Adonis Diaries

Discredited certitude?

Unregulated capitalism (liberal capitalism) is plainly discredited; communism was discredited way before 1989; the doctrine of the Christian religion was discredited since the French Revolution in 1787 ; Islam was discredited less than a century after the Prophet’s death,  but can religion be eradicated from the spirit of the masses?

The power of current religions is that you don’t need to apply to any religious sect for fear of being  ex-communicated, whether you are a believer or not, or whether your opinions are not compatible with the predominant ideology. (Radical sects still kill those who change religions)

Religion exercises its legitimacy once it combines the doctrines of “communism or socialism” for equal opportunities and the aspiration for independence against a usurper of our wishes.  That is how extremist Islam has managed to package its ideology: an ideology targeting the poor and the disinherited who were deprived of dignity and were humiliated by the western powers.

The progress in Europe was established indirectly by a centralized Papal spiritual authority.   Ironically, this spiritual centralization was acquired when the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine supposedly converted to Christianity.

Christianity could have evolved without any serious centralization if it was not ordered by the Roman ideological system of centralized power.

Hundreds of Christian sects existed in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire before the year 325:  They were persecuted as “heretics” after the conclave of Nicaea (current Turkey) in 325 and several other conclaves within the century.

Papal Rome vigorously hindered progress and any changes  for nine centuries, but once society expressed its willingness for change then it followed suit and even staunchly maintained the changes and supported them against any refracting bishops or religious Christian sects.

Centralized Papal Rome was a counterbalance to the tyranny of temporary authorities who had to compromise and rectify policies that challenged the dignity and well-being of the poor citizens.

Islam had no such centralized spiritual authority:  Islam viewed with suspicion any kinds of religious centralization: Islam didn’t appreciate mediators between the believer and his God.

Thus, the political sultans and sovereigns dominated the religious spiritual power.  In most instances the monarch grabbed the legitimacy of caliph. The counterbalance to tyranny lacked in the Moslem world:  Any recognized cleric, ordered by a sultan, could proclaim a “fatwa” (an injunction for the people to obey) as a religious obligation.  You could have several “fatwas” concurrently expressing injunction of opposite orders.

The problem in Islam is not in the source or the Koran, but the free interpretations of any monarch or leader at any period.  There are no stable and steady spiritual legitimacy in any interpretations that can be changed or neglected at other periods.

The author Amine Maaluf recounts this story.  A Moslem woman applies in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for a private club that would allow Moslem women to meet and maybe share common hot baths along with sauna and Jacuzzi (hammam).

A week later, the municipality rejected the application on ground that the local Moslem cleric (Imam) had an objection to the club”.   If the woman was European would the municipality ask the opinion of a Christian cleric? It would certainly not.

What this story proves is that, under the good intentions of respecting ethnic minorities, the European are exercising covert apartheid: They are sending the message that minority rights are not covered by the UN declarations which are supposed to be valid for all human kinds.  The human rights approved by all States within the UN convention are applicable to all regardless of color, religion, sex, or origin.

What is fundamentally needed is that all States feel that the United Nation is a credible institution that is not dominated by veto power of Super Nations and that it has effective executive power to enforce its human rights proclamations to all world citizens and political concepts.

Let me resume my previous article on “Misleading Legitimacies“.

Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt managed to capture legitimacy in the emotions and spirit of the Arab populations as the leader of the Arab World by politically defeating the joint military attack by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956 to recapture the Suez Canal.  The Arab populations were satisfied that their crushed dignity for over 5 centuries was re-emerging among the nations (the western nations).

Even the crushing military defeat by tiny Zionist Israel in 1967 maintained Gamal Abdel Nasser as the legitimate leader, and most of the Arab State leaders converged to him to help resolve their conflicts with their neighbors or within their State.

Abdel Nasser resurrected the spirit but failed in his social promises, and of freeing the Arabic minds from oppression and dominant central government doctrines.

After the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser (The Raiyess) in 1970, the goal of Arab leaders was to re-capture Arab legitimacy.  The successor of the (Raiyess) in Egypt was Sadat who needed to rely on the legitimacy of the “Moslem Brotherhood” to strengthen his power and thus proclaimed to be “The First of the Believers (among Moslems)”.

All the Arab leaders realized that legitimacy reside in convincing victories against common enemies to the “Arabs”, or mainly any western nation and Israel as the closest geographically.  The initial victory in 1973 on the Sinai front against Israel was cancelled out by bedding with the USA and “My Dear Friend Henry (Kissinger)”.   Sadat was hated by most Arabs and no one shed a tear when he was assassinated.

Dictator Saddam Hussein enjoyed many potentials in Iraq: literate population, large army, and natural resources. He jumped at the occasion when the USA encouraged him to invade Iran of Khomeini in 1980.

This time, the enemy was the Persians who had re-captured lands that the Arab and Ottoman Empires had secured centuries ago and was called “Arabstan” or Khuzistan. After 8 years of mutual slaughtering in the battle field that resulted in over one million of victims, Saddam Hussein reverted to its neighboring “Arab” State of Kuwait and invaded it in 1990.  Saddam was vanquished by the USA (the arch-enemy of the Arab spirit) and a coalition of European and Arab armies.  Saddam lost his legitimacy.

Saudi Arabia’s successive monarchs endeavored to gain legitimacy in the Arab World through building thousands of mosques, appointing clerics who favored the Wahhabi sect, and lavishing petro-dollars for settling conflicts among the Arab States.  Saudi Arabia has been working for the long-term by proselytizing their conservative extremist Wahhabi sect among the Sunni Moslems and gaining legitimacy by proclaiming that they are the “Servitors or Guardians of the Holy Kaaba and Medina (al Haramine)”.