The Dialectics of Martyrdom: Death as Witnessing and Professing
Like Judaism and Christianity before, Islam has a long history of martyrs (μάρτυς – “blood witnesses” or “witnesses by death”). Yet unlike in Christianity, where Jesus of Nazareth himself was martyred at the hands of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate (the Prefect of Judea), and those Jewish authorities who collaborated with Rome, Muhammad escaped all assassination attempts and eventually died peacefully with his family in the city of al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah.1 Although his adversaries attempted to kill him on more than one occasion, the zeitgeist of barbarism they wished to perpetuate was broken by the establishment of Islam in Arabia, which brought relative peace to the Arabian Peninsula. For the believer, Muhammad’s long life attests to Allah’s mercy and protection, especially in considering that Muhammad was fully prepared to be a martyr for his cause. For twenty-three years he lived under and accepted the very real threat of violence. There is no doubt in the Islamic tradition that he was entirely prepared to be sacrificed for his message, but his martyrdom was not the purpose of his life and message. When the Qur’aysh tribe asked his Uncle Abū Ṭālib ibn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib to intercede on their behalf hoping to persuade him to abandon his call, Muhammad said ‘even if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left, I will not give up this mission until either Allah is victorious or I die in the attempt.’2 Even non-Muslim biographers praise his resolve to see his message through to the end.3 Not even the promise of great wealth and pleasure could dislodge his determination to construct a society of tawḥīd (oneness of God) and taqwá (God-consciousness) based on the Qur’an. Muhammad’s message was essentially what the psychologist Erich Fromm describes as biophilic (love of life), as opposed to necrophilic
Nevertheless, the earliest Muslim community, those who risk their lives pledging their allegiance to the prophet and witnessing their faith in his message, felt the wrath of the Qur’aysh tribe, the wealthiest and most brutal opponents of Islam. Before Muhammad ultimately triumphed over his pagan adversaries in 630 ce, the pagans had sent hundreds of Muslims to Jannah (paradise) as šuhadāʾ (martyrs).
Yet the historical record demonstrates that Muhammad refused to make martyrs out of his adversaries when a just peace could be established. For example, when conquering Mecca from the pagans, Muhammad forbade any of his followers from engaging in any form of revenge, despite the fact that there were legitimate reasons to do so.5Qiṣāṣ, or the right of retaliation, was suspended by the command of Muhammad, as he believed it would only perpetuate violence and vendettas, and would therefore close the door to reconciliation between the Muslims and the pagan inhabitants of Mecca. If the Meccans, who spent the last two decades oppressing and murdering Muslims, would lay down their arms and live in peace, Muhammad could not allow his followers to retaliate, despite the fact that they had an abundance of legitimate reasons to seek revenge. The Qur’an states, ‘fight for the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not violate the limits; Allah does not love those who transgress.’6 By this ayat (verse) alone, Muhammad was obliged to offer peace to the Meccans as long as they were willing to live peacefully with their Muslim neighbors. This situation has been pointed out by many scholars as being an example of the capability of Muslims to live peacefully with those who do not share their faith, as the ṣaḥābah (companions) of the Prophet could even live with their former enemies who did not convert to Islam and had previously oppressed them, confiscated their properties, and murdered their kinsman.7
From a historical and theological perspective, the production of martyrs is only called upon when the bonds of brotherhood, as expressed in the Abrahamic traditions, are broken and violent conflict ensues. For many non-fundamentalist schools of thought, it is one of the primary goals of Islam to retire the concept of martyrdom by bringing into existence a society that no longer produces the conditions for which martial martyrs are needed – a reconciled society rooted in justice, peace, and friendly living together.9 It light
Yet despite the despair that history creates, humanity has not yet abandoned this longing for messianic reconciliation. For many it cannot be forgotten; to do so would be to deliver the world entirely to the “given,” to forfeit any possibility that the world could be other than what it is. In this sense, the utopian ideal remains preserved in both prophetic religion and critical philosophy, as the “longing for the totally other,” and in some occasions such a longing has called for martyrs: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm x (al-hajj Malik al-Shabazz), Che Guevara, ‘Ali Sharīʿati, Thomas Müntzer, Fra Dolcino, John Brown, Archbishop Óscar Romero, Sophie and Hans Scholl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Kwame Nkrumah, Steve Biko, Hussein ibn ‘Ali, and Jesus of Nazareth.
In the Islamic tradition, the martyrs, who have either been killed fighting or have been unjustly murdered for their faith (fisibillah), stand as testaments to what they believed to be ultimate reality concerning this world and the next. From the ḥadīṯh (reports of the Prophet Muhammad) literature, it is said that the martyr’s blood-soaked clothes, in which they are buried, stand as silent but powerful witnesses to their dedication to Allah and his religion. Like Michelangelo’s Pietà, which stands as a silent witness to the suffering of the innocent in St. Peter’s Basilica, the blood of the martyr need no words to convey the injustice of this world; its presence both before the divine and mankind
From the perspective of the critical religiologist – steeped in the reality of the theodicy problem – martyrdom is understood as a dialectical phenomenon; the blood of the martyrs is not only a sign of the believers’ commitment to his dīn (religion), but also can be understood as an active protest against the divine, as it is the divine’s world in which the barbaric conditions call for the blood of martyrs.10 According to the critical religiologist Rudolf J. Siebert, it is the social, political, and economic conditions that the divine is ultimately responsible for that lead to the necessity of martyrdom, which viewed dialectically, is an indictment leveled by the believer against their creator.11 Every televised suicide confession of an Islamic terrorist can be read not only as a profession of faith – evidence of their willingness to be sacrificed – but also a tacit denunciation of God’s world that creates the need for brutal self-sacrifice. Indeed, behind the bravado, the courage, and the strength (or cowardice) of the suicidal confession, lies the odious resentment that the life of the individual has to be scarified in order to fix that which the divine has allowed to be broken. It is quietly recognized, but painfully felt, that it is the family of the martyred who have to suffer the loss of their beloved while the one responsible for the situation remains absconditus (absent), or worse yet, reveals itself as the author of man’s misery (as in the book of Job). The world-as-it-is, so often absent of the values that the divine claims as its essential characteristics – mercy, compassion, empathy, and love – compels the believer to protest this godless and soulless situation with an act of supreme sacrifice. Out of love of family, companions, and/or nation, whom the divine seems to show no mercy, the martyr shows mercy, compassion, empathy, and love. Although the Islamic tradition does not openly encourage dissension within the discourse between the believer and Allah – there is no substantive tradition of “protest
To continue this dialectical approach to martyrdom, we must examine the martyr’s protest against the divine further: what is its function and who is its prototypical protest-actor in the Abrahamic traditions?
In Judaism, the adversary of God is Ha-Satan (Satan) who stands in opposition to the will of the divine as an “adversary.” Etymologically, “satan” is the noun deriving from the verb “to oppose.”12 Satan’s opposition to the will of the divine becomes acute in the book of Job, where he not only remains steadfast against God’s commands, but also accuses him of wrongdoing. He wants to demonstrate that the divine is deliberately provided a false consciousness – he veils Job’s potential faithlessness by giving him everything he needs. Of course Job is “blameless and upright” and “fear[s] God” because no calamity has every struck him.13 If God’s divine protection and blessings were withdrawn from him, and he had to experience the world in all its misery, pain, and suffering, this same saintly Job would curse his creator for his unfortunate fate. Although Job remains faithful to the divine, even after experiencing the loss of everything he holds dear, including his family, the act of accusing God of lying about the reality of his creation – that if it was not for his active intervention human life would be absolutely cruel and barbaric – is the essential role of Satan in his text. Satan, having knowledge of human frailty because he is ‘going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it,’ believes God to be duplicitous, an author of chaos, and the creator of the conditions by which man will suffer, murder each other in war, and curse the absence of God’s mercy.14 Whereas Satan walks were men walk, God remains seemingly absconditus, separate from his creation by nature and design. From a Christian reading, where the Holy Spirit should be, the unholy pervades. Does not Satan, in his accusative moment, speak in the name of his fellow – seemingly
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.16
Like so many other historical martyrs, in which the plan of the creator is questioned, Rabbi Jesus briefly defies his willingness to become a martyr; the price may have been too high, and the pain too deep, for him in that moment of hopeless despair. Sharing in his agony, his mother Mary – the stabat mater dolorosa (the standing suffering mother) – and his disciple Mary Magdalene prepared themselves for his unjust death. Surely, one can imagine so many other soon-to-be martyrs having such agonizing moments of doubt, where they question the mercy of the divine as well as their own convictions in the face of impending execution. Thus, the religiously obedient “event” of martyrdom produces its antithesis – doubt, despair, and often misotheism (hatred of god), for how could a loving and just God allow such evil.19The lives of saints are often composed by those who offer them and us a grave distortion when they fashion literary halos over their lives, effectively diminishing or even erasing the humanity God assumed and has given us, and which He uses to bring us to Himself. Sanitized stories of holy men and women too often describe them as essentially perfect, always pious, suffering without complaint, ever clear about their commitment and their destiny. In no way would such a description suit the life and character of Jesus of Nazareth, who fully shared our frail humanity.18
The Critical Theorist remembers the trial of God that the Rabbis engaged in while awaiting their deaths in Auschwitz; so deep was their agony that God
In light of the modern barbarity of war, cannibalistic civil society, and the international exploitation of humanity, the pessimistic philosopher, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, can easily come to the conclusion that the world is forsaken, for it is under God’s dominion that all the suffering, catastrophe, and destruction occur. Indeed, Deism, the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment answer to the theodicy problem, could only postulate that the divine bars itself from entering into history as the only logical reason for his apparent absence. As such, God leaves the problem of suffering for man to resolve. Martyrs may call out to God, according to the Deists, but they should expect no answer; he has taken leave and refuses to reenter into human history. The suffering masses can transcend their misery through prayer, fasting, and other vain rituals, but they should expect no countermovement from the divine. Deism fails to provide a consolating God.
In a Nietzschian world post-death-of-god, what came from the prayers of the suffering Jews in Auschwitz were only the Schutzstaffel (ss) and their sadomasochistic brutality. Yet, where God failed to deliver, the Bourgeois Enlightenment in the form of the United States Army, and the Marxist Enlightenment in the form of the Soviet Red Army, liberated what in the vernichtungslager
However, the preponderance of death at the hands of the unjust is not the last word on religious faith. Regardless of God’s seeming absence and like the ardent faith that the author of the Psalms expressed, the martyr remains semper fidelis (always faithful) to his creator, and to his mission, despite his moments of doubt and fear. From the view of the critical religiologist, the dialectics of martyrdom demonstrate the internal antagonism between faith and doubt, suffering and joy, transcendence and destruction, which is manifested through the martyrdom of the finite believer for the cause of the infinite. Because the dialectic persists regardless of history, such suffering and misery cannot be the final nail in god’s coffin nor can it be the final word on religion. Because religion points in the direction of another possibility, an abandonment of metaphysics or theology in the face of earthly despair can only deliver the world over to the already given, the status quo, the despairing world-as-it-is, and thus forsake a world that could be – that which the martyr died for.22 However, metaphysical thought that brings a positive meaning to the suffering of the martyr may also be dangerous and unacceptable.
In Hegel’s optimistic philosophy of history, the dialectical movement through time is predicated on the negation of that which came before; the determinate negation of the negative gives birth most painfully to the positive. However, as Adorno discovered in his Negative Dialectics, Hegel’s optimism did not always prove to be true, as no positive was born from the near complete destruction of the Jews in Europe.23 For Adorno and the Frankfurt School, not even the birth of Israel can justify such inhumanity as displayed in the “final
The senselessness invoked in Adorno’s Negative dialectics plays an important role in the history of Islamic and Christian martyrdom. Many individuals who had sacrificed their lives for their faiths, their values, and their core principles, have found, like Rabbi Jesus, not the “rose within the cross,” the rational within the real, but only the inadequate consolation of newly formed institutions – the Church in the case of Christianity and the state of Israel in the case of Judaism – that can neither fully reconcile the individual to their agonizing fates nor can they negate the conditions that led the individual to sacrifice themselves. Despite the piling up of martyred corpses, the world remains the same: an ever-destroying mechanism manifested in the cruelty of nature and history. No matter how many martyrs are honored with Islamic panegyrics (πανηγυριkός – “speeches praising martyrs”) in the West Bank and Gaza, no matter the number of rousing jihadi khuṭbah (sermons), the conditions which call for the production of martyrs continues; no matter how many Shi’a, Christian, and Yazidi martyrs accumulate at the hands of isis (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), the conditions that perpetuate martyrdom continues; no matter how many poor, weak, and suffering homeless and stateless immigrants die in the streets of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the coordinates that create such human catastrophes continues unabated. The negation of their suffering brought about no objective alleviation of suffering within the world, even if it was thought to have done so subjectively. Martyrdom has often failed to overcome that which creates martyrs, and so, despite Hegel’s
Witnessing against Islam: The Case of Theo van Gogh
Although western protests against Islam have a long history, since September 11, 2001, an awareness of the “other” within the western midst has led to a whole new wave of protests against Islam that have been aided by the ubiquity of modern media and the 24 hour news cycle. This constant awareness of the other has been a net negative for Muslims. In the Middle Ages, and even during the Enlightenment period, Islam was consistently represented as a form of Christian heresy, Muhammad was a fraud, and the Qur’an was the work of the Devil. Thousands of books, tracts, and treatises were written to prove the fraudulent nature of Islam and to convince Christendom of the evil intention of the Muslims.29 For example, Dante Alighieri places Mohammad in the realm of hell with the schismatics. Another example can be found in France, where, although criticizing the Catholic Church was his main objective, the
Two important advances in human history have determined the modern form of “Islamophobia.” First, the material abundance and acquisition of wealth within the western world have given opportunities to its people in education, liberation from agricultural toil, urbanization, and industrialization. All these developments have made it possible for people to gain the minimum education necessary to both read and engage in religious discussions within the public sphere. However, the same modernity that expanded basic literacy, failed to deliver to the masses the ability to think critically, systematically or dialectically, thus leaving them, in the thought of many, with an incomplete education. This “half-education” remains detrimental to the future of the West. First, it makes the masses increasingly susceptible to sophistic propaganda. Second, and in additional to the incomplete education, technology has brought the expanses of geography and culture into the home. Either via television or internet, the outside world, that which was never to be witnessed by the majority of westerners in the pre-modern periods, can now be witnessed by the touch of a bottom. In terms of its relationship with the West, this accessibility of information has been both of equal benefit to Islam as well as a
In August of 2004, Dutch public television aired an eleven-minute film entitled Submission (translated from the Arabic word “Islam”) that was made by the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the Somali apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali.34 The film was critical of what they saw as the violent nature of Islam, its
Witnessed from his statement that ‘I don’t hate Muslims, I hate Islam,’ Wilders believes that all things Islamic are foreign to Europe and are therefore not reconcilable with liberal Dutch values.38 For all intents and purposes, this statement, often repeated by many who disdain all things Islamic but do not want to appear to be xenophobic, is a distinction without a difference; to hate Islam is to hate Muslims, for without Muslims there is no Islam, and without Islam there are no Muslims.… the Islamic incursion must be stopped. Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe. If we do not stop Islamification now, Eurabia and Netherabia will just be a matter of time. One century ago, there were approximately 50 Muslims in the Netherlands. Today, there are about 1 million Muslims in this country. Where will it end? We are heading for the end of European and Dutch civilization as we know it. Where is our Prime Minister in all this? In reply to my questions in the House he said, without batting an eyelid, that there is no question of our country being Islamified.
Now, this reply constituted a historical error as soon as it was uttered. Very many Dutch citizens… experience the presence of Islam around them. And I can report that they have had enough of burkas, headscarves, the ritual slaughter of animals, so called honor revenge, blaring minarets, female circumcision, hymen restoration operations, abuse of
homosexuals, Turkish and Arabic on the buses and trains as well as on town hall leaflets, halal meat at grocery shops and department stores, Sharia exams, the Finance Minister’s Sharia mortgages, and the enormous overrepresentation of Muslims in the area of crime, including Moroccan street terrorists.37
Wilders took to the habit of likening the Qur’an to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but pointed out that he wasn’t the first to do so; Winston Churchill also made this erroneous connection.39 To the dismay of the Netherland’s Muslim faithful, Wilders aggressively advocated the banning of the Qur’an as a “threat to our society” just as Mein Kampf was banned in the Netherlands.40 The filmmaker Theo van Gogh couldn’t have agreed more, as he shared many of the same Islamophobic sentiments.41 Nevertheless, Van Gogh never had the opportunity to work closely with Wilders. On November 2, 2004, a Dutch-Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri murdered Van Gogh. Van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s disrespect of Islam, Muhammad, and the Muslim community outraged Bouyeri, and he was determined to send a message to Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her insolence and Van Gogh’s mockery.
From the perspective of the critical theory of religion, it is certainly possible for the secular-humanist individual to be a martyr for their cause. Max Horkheimer, in his Critique of Instrumental Rationality, reminds us that ‘both of them [religion and atheism] have been responsible for good and evil throughout history… and both of them have had their tyrants and their martyrs.’42 Che Guevara, an atheist Marxist and physician who dedicated himself to the revolutionary advancement of the working and poor classes in Latin America was brutally executed by the Bolivian military with the aid of the cia in 1967. Che was religiously unmusical, but he remained sensitive to the important role religion played in the lives of the many poor people he fought for. For Che, when religious praxis was identical with its core social values, then it naturally took the side of revolutionary love, justice, and solidarity, and as such he had no qualms with those members of his revolutionary movement who remained religious. However, when it sanctified the existing status quo of oppression, he vehemently attacked religion as a tool of the ruling class. With Fidel Castro, Che supported the removal of the Catholic Church from Cuba after the revolution precisely because it had supported the ruthless dictator Fulgencio Batista against the interests of the Cuban population.43 Che, like many other revolutionary Marxists, would attempt to make an alliance with religion if it was possible; where it was not, it had to be fought as a reactionary and counter-revolutionary ideology. For his work on behalf of the poor, for his fight against dictatorship, and for his ultimate martyrdom for a Latin American revolution, Che was thought by many to have been a secular alter Christus (other Christ).44 According to Fidel Castro, ‘if Che had been a Catholic, if Che had belonged
Patrice Lamumba, the secular revolutionary leader of the Mouvement National Congolaise, who fought and defeated colonial Belgium to gain independence in 1960, was assassinated by Belgium forces and their Congolese collaborators.46 Both the cia and the MI6 bear responsibility for his murder. Lamumba is remembered as a martyr for African independence for colonial powers. The atheist Leon Trotsky, murdered on the orders of Josef Stalin, is seen by many followers as a martyr for the cause of working class liberation and worldwide revolution. Fred Hampton, the deputy-chairman of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party, was executed while sleeping in his apartment by the Chicago Police Department in 1969 and today is still seen as a martyr for the cause of Black emancipation in America. These and many other non-religious, militantly secular or atheistic activists have be brutalized, oppressed, and murdered along side of their explicitly religious comrades. As such, martyrdom has no exclusive sectarian or religious/secular preference. It is not bound to one religion or to any religion at all, but manifests itself in times of crisis. Consequently, a martyr is one that is murdered unjustly while standing up for what they believe to be the truth and refusing to bend their knees in proskynesis (πρoσkύνησις – “prostration”) to those who unjustly set themselves above others. The 27 million Soviets communists that were murdered in the “Great Patriotic War” (World War ii) must be remembered as martyrs against fascism and for the communist ideal of equality.47 However, by that broad definition, can we classify fascists like Benito Mussolini and Hitler as martyrs? Do we want to lend the term “martyr” to individuals who are nearly universally despised for their destructive activities and philosophies? Were they unjustly murdered or was their demise indeed just? Mussolini certainly died for his
From the perspective of the critical religiologists who are concerned with the translation of the revolutionary potential of religious semantic and semiotic material into secular philosophy, the aims of the murdered matter in whether or not they can be legitimately classified as a martyr. The modern notion of martyrdom, rooted in the Abrahamic faiths that gave birth to the West, as well as in the “post-metaphysical” thought of Greek philosophy, cultural, and political life of Athens, Sparta, and other Greek city-states, takes seriously the claims that martyrs not only die witnessing for a faith, but also die witnessing for specific and substantive political-economic and cultural values such as freedom, justice, equality, and liberty even when they’re emancipated from their religious legitimation and motivation. Revolutionary values, which are rooted in communicative rationality, and therefore resist the colonization of instrumental rationality and the functionalization of language via empty and manipulative slogans, attempt to broaden the scope of human emancipation, human actualization, and human reconciliation, not further the trend towards barbarism or the totally administered society. When human energy, resources, and life are directed towards creating a society that does not exploit one side of the human family by the other, that works in cooperation for social flourishing instead of petty competitiveness and aggression, that resists
In light of this analysis, we must again ask ourselves what exactly it was that Theo van Gogh died for? What did he stand for? What were his philosophical, political, and cultural commitments? In whose tradition did he stand for? Did the conditions of post-secularity, in which he lived and worked, produce a new kind of martyr – one that is based on a contested definition of freedom? Was Van Gogh the first to be martyred in the struggle against the conditions of post-secularity?
It is clear that the murder of Theo van Gogh was unjust, unwarranted, and criminal (both legally and morally). Although some outspoken clerics among the Salafis were in support of an interpretation of religious law (sharīʿah) that exacts the death penalty against those who blaspheme or disrespect the Prophet, the Qur’an, or Islam in general, the concept of freedom of speech, a value that Theo van Gogh embraced, is an important concept within Islam itself, as it was this freedom that was denied the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca at the beginning of his prophethood. Additionally, Muhammad himself never executed someone simply for freely denying his prophethood – not even when they did so directly in front of him. He often opposed those of his followers that wanted to exact punishment on those who denied his prophethood.51 Freedom of speech, even if it was speech against the Muslims, was an Islamic ideal that needed to be protected both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For Muhammad, the Islamic value of free speech, which has been too often eclipsed in many Muslim countries by leaders who they didn’t elect, was extended even to those who used it to attack Muslims.
Since 9/11, the conflict between the West and the Muslim world has been constructed in a symbolic binary form: the narrative is one between the freedom of speech and the respect for religious figures. In other words, the core antagonism is between the secular “free” values of the West and the religious “authoritarian” values of Islam.52 Upon a critical analysis, it becomes clear that
Beyond politics, many Enlighteners were motivated out of their distrust and disagreement with the church’s pronunciations on morality, epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics, especially concerning the natural world and the priority of revelation and tradition over reason, as well as the church’s abuse of power. Out of this conflict with the church and the ultimate triumph of the Enlightenment, the modern West was born. Blasphemy won its right to exist in the public sphere.53 As the secular Enlightenment progressed, it would in time emancipate itself from the religious elements of mundane life as well as its dominating religious institutions.54
Since Luther broke open the doors to individualism through his “priesthood of all believers,” or what Alister E. McGrath dubbed the “dangerous idea” of Christianity, Rome struggled to dictate the morality of the West. Under the influence of Protestantism, each individual would be guided by their own reason and conscience – and that reason and conscious has increasingly become
From the perspective of the critical religiologist, the modern Muslim world could benefit much from a greater understanding of those same values associated with the western Enlightenment – secularity of the state, democracy, individual rights, etc. Just as equally true, the West could benefit from an increased understanding of those Muslim voices that harbor legitimate fear of secularization, democratization, and capitalization. For Habermas, the West should cultivate a greater understanding of such fears and apprehensions, while the Muslim world should come to appreciate the benefits of secular western values while simultaneously maintaining their Islamic identity?57 Discussions like these have undoubtedly lead many Muslims and non-Muslims scholars to ask can there be an Islamic movement that determinately negates western modernity and creates an Islamic modernity; one that could fully integrate itself into the modern world without abandoning the Islamic identity? This type of move would include a categorical rejection of a simplistic and blind emulation of the West, which the Iranian Marxist scholar Jalal Al-i Ahmad aptly diagnosed as “Occidentosis” (gharbzadegi), as well as a simplistic retreat into a reactionary Islamic fundamentalism.58 As Hans Küng as noted, the failure to engage in a meaningful discourse, to gather together the unlimited discourse community – which can enter into a robust discussion on what it means to be
A society in which divine guidance is separated from the masses, where the masses are allowed to follow their nafs (instincts and desires) over and above divine revelation was anathema to his conception of a just and righteous society, as it would inevitably lead man into error and barbarism. In essence, man’s animalic nature could never lead mankind into a society that is truly free, but would only enslave him to his animality, i.e. his “first nature.” A second nature, one rooted in and governed by divine revelation, was the only way to create such a desirable nation, and that second nature, according to bin Laden, could only be crafted through divine guidance. Secular democracy not only ignored such divine guidance, but let loose man’s destructiveness and gave that animalistic destructiveness the power of the state. If Plato thought democracy to be a failed form of government because it gave power to those who do not have the mental capacity to wield such power – the demos – then bin Laden believed it was because of their moral deficiency and their incapacity to justly guide themselves that democracy was faulty. He believed that by democratic consensus, a nation legitimizes the blindness of the first nature – thus alleviating the populace of it hatred of the superego in the form of the religious civilization. Democracy, in the name of civilization, unleashes civilization’s nemesis: animality.You [the United States and Europe] are a nation who, rather than ruling by the sharia (way) of God in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your politics, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for God the Almighty to fashion His creation, grant men power over all creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?62
Both bin Laden and Zawahiri are partially correct in their critique; a Muslim may be a democrat, but Islam is not democracy – the Muslim masses are not to create for themselves divine law: that is the sole prerogative of the divine in the Islamic tradition. As such, Islamic law – as crafted by the absolute sovereign – is difficult to reconcile with a political system that takes as its authority the popular sovereignty and will of its citizens. In other words, reconciling two very different forms of legitimation and two very different worldviews within one culture, especially when they’re as divergent as the libertine culture of the Netherlands and the traditional conservative religious culture of the immigrants would never be an easy endeavor. The social trauma created by men like Theo van Gogh, with his anti-Semitism, miso-Islamism, and anti-Christian provocations, and men like Mohammed Bouyeri, who was willing to murder to protect the dignity of his beliefs, makes sure that the multitudes of citizens who see both the importance of respect for the beliefs of the other as well as the imperative to maintain the freedom of the individual, never enter into a meaningful dialogue.64Know that democracy, that is, ‘rule of the people,’ is a new religion that deifies the masses by giving them the right to legislate without being shackled down to any other authority. For sovereignty, as has been shown earlier, is absolute authority; nothing supersedes it. Regarding this, Abu al-Ali al-Mawdudi said: ‘Democracy is the deification of man… and rule of the masses.’ In other words, democracy is a man-made infidel religion, devised to give the right to legislate to the masses – as opposed to Islam, where all legislative rights belong to Allah Most High… In democracies, however, those legislators from the masses become partners worshipped in place of Allah. Whoever obeys their laws worships them.63
Although we may credibly state that Theo van Gogh was murdered for the freedom of speech, he was not however a committed revolutionary who wanted to expand the bounds of freedom beyond what they already were. What Theo van Gogh did profess to was his desire to conserve the liberal freedoms already established by Dutch democracy. As stated before, Theo van Gogh was a Dutch nationalist who believed that the presence of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands was a threat to the secular liberal values of the open society. For him, Muslims represented an attack from the religious-right – a force that traditionally wanted to confine the autonomy of the individual within the strictures of religion. Thus, he believed the Muslims represented a religiously “conservative” threat to such secular liberal values; that they would attempt to impose an oppressive and restrictive sharīʿah law upon the non-believing Dutch population; that they represented an aggressively backwards and unenlightened weltanschauung (worldview); that they were a threat to the rights of homosexuals, and that they were a threat to the rights of blasphemers. Theo van Gogh believed that Islam would attempt to reestablish a religious morality on a population that had previously emancipated themselves from the burdensome moral codes of religion. Against all statistical data available, he believed Muslims represented a population that receives benefits from the state but only contributes to society via petty crime, sexual assault, religiously inspired misogyny, and terroristic condemnation of their host society. In other words, echoing Geert Wilders, the Muslims wanted to Islamize Europe starting with its most tolerant nation, The Netherlands, thus delivering it to what he believed was a barbaric and unenlightened way of life. For Theo van Gogh, no matter if the Muslim immigrants were Dutch “citizens,” they were not culturally Dutch unless they abandoned Islam and their native culture and adopted a secular-liberal worldview and lifestyle. They were Dutch by citizenship, but not by culture, and in Europe’s post-racial and post-nationalist society, culture was more important that ethnicity.66 Unexpectedly, Van Gogh’s objectionNo, Ayaan. If he were alive Theo would be hurt, hearing you say that. He wouldn’t have wanted to die in his bed. He felt like a knight on horseback about Submission. He died in a battle for free expression, and that’s what he lived for… This was a meaningful death.65
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel echoed the feeling that multiculturalism had failed in Europe in October of 2010. In light of Germany’s inability to cope with the problems associated with Muslim immigrants, she stated decried that ‘this [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed.’71 However, in the summer of 2015, Germany was the main destination for half a million Muslim refugees and immigrants fleeing war and instability in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and ironically, she was the public face of the policy to let them into Germany. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron echoed Merkel’s assessment of multiculturalism in February of 2011; believing the state had not adequately addressed the root cause for radicalization within his country, he denounced “state multiculturalism” as a failure. Promising greater scrutiny of Muslim organizations that profess views outside of the mainstream, Cameron declared,The conservative call for Enlightenment values is partly a revolt against a revolt. Tolerance has gone too far for many conservatives. They believe, like some former leftists, that multiculturalism was a mistake; our fundamental values must be reclaimed. Because secularism has gone too far to bring back the authority of the churches, conservatives and neo-conservatives have latched onto the Enlightenment as a badge of national or cultural identity. The Enlightenment, in other words, has become the name for the new conservative order, and its enemies are the aliens, whose values we don’t share.70
In light of the growing ghettoization of disaffected Muslim youths in Britain, who do not view Britain as the object of their loyalty, Cameron suggested a stronger commitment to a “British identity,” one that is rooted in the values of the Enlightenment. Although these values were tacitly juxtaposed to the “backward” values of Islam, the point of Cameron’s speech was not missed by the Muslim community, who understood that their worldview and way-of-life had become even more suspect in light of a Europe attempting to sort out its own fractured identity.Let’s properly judge these organizations: Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?72
Theo van Gogh undoubtedly understood his position to be within the camp of the Enlightenment fundamentalists, which he believed created the freedoms that allowed him to live the life that he lived within a secular nation unencumbered by religious dogmas and restrictions. Knowing the history of religious Europe, Theo van Gogh understood that he could not have lived in pre-Enlightenment the Netherlands and and survived being who he was and how he lived – he would have been subject to attack by the church or other conservative forces for his libertinism. Van Gogh therefore saw the rapidly growing Muslim community as an ominous threat to those same liberalThe multiculturalist party appeals to the protection of collective identities and accuses the other side of ‘Enlightenment fundamentalism’; the secularist, by contrast, insist on the uncompromising inclusion of minorities in the existing political culture and accuse their opponents of a ‘multiculturalist betrayal’ of the core values of the Enlightenment.74
The case of Theo van Gogh’s possible status as a martyr, as has been demonstrated, is extremely complex. If Theo van Gogh is determined to be a martyr, then he is a martyr for what he believed to be the defense of the secular Enlightenment; he was a secular Enlightenment-fundamentalist, who wished to conserve the progressive political and cultural values of the Netherlands and European society from a religiously conservative minority population. But, like many of his critics suspected, did he functionalize the values of the Enlightenment to justify his xenophobia and miso-Islamism? Like Geert Wilders, Van Gogh was not prepared to surrender Europe to what he believed was an invasion of a foreign people and hostile religion, but does that alone make him a bigot? Although he wasn’t attempting to augment freedom through revolutionary praxis, he was a defender of liberal freedoms; in the face of religious fanaticism, he wished to preserve and conserve such freedoms as a peculiarly European way-of-being-in-the-world against what he believed were forces that were attempting to diminish the freedom that distinguished the West from many other parts of the world. In a post-nationalist Europe, such Enlightenment values became the basis for a new European identity, one more fully integrated: the United States of Europe. He may have ultimately been mistaken concerning the intentions of the majority of Muslims in Europe, but his sincerity, even to his harshest critics, seemed genuine and was not simply for fame or profit. Unfortunately his intentions were clouded by an irrational miso-Islamism – especially exemplified by Ayaan Hirsi Ali – that prevented him from engaging the broader Muslim community in meaningful discourse. It is ironic that the immense freedom within Dutch society was not taken advantage of by Van Gogh and the Muslim community to engage in a self-critical and inter-subjective discourse with the other, as the Netherlands is particularity unique in providing a venue for such a discourse. In this sense, the freedoms he wished to defend were sorely underutilized.
Yet, on the other side, the disrespect that Muslims felt when viewing the movie Submission was authentic and painful, and it did not contribute to future reconciliation between differing communities. For the Muslims, this attack on what they held most sacred was a rejection of them as a people; a denunciation of their core values; and was done in complete disregard for their sensibilities and out of ignorance of Islam’s core values of social justice and ecumenism. Clearly, in democratic societies, such offensive language is tolerated and even promoted in some ways, but for the majority of the Muslims, it
Je ne suis pas Charlie et je ne suis pas avec les terroristes78
In Europe, France is the nation where the extremes of secularism arrive at their clearest apex, where secular culture and secular politics converge most
In the face of the terroristic attacks on the “satirical newspaper” Charlie Hebdo on January 7th, 2015, in which twelve people in total were killed, including a Muslim police officer, many Parisians took to the streets with signs reading “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). Expressing their solidarity with the victims of the terrorists of al-Qae’da in the Arabian Penninsula (aqap), Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, and the isis inspired Amedi Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddiene, the French symbolically made their nation synonymous with the racist, Islamophobic, and anti-religious bigotry of Charlie Hebdo, a small magazine that often derided and mocked religious groups, especially Muslims, Catholics and Jews. Consequently, many French Muslims, who also wanted to express their solidarity with the victims and affirm their belief in free speech, could not join their fellow citizens in exclaiming “Je suis Charlie,” as they could not endorse Charlie Hebdo’s ridicule of sacred religious figures such as Muhammad, Jesus, the Trinity, etc. In a time when a traumatized society wanted to lionize the martyrs of “free speech,” despite the fact that their satirical “journalism” was devoid of intellectual seriousness, but served only to enflame the antagonism between ethnic and religious communities, the false choice of making one group of people ethically pure and the other an absolute evil had to be rejected. And so many Muslims who were appalled by the murder of the Charlie Hebdo workers stayed home and did not join their fellow French in their rallies for the magazine.
Yet, from the perspective of Islamic inner-criticism and inner-reflexivity, instead of critically examining where the believers themselves “mock” the prophet by their own questionable actions in their daily life, which is a much more offensive in the Islamic view, they chose rather to focus their attention on those outside the faith who mock the prophet – seeking to pull the speck out of the other’s eye before they pulled the beam out of their own. The degree to which the Muslim fundamentalists refuse to self-critically analyze their own failure ultimately impedes the ummah from pulling itself out of the ditch of history. This is not to exonerate the West for its destructive dealings within the Muslim world, but to exclusively lay blame at the feet of the West when the ummah itself suffers immensely from self-inflicted wounds must be taken into account. From a traditional Islamic position, attacks on Islam and Muslims initiated self-reflectiveness and inner-critique, which can give birth to better answers to the problems at hand. As Tariq Ramadan once publically argued, without such a radical reflection on those self-inflicted wounds, the Muslims will continue to be colonized (or neo-colonized) because they continue to be colonizable.
Unfortunately, instead of examining the real cause of the terrorist attack, i.e. the provocative content of Charlie Hebdo’s derisive cartoons within the context of a marginalized Muslim community, the dominant narrative became one about the right of free speech, which, like in the Murder of Theo van Gogh, was never really in question. From the statements of the attackers, Charlie Hebdo was not attacked because its authors bore the right to blaspheme; it was because of the blasphemous content of what they chose to publish. The terrorists that murdered the cartoonists and others also bore that same right to free speech and they did not attack themselves or others for having it. Additionally, some remembered that according to French laws, free speech is not an absolute right, as there are many reasons why speech in France is eclipsed or can end in prosecution, including the vocal or written support for terrorism. France is also one of many Western European countries that severely restrict the right of its citizens to deny the Holocaust. Passed in July of 1990, the Gayssot Act, also known as the Law No. 90-615, to repress acts of racism, anti-Semitism and
Unfortunately, this “breaking point” is too close to the logic of the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo; they too had their breaking point and were ready to take action against those whom they disagreed and mocked the memory of the Prophet, although, unlike the state, they do not possess access to the legitimate “monopoly of violence” (Gewaltmonopol des Staates). France was willing to take the issue of the Holocaust out of the public arena by passing the Gayssot Act, so that the memory of the victims of fascism could not be mocked by pseudo-scholarship. Although the Gayssot Act was meant to diminish the possibility of ‘racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia,’ it failed to regulate the mockingly crude material emanating from Charlie Hebdo that increasingly heightened racist and xenophobic sentiments and actions.81 Unfortunately, and despite the law being able to remedy this, the insensitivity towards the religious sensibilities of the French Muslim community led to tragedy. Where once in the West satire was used to mock the powerful, in this case satire was used as a weapon of derision against the most maligned and vulnerable segment of the French population, the Muslims, who are mainly of North African descent – the sons and daughters of the formerly colonized.
The January of 2015, terrorists were willing to seek revenge for those who they believed mocked the most sacred symbol of Islam: Muhammad – a man whose honor millions are ready to defend, albeit in a variety of ways. As there
From the very roots of the Bourgeois revolution, which established the political right of free speech of the individual in the West, no individual should be murdered due to their ideas regardless of how controversial and bigoted they are. No individual should be forced to shutter in fear because they voice opinions that are heterodox or heretical, as even once the bourgeois’ political philosophy was criminal in the eyes of the feudal lords. In this sense, the murder of the Charlie Hebdo workers was not only a legal crime but also a crime against the values rooted within the Enlightenment itself. It was an attack on the West’s civil “sacred symbol,” its political and social freedom. However, post-event, the well-meaning French population claiming to be Charlie Hebdo overtly identified themselves with the most lowbrow forms of “journalistic” terrorism – the most vigorous forms of hates speech that emanated from the magazine of mockery and derision. They too have betrayed the values of the Enlightenment when adopting the phrase “Je suis Charlie,” as if the revolutionary qualities of the French Republic can be reduced down to crude and xenophobic characters of many of its own citizens. Such mockery of a marginalized population only serves the purpose of dividing the Republic. In a time when political, religious, and ethnic reconciliation is desperately needed, as the post-secular conditions can either devolve into inter-community violence or create inter-community cooperation, the lampooning of a group of
We should bear in mind that after the terrorist attack, Charlie Hebdo could have portrayed Muhammad, Islam, and the Muslim community based on the actions of Ahmed Merabat, the Muslim police officer who was killed by the Paris terrorists, or by Lassana Bathily, the Parisian-Malian Muslim who saved the shoppers in the Kosher supermarket, but instead they chose to lampoon Muhammad through the lenses of terrorists, who represent a small fraction of the Muslim community.85 Furthermore, those same terrorists attack Muslims in far greater numbers than they do non-Muslims. In the weeks just prior to the attack in Paris, Boko Haram, a Nigerian ‘Islamist’ terror group massacred approximately 2,000 Muslims in Baga, Nigeria; 61 Muslims were murdered in Yemen by al-Qae’da, and the Taliban executed 164 Muslim school children in their classrooms. Do these Muslims, who are also innocent victims of religious fanaticism, deserve to have their most sacred symbol comedically vandalized for the entertainment of those who live in relative peace and prosperity, who do not know what it is like to live without security, where religion is the only force that gives meaning and solace to one’s endangered life?Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.
Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked – and where are they?
Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.84
In addition, the principle of political equality, also rooted in the Enlightenment, has been questioned by the French version of secularity: laïcité.
He was not too tall nor was he too short. He was of medium build. His hair was neither short nor curly, nor was it straight but somewhere in between. His face was not narrow, nor was it really round, but it had some roundness in it. His skin was white. His eyes were black. He had long eyelashes. He had a big frame and had broad shoulders. He had no body hair except on his chest. He had large hands and feet. When he walked, he walked at an angle, as if descending a slope. When he looked at someone, he looked at them directly in their face. Between his shoulders was the seal of prophecy, the sign that he was the last prophet. He was the most giving of men, the most truthful, the most mild-tempered, and the noblest of men in lineage. Whoever unexpectedly saw him was in awe. And whoever knew him intimately loved him. Anyone who ever described him would say, ‘I never saw, before him or after him, the like of him.’ Peace be upon him.89
The satirical magazine’s depiction of the Prophet is not done out of reverence, but out of derision. It is not a misguided form of devotion, but an attempt to mock, dishonor and ridicule the sacred in Islam. The intention of the creator of the image is the deciding factor as to whether the image is a misguided attempt at devotion or a mean-spirited attempt to provoke religious sentiments by slandering the sacred. It was this form of free speech that Pope Francis spoke about when he said, ‘You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. There is a limit.’90 Although many rejected the Pope’s appeal for respect of religious beliefs, believing that he underhandedly legitimated the attack on Charlie Hebdo – which he actually condemned but gave an explanation why religious people would attack – his comments betray his clear understanding of the post-secular conditions of Europe. Through his speeches, actions, and discourses, he had shed light on a very real phenomenon; there are two forms of being that are occupying the same space: one secular and one religious.91 There is no option other than coexistence at this time, and that must be mediated through forms of mutual perspective taking. Both Charlie Hebdo and the terrorist attack against it contribute to the retreat into pure identity, and as Adorno warned in his Negative Dialectics, pure identity is pure death, as it allows for nothing outside of the totalizing concept.
As religion is fully privatized in the French Republic, it can play no meaningful role in the national will formation, i.e. it rarely gets a public platform by which it can express itself. However, the secular citizens right to free expression is not eclipsed, thus the secular atheist and libertarian persuasion of Charlie Hebdo was free to “blaspheme” without legal repercussions, while young Muslim girls are excluded from public education because they wish to express their religiosity (and modesty) by wearing a ḥijāb to school. As such, witnessing and professing a religion in the public is limited, while blaspheming and provoking are protected speech. These laws, and many other regulations to curb the influence of Islam in France, have only increased the Muslims community’s alienation from mainstream French society. They are often left feeling unwelcome in their own country – a country that they often adopted
The growing tension between the Muslim and non-Muslim French population bolsters the claims of al-Qae’da and isis, who peddle the narrative that the West is fundamentally anti-Islam; even when Muslims integrate into western society, they are still unwelcome because of their faith, they say. Fitnah (divisions) within the European community – especially between Muslims and non-Muslims – plays into the hands of those who are the purveyors of “civilizational” conflict, both in Europe and in the dar al-Islam. Because Charlie Hebdo chose to print another cartoon of Muhammad less than a week after the January 7th Paris attacks, demonstrations and riots throughout the Muslim world were launched. Disgusted with the publication’s unrelenting attack on the most sacred figure in Islam, which further diminished the potential for reconciliation and unity against post-secular barbarity, many of the protesters held signs saying, ‘You are Charlie, I am Muhammad.’92 For the radical clerics and Islamists who wish to further the hatred between communities, Charlie Hebdo had become their most effective publication, more effective than al-Qae’da’s Inspire magazine and isis’s Dabiq.
However, all did not join in the manufactured consent; many critical Europeans were uneasy with the phrase “Je suis Charlie,” as they were already aware that Charlie Hebdo was a publication that echoed a questionable history. Albeit satirically, Charlie Hebdo’s mockery of the Muslims resembled the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the anti-Semitic publication produced by the rapacious Nazi Julius Streicher, whose love for the Fuhrer was only eclipsed by his
As the far-right continues to gain popularity among the populace, these terrorist counterattacks against secular French society likewise prepares the conditions for the mainstreaming of the once marginal anti-immigrant right, especially the French National Front led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a neo-fascist politician who made his career by taking an ultra-conservative stance against immigration, the European Union, and other kulturkampf issues. Those who would be at the forefront of a new conflagration between Muslims and the West have much to gain politically by the continual polarization of French society, as their poll numbers continue to rise as social strains become worse. Ironically, Charlie Hebdo was published by a group of people who identify themselves as left-leaning atheists, who frequently attacked the French National Front party, but their work helped solidify the miso-Islamism of the political right wing in France. Unfortunately, as many French move farther to the right, following a general trend throughout Europe, they run the risk of cementing the view among the Muslim population, including their own, that France had taken the lead, not against terrorism, but against Islam itself.
Despite all the misguided attempts to show solidarity, there was one extremely meaningful gesture to come out of the aftermath of the attacks. Led by the French socialist President Francois Hollande, who also ordered the French attack against al-Qae’da in the Maghrib in 2013, the “unity” rally of January 11, 2015 demonstrated to the world that France, in all its diversity, would stand as one people against those who chose to attack it through violent means. Although walking behind Francois Hollande were many other world leaders, some of whom are also responsible for heinous crimes perpetrated by the states under their control, the people’s show of unity in the face of terrorism was an important expression of national solidarity, even if it was incomplete.94 This is precisely because the masses at the rally were comprised not only of native and/or ethnic French (Français de souche), but they were also Muslims, both French citizens and not, from all over the world. No doubt those particular Muslims did not agree with the content of Charlie Hebdo’s publication, but nevertheless they refused to allow their religious beliefs to be reinterpreted through the lenses of al-Qae’da and isis terror. The most devout of French
Yet the prognosis in Europe – and the West in general – is grim.96 At the moment there may not be an adequate resolution to the problems of post-secular
It should be noted that the Muslims do not blame “the Jews” for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, since the Qur’an states, ‘they slew him not,’ ‘the Jews’ cannot be made responsible for what did not happen. (Qur’an 4:157).
My translation.
See Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
See Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be? New York: Continuum, 2000.
Yahiya Emerick, Muhammad (Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002.), 227–248.
Qur’an. 2:190. My Translation and my emphasis.
Another paradigmatic example of an inter-faith community of early Muslims is when many Muslims escaped persecution at the hands of the pagan Arabs by traveling to Abyssinia, in East Africa. There, King Negus, a Christian, overrode the objections of the pagan Meccans and offered these Muslims sanctuary. The King was impressed by their reverence of Jesus and Mary and in kind protected them from their enemies. According to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Vol. 5, Number 218, Jabir bin ‘Abdallah Al-Ansari related that the Prophet even held a funeral service for King Negus when he later died, despite the fact that Negus did not convert to Islam. Regardless, the Prophet was impressed by Negus’ ecumenical spirit and willingness to embody the Christian value of charity and mercy.
Asma Afsaruddin, ‘Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and Praxis’ in Martyrdom and Terrorism: Pre-Modern to Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Dominic Janes and Alex Houen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 40–58.
A “reconciled society” is a society that has resolved its antagonisms, i.e. its class antagonisms, its gender antagonisms, it racial antagonisms, etc. Although prototypically belonging to theology, this term, via the Frankfurt School and others has been brought down from metaphysics and into sociology and philosophy.
See Rudolf J. Siebert, From Critical Theory to Critical Political Theology: Personal Autonomy and Universal Solidarity (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 153–269.
Siebert, From Critical Theory, 153–269.
Numbers 22:22, Samuel 29:4 and Psalms 109:6.
Job 1:1.
Job 1:7.
Matthew 27:46.
Psalm 22:1–2. Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version (New York: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1972), 484.
It is interesting to note that from the Christian perspective, God, via Jesus, quotes the lamentation of a human King. In this case, human words express the pain that is being suffered by a divine figure. The fact that “God” quotes man to express his suffering on the cross cannot be overlooked in an attempt to understand the theodicy problem.
Donald Spoto, Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi (New York: Viking Press, 2002), 183.
Bernard Schweizer, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Schweizer, Hating God, 161–165; Jenni Frazer, “Wiesel: Yes, We Really did put God on Trial,” September 19, 2008. http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/wiesel-yes-we-really-did-put-god-trial (Accessed 8/14/2014).
See Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God (as it was held on February 25, 1649 in Shamgorod), trans. Marion Wiesel New York: Random House, 1979.
John Abromeit. Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 362–366.
Many Israeli Rabbis have articulated the idea that the Jews of Europe were the sacrificial lambs for the rebirth of Israel as a modern nation-state: a returning of the chosen people to the land that God delivered to them in the Jewish Bible. From the perspective of the Critical Theorist, this argument lends a positive metaphysics to history, positing that it has a telos that is discernible and therefore meaningful; history, by way of providence, made those Jews into victims and therefore their suffering should be accepted as a necessary but painful good. Consequently, Hitler himself becomes the agent of providence in service to the creation of the Jewish state. For these reasons, and in agreement with Adorno, such arguments must be rejected for they revictimize the already victimized.
We will return once again to Adorno’s discussion of metaphysics post-Auschwitz in a later chapter.
Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1999), 361.
As has been noted by many critical scholars, the notion of “progress” has often been made into the ideology of bourgeois societies. All technological, social, economic, and political changes in favor of the ruling class have been designated progress, while all that resists and/or challenges bourgeois interests are dubbed retrogressive, obscurantist, or degenerate.
‘If you want peace prepare for war.’ “True peace” is predicated not on the threat of war, but in a state of being that requires both war and the threat of war to be absent.
Rudolf J. Siebert, Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless. Vol ii. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 465–466.
Minou Reeves, Muhammad in Europe: A Thousand Years of Western Myth-Making. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Denise Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 27–33.
Here I make the claim that although the content that technology advances, i.e. tv shows, music, blogs, etc., are bound to given subjective tastes, opinions, etc., technology itself remains neutral. However, this is only a surface observation, as technology itself advances a certain form of thinking, a certain way-of-being-in-the-world that determines human interaction and relations. Technology is predicated on instrumental reason, the reason of work and tool, manipulation of the physical world, and the reduction of all that cannot be subject to scientific scrutiny down to the physical. In this sense, even where communicative reason is still a powerful force in society, instrumental reason undermines its ability to serve as the basis for a healthy and cooperative society.
Richard Esposito et al., “Anti-Islam Film Producer Wrote Script in Prison: Authorities,” September 13, 2012. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/anti-islam-film-producer-wrote-script-prisonauthorities/story?id=17230609#.UFLmFK4dWVk (Accessed 3/30/2014).
Muslim Public Affairs Council, “What you Need to Know,” http://www.mpac.org/programs/hate-crime-prevention/statistics.php#.UzixcChDx94 (Accessed 3/30/2014).
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (New York: Free Press, 2007), 311–335. Ali refers to Van Gogh as a “Lord of Misrule,” invoking the Renaissance tradition of appointing an individual to direct the “Feast of Fools” for Christmas. She says ‘his house was a shambles, but he focused intensely on his work. He was a mess of contradictions, an impossible man, a genius in some ways.’ Ali, Infidel, 312.
Ibid., Infidel, 314.
Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam, and the Limits of Tolerance (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 5.
Geert Wilders, “Mr Wilders’ Contribution to the Debate on Islamic Activism,” September 29, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20080614074737/http://www.groepwilders.com/website/details.aspx?ID=44 (Accessed 3/30/2014).
Ian Traynor, “‘I Don’t Hate Muslims, I Hate Islam’ says Holland’s Rising Political Star,” February 16, 2008. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/17/netherlands.islam (Accessed 3/30/2014).
Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington d.c.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2012), 121.
Wilders, Marked For Death, 122.
Although they agreed on the threat of Islam, Geert Wilders and Theo van Gogh never worked together. Wilders thought Van Gogh to be too outlandish and anti-religious. Whereas Wilders was solely critical of Islam, Van Gogh was equally hostile to Christianity and Judaism. Whereas Van Gogh was an equal opportunity hater of religion, Wilders emphasized the Judeo-Christian legacy of Europe as a source for its rejuvenation. See Wilders, Marked For Death, 8–9.
Max Horkheimer, Critique of Instrumental Reason (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 49.
Fidel Castro and Frei Betto, Fidel and Religion: Conversations with Frei Bretto on Marxism & Liberation Theology. New York: Ocean Press, 2014.
Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010; Michael Casey, Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image. New York: Vintage Books, 2009.
Castro and Betto, Fidel and Religion, 289.
Although Lumumba was born into a Catholic family and was educated in a Protestant school, he nevertheless believed in the separation of church and state that would end the legitimization of government policies by clerical authorities.
I make a point to remember the 27 million Soviet communists who were killed fighting the Third Reich for the expressed point that they are so easily forgotten in the West. With all our emphasis on the D-Day invasion, the Holocaust, and the Western Front, we hardly remember that the Communists were the first and primary enemy of the Fascists. For that the Soviet Union lost 27 millions citizens – the highest loss of one country in the entire war. This observation in no way diminishes the commitment and loss of Americans, British, French, Canadians, and the partisan forces in occupied Europe. Additionally, it may be the case that anti-fascism was a stronger motivational force in the war against the Germans that was their dedication to Communism.
See Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Corporatism is a structural-functionalist theory of social organization that is rooted in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (12:12–31), where the community is understood to be structured like a body, with certain parts playing various but necessary functionalist roles. All parts work together to create a single organic whole. For Italian fascists, including Mussolini, all segments of society work as a whole for the benefit of the nation-race. For Marxists, this social theory fundamentally sanitizes the class divisions within a given nation and serves the ideological function to suppress class-consciousness and therefore revolution of the working class against their masters.
Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 325–368. See Dustin Byrd, Ayatollah Khomeini and the Anatomy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: Toward a Theory of Prophetic Charisma. Lanham, md: University Press of America, 2011. I use these terms, übermensch and untermensch, more in the spirit of the Third Reich and not Nietzsche’s philosophy, which the Nazis distorted.
See my later chapter on Walter Benjamin’s philosophy concerning the historical materialist historian.
During the signing of the Treaty of Hudaibiyyah, the Meccans refused to recognize Muhammad’s title “Messenger of God,” but would instead sign it if he wrote the “son of ‘Abdallah” by his name. Muhammad agreed to this despite the fact that it was explicitly denying his prophethood. Nevertheless, he did not retaliate against them for it, nor did he seek revenge for their disrespect.
Asad et al, Is Critique Secular: Blasphemy, Injury and Free Speech (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 14–57. This conflict wasn’t necessarily new. One should remember the 1988–1989 Salman Rushdie controversy when his novel Satanic Verses was released. The debate between freedom of speech and respect for sacred figures erupted then as well.
See Talal Assad’s chapter in Is Critique Secular: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, 14–57.
Historically, the process of secularization pertained to the state’s appropriation of church property, i.e. monasteries, convents, monastic lands, priories, and other church edifices, which occurred under King Henry viii’s dissolution of monasteries, having occurred after the Act of Supremacy was passed by Parliament in 1534, thus making the British King the supreme head (royal supremacy) of the Church of England. This seizure of properties – which transformed religious property into secular property – continued during the French Revolution and well into the 18th and 19th century by various European countries.
Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution – A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty First (New York: Harper One, 2007), 2–3, 57–58.
See Jürgen Habermas et al., An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Malden, ma: Polity Press, 2011), 15–23; Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.
Habermas, Europe, 59–77.
See Jalal Al-i Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, ed. Hamid Algar and trans. R. Campbell. Berkeley: Mizan Press Berkeley, 1984.
Hans Küng, Islam: Past, Present & Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), xxiii-xxx, 3–24.
Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, ma: The mit Press, 1998), 49–74.
One should also bear in mind the symbolic language of silence. Silence is often a way of registering one’s refusal to engage in a discourse, and thus through the silence one engages in the discourse.
Osama Bin Laden, Message to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, ed. Bruce Lawrence (New York: Verso, 2005), 167.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, The Al Qaeda Reader, ed. and trans. Raymond Ibrahim (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), 130.
Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam, 90–91.
Ali, Infidel, 323.
I do not say that ethnicity is not important at all in Europe for indeed it is. The different ethnos of most of the Muslim population remains a problem for many within Europe. However, it is the culture of Islam that most European critics of Islam object to; this separates them from the demos of any given nation more radically than their ethnos.
Theo van Gogh’s attitude towards immigrant women who embrace the sexual ethics of Europe is not unique among European leaders. For example, despite his anti-immigration politics, which were congruent with Italy’s Northern League (a right-wing anti-immigrant group), Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister of Italy, demonstrated his hypocritical stance towards foreigners by proclaiming that they have no place in his country, unless they’re “bringing over beautiful girls.” See Nick Squires, “Silvio Berlusconi says immigrants not welcome but beautiful girls’ can stay.” February 13, 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7223365/Silvio-Berlusconi-says-immigrants-not-welcome-but-beautiful-girls-can-stay.html (Accessed 11/11/2014). We should also bear in mind the Berlusconi was put on trial for his sexual relationship with a Moroccan teenager named Karima El Mahroug, a.k.a “Ruby the Heart stealer.”
According to the Instituut voor Multiculturele Vraagstukken (Utrecht, Netherlands), the Muslim population in the Netherlands is 6% of the total population, just over a million Muslims in a total population of 16.8 million. http://www.forum.nl/Portals/Res/res-pdf/Moslims-in-Nederland-2010.pdf (Accessed 11/29/2014).
Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam, 27–29.
Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam, 27–29.
Matthew Weaver, “Angela Merkel: German Multiculturalism has ‘Utterly Failed,’” October 17, 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed (Accessed 11/30/2014).
Laura Kuenssberg, “State Multiculturalism has Failed, Says David Cameron,” February 5, 2011. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-12371994 (Accessed 11/30/2014).
Habermas, Europe. 70.
Ibid., 70.
Axel Honneth, Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Malden, ma: Polity Press, 2007.
Klausen, Jytte. The Cartoons that Shook the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
It is clear from both Islam and Islamic history that Muslims are not above critique; the Prophet often told his followers that to “help their brother” when he is doing wrong is to stop him from doing wrong. Critique then is an integral part of becoming a more faithful Muslim.
“I am not Charlie and I am not with the Terrorists.”
Robert S. Leiken, Europe’s Angry Muslims: The Revolt of the Second Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–58; Emmanuel Todd, Who is Charlie? Xenophobia and the New Middle Class, trans. Andrew Brown (Malden, ma: Polity Press, 2015), 15–49.
See the story of Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust-denier/academic who was prosecuted under the Gayssot Act in 1991. He was later (2012) given an award for “courage” by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahmadinejad cited his fight against censorship as proof that Europe does not have true “freedom of speech.”
The issue of anti-Semitism in Charlie Hebdo has a history. In a couple different instances, the accusation that they were engaged in anti-Semitism resulted in the firing of individual employees. The magazine was sensitive towards these particular accusations. However, the idea that it was “Islamophobic” – because Islamophobism is swiftly become normalized in Europe – was of no concern for the editors.
Max Fisher, “This Map Shows Every Attack on French Muslims since Charlie Hebdo,” January 10, 2015. http://www.vox.com/2015/1/10/7524731/french-muslims-attacks-charlie-hebdo.
Habermas, Europe, 69.
I have to thank Shaykh Hamza Yusuf of Zaytuna College for bringing this poignant poem to light during this time of crisis in the French society.
After the January attack in Paris, Lassana Bathily, the French-Malian Muslim man, who saved the lives of many Jewish customers in the Hyper Cacher (Kosher) supermarket by hiding them in the freezer, was hailed by many as a hero. However, Charlie Hebdo acknowledged his actions, which represented the ecumenical spirit of his Islamic faith, by again mocking the Prophet Muhammad in their next edition. Additionally, one of the three French police officers that were killed during the three-day ordeal was also a Muslim, Ahmed Merabat. Despite his heroism, Charlie Hebdo also mocked his faith. This has an additional effect: too often the dominant narrative chooses to define Islam by the actions of its misguided followers and not by those believers who embody Islam’s ecumenical and merciful geist as displayed by these two men. When after the attempted assassination of the cartoonist Lars Vilks in February, 2015 in Copenhagen, Denmark, which was followed up by an attack on a Jewish synagogue, more than one thousand Muslims in Oslo stood shoulder to shoulder and created a ‘protective human ring’ around the Jewish center, shouting ‘no to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia.’ Unfortunately, this meaningful gesture of inter-religious solidarity garnished no major media coverage in the United States. Episodes like this, which can counter the prevailing stereotypes regarding the faith of Muslims, are routinely ignored, downplayed or dismissed. Again, its miscreants and not its most devout believers too often define Islam.
John R. Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 2007), 11–33.
In 2004, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom issued critical remarks regarding this law, believing it would be in fundamental disagreement with France’s human rights commitments.
This law was condemned by Amnesty International and widely criticized in Europe, the Americas, and in International governing bodies as being inherently discriminatory towards Muslims.
My translation.
bbc News Europe, “Paris Attack: Pope Francis Say Freedom of Speech has Limits,” January 15, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30835625 (Accessed 1/15/2015).
We do have to bear in mind that not all Muslims are religious and that not all westerners are secular. However, in general this distinction holds some weight.
Simon Tomlinson, “#noapology: Muslims stage angry protests over Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoon as Boko Haram terror leader hails Paris massacre,” January 14, 2015. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2910126/Muslims-stage-angry-protests-Charlie-Hebdo-s-Mohammed-cartoon-Boko-Haram-terror-leader-hails-Paris-massacre.html#ixzz3OpojSdsC (Accessed 1/14/2015).
Julius Streicher was later tried and executed at the Nuremberg Trials. I do not claim that Charlie Hebdo advocated the extermination of Muslims or other crimes against Muslims that Der Stürmer did against the Jews, only that it contributes to the stereotyping of a minority community.
The fact that many of the Presidents and Prime Ministers who were in Paris for this rally were themselves perpetrators of violence, demonstrates the very hypocrisy of countries that is so often pointed out by jihadists. While individual and group terrorism, such as that perpetrated against Charlie Hebdo, are universally condemned, the terrorism perpetrated by states, such as by Israel, is tolerated and their representatives are honored guests of the state. The presence of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” killed over 2,200 Palestinians (around 70% of which were civilians according to the u.n.), forced many French Muslims to stay home from the rally. They could not bring themselves to rally alongside someone who denies the fundamental right of existence to Palestinian men, women and children. Even Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President who ordered the attacks on hundreds of thousands of innocent ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine in 2014, joined the “unity” rally against terrorism.
Habermas, Europe, 66–70.
Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the 13 November 2015 attacks on Paris in general, physical violence and discrimination against Muslims in the United States has risen sharply, culminating in the Presidential candidancy of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly stoked the fire of Islamophobia in the American electorate. Trump has publically called for a ban on Muslims coming into the United States, greater monitoring of Muslim communities, mosques and gatherings. He made headlines again in March of 2016 by emphatically stating, ‘Islam hates us.’