European Colinialism is the Only Thing That Modernized Islam
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses
progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of
people who never figured out that if you borrow 18
trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it
back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a
demographic whose entire ideology is being on the
right side of history.
Raised
to believe that history inevitably trended toward
diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and
gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them on by
promising that the Middle East would be just like
Europe and then ISIS tore up their Lonely Planet
guidebook to Syria and chopped off their heads.
But ISIS also believes that it’s on the right side
of history. Its history is the Koran. The right side
of its history is what Iraq and Syria look like
today. It’s also how parts of Europe are starting to
look.
Progressive politicians and pundits trying to cope
with ISIS lapse into a shrill incoherence that has
nothing to do with their outrage at its atrocities
and a lot to do with their sheer incomprehension.
Terms like “apocalyptic nihilism” get thrown around
as if heavy metal were beginning to make a comeback.
Those few analysts who admit that the Islamic State
might be a just a little Islamic emphasize that it’s
a medieval throwback, as if there were some modern
version of Islam to compare it to.
Journalists trying to make sense of ISIS demanding
Jizya payments and taking slaves ought to remember
that these aren’t medieval behaviors in the Middle
East. Not unless medieval means the 19th century.
And that’s spotting them a whole century. Saudi
Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure
from the United States. Its labor market and that of
fellow Petrojihadi kingdoms like Kuwait and Qatar
are based on arrangements that look a lot like
temporary slavery… for those foreigners who survive.
Non-Muslims paid Jizya to Muslim rulers until very
recently. Here is what it looked like in nineteenth
century Morocco from the account of James Riley, an
American shipwrecked sea captain.
"The Mohammedan scrivener appointed to receive it
took it from them, hitting each one a smart blow
with his fist on his bare forehead, by way of
receipt for his money, at which the Jews said,
‘Thank you, my lord.’”
Those Jews who could not pay were flogged and
imprisoned until they converted to Islam. An account
from 1894 is similar, except that the blows were
delivered to the back of the neck. Only French
colonialism finally put a stop to this practice as
well as many other brutal Islamic Supremacist laws.
Morocco was one of the Arab countries where Jews
were treated reasonably well by the standards of the
Muslim world. It’s one of the few Arab countries to
still retain a Jewish population. When ISIS demands
Jizya from non-Muslims, it’s not reviving some
controversial medieval behavior. It’s doing what
even “moderate” Muslim countries were doing until
European guns and warships made them stop.
If the French hadn’t intervened, the same ugly scene
would have gone on playing out in Morocco. If the
United States hadn’t intervened, the Saudis would
still openly keep slaves.
Islam never became enlightened. It never stopped
being ‘medieval’. Whatever enlightenment it received
was imposed on it by European colonialism. It’s a
second-hand enlightenment that never went under the
skin.
ISIS isn’t just seventh century Islam. It’s also
much more recent than that. It’s Islam before the
French and the English came. It’s what the Muslim
world was like before it was forced to have
presidents and constitutions, before it was forced
to at least pay lip service to the alien notion of
equal rights for all.
The media reported the burning of the Jordanian
pilot as if it were some horrifying and
unprecedented aberration. But Muslim heretics, as
well as Jews and Christians accused of blasphemy,
were burned alive for their crimes against Islam.
Numerous accounts of this remain, not from the
seventh century, but from the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Those who weren’t burned,
might be beheaded.
These were not the practices of some apocalyptic
death cult. They were the Islamic law in the
“cosmopolitan” parts of North Africa. The only
reason they aren’t the law now is that the French
left behind some of their own laws.
Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that were never
truly colonized still behead men and women for
“witchcraft and sorcery.” Not in the seventh century
or even in the nineteenth century. Last year.
The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The
problem is that Islam is.
What progressives mistake for modern Islam, whether
while touring Algeria or on the campus of their
university, is really an Islam whose practice has
been repressed by the West while its ideology
remains untouched. Modern Islam is in a state of
contradiction. It’s a schizophrenic religion whose
doctrine calls for supremacism but whose
capabilities prevent it from exercising the full
measure of its doctrines.
Islam is the 90 lb. weakling that wants to be the
school bully. It can’t punch you in the face, so it
stabs you in the back and then blames someone else.
When you punch it back, it plays the victim.
This split between ideas and power forced Islamists
to resort to sneakier tactics, from terrorism to
mass migration, to fulfill the spirit of their
religion. The underlying imperative is to restore a
conquering Islam capable of humiliating non-Muslims
in Muslim lands and expanding into non-Muslim
countries. That is why Saddam and Iran pursued
weapons of mass destruction. Why Muslim armies
tested themselves against Israel. Why Al Qaeda built
a decentralized terrorist network with cells around
the world.
Together
with the practical agendas of wealth and power was a
deeper spiritual significance. Islam required that
its leaders wage a war against the infidels. And
they had to do so on terms that would allow them to
win. Or at least to survive the attempt.
ISIS cuts through the split by advocating an
uncompromising supremacism. Its theater of brutality
is meant to convince Muslim audiences that they have
the ability to directly confront the West. They no
longer need to navigate a course between their
capabilities and their religion. Under a Caliph,
they can build the capabilities to restore the full
practice of Islam as it was before the Europeans put
a stop to it.
In the bigger picture, ISIS would like to turn the
clock back to the seventh century. That’s a vision
it shares with any number of Islamist groups and
governments. But its most objectionable behavior,
such as beheading and burning non-Muslims, taking
slaves and demanding Jizya from non-Muslims, only
requires turning back the clock to the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
To truly understand ISIS, we don’t need to go back
to the seventh century. The eighteenth century would
be just as good. And once we understand that, we
understand all the rest of it too.
Progressives see ISIS as a historical aberration.
ISIS sees them the same way. It’s all a question of
whose history book we’re using and which side is
willing to do anything to win. Islam is a religion
of war. Its right side of history is not a matter of
faith. The right side of history is the side that
wins.