This is the third part in an ongoing espousing on the rejection of Islam and why it outrages reason to ascribe to this brand of faith.
It is no simple matter.
Forged by steel and moulded by conquest, the once conquered lands of Islam are not easily bracketed off into obscurity. As much as apologists want, we know a great deal about them. The rosy-speckled history the apologists paint of dhimmis is not true: The conquered ahl al-kitab (Christians and Jews) were not bedfellows of Muslims; nor on friendly terms with their Muslim overlords. A casual glance through any history of Constantinople, Iran, Iraq, and so on will reveal cultures already in place; cultures that were thriving, accentuating their identities. Islam has made of itself a new garb of pride – that before its installation into the minds of its bloodthirsty warlords, the peoples were “godless pagans”. Any Imam will tell his flock these people were barbarous, “naked”, murderous, mad and unforgiving. I have heard this from pulpits and daises from many mosques. It is patently wrong and arrogant that without Islam people were (or are!) unforgiving tyrants of puritanical evil.
However, one of the many the many trenches between reason and ignorance, was (and is) dug from Islam’s condemnation of anything pre-Islamic. Muslims are taught to relish in how powerful the Islamic warriors were: unstoppable, unthinking, conquering machines. Indeed, we may be in awe at their power and might but by today’s standards we do not unflinchingly appraise such crass abandonment of human rights. No “Briton” that I know is proud of the many colonised lands that Britain managed to usurp; I hardly think colonial powers today are proud of their forefathers inclination to make the rest of the world fall under their dominance. We look, we relent and we learn. Why not so for Islam, then? It is nothing to be proud of and quite shocking to love such carnage from that time.
Most readers who are not Muslim will not understand the previous point. But it is a serious one: Islam really teaches its followers to be proud of its conquering mindset, its history of brutality, its dismissal of “pagans” and their idols, because they did not worship the “true god”. Yes, we can point the finger also at other theisms, but the level of pride that is thrust toward Muslims, like a crown of thorns, is one that would make anyone else flinch when grabbing – yet Muslims’ hands would bleed with eagerness to clutch such thorny accomplishments. The easy dismissal in the Quran of pagans is horrid to contemplate: these were humans, worthy of respect and rights. The crass dismissal to hellfire, under the solitarist “pagan” approach, is horrid to contemplate and quite sickening.
There is nothing Muslims can be proud of in their history of war. There is nothing any of us should be proud of in our cultures’ histories of war. That may be for another argument, but at no time can I see advocating bloodshed as good, as a source of pride.
My reasons for raising the history of Islam are twofold: It needs to be understood and it leads me to my second point.
The Quran (or at least the one we have now, chosen from amongst others and out of arrogance by Uthman) is said to be eternal, perfect, the “Word of God”, unalterable, unchanging and unchanged through the centuries. It apparently holds all the truths of the world inside it: Science, politics, ethics, prophecy. People truly believe this to be a “magic book”, to use the great Sam Harris’ phrase. Yet when you point out any of this to Muslims, they will reply with the horrid doctrine of “abrogation” or it was “part of the times”. Yet, if god’s word is eternal how can it be part of “those times”? And why did this god need abrogation (i.e. when a verse trumps what a previous verse says, as it is now no longer applicable), and not simply give the better command in the first place? Either he is stupid, or he is imperfect, or he is not omnipotent.
Nonetheless, Muslims can not escape the fact that their past is made of bloody conquests, in the name of their god. But it is now time to realise, this is not something a normal human being would lay their pride in.
The slaughter and massacring, the acquisition of slaves, the destruction of temples, idols and all forms of a culture’s identity were and are thrust into the darkness of oncoming faith. Those who are fans of Allah, no doubt feel some great passion and love and equate the two in the conquering of lands.
No doubt they praised god when they won and cursed their enemies when they lost. In contemplating this two-fold notion of love, projected onto a person or idea (or deity), WB Yeats wrote a series of poems giving the Blakean notion of the Rose. Many critics have called William Blake’s poem The Serpent & The Rose the most “perfect” poem, as it encapsulates all ideas and every story we will tell as a species. But in understanding this passion, this parallel of ensconced ideas, twirled together like a self-eating serpent, Yeats gave a cry which no doubt echoes many extremist Muslims:
… I, too, await,
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
- The Secret Rose
The relations of smithy and fires to terrorist bombings should be ignored to a certain degree: But truly, this could be the dying words of any martyr for Islam. Perhaps not so eloquently, but in its eloquence I hope it conveys the two-fold passion of love for something powerful.
Underlying the arrogant notion that the Divine loves you, cares about you and answers your prayers, there is the idea of reciprocity. The amount of passion shown and the desire for that beloved god’s hour to finally arise, underpins all atrocities committed in his name. This might be linked to the “death wish” or “death instinct” or thanatos identified by Freud – along with eros.
The bonus of arriving in paradise or Heaven to be greeted by many virgins (or, as recently translated, raisins!), seems to encapsulate the reciprocated love of any relationship. God just happens to be the most beloved of all things, above and beyond any “mere mortal” or, worse, “woman”. How are we meant to step between something which is regarded as “above and beyond” normal human reasoning; how are we to step in-between the Rose (that has become of Allah) and the twirled serpent of extremist Muslims, curled and licking the leaves of this bronze-aged myth?
I call that serpent “faith” and I call that rose “religious belief”. That serpent will suck on the old, dry leaves, it will taste the bitter crackle of stale ideas. It will feel the thorns of humanity that plague every man-made thing; that serpent can not ignore the sharp-points as it coils lovingly around this concept of god. That rose is long dead and we critics, we ex-Muslims, are calling it for what it is: Unnecessary, unhelpful, untrue. We want all these serpents to release the hold of that rose, to let it fall softly to the ground and gaze above the long grass of obscurity. “Above and beyond” should not be applied to human reasoning, but to human superstitions! Above and beyond all notions lies the plain mortality and humanity and sequestered fallibility that repudiates all concepts of perfection!
The sun still shines and the dew will come again. We hope that all humans might lower their hands and touch that dripping dew. We hope that you raise your eyes to the bearning sun and relish in the dimming of clouds. To look up, beyond the dying rose of old ideas. This must be humanity’s hour, come ‘round at last, slouching away from Bethlehem to be born.