By Jake Bellone

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
—Karl Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right

Go and tell my friends that I have set off for the high seas
And that my boat is dashed to pieces;
It is in the religion of the gibbet that I shall die; Mecca
And Medina no longer mean anything to me.
—Al-Halladj (858-929 AD)
(Borrowed from Al-Djouhall’s “Misery of Islam”)

The present possibilities for peace, in the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular, rest upon a necessary renunciation of the Sacred Object.  By this I mean several things that are congruent.  The Sacred Object is what allows for the effective functioning of ideology, it is the “subject-supposed-to-enjoy.”  Anti-Semitism flares when one presumes that the Jews are the possessors of a particular sacred object (the media, the banks, etc.).  Even if a certain number of Jews work in the media sector, economics, or politics, to reduce this so a facet of the Jews is nonetheless pathological—that is, when anti-Semitism flared up in Nazi Germany, issuing from a certain number of lies: that Jews were seducing German women, that they were in some ways exploiting others through business, and no doubt some of them were unclean—some of these were indeed true; certainly some Jews did flirt with German women, some did in fact exploit others for financial gain, and no doubt, not all of them were the pinnacle of hygiene, but this does not change the fact that this ideological condition is nonetheless pathological, it is a paranoid fantastical construction.
        
And no doubt, some Muslims are “terrorists,” that is, some of them are violent and fundamentalist.  But to punish all Muslims for the sake of the (proportionally) few who engage in violent acts of fundamentalism makes no sense—were all white Christians to be punished for Timothy McVeigh’s actions?  Were the Germans to be punished for the Andreas Baader?  Were all the French to be punished for Mesrine?  Naturally, however, there’s a difference between contemporary “terrorism” and the old school political terrorism (and some of us wouldn’t mind seeing a return to the latter).  But this division seems rather arbitrary when the definition of “terrorism” and “terrorist” remains ambiguous.  Christopher Hitchens has gone so far to say “bin-Ladenists,” but this reflects a poor understanding of terrorism (likewise so do nonsensical terms like Islamo-Fascists).  For Hitchens, it revolves around an ideology.  Someone like Jon Stewart was intelligent to point out that we are not fighting a territorial force, that is, terrorism isn’t Iraqi; nonetheless, the problem is even more difficult than ideology.  The problem with terrorism is that it is oftentimes simply a sentiment.  Terrorism can easily be provoked by an errant bomb that misses its target and kills someone close (passively termed “collateral damage”), stirring sentiments of revenge.  No doubt there is also capital’s capacity to destroy social, ethnic, and religious bonds.  It is the violent reassertion of solidarity against an attack, against a threat at this very solidarity that constitutes, some, if not many acts, of terrorism.  So the whole ground has to be rethought.
        
In regards to the Middle East, most people think the situation is completely unfixable.  I have heard this case argued from Jews and Muslims alike.  In addition, it must be stated that the time for heroes is over, that it was finished with Nietzsche, Blake, Rimbaud, etc.  What’s needed now, however, more than ever, is a hero, but the properly ethical hero.  And in this case, the heroic gesture is to precisely renounce the sacred object.  We must keep to the Marxian doctrine that humanity only sets before itself problems which it is capable of solving.  The race in the Middle East, precisely in Israel, is not the race to see who can kill who, who can annihilate who, but who will be the first to renounce the sacred object.  In a conversation I had with a friend of mine, he said that it was the people who didn’t give up Gaza without a fight that constitute the heroes of the withdrawal.  These were the people who stayed behind to fight, who would only be removed by force.  For my part, I would consider the first who left to be the heroes, those who didn’t destroy their homes in preparation for the Palestinians. 

This goes to say that politics can no longer be thought in terms of realpolitik, in terms of concessions to power, in terms of the abandonment of any alternative to global capitalism, in terms of new, subtle gestures of raw force and raw expansion of power.  If there is to be peace in Israel, the only hope is the renunciation of Jerusalem, the renunciation of the Holy Land.  And for Israeli domestic policy, the only feasible solution, the only solution that will bring peace, the only solution that will be able to create a unified Israel, a home for an individual of any religion, ethnicity, race, etc., is precisely the renunciation of the Jew as the sacred object.  This is the meaning of universality—no more privileges, no more states of exception.  This also means the renunciation of the Jew as the universal form of the victim.  Judaism can no longer resuscitate its past, a past of horrible and violent repression, in order to perpetrate a violence of its own.  The policies enacted in Israel are close reflections of exactly the crimes perpetrated against them during the Holocaust, but it is the resuscitation of the Holocaust, its instrumentalization of the Event which falsely legitimizes the actions being taken in Israel.  There is no doubt an impassable gap between an event like the Holocaust and 9/11, nonetheless, their instrumentalization is equally sinister, and for similar reasons.  Put precisely, the instrumentalization of such events is used in order to perpetuate a particular brand of crime.  The hope is not for a Jewish state, nor a Palestinian state, there can be no more walls.  The only ethical act is precisely a unified state.

Likewise we must make perfectly clear the distinction here between renunciation and sacrifice.  To sacrifice is always an external obligation, that is, one sacrifices on behalf of a god/God/Allah, etc.  Renunciation is the mobilization of an inner compulsion, and let’s be clear, not an internalized external obligation; renunciation is the ethical act par excellence.  This is to say that renunciation doesn’t mean the simple renouncing of an object or deed, we must clarify, it is not enough to renounce, but the individual must be capable of ceasing to want it.
        
There is a close relationship between masochism and the renunciation of the sacred object, since in both cases there is a reliance on precisely giving the other person what s/he wants.  Masochism is not to create the pleasure of the Other, but precisely to illicit his disgust, his repugnance.  Imagine if, when the ignorant American soldiers flushed the Qu’ran down the toilet, if the prisoners had simply smiled smugly in their renunciation of the sacred text—this already constitutes the revolt of those tortured, and the horrifying disgust of those who torture.  But this example cannot be construed as condoning terrorism.  I’m more interested in considering the Iraqis, the Iraqis themselves who, in 1959, themselves burned the Qu’ran in the streets of Baghdad.  This is precisely the renunciation of the sacred object.  The problem in the Middle East is not so simple as the need for a Muslim Enlightenment, for a Muslim Nietzsche, nor for it to readily and happily embrace global capitalism.  This form of what is easily passed off as “terrorism” is the effect of capitalism in the Middle East. 

What is being experienced at the moment is not violence against culture, not violence against capitalism, but the violence of capitalism/civilization itself.  However, this places Islam in a privileged position in regards to global capitalism (much as certain countries in South America and potentially areas of Africa as well), as it affords the opportunity and space to rethink the economic strata altogether.  Even in the West, the Enlightenment cannot function without the renunciation of the sacred object, without the renunciation of Christianity in the public realm, in the realm of legislating, etc.  Capital has become the sacred object of such a decadent form of capitalism as in the US (what is referred to in French as capitalisme sauvage).  Capitalism nonetheless achieves its own form of spirituality and mysticism.  Decisions are made using abstract numbers in a closed room in a large city, isolated from the real concrete conditions it actually affects, and indifferent to those consequences.  It has an extreme detachment from the Real as with every religion and ideology.  Within capitalism, capital is the sacred object.  And likewise, the only way to pass au-dela of capitalism is precisely to renounce capital, renounce power.  The situationists wanted power only to destroy it, to subvert it, to place power at the service of life as against life at the service of power.  In regards to terrorism, on the other hand, it must be said: sometimes the sacrificial object is not the self, but the cause for which one sacrifices the self.
        
This is precisely why the US is degenerating into a pre-modern religious nation, even while nation-states and nationalisms increasingly mean less in an increasingly globalized world.  It is unable to renounce the object which stands in direct confrontation with the possibilities of its evolution.  The same goes for France which continues its vendetta against Islam, and naturally Islam with its own sacred object.  To give up, to precisely sacrifice the object of enjoyment is what creates the conditions for peace.  And again, not merely to give up, but to cease to want.
        
It is against capitalism that the only way to individual self-actualization can be formed.  If it is religion which glosses over repression, the only way to obtain actual freedom is by having the resources with which to actualize oneself.  This is why those who are wealthy tend, and only tend to be less religious, because they have the means and the resources by which to actualize themselves.  On the other hand, this is also what gives the feeling of contempt to the elite who, free of responsibility, find themselves unable to engage in the world.  While capitalism may dissolve seemingly religious bonds, religion actually serves as the supplement to capitalism itself, it is what allows the individual to acclimatize himself with oppression and suffering.  And no form of religion will be able to find itself unable to align itself within a capitalism framework.  Capitalism’s abilities of recuperation are seemingly limitless.  But the renunciation of religion (and likewise of ideology) places one in a privileged position, able to view the world in a more “clear-eyed” manner, to “pluck the living flower” and bear the chain “without fantasy or consolation”.  This is finally what will allow the chain to be thrown off.
        
Naturally, one cannot demand such an act of will by anybody, and it cannot in any case be legislated.  Nonetheless the renunciation of the sacred object is the political Act par excellence.  It stems from an internal compulsion, not an external obligation. 
        
This can be further illustrated using an example from popular culture—the film The Lord of the Rings.  The narrative is centered around a single ring, the ring of power.  It is the object of limitless power, the ability to conquer and dominate the globe, the (instrumental) power to rule, and also the object of temptation, and the object which corrupts whoever wears it.  Even without wearing it, the ring has a strong influence over anyone around it, attracting people to it.  But the whole aim of the story is that the ring must be destroyed, and never worn.  There is a perilous journey, and all for simply throwing the ring into a volcanic mountain to be destroyed.  The journey takes place across freezing tundras, volcanic caverns, against hordes of evil forces desperately seeking to take back this simple ring.  But in the end, what solidifies the story is the renunciation, and the destruction, of the sacred object.