God's Zeal Read online

  With increasing success comes increasing entropy. Under its influence, the universalist potential of faith is confirmed and simultaneously pensioned off by the great church organizations. Entropic phenomena are also unmistakably responsible for the changing face of faith in the USA, where, as Harold Bloom incisively observed, the last fifty years have seen a reshaping of Protestant Christianity into a post-Christian ‘American religion’ with pronounced gnostic, individualistic and Machiavellist aspects.17 Here, the faith in the Father has almost entirely disappeared, while the narcissistic realm of the Son no longer tolerates resistance. If there were an American trinity it would consist of Jesus, Machiavelli and the spirit of money. The postmodern credo was formulated in exemplary fashion by the Afro-American actor Forest Whitaker when he gave his speech of thanks upon receiving the Oscar for the best leading role in 2007, closing with the words: ‘And I thank God for always believing in me.’

  The intentional universalism of Christianity, however, was inevitably foiled in the twentieth century by the pragmatic necessities arising from coexistence with other creeds – and the charitable weakening of the churches through the development of self-confidently secular forms of life. The Christian confessions attended the school of pluralism and became predictable factors in the world ecumenical movement. From this perspective, Christianity, at least with regard to its broad central field, has entered its ‘post-imperial’ period, and – as far as one can tell – irreversibly so. The radical sects are an excep-tion to this, especially at the evangelical end of the spectrum: they ‘use fundamentalism as a means of re-universalization’.18 One can profit from them as unwitting enlighteners by listening to them as informants on the universalism of the lunatics. This is not, however, the place to discuss – let alone decide – whether one should take their example as representative of the hysterical nature of all militant universalism.

  Finally, I would like to turn to the question of whether Islam too is committed to its own specific campaign. The obvious answer would seem to be in the affirmative, but any more precise elaboration comes up against various obstacles for fundamental and historical reasons. The historical complications result from the fact that, after an initial phase of rapid expansion and great imperial prosperity, the Islamic world, whose fate was initially identical to that of the Arab sphere as a whole, fell into a long period of stagnation and regression whose possible end only became foreseeable with the demographic explosiveness and fundamentalist reform dynamic of the twentieth century. As far as the difficulties of a fundamental nature are concerned, these are combined above all with the contentious interpretation of the term jihad, whose appropriation by radical Islamic terrorist sects in recent times continues to spawn polemics and counter-statements.

  A first indication of the inherent offensive dynamic of Islamic preaching can be gained through the observation that the earliest suras, which followed the divine revelations of 610 and the years immediately after it (such as the famous Meccan sura 81 al-Takwirk, The Folding Up), predominantly follow the tunes of apocalyptic escalation, the final decision and the threat of the terrors of Judgement Day.19 The tendency of the other early suras is one of an unconditional separation from conventional religious practices in Mecca and elsewhere: ‘Say to them: you unbelievers! I do not honour what you honour, and you do not honour what I honour’ (Sura 109:1f.). It is equally evident that the starting point of the Islamic commune as a small, sworn community did not constitute an ideal, but was intended to be overcome as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the first ummah of Medina that gathered around the prophet was anything but a contemplative idyll. Its chronicle tells of numerous martial confrontations, starting with the ominous skirmish at the waterhole of Badr. It deals with the prophet's controversial caravan raids, shifting strategic alliances, an attack on the palm grove of a rival party that was scandalous for Arabs, and the casual massacre of a Jewish minority. But whatever religious meanings might be read into these episodes, they already give clear indications of what was to follow. The imperative of growth was no less intrinsic to this religious foundation than it was to Paul's mission – with the difference that the political–military and religious dynamics here formed an inseparable a-priori unity. Mohammed followed on from the escalation of post-Babylonian Judaism, which lived on in the zealotic escalation of Paul, developing these elements further to form an integral militantism. He achieved this by making – like an Arab Paul – the apostolic form of life, the self-consumption in the proclamation and the proclaimed, binding for all the members of his commune. In this way, the maximum religious existence, the complete devotion to God's instructions, was declared a standard expectation of all people – in fact, almost the bare minimum of service to the Almighty that humans should carry out. That is why the word islām, which literally means ‘submission’, also gave the religion its name.

  The binding nature of this guiding concept for all Muslims has foreseeable consequences: it transfers the prophet's zealotry normatively to his followers' way of life – and inversely to the fates of the unbelievers. The constitutive role of the martial factor is reinforced by the fact that the canonic writings on the prophet include a subgroup, known as the maghazi literature, that deals exclusively with Mohammed's military campaigns; in them one finds a normative inflation of sacred militantism. This final escalation finds its most vivid expression in the compulsory prayer (salāt) to be carried out 5 times per day, each time with 17 bows and 2 prostrations. Thus every practising Muslim performs 85 bows to Allah and 10 prostrations daily, making 29,090 bows and 3,540 prostrations per lunar year, as well as the corresponding recitations. In Christianity, such intensive rehearsal is only demanded within monastic orders, with a daily quota of seven hours of prayer. Logically enough, the Arabic word for ‘mosque’, masjid, means ‘place of prostration’. One should not underestimate the formative effect of frequent ritual actions. The prophet says so himself: Ad-dînu mu'amala – ‘religion is behaviour’. This is why some Islamic scholars are right in going so far as to claim that ritual prayer is a form of jihad.20 That may sound effusive, but it describes a psychosemantically evident reality. What goes on in Muslim houses of prayer thus serves not only the manifestation of faith. The relationship with transcendence celebrated physically and psychologically on a daily basis becomes equally effective as a way of keeping in shape for projects of holy dispute. From an ethical and pragmatic perspective, Islam succeeded in absorbing zealotry completely into daily life through the universal duty of ritual prayer. The greatest of all duties is memoactive fitness: it equals the spirit of the law itself.

  Given the familiarity of the subject, I will be permitted to refrain from recounting the astounding history of Islamic expansion leading to the foundation of the various caliphates under the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Ottomans, etc. The explosive spread of Islam in the one-and-a-half centuries following the prophet's death is undeniably one of the political-military wonders of the world, surpassed only by the extensively and intensively even more significant expansion of the British Empire between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It cannot be doubted for a moment that this rapid, albeit regionally limited, world conquest was based on the most authentic intentions of Islam and its holy scriptures. What some have referred to as ‘the venture of Islam’21 was founded on a vigorous ethic of expansion. Never was this more successful than in the time of the early caliphs; all practical realizations of Islam-specific dreams of a world empire originate from them.22 The frequently read claim that the Arab conquests were of a purely political nature, that forced conversions of the conquered only took place very rarely, and certainly not with people of the book – because Islam rejects the use of force in religious matters – is a well-meaning protective statement whose true core lies beneath a thick shell of contradictory facts. Otherwise it would be inexplicable why, following the Arabian peninsula, such countries as Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Spain, but also large parts of Anatolia, Iran, t
he Caucasus and North India were taken up, with lasting or at least long-term consequences, into the Islamic religious space. Here one can apply Rousseau's theory that in earlier times, ‘since there was no means of converting people except by subduing them, the only missionaries were conquerors’.23 Certainly some people would have embraced the Islamic faith because of their own inclination and conviction, but it can hardly be denied that, for most new believers, conversion began with an armed invitation to prayer. Later generations found Islam as the ruling religion, experiencing it as a fact of culture that one acquires through the mild tyranny of education. What began with devout conventions came to fruition through the internalization of the memoactive stigma.

  The history of the campaign of Islam can, despite regional setbacks and schisms verging on civil war, be related as a consistent success story until the fifteenth century AD (the ninth century by the Muslim calendar). Up to that point, the supremacy of Arab and Islamic civilization was incontestable in most areas, starting with their superior military power. In its golden age, Islam was also the most important economic force in the world, as can be seen from the intercontinental connections it cultivated. Its colourful bazaars were legendary, and the variety of the selection at its slave markets was unparalleled. Furthermore, Islamic scientists and artists embodied the highest level of achievement up to the turn of the thirteenth century. The assimilative power of Islamic culture for knowledge and skills from other parts of the world seemed to know no boundaries – until the bigoted reactionary movements in the thirteenth century (not forgetting the disastrous effects of the Mongol attack of 1258) brought this high-cultural splendour to an end.24 Nonetheless, it took centuries for the heirs of the Islamic heyday to notice the stagnation. When Constantinople was conquered by Ottoman troops in 1453, there was a general conviction that Christian Europe was now also ripe for conquest.

  In their seemingly well-founded sense of superiority, most members of the Islamic cultural realm had missed the fact that they were in the process of being outdone by the ‘miserable infidels’ of the north-west – in the fields of theology, philosophy and worldly science from the thirteenth century on; in the visual arts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on; as well as economically from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on, which was due particularly to the superior European seafaring and the transition to modern property economy alias capitalism, with its dynamic of constant innovation. The achievements of the distant enemy could seemingly be ignored with impunity as long as people were living under the protection of timeless revelations and sublime governments. They were not able or willing to see that they had locked themselves in the prison of tradition. Finally, in the eighteenth century, the military supremacy of the Europeans was made shockingly clear – the trauma of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition in 1798 is still acute more than two centuries later. From the moment that Europe's ascent to global dominance could no longer be overlooked, the proud chronicle of Islam's campaigns turned into a never-ending history of insult. The disappointment of those left behind grew into bitterness from the eighteenth century on, and the noisy European expansionism of the nineteenth century was hardly likely to mitigate this sentiment. Since then, the extremely thymotic culture of the Islamic countries has been cloaked in a veil of anger woven from the conflicting sentiments of a longing for splendour and dominance on the one hand and a chronic feeling of resentment on the other. From that point on, pride in the past was always accompanied by a scarcely concealable shame at the current state of affairs.

  Characteristically, the growth of a new zealotry in Islam can be traced back to the eighteenth century, when even the most introverted Muslims could no longer overlook the exhausted state of both their culture and their religion. Wahabbism, which sought redemption in a return to a literal interpretation of the Qur'an, was typical of the reactionary tendencies of the time, while in the nineteenth century the most characteristic movement was Salafism, which can best be understood as an ascetic romanticism and whose followers dreamed of the early ummah and the righteous predecessors (salaf as-salih) of Medina. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, then, a temptation had been in the air to alleviate the plight of Islam in the age of confrontation with the superior West through zealotic escalation and restorative collectives. By claiming more adamantly than ever to be under the just guidance of Allah, the new zealots resolutely chose not to learn from the enemy – and thus likewise to ignore the voices of the present. Perhaps they thought that bowing to God's authority entitled them to oppose the authority of the rest of the world. The Arabocentrism of these reactions was a further factor in weakening the Islamic world, as it encouraged the tendency to ignore the internal diversity of the Muslim universe, as exemplified by the spiritual and cultural treasures of the Persian-Shiite and Turkish-Ottoman epicentres. The consequences of this choice proved disastrous for the entire Islamic hemisphere, as they reinforced the tendency towards defiant intractability in the face of the demands made by an age of new openings. Viewing oneself as a victim of foreign powers became a widespread approach, and when victims come together with other victims, it does not take long for culprits to be named. Bernard Lewis describes the harmful effects of these reactionary tendencies. It is only with great delay and in tentative forms that people in the Middle East are becoming willing to examine their own behaviour: ‘The question “Who did this to us?” has led only to neurotic fantasies and conspiracy theories. The other question – “What did we do wrong?” – has led naturally to a second question: “How do we put it right?” In that question, and in the various answers that are being found, lie the best hopes for the future.’25

  The campaign-like qualities of the ‘venture of Islam’ can thus, as we have seen, be established historically with somewhat clear contours. They also, however, invite an evaluation at a fundamental level in so far as they are connected closely to orthodox and orthopractically lived religion. This is where the meanwhile infamous concept of jihad comes into view, that ‘striving on the path of God’ through which Islam seeks to train its believers, generally without exception, as zealots for the kingdom of God. This tradition makes militantism a part of Muslim life from the outset, and the only reason it is not officially included among the famous five ‘pillars’ of Islam is that it is implicitly understood in all of them. Islam therefore constitutes not only the most pronounced final form of offensive religious universalism (rivalled only, temporarily, by Communism); its design practically makes it a religion of encampments. Permanent movement is inherent in it – and any stasis must be viewed with suspicion as the beginning of a falling away from faith. In this respect Mohammed faithfully followed Paul's model, with the significant difference that the latter, as a civilian and Roman citizen, preferred peaceful zealotry. Islamic zealotry has always had an element of martial devotion, underpinned by a richly embellished mysticism of martyrdom. It would be an exaggeration to describe the aggressive mujaheddin of the Caliphate as professional revolutionaries of God, but their willingness to use force for the noble cause certainly increases the similarities. The contemporary Egyptian author Sa'id Ayyub postulates the God-given duty for Muslims to shed their blood in the Holy War against the anti-Muslim Satan: ‘That is our destiny, from the battle of Badr (in 624) to the day of the antichrist.’26

  It may be that the internalization of jihad taught from the twelfth century on, following the efforts of the Sufi mystic Al Ghazali, bore fine fruits in the peace of the Islamic rear lines. But the fact that one could describe the inner battle as the major jihad and the external battle as the minor only proves that even Islam, normally known for its sobriety, was not immune to excessive enthusiasm. The popularization of jihad in the conflicts of the present results in the desublimation of the concept and thus the return to its first meaning, regardless of all objections from spiritual exegetes. The idea of a battle against the base self gave rise to a conceptualized militantism without any external enemy, as one can also observe in the reshaping of the Far Eastern art
of war into spiritualized fighting disciplines. The subtle jihad needed to be waged as a campaign against the heathen residue within one's own soul – with the believer discovering rebellious oases and anarchic provinces within himself that have not yet been reached by the dominion of the law. With the return of the real enemy, even if only on the level of misunderstandings and projections, the metaphorical meanings disappear. These are replaced once more by concrete acts of war against physical opponents both near and distant. The modern agitators say it loudly and clearly: the believer should not sleep as long as he is living within a non-Islamic political system; his life can only take on meaning if it is devoted to the abolition of foreign dominance.27 Those who fall in this battle have secured their place in paradise; unbelievers who die in the unjust battle against Muslims, on the other hand, go directly to hell. Although they have no scholarly authority, the activists in the militant organizations of today know which suras to refer to. Their actions may be appalling, but their quotations are perfect.

  All commentaries on Islamic neo-expansionism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries would remain idle speculation had Islam, as a religion and a cultural model, not been bolstered by two recent developments that have, within a short time, made it politically significant once again. The first of these changes is of an economic-technological nature, the second of a biopolitical one. Firstly, a number of states under Islamic rule – more specifically, the upper classes of such countries as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, and to a lesser extent also Libya and Egypt – have profited both economically and politically from the fact that up to 60 per cent of the world's oil reserves either have been found or are believed to be located within their borders. In the age of fossil fuels, this situation has, despite the well-known inefficiency of their governments, the often-criticized backwardness of their social structures and the insecurity of their legal systems, provided the oil-producing countries of the Middle East with the resources to live far beyond their means. The second tendency reinforces this dubious economic situation. Between 1900 and 2000, the population of the Islamic hemisphere has increased from roughly 150 million to 1.2 billion people, eight times as many – a dynamic of increase that is unprecedented, even with the broadest historical view. One part of this explosion can be attributed to conditions that support a reproduction of poverty, while another part is culturally and religiously determined, as an abundance of children is still valued highly by conservative Muslims; a further part can probably be attributed to a more or less conscious policy of militant reproduction, as there have long been numerous ideologues in Islamic countries who are proud to carry the ‘banner of reproduction’. These factors shape the conditions under which the resumption of offensively universalist programmes by elements of militant Islamism could become the order of the day. The frequent fantasies in militant circles of re-establishing the world caliphate also show, admittedly, that more than a few radicals live in isolated alternative realities. For them, the surrealism that lies in all religions grows into a reverie with open eyes. They work on a purely imaginary agenda that can no longer be reconciled with any actual history. The only link between their constructs and the rest of the world is the terrorist attack with as many dead as possible, whose scenic form corresponds to a raid from the dream world into reality.