Islam and the Sword.
There was a prescient piece in the Sunday Times this week by Tom Holland, historian and author of, amongst other books, ‘In the Shadow of the Sword’, which charts the origins of Islam.
In the article he discussed the present predilection for beheadings by ‘Islamic militants’ and discussed the history of this particular brand of atrocity in the Middle East. He was not to know that a decent man, American journalist James Foley, would meet a similar utterly cruel and barbaric fate this week, at the hands of a young British man allegedly called ‘John’, his last moments spread all over social media. It might have been better if ‘John’ had actually used a sword, but he used a nasty looking knife instead, I believe.
I understand that the ‘lslamic State’ and other radical groups of similar ilk enforce their will and rid lands of unbelievers in other vicious manners too, including crucifixion and cutting off their hands and feet.
Before I express my views on the murder itself which I hope to do at a later date, I would like to explore the motivation or psychology for this kind of act.
The first step is to understand the basic proposition of Islamic theology, and some would say that it is the reason why it is impossible to be “moderate” Muslim.
The basic tenet is that the Quran/Koran is the exact word of God, related to the Prophet Mohammad by the Angel Gabriel in messages received and memorised by the Prophet over time. As the exact word of God it is perfect and must be obeyed completely unless a command in it was cancelled or over-ridden by a subsequent instruction or observation. This is the so called doctrine of abrogation. It also trumps any earlier Holy Books texts or instructions, such as the Gospels.
Although the information was originally orally recorded when the book was collated in around AD 650 (the date is in dispute and some have suggested it was much, much later) the Word became flesh, so to speak. Hence the very book which contains the Word is holy, containing as is believed, the direct revelations and words of God.
The book is collated in a strange way. It does not have a narrative story, but is rather a collection of what might be called stream of consciousness observations and instructions. The chapters are not arranged in date order but by length, with the longest first and the shortest at the end. My understanding is that the earliest passages date from when the Prophet first began to preach his faith when he was in his home town of Mecca and he and his first followers were being persecuted by the ruling authorities, but the injunctions become more martial when he established a base in Medina and became a successful military leader.
Some of it is clear and some of it is obscure. In addition to all of this, there are disputes about translation. It is thus a very good recipe for confusion.
Perhaps the most controversial or notorious verse is number 5 from “Sura At-Tawba” and is known as the Ayat al-sayf, Ayah of the Sword or The Sword Verse. Here are a couple of translations:
“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
Or
“And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”
Explaining the context of this verse, some Quranic scholars say that the permission to fight and kill is being given regarding specific tribes already at war with the Muslims who have breached their peace agreements and have attacked the Muslims first, or polytheists – not, therefore Christians or Jews. But as mentioned above, and as these translations indicate, there are issues about translation. Clearly the Prophet preached against the worship of multiple deities, as was common at the time. But I have seen other translations of this passage which suggest that it does include Christians and Jews. Some passages are positively complimentary of the co–monotheistic Christians and Jews. In others, they are permitted to carry on their worship if they pay tax.
That explains why Islamic State were willing to spare Christians in exchange for submission and tax – but the Yazidis, who had not been granted any such partial exemption, faced annihilation.
Here is another passage:
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter”
This is why these practices are followed by the so-called fundamentalists today. Again, there are arguments about context, but it seems pretty clear to me.
But the Quran/Koran is not the only source of authority. The Prophet is regarded as the perfect person, the possessor of all virtues. So the reasoning is that, if he did something, it is self evidently the right thing to do.
There are sources about the life of the Prophet which give information about his life. One is The Life of Mohammad by Mohammed bin Ishaq later, edited by Abdul Malik bin Hisham (spellings of the names vary) concerning the conquest of the mass killing of the men of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe of Medina. The tribe was accused of having engaged in treasonous agreements with the enemies besieging Medina in the Battle of the Trench in 627. As translated by Professor Alfred Guilluame in 1955 it reads:
“Then the …tribe surrendered and the Apostle confined them in Medina…then the Apostle went out to the market of Medina and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck of their heads in those trenches as they were brought to him in batches. There were six hundred or seven hundred in all, though some put the figure as high as eight hundred or nine hundred…”
I believe other sources say that any boy who had begun to develop pubic hair was killed, and the wives and daughter taken into slavery. There are stories of what we might call warlord behaviour. One story is that the last fort of the Jewish settlement called Khaybar was taken by the Prophet and his men; the chief of the Jews, called Kinana ibn al-Rabi, was asked by the Prophet to reveal the location of some hidden treasure. When he refused, the Prophet ordered a man to torture Kinana, and the man “kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead.” Kinana was then beheaded, and the Prophet took his young wife Safiyya as a concubine.” However, many Muslims dispute this as a slur.
A few final points. It is clear that Islam embraces the concept of Jihad. This may involve inner struggle in search of purity (“greater Jihad”) but it equally clearly does unequivocally involve armed struggle (“lesser Jihad”). Some passages of the Quran/Koran suggest that this is measured, proportionate self defence. Others do not. But it is clear that the Quran/Koran promises immediate and automatic salvation with all sorts of sexual pleasures to those who die engaged in Jihad. If one truly believes that, death is a positive “win”. A suicide bomber in this psychological construct does not commit suicide, which I believe is forbidden. They die in combat and thus go straight to Paradise.
Nothing in the Koran specifically states that the faithful are allotted 72 virgins apiece. For this elaboration we turn to the hadith, traditional sayings traced with varying degrees of credibility to Muhammad. Hadith number 2,562 in the collection known as the Sunan al-Tirmidhi says, “The least [reward] for the people of Heaven is 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome of pearls, aquamarine and ruby.”
I have to add this does appear to be a Gentleman’s Club of a disturbing or entertaining nature depending on your point of view – but what happens to female Jihadis is a little unclear to me.
The combination of this sense of perfect certainty of absolute spiritual authority, the literal interpretation of verses in the Quran/Koran and the known or assumed facts about the Prophet’s campaigns thus form the basis for a highly primitive, easy to absorb, belief system which plays nicely into a “them or us” mind set and which can easily brain wash the recipient into becoming a fanatic with a zeal for murder and self destruction.
It is a belief system which is trapped in time, transporting the mind set of a pre-Medieval psychopath into the 21st Century. It is the Ebola of religions.
In another piece I shall try to explain what is manifestly true. That the acts of these groups are evil, and by whatever means they must be annihilated.
Gildas the Monk
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August 22, 2014 at 7:51 am -
B-b-but Gildas…Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance, why there are only 560 Muslims in the entire British Army: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/
so unwilling are they to take up arms and kill people…er, perhaps we should mention the ubiquitous ‘Muslim community leader’ who says there are between 600 to 1500 ‘British Muslims’ that have travelled to Syria and the Middle East for ‘humanitarian reasons’…..and ‘Jihad’.-
August 22, 2014 at 11:42 am -
A counter-extremism think tank and others of apparently Muslim origin seem to consider community groups part of the problem.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2014/08/20/wrn-western-extremism-maajid-nawaz-intv.cnn&video_referrer=#/video/world/2014/08/20/wrn-western-extremism-maajid-nawaz-intv.cnn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hyhgl-sU_g -
August 22, 2014 at 1:05 pm -
Strip them of British citizenship. Problem solved!
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August 22, 2014 at 11:00 pm -
Didn’t I read that the executioner of James Foley was a Brit? Called John?
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August 22, 2014 at 8:08 am -
We also have the Christians George Bush Jnr and cohorts like T.Blair on a messianic mission to slay thousands of Iraqis & Afghanis on some pretext.
Religion is a complicated business and I tend to stick to good old Spiritualism like my Mum which involves nothing more aggressive than singing Shall We Gather By The River, contacting dead relatives for guidance followed by tea and biscuits.-
August 22, 2014 at 10:16 am -
Oil, oil & more oil – needed for all those church lamps perhaps?
It’s the religion of submission, not peace. The peace comes after your head is separated from your body.
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August 22, 2014 at 10:18 am -
I share your concerns about “fundamentalists” of all kinds, who invariably have absolutely no idea of what they are doing. These are people who follow religion like people follow a football team. My team is good, your team is bad. In part 2 of this post I may touch on such themes. A lot of Christians I know would denounce spiritualism as messing with things which should not be messed with. I retain an open mind, and have no problem at all with it. I would happily join you for the service and the tea and biscuits.
I can’t sing though.
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August 22, 2014 at 10:33 am -
This site is a good resource to look for modern interpretation and rules for Muslims in our society – it is at once scary and laughable !
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August 22, 2014 at 10:34 am -
72 virgins or a bunch of grapes ?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/opinion/martyrs-virgins-and-grapes.html
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August 22, 2014 at 12:24 pm -
That’s an interesting piece
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August 22, 2014 at 12:39 pm -
I had heard of the “grape” translation – but first time I have read of any serious scholarly challenge to the Quran – interesting. I do think that IS may turn out to be the point in history that people declare they have had enough.
The multicultural nonsense is the equivalent to Chamberlain in Munich – IS is the equivalent of the German invasion of Poland… Just a thought….
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August 23, 2014 at 1:34 pm -
A phrase that lept out of the article linked-to by Gunker was:
“But the scholar who pioneered this pathbreaking research, using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for security reasons…”
How sad that such considerations are even necessary. (An attempt to silence other differing opinions can be seen with regards to some of the other topics discussed on this site. As with religion/Islam, I’m sure that many feel it not worth the hassle of questioning or debating with the foam-flecked fundamentalists, which of course allows their ‘version of the truth’ to grow ever more dominant & will eventually leave it unassailable).
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August 25, 2014 at 12:10 pm -
A Moslem friend of mine claimed it was not 72 grapes but 72 raisins. No idea if it’s true, but it would make more sense in terms of rewards for all good Moslems, including women. After all, why be a modest, obedient and pious wife if all you have to look forward to is a bunch of virgins to share eternity with?
And most men wouldn’t be after 72 virgins but sexually experienced women who could show you a much better time…
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August 22, 2014 at 11:38 am -
An interesting blog-post here: http://rationalislam.blogspot.com/
It makes the point that Mohammed was using exactly the same sort of terror tactics to terrify his enemies as ISIS are today.
Incidentally, I get rather bored with the BBC PC description of Mohammed as ‘the Prophet Mohammed’. He’s no prophet of mine; in fact the closest he comes is to describe him as ‘the false prophet Mohammed’.
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August 23, 2014 at 12:48 am -
Agreed. Every time I hear that phrase I hear Alec Guiness in my head saying, “Only a master of evil, Darth”..
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August 22, 2014 at 11:47 am -
An interesting article, Gildas, as always. But I think we have to look beyond the plain text of the Quran, which is even more obscure, self-contradictory and incoherent than other religious texts. The Bible contradicts itself because it’s not one book, but many, written by many different people in different languages over a period of centuries, in widely differing contexts. The Quran manages to contradict itself despite being allegedly written down by just one man.
You mention the theory that the more reasonable bits were written before Muhammad gained power, ie while he was compelled to coexist with non-Muslims, while the more intolerant and violent bits date from later on when he was a ruler with an army. I’m not sure if there’s any external evidence for that or if it’s just asumed on a sort of commonsense basis.
Yesterdays I read of a moderate Muslim quoting the bit about “if you kill a man it is as if you kill the whole world.” What she didn’t say, and maybe didn’t know, is that this verse is in the same chapter 5 as the bit about crucifying and chopping off hands and feet- there’s only a few lines between these radically different pronouncements.
As to whether it’s possible to be a “moderate muslim,” you might ask equally whether it’s possible to be a “moderate christian,” ie one who doesn’t “turn the other cheek” when attacked, nor “sell all that he has and give to the poor?” The vast majority of self-identified Christians have always ignored these exhortations.
It’s clear that Jesus Christ was a pacifist, while Muhammad was a warrior- each policy was almost inevitable given the very different societies in which they lived- Jesus in the Pax Romana- the universal peace maintained brutally but effectively by the legions of Emperor Augustus, while Muhammad lived in a society of warring tribes. But the interesting thing is that despite the very different teachings of their founders, Christians and Muslims have been equally violent and cruel for the great majority of their history. Indeed, during the Middle Ages the Islamic world was certainly more tolerant than Christendom, and preserved the knowledge of Greek civilisation when the Christian bigots of the Dark Ages would have trashed it.
But something happened in the 18th century that has not been properly explained by anything I’ve read. Europe began the long process of “Enlightenment,” while the Islamic world began heading in an opposite direction. The Wahabi/Salafist version of Islam dates from this period, and was founded in direct reaction to the apparent success of Christendom against the Muslim Ottoman Empire, on the basis that “If Allah allows infidels to defeat us so often, we must be doing something wrong. If we interpret the quran and Hadith in the strictest way possible, Allah will give us victory against Christendom as in the days of Muhammad.”
Edward Gibbon, BTW, in his “decline and Fall of the Roman Ampire,” gives the real reason why the Muslims defeated the Chritians so easily at the start of their expansion. Briefly, the Roman Empire had just won a long war against the Persian Empire, who were the other superpower of that era. To finance the war the Emperor had borrowed a huge sum from the Church, which was already immensely wealthy and powerful. As soon as the war was over, the Church demanded immediate repayment of the debt, thus bankrupting the Empire. Hence the barbaric Muslim tribes of Arabia easily conquered the heartland of the ancient civilised world in one fell swoop- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine.
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August 22, 2014 at 12:22 pm -
As for the dating, I’m dependent on true experts. But I found it an interesting piece to research. Whilst I don’t know enough about Gibbon or that period of history to comment on the rapid expansion of Islam, I see your point about the Enlightenment and the reaction of Wahabi-ism, which is the most troubling aspect of Islam today. I also readily accept your point about the often brutal aspect of Medieval Christianity.
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August 22, 2014 at 12:35 pm -
David Wood, an evangelist, has studied the Koran, quotes it and presents many videos about it’s violent and oppressive aspects. He has a site called Answering Islam David Wood
Gates of Vienna is another site that shows the ‘not-so-cuddly’ aspects of Islam. Here’s their article and videos about the five stages of islamic conquest Five pillars
Jihad Watch is Robert Spencer’s site where he warns against the true nature of Islam.
Jihad Watch
He has also written several books popularising recent scholarship about Islam and it’s origins, especially ‘Did Mohammed Exist?’
BooksThere’s no longer any excuse for sympathy or ignorance.
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August 22, 2014 at 6:17 pm -
There’s clearly no excuse. I just wonder how much credence is given to the opinions of people of a religious persuasion in discussions about other religions. One has the impression that the only acceptable outlook is a secular one, and anything outside that is regarded as iffy. These discussions often seems to involve relativising and extrapolating to apply to all religions, i.e. “Muslim extremists may be slaughtering people today, but Christian extremists were doing the same way back when. And look at what Buddhists and Hindus are capable of. Religions are all the same. etc, etc.” With the result that whatever religion or religious sect is under discussion isn’t really considered for what it is on its own terms. Perhaps the “religions are all the same” attitude has actually helped to allow non-violent extremism and undemocratic propaganda to flourish. If Anglican church = mosque = temple = synagogue, then it’s surely easier for whatever is going on in one to go unnoticed. Or be given support by those bending over backwards to be egalitarian and not look prejudiced. “That lot attend wishy-washy church services and do flower arranging, so you lot can listen to hell-fire preachers and promote apartheid at university. They have schools, so can you. Just as long as you do your own thing and don’t bother us multicultural types, there’s good chaps!”
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August 22, 2014 at 1:35 pm -
@Gildas I think you have spent to long meditating upon MWT…for, not unlike “The Only Way is I-rak” Jihadis, you pulled the “Red Top” sections of the Koran and ignored the nitty gritty, day to day stuff.
Firstly, the stated intention of the Koran (Good luck with holding that line as soon as you are dead!) was actually to avoid the contradictions and political spin that beset the Bible throughout it’s history. The Prophet reiterates, over and over that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are like three chapters of the same book and, as such, should all be considered as “people of the book”. The fact that this considered attitude may have proved a little…AWKWARD during the Crusades is probably a total coincidence with the various contradictory statements that found their way in there somehow.
(Now I am not too sure about the veracity of admonitions to do unspeakable things to the nearest unrepentant Zoroastrian/Wiccan/Other but those were different times when “unspeakable things” tended to form an important part of everyday life, no harm in channelling ’em a bit I suppose?)
The Prophet was very much a human being, merchant and businessman who worked his way up the social ladder and even married his boss (I always think that might be a significant factor in his giving women more stand alone rights than they would even have in 18th century Europe) .
Maybe the absolute word of God delivered flawlessly (good grief, now I am making Islam sound like a new hair product), but look closer…the absolute word of god is expressed largely through advice and suggestion:
“Strong drink is both of great harm and great utility to man, but the harm of it is greater than the utility” that’s it…nothing else.Christianity says to marry for “as long as ye both shall life” and “that which god has joined, let no man put asunder” , but Islam takes a rather different view (loosely transcribed):
“Allah is fully aware that sometimes, marriage just doesn’t work out, and life is too short, so, talk it over, sleep on it awhile, talk it over with your families, sleep on that awhile too, and talk it over with your community…and if sleeping on that awhile doesn’t fix it…ok, go to Reno…COME BACK I HAVE NOT FINISHED YET…but all bets are off unless you are ready to be nice to each other about it…how hard can that be?”3 wives is a bit patriarchal…until you read the terms and conditions of claiming widows allowance in the 7th century and recognise the rate at which the constant warfare was generating widows…with children…there just were not enough men left standing to hand out one each.
“Be honest in all your business dealings…and the fact that your ebay partner is probably a polytheist IS IRRELEVANT in the all seeing eyes of Allah in this respect ”
A huge part of the Koran is full of this easy, reasonable, do-able “design for living” stuff most of which is still literally applicable and valid today, almost all of which is adaptable today.
(Another huge part of the Koran contains excerpts of narrative about the “Horned King” who is generally assumed to be Alexander the Great and tends to be presented as a shining example, not to sure of what. I suspect that was mostly included to keep people from getting bored with all the mundane common sense and advice?)
It is a terrible pity that “The Only Way is I-rak” boys could not have stayed at home in Essex (or similar) and nailed their noses to the every day parts of the Koran instead. If they had they would grow up to be good, reasonable men, who deserved the respect of any and all…
…but I guess that was for real men – too much like hard work for spoilt brats?
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August 22, 2014 at 4:12 pm -
I found this documentary interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSIsB5TRfUY-
August 22, 2014 at 4:48 pm -
Looks extraordinary, thanks…I always prefer to interpret history as deeds and choices of actual human people…not the mythology of sacred cows.
I will enjoy this immensely.
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August 22, 2014 at 6:16 pm -
On line strikes me particularly in that documentary:
“Mohammed is the man all Muslims strive to emulate”
Why would they not? After all, he came from nowhere and ended up as an ancient cross between John F Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, but with less bullets to the brain and more wives…
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August 22, 2014 at 10:58 pm -
Or as Basil Fawlty would say “Sybil Fawlty – Welcome to Mastermind. Your subject is the bleeding obvious.”
Of course you are expected to emulate the great exponent of your faith.
“Imitatio Christi” – for the Catholics out there.
“What Would Jesus Do?” for the post-Reformation lot.
” Sarah Ferguson’s Diet Plan – Slim-Fast Worked for Me!” for the post-modernists among you.
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August 23, 2014 at 12:17 am -
I could happily emulate him on business and politics alone
…and just LOVING the attitude to older women…
No question, subtract Islam and Mohammed was still a pretty remarkable guy…WAY more interesting than Jesus.
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August 23, 2014 at 1:10 am -
GD, I am afraid we will have to differ there.
But I can perfectly understand why Big Mo would have a certain appeal, just as a bloke.
If this conversation carries on, I will be transported back to my childhood days (when we first got the telly) in 1979/80 when the only subject of conversation in my girls’s Catholic primary school in NI at p7 was “Which? Starsky or Hutch?”
Basically, the weird girls went for Starsky and the conformists for Hut
Me, being me, I was obsessed with Huggie Bear – the frail, dope-using, Black informant.
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August 23, 2014 at 1:13 am -
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August 23, 2014 at 1:32 am -
He was a tragedy case. He was fascinating. He had to work so much harder than anyone else for so much less.
The guy was a drug addict, who had, we vaguely gather, all sorts of connections: to gangsters, Black Power activists, corrupt law-enforcement, “street-people”, and the lumpen-proletariat, and he managed to parlay what bits of knowledge he had into a life he could live. Perhaps not the one he would have chosen – but who gets to choose anything?
I worried about him and identified with him, especially when he was being beaten up.
For me, the whole series was “Does Huggie make it through this particular day?” The other guys all had a fixed place in this world. With Huggie, you were on a knife-edge.
Spare me the “cute”. Cut is as cute does, and Huggie had what the Irish call “cute” – wits, commonsense, an eye for the main chance.
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August 22, 2014 at 3:06 pm -
” the acts of these groups are evil, and by whatever means they must be annihilated. ”
I grew up listening to rhetoric like this, and guess what? at the end of the day, they did a deal.
It is now nearly 38 years since I was present at a rally conducted by the Reverend Ian Paisley, in which he paraded a series of quotes from the Old and New Testament to gee up the troops: Ulster is “the Land of Gideon and the Land of the Sword”; “the praise of the Lord in your mouth and a double-edged sword in your hand”; Christ said “think not that I have come to bring peace but fire and the sword” , Your enemies are those of your own household – they are all kosher Bible verses and all cherry-picked, of course. Not to mention his pornographic reveries on the Great Whore of Babylon, drunk with her fornications, which he identified with the Church of Rome. The sex and violence quotient was off the scale After one of these rallies, the lads would go on a rampage through the nearest Catholic town or neighbourhood.
Oddly enough, the Provos were mainly Marxist and atheist in their ideology, at the top levels anyway.
For all that, I was never tempted to believe that Dissenting Protestantism was inherently bloodthirsty creed or that the contemporary conflict in NI had anything to do with religion at all. Except as a means of reinforcing the divide. No one died in NI for transubstantiation vs consubstantiation, or the primacy of faith over good works.
Only last year Cameron tried to strong-arm Patrliament into backing ISIS against Assad. . Now we are going to prop up Assad instead. A few weeks ago, Putin was the greatest threat to Europe since Hitler. This is Enemy of the Month Club.
For much of the c20, the great fear was that MENA was going to be taken over by nationalist, and Socialist (for which read Commie-friendly) govts. A lot of time and money was put into carefully promoting fundamentalist Islamic groups in the hopes that they would prevent the fellaheen from turning Red. Saudi Arabia exported its brand of Wahahabism all round the globe, while maintaining US bases on the sacred sands of Mecca. They did it in Britain, too. This is called playing both ends against the middle, or as the Yanks say, “Working both sides of the street”.
If a particular form of militantly aggressive Islam has become the vehicle for terrorist groups in MENA, well we went a long way towards mid-wiving it. This is “blow-back”, not the necessary and inevitable consequence of Muslim belief.
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August 22, 2014 at 3:08 pm -
I respect the decent moral guidance provided by religion but pour scorn on its centuries of illogical persecution. Therefore neither the Koran nor Bible are on my reading list (a position readily reconsidered under threat of execution). IMHO any religion which cannot be taken literally (and one must consider comic flexibility in the interpretations assigned to passages), cannot be taken seriously.
Western propaganda has focused upon one single shocking murder. In no way can the act be excused or condoned but I feel bound to observe that at least one young, misguided man was convinced it could never compete with cumulative, post-1940 American barbarism.
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August 22, 2014 at 3:46 pm -
Thank you. Spot on. Perhaps I should say that during the years I lived in Muslim countries in the fifties and sixties I never once suffered discourtesy, let alone enmity. This Ebola, as you rightly call it, is surely a fairly recent phenomenon.
Of course one can find pretty horrifying stuff in the “Holy” Bible (what is holy I wonder about the irascible and murderous God invented in the Old Testament who played nasty tricks on Abraham and on Lot’s poor old wife – just for being a bit inquisitive!). And Christian history is full of the most awful massacres carried out in the name of one or other version of the religion – look at the Cathars, the Huguenots, the Jews and the victims of the crusaders for instance. Even in our own time, followers of the “Prince of Peace” have murdered large numbers of Muslims as indeed they are still doing in Africa.
I think institutionalised religion is at best injurious to society, and at worst fatal, as the catastrophe suffered by the Syrians has amply demonstrated. I wonder how long it will be before one of our demented home-grown so-called jihardists lays his or her hands on a weapon of mass destruction and decides to use it on behalf of the God he or she has made in their own wretched image.
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August 22, 2014 at 4:35 pm -
@Griffin I always felt that:
“I need you to prove yourself by sacrificing your first born son” taken all the way to the wire, was more like auditioning for reality show loosely based on “Deliverance” than selecting a chosen people, but what do I know from being god? *shrugs*I think the old Testament God could give “The Only Way Is I-rak” boys a few pointers on “how to impress yer mates on twitter”.
@eyeswideshut
Lectures on the Whore of Babylon no less…”and her name it shall be called *superinjuction*”.What was that supposed to be? “Cromwell: The Remake”? Paisley is a vile old man it is incomprehensible nobody sees through at a glance…his, more personable, son is downright dangerous. It was quite bizarre for me to have to stand up to people who publicly declare a belief in creationism without even their ears going red.
I suppose the dichotomy of the Provos was that they were standing up against Protestant Unionism politically whilst personally being of the generation that finally rebelled against the stranglehold of the catholic church. I was in the Cathedral in Armagh when Cardinal Daly declared a general absolution for “any who might have felt excluded in the past”. I couldn’t work out whether he was talking about divorce, abortion or the paramilitary.
It is NEVER really about religion. Each of us creates the God we need to get us past our issues and blindfold us against the things we can neither change nor handle, while keeping us half civilised by demanding payment in good behaviour. That only becomes a powerful tool when someone figures out a way to offer a God that does a better job for less investment – AS LONG AS YOU FOLLOW THEM.
…and their motivation is always 100% venal, secular and subject to sudden change…to be a politician is to become the Vicar of Bray, even in the Middle East.
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August 22, 2014 at 5:26 pm -
Lol, yes, I lived in Sri Lanka for two years and it blew my tiny mind to see Buddhist monks calling for the murder of Tamils. We are always told, and my own study of Buddhism would support, that Buddhism really shouldn’t start from here at all, as the old joke about the Kerryman goes.
I seem not to be the type that Catholic or Protestant clergy are attracted to, but I’ve been touched up by an Orthodox priest and had to flee from a monastery in Kandy, after the Abbot decided to discuss the Lotus Blossom Position with me.
In other words, we can all play at this game. According to Richard Dawkins, all religions are essentially nuts and downright dangerous, not just Islam. There is a school of thought that so is democracy, let alone capitalism, or socialism.
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August 22, 2014 at 6:13 pm -
So that would be a kind of:
“Eradicate the Tamils but please do make the effort not to step on any insects in the process?”
*boggled eyes*
Of course all religions are nuts, they are all basically excuses for an adult version of an “imaginary friend” for starters…how sane could they be on that basis? But even so, there are people who use them wisely too.
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August 22, 2014 at 6:33 pm -
Lol, more or less. It always surprises me that Buddhism is seen as the fluffy faith (though strictly speaking, it’s a philosophy not a faith) in the West.
In Sri Lanlka, they are part of the government. This is of course where it all goes wrong. Theology is one thing – theocracy is another. Or if not outright theocracy, the use of an official religion to serve state interests, while of course getting a fat bit for themselves.
They are very good at it, BTW. Even, or perhaps especially in the land of the separation of Church and State (“Congress shall make no law”..), they made a very good job of smuggling fundie Christianity in through the back-door, when the Republican right went looking for a whole new voter base in the 1970s.
But anyone who talks about “eradicating Islam or Islamists” is just another fundie in my book. (a) You won’t. and (b) any attempt to do so will just make everything ten times worse.
These countries need democracy, good governance, peace, and trade which isn’t dictated to them by Western oil interests. And to be left alone by us. Frankly, the record is so bad by this stage, a period of reflection is called for on our part, rather than another ill-timed, ill-judged, confused and incoherent “intervention”. Their biggest problem with us that they don’t trust our motives for being there at all, not that we a re Kuffr dogs and Allah told them so.
But I fully expect the Clash of Civilisations narrative to have much more traction in the West than my “modest proposal”. We’ve been brought up on “Lord of the Rings”, not the New Testament, no matter how we might want to style ourselves “Christians”.
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August 22, 2014 at 7:21 pm -
Well, yes – up to a point. We tried the ‘leave them alone’ policy with Syria, and so far it seems to have made things worse, not better. Intervention may not be the perfect option, but it may turn out to be the least worst option. You can’t have democracy, good governance, peace and trade without reasonable security; in cutting and running from Iraq as fast as we did, we left a security vaccuum, which ISIS have been delighted to fill. It is our problem, we did contribute significantly to it, and in the end we do have a responsibility to try and sort it out. Properly, this time – not just ‘shock and awe’ followed by “there you go Abdul, all yours” as we scarper as fast as we arrived.
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August 22, 2014 at 7:53 pm -
Maybe it is simpler and yet more complex than that?
As a rule Iraqis are rather nice, civilised and moderate people, but they are (arguably) the oldest civilisation on earth, because there are good reasons why the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates was considered to be the biblical “Garden of Eden”, and they had it easy, particularly compared to their immediate neighbours since the dawn of time. But the devil makes work for the idle and the national sport seems to have been political intrigue for the sake of political intrigue for almost as long, whatever anybody else does, or does not, do. The result is a weird and arrogant disconnect between the culture and the politics.
Culturally they are ill equipped to accept inroads into their independence, much less outright intervention…culturally in theory they could probably do a better, fairer job than America in any circumstance. In real, hard political terms, two words:
“Saddam” “Hussein”
..and who needs that again?
This is one situation I have no longer got a clue how to call…but it is one hell of a mess, and, as always, the ordinary decent people are doing all the suffering.
Politically
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August 22, 2014 at 10:02 pm -
But roll the clock back a few years – there were Saddam, Gadhaffi and Mubarak all maintaining a degree of stability in parts of that otherwise ungovernable area. True, they all had their dark sides, but I suspect the lives of the millions of average Iraqi, Libyan and Egyptian citizens were actually better, safer and more positive than any of them have now.
We kid ourselves that ‘western democracy’ is the answer whilst, in their state of development, attempting to impose it just creates a bigger problem. They are not ready for democracy, it took the West hundreds of years to settle down to roughly democratic systems instead of killing each other, divine-right kingdoms or dictatorships. These are tribal, immature cultures – they need to go through the development process themselves before anything approaching democracy could ever work. It may not take hundreds of years, but it will still take a few generations, so don’t hold your breath.
Until then, we either learn to accept/tolerate the ‘strong leaders’ like Saddam etc. (along with their negative sides), or we must get used to chronic instability in that part of the planet.
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August 22, 2014 at 10:36 pm -
@ Mudplugger. Agree – but it’ctually a lot simpler than that. Our “democracy” is meaningless to these guys not because they are rag-head primitives who need to be told by an Imam not to bugger camels (or at least not on Fridays before or after prayers) but because what they have seen of Western democracy is, shall I say it, hardly the best of the west or democracy. For the first part of the c20, it was rule by Western multinationals (Anglo-Persian Oil, anyone?) and some of those countries are still propped up by the West. Take Saudi Arabia. Remove the US military guaranteeing the flow of oil, and the House of Ibn Saud would go down in flames. They are that hated by their own people.
The Strong Men were reactions to western exlploitation. Their cock-a-mamie Nationalist polices were always doomed because they had to enforce a dubious Western-created sense of a nation on what were ethnic and regional groups, who had no concept of c19 nationhood at all – as it would be understood by Europeans. And that is not their fault. The map of Europe has been brutally draw and redrawn not “over centuries”, but in the last 40 years – and for much the same reasons.
Are we a “democracy”? Yes, we can vote and no one will shoot us for attempting to, but do you know who owns Britain? Just today I read who has got a 14 bn sterling contract to supply the British Army. Check it up. See who owns the boots on the ground that the British are planning to put into Iraq.
We will never get anywhere when we prattle about Western democracy to the Russians and the Asians and the Middle East. They know what we mean by that. They are not impressed.
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August 23, 2014 at 12:09 am -
Isn’t “Western Democracy” more about PR and propaganda wars than anything anyway?
The most manipulative party wins every time. You can tell people all the endless bloodshed and “might follows right” is wrong, but you can’t tell the Western Democracy is any better.
(Am I imagining things or were Egypt and Iraq highly developed and educated societies while we were still running around painted with woad?)
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August 23, 2014 at 1:49 am -
And oil.
Don’t forget oil.
As if we would have had the slightest interest or laff out loud – responsibility – has it not been for that.
If you fancy a flutter, I’ll give you 25-1 at Paddy Power “John the Jihadi” and poor Mr Foley will have faded from the MSM in 4 weeks.
It’s; not the first time we gaped in horror and amaze at the decapitation of a journalist. And forgive me, if I sound blase. I am not at all. Very far from it. Daniel Perl? Which became a failed Oscar-vehicle for Angelina Jolie: she wears a fright wig! She looks terribly pregnant and concerned!
This is how we remember the dead of the West. The dead of the ME are just – dead.
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August 23, 2014 at 11:48 am -
@Eyes Wide Shut We will never get anywhere when we prattle about Western democracy to the Russians and the Asians and the Middle East. They know what we mean by that. They are not impressed.
And dare I venture neither should they be?
I am not saying Western Democracy is not better than present alternatives but rather that in its present form and the direction in which it is moving it is paradoxically becoming less inclusive —more skewed in favour of certain interest groups and with it a feeling of exclusion of traditionalism and the majority.
Perhaps the question being posed at the moment is the wrong one —-not what is wrong with Islamic Fundamentalism (its pretty obvious) and why it needs to be stopped(again obvious) but what is Western Democracy lacking that makes alternatives attractive —its not just ignorance .
There has been something of an assumption that the inevitable march of history is in the direction of liberal democracy (whatever that catchall phrase means) —perhaps not so different from the Marxist assumption of the historical inevitability of communism ( the varying creeds covered by that catchall term for very different means and to some extent different ends) –probably no different then belief in the inevitability than the correctness of the Divine Right of kings.
I am not sure one has to travel to the Middle East to see the deep discontent with the present Western Liberal Democratic Model —my daily trip stroll through cyberspace to the Raccoon Arms for a large G&T is enough —and the chatter in the snug is usually not just about whats wrong with it (and by gosh there are some blindingly clever insights) but a general feeling that it is so flawed that it is falling and will fall apart
Fundamentalism progresses not because its ‘better’ but because it offers to fill voids in peoples lives with certainties that the liberal democratic model in its present form appears unable to offer.. Perhaps seemingly for example some sort of Justice rather than Law. Perhaps seemingly some form equality. I say seemingly so I don’t get flamed by people thinking I am suggesting Fundamentalism is the right answer to the question I am trying to pose
I wonder if reform in the West might not be ONE of a number of ways of approaching global instability—perhaps where a start might be made —if nothing else it might produce a model that at least might produce a more cohesive cogent and convincing model to its own citizens and thereby a rather stronger alternative.
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August 22, 2014 at 8:09 pm -
@Engineer. We will have to disagree there. I don’t happen to think our motives in MENA are now or have ever been a question of “sorting anything out” except to our own satisfaction and that will surely not be to theirs. so I would be tempted to give it up as a bad job all round.
We would not have drawn perpendicular lines on a map back at the Versailles Peace Conferences, if our object had not been to secure the oil fields for Britain and France. Since then from Suez to the overthrow of Mossadeq to preserve Anglo-Persian oil, our support of Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war and the double-games we have permitted Saudi to play, I think it is quite clear who we fel a responsibility towards.
Now, there will be no lasting settlement delivered by the West in MENA. We are wasting our time and creating fresh enemies there and at home, and we cannot keep this up indefinitely. We will tire before they do.
Unless our thinking is same as Lord Macbeth’s : “Being steeped in gore/To wade back were tedious as go o’er.”
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August 22, 2014 at 7:27 pm -
Buddhists don’t get an imaginary friend do they? Not really anyway. (Taoists get AS MANY AS THEY WANT
)Maybe that sometimes makes the bitter and twisted?
Years ago, in SW7 I had an overdose of listening to former FCO stalwarts carrying on like an upper middle crust edition of the EDL So I told them, firmly (my voice carries too!) that, having done a little research I had established that they were being terribly hypocritical, as they were, in and of themselves, nothing more than a bunch of kaffirs…
You could have heard a pin drop for about 5 minutes before they turned on me and argued that toss.
But I was right…they were wrong.
That dreadful brat from Wales really does look a lot like a hobbit, doesn’t he? Sounds more like Golum though…
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August 22, 2014 at 8:21 pm -
@GD, ah a Taoist. No wonder I like you.
The caryatids of empire, whether the former British one, or the current American one, or even the half-assed Russian one which has much more limited objectives, all end up sounding the same.
They have a right to “make settlements” and “sort things out” and take Big Decisions, and they never understand why the objects of their decisions – well, object.
It must be because there is something wrong with their religion or their wiring or who knows, the amount of red meat they consume or don’t consume.
This is the caryatids’ self-sustaining paradigm. That is why they never see it coming, so to speak. Their mind-set doesn’t allow them to see it.
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August 22, 2014 at 9:20 pm -
Not QUITE a Taoist…but close…I am determined to believe in my late step father to assist me in such important mutual interests as the Tesco “reduced for clearance” shelves and the value of items left in skips…this belief system serves me VERY well. He would have liked me to believe in his friend Jesus instead, but I have never even met him, so NOT.GOING.TO.HAPPEN.
Isn’t it all just another excuse to infantilise other adults as a poor substitute for actually trying to be better than they are?
(I think I have flu
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August 22, 2014 at 9:51 pm -
“Our Lord who art in Tescos. BOG-OFF be Thy Name. Thy discount come. Thy cash-back be done. Give us this day our daily promotions. And lead us not into branded lines. For thine is the self-check-out, the coupons and the two-for-one. AYYY-MENNN.
Many a poor man or woman has found a pearl of great prize in a skip even if was only themselves, after throwing-out time.
I know, because it happened to me
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August 22, 2014 at 6:07 pm -
Very informative article. I learnt a lot from it – not least of all that Muslims fundamentalists need to be eliminated before they exterminate us. Also that if we didn’t have religions, then we’d have to find another excuse to behave like barbarians. What an appalling species we are. Perhaps the universe would be a better place without the human race?
I worry for my grandchildren.
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August 22, 2014 at 7:01 pm -
Well, yes – up to a point. But if it’s not Kaiser Bill throwing his weight around, or Nazis, or the threat of mutually assured destruction as the West and the old Soviet bloc try to face each other down, or global warming/climate change/whatever it’s called this week (a non-problem if ever there was one), it’s Alky Ada, Ebola, the Islamic State, or whatever will crop up next. There’s always something going on to give the media something to panic us all about. Yes, we do have to face the current crisis, yes we may have to put boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria to sort out ISIL/ISIS/whatever it’s called, yes the security services may have to deal with home-grown terrorists, yes do do have to find an answer to the problem of radicalisation, but in a sense it’s all just business as usual. This month’s crisis.
Don’t worry too much for your grandchildren. In many ways they’re far safer and better off than our grandparents’ generation was. There are some appalling human beings around, but they are, thank God, a minority. They cause bother out of all proportion to their number, but they are still vastly outnumbered by decent, well-adjusted folk; and the latter will, in due course, prevail.
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August 22, 2014 at 6:42 pm -
There seems to be a move towards shifting Bashar al Assad out of the “enemy of the month” slot- I just heard General sir Richard Dannatt and Sir Malcolm Rifkind advocating this, while Philip Hammond opposed it. Two well-known very senior high flyers versus one rcently promoted nonentity. “Democratic” governments can’t switch demons overnight, like Stalin’s USSR was able to, but they’ll do their best. We ought to have supported Assad all along- he leads the nearest thing the Middle East has to a genuinely multicultural society. The Syrian War was what finally destroyed my faith in the BBC- that and their craven, emotive treatment of the Saville witch hunt. Porton Down (the UK’s own chemical warfare research lab) analysed the gas residues from the Ghouta attack and concluded that the FSA had done it- not Assad. An opinion poll conducted inside Syria by a UK-based company found 35% support for Assad’s government- by far the most popular faction- and only 9% each for the FSA and Al-Qaida (4% for Islamic State). But you won’t find this reported on BBC.
I’ve just heard once again on Radio Four about how “well-funded” Islamic State is. But the BBC airheads never ask the obvious next question- funded by whom? A week or so an MP was being interviewed- forget which party- he suggested we should “rethink our relationship with Saudi Arabia, who are the Islamic State’s main funders.” He was immediately cut off by the BBC presenter. I’ve long suspected that BBC journalists have standing orders not to criticise that unspeakable regime.
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August 22, 2014 at 7:11 pm -
Another little misconception was sunk by Radio 4 – that the UK is the major contributor of radicalised ‘fighters’. It seems that ‘estimates’ (by whom? how?) suggest about 400 from the UK, 700 from France, 400 from Belgium, and unstated numbers from Germany, Italy, Turkey, Australia and probably other countries. Even if the numbers are erroneous, it’s a more general problem than has previously been suggested, it would seem.
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August 22, 2014 at 8:54 pm -
To put this into perspective, most analysts agree that during the 40 years of the Troubles in NI, which the last time I looked was still part of the UK, membership of the PIRA ran at roughly 1000, and that includes both NI and the Republic of Ireland – the North has a population of 1.8 million and during the period in question the population of the Republic of Ireland was about 4 million.
“Active service units” in PIRA at any given time accounted for between 250 and 500 “volunteers”.
I will say nothing of the various Loyalist paramilitary organisations, UVF, UDA, Ulster Resistance, Red Hand of Ulster, and others too “niche” to detain us here. These were never “proscribed organisations”, funnily enough. Consequently, membership is hard to establish because so many hangers-on claim to be have been members, knowing they don’t face a two-year jail sentence for admitting it.
Now you do the maths.
England alone has a population of approximately 60 million nowadays.
We are a long, long way from the Brighton Bombings.
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August 23, 2014 at 3:39 pm -
I’m not sure I see the connection between PIRA thirty years ago and ISIS today. PIRA didn’t suck in ‘fighters’ from all over the Catholic world; pretty well all it’s members had their roots in the island of Ireland, even if much of it’s funding was conned out of the Irish diaspora (Noraid, for example). In contrast, ISIS seems to be drawing it’s ‘fighters’ from the Muslim diaspora, and not just the UK; heaven knows where it’s funding comes from.
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August 23, 2014 at 4:34 pm -
I imagine the half billion raided from the central bank in Mosul must have secured ‘funding’ for a fair while….no worries about having to ‘cut services’ this year.
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August 23, 2014 at 5:29 pm -
Good point – it was fairly extensively reported at the time, and I’d just forgotten about it.
It’ll make identification easier when the West does put boots on the ground. Fighters with dusty, beaten-up AK47s and dented old Toyota pick-ups will be non-ISIS, fighters with diamond-encrusted AK47s and sleek new Toyota pick-ups will be the ISIS ones.
Slightly more seriously, I wonder just how the oil money paid by the West is being channelled to outfits like ISIS. There have been questions raised about Saudi and Qatar, but I bet they’re not the only ones. Are we inadvertently funding our own terrorist threats?
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August 23, 2014 at 12:21 am -
There are myriad extreme belief systems in the world.
All of them are potty.
The question we should ask is, “Who bankrolls this bollocks?”
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/at-the-end-of-the-day-510/-
August 23, 2014 at 1:02 am -
Well bloody said, Mr Ward
Even if, like a good old ad-man, you are saying “I got the goods – over here!”
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August 23, 2014 at 4:20 am -
I was always hung up on cute…Claus Von Staffenberg (as created by Mama Von Staffenberg rather than Hollywood) was my deepest foray into less epidermal interests…and frankly, even with bits missing, he was well cute enough to be the actor who played Tom Cruise…
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August 23, 2014 at 7:24 pm -
That was supposed to go way higher up as a response to remarks about huggy bear, but, left where it is it has a kind of zen about it…
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August 23, 2014 at 7:11 pm -
I had a rat problem in the house last year. I recall exactly what I did about it. Those which Archie the Jack Russel didn’t get, I did.
What I find odd about all this is that despite the backward nature of II (Irrational Islamism), these people are being treated as if they have some sort of moral equivalence, at least in some quarters. But then, Al Capone was briefly a folk hero…
I have, in my circle of acquaintance, several strict adherents of various faiths – none of them – not one – would dream of sawing the head off a helpless captive on Youtube. I haven’t watched it and don’t intend to – I grew up in a war zone, so I can imagine.
I have no idea who this pervert is, but five will get you ten that he masturbates a lot.
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August 23, 2014 at 7:17 pm -
“John” the executioner’s full identity is known to the intelligence world. All we’re told is that he is British. Recently nationalized, I imagine. One of about 600 recent recruits to IFL.
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August 23, 2014 at 7:47 pm -
With respect to you, he is not an executioner, rather he is a murderer who clearly undergoes a glandular pleasure in doing what he is doing. I am, though, sure you are right; I suspect that the security services know exactly who he is and I am sure that there have been several ‘interviews without coffee’ in the wake of this…
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August 26, 2014 at 10:21 pm -
Jesus! I got to the second paragraph before saying “fucking hell” – all religions are shite, and Islam is The Prince of shite -Anna dear, take up rug making or something more productive.
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August 27, 2014 at 12:40 pm -
This “John” thing is because the hostages reportedly named their captors after the Beatles. It strikes me as unwise for the media to make a big play about this because for better or worse, the thing that would enrage these guys most is being laughed at in public.
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