Sam Gerrans, Quranites & Petra

Those many people who, not unreasonably, suspect that something is profoundly amiss in contemporary Mahometanism often mistakenly turn to the Koran and try to identify odious passages that supposedly give license to suicide bombers, clitorectomies, beheadings and such other Islam-related atrocities that today populate our news feeds with appalling regularity. They will hold up the Koran, point to nefarious texts, and declare that “the problem starts here!” But in fact, as anyone with more than an outside and partisan view of the religion knows from bitter experience, the problem is not the Koran but rather the secondary sources of Islamic piety, the Hadith. These are the so-called ‘Traditions’ of the Prophet, and the thing that characterizes modern Islam – certainly since the rise of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia – is an uncritical adherence to a selected collation of such Traditions to the extent that the Koran is read through that lens. This fact is on full display in the approved Saudi translation of the Koran known as the Hillel edition. Every passage and verse of the Holy Book is explained by reference to one or other of the voluminous Hadith. The Wahhabis are, first and foremost, Hadithists. They elevate the supposed Traditions of Mahomet to the status of pseudo-Scripture and impose them upon the text and meaning of the Holy Writ. The justifications for suicide bombings, female genital mutilation, and so on, are not to be found in the Koran but rather in the Hadith, or else in the Koran as interpreted via the Hadith. The manifestly unhealthy state of contemporary Mahometanism has its roots there, and nowhere else. Accordingly, efforts to correct this state of affairs, and somehow to rouse the Saracens to sensible reform – some practical accommodation with the facts of modernity – must begin there and nowhere else as well.

This, in a fashion, is the agenda of Sam Gerrans. He has rightly gauged that the religion known as ‘Islam’ is primarily a construction of Traditions (Hadith) and is not a simple reflection of the Koran at all. He thus regards it as a “man-made” construction that has been imposed upon – and violates – the actual teachings of the Holy Koran. He is an enthusiast of the actual teachings of the Holy Koran, but not at all fond of the religion known as ‘Islam’. He devotes himself to separating these two things and to promoting a non-Islamic, non-Mahometan, reading of the Arabic Scripture. It is a unique point of view. He calls himself a ‘Quranite’. He has no doubt that the Koran is a divine revelation, but he insists that it has nothing to do with the man-made religion of those he calls Traditionalists, which is to say Hadithists. He dismisses the Hadith literature of the Muslims as hearsay and affords it no authority at all. He offers a reading of the Koran with the lens of the Hadith, and the whole edifice of the Mahometan faith, removed. To this end he has learnt Arabic, acquired a vast understanding of Koranic grammar, and has produced a copiously annotated Islam-free Koran available for free at his website Quranite.com. 

There are other Koran-only Muslims who have rejected the intruding authority of the Hadith literature, but Mr. Gerrans goes further. He does not count himself a “Muslim” at all. He is only a follower and devotee of the Koran - hence "Quranite". He insists that this has no relation to the historic Islamic religion. Unlike Koran-only Muslims, he has no interest in reforming or correcting Islam or in redefining or sanitizing the designation “Muslim”. He has severed the links entirely. He has cut the Gordian knot. He is a “Quranite” pure and simple. He is immersed in and marvels at the revelatory wonders of the Koran but comprehensively rejects anything and everything to do with the “man-made” religion called ‘Islam’.

It is a radical stance. And challenging, and also, as he does it, refreshing. If nothing else, Mr. Gerrens is a determinedly independent thinker. He has, at some point in his life, encountered the Holy Koran – or it has encountered him – and he has relentlessly pursued his own intuitions regarding that sacred text, and – most impressively – he has done so while holding the pervasive mind-set of the Mahometans at bay at every turn. How many others have been able to grapple with the Koran and keep it rigorously separate from the vast structures of institutional Islam? It is surely a feat of great intellectual discipline. One would imagine that if someone is so moved by the Koran that they become convinced it is a divine revelation this would naturally lead them towards some embrace of the Mahometan creed. Many converts to Islam attest that they came to the faith via the Holy Book. But not Mr. Gerrans. Instead, he was struck by how at odds the Mahometan religion is to the plain teachings of the Book. He was moved by the manifest inconsistencies between the practices of the Muslims and the teachings of the Book they purport to cherish. He was able to keep himself intellectually aloof from Islam and its traditions and to just become a devoted student of the Book. It is a noble independence. His work has the integrity of someone who has been able to think outside all the habits of Islamic civilization, and he does so while maintaining cogency and lucidity. Reading Mr. Gerrens’ work offers a new, fresh view of the Koran, throwing new light on a text that even the most occidental orientalist has habitually viewed through Mahometan eyes.

As an example, let us ask: what does the Koran say concerning non-believers and the propagation of the Koranic message? The institutions of jihad, Mr. Gerrens insists, are Hadith-based and not in the least Koranic. Rather, all the Koran proposes is this: that believers share the ‘Warning of the Last Days’ of the Koran with non-believers, urge them to embrace the One God, but then to leave judgment, reward and retribution to God, while authorizing self-defense if believers are subsequently attacked. This is all that a plain reading of the text allows, and nothing more. Other Mahometan institutions, Mr. Gerrens argues, have no Koranic warrant whatsoever. Are dogs unclean? This is entirely a concoction of the Hadith, he says, and has no basis in the Koran. The laws of Halal slaughter? Traditions, but not Koranic. An obsessive prohibition on alcohol? Not Koranic. Gerrens seeks to liberate the Holy Text from the distortions of the Hadith systematically and comprehensively. In an appendix to his translation of the Holy Writ he compares ‘Islam’ with the actual teachings of the Koran. The religion called ‘Islam’, he concludes, is not Koranic – it is essentially Hadithism. If one views the Koran without the distorting lens of the Hadith we arrive at something very different to any traditional form of the Mahometan faith.

This work of Mr. Gerrens deserves a much wider audience, both among Mahometans and others. It has impressive breadth for the work of a self-taught scholar. He engages with the Arabic text at depth and elucidates the finer meanings of the text with painstaking detail. It is the labour of decades, full of insight and intelligence. If nothing else, he offers a great resource to students of the Koran – the Koran seen through rigorously non-Islamic eyes. If one is looking for a fresh view of the Koranic Scripture, this is an excellent place to start. Let us suppose the Koran was not delivered into the cradle of nascent Islam as the traditional narratives would have it. What would it be like then? The‘Quranite’ exercise of Mr. Gerrens is like a view into parallel universe where the Koran exists and yet Islam does not. Given the state of contemporary Islam one can hardly be blamed for finding this position tempting. What if we throw out Islam but keep the Koran? It is a liberating thought.

It is to Mr. Gerran’s credit that his review of the Koran is not motivated by some shallow modernist agenda. There has been a welter of tawdry Korans of late – the feminist Koran, the ecologist Koran, the gay-gender-diversity-transexual Koran, and so on – that try to enlist VIth century Allah to XXIst century social causes. These are uniformly useless where they are not also ludicrous and cringeworthy. The Quranite endeavour is not in that category, thankfully. Mr. Gerran is not out to show how God is a leftist liberal. He seems intent on following his own methodology and on accepting the results whether they agree with modern sensitivities or not. His translation and commentary has the consistency and integrity that so many others lack.

As it happens, however, the present writer feels that the Gerrens strategy goes a little too far. The Hadith literature is, after all, a vast treasure-house in itself – an extensive folklore, deep and profound, a storehouse of traditional wisdom assembled over many centuries and bringing together diverse strands of oral culture. But it should never be allowed to overshadow the Koran. Would it not be possible to put the test of Koranic compatibility to the Hadith literature and to put the Koran first and the Hadith second-most where it belongs? Need we throw out the baby with the bathwater? The real problem, indeed, is not even the Hadith as Mr. Gerrens and other Koran-only advocates propose, but rather the way in which the Hadith literature is used to construct the Shariah and other Mahometan institutions. It need not be used in that way. The problem lies in elevating the Hadith to the status of pseudo-Scripture instead of recognizing it as an oral tradition of beautiful textures, colours and moods but of strictly limited authority. This writer, at least, celebrates the Hadith literature - acknowledging its many blemishes and obvious forgeries - but he understands that one ought never read the Koran through its lens. The relation between that literature and the Holy Book needs clarification. That is a task of outstanding urgency today. 

One aspect of Mr. Gerrens brave adventure into Koranic independence stands out for special comment. He is so keen to divorce the Koran from Mahometanism that he has embraced, somewhat recklessly, the daring archaeological thesis of Mr. Dan Gibson as advanced in the book Quranic Geography. Mr. Gibson has proposed the extraordinary notion that Mahomet and the early Muslims did not live in Mecca but rather in the Nabatean city of Petra. It is proposed that during civil wars in the first century of the Era of the Hijra the Arabs of the Hijaz region transplanted the geography of Mahometan piety from there to Mecca and thereafter Mecca became the place of Islamic pilgrimage and the holy city of the Musselmans. This is, needless to say, a very radical thesis indeed, and accordingly requires a wealth of compelling evidence to support it if it is to be entertained. Incautiously, Mr. Gerrens has embraced this Petra thesis as a whole and one finds reference to it throughout the footnotes and commentary of his Quranite Koran. Incautiously, because on the face of it the thesis of Mr. Gibson is a long stretch and by no account can it be considered even part way demonstrated. This is not to say it is necessarily wrong, but it is far from being proven. 

Gibson offers some enticing arguments for supposing that the Koran was first composed in Petra, not Mecca, but they are not altogether convincing. There is a tendency in secular scholarship nowadays to suggest – or at least to suspect – that perhaps the origins of the Koran did indeed lie westwards of Mecca in Syria and Nabatea. There is a body of (minority) scholarly thought that supposes that the roots of Koranic Arabic are Syrio/Aramaic. The Arabic of the Koran is strange and at odds with that typical of Mecca. And moreover, as many readers of the Koran have long noted, the geographical notices in the Koran do not seem to match Mecca and surrounds. Secular scholars are happy to consider the possibility that the Koran – or the core of the text – was originally composed somewhere other than around Mecca, most likely in the cradle of ancient Judeo-Christian Syria. Petra was once a sacred city of those Arabs. Mr. Gibson joins the dots and, citing various elements of the archaeology of Petra, argues that Petra is a better locus for the origins of the Koran than is Mecca. Mr. Gerrens, eager to distance the Koran from institutional and historic Islam has attached his non-Islamic reading of the Koran to Mr. Gibson’s proposal.

But to do so is surely premature and it adds an unecessary dimension of conjecture and archaelogical speculation to an otherwise rigorous translation of the Koran. It would have been enough for Mr. Gerrens to note that the geography of the Koran is ill-fitting with the known geography of Mecca and to leave it as an open question. Instead, he has settled on the Petra thesis and argues the case for Mr. Gibson from the signals in the Koranic text. This has the effect of removing the text from its familiar Mecca/Medina setting, and Mr. Gerrens obviously enjoys the way in which this loosens and liberates meanings and messages from the accepted and traditional contexts, but it also has the effect of making his translation seem crankish and eccentric in places. He has hitched a very fine labour of translation to a very dubious, or at least questionable, archaeology.  His work is far more solid than that of Mr. Gibson. 

It remains to be seen if the Quranite translation and Mr. Gerren's work attracts a following or whether it just floats around in cyberspace as yet another one-man adventure in speculative Islam. There are many aspects of his work that are unsatisfying. He rejects the classical distinction between early and late surahs (chapters) in the text, for instance, and some of his renderings of familiar vocabulary seems idiosyncratic. It is, after all, Sam Gerren's lifelong encounter with the Holy Koran that is offered to readers, his personal encounter, and so it carries his fingerprints and is blemished with his personal peculiarities. It is not objective and selfless. But it is courageous and bold, and courage and boldness are certainly qualities that the Koranic world - Islamic and otherwise - need in abundance in these very sorry times. Conventional Islam is in a terrible mess. Some bold thinking outside the strictures of traditional or rather Wahhabist Islam is long overdue. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

The Lost City of Muziris

The Tabula Peutingeriana

The Romans, we know, traded for spices at sites along the western shores of the Hindoostani sub-continent, but the most famous trading centre of all, usually known as Muziris (or Muchiri), and mentioned in several Latin sources, including Pliny, and marked on the famous Roman map the Tabula Peutingeriana, is lost to us. Southern Indian sources speak of the Yavanas (Romans) and their “beautiful ships” that “stir the white foam on the Periyar River” coming to the “city where liquor abounds”, the “city that bestows wealth… to the merchants of the sea…” But where exactly was this illustrious city? It was, we can surmise, somewhere in the vicinity of present-day Cochin – the port city now at the mouth of the Periyar River - but its exact location in that area is unknown.

The problem arises because cyclonic floods of catastrophic proportions in the year 1341 completely reshaped the Malabar coastline. Muziris – or the city that succeeded it, by then called Cranganore – was drowned and the ancient port silted up. It is estimated that the coastline shifted several kilometers. A new opening of the Periyar into the Arabian Sea was opened and a backwater formed by the long stretch of the newly created Vypen Island. 

The complex waterways where the Periyar River meets the Arabian Sea was reshaped by the floods of 1341. Muziris was lost. Kochi (Cochin) became the principle port. 

It was after the events of 1341 that commerce shifted to Cochin which then became the centre for inter-civilizational trade for a series of early modern colonial powers: first the Portugese, then the Dutch and finally the British in turn. The history of Cochin is well documented, but anything prior to 1341 is sketchy at best. The great trading port known to the Romans, once the meeting place of east and west, is lost. 

It would be a great boon to discover it again, because it was there, in ancient times, that Rome met China, and also where the three great Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Mahometanism are supposed to have made their first entry into India. The Tabula Peutingeriana indicates that the Romans had built a Temple of Augustus there. Jewish legend says that Jews from the period of Solomon settled there, and then over 10,000 refugees from the destruction of the second Temple made their way there in the year 72AD founding synagogues along the Malabar coast. Christian sources relate that St. Thomas travelled there in the year 52AD, founding seven churches and bringing Thomasine Christianity to Southern India. Then, Muslim sources relate that the king of Muziris travelled to Mecca, met the Prophet Muhammad and converted to Islam and in this way Islam was first brought to India. Land routes came later. The sea route from the Red Sea or Persian Gulf to the Malabar Coast was of prime importance in the beginning. 

Thus was Muziris axial in the contacts between India and the West, as well as hosting a community of Chinese traders (famous for their distinctive fishing nets which still characterize the coastline in this region today) and thus being the midpoint between great civilisations. Muziris was one of the great hubs, the great junctions of human civilization. 

Without knowing the location of the city, and until excavations of the location have been made, however, much of the history of the western or Malabar coast is in question and subject to sometimes rancorous debate. Was there really a Temple to Augustus? When did the first Jews arrive? How early was Christianity established in Western India? Was there a trade of ideas between Europeans and the Chinese? 

A historical marker on the foreshore of Fort Kochi relating the great flood of 1341 explains that the Chinese fishing nets previously located at Crangancore.

The author is presently residing in Fort Kochi, on Cochin island, and has been spending his days visiting historical sites and pondering some of the historical problems related to this lost city. His interest is mainly in issues concerning the St. Thomas Christians and, even more, the Malabar Jews, and the peculiar religious traditions found in this famous region. It is, though, a very tangled matter. Local debates concerning the long lost ‘Muziris’ have caught his attention in the last few days, and they are rancorous indeed. As noted above, the very geography of the region has shifted considerably since ancient times, and there is now no agreement about how the area might once have looked. Debate rages. There are contending camps, and efforts to locate the lost city are hindered by the peculiar ferocity that characterizes Indian historical debates.

* * * 

The rancor was on full display just a few days ago. The President of the Indian Republic made a visit to the area and was due to visit the so-called 'Muziris Heritage Project', this being a set of archaeological diggings in the village of Pattanam. His visit caused an uproar, however. A group of historians rose up to denounce the 'Muziris Heritage Project' as fake and urged the President to stay away. This, at the eleventh hour, he did, and that decision was duly denounced as "painful" and "hurtful" and "perplexing" by a counter group of historians who have worked on the diggings at Pattanam for many years. What, the present author wondered, was all the fuss about? It is difficult to work out. The entire matter is hopelessly politicized in a thoroughly Indian way. In such a climate of disputation it is almost impossible to establish the truth. The matter, however, seems to have gone as follows:

*It is generally agreed, based on all records, that Muziris was in the vacinity of the medieval city known as Cranganore (known to the Jews as Shingli) and this is identified as the modern village of Kodungallur. 

*Diggings at Kodungallur, however, have been fruitless. No evidence of an ancient city on that site have been discovered. There are artifacts from the medieval period, but no earlier. So it happens that Muziris is not where we expected. 

*In the early 2000s another excavation was made at nearby Pattanam. This was done by the Kerala Council for Historical Research mainly consisting of amateur local historians. Diggings turned up some Roman coins and other artefacts along with a profusion of glass beads.

*The KCHR announced that Muziris had been found at Pattanam. Subsequently, the 'Muziris Heritage Project' was established and promoted to tourists. 

*But the identification of Pattanam with Muziris is premature. The fact that Roman coins etc. were found there is not in the least conclusive. Roman coins etc. have been found at many sites. It does not mean that Romans were at those sites, only that people at those sites traded with Romans, or traded with people who traded with Romans. 

*There are now contending groups of historical opinion. Some - mainly locals - proclaim Pattanam as the long lost city. Others - mainly outsiders - are sceptical or indeed denounce the Pattanam diggings as spurious. These critics believe that Pattanam was nothing more than a centre of glass bead-making and a marketplace. The 'Muziris Heritage Project', they say, is a tourist scam. 

*Nevertheless, the diggings at Pattanam are, at least, promising and perhaps indicate part of the ancient city. Much more exploration is needed. This, however, is hindered because the good people of Pattanam fear that their land is being taken from them and have resisted further archaeology. 

*It was into this tangle that the President wandered. At the last minute his advisors told him to back out, which he did. Thus the furore. History in modern India is like that. The experts agree on nothing. There are religious and ethnic sensitivities at every turn.  Parties are always eager for legitimacy. The slightest affront unleashes tirades of dispute. 

The present author has visited at least some of the areas of contention, but he is certainly in no position to make his own determination on such vexed matters. We know that Muziris was around here somewhere, but where? The land is low-lying, a maze of islands and backwaters. There are many layers of history, but the catastrophe of 1341 seems to have been decisive. History earlier than that is well and truly lost. Is Muziris at Pattanam? Unfortunately, it is just as possible that the original site of the great ancient city is currently somwhere at the bottom of the natural harbour of which Cochin now forms the gateway. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

The Forgotten Queens of India

We account for the rise of the modern Indian nation state through the retreat of the British Raj and the decline of the British Empire, but in fact it was more than that: more than a movement for independence among Indians, it was also a movement for republicanism and Indian unity and the end to the many centuries of all the various kingdoms and principalities that had existed as a shifting patchwork in the Hindoostani sub-continent. This was its wider ideological agenda. It was essentially a socialistic national movement - altogether typical of that part of the XXth century - that matched "anti-imperialism" with a liberal egaliatarian nationalist ideology. Independence activists were not only against the British but also, necessarily, against many time-honoured Indian institutions as well. The British Raj had, in fact, been an umbrella over a network of local kings, princes, maharajas, nizams and others. When the Raj ended - more because of the exhaustion of war against the Germans in Europe than because of the merits or methods of so-called 'freedom fighters' in India - the influence of Indian royalty ended as well. Today, the Maharajas have no official power, although many of them continue to be influential, wealthy and widely respected (where they have not degenerated into buffoons or tourist celebrities.) 

A new book, published on the last day of 2015, celebrates the forgotten queens and princesses of the wide lands of Hindoostan. The simple purpose of this post is to recommend it. The book, Maharanis: Women of Royal India, is a collection of exquisite photographs of the women of those royal houses that became officially defunct in 1947. The photographs have been collected from diverse sources and are presented with accompanying essays, mostly concerning the photography and the role of photography in modern Indian history. It is a book, that is, by and for photographers, first and foremost. But it is also a beautiful and timely book for those of us who remain firm in the conviction that royalty and monarchy are worthy expressions of human dignity, embodiments of the sublime, and not just "outmoded forms of inequality" as the envy-driven would have it.

The present writer, in any case, makes no secret of his fondness for royalty as an institution and for monarchy as an element of tradition and government. (The organic principle of monarchy is that the best analogy of the state is a family, not a corporation, not a contractual partnership, not a machine.) This book records and celebrates a dimension of the royal houses of Hindoostan - and some of their marital interconnections with royalty from other lands - that is usually overlooked or has, indeed, been kept from public view. Alas, in contemporary India these women have been replaced by the vamps and tramps of Bollywood - you cannot really abolish aristocracy, you only end up replacing it with secular dynasties and  ill-bred pretenders. 

The photographs are beautiful in themselves, as are the women, but also of interest in the way that royal portraiture developed in India, usually by the adoption of British Victorian conventions. In some cases, though, distinctive Indian traditions intrude, such as conventions borrowed from the traditions of the Moghul miniature, especially among official the court photographers in the larger royal courts in the north of the sub-continent. 

Click on any photograph for an enlarged view.

Thakorani Vijayalakshmi Devi Sahiba of Kotda Sangani, c. 1941 – 1942 

Rani Sethu Parvathi Bayi and Rani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore

Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, c. 1960s

Rani Prem Kaur Sahiba of Kapurthala, Hyderabad 1915

Princess Rama Rajya Lakshmi Rana, undated

Princess Rafat Zamani Begum – Bari Begum Sahiba of Rampur, of Najiabad Family, 1960.

Kanchi Bada Maharani Balkumari Devi Rana of Nepal in 1908

Maharani Vijaya Raje Scindia of Gwalior, c. 1940s

Shrimant Maharajkumari Mrunalini Raje Gaekwad of Baroda, the Maharani of Dhar, 1940

Princess Durru Shehvar, Princess of Berar by marriage and Imperial Princess of the Ottoman Empire by birth. c. 1940–1945

Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, also known as Princess Ayesha of Cooch Behar, 1951.

Maharani Sita Devi of Baroda in 1948

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Ginger House in Jew Town

Museums in India can be disappointing affairs that demonstrate more a lack of funding and archival expertise than they do the history and culture of the great lands and peoples of Hindoostan. Indians of a post-colonial mind often fume about artificats that have found a home in foreign museums, but when the same artifacts are returned to the bosom of Mother India they end up in shabby, poorly lit, dusty museums, wrongly labeled and deteriorating rapidly with the humidity and direct sunlight. Even the great collection that was once the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta, as the present writer discovered, is these days poorly presented with many displays unimproved since the 1950s. Moreover, the official museums often present tardy collections because the real jewels of Hindoostani history are pirated by a corrupt trade into private hands; the public museums are just so-so because the best pieces fall into private collections.

By far the most impressive collection of Indian artifacts that this writer has encountered during his long sojourn in the sub-continent was not in a museum but in an old warehouse in the back streets of Jew Town in Cochin. The warehouse is called the ‘Ginger House’ because, in former days, it was a store for the Dutch trade in ginger. It fronts directly onto the water and an area that was once a busy dock. Now it is an extensive series of large rooms brimful - overflowing! - with remarkable art objects, statues, idols, and other paraphernalia taken from old temples, churches, mosques and sundry holy places from throughout the length and breadth of India. It is the most extraordinary collection of such pieces imaginable.

It is a private collection with all items for sale. It is said to be “government approved” although it is uncertain exactly what this means. The present author was curious about the legitimacy of purchasing objects from there if they were to be taken out of India. Upon this inquiry a woman of earnest demeanor arrived reiterating that everything is “government approved” and testifying to the soundness of the mailing system. “But what if I buy this Ganesh statue for $10,000 only to find that it can’t be taken out of the country?” the author persisted. “No, no, sir,” she said. “It is packed in a secure crate and sent to your home address.” She explained that their clientele are wealthy collectors from far and wide.

Where does it all come from? It was explained that it had been collected from all over India for a period exceeding thirty years. (So, the author thought, this is where the artifacts pilfered from the temples of Tamil Nadu end up!)

In any case, it is far more extensive and comprehensive - and impressive! - than any public collection, by far. Upon walking in one is simply gobsmacked by the extent and the quality of the work for sale. There are literally entire temples, pillars and all, for sale. In one room there seems to be all the panels and icons and decorations from an entire Catholic church. 

There are signs throughout saying ‘Sorry, no photography’ and yet people were wandering through photographing it right in front of the staff. The photographs below give only an introductory impression of just how extensive, how vast - room upon room upon room, a wonderland, of religious artifacts - is the collection at the ‘Ginger House’ in Jew Town.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Lament of the Prophet called God

“Jesus wept.” The shortest sentence in the English Bible. Jesus wept on the Cross. In the fascinating reconstructions of the pseudepigraphal medieval work, the Gospel of Barnabas, however, Jesus is portrayed as weeping in many circumstances; indeed, he is a man of constant sorrow. He weeps for Jerusalem, he weeps for Israel and, in a pivotal episode in chapter 112, he weeps for himself. The effect of the written text is melodramatic rather than tragic, but its author intends to portray Jesus as a tragic prophet, an innocent man entangled in wicked events. 

This is despite the fact that in this gospel it is the traitor Judas Iscariot and not Jesus who is crucified; its central claim is that Jesus escaped the Cross. In other docetic literature this is seen as an occasion for happiness: Jesus is portrayed as looking on at the crucifixion happy and smiling, even laughing. In the medieval Barnabas, however, Jesus regards even his rescue from the ignominy of the Cross as a cause for weeping. Only once, in all 222 chapters, is he portrayed as being pleased. In chapter 127, after the great success of the missions to Judea undertaken by his disciples, he expresses contentment and is able, with his disciples, to rest. Otherwise, he is uniformly dour and tearful, a prophet carrying the immense burden of his prophecies.

The Angel Gabriel comforts him on several occasions but to little effect. The Jewish authorities appeal to the Roman Senate to put an end to dissension about the identity of Jesus: this does not comfort him either. He is still a tragic figure even though Judas dies in his stead and God is revealed as merciful toward the righteous and severe to the unfaithful. The docetic crucifixion does not ease Jesus' discomfiture at all.

The source of this portrait of the suffering (docetic) Jesus is to be found in almost the very centre of the work, chapter 112. Here Jesus confides to Barnabas - "he who writes" as the author describes himself - the cause of his sorrow. The few commentators who have studied the work do not seem to have noted this or to have given it due weight. Alone with "he who writes" Jesus reveals what he calls his "great secrets". In the context of the work as a whole it is an important moment; matters that have only been hinted at earlier are here spelt out in full. It is a key scene. All the scenes in which "he who writes" takes a part are important and signal key themes, but this scene especially so. It is Jesus' most intimate, personal confession to his closest disciple and, arguably, a signature scene revealing to us matters close to the heart of the work's unknown author - assuming that the author identifies himself with the character "he who writes".

More significantly, it is the moment at which this "he who writes" receives his commission to impart Jesus' true teachings to the world - which amounts to authority for the document itself. Jesus is half way through his ministry. He knows what lies ahead. After the disciples and apostles had departed:

There remained with Jesus he who writes; whereupon Jesus, weeping, said: "O Barnabas, it is necessary that I should reveal to you great secrets, which, after that I shall be departed from the world, you shall reveal to it."

Then answered he that writes, weeping, and said: "Suffer me to weep, O master, and other men also, for that we are sinners. And you, that are an holy one and prophet of God, it is not fitting for you to weep so much."

Jesus answered: "Believe me, Barnabas;, that I cannot weep as much as I ought. For if men had not called me God, I should have seen God here as he will be seen in paradise, and should have been safe not to fear the day of judgment. But God knows that I am innocent, because never have I harbored thought to be held more than a poor slave. No, I tell you that if I had not been called God I should have been carried into paradise when I shall depart from the world, whereas now I shall not go thither until the judgment. Now you see if I have cause to weep. Know, O Barnabas, that for this I must have great persecution, and shall be sold by one of my disciples for thirty pieces of money. Whereupon I am sure that he who shall sell me shall be slain in my name, for that God shall take me up from the earth, and shall change the appearance of the traitor so that every one shall believe him to be me; nevertheless, when he dies an evil death, I shall abide in that dishonour for a long time in the world. But when Muhammad shall come, the sacred Messenger of God, that infamy shall be taken away. And this shall God do because I have confessed the truth of the Messiah who shall give me this reward, that I shall be known to be alive and to be a stranger to that death of infamy."

Then answered he that writes: "O master, tell me who is that wretch, for I fain would choke him to death."

"Hold your peace," answered Jesus, "for so God wills, and he cannot do otherwise but see you that when my mother is afflicted at such an event you tell her the truth, in order that she may be comforted."

Then answered he who writes: "All this will I do, O master, if God please."

The first contribution by "he who writes" in this passage is interesting in that it might be taken to reflect a more normative type of doceticism. Jesus is indeed a holy one of God: he should therefore not suffer. This is the basis for the doceticism we know from among the heresies in early Christianity: Jesus is too good to have died by crucifixion. In the docetic mind it is too much to think that God could permit or endorse such a monstrous injustice. It was a powerful objection to Christianity in its early history. What manner of God would allow His Son to suffer the scandal and torture of being crucified? Here "he who writes" believes that it is improper for one so holy as Jesus to weep so much. Weeping is the state of sinners; Jesus is not a sinner; why then should he weep?

The "great secrets" then, are a response to this. Jesus explains why he weeps, why he suffers, even though he is holy. And his answer is in itself extraordinary. Its theological and Christological implications are far-reaching. His answer is - I suffer because I am too holy. This is an idea that finds a place within orthodox Christian themes. It answers docetic formulations with the psychological truism: if God was a man a hateful world would despise Him. This is not a failing of God's justice but rather the way of a fallen world and of a sinful mankind.

Elsewhere in the Gospel of Barnabas we have reproductions of the canonical theme 'the persecution of the prophets'. Prophets, in this work, are persecuted by the world, and this is in the nature of things. The author usually has Ahab and Jezebel’s persecution of Elijah and the "Sons of the Prophet's" in mind, but it is presented as a general principle: prophets suffer persecution. Jesus' own sense of persecution, however, is unique. It happens, in this gospel, that Jesus is so holy that men mistakenly call him God, and in so doing bring upon him the persecution of deification. This is the greatest of the "great secrets" in the Gospel of Barnabas: Jesus weeps because men call him God and - more than that - the deification of him does him violence. The peculiar persecution of Jesus, that is, is that he is so good, possesses so many miraculous powers, displays so many signs, that men worship him and make of him a false god. This tragic irony is the keynote to the Gospel of Barnabas' picture of the weeping Jesus.

The consequences of this are wide and are explored throughout this work. While God knows full well that Jesus is an innocent man, the fact that men have made of him a false god has unavoidable repercussions. Jesus, it seems, was a prophet of such high station that he could have attained the paradisiacal vision in his lifetime. Instead, because men had called him God, and despite his innocence, he must, tragically, be deprived this supreme vision until the end of time.

While Jesus is no less deserving of this supreme vision, the fact that men have made of him a god in some way links him to their fate: he must wait until the Judgment and until those who have deified him have received their proper reward. There is the suggestion, too, perhaps, that as a Prophet Jesus was indeed god-like, and that deification was a hazard inherent in his mission. When Peter, at one point, says that Jesus is God, Jesus curses him and prays that he be sent to hell for saying and believing so. At another point Jesus bangs his head on the ground in anger and frustration at what people believe and say of him. He spends a good part of his ministry trying to dispel the false claims being made about who and what he is. In what is surely a strange and oblique presentation of the Jewish War, the identity of Jesus causes sedition and upheaval in Judea. 

In one sense, in the Gospel of Barnabas, his identity is his mission and his message; what he teaches is not as challenging as the question of who he is. Because men call him God, he is withheld from God, or, more exactly, men who are withheld from God withhold him. He is not free of them until they receive their justice. Although it is not explicit in this passage, this doctrine conforms to what the Muslim inspired Gospel of Barnabas has to say about idols and idolatry. In effect, people treat Jesus as an idol, an object of shiirk. He suffers because of this.

The present author has reframed Jesus' speech in chapter 112 as a lament, the lament of the prophet called God:

If men had not called me God

I would have seen God here as in paradise.

If men had not called me God
I should have been safe not to fear the Day of Judgment.

God knows that in my heart I am innocent.

I am naught but His poor slave.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

If men had not called me God

I should have been transported to the Gardens of Bliss

when I depart from this world.

Now I shall not know paradise until the Last Day.

Great is my persecution! since men have called me God.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

God knows that I am innocent of heart.

He shall take me up from the earth

and have the traitor slain in my name.

But if men had not called me God

God should not give him my face

and my likeness in an evil death.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

If men had not called me God

I should not have to abide in dishonour

and await the Comforter who shall remove the infamy.

I have confessed the truth of the one who is to come.

Only he shall restore my name.

Only then shall I be known to be alive

and a stranger to that evil death.
Men have made of me an idol.

This is surely the greatest persecution
the Prophets of God can know.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

It is a cunning twist of Mahometan Christology. The important point to note is that Jesus' final solace - the vision of Paradise - is postponed because men called him God. In this perspective – the core message of this heterodox medieval work - to call Jesus God does him lasting spiritual violence. In the medieval Barnabas he is spared the injustice of the Cross – although Judas is given his appearance and so the world at large attributes this vile fate to him, a slander that persists until the ‘Comforter’ (Paraclete) comes to expose the error – but the unique form of persecution he suffers among all the persecuted prophets is to be deified by a wickedly idolatrous world.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

A Battle Raging in a Single System - discussions

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A BATTLE RAGING IN A SINGLE SYSTEM

Being wide-ranging discussions on historical and contemporary questions concerning relations between Islam and the West. Like many entries on this blog this is a sketch to be enlarged and developed.

Question: Conflict between Islam and the West is among the defining features of our age. What is your perspective on it?

Answer: It needs to be placed in a larger context, and a deeper context than the merely political. History is a process, a drama of the soul. Most of the important factors and forces are hidden, underground. In any matter like this, where it defines an age, as you say, it is important to step well back and to take a much longer view. And to realize that the political dimension is usually only symptomatic, not decisive. This is especially the case in religious and spiritual conflicts. These are conflicts in the human soul. This is a spiritual history. So what framework do we bring to that? What framework is useful for that?

Question: That is what I am asking.

Answer: In this case we have a situation of profound antipathies, but also of complementarities. Contraries and complements. There are symmetries and forces – energies – that go much deeper than politics or sociology.

Question: You’ve written about ‘historical rage’. What do you mean by ‘historical rage’?

Answer: Just what it says. A rage against the course of history. But in relation to what do you mean specifically?

Question: Specifically, in relation to Islam. You portray Islam as being subject to ‘historical rage’.

Answer: Contemporary Islam. But not Islam, per se. Only Islam in relation to its contemporary situation. Historical rage is a way of describing or understanding the character of contemporary Islam, or at least certain trends or aspects in contemporary Islam. Specifically, Islamism, jihadism, radical Islam. In these things we find a rage against history. Although at a deeper level it pervades contemporary Islam. The jihadis and the suicide bombers are merely acute manifestations of it.

Question: So what does it mean, in that context?

Answer: It just means that there is a sense of grievance, in contemporary Islam, in modern Islam, against the manifest course of history. On a deeper level it means there is a grievance, a sense of injustice, of things not being right, between heaven and earth.

Question: I don’t understand. Can you explain?

Answer: For Muslims there is a strong sense that Islam has a certain destiny. It is particularly strong in Islam because historically Islam has been a quite extraordinary success. It exploded into history. It began in a small illiterate backwater – late antiquity Arabia – and in a very short time it conquered a large portion of the world. This gave it a strong sense of destiny. God is on their side. God has destined Islam to be an historical success. This is backed up in certain Islamic texts, such as the hadith – the prophetic tradition – that says, the prophet says, ‘My people are the best of people’. Or ‘My Ummah is the best of Ummahs.’ Which means that the Islamic ‘nation’, the Islamic people, are destined to be the very best of people. But this is an expectation that far exceeds the facts, in the modern era. Once it was true. Once the Muslims, Islamic civilization, was the most advanced, the most successful in the world, in history. But from the late Middle Ages onwards Islamic civilization went into decline. So there is something wrong, something amiss between the mandate of heaven – because the Divine will is for the Islamic Ummah to be the best and the foremost, as Muslims see it – and the mundane order. Historical rage is the anger this causes. There is an anger that history has not gone according to a perceived destiny. There is a sense that the destiny of Islam has been thwarted. So something must be done to correct this. This is a deep motivation behind radical Islam. But, of course, it is not exclusive to Muslims. That is only a specific instance of it. Much of Western history, or Christian history, needs to be understood in terms of historical rage as well. On the other side of the coin.

Question: How? Or when? How are the Christians subject to historical rage?

Answer: Historical rage is the great motivating force in Western history. Specifically, in that case, against the historical success of Islam. When Islam was in ascendancy and Christianity was in decline, then we witnessed a similar historical rage in the Christian world. Once again, this is because there was a perceived misalignment between heaven and earth. How could God tolerate the Muslim infidels, followers of that blasphemous pretender, Muhammad… as Christian saw it… how could God permit them to build such a huge, vast and prosperous civilization, as Islamic civilization was in the Middle Ages? In Christian minds, this surely violated the Divine Will. The Divine Will, for Christians, was for all people to come to Christ. And for many centuries it seemed that way. Slowly – not in an explosion like Islam – but slowly, steadily, Christianity was extending itself across the world. But then suddenly, very suddenly, it faced the shocking reality of Islam. Suddenly, Islam stole the whole of North Africa, nearly a third of the Christian world fell to the infidels, the pretenders, the false creed. How could history go this way? In Christians this provoked a rage against history. A violent reaction to the course of historical events.

Question: Can you give an example?

Answer: The obvious example is the Crusades. Historians struggle to explain the Crusades. Especially the first Crusade which seemed like a spontaneous sudden popular overflowing of zeal, directed against the Saracens. It is hard to explain. It was an explosion. And then it became an entrenched pattern of cultural religious behavior. That is hard to explain as well. Time and time again Christian Europeans collected themselves into armies and set off to the Near East to correct history. It was a rage against history. The history in that case was the manifest success and prosperity of Islam. The Saracens had built a vast and enormously sophisticated civilization. It dwarfed Christendom. It humbled Christendom. It made Christendom look like an impoverished backwater of history. Christians found this intolerable. It was an intolerable injustice of history. And they raged against it. Not only in the Crusades though. This historical rage became the centre-piece of the Western project – to right the wrongs of history. It shaped the whole of Western civilization subsequently.

Question: So you’re drawing parallels between the Crusaders and Islamic jihadists?

Answer: In their underlying motivations, which in both cases is historical rage. I'm not making judgments about the justness of their cause. There are nearer parallels. Such as the so-called martyrs of Cordova. These were suicidal Christians in Islamic Spain. They would do things like bursting into mosques, screaming insults and abuse at the Prophet Muhammad, and then of course they would be killed by the Muslims. They set out to be martyrs. Christian jihadists. They willingly martyred themselves in the rage against history. They are so enraged, on a deep level, by the course of history that they sacrifice themselves in order to set things right, to set things right between heaven and earth. This is what motivates the suicidal martyr.

Question: So the Islamic suicide bomber is enraged by what? Western imperialism?

Answer: By the manifest success of Western civilization. Which, in the Muslim religious mind is still Christendom. Only, of course, it is not Christendom any longer. Or not overtly. Which is the great irony. This is where it becomes complicated. Because the historical rage of the West, as a force in Western history, so transformed the West that it actually shed its Christian identity in order to set heaven and earth aright. But yes, the historical rage of the contemporary Saracens, the Mahometans, is directed at the enormous disparity between the West and the House of Islam. The House of Islam is backward, impoverished. They are the losers of history. How can this be? How can God tolerate such a state of affairs, that the Ummah of the Prophet – destined to be the best of Ummahs – is in such a terrible state? They are destined to rule the world. Yet on every front they are the losers of history. In the whole world order they are in the inferior place. It is not right, as they see it, feel it. So the jihadist martyr sets out to correct this intolerable state of affairs. You can label it Western imperialism. It just means Western superiority. Culturally. Scientifically. Economically. Militarily. Artistically. Politically. This is impossible to tolerate for someone for whom the superiority of the House of Islam is a given. Just as it was for Christians in the Middle Ages. When Christians in the Middle Ages were faced with the obvious, manifest superiority of Islamic civilization, it was intolerable. They had to do something about it.

Question: What do you mean the West shed its Christian identity? How did that happen? Isn’t that a contradiction?

Answer: It is the great irony here. In order to defeat the Saracens, in order to set things right, in order to set heaven and earth right again, Christianity itself had to be transformed. Because – and this is the source of the irony – the forms of Christianity that had been created prior to Islam, when there was no Islam with which to compete… these turned out to be entirely inadequate for the task. So, in fact, for Christianity to reassert itself against the Muslims it had to be remade. And once this was done there was no stopping it. Christian history, from the Middle Ages onwards, becomes a series of successive revolutions and upheavals. That is, historical rage upsets the equilibrium of Western civilization in a fundamental way. This is why the trajectory of Western history is so unique. This historical rage – against the Saracens – so disturbs the roots of Western civilization that the entire civilization is utterly transformed.

Question: But I don’t see how this leads to shedding its Christian identity, as you call it. Isn’t that self-defeating?

Answer: It is ironic, at least. The obvious case is the Protestant Reformation. Which is, by this account, a Christian response to Islam. But then this disturbs Christendom in a fundamental way. The split between Orthodoxy and the Roman Church did not damage it in a fundamental way. But the Reformation did. It was damaged spiritually, that is. But, on the other hand, the Reformation enabled Christians – increasingly just ‘Europeans’ – to compete against the Muslims. So it was successful in that sense. Protestantism is a Christian response to Islam. Or we might even say that Protestantism is an Islamicized Christianity.

Question: How so?

Answer: With its emphasis upon the Book. With the doctrine of every man a priest. The rejection of monasticism. The rejection of icons. The prohibition of alcohol. A religion for urban traders. Whereas classical Christianity – which is what I call it – was an agrarian monastic religion. The Protestants remade Christianity in the image of Islam. It is a streamlined Christianity that was able to compete with Islam. The Catholics had a different strategy.

Question: Which was what?

Answer: Conquest. An extension of Crusading. At the dawn of the Reformation the crucial event was the threat of the Turks to Vienna, to central Europe. The Pope proposed another Crusade. That was the typical, age-old response to the Saracens. Crusades. But Luther – this was the crucial turning point in European history – spoke and wrote against the Crusade as a solution to that threat. Instead, he said, the Christians, Christendom, needed to be reformed. Only self-correction could meet the challenge. The Catholics, of course, were forced to do a certain amount of this. Catholicism absorbs, is transformed by, Islam to some extent as well. We see it in architecture. We see it in liturgy. The imitation of Christ. Catholic humanism. That is a Catholicism reshaped by the pressures imposed upon Christendom by the Saracens. But finally the Catholic response, the response of the Catholic world, was geographical. Columbus, remember, set out to find the Indies and sailed westwards. Why? Because the Muslims had closed off the east. The Catholic kings had an idea. ‘We will go around them!’ Columbus set out to circumvent the Muslims, to find a way around the Islamic blockade. The Muslims controlled the great trade routes. This was the source of their prosperity. This is why heaven and earth were out of alignment. So the Catholics discovered the New World. Then, suddenly, Europeans had a vast new source of wealth. After that, everything changed. After that, Islamic civilization went into decline. The Saracens hardly noticed at the time.

Question: But you say Catholic religion itself was transformed?

Answer: In many ways.

Question: Humanism?

Answer: Humanism. So, for example, Christ becomes a man to be imitated. This is a muted theme in earlier Christianity, but in the later Middle Ages there is an increased emphasis upon Christ as a man. Earlier Christ was a cosmic figure. You see it very clearly in iconography. In the Renaissance he becomes a man. The emphasis shifts to his humanity. This, I want to argue, is in response to the imitation of the Prophet in Islamic spirituality. Muhammad is the human exemplar. Islamic piety consists of imitating his example. For Sunni Islam. Christians develop a response to counter this. The imitation of Christ. Christ becomes for them the human exemplar. This new emphasis in the later Middle Ages in Christendom is, I think, counter-Islamic. It would not have happened without Islam. That is the point. It would not have happened without Islam. Christianity was remade to counter Islam. So, to give another example, there was the rise of mendicantism in Catholic Christianity – the Franciscans explicitly. Which are a type of Christian answer to the Sufi mendicants of Islam. These things are to be explained as counter-Islamic. Or para-Islamic. Some things are counter-Islamic. Some things para-Islamic. Some things anti-Islamic. The Crusades were anti-Islamic. But without the fact of Islam, its historical success, they would not have happened. Islam transformed Christianity.

Question: I still don’t see how this led to Europeans shedding their Christian identity as you call it. What do you mean?

Answer: Protestantism was an over-compensation. And it unfolds from there. It begins a process of deconstruction. Christendom unravels. But in fact Christianity – in its classical forms – was not well-formed, not well-equipped to compete with Islam. It was first constructed in an environment where there was no Islam. And it was not the Church so much as the secular powers that set out to match the Saracens, finally. It happens on several levels. It is the secular powers, the nobles, that want to acquire the spoils of the Crusades. They want the silks and the spices and the technology and the medicine and the weapons. They want to acquire Saracen sciences. This sets them against the Church. This is played out at length in European history. And these factors converge. The desacralisation that follows from the Protestant revolt. The rise of the secular classes. Each of these forces are anti- or contra- or para- Islamic, and together they give birth to a Europe that is no longer a ‘Christendom’. To put it bluntly, what was once Christendom sold its soul in order to put the Saracens in their place, in order to set history right again.

Question: This is not a conventional reading of European history though, is it?

Answer: Not at all. In some measure it is the ‘secret’ history of European civilization. Historical rage is often, very often, an undercurrent, an unspoken motivation in events. But it is plain enough. I think I read five or six or more histories of the Reformation and not one of them mentioned the Muslims as a factor. Here were the Turks threatening to overrun central Europe and none of these histories even acknowledged that as a factor. Instead, they wrote about the Reformation as a self-contained thing. Luther’s personal struggle, and so on. Abuses of the Church, and so on. And yet, quite obviously, the entire episode was framed by the threat of the Turks. And similarly, you can read dozens of accounts of Protestantism, literally dozens, and not a single author will mention the very obvious parallels between Protestantism – especially Calvinist forms – and Islam. Why not? Islam is the elephant in the room, as they say. It is blindingly obvious but it is never mentioned.

Question: Why is that do you think?

Answer: Because it is a deep psychology in European history, and in Christian religion. Just as historical rage is a deep psychology in contemporary Islam. By that I mean that much of it is hidden below the surface of things. Islamic jihadists will present all manner of explanations for their actions. They won’t tell you they are driven by historical rage. Similarly, in European history it is an undercurrent. It is largely unconscious. But, as in Freudian psychology, it is what is unconscious, unseen, unacknowledged, repressed, that is important. Most of the iceberg is below the surface. Islam is the unseen, unacknowledged factor in European history. That is why, personally, I engaged with Islam in the first place – a journey into that historical darkness.

Question: What is your association with Islam?

Answer: I’ve had a lifelong association with Islam. I grew up in a very multiethnic environment. There were a lot of Turks. I had Turkish friends growing up. Immigrants. I grew up knowing about Turkish Islam. And Albanians. So my association began there. From childhood.

Question: And after that?

Answer: After that I had a much closer association, through family, marriage. It is hard to avoid in multiethnic Australia. There are wives and girlfriends and partners and colleagues and neighbors and friends. Islam is a big minority where I came from. And then I had a professional acquaintance because I was fortunate enough to teach Islamic/West relations – although this was in the context of a course on Western Traditions. Actually, professionally, I am a student of Plato, Greek philosophy, the Western Tradition. But at a certain point I came to understand that you cannot really get to the bottom of the Western Tradition without a deep knowledge of Islam. So - strange to say - my approach to Islam has been through the Western Tradition. I see it as a complement to, or the other side of, the Western Tradition. Both personally and professionally.

Question: Can you elaborate on your personal approach to it?

Answer: Personal things are, well, personal. They don’t really matter, except to me. It is better to concentrate on the bigger picture, the larger scope of things. But I will say – because it’s important – that my interest in Islam, even in its spirituality, has never been anti-Western. It is important to stress that, because these days there is an Islam/West antipathy, an active antipathy, and you will find many people who become interested or involved in Islam – even as converts – are motivated by a rejection of their own tradition, a hatred of their given tradition, by which I mean the Western Tradition. I am not in that category. I have never been in that category. And personally, I have no sympathy for it. I can say that. I have no sympathy for people – malcontents – who look to Islam because they hate the West. On the contrary, my interest in Islam and my journeys into Islam – adventures you might say, explorations - have always been about knowing the West on a deeper level.

Question: But how? Surely Islam is a completely different tradition?

Answer: It is. But also, it isn’t. I don’t think you can really understand the West without understanding Islam. In ways that I’ve already mentioned. The historical rage of the West, that transformed the West. That is a fact of history. But it goes much deeper than that. Very early – in my twenties – I came to understand that, in fact, Islam and the West are a single entity, on a certain level. I adopted a phrase from the Algerian scholar, Hichem Djait. He described Islamic/West tensions as “a battle raging in a single system.” It is an important phrase. That is my starting point. Islam and the West are a single system. But of course they are opposites as well as complements. Like the two sides of a coin, the heads and the tails. Some people might reject the heads and embrace the tails. That’s never been my interest. I’m interested in the whole coin. I didn’t set out to study Islam, or become involved at any level, because I rejected the West. I just realized that there was another side to the coin. It’s a Self and Other problem. Islam is the Other. To understand the Self you need to acknowledge and confront the Other. The academic study of the Western Tradition was lacking in that.

Question: What do you mean?

Answer: You can study the Western Tradition as if it is a self-contained thing. You can study the great works. Plato. Aristotle. The Bible. The cathedrals. Cervantes. Dante. Arthurian Legend. The Renaissance. The Reformation. You can study it all as self-referential. You need never step out of that occidental world. A standard university course – in the old days, at least – did just that. But I came to appreciate that there was something lurking in the shadows. Always. To reach a full picture of European history and the Western Tradition, the occidental civilization, you need to realize the role of Islam in it. Which is sometimes a positive role, and more often a type of shadow, a dark side, lurking in the background. From the early Middle Ages onwards this is true. Or even earlier. As it’s said: ‘Without Muhammad, no Charlemagne.’ There is a certain narrative that ignores Islam entirely. I find it unsatisfactory. As I say you can read entire histories of the Reformation where Islam is never mentioned as a formative factor. I cannot understand the West without Islam. Without Muhammad, no Charlemagne. A battle raging in a single system.

Question: Is that still true today? A battle raging in a single system?

Answer: Of course. That dynamic – Self and Other – let’s use the Jungian term, the ‘Shadow’ – is of course present today. It is not so easily overcome. This is the foolishness of the multiculturalists and the Leftists. They think that this entire history, a whole historical dynamic, centuries of historical rage and counter rage can be overcome by good will and bumper stickers and community love-ins and workshops. Of course it can’t. And it is utter folly to try. I think the forces involved are very deep. A deep psychology, as I say. A deep cultural psychology. That is my main interest. This is something you discover on a journey into Islam. It is not like changing your coat. It is not like choosing a new hairdo. It is much more like Ishmael in Moby Dick. Going to sea is like suicide, you know. Going to sea is death. Islam is the Shadow. It is a dark realm. Not in itself, but in relation to the West. The Other is dangerous. The Other is hidden. The Other is unseen and dark, unconscious. You encounter things you never expected. It is a journey into night. I am speaking personally.

Question: I am not sure I understand what you mean.

Answer: There is a very deep psychology – the psychology of civilizations. The differences between Islam and the West are not superficial. They run very deep. That is what I mean. The historical rage we have discussed – it is a very deep pattern that grips whole civilizations, often unspoken, unconscious, deep and hidden.

Question: But antipathy between Islam and the West has hardly been hidden over the centuries…

Answer: No, but there are still profound undercurrents. The Crusades – they were ostensibly about liberating the Holy Sepulchre from the Saracens. Sure. But that doesn’t explain the explosion of the First Crusade. The spontaneous nature of it. The intensity of it. People throughout Europe literally dropped everything and marched to the Holy Land on a whim. Nothing explains that. And along the way they murdered Jews, and fought the Orthodox Christians and in Syria they resorted to cannibalism. How do you explain that? That outbreak of barbarism? The quest for the Holy Sepulchre doesn’t match the depth and ferocity and intensity and explosive nature of the phenomenon. So you realize that there must be something deeper going on that the given explanation. Some deep psychology. A dark psychology. Islam is the hidden, the occult.

Question: The occult?

Answer: It is a hidden force in European ideas. Islamic science comes into Europe in the form of so-called ‘occultism’. The history of the European acquisition of Islamic science is inseparable from the history of occidental occultism. The word ‘Abracadabra’ is just a corruption of Arabic. All the magic words of Western occultism are corruptions of Arabic. Islam is the occult, the dark, the hidden. It is the darkness of the Other. This is very significant. The study of the occult in Western history is very significant, because often it is there that we see the real movement of ideas, the true currents of cultural exchange. Newton, all those scientists, were interested in alchemy. But what is alchemy but the Islamic sciences? It is heavily encoded. Exchanges between Islam and the West are often heavily encoded.

Question: So your personal encounter has been about Self and Other?

Answer: Yes. I’m a Western man. But there is a hidden side to the West that I set out to explore. Difficult, of course. And complex. A tangle of pathways. My foundation studies are of Plato. But after that there are adventures, journeys, into the whole complex of Western history, and I found it necessary to expand that to include Islam. In that sense I see it as a Western religion, in that broader sense.

Question: And you also studied the Biblical tradition, early Christianity?

Answer: For the same reason. Although again I was fortunate to be in the position where I could teach Biblical Studies at University level, at the same time as teaching Greek philosophy and Islam and the West. They all form a single study, a single quest, if you like. In the case of Biblical Studies and early Christianity, once again, even then, I was interested in Islam. Of course there was no such thing as Islam at that time, but there was already a proto-Islam, in early Christianity there was already an Islam before Islam. And once again it is a hidden history. In that particular case, a history of heresy and forgotten possibilities. I didn’t study Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity according to the conventional patterns. I wanted to see into the shadows.

Question: Is there evil in the shadows?

Answer: More than you suspect. When you dredge things up which have been forgotten, or when you dredge things up from your subconscious, you never know what might come with it. Many lost pathways are dangerous. A confrontation with your own Other is confronting. The same applies when considering whole cultures.

Question: For instance?

Answer: Leaving aside my own personal demons, there are cultural expressions of it. The one I often cite is the vampire myths. Which I think are adumbrations of hidden forces on the borderland between Islam and the West. The vampire is a shadow, a reflection, a projection of Islam. Specifically of the dark Turk. I think that is what the vampire mythology is about. I’ve written about it. Someone put it to me recently – it was an arresting idea - that for a Western person to convert to Islam, to become a Muslim, is an act of suicide. It is an act of spiritual suicide. Cultural suicide. That is true. It is a type of death. Just as, for a sailor, going to sea, setting out to sea – into the Otherness of the ocean – is a death. I am thinking of Ishmael at the start of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Noting here that his name is Ishmael, after all. It is only implied, but he is clearly thinking of suicide, Ishmael, the narrator. Setting out to sea is a death of the Self, immersion in the Other. And of course there is a new psychology that prevails at sea. New laws. New realities. For a Western person to go into Islam is like that. Unless, of course, they are dead already, completely superficial. Islam, for a Western person, is the darkness.

Question: But isn’t it important that we overcome these divisions today? Those are the divisions of the past…

Answer: They are not superficial divisions. The multiculturalist has a dangerously superficial view of human beings. They think that human beings – cultures – are just sludge, and you can shape them or reshape them easily. It is not so easy. There’s a deep hidden psychology to it. Those deep forces won’t be thwarted. They will emerge and re-emerge and go underground and re-emerge again. Only a tremendous amount of destruction and violence can actually change cultures, finally. That is an unfortunate fact. Marx was right about that. Real change, deep change, takes revolution. Terrible violence. You can paste over surfaces but underneath there are deep and terrible forces. These are the forces that animate the ‘battle raging in a single system’. That rage is deep. It cannot be wished away by do-gooders. The multicultural project is doomed because it is so completely naïve. You can’t mix oil and water. The hostilities between Islam and the West are profound, not just long-lived. You can’t paste over them with sentimentality. It is frightening how stupid people are about those things.

Question: Did you experience the journey into Islamic ideas as a type of suicide? A death?

Answer: A hall of mirrors, at least. It is a hall or mirrors of Self and Other. It is easy to get lost in there, certainly. As I say, I never rejected my occidental identity. To study the Other is still a way of knowing the Self. But anyone who converts to Islam – to externalist Islam, street-variety, Koran-thumping Islam – beard and kurta Islam – that’s a death. Sooner or later the bell will toll, on some level. And we are seeing exactly that. Have you seen those young people, boys and girls, teenagers, who leave their safe middle class homes in the middle of the night and run away and catch a plane to Syria to join ISIS or al-Qaeda and post jihad videos to the folks back home? Have you seen that? It is suicidal. It is an act of suicide. They are already dead. Islam, for a Western person, is always a dance with death.

Question: So you are saying it’s impossible for a Western person to convert to Islam?

Answer: No. Many people do it. Most of them are unsuccessful. In most cases it doesn’t last. Because, without knowing it, it involves a deep level of self-violence. It can be done. But at a high price. Generally, I am more pessimistic about conversions to any religion – Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism – than I was in the past. Although there are exceptions, usually where there is a higher spiritual calling involved. In some cases you can move to a higher level. At a higher level religions converge. There is a higher level at which Islam and Christianity converge. That is a level above the level of historical rage. But that is not for everyone. Very difficult. The vast majority of people are better advised to stay with the tradition into which they were born. In my opinion. Experience and age confirms me more and more in that view. You can never not be a Western person. So be a good one. That’s the best advice. But it is, in fact, a very complex thing. The liberal myth supposes that we are self-created beings. No we’re not. Only very superficially so. Converts now – it is very different than in the past.

Question: When do you mean? In the past?

Answer: I have written about this. In the 19th century there were converts to Islam. Among the English aristocracy. Important people. Among orientalists in the British upper class. But that was a very different phenomenon that what we find today. Today, it is among disaffected out-of-work snotty-nosed badly educated and resentful urban youth. In the main. There is always an element of self-loathing involved. And the liberal myth of self-creation.

Question: The liberal myth of self-creation?

Answer: The essence of liberalism – an ideology that unfortunately permeates the West now, and certainly its media and education system - is the idea that only what you choose has value. So you must reject what you were born into. This is supposed to be liberating. So we cheer someone who is born a man but chooses to be a woman. The liberal values self-creation. Whereas the conservative values making the most of what you are given. The liberal myth is that we are self-created beings and the circumstances into which we are born are inconsequential. That is the essential fallacy of liberalism. Whereas those older so-called converts to Islam – most of them – had no such motivation. Their motivations were much different, and much more interesting. But then, they were involved in a very different type of Islam. What I usually call classical Islam. Whereas modern Islam is a very different beast indeed.

Question: Different motivations? What were their motivations?

Answer: Look at a ‘convert’ like Lord Farook, for instance. A British aristocrat. You see pictures of him, Lord Farook, in his highland kilt and regalia. Not looking like much of a convert. Compare that image to that of one of these contemporary jihad punks with their beard and their seventh century Arabia attire, dressed like the Taliban. Those older ‘converts’ were not converts in the modern sense. They weren’t driven by a rejection of their own tradition. On the contrary, they were driven by the fact that their own tradition – the Western tradition – had recently acquired, conquered, the Islamic world. That is to say they were orientalists. The historical rage was over. All was right in heaven and earth again. And so, at last, it was safe to play the Other, embrace the Other. That was the remarkable thing about the Orientalists.

Question: What was?

Answer: For the first time in history, the first time in European history, Europeans looked with real sympathy and interest at the Saracens. They could do so because the historical misalignment had been healed. Christendom was triumphant. Islamic civilization had been conquered. And so, now, the Muslims became objects of interest and fascination and Europeans were free to admire them. But this changed again in the 20th C. In the 20th C. – one of the most important and salient features of the whole century – Islam was resurgent. It is one of the great facts of our time. Resurgent Islam. Historical rage begins again. People like Edward Said – he reignited the historical rage. The wonderful and unique thing about the Orientalists – that Edward Said deliberately overlooks – is that, for the first time, Europeans looked upon Islam without seeing through the lens of historical rage. I’ve only ever been interested in the Orientalist vision of Islam. Not resurgent, modern Islam. Not political post-colonial Islam, which is repugnant. In post-colonial Islam historical rage begins again in new and more dangerous forms. It is a new monster. That is where we are today.

Question: Today we see the return of old animosities?

Answer: Yes. In new forms, or in new configurations of old patterns, one should say. Which demonstrates how deep those animosities run. It is a battle raging in a single system. That is the important thing to grasp. That is the frame you need to apply to the problem in order to understand it at a deeper level. Many people, of course, are caught in an Us versus Them framework. In order to stand outside of that you need to see it as a battle raging in a single system. You need to think of Islam and the West as a single system, albeit consisting of two vast and opposing civilizations. Today, with Islamic civilization much diminished and caught up in an historical rage about it. In the West, counter animosities. I'm not opposed to people who hate Islam, Westerners who hate and fear Islam. In some ways I'd be more concerned if people didn't.

Question: And yet many people in the west have a sympathetic view of Islam.

Answer: But we are also seeing deep hostilities. Which is what one would expect. And they are not overcome very easily. The narrative continues to play out. History is not over yet. The dynamic is not completed yet. Now we see a new chapter. The most interesting phenomenon now is the convergence of liberal Leftism and Islam. They would seem to be odd bedfellows. But in fact the socialist stream in Western history has deep roots in Islam too. When you sit in a mosque, on the large empty even space of the floor - there is socialism. It is no accident that the hammer and sickle so nearly resembles the hilal, the crescent that symbolizes Islam. Since the collapse of communism there are new configurations emerging. The system continues.

Question: The single system?

Answer: Yes. It is a very useful frame in which to place contemporary events, as well as earlier history. It is quite obviously a single system. Ideologically but also geographically. Geographically Europe doesn’t end at Sicily. Europe extends all the way to the Sahara desert, geographically. The Mediterranean basin is a single world. If you remove the political and religious and cultural boundaries, it is a single geographical system. It is a single world. But it has been bifurcated. The last time it was a single political entity was under the Roman Empire. The Roman project was to unite the geographical reality of the Mediterranean basis. And of course it lasted several centuries. And Christianity was part of that project. Specifically it was to unite the eastern and western ends of the Mediterranean. But the rise of Islam ruptured that unity. It was ruptured in both directions. The Saracens took North Africa, and then later they took the eastern Roman Empire, Asia Minor. So the geographical world of the Mediterranean was ruptured. The single system was bifurcated. Recent events have reminded us of this.

Question: What events?

Answer: The immigration crisis. Thousands of North Africans travelling across the Mediterranean and pouring into Europe. And thousands more from the eastern Mediterranean travelling westwards into Europe. Suddenly you realize what a compact system it is, geographically. But politically and religiously and culturally it has been bifurcated. It has been cut in half. It is now a coin with two sides, heads and tails. And there is endless tension between these two sides, and they are tensions that run very deep and are not easily overcome. The Muslims took North Africa in the blink of an eye, and yet it is as if it is completely indigenous there. It is as if Islam is in the soil itself. You cannot just remove it. And no amount of social engineering will wish away the tensions and divisions – deep, real divisions – between Islam and the west. People are not just sludge that can be shaped by social policies. There are much deeper dimensions. As we will discover.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black