That was a massive information bolus I gave everyone the other day. I’ll give that one time to settle in by osmosis, whilst I stoke my furnace for the next piece. Since I stumbled into that history, I have decided I will focus my writing on being an outsider Muslim and tracing the origins of present-day culture + thought.
My next major piece will be about the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood and how it influenced Muslim thinking. The strong theme of anti-Jewish hatred, wherever present, I will thread through my work. I know well from studying Holocaust Germany that Goebbels + Hitler tied German nationalism and collective German victimhood to Jews, whom they cast as villainous scapegoat, and I see a similar behaviour pattern in the evolution of Arab nationalism and selective Muslim outrage.
Also the dehumanisation mindset rampant in the Muslim world fascinates me—the facile way many who claim to be pious have excused or even cheered the cruel horrific violent attack on Salman Rushdie exhibits a devastating level of brainwashing and a viral spread of the dehumanisation phenomenon David Livingstone Smith has written about.
Tying an identity to hating/demonising a group of humans seems dangerous to me.
Can we really call it mercy when we cast a mass murderer as a victim of inhumane treatment? What, really, do we mean by mercy? For whom? For what ethical or moral value?
Does anyone remember The Nice Nazi? The Americans trotted him around the publicity circuit, we couldn’t help but gawk in fascination, like when mama took us to a strange new place to see strange puzzling things. Here was this seemingly harmless man on Donahue, he had been Prisoner Number 5 in Spandau Prison—Albert Speer. Yeah, The Nice Nazi only exploited millions of slave labourers to double production of armaments (to kill allied soldiers) for Hitler’s deranged psychotic war game fantasy. Yeah, super nice guy.
Why are humans like this? Why do we do this ridiculous thing where we engage in mental gymnastics to excuse unapologetic people who did horrific things to masses of humans? How could we possibly construe this as mercy or compassion?
Did we bring Nazis to justice and eradicate nazism? Did we really? Just because the Third Reich fell, doesn’t mean nazism died that day. Far from it—the world pretended not to notice whilst a bunch of nazis ran away to South America and Egypt.
Why is defending the honour of The Prophet seen as:
aggressing and terrorising Europeans for stupid cartoons?
vilifying Jews as fascist oppressors?
having silly tantrums about the dream of a Bilad al-Shams Arab Dynasty being smashed (and pretending that’s colonial oppression)?
taking out Salman Rushdie’s eye after having various fatwas on his head and driving him into hiding, including under police protection, for several years?
Why is defending the honour of The Prophet NOT seen as aggressing the theft of the Holy Sites at Mecca and Medina by the House of Saud, who destroyed the home of Kadijah, the Mother of all Muslims, and killed Jamal Khashogghi for being a dissident?
The Hashemites, the King of Jordan, are the true descendants of The Prophet, are they not? Hashim = the great grandfather of Muhammad.
Why does the vast majority of humans on the planet hate what we hate more than we love what we love? Why are many of us behaving like we have no prefrontal cortex and have been raised by hyenas or some other amoral, wild and predacious pack animals?
Are you letting your amygdala drive the bus? Why?
Have you considered that The One Which You Other is going nowhere, and that you will have to learn to co-exist on this planet with them? How will you achieve that by cancelling them all? Where are you planning to cancel them to? Who will look after you, for example, when you have canceled and alienated all the health care workers who refuse to join your mRNA cult? Have you considered the consequences of the things your emotions tell you that you want? Have you see how well Zero Covid Measures are working in China? Remember when you wanted that?
Are you sure you want what you say you want? Are you sure you just don’t want to control others to give yourself dopamine hits? How would you know the difference?
I think humans are inherently good, if I didn’t I would believe in Original Sin and I think that a pile of horse manure. That said, I also think humans struggle against their nafs, and that the greater jihad, ie the struggle that happens in one’s own heart, ie Qalb, is a constant one.
Maybe the heart cycle—expand + contract, filling + emptying, maybe this is instructive to us? To be alive means chemical + gas exchange at the cellular level. What if nature can teach us what we must do, if only we stopped pretending we are better because we have a prefrontal cortex blah blah?
Being a Muslims means you are NOT a trinitarian + you believe Jesus was the messiah, you don’t believe in the crucifixion + resurrection, you believe Muhammad was a prophet of God + that the Qur’an was revealed to Him as the word of God. That’s it. Why do so many believe it means obligatory sexism and hatred of Jews and anti-westernism?