Topic started by VOI- admirer (@ ip1-229.clgrab01g01.dialup.ca.telus.com) on Sat Nov 8 00:22:52 EST 2003.
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Theology of Islam
Islam uses the Arabic language instead of Hebrew or Greek, but says the same things as the older revealed religions. Its only point of departure is that it abrogates the earlier revelations, and subordinates the earlier prophets to the “latest and the last”.
Islam has hijacked Allah from the pantheon of the pre-Islamic Arabs and turned him into a jealous God who tolerates no “other gods”. Allăh of Islam is no more than a reincarnation of Jehovah, the Judaic and the Christian God in the Bible.
The prophet of Islam, Muhammad, moulds himself, consciously and progressively, in the image of Moses. In fact, his very name, Nabî, has been taken from the Hebrew Lexicon.
Allăh now speaks only through the mouth of Muhammad. That is the Qur’ăn, or the Book (Kităb). Here also the word of God is borrowed, by and large, from the Bible. The only difference is that the Qur’ăn lacks the literary merit and narrative coherence of the earlier scripture. It is a loose bundle of vehement utterances, without any chronological or thematic order, and has to be understood with the help of laborious, very often speculative, commentaries.
Again, Allăh acts in the life-style of Muhammad. That is the Sunnah of the Prophet. This divine pattern of human conduct knows all the answers. No pious Muslim has to use his own mental faculties or devise his own individual course of action. It is all laid down for him, from birth to death, and even beyond. As the theologians of Islam say, Muslims should not use their aql (reason); all they need is naql (imitation of the Prophet).
The covenant, MiSăq, into which Allăh enters with the newly chosen people, the Ummatu Muhammadî, commands them to worship him alone and convert or kill or enslave those who worship other gods. Allăh’s earlier covenants with the Jews or the Ummatu Ibrăhîmî and the Christians or the Ummatu Îsă, stand cancelled. Now onwards, Muslims alone are entitled to rule over the world and appropriate its wealth. There is a slight “improvement” also in the new covenant. Plunder of the infidels’ properties, particularly their women and children, was not permitted to the earlier chosen people, while it has been prescribed as obligatory for the Ummatu Muhammadî.
The doings of the Ummatu Muhammadî in Arabia and many other lands manifest the divine plan in human history. The annals of Islam, the Twărîkh, which are an integral part of its theology, have been penned by some of its most pious scholars.
The theology of Islam, Kalăm, deals with the same old divisions of human history, the human family, and the inhabited world. The period before Muhammad started receiving revelations and proclaimed his prophethood is denounced as Jăhilîya, the age of ignorance; the period succeeding that event is the age of Ilm, enlightenment. Those who recite the Kalima or confession of faith-Lă Ilăha Illa‘llăhű, Mahammadűn Rasűl‘llăh (there is no god but Allăh and Muhammad is the Prophet)8 -are Mu‘mins, the believers; those who do not, are Kăfirs, the unbelievers. The lands ruled by the Mu‘mins are Dăr al-Islăm, abodes of peace, while those where the Kăfirs live are Dăr al-Harb, abodes of war, where the Mu‘mins should ply their swords. It sounds logical that in popular Muslim parlance a Kăfir is often called a Harbî, that is, one who deserves treatment of the sword.
Finally, Islam enjoins a permanent war, Jihăd, by the Mu‘mins and against the Kăfirs. We need not give the details which we have already presented elsewhere, in principle as well as practice.9 Suffice it to say that it is an extremely bloody affair, entailing continued wars of conquest, massacres, mass conversions by force, widespread plunder, enslavement of prisoner taken in war, collection of booty including non-combatant men and women and children, subjugation of native populations, and the rest. What concerns us here is that Jihăd is centred round iconoclasm. In fact, the need for Jihăd arises only because the Kăfirs worship their own Gods instead of Muhammad’s Allăh. Jihăd, therefore, remains incomplete till all places where those Gods are worshipped get levelled with the ground, and all saints and priests who spread and sustain Kufr are converted or killed.
Confining ourselves to India, “The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history,” according to Will Durant, the famous student of civilizations. He finds it “a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious thing whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians…”10 But the pious Muslims read or listen to this story with immense satisfaction. They go into raptures as their heroes invade Sind and Hind, massacre the accursed Kăfirs without remorse, capture and sell into slavery large numbers of Hindu men and women and children, kill or heap humiliations on Hindu saints and scholars, desecrate or destroy idols of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, pull down Hindu temples or convert them into masjids and madrasas, reduce the Hindus to non-citizens in their own homeland, and misappropriate all properties, moveable and immoveable. And they get furious when they find the Hindus failing to admire Muhammad bin Qăsim, Mahműd of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghűrî, Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish, Ghiyăsu’d-Dîn Balban, ‘Alău’d-Dîn Khaljî, Muhammad and Fîrűz Shăh Tughalaq, Sikandar Lodî, Băbur, Aurangzeb, and Ahmad Shăh Abdălî, to cite only the most notable among Muslim heroes in the history of India. The theology of Islam has thus performed to perfection the function it is intended to perform, even though the forefathers of an overwhelming majority of Muslims in India were victims of this theology.
In our specific context, namely, the destruction of Hindu temples, it should be more than sufficient if we merely cite what the Qur’ăn says, in verse after verse and chapter after chapter, vis-a-vis the mushriks (polytheists) and the aSnăm (idols) they worship. Allăh of Islam leaves no one in doubt that he sanctions the destruction of “false gods” and the places where they receive homage. So is the case with the Sunnah of the Prophet. We have only to list the instances of iconoclasm which Muhammad undertook himself or ordered in his own lifetime, and we have more than sufficient pious precedents which the faithful are expected to follow. Anyone who says that the Qur’ăn and the Sunnah do not enjoin the destruction of other people’s places of worship has either not read the documents, or has failed to grasp the message, or is practising deliberate deception. No amount of apologetics can cover up or explain away the principle and the practice.
A mere narration of principle and practice, however, is likely to leave a mistaken impression. People who are not familiar with the rise and spread of Islam have been led away by the Big Lie that the people of Arabia rallied round a prophet and did, willingly and voluntarily, whatever he asked them to do, because they knew no better. This lie has succeeded to a great extent not only in the lands which are now occupied by the believers but also in India which has battled with Islam for more than thirteen hundred years. But nothing can be farther from the truth as told in the orthodox biographies of the Prophet. The people of Arabia resisted Muhammad and his message, and fought in defence of their ancient religion and culture, till they were forced to surrender in the face of a formidable military machine forged by him at Medina. The machine was financed by plunder obtained through widespread raids, and manned by desperados recruited from all over Arabia. Neither the Qur’ăn nor the Sunnah of the Prophet can be understood or evaluated properly unless it is placed in its historical context, namely, the pre-Islamic Arab society and culture which had functioned for a long time to the satisfaction of the people concerned, till Muhammad appeared on the scene.
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