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Volume 2, No. 11 - April 2003 << Back to formatted version


Wahi: The Supernatural Basis of Islam

Part VII  - Dealing with a mistaken religion
Dr. Koenraad ELST

Now that science has spoken out on the true nature of Mohammed’s revelations, we should explore the practical implications of this new and more enlightened understanding of the Islam problem. How to deal with our Muslim neighbours now that we realize they are the prisoners of a gigantic centuries-spanning delusion? 

(1) Distinctions within Islam 

The first thing to do is to cultivate a correct understanding of Islam among ourselves. Whenever something critical is said about Islam, non-Muslims are always the first to come to its defence and to lambast the critics as “prejudiced hate-mongers” or some such unthinking hate-filled smear. Just as the so-called “anti-anti-Communists” provided the first line of defence to Communism by countering or ridiculing every serious anti-Communist argument, we are now faced with anti-anti-Islamism as the first major roadblock on the way to a candid analysis of the Islam problem. Many Hindus and other non-Muslims have a romanticized view of Islam centred on Sufi poetry and vague reminiscences of civilizational successes during the bygone Golden Age of Islam. For the sake of argument, we may concede for now that these are indeed meritorious contributions of Islam. The point is then to distinguish within Islam its different components.  

Charming achievements such as algebra, Arabic calligraphy or the basic and most attractive ideas of Sufi mysticism are all external to Islam. Arabic calligraphy, geometrical ornamentation on mosque walls and other non-figurative aesthetic developments were stimulated by the Islamic prohibition on the depiction of human or animal life; but they were no more than variants on art forms which have existed outside and before Islam as well. Algebra and other sciences were borrowed from India, China or Greece, as the Arab conquerors readily admitted; the belief that they were in possession of the true religion was enough to bolster their pride, so they could honestly concede other achievements to other nations. The central aim of Sufism, the self-extinction in the merger with God, is obviously borrowed from Buddhist and Vedantic sources. Initially the orthodox clergy persecuted outspoken Sufis who said blasphemous things like “ana’l Haqq” (“I am the True One”, Arabic translation of the Upanishadic dictum “Aham Brahmasmi”), because they saw through its un-Islamic inspiration, but later they adapted and domesticated Sufism into an acceptable Islamic form of devotion for both the spiritual eccentrics and the sentimental illiterate masses. 

At any rate, all these attractive sideshows of Islam can be evaluated separately without judging the defining beliefs of Islam. Even within Islamic theology proper, a distinction must be made. Firstly, there is a distinction between general religiosity or ethics and the specifically Islamic innovations. Partly in order to gain respectability, Mohammed included in the Quran and in his own sayings many elements of traditional morality, injunctions against stealing, slander, child abuse or marital infidelity. This can be compared with Moses’ Ten Commandments, where his own theological innovations (monotheism, taboo on idolatry, taboo on the God-name, keeping a weekly day of rest) are coupled with age-old moral rules against lying, stealing, disrespect to parents, adultery etc. In both Moses’ and Mohammed’s case, the intention seems to be, to confer the authority of age-old morality upon the prophet’s own innovative religious ideas. The net result is at any rate that a believer in the Bible or the Quran can truthfully say that his Holy Book has taught him morality. That much in the Quran deserves respect: elements of universal ethics which are not specifically Islamic but which nonetheless have come to form a part of Islam. 

Even in the theological core which defines Islam as distinct from other religions, a further distinction must be made, one which practically coincides with the two assertions of the Islamic creed: monotheism (“there is no God but Allah”) and the belief in Mohammed’s prophethood (“and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah”). Monotheism, the belief in the oneness of the Divine, can be deduced from different sources of inspiration, not merely the Bible or the Quran. One can discern a kind of monotheism in Aristotle’s philosophy or in Stoicism, it has been claimed for Zarathushtra’s religion of Ahura Mazda, and even Hindu devotionalism is sometimes conceived as monotheistic. Within the monotheistic framework, Medieval and Renaissance philosophers (al-Arabi, Cusanus, Bruno, Galilei, Leibniz et al.) have developed profound conceptions of consciousness and the universe. In principle, it is possible to subscribe to monotheism without developing the typical problematic features of the major monotheistic religions including Islam. So, if your Muslim neighbour says “Alhamdulillah” (Praise be to Allah) or some other Allah invocation, please don’t jump to jihadic conclusions. He may well mean the exact same thing intended by a Hindu who invokes Bhagwan. 

The real problem arises when he understands God/Allah as exclusively the character revealed in the Quran, the collection of sayings which Mohammed claimed to have heard from a supernatural source identified as the Archangel Gabriel. The ultimate core of Islam is not Allah and monotheism, but Mohammed and prophethood. Monotheism is a fairly widespread idea, but Mohammed and his Quran are truly the defining elements of Islam. If the oneness of God can conditionally be accepted as a valid manner of speaking about the Divine, there can be no compromise with Mohammed’s deluded belief in his exclusive telephone line with Heaven. Here, we hit the radically irrational and unacceptable core of Islam. Here, there is no room for sweet-talk, even if only metaphorically or figuratively intended, of a “basic unity” or “equal truth” of all religions. The defining core belief of Islam is wrong. It is nothing but the paranoid delusion of an ordinary early-medieval Arab businessman. Putting such vain self-delusion on a par with the profound insights of a Yajnyavalkya, a Buddha, a Confucius, a Laozi or a Socrates, is plainly absurd. 

(2) Speaking out 

Speaking with Muslims about the deluded basis of Islam may initially prove to be difficult. On the other hand, non-Muslims enjoy the benefit of their unbeliever status. In the present world, Muslims have had to accept at least the existence of unbelievers, and an unbelievers is by definition one who doesn’t believe in Mohammed’s prophetic claims. After all, if he believed in Mohammed’s claim to prophethood, he would accept the validity of the Quran and hence the whole contents of the Quran, and by accepting all that, he would by definition be a Muslim. So, in private conversation, subject to rules of politeness and diplomacy, a non-Muslim has a certain freedom to express his doubts about the core belief of Islam. There is no need to be intrusive with your message, as most Muslims spontaneously bring up the subject of the relative superiority of one religion vis-à-vis another once in a while. 

For born Muslims, introducing critical questions about Islam is more difficult, as it amounts to a statement of apostasy, a crime punishable by death under Islamic law. Yet, it is mainly these enlightened ex-Muslims who will do the job of opening the exit gate from Islam for their Muslim-born brothers and sisters. It is helpful and meritorious if we non-Muslims speak our minds about the fundamental questions of religion, but our influence on Muslim audiences will always be much more limited. We may work for the inclusion of properly scientific information in all general textbooks of religious history, so that Muslim children in state-funded schools will be exposed to a more enlightened view of Mohammed’s prophecies; but we should expect many Muslims to distrust and reject all such information emanating from unbeliever sources. By contrast, born and bred Muslims who have shaken off the veil of the faith and exposed themselves to the light of Reason may have more impact on the Muslim masses,-- which is why it is also much more dangerous for them to speak their minds. 

However, I am confident that recent developments in communications technology, particularly the entry of satellite television and the internet in even the remotest harems of Arabia, will profoundly alter the mental climate in the Muslim world. So far, the a lot of the authority wielded by the orthodox clergy over their flock was purely the result of ignorance about the world outside Islam. Most Muslims have grown up with caricatured enemy-images of Western and Asian cultures, which made it that much easier for them to identify civilization and morality with their own familiar Islam. In the next decade, their mental horizon is bound to widen dramatically. 

Already, websites hosted by ex-Muslims centralize all the information about the dark side of Islam, about persecutions of non-Muslims and injustices to women, and more consequentially, about the irrationality and unsustainability of the core beliefs defining Islam. Books can be burned, speeches interrupted by the police, but the newer forms of communication are very discreet and can penetrate into the private rooms of every inquisitive Muslim. 

(3) The alternative 

Experience in the secularized West has shown that apostasy from religion can have unpleasant side-effects. On the one hand, people are better informed and more open and honest about touchy subjects. On the other hand, many people flush out ethics and self-restraint along with the religion which they have come to see as irrational and obsolete. In this sense, one can sympathize with those Muslims who fear that a weakening of Islam will lead to immorality, hedonism, crass consumerism, flaky quasi-religions (whether political, sex-centred or occultist) and a general lowering of cultural standards. If the world of non-Islam gets identified with Hollywood, McDonalds and Playboy, it is understandable that Muslims will cling to the devil they know rather than expose themselves to the intruding devils from the West. 

This is where Hinduism and other Asian spiritual traditions have a key role to play. They have to show the Muslims that there is life after apostasy from an irrational belief system. They have to prove that religion can be something else than a silly acceptance of some prophet’s vainglorious claims about himself. In the case of India, it is even very simple: Muslims are surrounded by the heirs of one of the great spiritual traditions of mankind. Hindus have to cultivate or rekindle the best in their tradition, and Indian Muslims merely have to switch off a few centuries of Islamic alienation and return to their native civilization still alive all around them.

(Concluded)

[Born in Leuven, in the year 1959, Koenraad Elst grew up in the Catholic Community in Belgium. He was active for some years in what is known as the new Age movement, before studying at the famed Catholic University of Leuven (KUL). He graduated in Chinese Studies, Indo-Iranian Studies and Philosophy. He earned his doctorate magna cum laude with a dissertation on the politics of Hindu Revivalism.

He took courses in Indian philosophy at the Benares Hindu University (BHU), and interviewed many Indian leaders and thinkers during his stay in India between 1988 and 1992. He has published in Dutch about language policy issues, contemporary politics, history of science and Oriental philosophies; in English about the Ayodhya issue and about the general religio-political situation in India.

A few of his latest books are:

  • Who Is a Hindu? (2002)

  • Ayodhya: The Case against the Temple (2002)

  • The Saffron Swastika: The Notion of 'Hindu Fascism' (2001)

  • Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001)

  • Gandhi and Godse (2001)

  • Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam,

  • Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid, and

  • Ayodhya and After.

While doing research in Indian philosophy at Benares Hindu University, he started taking an interest in the ongoing Rushdie and Ayodhya controversies and the larger debate on secularism. He published several books on the historical Ayodhya file. He is currently working as a free-lance scholar and columnist.]

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