| Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice The Complete Layman’s Guide to the Koran Chapter 26 It Wasn’t Always Like That It wasn’t always like that – the hate, the intolerance, the brutality found in the Koran that many now associate with Arabs in particular and Muslims in general. Arabs, Before and After Virgil Gheorghiu in his admiring biography of the Prophet, La vie de Mahomet, writes about a pre-Islamic Arabia that was home to a multitude of cultures and religions. For this author, pre-Islamic Arabs were dynamic, creative, fun-loving and tolerant. Ernest Renan (1823–92), French historian and critic, writing about pre-Islamic Arab society, described it this way (my translation). I am not aware in the entire history of civilisation of a more gracious, more loving, more vibrant society than that of the Arabs before Islam … [it was a time] … of unbound freedom, lofty sentiments, a nomadic and chivalrous way of life, [a land] of fantasy, joy, mischievousness, bawdy impious poetry, refined love-making … Ernest Renan, cf. Robert Montagne, La Civilisation du désert Barnaby Rogerson paints a similar picture of the inhabitants of the peninsula and the Middle East before the Islamic conquest in his flattering biography The Prophet Muhammad. His vivid travel-log-like writing has you imagining that you are with the Prophet on his voyages throughout the Middle East, meeting the people he meets, hearing the stories he hears – stories that will find their way into the Koran. It’s a magical, fantastical place, a good time to be alive. So what happened? Islam happened. Islam became the religion of the inhabitants of the peninsula and the Arabs, in T.E. Lawrence’s words, became a people of “primary colours.” They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white … They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questioning. They only knew truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades. This people was black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes … they never compromised; they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellect lay fallow in curious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative. T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom The period before Islam, on the Arabian Peninsula, is generally referred to by Muslims as Jahiliya, the time of ignorance when world views as numerous and as varied as the colours of the rainbow flourished. Then Allah sent His last messenger and that multi-coloured view of the universe changed to black and white, and humankind’s relationship with its Creator was demoted to that of mere supplicants of a vain and vengeful God. The Prophet’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 with his followers marks this alleged transition from ignorance to enlightenment. The year of this exodus is known as the Hijra or Hegira. The Hegira begins the Muslim calendar and is represented as 1 AH or 1 al-Hijra. Muslim tradition holds that the Koran, and the instructions it contains are unchanging and carved for eternity on a golden tablet in Paradise. The bases of this tradition are the verses that end surah 85, The Constellations, a short panegyric to Allah. 85:21 Yet, it is a glorious Qur’an, 85:22 In a Well-Preserved Tablet. The Koran in heaven is also referred to as the Mother of the Book and the Master Register (“Umm al-Kitab or al-Lawh al Mahfuz, the original and eternal codex of the Qur’an in heaven”, Fakhry) 13:39 Allah blots out and confirms what He pleases; and with Him is the Mother of the Book. 36:12 It is We Who bring the dead back to life and write down what they have advanced and their vestiges too. Everything We have enumerated in a clear Master Register. Because the Koran received by the Prophet Muhammad is believed to be a clone of the Mother of the Book, it is assumed to be free of any defects, and no doubt can be expressed about its authenticity. 39:28 We made it an Arabic Qur’an without any defect that perchance they might be God-fearing. 2:2 This is the Book which cannot be doubted and is a guidance to the God-fearing Depending on how you see the world, this new unchanging, perfect, divinely ordained world-order and our place in it was a good or a bad thing. For the believers, Western Civilization’s questioning, multi-coloured world-view is a product of the time of ignorance. The Koran’s dogmatic black and white world-view was to usher in a new age of enlightenment. Both world-views cannot peacefully co-exist and never have. When the 17th century welcomed the Age of Reason it was thought that one world-view had triumph over the other. Islam has proven this assumption to be wrong, and the outcome of the battle between reason and unreason is still very much in doubt. The Renaissance, which marked the end of the Catholic Church’s dominance in Europe allowing for a flowering of the arts and sciences, and the Enlightenment which ushered in the Age of Reason may turn out to have been a short detour, taken by a relatively small segment of humanity in the march of history; a fragile exception writes Mark Lilla, professor of the humanities at Columbia University in The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West (2007): After centuries of strife, the West has learned to separate religion and politics – to establish the legitimacy of its leaders without referring to divine command. There is little reason to expect the rest of the world – the Islamic world in particular – will follow. We in the West find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men, stirring up messianic passions that can leave societies in ruin. We had assumed that this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that political theology died in 16th-century Europe. We were wrong. It's we who are the fragile exception. If you believe that the Koran’s world-view is the correct one, you only have to do nothing for this point of view to triumph. Islam’s blanket rejection of abortion and birth control; its approval of polygamy, early marriages and large families; its promise of death to those who would even contemplate leaving the perfect religion for one less perfect or for no religion at all means the community of believers will always be expanding. In fact, except for a temporary halt at the gates of Vienna in 1683, a small setback in Spain during the reign of Isabella and Ferdinand and a temporary reversal during the Mongol invasions, Islam has never looked back. With all it has going for it, not to mention the paralyzing fear of random death as the more fanatical followers of the Prophet Muhammad threaten violence if Islam is not allowed to recruit in the “land of war”, the land of the unbelievers, in Islam you have the making of a winner. This is a forgone conclusion for authors like Mark Stein. In his book America Alone, he writes that the future belong to Islam because “the Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambition. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and more and more lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it.” If you don’t believe that the Koranic world-view should prevail, what should you do? Informing yourself of what is at stake is a start. Another would be acknowledging that Muslims are not your enemy. Religion, to paraphrase Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, can make good people do bad things. Your enemy is a religion that was not allowed to grow beyond its desert roots; to become more than what Irshad Manji, in her plea for reform, The Trouble With Islam. A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change, calls “desert Islam.” The Cartoon Protests I mentioned earlier that the Koran was a set of rules to be rigidly adhered to. But of course, it is more than that, it is also one man’s idea of what your relationship with God should be. Like any profound idea, good or bad, it will easily take root if it offers some benefit to a large enough collective and is left unopposed. Until the last century Islam was mainly spread by the sword, the Ottoman Empire spearheading the most recent assault into Europe. Today, desert Islam is subjugating the West not through the force of arms although intimidation, mainly through terrorist acts, still plays a role, but through complicity of the Western democracies. The West has implicitly, if not explicitly, accepted desert Islam’s argument that limits should be placed on criticism of religious beliefs, thereby allowing desert Islam to advance almost unchallenged. This gradual surrender of basic freedoms in the face of religious intolerance is slowly neutering the most effective weapons against the spread of this type of tyranny: freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Winston Churchill, after the end of the Second World War, when the war still had no official name, was asked what they should call the war that had just ended and cost more than 30 million lives. He said “the unnecessary war.” Like Churchill, I believe that if the democracies had stood steadfast in the face of Hitler’s demands instead of rewarding aggressive behaviour there would have been no Second World War. I was reminded of Churchill’s response when viewing a demonstration by Muslims in London during the so-called “cartoon protest.” Some of the demonstrators carried signs demanding that the now infamous Danish cartoonists be slaughtered, others that they be butchered for mocking Islam – for drawing mostly inoffensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. I am sure that Churchill, if he was still alive, would have labelled the democracies’ timid response, which involved mainly apologizing for their citizens exercising their right to freedom of expression, as rewarding aggressive behaviour. Will the outcome be the same, a bloody, global war to dwarf all wars to try to regain cherished freedoms carelessly thrown away? Not if you fight the real enemy now, using the bloodless weapons that you still have at your disposal: your right to freedom of speech, your right to freedom of expression, your right to express an opinion with which others might disagree. And who is your enemy? Those of any faith, of any religion or of no faith, who would deny you your right to criticize an idea, a person or a book, in your own words or through your art, simply because the idea, the person or the book is deemed by the defenders of the status-quo to be sacred and off-limits. An Extraordinary Verse When you come across a verse like the following you are taken aback because the message it conveys is so different from what you have been reading, or will be reading, even if Allah does not mention those who don’t believe in a monistic deity e.g. Indians (Hinduism). For these unfortunates, it is still convert or die. 2:62 The believers (Muslims), the Jews, the Christians and the Sabians – whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is good, shall receive their reward from their Lord. They shall have nothing to fear they shall not grieve. Authors like Fouad Laroui ask us to forget all that other stuff. The nasty and pedantic stuff found in the Koran, what he calls, “window dressing”, and concentrate on the good things the Koran has to say about getting along and doing God’s work, such as: 2:215 They ask you (Muhammad) what they should spend. Say: “Whatever bounty you give is for the parents, the near of kin, the orphans the needy and the wayfarer. And whatever good you do, Allah is fully cognizant of it.” 2:256 There is no compulsion in religion; true guidance has become distinct from error. Thus he who disbelieves in the Devil and believes in Allah grasps the firmest handle that will never break. Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. If only that were possible! If only that were possible! Consider a revelation which contains a plea, a prayer; a somewhat amenable near-universal prayer if you ignore the last line. Pity! 2:286 Allah does not charge any soul beyond its capacity. It gets [rewarded for] what [good] it has earned, and is called to account for what [evil] it has committed. Lord, forgive us if we have forgotten or erred. Lord, do not lay on us a burden like that You laid on those before us, and do not burden us with what we cannot bear. Pardon us, forgive us and have mercy on us. You are our Protector. Give us victory over the unbelieving people. An Extraordinary Surah THE UNBELIEVERS 109 Al-Kâfirûn In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful 109:1 Say: “O unbelievers, 109:2 “I do not worship what you worship, 109:3 “Nor do you worship what I worship; 109:4 “Nor do I worship what you have worshipped, 109:5 “Nor do you worship what I worship[66], 109:6 “You have your religion and I have mine.” ------------------------ Yes, except for the punctuation, verses 109:3 and 109:5 are exactly the same. ------------------------ Unfortunately, the preceding is a Meccan surah, a surah revealed during the Prophet’s time in Mecca when he had few friends and only his say-so to convince his tribesmen that he was God's Messenger charged with delivering His final instructions for mankind, the Koran. As he became more powerful, after fleeing Mecca for Medina, he discovered the persuasive power of the sword and became a lot less tolerant and that is unfortunate.
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