Tuesday Post

God Is Not Great

One of our afternoon panelists commented that sometimes people tend to posit a simplistic victim-oppressor analysis. We examine the past and determine who has been victimized and who is oppressed. Some educators perform this exercise in the case of Egypt, and the Middle East generally: i.e., Mubarak, bad, what he is replaced with, good. This analysis suggests that if the Muslim Brotherhood replaces Mubarak this could be a good thing. But as I consider covering the Caliphate in my World History classes I am reminded of what is stated in, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens states that the Koran is a rehash of Jewish and Christian myths. Islam, with no Reformation, and no internal self-critical tradition, is the least adjusted world religion to the obvious contradictions of living in the modern world with a pre-modern mindset. Any historical example to critically examine the claims of Islam has resulted in repression (p. 125). The accounts of Muhammad (d. 632) "are hopelessly corrupted into incoherence by self-interest, rumor, and illiteracy" (p. 127). "The first full account of his life was set down a full hundred and twenty years later by Ibn Ishaq, whose original was lost and can only be consulted through its reworked form, authored by Ibn Hisham, who died in 834" (p. 129). In addition, there is no way of determining how the competing accounts and traditions were collated and edited to form the text of the Koran. We are left with conjecture and hearsay as to the actual message of Muhammad.

The chaotic manner in which the Koran was assembled gave rise to the more pressing issue of succession, a controversy characterizing Islam and one in which Muslims have never solved. Continuously Islam has strenuously opposed critical examination of the Koranic text. The apparent unity of Islam masks a great insecurity and anxiety about the text not shared by other religious traditions (p. 126). "But Islam when examined is not much more a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require" (p. 129). With its lack of originality Islam nonetheless demands obeisance from non-believers yet "there is nothing--absolutely nothing--in its teachings that can begin to justify such arrogance and presumption" (p. 129).

The primary issue of a critical and scholarly account of Islam based on the Koran requires a similar willingness, as Jews and Christians have allowed and benefited from, to examine the Scriptural claims to objective, scholarly examination. The consensus of religious obscurantism though has precluded "free inquiry and the emancipating consequences that it might bring" (p. 137).

Meanwhile, rogues, terrorists, mullahs, and misguided Islamists predominate and prey unmolested upon unwary victims.

As a result, the question of authority looms large since there is no program to critically examine the Koran, religion poisons everything, but an institution could politically unify Islamists.

The Caliphate

It is important to understand what the caliphate is, its place in Muslim majority countries, and its significance.

The cornerstone of Islamic theology, the caliphate, or khilafah, is the central, authoritarian government that was implemented after the death of Muhammad by his disciples in 632 AD. It derives its authority from and governs by Shariah law, and is presided over by a “caliph,“ or ”successor” who holds both legislative and spiritual power.

Per the tenets of Islam, this “state” is not limited to encompassing only Muslims across Muslim lands, rather, the goal is to ultimately establish a global caliphate that would mandate people of all walks to embrace Islam or to at least to submit to being governed by Islamic law. The khilafah is also the form of government endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In March 1924, reformer and president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, constitutionally destroyed the “Khilafah State.” Today, an organization dedicated to the reestablishment of a global caliphate, Khilafah.com, stated that Ataturk’s move marked the end of “an illustrious era of Islamic rule” and that, since then, “the dark shadow of the West has engulfed the world.”

Prince Orhan Aal Othman, the Grandson of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, blames Theodore Herzl, the Jewish Zionist, as the cause of the Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate


MEMRITV - The Middle East Media Research Institute

#3250 - Prince Orhan Aal Othman, Grandson of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II: Herzl Was the Cause of the Fall of the Ottoman Empire

Transcript

http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/3250.htm
To illustrate what Islamists believe regarding Islam and the caliphate, consider the following passage from one of their sources:

"We assert, without compromise, that it is only by the establishment of the Khilafah State, that the practical solutions of Islam can once again provide a real alternative for the entire world. The ‘Clash of Civilisations’ first discussed by Samuel Huntington is real and inevitable. We endorse the notion that there is a civilisational difference between Islam and the West and that the problem for the West is Islam and the problem for Islam is the West. By arguing this, we also maintain Islam, as a universal ideology, came for all of humankind, Muslim and Non-Muslims, and as such it is only Islam that serves as a Rahma (mercy) for all mankind."

Khilafah.com goes on to assert that “the only challenge” to encroaching Western dominance “must come from Islam.”  Thus, to Islamists, the caliphate is vitally important in their fight against Western democracy and to ensure the adoption of Islam and the implementation of Shariah law across the world.