The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad Terrifying and funny

 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Terrifying and funny

 

Joseph Conrad has three books on the Modern Library List of 100 best novels of the 20^th century, written in English. French, German and other authors are not included here.

The three books are The Secret Agent, Lord Jim and Nostromo. The latter is the one I liked most, then the former. I did not like Lord Jim for some reason.

The Secret Agent is not exactly the book I’d take with me on an island, if I could only pick one novel. It was both terrifying and funny.

It deals with the ancestors of today’s terrorists, the uncles of Al Qaeda, ISIS and the like.

Like the ones who create havoc today, the heroes of the book were keen on setting off artisanal bombs.

In their stupidity it happened that they set off the explosive device by accident.

In terms of ideology, they do not represent the early stages of those who murder people today, often by blowing themselves up- voluntarily.

The crazies of The Secret Agent have been more anarchists than believers in a solid doctrine or another, as opposed to the lunatics who are our contemporaries.

I love some of the names that Conrad has picked for his heroes, and I have a fondness for –especially- strange names: my cat is called Ndugu – an African child in a movie with Jack Nicholson, another dog was called Okwe, the junior borzoi is called Karzai…

Looking on the net, I see that Alfred Hitchcock directed an earlier version of the Secret Agent, but based on a Maugham excellent story with the same name.

Verloc is a good sounding appellative. Ossipon is also interesting.

In fact the fiction has the advantage that the heroes can be more complex, they can even have likeable traits.

The descendants, the jihadists of today are only despicable.

 A few days ago they have beheaded yet another captive, a journalist who had nothing wrong.

Killing innocent civilians in such horrible executions says everything about these sub humans.

The trouble is that, albeit there are many people who insist that Islam is basically a peaceful religion, from what I have read recently I gathered a different image.

It is clearly only the fanatics that go to the extreme of killing innocent infidels, but Islam has a genetic flaw in my view:

It emphasizes the need to convert the “infidel”

There is a rift between the Muslims and us, the rest.

Infidels need to be brought to see the “truth’ that “there is no God, but Allah and Mohamed is His prophet”

The simplistic view seems to encourage Muslims to feel that the rest of the world either converts or else it does not matter if it exists or not.

The nut cases establishing a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq represent a fringe, a band of hardliners like the world has never seen before.

It is plain who we are dealing with, from the fact that Al Qaeda, not exactly an NGO for peace, has rebutted and severed ties with the ISIS.

The Christian, Buddhist religions have their own violent evil people. The Buddhists who have peace at the very core of their religion commit violence in Myanmar and other places.

But in the eyes of this reader, Islam has some fundamentals wrong.

Yes, there are also some good aspects- Zakat, giving to the poor, but I am sure that I will never convert to Islam, unless Allah himself descends riding on a camel- Insha’Allah.