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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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February 20, 2005
War Between the Abrahamic Religions by George J. Irbe
Peters' Beyond
Terror is a collection of his essays, written
between Scheuer had a long career as a CIA analyst, seventeen years of which he spent gathering and analyzing intelligence from the Muslim world of the Middle East and South Asia, and the terrorist activities of militant Islamists, in particular bin Laden. Imperial Hubris covers the period from the mid-1990s up to early 2004. Anyone can already guess from the book's title that the author is quite critical of how the Bush Administration and the Western world as a whole has been prosecuting the so-called 'war on terror.' General Comments I found much that I could agree with in both books. Yet, I also often found reading the two books intellectually irritating, because they fail to identify squarely the nature of the current conflict: namely, that it is a traditional new-old conflict between religious cousins: Islam -- the youngest claimant to Abraham's patrimony, against the two older ones -- Christianity and Judaism. In this centuries-old conflict, religious dogma has always played the surrogate for very practical objectives, bluntly put -- for territorial and political conquest and domination. Both Peters and Scheuer fail, each in his own way, to identify the secular, one could say the strategic, objectives of the Islamists of today, which are wrapped up in old and familiar religious garb. Peters tends to ignore the importance of the Islamists' use of the religious weapon to mobilize their followers. He also seems oblivious to the fact that bin Laden and his followers actually have strategic and genuinely secular objectives. Scheuer certainly recognizes the centrality of the religious factor in this conflict, but, because of his own religiosity, explains and excuses the Islamists' actions on purely religious grounds, failing to recognize that the Islamists are using their religion to mobilize the masses of the Muslim world in order to attain their quite secular geopolitical objectives. It could also be that Peters and Scheuer don't identify this conflict as a resumption of a war, waged, as of old, on a religious pretext for territorial and political ends, in order to avoid criticism from the public at large and the powers-that-be. After all, the entire Western world is unwilling to face the fact that it is engaged in a war with Islam, both in the religious and secular sense. To put it in another way: What we have here, then, is perhaps deliberate avoidance by both authors of the dreaded bugaboo of 'religious war' in order to stay on the safe side of popular 'political correctness.' Perhaps for the same reason, Peters and Scheuer also do not go to any depth into Islam as such -- its historical behavior and its mixed religio-ideological nature. Their analyses of the current conflict suffer as a result. I suppose that, in general, all Western intelligence agencies labor under the same kind of self-imposed taboo: Religion - Islam in particular - is out of bounds. As Peters poignantly says, on page 195: "During my bleak Washington years as an intelligence officer, no one dared to speak of the forces of love or hatred, or of any other emotion. Nor could they say anything profound about religion or culture. . . We tried to deal with the torrid world of flesh and blood as if it were made of fitted nuts and bolts. We understood nothing that mattered." Another general observation: Peters and Scheuer both disregard the significant role that the United Nations has necessarily played, and will continue to play - like it or not - in constricting and, at times, opposing outright the foreign policy moves and initiatives of the United States. Now, many people, myself included, think that the United Nations is a malformed and useless organization, which has done more harm than good for mankind. It was largely the brain-child of the utopian radical left lobby which dominated the Roosevelt administration during World War II. I consider the founding of the United Nations to be the greatest foreign policy blunder by the United States in the 20th century. Therefore, I can understand the antipathy that large numbers of Americans, perhaps also including Peters and Scheuer, may feel towards that international den of poseurs and thieves. However, such is the geopolitical order of the world today that, dislike that parasitical organization as much as we want, ignore it we cannot. Because most of my critique of what Peters and Scheuer have written will concern religion in general and Islam in particular, it is appropriate that I declare my own views on religion and my understanding of Islam at the outset. What I will have to say about religion, especially to Scheuer, may give the readers the impression that I am an atheist. They would be wrong to assume so. I know that there is God. I have stated my understanding of God in the essay http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/credo.html; and my views on organized religion in http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/Religion.html. I consider my rational understanding and acceptance of God to be mentally healthier than that of the religionists who need the crutch of a personal (and imagined) anthropomorphic God. As for Islam, I believe I have become sufficiently acquainted with its character and history for my particular purposes. Islam is not an overly sophisticated institution. It doesn't take that much reading or appreciation to understand it. If you are unsure where to start, take a look in the Koran, the be-all and end-all for Muslims. Today, there are numerous sites on the internet which provide translations of the Koran in English and other languages; most of them offer options to search on words and phrases. Most of them are maintained by Islamic organizations and most are quite 'in-your-face' about every word of the Koran having been dictated by God (Allah) in Arabic to His Prophet Mohammed; and that therefore the Koran is unalterable and unquestionable. The Islamist purists would insist further that it is therefore not translatable into other languages. Another source, not as readily available as the Koran, but of equal importance to understanding the inner composition of Islam, is The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, by Ahmad ibn Naqib-al-Misri (d. 1368). It is a compilation of the laws (there is no distinction between civil and religious law in Islam) that every Muslim is obliged to live by. When I undertook to become familiar with Islam, it was perhaps only my good fortune to encounter a few very useful books on the subject, most notable among them: 1. The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel P. Huntington, 2. The Seed of Abraham, by Raphael Patai, 3. Mohammed, by Maxime Rodinson, 4. Among the Believers, by V.S. Naipaul, and 5. Jihad, by Paul Fregosi. These five works, plus the Koran and the Manual of Islamic Sacred Law provide a basic, if by no means exhaustive, understanding of Islam, its dogma and its history. My understanding of the nature of Islam is given in http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/New%20Jihad.html. Comments Concerning Religion and Religiosity There should be little disagreement with the following two statements: First, that our Western civilization is grounded in Judeo-Christian traditions; Second, that, this being a conflict between Islam and the West, it is therefore also a conflict between Islam and the other two Abrahamic religions. I think that therefore it also follows that, the only good intelligence analysis being impartial intelligence analysis, such analyses should be delivered preferably only by individuals without a personal belief in, or sympathy towards, any of the three Abrahamic religions; ideally, an intelligence analyst should have no attachment to an organized religion of any kind. Opinions expressed about this conflict by a person with religious convictions are inescapably biased; such a person cannot provide an impartial analysis of the conflict. Ralph Peters, to my knowledge, has not indicated his religious affiliation, if any; nor do I detect a particular religious bias in his writings. But he undervalues the importance of religion, seeing it as a mere adjunct of culture in general, whereas in actual fact religion is still the indispensable nucleus of all cultures, except, perhaps, in the modern industrialized societies. Michael Scheuer's problem is that he appears to be quite religious himself. He esteems religion too much and betrays certain personal religious biases by what he says. He remarks in his book that his is a "Catholic tradition" (Pg.255). It is good that he does so, because that explains his strong religionist's bias which robs his opinions of some of the objectivity one would expect from an intelligence analyst. Comments Concerning Islam The facts about Islam are laid out in my essay; its internet address is given above. I encourage readers to learn about Islam for themselves by reading the books I have listed there. To put it very bluntly, Islam is a blueprint for world conquest camouflaged in religious accouterments which it borrowed from the two Abrahamic religions extant at the time of Mohammed. Here I want to deal with two characterizations of Islam, which are commonly inserted generously (and unthinkingly) in speech or text by Western academicians, media pundits, and politicians, because they are such safe 'politically correct' things to say. The first is a tiresome stock phrase about Islam that we see and hear repeated again and again by all sorts of people who talk at us in the broadcast media and write books and newspaper columns for us to read on the subject. It goes something like this: "Islam is one of the three great religions," or a variant of it: "Islam is one of the world's great religions." I wonder if the persons mouthing or writing these phrases are trying to glorify Islam, flatter Muslims, or gloss over Muslim hostility towards all non-Muslims. I must ask: What's so "great" about any religion, and particularly about Islam which does not even bear the biblical bona fides of the other two Abrahamic religions? Would it not suffice to simply say, "Islam, one of the Abrahamic religions"? The second dubious characterization of Islam is to say that it used to be so progressive and so beneficial for mankind. Much is made by many scholars and historians, notably by the prolific Prof. Bernard Lewis, of the supposedly enormous contribution by Muslims to science and cultural refinements during the pejoratively termed "Dark Ages" of European history. I suspect that in this case also, many people simply parrot what they have heard or read because it is such politically correct talk. As for Europe, dark the ages may have been insofar as the disintegration of the Roman Empire and the destruction of its civilizing norms by the invading barbarian peoples from Asia. Indeed, after the collapse of the old Roman Empire, its European dominions suffered through a long period of intellectual darkness, when endless savage violence was the norm and the pursuit and cultivation of knowledge was rendered almost impossible. However, history tells us that the calamity in Europe was really not that exceptional. War, pillage and destruction had been routine visitors already for millennia in the classical world of the Mediterranean basin, the Levant, and eastward into Persia. There, throughout thousands of years, centers of learning and cultural achievement have risen and fallen, have bloomed and withered. There is another point to be made. Rulers, however exalted, and civilizations, however splendid and grandiose, do not create knowledge. The advancement of science, mathematics, and knowledge in general, has always been by fits and starts. The contributors of new ideas and discoveries to mankind's common store of knowledge have always been exemplary individuals who often made such contributions in defiance of the religious beliefs and mores of the society in which they lived, rather than with that society's approval and assistance. Often they paid with their life for their obstinate pursuit of knowledge. I want to suggest that it was the insatiable thirst for knowledge by individual Europeans, which they inherited from the Greeks and Romans, that eventually lifted up Western civilization once again and to even greater heights than what had existed before the fall of Rome. That is a feat unequalled by any other civilization. I rather subscribe to Samuel P. Huntington's observation, to the effect that "Islam has always had bloody borders." Islam was designed for conquest, pure and simple, by its founder Mohammed. Islam was never a builder of civilization. In fact, the Arab irruption into the civilized world in the 7th century was just as savage and destructive, and perhaps more so, than the barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire some three centuries before that. The Arab tribes that set out to conquer in 622 had a primitive culture and were almost totally illiterate. Yet, Islam over-ran long-established centers of civilization which had been Christian for hundreds of years: Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Asia Minor. The most that can be said for Islam is that, when it conquered an established civilization, it assimilated and transmitted those parts of it which it found to be useful for its own purposes. The rest it destroyed. In certain respects Muslims exceeded the barbarians in savagery and bloody-mindedness. Muslims had a particular taste for beheading their captives who would not convert to Islam on the spot and, when the need arose, they would behead their own Muslim rivals as well. They greatly exceeded their adversaries, Christian or pagan, in such behavior. Their penchant for beheading is still evident today in Iraq. It was also normal practice by a Muslim ruler, or the one next in line to rule, to ruthlessly eliminate all of his own family members who were his potential rivals. In Spain, during the 700 years of warfare between Christians and Muslims, it is pointless to try to judge who were the more barbaric and who the more civilized. Both sides committed exemplary atrocities; however, there was always something particularly imaginative and exquisite about the atrocities perpetrated by the Muslims. Therefore, all things considered, I have a gut feeling that all the paeans to the great cultural and scientific heights achieved by the Muslims in Al Andalus - in Cordoba in particular -- are wishful exaggerations. I ask: When did the Caliphs of Cordoba find time to be gracious patrons of science and the arts when they were occupied almost full time with mayhem and slaughter? Much has been made of Cordoba's so-called "golden age" by numerous historians. That age was actually of rather short duration, consisting roughly of fifty years, from 926 to 976. It lasted just a bit longer than the long reign of Abd-al-Rahman III (912-961), the ruler who is credited with bringing it about. He was half European, as were many of the ruling caste of Andalus; his mother was a Navarrese princess. Rahman III is described as short, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and bow-legged; he dyed his red hair black to match that of most of his subjects. His grandfather, Abdullah ibn Mohammed ruled just before Rahman, from 888 to 912. Abdullah had his own son and Rahman's father, Mohammed, murdered, but then designated grandson Rahman III to be his successor. Rahman III assumed power in 912. After more than ten years of fighting, he managed to bringing most of Andalus under his power by the year 926. He started his campaign of pacification in a resolute and convincing manner. It is said that within days of taking power he had an enemy decapitated and the head nailed to the door of his palace as a warning of what awaits his other enemies. By 929 he felt secure enough to challenge the suzerainty of the Caliph of Baghdad, by elevating his own emirate to the status of a caliphate. By so doing, he was repudiating his nominally subservient position to the Caliph of Baghdad, claiming complete religious and political sovereignty for himself. I surmise that it must have been in this later period of independence from the shackles of Islamic dogma, from 929 onward, that Rahman III could indulge the European side of his lineage, which he inherited from his mother, by allowing freedom of thought and expression in the sciences and arts to flourish. Undoubtedly, in the vast Islamic empire, which stretched from Spain eastward all the way into India, there were, at times, periods of enlightened rule by particular rulers in particular cities and emirates, while at the same time, in other parts of the empire, conditions were horrendous. For example, during the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, the reigning caliph always had his executioner standing by the throne and could order a visitor who displeased him to be beheaded on the spot. The execution block stood on a leather mat so as to prevent messing the place up with blood. All said, then, it is silly on the part of historians to ascribe to Islam as a whole all those noble, but, alas, non-existent, virtues. |
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