Who should run the world?

An article by Obaid Omer, whom I assume to be a “moderate Muslim,” writes rather bravely in Quillette that the problem we face with Islamic extremism is not “Islamism” but Islam itself.

His point is that the things that threaten the Western way of life from the Islamists are not additions to Islam, but are intrinsic to the religion itself. What we see in Isis is precisely what we would have seen during the early spread of the Muslim Empire in the eighth century. Consequently (as one commenter says) any “reform” of Islam would be likely to direct more of its adherents into paths of violent extremism rather than the reverse. Omer writes:

“Islamism” is a weasel word. It allows apologists to downplay the effects of Islamic teaching and practice. Theocratic governments like those in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan are not “Islamist.” They are Islamic. They pass laws and institute policies that conform to Islamic teaching.

Since I have just read Robert Spencer’s critical biography of Muhammad, analysing primarily the mutually contradictory hadith of the ninth century and later, which built up the “standard narrative” of the prophet’s life, I have to agree. The Muhammad of that accepted narrative would fit easily as a leader of Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah, simply because those organisations set out to emulate that “most perfect of men” in every detail.

The ironic thing is that the dubious provenance of the hadith and the lack of any good seventh century sources cast doubt on the very existence of Muhammad, at least that of the traditional narrative. The hadith seem to have projected back the ideals of ruthless Arab warlords, motivated by a militant anti-Trinitarian and antisemitic monotheism, on to an obscure fighter or prophet figure a couple of centuries earlier (Trinitarianism was the religion of their western Byzantine adversaries, and the Jews their rivals in the Levant – the Zoroastrians to the east seem to have been defined as “pagan” despite seeing themselves as monotheistic). Yet from these foundational traditions of the Prophet come “controversial” teachings like child marriage, sex-slavery, torture of unbelievers and the genocide of all Jews before the Last Judgement can occur.

Omer points out the obvious fact that most Muslims are peace-loving people who want to get on with their lives without conflict. This is, of course true. For myself I remember fondly Abdul Basit, the excellent Pakistani registrar who taught me surgery in my pre-registration year, and the Marconi engineer who joked about the discussions he had with a Christian friend of mine about the superiority of his own religion. I should also add that many of the attendees of the local mosque came to our GP surgery because, being a Christian practice we cared about spiritual matters, and were never antagonistic.

But the problem is that, underlying this daily “rubbing along” is the teaching of the mosque, where (if the imam is doing his job) the idle are admonished to return to the ways of Allah in the Qu’ran and the example of the Prophet in the hadith. As Omer reminds us:

Islamic doctrine separates the world into the House of Islam, Dar al Islam, and the House of War, Dar al Harb. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamic terrorist groups are fighting to expand the reach of Dar al Islam, as mandated by the Quran. We should fight them on the basis of their actions and understand that what motivates those actions is a literal reading of Islamic scripture—not muddy the waters by conflating Islam with Islamism.

How this works out in the Muslim population, until Sharia Law takes over, is in acquiescence to stress-reducing principles like never disadvantaging a brother Muslim over a kaffir (hence much of the denial by Muslim communities here of the grooming gang problem and the irrational defence of extremists committing atrocities). A majority of Muslims would like to see their countries submitting to Islam as a matter of deep-held principle, even though in most countries (Gaza being one exception) few approve of suicide bombings. So it is not surprising that they would vote for any Muslim election candidate, however corrupt or incompetent, rather than for the Methodist councillor with a fantastic track record on improving local services. “Equality under the law” is not an Islamic principle.

There is a principle dating back, supposedly, to Muhammad’s early Medina residency, by which Muslims fleeing adverse circumstances, aka refugees (in this case from Mecca) will accept refuge in a foreign place, and then use any and every means to Islamise it if they become numerous enough. This illustrates how, unlike Christianity, Islam’s very beginning had to do with wielding physical power to impose a theocratic regime.

I found some of the comments under the article interesting, in that some liberally-minded readers took it as a warning not only against the imposition of Islam, but of all religious worldviews. Patrick Wylie wrote:

It’s odd, social justice fundamentalists gleefully reject obsolete notions of Christian fundamentalists regarding homosexuality and patriarchy, yet, if you criticize these same ideas in Islam, you are “Islamophobic.” Please God/Allah/DNC, eviscerate all fundamentalisms!

He was responding to Omer’s penultimate paragraph:

The term “Islamist” deflects from the fact that violent extremists have goals that are Islamic. The problem here is not a subset of Islamic thought, but the fundamentals of Islam itself. Uganda recently passed laws outlawing homosexuality. This illiberal and inhumane authoritarianism was not ascribed to “Christianism,” but to the influence of evangelical Christianity.

Another commenter, VJM, draws a parallel with the Christian supporters of American MAGA movement:

If Islamism means the ideology that Islam should have dominion over the world and that everyone should either be Muslim and submit to God (meaning the Koran) or not be Muslim but submit to Muslim rule and that there be a union of political and religious power, then Islam is Islamist as it began with the complete union of political and religious power. Yet, the distinction is still useful, much as the distinction between fundamental Christian and Christian Nationalist in the USA is useful. One is merely fundamentalist, the other wants the state to enforce that fundamentalism.

By this, one assumes he or she means the desire to control abortion or other ethical issues: no US Christian Nationalist has the ambition to enforce universal baptism on pain of death or paying the jizyah. Steve Briggs, a “moderate Christian,” pushes back on such Christian Nationalism thus:

I’ve always thought that Christianity started out as a minority religion and didn’t (originally) mandate government laws (“render unto Caesar…” etc.). (Obviously, Middle Ages Europe had a strong Christian influence on government.) Judaism and Islam both started out explicitly as theocracies and it seems that governmental enforcement of personal behavior (i.e. sharia law) is fundamental to their origins. Contemporary Jews (except for a very small minority of extremists) have abandoned their theocratic origins. Can Islam do the same?

It seems to me that all of these responders have missed a rather uncomfortable truth: there can be no functioning society without some universal ideology being agreed, and/or imposed, within it. The question is which one produces the most human flourishing whilst remaining stable. We have experienced, and are experiencing, the calamitous results of the illusion that there can be a society that tolerates, and lives by, all views equally and simultaneously. We have termed it “multiculturalism” and have found it to mean both decadence (a la Brave New World) and fear not only of militant factions such as Islamism, but of the totalitarianism of the all-inclusive system itself (a la 1984). Interestingly Steve Briggs’s example of Israel has gravitated back towards its Abrahamic and Mosaic roots since the October 7 massacre.

Uganda’s outlawing homosexuality may be illiberal and inhumane, but it is a reaction to the toleration of sexual deviation rapidly burgeoning, in the liberal secular West, into deliberately transgressive public perversion, the sexual exploitation of children, the destruction of art and culture, and even population decline. My guess is that Ugandans have asked themselves how it is possible to prevent that collapse, other than through prescriptive control.

Christianity, it is true, spent its first centuries as a minority faith – though never without a public voice, as I explored here. But once it was successful enough to renovate the culture, were Christian rulers going to continue to endorse laws encouraging infanticide, chattel slavery, public corruption and so on? I’m fully aware that changes to these things were slow, messy and incomplete, but given that they reflected the true teaching of Jesus, they were bound to come eventually as, and only as, Christianity was healthy and holistic. Trying to keep Christianity out of “society” by pietistic non-engagement simply abandons our fellow-citizens – and our children – to some other, and arguably inferior, ideology.

If our nation is not “theocratically Christian” in the way that we’ve seen in its history up to recently, then it will surely be theocratically something else, whether worshipping Allah, Priapus or – most demonic of all – the State. I would suggest that Christianity, almost alone, has a clear ethical vision that includes within it the principles of moderate toleration which can allow the freedom of thought and conscience we knew hitherto, yet control serious vices, without suppressing its opponents by dhimmi status to keep the peace.

If that’s not the case, then I am pretty certain that is no other ideology that has cracked the problem any better.