timeimmortal

Shaukat Khawja is blogging, I think, about how he proud to be an Islamic radical. Oh, he doesn’t really mention himself, per sé, but he does attempt to deflect the typical stigma that is attached to the term “radical” when it is used in reference to the false religion of Muhammad.

One famous biblical “radical” was Jesus (as), who challenged and opposed the evil power of Rabbinical class, and condemned them for distorting the Laws of Moses. For that Jesus was projected as “radical” and a grave threat to Roman colonial empire. Another famous “radical” was Lord Buddha, who challenged the repressive hegemony of Brahmin upper-caste minority. Nelson Mandela was another “radical”, because he upset the status quo - and challenged the racist Afrikan regime. When Senator Cheney called him “radical”, the western world and Zionist entity rejoiced - including his supporters, though, for him being “honoured” as a freedom-fighter.

Same goes for Malcolm X and Rev. Martin Luther King. Both were dubbed “radicals” because they sought to subvert and overturn the racist political culture that had been institutionalized in the US for the benefit of a small minority of elites - most of whom take orders from Israel Lobbying groups (AIPAC, ADL, AJC, etc.).

The best and living example of progressive, emancipatory radicalism can be found in the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) - who, like Moses and Jesus - challenged the existing religious and political doctrine of his time. Islamic message too, can be called “radical” because it conclusively rejects all forms of caste, Racism, class oppression, usury, exploitation, abuse of the law and dehumanization of human beings.

Shaukat is something of a fan of the Iranian Ayatollahs, and so we can presume from his having said the above that Islam’s rejection of the dehumanization of human beings is, in part, predicated on the assumption that women are not human beings, since women in Iran do suffer no small degree of dehumanization, exploitation, and abuse. The same can be said for women in many Islamic nations, and perhaps we ought to be thankful that the blogger at RehmatPedia is being honest in what he has omitted from his article.

As to his sense of history, I observe that with typical flair, Shaukat has infused his lesson with no small measure of anti-Jewish sentiments, as is his custom. As to whether Jesus opposed the evil power of the Rabbinical class, I can’t say (having not been there personally) — most accounts of Jesus’ life suggest, however, that the Pharisees weren’t evil so much as they were hypocritical and wrong-thinking. Nobody could honestly deny the ardent faith of the rabbis — Jesus’ issue with them was that the way they lorded their faith over others was also the antithesis of the faith that they held.

Shaukat continues:

Muslims like non-Muslims, seek justice. However, justice will never be served to anyone on silver plate. People must srive, both intellectual and physical. It will involve challenging and exposing the activities of secularist and capitalist minority - who see Islam as threat to their political, economic and cultural domination.

Against this, I might remark as Hillaire Belloc once observed:

For centuries to come Islam was to remain a menace, even though Spain was reconquered by Christians. In the East it became more than a menace, and spread continually for seven hundred years until it had mastered the Balkans and the Hungarian plain and all but occupied Western Europe itself. Islam was the one heresy that nearly destroyed Christendom through its early material and intellectual superiority.

Now why was this? The answer lies in the very nature of the Mohammedan conquest. It did not, as has been so frequently repeated, destroy at once what it came across; it did not exterminate all those who would not accept Islam. It was just the other way. It was remarkable among all the powers that have ruled these lands throughout history for what has wrongly been called its “tolerance.” The Mohammedan temper was not tolerant. It was, on the contrary, fanatical and bloodthirsty. It felt no respect for, nor even curiosity about, those from whom it differed. It was absurdly vain of itself, regarding with contempt the high Christian culture about it. It still so regards it even today.

That does not sound so much like the pursuit of justice as it does the pursuit of gain; Islam has always expanded itself by means of war, and continues to do so now by other violent means.

As previously noted, the internal simplicity of the Muslim faith plays a role in that. For as the religion is simple, so too do its followers take a fairly simple view of those who do not share in the faith; the world reduces into the dar al-Islam and the dar al-Harb, the domain of Islam and the domain of war.

Chesterton observed much the same thing:

“There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. It affirms, with no little sublimity, something that is not merely the singleness but rather the solitude of God. There is the same extreme simplification in the solitary figure of the Prophet; and yet this isolation perpetually reacts into its own opposite. A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets. Of these the mightiest in modern times were the man whose name was Ahmed, and whose more famous title was the Mahdi; and his more ferocious successor Abdullahi, who was generally known as the Khalifa. These great fanatics, or great creators of fanaticism, succeeded in making a militarism almost as famous and formidable as that of the Turkish Empire on whose frontiers it hovered, and in spreading a reign of terror such as can seldom be organised except by civilisation…“

I would agree that people must strive to seek out justice, and I think that the core flaw of Islam, which Shaukat is perhaps not cognizant of, is that it seems to over-simplify that search for what is just. In Islam, Allah is justice, and the Koran is the articulation of his justice. If you have the Koran, and if you know the Koran, you understand justice, and have found it in the confession that there is no god except Allah.

Would that it were that simple! Because while God is surely just, we each are commissioned by Him (through the ministry and teachings of Christ) to effect His justice in the world. And I think that Islam misses this point entirely when it denies the Incarnation; it does not realize that humanity and God are now intrinsically linked, and that the justice which God promises is wrought not by God alone, but through His influence in the agentic actions of His faithful. Humanity does not merely respond to God, nor is humanity merely a slave of the Almighty, nor are we simply sitting by watching God do His work; we — merely human — are the agents of God’s work, the willing participants in His grace, the means by which He chooses to effect His justice in the world.

In the wake of Ascension Sunday, which marks the ascension of Christ — body and soul, human and divine — into Heaven, it is perhaps fitting to reflect that Islam is something like a Christian heresy in that it tries to teach this reality of divine justice while simultaneously denying the one thing that gives the teaching its true impetus: the Incarnation of Christ Jesus, God enfleshed as one of us.

~ by Kenneth on May 5, 2008.