Misunderstanding of religion

Submitted by Philip (United Kingdom), Jan 5, 2016 at 05:18

This article seems to treat the 'Islamist Movement' as a political ideology, like Communism, Marxism etc. These political ideologies were contemporary and were responses to 'human conditions' of the Modern Era, and once those conditions changed, the ideologies arguably became less influential.

Islam is a 1300 year old religion. It has always had multiple streams and facets. It is like a huge river with underlying currents and counter currents, flows and eddies. But Islam, as submission to Allah, is One River with One Direction, the Global Caliphate. It has been working towards this goal relentlessly with but one quiescent period for 1300 years. That quiescent period from 1683-1979 was anomalous. 1683 at the Gates of Vienna marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Caliphate but 100 years later in the 18thC in the Arabian Peninsula another Islamic dynamic arose, Wahhabism. Just as the Ottoman Caliphate died in 1920, so the Saudi Wahhabi Kingdom established itself a decade later in the 1930s. Then in 1945 Saudi allied with petroleum to the US. In 1974 the West became dhimmi to Allah's Saudi petroleum, and in 1979 Khomeini kick-started the 3rd Islamic resurgence.

There may well be differences among Muslims. It seems that the millennial Sunni-Shia split is coming to a head. Saudi has the means through the dhimmi US/UK connection to, in its view, eradicate the Shia heresy once and for all. The Saudi have a Grand Design. Internal disputes aside this dynamic is strong, fuelled by global petrol money and Saudi Dawaa. Whatever the conflicts, most Muslims will actively or passively support the Dawaa towards a Global Islam. Present Islamism is one route to that. Doubtless, like the Jihad groups, it will transmogrify. But the dynamic as a religious imperative going back 1300 years remains constant.

Secular cultures fail to understand this, because they fail to comprehend the inherent 'psycho-emotional/spiritual' networking dynamic of a religion with 1.5 billion adherents. They tend to be overwhelmingly Rationalist in their world views and tend to treat religions either as forms of superstition or as belonging to the personal and the private. The West separated Church and State in the 18/19Cs. Islam continues to integrate them. So the secular rationalist West remains blind to the implications of this Islamic integralist dynamic. Unless they overcome this blindness they are very likely to succumb to the Islamic (not necessarily 'Islamist') dynamic in some form or other.

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