REVIEW: ISLAM

MA’AT 2006

ISLAM A Short History

By Karen Armstrong

2000 Modern Library Edition

© Karen Armstrong

U.S.A. $19.95

222Pages

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular Western imagination as an extreme faith that promotes authoritarian government, female oppression, civil war, and terrorism. Karen Armstrong’s short history offers a vital corrective to this narrow view. The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world’s fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than it’s modern fundamentalist strain might suggest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Karen Armstrong is one of the world’s foremost scholars on religious affairs. She is the author of several books, including The Battle for God, The History of God, and Through the Narrow Gate, a memoir of her seven years as a nun.

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Karen Armstrong prefaces her book with an excellent Chronology Table beginning in 610 C.E. with the first revelation of God to Muhammad in Mecca that would eventually establish the foundation of the Quran; and ends in 1998 when “President Khatami dissociates his government (i.e. Iran) from Khomeini’s fatwah (“a formal legal opinion…on a manner of Islamic law’) calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, a criticism of the Quran.

Karen Armstrong’s ISLAM does not cover ANY spiritual practice associated with the faith, rather restricting itself to a general history of the religion. The fact that she fails to even mention the B’hai faith, the most influential offshoot of, Islam is telling. Information regarding Baha’i can be accessed via the picture at the conclusion of this review.

Armstrong asserts that it was during the so-called “Axial Age” (c. 700 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E.) when civilization…developed with the confessional faiths which have continued to nourish humanity…

The “nourish” aspect is questionable (“fleecing the flock” may be more apt), but the author goes on to draw solid historic references between the increasing complexity of the social order, the development of monotheism in general, and the evil “revelation” of Yahweh in particular.

The Gnostic Pagan School allegorically calls this the Aeon of Osiris, the Dying God.

Armstrong correctly illustrates that, from a historical materialist perspective (also called historic determinism), paganism could no longer satisfy the complexity of individual and social needs.

In the larger states, people acquired broader horizons,

and the old local cults ceased to be appropriate…the Axil Age faiths focused

on a single deity or supreme symbol of transcendence…All pre-modern civilizations

were based economically upon a surplus of agricultural produce; they therefore depended upon

the labour of peasants who could not enjoy their high culture, which was only for an elite.

To counter this, the new faiths stressed the importance of compassion.

[P. 7]

This statement contains elements basic to the historical dialectic of Karl Marx.

In fact, the philosophy of historic determinism illustrates a definite parallel between Islam and Marxism although, of course, Islam is strictly theosophical while Marxism is rigorously secular (It has suggested by its enemies that Marxism is itself a form of secular religion.)

Therein lies the basic internal contradiction of Islam today—and looked at from an objective vantage point, may indicate a resolution to the madness of theocracy (that constitutes the foundation of Western states as well as Islamic). In fact, radical & terrorist Christians are increasing seizing political power in the West and actively dismantling the sanity of separation of Church & State.

Marx stated that religion arose from economic forces, and ultimately represents “the opiate” of the people and was to be overcome through social revolution (overthrow of the capitalist system.) Karen Armstrong suggests that monotheist religion is in itself revolutionary, or at the very least, serves as moderating force between the working and leisure classes. Armstrong states that Islam is a highly advanced Axil Age religion, dedicated to the single god of the Bible and Quran.

Both views illustrate valid, albeit antithetical, historical perspectives.

But when the opinions of the Early Gnostics are taken into account, a monkey wrench is thrown into this rational dialectical harmony. To Gnostics the Biblical Creator is neither nonexistent (Marx) nor revolutionary (Armstrong.) Instead the Gnostics called the monotheist God the Demiurge, or false god of the material world.

For the Gnostics, Yahweh = Demiurge = Satan/Jehovah.

However, Islam, at least superficially, places more emphasis on the compassionate nature of Allah than do Judaism or Christianity.

Unfortunately, many followers of the main Axial Age religions rather consistently fail to live up to the life they preach.

The first recorded attempt to develop a mass monotheist religion was during the ill fated 18^th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten (formerly Amenhotep IV), and the cult of the Aten or the solar disk. This initial experiment was doomed to failure because the Egyptians were attached to the old gods and believed that the radical religion of the Pharaoh was heresy. They also believed that the polytheistic pantheon they worshiped represented a direct connection with the world—and that Egypt was the center of both the Earth and the Cosmos (pyramids represented the primordial mound of material creation.) The Egyptians also believed that Akhenaten’s radical monotheism (which was really placing himself at the center of a monotheistic cult with himself as the center) would bring chaos and destruction to the Earth. Many historians assert that the monotheist god Yahweh (Jehovah) of Moses was originally inspired by the Aten Cult.

But that did not mean a wholesale rejection of tradition,

the Axil Age prophets…built on the old pagan rites of their region,

and Muhammad would do the same. He did say that they ignore the cult of such popular Arabian goddesses as Manat, al-Lat and al-Uzzah…and worship Allah alone. The pagan deities are said in the Quran to be like weak tribal…a liability for their people, because they could not bring adequate protection…The old religion Quran claimed, was simply not working. There was spiritual malaise…warfare…injustice that violated the best Arab traditions and tribal codes .The way forward laid in a single God and a unified ummab (“the Muslim Community”), which was governed by justice and equity.

[Pgs. 7-8]

The goddess Manat was most likely a corruption of the ancient Egyptian Maat, the solar goddess of truth & justice.

It is also interesting that Muhammad describes the pagan deities as being lesser tribal powers—in other words, they did exist but had lost their supremacy. At the time of the Prophet, the Kabah (central shrine of hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca originally for pagans and eventually Muslims.) had become a monument of the High God, Allah. Apparently in the pre-historic past statues of 360 lesser deities surrounded the Kabah, but Muhammad had them torn down. These deities may have some correspondence to the early Gnostic belief in the cosmic Archons that ruled over the earth, one for each day of the solar year.

Muhammad was insistent that there be no “craven images” of Allah. As a consequence Islamic calligraphy was developed as a fine art form that would grace religious structures in place of icons or other images.

The reasons for the popularity of belief in a single god in Arabia from 610 onwards were the same for the propagandistic conquering of the Roman Empire by Christianity. Paganism appeared to have run out of steam. It wasn’t so much that pagans had lost their belief in the gods—they quit believing in anything. The value of the written word communicating a more complex & sophisticated spiritual worldview cannot be overestimated in this regard. Apparently human nature (at least during the beginning of the Christian era in Europe) required a metaphysical belief system in a controlling Supreme Deity. It makes perfect sense that monotheism would arise from the realization that a more-or-less mutual universal belief system be adopted by people who desired to trade with one another. The God of the Jews is (in theory anyway) the same God of Christianity, as well as the God of Muhammad.

During Muhammad’s era Arabic society contained massive contradictions and poverty, and monotheism developed as a necessary means of achieving unity. In fact, the idea of a unified spiritual community both religious & political is particularly significant in Islam. This is one of many aspects of Islam that secularist Westerners fail to appreciate. A tremendous energy has been utilized in the West to separate religion from the political community; the goal in Islam is for spirituality and the community to be one.

Another major factor in the unfolding of Islam—and Arabic culture in general—was that the land was inhospitable to the development of an agrarian society that could produce & maintain a surplus that (that would come much later with the modern need for oil.) The many conflicting clans & tribes (including the Prophet’s) engaged in aggressive raids against each other and other populations. This was considered normal. Indeed, the ancient Hebrews and later Christians engaged in the same behavior. The ancient Hebrews and Arabs raided out of economic necessity. The Christians motivated more by greed and the compulsive need to make everybody believe in their own version of a Big Sky God Daddy who seemed appeased only by the torture and execution of His Only Begotten Son.

While Judaism rejected “Jesus” as Messiah, Islam considers him to be a prophet, albeit a lesser Prophet than Muhammad

Yahweh is not a god of peace; he is like Zeus without a spouse.

Nonetheless, Muhammad attempted to form fraternal ties with the Hebrew Patriarchs, but his efforts fell on deaf ears.

Karen Armstrong notes:

The Quran continued to revere Jewish prophets and to urge Muslims

to respect the People of the Book…and later Jews, like Christians, enjoyed

full religious liberty in Islamic empires. Anti-semitism is a Christian vice.

Hatred of Jews became marked in the Muslim world only after the creation

of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent loss of Arab Palestine. It is

significant that Muslims were compelled to import anti-Jewish myths from

Europe, and translate into Arabic such virulently anti-semitic texts as

Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because they had no such traditions

of their own…

[Pgs. 21-22]

The Protocols was a blatant forgery of the Czarist Secret Service used to stir up popular support for pogroms (anti-Jewish acts of vandalism & violence.) This disreputable document claimed there was an international Jewish conspiracy controlling events and that Jews were behind both capitalism AND bolshevism—quite a neat trick, to say the least.

The National Socialists in Germany as well as the Stalinists in Russia promoted The Protocols as historic fact.

There are uneducated people who believe in it to this day. In fact, it has been reported that The Protocols is being used again to enflame anti-Semitism in Arab communities.

Click above for more info.

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As Islam developed, strains & fractures began to appear somewhat—but not quite—like the schisms between Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism. Often these differences in Islam revolved around Muhammad ‘s descendants, just as Papal succession stir up warfare in the Roman Catholic tradition However, there is this major difference between Islam & traditionalist Christianity: Muhammad, although the last & greatest Prophet, was not the literal Son of God by Muslims; whereas to early Christians Joshua ben Joseph was thought the be the one and only Son of God. Jesus has been depicted as having no sex life, no wife, and no son. The closest human analogy in Christianity would revolve around the pop idea inferring that Mary Magdalene bore the son of the Son of God.

Muslims accepted the biblical prophets (including Jesus), but claim Muhammad was the last.

It was probably during the riddah wars that Muslims began to assert

that Muhammad had been the last and greatest of the prophets, a claim that is not made

explicitly in the Quran, as Muslims countered the challenge of…riddah prophets.

[P. 26]

As in the case of Judaism & Christianity and the Bible, Muslims look to the Quran for self-fulfilling prophecy.

A century after the Prophet’s death,

the Islamic Empire extended from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas.

It seemed yet another miracle of God’s favour. Before the coming of Islam,

the Arabs had been a despised out group; but in a remarkably short space of time they had inflicted major defeats upon two world empires. The experience of conquest

enhanced their sense that something tremendous had happened to them.

Membership of the ummah

was a transcendent experience, because it went beyond anything

they had known or could have imagined

in the old tribal days.

Their success also endorsed the message of the Quran, which had

asserted that a correctly guided society must prosper because it was in tune with

God’s laws. Look what happened once they had surrendered to God’s will!

Where Christians discerned God’s hand in apparent failure and defeat,

when Jesus died on the cross, Muslims experienced political

success as sacramental and as a revelation of the

divine presence in their lives.

[P. 29]

There is only one metaphysical Mystery greater than how or why there was any Beginning—and that is the question, how can people who profess belief in the same God have such diametrically opposed views? The Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims fight with one another, and each group claims to have the monotheist “God” on their side.

Over the course of time humanity has created many gods in its own image, but the aggression & racial prejudice of Yahweh

Armstrong continues to illustrate further early Islamic schism.

But it seemed wrong to the Muslims of Medina,

who still boasted of being the ansar (helpers) of the Prophet,

that they should be passed over in favour of Abu Sufyan’s offspring.

the Quran-reciters, who knew the scripture by heart and had become the

chief religious authorities, were also incensed…that only one version of the sacred text be used in garrison towns, and suppressed variants, which many of them preferred, but

which differed in minor details. Increasingly, the malcontents looked to Ali ibn

Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin, who, it seems, had opposed the policies of

both Umar and Uthman, standing for “soldiers rights”

against the power of central authority.

In 656 the discontent culminated in outright mutiny.

A group of soldiers from Fustat returned to Medina to

claim their due, and when fobbed off they besieged Uthman’s simple house ,

broke in, and assassinated him. The mutineers acclaimed Ali as the new caliph.

[Pgs. 32-33]

All this drama only 50 years since the first “revelation.”

It was a violent drama that would be played out time and time again—just like the Christian religious wars.

Maybe Jews really are the Chosen of Yahweh, but alas, he has not been particularly nice to them either.

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Karen Armstrong continues to develop the theme of how Islam and the Western view of politics & religion differ.

…It had been found, after centuries of experience,

that an absolute monarchy was the only effective way

of governing a pre-modern empire agrarian-based economy,

and that it was far more satisfactory than a military oligarchy,

where commanders usually competed with one another for power.

The idea of making one man so privileged that rich and poor alike are

vulnerable before him is abhorrent to us in our democratic era, but we must

realize that democracy is made possible by an industrialized society which has

the technology to replicate its resources indefinitely; this was not an option before the

advent of Western modernity. In the pre-modern world, a monarch who was so

powerful that he had no rivals did not need to fight his own battles, could

settle the quarrels of the great and had no reason to ignore to ignore the

entreaties of those who pleaded for the poor.

[Pgs. 41-42]

This is an incredibly idealized version of religious absolutism and theocracy—and seems unsupportable to most Muslims, especially for those living in the West. It runs completely contrary to the Marxist historical dialectic. It also indicates how difficult it is for Muslims to “convert” to even non-Marxist Socialism. Back in the days when the United States Government was still chummy with Saddam Hussein, the latter had thousands of Communist members murdered in order to (1) eliminate a potential opposition base, and (2) curry favor with his Imperialist backer.

The fate of Socialists in Arab countries has been brutal, and yet many people have commented on the similarities between the Islamic worldview and Socialism. However, one could say that the problem with Islam has too many leaders and Socialism has none.

Armstrong continues her well-reasoned view that political history and religious history are one & the same in Islam & for the Muslim Community.

What arrangements made about the succession?

…Historians such as Muhammad ibn Ishaq (d. 767) started

to collect ahadith (“reports”) which explained some of the passages

in the Quran by relating them to the historical circumstances

in which the prophet had received a particular revelation…and the inequity of the Meccans

who had opposed Muhammad. He clearly inclined to the Shii position that it was not

fitting that Muslims should be ruled by the descendants of Abu Sufyan.

History had thus become a religious activity that justified

a principled opposition to the regime.

[P. 49]

Again, there is a certain degree of historical correspondence with Islamic political struggle that continues to this day, with the Christian European Religious War & Wars of Succession. The big difference is that in terms of history, the Christians had some 600 years on the Muslims in terms of spiritual degeneration of the original revelation, and had reached the collective conclusion to reject Absolutist control represented by the Union of Church & State. Armstrong agrees with the modern Islamic view that it is legitimate for the Muslim Community to reject secularism even if they live in the West.

Of course many Arabic immigrants & second or third generation prefer the separation of Church & State rather than living in a rigid Theocracy. There is obviously a need for a give and take attitude. For example, it would be inappropriate for a child to wear a Bin Laden t-shirt in a western school—just as it would be equally inappropriate to deny a Muslim girl her right to wear a religious headscarf in school.

Commenting on the High Caliphal Period (750-935) Armstrong notes both the brutality & triumphs of the times.

Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah (750-54), the first Abbasid caliph, massacred all the Umayyads he could lay his hands upon. Hitherto the indiscriminate slaughter of a noble Arab family would have been unthinkable.

Caliph Abu Jafar al-Mansur (754-75) murdered all the Shii leaders whom he considered a danger to his rule…Al-Mansur indicated that God would give him “special help” to achieve victory; his son styled himself al-Mahdi(the Guided One), the term used by Shiis to describe a leader who would establish the age of justice and peace.

[Pgs. 53-55]

We’re all still waiting…

It was during this period that the power of the caliphs began to overshadow the role of the Prophet and to override piety with pomp and mundane elitism. Ordinary people were expected to bow to the ground before the nobility, an act of veneration formerly reserved only to Allah.

And yet during this same time, Arabic civilization was in full bloom.

Harun al-Rashid was a patron of the arts and scholarship, and inspired a great cultural renaissance. Literary criticism, philosophy, poetry, medicine, mathematics and astronomy flourished not only in Baghdad…translating the philosophical and medical texts of classical Hellenism from Greek and Syriac into Arabic…Muslim scholars made more scientific discoveries during this time than in the whole of previously recorded history.

But Armstrong makes a somewhat arguable remark on Page 56.

Islam is a realistic and practical faith, which does not normally encourage the spirit of martyrdom or the taking of pointless risks.

Old Aeon religions such as Christianity and Islam have thrived on the blood of martyrs—and both have martyred Jews and those of their own race considered to be heretics.

Click on the “witch” for more info

on the Inquisition

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Karen Armstrong comments on the development of esoteric branches of Islam.

The Mutazilah had always been too abstruse for the vast majority of Muslims. Asharism became the predominant philosophy of Sunni Islam. It was obviously not a rationalist creed, but more of a mystical and contemplative discipline. It encouraged Muslims to see the divine presence everywhere, to look through external to the transcendent reality immanent within it…

[P. 64]

The following passage on P. 66 illustrates definite parallels with early Gnostic communities:

…During the Abbasid period, four more complex forms of Islamic philosophy…emerged that appealed to an elite. These ideas were kept secret from the masses, because adepts believed that they could easily be misunderstood by those of meaner intelligence…The secrecy was also a self-protective device. Jafar as-Sadiq…told his disciples to practice taqiyyah (dissimulation) for their own safety. These were perilous times for Shiis, who were danger from the political establishment…(dissimulation—ed.) kept conflict to a minimum. In Christendom, people who held beliefs that were different from the establishment were…persecuted as heretics. In Islam, these potential dissidents kept quiet about their ideas…The myths and theological insights of the esoterics were part of a total way of life…but were not necessarily comprehensible to the ordinary rational understanding of an outsider. They were like a poem or a piece of music, whose effect cannot be explained rationally, and which often requires a degree of aesthetic training and expertise if it is to be appreciated fully.

Certainly this dovetails completely with the teachings of The Gnostic Pagan School in so far it advocates ideas considered “seditious” by the modern capitalist establishment.

Pertaining to the three major esoteric developments (Shiis, Ismailis & Falsafah—Sufism is not included at this stage), Armstrong notes elements of each also reflected in The Gnostic Pagan School.

As to Shii, the elements of martyrdom and apparent masochism override the more subtle spiritual aspects, or so it may appear to Western viewers.

The martyrdom of Husain, the Third Imam at Kerbala was a particularly eloquent example of the perils that could accrue from the attempt to do God’s will in this world. By the tenth century Shiis publicly mourned Husain,,,They would process through the streets, weeping and beating their breast, declaring…undying opposition to the corruption of Muslim political life…Shiis who followed Jafar as-Saddiq may have abjured politics, but the passion for social justice was at the heart of their piety of protest.

[P. 67-68]

This type of ritual procession is reminiscent of the European Christian flagellants who went from town to town at the height of the bubonic plague. They would whip themselves & one another into frenzy, carry heavy crosses, wear crowns of thorns, etc. This practice was brilliantly portrayed in the early Ingmar Bergam film The Seventh Seal. Variations of this theme are still performed during Holy Week in many countries that include actual crucifixion—so the various self-mutilation rituals of other people are really not such an aberration as may appear at first glance.

Back in Arabia, Sunni Muslims had been engaged in a prolonged struggle against the court system that appeared to substitute privileged mortals in place of the Prophet and Allah. As a consequence they grow suspicious of arts & sciences. [P. 70]

As a result of the Sunni anti-aesthetic orientation, Ismailism offered the more intellectual the chance to study the new philosophy in a religious way.

They also believed that no one revelation or theological system could ever be definitive, since God was always greater than human thought.

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Continuing her examination of Ismailism with the third major branch of Islamic thought Falsafah—and both their indebtedness to ancient Greek philosophy—reveal a quasi-gnostic type philosophy.

The Ismailis derived a good deal of their cosmic symbolism from Falsafah…It sprang from the cultural renaissance inaugurated by the Abbasids, in particular the discovery of Greek philosophy, science and medicine. The Faylasufs were enthralled by the Hellenistic cult of reason…The Supreme Deity of Aristotle and Plotinus was very different from Allah. It did not concern itself with earthly events…Where monotheists had experienced God in the historical events of the world, the Faylasufs agreed with the Greeks that history was an illusion; it had no beginning, middle or end…By purifying our intellects of all that was not rational…human beings could reverse the process of eternal emanation away from the divine, ascend from the multiplicity and complexity of life…This process of catharsis…was the primordial religion…All other cults were simply inadequate versions of the true faith of reason.

[P. 71]

And regarding the more mystically inclined Sufis, the author writes:

Sufism, the mysticism of Sunni Islam, is different from the other schools…since it did not develop an overtly political philosophy…it seemed to have turned its back on history, and Sufis sought God in the depths of their being rather than in current events…Sufis went back to the spirit of the Quran in their appreciation of other religious traditions. Some…were especially devoted to Jesus…since he had preached a gospel of love. Others maintained that even a pagan who prostrated himself before a stone was worshipping the Truth (al-hagg)…Sufis, like the Shiis, were constantly open to the possibility of new truths, which could be found anywhere, even in other religious traditions.

[Pgs. 73-74]

The following statement on Page 88 concerning the 11^th Century scholar Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali concludes with a verbatim definition of Sufism and Gnosticism (underlined):

…an expert in Islamic law, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1095. The Ismaili revolution was at its height, but al-Ghazzali…found he was paralyzed and could not speak…explained that…he knew a great deal about God, he did not know God himself…There were, he believed, three sorts of people: those who accept the trurths of religion without questioning them; those who try to find justification for their beliefs in the rational discipline of kalam (theology); and the Sufis, who have a direct experience of religious truth.

In this same section the author notes that Muslims had coined the term “theosophy” long before Madame Blavatsky popularized the term near the end of the 19^th Century—but in different contexts. Blavatsky used the word to describe the East-Meets-West fusion of various beliefs & practices. Aleister Crowley built upon this base and expanded its dimensions. For Islam all religion was theosophy and political ideology was theosophy—and religious/political people were theosophists.

Leaders of the many divergent early Gnostic sects were often called “Doctor” as in Metaphysician or Doctor of Theosophy.

There’s no question that Gnosticism originated in the Middle East and traveled from Alexandria to Rome and to Asia. Unfortunately Armstrong neither comments on the influence (or even lack thereof) of Gnosticism on Islam—just as she does not even mention the 19^th Century development of the B’hai movement from its Islamic source.

Armstrong does, however, comment on mystic currents in Islam that definitely have a Gnostic nature.

Henceforth there would be no theological…discourse in Islam that was not deeply fused with spirituality…Yahya Suhrawdi (d. 1191) founded a school of illumination (al-ishraq) based on ancient pre-Islamic Iranian mysticism. He saw true philosophy as the result of a marriage between the disciplined training of the intellect through Falsafah and the interior transformation of the heart effected by Sufism.

…The visions of the mystics and the symbols of the Quran…could not be proved empirically, but could only be glimpsed by the trained intuitive faculty of the contemplative.

…Even those who were not trained mystics became aware of this world in dreams or in the hypnogogic imagery that can surface when we fall asleep or into a trance state. When a prophet or a mystic has a vision…he had become aware of this interior realm, which could correspond to what we call the unconscious mind today.

…The theosopher Muid ad-Din al-Arabi (d. 1240)…urged Muslims to discover the alam al-mithal within them, and taught that God lay through the creative imagination.

[Pgs. 91-92]

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Commenting on the medieval Crusades, Karen Armstrong makes this apt observation:

The Crusades were disgraceful but formative events in Western history; they were devastating for the Muslims of the Near East, but for the vast majority of Muslims in Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Malaya, Afghanistan and India, they were remote border incidents. It was only in the twentieth century, when the West had become more powerful and threatening, the Muslim historians would become preoccupied by the…Crusades…longing for a leader who would be able to contain the neo-Crusade of Western imperialism.

[P. 95]

[For more detailed information regarding the Crusades, click on the Knight.]

A more fundamental & lasting influence on Islam were the stunning campaign successes of war-faring Mongols under the brilliant leadership of their chief Genghis Khan.

The Mongols therefore became the chief Muslim power in the central Islamic heartlands. But whatever their official allegiance to Islam, the main ideology of their states was “Mongolism,” which glorified the…military might of the Mongols…

[P. 98]

Armstrong notes that it was during this time frame (1220-1500) and the seemingly unstoppable advances of the Mongols, that people clearly felt that the world…was coming to an end, but also that an entirely new global order was possible.

And during this time another Sufi mystic was to expound a philosophy similar to Gnosticism.

…the vision of the Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-73), who was himself a victim of the Mongols but whose teachings expressed the sense of boundless possibility that they had brought with them..his father was…a Sufi master, and Rumi…was learned in…theology…Arabic and Persian literature…Rumi’s spirituality is suffused by a sense of cosmic homelessness and separation from God, the divine source. The greatest misfortune that could befall…was not to feel the pain of severance…We must realize…that our sense of selfhood is illusory. Our ego veils the reality from us, and by divesting ourselves of egotism and selfishness we will find that God is all that remains.

[P. 101]

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Nearing the end of the third section (CULMINATION) of her history, Armstrong notes observations that foreshadow current events.

…Throughout Islamic history…especially during a period of foreign encroachment—a reformer (mujdadid) would often renew the faith…These reforms followed a similar pattern. They were conservative, since they attempted to go back to basics rather than create an entirely new solution…the reformers were often iconoclastic in sweeping away later medieval developments that had come to be considered sacred. They were also suspicious of foreign influence…which had corrupted what they saw as the purity of the faith. This type of reformer would become a feature of Muslim society. Many of the people who are called “Muslim Fundamentalists” in our own day correspond exactly to the old pattern set by the mujdadids.

[P. 103-104]

Muslims remained a minority in India. Some…of the “untouchables” converted to Islam often as a result of the teaching of Sufi(ism)…But the majority retained their Hindu, Buddhist or Jain allegiance. It is not true…that Muslims destroyed Buddhism in India.

[P. 102]

Perhaps not, but the Taliban outraged the contemporary world by blowing up historically significant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan.

In 1389 the Ottomans defeated the Serbian army at Kosovo Field…the Serbian Prince Hrelbejanovic Lazar was captured and executed, It marked the end of Serbian independence and, to this day, Serbians…have nurtured a profound hatred of Islam.

By the end of the fifteenth century Islamdom was the greatest power bloc in the world. It had advanced into Eastern Europe, into the Eurasian steppes, and into the sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of Muslim traders…The whole world seemed to becoming Islamic: even those who did not live under Muslim rule discovered that the Muslims controlled the high seas, and that when they left their own lands they had to confront Islamdom.

[Pgs. 109-111]

Unlike their non-Christian counterparts around the world, Muslims were not subject to the invasion by missionaries seeking souls, new land and loot.

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The concluding section of the history is titled ISLAM TRIUMPHANT and spans 1500 to the present.

Some useful background information regarding the conflict between Sunni & Shii is presented.

The establishment of a Shii Empire caused a new and decisive rift between Sunnis and Shiis, leading to an intolerance and an aggressive sectarianism that was unprecedented in the Islamic world but which was similar to the bitter conflict between Catholics and Protestants that erupted at the same time in Europe. There was also the challenge of Europe itself, which had hitherto been a backward region and of little interest to Muslims. Europe…was just beginning to evolve an entirely new kind of civilization, free of the constraints of agrarian society, which would eventually enable the West not only to overtake but to subjugate the Islamic world…When the Russians invaded Kazan and Astrakhan (1552-56), and imposed Christianity there, Muslims profited from this defeat by opening new lines of trade with northern Europe…

[P. 116]

In the second half of the sixteenth century they (Portuguese merchants) tried to ruin Muslim trade in the Red Sea. These exploits…made little impact on the Islamic world. Muslims were far more interested in the establishment of a Shii Empire in Iran; the spectacular successes of the early Safavids were a severe blow to Sunni expectations. For the first time in centuries, a stable, powerful and enduring Shii state had been planted right in the heart of Islamdom.

[P. 117]

By the late seventeenth century most Iranians were solidly Shii, and have remained so to the present day.

[P. 118]

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In the 17^th Century Sufism evolved into deeper mystic practices that more than even more resembled the 10^th Century Christian sadomasochism. In the case of the Christian flagellants, their vision as an apocalyptic one fueled by the turning of a millennium and the superstition riddled “Revelation” of John. The Sufi’s were motivated by social fractures & injustice imposed by “Shii bigotry

He (Muhammad Baqir Majlisis (d. 1700) tried to suppress the teaching of Falsafah mysticism…and mercilessly persecuted the remaining Sufis….Majlisi introduced into Iranian Shiism a distrust of mysticism and philosophy that is still prevalent today.

To replace the old Sufi devotions…and the cult of Sufi saints, Majlisi promoted the mourning rituals…to teach…the values and piety of the Shiah. There were elaborate processions, and highly emotional dirges were sung, while the people wailed and cried aloud…weeping and beating their breasts…The rituals provided an important safety valve. ..they moaned, slapped their foreheads and wept uncontrollably…yearning for justice which is at the heart of Shii piety, asking…why the good seemed to suffer and evil nearly always prevailed. But Majlisis and the shahas were careful were careful to suppress the revolutionary potential of these rites. Instead of protesting the tyranny at home…the people were taught to…secure their admission into paradise.

[P. 121]

Christianity has been duping the masses for two thousand with the same pie-in-the-sky ideology—and with the same objective—that is, to protect the interests of an elitist & corrupt Oligarchy at the expense of the majority,

Click for P.L.O.

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Time restraints—and probably the reader’s patience—suggest we jump ahead at this point to Armstrong’s concluding chapters FUNDAMENTALISM and MUSLIMS IN A MINORITY.

As this is such a hot issue today there are some that are of particular relevance.

Concerning the emergence of fundamentalism in all the main faiths, Armstrong is perceptive on some levels—and way of the mark (to say the least) in others.

The Western media often gives the impression that the embattled and occasionally (!) violent form of religiosity known as “fundamentalism” is a purely Islamic phenomenon.

[P. 164]

My god, Armstrong must have been completely sheltered in that convent during the past 20 years. Everyone else is aware the violence in the United States organized the far right, racists & so-called Christians. Abortion clinic bombings, racist killings and murderous cults: everybody knows about these events in the U.S. for exception of Armstrong who sounds very much like an apologist for reactionary religion.

And what about the Taliban that tortured school teachers in Afghanistan—or Saudi Arabia where they beheaded a princess for the “crime” of adultery? Monotheist bias mars Armstrong’s objectivity, and unfortunately prevents her work. In her summation, Armstrong really lets it rip.

All fundamentalists feel that they are fighting for survival…in this frame of mind, on rare occasions, some resort to terrorism. The vast majority, however, do not commit acts of violence, but simply try to revive their faith in a more conventional, lawful way.

[P. 167]

Maybe not—but they do either actively or passively empower their respective governments to commit the “lawful” violence historically associated with Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There are elements of this argument in the “Wiccan” need to let everybody know that “true” Wicca has nothing to do with Satanism. Unfortunately even to the glibbest witch, the “Craft” has indeed traditionally associated with Satanism—AND there is absolutely no evidence of a viable continuity of any of the myriad “traditions” of witchcraft before the 16^th century, when the Black Mass was popular among the levels of French society (who were soon to lose their heads if they were unlucky.)

Armstrong’s argument that the Axial Religions represent a great truth really only reinforces the general Gnostic belief that the more people that are involved in any significant gnostic circle simply dilute the gnosis the shared by the group.

In other words, Gnosis never was, never is, and never will be a “mass” religious movement. Today is may present itself in such a form, but it is more seminar & therapy group than Gnosis.

Divorced from revolutionary politics Gnosis can’t help but be elitist.

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On page 172 Susan Armstrong discusses the traditional dress of Muslim that has caused so much controversy in the West.

Surveys show that a large proportion of veiled women hold progressive views on such matters as gender. For some women, who have come from rural areas to…university…the assumption of Islamic dress provides continuity and makes their rite of passage less traumatic than it…might have been. They are coming to join the modern world…on their own terms and in an Islamic context that gives it a sacred meaning.

This may well be true for religious and/or traditionalist women, but all too often this obsession with being covered from head to toe is simply a matter of oppressing women like foot binding in ancient China.

Armstrong continues her murky quasi-socio-religious analysis.

Veiling can also be seen as a tacit critique of some of the less positive aspects of modernity. It defies the strange Western compulsion to “reveal all” in sexual matters. In the West, people…flaunt their tanned…bodies as a sign of privilege; they try to counteract the signs of ageing and hold on to this life. The shrouded Islamic body…is oriented to transcendence…and stresses the importance of community over Western individualism.

In other words, like all the Axial Age religions, Islam, whether “fundamentalist” or not, is ultra-conformist.

When the upper class Muslim women go to Paris they make a beeline to the smart shops.

When the Red Army entered Kabul, the women couldn’t wait to toss off the imprisoning chador.

So once again author Armstrong is blind-sighted by her own orthodox monotheism.

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Armstrong practically—if not actually—canonizes Ayatollah Khomeini, that Satan incarnate to the West.

During the 1960’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-89) brought the people out into the streets to protest against the cruel and unconstitutional policies of Muhammad Reza Shah, whom he identified with Yazid, the Umayyad caliph who had been responsible for the death of Husain at Kerbala, the type of unjust ruler…Muslims had a duty to fight…who would have been unmoved by a socialist call to revolution…

[P. 173]

And the entire world is so much the worse for it!

The International Social Revolution should be able to accept the non-destructive, non-enslaving aspects of personal religion, but never be derailed by it. As Marxists are fully aware, Capitalism pits gender against gender, clan against clan, religion against religion, and race against race. One must suspect the motives of any religious group that claims sole rights on truth, and demands a theocracy based on a single “revelation.”

There is absolutely no reason why people can’t maintain their personal religious beliefs without insisting that they be reflected in the State.

THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH & STATE IS AN ABSOLUTE DEMOCRATIC DOCTRINE.

In the final section of her history, Armstrong comments that Muslims have fared better in the United States than in most other non-Islamic countries such as Germany, France and even the U.K. Of course 9/11 most certainly has changed the terrain in the U.S. as well.

Muslims have fared better in the United States. The Muslim immigrations there are better educated and middle class. They work as doctors, academics and engineers, whereas in Europe the Muslim community is predominately working class. American Muslims feel that they are in the United States by choice. They want to become Americans, and in the land of the melting pot integration is more a possibility than in Europe. Muslims such as Malcolm X (1925-65), the…leader of the black separatist group called the Nation of Islam…became an emblem of Black and Muslim power. The Nation of Islam, however, was a heterodox party. Founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard…after the mysterious disappearance of Fard in 1934, led by Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975), it claimed that God had been incarnated in Fard, that white people are inherently evil and that there was no life after death—all views that are heretical from an Islamic perspective. The Nation of Islam demanded a separate state for African Americans…Malcolm X became disillusioned…when he discovered the moral laxity of Elijah Muhammad and took his followers into Sunni Islam: two years later, he was assassinated for this apostasy…The bizarre [Black Nationalist--.Ed] stance of the Nation may seem closer to the Western stereotype of Islam as an inherently intolerant and fanatical.

[P. 177]

Lingering racial prejudice & economic disparity in America only fuel discord & dissension.

Karen Armstrong concludes her book with the typical & obligatory call for “reconciliation.”

The West has not been wholly responsible for the extreme forms of Islam, which have cultivated a violence that violates the most sacred canons of religion. But the West has certainly contributed to this development and, to assuage the fear and despair that lies at the root of all fundamentalist vision, should cultivate a more accurate appreciation of Islam in the third Christian millennium.

[P. 187]

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A SHORT HISTORY of ISLAM is certainly that, but it does helpful in illustrating the depths & textures of the creed.

It is astounding that Armstrong mentions Malcolm X, but not one word to the persecuted Bhai’s.

For additional information on B’hai, select the portrait of Bahaulla below.

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Source Material:

ISLAM The Straight Way by John L. Esposito

Oxford University Press

ISLAM Religion, History & Civilization by Seyyed Hossein Nasr