ISLAM: THE TOTALITARIAN PAROXISM

Seeing Islam as just another religion, like the others, with the same noble purposes is an immense mistake that could plunge Western civilization into an endless abyss.

By HEITOR DE PAOLA 07/24/2003

The paths to disaster are infinite and tortuous, but to limit this essay I will address one last topic, another important path in the march of current foolishness: seeing Islam as just another religion, like the others, with the same noble purposes. It is an immense mistake that could plunge Western civilization into an endless abyss.

One of the most dangerous tendencies of multiculturalism is that which prohibits us from criticizing or judging other societies, religions, beliefs, customs, etc. The most interesting thing is that this relativism is, in itself, relative! As yet another expression of doublethinking, it is only applied in one sense: only Westerners are obligated to this obsequious “respect” for other peoples; they are free from these reverential ties and all criticisms they make of the West are, in principle, valid! We cannot judge or criticize but we must abjectly submit to any criticism or judgment coming from Eastern or African or indigenous “wisdom”. All religious, philosophical or scientific reflections of the immense ancient Judeo-Greco-Roman-Christian tradition vanish into nothingness, in the face of any sentence pontificated by a man sitting on a camel or by a Hindu fakir. This one is seeing as true wisdom. The Western attraction to turbans is impressive!

The intention is to leave us defenseless and vulnerable! Making us believe that we do not have intellectual arguments to compete with such great “wisdom”, that we are barbarians who only know how to produce weapons to conquer and colonize, and assert our false superiority. I think it is not only a right but also a duty to criticize and judge other people, not because we are superior or because we descend from a certain ethnic lineage, on the contrary, because the principles we formulated millennia ago are more suitable for human beings to live in a more tolerant, multiracial and multi-religious society.

ISLAMIC TOTALITARISM

Islam is the most complete and paroxysmal expression of totalitarianism that Humanity has ever seen. To begin with, Islam means submission, and Muslim “he who submits” to Allah, whose will was expressed in the Qur'an and the Hadhith - the Prophet's interpretation in some passages, testimonies about his actions and his life which as a messenger of Allah never made mistakes, all his acts are followed to the letter as they are also considered the will of Allah. Each Hadith contains an exemplary teaching. The Qur’an is made up of 114 suras or chapters, divided into 6,236 verses. It is considered the word of Allah directly in Arabic and, strictly speaking, it cannot be translated for religious uses in any other language, with any translation being considered, by the most orthodox, a blasphemy and a degradation of the direct and untranslatable word of Allah. Lately, translations into Turkish and Farsi – the language spoken in Iran – have been reluctantly accepted.

The theme exhaustively repeated and elaborated in the text is complete submission to the will of Allah, who is one and only God (Tawhid[i]). It turns out that it encompasses not only religious commandments but is a complete legislation – constitutional, criminal, civil and military – leaving no place for secular administration of any aspect of the lives of all believers until Judgment Day.

The Qur’an is the truth and the only truth, dissent or divergence is not permitted, all of which are considered blasphemies against the will and word of Allah, as transmitted to the Prophet[ii]. A practical example is what happened in one of the debates I participated with a Muslim. I mentioned in an article that there are historical records that Muhammad robbed caravans. The Muslim debater's argument was that this was impossible since he was the Prophet, the Messenger of Allah, and Allah would never have chosen him and if this were true as he chose him, it is false! What, for a Westerner, is a circular argument that proves nothing, is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim because submission obeys the principle of voluntary and rational acceptance. It is really difficult for a Westerner to penetrate the darkness of Islamic thought.

Neither Stalin, nor Hitler, nor Mao or any other dictator or absolutist king, ever achieved totalitarianism as complete and total as Islam. There are approximately two billion people, in more than forty countries (25% of all religions), subjected to words spoken 1400 years ago, without dissent regarding the essentials, without uprisings, without individual demands. Totalitarian paradise. What's more, with the exception of the Ayathollas in Iran, there is no clergy and each believer can be considered to be part of the clergy. Sheik just means “elder”. Control is exercised by the web of social relationships that are woven into everyone's lives, spying, criticizing, demanding faith in the truth of Allah's word and the correct practice of the teachings. Nothing, nothing at all, escapes the commandments – all life is regulated in the smallest aspects. What is not in the Qur’an is in the 40,000 Hadith. The Qur’an differs from Christian and Jewish sacred texts because the latter admit that they can be subjected to textual analysis and critical evaluation while the Qur’an is the final and literal will of the word of Allah preserved just like that in Heaven, for all Eternity.

ISLAM IN POWER

Such a rigid and absolute structure constitutes what Hanna Arendt called totalitarianism: its basis is not just the imposition of an idea but the suppression of all divergent ideas. While authoritarian regimes persecute those who dare to think differently, totalitarian regimes prevent all different thinking. This is the heart of Shari’a, Islamic Law[iii]. The Prophet himself began this when he removed from the original text the “Satanic Verses” as having been communicated by Satan and not by the archangel Gabriel.

There is a certain tolerance regarding the exclusively private sphere, as long as it is not externalized or leads to attempts to convince others of something contrary to the word of Allah. In more traditionalist Islamic countries, such as Iran – Shi'ite[iv] – and Saudi Arabia – where the Wahhabi[v] sect rules – all citizens are subjected to strict surveillance by the Mutawwa'in, the religious police that are part of the “Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue” and to Mubahith, “Inner Security Force”. All cases of rape are judged summarily, generally without the presence of the defendant or his representatives, and the punishments follow Quranic Law, the Shari'a: beheading, stoning, amputations of limbs.

MODERNIZATION AND LAICIZATION OF ISLAM?

Much has been discussed about the possibilities of a secularization process in Islamic countries with the separation between State and Religion along Western lines. Studying the structures of Islamic society, of which a pale picture has been painted above, seems impossible. The Islamic ideal is the return to the Islamic Empire in which Koranic laws prevailed, the Ummah, the perfect Islamic State that existed, for some, from the first Caliphs until 1924 with the total collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The concept of religious freedom - and any other freedom - is completely different from the Western one, as it depends on absolute submission to the community. Even the construction of a temple that is not a Mosque must be submitted to the community, if it “offends” some, nothing can be done. Freedom only exists on paper, not in fact. This impossibility can be well measured by the answer given by Sheikh Ali Abdune regarding the possibility of modernizing Islam: he replied that no, “what is needed is to Islamize modernity, because Islam is modern by nature, at any time”.

One can already imagine what the world will be like if conquered by Islam. You cannot blaspheme, as Salman Rushdie says, as blasphemy has a much broader concept than for other religions.

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[i] Tawhid (Arabic: توحيد‎ tawḥīd, meaning "oneness [of God]" also romanized as tawheed, touheed, or tevhid) is the indivisible oneness concept of monotheism in Islam. Tawhid is the religion's central and single-most important concept, upon which a Muslim's entire faith rests. It unequivocally holds that God is One (Al-ʾAḥad) and Single (Al-Wāḥid); therefore, the Islamic belief in God is considered Unitarian."Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of faith.

[ii] When the Prophet or His name is quoted follows SAWS: sallallahu alayhi wa salaam" (may God's prayers and peace be with him).

[iii] Sharia (, Arabic: شريعة‎ [ʃaˈriːʕah]), Islamic law, or redundantly Sharia law, the path is a religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Qur’an and the hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its human scholarly interpretations.

[iv] Shia (شيعة‎ Shīʿah, from Shīʿatu ʿAlī, "adherent of Ali"), also transliterated Shiah and Shiʿah, is a branch of Islam which holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor and the Imam (leader) after him, most notably at the event of Ghadir Khumm, but was prevented from the caliphate as a result of the incident at Saqifah. This view primarily contrasts with that of Sunni Islam, whose adherents believe that Muhammad did not appoint a successor and consider Abu Bakr, who they claim was appointed Caliph through a Shura, i.e. community consensus in Saqifa, to be the first rightful Caliph after the Prophet. Adherents of Shia Islam are called Shias of Ali, Shias or the Shi'a as a collective or Shi'i or Shi'ite individually.

[v] Followers of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab, the Sunni founder of the Wahhabi movement, although this label is not claimed by his followers but rather employed by Western scholars as well as his critics. He promoted strict adherence to traditional Islamic law, proclaiming the necessity of returning directly to the Qur’an and hadith literature  rather than relying on medieval interpretations, and insisted that every Muslim – male and female – personally read and study the Quran.