It is
fashionable in the West to talk about the « compatibility of Islam and
democracy » or « Islam and secularism ». These issues suggest that by nature
Islam is clerical, and therefore not a religion, but a political current.
Consequently, the most « radical » Muslims are terrorists and vice versa. And
yet, for the last month, the Greater Middle East, with its mostly Muslim
population, is dividing between the faithful followers of this religion and the
partisans of a political system which is manipulating them.
Some of our readers misunderstood a previous chronicle
concerning the evolution of the Muslim world. I shall, therefore, clear up the
questions concerning Islam before describing as precisely as possible its
current situation.
In the first place, if you have a clear-cut idea about Islam,
this means that you know only one of its forms since the religion differs
widely between Morocco and Xinjiang. Whether on the liturgical or the legal
level, there is hardly any resemblance between the Islam of Sharjah and the
Islam of Java.
This
religion may be approached by a literal reading of the Quran, or by a contextualised reading, or even by an
appraisal of the authenticity of the current Quranic text.
During the
first four centuries of Islam, all Muslims agreed on the necessity of
interpreting the Quran, which led to the elaboration
of four distinct legal systems (Hanafite, Malekite, Shafiite and Hanbalite),
depending on the local culture. But at the end of the 10th century, noting the
expansion of this religion and fearing that it would lead to division, the
Sunni caliph forbade further interpretation. Only the Shiites continued their
investigations. Since then, Islam has adapted as best it could to the demands
of its time.
Despite
appearences, if one refuses to interpret the text, it cannot be understood as
it was first written, but only through the prism of one’s own culture. Aware
that Mahommet had lived in Arabia, the Saudis considered as given that they
would spontaneously be able to understand the meaning of the Quran, as if their society and their language had not
evolved for 1,400 years. For them, as in the 18th century for Mohammed ben
Abdel Wahhab, Mahommet had consolidated the values of nomadic tribalism. These
are the « Wahhabites ». For example, the Quran condemns
idols – thus the Wahhabites destroy statues of the antique gods, which Mahommet
never did, but which corresponds to their Bedouin culture. Similarly, in the
8th century, the Byzantine Christians had to deal with the Saudi « iconoclasts
» who destroyed, in the name of Christ, the decorations of the churches.
Nomadic tribalism does not even recognise the notion of History. The Wahhabites
destroyed the house of the prophet in Mecca, because it had become a site of
pilgrimage, and thus, according to them, a place of idolatry. But they did not
stop there. Over the last few years, they have destroyed all of the magnificent
ancient city of Mecca, since they recognise no cultural interest in what they
see as heaps of old stones. If one refers to the literal reading, one is a «
fundamentalist », and so, generally, tries to live like the companions of the
prophet. In that case, one is known as a « Salafist », because one is trying to
live like the holy ancestors (the « Salafs »). This movement, born in the 19th
century Egypt, was developed in reaction to Wahhabism and was extremely
liberal. However, it has since become very repressive. For example, most of
today’s Salafists forbid the consumption of alcohol, but some sheikhs, on the
contrary, affirm that it is lawful to drink in moderation. All of them draw
their arguments from the Quran, which
contains three apparently contradictory passages on the subject. All religions
are confronted with this impossibility of reproducing a passage that no-one can
reconstitute. For example, in the 20th century, the Christian charismatic
movement gave rise to a conflicting understanding of sexuality, according to
whether they based their case directly on the Gospels, or on the morality of
Paul’s epistles.
Over the
last few years, under the influence of the work done by the European exegetes
concerning the writing of the biblical texts, a few authors question the
authenticity of the Quranic texts. In the first place, in order to affirm his
authority, the caliph of Damascus demanded the collation of the texts
attributed to Mahommet, from which he constituted the Quran, and then ordered the burning of all the other
anthologies. However, the word « Mahommet » does not indicate a specific
person, it is a title awarded to wise men. It is therefore possible that
the Quran reproduces the words of several prophets,
which seems to be corroborated by the presence of different literary styles in
the canonical texts. Archeologists have discovered Quranic texts which are anterior to the canonical
version. There are differences, sometimes significative, between these texts
written with distinct alphabets. Indeed, the canonical Quran was written with a simplified alphabet which
was only completed later, during the 8th century. This transcription is in
itself an interpretation, and it is possible that it was sometimes mistaken.
Evidently, certain suras of the Quranreproduce older
texts used by the Christians of the region. They were not written in Arabic,
but in Aramean, and certain original words have been conserved in the
definitive text. Their contemporary reading is the object of numerous
misunderstandings. Thus – with apologies to the kamikazes of Daesh, who hope
for their reward in Paradise – the word « houri » means « white grapes », and
not « wide-eyed virgins ».
So far,
things seem simple enough – Islam is the religion of the Quran. However, the tradition gives almost equal
importance to the golden legend of the prophet, the Hadiths. These are works
written often hundreds of years later by people who could not have witnessed
the facts they present. These assertions are far more numerous than could occur
in the space of a single lifetime. They illustrate very diverse and opposing opinions.
Some of them display an appalling level of intellect and could serve to justify
anything at all. The unwarranted credit accorded to these fantastical writings
has profoundly deformed the transmission of the Quranic
message.
In pratice, all these discussions mask another, essential – if
religion is what attempts to link mankind to God, it is obviously the source of
all chicanery. Indeed, how can we pretend to know God if He is of a radically
different and superior nature than our own? And, even supposing that He
actually expressed Himself through the prophets, how can we pretend to
understand what He told us? We should note that from this perspective, the
question of the existence of God – that is to say a conscience superior to our
own – has no meaning. This is, for example, the idea supported by the Christian
saints Gregory of Nazianzus or Francis of Assisi.
Still from this perspective, people who attempt to approach God
– that is, not to apply His Law, but to help the evolution of human nature to
make it more conscious – have a tendency to share their experience and thus to
found churches.In order to function, these churches have a tendency to form
permanent staff, priests or imams. In Christianity, this function only appeared
as from the 3rd century – several generations after the death of Jesus. In all
religions, these clerics wind up enjoying an intermediary status between the
lay community and God. But none of the founders of the great religions ever
created a church or formed a clergy.
Just as Europe experienced a massive step backward with the
great invasions which destroyed the Roman Empire (the Huns and the Goths), so
the Muslim world also experienced a step backward with the Mongol invasions
(Genghis Khan and Timur). While this traumatism lasted only three centuries in
Europe, it was artificially prolonged in the Arab world by the Ottoman and
European colonisations. Although that had nothing to do with the history of
Christianity, nor that of Islam, there are enough clerics who pretend that
these steps backward are the consequences of a state of sin which has become
generalised. In order to reclaim the golden age, we only have to follow their
teaching, and not to rebuild.
Inexorably, the clerics became involved in politics and aspired
to impose their vision of things in the name of God. The result is a rivalry
between the clergy and the lay community. So, in France, once the traumatism of
the great invasion was over, and although it existed by « divine right », the
secular royalty entered into conflict with the clerical papacy. In the Arab
world, which is a minority within the Muslim world, this conflict blew up with
decolonisation and the independence movements. The nationalist leaders (Nasser,
Ben Barka) found themselves in conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood. During the
Cold War, the former were supported by the Soviets and the latter by NATO. The
dissolution of the USSR weakened the nationalist camp and led to a wave of
Islamism. Furthermore, the « Arab Spring » was a NATO operation intended to
definitively eradicate the nationalists to the profit of the Muslim
Brotherhood. The crowds who supported these movements were in no way attempting
to install democracies. On the contrary, they were persuaded that by putting
the Muslim Brotherhood in power, they would be creating an ideal society and a
new Islamic golden age. They have changed their minds since then.
The political party of the Muslim Brotherhood was reconstituted in
1951 by the British secret services on the ruins of Hassan el-Banna’s
organisation of the same name. It is the matrix of terrorism in the Muslim
world, having formed every one of the heads of the terrorist organisations,
from Oussama Ben Laden to Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi. The political party and its
armed organisations work in collaboration with the imperialist powers. There is
nothing religious about it.
It is
important to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood and their jihadist
organisations, Al-Qaïda and Daesh, are not radicalised Muslims as the West
pretends. These are political and not religious movements. The fact that they
quote passages from the Quran all day
long does not make them religious. They are no more than clerics.
The reaction against the « Arab Spring » began in June 2013 in
Egypt, where 33 million citizens demonstrated for five days against the
dictatorship of Brother Mohamed Morsi and for the re-establishment of the
constitutional order by the army. Every political party – without exception –
and all the religious organisations united around the army against the Muslim Brotherhood,
in other words for secularism and against clericalism. In the months that
followed, the head of the armies, General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who harbored
the ambition of being elected President, transmitted to Saudi Arabia documents
which had been seized at the headquarters of the Brotherhood. They attested to
the fact that certain members of the Brotherhood were preparing the overthrow
of the Seouds, from Qatar. Riyadh’s reaction was immediate – the arrest of
several members of the Brotherhood in Arabia, attacks in Qatar and
unconditional support for the election of General al-Sissi.
The situation of the Seouds was all the more complicated in that
–
not all of the Brotherhood was
implicated in the plot; since 1961, they have been the
sponsors of the Brotherhood via the Muslim World League; and that their régime was
based on Wahhabism, and therefore clerical, like the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Seouds
gave the Nayefs free reign to repress the putschists and re-establish order.
They acted as they had in 1990 during the Sururist revolt. At the time, a
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Surur, had managed to convince the
Saudi Wahhabists to take power. It took five years to put down the
rebellion [1].
This was the situation which blew up again when, in May 2017,
President Donald Trump came to Riyadh to demand that the Muslim powers end
their association with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Seouds decided this time not
only to split with the Brotherhood, but also to abandon political Islam. This
must be understood – the fact of adopting a secular position in no way changes
the fact of being fundamentalist, Salafist. The monarchy of King Salman found
itself in the same position as the French monarchy of Philippe le Bel. In order
to accompany this decisive evolution, the Seoud family council accepted, by 31
voices to 4, to prepare the abdication of King Salman, to put an end to the
Adelphic rule for succession to the throne, to skip two generations and
designate Prince Mohammed ben Salman as their next king.
From their side, Qatar and the Brotherhood immediately contacted
Turkey and Pakistan. Above all , they allied themselves with Iran, despite the
fact that they are still fighting the Revolutionary Guard on the battlefields
of Syria and Yemen, and the government of Cheikh Rohani shares their clerical
conception of Islam.
This about-face by Iran demonstrates the opposition between its
political power and its military power. It is based on the pact concluded
between Hassan el-Banna, the founder of the original Muslim Brotherhood, and
the young Ayatollah Khomeiny. This was an agreement according to which the
Brotherhood would not start a religious war between the Sunnis and the Chiites,
an agreement which was smashed by Daesh. Above all, it was based on the
ambiguities of the Revolution of 1979, at once an anti-imperialist secular
movement and a search for clerical identity, and on the evolution of the
function of the Guide Ali Khamenei, at once leader of the world Revolution and
local politician charged with maintaining the balance between the factions.
Considering the thirteen stipulations transmitted by Saudi Arabia
and Egypt to Qatar, it is unlikely that the conflict between the lay community
and the clerics will be resolved quickly. The question is whether the Western
powers will understand what is actually playing out in the « Greater Middle
East ». They are the ones who presented President Ahmadinejad as a cleric; they
according to whom Brother Morsi did not rig his election and was overthrown by
a coup d’etat; they who pretend that Libya and Syria were not attacked from the
exterior but were the theatre of a democratic revolution. If you keep lying to
yourself, you lose contact with reality.
Notes
[1] It was in this context that the head of the
secret services, Prince Turki, exfiltrated his agent Oussama Ben Laden to
Sudan.
French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the
Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations
feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and
Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
The articles
on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is cited,
their integrity is respected and they are not used for commercial purposes
(license CC BY-NC-ND).
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