The aim of the book is to show that Islam is different from any other religion so far and that, in its principles, it is different from the systems obtaining in the West. In the West there is divisiveness and there is always conflict. This divisiveness goes back to the pre-Axial ages when there was an ancient Chinese doctrine of yin and yang as two opposed elements of construction and destruction separately, to Manicheanism and finally to Judaism and Christianity where people are divided into Jews and non-Jews, into Chosen and Gentile, and into Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians. This also reminds of Professor Joad’s saying that civilization carries within it the germs of its own destruction, of Newton’s saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This Newtonian rule may imply that even this present civilization may destroy itself.
But what is significant is that this divisiveness in social and psychological matters has been prevailing in the West for five centuries at least. It has manifested itself in colonialism, in wars, in general poverty, in lust for money and lust for power and recently in globalization and unipolar hegemony. The only major movement that steered away from this course is Islam. Islam is unitive and calls for unity, rejects discrimination, especially racism and rejects hegemony on the strength of wealth or power. The Muslim and even the human society as a whole should live as one interrelated society in accordance with the five principles of Islam, namely Unitarianism, egalitarianism, symmetrical recognition, social justice, and universal justice, and should serve as a cardinal law among nations. The case now is different, and that is why Islam is different.
Islam is also different because when it prescribes those principles, it assumes the character of a social philosophy rather than a religion. Islam is a movement which has its roots in authenticity, truth and justice. It does not believe in myths, fables, astrology, magic or witchcraft. It believes in facts. It is not opposed to science and technology. It is fundamentalist and secularist at the same time. No wonder that it is different, but universal. The fact that the present civilization in the West is based upon divisiveness is really curious. With its brilliant achievement how could it have failed to remedy itself? This tendency to differentiate and discriminate under the influence of Judaism and Judeo-Christianity has persisted till today. It has created something like an established mentality or psychology similar to a complex or, in extreme cases, like a psychosis which is hard to shake off. It has a firm hold on the mind. A psychotic will have always to be under control, and what one thinks or does is always shaped by the psychosis, and is abnormal. In the West people behave like a psychotic in social and political matters, wrongly. They are like a player in a game who uses loaded dice. This aberration will go on and on indefinitely, and the present developments on the world scene are an unmistakable indication.
Now let us cast a glance at the world situation. There is no doubt that it is a consequence of the state of mind in the West. It is not moral and it is not just. It manifested itself in colonialism in which the colonial peoples were regarded as Gentiles or like Lilliputians who are only fit to be trampled underfoot. Those peoples were persecuted, despoiled, expelled or exterminated like the Red Indians or the Australian aborigines. This treatment was motivated by religion. Now money is being accumulated by those who are under a religious influence for safety. Lust for money created poverty in the world, and the ensuing lust for power created weapons of mass destruction which have cowed everybody by terrorizing them. All this is being done in a world claiming to be democratic.
I have been lately puzzled by what democracy or terrorism means, just like Gilbert Ryle, who was puzzled by what is right and what is wrong. One seems to be free to give the meaning one likes. This puzzlement points to the loss of standards, or to the fact that the world now is a wasteland. I suggested somewhere in this book that the world is in a dire need for re-education, beginning from childhood, by inculcating ideas that will sweep away the erroneous cultural ones instead so that the world might be set on the straight path.
In the end I should like to say something on the contents of the book. It deals with a number of remarks on other world religions. These remarks may be interpreted as criticism. They are not critical or derogatory remarks, but only statements to show the difference.
First of all, I must not forget to mention a sixth cardinal principle of Islam, namely the principle of taqwa which acts in fact as a check on the selfishness of man. The idea underlying the principle is that man by nature tends to glorify himself and disregard the others and the other point of view to the extent of becoming hubristic and defies the laws of God. The principle insists that if you want to do anything you must think of what you are going to do, make sure that it is just to the others in consequence. If it is unjust you must not do it, it is “haram” and not “halal”. Now, in the West, how many times have the Western powers abided by the principle in colonialism, in their lust for money and lust for power? What is taking place in Palestine or in Iraq? Is it halal or haram? Was Balfour Declaration Halal or Haram?
This selfishness of man, which is unjust, has led him to be arrogant to the extent of holding his word in higher esteem than the word of God. The Talmud is regarded in Judaism holier than the Old Testament, and both are man-made. The Nicean Creed was decided in the Ecumenical Council of Nicea in the year 325 A.D.. Tradition, which is the word of man, is regarded as valid instead of the word of God, and this is not so in Islam. What is taken in the world now as a guide is subjectivism, relativism and the word of a mighty nation. In Islam might by itself is not right.
Now to go back to the ancient idea of yin and yang and think of the course the world is following and see whether it is following the course of destruction or construction, we should consider the underlying philosophy or the theology that has been followed and has brought about this destructiveness on a global scale. In the past down to the present the most effective fact in shaping the human society is religion. The survey of the human history in the West will at least show that this past of the world has been like a cauldron of strife and conflict, always in turmoil and moving in the direction of divisiveness, rivalry and conflict, under the influence of lust for power and, above all for money, for who is the best or the Chosen. Now this turmoil has resulted in destruction, destruction of the family, destruction of morality and justice, destruction of the atmosphere and of the environment and pollution, in the creation of poverty and diseases and in bringing millions of people to the verge of disaster and extinction and especially to globalization and hegemony. Lust for power is another evil. Everybody seems to be watching the drift to nowhere, aghast, fearing to intervene because they will be rapped on their knuckles, and the situation is let rip. Millions are dying of starvation, pollution, disease or wars, and the whole thing is going from bad to worse. Intellectually the world is moving fast away from positivism, rationality and humanitarianism towards subjectivism, relativism and solipsism, and there is no gleam of hope for a return to sanity.
The disastrous stage in the human situation has been, I think, activated always by a sinister motive that has been operating unconsciously like a psychological complex. The complex in the West has been built up by religion and by religious teaching. The specialists have to verify or reject this supposition, and I do not pretend to be one of them.
The only thing I can do is to show that Islam is constructive and not destructive, and I call upon the specialist to study the major principles in Islam mentioned in this book to see for themselves that Islam is really constructive. But if religion is found to be destructive it must be abandoned.
One of the aftereffects of divisiveness is the splitting taking place in the political parties everywhere. This splitting is creating a plurality of parties in parliaments and in general elections. It is very rarely that one party gains the absolute majority. There is uncertainty about political creeds. This uncertainty is also shown in the confusion about the exact meaning of the political ideas of parties. For example, there is no accepted meaning of democracy or terrorism or self-defence. This reminds me of Gilbert Ryle who referred to the difficulty of finding the difference in the meaning of what is right or what is wrong. It seems that this uncertainty or confusion predicates the chaos prevailing in the human thinking these days, which leads to the commission of acts of injustice and brutality as is now happening in many parts of the world, as, for example, what was happening in the colonial period. Now in Palestine the assassination of the Palestinians by the Israeli soldiers is regarded as something right. Is this not solipsism? Every judgement now is solipsistic. Solipsism or subjectivism may lead on a large scale to arbitrariness, tyranny or hubris, and a hubristic superpower may assume for itself the role of the Vicar of God. The antidote is the principle of taqwa.
This mindset may induce a group of fanatics, or a group of secularists or a group of adventurers in control of a state or a world power to claim for itself the divine right to be superior and to behave like a swashbuckler, playing havoc with the world order, arbitrarily, moved along by a solipsistic or religious idea of being supreme as if it is the vicar or regent of God on earth.
Now, the trend in the world seems to be heading towards this vicarage or regency, unjust as it is. Thinkers and intellectuals who have the welfare of humanity at heart must now be thinking of a way out. They must of course, in their endeavour, free themselves of any prepossession, especially religious, to be able to come out with a solution untainted with any partiality. Normally, one may turn to religion for guidance or to anti-religion, but in both cases one will be like a player of a game with loaded dice. The solution, therefore, must be philosophical and quite immune from any prejudice. I am afraid that this kind of solution cannot be expected to come out of the West, impregnated as it is with religion or secularism. It must come from somewhere else. Christianity is basically pacifist and eschatological and not worldly. Judaism is an antithesis. It is too worldly, aggressive and prejudicial. Islam is different from both, and did not have a role in the building of Western culture which is basically religious, either Christian, Jewish or Jewish-Christian, with the Bible as the source of inspiration.
Therefore, the solution must be, I think, philosophical springing not from the West, but from outside it, to be universal and not parochial or provincial but impartial. The Crusades and Zionism were conceited in the West.
To avoid the prejudicial influence which is characteristic of the West, one must look somewhere else or cut off the roots of this prejudice. The latter option may suggest that religious education, based as it is on the Bible, and especially on the Old Testament, should be abolished. The West seems to be in need of re-education to rid itself of religious prejudice.
The second option in the search for a solution is to look for it somewhere else outside the West. The source outside the West is the Eastern philosophies and religions such as Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Eastern Christianity and Islam. But the thing about those philosophies and religions, with the exception of Islam, is that they did not have the same effect on the course of human history as Judaism and Western Christianity. Therefore Eastern Christianity and Islam are the only two sources that look to be the field for the search or a solution. I think that Islam, as a universal religion should be the only source for the solution. The solution suggested here is the six principles of Islam mentioned in this book.
Finally, I must say that I had a hope that the initial mutual recognition between Eastern Christianity and Islam could have been confirmed later. But that hope was not fulfilled, in spite of the Islamic tolerance and the revised Eastern Christian creed. Later, Muslims could not accept that “Christ is the creator of the world” or that the henotheistic Judaism could be monotheistic.
I have another thing, all important, to discuss. This is the question of – What is Islam really? There are many attempts to answer the question. But they were all, in my view, not definitive, and I thought of making another attempt.
Islam has a distinct philosophy, apart from theology. It is deism more than theism, and it is a philosophy more than a religion. Its aim when it appeared was to correct belief in God and the human to regular situation. When it appeared, it laid down new rules for overall reformation, both in religion and in worldly affairs. It was more Axial and more in the logos world, far apart from myth, fable, fictional stories, magic and witchcraft. It cared very much for a better reorganization of creed and social life. It called for unity within diversity and for interrelatedness to enforce this unity. God is only one, the universe is one, the human society is one, in egalitarianism. It is unitive and not divisive as it is the case in other previous religions. There is no Chosenness in Islam. The human society is an interrelated structure like the human body. It is a compact structure with a unified aim and based upon cooperation and sympathy with reciprocal duties and obligations. It has positives and negatives, with the insistence that the negatives should be destroyed and not be practised as in the West, for instance :
- If you believe in something you should not believe in something contrary to it.
- If you believe in mercy, you should not be cruel.
- If you believe in egalitarianism, you should not be racist.
- If you believe in the unity of God, you should not be a trinitarian.
- If you believe in symmetrical recognition as in Islam, you should not be aggressive.
- What is right is not wrong, and what is wrong cannot be right.
These conditions are positives and negatives. In Islam, the positives are to be adopted, and the negatives are to be rejected. In the West, the positives and the negatives are accepted and practised at the same time, as in ambivalence schizophrenia, prejudice, hypocrisy, doublespeak, double-talk, double-standard and double-think. In the West they believe in charity, but they create poverty. They believe in the rights of man, but they practise discrimination, and believe in the need for deadly weapons to kill man.
Islam, in one word, is the religion of the straight path (Al Sirat al-Mostaqim). It is the religion of the middle course, against extremism, with Taqwa as a check. Straight path is the symbol of Islam, to be its spirit and its core. The West is marked by lust for money and lust for power. The Western countries are segregated from the rest of the world by these two lusts. Their influence is irresistible, and they have led to the present tragic situation. Islam is against lust for money by the prohibition of usury and the law of inheritance. Power or might is condemned. In the West, it is possible to think that a man can be a god and that a god can be a man. It is also possible for a nation, a state or a race to think that it is a favourite of God and be the vicar or the regent of God upon earth. Such ideas are anathema to Islam. In the West it is possible to believe a lie more readily than a hard fact. Fact might be turned into a fiction, and a fiction may be turned into a fact. What has happened in the Middle East and is happening now is the proof. Hearsay evidence is as reliable as an evidence based on veritable or historical grounds. How can this be possible? Is it due to a mental abnormality or to a fanatic turn of mind? In the Western foreign policies a falsehood can be a fact, and a fact can be a lie, lies may be regarded as truths and can be a cause for war. Under these circumstances, it looks that the West is not fit to be the leader of the world. Another leader in the form of a set of principles should be devised to be the guide for the world, especially in the international field. If the feeling in the world supports the idea, competent people should work out the strategy. This strategy was proposed recently by the Pope. But will the West conform, and will the leading Western powers be ready to surrender the destructive side of their policy based upon globalization and hegemony? My suggestion in this context was, I think, more revolutionary. It was first the abolition of the religious education in all the West.
But to wind up, I must say that Islam is unique in being universal and not parochial or provincial in being revolutionary and reformatory in both religion and society and in being based on authenticity, truth and justice impartially in the whole universe. One may add more of those positives and negatives, and the trend in the West and in the greater part of the world seems to think that they are irrelevant and the consideration which is relevant is to join the race for technology, space science, weapons of mass destruction, globalisation, and cloning, and the devil take the hindmost, with no regard for the human species. I, personally, admire the achievements of the Western civilization, but I am fearful that this civilization seems to be going forward in a race without a pause to think of the other side and to realize the damage done to the atmosphere, the threat to the world temperature, the threat of wars, the absence of morality and justice, the threat of pollution, the extermination of animals and trees, and the making of awful diseases on top of poverty and starvation. The human species seems to be threatened with extinction. Nobody seems to mind those threats, and the main thing is to rush in the race. This is the dark side of the present civilization, which forces one to wonder about the value of this civilization, where the bright side is being eclipsed by the dark side. But what is sad and tragic is that the rush is motivated by a religious thought to the effect that man must always seek ways and means to protect himself, especially by lust for money and lust for power. This religious motivation of fear must be treated to moderate its effects and they do not have the same religious impulse of fear. The fault of Islam and Muslims is that they are not money-makers and therefore they must be removed out of the way or the bulldozer will crush them, as it has crushed utopia, communes, colonies, socialism and communism. Philosophers and intellectuals are in decline. Money-making has no place in Islam and it is a hotbed for every evil, ranging from corruption to immorality and injustice, and finally to globalization and hegemony. The world as a whole should toe the line and every dissidence has to be crushed, no matter how worthy it is. The human mind has been warped and therefore curricula in schools, colleges and universities have to conform, and philosophical studies have to go. Even philosophers, especially Jewish ones have been destructive. The world now is wanted to be monopolar, revolving round a single pivot, namely money-making. Everyone is being forced to lump it, or he will get it hot. This is the position in which Islam and the Muslims are, in conflict between two religions: one is dedicated to money-making, and the other, Islam, is dedicated to be against it and to lag behind. This dedication in the West is now deeply rooted, and it is almost ineradicable.
There is still one more point I would like to discuss briefly in connection with the sixth principle of Islam, Taqwa. The word originally means: to avoid, to defer to, to fear, etc. This meaning leads us to think of a supreme example, perhaps divine, to which we must defer before we make a judgement. In Islam, this supreme example is that of the supreme judge in heaven. The idea in the lateral thinking is that one should take many relevant things into consideration before one can make a judgement. One must be careful not to be egocentric and selfish. One must not think that one has a divine right to behave as if one is in the place of God or the vicar of God and that one is one of the Chosen or the favourites of God without any regard for the others, for the weak and for the poor and for anybody else. Taqwa, therefore, serves as a curb to check any rash action which does not take into account the evil consequent upon that rash action, which could be for example an unwarranted invasion of a country in the colonial period, the despoilation of the land of the colonial people and of the raw materials of the colony. This is what is normally expected to happen. But what actually happened was quite different. Taqwa was ineffectual because it was met with a fierce resistance based upon religious conviction that what the colonial power did was just and justified by the word of God. The colonial people are Gentiles, and as such they deserved, like the Lilliputians, to be trampled underfoot and to be exterminated.
Taqwa acts as a deterrent springing from piety or pious fear of God. This fear is not like animal fear which arises only when a fearful thing is in sight. Nuclear deterrent is material because it acts like animal fear. But Taqwa arises from a conviction that it is a fear that one is deterred by some force in the heart that the intention to do an evil thing is contrary to a judgement which is superior to human judgement, and therefore, the intention is bad and is not only unlawful or illegal. A deterrent may act as a piece of advice or a commandment, but in Islam, advice is preliminary to Taqwa, and commandment should be based on what is known in Arabic as tawsiya which is preliminary to commandment. The gradation then is like this: advice, towsiya, commandment, taqwa. There are, I think, grades in between, but what is all important is the final grade which is not easily attainable, but it is the real deterrent. This conception exists only in Islam as long as there is a heartfelt belief in Islam. The value of deterrence is in the effect, and the pious fear of God is most effective, and this is real taqwa.
Muslims in the world have diverged from the straight path (al-sirat al-mustaqim) of Islam. They are condemned prospectively in the Qur’an by identifying them as those who stray from the right path. There is a wide difference between Islam and the West. Islam is unitive and the West is divisive. The West is centrifugal and Islam is centripetal. In Islam diversity ends in unity, but in the West unity develops into diversity. In Islam the human species is one, and racism is not tolerated, and the West is divided into races, peoples, whites and coloured, into Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians, and into Chosen and Gentiles. Each section is hostile to the other and this hostility has brought about wars, savageries, poverty, and has brought the idea of the super-race or people and the idea of hegemony by the world of God. In Islam, the Qur’an, the holy book, is not addressed to the Arabs or Muslims exclusively, but to all mankind, and the address is always in the plural and not to individuals. In the West, a human being is divided into mind and body, and the mind is divided into conscious and subconscious. A human society in Islam is interrelated like the human body with reciprocal obligations. There should be no discrimination, not against minorities, be they ethnic or religious. In the West, deference is accorded to man. In Islam it is to God. In the West, it is easier to believe a myth than to believe a hard fact, and it is usual to believe them both simultaneously.
In the West, it is easy to turn a fact into a fiction and to turn a fiction into a fact. For instance, the Palestinians who are the rightful owners of the land which is being stolen from them are now being called intruders, usurpers or squatters, and when they rise against this gross injustice they are called terrorists. Normally, this is unbelievable, but unfortunately, it is believed in the West. The West is solipsistic, and man is the measure, and that is why it is drifting and bound nowhere. The criterion there is quest for money and quest for power, with most destructive weapons.
This is how the world situation is, and it is more destructive than constructive and the world is in dire need for a different code of law, as the Pope declared recently. This is why I suggested a world re-education on the basis of the principle of Islam.
One last point in this context is worth considering. This is the contention by the exponents of the parallel and of the lateral thinking that the western traditional thinking is a failure for restricting its field in a cage of two opposites such as good v. evil, right v. wrong, constructive v. destructive, etc. without leaving room for other possible or new ideas. The two opposites here are two extremes which Islam tried to avoid by the middle course although the Qur’an is full of dichotomies. The traditional way of thinking is said to have been originated by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and has been in operation till now. Those exponents of the parallel thinking pose a question as to the division of mankind into Chosen and Gentile. Is it older than the Western traditional way of thinking or is it later than Socrates? Judaism is worldly, Christianity is eschatological, but Islam is both.
Hasan S. Karmi
http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/public ... est/P6.php
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