For Laurent Murawiec
By Guy Millière © Metula News Agency
(Free distribution)
The news reached me on the morning of October 8. The death of a man I loved and respected most deeply. And yet, because he stood for honesty, straightforwardness, and all the values that made him admirable in my eyes, probably nobody in the mainstream media will speak of him.
Because he was immensely cultivated and endowed with a rare lucidity, and because we are living in an era when all the values that enable a culture to remain alive and strong are systematically inverted and perverted, almost nobody will speak of him anywhere.
For my part I know I have lost a friend and an irreplaceable brother in arms. The road that lies before me now will be more difficult, and I will feel even more alone.
At this moment, I think of his two daughters, who are still so young and who will have to face the future without their father. I think of his wife, who has not been not in the U.S. for a very long time: the ordeal can only be terribly trying for her.
I think of his family in Europe.
Laurent Murawiec
However I also think that, when one is absorbed by a multitude of tasks, one can sometimes let time slip by, without giving all the attention he should to those who really deserve it. Sometimes in recent years, because my stay was short and I was about to go elsewhere, I passed by Washington without taking the time to contact Laurent. I always thought that there would be another opportunity: but there will be no other opportunity, and I feel through and through the pangs of guilt.
What remains for me to do is to pay tribute to his memory and his work. Laurent was an extremely brave and fearless man. He never ceased to prove it in his too short life. He never hesitated to say or write what he thought should be said or written, whatever the personal cost may be.
He was a discrete man, who never took pity on his plight. He was an uncompromising man, who never diluted his words, since he was one of the few who know that the truth, when it is watered down, is no longer the truth.
He was an intellectual in the highest sense of a term that is often overused: someone who worked with tenacity to create and spread ideas and knowledge, in order to dispel darkness and bring more light to others and the world.
He wrote articles that, behind a seemingly polemical and incisive tone, showed an unfailing erudition. He wrote remarkable books, some of them yet unpublished: one is about Europe and bears a very appropriate title: The Empire of the Setting Sun (L’Empire du soleil couchant).
Laurent was the author of War in the Twenty-first Century (La Guerre au XXIème siècle) – a masterly analysis of the “revolution in military affairs” that has changed the face of war in recent years –, and of The Spirit of Nations (L’Esprit des nations), an innovative essay about the connections between geopolitics and the history of cultures, that opened new horizons of research to those who understand that the world has become a more complex place.
The Next War (La Guerre d’après) is a charge leveled against Saudi Arabia, and the best documented and most innovative approach to have been published about a country and a regime that are almost everywhere behind the spread of radical Islam today (the book was published in the US under another title: Princes of Darkness: the Saudi Assault on the West).
However, what will remain Laurent’s masterpiece is The Mind of Jihad, originally published in two volumes, and that has now become available in a complete edition since October 2008, thanks to Cambridge University Press. It is not just one more book about radical Islam: it is one of the most important books on the subject ever to be published. Laurent used all the available resources and took the time to study them very closely.
The book shows very precisely and very accurately, in all necessary detail, what makes Islamic radicalism inseparable from Islam itself, and what the connections are between radical Islam and the most nihilistic and more violently destructive political trends that have emerged during the last two millennia.
It masterfully reveals the danger facing us, the dogma that constitutes the proliferating matrix of this danger, and it explains the deleterious attraction Jihad exerts over the adherents of other totalitarianisms.
I am convinced that The Mind of Jihad will be read and reread for years to come, and that it will become a classic. Michael Ledeen described it as “at last, a book on radical Islam that does it all”. Fouad Ajami calls it “a work that will make for itself a sure place in the Writings on Islamic Radicalism”.
I know Laurent still had much to say, write and offer. He spoke little of his plans, but all those who were fortunate enough to know him are sure he was just at the dawn of further accomplishments.
He spoke little of his own and his family’s past. However he gave me texts about the memory of the Holocaust and the mutilations that it had inflicted on his family. He was Jewish, even if it is an aspect of himself that he almost never evoked. He was a steadfast friend of Israel: not because he was Jewish, but because he was firmly on the side of liberty and the dignity of human beings; because he was obstinately hostile to all that oppresses, degrades and perverts.
He had left France, like many of those who have had to choose between compromise and exile, and who have chosen exile. The Hudson Institute that is headed by another man I love and respect, Ken Weinstein, welcomed him, conferring on him the title of Senior Fellow. He became an American, attached to everything that has belonged to the true soul of America since the time of the Founding Fathers.
Probably nobody will speak of Laurent’s death in the mainstream media. But everything that he was will survive as an ever-shining light in the hearts and minds of all those who have met him and loved him.
I said that I feel more alone, but I will cherish as long as I live the memory of conversations with Laurent, the sound of Laurent’s voice. I will know he is still there. I will cherish as long as I live the words written by Laurent, I will read them over and over, and I will know that Laurent has not disappeared and will never disappear.
Laurent Murawiec passed away on October 7
We just learned that Laurent Murawiec passed away, on October 7, 2009, aged 58. Laurent was a friend of ESISC. He was also a brilliant and innovative thinker who specialized, years ago, in strategic studies.
He was an adviser to to the French Ministry of Defense and a teacher at the prestigious Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), in Paris, before moving to the United States where he joined the Rand Corporation as a senior international policy analyst.
He had to leave his position at Rand after having publicly denounced the links between Saudi Arabia and Islamic Terrorism and joined the Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow.
He was considered as a key thinker in the neoconservative circles.
Laurent who spoked at least 5 languages - left hundreds of articles and op-ed, and a dozen of books published in French and English.
The intellectual was an unconventional and disturbing thinker. The man was attentive to others. The friend was generous, funny and eager for supporting those who needed it.
At the very beginning of ESISC, in 2002, and in the following years, he was instrumental in introducing us in the intellectual, political and military circles in Washington.
In his intellectual and professional life, Laurent Murawiec won a lot of battles and was never afraid to enter a new one.
Unfortunately, he didn’t win the battle he had to fight against cancer.
ESISC mourns Laurent Murawiec with all his friends around the world.
Posts
