virus: Islam, Middle East and Fascism from http://www.secularislam.org

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 20:37:49 MDT


    
    Islam, Middle East and Fascism
    In a speech that he gave at Columbia University, Umberto
    Eco spelled out fourteen features that he considered were
    typical of Eternal Fascism (which he also calls Ur-Fascism
    ); adding however this explanatory detail: " These features
    cannot be organized into a system; many of them
    contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of
    despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them
    be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it."
    Umberto Eco: [1] The Cult of Tradition. "Truth has
    already been spelled out once and for all, and we can only
    keep interpreting its obscure message."
    Islam is the quintessentially tradition-bound religion. First,
    the Koran is the eternal and infallible Word of God, and
    contains the whole of God™s final revelation to man, and
    must be obeyed in all its details. "This day I have perfected
    your religion for you and completed My favour to you. I
    have chosen Islam to be your faith." The Koran is
    immutable, "Say: ˜It is not for me to change [the Koran]. I
    only follow what is revealed to me. I cannot disobey my
    Lord, for I fear the punishment of a fateful day." "Proclaim
    what is revealed to you in the Book of your Lord. None
    can change His Words. You shall find no refuge besides
    Him." The Koran is a faithful and unalterable reproduction
    of the original scriptures which are preserved in heaven.
    A Muslim™s wish is to establish a new life in accordance
    with a religious law willed by God and consonant with the
    Prophet Muhammad™s intentions. Clearly the Koran by
    itself (i.e. uninterpreted) did not furnish enough guiding
    principles to meet the changing requirements of the early
    Muslims. Thus, in all matters whether civil or religious,
    the will of the prophet had first to be ascertained and
    followed as a true guide to practical conduct. The
    Prophet™s Companions were considered the best source for
    learning the Prophet™s will ; that is, from people who lived
    their lives in his company, witnessed his actions, and
    heard his very words and pronouncements on every single
    aspect of daily life. After the passing of this first
    generation, pious Muslims had to rely on the members of
    the next generation who passed on what they had learnt
    from the first. Thus, transmission from generation to
    generation continued down to contemporary periods.
    Finally, conduct and judgment were accepted as correct
    and their legitimacy was established if a chain of reliable
    transmission ( isnad, in Arabic )ultimately traced them
    back to a Companion who could testify that they were in
    harmony with the Prophet™s intentions. On the strength of
    such traditions, certain customs in ritual and law were
    established as the usage of the authoritative first believers
    of Islam, and as having been practised under the Prophet™s
    own eyes. As such, they acquired a sacred character. They
    are called sunna, sacred custom. The form in which such a
    usage is stated is hadith, tradition. Sunna and hadith are
    not synonymous ; hadith being the documentation of
    sunna.
    Sunna intimately reflects the views and practices of the
    oldest Islamic community, and thus functions as the most
    authoritative interpretation of the Koran. The Koran
    cannot answer every single problem that any morally
    sensitive Muslim is likely to encounter ; and it only comes
    alive and effective through the sunna. Furthermore the
    Koran, contrary to what many Muslims realize, is an
    extremely obscure text ; even Muslims exegetes
    acknowledge that they do not know the meaning of many
    words and whole passages. For instance, the exegetes have
    classified obscure or opaque sentences of the Koran into
    Zahir ( obvious ) or hidden ( Khafi ). The Khafi sentences
    are further subdivided into Khaji, Mushkil, Mujmal, and
    Mutashabih. In Khaji sentences the other persons or things
    are hidden beneath the plain meaning of a word or
    expression ; Mushkil sentences are ambiguous; Mujmal
    sentences have a variety of interpretations , while
    Mutashabih ones are intricate sentences or expressions, the
    exact meaning of which it is impossible for a man to
    ascertain until the day of resurrection. The Koran itself
    tells us that it contains ambiguous verses, and verses
    whose interpretation is only known to God ( sura iii.5 p
    .214 vol.1).
    The Sharia or Islamic Law is based on four principles: The
    Koran; the sunna of the Prophet, which is incorporated in
    the recognized traditions ( hadith ); the consensus (ijma) of
    the scholars of the orthodox community ; and the method
    of reasoning by analogy (qiyas)
    Many liberal Muslims ( if that is not a contradiction in
    terms) get excited by ijma, sensing that somehow therein
    lies their only hope of modernising Islam. However,
    historically, the notion of consensus (ijma) has nothing
    democratic about it ; the masses are expressly excluded. It
    is the consensus of suitably qualified and learned
    authorities. The doctrine of the infallibility of the
    consensus, far from allowing some liberty of reasoning as
    one might have expected, worked in favour of a
    progressive narrowing and hardening of doctrine. By the
    beginning of 900 C.E., Islamic Law became rigidly fixed
    because Muslim scholars felt that all essential questions
    had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a
    consensus gradually established itself to the effect that
    henceforth no one might be deemed to have the necessary
    qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that
    all future activity would have to be confined to the
    explanation, application, and, at most, interpretation of the
    doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all. This
    closing of the gate of independent reasoning, in effect,
    meant the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of
    established schools and authorities. Islamic Law became
    increasingly rigid and set in its final mould.
    Liberal Muslims think they are more liberated than their
    "fundamentalist" cousins because they (the Liberal
    Muslims) believe that by some creative re-interpretation of
    the Koran they will thereby bring the Koran, albeit
    screaming and kicking, into the 21st Century. First, it does
    not seem to strike these misguided liberal Muslims that
    they are still prisoners to an obscure, incoherent, bizarre
    mediaeval text, a curious amalgam of Talmudic Judaism,
    apocryphal Christianity and pagan superstitions (especially
    in the rites and rituals of the Hajj), full of barbarisms.
    They have not cut their umbilical cords, and are still trying
    to make sense of an often senseless text, more than a
    thousand years old. Second this desire to re-interpret has
    led to some willful and intellectually dishonest "re-
    reading" of the Koran. Feminists pretend that the "real
    Koran" is progressive towards women, human rights
    activists pretend, in the face of overwhelming evidence to
    the contrary that the « real Koran » is totally compatible
    with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The
    reality is that the Koran, and the Sharia derived from the
    Koran, are totalitarian constructs that try to control every
    single aspect of an individual™s life from the way he or she
    urinates and defecates, the way he/she eats, dresses, works,
    marries, makes love, prays, to the way he or she thinks on
    every conceivable subject. Finally, while the Koran is open
    to some re-interpretation, it is not infinitely flexible.
    Umberto Eco: [2] "Traditionalism implies the rejection of
    modernism ¦The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is
    seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense
    [Eternal fascism] can be defined as irrationalism."
    Umberto Eco: [3] "Irrationalism also depends on the cult
    of action for action™s sake ¦. Thinking is a form of
    emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is
    identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual
    world has always been symptom of Ur- [or Eternal
    Fascism ]."
    Umberto Eco: [4] " No syncretistic faith can withstand
    analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions,
    and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern
    culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a
    way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism (or Eternal
    Fascism), disagreement is is treason."
    Umberto Eco: [5] "Besides, disagreement is a sign of
    diversity. Ur-fascism (or Eternal Fascism) grows up and
    seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the
    natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist
    movement is an appeal against intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism
    (or Eternal Fascism) is racist by definition."
    I shall show that, mutatis mutandis, Islam also rejects
    modernism, is hostile to reason, critical thought, fears
    disagreement, and is terrified of ˜intruders,™ though
    Islam™s form of exclusion is based on religion and not
    race.
    The revival of modern Muslim thought owes a great deal
    to the writings of the Indian (later Pakistani) al-Maududi.
    In works such as Jihad in Islam, Islam and Jahiliyya, The
    Principles of Islamic Government, al-Maududi was the
    first modern Muslim thinker to "arrive at a sweeping
    condemnation of modernity and its incompatibility with
    Islam, and to formulate a definition of the danger it
    constituted." Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian thinker, was in
    part influenced by al-Maududi, and felt that "Domination
    should be reverted to Allah alone, namely to Islam, that
    holistic system He conferred upon men. An all-out
    offensive, a jihad, should be waged against modernity so
    that this moral rearmament could take place The ultimate
    objective is to reestablish the Kingdom of God upon earth
    ¦"
    Second, let us not forget that all three of the major
    Abrahamic religions are irrational, that is, they are based
    on irrational dogma that do not stand up to critical
    scrutiny. The whole framework of the three religions is
    historical, in that all three depend on the historical veracity
    of putative events described in their respective scriptures.
    But increasing critical inquiry and scientific thought(
    historical, philological , archaeological ) has revealed the
    improbability of the historical events described in their
    scriptures, and traditions. While Higher Biblical Criticism,
    developed by great thinkers such Spinoza, and further
    elaborated in Germany in the 19th Century, is well-known
    to, at least, educated Westerners and intellectuals in
    general , astonishingly few people even among the
    Western Islamologists seem to be aware of the shaky
    historical foundations of the beliefs of Muslims.
    Muslims seem to be unaware that the research of the
    German Higher Critics apply directly to their belief
    system, which seems impervious to rational thought. For
    instance, there is absolutely no evidence, archaeological,
    epigraphic, documentary, that Abraham ever set foot in
    Arabia, let alone build the Kaaba. Many scholars such T.
    L. Thompson have even put forward the idea that not only
    Abraham but Isaac and Jacob never existed. Muslims are
    also committed to the dogma that Moses wrote the
    Pentateuch despite research since the 17 the Century of
    thinkers such as La Preyre, Spinoza, and Hobbes, and in
    the 19th Century by historians such as Julius Wellhausen
    who have all argued that Moses could not possibly have
    written the First Five Books of the Old Testament. No
    Western scholar believes the apocryphal Christian story of
    Jesus that is to be found in the Koran. Further it is surely
    totally irrational to continue to believe that the Koran is
    the word of God when the slightest amount of rational
    thought will reveal that the Koran contains words and
    passages addressed to God ( e.g. the Fatihah; sura vi.104;
    vi..114 ; xvii.1; xxvii.91; lxxxi.15-29; lxxxiv.16-19; etc.) ;
    that it is full of historical errors: at sura xl.38, the Koran
    mistakenly identifies Haman, who in reality was the
    minister of the Persian King Ahasuerus ( mentioned in the
    book of Esther ), as the minister of the Pharaoh at the time
    of Moses ; there is a confusion of Mary, the mother of
    Jesus, with the Mary who was sister of Moses and Aaron ;
    at sura ii.249/250, there is obviously a confusion between
    the story of Saul as told therein, and the account of Gideon
    in Judges, 7.5; the account of Alexander the Great is
    hopelessly garbled historically (sura xviii.82).
    Finally, Goldziher, Lammens and Schacht, have shown
    that a vast number of traditions (hadith) accepted even in
    the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were
    outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries. It is
    simply irrational to go on accepting the "truth" of these
    traditions.
    The history of the Islamic theology can be seen as a
    struggle between reason and revelation, with the eventual
    triumph of the dictates of revelation, with a victory for
    irrationalism and blind obedience to tradition.
    It is undoubtedly true that there was at the dawn of Islam,
    a rationalising tendency as, for example, in the theology of
    the Mu˜tazilites. But the Mu˜tazilites were nonetheless
    Muslims, which in itself, as I have tried to argue above, is
    an indication of irrational beliefs. Second, they were ready
    to assassinate those who rejected their doctrines and
    advocated the jihad in all regions in which their dogma did
    not have the ascendancy. They were responsible for the
    Mihna or the Muslim Inquisition.
    Finally, the rationalism of the Mu ˜tazilites was defeated
    by the philosophy of al-Ashari (died 935 C.E.) who, while
    not totally abandoning reason, did essentially subordinate
    reason to revelation. And the final death blow was given to
    rationalism by the real traditionists whose views
    eventually prevailed in Islam. The traditionists had no time
    for scholastic theology, which, for them was no different
    from Aristotelian philosophy “both led to unbelief. The
    traditionists refused to bend to aql, or reason, for them,
    reason was not required for religious understanding.
    Religious truth lay in in the Koran and the sunna, both of
    which had to be accepted without question and doubts. For
    example, al Shafi ˜i is made to say in true traditionist
    fashion that people who advocate scholastic theology with
    its modest amount of rationalism, "should be beaten with
    whips and the soles of sandals, and then paraded through
    all tribes and encampments while it is proclaimed of them,
    ˜Such is the reward of those who forsake the Koran and
    sunna and give themselves up to scholastic theology (
    kalam ). ™" Al-Ghazali was similarly dismissive of reason;
    he constantly criticizes the Greeks and the Muslim
    philosophers influenced by them. Al Ghazali finds Greeks
    the source of all kinds infidelity ; he was totally opposed
    to spirit of free inquiry; for example in section 7, chapter 2
    of his Ihay ulum al-adin, al Gahazali tells us that certain of
    the natural sciences are contrary to the law and religion,
    and in chapter 3 he tells us to abstain from free thought
    and accept the conclusions of the prophets. The great Ibn
    Khaldun is also suspicious of unbridled reason, which he
    also finds the source of unbelief. "No," wrote Ibn Khaldun,
    "one must be on guard by completely abandoning any
    speculation about (causes)...We have been commanded
    completely to abandon and suppress any speculation about
    [causes] and to direct ourselves to the Causer of all causes,
    so that the soul will be firmly coloured with the oneness of
    God. A man who stops at the causes is frustrated. He is
    rightly (said to be) unbeliever ¦.Therefore we are
    forbidden by Muhammad to study causes."
    The ultimate sign within Islam of the fear of disagreement
    is surely the law of apostasy, (in Arabic, irtidad, or ridda ;
    while an apostate is called a murtadd). In the Koran
    (xvi.106 ff ) the apostate is threatened with punishment in
    the next world only, but under Islamic law the penalty is
    death. In the Traditions, Ibn Abbas transmits the following
    saying of the Prophet : . "Kill him, who changes his
    religion" or "behead him" ( Ibn Maja, Hudud, bab 2 ;Nasai,
    Tahrim al-dam, bab 14; Bukhari, Murtaddin, bab 2;
    Tirmidhi, Hudud, bab 25, Abu Dawud, Hudud, bab. 1; Ibn
    Hanbal, i.217, 282, 322.)
    Finally, we come to Islam™s fear of ˜outsiders.™ Islam
    undoubtedly preached, to its credit, the equality of all free-
    born, Male Muslims. However Muslim women, and
    Muslim slaves are of course not considered equal. Thus
    Islam is not, in theory, racist .However Islam excludes
    people on the basis of belief. Salvation outside the Islamic
    faith is impossible. The world is divided between Muslims
    and Non-Muslims. There are very many sayings in the
    Koran which preach hatred and ill-will towards non-
    Muslims , and show a pathological fear of the "other:"
    iv.101: The unbelievers are your sworn enemies.
    lx.4: We renounce you (i.e. the idolaters): enmity and hate
    shall reign between us until you believe in Allah only¦
    lviii.23: You will not find believers in Allah and the Last
    day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and
    His apostle, even though they be their fathers, their sons,
    their brothers, or their nearest kindred ¦
    ix.7: Allah and His apostle repose no trust in idolaters ¦
    viii.13-14: Thus We punished them because they defied
    Allah and His apostle. He that defies Allah and His apostle
    shall be sternly punished. We said to them, "Feel our
    scourge. Hell-fire awaits the unbelievers."
    viii.55: The basest creatures in the sight of Allah are the
    faithless who will not believe ¦
    xxv.55: Yet the unbelievers worship idols which can
    neither help nor harm. Surely the unbeliever is his Lord™s
    enemy.
    v.72: ¦ He that worships other Gods besides Allah shall
    be forbidden Paradise and shall be cast into Hell-fire.
    None shall help the evil-doers.
    ix.23: Believers! do not befriend your fathers or your
    brothers if they choose unbelief in preference to faith.
    Wrong-doers are those that befriend them.
    ix. 28: Believers ! know that the idolaters are unclean.
    xi. 28: Let believers not make friends with the infidels in
    preference to the faithful ; he that does this has nothing to
    hope for from Allah “ except in self-defence.
    iii.118: Believers ! do not make friends with any men other
    than your own people. They will spare no pains to corrupt
    you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is
    clear from what they say, but more violent is the hatred
    which their breasts conceal ¦
    v. 14: Therefore, We stirred among them (the Christians)
    enmity and hatred, which shall endure till the Day of
    Resurrection, when Allah will declare to them all that they
    have done.
    v.64 ¦ That which Allah has revealed to you will surely
    increase the wickedness and unbelief of many of them (the
    Jews). We have stirred among them (the Jews) enmity and
    hatred which will endure till the Day of Resurrection.
    v.51: Believers! take neither Jews nor Christians for your
    friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of
    you seeks their friendship shall become one of their
    number. Allah does not guide the wrongdoers.
    Christians are marginally better regarded than the Jews,
    but the Koran still accuses them of falsifying the
    scriptures.v.75: "They surely are infidels who say, "God is
    the third of three"; for there is but one God; and if they do
    not refrain from what they say, a severe punishment shall
    light on those who are unbelievers."
    They are also accused of worshipping Jesus as the son of
    God, and like the Jews, they have been led astray and must
    be brought back to the true religion, that is, Islam.
    According to the Koran, Jews have intense hatred of all
    true Muslims, and as a punishments for their sins, some of
    them had, in the past, been changed into apes and swine
    (surah v.63), and others will have their hands tied to their
    necks and be cast into the Fire on Judgment day. The
    attitude enjoined upon the Muslims towards the Jews can
    only be described as anti-Semitic, and certainly was not
    conducive to a better understanding, tolerance or co-
    existence.
    v.51: Believers, do not take Jews or Christians as
    friends They are but one anothers friends. If
    anyone of you takes them for his friends,, then he is
    surely one of them. God will not guide evil-doers."
    v.56-64: O Believers, do not take as your friends
    the infidels or those who received the Scriptures
    before you [Jews and Christians] and who scoff
    and jest at your religion , but fear God if you are
    believers. Nor those who when you call them to
    prayer, make it an object of mirth and derision This
    is only because they are a people who do not
    understand.
    Say: "People of the Book: isn't it true that you hate
    us simply because we believe in God, and in what
    He has sent down to us, and in what He has
    revealed to others before; and because most of you
    are evil doers?"
    "Why don't their rabbis and doctors of lax forbid
    them from uttering sinful words and eating
    unlawful food ? Evil indeed are their works.
    "The hand of God is chained up ", claim the Jews
    .Their own hands shall be chained up __ and they
    shall be cursed for saying such a thing ".
    Jews are often accused, in the Koran, of perverting the
    scriptures, and holding doctrines they never held:
    ix.29,30: "Declare war upon those to whom the
    Scriptures were revealed but believe neither in God
    nor the Last Day ,and who do not forbid that which
    God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who
    refuse to acknowledge the true religion [Islam]
    until they pay the poll-tax without reservation and
    are totally subjugated.
    "The Jews claim that Ezra is a son of God, and the
    Christians say, " the Messiah is a son of God
    ".Those are their claims which do indeed resemble
    the sayings of the Infidels of Old. May God do
    battle with them! How they are deluded!"
    And they deserve fully any punishment they get:
    ii.61: "Wretchedness and baseness were stamped
    upon them [That is the Jews] and they drew on
    themselves the wrath of God. This was because
    they [the Jews] disbelieved the signs of God and
    slew the Prophets unjustly, and because they
    rebelled and transgressed ."
    iv.160,161: Because of the wickedness of certain
    Jews, and because they turn many from the way of
    God, We have forbidden them good and
    wholesome foods which were formerly allowed
    them; and because they have taken to usury, though
    they were forbidden it; and have cheated others of
    their possessions, We have prepared a grievous
    punishment for the Infidels amongst them ".
    Such are some of the sentiments expressed in the Koran,
    which remains for all Muslims, and not just
    "fundamentalists", the uncreated word of God Himself. It
    is valid for all times and places, its ideas are, according to
    all Muslims, absolutely true and beyond any criticism.
    The treatment of the Jews by Muhammad is certainly not
    above reproach. The cold-blooded extermination of the
    Banu Qurayza ( between 600 and 900 men ), the expulsion
    of the Nadir and their later massacre (something often
    overlooked in the history books) are not signs of
    magnanimity or compassion. His treatment of the Jews of
    the oasis of Khaybar served "as a model for the treaties
    granted by the Arab conquerors to the conquered peoples
    in territories beyond Arabia." Muhammad attacked the
    oasis in 628, had one of the leaders tortured to find the
    hidden treasures of the tribe, and then when the Jews
    surrendered, agreed to let them continue cultivating their
    oasis only if they gave him half their produce. Muhammad
    also reserved the right to cancel the treaty and expel the
    Jews whenever he liked. This treaty or agreement was
    called a DHIMMA, and those who accepted it were known
    as DHIMMIS. All non-Muslims who accepted Muslim
    supremacy and agreed to pay a tribute, in return for "
    Muslim protection," are referred to as dhimmis.
    The second caliph Umar later expelled the Jews and the
    Christians from the Hijaz (containing the holy cities of
    Mecca and Medina) in 640, referring to the dhimma of
    Khaybar. He is said to have quoted the Prophet on the right
    to cancel any pact he wished, and the Prophet's famous
    saying: " Two religions shall not remain together in the
    peninsula of the Arabs." To this day, the establishment of
    any other religion in Saudi Arabia is forbidden, many
    Christians have been executed for simply practising their
    religion. Here is how Amnesty International describes the
    situation in Saudi Arabia :
    "Hundreds of Christians, including women and children
    have been arrested and detained over the past three years,
    most without charge or trial, solely for the peaceful
    expression of their religious beliefs. Scores have been
    tortured, some by flogging, while in detention¦.The
    possession of non-Islamic religious objects “ including
    Bibles, rosary beads, crosses and pictures of Jesus Christ “
    is prohibited and such items may be confiscated" (AINO
    62 ; July /August 1993).
    At least since the Renaissance, one of the characteristics of
    Western civilisation has been its interest in other lands and
    societies. "This universal curiosity is still a distinguishing,
    almost an exclusive, characteristic of Europe and her
    daughters." Muslims are by contrast profoundly convinced
    of the finality, completeness, and essential self-sufficiency
    of their civilisation. For the Muslim, Islam is the one true
    faith, beyond which there are only unbelievers. "You [
    Muslims ] are the best of peoples" the Koran tells Muslims
    (sura iii.110) It is a remarkable fact that until at least the
    late 16 th century, when Turkish historians began to show
    a vague and still faint interest in European history, Muslim
    historians, with three noble exceptions, and Muslims in
    general, showed little desire to step outside their
    civilisation intellectually. The exceptions are just that,
    exceptions : the geographer Masudi, cultural historian and
    observer al-Biruni, and historian Rashid al-Din. Until the
    end of the 18th century, very few European books were
    translated into Muslim languages, and most of these dealt
    with useful topics such as medical science. This attitude
    has continued to this day. No Islamic country has
    university faculties that study non-Islamic civilisations,
    with the exception, significantly of Turkey, where, in
    Ankara, one can study Sanskrit. Even to listen to Western
    classical music is considered undesirable, and a danger to
    Islamic civilisation; "the treason of an Arab begins when
    he enjoys listening to Mozart or Beethoven;" wrote the
    Tunisian al-Wasiti ( quoted by Norman Daniel, Euro-Arab
    dialogue, p.88 ) Here is how one political analyst sums up
    the situation in the 1990s :
    "Arabs may be well informed on currency movements and
    the latest chat on the prospects of the Western economies
    but know surprisingly little about how Western societies
    and governments operate. Even those who live in the West
    or visit it frequently on holiday do not have much
    understanding of it because, in most cases, when they are
    there they mix with other Arabs,, principally their own
    relations, and take no interest in the culture, history or
    institutions of the countries they are in." Dr.Muhamed
    Talbi also makes a similar point by quoting Ibn Khaldun
    and Maryam Jameelah :
    "Au VIIIe / XIVe siècle, Ibn Khaldun, dont le génie est
    pourtant incontestable,écrivait: "Il faut donc se tenir à
    l'écart des sciences relatives aux religions antérieures à
    l'Islam et il est interdit d'en discuter". Ibn Khaldun, en cela
    seulement, fut écouté, ou plutôt il était l'interprète d'une
    mentalité qui avait preevalu jusqu'à nos jours. "Peu de
    musulmans, écrit Maryam Jameelah, ont réellement une
    connaissance profonde de l'Occident. Combien de
    musulmans, par exemple, maîtrisent - ils le grec ou le
    latin, et combien sont - ils intellectuellement équipés pour
    étudier le Judaïsme et le Christianisme aussi bien que les
    idéologies laïques à partir d'un point de vue musulman?
    Alors que des générations d'orientalistes occidentaux
    avaient étudié l'Islam conformément à leurs besoins et à
    leurs buts, n'est - il pas essentiel que quelques ulémas
    deviennent des occidentalistes?"
    Muslims are certain that Islam is not only the whole of
    God™s truth, but it is its final expression. Hence Muslims
    fear and persecute such post-Islamic religious movements
    as the Baha™is and the Ahmadis. Here is Amnesty
    International on the plight of the Ahmadis [ ASA
    :33/15.91]: "Ahmadis consider themselves to be Muslims
    but they are regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical
    because they call the founder of their movement al-Masih
    [ the Messiah ]: this is taken to imply that Muhammad is
    not the final seal of the prophets as orthodox Islam holds,
    i.e., the Prophet who carried the final message from God
    to humanity ¦. As a result of these divergences, Ahmadis
    have been subjected to discrimination and persecution in
    some Islamic countries. In the mid-1970s, the Saudi
    Arabia based World Muslim League called on Muslim
    governments worldwide to take action against Ahmadis.
    Ahmadis are since then banned in Saudi Arabia."
    Umberto Eco: [6] "Ur-Fascism (or Eternal Fascism)
    derives from individual or social frustration."
    There has been a demographic explosion in the Islamic
    world, and the leaders have simply not coped, unable to
    provide jobs, housing, health facilities, transport, inflation
    running high, all compounded by human rights abuses
    (torture, summary justice, executions, and so on ) This
    failure has been very ably exploited by the Islamists to
    increase their prestige, to increase their power, which has
    led, in turn, to mounting demands for increasing
    Islamization of society. Another essential factor in the
    current Islamic revival has to do with Islam™s crisis of
    identity, especially in face of the West™s overwhelming
    economic and cultural success in contrast to the relative
    economic, cultural, human rights failures of the post-
    independence regimes in the Islamic world. These failures
    have led to an increase of frustration, envy and hatred of
    the West, and an exaggerated emphasis on their Islamic
    identity. And "since for Muslims Islam is, by definition,
    superior to all other faiths, the failures and defeats of
    Muslims in this world can only mean that they are not
    practicing authentic Islam and that their states are not true
    Islamic states. The remedy, therefore, is return to the pure,
    authentic Islam of the Prophet and his Companions, a
    rejection and elimination of the accretions and innovations
    that had debased and corrupted the faith and enfeebled the
    Islamic society ¦ "
    Umberto Eco: [7] " ¦Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist
    psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an
    international one. The followers must feel besieged. The
    easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.
    But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are
    usually the best target because they have the advantage of
    being at the same time inside and outside."
    A belief in international plots, or, in other words,
    conspiracy theories are the key to understanding the
    politics of the Middle East. As Daniel Pipes in his
    acclaimed study, "The Hidden Hand, The Middle East
    Fears of Conspiracy" put it : "¦Whoever hopes to
    understand the Middle East must recognize the distorting
    lens of conspiracy theories, understand them, make
    allowance for them, and perhaps even plan around them.
    Conspiracism [the belief in international plots or
    conspiracies] provides a key to understanding the political
    culture of the Middle East." Amazingly enough, most of
    the leading Muslim thinkers and actors of the twentieth
    century have put forward conspiracy theories to excuse the
    continuing cultural and economic backwardness of Islamic
    countries; the prevalence of such theories indicate a
    refusal on the part of Muslims to take responsibility for
    their own failures. As Pipes in his brilliant work says,
    "although grand conspiracy theories surfaced in the Middle
    East only in the late nineteenth century, their subject
    matter ranges much farther ; indeed it often extends right
    back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. More broadly,
    conspiracy theorists reinterpret the whole sweep of Islamic
    history, plundering medieval texts to locate instances of
    conspiracy, especially on the part of Christians and Jews."
    The Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian has shown how
    prevalent the conspiracies are in Iran,, leading often to
    tragic consequences , as in the mass executions of 1981-
    82:
    "When in June 1981 the [People™s] Mojahedin tried to
    overthrow the Islamic Republic, Khomeini proclaimed that
    the CIA was planning a repeat performance of 1953 and
    that the whole opposition, not just the Mojahedin, was
    implicated in this grand international plot. In six short
    weeks, the Islamic Republic shot over one thousand
    prisoners. The victims included not only members of the
    Mojahedin but also royalists, Bahais, Jews.
    "Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Qashqayis, Tukomans, National
    Frontists, Maoists, anti-Stalinist Marxists, and even
    apolitical teenage girls who happened to be in the wrong
    street at the wrong time. Never before in Iran had firing
    squads executed so many in so short a time over so flimsy
    an accusation."
    Muslim thinkers premise their understanding of modern
    history on Western plots against Islam. For example,
    Muhammad al-Ghazali, a leading contemporary Muslim
    thinker from Egypt, wrote, "there is a conspiracy against
    Islam ¦by Western secularism because it claims that
    Islam is a dangerous religion.". Khomeini goes further by
    explaining, "In the interests of the Jews, America, and
    Israel, we [Muslims] must be jailed and killed, we must be
    sacrificed to the evil intentions of foreigners." According
    to such Muslim thinking, Islam made the Muslims great,
    culturally, militarily, economically , but because of
    external influence and plotting of the Jews and the
    imperialists, Muslims have been lured away from the
    Koran, the Sharia, the Muslim way of life, and hence have
    lost their moorings. Khomeini saw the Shah of Persia ˜s
    granting women the right to vote as an "attempt to corrupt
    our chaste women" and a plot against Islam "perhaps
    drawn up by the spies of the Jews and the Zionists"
    intending to destroy "the independence of the state and the
    economy." Rushdie™s novel, Satanic Verses he saw as a
    mortal threat to Islam.
    As Pipes concludes, nearly all the most influential Muslim
    thinkers, such as Hasan al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abu™l A™la
    al-Maududi, accept the premise of anti-Islamic
    conspiration by Jews and Europeans, as do most of the
    preachers, scholars , journalists, and politicians. The very
    constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran refers to
    plotting, when it describes the White Revolution (the
    Shah™s land-reform program) as an "American plot ¦ a
    ploy to stabilize the foundation of the colonialist
    government [of the Shah] and strengthen Iran™s ¦ties with
    world imperialism." This constitution also promises that
    non-Muslims will be well-treated if they refrain from
    getting "in conspiracies hatched against the Islamic
    Republic of Iran."
    Muslims of the Middle East fear two main conspirators,
    Jews and Imperialists. Jews are seen as a threat to the
    whole of humanity, and are considered responsible for
    every evil in the world, from assassinations of Lincoln,
    McKinley, and Kennedy, to the French and Russian
    Revolution, and so on. As Robert Wistrich put it, for the
    Muslim Brethren of Egypt, "Of all the myriad enemies of
    Islam ¦Jewry represents the ultimate abomination, evil in
    its purest ontological form." and as Daniel Pipes adds, and
    the same applies for many other Muslims, for example,
    Sayyid Qutb, the very influential Egyptian thinker, wrote,
    "Through the lengthy centuries “ regretfully “ [the Jews]
    poisoned the Islamic heritage in a way that may itself be
    revealed only with the effort of centuries."
    While Mustafa Mashur, another Egyptian thinker sees
    Jews behind "every weird, deviant principle" in history.
    Muslims considered the U.N. International Conference on
    Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994 as an
    international plot to undermine Islam, and to annihilate
    Muslims. Adil Husayn, a leading Muslim Egyptian thinker
    argued that the West™s promotion of birth control "is not
    aimed at developing the poor world. It is a racist plan to
    designed to continue looting and weakening us in favour
    of the dominating white race ¦.The conference is the
    culmination of a scheme aimed at annihilating mankind
    and Muslims."
    What precisely is the reason for the prevalence of
    conspiracy theories in the Muslim Middle East. Many
    analysts are convinced of the role and nature of Islam in
    the incubation and perpetuation of conspiracy theories.
    The saying "better a 100 years of repression than a day of
    anarchy" sums up the fear of anarchy (fitna) that lies deep
    in Islamic culture, and may be responsible for encouraging
    the paranoid style of thinking. More commonly, Middle
    Eastern analysts point to the fatalism inculcated by Islam .
    Though there, as usual contradictory statements in the
    Koran on this subject, in the end it was the predestination
    doctrine that prevailed in Islam .Here are some quotes
    from the Koran that have led to a kind of fatalism within
    Islam :
    liv. 49 All things have been created after fixed decree.
    iii.139 No one can die except by God™s permission
    according to the book that fixes the term of life.
    lxxxvii.2 The Lord has created and balanced all things and
    has fixed their destinies and guided them..
    viii.17 God killed them, and those shafts were God™s, not
    yours.
    ix.51 By no means can anything befall us but what God
    has destined for us.
    ( See also, xiii.30 ; xiv.4 ; xviii.101 ; xxxii.32 xlv.26 ;
    lvii.22 )
    Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi political thinker, sees, "extreme
    fatalism ¦that may be a characteristic of Islamic culture
    generally « as a key explanation for conspiracy theories. In
    his view, this world view undermines the notion of man as
    responsible to himself. Similarly, Homa Katouzian traces
    conspiracy theories to an « unimaginable fatalism;" and
    Jahangir Amuzegar ascribes them to a "fatalistic streak."
    Others point to the Shi™a tradition of taqiya ( dissimulation
    “ for self-protection and the safeguarding of faith ; and
    finally some single out the Shia tradition of martyrdom
    (shihada) that causes Iranians to externalize evil, to seek to
    put the responsibility for their failures, misdeeds, blunders
    onto others plotting against them.
    Umberto Eco: [8] "The followers must feel humiliated by
    the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies
    ¦.However, the followers must be convinced that they
    can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous
    shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are the same time
    too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are
    condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally
    incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the
    enemy."
    The Muslims in the Middle East have been constantly
    humiliated for centuries, but perhaps at no time more so
    than since the late 18th century when Napoleon first burst
    upon the scene with the conquest of Egypt. Ever since
    then, Muslims have continued to be at once both attracted,
    and repelled by Western civilisation, and all its material
    and spiritual wares, which they cannot afford to buy, or
    emulate for fear of being accused of treason towards
    Islam. The Six “Day War with Israel totally humiliated not
    just Arabs, but all Muslims around the world. And as
    Umberto Eco says, they are condemned to lose wars as
    they seem incapable of rationally and objectively assessing
    the strength and weaknesses of the enemy. The enemy is
    seen as both too strong and too weak . As Field puts it, the
    paranoid style in the Middle East "is obviously linked to
    the theorists™ general ignorance of the outside world and
    this is clearly a disadvantage for any society. The belief in
    plots, combined with ignorance, leads the Arabs to
    exaggerate the power of the West and misjudge its
    motives, making them believe that it is hostile and
    manipulative when it is more likely to be morally
    censorious, occasionally concerned with upholding states™
    sovereignty and /or protecting its oil interests, generally
    interested in promoting its exports, and often indifferent to
    Arab issues “ or concerned but unable to see how it can
    influence events."
    For the Middle Easterner, the Jewish or Imperialist
    conspirator is at once too powerful and too weak. Thus
    "the conspirator never rests, never falters, never makes
    mistakes, and never shows fear; word to the contrary is
    disinformation. He is tireless." "Every day the [enemies of
    Islam] plot new conspiracies and schemes." The Zionist
    conspiracy "has enormous resources at its disposal: money,
    media, industry, technology, oil, military hardware, and
    the intelligence agencies, led by Mossad and CIA." Gamal
    Abdel Nasser also believed in the omnipotence of the
    West, "The Americans know perfectly well what we will
    say, where we will proceed, and what we will do." While
    Sattareh Farman Farmaian tells of the servants in her
    family™s Iranian home that they "believed that the English
    were so diabolical that they could even cause floods,
    droughts, and earthquakes. And it was true that to Iranians,
    the British seemed almost supernaturally clever."
    And yet, the enemies of Islam never wins . "The Jews may
    try, but they will never destroy the [Muslims]." Or as The
    Baghdad Observer put it, "A savage campaign has been
    conducted by the U.S. inside the Security Council to hurt
    Iraq, choke its economy and starve its people. Yet, as the
    first chapters of the conspiracy have failed to weaken Iraq,
    the final phase of the enemies™ schemes is definitely going
    to meet the same fate. The whole conspiracy is doomed to
    failure."
    Umberto Eco: [9] "For Ur-Fascism, (Eternal Fascism)
    there is no struggle for life, but rather life is lived for
    struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is
    bad because life is permanent warfare."
    Umberto Eco: [11] "¦Everybody is educated to become a
    hero ¦This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult
    of death. In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that
    death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity ;
    believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a
    supernatural happiness. By, contrast, the Ur-Fascist craves
    heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic
    life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his
    impatience, he more frequently sends other people to
    death."
    Umberto Eco™s feature [9] goes naturally well with feature
    [11], so I shall discuss them here, and leave feature [10]
    for later.
    The totalitarian nature of Islam is no where more apparent
    than in the concept of Jihad, the Holy War, whose ultimate
    aim is to conquer the entire world and submit it to the one
    true faith, to the law of Allah. To Islam alone has been
    granted the truth - there is no possibility of salvation
    outside it. It is the sacred duty - an incumbent religious
    duty established in the Koran and the Traditions - of all
    Muslims to bring it to all humanity. Jihad is a divine
    institution, enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing
    Islam. Muslims must strive, fight and kill in the name of
    God:
    ix.5-6: "Kill those who join other gods with God wherever
    you may find them."
    iv.76: "Those who believe fight in the cause of God..."
    viii.12: "I will instill terror into the hearts of the Infidels,
    strike off their heads then, and strike off from them every
    fingertip."
    viii.39-42: "Say to the Infidels: If they desist from their
    unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven them; but if
    they return to it, they have already before them the doom
    of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be at an
    end, and the religion be all of it God's."
    ii.256: "But they who believe, and who fly their country,
    and fight in the cause of God may hope for God's mercy:
    and God is Gracious, Merciful."
    It is a grave sin for a Muslim to shirk the battle against the
    unbelievers, those who do will roast in hell:
    viii. 15, 16: "Believers, when you meet the unbelievers
    preparing for battle do not turn your backs to them. [
    Anyone who does ] shall incur the wrath of God and hell
    shall be his home: an evil dwelling indeed ".
    ix.39: "If you do not fight, He will punish you severely,
    and put others in your place."
    Those who die fighting for the only true religion, Islam,
    will be amply rewarded in the life to come:
    iv.74: "Let those fight in the cause of God who barter the
    life of this world for that which is to come; for whoever
    fights on God's path, whether he is killed or triumphs, We
    will give him a handsome reward."
    It is abundantly clear from many of the above verses that
    the Koran is not talking of metaphorical battles or of moral
    crusades; it is talking of the battle field. To read such
    blood thirsty injunctions in a Holy Book is shocking.
    Mankind is divided into two groups - Muslims and non-
    Muslims. The Muslims are members of the Islamic
    community, the umma, who possess territories in the Dar
    ul Islam, the Land of Islam, where the edicts of Islam are
    fully promulgated. The non-Muslims are the Harbi, people
    of the Dar ul Harb, the Land of Warfare, any country
    belonging to the infidels which has not been subdued by
    Islam but which, nonetheless, is destined to pass into
    Islamic jurisdiction either by conversion or by war (Harb).
    All acts of war are permitted in the Dar ul Harb. Once the
    Dar ul Harb has been subjugated, the Harbi become
    prisoners of war. The imam can do what he likes to them
    according to the circumstances. Woe betide the city that
    resists and is then taken by the Islamic army by storm.. In
    this case, the inhabitants have no rights whatsoever, and as
    Sir Steven Runciman says in his "The Fall of
    Constantinople, 1453":
    "The conquering army is allowed three days of
    unrestricted pillage; and the former places of worship,
    with every other building, become the property of the
    conquering leader; he may dispose of them as he pleases.
    Sultan Mehmet [after the fall of Constantinople in 1453
    allowed] his soldiers the three days of pillage to which
    they were entitled. They poured into the city...They slew
    everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and
    children without discrimination.. The blood ran in rivers
    down the steep streets...But soon the lust for slaughter was
    assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious
    objects would bring them greater profits."
    In other cases, they are sold into slavery, exiled or treated
    as dhimmis, who are tolerated as second class subjects, as
    long as they pay a regular tribute.
    It is common nowadays for the apologists of Islam,
    whether Muslims or their Western admirers, to interpret
    "Jihad" in the non-military sense of "moral struggle,"
    "moral striving." But it is quite illegitimate to pretend that
    the Koran and the books on Islamic Law were talking
    about "moral crusades." Rather as Rudolf Peters says in his
    definitive study of Jihad says, "In the books on Islamic
    Law, the word means armed struggle against the
    unbelievers, which is also a common meaning in the
    Koran." Apologists of Islam, even when they do admit that
    real battles are being referred to, still pretend that the
    doctrine of Jihad only talks of "defensive measures," that
    is, the apologists pretend that fighting is only allowed to
    defend Muslims, and that offensive wars are illegitimate.
    But again, this is not the classical doctrine in Islam; as
    Peters makes clear, the Sword Verses in the Koran were
    interpreted as unconditional commands to fight the
    unbelievers, and furthermore these Sword Verses
    abrogated all previous verses concerning intercourse with
    non-Muslims. Peters sums up the classical doctrine as:
    "The doctrine of Jihad as laid down in the works on
    Islamic Law, developed out of the Koranic prescriptions
    and the example of the Prophet and the first caliphs, which
    is recorded in the hadith; The crux of the doctrine is the
    existence of one single Islamic state, ruling the entire
    umma [Muslim community]. It is the duty of the umma to
    expand the territory of this state in order to bring as many
    people under its rule as possible. The ultimate aim is to
    bring the whole earth under the sway of Islam and to
    extirpate unbelief : "Fight them until there is no
    persecution and the religion is God™s entirely." (sura ii.193
    ; viii.39). Expansionist jihad is a collective duty (fard ala
    al-kifaya), which is fulfilled if a sufficient number of
    people take part in it. If this is not the case, the whole
    umma [Muslim community] is sinning."
    Here are more bellicose verses from the Koran, the words
    of Allah telling Muslims to kill, murder on his behalf :
    ii.193: Fight against them until idolatry is no more and
    Allah™s religion reigns supreme.
    ii. 216: Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike
    it. But you may hate a thing although it is good for you,
    and love a thing although it is bad for you. Allah knows,
    but you do not.
    ix.41: Whether unarmed or well-equipped, march on and
    fight for the cause of Allah, with your wealth and your
    persons. This is best for you, if you but knew it.
    ix. 123: Believers! make war on the infidels who dwell
    around you let them find harshness in you.
    lxvi.9: O Prophet! make war on the unbelievers and the
    hypocrites and deal sternly with them hell shall be their
    home, evil their fate.
    ix.73: O Prophet Make war on the unbelievers and the
    hypocrites. Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is
    hell, a hapless journey™s end.
    viii.65: O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight. If there
    are twenty steadfast men among you, they shall vanquish
    two hundred; and if there are a hundred, they shall rout a
    thousand unbelievers, for they are devoid of
    understanding.
    xlvii.4-15: When you meet the unbelievers in the
    battlefield strike off their heads and when you have laid
    them low, bind your captives firmly ¦.
    xxv.52: Do not yield to the unbelievers, but fight them
    strenuously with this Koran.
    viii.67: It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he
    has made slaughter in the land ¦
    What Umberto Eco calls the cult of heroism and the cult
    of death is beautifully exemplified in the Muslim cult of
    martyrdom. The Koran promises Paradise with its
    seductive houris to all those who die in the cause of Islam :
    x. 4-15 "...As for those who are slain in the cause of Allah,
    He will not allow their works to perish. He will vouchsafe
    them guidance and ennoble their state; He will admit them
    to Paradise He has made known to them."
    ix.111: "Allah has purchased of their faithful lives and
    worldly goods and in return has promised them the
    Garden. They will fight for His cause, kill and be killed."
    iii.169-171: "You must not think that those who were slain
    in the cause of Allah are dead. They are alive, and well-
    provided for by their Lord¦. "
    iii.157-158 "If you should die or be killed in the cause of
    Allah, His mercy and forgiveness would surely be better
    than all the riches that amass. If you should die or be
    killed, before Him you shall all be gathered."
    Bukhari gives the following hadith : "Narrated Anas bin
    Malik : ˜The prophet said, 'Nobody who dies and finds
    good from Allah (in the hereafter) would wish to come
    back to this world even if he were given the whole world
    ¦except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of
    martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get
    killed again (in Allah's cause.)'"
    Finally, on the obligation of Jihad, I shall quote from two
    Muslim thinkers greatly admired in the West. First Ibn
    Khaldun in his Muqaddimah writes: "In the Muslim
    community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the
    universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to)
    covert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by
    force."
    And now Averroes, a much romanticized figure in the
    West : "According to the majority of scholars, the
    compulsory nature of the jihad is founded on sura ii.216:
    ˜Prescribed for you is fighting, though it is hateful to you.™
    The obligation to participate in the jihad applies to adult
    free men who have the means at their disposal to go to war
    and who are healthy, ¦ Scholars agree that all polytheists
    should be fought; This founded on sura viii.39: Fight them
    until there is no persecution and the religion is God™s
    entirely"¦ Most scholars are agreed that, in his dealing
    with captives, various policies are open to the Imam. He
    may pardon them, enslave them, kill them, or release them
    either on ransom or as dhimmi [non-Muslim, second class
    subject of the Islamic state], in which latter case the
    released captive is obliged to pay poll-tax (jizya) ¦.Sura
    viii.67 "It is not for any Prophet to have prisoners until he
    make wide slaughter in the land." as well as the occasion
    when this verse was revealed [viz.the captives of Badr]
    would prove that it is better to kill captives than to enslave
    them. The Prophet himself would in some cases kill
    captives outside the field of battle, while he would pardon
    them in others. Women he used to enslave ¦. The
    Muslims are agreed that the aim of warfare against the
    People of the Book ¦is two-fold :either conversion to
    Islam or payment of poll-tax “jizya)."
    Umberto Eco: [10] "Elitism is a typical aspect of any
    reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally
    aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly
    implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only
    advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the
    best people of the world, the members of the party are the
    best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to)
    become a member of the party ¦ "
    Here, it takes very little substitution to see how Umberto
    Eco's tenth feature applies to Muslims as well. "Every
    [Muslim] belongs to the best people of the world, the
    members of the [Umma] are the best among the citizens,
    every citizen can (or ought to) become a [Muslim]
    member of the [Umma]."
    Islam is the most perfect of religion, and Muslims are the
    chosen people, as sura v.3 tells us: " This day I have
    prefected for you your religion and completed My favour
    to you and chosen for you Islam as a religion." Islam is
    destined to triumph ultimately, sura ix.33 "He it is Who
    sent His Messenger with guidance and the Religion of
    Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religions,
    though the polytheists are averse" (see also xlviii.28;
    lxi.9).
    The arrogance of Muslims is captured very precisely by
    Frithjof Schuon, a Western convert to a mystical variety of
    Islam:
    "The intellectual “ and thereby the rational “ foundation of
    Islam results in the average Muslim having a curious
    tendency to believe that non-Muslims either know that
    Islam is the Truth and reject it out of pure obstinacy, or
    else are simply ignorant of it and can be converted by
    elementary explanations; that anyone should be able to
    oppose Islam with a good conscience quite exceeds the
    Muslims™ imagination, precisely because Islam coincides
    in his mind with the irresistible logic of things."
    Umberto Eco: [12] "Since both permanent war and
    heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist
    transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the
    origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for
    women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard
    sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality)."
    Here are some machismo sayings from the Koran :
    iv..34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath
    made the one of them to excel the other, & because they
    spend of their property (for the support of women). So
    good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that
    which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear
    rebellion, admonish them & banish them to beds apart;
    and beat them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way
    against them Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.
    v.6... And if ye are sick on a journey, or one of you cometh
    from the closet, or ye have contact with women & ye find
    not water, then go to clean high ground & rub your faces
    & your hands with some of it...
    xxxiii. 32-33 O ye wives of the Prophet! Ye are not like
    any other women. If ye keep your duty (to Allah), then be
    not soft of speech lest he in whose heart is a disease aspire
    to you, but utter customary speech And stay in your
    houses. Bedizen not yourselves with the bedizenment of
    the time of ignorance. Be regular in prayer, & pay the poor
    due, & obey Allah & His Messenger...
    Equally, in numerous Hadiths on which are based the
    Islamic laws we learn of the woman' s role - to stay at
    home, to be at the beck & call of man, to obey him (which
    is a religious duty,) to assure man a tranquil existence.
    Here are some examples:
    _____ If it had been given me to order someone to
    prostrate themselves in front of someone other than God, I
    would surely have ordered women to prostrate themselves
    in front of their husbands... A woman cannot fulfill her
    duties towards God without first having accomplished
    those that she owes her husband.
    _____ The woman who dies & with whom the husband is
    satisfied will go to paradise.
    _____ A wife should never refuse herself to her husband
    even if it is on the saddle of a camel.
    _____ Hellfire appeared to me in a dream & I noticed that
    it was above all peopled with women who had been
    ungrateful. "Was it towards God that they were
    ungrateful?" They had not shown any gratitude towards
    their husbands for all they had received from them... Even
    when all your life you have showered a woman with your
    largesse she will still find something petty to reproach you
    with one day, saying, "You have never done anything for
    me."
    _____ If anything presages a bad omen it is: a house, a
    woman, a horse.
    _____ Never will a people know success if they confide
    their affairs to a woman.
    Al -Ghazali (1058 - 1111), whom Professor Montgomery
    Watt describes as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad, in
    his " The Revival Of The Religious Sciences," defines the
    woman' s role:
    "She should stay at home & get on with her spinning, she
    should not go out often, she must not be well-informed,
    nor must she be communicative with her neighbours &
    only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take
    care of her husband & respect him in his presence & his
    absence & seek to satisfy him in everything; she must not
    cheat on him nor extort money from him; she must not
    leave her house without his permission & if gives his
    permission she must leave surreptitiously. She should put
    old on clothes & take deserted streets & alleys, avoid
    markets, & make sure that a stranger does not hear her
    voice or recognise her; she must not speak to a friend of
    her husband even in need... Her sole worry should be her
    virtue, her home as well as her prayers & her fast. If a
    friend of her husband calls when the latter is absent she
    must not open the door nor reply to him in order to
    safeguard her & her husband's honour. She should accept
    what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual needs at
    any moment "...She should be clean and ready to satisfy
    her husband's sexual needs at any moment." The great
    theologian then warns all men to be careful of women for
    their, "guile is immense & their mischief is noxious; they
    are immoral & mean spirited." "It is a fact that all the
    trials, misfortunes & woes which befall men come from
    women," moaned Al Ghazali.
    In his Book of Counsel for Kings, Ghazali sums up all that
    a woman has to suffer & endure because of Eve's
    misbehaviour in the Garden of Eden:
    "As for the distinctive characteristics with which God on
    high has punished women, (the matter is as follows):
    "When Eve ate fruit which He had forbidden to her from
    the tree in Paradise, the Lord, be He praised, punished
    women with eighteen things: (1) menstruation; (2)
    childbirth; (3) separation from mother & father &
    marriage to a stranger; (4) pregnancy; (5) not having
    control over her own person; (6) a lesser share in
    inheritance; (7) her liability to be divorced & inability to
    divorce; (8) its being lawful for men to have four wives,
    but for a woman to have only one husband; (9) the fact
    that she must stay secluded in the house; (10) the fact that
    she must keep her head covered inside the house; (11) the
    fact that two women's testimony has to be set against the
    testimony of one man; (12) the fact that she must not go
    out of the house unless accompanied by a near relative;
    (13) the fact that men take part in Friday & feast day
    prayers & funerals while women do not; (14)
    disqualification for rulership & judgeship; (15) the fact
    that merit has one thousand components, only one of
    which is attributable to women, while 999 are attributable
    to men; (16)... (17) the fact that if their husbands die they
    must observe a waiting period of four months & ten days
    before remarrying. (18) The fact that if their husbands
    divorce them they must observe a waiting period of three
    months or three menstrual periods before remarrying... "
    The Koran, of course, permits men an unlimited number of
    women: IV.3 And if ye are apprehensive that ye shall not
    deal fairly with orphans, then, of other women who seem
    good in your eyes marry but two, or three or four; & if ye
    still fear that ye shall not act equitably, then one only; or
    the slaves whom ye have acquired XXIII.1,5,6. Happy now
    the believers, humble in their prayers, shunning vain
    conversation, paying the poor-due,& who restrain their
    appetites except with their wives or the slaves whom their
    right hands possess: for in that case they shall be free from
    blame.
    XXXIII.49-51 O Prophet! We allow thee thy wives whom
    thou hast dowered, & the slaves whom thy right hand
    possesseth out of the booty which God hath granted thee,
    & the daughters of thy uncle, thy paternal & maternal
    aunts who fled with thee to Medina, & any believing
    woman who hath given herself up to the Prophet, if the
    Prophet desired to wed her - a Privilege for thee above the
    rest of the Faithful We well know what we have settled for
    them, in regard to their wives & to the slaves...; that there
    may be no fault on thy part... Thou mayst decline for the
    present whom thou wilt of them, & thou mayest take to thy
    bed her whom thou wilt, & whomsoever thou shalt long
    for of those thou shalt have before neglected, & this shall
    not be a crime in thee."
    The inequality between men & women in matters of
    giving testimony or evidence; or being a witness is
    enshrined in the Koran: II.282 "Call in two male witnesses
    from among you but if two men cannot be found, then one
    man & two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses;
    so that if either of them commit an error the other will
    remember."
    On adultery the Koran says: XXIV.4 Those that defame
    honourable women & cannot produce four witnesses shall
    be given eighty lashes. "Of course, Muslim jurists will
    only accept four male witnesses. These witnesses must
    declare that they have "seen the parties in the very act of
    carnal conjunction".
    In questions of heritage, the Quran tells us that male
    children should inherit twice the portion of female
    children IV.11-12 A male shall inherit twice as much as a
    female. If there be more than two girls, they shall have
    two- thirds of the inheritance, but if there be one only, she
    shall inherit the half. Parents shall inherit a sixth each, if
    the deceased have a child; but if he leave no child & his
    parents be his heirs, his mother shall have a third. If he
    have brothers, his mother shall have a sixth after payment
    of any legacy he may have bequeathed or any debt he may
    have owed.
    The birth of a girl is still seen as a catastrophe in Islamic
    societies.. The system of inheritance just adds to her
    misery & her dependence on the man.... If she is an only
    child she receives only half the legacy of her father, the
    other half going to the male members of the father's
    family. If there are two or more daughters, they inherit
    2/3rds. This pushes fathers & mothers to prefer male
    children to female so that they can leave the entirety of
    their effects or possessions to their own descendants. "Yet
    when a new-born girl is announced to one of them his
    countenance darkens & heis filled with gloom"; Koran
    XLIII. 15. The situation is even worse when a woman
    loses her husband - she only receives a quarter of the
    legacy & one eighth if there are. If the deceased leaves
    more than one wife, all the wives are still obliged to share
    among themselves a quarter or one eighth of the legacy.
    All Muslim males can at any moment separate themselves
    from their wives, can repudiate their wives without
    formality, without explanations, without compensation. It
    is enough for the husband to pronounce the phrase "You
    are divorced" & it is done. Up to a period of three months
    the divorce is revocable. If the husband pronounces "You
    are divorced" three times, then the divorce is definitive. In
    the latter case the divorced wife cannot return to her
    husband until she has been married, "enjoyed", & divorced
    by another husband. Divorce depends entirely on the will
    & caprice of the husband - he may divorce his wife
    without any misbehaviour on her part, or without assigning
    any cause. As far as the custody of children goes, it is the
    mother who has the right to keep them. But as soon as she
    decides to remarry, she automatically loses her right to her
    children from the previous marriage.... In the case where
    the husband has the custody of children, if he remarries he
    does not lose this right to keep his children. Thus the
    woman is faced with the choice of remarrying & losing
    custody of her children or keeping her children & not
    marrying. This of course leads to a total insecurity for the
    women. Divorce is very frequent in Arab countries;
    instead of keeping four wives at the same time, which is
    rather expensive, a man simply changes his wife several
    times as recommended by the great Al Ghazali.
    If a woman asks a man for a divorce, he may agree if he is
    paid or compensated in some way...In such a case she is
    not entitled to the repayment of her dower. The Koran
    sanctions such a dissolution II.229 "If ye fear that they
    cannot observe the ordinances of God, then no blame shall
    attach to either of you for what the wife shall herself give
    for her redemption."
    An annulment of a marriage means a woman loses the
    right to the dowry & must give back what she has already
    received. Divorced women do have the right to re-marry
    but " must wait keeping themselves from men, three
    menstrual courses." ( II. 228 )
    Umberto Eco: [13] "Ur-Fascism (Eternal Fascism) is based
    upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one
    might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual
    rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political
    impact only from a quantitative point of view “ one
    follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism
    (Eternal Fascism), however, individuals as individuals
    have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a
    monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no
    large quantity of human beings can have a common will,
    the Leader pretends to be their interpreter..."
    Liberal democracy extends the sphere of individual
    freedom and attaches all possible value to each man or
    woman. Individualism is not a recognizable feature of
    Islam ; instead the collective will of the Muslim people is
    constantly emphasized. There is certainly no notion of
    individual rights, which developed in the West, especially
    during the eighteenth century. The constant injunction to
    obey the Caliph, who is God™s Shadow on Earth, is hardly
    inducive to creating a rights “based individualist
    philosophy. The hostility to individual rights is manifest in
    these two excerpts, one from the great Ibn Khaldun, and
    one from a recent Muslim thinker A.K. Brohi, a former
    Minister of Law and Religious Affairs in Pakistan who has
    often written on human rights from an Islamic perspective.
    First, Ibn Khaldun: "All religious laws and practices and
    everything that the masses are expected to do requires
    group feeling. Only with the help of group feeling can a
    claim be successfully pressed,¦.Group feeling is
    necessary to the Muslim community. Its existence enables
    (the community) to fulfill what God expects of it."
    Now A.K.Brohi : "Human duties and rights have been
    vigorously defined and their orderly enforcement is the
    duty of the whole of organized communities and the task is
    specifically entrusted to the law enforcement organs of the
    state. The individual if necessary has to be sacrificed in
    order that that the life of the organism be saved.
    Collectivity has a special sanctity attached to it in Islam."
    "[In Islam] there are no "human rights" or "freedoms"
    admissible to man ¦in essence the believer owes
    obligation or duties to God if only because he is called
    upon to obey the Divine Law and such human rights as he
    is made to acknowledge seem to stem from his primary
    duty to obey God ." (Note the chillingly frightening, fascist
    and totalitarian phrase, "the individual if necessary has to
    be sacrificed.")
    Umberto Eco [14] "Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
    Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, ¦But
    elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of
    dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use
    of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax,
    in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical
    thinking."
    A.K.Brohi already quoted above, goes on to write, "By
    accepting to live in bondage to this Divine Law, man
    learns to be free," which again frighteningly reminds one
    of Orwell™s Newspeak...
    "Freedom is Slavery."
    As for Arabic, one Muslim philosopher, Shabbir Akhtar
    who taught at the International Islamic University in
    Malaysia has written of the limitations of Arabic, "In
    modern analytical philosophy, there is hardly anything in
    Arabic or any other Islamic tongue. Philosophical
    discussion is best conducted in English. Owing to the
    grammatical limitations of of Arabic, it is impossible to
    express most philosophical claims with an acceptable
    degree of rigour and clarity. Moreover Arabic is a
    devotional language lacking the vocabulary requisite for
    detached discussion of controversial matters."



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Sep 22 2002 - 05:06:15 MDT