Sunday, May 06, 2007

From Ideal to Apocalyptic Messenger

Islam - the offspring of Arabia and the Arabian Prophet - was not only a system of belief and cult. It was also a system of state, society, law, thought and art - a civilization with religion as its unifying, eventually dominating, factor. From the Hijra onwards Islam meant submission not only to the new faith, but to the community - in practise, to the suzerainty of Medina and the Prophet, later of the Empire and Caliph. Islam was at first Arab citizenship, later the first-class citizenship of the Empire. Its code was the Shari'a, the holy law developed by jurists from the Qu'ran and the tradition of the Prophet. The Shari'a was not only a normative code of law but also, in its social and political aspects, a pattern of conduct, an ideal towards which men and society must strive. Islam admitted no legislative power since law could emanate only from God through revelation, but customary law and civil legislation, the will of the ruler, survived unofficially with occasional limited recognition from the jurists. The divinely granted Shari'a regulated every aspect of life, not only belief cult, but also public law, constitutional and international, and private law, criminal and civil. Its ideal character is clearest in its constitutional aspect. The Arabs in History - Bernard Lewis
This was the distillation and interpretation of a convoluted set of circumstances, from the Bedouin Arabic tribal traditions, to the acceptance of a divine word brought from on high by an inimitable Messenger to displace the cult of desert nomads with their honour codes and fierce warrior tradition, to the sublimation of the individual toward a higher, unified purpose of submission to Allah, to the evangelization of the holy script and language of Islam and the conquest of the central and mid-eastern world of the time, along with much of abutting Europe. This was the acceptance of a religion that fit neatly into the landscape of its time, abjuring its adherents to find their place within, yet seeing fit also to spread a larger word in a more complex landscape.

After the earlier centuries of advancing Islam, of wars, of routing of adversaries, of eclipsing rival aspirants to the seat of legitimacy alongside Allah's throne, the spread of Islam having succeeded under a number of canny followers with great wealth and armies at their behest and call, morphed into an instrument of encouragement for the acquisition of greater wealth through an Arabic-inspired merchant fleet trading with countries near and far, an agrarian renaissance where irrigation was used for the first time in human history, where groundwork was laid for a rich culture of learning and the dissemination of seminal scientific works, of art and architecture enriching the world at large which adopted what it would of the music, the poetry, the literature and art of Islam.

How far has this Empire fallen. From the light of the world in its acquired wisdom and enlightened administration of conquered lands, its distribution of the knowledge of ancient philosophical texts, its enrichment of the science of mathematics, we have come to a place in history where Muslims dream deliriously of past glory, astonished at what has escaped their grasp, eager to assume their past mantel of control, of the Caliphate, but incapable of proceeding through the old means of domination achieved through respect and admiration. Arab countries no longer produce knowledge, their art and culture has stagnated, their vaunted business and trade acumen become shrivelled into decay.

The religion that once unified after centuries of cataclysmic upheaval with the advent of one sect after another proclaiming domination then falling to another has yet again collapsed upon itself. Ayatollahs, imams, mullahs and heads of state have resorted to bludgeoning their people into acquiescence, into accepting the stagnation of the status quo, their countries left behind in technological and scientific advancement, in civilly enhanced modes of living, in co-operative ventures with their neighbours. Here are Islamic countries divided in sectarian hatred for one another, all worshipping the same God, all revering the same Divine Messenger, all one in the name of Allah, but resentful and vengeful and murderous in their intent one upon the other.

It has been left to Western countries to attempt intervention, to attempt to stem the bloody tides of carnage, Shi'a against Sunni, against Kurds and Christians, against Jews and above all against the infamy of surrendering, time after time, their sovereignty and authority to the greater strengths of invading armies, fearful of the effects of Islam's decay which has led to another instrument of fear; the intent of jihadist-inspired terrorists from among the fanatical wings of Islam. Those very Islamists who target their co-religionists who worship modestly, who target all manifestations of Western corruption, and those representing the ideals of the West, their institutions, their creeping social and political and cultural corruption of the purity of fundamentalist Islam.

Is there a solution to the most recent of the world's dilemmas, where an enlightened West faces an aggravatedly ferocious religious/political adversary declaring itself as the whirlwind of destruction of the world as we know it?

Labels:

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, May 06, 2007

Follow @rheytah Tweet