TELOSscope: The Telos Press Blog

Cultures of Death: Required Readings

“In a leading article entitled ‘Industry of Death,’ which was to become famous, Hassan al-Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] explained to a wider public his concept of jihad—a concept in which the term Industry of Death denotes not something horrible but an ideal. He wrote, ‘to a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.'”

Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred (New York: Telos Press, 2007), p. 14.

“Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin something bad about em, but of course that’s a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don’t like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I don’t have much doubt but what she’ll be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.”

—Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (New York: Vintage, 2007), pp. 196–97.

“‘No!’ Naphta conintued. ‘The mystery and precept of our age is not liberation and development of the ego. What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror.'”

—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 393.