WESTERN CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON REASON, NOT SUPERSTITION.
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Abstract; Some drastic differences between the West and Islam are explored, and explained. That brings forth reflections on some differences between civilization and superstition.
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Strident screaming in France from the politically correct. Claude Gueant, one of the ministers of the discombobulated Sarkozy, observed that:
“Contrary to what the left’s relativist ideology says, for us, all civilizations are not of equal value. Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that deny it. Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred.” Adding the need to “protect our civilization”, he insisted he had not targeted “one culture in particular”.
[Disclosure: I detest Claude Gueant’s immigration policy; but that does not mean I have to detest all his thoughts, especially when they happen to be philosophically correct.]
Islam de France asked Gueant to specify that he did not target Islam. A socialist (related) member of parliament amalgamated Gueant’s observations with Nazism. The French government walked out of the National Assembly, for the first time since 1898.
To progress in the elucidation of things, one has to get where one did not go before. And nothing is best for that than strong emotions. E-motions are called that way, precisely because they move people. Cold logic, per se, is a ship without motion. Logic does not move by itself.
So let me invenominate the debate a bit more. As a public service.
Islam is why the Middle East covered itself with fascist dictatorships.
(Islam is only a proximal cause, however, see below.) OK, let’s roll out Muhammad Himself, Peace Be On Him, He needs it!
“O YE WHO BELIEVE! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.” (Quran’s, Sura 4; verse 59).
In other words, obey power, not intelligence, virtue or democracy. I call that Islam’s fascist principle.
The truth can be outrageous. Nothing better than truth to bring rage out. OK, maybe I put the cart, religion, before the donkey, dictatorship. The water crisis in the Middle East forced the establishment of hydraulic dictatorships. As the drought increased, so did the ferocity: the Egyptian religious was softer than Christianism, itself more open minded than Islam.
True, Jesus Christ, a prophet of Islam, ordered to kill non believers. Luke 19:27: “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.”
However Christ’s robust self glorification was not the law in the Imperium Francorum. Probably impressed by what the mighty Franks had done in Occident, emperor Justinian, who reigned 40 years, and reconquered the Mediterranean, ordered to separate the secular and the religious in Roman law.
If a Christian wanted to become a Jew, or a Muslim, it was not a cause for execution.
But the Qur’an is more specific: “And if they break their oaths after their agreement and (openly) revile your religion, then fight the leaders of unbelief– surely their oaths are nothing– so that they may desist.” (Qur’an, S 9, v 12) Passages abound in the Hadith (the second sacred book of Islam, full of sayings attributed to Muhammad) of murderous narrow mindedness:
“Allah’s Apostle [Muhammad] said, “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.”—Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 9:83:17
Some with leftist pretentions will erupt:”How dare you? Is not religion good? Do you have something against Islam? Are you an incredible racist?”
No, I am not an incredible racist. Just the opposite. It is precisely because I respect the victims of an all too fascist friendly religion that I intervene.
I spent the essential of my childhood in Muslim countries, and I nearly always respected the individuals I met, and loved the mosques, and the architecture. I even respect several injunctions of Islam: for example no alcohol whatsoever (I am silly enough already on my own to not need adjuvants). However Islam is a system of thought, and thinking is what I eat.
A particular problem with Islam is the way it treats women. As women educate small children, mentally underperforming women means mentally underperforming children, and thus mentally underperforming adults, hence mentally underperforming societies.
So Islam becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There is no senility like senility, and stupidity is its prophet.
Some with leftist pretentions will hammer their war drums, the way they have been taught is supposed to be correct:”We don’t see you criticizing the West, the Christian civilization!”
Well, you should read me more. I enjoy dogfights with Christianism. My answer is that there is not such a thing as Christian civilization. “Christian civilization” is an oxymoron, except in the most primitive places.
By definition of what a civilization is, civilization cannot be just a religion, especially not a superstitious religion. And, historically, the West was not founded by the Franks as a religion, but as a reaction against the superstitious organization of society by Catholic bishops.
Contrarily to a commonly accepted myth, the West, the synergetic civilizational aggregate imagined by the Franks, was not founded on a particular superstition, or even a particular nation or language. Quite the opposite. It was intrinsically omnirole, and even anti-plutocratic. (The multivaried nature of the empire of the Franks make it closer to the present European Union, than to a conventional empire; the Imperium Francorum was a sort of European Union in its time, but with the world’s mightiest army.)
In the Imperium Francorum, Christians could become Jews, and they did, and, no, they did not have fewer rights, and no, they did not have to wear signs on their clothing warning of their particular superstition.
Whereas in Islam, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, although had lived there for centuries, when not millennia, were discriminated against by the heavily armed newbies. Non-Muslims had to wear special clothing to warn of their presence, they did not have equal rights, and enjoyed special supplementary taxes. To this day it is forbidden for a Muslim woman to marry a non Muslim. 25% of Lebanese weddings happen in Cyprus, to turn around that interdiction.
According to the Qur’an believers are suppose to kill Pagans and Non Believers:
“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them and beleaguer them and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war). But if they repent and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them, for Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful.” [Qur’an, Surah al-Tawbah: verse 5]
Taken at face value in the short, 80,000 words Qur’an, this verse is as clear as it gets. Some Islamists try to wiggle out of it, see Islam Tomorrow.(I enjoy reading Islamists.)
So why such a huge difference between Christian Francia and the contemporaneous first Islamist Caliphate? At first sight, this is strange, because Christianism and Islamism are variants of the same religion of Abraham. (Maybe I should call that mother religion Abrahamism, to rhyme with Shamanism.)
Islam, by promoting jihad, interpreted by Muhammad Himself as a war effort against the West allowed to build the world’s largest empire in one generation. That immense succession of battles was launched from just one city, Medina (where Muhammad is buried).
Muhammad admonished Roman authorities to convert, while telling his followers that, for the first time in 1,000 years, the Greco-Romans and their successor regimes (such as the Persian Sassanids) were weak (from a terrible war between them, and the civil war of the Christians against the Pagans and Thinkers inside the Greco-Roman empire). And it was the time to attack.
In the Orient, jihadist rage, lots of luck, and tremendous overconfidence and incompetence in one major battle by the Roman army high command, led the Arabs to the gates of Constantinople. There they were defeated by a high tech weapon, Grecian fire. Grecian fire, secret to this day, was used successfully against Muslims for centuries. Even in Saint Tropez in the Tenth century when a combined effort of the Frankish army and the Roman navy threw the Islamist armies out of Francia.
Blocked by the enormous walls of Constantinople and its fire spitting navy, the Islamists conceived to go around, and catch Constantinople from behind.
After quickly overrunning Gothic Iberia, massacring 20% of its natives, the armies of Islam met the Franks, in Francia. Not only the franks had defeated the Goths, two centuries prior, but they had sent spies to figure out the Muslims, as soon as Islam swept Palestine and Egypt. The Franks represented legal Roman power, and applied Roman law, with an addition, Salic law, initially written in Latin by Roman jurists around 300CE (it was amended enormously in the following millennium). No religious law for the Franks. Zilcht.
In a succession of three terrible invasions (721-750 CE), the Arab and Berber armies and navies tried to break through Francia, and, instead, were the ones broken to smithereens. Not only were the obnoxious invaders thrown out, bones rotting in the sun, but, exhausted, the Caliphate in Damascus fell (750 CE).
Civilian Muslims left behind were left alone and not discriminated against. They reproduced in peace, as genetics studies on the French population have shown.
The Franks were not fighting in the name of Christianity. They viewed the Sarah-sin as a type of Christian, originating from the Bible’s Sarah. The Franks had a long tradition of fighting fanatical Christians. That is why the Franks organized a succession of coups, wars and elected several scholars as emperors, to break the Christian theocracy in Constantinople. They finally captured Francia in 476 CE (and Constantinople in 1204 CE, vengeance is best cold!)
The Franks viewed in Islam more of the same they knew all too well, and they had fought for five centuries, ever since they were the Free, the Franks.
The Frank Reich had always been multinational and multilingual. They spoke old Dutch, Latin, German…By the time the Islamists invaded, the Franks called themselves “EUROPEANS“.
There was their fundamental religion, what bound them together again: Europe.
Thus, contrarily to the Islamist empire, the West was founded on tolerance and reason, and the secular law. The west of the Franks was not founded on the adoration of the would be child killer, adulator of his boss, Abraham his name. Just the opposite.
A demonstration of this occurred unwittingly when Christianism was unleashed to help reconquer the Middle East. What happened? Christianism soon re-engaged in what it does best, namely plutocratization. Plutocratization, the instauration of the Dark Side. In contrast to civilization.
Why are Christianism and Islam so prone to plutocratization? It is not an accident.
The myth of Abraham is the very foundation of Christianism and Islam. And what do we observe?
The religion of Abraham is founded on the most insane torturous obsession imaginable, the killing of the child by his parent, to please the boss. Worse than that cannot be found. Think about it. That’s what Islamist regimes are founded on.
The Aztec philosophers viewed their own superstition as more humane than Abraham’s pedophobic obsession, and contradicted the Christian theologians point by point.
Remark: the clueless Vatican wonders why so thousands of obsessed priests tortured children. May I remind them of Abraham? Torturing children is what their god does. See what happened to David’s son, according to their little book of horrors.
So what is civilization? The term appeared around 1600 CE in France, after seven religious civil wars in quick succession (instigated by the Catholic fanatic Spanish emperor, son of his French father, Charles V!).
Henri IV built on the tremendous work of his great predecessor Henri III (assassinated by a Catholic fanatic). He put his war marshal the duke of Sully in charge of the economy. The new society was a welfare state (“a chicken in every pot!”), a stimulus program, and a planification of the economy was introduced, with an accent on high tech.
When the protestant Henri de Navarre was told it would be better if he became catholic to sit on the throne of France, he scoffed:”Paris vaut bien une messe!” (“Paris is worth a mass!”)
Civilization is not religion. Civilization is a process, a progress towards a more civil society. Civilization lives in its time (that’s what “secular” means), and on the ground (it’s not standing-over, which is what super-stition means).
Religion is an old, wet rat clinging to an old branch sinking in the middle of the ocean. A superstitious religion is just a revelation. Some guy in the desert, way back, walking on the water, making fish out of wine, listening to archangels in his head, threatening to kill whoever he is unwilling to “believe” in him, and venerate those ready to kill a child, if the boss says so.
Henri III and Henri IV were both assassinated by religious fanatics (after several dozens attempts!). Their crime? Pushing forcefully for a more civil society. For civilization.
Let’s remember that, next time we are told that a religion can be a civilization.
***
Patrice Ayme
Tags: Reason, superstition, The West
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
February 13, 2012 at 4:04 am |
Good article! However, some details in your description of Abrahamism are incorrect. Specifically, the turning of fish to wine. This is not in the text.
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February 13, 2012 at 4:06 am |
Thanks Alexi! OK, maybe swine, not wine! It tried to do what I think is called a joke, if I remember the notion well… ;-)!
PA
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February 13, 2012 at 5:18 pm |
“WESTERN CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON REASON, NOT SUPERSTITION.”
Ah yes, reason, as in science.
Which is itself a system of beliefs.
I personally have experienced the inviolable Laws of Sir Isaac Newton proven wrong twice in the 20th century.
And we are not done yet.
We “believe” in Western medicine because it often works. But so does Chinese medicine (sometimes).
And placebos have been proven effective medicine, even when the subject is told that he is the one getting the placebo.
So do we really KNOW, or do we simply BELIEVE?
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February 13, 2012 at 5:57 pm |
Dear Old Geezer: Your observations are very astute, and I have long held a similar set of beliefs. Actually, buried in one of my recent essays (I don’t even remember if I published it or not) I pointed out that “faith” and “belief” are central to REASON. In other words, faith and belief are fundamental to the scientific instinct which truly characterize the genus Homo.
“Chinese medecine” is science. Middle Age science, true, but still science. Similarly the basic maneuvers most of us learn when we are children, and play with fire, are also part of science. “Science” comes from the Latin for knowing.
We know if, and only if, we have faith in the knowledge we have. If the commander and the copilot of a superjumbo A380 jet sat behind the commands, and suddenly had no faith in what they used to know the day before, they could not roll down the runway. If it happened in mid-air, the plane would crash. And so it is for all humans doing anything whatsoever. (OK, this is not completely true, because activities such as walking go from the conscious to hardwiring at some point in development, so no more faith is needed to operate them than to operate the heart; but then the surgeon operating on a heart has to use faith, and so did the now unconscious patient when she put her life and faith in the hands of the surgeon).
By the way, it is pretty much known how the placebo effect works. And as far as Newton is concerned, scientists ought to have read him more carefully. He was the first to meta-analyze his gravitation theory, and declare that it made no sense (about the instantaneous interaction at a distance with no medium in between). similarly, the Riemann-(Poincare’?)-Einstein theory of gravitation makes no (fundamental) sense, as it is basically a tautology. However, Newton theory was incremental, significant progress: it explained effects not explained before, and so did the Einstein thing.
Modern QFT is also progress. But when some physicist come, and say they have it all figured out, they are just arrogant, stupid and easy to contradict. They hurt the notion of science by their brutal sociological dominance, proferring absurdities to make themselves interesting.
There is no knowledge without faith, and knowledge is all about beliefs.
PA
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February 13, 2012 at 7:49 pm |
Alexi Helligar: Just checking. Usually, your depictions of history and culture are provocative and accurate. The joke was lost on me. Many of the ideas expressed by Abrahamism are sufficiently ridiculous without distortion.
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February 13, 2012 at 7:52 pm |
Yes, Alexi, I try to be very accurate, to the point of being boring. But joking is a good technique. So is poetry. I don’t want to be too boring.
People are trained to accept the myths, word for word. So Jesus, as expected, turns water into wine, etc. If one tweaks the myth, as in making Jesus turn water into SWINE, the absurdity comes to the fore, because people are forced to process the absurdity anew…
Along same lines, just more serious, it’s amusing the moon (deity of old Mecca Paganism) and the Kaaba (meteorite adorated in old Mecca Paganism) are central symbols of Islam. Let Muslim scholars point at the part of the Qur’an where they are. Ha ha ha… They are in the Satanic verses! Ooopss… So is Islam Paganism in drags?
PA
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February 14, 2012 at 6:35 pm |
Patrice,
My favorite line: “Religion is an old, wet rat clinging to an old branch sinking in the middle of the ocean.”
Well done.
I have one major concern. While you successfully described how Islam’s extremism is more than that of Christianity (due to some particular verses and hadiths), you fail to acknowledge the progression of extremism INHERITED through her parents. Islam is an enthusiastic follower compared to Judaism and Christianity, both of which came BEFORE Islam. Why focus on the evils of Islam when such evil wouldn’t have existed without the two evil religions before it? Islam is the neglected child of an abusive parent – I would much rather read your thoughts on the Torah/Old Testament that the three Abrahamic religions share, versus the one that only the youngest child uses. I know you have talked about them, but not to the extent of the Quran.
You do such a great job of criticizing parents in many other of your arguments, why are you suddenly attacking the child here? For example, you do not attack one random American for being stupid, instead you attack the failure of American society for giving birth to him. I admire that. Why instead with religion do you attack the crazy child born of crazy parents?
Islam stands on the shoulders of Judaism and Christianity. They’re all crazy, yes, but I would appreciate your essays more if you did a better job of acknowledging that. Otherwise, yes, you look like you’re picking on a neglected stepchild.
A
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February 14, 2012 at 6:38 pm |
Hi A!
I agree 100% with your critique here, and I make that point all the time myself: Judaism came first, and Christianism
(aka Cretinism, as some critiques had it) came second, and made Judaism much worse… due to its entanglement with Caesar, traceable directly to Christ (“Render onto caesar what is Caeasar’s”).
One can see that implictly as I mention Abrahamism, and view its various sects as just all in the same Abraham basket. So what you say, which is correct, is only about that particular mini (!) essay. It was not: Christianism versus Islamism, but “Islam versus Civilization”.
Somewhere on my site, there are all the abominable quotes of the Qur’an. I got them easily by going to terrorist sites, which used them as excuses. Then I tried to do the same for Christianism, but there were so many, and they are so well hidden, i had to read the Bible line by line, and i gave up, for now. Anyway the Luke quote of Christ I gave is very famous, and enough, and actually NEARLY all the obnoxious stuff in Islam can be tracked to Christianism.
So I agree with you. As I pointed out, the Franks viewed the Msulims as enraged Christians, and treated them as such. The first thing Christian leaders did, actually, when the Islamist armies invaded, was to nationalize the Christian church, and sell its treasure. That’s counterintuive.
But the Franks needed lots of money to rise the largest professional army since the heydays of the Roman empire.
So you made an excellent point, and it will be, it has to be, adressed in further essays. enraged islamists have to be told they are just behaving like the Christians used to, word for word, before a clamp was put on them, Christians, by the rising western civilization. Rising out of the ashes of theocratic Catholic Rome, that is.
PA
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February 15, 2012 at 12:18 am |
Patrice,
You are saying you agree with me, but the fact remains that generally speaking, you pick on Islam 90% of the time.
A
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February 15, 2012 at 12:27 am |
Why I pick on Islam 90%? (Supposing I do, which I contest) Because it’s still not completely dead. Whereas Christianity is sunk at the bottom of the sea. Once it’s sunk, it’s sunk, we attack the one still floating.
Also because I eat live prey rather than dead, rotting corpses. Really, Christianity is dead, except in a few places which are themselves dead or dying. Who cares about maggots?
Whereas Islam is taken seriously by lots of serious, influential people: see the voting in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco
each time a clean sweep by Islamists, with an Islamist agenda. And there is an Islamist party in power in Turkey. And islamists control Arabia, Iraq, Iran… Pakistan…
I don’t know of one country with a Christianist party in power, with a Christanist program…. Sure, it used to be a huge problem, but in the Rennaissance (of Christian religious terror, as I pointed out in the essay).
The only western country which has a serious Abrahamist problem is Israel. And that’s due to the highjacking of the representative parliamentary system by fanatical Jews. And they don’t amuse me, except when they dress funny, reminding me of chimps in three piece suits, in their parody of Western bankers’ costumes… A trick to seduce the powers that be in Europe, which leaves seething with barely contained anti-plutocratic irritation.
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February 15, 2012 at 4:20 am |
Just because there is no declared “Christian government” doesn’t mean that Christianity is not permeating through entire societies, influencing and shaping the government.
BTW, thumbs up for the French taking on Monsanto…..
A
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February 15, 2012 at 4:21 am |
Please give me examples of permeability and influence of Christianity (I know some, but I view them as minor, although some directly irritate me).
As it turns out many of the characteristics viewed as “Christian” were pre-Christian, or had nothing to do with Christianity.
For example:
1) welfare programs were started under the early Roman empire. S.milarly more advanced welfare in the middle Ages were gov decisions, not the church’s.2) outlawing of slavery in the 7C was a Frankish gov decision. it had nothing to do with Christianity. The pope reinstituted slavery for Africans 7 centuries later. Still it stayed unlawful in the old Imperium Francorum, i.e. most of europe, including Great Britain.
3) secular education given by the churches and monasteries was actually a law mandated by the Franks for getting a religious licence.
And so on.
PA
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February 15, 2012 at 4:37 am |
IN FACT, I would argue that it’s even more dangerous when religion is NOT declared in a religion-following government, all the while it’s running the whole god damned country. Turning a blind eye and saying it doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just makes it harder to destroy when nobody chooses to see it.
AS
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February 15, 2012 at 4:39 am |
A respected work of art in the West consists in a bocal of urine drowning a reproduction of Christ inside. Let see the same with Muhammad. Then Islam will be treated by the West as Christianity is.
Something to piss on. Right now Muslims are treated like mentally weak creatures that would go bersek if their image of Muhammad was stomped on, let alone watered with waste. Oh, I forgot; they are supposed to go bersek, at least Sunnis (not Shiah) at the first reproduction of human, or even animal figures…
And once we have really made pissing on all aspects of Christianity respectful, what’s left of it?
The invisible influence nobody can see? Really? In France, all religious establisments are property of the People (except the Grand Mosque in Paris, a gift from the People to the Islam de France! 1920s…)
One can even argue that the cathedrals, with all their ugly gargoyles, were a way, just like Dante’s Inferno, to piss on Christianity. That was written in the early 1300s. Quite a few religious figures, including the pope are down in various circles of hell (with Muhammad!) OK, he probably forgot Christ; nobody is perfect on first try…
PA
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February 16, 2012 at 5:53 pm |
While you are right to deflate the French PC bubble over Guéant’s sortie, it should be pointed out that he obviously did not make the statement out of philosophical beliefs or principles. He was implementing the current Sarkozyte last-straw strategy of grabbing Front National voters by any means. This is why the left shot back from the hip, even though inequality among societies (and therefore civilizations) is the very basis of progressive thinking – what is the point of agitating towards another kind of society if it is not a better one?
This will soon be forgotten, as Sarkozy’s campaign obviously will rely on drawing the Socialists into endless meaningless squabbles. Pity that one was so badly – and thoughtlessly – handled.
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February 17, 2012 at 5:57 am |
Bonjour Dominique II! What you say nails it on the head, and is tied into the central quandary of the so called left, in the West, for the last, well…
I think the problem started during decolonization, which corresponded to Stalinization (calling Breznev an honorary Stalin for the occasion). By then the left was completely confused. I have to find and (re?) read my copy of Levy-Strauss’ “Tristes Tropiques” because I suspect the problem started there.
Detecting, despising and rejecting erroneous civilizations and cultures, is not just the essence of progressivity, but of the genus Homo.
The left both excoriates progress, while, as you say, it’s supposed to be its main mission (amen!) and the very definition of the word civilization. I lived in some countries where the so called “decolonization” replaced a small capable administration by the natives (with a few French officers and administrators mostly invisible) by coups, arbitrary arrests and shooting in the streets. And now, it’s getting even worse.
I read the Algerian family code, and see rights are fully for the father, as long as he is a Muslim. never mind there were jews in North Africa for a millennium before Islam was invented, and that half of humanity is female. But Algerian sheep will bleat that’s their identity, and thanks allah they were “decolonized”. Were the Jews also “decolonized”?
Once I met some friendly Morroccans, who my spouse had befriended for years, to the point of travelling with them once to Hawai’i. They insisted to invite me over (often a mistake). I mentionned that the Romans were in Morocco 900 years before the Muslims, and they were adamant that was not the case, that could not have been the case, Morocco was always Muslim. They were petty upset, and that was the end of this beautiful relationship.
Fireworks don’t last, but that makes them even more beautiful. Truth is eternal, though.
Srkzy indeed jumped into Hollande’s hate-love relationship to finance. Saying to London the opposite of what he said a few weeks before was worse than not smart, it was, as Srkozy pointed out, a lie. He should know, being an expert. OK, he mostly lie to himself…
PA
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February 17, 2012 at 11:33 am |
I’ve lived in African and Middle-East countries, too, and am not naive. I’ve seen OBL posters on perfectly nice shopkeepers’ walls deep in Mali way before AQMI started its mayhem. Still, I think you’re wrong to target Islam, rather than Islamism. A distinguo which may be PC but still deeply valid. As a religion, Islam is suitably obscurantist and rife with barbarity, as befits a goatherders’ creed (another name for Abrahamism). So what. Like a large, vicious dog, Christianity had to be house-trained, and it was, at least in Europe; Islam still has to be house-trained by the citizens of countries it still rules, and by countries which house-trained their own religious hounds long ago; this may take time. Whereas Islamism, which is Islam with rabies, merely has to be put down ASAP. An opinion I often heard from Algerians in Algeria.
Re decolonization you may be a bit harsh. True, most released countries indulged in a riot of political and economical idiocy, sometimes murderous. I really do not see how they could have avoided it, with their ingrained reliance on foreign masters. Things are moving to the better, oh so slowly. The real issue, as an historian must realize, is that of colonization. I once was quite ready to credit it with the usual gifts – health, roads, the trappings of modernity. My lifetime experience has killed that delusion. There is nothing, in the so-called legacy of colonization, which countries could not get through trade and diplomacy; countries which were never colonized actually fared much better on all those counts.
Of course colonization had all the right-sounding reasons: we went out to free the slaves, as we now are out to liberate veiled women in Afghanistan. (we succeeded rather better then). The foot soldiers (including officers) believed it, and among them were tremendous individuals. Some are remembered as active defenders of the natives. But genocide was also a hazard – you are right to quote the Namibian Herero genocide at Von Trotha’s hands, which incidentally set up an uproar in Germany when news of it made it to Berlin; but don’t forget either the American Indians, or the Tasmanians; France itself, AFAIK, never initiated a genocide proper, but mass slaughter did happen. Speaking of non-genocide war crimes, Kurds may recall that their first experience of airborne gassing came to them courtesy of Sir Winston in the 30’s…
Independent countries have been independent long enough to be denied the excuse of the evil colonists’ legacy; but as you often point out, truth is eternal and must not be forgotten.
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February 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm |
Dear Dominique II: Thanks for the long, thoughtful comment. I agree 100% with most of what you say. Except that I am wrong, of course.
Although I readily admit that I may look wrong, because whatever I wrote has been insufficient to convey what I really mean, or because my point of view is genuinely difficult to understand. An example is the disctinction between Islam and Islamism, that I deliberately blurr. It did not escape me that in American usage we have: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. “Islamism” is dumped down with Socialism, Communism, Nazism and Capitalism.
The French though use: Christianisme, but “Islamism” is derogatory, just like in the USA.
As I do not see why one should discriminate against Judaism, the inventor of Abrahamism, I make everybody equivalent: Christianism, Islamism, Judaism, Abrahamism. Let Muslims explain to me why jews practice Judaism, but they do not practice Islamism.
I detailled in https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/some-violence-in-holy-quran/
7,200 words in the 80,000 words Qur’an that incite to violence, much of it lethal and terminal… Although the one about Allah burning people alive to death, and then regrowing their skins, to do it again, and again and again, shows clearly that, as far as Allah is concerned, life is for torture, and not conversely.
Thus the Qur’an is a civilizational, and legal, disaster. Christianism is irrelevant at this point, except in the homosexual, pedophiliac Vatican and its antennas (OK, another abbreviation, but speech, being finite and digital, is always an abbreviation, and so are all and any human actions). The Vatican itself is irrelevant, except to reproduce HIV (as it mysteriously forbid one of God’s creation, the condom).
Your argument that countries that did not know “colonization” did better is interesting. But there are very few of these countries. Thailand and japan come to mind, and that’s roughly it. Korea was conquered by the Mongols (as was China, which came epsilon from eradication by the Mongols; other civilizations were eradicated by yhe Mongols and now lay under the sands).
Even China had to compose with the foreign devils, and practice inverted colonization (the 50 million + Chinese diaspora, Singapore, etc.). I agree that “colonization” was atrocious in many parts (and, in Africa, often for the colonizers themselves, who died like flies). Namibia and Congo come to mind.
The PC attitude has polluted the accuracy of debate all over. An example is slavery. I am, of course, against slavery, but the fact is that, contrarily to legend, the slave trade originated in Africa, not in the few European cities rendered rich by it. It was an african civilizational problem. Not that, with the tech capabilities of africa then, there was any choice; it was slavery, or massacre.
I could write an essay. Here is the title: Did slavery save lives?
Anyway, from the philosophical point of view, colonization, at least by ideas, was global.
Today’s Japan has much more to do with 18C England than 18C Japan. So Western civilization, philosophically speaking, conquered Japan, and Japan would not have survived otherwise.
I do believe that the clash of civilizations is the greatest engine of philosophical progress (although I completely reject the work of that Harvard professor who was maniacal obsolete racist on the subject of long dead civilizations clashing…). Although I want to destroy the present Pakistani nuclear state, I am much more measured on Iran’s nuclear ambition, which, I think should be the object of a global negotiation, and is no threat at this moment.
PA
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February 22, 2012 at 5:51 am |
DuJuan Ross The Manichaeans were slaughtered for believing in such a duality of Yahweh,…a name they spoke unrepentantly when Semites deemed it too sacred to utter….Societies fade and disappear, features not becoming to a Creator of the Universe conceptually…
Societies? gods?man-made:yes….The Creator of the Universe is conceived by Monotheists and is pontificated to be Everlasting….No society ever conceived is thought to be everlasting,and History bears this out. Ergo,different concepts.
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February 22, 2012 at 5:53 am |
Hi DuJuan! Christians (“Catholic Orthodox” as they grandly called themselves!), those “Universals of Common Wisdom” pretty much slaughtered everybody in sight, except the Jews so they could keep on slaughtering those through the ages… I am guessing…
PA
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February 22, 2012 at 10:27 pm |
thank you for courageous Atheist remarks, humanity will be better off when faiths die faster than Zeus & Thor & Athena, Jeebus Jehobah Ghost Hole virgin vaginal birthed alleged baby gods? No wonder 6 million women die each year because the Vatican vetoes United Nations WHO spending for condoms & life saving abortions…
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February 22, 2012 at 10:34 pm |
Thanks Larry! OK, let’s add another layer!
There is no god, but dog, and submission is its prophet.
Faith in goodness is not just fine with me, but much appreciated. However, barking out malevolent orders, indeed, not so.
PA
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March 4, 2012 at 7:55 pm |
[…] I have argued in “Islam Against Civilization”, unreconstructed Islam is fundamentally an enemy of civilization (so my position on attacking the […]
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January 19, 2014 at 10:29 pm |
Hello There,
When I have time, I shall respond to your article as it relates to Islam. In the mean time, lets reflect on European history for what it really is, which, in case you had forgotten, includes the “French ” as well.
From your history books we learn that modern Western civilization (how you became more “civilised”) has established the most heinous record of licentiousness (depravity, degenerate, debauchery, immorality, shamelessness ) —a record unsurpassed in the history of human civilizations. No civilization since the creation of the first man Adam, has reached this level. This is your European history, your legacy.
Charles Mills: The History of Crusades (2 vols), London 1821, vol. 1, pp. 68, 71, 185, 228-229, 254, 260.
———————————————————–
“They abandoned themselves to every grossness and
libertinism. Neither public treasures nor private possessions
were spared. Virgin modesty was no protection, conjugal virtue
no safeguard … Among the Crusaders, particularly
distinguished for ferocity, were two thousand Normans or
French. That they destroyed children at the breast and scattered
their quivering limbs in the air … that their crimes were
enormous, is the general confession of the Latin writers … The
Christians dragged the corpses from the sepulchre and
despoiled them of their dress and ornaments. They severed the
heads from the trunks, and 15 hundred of them were exposed on
pikes to the weeping Turks; and some were sent to the Caliph of
Egypt in proof of victory. The dignity of age, the helplessness
of youth and the beauty of weaker sex were disregarded by the
Latin savages. Houses were no sanctuaries, and the sight of
mosque added new virulence to cruelty … the attendants and
followers of the camp pillaged the houses of Antioch as soon as
the gates had been thrown open; but the soldiers did not for a
while suffer their rapacity to check their thirst for blood; when
however, every species of habitation, from the market place to
the meanest hovels, had been covered into a scene of slaughter,
when the narrow streets and the spacious squares were all alike
disfigured with human gore, and crowded with mangled
carcasses, then the assasins turned robbers, and became as
mercenary as they had been merciless … They were soon
reduced to their old resources of dog’s flesh and human
carcasses. They broke open the tombs of the Musalmans; ripped
up the bellies of the dead for gold, and then dressed and ate
fragments of the flesh … Their cruelty could not be appeased
by a bloodless conquest; extermination, not clemency, marked
their victory … Such was the carnage in the mosque of Omar
that the mutilated carcasses were hurried by the torrents of
blood into the courts; severed arms and hands floated into the
current that carried into contact with bodies to which they had
not belonged. Ten thousand people were murdered in this
sanctuary. It was not only the lacerated and headless trunks
which shocked the sight, but the figures of the victors
themselves reckoning with the blood of their slaughtered
enemies. No place of refuge remained to the vanquished, so
indiscriminately did the insatiable fanaticism of the conquerors
disregarded alike supplication and resistance. Some were slain,
others were thrown from the tops of the churches and of the
citadel … It was resolved that no pity should be shown to the
Musalmans … the subjected people were, therefore, dragged
into the public places, and slain as victims; women with
children at breast, girls and boys, all were slaughtered. The
squares, the streets and even the uninhabited places of
Jerusalem were stewed with dead bodies of men and women
and the mangled limbs of children. No heart melted into
compassion or expanded into benevolence.”
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January 20, 2014 at 12:13 am |
Hello Saadiq, and welcome: I am myself, overall, pretty much an adversary of the Crusades, although the call for the First one made sense (but it immediately went crazy, killing European Jews before even leaving France/Germany). I have mentioned this many times before.
Charles Mills is an Englishman, reporting what had been reported before. By whom? The Frankish Crusaders themselves, and in particular some of their commanders (Joinville, etc.). They reported, obviously because they did not approve. Cannibalism (but not of live people, as they did) was both a necessity, sort of, but also a devious insult of the Christian religious (“Eat me, because this is my flesh”, said Jesus, etc.)
Arguably, the worst Crusade was not in the Middle East, but in Southern Europe, when millions of Cathars were massacred to the last man, and anybody who tolerated them.
This is exactly why, in the end, European civilization developed an intolerance to intolerance.
I look forward to your observations about what I think of “Islam”.
… Although, of course, there are extremely different versions of Islam. Some, in my book, are better than the best versions of Christianity, and are fully compatible with my way of thought.
PA
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January 20, 2014 at 11:06 am |
You are quoting the Quran so eloquently. Given the nature of your article, its only appropriate that it beckons me to ask the questions: “Do you speak, read and write Arabic?” or do you merely quote the English translation of the Quran? You see, if you intend starting a topic, quoting with impunity verses from the Quran, its stands to reason that such a person should be capable and thus be affluent in the language of the Book he/she is quoting….
Your article covers many aspects of Islam. For now, I will comment on the “FIRST” remark you made about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
I quote your FIRST REMARK:
—————————————–
” Islam is why the Middle East covered itself with fascist dictatorships” (Islam is only a proximal cause, however, see below.) OK, let’s roll out Muhammad Himself, Peace Be On Him, He needs it! “O YE WHO BELIEVE! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.” (Quran’s, Sura 4; verse 59). In other words, obey power, not intelligence, virtue or democracy. I call that Islam’s fascist principle”
—————————————————————-
Firstly, let me explain the Quranic verse to you, in case you missed it.
The Arabic word “U-lil-amr” refers to those charged with authority, responsibility or decision making, those capable of dealing with the settlement of affairs. The ultimate Authority rest with God. Men of God derive their authority from Him. Islam therefore expects ordinary governments (including your own) to be imbued with righteousness. Where there is sharp division between Law and Morality, between Secular and Religious affairs (the case of most countries presently), Islam still expects secular authority to be exercised in righteousness and on THAT! Condition, enjoins obedience to such authority.
From this Quranic verse we can discern that The Ultimate Authority is God. Thus God is the Supra-Cosmic Ideal of Supreme Good, as the Possessor of Absolute Harmony in all Dimensions of Perfection. God is the Fountainhead of Guidance as well as of Power, and His personality forms the Monistic Principle of Evaluation, in respect of the pursuit by humanity of the fulfillment of its Destiny.
OBEY THE MESSENGER
————————————–
We also learn from this Quranic verse that The Prophets—all the Prophets of humanity—are the Human Ideal of Supreme Good, as possessors and demonstrators of humanly-perfect harmony between the human will and the Divine Will. Prophets are the human transmitters to, and exemplifiers of, Divine Guidance for humanity. Here it should be noted that the unique Quranic doctrine concerning ‘Belief in all the Prophets of Humanity’ is related to the Quranic teaching that: (1) God being one, and mankind being one, the Guidance from God has come to all the human communities since the time of Adam (Peace be on him!) through the Prophets of God that came to them (Quran-13:7; etc.),—and it has not been confined to any ‘chosen people’; (2) it has been—as it ought to have been in the very nature of the case—fundamentally the same, i.e., Islam, or, the Philosophy and the Way of Submission to the One God (Quran-3:19); and (Quran-3) wherever there are resemblances in the teachings of the different religions, they are the remnants of the original Truth revealed by God. The final part of ‘Belief in all Prophets’ is the affirmation of belief in the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be on him!) not only as one of the Prophets but as the last Messenger of God, who came to seal the Age of Prophethood and Prophetic Revelation in the history of mankind (Quran-33:40) and to be the Guide for entire humanity in its Age of Maturity for all time (Quran-34:28).
HOW TO OBEY?
—————————-
The manner of “Obedience” to God is therefore enshrined in The Scriptures—all the Books of Guidance which came from God to humanity—represent Divine Guidance in respect of the pursuit of harmony between the human will and the Divine Will for the attainment of Supreme Good by the human beings.
Belief in all the Scriptures ever revealed to humanity by God fulfils the same function, in terms of ‘code of guidance’, as ‘Belief in the Prophets’. Namely: All the Divine Guidance communicated by God to the Prophets of the world, for the guidance of human communities, in the form of Scriptures, since the earliest times—as a result of which Muslims have existed in all periods of human history—has been directed to final human success in the Life Hereafter on the basis of ethico-religious fulfillment during the life lived on earth. As regards the Holy Quran, it is the last, the final, and the comprehensive revelation of Divine Guidance. Consequently, it performs three functions: (1) it restates the Divine Guidance that had come before its revelation to the different human communities but had subsequently suffered perversion through the vicissitudes of history and human interpolation. Thus, its Guidance is fundamentally the same as that contained originally in the previous Scriptures (Quran- 87:18- 19); (2) it corrects all the wrong notions found in the different religions, as they came to exist after the introduction of changes; (3) it projects the Divine Guidance in the dimensions that bear reference to the ‘era of maturity’ in the history of human civilisation, imparting comprehensive guidance as a result. As to the ‘era of maturity’: Taking humanity as a whole, the history of civilisation presents a picture of definite stages in respect of its evolution, and this evolution has been in the form of the progressive actualisation of human potentialities in terms of creativity.
In this perspective, the present Scientific Era, which the Holy Quran initiated, forms definitely the ‘era of maturity’ of human civilisation because of the emergence of, so to say, limitless possibilities of human thrust into the empirical aspect of Reality, which clearly stands out as the ‘maturity’-dimension of human civilisation, providing an ever-widening vision for understanding the Reality,—ever wider than possessed by humanity in any pre-Quranic period of human history, and, consequently, necessitating Divine Guidance in comprehensive measure and directly grounded in the new situation. The same has been provided in the Quran in terms of the comprehensive projection and correlation of all the dimensions of life (Quran-16: 89). Then, as the emergence of the new dimension of human quest in terms of the conquest of Nature beyond the earth constitutes the completion of the dimensions of civilisation with variations seemingly possible only in correlations within the structure of the quest, the Quranic comprehensive guidance has also been made by God as the last and the final revealed guidance from Him.
It should be clearly noted that the Quran has explicitly qualified the Muslims as those “who believe in that which has been revealed to you (Muhammad) and that which was revealed before you” (Quran-2:4), and does not even indirectly hint at belief in any future Prophetic Revelation.
In these Quranic doctrines of Universal Divine Guidance and the Unity of Religious Truth emerges a noble and unique dimension in the religious attitude of a Muslim, which is of tremendous importance for him as well as for humanity. It is the triune dimension of largeheartedness, good-will and wisdom. Because: (1) These doctrines establish in him a rational attitude towards other religions, whereby he tries to view the original reality beneath the crusts of mythology and human interpolations; and possessing, as he does, the Divine Guidance in its pure and authentic revelation, he can undertake a most rational and meaningful probe and research in the field of Comparative Religion, can reconstruct the original religion for the different communities, and can invite them to the same. (2) Knowing, as he does, through his own religion and through history, the in-authenticity of the records of all the pre-Quranic religions, he is duty-bound to refrain, on principle and not just for expediency, from insulting those personalities of other religions who are considered to be their founders,—which lays the foundation of international goodwill on the basis of Religion from his side. He can criticize, without ill-will and only for upholding and distinguishing the truth, the wrong teachings of different religions and the wrongs committed by different religious communities, but he is not permitted by Islam to indulge in insult and abuse of the supreme heads of other religions.
FINALLY!
————
In conclusion to your quotation, You alluded that as Muslims, we abandon ‘intelligence’, ‘virtue’ and democracy. It is he! (Mohammad pbuh) who brought intelligence, to the European ‘Dark Ages’. R.Briffault in his book “The Making of Humanity” says that “science” before Islam, was unscientific. Pre-Islamic science was based on the deductive method which is in fact, a defective method of inquiry. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) method was the real scientific method of inquiry”.
The abovementioned is the essence of the meaning of the verse you quoted!
QUOTATIONS FROM YOUR SCHOLARS:
————————————————————
“It seemed then the great civilization which it had taken four thousand years to construct was on the verge of disintegration, and that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order was unknown … The old tribal sanctions had lost their power … The new sanctions created by Christianity were working division and destruction instead of unity and order. It was a time fraught with tragedy. Civilization, like a gigantic tree whose foliage had overarched the world and whose branches had borne the golden fruits of art and science and literature, stood tottering … rotted to the core. Was there any emotional culture that could be brought in to gather mankind once more into unity and to save civilization?” – J.H. Denison: Emotion as the Basis of Civilization, London, 1928, pp. 265. 269.
“Our authorities”, says Muir, “all agree in ascribing to the youth of Mohammad a modesty of deportment and purity of manners rare among the people of Makka … Endowed with a refined mind and delicate taste, reserved and meditative, he lived much within himself, and the ponderings of his heart no doubt supplied occupation for leisure hours spent by others of a lower stamp in rude sports and profligacy. The fair character and honorable bearing of the unobtrusive youth won the approbation of his fellow-citizens; and he received the title, by common consent, of Al-AmÊn, the Trustworthy” – Sir William Muir: Life of Mohammad, London 1903.
“………..A year before his death, at the end of the tenth year of the Hegira, Muhammad made his last pilgrimage from Madina to Makka. He made then a great sermon to his people … The reader will note that the first paragraph sweeps away all plunder and blood feuds among the followers of Islam. The last makes the believing Negro the equal of the Caliph … they established in the world a great tradition of dignified fair dealing, they breathe a spirit of generosity, and they are human and workable. They created a society more free from widespread cruelty and social oppression than any society had ever been in the world before.” – H.G. Wells: The Outline of History, London 1920, p. 325
“His military triumphs awakened no pride nor vain glory, as they would have done had they been effected for selfish purposes. In the time of his greatest power he maintained the same simplicity of manners and appearance as in the days of his adversity. So far from affecting a regal state, he was displeased if, on entering a room, any unusual testimonials of respect were shown to him. If he aimed at universal dominion, it was the dominion of the faith, as to the temporal rule which grew up in his hands, as he used it without ostentation, so he took no step to perpetuate it in his family.” – Washington Irving: Mahomet and his Successors, London 1909; pp. 192,193,199
“Head of the State as well as of the Church”, remarks Bosworth Smith, “he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope’s pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar. Without a standing army, without a body-guard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue, if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammad, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. He rose superior to the title and ceremonies, the solemn trifling, and the proud humility of court etiquette. To hereditary kings, to princes born in the purple, these things are naturally enough as the breath of life; but those who ought to have known better, even self-made rulers, and those the foremost in the files of time—a Caesar, a Cromwell, a Napolean, have been unable to resist their tinsel attractions. Mohammad was content with the reality; he cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life. ‘God’, says AlBokhari, ‘offered him the keys of the treasures of the earth, but he would not accept them’ – Bosworth Smith: Mohammad and Mohammadanism, p. 92.
“It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of Supreme.” – Annie Besant: The Life and Teachings of Muhammad, Madras 1932, p. 4.
“His readiness to undergo persecutions for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement—all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad as impostor raises more problems than it solves. Moreover, none of the great figures of history is so poorly appreciated in the West as Muhammad … Thus, not merely must we credit Muhammad with essential honesty and integrity of purpose, if we are to understand him at all; if we are to correct the errors we have inherited from the past, we must in every particular case hold firmly to the belief in his sincerity until the opposite is conclusively proved; and we must not forget that conclusive proof is a much stricter requirement than a show of plausibility, and in a matter such as this only to be attained with difficulty.” – W. Montgomery Watt: Muhammad at Makka, Oxford 1953, p. 52.
“Serious or trivial, his daily behaviour has instituted a canon which millions observe at this day with conscious memory. No one regarded by any section of the human race as Perfect Man has been imitated so minutely. The conduct of the Founder of Christianity has not so governed the ordinary life of his followers. Moreover, no founder of a religion has been left on so solitary an eminence as the Muslim Apostle. – D. G. Hogarth: A History of Arabia, Oxford 1922, p. 52.
“It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our wonder; the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Makka and Madina is preserved, after the revolutions of twelve centuries … The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. – Edward Gibbon and Simon Ockley: History of the Saracen Empire, London 1870, p. 54.
“The ignorance displayed by most Christians regarding the Muslim religion is appalling … Mohammad alone, among the nations at that time, believed in one God to the exclusion of all others. He insisted on righteousness as the source of conduct, of filial duty, and on frequent prayers to the Everliving God, and of respect to all other peoples, and of justice and mercy to and moderation in all things, and to hold in great respect learning of every kind … Most of the absurdities which Christians would have us believe to exist in the Qur’an were never uttered by Mohammad himself, nor are they to be found in a correct translation of the work. – G. Lindsay Johnson, F.R.C.S.: The Two Worlds, Manchester, 9th August, 1940.
“Western writers have based their charges of voluptuousness mainly on the question of women. Before Muhammad, however, men were encouraged to take innumerable wives; he limited them to four only, and the Koran is explicit that husbands who are unable to maintain strict equality between two or more wives must confine themselves to one …” – James A. Michener, op. Cit
“More pure than the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of Moses, the religion of Mahomet: might seem less inconsistent with reason than the creed of mystery and superstition which, in the seventh century, disgraced the simplicity of the gospels. – Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5, p. 487.
“The nobility and broad tolerance of this creed, which accepts as God-inspired all the real religions of the world, will always be a glorious heritage for mankind. On it could indeed be built a perfect world religion.” – Duncan Greenless: The Gospel of Islam, Adyar 1948, p. 27.
“The Muhammadan law which is binding on all from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven, with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.” – Edmund Burke: in his “Impeachment of Warren Hastings”.
“Such a spirit … can any other appeal stand against that of the Moslem who, in approaching the pagan, says to him, however obscure or degraded he may be, ‘Embrace the faith, and you are at once an equal and a brother’. Islam knows no ‘colour line’.” – S. S. Leeder: Veiled Mysteries of Egypt, London 1912, pp 332-335.
“That his (Muhammad’s) reforms enhanced the status of women in general is universally admitted.” – H.A.R. Gibb: Mohammedanism, London 1953. p. 33.
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January 20, 2014 at 8:46 pm |
Dear Saadiq: I speak more than half a dozen languages. I have nearly never encountered severe differences between original and translation, so the well know argument that one needs to be an Arab (= speak Arabic perfectly) to understand god is of the lowest tribal form.
You use lots of words and concepts, most of a legendary type. You may as well evoke the Walhalla (Wal-Allah?). For you those 3 year old bed time stories are real. Makes it difficult to have an adult conversation.
That Arabs invented science, etc. is a well known one. It works well rhetorically. What happened is that the abominable murderous idiotic Christian fanatics in Constantinople had chased out intellectuals and their books. They found refuge in Persia. Thus became Arab property after the conquest of the latter.
In truth, one can basically trace not one important discovery to the Arabs (for example “Arabic” numerals came from Greece… through India).
It’s hard to make science with fanatics in command. Of all the prophets, the only one we know existed was Muhammad. There is no formal proof of the existence of Jesus or his execution, there is plenty of evidence Jesus was invented later (in 66 CE exactly, basically 6 centuries before the invention of Islam by an illiterate epileptic (pbuh!).
Abraham, even as reported, was the worst child molester, ever. Funny people can be deranged enough to make a cult about child molesting.
Free to you to believe in the great dog in the sky. After all the Aztecs believed killing 87,000 people in four days for the hummingbird god was kosher.
Yet, when too much extremity of insanity results in killing people, you will find the Republic in the way.
Sura 4, v59 has been used by hundreds of “Muslims” dictators ever since Islam appeared 13 centuries ago. Just look at Erdogan in Turkey (or general Sissi in Egypt, for that matter). The deranged versions of Islam that reign over the Middle East explains why it turns out to be the world’s poorest, and most conflictual.
PA
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January 21, 2014 at 10:03 am |
Good Morning Patrice,
It is discreditable how followers of some religions behave and consequentially attributing it to their religious doctrines as the absolute.
In reference e to your comment (“3 year old bed time story”), it goes without saying, that the Quran has not changed in 1400 years and as such, the constructs presented in my response (surely aren’t mythical as alluded) is the same as it were 1400 years ago. The milieu may have changed, but not the “religious experience”.
From your response I gather that you are unable to neither read, write nor speak Arabic. Based on my commentaries hereinafter, there is no shame in not knowing the Arabic language per se. However, it always becomes essential, as the quintessence in understanding its (the Quran) true meaning especially when one endeavours to propagate Quranic verses.
It has been a pleasurable experience conversating with your good self. Time may not permit me to expound on other facets of your article, however I do hope to return (if time permits), to further elucidate on your comments.
Kind Regards,
Saadiq
CONCERNING THE QURAN
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The Arabic language itself, which is the language of the Quran, is an extremely rich language—a fact attested unanimously by all the Arabicists of the world, Muslim as well as non-Muslim. Over and above that, there is the style employed in the Quran, whose depths in the imension of meaning and heights in respect of grandeur are simply immeasurable by human genius—a fact which has given to the language of the Quran the status of “the purest Arabic” (F.F. Arbuthnot, The Construction of the Bible and the Koran, London, p.5) and “the standard of the Arabic tongue” (George Sale: The Koran: The Preliminary Discourse, London and New York 1891, p. 47) —all that in a miraculous form.
“Whenever Muhammad was asked a miracle as a proof of the authenticity of his mission”, says the French scholar Paul Casanova, “he quoted the composition of the Quran and its incomparable excellence as proof of its Divine origin. And, in fact, even for those who are non-Muslims nothing is more marvellous than its language which with such a prehensible plenitude and grasping sonority with its simple audition ravished with admiration those primitive (In actual fact, the Arabs of those days were not primitive but highly civilised in respect of language) peoples so fond of eloquence. The ampleness of its syllables with a grandiose cadence and with a remarkable rhythm have been of much moment in the conversion of the most hostile and the most skeptical …” (“L’Enseignement de I’Arabe au College de France”. in Lecon d’overture for 26th April, 1909)
And the American scholar, Harry Gaylord Dorman (Towards Understanding Islam, New York 1948. p. 3) says: “It (Quran) is an ever-present miracle witnessing to itself and to Muhammad, the Prophet of God. Its miraculous quality resides partly in its style, so perfect and lofty that neither men nor jinn could produce a single chapter to compare with its briefest chapter, and partly in its content of teachings, prophecies is about the future, and amazingly accurate information such as the illiterate Muhammad could never have gathered of so his own accord.”
It is correct to say that the miraculous quality of the Quran resides only partly in its literary aspect. Its emphasis on this aspect was, however, necessitated by the arrogance of the Arabs of those days who were proud of their high attainment in literary skill. Thus the challenge was posed to them on their own terms, when the Holy Quran proclaimed: “Or do they say: ‘he has forged it’? Say: Bring you then ten suras forged, like thereunto, and call (to your aid) whomsoever you can, other than Allah!—, if you speak the truth’.” (Quran – 11:13). “Say (O Muhammad!): ‘if the whole of mankind and jinns were to gather together to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce of the like thereof, even if they backed up each other with help and support.” (Quran – 17:88). (It should be observed that both of these verses were revealed at Makka, which proves that the Quran grew from the very beginning in book-form. Also: we find this challenge repeated on three other occasions, viz., Quran – 2:23; 10:38; 52:34)
It is difficult to translate any book written in any language. Much more so the Quran, whose miraculous language simply defies translation. All honest translators are unanimous in this behalf. “The Quran”, says Marmaduke Pickthall, “cannot be translated. That is the belief of old-fashioned Sheykhs and the view of the present writer.” “Of all the great works,” writes Abdul Majid Daryabadi, “the Holy Quran is perhaps the least translatable. Arabic is not at all easy to translate into a language so widely and radically differing from it in structure and genius as English, unless it be with the aid of loose periphrasis and lax paraphrase. Even so the fire of the original is quenched, its vivacious perspicuity is lost, and the so-called literal translation looks rugged and dreary. That the language of the Arabs abounds in nuances and both the noun and the verb are extremely flexible, is a fact well known to every student of that tongue. The difficulty is increased hundredfold when one has to render into English, with any degree of accuracy and precision, a work so rich in meaning, so pithy in expression, so vigorous in style and so subtle in implications as the Holy Quran. To reproduce even partially its exotic beauty, wonderful grandeur and magical vivacity without sacrificing the requirements of the English idiom and usage, is the despair of the translator and an ideal impossible of attainment. The result is that every fresh attempt at translating the Holy Writ brings home, in varying degrees, the truth of the old saying that nothing is so unlike an original as its copy.” (The Holy Quran: English Translation and Commentary, Lahore and Karachi 1957, Preface, p. 9).
According to Eduard Montet, “… the Coran (Quran) … its grandeur of form is so sublime that no translation into any European language can allow us to appreciate it.” ( Traduction Francaise du Coran, Paris 1929, Introduction, p. 53.).
Even a Christian clergyman has confessed: “The Quran in its original Arabic dress has a seductive beauty and charm of its own. Couched in concise and exalted style, its brief pregnant sentences, often rhymed, possess an expressive force and explosive energy which it is extremely difficult to convey by literal word for word translation.” (John Naish, M.A. (Oxon.), D.D: The Wisdom of the Qur’an, Oxford 1937, Preface, p. 8).
The Quranic narration is so unique in its style, and so different from the writings of the world’s seers and sages, that those who are accustomed only to read human literary productions based on commonplace logical sequence and on the finitude in which human thought expresses itself—the finitude of human perception and conception having its own finite, and hence more intelligible and more crystalised, sequential emphasis—are likely to discover that their minds do not grasp truly the transcendental logic of the Quranic narration as it flows majestically, starting at sura al-Fatiha and ending at sura al-Nas.
A non-Muslim translator of the Holy Quran views this problem in his own light and tenders the following advice to the readers of translations: “In the first place, the Western reader must get rid of the assumption that the Koran is more or less like the Old Testament. The misapprehension is natural enough, when the first casual glance picks out the names of Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jonah, Joseph, Jacob, Job: the Biblical style of the popular translations does not furnish exactly a corrective. Misled by these early impressions, the reader makes the fatal mistake of trying to take it too much at once; he opens at a likely place, the beginning of a sura, and is lulled into suspicion by the familiar layout of chapter and verse; he finishes the first sura and goes on to several more; he is bewildered by the rapid and seemingly illogical changes of subject, and he quickly wearies of the frequent repetitions of themes and formulas… The Koran, like the poetry which it resembles in so many ways, is best sampled a little at a time; and that little deserves and needs meditation… He (the reader) will become gradually familiar with the Koran’s claim to be a confirmation of earlier scriptures. He will observe how the Koran assumes a knowledge of the contents of those scriptures, and only later expands the individual narratives into something like connected stories. He now follows step by step the gradual unfolding of the full prophetic powers, and when he comes to the polemic and the legislation he is readier to receive and understand them … the uninitiated enquirer … is screened from it by the double veil of a printed page and a foreign idiom. Yes, a foreign idiom, for the Koran is God’s revelation in Arabic, and the emotive and evocative qualities of the original disappear almost totally in the skilfullest translation. When appreciation rests upon these foundations, the charges of wearisome repetition and jumbled confusion become meaningless. Truth cannot be dimmed by being frequently stated, but only gains in clarity and convincingness at every repetition …” – A. J. Arberry: The Holy Koran, an Introduction with Selections, London 1953, pp. 25-2
CONCERNING SCIENCE
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“History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated. – De Lacy O’Leary: Islam at the Crossroads, London 1923, P. 8.
“The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries of revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The ancient world was, as we saw, pre-scientific. The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized, and of theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament … What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry, of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of Mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.” – Robert R. Briffault: The Making of Humanity, p. 190
“They (Arabs) were no blood thirsty savages, bent solely on loot and destruction. On the contrary, they were an innately gifted race, eager to learn and appreciative of the cultural gifts which older civilizations had to bestow. Intermarrying freely and professing a common belief, conquerors and conquered rapidly fused, and from this fusion arose a new civilization—the Saracenic civilization, in which the ancient cultures of Greece, Rome and Persia were revitalized by the Arab genius and the Islamic spirit. For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D. 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious masjids, and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages. – A M. Lothrop Stoddard: The New World of Islam, London 1932, pp. 1-3
“Europe was darkened at sunset, Cordova shone with public lamps: Europe was dirty, Cordova built a thousand baths: Europe was covered with vermin, Cordova changed its undergarments daily: Europe lay in mud, Cordova’s streets were paved; Europe’s palaces had smoke-holes in the ceiling, Cordova’s arabesques were exquisite; Europe’s nobility could not sign its name, Cordova’s children went to school; Europe’s monks could not read the baptismal service, Cordova’s teachers created a library of Alexandrian dimensions.” – Victor Robinson: The Story of Medicine, p. 164.
“‘By the aid of the Qur’ān the Arabs conquered a world greater than that of Alexander the Great, greater than that of Rome and in as many tens of years as the latter had wanted hundreds to accomplish her conquests; by the aid of which they, alone of all the Semites, came to Europe as kings, whither the Phoenicians had come as tradesmen, and the Jews as fugitives or captives. They came to Europe to hold up the light to Humanity; they alone, while darkness lay around, to raise up the wisdom and knowledge of Hellas from the dead, to teach philosophy, medicine, astronomy and the golden art of song to the West as well as to the East, to stand at the cradle of modem science, and to cause us late epigoni for ever to weep over the day when Grenada fell’.” – Emmanuel Deutsch
“‘To seek knowledge is a duty for every Muslim man and woman’. ‘Seek knowledge even though it be in China’. ‘The savants are the heirs of the Prophets’. These profound words of the great reformer (Muhammad) are an indisputable contradiction to those who seek and exert themselves in putting the responsibility of the intellectual degradation of Muslims upon the spirit of the Quran. Let them read and meditate upon this great Book and they will find in it, at every passage, a constant attack upon idolatry and materialism; they will read that the Prophet incessantly called the attention and the meditation of his people to the splendid marvels, to the mysterious phenomenon of creation. The incredulous, skeptical and un-believing may convince themselves that the importance of this Book and its doctrine was not to throw back, eventually, the intellectual and moral faculties of a whole people. On the contrary, those who have followed its counsels have been, as we have described in the course of this study, the creators of a civilization which is astounding unto this day.”1 – Dr. A. Bertherand: Contribution des Arabes au Progress des Sciences Medicales, Paris 1883, p. 6.
“It is to Mussulman science, to Mussulman art, and to Mussulman literature that Europe has been in a great measure indebted for its extrication from the darkness of the Middle Ages.” – Marquis of Dufferin and Ava: Speeches Delivered in India. London 1890. p. 24.
“Our use of the phrase ‘the Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe … From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourised. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary … To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization; but this is a narrow view. – Bertrand Russell: History of Western Philosophy, London 1948, p. 419.
“… From a new angle and with a fresh vigour it (the Arab mind) took up that systematic development of positive knowledge which the Greeks had begun and relinquished … Through the Arabs it was and not by the Latin route that the modern world received that gift of light and power. – H.G. Wells: The Outline of History. p. 327.
“The influence of the powerful movement of Islamic culture in Spain rapidly made itself felt throughout Europe. Petrus Alfonsi (b. 1602) who studied at the Arabian medical schools, came to England from Spain as Physician to King Henri I and, in 1120, collaborated with Walcher, Prior of Malvern, in the production of a translation of Alfonsi’s astronomical treatise, based upon Arabian sources. In England their united effort represents the first impact of Arabian learning. Its effect was rapid, for immediately afterwards Adelard of Bath earned the distinction of being the first prominent European man of science, outside Spain, to come to Toledo and make a special study of Arabian learning, The cultural links thus formed between England and Muslim Spain were destined to produce important results. They stimulated in England the desire for the new philosophical and scientific learning and led to the achievements of Michael Scot (C. 1175/1232) and Roger Bacon (1214-1294). Scot proceeded to Toledo in order to gain a knowledge of Arabic and of Arabian philosophy. At Oxford, Roger Bacon achieved brilliant success as an exponent of the new Arabian-Aristotelian philosophy. In the library of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral is a late thirteenth century illuminated manuscript, ‘Vetus Logica’, the earliest known commentary on Aristotle’s Logic produced in England following the Arabian ‘renaissance’ of Aristotelian philosophy. Amongst those scholars who came to Spain from Britain were Robert of England (flourished 1143), first translator of the Quran, Dental Morley (flourished 1170), etc. Roger Bacon’s work ‘Optics’ was based on Alhazen’s ‘Theraurus opticae’. The alchemical teachings of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber) and other Arabian writers, are apparent in the work of Albert Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, etc. “In a recent study made by the ‘Madrid School of Spanish Arabists’, (a school which is concerned with the study of Islamic civilisation in Spain and its influence on Christian civilisation in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in the rest of Europe), Julian Ribera demonstrates that many of the institutions of Christian Spain were nothing but a copy or an imitation of similar institutions of Muslim Spain. He discovered Arabic sources for the doctrines of certain thinkers and certain poetic forms of songs of the Middle Ages, and for the mediaeval Andalusian music and songs of the troubadours, trouveres and minnesingers. Don Miguel Asin Palacios, in studying the origins of philosophy in Spain, traces the influences of such Arabian thinkers as Avempace, Averroes, Abenarabi, Abenmasarra and others. He also eitablishes the point that, one should seek the key of the Divine Comedy of Dante in the Islamic legends of the nocturnal voyage of Muhammad . It is further shown that historiographers mathematicians and lexicologists, etc., owe much to their Muslim predecessors of Spain.” – Renowned British Orientalist, Marmaduke Pickthall
“Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic in the widest sense of this term, considered etymologically and historically. The definition of rationalism as a system that bases religious beliefs on principles furnished by the reason, applies to it exactly. It is true that Muhammad, who was an enthusiast and possessed also the ardour of faith and the fire of conviction, the precious quality that he transmitted to so many of his disciples, brought forward his reform as a revelation; but this kind of revelation is only one form of exposition, and his religion has all the marks of a collection of doctrines founded on the data of reason… A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvellous power of winning its way into the consciences of men. – Eduard Montet: La propagande Chretienne et es adversaires Musulmans, Paris 1890, pp. 17-18.
“In the same manner the Qoran gave an impetus to medical studies and recommended the contemplation and study of Nature in general.” – Dr. Hartwig Hirschfeld: New Researches into the Composition and Exegesis of the Qoran, London 1902, p. 9.
“It is a pity that we know these three centuries (750-1050) of Arabic efflorescence so imperfectly. Thousands of Arabic manuscripts in science, literature, and philosophy, lie hidden in the libraries of the Moslem world; in Constantinople alone there are thirty mosque libraries whose wealth has been merely scratched; in Cairo, Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad, Delhi are great collections not even catalogued; an immense library in the Escorial near Madrid has hardly completed the listing of its Islamic manuscripts in science, literature, jurisprudence, and philosophy. What we know of Moslem thought in those centuries is a fragment of what survives; what survives is a fragment of what was produced; what appears in these pages is a morsel of a fraction of a fragment.” – Will Durant, (The Age of Faith, p. 257.
“In their wars of conquest, however, the Muslims exhibited a degree of toleration which puts many Christian nations to shame.” – E. Alexander Powell: The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia, New York 1923, P. 48.
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January 21, 2014 at 3:13 pm |
Hello Saadiq: Thank you for your kind answer. Among the languages I know, some are reputed richer, or more accurate than others. I found those sorts of remarks unhelpful in practice. Inuits have more than 40 words for snow, simpler mortals can make do by adding adjectives to the word “snow”.
Although indeed I do not speak Arabic I was raised in Muslim countries, but not in Wahhabist countries. I was where Islam was practiced in ways often more scandalous to standard Wahhabis than say the way the average French lives.
The Cathars (you can read about them here and there in my essays) believed that the Old Testament was the work of the anti-god, the devil. Their name meant “the pure” in Greek. Indeed, the old testament was, is, evil. Meaning that, interpreted literally, it allows evil acts. Old legends come from old, more barbarous times. When life was viewed as cheaper. Always. See my recent:
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June 2, 2015 at 8:30 pm |
Hi Patrice: I would like to add:
1. Islam is for anti-civilization and misogyny.
2. It has zero compassion.
3. One god is inferior to many gods. Greece and Rome and India had zero religious wars. These had many goddesses too.
4. Islam had zero science. Jews who don’t take their religion seriously have 2000 times more Nobel prizes compared to Islam, per capita.
5. Islam destroyed Buddhism in India by burning the Great library in Nalanda at the beginning of the golden age of Islam when they declared that there was no cause and effect in their “science”, a big crime against humanity.
6. Conquered people were abused and enslaved all over in Africa, Europe and India and Turkey, formerly Anatolia. They converted Churches and destroyed temples and built Mosques over them.
7. Islam never did any science. The numbers and place value system, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry are Indian inventions wrongly attributed by Muslims to themselves.
8. Islam has been a disaster on humanity so far and continues to be a major threat to civilization.
Partha
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June 2, 2015 at 11:29 pm |
Dear Partha:
a) You make a very interesting point: polytheism has no religious wars. Why? Probably because its essence is that gods have to tolerate each other. And once one has admitted of a god for this, a god for that, why not a god for the other thing, too? That’s why India has a million gods (and avatars?)
Christianism and Islamism have definitively killed millions each, just in internal religious strife. Not to say tens of millions. They are actually 2 variants of the same religion, or so the Franks thought, as soon as Islamism appeared.
b) Many “Islamist” intellectuals were actually not Arab-Islam. See: “Shocking Arabophilia”:
Many were peripheral, like the north Persia Al-Khwarizmi…
Many, if not most, were Jews, or Christians, or recently pseudo-converted…
Jews indeed, on the face of it, had/have much more smarts, as their version of Abrahamism BECAME much more argumentative (after trying to decapitate Saint Paul, maybe…) (That infuriates would-be Nazis… Let’s brace for their shrill cries…)
The construction of Mosques (Al Aqsa, etc.) on the top of the Great Temple in Jerusalem is, undeniably, a problem. My solution? Move them, half a mile… I am sure we can get the Christians to agree to that, with the Saint Sepulchral church, or whatever its name… We can keep on slapping them while they turn the other cheek, until they agree… So after we get the Xians to move, and start rebuilding the Temple (as Emperor Julian had started to do…), we can show those parrots of Xianism, the Islamists, to do the same…
Why rebuild? As Judaism is mother to Xianism and Islamism, that’s only logical…
It’s more than Islam which is the threat. The threat is the tolerance of the political correctness that fosters Islam (see today’s essay: All We Need Is Truth…)
PA
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