Skybird
02-02-06, 06:37 PM
In the thread on the cartoon-affair TypeXXIII asked me on how I get it together that there are "tolerant Muslims" when I brandmark Islam as an aggressive ideology. Comparable questions I got asked in the last weeks and days by Hitman and other guys, too, in forum threads, and in emails. In the cartoon-thread I told TypeXXIII
I sent a long letter to someone who was questioning my opinion, too, for comparable reasons like you do. We are very diffrent, or better: strictly opposed in our opinions, but still can manage to respect each other. Nevertheless, major parts of that letter are not any personal at all, but are like one of my usual essays or texts. I will post longer excerpts from that and clean them of any personal references, because 90% of that multi-page letter was an essay in fact, I hope (and think), my mail-partner at that time will not feel treated unfair that way, no personal adresses I will include.
This is that letter. The receiver back then will recognize it, and although he strongly disagrees with it's context I hope he sees why I post it here, in an edited form that got cleaned of every personal relevancy or identification. I got asked these things often in the last days and weeks, and find it increasingly "exhausting" always to give long answers. That'C why I take this shortcut and post this thing. Keep in mind that it is edited and maybe I have overseen some signs of "structural desintegration".
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I am surrounded by masses of people, most of whom declare they are catholics or protestants. But the way they spend their lifes, their way of living their faith, does not do any truth to their statements that they are Christians. You can walk into a church – without beeing Christian at all. You can practice the correct rites – and still, you do it by habit, because it is expected, because you had been taught a tradition. Most „Christians“ I know are not Christians. Remember that long essay of mine, where I talked of a „virtual Muhammad“? That not the historical figure of Muhammad is at center of Islam, but an artificial creation that has not much to do with the historically correct Muhammad, and that is constantly changed to adopt to new needs and changes in real life at the present? And that immitation replaces understanding? The old testament, compared to Qu’ran, is of almost equal diversity and partial contradiction. Everyone can pick something from it as he sees a need to justify his opinion. Old Testament and Qu’ran and Hadith cannot be compared in their history of creation, certainly I accept none of both to be given by any god himself. They are man’s work, and that means, personalities, selfish interests, political opportunism, egos taking a bath in public sunshine, and the way people tried to made sense of the world and their life and tried to add control and preview (by installing rules and artificial orders/categories) – all these factors influenced the way the creation went on, and decided the final form.
Rites are dust and shadow only. Any actor could play a Muslim, a Jew the next day, a Zen monk one day later. This is only dead ritual, it means nothing – even if the person in question believes it is right and important. Tolerance, Coexistance, and in general: non-intrusive behavior towards non-Islamic for me is clear signal that a muslim propagating these terms, and living by them!!!, is not Muslim in the understanding of Muhammad, Medina-model, Qu’ran and Hadith.
I see major differences between Christianity, and Islam (and Buddhism). Take the church, for example. Jesus hasn’T founded it. There is no statement in the new testament and in the teachings of Jesus where I would conclude from that he had an intention to make himself a leading figure. Short before his end, and after he raised from the grave (if he ever was killed, I have my doubts) and met his followers again, he said: „It is good for you that I leave.“ Means: you cannot be free to find the devine quality in yourself when you stare at me the whole time. Zen says: if you are thirsty it is of no help for you if you watch someone else drinking a glass of water. If you are thirsty, it doesn’t help you to paint a picture, showing a glass of water. You need to get a glas of water and drink it yourself. Or Origines, with regard to a quote by Paulus in one of the Roman letters: „And if the holy spirit drove into Paulus and enlightend him, and did not drive into me – what use could this be for me, then?“
Of course, there was a growing separation between what Jesus said, and the christian religion that was created by the church – more and more as an instrument to bolster it‘s own political and material power in this world. By saying that the Catholic church and it’s priests and their privileges and rites are the needed mediator between God and man, they made themselves indispensible, and unavailable for any critizism. The same did Muhammad when preaching and in the early time more and more often declared that what he said must be true and cannot be critizised for the simple reason that he only said what Allah has revealed to him. By that he took special rights and privileges for himself and at the same time he made himself unavailable for critizism. Critizising him was heresy and an attack versus Allah. He repeatedly showed no restraint in dealing brutally and murderous with unwelcomed critizism. I described this in that essay back then. Jesus never did like that. Buddha never did like that. Both were six hundred years before Muhammad. Both possible have met during Jesus‘ likely travelling to India. This explains why their teachings share so many similarities, expressed in different cultural and verbal symbols, of course. I can’t see that similarity with regard to Muhammad. By his deeds he was anything but a man of peace. The first are said to have never raised their hands even against those who did them harm.
Later, the church acted with immense cruelty during the inquisition, and during the many slaughterings that took place to wipe out different understandings of Jesus‘ message, by that questioning the legitimacy of the churche’S demand to be the only valid institution to teach christian faith. Critizism was a direct attack on it’s authority, and thus the lethal reactions against heretics. Islam did the same since the very beginning. There WERE attempts to establish different traditions of interpretation, as there also were (during the first three century, when the Qu’ran was built and formed and molt into it’s present shape: again, my essay...) attempts to establish an independent Islamic philosophy, to allow science and theological disputing that was leading beyond those harmless and thus ineffective schools that haven’t changed until today. Islam was even more radical and thus successful in supressing and annihilating such developments, often by murder. This has had consequences. First, Islam hasn’t changed much since the 7th and 8th century and since the civil war and the later shia (separation of the followers of Ali). Second, this strengthend the unity and solid appearance of it, holding sociology, politics, mission and religion all in one and the same hand (different to the West). But this unmoving strength also comes at the price of rigidity and lacking flexibility. The intellectual developement the West experienced – did not took place. Their was no scientific and technological and medical progress. It stayed on the level it was when Muhammad appeared. Sooner or later the initially inferior Western nations overtook it, raced away and left it far behind. The unquestionable military, industrial, scientific, legislative and material superiority of the West in the modern era, and since the age of enlightenment at the latest, was the logical result. I commented on this a bit in a thread were I referred to the Osman empire, and already commented on the dhimma-system and the „offense“ the West was producing when braking it.
The church in europe, on the other hand, was not able to wipe out critizism completely, it could not stem against the growing tide forever, and finally had to give way. New understandings of what Christin belief should be appeared, a growing freedom for invention, scientific exploration, philosophy enforced it’s way. This, of course came at the cost of the power of the churches. In modern times, the present, the churches are eroded to a degree of beeing a hollow body only. First, they never had the true mystic heart and core of Jesus teachings as their legal basis, but ursurped their power by distorting and perverting Jesus, and second, the competition with the many different ideas, schools, and ideologies necessarily picked away parts of it’s influence, too. The strength of the West – now turns into weakness that way, in lacking cultural resistance and lacking substance of values. The very high cultural penetration power (that’s how I call it) of Islam means strength, but it comes at the price of that it got stuck in the 7th century, lacking flexibility, no progress, and an almost totalitarian rigidity. In a way, both spheres mirrors each other in point-symmetry.
(...)
Of course I form my own opinion on history! I’ve been given a brain, I have senses for perception, and I intent to use both. Rejecting it – wouldn’t this be an offense to any god that is said to have created man, life, cosmos? You make it sound as if it is a fault to form one’s own opinion. Dogmas, taboos – I do not accept, zero tolerance from me. „Holy“ is a word that for me does not exist. Simply believing – is not good enough for me. Direct experience of something, or of the „divine“ basis of life, cósmos, creation - or reason and logical argument – these I accept. The first is the scale for me in spiritual things, the latter in every-day-life, and in the end: boith levels of life are one and the same, Nirvana and Samsare are one and the same world – only seen in two different states of mind. In board discussion I intentionally did not adress the theology of Islam that much. I find it so absurd and queer that I would raise massive hostility even from reasonable people being around here. I have a clearly defined opinion on substantial elements of this theology, and I do not like it a bit.
The basis of my opinion on Islam is history, yes, but also my (not complete) reading of Qu’ran and Hadith, more important: analysis-books about Qu’ran and Hadiths by educated authors that are in far greater knowledge about it than I am and whose working methods and way of building their arguments I can comprehend; then: very important, the historical figure of Muhammad, his life and acting, the conclusions I must make about his personality and motivations (judging by historical course of events) and the highly influential socalled Medina-model, and of course politics (where it should be mentioned that religion and politics are not separated in Islam as in Western tradition, but from the beginning on laid in one and the same hand: those trustworthy men Muhammad send around on the Arabian peninsula to collect the taxes from tribes that by that bought the promise they would not be attacked and submitted by force – extortion of protection money we call such a practice today – were the same men that were authorized to preach the teachings of Muhammad and give religious education. So, additionally to historical research, linguist’s conclusions (very important field, often completely overseen!!!), I do not forget the theological level at all. It appears to me that you see it too strictly from inside the system of rites, practices and dogmas that you choosed to follow, while I reject to limit myself that way. I’ve done so with my original protestantic education when I was young, and with various buddhist sects and Tibetan Lamas as well, of whom none passed my testing, although I have a strong sympathy for Buddhism – why should I do different with Islam? The wokring method of mine served me well in my life so far, and never failed for me.
(...)
To me Islam is not the way like Islam sees itself, and I feel confirmedby it’s highly expansive and militant history in that. When going back to Muhammad, medina model, but also to many, many passages in the Qu’ran and Hadith that clearly, loudly, undeniably illustrate Islam’s self-definition of beeing the aim of all evolution, beeing the final revelation of the only truth there is, and thus that it is superior and has a God-wanted right to demand the submission of everything that is not Islam, I must understand that it’s inability to reflect about itself and to really tolerate the existence of „Non-Islam“ is a logical consequence of historical conditions and processes that cannot be ignored. It does not help to refer to 2/256, for example, that there shall not be constraint in faith, if the same book at the same time holds more than 300 passages describing that infidels shall be boiled in hot waters, shall be strangled with iron chains, shall be beheaded and will suffer all the pain hell has to offer as a justified penalty for not submitting to Allah. Islam’s scritpures are a loose collection of highly contradictive, partially superstitious statements that have changed their content and form drastically during the first 300 years (necessarily so, see my essay), and that for the most reflect the mental horizon of a society living in that Arabian state, with that sociological system in place, and with that leading figure with a big ego and even greater ambitions in power. And muhammad, when looking at his life, I cannot accept to be a man of peace. Bloodshed, raiding, murder, massacre, initmidating, torture and imprisonement were in his company during his last 15 years of his life or so, his hands are red with blood. And the Qu’ran reflects that. He does not compare to Jesus, of Siddharta, in no way. So, to me Islam is not a real religion, more a totalitarian, militant and highly expansive ideology on a mission founded on it’s self-declared understanding of beeing superior and having to overcome the whole world. And like so many christians are not representative for the true christian spirit beeing taught by Jesus who gave himself as a living example of how to do things, or as it is demonstrated in the traditon of the christian mystics, and like so many Buddhist I met were practicing strange rites from cultures like Tibet that they did not know much about, by that missing the real essence of Siddharta’s thoughts - I do not autopmatically assume that everyone labelling himself a Muslim is a true Muslin indeed. He may be more about what his personal interpretation of islam’s meaning is. Most people do not want to learn about the truth of live, they want to be con firmed in their interpretation of life’s meaning. So that it is easy, and lull, and that they must not change. Until last december I taught meditation, since many years. I often told new people: „If you stay long enough, eventually you will learn, but only one thing: how to die.“ The important difference to keep in mind is: the Christian person that is not Christian in the understanding of Jesus‘ preachings may be a person of the church, but nevertheless is a person that has moved away from the content of Jesus‘ teachings, so that is not good in my book. The Muslim who has moved away from the Islam as it presents itself in history, writing, and teaching, has left behind something that I consider to be bad – so that is good for that person, and those he/she has to deal with. That someone shows reason and tolerance and willingness to explain himself, and listen to others, honours tjis person - and definetly speaks against true Muslim spirit. Islam’s „institutional“ face is in correspondence with it’s inner teachings and scriptures (this is not true with Christian religion, the church is NOT representative for Jesus‘ teachings); Islam, by it’s self-understanding, does not see any need to be tolerant – that would be an offense against Allah. Islam is even offeneded if something non-Islamic is too strong to be overcome, and refuses to simply submit. Islam speaks of the „great offending/insult“ („große Kränkung), with regard to the defeat at Vienna. It speaks of a „great offending/insult“ with regard to the later christian immunity to the dhimma-system. Again it speaks of a „great offending/insult“ with regard to the protection the military superior colonial powers gave to the Jews in their Muslim colonies, by that completely disabling the dhimma-system. It again speaks of the „great offending“ again with regard to the founding of Israel. It seems to me it is like a little boy that is moaning and complaining about insults when he is not getting the candies that he wants. And like Muhammad wanted all, Islam wants all as well - it is his child. He raised it according to his own character and priorities in his life. Again, this reflects personality characteristics of Muhammad, I think. Orphant, having to fight to be socially recognized, wanting more power, wanting wealth, wanting applaus: combining social reforms with a self-declared status of beeing the envoy of God he evaded critizism, secured the wanted privileges, gathered his own „church“ which also served as an army and a pool of assassins and was able to living out what I honestly think was nothing else than megalomania, born out of overcompensating initial inferiority-complexes. History is filled with figures like that. The small ones, those who feel to be at disadvantage, often created impressive ambitions and energy to realize goals far bigger than they are themselves. Napoleon sometimes is said to have been like that, too :) It even is true for Nietzsche, whose general philosophy I highly respect (as you may have noticed :) ), but the symptoms of megalomania (deriving from compensating the bitter isolation and resistance he faced throughout his life, and the trauma of beeing raised in a household of females only, where he even had to wear women’s clothes at times – Nietzsche hated women, it seems) cannot be overseen in parts of his works.
(...) but meanwhile I found references in academical literature that give a slighty wider perspective ( I mentioned some titles in that essay). Taqiya is not exclusively in use by the Shia, but since the days of the conflict between Ali and the rivalling Kalifs - that finally ended in his assassination (or death on battlefield) - it is practiced in Sunni tradition as well, although it might have been introduced by the Shias, as mentioned. It means the disownment of Muslim faith for one of two reasons: as was said, if it is for reasons of self.-protection; AND if it helps to protect vital interests of Islam OR helps in expanding Islam by weakening opposition to it, here taqiya has an offensive meaning. In the latter meaning it does not only mean disownment of Muslim faith, but conceilment, intentional misleading, or straight lying. That is a brief summary of what I have in several books about it, (list of literature in my essay, only a part of what I have – or had - here).
During the Islamic expansion in the 7th and 8th century there were two strogngholds of Jewish presence, in Spain and Northwest-Africa, and in Persia and Iraq. Interestingly these Jewish communities tried to cope with the new Islamic ruling by practicing something that can be labeled as taqiya as well. They took over Arab and Persian language, by which Hebrew was used as a ceremonial language only in following times, for religious opportunities, and tried to protect themselves by maximizing the similarities in education and function between Rabbis and Imams, by which first the Jewish legislative traditon of halacha/teschuwot more and more came under influence of the shari’a/fatwa, and as a consequence of that secondly the general Jewish life and social rules and concepts were „islamized“. However, these changes were not substantial or lasting. When the during the 10th century he Abassidian Kalifate fell apart economically and politically, the repression against Jews and Christians grew immensly again, and trying to evade that by pretending did not make much sense anymore – the Jewish communities concentrated more on their own Jewish tradition and identity again.
In the form of „Marranismus“ (don’t know the English word), Jews under influence of the later Iberian catholicism practised a self-protective deception accordingly, with varying success. That was the only example within that historical timeframe where Jews were adopting to christian dominance that way. Maimonides (12th century) tries to explain this by – from Jewish pespective) the greater similiarity of Jewish religion witzh the monotheism of Islam, whereas the Christian religion seemd to be less similiar, and thus saelf-sacrifice appeared to be the more „correct „ solution when having to live under christian dominance. By that Maimonides concluded that Jews felt that Muhammad maybe could have been the prophet of Allah, but Jesus could not have been the son of God (well the usual view is that they murdered him, isn’t it like that. If it is historically true that Jesus got executed is something different. Certain christian sects believe different. Islam also critizises the Christians for believing that Jesus got killed, Islam says he escaped execution and someone else was killed in his place. Interesting.).
The West‘s lacking understanding of taqiya reminds me of another misperception of ours, with regard to the word djihad. I never heared anyone mentioning in „expert discussions“ on TV, that the word djihad actually has NOT the two-split meaning of „holy war“ inside the material world and fighting the infidels, and inner effort in faith and spiritually overcoming oneself, but actually exclusively means „holy war“ in a martial and aggressive and material understanding. Today’S socalled „fundamentalists“ are more in correspondcence with the meaning of djihad than the „moderates“ that immediately point at the inner spiritual meaning in an attempt to let islam not appear that aggressive. But as a linguistical fact the meaning of „inner effort in faith“ is exclusively connected to the original root of the word djihad only, that is djahada. Only in the Shia community, to some limited degree, this difference is not realized, whereas in Sunni orthodoxy the word djihad intentionally is used and in the pure form of describing the violant conflict between dar al-islam and dar al-harb, in the spirit of djihad describing the enforced expansion of Islam into the land of non-Islam (not only the defense of the latter against the first, it is an offensive concept as well). That means, that Sunni orthodoxy intentionally has choosen to refer to the effort in fighting the Non-Islamic world when using the word „djihad“, whereas in shia tradition we outsiders never can know if they mean the spiritual or the martial understanding the term, since they have mixed both understandings. In the orthodox understanding of djihad, it is the Islamic fighters that spread peace in the world by overcoming what is non-Islam. Peace is only possible by enforcing the dominance of Islam, one of the bitter truths with Islam, sorry. This concept even won in dynamic during the late 19th and early 20th century, when Abduh’s student Al-Afgani caused trouble by challenging the more moderate Sultan Abd Al-Hamid by proclaiming that Islam’s position against European colonialism shall not be founded on the basis of Islam’s (self-declared) superior knowledge alone, but on the violant action and resistance against it in the main. The concept has been there for very long, but the appearance of Al-Afgani probably can be regarded as the birth-hour of the West’s misperception of a separate „fundamentalistic“ tradition of Islam that is different from the „true“, or „original“, or „real“ Islam. It is one and the same. The difference medias point out politically most correct – is wishful thinking only.
Another misunderstanding of the West is with regard to the term ahl al-dhimma, which is misunderstood as a protective tolerance for members of different religions living in Islamic countries. As I have argued and illustrated in a longer thread weeks ago, in historical reality it was a status of discrimination and opression that led as far as to regular progroms, living in ghettos, beeing subject to excessive taxes, and wearing discriminative clothing. Muslim children even had the right to kill jewish males „for fun“ by throwing stones without having to fear penalties, and with rare exceptions jobs with some higher social reputation were forbidden, especially for Jews. There are some interesting Jewish historical figures, though, that made a career as Royal doctors, and higher servants in the administrative structures, though, but these are exceptions. The opression under the covering of the dhimma-system was especially high during the ruling of the Almohades, and covered almost all muslim territory from Spain to Persia. Whereas you certainly would quote the Qu’ran to proove that this was wrong doing, I could use the same Qu’ran to show you that there are also many quotes possible that explicitly justify and excuse this treatment of infidels. I just don’t know the Qu’ran good enough to pick the right pages hands down. But I red extensive quotes repeatedly, really, and also more comptent commentats and anaylsis of this problem in other books. Well, I already pointed at the problems I have with the Qu’ran’s opportunistic two faces.
It must also be mentioned that Christian countries usually are open for different religions to built representation inside of them (of which Islam makes excessive use: in Germany the number of Muslim communities and their temples have increased by a fantastic 1500% in thirty years). At the same time, and in centuries before, and during all of Islam’s history, members of different religions in Muslim territories (Arab ground as well as conquered ground), have constantly been subject to systematical reduction (by ecouraging or enforcing converting to Islam, or by killing), and whole countries almost were sterilized and cleaned of the presence of foreign cultures and religions. Saudi-Arabia only is the most obvious example, but christian communities at the present and during the last century have been subject to constant oppression, reprisals, and even collective murder. Since 14 centuries the number of followers of non-Muslim religions have been decimated in all muslim territories, with only very rare exceptions (like the Jews were welcomed by the Osman rulers when they fleed the reformation in Europe – they were welcomed because they brought much needed knowledge on superior Western weapons technology with them). This history cannot be denied, and can hardly be taken as an example of islam’s tolerance and interest for peaceful cooperation und cultural coexistance. That is simply not true. Islam is not like that. That is hard for you and you may be tempted to counter me with quotes from the Qu’ran, well, the same Qu’ran holds, by numbers, far more quotes available supporting this treatment of non-Islamic people and encourages the most brutal and barbaric treatment of these.
I just need to watch TV’s covering of the „muslim issue“ and cultural coexistence and ongoing Muslim immigration to see how successful taqiya works. The public is kept in massive ignorrance of most vital knowledge, both theological and historical knowledge. The public opinion-shaping is built on lacking knowledge, and wrong concepts covering the gaps.
And this is even wanted fromWestern side as well, economy seeking low-wage workers, greens and left politicians propagating multi-cultural societies (but usually not living in multi-cultural neighborhood themselves), we-carry-the-burden-of-all-mankind-fetishists, concerned people that want to behave kind towards Islam in order not raise it’s anger, and most important: the Catholic church itself. Since the last Vatican council it has become official policy, that catholicism should open itself towards Islam and almost exclusively should emphasize what the catholic church – by mistake – thinks Islam has in common with Christian belief. Paul II. pushed even further into that direction, and I must say, he lost every sense for reality and every logical reason in that attempt. Several cardinals complained during his ruling that one could only raise and make a career inside the Catholic church when one can present outstanding examples of having led christian community closer to Islam (not making Islam approaching Christianaty). I could wrote a book about the many misconceptions and flawed understandings on the churches side, it’S many idiotisms that illustrate that it has no understanding of certain aspects and meanings of Islam and is trying to start a dialogue with an Islam that only exists in the church’s imagination only, a virtual conception that has not much to do with what Islam really is. It makes me want to explode with anger. In my long essay on the history of Islam, I complained about Islam always referring back, linking in a circular conclusion to the time of Medina and the figure of Muhammad; and that – as I see it – Islam’s followers try to gain enlightenment or however you would call it by, in principle, immitating Muhammad – and if this is not already absurd, it is even not the historical Muhammad, but an artificial creation, an image, a virtual wish-he-was-like that they are dealing with, ignoring and bypassing the critical and less charmful symptoms that accompanied his raise, the immense violance, the immense bloodshed that he used to push his ideas through. In a way, christian churches do like that, too: dealing with a virtual pseudo-image of Islam they have created with their own fantasy, missing the reality of what Islam really is.
(...)
In the West the church was holding a monopole for power, where kings came and went by, the church stayed and brutally defended against any attempts to undermine it’s powerbasis by creating alternative ideas and traditions that violated the church’s dogma. Islam did the same and brutally supressed and wiped out attempts of establishing an Islamic philosophy, or a theological system of debate with rules that not necessarily always led to the conclusion that the Qu’ran is right (Islamic theology has the prooving of the Qu’ran as the only valid truth as it’s only center of interest), it also denied the developement of any sciences that could have led to results leading beyond profane use in everyday life, science was allowed to deliver tools only, no insight and knowledge – these can only be coming from believing in the „right“ way, the mystic tradition was supressed, too, before the Mongoles dealt with it’s remains once and for all in the middle of the 13th century, and even varying traditions of interpreting the law were forced into unconditonal submission to the shari’a. More than just a handful of brilliant and surprisingly modern and open minds were wasted that way, sometimes locked away, sometimes murdered. They never were replaced.
So far, so good, but Islam was more successful in this way of doing than Europe. The Christian church , step by step, had to give ground, which automatically reduced it’s power and influence in usual life, it led to the age of enligthenment, to the blossoming of sciences, philosophy, arts, different interpretations of christian religion – but also to trade, mechanized weapon and industrial warfare, the inflationary loss of worth of a man’S existence, excessive materialism, to an ever growing speed of life and all the loss of living quality coming from that, and short-termed thinking, and to today’s erosion of most elemental values and rules of behavior. The orientation the churches had given may have been corrupted, and wrong, and not in the spirit of Jesus‘ teachings, but people took them as orientation nevertheless, because there were no alternatives they knew of or could believe in, with the limit intellectual knowledge of earlier times. The fall of the church created a vaccum that was not filled by a solid predecessor. – Islam, on the other hand, was very successful in essentially freezing the status quo of the first three centuries of it’s existence. It is united, it has a most formidable (what i call) cultural penetration power to take over other cultures in various ways and exploit their ressources without allowing them to feedback on islam and influnce and chnage it that way, and it’s believers are both too convinced and maybe also too intimidated (giving up Islam is threatend with death, so say the scriptures) to even think about turning their backs on it, or step back, look at it from an outside perspective and ask critical constructive questions about it. The process of self-reflecting and self-testing the Westewrn philosophical traditon went through has not taken place in Islam. This led to it’s united strength, but also to it’s obvious weaknesses: an almost totalitarian rigidity, a phenomenal lack of flexibility and ability to adopt to an everchanging world, the absence of self-critical reflection, the need to endlessly turn back and reconnect with the Medina model and the virtualy created and artificial imagination of a Muhammad that is very different to the historical person, short: the inability to adopt, which indirectly helps and supports it’s belief of superiority. If it cannot adopt to others, than it can only remain an illusion of beeing en par with them by arguing it does not have to catch up with them because it already is ahead. This is what I call the immense arrogance of Islam. It sees even lesser need to change itself, since in recent decades it sees it’s archrival, Christianity, moving towards it’s own position without expecting according steps of Islam towards christian religion. A very one-sided kind of dialogue that is.
I said that this is official church policy, and this is fatal for the West. It put the church under pressure of beeing successful at all cost, and if it has to deal with an Islam not moving and beeing open to true dialogue, then the church can prevent the need to declare failure (and thus, it’s incompetence in intellectual assessement of Islam) only by keeping the folly alive – and moving even more towards Islam’s positions. This current status is a no win-no win-situation. The folly leads as far as that the Vatican even remains silent about the yearly mass killing of up to 150.000 christians in Muslims countries, who get murdered in local progroms each year. That says the Vatican’s own secret service, three or four years ago. To say that is considered to be politically uncorrect. It threatens the FOLLY one is trying hard to keep alive: that there is interest for dialogue and tolerance on the other side. When Paul II visited Sudan in 1983, or was it 86, he also met Hasan Al-Turabi, a known radical, whom he embraced and praised him as a great man, stressing the mutual tolerance and similiarities between both religions – the very same man that in the twelve months before had slaughtered one million christians in southern Sudan by sending Muslim marauders, and a man who just waited until the pope was back to Rome and then spend another year or so with murdering another two million Christians there – this time by using more efficient massbombardement from bombers and fighter planes, until he fell out of favour himself. Many popes were idiots, but Paul II is one of the worst popes christian history ever had. I see no greatness in his last years, and no example leadership for a strong church, and „true inner strength“. The daily soap his last months had degenerated into I felt to be disgusting to the max, and symbolic for the state the church is in: declaring weakness a virtue, depleted of true strength and influence, trying to appease the worst enemy it ever had: Islam, stripped of any willingness to seriously resist. It’s doomed to fall. It is ripe to fall. And Islam knows that all too well. The present is the great chance it had waited for since the last time it got deafetd before Vienna. This time it does not come with canons and armies, but with the power of demographic and by exploiting the West’s silly dependence on oil. We cannot afford to depend on their oil. If Bush was serious in his latest adress to the state of the union, than even his script-writer have understood that they cannot afford to depend on oil from Muslim nations anymore. From my mouth, that is almost a compliment to Bush.
Later Pope II. said that „if we allow women for priesthood, this will block our ecumenical contact to Islam“, and explained that for the latter reason the first shall not be. If that is not revealing.
What is acchieved by this? A new form of monologue is created, that labels itself a dialogue, that by renunciation of analysis and reason uses highly irrational criterias, illusions and wishful thinking, nevertheless searches for a truth that nevertheless it already has limited in advance (dialogue with Islam MUST be successful), this is enforced with highly dogmatic power inside the church, and at the same time accepting massive deformation of the church’s spiritual contents that already were hollowed out before and have lost so much attractiveness that churches today are empty and young generations are driven away – while mosques are crowded and their numbers almost exploded in the last three decades. Today, Islam in europe just needs to pick up those people that were driven away from the churches, that felt disgusted, and saw no convincing orientation in Christian religion, as interpreted by corrupted churches, anymore. Some fall victim to spiritual mass-tourism. Some fall victim to Buddhist sects that have not adopted their teachings to Western living surroundings. Some fall victim to islam that promsies them to be striuct and strong in giving them orientation by total regulation of all levels of life. Most people fall victim to materialism and nihilism, beeing no thrwad to Islmaic expansion into the West anymore – they are weak.
During the bishop’s synode 1999 in Rome the Bishop of Izmir risked open confrontation with the Vatican when ignoring orders to shut up, and gave the assembly a report on the massive discriminations Christians in his diocese are facing, and I quote from one of my books here (my translation):
„During an official meeting about the ‚dialogue‘ between Christians and Muslims, a high representatives of the Muslim community raised and adressed the Christian participants of that assembly, saying: ‚Thanks to your own democratic laws we will overcome you, thanks to your own religious rules we will rule you.‘ Their rulership already has begun with the petrodollars, that are not used to fight poverty in the poor countries of Northern Africa or to create jobs in the middle east, but to raise mosques and ‚culture centers‘ within Christian countries with a very high quota of Muslim immigrants beeing send to the construction sites. How can we fail to see a clear intentional program in this, that is directed at expansion, taking over, and ultimate ruling...?“
The Bishop continued to describe that all the intercultural meetings always, always are organized and created by Christians, never initiated by Muslims, and he described how another high ranking Muslim representative was asked why this was so, that Muslims never initiated cultural exchange and interreligious meetings. That Muslim representative answered, and I quote again:
„ Why should we do that...? You cannot teach us anything, and we DO NOT NEED TOM LEARN ANYTHING.“
The Bishop continued:
„It is a fact, that terms like dialogue, justice, mutuality (Gegenseitigkeit), or terms like human rights and democracy have a completely different meaning and understanding for Muslims than for us. But it is absolutely inevitable that we are united in our understanding of these principles. We may never again offer a Christian church to a muslim community for celebrating a Muslim religious festivity in there, because for them it is a most convincing signal for our own apostasy.“
With regard to the poor picture christian church is giving today, I immediately remember Nietzsche, a man whose disgust for declaring weakness a virtue is proverbial:
„When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond"--in nothingness--then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life. . . . Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? . . . Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path."--"One thing only is necessary". . . That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph--it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The "salvation of the soul"--in plain English: "the world revolves around me." . . . The poisonous doctrine, "equal rights for all," has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization--out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth . . . To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.--And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals--for the pathos of distance. . . Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!--The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the majority" makes and will continue to make revolution--it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly" lowers . . .
In addition to that i may point out that Buddha also denied the existence of an individual soul – but by that also pointing out that after death there is no nihilistic „nothingness“, but the realization that we have no individual souls, but all are part of just one devine entity that one could label as „cosmic spirit“ (ancient Greece), „devine spark“ (Christian mystic), „God“ in the non-institutional religion’s understanding. Neither Buddha nor Nietzsche were nihilists, by far not. Nietzsche only fought against false idols, and very oncompromising.
I want to end this letter with one final quote that is one of the most vital and important guidelines for me in my live. I no more must simply believe in it, for I experienced time and again that it is true. From the Kalamas-Sutra:
„Do not put faith in traditions, even though they have been accepted for long generations and in many countries. Do not believe a thing because many repeat it. Do not accept a thing on the authority of one or another of the sages of old, nor on the ground of statements as found in the books. Never believe anything because probability is in its favor. Do not believe in that which you yourselves have imagined, thinking that a god has inspired it. Believe nothing on the authority of the teachers or the priests. After examination, believe that which you have tested for yourself and found reasonable, which is in conformity with your well being and that of others.“
I sent a long letter to someone who was questioning my opinion, too, for comparable reasons like you do. We are very diffrent, or better: strictly opposed in our opinions, but still can manage to respect each other. Nevertheless, major parts of that letter are not any personal at all, but are like one of my usual essays or texts. I will post longer excerpts from that and clean them of any personal references, because 90% of that multi-page letter was an essay in fact, I hope (and think), my mail-partner at that time will not feel treated unfair that way, no personal adresses I will include.
This is that letter. The receiver back then will recognize it, and although he strongly disagrees with it's context I hope he sees why I post it here, in an edited form that got cleaned of every personal relevancy or identification. I got asked these things often in the last days and weeks, and find it increasingly "exhausting" always to give long answers. That'C why I take this shortcut and post this thing. Keep in mind that it is edited and maybe I have overseen some signs of "structural desintegration".
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I am surrounded by masses of people, most of whom declare they are catholics or protestants. But the way they spend their lifes, their way of living their faith, does not do any truth to their statements that they are Christians. You can walk into a church – without beeing Christian at all. You can practice the correct rites – and still, you do it by habit, because it is expected, because you had been taught a tradition. Most „Christians“ I know are not Christians. Remember that long essay of mine, where I talked of a „virtual Muhammad“? That not the historical figure of Muhammad is at center of Islam, but an artificial creation that has not much to do with the historically correct Muhammad, and that is constantly changed to adopt to new needs and changes in real life at the present? And that immitation replaces understanding? The old testament, compared to Qu’ran, is of almost equal diversity and partial contradiction. Everyone can pick something from it as he sees a need to justify his opinion. Old Testament and Qu’ran and Hadith cannot be compared in their history of creation, certainly I accept none of both to be given by any god himself. They are man’s work, and that means, personalities, selfish interests, political opportunism, egos taking a bath in public sunshine, and the way people tried to made sense of the world and their life and tried to add control and preview (by installing rules and artificial orders/categories) – all these factors influenced the way the creation went on, and decided the final form.
Rites are dust and shadow only. Any actor could play a Muslim, a Jew the next day, a Zen monk one day later. This is only dead ritual, it means nothing – even if the person in question believes it is right and important. Tolerance, Coexistance, and in general: non-intrusive behavior towards non-Islamic for me is clear signal that a muslim propagating these terms, and living by them!!!, is not Muslim in the understanding of Muhammad, Medina-model, Qu’ran and Hadith.
I see major differences between Christianity, and Islam (and Buddhism). Take the church, for example. Jesus hasn’T founded it. There is no statement in the new testament and in the teachings of Jesus where I would conclude from that he had an intention to make himself a leading figure. Short before his end, and after he raised from the grave (if he ever was killed, I have my doubts) and met his followers again, he said: „It is good for you that I leave.“ Means: you cannot be free to find the devine quality in yourself when you stare at me the whole time. Zen says: if you are thirsty it is of no help for you if you watch someone else drinking a glass of water. If you are thirsty, it doesn’t help you to paint a picture, showing a glass of water. You need to get a glas of water and drink it yourself. Or Origines, with regard to a quote by Paulus in one of the Roman letters: „And if the holy spirit drove into Paulus and enlightend him, and did not drive into me – what use could this be for me, then?“
Of course, there was a growing separation between what Jesus said, and the christian religion that was created by the church – more and more as an instrument to bolster it‘s own political and material power in this world. By saying that the Catholic church and it’s priests and their privileges and rites are the needed mediator between God and man, they made themselves indispensible, and unavailable for any critizism. The same did Muhammad when preaching and in the early time more and more often declared that what he said must be true and cannot be critizised for the simple reason that he only said what Allah has revealed to him. By that he took special rights and privileges for himself and at the same time he made himself unavailable for critizism. Critizising him was heresy and an attack versus Allah. He repeatedly showed no restraint in dealing brutally and murderous with unwelcomed critizism. I described this in that essay back then. Jesus never did like that. Buddha never did like that. Both were six hundred years before Muhammad. Both possible have met during Jesus‘ likely travelling to India. This explains why their teachings share so many similarities, expressed in different cultural and verbal symbols, of course. I can’t see that similarity with regard to Muhammad. By his deeds he was anything but a man of peace. The first are said to have never raised their hands even against those who did them harm.
Later, the church acted with immense cruelty during the inquisition, and during the many slaughterings that took place to wipe out different understandings of Jesus‘ message, by that questioning the legitimacy of the churche’S demand to be the only valid institution to teach christian faith. Critizism was a direct attack on it’s authority, and thus the lethal reactions against heretics. Islam did the same since the very beginning. There WERE attempts to establish different traditions of interpretation, as there also were (during the first three century, when the Qu’ran was built and formed and molt into it’s present shape: again, my essay...) attempts to establish an independent Islamic philosophy, to allow science and theological disputing that was leading beyond those harmless and thus ineffective schools that haven’t changed until today. Islam was even more radical and thus successful in supressing and annihilating such developments, often by murder. This has had consequences. First, Islam hasn’t changed much since the 7th and 8th century and since the civil war and the later shia (separation of the followers of Ali). Second, this strengthend the unity and solid appearance of it, holding sociology, politics, mission and religion all in one and the same hand (different to the West). But this unmoving strength also comes at the price of rigidity and lacking flexibility. The intellectual developement the West experienced – did not took place. Their was no scientific and technological and medical progress. It stayed on the level it was when Muhammad appeared. Sooner or later the initially inferior Western nations overtook it, raced away and left it far behind. The unquestionable military, industrial, scientific, legislative and material superiority of the West in the modern era, and since the age of enlightenment at the latest, was the logical result. I commented on this a bit in a thread were I referred to the Osman empire, and already commented on the dhimma-system and the „offense“ the West was producing when braking it.
The church in europe, on the other hand, was not able to wipe out critizism completely, it could not stem against the growing tide forever, and finally had to give way. New understandings of what Christin belief should be appeared, a growing freedom for invention, scientific exploration, philosophy enforced it’s way. This, of course came at the cost of the power of the churches. In modern times, the present, the churches are eroded to a degree of beeing a hollow body only. First, they never had the true mystic heart and core of Jesus teachings as their legal basis, but ursurped their power by distorting and perverting Jesus, and second, the competition with the many different ideas, schools, and ideologies necessarily picked away parts of it’s influence, too. The strength of the West – now turns into weakness that way, in lacking cultural resistance and lacking substance of values. The very high cultural penetration power (that’s how I call it) of Islam means strength, but it comes at the price of that it got stuck in the 7th century, lacking flexibility, no progress, and an almost totalitarian rigidity. In a way, both spheres mirrors each other in point-symmetry.
(...)
Of course I form my own opinion on history! I’ve been given a brain, I have senses for perception, and I intent to use both. Rejecting it – wouldn’t this be an offense to any god that is said to have created man, life, cosmos? You make it sound as if it is a fault to form one’s own opinion. Dogmas, taboos – I do not accept, zero tolerance from me. „Holy“ is a word that for me does not exist. Simply believing – is not good enough for me. Direct experience of something, or of the „divine“ basis of life, cósmos, creation - or reason and logical argument – these I accept. The first is the scale for me in spiritual things, the latter in every-day-life, and in the end: boith levels of life are one and the same, Nirvana and Samsare are one and the same world – only seen in two different states of mind. In board discussion I intentionally did not adress the theology of Islam that much. I find it so absurd and queer that I would raise massive hostility even from reasonable people being around here. I have a clearly defined opinion on substantial elements of this theology, and I do not like it a bit.
The basis of my opinion on Islam is history, yes, but also my (not complete) reading of Qu’ran and Hadith, more important: analysis-books about Qu’ran and Hadiths by educated authors that are in far greater knowledge about it than I am and whose working methods and way of building their arguments I can comprehend; then: very important, the historical figure of Muhammad, his life and acting, the conclusions I must make about his personality and motivations (judging by historical course of events) and the highly influential socalled Medina-model, and of course politics (where it should be mentioned that religion and politics are not separated in Islam as in Western tradition, but from the beginning on laid in one and the same hand: those trustworthy men Muhammad send around on the Arabian peninsula to collect the taxes from tribes that by that bought the promise they would not be attacked and submitted by force – extortion of protection money we call such a practice today – were the same men that were authorized to preach the teachings of Muhammad and give religious education. So, additionally to historical research, linguist’s conclusions (very important field, often completely overseen!!!), I do not forget the theological level at all. It appears to me that you see it too strictly from inside the system of rites, practices and dogmas that you choosed to follow, while I reject to limit myself that way. I’ve done so with my original protestantic education when I was young, and with various buddhist sects and Tibetan Lamas as well, of whom none passed my testing, although I have a strong sympathy for Buddhism – why should I do different with Islam? The wokring method of mine served me well in my life so far, and never failed for me.
(...)
To me Islam is not the way like Islam sees itself, and I feel confirmedby it’s highly expansive and militant history in that. When going back to Muhammad, medina model, but also to many, many passages in the Qu’ran and Hadith that clearly, loudly, undeniably illustrate Islam’s self-definition of beeing the aim of all evolution, beeing the final revelation of the only truth there is, and thus that it is superior and has a God-wanted right to demand the submission of everything that is not Islam, I must understand that it’s inability to reflect about itself and to really tolerate the existence of „Non-Islam“ is a logical consequence of historical conditions and processes that cannot be ignored. It does not help to refer to 2/256, for example, that there shall not be constraint in faith, if the same book at the same time holds more than 300 passages describing that infidels shall be boiled in hot waters, shall be strangled with iron chains, shall be beheaded and will suffer all the pain hell has to offer as a justified penalty for not submitting to Allah. Islam’s scritpures are a loose collection of highly contradictive, partially superstitious statements that have changed their content and form drastically during the first 300 years (necessarily so, see my essay), and that for the most reflect the mental horizon of a society living in that Arabian state, with that sociological system in place, and with that leading figure with a big ego and even greater ambitions in power. And muhammad, when looking at his life, I cannot accept to be a man of peace. Bloodshed, raiding, murder, massacre, initmidating, torture and imprisonement were in his company during his last 15 years of his life or so, his hands are red with blood. And the Qu’ran reflects that. He does not compare to Jesus, of Siddharta, in no way. So, to me Islam is not a real religion, more a totalitarian, militant and highly expansive ideology on a mission founded on it’s self-declared understanding of beeing superior and having to overcome the whole world. And like so many christians are not representative for the true christian spirit beeing taught by Jesus who gave himself as a living example of how to do things, or as it is demonstrated in the traditon of the christian mystics, and like so many Buddhist I met were practicing strange rites from cultures like Tibet that they did not know much about, by that missing the real essence of Siddharta’s thoughts - I do not autopmatically assume that everyone labelling himself a Muslim is a true Muslin indeed. He may be more about what his personal interpretation of islam’s meaning is. Most people do not want to learn about the truth of live, they want to be con firmed in their interpretation of life’s meaning. So that it is easy, and lull, and that they must not change. Until last december I taught meditation, since many years. I often told new people: „If you stay long enough, eventually you will learn, but only one thing: how to die.“ The important difference to keep in mind is: the Christian person that is not Christian in the understanding of Jesus‘ preachings may be a person of the church, but nevertheless is a person that has moved away from the content of Jesus‘ teachings, so that is not good in my book. The Muslim who has moved away from the Islam as it presents itself in history, writing, and teaching, has left behind something that I consider to be bad – so that is good for that person, and those he/she has to deal with. That someone shows reason and tolerance and willingness to explain himself, and listen to others, honours tjis person - and definetly speaks against true Muslim spirit. Islam’s „institutional“ face is in correspondence with it’s inner teachings and scriptures (this is not true with Christian religion, the church is NOT representative for Jesus‘ teachings); Islam, by it’s self-understanding, does not see any need to be tolerant – that would be an offense against Allah. Islam is even offeneded if something non-Islamic is too strong to be overcome, and refuses to simply submit. Islam speaks of the „great offending/insult“ („große Kränkung), with regard to the defeat at Vienna. It speaks of a „great offending/insult“ with regard to the later christian immunity to the dhimma-system. Again it speaks of a „great offending/insult“ with regard to the protection the military superior colonial powers gave to the Jews in their Muslim colonies, by that completely disabling the dhimma-system. It again speaks of the „great offending“ again with regard to the founding of Israel. It seems to me it is like a little boy that is moaning and complaining about insults when he is not getting the candies that he wants. And like Muhammad wanted all, Islam wants all as well - it is his child. He raised it according to his own character and priorities in his life. Again, this reflects personality characteristics of Muhammad, I think. Orphant, having to fight to be socially recognized, wanting more power, wanting wealth, wanting applaus: combining social reforms with a self-declared status of beeing the envoy of God he evaded critizism, secured the wanted privileges, gathered his own „church“ which also served as an army and a pool of assassins and was able to living out what I honestly think was nothing else than megalomania, born out of overcompensating initial inferiority-complexes. History is filled with figures like that. The small ones, those who feel to be at disadvantage, often created impressive ambitions and energy to realize goals far bigger than they are themselves. Napoleon sometimes is said to have been like that, too :) It even is true for Nietzsche, whose general philosophy I highly respect (as you may have noticed :) ), but the symptoms of megalomania (deriving from compensating the bitter isolation and resistance he faced throughout his life, and the trauma of beeing raised in a household of females only, where he even had to wear women’s clothes at times – Nietzsche hated women, it seems) cannot be overseen in parts of his works.
(...) but meanwhile I found references in academical literature that give a slighty wider perspective ( I mentioned some titles in that essay). Taqiya is not exclusively in use by the Shia, but since the days of the conflict between Ali and the rivalling Kalifs - that finally ended in his assassination (or death on battlefield) - it is practiced in Sunni tradition as well, although it might have been introduced by the Shias, as mentioned. It means the disownment of Muslim faith for one of two reasons: as was said, if it is for reasons of self.-protection; AND if it helps to protect vital interests of Islam OR helps in expanding Islam by weakening opposition to it, here taqiya has an offensive meaning. In the latter meaning it does not only mean disownment of Muslim faith, but conceilment, intentional misleading, or straight lying. That is a brief summary of what I have in several books about it, (list of literature in my essay, only a part of what I have – or had - here).
During the Islamic expansion in the 7th and 8th century there were two strogngholds of Jewish presence, in Spain and Northwest-Africa, and in Persia and Iraq. Interestingly these Jewish communities tried to cope with the new Islamic ruling by practicing something that can be labeled as taqiya as well. They took over Arab and Persian language, by which Hebrew was used as a ceremonial language only in following times, for religious opportunities, and tried to protect themselves by maximizing the similarities in education and function between Rabbis and Imams, by which first the Jewish legislative traditon of halacha/teschuwot more and more came under influence of the shari’a/fatwa, and as a consequence of that secondly the general Jewish life and social rules and concepts were „islamized“. However, these changes were not substantial or lasting. When the during the 10th century he Abassidian Kalifate fell apart economically and politically, the repression against Jews and Christians grew immensly again, and trying to evade that by pretending did not make much sense anymore – the Jewish communities concentrated more on their own Jewish tradition and identity again.
In the form of „Marranismus“ (don’t know the English word), Jews under influence of the later Iberian catholicism practised a self-protective deception accordingly, with varying success. That was the only example within that historical timeframe where Jews were adopting to christian dominance that way. Maimonides (12th century) tries to explain this by – from Jewish pespective) the greater similiarity of Jewish religion witzh the monotheism of Islam, whereas the Christian religion seemd to be less similiar, and thus saelf-sacrifice appeared to be the more „correct „ solution when having to live under christian dominance. By that Maimonides concluded that Jews felt that Muhammad maybe could have been the prophet of Allah, but Jesus could not have been the son of God (well the usual view is that they murdered him, isn’t it like that. If it is historically true that Jesus got executed is something different. Certain christian sects believe different. Islam also critizises the Christians for believing that Jesus got killed, Islam says he escaped execution and someone else was killed in his place. Interesting.).
The West‘s lacking understanding of taqiya reminds me of another misperception of ours, with regard to the word djihad. I never heared anyone mentioning in „expert discussions“ on TV, that the word djihad actually has NOT the two-split meaning of „holy war“ inside the material world and fighting the infidels, and inner effort in faith and spiritually overcoming oneself, but actually exclusively means „holy war“ in a martial and aggressive and material understanding. Today’S socalled „fundamentalists“ are more in correspondcence with the meaning of djihad than the „moderates“ that immediately point at the inner spiritual meaning in an attempt to let islam not appear that aggressive. But as a linguistical fact the meaning of „inner effort in faith“ is exclusively connected to the original root of the word djihad only, that is djahada. Only in the Shia community, to some limited degree, this difference is not realized, whereas in Sunni orthodoxy the word djihad intentionally is used and in the pure form of describing the violant conflict between dar al-islam and dar al-harb, in the spirit of djihad describing the enforced expansion of Islam into the land of non-Islam (not only the defense of the latter against the first, it is an offensive concept as well). That means, that Sunni orthodoxy intentionally has choosen to refer to the effort in fighting the Non-Islamic world when using the word „djihad“, whereas in shia tradition we outsiders never can know if they mean the spiritual or the martial understanding the term, since they have mixed both understandings. In the orthodox understanding of djihad, it is the Islamic fighters that spread peace in the world by overcoming what is non-Islam. Peace is only possible by enforcing the dominance of Islam, one of the bitter truths with Islam, sorry. This concept even won in dynamic during the late 19th and early 20th century, when Abduh’s student Al-Afgani caused trouble by challenging the more moderate Sultan Abd Al-Hamid by proclaiming that Islam’s position against European colonialism shall not be founded on the basis of Islam’s (self-declared) superior knowledge alone, but on the violant action and resistance against it in the main. The concept has been there for very long, but the appearance of Al-Afgani probably can be regarded as the birth-hour of the West’s misperception of a separate „fundamentalistic“ tradition of Islam that is different from the „true“, or „original“, or „real“ Islam. It is one and the same. The difference medias point out politically most correct – is wishful thinking only.
Another misunderstanding of the West is with regard to the term ahl al-dhimma, which is misunderstood as a protective tolerance for members of different religions living in Islamic countries. As I have argued and illustrated in a longer thread weeks ago, in historical reality it was a status of discrimination and opression that led as far as to regular progroms, living in ghettos, beeing subject to excessive taxes, and wearing discriminative clothing. Muslim children even had the right to kill jewish males „for fun“ by throwing stones without having to fear penalties, and with rare exceptions jobs with some higher social reputation were forbidden, especially for Jews. There are some interesting Jewish historical figures, though, that made a career as Royal doctors, and higher servants in the administrative structures, though, but these are exceptions. The opression under the covering of the dhimma-system was especially high during the ruling of the Almohades, and covered almost all muslim territory from Spain to Persia. Whereas you certainly would quote the Qu’ran to proove that this was wrong doing, I could use the same Qu’ran to show you that there are also many quotes possible that explicitly justify and excuse this treatment of infidels. I just don’t know the Qu’ran good enough to pick the right pages hands down. But I red extensive quotes repeatedly, really, and also more comptent commentats and anaylsis of this problem in other books. Well, I already pointed at the problems I have with the Qu’ran’s opportunistic two faces.
It must also be mentioned that Christian countries usually are open for different religions to built representation inside of them (of which Islam makes excessive use: in Germany the number of Muslim communities and their temples have increased by a fantastic 1500% in thirty years). At the same time, and in centuries before, and during all of Islam’s history, members of different religions in Muslim territories (Arab ground as well as conquered ground), have constantly been subject to systematical reduction (by ecouraging or enforcing converting to Islam, or by killing), and whole countries almost were sterilized and cleaned of the presence of foreign cultures and religions. Saudi-Arabia only is the most obvious example, but christian communities at the present and during the last century have been subject to constant oppression, reprisals, and even collective murder. Since 14 centuries the number of followers of non-Muslim religions have been decimated in all muslim territories, with only very rare exceptions (like the Jews were welcomed by the Osman rulers when they fleed the reformation in Europe – they were welcomed because they brought much needed knowledge on superior Western weapons technology with them). This history cannot be denied, and can hardly be taken as an example of islam’s tolerance and interest for peaceful cooperation und cultural coexistance. That is simply not true. Islam is not like that. That is hard for you and you may be tempted to counter me with quotes from the Qu’ran, well, the same Qu’ran holds, by numbers, far more quotes available supporting this treatment of non-Islamic people and encourages the most brutal and barbaric treatment of these.
I just need to watch TV’s covering of the „muslim issue“ and cultural coexistence and ongoing Muslim immigration to see how successful taqiya works. The public is kept in massive ignorrance of most vital knowledge, both theological and historical knowledge. The public opinion-shaping is built on lacking knowledge, and wrong concepts covering the gaps.
And this is even wanted fromWestern side as well, economy seeking low-wage workers, greens and left politicians propagating multi-cultural societies (but usually not living in multi-cultural neighborhood themselves), we-carry-the-burden-of-all-mankind-fetishists, concerned people that want to behave kind towards Islam in order not raise it’s anger, and most important: the Catholic church itself. Since the last Vatican council it has become official policy, that catholicism should open itself towards Islam and almost exclusively should emphasize what the catholic church – by mistake – thinks Islam has in common with Christian belief. Paul II. pushed even further into that direction, and I must say, he lost every sense for reality and every logical reason in that attempt. Several cardinals complained during his ruling that one could only raise and make a career inside the Catholic church when one can present outstanding examples of having led christian community closer to Islam (not making Islam approaching Christianaty). I could wrote a book about the many misconceptions and flawed understandings on the churches side, it’S many idiotisms that illustrate that it has no understanding of certain aspects and meanings of Islam and is trying to start a dialogue with an Islam that only exists in the church’s imagination only, a virtual conception that has not much to do with what Islam really is. It makes me want to explode with anger. In my long essay on the history of Islam, I complained about Islam always referring back, linking in a circular conclusion to the time of Medina and the figure of Muhammad; and that – as I see it – Islam’s followers try to gain enlightenment or however you would call it by, in principle, immitating Muhammad – and if this is not already absurd, it is even not the historical Muhammad, but an artificial creation, an image, a virtual wish-he-was-like that they are dealing with, ignoring and bypassing the critical and less charmful symptoms that accompanied his raise, the immense violance, the immense bloodshed that he used to push his ideas through. In a way, christian churches do like that, too: dealing with a virtual pseudo-image of Islam they have created with their own fantasy, missing the reality of what Islam really is.
(...)
In the West the church was holding a monopole for power, where kings came and went by, the church stayed and brutally defended against any attempts to undermine it’s powerbasis by creating alternative ideas and traditions that violated the church’s dogma. Islam did the same and brutally supressed and wiped out attempts of establishing an Islamic philosophy, or a theological system of debate with rules that not necessarily always led to the conclusion that the Qu’ran is right (Islamic theology has the prooving of the Qu’ran as the only valid truth as it’s only center of interest), it also denied the developement of any sciences that could have led to results leading beyond profane use in everyday life, science was allowed to deliver tools only, no insight and knowledge – these can only be coming from believing in the „right“ way, the mystic tradition was supressed, too, before the Mongoles dealt with it’s remains once and for all in the middle of the 13th century, and even varying traditions of interpreting the law were forced into unconditonal submission to the shari’a. More than just a handful of brilliant and surprisingly modern and open minds were wasted that way, sometimes locked away, sometimes murdered. They never were replaced.
So far, so good, but Islam was more successful in this way of doing than Europe. The Christian church , step by step, had to give ground, which automatically reduced it’s power and influence in usual life, it led to the age of enligthenment, to the blossoming of sciences, philosophy, arts, different interpretations of christian religion – but also to trade, mechanized weapon and industrial warfare, the inflationary loss of worth of a man’S existence, excessive materialism, to an ever growing speed of life and all the loss of living quality coming from that, and short-termed thinking, and to today’s erosion of most elemental values and rules of behavior. The orientation the churches had given may have been corrupted, and wrong, and not in the spirit of Jesus‘ teachings, but people took them as orientation nevertheless, because there were no alternatives they knew of or could believe in, with the limit intellectual knowledge of earlier times. The fall of the church created a vaccum that was not filled by a solid predecessor. – Islam, on the other hand, was very successful in essentially freezing the status quo of the first three centuries of it’s existence. It is united, it has a most formidable (what i call) cultural penetration power to take over other cultures in various ways and exploit their ressources without allowing them to feedback on islam and influnce and chnage it that way, and it’s believers are both too convinced and maybe also too intimidated (giving up Islam is threatend with death, so say the scriptures) to even think about turning their backs on it, or step back, look at it from an outside perspective and ask critical constructive questions about it. The process of self-reflecting and self-testing the Westewrn philosophical traditon went through has not taken place in Islam. This led to it’s united strength, but also to it’s obvious weaknesses: an almost totalitarian rigidity, a phenomenal lack of flexibility and ability to adopt to an everchanging world, the absence of self-critical reflection, the need to endlessly turn back and reconnect with the Medina model and the virtualy created and artificial imagination of a Muhammad that is very different to the historical person, short: the inability to adopt, which indirectly helps and supports it’s belief of superiority. If it cannot adopt to others, than it can only remain an illusion of beeing en par with them by arguing it does not have to catch up with them because it already is ahead. This is what I call the immense arrogance of Islam. It sees even lesser need to change itself, since in recent decades it sees it’s archrival, Christianity, moving towards it’s own position without expecting according steps of Islam towards christian religion. A very one-sided kind of dialogue that is.
I said that this is official church policy, and this is fatal for the West. It put the church under pressure of beeing successful at all cost, and if it has to deal with an Islam not moving and beeing open to true dialogue, then the church can prevent the need to declare failure (and thus, it’s incompetence in intellectual assessement of Islam) only by keeping the folly alive – and moving even more towards Islam’s positions. This current status is a no win-no win-situation. The folly leads as far as that the Vatican even remains silent about the yearly mass killing of up to 150.000 christians in Muslims countries, who get murdered in local progroms each year. That says the Vatican’s own secret service, three or four years ago. To say that is considered to be politically uncorrect. It threatens the FOLLY one is trying hard to keep alive: that there is interest for dialogue and tolerance on the other side. When Paul II visited Sudan in 1983, or was it 86, he also met Hasan Al-Turabi, a known radical, whom he embraced and praised him as a great man, stressing the mutual tolerance and similiarities between both religions – the very same man that in the twelve months before had slaughtered one million christians in southern Sudan by sending Muslim marauders, and a man who just waited until the pope was back to Rome and then spend another year or so with murdering another two million Christians there – this time by using more efficient massbombardement from bombers and fighter planes, until he fell out of favour himself. Many popes were idiots, but Paul II is one of the worst popes christian history ever had. I see no greatness in his last years, and no example leadership for a strong church, and „true inner strength“. The daily soap his last months had degenerated into I felt to be disgusting to the max, and symbolic for the state the church is in: declaring weakness a virtue, depleted of true strength and influence, trying to appease the worst enemy it ever had: Islam, stripped of any willingness to seriously resist. It’s doomed to fall. It is ripe to fall. And Islam knows that all too well. The present is the great chance it had waited for since the last time it got deafetd before Vienna. This time it does not come with canons and armies, but with the power of demographic and by exploiting the West’s silly dependence on oil. We cannot afford to depend on their oil. If Bush was serious in his latest adress to the state of the union, than even his script-writer have understood that they cannot afford to depend on oil from Muslim nations anymore. From my mouth, that is almost a compliment to Bush.
Later Pope II. said that „if we allow women for priesthood, this will block our ecumenical contact to Islam“, and explained that for the latter reason the first shall not be. If that is not revealing.
What is acchieved by this? A new form of monologue is created, that labels itself a dialogue, that by renunciation of analysis and reason uses highly irrational criterias, illusions and wishful thinking, nevertheless searches for a truth that nevertheless it already has limited in advance (dialogue with Islam MUST be successful), this is enforced with highly dogmatic power inside the church, and at the same time accepting massive deformation of the church’s spiritual contents that already were hollowed out before and have lost so much attractiveness that churches today are empty and young generations are driven away – while mosques are crowded and their numbers almost exploded in the last three decades. Today, Islam in europe just needs to pick up those people that were driven away from the churches, that felt disgusted, and saw no convincing orientation in Christian religion, as interpreted by corrupted churches, anymore. Some fall victim to spiritual mass-tourism. Some fall victim to Buddhist sects that have not adopted their teachings to Western living surroundings. Some fall victim to islam that promsies them to be striuct and strong in giving them orientation by total regulation of all levels of life. Most people fall victim to materialism and nihilism, beeing no thrwad to Islmaic expansion into the West anymore – they are weak.
During the bishop’s synode 1999 in Rome the Bishop of Izmir risked open confrontation with the Vatican when ignoring orders to shut up, and gave the assembly a report on the massive discriminations Christians in his diocese are facing, and I quote from one of my books here (my translation):
„During an official meeting about the ‚dialogue‘ between Christians and Muslims, a high representatives of the Muslim community raised and adressed the Christian participants of that assembly, saying: ‚Thanks to your own democratic laws we will overcome you, thanks to your own religious rules we will rule you.‘ Their rulership already has begun with the petrodollars, that are not used to fight poverty in the poor countries of Northern Africa or to create jobs in the middle east, but to raise mosques and ‚culture centers‘ within Christian countries with a very high quota of Muslim immigrants beeing send to the construction sites. How can we fail to see a clear intentional program in this, that is directed at expansion, taking over, and ultimate ruling...?“
The Bishop continued to describe that all the intercultural meetings always, always are organized and created by Christians, never initiated by Muslims, and he described how another high ranking Muslim representative was asked why this was so, that Muslims never initiated cultural exchange and interreligious meetings. That Muslim representative answered, and I quote again:
„ Why should we do that...? You cannot teach us anything, and we DO NOT NEED TOM LEARN ANYTHING.“
The Bishop continued:
„It is a fact, that terms like dialogue, justice, mutuality (Gegenseitigkeit), or terms like human rights and democracy have a completely different meaning and understanding for Muslims than for us. But it is absolutely inevitable that we are united in our understanding of these principles. We may never again offer a Christian church to a muslim community for celebrating a Muslim religious festivity in there, because for them it is a most convincing signal for our own apostasy.“
With regard to the poor picture christian church is giving today, I immediately remember Nietzsche, a man whose disgust for declaring weakness a virtue is proverbial:
„When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond"--in nothingness--then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life. . . . Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? . . . Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path."--"One thing only is necessary". . . That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph--it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The "salvation of the soul"--in plain English: "the world revolves around me." . . . The poisonous doctrine, "equal rights for all," has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization--out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth . . . To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.--And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals--for the pathos of distance. . . Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!--The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the majority" makes and will continue to make revolution--it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly" lowers . . .
In addition to that i may point out that Buddha also denied the existence of an individual soul – but by that also pointing out that after death there is no nihilistic „nothingness“, but the realization that we have no individual souls, but all are part of just one devine entity that one could label as „cosmic spirit“ (ancient Greece), „devine spark“ (Christian mystic), „God“ in the non-institutional religion’s understanding. Neither Buddha nor Nietzsche were nihilists, by far not. Nietzsche only fought against false idols, and very oncompromising.
I want to end this letter with one final quote that is one of the most vital and important guidelines for me in my live. I no more must simply believe in it, for I experienced time and again that it is true. From the Kalamas-Sutra:
„Do not put faith in traditions, even though they have been accepted for long generations and in many countries. Do not believe a thing because many repeat it. Do not accept a thing on the authority of one or another of the sages of old, nor on the ground of statements as found in the books. Never believe anything because probability is in its favor. Do not believe in that which you yourselves have imagined, thinking that a god has inspired it. Believe nothing on the authority of the teachers or the priests. After examination, believe that which you have tested for yourself and found reasonable, which is in conformity with your well being and that of others.“