Faith and Madness Part 2:Who of Us is a True Party of Holy Wars؟ By Saeed M. Adnan

00:49 AM June, 12 2017

Sudanese Online
سعيد محمد عدنان-
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– London – U.K.


The answer will of course be: not me, maybe you – but not me, right؟
But to the surprise of the reader, the answer will not come that easy, as most of us are true parties to holy wars, but not knowing it.
The believer knows well that true belief would make one doubtful if one allows one’s conscience to guide, or remains a dissembler, led by one’s rapacity and vanity.
In our Islamic morality, as well as those ethos endowed upon the people of the book, there is nothing more perverse than dissemblance.
Maybe, it is for the better if you would test yourself, remembering the ethos in Islam: “one who keeps a tight grip on virtue is like a tight grabber of a glowing ember.”
Have you at all examined the legislature justifying life taking or stoning of a human, the evilest deed of human beings, that you saw happening in the name of Islam؟ Do you approve or tolerate it before sifting the ethical high grounds of God’s clear verses in Islam؟ These verses should basically not stand off His ordinances interdicting the taking of a life؟ Do you find in God’s clear directions a licence granting life taking in other than the state of self-defence or defending the faith (defending practising it, not defending making others practise it, for that is political requiring social agreement to listen to you)؟ Or do you find the Blood Right licence that God granted to the close relatives of the victim to avenge his or her killing on the killer, and not on one of his family or community, is none but a limitation that old blood should not prevail (as used to be common place amongst the Old Arab society) verse 2, 179, “In the Law of Equality there is a saving of Life to you, O ye men of understanding; that ye may restrain yourselves” as He so ordained؟
Have you ever investigated if taking the life of an apostate, taking that of an adulterer, or stoning one, taking that of a non-believer, or taking that of a non-warring murderer (with no licence from God by the law of equity), if taking life in all these cases is allowable؟ Do you realise via your inaccuracy to allow taking a life without a Godly clear ordinance, even within other ordinances –you would be justifying extremists’ terror, while remain in denial of your own depiction (as they probably do too), and that you are a full and true party to these holy wars؟
In the present era, the era of peace talks, logical debates in integrating economic theories to improve living standards of humanity and fairness in distribution, of the lifting of misery and servitude, in the era of fighting diseases, plagues and malnutrition. In the era of scientific advancement to decipher the secrets leading to the saving of the ecology and how to resolve its deterioration, protect it and induce in it sustainability; in the ongoing resolutions for reconciliation and peace, justice and rationale in dispute resolutions, in the dawn of honouring humans via the abolishment and incrimination of slavery practices and persecution of faith or creed, and in honouring out of abuse, of childhood, the week, the ill, the old, the disabled, captives and the vulnerable.
In this era, the horns and drums of the holy wars were muffled, yes muffled, but still humming.
Other soundings of horns and drums were more than humming, in fact they remained loud, but are beyond the pale
In this era, clouds of dark doom began to dissipate, well after man filled his table with fables of his evil and insanity from invasions, lootings, slavery, atomic exterminations and genocide; and sparkles of hope began to glitter, as humanity engaged in identifying and delimiting evil of their deeds, which surpassed evil ever known. Yet no glimpse of hope was there to bring an end to it, for its fuel was the greed of man. That achievement of controlling that greed and remaining committed to observe and control it was the biggest victory for the human aspirations towards horizons of plentiful of peaceful co-existence, in the era of the enlightenment philosophical awakening, whose most distinguished of its philosophers was Emmanuel Kant. He defined the delimitation of Politics and Ethics and the conditions of ever pairing them together. In that era, the resolution of conflicts gave birth to reality of achieving a global community in United Nations, the Human Rights Resolutions, the International Court of Justice and the drawing of borders of nations.
Whiffs of winds of the Holy War, which is considered the most successful tool for authoritarianism, never ceased to stealthily blow in the absence of, or from behind, the beliefs in heavenly religions. That is when high priests and clerics, with that acquired power, forced their authority over the true and free believers, while passing rulers with themselves as true partners; that is whence they would lend might to gusts and hurricanes, enslaving man and idolizing the ruler. Repeatedly, the whim for holy wars would wake up to every weakening in the conscience and every setback in the beliefs. It wakes up of its dormancy in its incubation in the lust of the heart of humans, whom God described as impatient [verse 70/20: “Truly man was created impatient”] thence it blows and gather might with a continued deterioration of the religious Message.
The few were still humming, when the holy war gusts flared and strengthened, towering its might, not because of weakness in the beliefs, but for the deformation out of the vanity in the joy of victory and the taste of spoils, from time to time, as dubbed ‘The Islamic invasions’, during the Umayyads the Abbasids, and later in the Ottoman era.
For despite the Samarqand case when a Jew raised his plea before the court against the invasion of the Muslims to Samarqand, to Islamize them, short of God’s message [verse 16/ 125 ‘Call for thy Lord with wisdom and good preaching, and argue with them amicably’], the judge passed a decree that the Islamic army leave Samarqand and start from the beginning to invite its people to Islam by preaching and negotiation.
Despite that exclusive precedent, the grace of the Message never curbed the Muslims urge to invade, until they reached the apex of the grandeur of power in the invasion of Andalusia. They then began to harvest the fruits of their mistakes when they executed the apostates from Cordoba (dubbed by the Christians ‘the Martyrs of Cordoba’) via their innovation of ‘Ridda (apostacy): meaning deserting Islam’, based on a myth that leaving Islam was a Ridda punishable by death, which had never been ordained by God. They misread it from the Ridda Wars staged by Khalifa Abu Bakr Al Siddiq when following the death of Prophet Mohammed, Medina apostates staged a rebellion against the State by trying to forcefully reclaim women who became Muslims and were thus not allowed to marry nonbelievers, or stay with apostates, to ransack the State’s wealth or to defy paying their as citizens. So, their legislators wrongly legalised killing of apostates, whose destiny is in the hands of God alone, [verse 88/25, 26 ‘For to Us will be their Return (25) Then it will be for Us to call them to account (26)’]. Thus, they rendered themselves wild beasts nurturing on blood and abuse, only to attain acceptance of what such beastly behaviours would bring, and to assume an authority that is not theirs, ending up making it the igniter of a war that kicked them out of Andalusia and provided a symbol for the celebrations till this day of kicking out the Muslim coloniser. That shows the Muslims reason of being proud to invade, and to accrue the prosperity they achieved in Andalusia as a best example, or during the Ottoman Kalifate, was not in pursuit of spreading Islam. And God only knows who converted to Islam or who willingly paid the tribute, whether he did any of that to his belief or by coercion؟ As we know, only God knows.
This way the elation was a worldly one, and in these foreign lands Islam spread wider and stronger in recent times, through convincing and providing the good example, more than via the sword during the earlier Islamic rule, which had been doctored by the enemies of Islam for Muslims to kill one another via sedition.
It is the same ailment that the people of the book suffered before, like in Northern Ireland, and by the Lord Army in Uganda.
But there was a mistake from the people of the book.
It was when Crusaders gathered to stage a holy war at Jerusalem, whence Christianity was freely practised and Islam posed no cause for worry. Their aims materialised when these knights took the matter in their hands, forsaking allegiance to the Pope, and indulged in slaughtering and looting, and wreaked havoc, until the Pope forsook them, and that is according to the account of the Christians themselves.
Faiths’ reconciliations eventually, amongst other disputes resolutions, took place, and in the present era extruded from global convictions reached.
We referred to some of the winds of holy warring sentiment were quiet, others were noisy, but in secrecy. The Crusades were the one that was noisy and was never cured by faiths reconciliation, as the knights of the Crusades had personal aims, which they spewed venom of their own, different to those of their creed. The most dangerous precipitate are the neo-evangelicals, mushrooming out of the evangelicals who ‘pilgrimaged’ from Europe to the New Land when America was discovered, and formed the largest quagmire for the crusade advocates.
Similar ailments began to disease the wills of some Islamic and Jewish believers with bloodthirsty dogma, either through aggression, being the surest way to defend (as in the case of Muslims), causing extremism and deviation from true regular Islam, to awaken the evils of vengeance rather than submitting to God’s Will. Another reflex was to the hijacking of the strategy behind it to make use of rather than totally abandoning it (like in the case of Jews), which had most clearly been utilised when America switched from discriminating against the Jews to building a pact with them during the infamous President Truman, opening the door for the thriving of political Zionism in place of the pure Judaism. That was copied by the advocates of the Islamic Awakening Group, like those of the Salvation Regime in Sudan, who stole the wealth of Sudan utilizing it for holy wars and empowerment programs to its advocates, or what is known philosophically as ruling via thieving (kleptocracy).
This new strategy split an educated religious organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, formed in the aftermath of the deterioration of the Islamic Empires, particularly the Ottoman one, and allied with the Free Officers of Egypt to end the reign of King Farooq, the last of the Ottoman Kalifate there, as a religious reform. The split was caused by some Muslim Brothers indulging in mixing religion with politics, and were rebuffed by the president, Nasser, whom they trusted, that they were not to interfere. But that was over when Sayed Qutb, a prominent Muslim Brothers scholar rebelled, and it landed him in jail. He also clashed with the Muslim Brothers’ leader, Sheikh Hassan El Hudeibi, who stuck to the charitable role, and, with the help of his lawyer son Mamoon, printed his conviction in a book titled ‘Preachers Not Judges’. Sayed Qutb massed followers to the extremism he preached, and the split group formed the 1965 Conference Organisation, which refused to support Nasser on his war against Israel. But at the catastrophe of the 1967 defeat and when the expansion of Israel was realised, with the heating up of the vision as a conspiracy by the evangelicals in the South of Sudan, a holy war was covertly intended and the Qutbians grouped in Jihadi factions.
Till now, the voices of all the rational religious and non-religious groups, who rejected politicising religion, is the most heard, against the holy intimidation and the misrepresentation of God’s ordinances, which led to it. Thus, we find a lot of Muslims showing approval of the nine eleven attacks. In politics, Bush and Blair, in attacking Iraq, were certainly not at an arm’s length of getting tarnished with a holy war gung ho, but that gives no excuse to the true Muslim believer to assume so accordingly. For the Palestinian-Israeli disputes, for that who studied the history of reasons behind them, were political, nothing more nothing less, naturally resulting in settling the minorities exposed by the dismantling of the empires. It was a huge and a challenging task, but plausible no doubt.
Those who want justice and prevalence of virtue, must realise that achievement from the enlightenment era.
Today, in retrospect to the terrorism carried out by ISIS that worried the Western countries, that many of the culprits were citizens of their own, and in taking the latest era of stable governance in the USA and the UK, that is, when David Cameron of the UK and Obama of the US were in charge, I was irritated by the two leaders starting only by deploring ISIS and threatening to get them, and no sooner than resuming their own Summer holidays. When the media investigated why, the answer was the leaders were still in meeting and keeping good touch with what was happening.
That exposed to me then how underestimated that imminent danger was by those states, who left the ultimate solution to force and war, which exactly how and in which manner they were shepherded to it by those extremists. The latter, and to the irony of destiny, gained more strength and might via the weaponry these nations spilt to ignite these wars by proxy, and magic turned against the magician, as they say.
Rather than contemplate whether any of the two leaders were pro politicisation of faith, I would presume them, like most of us, did not get alarmed or bothered like most moderates. There, those extremists found their opportunity to brainwash via the construing of the faith, which is not objected to by the moderates as they did not vigilantly care.
I also watched on British TV an episode of ‘Hard Talk’ by Stephen Sackur, hosting the Egyptian Coptic Cardinal “Angles”, in which a dialogue was held over ISIS and the Jihadi war in Egypt. The Cardinal was careful and very specific in calling things with their names. I was surprised at Sackur, who, while I warmly applaud his high rationale and strong reasoning, that, in the slime of this deceptive subject, he was struggling in his Christian enthusiasm, persisted in asking the Cardinal how they accepted to deal with a coup d’état government like that of President Sisi while it was against democracy that the Cardinal believed in؟ Missing out that, democracy that does not rise up on and by its legitimate democratic institutions does not qualify for a democracy. The Cardinal explained to him that a coup d’état is taking power by the army and handing it over to the army, yet Sisi did not do that: a lesson from a cardinal to a renowned reporter. Why wouldn’t the Pope call for a move to save the Christians, and the Pope was the same person who advised Blair, the ex-premier of Britain, not to indulge in a war with Iraq lest the healing wounds of the last Crusades be disturbed as it is yet tender؟
In short, Sackur was worked up in being protective to the Christians, or alternatively have them relocated to the West to be protected, which reminded me how the Coptics in Sudan were encouraged to seek asylum in the West, basing their argument on religious persecution while they were enjoying amicable relationships with their Muslim counterparts. Same lesson is what befell the Christians or Pagans of South Sudan, and the Coptics, under political/ religious persecution, same as what befell the Muslims opposing the politicisation of Islam.
This way it is clear how easy it is to fall into the dogma of political-religious disputes out of jealousy of your religion. Unless you diligently be aware religion is only a worshiping of God and an observing of His high moral axioms and not the practising of rituals and tribal stand offs, you are bound to find yourself a true party to the Holy Wars.
And despite all what is said, if ISIS met you, they would spill your blood, as that partnership of yours is not seen by them, equally as it is not seen by you either; and whoever wants to try that himself, should go to them in person: there, unless you fight with them and do the taboo they do, you will be condemned to be killed.
Similarly, if the extremists from other faiths met you, you would have your blood spilt, as they wouldn’t know you were a partner, because you had not denied it and you remained not knowing it.

This essay is published in Arabic in the following link:
http://sudaneseonline.com/board/7/msg/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a5%d9%...9%8a-1496883160.html

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