I found the article by Toynbee remember he wrote this in 1948
I have question for readers of this thread, if you were a western strategic planner, knowing about of herodianism and zealotism which one would you have as your enemy?
The answer to that question explains the connection between fanatical Islamic terrorist and western intelligence services
HERODIANISM vs ZEALOTISM
(Muslim brotherhood narrative vs salafist narrative)
This is a chapter of a book by Arnold J Toynbee
http://www.zenker.se/Books/toynbee.jpg
ZEALOTISM
The ‘Zealot’ is the man who takes refuge from the unknown in the familiar; and
when he joins battle with a stranger who practises superior tactics and employs
formidable newfangled weapons, and finds himself getting the worst of the
encounter, he responds by practising his own traditional art of war with
abnormally scrupulous exactitude. ‘Zealotism,’ in fact, may be described as
archaism evoked by foreign pressure; and its most conspicuous representatives
in the contemporary Islamic world are ‘puritans’ like the North African Sanusis
and the Central Arabian Wahhabis.
The first point to notice about these Islamic ‘Zealots’ is that their strongholds lie in
sterile and sparsely populated regions which are remote from the main
HERODIANISM
The ‘Herodian’ is the man who acts on the principle that the most effective way to
guard against the danger of the unknown is to master its secret; and, when he
finds himself in the predicament of being confronted by a more highly skilled and
better armed opponent, he responds by discarding his traditional art of war and
In two of these tropical regions, Central Africa and Indonesia, Islam is the
spiritual force which has taken advantage of the opportunity thus thrown
open by the Western pioneers of material civilization to all comers on the
spiritual plane; and, if ever the ‘natives’ of these regions succeed in
recapturing a spiritual state in which they are able to call their souls their
own, it may prove to have been the Islamic spirit that has given fresh form
to the void. This spirit may be expected to manifest itself in many practical
ways; and one of these. manifestations might be a liberation from alcohol
which was inspired by religious conviction and which was therefore able to
accomplish what could never be enforced by the external sanction of an
alien law.
Here, then, in the foreground of the future, we can remark two valuable
influences which Islam may exert upon the cosmopolitan proletariat of a
Western society that has cast its net round the world and embraced the
whole of mankind; while in the more distant future we may speculate on the
possible contributions of Islam to some new manifestation of religion.
On two historic occasions in the past,
Islam has been the sign in which an Oriental society has risen up
victoriously against an Occidental intruder. Under the first successors of
the Prophet, Islam liberated Syria and Egypt from a Hellenic domination
which had weighed on them for nearly a thousand years. Under Zangi and
Nur-ad-Din and Saladin and the Mamliiks, Islam held the fort against the
assaults of Crusaders and Mongols. If the present situation of mankind
were to precipitate a ‘race war,’ Islam might be moved to play her historic
role once again.