At times like this, it’s tempting to channel Bette Davis: only speak good of the dead. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s dead. Good.
But perhaps the moment deserves some more considered reflection. There’s striking footage (see below) of al-Zawahiri in the defendants’ cage during the 1982 trial of Islamic Jihad members implicated in the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat. Al-Zawahiri alone speaks in English for the cameras. He is uncompromising and belligerent. But his command of the language of international communication reveals his background: educated and middle class. That made him different to most of his fellow accused.
He had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood since adolescence. The Brotherhood contained other middle-class intellectuals. But it had been cowed by Nasser’s prisons into a form of accommodation with the Egyptian state.
One lesson of al-Zawahiri’s career is that violent Islamism will never have the widespread appeal of which he dreamed
Al-Zawahiri, like others shaped by the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the key ideologue of radical Islamist vanguardism, preferred a more kinetic solution.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in