The Muslim Religious Wars

A while back now (June 3, 2013)—but I glimpsed it again just the other day while making order—I saw an op-ed column by Bret Stephens in the WSJ titled “The Muslim Civil War,” subtitled “Standing by while the Sunnis and Shiites fight it out invites disaster.” The story deals principally with the Syrian conflict, but it got me thinking—and recalling. I recalled a post I’d put up on January 18, 2013 here (link) entitled “The Muslim Reformation.” In that post I noted the age of the Muslim religion and compared it with that of Christianity—and concluded that what we’re now witnessing is an intra-Muslim conflict of a religious nature comparable to the religious wars that plagued Europe for a period of 124 years following the Reformation.

These wars, briefly listed by Wikipedia (link), extended from 1524 until 1648. They began with the German Peasants’ War (1524-1525) and include the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) that involved the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, Bohemia, France, Denmark, and Sweden.

In my earlier post I noted that the Muslim religious wars are viewed by us through a lens formed by modern ways of thought in which religion is, at most, a minor factor used in propaganda. All is about economics and power. But while secular concerns are always present in all wars, the deeper motivation is what sets the tone. Therefore, I suggested, even if the Americas and Europe suddenly disappeared, as if by magic, the Muslim civil wars would continue on exactly as they are doing now. Whether we stand by or participate should be guided by our sober and narrow self-interest. To misunderstand these wars as the yearning in Arab hearts for democracy and free markets is to misunderstand the current turmoil.

If my sense of history is at all on target, the great religious wars of civilizations are followed, in due time, by secularization, heralded roughly a hundred or so years after these wars have run their course by an Enlightenment. In 2214, give or take, Arabs might be agitating for democracy. Right now something else is happening.

Notes on the Muslim Reformation

Last October, when troubles in Mali first began to make the news, I suggested that “What is now proceeding in that region is, in fact, a conflict within the Muslim community.” I might also have said, more accurately, “a local conflict within a much wider revolution that is reshaping the greater Muslim community.” In the now very densely populated world, where technological modernity, originating in the West, overwhelmingly dominates everything, strands of influence and motivation are very difficult to isolate. Add to that the self-centered nature of every society, and when I do then it does seem as if phenomena like Al Qaeda and the Taliban are principally aiming aggression at the West. But a very plausible, and perhaps much more fundamental underlying motivation arises from within Islam itself aimed, in the first instance, at Islam, trying to reform it. The hatred of the West is a secondary byproduct of that, motivated in part because the West blocks this “Muslim Reformation,” principally to retain control over oil and mineral resources, and in part because hatred of the West is a handy motivator of the Muslim masses.

If we take the start of Christianity to be 29 AD, the beginning of Christ’s ministry, it took Christianity 1488 years before (in 1517), Luther launched the Reformation. It was, ultimately, a “back to the basics” movement. If we take the start of Islam to be 610 AD, the year Mohammad had his vision, 1402 years have passed since—time enough for Islam to have drifted roughly as far from the True Faith as Christianity had by Martin Luther’s time. In the Muslim world reform takes the form of a “return to Sharia.” It’s aim is to dislodge nominal Muslim but actual secularist authoritarian elites. At the core. Or thus, I suggests, we might view it. Another way to put it: Even if the West were suddenly to vanish from the globe, the Muslim Reformation would go right on.

The rootings of this reformation are traceable to the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by one Hassan al-Banna, its aim the restoration of the Qur’an and Sunnah. That last word means “tradition,” and Sharia its most perfect form. This movement has proliferated since, and Osama bin Laden was the student of one of its later very prominent members, Sayyid Qutb, a secularist turned fundamentalist committed to government under Sharia.

In the West the Reformation has long since faded. In the intermediate period, “On Sunday the Bible [was their] ledger, and on week-days the ledger [was their] Bible” (link), but in these latter days only the ledger remains. We’ve lost even a remote memory of what it is like to live in a religious culture. Hence we imagine that the Muslims only desire democratic and market liberties to become normal citizens of the world. Therefore we face the Muslim Reformation with absolute bafflement and shake our head in incomprehension saying, “Why do they hate us?”

Sand You Were and Sand You Will Become

The clash of great collectives, thus cultures and civilizations, is a fascinating story with discernible laws of their own, but the subject interests at most one person in multiple thousands. We’re time-bound. Our time horizons are quite short, at most years, usually much shorter. Virtually nobody wonders how things will look a century, never mind three centuries hence.

I’m thinking now of the oil-rich Arab countries in the first instance. They belong to the Muslim culture; it is younger than the Western. It originated in the seventh, the Western (Christendom) in the forth century. I date the first to 632 when Muhammed died and the second to Constantine’s ascension or, more specifically, to the Edict of Milan in 312. Younger, older.

Cultural clashes make winners and losers, and to some extent the outcomes are predictable. A mature civilization encroaching on a relatively primitive culture spells the domination of the primitive by the mature—and often, when primitives are not very numerous (such was the case in Europe’s invasion of America) the virtual wipe-out of the primitive. When both cultures are in their growth phase, the older will more likely win if all else is equal. This has been the case in the clash between the West and the Muslim culture. Therefore it is we who established Israel in Palestine. It is we who’re “nation-building” in Iraq and in Afghanistan rather than, say, The Caliphate nation-building in Texas or in Florida.

The Romans expanded northward and subjected what today is France and England; they also warred against the Germans like we war against Afghanistan—not quite succeeding—and found little footing east of the Rhine.

When a decadent civilization is up against a younger one it is ultimately overrun, but the younger of the two will absorb the culture of those that it conquers. Thus Germanic tribes eventually overran Rome. Thus also the Mongols under Kublai Khan conquered China. The English conquered India, a decadent civilization, that had been overrun earlier by the Muslims. China was less decadent. It was somewhat “opened,” meaning to trade, by the Opium Wars, but it was never colonized like India; and now, rising, when it looks out onto the world, it is not through westernized eyes.

Now what lies ahead of us in the long run—and there is no need to worry, it won’t affect most people living now—is that the Western decadence will deepen just as fossil fuels run out. Muslim populations are already, as I write, interlacing western populations in Europe, including England; they are notorious for breeding, resisting integration, and heeding their mullahs. When the oil wells dry up, great transformations, and confusions, will preoccupy the “developed” world—most endangered by its vast reliance on fossil fuels. The Arab countries, where all of the world’s attention is now, will become what they have once been—mostly sand. And our vital interest in maintaining Israel, our de-facto 51st state, will become almost indiscernible; we’ll be too busy learning to farm and to weave. What will then become of that outpost of the Western world embedded there, by force, in the midst of the Muslim culture? Will Israel conquer the sand or will the sand conquer Israel?