Prof. Paul Eidelberg
In his classic DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, Alexis de Tocqueville writes: “There is hardly any human action, however particular it may be, that does not originate in some very general idea men have conceived of the Deity …”
Surely this is true of the Muslim-Jewish conflict. As one Muslim spokesman put it before the Six-Day War: “The propagandists of secularism, who leave out of account the religious factor in the Palestine problem, ignore the fact that this is the only bone of contention in the world which has persisted for thirty centuries and is still based on religious and spiritual foundations.”
Muslim clerics make this absolutely clear. In a sermon delivered at the Qabaa mosque in Al-Madina, Sheikh Abd Al-’Aziz Qari declared: “Two groups—the Jews and the Christians—are the main elements constituting the ‘Camp of Kufur’ [infidels] and will continue to be its two foundations until Allah allows their downfall and annihilation at the end of days...”
In a sermon at a Mecca mosque, Sheikh Adnan Ahmad Siyami said: “… there is no way to reach Paradise and to be delivered from Hell except by walking in the path of our Prophet Muhammad and joining Islam…. In light of this, my believing brethren, how can it be claimed that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all paths leading to Allah?!”
He warned: “The call for the unification of the religions is a call for the abolition of religious differences among people: No more Muslim and infidel. All will come under the unity of human harmony…. This call will lead to presenting the infidels’ schools of thought as correct, and to silence regarding them; to permitting conversion to Judaism and Christianity with no shame whatsoever; to the abolition of the vast difference between the Muslims and others—a difference underpinning the conflict between truth and falsehood; to the transformation of the religion of Islam into a religion like the other, false religions, into a religion that has no advantage over the other religions …”
Finally, Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam of the Al-Haraam mosque in Mecca, told worshipers: “The most noble [sic] civilization ever known to mankind is our Islamic civilization. Today, Western civilization is nothing more than the product of its encounter with our Islamic civilization in Andalusia [medieval Spain] and other places. The reason for [Western civilization’s] bankruptcy is its reliance on the materialistic approach, and its detachment from religion and values. [This approach] has been one reason for the misery of the human race, for the proliferation of suicide, mental problems, and for moral perversion.”
Unlike the prevailing view in the West, Muslims reject theological egalitarianism. There is only one truth: Islam, and Mohammad is its prophet. Consistent therewith, Muslims reject cultural relativism. Allah has prescribed, in the Qur’an, the only true way of life.
Steeped in theological egalitarianism and cultural relativism, the West is not intellectually prepared to refute Islam, a precondition of Islam’s democratization (which, by the way, would not be an unmixed blessing). When American policy-makers and opinion-makers speak of the need for “regime change” in Iraq, they do not include the need to change, in any fundamental way, Iraq’s prevailing religion. Their approach is as simplistic as it is secular: replace Saddam Hussein with a pro-Western alternative and institute periodic, multi-party elections. But if Islam is inherently anti-democratic—Daniel Pipes puzzlingly denies the fact, while Bernard Lewis prefers to ignore it—”regime change” will accomplish very little. Iraq will not become another Turkey, which is not only tied to NATO and Europe, but shows signs of Islamic resurgence.
The only way to democratize Islam is to undermine its hold on the minds of Muslims. Throughout history cultures and nations perished or were transformed by destroying their deities: Zeus, Jupiter, Hirohito, Hitler. Hence it will be necessary to discredit Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. But first Western intellectuals will have to overcome their relativism and engage in a serious critique of the Qur’an. Bearing in mind that both Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas had a low opinion of Muhammad (to put it mildly), consider Abraham Geiger.
In JUDAISM AND ISLAM, Geiger writes: “The order in which he [Muhammad] gives the prophets is interesting, for immediately after the patriarchs he places first Jesus, then Job, Jonah, Aaron, Solomon, and last of all David [Sura 4:161]. In another passage [Sura 6:84-86] the order is still more ridiculous, for here we have David, Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Zachariah, John, Jesus, Elijah, Ishmael, Jonah, and Lot! The incorrect spellings of the names of these prophets [sic], as well as the parts which [Muhammad] assigns to them in history, proves that he had never even looked into the Hebrew Scriptures.”
Also, despite the Qur’an’s reference to Allah the “compassionate,” Islam is more conspicuous, in word and deed, as a religion of hatred rather than a religion of love. JIHAD (holy war), one of Islam’s basic tenets, dominates its history. This has theological implications. Judging from the Zohar (87a), Allah is a questionable deity, one who primary attribute is power. Hence he is not to be identified with the Ineffable Name of God (the Tetragrammaton), the Holy One of Israel.
It may appear callous to question the religion of a billion people. But if, as I believe, the West is engaged in a clash civilizations—which Muslim clerics emphatically affirm—then nothing less than the truth of Islam is in question. Pity eminent students of Islam such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes avoid this question, which has not only theological but strategic significance.