Stop The World - We Want To Get Off

The biggest mistake that Western politicians have ever made, is in thinking that Islam will reform ....

Some Groups Want
To Stop The World

 ... that under the moderating influences of the global world, some of which world has been informed for a couple of thousand years by the values of Hellenism, and Judaeo-Christianity, it will become a tolerant more 'Western' form of the religion.

But those Western values are in fact very alien to the Muslim world, where the phenomenon of Islam, meaning 'submission', spread its rule by sword and force across a large part of North Africa, Spain (only being repelled from Spain by force), Asia Minor, Central Asia, North India and the Levant. For some of that time Islam was largely tolerant of the cultures and faiths of the peoples it overran (as it was vastly outnumbered by those peoples outside of the Arabian peninsular), and these areas were rich in philosophical ideas, techniques, art and learning which the Arab culture sucked up, and briefly even added to.

But look at those lands now .... North Africa, which was Byzantine Orthodox Christian at the time of the conquests, is now 100 per cent Muslim (with the exception of Egypt, where around 10 per cent of the population remain Coptic Christian, despite occasional bouts of persecution). The land that is now Turkey once had a majority of Christians but now has none .... the eradication of the Armenian's and expulsion of the Greeks removed the final traces of that past. The rich Buddhist cultures of central Asia were eradicated (See Afghanistan), and some northern parts of Hindu India was only freed from Muslim control by the arrival of the British Raj.

In this belief in Islam reforming, moderating or becoming tolerant, the Western politicians are encouraged by some Western Muslims ... those who rush to the media microphones, following every jihadi inspired bombing, or knifing, or shooting, to distance ‘true’ Islam from the various categories of jihadist barbarism carried out in the West. They don't even bother with this fig leaf of an excuse when the attacks are in Asia, or outside of the West ... hence the ringing silence in some quarters after the Hamas mass terrorist attack on Israel (until Israel retaliated, then the left-wing, and pro-Palestinians marched down Western streets demanding Israel stop and leave Hamas with their hostages).

This excuse making for every terrorist attack such as the Manchester Arena, allows them to continue to emigrate to the West, without fear of reprisals or hindrance from the native populations politicians. But in fact its a lie. Sporadic outbursts of hard-line Islamic thought erupt every few centuries or so, and we are in the middle of one now ... The recent Hamas atrocities are an aspect of these outbursts, as they invoke militant interpretations of Islam to support their activities.

The problem partly stems from the fact that Islam has no hierarchies beyond the (Shiite) grand ayatollahs of Iran, to speak as one for ‘Islam’. There are no purely spiritual leaders acknowledged by all the Sunni Muslims, no Popes, or Orthodox Patriarchs, or Archbishops of Canterbury ... no moderators or the like, to speak for the two or three main bodies of Muslim adherents, or to collectively lead them in a more moderate direction. Today there is no perceptible deep thinking in contemporary Islamic theology, no debate, and so no viable mechanism of inserting change and evolution in to the practising of the religion.

A progressive Islam was probably doomed after Al-Mutawakkil became Caliph in 847 AD, and stopped support for the Muʿtazila, and resumed persecuting Non Muslims ... In 850 AD Caliph Al-Mutawakkil issued a decree requiring all Christians and Jews in his realm, including Jerusalem and Caesarea, to wear a yellow (honey-colored) hood and belt, so as to distinguish them from Muslims. This mentality has stuck ever since inside Islamic thinking and is exported in to the Muslims living outside Muslim lands.

Debate in Islam, about the message and how it should be practised is not really allowed (unless its for a more hardline stance e.g The Taliban and ISIS), and indeed has not been allowed for very many centuries, so Islam struggles to play a coherent part in the rest of the world as it is today.

The Sunni Muslim heartland of Saudi Arabia is struggling to break even a few of the self imposed chains such as the ban on satellite dishes imposed in 1994 (which 80 per cent of the population ignored, with rooftops in every Saudi city covered with them, and subscriptions to a variety of foreign channels are freely sold) ... While under Iranian law, satellite equipment is also officially banned, but 70 percent of Iranians violate the law by owning satellite dishes. Women can now finally drive cars in both countries, but are still harshly persecuted for protests against their many restrictions.

In 2004, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority issued an edict barring the use of cell phones with built-in cameras, blaming them for “spreading obscenity,” this after a ban on their sale and import in to the kingdom failed to stop them arriving. Sufism had been effectively outlawed in Saudi Arabia (and in many other Muslim countries) since the 1930's, by the hard-line Wahhabi clerics practice of issuing a takfir (excommunication) against everyone who didn't exactly follow their creed. Now they have partially relented and now they are not 'officially' banned, although the Sufi's say that their shrines are still destroyed.

But its these sorts of unenforceable bans against the modern world, that just cause resentment and disobedience amongst a younger population increasingly aware that the rest of the world marches to the beat of another drum. A 20-year-old student in Riyadh said “First they banned dolls, then they banned stuffed toys, and now this. I don’t know where all this will stop,” after the unenforceable phone camera ban in 2004. There were calls to ban the 'Barbie' movie in 2023 .... Saudi Arabia (despite Barbie dolls being banned), UAE and Bahrain all let it be shown, while Kuwait did ban it. 

Obscurantism in the practice of Islam is the norm, where the rote-parroting of the Koran is the preferred 'scholarly' route to understanding the religion. Islam hardliners in Saudi, Iran and elsewhere are very aware that it's under threat, by the unstoppable, unconquerable and incomprehensible prevailing Western global Zeitgeist, that is moving in a different direction to the world they want. 

But the only other world models they have to look to are either the highly controlled, but non religious Communist China (which is accused by some of actively persecuting some Muslims), or the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable, but also very highly religious, Russia. 

Those two are not models it wants to follow, and that leaves it with just a choice between imposing ever more hard-line Islam (via evermore restrictive bans and harsh punishments to enforce them), or maybe some sort of a reform, which as already discussed, they have absolutely no mechanism to even start, let alone achieve. So their immediate and only response is violence against the threat of changes, or the fact that much of the world seemingly is moving in another direction.

When Islamic zealots, burn or bombs Christian churches in Sri Lanka, Alexandria, Baghdad, or Pakistan, it is because they fear them, or rather the ideas they represent, of another way to run a religion, whereby people are using their minds and thinking, and that there are many peaceful ways people can practice their faith, including Islam ... but many in Islam just can't accept that. Perhaps a moderate Sufism may be the only route away for them, from being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Because, much as some Islamic hard liners would like to, they can't stop the world and get off.