THE ISLAMIC CULTURE (Part
I)
THE ISLAMIC CULTURE (Part I)
by Anwar Shaikh
Judging by the Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Christian ways of
life, India may be said to have one culture, which is essentially
Vedic, because all these people believe that India is their
Motherland, and therefore, despite their political and social
squabbles, they can agree when the honor of their Motherland is at
stake. Difference of opinion, in a democratic society is not a
source of blight but beneficence. In fact, it is a process of
purification, leading to friendship, fraternity and fruition. It
is for this reason that these cultures, despite having
differences, revolve round the same axis of patriotism, but this
is not the case with Islam, which preaches loyalty to Mecca and
treason to a believer's own Motherland if he happens to be a non-
Arab i.e. an Indian. Keshav Sharma has shrewdly picked up this
point, and the book i.e. "The Question of Culture,"
which is actually a collection of his essays, seeks to solve the
problem in India.
To Keshav Sharma, "Culture is a set of methods of solving
problems, based on the definition of reality as evolved and
enunciated by intellectual leaders of a society."
Possibly, the most noteworthy point he makes is the assertion that
culture is naturally dynamic and admits no pessimism; tomorrow
ought to be better than yesterday, and it is no good pretending
that we live in the Kali Yuga, the dark age, where nothing bright,
blissful and benevolent can take place.
Stating solution to the Islamic and other problems of India, he
adds: "India's natural law-based on classical Vedic
civilization of the yesteryears sets the finest example in
managing both the private and public realms without destroying
either."
Keshav is a patriot who feels the pain and pleasure of his
motherland. He is conscientious of preserving the integrity of
what is left of India i.e. Bharat. He holds Islam as the poison
for his country and the Vedic doctrine as the panacea for its
revival.
It is difficult for any patriot to differ with his conclusion.
Therefore, for my part, I give him credit for his intentions and
wish him luck in the Presidential elections.
Having said that, I may add that Sharmaji has not provided a
comparative study of the Islamic and Vedic cultures to show why
the former is injurious to India, and why the latter, despite
being infinitely superior to the former, has failed to solve the
Indian problems. I am sure that he knows it all, but being a
politician, he is aware of the fact that politics is the art of
treading carefully. Since I am not a politician, the scope for
stating the truth happens to be much wider for me.
In fact, I am grateful to Sharmaji for giving me a chance to
express thoughts on my favorite subject. I wrote a book:
"Culture The Destiny" but published only one part of it
under the title: "Islam, The Arab National Movement"
which caught public attention on a fairly large scale. In
"Culture, he Destiny," I divided culture into three
categories:
1. The libertarian Culture,
2. The Aggressive Culture, and
3. The Passive Culture.
"Islam, The Arab National Movement" is an example of the
Aggressive Culture: Islam is an aggressive culture because it is
the ambassador of the Arabian way of life and seeks to impose Arab
imperialism on the non-Arab Muslims in the guise of religion.
On the contrary, the Vedic culture, being a natural way of life,
is superior to the Islamic culture and thus must rank as an
example of the Libertarian Culture for its beneficial effect on
mankind. As long as people of India practiced it, they possessed a
scholarly mind and a heroic conduct, which made them torch-bearers
of the world civilization, but as it has suffered a lot of
corruption at the hands of its own followers, it cannot be cited
as Libertarian. Now, it has become the Hindu or Passive culture,
which has lost its luster, loftiness, and loyalty to the Vedas.
Keshav has correctly diagnosed that nature of the Indian trouble
is cultural, but he has put the entire blame on the Islamic
culture and has not commented on the present state of the Hindu
culture, which is very nearly an antithesis of the Vedic doctrine.
Since remedial action cannot be based on a biased analysis, I am
obliged to present a comparative study of the Islamic and Hindu
cultures to show where things have gone wrong for Mother India.
Therefore, I may divide the ensuing discussion into two parts,
namely, Islamic Culture and Hindu Culture:
Like the cosmic structure, man's societal make-up is also
hierarchical: it is well represented by a pyramid, which is
broadest at the base and narrowest at the top. Take a democratic
government, for instance: at the bottom stand millions of voters,
but as the political Organization rises higher, on the top is
found a small cabinet headed by one person known as the President
or Prime Minister.
There may be countless individuals in political parties, competing
for power. This results from man's Dominance-Urge, which makes a
person power-hungry and he wants to command others by gaining
ascendancy over them. History is the manifestation of this urge
(drive): without it, there will be no Alexanders, Ganghis Khans or
Napoleons. These remarks equally apply to the administrative,
judicial and social hierarchies.
However, intensity of the Dominance-Urge varies in different
people. Its highest expression is not to be found amongst
conquerors and rulers but the category of men, who distinguish
themselves as Prophets. The reason is that when a ruler dies, with
him perishes his Dominance-Urge because he cannot tell people what
to do and what not to do, but this fact is reversed in the case of
a Prophet, who commands his people from beyond the grave through
the Law, which he leaves behind as the Divine Guidance or Word of
God: the Koran is one such code of law, which its followers
believe, shall last forever irrespective of its relevance to the
changed times.
The Prophet Muhammad, who presented the Koran to mankind was a
wise man, and possessed an unusually acute Urge of Dominance. He
aspired to be acknowledged, not as God, but God's Superior, and he
wanted to deify himself through national dignity. In simple
language, it means that he wanted to weld his fellow Arabs into a
strong fighting force, which should rule the world but in his name
so that he could act as the head of the Arab Imperialism. This
type of scheme could not have been imagined by the Indian leaders
such as Gandhi, who sought Godhead through the degradation of his
people by addicting them to the opium of Ahimsa.
Muhammad's wisdom lay in realizing the value of culture: he seems
to have known that man is basically endowed with a potential of
development, and he becomes according to how he cultivates his
potential; if he is trained to be brave and fearless, he becomes a
warrior, a conqueror and honorable, but if he is taught cowardice
in the guise of non-violence, he grows up as a mouse, which knows
nothing about self-respect, honor and high morality. Thus, culture
represents the refinement which results from the cultivation of
one's potential. Therefore, culture is the ambassador of man's
destiny. Whether he becomes a saint or Satan, depends upon the
magnitude of his cultural achievement.
Culture is not just an individual concept, it equally applies to a
nation. The Arabs of that time were an inferior race for
practicing principles and traditions, which led to social discord
and national degradation. The only way Prophet Muhammad could
raise their stature was, by accustoming them to superior cultural
values, having the power to unite them into a proud nation. Since
the Arab psyche had been adversely affected by the Jewish claims
of racial superiority and mundane prosperity, he asserted:
"Of the two tribes that God chose as the best were the
descendants of Ishmael and Isaac. God preferred the children of
Ishmael (the Arabs) to the children of Isaac (the Jews). Then God
created Muhammad in the chosen tribe of Quresh (the descendants of
Ishmael ) and then He chose Muhammad as the best of ad men."
(Jame Tirmze, Vol: 2)
One can clearly see here the following facts:
1. Both the Jews and Arabs are chosen people but the Arabs are
superior to the Jews.
2. Muhammad is the best of all men.
These two points indicate their mutual relationship, that is,
superiority of the Arabs as a race and that of Muhammad are co-
dependent. This proves my view that Muhammad wanted to deify
himself through Arab Imperialism i e. by raising a great Arab
nation capable of spreading his reverence through sustained
ascendancy. Muhammad's sagacity is vouched for by the fact that he
did not rely just on the force of national arms but turned the
Arab culture itself into the dominant culture, which once
established, should be self-perpetuating without any external aid.
India provides evincing evidence to this fact: Muhammad Bin Qasim
and his likes used torture, tyranny and torment to introduce Islam
to the Land of the Vedas but long after the demise of the Muslim
rule, the Islamic culture was able to achieve what the ferocity of
the combined Muslim reign of centuries had failed to accomplish.
In 1947, the Muslims declared that their Islamic culture did not
permit them to live with the Kafirs (the Hindus), and thus they
were able to make a successful demand to partition India. It was
the greatest tragedy that could have befallen any country but such
a grievous loss can be felt by the patriots only, and not by the
practitioners of Ahimsa, who will suffer any indignity to breathe
a little longer.
What are the fundamentals of the Islamic culture and how does it
work? Here is a brief sketch of Muhammad's plan:
1. Muhammad, had idolatrous parentage. Prior to declaring Islam,
he was known to have been a regular visitor to the Kaaba, the
chief Arab temple, organized on the Vedic principle of Triad. The
history also testifies to the fact that he was confirmed in his
ancestral faith in the Kaaba by his grandfather Abdul Muttalib
according to the pagan rites of the time. He must have practiced
his ancestral religion until he was forty years old when Gabriel
brought him a written message from Allah and commanded him to read
it. At that time, Muhammad was meditating in a cave called "Hira."
When he expressed his inability to read Allah's message, Gabriel
became aggressive and tried to strangle him three times, that is,
each time Muhammad expressed his inability to read.
This episode clearly expresses Allah's desperation for finding a
Prophet and Muhammad's reluctance to act as one. In fact, this is
the starting point for exhibiting his superiority over Allah, who
is determined to persuade him through all means, including
violence.
What is a prophet? In the Semitic culture, a Prophet is God's
appointee through whom He reveals Himself. It is because God wants
to guide mankind to save them from hell-fire, and thus needs a
Prophet (also known as Messenger), who can give people His
message.
This makes Prophet hood a very subtle device to make God as an
incompetent Creator because He relies on a man (Prophet) for the
conveyance of His message. If God is really Absolute, Omniscient
and the most competent Creator, as Islam repeatedly declares, He
could have created a self-guided man to avoid embarrassment of
depending on a Prophet to do His work. This is what makes Prophet
hood a supplement to God, reducing His Divine splendor, solemnity
and supremacy. What makes things even more derogatory to God is
the fact that the Prophet is just a human: he is born in the
normal process, eats, drinks, walks, talks, eats, etc., and
eventually dies.
These remarks, which apply to a Prophet physically, equally hold
good morally, too, though the Muslims believe that a Prophet is
innocent and cannot commit a sin. This is a mistaken belief and
collides with the Koran:
" God may forgive thee (Muhammad) thy former and thy latter
sins, and complete His blessings upon thee, and guide thee on a
straight path" ( XLV lil - Victory: 1 )
It means that a Prophet commits sin like ordinary people and
requires constant guidance from Allah to walk on the straight
path. In other words, a Prophet is fallible. The God who relies on
such a person so completely and needs him so desperately that
Gabriel uses violence to enroll him as a Prophet, is Himself
fallible, to say the least. Such a God cannot be the true God.
Again, I may also make it clear that Muhammad was not born guided
because firstly, he did not declare his Prophet hood until he was
forty years old; secondly, his wife Khadija converted to Islam
when he broke the news to her about what had happened in the cave.
one must remember that they had been married long before this
event, and Islam does not allow a Muslim man to marry a non-
Muslim woman. Evidently, Muhammad himself was not a Muslim prior
to this episode, and practiced his ancestral faith.
Since this is a very important issue, it cannot be left to
interpretation. In fact, this is not necessary because the Koran
itself confirms this truth:
"And thus have we (Allah) inspired in thee (Muhammad) a
spirit of Our command. Thou knewest not what the Scripture (Divine
guidance) was, nor what the Faith (Islam)." (XLIII -
Ornaments of Gold: 52)
It shows that Prophet hood being a highly defective device, cannot
represent the dignity of God. In fact, it is a gross insult to God
and serves as the medium for man to present himself as God's
superior. It is the most powerful and compulsive form of
dominance. Urge that makes man feel greater than God and he acts
accordingly to prepare religious system to brainwash people..
The central point of Prophet hood is that the Prophet declares
himself to be a man who has been chosen by God to disseminate His
message. Thus, the Prophet is God's agent, but this agency is
absolutely exclusive to him: God speaks only through him and
cannot be approached without him. Thus, whatever he says becomes
the Word of God. This is a very sharp and subtle form of idolatry
because as God cannot be seen or contacted, the Prophet begins to
rank as the Symbol of God exactly the same way as an ordinary
statue is regarded the token of a deity.
To my mind, Muhammad is the most prominent figure in the world of
Prophet hood. Moses, certainly, raised the Jewish nation on the
same principle but his people though materially well off, have
been the target of world's slight, subjugation and slaughter but
Muhammad prepared such a culture based on the doctrine of Prophet
hood that the Arabs now, despite being a backward nation, as well
as the source of regression for all the Muslim world, hold a
position of respect, repute and resplendence. This is the true
miracle of Muhammad, and it is unique. Why? Men of other races
have claimed to be gods but it remained an individual affair and
they were, chiefly, worshipped by their own nations only; names of
the Egyptian Pharaohs and Roman Emperors are some of the examples.
But Muhammad proclaimed his Godhead through the glory of his
nation. This is the cornerstone of the Arab culture; he prepared a
strong and unified nation inspired by the ideal of self-
significance and imperial dreams, but dedicated to projecting'
Muhammad as the "Best of Mankind" and God's Superior.
Thus Muhammad made the success of his own nation as the mark of
his victory. How did he do it?
He declared: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His
Rasool (Messenger i .e. Prophet).
Though the Koran repeatedly says that mentioning someone else's
name with the name of Allah is the only unpardonable sin, we can
see that Muhammad has his name incorporated with the name of
Allah. The purpose of this device is to indicate the parity of
Muhammad with that of Allah. This is called Shahada i.e. the basic
confession, which makes a person Muslim. Just belief in Allah does
not render a person Muslim. Obviously, Allah is nothing on His own
though He may claim to be the Creator, all-powerful, Omniscient,
and so on.
When Muhammad was politically weak, he emphasized his humility as
a human and glorified Allah but when he became powerful, he
reversed the relationship between him and Allah because he himself
became the object of worship by Allah:
"Lo! Allah and His angels pray peace to the Prophet (
Muhammad ) O ye who also pray peace to him and salute him with a
worthy salutation." (XXX - The Clans: 56)
Simply stated, this verse means that Allah and His angels worship
Muhammad because when the Muslims (apparently) worship God, they
actually pray peace to Him. Is it not strange that in every
religion, it is man who worships God but in Islam, it is God, who
along with his angels, worships Muhammad? This is an extreme case
of Dominance-Urge, which incites man to be even God's Superior,
and it is the device of Prophet hood that enables him to achieve
this goal.
Now, one can see that in fact, Muhammad is Allah, who tolerates no
peer, and declares that there is no God but He. This necessitates
the elimination of all other Gods. To achieve this end, he laid
down the cardinal rule, Which has become a fountain of Islamic
culture.
"It is He (Allah) who has sent His Messenger with the
guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), that He may make it
dominant over every religion.
Muhammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are
hard against the unbelievers, merciful to one another." (
XLVIII Victory: 25 )
Thus the Cardinal rule of the Islamic Culture is:
1. All Gods are false except Allah (who prays peace to Muhammad
along with His angels).
2. Islam is the only true religion and it is the duty of all
Muslims to make it dominate over all other faiths.
3. The method of making it dominant over other faith is that the
Muslims must be kind to one another but harsh to the unbelievers.
The last i.e. no. 3 serves as the Divine wrath on mankind and
therefore deserves further explanation:
Islam, in fact, is a perpetual declaration of war against all
those, who do not believe in Muhammad. This war is not confined to
words but it is really brutish, barbaric and bewildering. It makes
society a hot bed of mutual hatred based on discrimination of
Momin (Muslim) and Kafir (non-Muslim). Thus, it ignites the flame
of eternal conflict far more dangerous, debilitating and
devastating than Karl-Marx could ever visualize: "They
(unbelievers) are Satan's party they are the losers.... Those (the
Muslims) are God's party....they are the prosperers." (LVIII
The Disputer: 20)
The Muslims are commanded to wage an everlasting war against the
unbelievers and are assured victory in the struggle.Surely, the
Marxist social philosophy is an extension of the Koranic doctrine.
To realize the significance of this statement, one ought to read
the following:
1. On unbelievers is the curse of Allah. (The Cow: 161 )
2. Allah is an enemy to unbelievers. ( The Cow: 15 )
3. The worst of beasts in Allah's sight are the ungrateful, who
will not believe. (Spoils of War: 55)
4. Oh ye who believe! the non-Muslims are unclean. (Repentance:17)
5. Oh ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers and let
them find harshness in you. (Repentance: 123)
6. Oh believers, do not treat your fathers and mothers as your
friends, if they prefer unbelief to belief, whosoever of you takes
them for friends, they are evil-doers. (Repentance: 20)
7. Humiliate the non-Muslims to such an extent that they surrender
and pay tribute. ( Repentance: 29 )
Through the doctrine of hatred, Islam incites Muslims against
non-Muslims and proposes Jehad as the solution to make Islam the
dominant faith. What is Jehad? It is the battle against
unbelievers such as the Hindus, the Christians, the Jews, the
atheists - in fact, unbelievers of all sorts.
Since humans do not like harming innocent people, Jehad is nothing
but an inducement to murder and plunder non-Muslims for the sheer
crime of not believing in Muhammad. It is called a "holy
war." Those who return home victoriously, come laden with
booty, which includes wealth and non-Muslim women for concubinage
and free seduction but those "crusaders" who are killed
"in the way of Allah" go straight to paradise where
ever-young virgins of exquisite beauty and pretty boys anxiously
wait to serve them! Even more stunning is the fact that while
every code of moral conduct treats murder, rape, plunder, lechery
as sins, Islam counts them as acts of piety. The Jehad, which is
an integral part of the Islamic culture, explains its moral
values.
With a view to making sure that Muslims follow the Prophet
blindly, he claimed that he had Intercessory Powers, which will
enable him to decide on the Day of Judgment as who will go to
paradise. It is only his followers who will qualify for this
treat, and it matters not if they were murderers, thieves,
rapists, liars. or traitors. Look at the following:
"...truly this is the word of a noble Messenger having power,
with the Lord of the Throne secure, obeyed, moreover trusty."
(LXXXI: The Darkening: 20)
This is interpreted by the Muslims to mean that on the Day of
Judgment, the Prophet Muhammad will share the Throne of Justice
with Allah, and will sit on His right hand side; it is he who will
make recommendations as who should enter paradise, and his
recommendations are binding on Allah!
Who will be recommended by the Prophet Muhammad? The answer to
this question constitutes what may be termed as the Master stroke
of Muhammad, binding on all non-Arab Muslims, no matter where they
are. The Koran says: "You (The Muslims) have had a good
example in God's Messenger for whosoever hopes for God and the
Last Day, and remembers God oft." (XXXIII - The Confederates:
20)
In plain English, it means that Prophet Muhammad is the Model of
Behavior for all those who believe in him. If they "hope for
God and the Last Day," they must follow in his footprints.
The more closely they do so, the better their chances of getting
recommended by the Prophet! Thus, it has become an integral part
of the Islamic faith that to be a Muslim one must walk, talk, eat,
drink, look, think, and act like the Prophet. This being man-
worship, is the worst form of idolatry, but this is not the
subject under deliberation. What I am discussing is the Master
Cultural Stroke of the Prophet. Though it has destroyed the
dignity of the non-Arab Muslim nations and has become the main
cause of their regression, I applaud the Prophet's ingenuity and
his concern for permanently raising the imperial status of his own
people i.e. the Arabs, by making the Arab Culture as the Divine
Culture. Since Culture means the way of life, all non-Arab Muslims
qualify as the Arabian slaves for imitating the Arab culture
without any external coercion.
The central point of this argument is that a Muslim must think and
act like the Prophet; as the Prophet loved Arabia, its
institutions and Practiced its culture, so must do his followers
as a matter of faith, which is far more powerful than reason for
being blind, boisterous and barbaric.
How did the Prophet perform this miracle? Here is a tiny sketch of
this scheme, which speaks for itself:
1. First, he created the fundamental distinction between Muslims
and non-Muslims and prescribed a society in which the Muslims are
permanently at war with the non-Muslims.
2. With a view to making his own country i.e. Arabia the
beneficiary of this Momin-Kafir struggle, he made reverence of the
Arab institutions and customs as an integral part of the Islamic
faith.
For example, he declared Kaaba, the central Arab shrine, as the
House of Allah, and asserted that Allah Himself had ordered Adam,
the progenitor of mankind, to build this house for Him.
(The faithful do not realize that if Allah is dependent on Adam
for housing Him, how can He be the Creator of the universe? But in
faith, reasoning has no place; the darker it is, the greater
protection it provides against the harshness of real life.)
3. Kaaba is also the Kibla i.e. the direction of worship. This has
created slavish mentality among the non-Arab Muslims in relation
to Arabia because they have to bow, bend and beseech Allah, who
lives there, at least five times a day. This is, in fact, a daily
salutation to the Arabian soil!
4. A Muslim's grave must be dug in a way that his body when
buried, faces Kaaba (Mecca).
Looking towards Arabia even after one's death shows one's total
subordination to Arabia and betrays one's sense of self-
humiliation to Mecca, the birth place of Muhammad .
5. So sacred is Mecca that nobody must defecate himself facing
this city. He who does so, is a Kafir ( faithless ) .
6. Every Muslim, no matter where he lives, must come to Mecca for
pilgrimage, provided he has the means to do so.
This is a pre-Islamic custom of Arabia, which the Prophet Muhammad
incorporated in Islam for its economic benefits to his country.
7. Allah speaks Arabic, and the Koran is also in Arabic, which is
a difficult language to learn. All Muslims must speak Arabic to
earn Allah's blessing. See, how Allah favors Arabia! In fact, this
is the most effective device to impose Arabian culture on non-Arab
Muslims as the Divine behest.
8. Kaaba is the center of God's blessings because it is here that
one-hundred-and-twenty Divine Benedictions descend every day, and
are therefrom distributed to the rest of the world.
9. Even the Arabian graveyards known as "Jannat-ul-Mualla"
and "Janmnat-ul-Baqee," are the most sacred. According
to a hadith, they look shining to the dwellers of the skies the
same way as sun and moon appear to the people of the earth. Those
who are buried there, shall enter paradise without any
accountability, and each of them shall be privileged to intercede
for seventy thousand people! What a glory of the Arabian soil and
even the ordinary dead Arabs, who are buried there!
No wonder that the Muslim pilgrims want to die and be buried
there. For this reason, they sell their houses, land and cattle to
raise money for the holy journey, which is beneficial to Arabia
but detrimental to their own families.
10. Ibne Majah reports in Hadith no. 1463, page 404, that a Namaz
i.e., prayer in the Mosque-in-Medina brings 100 times more
blessings than a similar prayer in other mosques; and a prayer in
the Kaaba invokes 100,000 benedictions compared to a similar
worship in other mosques.
Here one can see the preference that the Prophet Muhammad has
bestowed on the Arabian soil in relation to the national homelands
of the non-Arab Muslims. This is how he brainwashed them with the
sanctity, superiority and supremacy of the Arab culture. He
achieved this goal by projecting himself as the Divine model of
behavior: as he loved Arabia, all non-Arab Muslims must love
Arabia and be indifferent to their own homelands to the tune of
treason. This is exactly what happened in India during 1947. The
Muslims divided their own country by pretending to be not Indians
but a Muslim nation. They are still holding the same position by
opposing introduction of unified civil code which is extremely
harmful to the Indian unity but beneficial to Arabian culture.
Keshav Dev Sharma is fully aware of this fact in his book:
"The Question of Culture" and is therefore not willing
to compromise with the Muslim Culture in his homeland. Seeking
elimination of the Islamic Culture may be a beautiful dream, but
it is not a possibility because the Hindus neither possess a
practicable system of Dharma nor they have the courage to
challenge the Muslims for a duel. This requires discussion about
the Hindu Culture. What is the Hindu culture?
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