| What does it mean to "make history"?" A certain kind of history is created when a group initiates acts of violence in the name of valorizing or defending a sacred ideal. In the 1990s, some hypothesized that we had reached the end of history. On September 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden sought to demonstrate that this was not the case. He acted in order to introduce himself—as representative of the will of Allah—into the historical process. What followed in the wake of September 11 might be called the resurrection of history. According to Assaf Moghadam and other scholars of Islamic radicalism, Bin Laden's ideology grows out of the thinking of his mentor, Abdullah Azzam. Azzam, Moghadam says, was the first theoretician to succeed in "turning martyrdom and self-sacrifice into a formative ethos for future al-Qaida members." It is largely because of Azzam that self-sacrifice has become a "moral code that al-Qaida has used to justify suicide missions against its enemies." Indeed, Azzam's essay, "Martyrs: The Building Blocks of Nations," contains a full-blown philosophy of history. Azzam writes that the life of the Muslim Ummah is solely dependent on the "ink of its scholars and the blood of its martyrs." The map of history is colored with two lines: One of them black, "what the scholar wrote with the ink of his pen." And the other red, "what the martyr wrote with his blood." Glory, Azzam says, does not build its lofty edifice "except with skulls." Honor and respect cannot be established except on a foundation of "cripples and corpses." Founders of nations and the "architects of glory," Azzam says, are few. Those who think they can change reality without "blood sacrifices and invalids, without pure, innocent souls," do not understand. Those who wish to achieve glory must pay its price: sweat and "seas of blood." Azzam's treatise articulates what is required if Islam and Allah are to transform societies and create history. However, the passages above also contain a narrative that has guided the course of the Twentieth Century. Men like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler and Mao established their ideologies and reputations on a "foundation of cripples and corpses." By building an edifice of skulls, they sought glory for themselves, their ideologies and their nations. David Starr Jordan discusses a painting from the time of Napoleon called "A Scene in Hell" (Une Scene dans l'Enfer) depicting the great marshal with "arms and face unmoved." The picture is filled with the faces of soldiers—men "sent to death before their time by Napoleon's unbridled ambition"—expressing "every form of reproach." Four millions there were, Jordan says, more than half of them French, youth without blemish, made "flesh for the cannon." Over Napoleon's career, campaign followed campaign—against enemies, against neutrals, against friends. Conscription followed victory, conscription followed defeat, again conscription and conscription. "Let them die with arms in their hands," Napoleon said. "Their death is glorious. You can always fill the places with soldiers. A great soldier like me doesn't care a tinker's damn for the lives of a million men." Napoleon—like Azzam's ideal terrorist—acted to create history building an edifice of blood and skulls upon a foundation of cripples and corpses. Napoleon dreamt of greatness for himself and France—and was willing to pay the price. He was one of those rare founders of nations who became the architect of glory—created history—by generating a sea of blood. Michael Roberts proposes a comparative study of "sacrificial devotion." What are we to call people who have died—been slaughtered—in the name of glorifying a sacred ideal? Shall we call these human beings martyrs, or heroes; people who have died for their country, or sacrificial victims, or simply victims? What shall we call political leaders who generate slaughter in the name of propagating a societal ideal? Shall we call them conquerors, great leaders or mass-murderers? What is the nature of those entities that have generated slaughter? In the First World War, they were given names like France and Great Britain and Germany. Moving forward, slaughter was undertaken in the name of words such as Communism and Nazism and the Emperor. Names change, but the dream remains the same. A certain kind of history comes into being when a societal group initiates slaughter in the name of a sacred ideal. Historians (colluding with those who generate slaughter) establish the significance of historical events by "counting skulls." The purpose of death and destruction is to confer reality upon leaders, nations and ideologies. Surely, human beings imagine, that which can generate such carnage must be real. Dead and mangled bodies—cripples and corpses—attest to the reality of some "thing" that has produced them. What could generate such frenetic activity, such prodigious expenditures of human energy and material capital? Each episode of societal violence testifies to the reality of that "thing" in whose name violence was undertaken. Surely, that for which tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people have died could not be no-thing. | 
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