Louis Lingg writes

"The folks who assembled 'Against War and Terrorism' back in October have produced a second issue. Included is the reproduction of an essay originally published in 1981 by Lafif Lakhdar, 'Why the Reversion to Islamic Archaism?'. Lakhdar was a revolutionary, a socialist, and a colleague of and collaborator with the situationist Mustapha Khayati. He was living in Lebanon when he wrote this piece, in an effort to understand and explain events in Iran.

An excerpt: "The decline of the West has become obvious. Its dying throes shake the economic, ethical and aesthetic order; its traditional ideologies 'socialist' as well as
liberal - are dead. In short, it no longer presents even for itself a feasible project for civilisation. The Arab-Muslim intelligentsia, which had formerly earned
its daily bread by circulating the latest cultural fashions of this same western civilisation, is now thrown back on its own resources and outdated values. As
though by some magic power, it has now begun to rediscover the long-forgotten virtues of the celebrated Return to the Source advocated by the
pan-Islamism of a bygone age. Thus Zaki Najib Mahmud, grown grey in the service of American positivism, realises at the end of his life that he had
"considerably under-estimated" al-turath, the Arab-Islamic heritage, which - if we are to believe him - is capable after all of rejuvenating good old Arab
society! Others in turn have suddenly discovered, more than two generations after the Dadaists, the bankruptcy of 18th century rationalism which had
promised to usher in the reign of reason in everyday life - a belated discovery of a bankruptcy which was already clearly visible in the debris of the First
World Butchery. Yet others have discovered that the alcoholism, drug addiction and youth vandalism rampant in the West are all due to the decline of
religious feelings, and they would like to protect their own society from these evils. In short, the fact that the Arab-Muslim intelligentsia as a whole, which
only yesterday was looking to the West, is now withdrawing into itself is grist to the mill of Islamic integralism."

Also posted is an excellent preface to Lakhdar's essay by Harald Beyer-Arnesen: The modern schizophrenia of Islamic integralism."