Islam’s Last Stand And The End of “Religious” History

In light of the worlds many faiths and religions, specifically Islam and its last stand, when does it become necessary to enter into resistance to a state or alliance of states? Put another way, what happens when a state’s political interests are in direct conflict with an individual’s or group’s commitment to their religion or faith?

In like manner, then, the political order must either serve or at least respect and honor the religious and faithful, or the religious and faithful must be made to submit to the will of the state and be used for its political ends. Moreover, what happens to the faithful if they refuse to yield?

Imposing Their Will

Indeed, the crisis facing Islam and its 1.6 billion followers may not be of their own choosing. In truth, a coalition of Western and secular, illiberal and militarized corporate-states are trying to impose their will on predominantly Islamic regions of the world, like Southwest Asia and Africa. Consequently, and instead of submitting, some of the faithful resort to different kinds of resistances to combat a global secular and market-oriented plutocracy. From nonviolence and civil disobedience to retaliatory attacks and armed insurgencies, Islam is challenging an alliance of states, all born in revolutionary violence!

As for religions like Islam, their historical continuity and unchanging unique beliefs have always been dangerous to states. Jesus, a prophet of Christianity and Islam, for example, was executed for encouraging followers to serve only one master and kingdom instead of the Roman Empire and Jewish State. The founders of Judaism and Islam, Abraham and Prophet Muhammad, were persecuted by the state due to their absolute faiths in God. Both were forced to flee and at last defend their faith. While the former fought to survive or face genocide the latter combated sanctions, assassination and near genocide.

It follows that Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism and other faiths were universally and at first peaceful faiths. Violence was no more justified except to protect one’s family or lifestyle. Most faiths, in fact, only fought to avoid annihilation or compliance to absolute military states.

From targeting compliant Muslim leaders to resisting oppressors, Islamic awakenings are experimenting with numerous acts of resistance.

But due to external and internal forces of war mobilization and militarism, and in order to survive, many religions and the religious yielded and merged over time with despotic and repressive states. As a result, religious interpretations changed and became distorted and corrupt, eventually becoming more like the absolute state’s civil religions.

Liberal democracies were no different, as military-like corporate-states exerted total control over both private and public lives of the faithful and religious. Even a revelatory conscience, for instance, was perilous. In the final Bill of Rights, James Madison’s “no state shall violate the equal rights of conscience” was omitted. Still, he and others, like Alexis de Tocqueville, believed that “of all enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” War was also the surest and shortest means to destroy liberties of any democratic nation.

Consequently, the liberties for unique and peaceful teachings of religions and the faithful were also destroyed. In the midst of perpetual and illiberal corporate warfare, no nation could afford even limited liberty. Besides, conflict always aggrandizes state power by destroying traditional structures and societal resistance that restrain central authority. It also allows a corporate-state to morally justify the repression of unwilling or alternative religions. The faithful that did not submit to war taxation and mobilization, rationing of goods and services, expanding armies, and arms industries were purged or eliminated.

State Civil Religion

What’s more, fostering a sense of crises and an acceptance of carnage that accompanies coercive rule keeps intact a perverted state civil religion. To ignore the secular genocides of ancient or modern militant corporate-states, whether Communism, Fascism, Illiberal Democracy, Nazism or Corporate Plutocracy, is to ignore history. In addition, the evils of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries originated in representative, democratic and populist states based on revolutionary violence. Both secularists and religious adherents believed in a perverted civil faith, internalizing the corporate-state’s “total violence.”

Subsequently, today’s state’s and civil religion’s comfortableness with violence and war is an excuse to exist and fuse absolute power with new war technologies, eugenics-like science, and global utopian visions. They are monstrously exploited to justify preemptive wars, eventually exploiting the occupied nation’s resources and militarizing its peoples. To be certain, a secular Western alliance consisting of militant corporate-states is trying to seize Islamic cultures and lands.

Not that Islam is necessarily the ideal faith, but it is certainly not the problem. The real problem is, instead, a globalized coalition of militant corporate-states which demands massive resources and total military service. It is, in effect, trying to usurp and totalize the impetus of violence. Indeed, the U.S. Defense Department and Pentagon just announced a new global network of military bases stretching from Africa to East Asia. Along with hosting thousands of new military forces, this will increase perpetual war industries and mobilization. New conflicts and more false flag events will likely continue.

In spite of this desire for global control, 70,000 Muslim clerics just passed a fatwa against Islamic terrorist organizations, claiming they did not belong to the Islamic faith. Some Muslims, however, will still wrestle over whether to retaliate against Washington’s global military apparatus to maintain the purity of their faith. As for the faithful and religious residing within a perverse, militant, totalitarian corporate-federation, they will continue to suffer from government intervention and compromise, some forced to utterly submit in the name of a perverted civil religion and be used for political ends.

In the meantime, adherents to Islam’s unique continuity will likely continue to endure last stands, especially since the Prophet Muhammad solved the crisis between the state and revelatory faith by “clearly” uniting the two. Sadly, though, he did not appoint a successor, something that is causing Islam’s disintegration while favoring the West.

Actually, if the West’s corporate-state’s coalition ever succeeds, it will then be the end of history. In truth, Francis Fukuyama mistook the end of a secular state and continuation of another instead of the end of another religion or secular state.

In other words, and similar to other religions, Islam’s final defeat will be another compromised faith. Instead of a religious state it will be another state religion and its sacred Qur’anic scriptures changed and tainted by imperial scribes and interpretations.(1) But whereas adherents of the market-oriented West’s secular coalition might have watches, some Muslims have time on their side.

(Note: When using “secular,” I am referring to those who are state absolutists and intolerant to all religions and faiths. At the same time, some secularists are extremely compassionate and nonviolent and have refused to submit to the militant corporate-state.)

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)

(1) I am of the opinion that from the outset later authors of the worlds sacred scriptures sometimes projected their state religions on the original meaning and texts, mirroring a state religion in stead of a peaceful revelatory one. This, then, explains why passages justify killing and even genocide in some cases. Recall that after entering Mecca, Prophet Muhammad forgave the Meccans and instead destroyed the stone idols which was, in itself, a very revolutionary and forgiving act when one considers the Arabian desert‘s tribal culture of cyclical retaliation.