Indicting Islam, and other notes
Michael said:
War Is Peace
Freedom Is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
I happened to quote this the other day in a completely separate context, yet it springs to mind in recalling Orwell. Thirty-six years before the Ministry of Truth,
Frater Perdurabo (Aleister Crowley) published
The Book of Lies, Which is also Falsely Called BREAKS. The Wanderings or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo, which Thought is itself Untrue. Liber CCCXXXIII (Book 333):
ΚΕΦΑΛΗ Ε
THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS
That is not which is.
The only Word is Silence.
The only Meaning of that Word is not.
Thoughts are false.
Fatherhood is unity disguised as duality.
Peace implies war.
Power implies war.
Harmony implies war.
Victory implies war.
Glory implies war.
Foundation implies war.
Alas! for the Kingdom wherein all these are at war.
What such ideas as the Ministry of Truth fear most is the "Holy Illuminated Man Of God":
ΚΕΦΑΛΗ Μ
THE HIMOG
A red rose absorbs all colours but red; red is therefore the one colour that it is not.
This Law, Reason, Time, Space, all Limitation blinds us to Truth.
All that we know of Man, Nature, God, is just that which they are not; it is that which they throw off as repugnant.
The HIMOG is only visible in so far as He is imperfect.
Then are they all glorious who seem not to be glorious, as the HIMOG is All-glorious Within?
It may be so.
How then distinguish the inglorious and perfect HIMOG from the inglorious man of earth?
Distinguish not!
But thyself Ex-tinguish: HIMOG art thou, and HIMOG shalt thou be.
Sufism, a sect of Islam that claims heritage predating Abraham, has been described as "the inner component of religion". Adilbai Karkhovli explained, "The conception that 'Sufism is the inner component of religion,' too, should be acceptable enough if it is seen from enough examples that religion is often mainly an accretion of superficialities around an ancient core which may be reclaimed ...."
Islam, like all religions, is susceptible to subordinating its essence to the tangible accretions and superficialities. This subordination actually interferes with comprehension of a vital idea: "The much-repeated theory ... that 'virtues' are not keys to heaven but essential steps which clear the way to higher understanding, is perhaps the most attractive of all [religious] statements."
Many critics would blast Islam today for its failures in this context, but the question remains: "Whence come these failures?" My own theory is not so much an inherent and original corruption in the revelation, but, rather, that it is a product of human social, economic, and political decline. At the height of Islam, societies created wonders. Since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, at the very least, Muslims have lived somewhat removed from centers of power and empowerment.
In other debates concerning other subjects, it is sometimes asserted that a civilized, advanced people will behave as barbarians if that progress is erased and civility undermined. Americans who criticize Shari'a for its barbarity ought to remember that when we were less wealthy and less educated, we committed some grotesque atrocities against one another. Indeed, there is merit in pointing out that the last prosecution for witchcraft in the U.S., of Zsussana Budapest in 1975, was civilized compared to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. And, indeed, nine years of appeal eventually saw her conviction overturned, and laws against fortune-telling struck from California codes. But somewhere between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, we even hanged a cow for sorcery in the Kansas Territory, according to the late Lou Boyd. With the election of a black president spurring histrionic rumors of armed revolt in the United States, one wonders what it would take to return us to blood feuds, witch trials, or wives as the legal property of a husband. Indeed, it seems Biblical law did not require a woman's consent to marriage (
Cheyne and Black).
The grotesque persecution of the Ahmadi is especially pronounced in Pakistan, a nation formed amid the hideous, genocidal turmoil of that dark day known as The Partition. Sixty-three years later, some vital questions of Partition remain unanswered. The per capita income in Pakistan (
2009 PPP) is estimated between $2,538 and $2,661. Education is largely run by impoverished religious organizations scrabbling for political power. Internal security has long been sacrificed in favor of protecting the land against a fear of Indian invasion. Using a threshold of one dollar a day, nearly 24% of the Pakistani population is estimated to live below the poverty line; some thirty-five million of the nation's citizens are malnourished; the Global Hunger Index ranks Pakistan at 88 of 119 develping countries (
ActionAid).
In light of all this, I would suggest that indicting Islam itself for Paksitan's sins is inappropriate. Rather, Pakistanis are humans, and behaving exactly as we might expect people to conduct themselves amid a seemingly permanent state of poverty and insecurity. If the faith has come to resemble the Ministry of Truth, one must ask why. And if the answer is the simple assertion of fundamental corruption inherent to Islam, we have chosen what seems the easy way out. But it is not, in the end, the easy way, as numerous wars and rumors of wars might attest. Peace and prosperity? The one results in large part from the other. No people will abandon superstition without enjoying the fruits of enlightenment, and those superstitions will, generally, become more stringent in the absence of succor.
Psychologically speaking, the accretions of religion are bricks in the wall of the psyche; they are ego defense mechanisms, armor plating against the wounds and anguish of human frailty and raw wounds thereof. Understanding the motivations driving such horrors does not require endorsement. Rather, it is a prerequisite to breaking the cycle.
____________________
Notes:
Perdurabo, Fr. The Book of Lies. 1913. PuggryDuckling.com. June 19, 2010. http://www.puggryduckling.com/uncle_al/lies/index.html
Kharkovli, Adilbai. "Those Astonishing Sufis". Ed. Hafiz Jamal. From Sufi Thought and Action, assembled by Idries Shah. London: Octagon, 1990.
Cheyne, Thomas K. and John S. Black. "Marriage". Encyclopaedia Biblica. 1903. Wiksource.org. June 15, 2010. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_Biblica
Wikipedia. "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita". June 15, 2010. Wikipedia.org. June 19, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
ActionAid International. "Pakistan — Haunted by Hunger". (n.d.) ActionAid.org. June 19, 2010. http://www.actionaid.org/micrositeAssets/pakistan/assets/pakistan-haunted by hunger.doc
Please don't kill me Mr. CIA Man! Please!!!!
