For jihadist, read anarchist

BOMBS, beards and backpacks: these are the distinguishing marks, at least in the popular imagination, of the terror-mongers who either incite or carry out the explosions that periodically rock the cities of the western world. A century or so ago it was not so different: bombs, beards and fizzing fuses. The worries generated by the two waves of terror, the responses to them and some of their other characteristics are also similar. The spasm of anarchist violence that was at its most convulsive in the 1880s and 1890s was felt, if indirectly, in every continent. It claimed hundreds of lives, including those of several heads of government, aroused widespread fear and prompted quantities of new laws and restrictions. But it passed. Jihadism is certainly not a lineal descendant of anarchism: far from it. Even so, the parallels between the anarchist bombings of the 19th century and the Islamist ones of today may be instructive.

Islamists, or at least those of the Osama bin Laden stripe, have several aims. Some—such as the desire “to regain Palestine”, to avenge the killing of “our nation's sons” and to expel all “infidel armies” from “the land of Muhammad”—could be those of any conventional national-liberation movement. Others are more millenarian: to bring everyone to Islam, which, says Mr bin Laden, “is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and persecuted.” All this will come to pass once everyone is living in an Islamic state, a caliphate governed by sharia law. Hence “the martyrdom operations against the enemy” and the promise of paradise for those who carry them out.

Anarchists have always believed in the antithesis of a Muslim state. They want a world without rule. Their first great theoretician, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, wanted to abolish centralised government altogether. This, though, would not bring the chaos with which the word anarchy is often considered synonymous. On the contrary, a sort of harmonious order would ensue, the state being replaced by a system of autonomous groups and communities, glued together by contract and mutual interest in place of laws. Justice, argued this essentially non-violent man, was the “central star” governing society

What prompts the leap from idealistic thought to violent action is largely a matter for conjecture. Every religion and almost every philosophy has drawn adherents ready to shed blood, their own included, and in the face of tyranny, poverty and exploitation, a willingness to resort to force is not hard to understand. Both anarchism and jihadism, though, have incorporated bloodshed into their ideologies, or at least some of their zealots have. And both have been ready to justify the killing not just of soldiers, policemen and other agents of the state, but also of civilians.

Why it is so hard for Arabs to act together to solve the region's manifold problems

SUSPICION of America runs deep in the Arab world. At a Cairo dinner party , a sophisticated Egyptian businessman asks why there is so much noise about the humanitarian crisis in western Sudan. “What is it America wants from Darfur? Is there oil there? Uranium?” On the al-Jazeera satellite TV channel, the Arab world's most popular, an Iraqi commentator suggests that America was behind last week's bombings of Iraqi churches “because they want to taint the noble Iraqi resistance with the crime and create chaos to continue the occupation.”
Whether such views are paranoid or, perhaps, cynically savvy, they carry influence. Many Arab governments would sincerely like to help heal festering regional sores such as the mayhem in Iraq and the misery in Palestine and Darfur. Not only would this reduce the risk of infection, it would also improve the strained relations with the superpower. But popular distrust of western, and particularly American, motives keeps getting in the way.

The Arab response to the Darfur crisis has been similarly fork-tongued. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have dispatched planeloads of aid to the stricken region but also lobbied to ensure that the UN Security Council refrained from threatening sanctions against the Sudanese regime, which is largely responsible for creating the mess. Sudan's Arab neighbours do have an interest in supporting the government in Khartoum. They do not want Iraq-style chaos next door that could ensue if it falls. But they are also exposed to public pressure to prevent another western intrusion into Arab land.

Obviously, all the region's problems could be dealt with more effectively if there were more trust in the atmosphere. And what would it take to create it?