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A world ruled by kafirs


Today is the one-year anniversary of the Hamas pogrom against Israel.

Yesterday, cities around the world rang with eliminationist rhetoric against Israel, and Jews more broadly. Language which many of us thought had perished in the charnel houses of Auschwitz and Sobibor has come roaring back to life in London, Paris, Berlin, New York City. "Zionist" is nothing but an acceptable substitute for anti-Jewish slurs, which I will not repeat here, much as I wouldn't repeat slurs against Black people. (The irony being that some Black people, here and abroad, are using those anti-Jewish slurs.)

Arab Muslims bemoan that the world is ruled by "kafirs". They bemoan that once they were the most advanced, the most powerful civilization, and are now living in a world ruled by Christians and, as they see it, Jews pulling the invisible strings.

What is a "kafir"? From Wikipedia:
Kafir (Arabic: كَافِر, romanized: kāfir; plural: كَافِرُون kāfirūn, كُفَّار kuffār, or كَفَرَة kafara; feminine: كَافِرَة kāfira; feminine plural: كَافِرَات kāfirāt or كَوَافِر kawāfir) is an Arabic term in Islam which refers to a person who disbelieves the God in Islam, denies his authority, rejects the tenets of Islam, or simply is not a Muslim—one who does not believe in the guidance of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.[1][2][3][4][5]
"Well, that's interesting, LL. Where is this going?"

I came across this video a few weeks ago. It was a slap in the face of awakening.

Then, I came across this video:



I am a long-time reader of Bernard Lewis and his dissections of Islam's fall into insularity and radicalization. These two videos are, really, a distillation of his main theses. When Muslim scholars declared the "closing of the gates of ijtihad", Islam's Golden Age came to a halt. This term describes the end of debate of what Islam means, and that scholars should only interpret, apply, and explain the doctrines already decided upon. Of course, when one closes debate on the religion which forms the basis of society, it's no surprise that the same will come to apply to other areas of cultural life. It is no surprise that the explosion of Western science and knowledge came about precisely when the Catholic Church's domination began to be questioned, first in the Italian Renaissance, and then more broadly with Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg's cathedral. Western Christianity no longer had a central authority which applied to all Christians. This fracturing allowed for the rapid advance of science, with there being no longer any fear of an all-powerful Church. Galileo's persecution was a last gasp from Rome. His discoveries had already spread far too much for the popes to suppress.

At the same time that the West began its rapid ascent, it was facing off against the Muslim Ottoman Empire. For a few decades, it seemed as if the conquerors of the Second Rome would also sweep Europe into its fold. I welcome you to read about the two sieges of Vienna to see how the Sultans on the Bosphorus failed to push further into Europe than the Balkans. But what I find interesting about the very interesting Ottomans is that unlike the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, that of the Ottomans didn't take the new learning coming out of Europe and build on it. Much like the Chinese, they felt they had everything they needed for an ordered society, and had no desire to import infidel learning. Therefore, by the 18th century it began to contract, and became what came to be known as the "Sick Man of Europe".

Of course, the West is far from perfect. And it has its own analogues to the Taliban and Saudi Wahhabism. But, these forces are being fought with various degrees of success. And, by and large, Western democratic governments aren't feeding their people an ideology that their troubles are being caused by outsiders seeking to infect them with unnatural beliefs. Those that are—Russia and Hungary come to mind—are quickly unraveling. But look at any Arab television station, and the culprit for Arab impotence is always the Christian West and its Jewish puppetmasters. There is never any introspection which leads, like the videos above, to an internal reckoning. Allah, like Christ among the Christian fundamentalists, is the truth, the way, and the light, and one needs nothing else.

However, Islam does have something which is being ignored by its adherents. It has a variant of the Christian saying that "God helps those who help themselves." "Indeed Allah will not change the conditions of the people until they change what is in themselves." (Quran, 13:11) That one verse could be the genesis of a much-needed Muslim Reformation. And it's implicit in the analyses offered above. The call for a thorough and complete self-examination is there. Instead, the results of any such examination lead to the belief—also common among fundamentalists of all religions—that only a return to a "pure" belief will save them.

Therefore, Arabs, and Muslims more generally, remain mired in arguing over intricacies of theology, rather than contributing to a global, Western-led scientific culture. Their world is ruled by kafirs who know not God. Perhaps God is trying to tell them something.

Post-script

As if to prove my point that Islam at large engage in no self-reflection: the latest tweet from darling of the left, Mehdi Hasan:


This isn't as bad as saying that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. But it's close. Islam can never be at fault. Any irruption has to be the fault of others. Of kafirs.

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