Spiritual Blogs

Too often warring groups comes in the name of Islam. Alshabaab, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Taliban, Houthi, needless to keep naming. Too often there are wars where there are muslims. Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya etc. So apparently, Islam is a war mongering religion. All this is when you peruse it carelessly. When you close exermine more deeply, you find another common denominator. In all these places where there are wars, and Muslims are there, they are all along the Saharan desert. When you move slightly northwards, to place like Turkey and Iran, you find lesser war mongering despite them being majority muslims. Same applies to Indonesia. So is it Islam or is it deserts that is prone to wars? The answer is, it is hostile deserts that creates war mongerings. Islam is mostly a beautifull religion. Latter, we will see the reason why dessert inhabitants prefer Islam.

During conflicts, media often over-highlights religion in a misleading way. A good example is resent events around the beautiful Al Aqsa Mosque. Just because war mongering was a retaliation to the misbehaviour around the Mosque makes the media propaganda present it as if it is a religious war. In reality, the major problem is the question of whether the jews or the Palestinians should own and control the area around the Mosque. Israel is trespassing into the Palestinian Teritory, that is the point. That the Mosque is there only dramatize Israel's mis-behaviour. Convince them that the mosque is built in another person's territory and I bet that they will surrender! So it is not more about Mosque. It is mainly about territory.

Islam is good because it recognized other regions other than Arabia as holy. Notably Jerusalem. It is also not a selfish, tribal religion. It doesn't venerate Arabs as special 'God's people'. This is notable because that was the norm of that time. Religions were an ugly contests about which tribe had the best god! One of them is Judaism, which more of belong to BCs!  But Jerusalem is remarkable! Beleiving that God appeared to Isaac in Jerusalem, and a temple was once there, they honoured Allah (God of Abraham, as prifered by Jews and Christians) by rebuilding the 'temple' there, which they preferred to call it 'Mosque'. So Al Aqsa is actually an honour that Muslims also shows to Jews by recognizing the holiness of their city and rebuilding what, according to them, is 'the temple that was once there' where Abraham worshiped.  (Ironically, it is Israelis that desecrates the place by throwing tear-gasses to people who are, according to them, honnoring the God of Israel in 'their own holy place'!)

Before Islam, Arabia was babaric, with thousands of competing, tribal gods. Islam tought them that it is not the case that each tribe has its own god. Rather, there is only one God and all tribes are equal before God. This brought unity and peace in Arabia, a fleat that had never been achieved! Christianity was not able to gain inroads in Arabia because of its unrealistic 'turn the other cheek' doctrine. Every christian preaches it but no one actually practice it! If a person steal their house, Christians  don't give them their land as well (otherwise there would be very cheap way for thieves to get rich near Christians!). They report it to Police. The police, of course goes and sin, perhaps toturing the 'criminal', and then Christians boasts that 'they don't harm anyone or revenge'! They are like Jezebels who prifer to use the husband to do evil and thinks she is without guilt. But how about when there are no institutions, no governments, no judiciary, no presidents etc What will a Christian do to thieves? So you see that Christianity can't erect a civilization out from pure barbarians! That is why Paul etc evengelized only in the then more civilized world of Rome and neglected Arabia!

Some say that Islam was spread by sword just as Christianity was spread by a gun. None of these statements are true. This stems from people who don't understand government. You cannot conquere solely by sword. You need a huge loyal army. However, armies are derived from the very population of people. To conquere, you need a lot of people to support you. So how did Muslims became the overwhelming majority, say in Arabia, and thus enabling them to subdue others? The answer is that Islam was spread peacefully. Once it became the dorminant religion was it able to exercise authority over other smaller religions. Arabs never displaced other smaller tribes. Such a method never leads to permanent and/or large scale conquering as it never increase your army. Arabs instead 'Arabized' other tribes. To take palestine, for instance, Arabs begun by peacefully spreading their culture and religion. Once the Palestinians  (first Jews) begun to see themselves as 'Arabs', then de facto, Palestine automatically became an Arab territory even without any war! Wars plaid far lesser role in the conquests. You see the same thing in Modern times, but more centered in Iran rather than Arabia. Because Iran is Shia Islam, every shia around the world recognizes, in some way, the authority of Ayatollahs in Iran. This makes Iran a significantly powerfull country even without having such a powerfull army! 

Iran is often falsely accused for 'supporting and funding terorists'. It is not understood that part of the faith in shia Islam is that there is only one leader in the Islamic world, a true descendant of Muhammad. This is the reason why Sunni governments fear shias. Obviously a shia majority will ultimately and automatically undermine the sovereignty of a country! It happened in Iraq, to the horror of US and Israel. This shows that US did not well understand shia when it lead to topling of Saddam. A shia government in Iraq makes Iraq a de facto, Iran!! Saddam understood this one very well, and resisted shia. This, in west, is demonized as 'restricting religion'. But as you can now see, religion in middle east means something different than it means in US. The latter method of governance cannot work in middle east, based solely on what majority of people in middle east believe. 

We erroneously condemn Muslims for endorsing wars because we think that secularism is a default state of human governance when infact, anarchy is the default! An American cannot, for instance, see that he too endorses war but opts to engrave it in a secular constitution. He says 'it is okay to do all wars, including using nukes, as long as you are not doing it in the name of religion, but if you throw a stone in the name of Islam, then you are a terorist doing a crime against humanity'! You wonder is it murder that we were trying to demonize or what?

Neither is dictatorship what immediately comes out from anarchy in the first step of government formation. The fact that US thinks that it is the first democracy in the world shows that US don't understand governments and should never be trying to topple governments. It should rather be getting educated on what government and democracy is! A constitution like that of US has one major weakness, and is the reason behind formation of vague cabals and deep state. While it provides procedures for establishing legitimate leaders, it does not clearly say how to form a legitimate army and other institutions. In other words, the constitution deceptively unroots the country from its history. It is a story that starts in the mid way with some entities already presumed to be there but whose authority is unjustifiable by the same constitution! Consequently, the constitution cannot erect a government from pure anarchy. It may be good in transforming a dictatorship into a democracy hence the erroneous  views like 'US is the first democracy'. On the other hand Islamic and other theocratic constitutions can do this, hence the earliest governments were theocracies. But I don't insist that it is only a theocracy that can do this. I only insist that naive secularism cannot do it.

Given a total anarchy, how do group of fighters completely subdue others to form what it looks like an army of a country? Even more importantly, having subdued all the others, in what sense do this army a legitimate body that should implement. The answer is that dictatorship can never form out from a state of no prior government! What we will have is more and more anargy as each tiny groups tries in vain to beat others into submission! The dorminant army rises only when it manages to recruit more and more fighters. Therefore the overwhelming majority automatically win, hence a democracy. That the west don't understand this is highlighted by the fact that it drags the world into excessively arming the millitary so that the millitary draws its power from the superiority of weapons rather than the masses! To the west, the question of legitimacy of armies is cowardly excluded from the constitution.

Thus Islam gained power by making majority of people believe that it was true, just, charitable and merciful and above all, it doesn't discriminate based on one's ethnicity or ancestry. Same cannot be said of Judaism which could not take off from the Jerusalem cocoon. Hence jews never concurred anything significantly bigger than Jerusalem's  compound, despite its military genius! If you are not an Israelite, one wonders how it is that you can be interested with Judaism! In Jewish temple, there is an outer place for gentils and an inner, holier place preserved solely for jews. Mosques have no such partitioning. One's holiness is not determined by one's ancestry but by how much you obey God. Of what use is a murderous, Abraham's descendant? This scored a couple of points above Judaism.

Judaism theocracy can only be an apartheid! Establishing it in Jerusalem will mean that if you are not a jew, there are places that you cannot ente in the town! Of course such a religion asJudaism cannot 'explode' and conquere the whole world, like they dream! Instead it imploded and it was flattened to the ground. But thanks to British folly. They sought to revive an ancient, barbaric culture that Romans, Greeks, Muslims and early Christians laboured hard to destroy it!!