ISLAM IDEOLOGIES – Conflictos Modernos

THE WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN. An apocalyptic war? First Part.

Introduction.

We have before us, face to face, the two most dangerous and extraordinary rivals that exist on Earth. They are the Jews or Israelites and the Shiite Islamists.

What gives them similarity? Both have a strong religiosity, resistant to anything, which is part of their identity and the essence of their life.

The Jews or Israelites.

The Jews are a small people, who have survived the vicissitudes of History in a truly unique and special way: persecutions, pogroms, genocides, collective exiles, attempts at religious assimilation, collective guilt received, deportations.

According to their ideology, they are the people Chosen by God to guard and carry through History the Plan of Yaweh for Humanity. They hold, treasure the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. This is where their merit, stamp and superiority are consecrated.

The Israelites have deviated from this many times, but Yahweh‘s anger has always been appeased. Among other things, because God needs them to complete his plan for men. Yahweh has been sending his warners, messengers or prophets to correct them, and he has punished them collectively with exiles, famines, nomadism, a sign that it was the people who had turned away from Him.

For the sons of Israel, God is not a Father. This is implausible. God is a “Great and Powerful Creator Lord”, with all the characteristics in superlative. He leads them along his paths, rewards and punishes them. He made them at his image and likeness; but that does not mean that God has eyes, ears, legs and hands. And, He is Loving with all his creatures.

Only Christians see and feel in God a Father, in Jesus a Brother Redeemer and in the Spirit, the Guide and Consoler of their earthly life, gently and serenely.

This belonging gives the Israelites a reassuring security. They are not proselytizers, they do not seek to spread their religion to others, even to their foreign cohabitants. The others do not belong to the people of God and have nothing to do with Salvation. This is the marrow, the central essence and the core of everything.

This gives the Israelites an unprecedented, solid and secure courage in the face of a terrifying Nuclear War. Which Israel, from the start, does not seek, nor desire. They advance in the battles, without worrying about the greater number of enemies, because Jahweh Fights at their Side.

If God wants it will happen and they will be taken by the angels to Jahweh, at the culmination of History.

The Shiite Muslims.

There is a great ideological and practical difference between Sunnism and Shiism.

The latter feels persecuted, because of the dynastic orthodoxies (it defends the rights of the Prophet’s family to lead Islam) and ideological orthodoxies (it admits fewer sources of revelation, limiting the Hadiths, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet, by their origin – who communicated them- and line of transmission), which the Shiites proclaim and defend.

A’isha, the third and most cultured of the Prophet’s wives, would have been a caliph if she were a man, and Ali, cousin, son-in-law, husband of Fatima, the favorite daughter of Mohammed, are the two main and reputable creators of Hadith for Sunnis and Shiites. They begin like this: I saw…; I heard…; I knew… and the successive transmitters are also added. This chain guarantees the traceability of the hadith.

Omar, the second caliph after Abu Bakr, worked to purify and organize the Hadiths and the texts of the Khoran.

The schism of Islam was consolidated on October 10, 680, when the troops of Yazid, the second Umayyad caliph, defeated and killed Hussein Ben Ali, grandson of Mohammed, in the battle of Kerbala, in Iraq. The total number of casualties on both sides in the decisive battle of Kerbala was seventy.

The supporters of Hussein “son of Ali” (that is, Ben Ali, pronounced in English as Bin Ali. And then we call him as we hear his name, Bin Ali), were called in Arabic shi’at Ali, in short, Shi’is.

Everyone knows, from the displays on the news, the rituals of self-flagellation that devout men practice on certain Iraqi Shiite holidays.

A powerful reason for this sense of sorrow and suffering may be the great demographic inferiority of the Shiites. 90% of Muslims are Sunnis, who occupy the Holy Places of Islam and are spread throughout the world. Of the remaining 10%, the vast majority is Shiite, more than 86%, and the rest corresponds to small fractions, such as the Alawites of Syria, the Turkish dervishes. All of the latter are “heresy within the heresy” for Sunni Muslims.

In effect, the Shiites are like an island (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, which are bordering and with a majority only in Iran and Iraq) surrounded on all sides by the ocean of the Sunnis.

(To be continued)

THE IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ISLAM. 2nd Part.

THE SECOND TRANSFORMATION

FIRST HALF VIII CENTURY TO BEGINNING XII CENTURY

The salafist Ideology.

Salafism, from «salaf«, predecessor or ancestor, is the other ideological school of the Islam. As salaf, the Muslims call Mohammed and his disciples: the first four caliphs and the next two generations. The expansion of the Islam in the 7th century assumes to the purity of his faith. Since this brought them the Allah’s favor and support.

Since then, whenever the Moslem societies are sufering an economic, political or social crisis, prominent figures will arise that will praise a return to the Islam of the Salaf. Ibn Hanbal, in the 9th century, gives a literal interpretation of the Islam, based in recovering the ancestors and in the condemnation to the ideological innovations. Ibn Taymiyya resorted equally to her in the 14th century, when the Middle East was suffering the Mongolians invasions. These would be the initiators of this current or school.

The Imam, Ahmad Bin Hanbal - Alchemiya — ***IMAM AHMED IBN HANBAL***

The salafist currents are renaissance movements of the Islam, through the return to the original faith, that of the «pious predecessors«. They reject everything that identify as «human interpretations after the revelation of the Prophet«. They are radical reformists movements, which condemn the practices of the «popular Islam« (accused of being superstitions) and great part of the ideological Moslem thought, considered as carrier of «innovations». That is to say, «creations of the human reason«, that move away from the divine message. The salafists reject in turn the influence of the Western civilization, particularly the democracy, the relativism and the laity, that «corrupt the Moslem faith«.

Was Ibn Taymiyyah the spiritual father of jihadists? - Teller Report — ***IBN TAYMIYYA***

The salafists become emancipated of the tradition founded by the 3 sunnis canonical schools. And they invent another Islam, which they affirm is founded on the Coran and the Sunna. Also they seek to imitate Mohammed in all the acts of the daily life, included the way of eating or dressing.

The wahhabism or the salafism at the political Power.

The modern salafists begin with the preaching of the Arabic ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792). Who thought that the decline of the Moslem countries opposite to the West, ensues from the oblivion of the original message of the Islam. Ibn Abdul Wahhab preaches the literal and puritanical reading of the Islam, following the Hanbalist and Ibn Taymiyya traditions. Searching for «the correct way of acting in the teachings of the pious predecessors». His sermons were not well received and was expelled from his natal locality, in the Nejd region. He went to Diriyah’s city and there formed an alliance with the sheikh Mohamed ibn Saud, founder of Saud’s House. Ibn Saud promulgated the idea of the «wahhabí» Islam as the official way of practising the Islam in the country. For his part, al-Wahhab gave the religious legitimacy to Ibn Saud in his conquest of Arabia.

muhammad-bin-abdul-wahab – Vridar — ***Ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab***

Finally, in 1902, the emir Abdul Aziz ibn Saud reconquered Riyadh. In 1924 occupied Mecca and Medina and in 1932, all the Saudi Arabia. This was giving them the control on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the Muslim Sacred Places and the opportunity to preach the wahhabism to the pilgrims from all the countries. But, the wahhabism was a minor current of the Islam until 1938, when the oil reserves were discovered in the zone. The immense incomes from this new wealth gave a great impetus to his ideological expansion for the world.

The imans near to the Saudi regime, reject the jihadist way, that tries to impose a Moslem regime by means of the violent and revolutionary action. On having considered it to be condemned to the failure. One of his great figures, from the 60s up to his death in 1999, the sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani, was declaring that «nowadays, it forms part of the good politic, to leave the politic». For al-Albani it was necessary to follow a strategy of purification of the education: on one hand, to regenerate the faith, purifying it of ideological «innovations», that remove it from his origins; and to educate the Muslims in this regenerated faith, in order that they leave his religious «corrupt» practices.

Pin on Y Chromosome — ***Sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani***

The «Jihadist salafism» or Qutbism.

This current of the school makes the Jihad one of his activity centers. The jihadism seek to accelerate the liberation of the Moslem countries of any foreign occupation. It is based on Sayyid Qutb’s ideas, a theoretic and revolutionary born within the Moslem Brothers. He was sure that the Western Society was sick with individualism and ungodliness. And the Moslem countries would suffer the same thing, if they were influenced by West. And affirmed that the actual Moslem regimes were apostates, on having applied lay laws, instead of the Sharia.

sayyid-qutb | tarnmoor — ***Sayyid Qutb***

Qutb‘s thought was one of the principal influences in the sects Muslims’ Society or Excommunnication (takfir) and Hegira (migration), arisen in 1969 in the bosom of the Moslem Brothers in Egypt, and in al-Qaeda, and his leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Ben Laden. Sayyid Qutb, was detained, judged and executed at August 29, 1966, for planning the murder of the president Nasser. After his death, the Muslims Brothers evolved towards organization and fight forms inside the existing political system.

The actual salafist jihadism is born in the 80s, during the Afghanistan’s war against the Soviet occupation. The salafists jihadists arrived from Saudi Arabia met the Moslem Brothers. It drove them to adopt the political speech of the Moslem Brothers and to restoring in it the salafistst preaching of Sayyid Qutb.

Epilogue.

The practice praised by the salafistas introduced a strong ingredient of instability and of violence, still physical, between the Muslims and, therefore, between their ideological schools. That was depending and was a function of the antagonistic contradictions (insoluble in a pacific synthesis) that in every historical stage were generating and appearing in the Umma or in located parts of her and in the borders with the hostile peoples. The practical result was that the armed way became consubstantial and intermittently, in the mean of defense and spread of the Faith for many Muslims.

And though only a minimal percentage supports her nowadays and still they are less those who apply it, this conduct, as the red of the blood, turns out to be showy before all the men. That by extension and ignorance, attribute it to the totality of the Moslem community or Umma.

In addition, the sword is an enemy of the pen and of the abstract or scientific ideas. Or, at least, it fades and suffocates them. Though Mohammed already warned it in a hadis: «The ink of the pens is sometimes more useful for the Umma that the blood of the martyrs». At about the 5th century of the Hegira, our 11th century, the ideologists, in a political decision, closed the door to the ichtihad. And the methodological Islamic approach altered. From then, it was imitated, it was repeating itself, it was abused with the compendiums. There got lost the curiosity, the scientific personal effort, the flexibility, the intercommunication of studies and results. And, finally, since it could not be less, this ideological crystallization, moved also to the Moslem arts and sciences, that started a long declining.

This way, this second Transformation of the Islam remained largely frustrated and faded. By the new outcrop of the «minor Yihad», which constituted the first Transformation of the Islam. And that turned out to be completed and profitable with the incredible extension of the Islam in the known world in something more that one century. This reappearance of the first Transformation of the Islam, which was the use of the force for the extension and the implantation of a monotheistic religion, would turn into a complex, multiple, repetitive and violent action throughout the following centuries. Creating effusions of blood and spreading stertors of childbirth for different and numerous countries. On having searched with a new birth of the first Transformation of the Islam, the solution of the inevitable crises (for being vicissitudes of the personal and colectives lives) of the Muslims with the unfaithfuls or their chiies separated brothers…

Creating a permanent civil war, with a rosary of truces, within Islam, within the Umma, between Shiites and Sunnis.

THE MUSLIM THOUGHT OF UNIVERSITY AL-AZHAR.

HOPES AND REALITIES IN SEARCH OF COEXISTENCE

Introduction.

The visit of the Pope Francis to Egypt on the past April 28 and 29 (only 27 hours in total) brought a blast of fresh air and of hope to the difficult relations of the Islam and West. That today are tense in many places of the world: for the salafists jihadists attempts in Europe and the USA; for the civil wars between shiis and sunnis in Iraq and Syria, with the military participation of Russia and West; and for the declarations of intellectuals and politicians of one and another sign and the popular manifestations, as expression of the opinions and the mental collective conditions.

A special importance and transcendency for these relations had Francis‘ visit to the ulema Ahmed al-Tayeb, rector of the Cairota university of al-Azhar. That is the principal model and ideological source for the 1400 million sunnis Muslims of the world. His relations with the Holy See were of «sine die» break from first of 2011. When al-Azhar cut the relations with the Vatican, arguing the interference of this one in the internal matters of Egypt.

The social religious internal Field.

In this context of rivalries and lacks of understanding, which was coming out the religious area, to project and affect the large social space, the president Abdelfatah al-Sisi (marshall of the AA. FF. and former Defense Secretary of the president Mursi) had requested to the ideological Moslem university, the renovation of his speech, before the increasing use of the Islam to justify the salafist terrorism. Al-Sisi also asked to al-Azhar that the ulems and muftis were controlling more the religious Fridays sermons at the midday in the mosques.

In his trip, the Pope visited and consoled the scarcely 250 thousand Catholics of the country. And he met his friend, the patriarch Teodoro II, of the orthodox Copts, whose church adds up 9 million faithful, signing a document in which the validity of the baptism was recognized mutually. The Christians already were settled in Egypt several centuries before his armed religious conquest by the Arabs in the year 641. They are collectivly reliable, discreet, industrious and pacific citizens. And because of it the radical local fanatics attack them by many ways and «train» with them for his crimes and outrages against the society.

IN EGYPT.

Nevertheless, the respected Moslem institution, by mouth of the assistant director of al-Azhar, Abbas Sluieman, closed these possibilities, even that of controlling and limiting the incendiary sermons, on the other hand, orthodox, of certain imans: «The Islam does not need self-criticism or update».

This means that all his revelation, is already transmitted in the Koran and the hadices or accepted sayings and facts (for his verified transmission) of Mohammed. And that they are already sufficiently studied and interpreted by the ulemas and muftis throughout the centuries. But this leaves the opened door to the radical salafist interpretation, so much to the violent or Qubism (that does not hold the power in any country), as to ideological and educational of the Saudi radical wahabism. That does not propagate with the armed revolution, which would inevitably overthrow a corrupt and full of privileges dynasty, but with part of the crude oil incomes, distributed to the related mosques all over the world. Radicals that it is not possible to directly condemn, in altars of the great freedom of interpretation and expression that accepts the Islam. That allows to condemn only the crimes and misbehaviors committed «as such» in his name by a small part of his faithful.

The important Words in the ecumenical Interview.

Al-Tayeb asked in general to the believers (all), «to walk together, liberating the image of both religions of false concepts and lacks of understanding». But this ecumenical message is not accepted by the majority of the clergymen (ulemas, muftíes and imans) of al-Azhar.

Ahmed al-Tayeb, for his part, indicated that «we should not ask for an explanation to the religion (his is the one that is indicated) of the crimes that commit a small group of his followers. The Islam is not a religion of terrorism, for much that a group of followers tries to manipulate the Khoranic texts and misinterpret them from the ignorance. Later, they spill blood and spread the destruction «. terrorism «.

AL-AZHAR AND ITS MOSQUE.

Also the other two monotheistic religions received his part: «If we open the door for the accusations, as we do it against the Islam, no religion, civilization or history would turn out to be innocent of the charge of violence and terrorism”.

The Employ of the Violence by the Religions.

The Jews, in their stage of conquest and settlement in the land of Canaan, the Palestine, the Promised Land to Abraham and his descent, from before the Joseph’s and his family exile in Egypt, practised the hard violence of the Ancient Age. It was the only mean to defeat and expel the pagan and idolatrous peoples of these lands. That the Jews had to conquer and occupy. To be able to guard and transmit up to the fullness of the History, the beliefs, laws and procedure «agreeable to Yehova« for his faithful. And the depraved and idolatrous essence of those peoples was the moral justification of their conquest and separation of Canaan.

JOSUE ENTERS IN JERICHO

The conquest only was looking for the creation and establishment of a «living space» for the Jews, as nation. Without this living space, the Jewish nation would never exist. And the people will live very badly in hands of the dominators of the lands where it was settled. The experience of the Kurds, after the I World War and the disappearance and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, can offer a nearby and vivid example of the hardships that the peoples without State suffer still nowadays. And one of the organizational bases of the State is the national territory. That allow them to exercise and keep their rights and sovereignty as a constituted and stable nation.

This way, the Jews never tried to impose the Judaism on any submitted or expelled people. Since only they were holding the divine promises done to Abraham and confirmed to his son Isaac and to his grandson Jacob. They were the chosen people of Yehova.

The Christians took at the beginning of their times, initiated the Evangelization and with few small, weak and dispersed communities in the Roman Empire, the way of the peace, the preaching, the sobriety and the prudence. Inspired their conduct by the mercy, as love that is received, practised and spreads out. To separate of the rites and procedure of a strong, stable and bridled in norms State, made them stay, first, as «stranges». And then, with the increase and extension of the faithful, they were defined as enemies of Rome. Up to 10 great persecutions devastated the Church or faithful congregation, not the place, up to the 4th century. From Neron to Diocleciano, passing for emperors as «eminent» as Trajano and Marco Aurelio. The meekness, resistance and loyalty of the tortured Christians were well-known and admirable. For what Diocleciano sought to prolong and refine the tortures and not to create martyrs for the worship…

The Crusades were military and religious enterprises stimulated by the Church with exhortations, prayers and indulgences, and realized by volunteers of the whole Christianity. They were seeking to recover for Her the domain over the Holy Places of Jesus Christ in Palestine, from the hands of the expansive Islam. This occupied them in the year 635 and was putting successively obstacles to the individual and collective pilgrimage of the Christians. Between 1096 and 1270, eight Crusades were carried out. In 1291, was lost the principal strategic aim of the christian Europe from 200 years behind.

ALI PASHA, ADMIRAL OF THE TURKISH FLEET IN LEPANTO.

Nevertheless, from the beginning of the military Yihad by the Arabs, in the 7th century, the Holy Original Places of the Islam in the peninsula of Arabia, always were in the political and religious hands of his faithful, well the Arabs or the Ottoman Turks.

The Church, as institution, used sporadically the violence during the modern and contemporary ages. In the inter-states conflicts arisen when she was holding and joining a political, mundane power, to his prerogatives and religious actions. This political power was concentrating and was born in the so called temporal states or pontifical lands. That, from a minimal surface of territory, the necessary to assure his functioning, independence and security, was growing and hypertrophying from the 4th century. After the Edict of Milan on the religious freedom in the Roman Empire, given in the year 311 by Constantin the Great. When the papacy managed to be an independent feudal lord or a sovereign in great part of Italy, up to its late reunification.

In 1870, after the Italian reunification and without the superfluous real estate and his problems and mundane burdens, the Church was abided to act and to live as the spiritual and governing organism that was. And here it might say that «the organ created the function«, upside-down of the known phrase of the Darwinian theory of the evolution.

From the middle of the 622 year, the Muslims employed methodically and systematicly the armed force, to fight the unfaithful peoples and, especially, to extend the lands of dar al-Islam. These are the lands where the Islam is the principal and dominant religion. And where are established and practise the Koran, the tradition of Mohammed or Sunna and the Sharia or direct application of them to the daily life of the believers and their norms.

No religion or, better, great religion, has followed and used the armed violence, in the same way and continuity that the Islam, for the imposition of their creeds and morals all over the world. And it is not that other religions have not used the violence in his defense or in the active pursuit of the unfaithful persons or «different» along his history. But this has never been as a part of his essence and nature, as “instrument of redemption» of the men, as another «pillar» of their basic duties. Confirmed this throughout the centuries, though intermittently, by the ulemas or ideologists, the muftis or jurists and the imans or conductors of the Salat or daily prayers and direct preachers of the people.