Islam and Armageddon
Suddenly, everyone, or so it seems, is an expert on Islam.
From Presidents and Prime Ministers to the humblest
hack, all are ready to lecture the public on what real Islam
is. If this` knowledge is so readily available to such
unlikely mentors it seems odd that so much wrong opinion
is abroad on the subject. Tony Blair, apparently, knows so
much about it that he can confidently announce from a
public platform that any 'muslim' who has a different view
of Islam from his own is not a proper muslim. According
to this view, real muslims are just like members of the
Church of England, all sweetness and light, interested only
in being good neighbours, engaging in 'inter-faith dialogue'
and, presumably, voting for New Labour.
Islam, we are told over and over again by the self-
appointed guardians of right thinking, is not a religion of
violence and aggression but of peace and love. Does not
the Koran have at the head of every chapter: 'In the name
of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate'? Who could
disagree with that? That's the sentiment of all decent
people everywhere isn't it? Why, we could even have it as
the slogan for the next Labour Party Conference,
fetchingly lit in shades of green and rose, with a copy of
the Koran given away free to every delegate. This
wonderful book is already the Prime Minister's favourite
bed -time reading and was ostentatiously flourished on the
plane to America in the wake of recent events.
How can people in high office be so naïve and stupid?
Very easily it seems, almost a mandatory qualification,
since it makes it easier to spout sanctimonious drivel with
a straight face. But where are the doubting voices, the
posers of awkward questions that might expose this
ludicrous charade for the expedient nonsense it is?
Certainly not the TV interviewers and ambitious
journalists with careers to think about, who in any case
know no more about the subject than the people they are
interviewing, and are every bit as keen to appear 'tolerant'
and 'understanding' for fear of something nasty happening
on their own doorsteps.
Here are a few questions that might be put to Mr Blair or
any other apologist for Islam that appear regularly in the
media. (1) If real Islam is all about peace and love, how
did it acquire an empire that stretched from Spain to India,
by sweet reason? (2) When is Islam going to apologise for
overrunning the Hellenic-Christian civilization of the
Middle East, conquering Constantinople in 1453, and
laying siege to Vienna in 1529? (3) If the Koran is all
about peace and love, how are such verses as the following
to be explained. K.4:74, 'Let those fight in the cause of
God who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To
him who fights in the cause of God, whether he is slain or
victorious, soon we shall give him a great reward'. K.4:76,
'Those who believe fight in the cause of God, and those
who reject faith fight in the cause of evil.' K.5:54, 'O
believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends, they are
friends of each other. Those of you who make them his
friends is one of them. God does not guide an unjust
people.' K.9:29, 'Fight those who believe neither in God
nor the Last Day, nor what has been forbidden by God and
his messenger (Muhammad), nor acknowledge the religion
of Truth (Islam), even if they are People of the Book (Jews
and Christians), until they pay the tribute and have been
humbled.' K.47:4, 'When you meet the unbelievers, smite
their necks, then when you have made wide slaughter
among them, tie fast the bonds, then set them free, either
by grace or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens.'
It is not difficult to see how those who regard the Koran as
God's own speech can find in verses such as these the
justification for practically any act of 'terrorism'
imaginable. When such texts are put to apologists the
usual response is to say that they are bad translations and it
is quite different in the Arabic, and in any case such verses
are balanced or cancelled by other meliorating texts
elsewhere in the Koran. Unfortunately, according to the
traditional muslim chronology of revelation, early texts are
abrogated by apparently contradictory later texts, and all
the above texts are late or 'Medinan', while most of the
'compassionate' texts are early or 'Meccan'. It has been said
that the text at K.9:5, 'Slay the idolaters wherever you find
them', cancels 124 verses advocating mercy and toleration.
There is no Pope in Islam, no ultimate authority able to say
what real Islam is, or what is the right interpretation of
texts, there is just and endless spectrum of opinion. Those
involved in recent events, wearing red head -bands
emblazoned with texts such as those above, have every
right to consider themselves real muslims going about
God's work and deserving reward in the hereafter. Indeed,
such people probably have more right to consider
themselves good muslims than those Western educated,
Western suited, representatives of muslim institutions
expressing sympathy and regret, or any benignly smiling
Sufi talking about 'the heart'; the latter are especially
nauseating in that they share many of the aims of the
militants, such as the restoration of the caliphate, without
the courage to do anything about it.
It is important that such things are said loudly and said
now, since it is likely that before long both the writer and
the publisher of these words could be deemed guilty of the
crime of inciting religious hatred. This is the dream of yet
another expert on Islam, the Home Secretary, who is so
unstinting in his admiration that he thinks anyone
suggesting that Islam is anything less than wonderful, and
muslims anything other than wholly admirable, deserve to
be prosecuted. So widespread are such sentiments amongst
the liberal intelligentsia that it is surprising that there have
not yet been mass conversions. In contrast, outside such
circles, it appears that either Islam is true, in which case
we all ought to be muslims, or it is not true, in which case
it is pernicious nonsense and it cannot be criminal to say
so.
The fear here of course is of blood on the streets. That
there have been physical attacks on muslims arises largely
from the fact that they choose to make themselves obvious
by their mode of dress, and of course, as we all know, this
is prescribed by their religion, especially in the case of
women - well, no, actually we don't and it isn't. Nowhere
in the Koran and the Hadith is it laid down that muslim
women must go around wearing head scarves and long
shapeless garments, all that is required is modest dress,
and there are literally thousands of ways of dressing
modestly, many of them indistinguishable from Western
dress. The fuss about muslim women wearing head scarves
is quite literally a fuss about nothing, they don't have to
wear them.
The fact that some muslim women choose to make an
exhibition of themselves by wearing head scarves is of no
more significance or importance than any other affectation
or fashion statement. With others it is simply a result of
the ignorance and poor education that is endemic amongst
muslims; they have been told by their communities that
this is the proper muslim thing to do and they have no
means of knowing anything to the contrary. This is
especially chilling when it is applied to girls as young as
four or five when the rule does not apply until the onset of
puberty. But can we imagine any telly journalist putting
these points to a female 'victim' of prejudice and
misunderstanding? If Islam is all about peace and love and
good behaviour, as we are constantly told, such things do
not require a peculiar mode of dress, an attention
attracting uniform, to make them manifest. Indeed, such a
thing is redolent of a peculiar vanity - look at me, how
modest I am, so virtuous, so beautiful, a veritable living
reproach to your wanton ways, I must make a play of
hiding myself for your good as well as mine.
We are constantly told that we are not engaged in a war
against Islam, but why not a war against Islam? Why not a
war against that billion of the world's population bound in
benighted ignorance and superstition? Why not a war
against a world-view diametrically opposed to all those
secular, liberal, humanist, democratic values that it is
supposed to hold so dear? Why not? Because the West is
led by a pair of evangelical nincompoops, one with
messianic delusions, more than half in love with what in
their muddled minds they like to think real Islam is, and
what in their dreams they would like the West to be - God-
fearing, Bible-reading, Church-going, a land of inanely
grinning communitarians whose highest value is that their
pathetic little egos strut about the world stage for as long
as possible. Compared with such people the hijackers are
heroes.
We are also told that the events of September 11th were
not a clash of civilizations or world-views, but that is
exactly what they were. It was not by chance that the twin
towers of the World Trade Centre were the first to go. In
the minds of many muslims tall buildings are the ultimate
symbol of infidel pride and arrogance and defiance of
Allah, especially evident in the end times before the final
reckoning. The fact that they were also temples of usury
and symbols of the economic power with which Jews and
Christians undermine and exploit the muslim world can
only have added to the satisfaction of bringing them down,
especially when it was achieved by just ten men wielding
pen knives. That there were muslims in the building at the
time is of no consequence, since their fate was already
sealed by K.5:54 and K.9:29 quoted above.
The purpose of the attack on Afghanistan we are told is to
bring about 'justice', as if there were some cross-cultural
consensus on what any such word means, a Platonic
archetypal heaven from which its form could be plucked
by be-wigged Western lawyers for the recognition and
satisfaction of all 'decent' people. The only relevant
question to be asked about 'justice' is: Whose justice, mine
or yours, ours or theirs, man's or God's? How much shar'ia
is there in 'international law'? Where did that law
originate, who invented it, with what purpose in mind?
What kind of world did it come from and what kind of
world was it intended to bring about? Certainly not that of
the ecumenical imperium of the caliphate, where muslim
justice held sway for almost 1400 years. (See the review of
Muslim Kingship in this issue, p.?) It is not without
significance that 'infinite justice', the original name for the
American attack, had to be changed since it unwittingly
usurped one of the Koranic names of God (al adl), it was
replaced with the favourite shibboleth from the Western
lexicon of praise: 'infinite freedom'.
The enormity of the crime - the attack on New
York/Afghanistan - we are told, is the slaughter of the
innocent, but who is not willing to sacrifice the innocent
when it suits them? Certainly 'Western Civilization' was
when, between 1914 and 1945 in Europe alone, it
managed to wipe out over one hundred million civilians in
the name of one cause or another. Such figures are the
result of the employment of technology in the furtherance
of a cause, but before the technological age the causes
were no less virulent and murderous in intent, it was just
more difficult to kill large numbers.
But who believes in causes any more? Not even the
majority of modern muslims can be got of their backsides
for a decent jihad. Like most Westerners their main
motivations are money and sex and a comfortable life,
with a little religion on top for identity, consolation,
companionship, and at least the possibility of a
continuation of the same in an afterlife. Religion survives,
and will probably always survive, not because it is true but
because human beings are pathetic.
Yet we still need war, if only to satisfy the barely
subconscious, barely acknowledged recognition of how
mind numbingly dull a perpetually peaceful world would
be. Since God refuses to supply us with an apocalypse it
seems we must supply our own: 'I am become Shiva the
destroyer of worlds', as Robert Oppenheimer said. Who
was not fascinated, amazed, entranced, by those planes
going into those towers? Was it not the most astonishing
and exciting thing you have ever seen in your life?
Perhaps Osama and his followers, like many others, are
the true children of Turgenev's Bazarov, whose day may
have finally dawned. Any cause will do, or no cause at all,
we shall have terrorism for the hell of it. In the immortal
words of Pisarev: 'Here is the ultimatum of our camp: what
can be smashed should be smashed; what will stand the
blow is good; what will fly into smithareens is rubbish; at
any rate, hit out right and left - there will and can be no
harm from it.' Allahu Akbar.
Ibn al Rawandi
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Sep 22 2002 - 05:06:15 MDT