Violence and Islam

Conversations with Houria Abdelouahed

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• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781509511907
• eBook ISBN: 9781509511938
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

Adonis? influence on Arabic literature has been likened to that of T. S. Eliot in the English-speaking world. Yet alongside this spearheading of a modernist literary revolution, the secular Syrian-born poet is also renowned for his persistent and staunch attacks on despotism across the Arab world.

In these conversations with the psychoanalyst Houria Abdelouahed, Adonis brings into sharp relief the latest wave of violence and war to engulf Arabic countries, tracing the cause of ongoing tensions back to the beginnings of Islam itself. Since the death of the prophet Muhammad, Islam has been used as a political and economic weapon, exploiting and reinforcing tribal divisions to aid the pursuit of power. Adonis argues that recent events in the Middle East – from the failures of the Arab Spring to the rise of ISIS and the bloody war in his native Syria – attest to the destructive effects of an Islamic worldview that prohibits any notion of plurality and breeds violence. If there is to be any hope of peace or progress in the Arab world, it is therefore imperative that these mentalities are overcome. In their place, Adonis urges a new spirit of enquiry, embodied in the freedoms to interrogate the past and to question cultural norms.

Adonis? penetrating analysis comes at a critical time, offering an alternative path to the cycle of violence that plagues the Arab world today.

Rethinking the Fundamentals

H: Mesopotamia was the cradle of two great civilizations: the Sumerian and the Babylonian. This land witnessed the birth of writing, of gods and of the stories that would be taken up later by the Old Testament and the Qur’an. How do we explain the triumph of monotheism?

A: I think monotheism is the result of two things. Firstly, the development of a sense of the economic sphere. Secondly, the development of a sense of power. These two elements revolutionized the ancient world, the place of great polytheistic civilizations, and killed the idea of plurality.

H: Let’s begin with the idea of the gods.

A: A single power in heaven and a single representative on earth. This monotheist thesis bears witness to the triumph of the economic sphere and of power on earth. Islam is the final example of this.

H: If I understand correctly, religious power has transformed itself into a social and political exercise of authority. ‘A single authority’ in all areas of life.

A: In fact, power has transformed everything. Islam was born in a place of commerce, Mecca. This society of merchants needed a single leader so that the spirit of commerce could triumph. It was a society that wanted to unite the tribes under the standard of a single power.

H: At the same time, this indicates a great force. Mecca was effectively a commercial crossroads. But to feed itself it depended on other towns, in present-day Yemen, such as Al-Yamāma and Sanaa, which supplied it with grain and other produce.

A: Commerce was triumphant because the ancient world was by now old. The Byzantines left behind an empty world. Syria opened its doors to Muslims. Worn down by the Byzantines, the people of Damascus, the majority of whom were oppressed Nestorians, thought that the Muslims were their saviours. They welcomed them with open arms. The Muslims enriched themselves further with each victory. They became powerful thanks to their amassed wealth. You might even say that they were lucky, as they didn’t have to face any real enemies or large armies. In the beginning the Arabs didn’t wage real wars. In any case, there weren’t any wars in the Greek or Roman sense.

H: It would be useful to reread these Futūḥāt (The Conquests). You invite us to analyse the socio-economic structure of the conquered countries.

A: Futūh. al-Buldān¹ is a work of reference. In it we learn that war in the time of Muhammad was between tribes. Once Arabia was unified, with a powerful army and rich leaders, whole countries, the real treasures of conquest, fell easily. Almost without resistance.

H: Marcus Aurelius had granted citizenship to so-called savage peoples. Islam came after other religions and other civilizations. But it didn’t surpass them when it came to tolerance, respect for differences, the construction of a citizenship, the abolition of slavery …

A: On the contrary, Islam attacked the gains of preceding civilizations and of others that followed. But fundamentally it retained three things: the Bible, its Law and its Prophets. We might add to this magical thinking, which it transformed into a doctrine.

What does the foundational text say?

H: In Les Tablettes babyloniennes, Edward Chiéra writes: ‘The thinking man is always interested in his past.’² Let us now reflect on the foundations of our religion, its principles and its vision of the world. It’s more necessary today than ever.

A: Firstly, violence is a phenomenon common to all three monotheisms. Nevertheless, violence in the Bible is bound up with the history of a people which has known servitude and exile. In Christianity, violence goes hand in hand with the foundation of the Church. On the other hand, in Islam violence is specifically the violence of the conqueror.

H: When we read the works of history, such as the Chronicles of Tabarī, we realize that the Muslim religion was imposed by force and by violence.

A: The whole history shows this. Islam was imposed by force; it became a history of conquests. People had to convert or pay a tribute. So violence was part and parcel of the foundation of Islam.

H: In Al-Kitāb you talk about violence in the heart of the city after the death of Muhammad. But we are now going to broach a taboo subject: that of violence in the foundational text.

A: It is an extremely violent text. I have counted eighty verses on Gehenna. There are sixty verses evoking paradise and seventy-two that talk about paradise as a place of infinite pleasure. Kufr (unbelieving) and its consequences appear in 518 verses; torture and its consequences are the subject of more than 370 verses; 518 talk about punishment. Hell is mentioned eighty times. We can cite in particular: ‘Whoever of you … dies while an unbeliever – these it is whose works shall go for nothing in this world and the hereafter, and they are the inmates of the fire; therein they shall abide.’³ Yet there is not a single verse that urges reflection, nor any verse that discusses the benefits or advantages of reason or the spirit, in the sense of the creative spirit. When the Qur’an says yatafakkarūn (reflect, reason), it is in the sense of remembering the precepts indicated by the Qur’an and applying them.

H: Following this logic, anyone who has done good works and who dies an unbeliever will be a guest in Gehenna and will envy the fate of the believer who committed worse acts. To attenuate this nightmarish vision and to highlight the difference between the mystical text and the theological text, Ibn ‘Arabī explains that kufr in Arab etymology means illusion or error of perception, not unbelieving.

A: Absolutely. But the theologian sees only unbelieving, and that merits punishment. In the case of ‘unbelievers’, the sentence is without appeal: ‘Surely they who disbelieve in the communications of Allah they shall have a severe chastisement; and Allah is Mighty, the Lord of Retribution.’⁴ The following verse is also worth citing: ‘(As for) those who disbelieve in Our communications, We shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned, We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement.’⁵

H: I draw your attention to the fact that this verse on the removal of the skin and the attack on the ‘self-skin’ as a form of eternal torture appears in a Sura that has been named ‘The Women’. From Tabarī to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī,⁶ the commentators strove to make clear that the skin would be changed only in the case of eternal torture. Some said that it would be changed 70,000 times, others spoke of a torture without end.

A: Any individual Muslim who lives in a culture that vaunts torture is condemned to submit to the precepts of religion. Any deviation from the path defined by Islam is condemned. And Islam is the only acceptable religion. The following verse is instructive here: ‘And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him.’⁷ And again: ‘This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favour on you and chosen for you Islam as a religion.’⁸ There is a theoretical violence and a practical violence in the Text. The former has engendered the latter. On the practical level, for example, an individual is not allowed to replace the faith of his family or community with another one.

H: Many verses condemn apostasy, which is in fact the choice of an individual and his freedom to take a different path from that of his family or his community. Religion refuses that choice. Here on earth, that individual runs the risk of being beheaded, while in the hereafter God reserves for him an exemplary punishment.

A: This brings to mind the following verse, which relates directly to this question: ‘My Lord! leave not upon the land any dweller from among the unbelievers.’⁹ The Muslim who reads this verse is invited to wage jihad to fulfil this wish and to combat ‘unbelieving’ with all the means at his disposal. It’s a form of violence that is not seen as such because it is considered as a triumph of Islam and the divine will. Already we can say that violence is intrinsic to Islam. We can also quote: ‘Therefore We inflicted retribution on them and drowned them in the sea’;¹⁰ ‘On the day when We will seize (them) with the most violent seizing; surely We will inflict retribution’;¹¹ ‘We will gather them together on the day of resurrection on their faces, blind and dumb and deaf; their abode is hell; whenever it becomes allayed We will add to their burning.’¹²

H: In this same Sura we read: ‘See how We have made some of them to excel others.’¹³ It’s the law of the arbitrary. Whether you ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• A Spring Without Swallows
• The Necessity of Rereading: History and Identity
• Rethinking the Fundamentals
• Beyond Economic and Geopolitical Interests: The Drives
• The West: Passionately, Madly
• Art, Myth, Religion
• Poetry Between Language and Precept
• Beyond Al-Kitāb
• How to Conclude?
• A Last Word
• Glossary
• End User License Agreement