Fintan O'Toole: The jihadists who inspired 9/11 have something horrible in common with Donald Trump

Before we face into the 25th anniversary of the al-Qaeda atrocities of September 11th, 2001, it is worth asking where they came from. And answering: from the manosphere. The deep roots of this barbaric assault on Americans lie in the same hatred of women that is now embedded in American reactionary politics.It is impossible to comprehend 9/11 without recalling the founder of modern jihadism, Sayyid Qutb. The two greatest intellectual influences on Osama bin Laden – the Palestinian preacher Abdallah Azzam and the militant Saudi cleric Safar al-Hawali – were steeped in Qutb’s writings. Qutb is both the Karl Marx and the Patrick Pearse of violent Islamism, at once its theorist and its exemplary martyr. His punchy book Ma‘alim (Milestones) – written in an Egyptian prison in 1964, before he was hanged in 1966 – is The Communist Manifesto of the movement. Its call for a male vanguard dedicated to the use of violence to establish a universal Islamic State was the blueprint for al-Qaeda.Qutb was a literary critic, Koranic scholar and official in the Department of Education in Cairo. In 1948, when he began to criticise the Egyptian monarchy, it sent him on a study trip to the United States to get him out of the way. He spent nearly two years in New York, Washington, Colorado and California. READ MOREHe was disturbed and disgusted by the sexuality of young American women: “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity,” he wrote. “She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” “Hungry passions and treacherous eyes flicker about her body”. The hungry eyes were obviously his own.In 1949, Qutb experienced a kind of epiphany. Greeley, Colorado, was a conservative, religious town where alcohol was banned, far from the fleshpots of New York or California. Nevertheless, Qutb witnessed a horror show – a dance in the church hall run by the local pastor: “The arena was swaying with feet and legs. Arms went round the waists and the lips and bosoms met ... All the atmosphere was that of love ... Then [the pastor] came to ‘the gramophone’ to choose a disc for the dancing which suits that atmosphere and to encourage those who were sitting from both sexes to participate in dancing. And he chose a very famous American song called But, Baby it is Cold Outside!” .[ 25 years later: ‘A couple of days before every 9/11 you get that sick feeling in your stomach’Opens in new window ]Qutb’s revulsion was deepened by his racist loathing of jazz: “this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.” That a religious pastor was encouraging lascivious dancing to these savage beats was, for him, the ultimate proof that America and thus all of western modernity was leading humanity to its doom. Only a global jihad, led by the pure vanguard, could save the world.There is nothing uniquely Islamic about the fanatical desire to control women’s bodies. Little versions of Qutb could have been found in 1950s Ireland too, foaming at the mouth about dirty dancing and Jews and “Negro” music and young women flaunting themselves. Seán South (of Garryowen), also a 1950s political and religious martyr, would have got on very well with Qutb if only they could have agreed on which One True Faith everyone must follow on pain of death.Smoke spews from a tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, after two hijacked airplanes hit the twin towers in a terrorist attack on New York City. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images The main difference is that Qutb’s vision was truly global. The jihadist movements that answered his call may have demanded a return to the 7th century but they were also pioneers of globalisation. They fought modernity with hypermodernity, forming transnational networks and mastering new technologies – from cassettes to the internet – to spread their message. It was not accidental that the 9/11 terrorists used the most global of machines – long-distance aircraft – to create appallingly photogenic spectacles.What they found repugnant about modernity, then, was not its technical innovations. It was – and is – the “round breasts, the full buttocks, and ... the shapely thighs” of women. Or rather, those features being on display outside of their own complete control. Women’s bodies must be their private property, for their own use and delectation. Why? Because, in distorted forms of masculinity, sexuality can only be understood as power. Qutb wrote of his dread of “sexual enjoyment in which the soul suffocates ... while instincts and senses become intoxicated.” If young women have that intoxicating potency, they can use it to drive men mad with desire and then humiliate them by withholding what is most desired. The only true safeguard against sexual humiliation is enforced submission and the erasure of the female body from the public realm. Pete Hegseth and US president Donald Trump. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images The terrible irony of the anniversary of the 9/11 crimes is that it will be marked under a US president who fought the most openly misogynistic presidential campaign in the country’s history. Standing beside him will be an avowed Christian jihadist, Pete Hegseth. Both appeal to men who share the most fundamental impulse of the jihadis: the desire to create a society in which women are under male control. It is perfectly logical that much of the anglophone manosphere has migrated towards reactionary Islamism. Tommy Robinson now says that “Islam has become an attraction for so many, because people are looking for something strong in principle that can stand its ground.” Andrew Tate announced his conversion to Islam in 2022, adding that he was already collecting bricks to stone his partner if she ever cheated on him. Conversely, Islamist preachers in the Middle East tell their followers that Tate is being persecuted for his Muslim faith.It is not, of course, Islam itself with which Tate and the manosphere really identify – it’s the sanction given by its most twisted forms to misogyny as the primary organising principle of society. But we won’t hear much of this in the official commemorations of the 9/11 atrocities. Some things are too close for comfort. Trump’s lines, delivered in the Pentagon just before he flies over to Ireland, will be all about “hatred of America”. Shared hatred of women will be, as always, unspeakable.[ Donald Trump breaks the law so fast that the law is left in his orange dustOpens in new window ]