

[Nathanael]

tell me again why you don't go to church anymore...

[euphrony]

Brant, why do I suspect you're not really talking about Al-Qaeda at all in this post? Just a feeling . . .

By the way, my next door neighbor works for Homeland Security. I'll print a copy of this and give it to him tonight.

[andy]

Thanks Brant,
I am relieved people reading this saw the point.

[MamasBoy]

Many of these ideas are fantastic. Thanks for putting them together! I really mean that. I just have a few to add myself. There are lots of very effective methods for neutralizing Al-Qaeda. The more tools we have in our tool box, the better off we are.

1) Convince Al-Qaeda to disband their council that coordinates training and helps set up camps for training jihadis and smuggling weapons. After this is done, convince them that the jihadi methods which the last generation of camp instructors taught are of little value. They will be much less effective if they are not able to train together and have to learn from scratch how to build an effective bomb, avoid government detection, make fake ID's, etc.

2) Foster disputes between the numerous cells. I would suggest flaming the debate between wahhabis which currently seem dominate Al-Qaeda and other forms of Sunni Islam. You can almost forget about promoting Shiite or Suffi Islam. This is a Sunni organization, so focus primarily on internal Sunni debates. Given that Wahhabism is such an extreme form of Sunni Islam to start with, I'm sure you could find lots of areas of dispute.

3) After they achieve some measure of success, the cat is out of the bag. You can only do so much and it is much more enjoyable to focus on your own family than stopping this group. With that in mind, relax and watch them fall apart trying to actually keep a culture together. If you haven't noticed, its no small feat. My suspicion is that they would soon start arguing with each other and lose their focus on destroying western culture. It is one thing for a radical group to multiply when their beliefs are held by only a small committed minority and there is dissatisfaction with the status quo among the masses. It is another thing to hold a culture together once a group achieves a following and starts to be held responsible for failures of the status quo. Focus on fixing internal problems while pointing out the failures of Al-Qaeda in delivering on what they said they were going to do and people will be less likely to be taken in by their radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam.

4) Once cell multiplication slows (for whatever reason), start debates about why. Convince certain charismatic people within Al-Qaeda that their own ideals are right and that the cell associations of years past have lost their zeal and have been coopted by Western culture (or Shia Islam if that won't do). Promote new cell multiplication ideas and ignore the old ones. Have these people start new groups whose growth is primarily based on stealing members from the older Al-Qaeda cell associations. Convince the new groups that this type of growth is the same as converting infidels.

5) To ease their consciences over this splintering, convince them that these new methods are really what Osama and company would have done if they were in their shoes. Note: Try to document very little about the origins of Al-Qaeda (convince Osama to not write anything himself and convince his followers to rely primarily on the oral transmission of knowledge to avoid police detection). Then after a generation or so has passed, say that everything not written by people who had met Osama in person is of little value in understanding the founding principles of Al-Qaeda. In this vaccuum, you can promote almost any idea as being what Osama would have done and get away with it. Most importantly, the groups will be so splintered and fractured about what the rule of Islam actually looks like in practice that it will never be achieved.

6) Convince another group of people that things must always remain static and that no adjustment of the methods is allowed or else it will be a violation of the goals of Jihad. If the methods are not allowed to adjust to the changing tactics of the police, then it will be easier to discover attacks before they occur.

I could go on, but I have to get back to work. Once again, thanks for the ideas. I look forward to hearing what other people have to say.

MB

[lorinda]

Ditto what Sarah said. Brilliant.

[Shawn Bashor]

You mean you weren't talking about Al-Qaeda?

[Geoff]

It kills me to see the parts of the machine that I've been such a big part of. I've bought these principles, and sold them on. Crap.

[Melquiades]

Christians should operate more like al Qaeda... this is so subversively brilliant. I love it!

[Fay(ola)]

Hilarious, especially after reading this a few minutes before.

[Cherie]

I understand the points you are making, and I agree with most of them. However, I think numbers 4 & 5 imply that studying is a frivolous pursuit. In fact, it is ignorance of the Bible among Christians (!) that leads to the elevation "experts" (and most of your other points).

[Dave Haupert]

This was brilliant Brant! Truly brilliant. How did it come out of you is all I'm sayin'?

;)

[Brant]

Thanks for the props -- I appreciate the input, too, on this stuff.

Cherie -- The churches I've grown up in sure didn't think study was frivolous. They made an idol out of it. In fact, were I to say, "Hey, you know what? You are complete in knowledge. You know what you need to know. Now do it." -- they would've thought me a heretic.

...but Paul actually said that, to a church that had just been planted. "You are complete in knowledge." Knowledge is WONDERFUL, but we can make a idol out of anything, and a distraction out of anything.

The churches I've been in know a LOT about the Bible. The problem tends to be the love issue. They spend far more time listening to sermons, reading Christian books, listening to radio sermons, getting together for Bible studies, planning Bible Schools, Sunday School Bible studies, etc, than they do loving their neighbors.

The Kingdom can be understood by uneducated peasants, children, the illiterate. It's not as complex as we make it. We're supposed to put it in action.

Great things can become idols, and the fact that Bible study has become an idol in some contexts is nicely-exhibited by the fact that some deny that it can be made an idol, as if it's the end of our existence. But the highest duty of man is not to study the Bible. Bible-knowledge is not the big picture, and should not be confused with our mission. It is a lamp for the path, it is not the path itself.

I don't mean to imply that studying the Bible is frivolity. But it's not why we're here, either.

[shaungroves]

They're gonna need their own media complex as well, preferably pumping out messages that promote navel-gazing with a focus on what Allah/Deity-of-your-choice can do to make their lives work better.

[Brian Mueller]

Mama's Boy, you make it sound as though, with your 5th point, you think the idea of Biblical canon is stupid and that because of canon Christians aren't living the way they ought to.
Am I completely misreading you? Because the alternative to canon is to accept anything claiming to be written at the time of Jesus (as many of the non-canonical "gospels" claim to be but really aren't), which basically gives us so many pictures of Jesus we can't know what or who to believe.
Again, sorry if I'm debating a position you didn't mean to take or didn't take at all, but I hope you aren't saying the Bible we have is an obstacle to doing God's will.

[MamasBoy]

Brian,

Getting off of Al-Qaeda for a bit, I'm certainly don't think a canon is bad. I think it is essential. That said, the NT canon wasn't set until the late 4th century and nobody before the mid 4th century had the same NT canon as we do today. It's important to understand the origins of the canon and the way the church functioned before it was set if we are to develop a sound theology based on books it contains.

MB

[Cherie]

Brant, I'm not saying that the point of Bible study is to gain knowledge. Rather, the goal is to impress the words of God in our hearts and minds for use by/through the Holy Spirit.

If God didn't mean for us to know what is in his word, why did he write it? Why did he promise to preserve it?

Clearly, Bible study is not an end in and of itself. There are unbelievers who devote their lives to the study of the Bible. And, I'm sure you are correct that there are plenty of church leaders who idolize Bible knowledge.

However, it has been my observation that the average Joe/Jane Shmoe in the pew is mostly ignorant of the Bible (and contentedly so). The early church devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. We may say that we do the same, but reality is a different matter.

In my church, we spend a lot of time on things other than true Bible study. We don't study the Bible itself very much. We study books about the Bible or books about "issues" from a "Christian perspective" (with some verses sprinkled in the margins). Perhaps my church is outside the norm for an evangelical church, but I doubt it.

I don't equate Bible study with true religion. James is pretty clear about what God considers acceptable. Rather, study of God's word is the catalyst that enables us to be the salt and light of the world.

So, basically, I think we're both right. Most American Christians are neglectful in their pursuit of God through learning the truth in his word and are neglectful in loving others.

[Cherie]

Oh, and by the way, in my earlier post it should read: elevation OF "experts"

[Justin Laster]

I see a giant metaphor right in front my face for some reason.

[Brant]

Cherie, I now believe that devoting one's self to someone's teaching means something different than studying it, unless the original teacher was purely academic.

Jesus was not academic. The apostles were not academic. There is a tremendous emphasis in Jesus's own teaching on doing. After a short speech, he winds up saying that a man who doesn't DO these things is like one who builds his house on the sand, etc.

Jesus taught us how to live. To be devoted to his teaching means to do what he says. The message itself is not so complex that it must be studied ad infinitum. Churches have made it tantamount to doing. I know scores of people who think they're Christian duty is to attend teaching events and read books. This is a good thing made substitute, distraction, and deadly for true multiplication. Maybe this is why Paul said, "You know enough now..." Speaking biographically, I regert that's not part of the Bible the churches I've been in have emphasized.

[Sarah Rooney]

That's interesting. It's true that our cultural framework (or worldview) determines how we interpret what it means to devote yourself to someone's teaching. I've often wondered how we in the west got to this point where our expression of church (in the mainstream) is almost the same as what I found in university. It's a Greek system of education: a passive audience, with one orator at the front on the stage. There's no relationship in that, no dialogue. Hebrew education (and worldview) was much different. It was relational, encompassed dialogue, and included practice of what was being shown/taught (Jesus modeled what to do to bring the kingdom into a situation, then sent out the disciples to do the same).