Islamic Unification in Theory & Practice

July 21, 11:16 AM · Jonathan van Belle - Oakland Atheism Examiner

On Islam: a political theology by a political genius—for the self-righteous adventurer. Total obedience, & its suicidal corollary, ultimately means: ask nothing, argue nothing, change nothing—in this manner, it does not consider attempts at justifying itself important, practical, or commendable: Allah, the highest, lowest & furthest logical principle, is unattainably profound: live with it, die with it.

There is a sort of Islamic transubstantiation: when you undertake Islam, your body is surrendered to Allah: Allah is one with you—his will is your will. In a sense, to die for Allah is to die for yourself: it is your reborn will to die, your choice, your divine regard. Master & slave are united in rebellion against other masters, other slaves, other rebellions. Allah provides the uninspired with a noble, imitative quest: make the will of others your will, as your will is Allah’s—that is, as your power found deep unification with itself, so the power of others must find unification in your power, a.k.a. Allah’s power. All must be one under one will, one power, one logic. I would not say that it is necessarily malicious, or even self-satisfying, for one to embark on this global unification, or to possess a unifying sentiment. Perhaps a better description of the core process is “delusional.” The enthusiasm of unifying others through the divinity of your ego is basically childlike; so the delusion here is residual: it required an alter ego, an Allah, to reanimate the wish, & render it exciting.

Now, combine these two active principles: fear of dissimilarity of will & disinterest in self-justification. This, I believe, is where any maliciousness occurs: once those unwilling to unify confront an enthusiastic Islamic unifier, the unifier feels deeply disturbed, deeply unsettled—there is a misalignment of things, but it seems futile to analyze this internal misalignment (as analysis is an infidelity to his supra-rational willpower). Instead of the futility of self-reflection, there is an externalization of the unifier’s distress in the person of the non-Muslim. Since, as I claimed, the operating delusion is childlike, it seems to follow that childlike behaviors would manifest in relation to the delusion—in this case, it is general hostility at the non-Muslim (from one non-Muslim to all non-Muslims: the induction is emotionally necessary). The non-Muslim is the contrary to a universe perfectly synchronized with the Islamic unifier’s sense of eternal & ineffable significance; the non-Muslim ruptures the unifier’s solipsism. The unifier’s degree of hostility for the non-unifier is positively proportional to the degree of self-empowerment the unifier feels in his experience, his projection, his conviction that his will is identical, through surrender, with the universal will.

The quality & degree of the hostile reaction varies. The desperately committed unifier will seek triumph in a heroic suicide-homicide: this accomplishes the elimination of some non-unifiers, the persuasive terror of his example, the salutations & hagiolatry of mourners (this is related to the after-death fantasies of children wherein the parents are utterly disconsolate, & regret interfering with the child’s will), &, above all, the unifier considers his death a reconnection with, or reaffirmation of (in an ultimate & divine sense), his profound centrality & power.  The less committed unifier will lionize the suicide, train others for the act, promote such activity in other ways, & so on. Of course, there are those watered-down unifiers, the lukewarm, the modernized, the generally indifferent, the lazy, etc. This group represents the fertilized ground, the soil, the roots, the bedrock, out of which mature the more consistent, active & self-destructive individuals.

Paranoia, arguably, is a natural accompaniment to these conscious & unconscious fusions, identifications, substitutions, etc., of Allah’s will, an individual’s will, & a society’s will—who is in control? Is Allah against me? Is Allah against the state? Are Allah & the state against me? Such suspicions manifest politically, emotionally, artistically, etc. Such apprehensions are evident in devout unifiers. Consider the gasping neurotic terror of a fully engaged “third-person” self-surveillance: Allah witnesses all & Allah punishes all those worthy of punishment. The unifier is constricted by his personifications & projections, & is too invested, too terrified, too complacent to pull the curtain on himself—the unifier is chained to a mirror, & must master the most ominous, most stringent performance of his idealistic, schizophrenic paranoia.

This harsh self-determinism makes further demands on the environment: it is easier to master one’s behavior when the environment is conducive to that mastery. Remodeling the environment, the culture, the society becomes the foremost task of the unifier, simply because the difficulty & intensity of concentrated self-mastery is too much, too sharp; with frustration, the unifier seeks his own noble rigidity & sanctity in his environment. The milieu, he imagines, obstructs his mission, his holy war on himself, & therefore must be maneuvered to fit the vision. A personal failure reaches out for ideological success in the culture. If anything, the success of his vision in the general culture would engender self-assurance in the unifier—the sort of self-assurance the unifier could not find in his internal jihad.

Thus, the personal experience of the devout Muslim should, if we wish to understand it better, be associated with the public experience & psychological environment of Islam. Islam is an explicitly political religion, as opposed to the implicitly political or non-political religions of Buddhism, Taoism, etc. The subjective aspects of Islam are codes of conduct considered most effective for the establishment of a system of this-world Caliphate unification. Mohammed was politically ambitious; it is naïve to discount or dismiss Mohammed’s political paradigm, in which theology is instrumental for unification under Mohammed. The first Prophet of Islam exemplifies the characteristic introjection of Islamic surrender: Allah’s will is hereafter my will. The public life of Islam sustains itself on the collectivization of one’s personal will. This is a mandate. The common will is surrendered, as is the personal will, to Allah—which again means the common Islamic will equates itself with Allah’s will. Those unwilling to surrender to the collective agenda represent, at least psychologically, oppressors. Oppressors in the sense of the parental oppressor: impediments to the unquestioned exercise of my will—specifically, the exercise, or remedial free play, of my internal hostility through subjugation of its cause: the non-unifier. This hostility, when collectivized, often produces outright political oppression: curiously, this outright political oppression is considered, by the oppressing collective, to be liberation from oppressors.

The various interpretations of Allah’s will represent a similar problem. Each unifier feels, by definition, connected to Allah, & one cannot feel connected in this way without additionally feeling that this particular connection is a true connection. I say ‘a true connection,’ because it is plausible that the unifier permits some room within his system for unknowns—but, as I will argue, ‘a true connection’ becomes by default ‘the true connection.’

Generally, the unifier’s interpretation is considered, in the heart of that unifier, completely true: there is no false article, false inference, false experience, etc. In consequence, he can only consider another interpretation accurate to the degree that nothing in that interpretation contradicts anything in his interpretation (if it did, it is a disunity & an infidelity). An interpretation that contradicts nothing in his own, but merely clarifies or includes some extra points, is tolerable—likely acceptable. This criteria, I would argue, effectively renders ‘a true connection’ into ‘the true connection’ since only trivial additions are permissible, but no subtractions. The foundation, the unity, is incontrovertible; hostility arises from disagreement, since the disagreement implies error in the unifier’s connection, which itself implies non-identity of his will with the will of Allah, which ultimately diminishes the magnitude of the unifier’s surrendered ego. Once more, the degree of hostility is positively proportional to the degree of investment, the degree of surrender to (identification with) Allah.

This relates to the common Islamic will: it must secure itself with a consistent interpretation of its unity with Allah, or else, through inconsistencies, its unity with Allah is doubtful to itself—and such doubtfulness materializes as civil unrest, which prompts civil war, etc. This consequent unrest is regarded by unifiers as a good reason to increase the unification of belief. “Increases” in unification require a combination of conversions, expulsions, executions, & intensified indoctrination (e.g. Madrasa Islamia). In this way, the governmental nature of Islam becomes obvious: the Machiavellian heart of Mohammed’s philosophy, & its submission to its own indirect solipsism, eventuate some degree of invasive conformity in order to neutralize its innate, idealistic hostilities.

Altogether, if there must be an altogether, today’s Islamic unifier & today’s Islamic “unified” (or the Islamic state) exemplify the disorders, strains, conflagrations, repressions, subversions, regressions, delusions, insecurities, ecstasies & envies of that ancient geo-political theology of helpless submission—submission essentially to fear, force, & diktat.

 

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