Whar Exactly Islam Aims At?
WHAT EXACTLY ISLAM AIMS AT?
A. It is a fact that some religions are only preoccupied with faith to guide and ritual to comfort their adherents while others are strongly proselytising and militant on top. The Abrahamic religions, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam belong to the second category. Since Judaism has had mainly nationalistic and only mildly internationalistic ambitions except in terms of jewish interests only Islam and Christianity may be regarded fully proselytising, internationalistic and militant faiths. That is why more than any other neighbour religions they have been at each others’ throat more than any other couple.
In this essay we propose to explain Islam’s proselytising and militant constitution. A thorough and careful study of Islam’s two main sources the Qur’an and the Hadith makes, studied with an open mind and conscientious objectivity makes it clear that through Islam Allah the Creator wants to unify and improve the morals, manners and living conditions of all mankind and through them protect and improve the environment with all its flora, fauna and other natural assets like water and soil. Of course these may seem being wiser after the event and ascribe to Islam care for things it didn’t know about to begin with. We shall see that this isn’t so. We shall see that Islam has had the possible solutions of all potential problems man is ever liable to face. With something very simple. Some attitude which made Islam capable of dealing with all.
The Prophet (sws) famously said “Ad dunya mazra’atul akhirah” i.e. This world is the sowing ground for the next”. Normally this is taken to mean as follows: What intentions you entertain and what acts you carry out in this life shall determine what you get in the life after death. In fact all major religions agree with this. But eloquent as always Arabic statements are more pregnant with alternative and/or additional meanings. The word for ‘world’ in Arabic is ‘dunya’ which derives from the verb ‘dana’ which means both coming near and coming low or being low. This sense of nearness in time is also affirmed in another Arabic word for this world, viz., ‘al oola’ i.e, the first, the before. This makes the Arabic word for the world ‘ad dunya’ to signify something both near in time and space and low or base, sordid. The word for the next world is ‘al Akhira’ which means the other, later or delayed. If we take the most general significations of the words ‘dunya’ and and ‘akhirah’ the same aphorism of the Prophet may be understood to also mean “ What you do in any present circumstances determine what you get later under other circumstances”. Or “what you sow today you reap tomorrow”. Simple but obviously true isn’t it? But we can even go farther than that. Let’s take the example of a plant. Its seed determines its genus and its root feeds its branches which in turn produce its fruits. So to return to the Prophet’s hadith we can rephrase: To get the good fruits you need and want sow the right seed and then attend to the plants needs like watering, fertiliser, weeding, aerating the soil and driving away parasites.
And the last and the vast: This earth is our near and low (available, reachable) world and Today inexorably leads to tomorrow. What we get tomorrow (later or ‘akhirah’ tomorrows world depends on how we put the ball rolling today in today’s world. This is a law of nature, this an aspect of the Law of Cause and Effect and as all natural laws is A n only mean recognising and obeying God’s laws. Nothing more nothing less. It therefore transpires like day following the night that True Islam can ony mean learning about all kinds of laws of the Creator, natural laws, moral best of our ability. We meet pain and harm to the extent that we disobey God’s laws. One of the laws is the law that “all we men are in the same boat and each should take responsibility to the best of his ability and opportunity to contribute to our collective wellbeing”. This may be called “the Law of Altruism”. And as every law it involves terms and foms of PUNISHMENT. Let me explain.
Using the boat example, a boat’s population includes the captain and his crew arranged hierarchically; then the passengers both occupying places private to them and sharing some other places in common. If the boat is not to sink and people not to perish each and every person on board, whether crew or passenger should be vigilant and feel responsible for the whole. The Prophet (sws) used exactly this metaphor and said “If some in the lower deck are lazy ignorantly attempt to puncture the hulk to get sea water for washing others have to stop them lest all of them drown”. The captain and the crew should be even more vigilant and feel evn more responsible. If this is clear we can then move on.
Now Allah informs us through His Messenger (sws) that He is offering us the chance to make our world a far better place to live. He wants all racial, class and geographical differences to stop to be used as causes of unconcern, hostility and war. He explains that these discriminatory mentalities policies result from wrong beliefs and attitudes which characterise cultures. Going back to the plant mataphor, each faulty culture may be regarded to be the seed of the problem plants producing poisonous fruits. The first thing to be done then is eliminating bad seeds and rooting out bad plants. It is no use just to prune these bad plants or try to destroy the fruits because the same roots shall go on giving poisonous fruits. So Allah said “The only religion acceptable to God is Islam ( * ). Why? Because it is only Islam which consists of learning about God’s laws and living by submitting to them. Just take a single example. Only too many accidents, crimes and illnesses are caused by taking alcohol. A pedestrian hit, torn apart and bleeding to death and costing a fortune to the society in treatment, compensation, livelihood of dependants… etc costs; a man dying a protracted death of an incurable illness caused by alcohol; resources diverted from more beneficial products like food, medicines, schools, welfare… because demand for alcohol is pressing… ALL THESE RUBBISH just because men of all intellectual and moral calibre are unable to resist an almost totally useless and mostly harmful substance simply because it pleasantly dizzies their heads and relaxes their tongues and other muscles and nerves. Of course it can also hot up tempers or arouse lower instincts leading to terrible crimes. Allah therefore banned it. Suppose people became wise enough to come to detest alcohol and avoid it altogether. We should see a drastic drop in traffic accidents and kinds of crime facilitated by the effects of alcohol and in the longer run a drastic reduction in ill health with consequent huge savings, of course everything else equal. Add to this hard drugs and tobacco, again banned in Islam- though muslim smokers don’t like hearing about tobacco ban; ban because the general principle of banning is the fact that something does more harm that good (Qur’an * ).
Then another drastic drop in crime, ill health, unhappiness and premature deaths and cost of living. Islam also bans sex outside traditional marriage. If again, for arguments sake, a society which somehow manages to tighten their pants management assisted both by a real enlightenment to the effect that instant satisfaction of more complicated lusts like sexual desire can more than be compensated by the mature joy of wise self-mastery and a deliberate, voluntary reduction of sexual incitement by all members of the society based on conviction… in this society sexual promiscuity and unnatural (read unnecessary and dangerous) excesses dwindle if not altogether vanish together with all risks to health, to emotional balance and to the wellbeing and future of children. Now many so-called liberated moderns think that a ban on extra-marital sex is grossly oppressive. Yes and no. Yes when the individual’s world view and habits are based on philosophy of personal freedom to indulge in whatever his lusts ask for without resorting to force or deceit (modern Western philosophy)- with this conviction held to be ‘sacred’ and habits only too badly established a ban on extra-marital sex is hell. No when the idea of external bodily freedom of indulging in bodily lusts is successfully replaced by internal freedom to arrest dangerous habits like arresting loose canon vandals infesting neighbourhoods and self-insightfully and with wise conviction and appreciation CONTROL all his instincts like a masterly jumbo jet pilot controls his flights.
Nobody who hasn’t experienced it can even begin to imagine the joy, nay, BLISS that comes from wise and mature self-mastery available to a true believer in a true faith (a real sufi for example)- an almost effortless capability to see real good as real good and real evil as real evil and choose the good and avoid the evil. The self-masterful man is able to resist the temptation to drop pants to anybody just because the allurement and opportunity winks only too well (let alone when they don’t and he has to employ lies, threats or force or all three) as well as temptation to cheat in money matters, to give just two examples. What is more the self-masterful man is not hurt by such wise and virtuous choices he makes. If anything, the pleasure and joy he gets from beating temptations with such contempt and ease and peace is many times more delicious and lasting than best sexual orgasm, if the analogy will be forgiven. What a pleasure it is to find oneself on top of the world enveloped in safety from base temptations and the euphoria of real (self-) liberation and moral astral travel at which level his only suffering is his pain of seeing his less well informed brothers and sisters fixed and chained to a bestial ground on which in the pursuit of their petty selfish fixes and fighting off similarly equally prurient rivals? The pain becomes even more pronounced when the prurient squabblers happen to be famous know-alls like academics, politicians or sanctimonious media columnists or interwievers criticising their opposition for failures they are really or potentially aren’t less liable for or to. Against them, the real saint (as the Godly mature, enlightened and self-masterful man can be called) is only too badly and fully aware of his own shortcomings and failures, both in the past and surpassed and now and yet not entirely conquered.
This constant awareness (called ‘an nafs al lawwamah’ i.e., ‘the holy self-insightful, self-blaming and the ever self-purifying soul’ in the Qur’an in *) greatly helps him to avoid harm to himself and others. And what is more his sincere and brave and hard-working religious orientation towards Godliness at all costs keeps the neuro-psychiatric process his all-round inner efforts sparked into action working inexorably towards self-healing and improvement, both on steam and on stream. May I assure any sincere and ready to wake up readers that no lived or potentially liveable experience whatsoever in human life can compare in glory, intensity of joy and satisfaction and lasting benefit than outgrowing, transcending and surpassing the ordinary consciousness of the ordinary self and land at the Holy Ground of Divine Precinct where it is all light, all enlightenment; where truth is perceived as truth and untruth is perceived as untruth and the truth can be obeyed with pleasure and untruth dismissed promptly and without regret. If any reader understands what is meant by the above he or she must be congratulated and may be expected to arrive at the Highest Destination in due course to meet his and her loving peers in the company of the Most High. Read if you wish “Innal muttaqina fi jannatin wa nahar fi maq’adi sidqin ‘inda malikin muqtadir” i.e., the Godly are in gardens and rivers as occupants of the seats of truthfulness in the Company of an All-Powerful King ( *).
ISLAM’S FIRST AND KEY AIM IS TO PRODUCE SUCH MEN OF WOMEN OF GOD who shall attract like powerful magnets their further back dear brothers and sisters and help them to improve themselves in the same direction. In other words Islam’s first and fundamental aim is: SPIRITUAL IMPROVEMENT FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL. Each of us carry both seeds of good and evil in our souls and our thoughts are their first germinations. The weeding out of bad thoughts must begin when they begin talking in our hearts or it will not be long before some of them begin to form a root and send out into the open world shoots destined to bear poisonous fruits- our acts. This weeding out effort is helped by our and mentors’ and other friends’ good advice and example and that is why education in all forms, from in-house (family) to street and school should incorporate spiritual education and training as its main pillar. To avoid confusion we define ‘spiritual’ as ‘practical values-oriented’ i.e., the successful discrimination of good from evil in each situation. ‘Knowing’ good from evil isn’t enough- a citizen should be trained to resist evil in its most secretive forms (inside the heart) and eagerly opt for the good in each situation. That oft-misunderstood, misused and abused term SALVATION means this and and only this and not thinking euphorically about Moses, the Christ or the Prophet and with such inner theatricals hope for rewards in a world to come while in this world one is the same old selfish cheat and hardened offender behind a mask of sanctimony.
Those who are thus saved or on the way of salvation are duty-bound by order of the Most High to help others to come to the same path. Remember, the path they are trying to show others is so right that without it man-made evil which has been wrecking man’s life since civilisation began cannot be stopped. Tribalism, elitism, theft, deception, swindle, seduction, violent crime, mass persecution and massacre and treachery… all keep their satanical sway among us hurting some, unjustly pampering some. Without weeding out these evils seed (bad conditioning), root (bad thoughts) and branch (bad acts) man made evil is here to stay and continue producing new child abuse victims, new Holocausts and new ethnic cleansings to name just a few evils. Men of God (read truth, universal justice and kindness) cannot stand idle and watch such evils begin as seeds, germinate, send up shoots and produce their poisonous fruits. By preaching God’s message of salvation they must fight to destroy bad seeds before germinating (thoughts) and if the opportunity has been missed then fight the evil plant before its poisonous fruits are on the market. THIS IS WHAT THAT MOST MISUNDERSTOOD, MISUSED AND ABUSED WORD ‘JEHAD’ MEANS.
It is waged simultaneously inside and outside the muslim; inside because he has to remove his own plaguing inner parasites lest they eat him up; outside because if his environment remains infected he can recontract the same illnesses. In a hospital they don’t only give antibiotics to kill bacteria infecting each patient. They also disinfect the whole hospital environment from toilets to nurses hands. A true muslim cannot simply sit hands-tied while his social environment remains a breeding ground of evil. Similarly a muslim society cannot just watch other societies keep producing evil unchecked. A good if imperfect example of conducting comprehensive jehad are the policies of the Ottoman governments during the rise of the empire. This brilliant muslim empire among all muslim polities was the only one to embrace substantial parts of Asia, Africa and Europe under its centuries-long rule. It conducted jehad on at least three fronts, namely, spiritual education of muslims (leaving non-muslims free to educate their own kind) through an extensive network of mosques, sufi centres and primary schools and another network of colleges and universities from one end of the empire to the other ALL FULLY SUBSIDISED BY THE GOVERNMENT DOWN TO THE SHOE LACES OF THE PUPILS, where piety was the top subject; jehad against neighbours, both muslim and non-muslim who posed real and often also actual threat to the Ottoman concept of Islamic peace and prosperity; and jehad also against its own bad apples who oppressed Ottoman subjects whether muslim or non-muslim. Many bandits as well as provincial governors were hanged as a result of this category of jehad but let one example suffice.
In the 18. century an Ottoman governor of Cyprus was oppressing the Christians of that island variously taxing them too much, punishing them too harshly and humiliating and robbing the their Greek Othodox church clergy. All these were banned under both Ottoman law and the royal charter of autonomy and just treatment granted to the Greek Cypriot Orthodox Patriarchy on the conquest of Cyprus in 1571. Armed with these enligtened ‘weapons’ the three top bishops of Cyprus travelled to Istanbul and put their case before the sultan who ordered a firman to be sent to the governor commanding him to explain himself and clear up the mess. When he dragged his feet an army was sent against him which deposed and severely punished him. All unjustly taken assets were returned to the Greeks and good government was re-established. Many historians regard the Ottoman Empire as the third Roman Empire (After the Eastern which was the second) and a much more enlightened at that, thanks to its Islam. At that age jews universally lived wretched and extremely precarious lives elsewhere in Europe while muslims didn’t stand even that chance. For the Christian ‘civilised’ nations of Europe a muslim deserved only death on sight. For its part the population of the Ottoman Empire was more than half Christian and they lived in the form of dozens of nationalties under their autonomous princes and bishops, often more prosperous than muslims. As for the jews they couldn’t be happier and more prosperous and safe. It was Islam which made these not only possible but MANDATORY as well.
The conclusion can only be that Islam’s mission is to make this world a far better place to live and accordingly it imposes on its believers the inalienable serial tasks of self-salvation, propagation of salvific (salvation producing) education, prevention and correction of wrongs and promotion of good in every form AS FAR AS REALISTICALLY POSSIBLE and not as a mad and fanatical pursuit causing more harm than good. Islam is a jehad, a war of righteousness waged firstly against the fighters individual crude self and extensible outside it only when the chances of success are good with peaceful means as the first port of call. Furthermore if working for the establishment, preservation and spread of an ideal state of affairs is militancy all practice-oriented ideologies are guilty of it including the current Western democratic liberalism. It also has been trying to make its values triumph and prevail all over the earth and went to many wars and employed other punitive methods like withholding credit from or imposing economic sanctions on nations whose political system it did not find democratic liberal enough. If militarist enterprises from more than a decade carpet bombing of VietNam to flattening Iraq in the Gulf war weren’t western versions of jehad (ideological warfare) Islam’s past wars aren’t either. The fact is that something like ninety percent of all blood shed in anger during the last three centuries are shed by the Western powers mostly on ideological grounds like Republicanism, Nazism and Communism and even in the name of Christianity which indeed was the main cause of Western ideological warfare (JEHAD, so to speak) throughout the Middle Ages. If many of the muslim jehad can be blamed for being thinly veiled imperialism intended for the acquisition material gain the same applies to all non-muslim ‘jehads’ as well. Man can never be perfect but he cannot afford just sitting and not interfering in world affairs simply because he may make moral and tactical mistakes. After all those who sit and don’t act because of too many scruples are wolfishly swallowed by others who do act with less scrupples. Whether we like it or not it is not possible to succeed in the pursuit of an ideal without playing the game by its rules whose moral level is determined by the moral level of the overwhelming majority. The Prophet said “Kama tadeenu tudanu” i.e, whatever sort of behavioural standards you as a community you employ in general by the same standards you are treated”. He meant to say that you get the kind of government you deserve.
How true and wise. For example in a community where there are only too many who are prepared to offer or accept bribes justice becomes a rare commodity. When there is no justice competent but scrupulous people are denied authority and incompetents who can play the game by its rules (bribes, nepotism etc.) get all the authority they need to line their pockets as well as get away with it. If for nothing else, the triumph of moral ideologies like Islam is necessary which makes jehad necessary which often isn’t military as already explained. It is a struggle to make good beat evil and as such and in principle cannot be condemned but ought to be praised. All the same we should also realise that in this modern age when peaceful persuasion or at most persuasion with violence as the very last resort is the universally professed standard of ideological and political behaviour towards perceived offenders muslims cannot expect resorting to violence in the name of God as if they are still living in a world where violence is the main currency of political struggle and accounts settling. What is worse we muslims have had a rather bad start to politics after the departure of the Prophet when bloody-eyed arbitrary jehad factionalism gradually replaced the peaceful consultative political ethos the Prophet and his four rightly-guided caliphs chose and cultivated.
As a result the third caliph our master Uthman was martyred by self-appointed guardians of Islam and his successor our master Ali was terribly opposed by only too many again self-appointed guardians of Islam as if he wasn’t legitimately elected as caliph only weeks ago. Nobody could think of or was prepared to take their any complaints or objections to an impartial court for arbitration and as a result only conspiracy and violence remained open to satisfy the contesting parties’ claims. To give his due our master Ali conducted himself very piously and tolerantly during all those anarchical years and paid for his unrealistic piety with his and his sons’ lives. To this day, a bloody-eyed, self-appointed jehad-mongering streak survives among muslims while all reputable jurist ulama are unanimous that jehad is a national affair to be conducted by legally ruling government and not self-appointed Qur’an- and hadith-peddling factions who fail to see that the general condition as well as the merits of their government are automatically God-selected on the basis of what they DESERVE as a result of their inner condition. Allah admonishes us more than once in His Qur’an like “Allah will not change a community’s circumstances until they change what is in their hearts”. If individual muslims or their free associations are to conduct jehad it should only be a jehad of ideas and not in the form of violent attempts at enforcement.
All of us are fallible beings whatever our pretensions to learning and spiritual gnosis and should realise that violence is only legitimate for legitimate government (on the standards of a real community who sometimes may never keep its peace without a dictator imposing it by brutal methods) and cannot take laws in our hands on the basis of our personal beliefs. Cubs of wolves cannot be safely suckled and raised by sheep but need a she-wolf. If a muslim community, despite its great label, mostly consist of savages who can’t wait to settle their disputes legally and peaceably but trigger-happily grab arms and start to shoot they cannot survive as a community under a civilized leader but need a brutal dictator to keep peace even if at the expense of some injustice.
Justice cannot be deserved or maintained by people who equate justice with their own point of view and desires and then resort to violence to impose them. A community mainly made up by such brutes need only a bigger brute to impose on them his points of view and his desires with such total control and brutal force that they shall be pacified through fear. Unfortunately that is the level of civilization most muslim countries have been reduced to and any experiments of democracy some have been going through are mostly shambolic on account of the corruption at all levels from the top to the street level all where many individuals try to cheat the system with all the wit and skill at their disposal.
At the top both the government and opposition members carry on with their own corruption while accusing each other of it. At the street level the police will stop drivers both justly and unjustly in order to get a chance of being offered a bribe. Or a municipality trade officer will turn a blind eye to some illegal practice in a shop for a cut from the earnings. Although such corruption is present in all countries they are more in the pooer and unhappier countries where the following vicious circle operates: The poorer and unhappier the more corruption; the more corruption the poorer and unhappier. That is why the gap between the rich and the poor countries keep becoming wider and not narrower. If some great boon strikes a poor country, like petroleum or gold, the resulting wealth more goes to the pockets of corrupt elites and less to the populace.
QUIXOTICS FOR MUSLIMS - WHAT IS QUIXOTICS
INTRODUCTION
Man has always theorised about his obsevations and philosophised about his experiences. The first eventually led to science and the second to ideology although between the two there was little difference in the past. Secular (non-religious) idelogising is a rather recent phenomenon but even so the secularity of ideologies are only apparent and not real. Seeking to replace religion for supposedly something better and thereby improving man’s lot ideologies found that without appealing to man’s irrational centres of motivation which religions appealed they could not dislodge religions and sit comfortably into that most strategically located space religion was evicted from. Hence the mythical elements like ‘the race’, ‘the nation’, ‘the working class’, and ‘the leader’ (‘fuhrer’ in the case of Nazism) all of which are credited with infallibility and numinous authority together forming a pantheon of gods or godhead except in name. Having banned the concept of god but equally in need of filling the strategic space so voided the atheist ideologies had to conceal the godly status of these substitutes they put in place. Ideologies equally needed the ritual and liturgical props of religions as well because these hypnotic and entertaining and comforting devices nurture the beliefs offered and the motivating emotions required for the loyalty and sacrifices prescribed.
Hence those military-like marches of tens of thousands with a forest of huge banners and to the sound and tempo of deafening music and chant. Hence the incorporation of the official ideology into national curriculum as the key subject and hence the respectful observation and artistic celebration of the ideology’s created days of pride at all localities and levels of the society. True, some ideologies like Nazism did not openly ban religion but instead found it wiser to keep it as a tamed ally thereby killing two birds with one stone- exploiting its power on the religious section of the populace (for not all are religious in any age) and avoiding the social and political cost of demolishing it. Because it serves a profound purpose, at least for the majority of people, religion can never be made forgotten and unwanted. In a national crisis its appeal is enhanced ant it may help to resolve it. It was for this reason that the world leader of Communism and its atheism, namely Stalin, had to reinstate religion temporarily to help defeat the Nazi attack.
But it was not only ideology secretly envying religion and clandestinely ‘religionising’ itself to ensure more popularity and success. Having seen the almost overnight success of ideologies like beginning with the French Revolution (1789) and culminating its zenith in the Marxist (1917) some persons and their groups among the religious begin to conceive the tempting idea of converting their faith into an ideology and as with other ideologies then use sloganised propaganda as well as conspiratorial organisation and bold illegal action create enough anarchy in and consequent ungovernability of their society so that the established government is utterly demoralised and government becomes ready for picking by themselves as the most well-organised and prepared political group. That was what exactly achieved by the Bolsheviks of Lenin in 1917 and since that it has been the secret envy of and model for all radical ideological groups including some Islamic revivalist movements. Without admitting it perhaps even to themselves they gleefully and with high hopes emulated the Bolshevik methods of elitist and clandestine and group dictatorial organisation, sloganised propaganda, disinformation and theatrical mass agitation and action as well as selective armed struggle. In Quixotics whe shall explore the psychology of this phenomenon of ideologic behaviour.
WHAT IS QUIXOTICS
I am launching a new mini science to be called ‘Quixotics’ which will have a humorous-looking tinge but it’s very serious, even vital for Islamist intellectuals to know. Its subject is the pitfalls Islamic theorists, ideologues and activists may and do often fall into with disastrous consequences for Islam in general as well as themselves. In fact I hardly know any Islamist who did not fall or is not falling into pitfalls. But this state of affairs is not confined to muslims. All social theorists and activists do not only fall into the pitfalls to be identified in due course but they also remain in them and work from their underground bunkers with the only benefit of a faulty periscope which doesn’t turn around or change angle but keep watching the same spot. No wonder ideological workers get nowhere good, their successes go sour in the face of social realities and the laws of human nature and even if they get the power they need cannot last long.
Before we move on I must explain the etymology of the word quixotics and my rationale for employing it for this new science. It comes from the surname of a famous fictional character whose full name is Don Quixote de la Mancha. The novel’s title is “The Adventures of Don Quixote” and the cover almost always features a drawing of an emaciated crazy-looking medieval knight in armour riding a scrawny horse and attacking a windmill with his lance. Another drawing may be added or used alternatively depicting our hero thrown away by an arm of the indifferent windmill and landing on the buttocks about twenty yards away. Bent on the poor knight is his squire (rustic servant) Sancho Panza trying to comfort him, having failed for the umpteenth time to persuade him that objects windmills aren’t mischievous giants to be attacked and killed by Christian knights in order to save innocent damsels from their clutches. As to the cause of this derangement , you see, our hero was an avid reader of medieval romances about knights who dedicated their lives to detect injustices from a Christian point of view in this imperfect world and put them to right with sword if necessary.
Their most popular targets were evil demons, giants or ‘saracens’ who prayed on innocent, pure Christian virgins of extreme beauty whom the knight was very interested in saving and then falling in love with. Reading too much like this Don Quixote’s brain softened and he began to see himself, despite his advanced age and poor condition and despite it was the Renaissance times when people were undeluding themselves from both the Medieval superstitions and values (and ideals going with them). Unable to contain himself any longer he resorts to the basement of his manor mansion (for he was a small noble in Spain) to reclaim his grandfather’s armour and arms like the lance, the sword and the shield. They all were rusted however and the armour had to be reconditioned by replacing some of its crumbling parts with material like tinplate and laundry wire (for he was also destitute for a nobleman).
Lastly he needed two more items to complete his image as a knight-errant, that medieval knight who led a life of adventure on horseback in pursuit of wrongs to put right, especially cases in which beautiful damsels were the victims. One was a top quality arab ‘steed’ (horse) of course and the other a sweetheart to whose honour compose and sing love poems and dedicate the heroic acts awaiting to be performed. As for the steed he had to make do with his long-suffering old stallion which then looked more like a skeleton in an ill-fitting hide. But buried in the dreams of his softened brain and looking at everything through his dreamy eyes the animal looked splendid to him, just as a proper knight should be proud of. Next was the sweetheart. As no real beauty was available to respond to our badly aged gentleman he appointed in his imagination the role to a neighbouring farm woman (to whom nobody would bother a second look) whom he pompously named Dulcinea del Toboso (who incidentally knew nothing about the appointment) and set out in search of glorious adventures. But I forgot to mention something equally necessary for a knight-errant. A squire! It means a personal servant who had to be inseparable from his master. The mantle naturally fell on his existing servant named Sancho Panza. Inherited from the father of our hero, the poor Sancho was recently very worried about his lord’s deteriorating physical and mental condition and the latter’s idea of setting out in a life of knight-errancy was sheer madness according Sancho. But he could not persuade his lord about the inadvisability of his project and as a loyal servant he had no option but accompany him in his mad pursuit not the least to moderate his views and passions so that he did not lay down his life for something silly and end up as carrion for the beasts and birds of prey in some nowhere.
We better pause a bit and taking a breath look into the mind of our unique hero. He had a firmly believed-in and enthused about stereotyped world view. It was this. The world was made by God who for all practical intents and purposes was identified with the Christ. Its sentient inhabitants were divided into two irreconcilable, totally opposite and inimical species: The Good and the Bad. The good consisted of the God’s angels and pious Christians, no less. The bad consisted of Christian sinners, Christian heretics, pagans and those who worshipped ‘Mahomet’ (often called the ‘saracens’ rather than ‘muslims’) the evilness increasing in that order. But there were other evil ones. They were the demons and the angels of the Satan and lastly voracious giants who especially liked beautiful Christian virgins and preyed on them. The Saracens also were guilty of this salacious crime. They were imagined as dark-skinned, dirtily turbaned and dressed libertines who were very interested in the carnal knowledge of fair christian damsels.
A knight’s duty was to trot the earth on horseback armed and armoured in order to find and identify all evil beings from Saracens to giants, especially those holding the beautiful damsels in captivity and slaying the evil captors and delivering the damsels in Christ’s name. But of course in actual fact no such beings and situations existed. Be as it may, our hero was so committed to and enthused about them that thanks to his constant semi-dreaming mind state he could conjure up suitable illusions together with the concomitant obliging delusions. So if in one case he identified a herd of sheep as a host of demons and the worn out old woman goading them as the victimized damsel. In another case he could equally perceive a windmill as a voracious giant and the coarse wife of the miller as world’s top beauty held captive by the giant to be devoured as his evening meal. In both cases he attacked but was badly beaten back. In the first case the shepherd arrived on the scene having heard the screams of his wife only to find an old lunatic in rusty armour spear his sheep to death. The outcome was not in doubt- the poor man could think of nothing but to beat up the mad attacker. Thankfully Sancho was always around and prevented a murder. A similar outcome in the windmill case. So on and so forth.
In this novel the author Cervantes is satirising his and other Renaissance idealists’ plight. Unable to break away from the values of a fast disappearing age and yet culturally sophisticated enough to conjure up comforting and motivating causes to fight for, the impractical idealist has been with us for ages. Generalising from the description of Don Quixote we can define quixotism as follows: An enduring state of idealist delusion in an otherwise intelligent person who has a stylised and caricaturised worldview in which its population is divided into two mutually exclusive and mortally hostile camps over an issue of what is ultimately right and what is ultimately wrong. One side, call them the goodies are total innocents governed by noble principles yet occasionally and partially deceived and victimised by the other, the baddies. These in turn are governed by evil principles and are always bent upon to destroying the goodies. Like two chemical elements the two types remain themselves whatever the degree of mix and rub. And the Quixote (quixotic person) knows who is who for sure. He therefore must hunt down and exterminate the baddies whatever it takes and re-convert or if impossible kill any deceived by them. Being based on superficial impressions born of simplistic doctrinaire conditioning a quixotic wordview looks like a caricature which is constructed of the exaggerations of the most noticeable features of its object to the exclusion of everything that is good with him. The caricaturist creates his images by exaggerating any slightly prominent elements, like big teeth or curved nose while dwarfing the rest, however handsome, to and innoticeable and irrelevant tail.
AETIOLOGY (causation) and PATHOLOGY OF QUIXOTISM
Some say “life is for living”, meaning that one must take the impressions of life at face value and do his best to steer a safe course of conduct to make most of the opportunities it presents and avoid as much as possible its upsets. Such are called ‘realists’ and provided they have no nasty habits and too great ambitions they are generally well-liked and make up most of the socially upwardly mobile. Why? Because people are weary of and always on the lookout for trouble-makers who may deliver them unexpected shocks. ‘Decent’ realists wisely avoid upsetting others so that they won’t have to fear any consequences of resentment and hostility they caused in anybody. Above all, they cultivate a habit of behaving diplomatically whereby they try to present even the bitterest circumstances in some positive, soothing package of comment or humour. They also talk about good or harmless things in slightly glowing terms so that they go down better with their recipients than they could otherwise go. Their this insistence on projecting and creating optimism pay dividends constantly and as a result, in an attempt to respond in kind people tend to like and help them. As for their philosophy some of these ‘pleasants’ look quite shallow this may be deceptive. The need for a philosophy of life often stems from a sense of confusion and insecurity and such people feel a need to formulate from their imagination a philosophy, a world picture which shall just address these inadequacies. The pleasants have no such sense of inadequacy and therefore need no philosophy to apply as a salve to them. It may be their genetic makeup or else or both. What is important is the fact that some people aren’t too prone to worry and anxiety while others are.
It is to these latter types, the confused and the worrier that philosophies, ideologies and religious faiths appeal irresistibly. But this doesn’t mean that these ‘anxio-neurotics’ are bad people. Some are very decent and humane and often very intelligent and imaginative. What is more the reason for their anxiety, which is often an existential one (not much related to life’s routine problems) which keeps them asking profound questions and begging for truly helpful answers. As morally very sensitive and perceptive souls they are puzzled and saddened by the apparent injustices and sufferings among people and AS IF IT WAS HE WHO HAD CREATED THEM AND RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR WELFARE he tries to imagine and perhaps put in practice measures of all sorts to improve the social conditions. It is from this grade of people that best politicians, teachers and spiritual leaders arise. And The prophets are the top quality souls among these, so good as to be in a class of their own. Prophets’ worrries and anxieties are not so much about themselves but for the humankind in general because they identify with all of them. Very kind people also have something of this quality of universal care and concern. Lastly, not every social or spiritual theoriser is blessed with goodwill and wisdom. There are those who are silly neurotics at the least and dangerous delusional sufferers at their worst. Many modern quixotes among both the secular and religious ideological activists are nearer the latter end they, particularly the Islamic ones, are our concern here.
But to be a nasty person one need not be an idealist, an ideological or religious Quixote. Among the ‘realists’ (non-worriers, non-theorisers and philosophisers) we equally have types capable of committing all grades of evil. Career criminals come from this class as amateur villains do. If they think the opportunity is there they won’t hesitate to cheat, steal, hit, seduce or rape. These make the bad tradesmen, corrupt officials and politicians as well as cruel and unfaithful spouses, parents or children. Lastly the typologies briefly sketched above are only approximate and each and every person may have a varying inheritance from and susceptibility to either type’s behaviour at different times and under different circumstances. We must never forget this. Each can also modify himself to some extent by becoming aware of his any delusions.
Quixotics we may also call the anxio-neurotics or perhaps we may call them the philosophicals or dreamers or all. They are occasionally markedly mentally unstable and often depressed types who can never settle on anything but move from place to place or condition to condition. Some of these fall into the hands of criminals for field work and as expendables as equally as in the hands of cultists or secular ideological groups with conspiratorial and violent bend of mind. In each case they are docile, emotionally dependent and slovenly types who can be persuaded to do almost any silly or criminal thing if cultivated well enough.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE QUIXOTICS
Before we analyse a quixotic person we define the overall picture. He (or she) is a person who develops or adopts ready-made a worldview of which he becomes both intellectually persuaded and to which he becomes emotionally attached, so much so that he may give everything else in his life only a secondary and even non-essential status. But that is not all. He becomes blind and deaf to all evidence and arguments which could break anybody else’s confidence in the worldview in question. Rather than registering and dismissing any criticism he additionally resents the objections and seeks opportunities to punish the objector. It reveals a fundamental inadequacy as regards scientific and philosophical as well as SPIRITUAL ability.
Scientific because a true scientist knows that all scientific theories without exceptions are deductions from LIMITED real or assumed facts. He recognises that many other facts that may have a bearing on the problem often remain unknown. For example the trajectory of a missile can theoretically be calculated from facts like the angle of launch and the acceleration expected from the initial combustion like the amount and kind of the gunpowder used. But once launched the missile has to interact with the medium it is travelling through which may be air, water or oil as well as a gravitational or magnetic or electrostatic field. Because these media may not be regular and/or steady (wind in air, fluctuations in other media etc.) some uncertainties shall always cause some discrepancy between the theoretical trajectory and the actual. Yet, this system of a missile launch is almost nothing in complicatedness compared to a human society which consists of very many individuals, institutions, laws, traditions, beliefs, interests, values etc etc.
When one knowledgeably admits the inevitability of some discrepancy between a theoretical and an actual missile trajectory (the infinitely simpler system), if one is a good scientist, seeing that a human society is almost infinitely more complicated, one realises that a human society cannot be analysed and its mechanisms elucidated and its behaviour predicted with one hundreth the certainty as the missile’s trajectory’s. Yet philosophers like Karl Marx tried to do just that and argued their case with shocking conviction. That is one of the major features of quixotic thinking. They delude themselves and others susceptible with categoric convictions and predictions as if a human society consists of a few mechanical dancing puppets attached to a music box whose the easy knowledge of the simple structure and in-built tunes could enable them to foretell what each limb of each puppet would do at each instant. What is more, equipped with this delusion they advocate revolt, violence and revolution thereby shedding the blood of millions and laying to waste assets and institutions built over many centuries.
As a result of such gross inaccuracy, instead of full democracy (or ‘real’ Islam), if that is their claim, they can only deliver the worst imaginable dictatorship and instead of equality they can only end up with elitism and instead of prosperity they bring about only abject poverty and instead of peace only atrocious rearmament (quixotic regimes spend fortunes on armaments even when their masses are starving- like North Korea). Wars and coups d’etat spread like mushroom in the name of revolution as they did until communism in USSR itself collapsed. Which leads us to the next and related feature: A claim to a willingness and ability to improve the lot of the good guys at the expense of the bad. Having equipped and deluded himself with a necessarily, inevitably grossly inadequate theory (ideology) quixotes are both cocksure and enthusiastic enough to conspire and attack their shepherds and windmills which they may call capitalists, communists, blacks or the paleface, jews or Saracens, all stereotyped, caricaturised and ritually spitted upon. This in turn leads us to the third feature: Dividing the world in his imagination into two irreconcilable and mutually exclusive camps: Good guys who should and shall welcome and follow our Quixote and be his soldiers and the bad guys who has to and shall oppose him, fight him and should be destroyed by him! What is the cause of this personality disorder? That needs a separate paragraph for itself.
When children begin to be aware of themselves and the world around they PROJECT themselves into everything. For example, to quote my childhood experiences, at about four or five I would pity inanimate objects as if they were conscious and feeling and vulnerable beings like myself. So in the winter I would worry about my teddy bear and would make sure it was under the bed covers with me and also worry about, can you imagine, the garden broom and would suggest grandma not to leave the poor fellow out in the cold. When she told me about God I would imagine him as another boy dressed exactly like me, i.e., in a gown reaching the ankles (for that was the leisure dress for little boys then) but as tall as the jujuba tree in our garden, looking down on me and being angry when I did something wrong and smiling at me when mum was happy with me.
We suppose that when we grow older and especially after becoming adults we understand that things are not persons and therefore have no feelings to be hurt and also that other persons are not exactly copies of ourselves but have different needs, preoccupations and abilities. But I believe we cannot entirely break away from our self-projecting condition. And within limits that is what it should be. For projecting ourselves to others (seeing them as our replicas and they partially are) enable us to empathise and sympathise with them and love and care for them. Isn’t that “putting yourself in the other fellow’s shoes” means? The nearer the person to us the more we identify with him. Mothers are especially gifted in this and their love and care about their children, even when they grow up and become many times more powerful than them they mothers still worry about them may interfere in their lives as before. And often this irritates the grownup ‘child’. In the quixotic this projecting himself into the world is far neare the childhood version than the average adult and includes projecting himself to those whom he thinks are like himself (muslim, working class etc.)and regard these the goodies. Into the rest he projects everything he hates about people and these become the baddies. These two imaginary groups make up whole population of the world.
As a result, foe example, a racial quixotic jew only approves and loves other jews in principle (so long one of them doesn’t cross him) and hates all gentiles whatever the merits of each. Similarly a Christian fundamentalist, a radical socialist, a white supremacist … adore their kind and hate the rest like hell. Each has a worldview which is black and white and doomed to a settling of accounts at an Armageddon. The Communist Manifesto jointly published by Marx and Engels in 1848 is, in the name of science, as eschatological as a religion and predicts and incites for a inter-class (proletariat vs bourgeoisie) Armageddon. Because Marx, a disorganised intellectual giant but also a social failure lacked in wisdom like all misfits and in his frustration with life had to champion a quixotic worldview to feel good. Many too intellectual or too romantic people are frustrated by life. For his part Marx felt that he could use his intellectual powers and sky-high ambition and emotional ammunition to blast that society he hated to dust and replace it with its opposite as he saw it- an utterly egalitarian one, egalitarian to an absurd and therefore impossible degree. When his convictions spread like an epidemic among similarly minded, i.e., socio-economical quixotics it could snowball into a flood of revolutionary anger and fervour until Russia was forcibly conquered and converted by it with disastrous consequences even for many communists themselves. Within two decades most of the revolutions heroes died accused of bourgeois crimes during the rule of Stalin who had also played cat and mouse with Lenin when the latter had lost his health too badly to defend himself.
All these features of quixotism are underlain by a single neurosis- existential anxiety! All uncertainties of life and death which are faced stoically by the majority of people affect and wound the future quixote deeply and sends him searching for answers and solutions. Once he comes up with or is given a reassuring and comforting explanation of life he tries to live avvording to its discovered rules to perfection. If he is a practicing muslim he will be obsessed with ritual precision no matter how much inconvenience and irritation he may cause to others and perhaps to himself as well. All these are symptoms of neurosis and in serious cases they may ruin lives for no good reason or even cause them to reverse direction and be an apostate instead. The Prophet sws was very angry with such neurotics and advised them to take things easy, for all mental illnesses unless it is a psychosis can be moderated by good advice and some will power. Even psychoses may be influenced positively to a certain extent. A psychotic may respond to, even if temporarily, a sympathetic and tactful adviser more than a hostile or indifferent one.
For example the Prophet (sws) criticised those who ran to reach the mosque in order not to miss the beginning of a prayer. Although motivated by a wish to earn more merit by virtue of missing no part of the prayer it was wrong to endanger himself and others by running like a wild ass in the streets or inside the mosque. He said “Walk normally and catch up where you can”. Some others worried about whether they did or missed something in their rituals and checked and/or repeated the ritual. To them the Prophet said “If you don’t have definite proof to the contrary just assume that you did everything right” he said. Based on this hadith the ulama ruled “suspicion does not invalidate certainty” which means, as an example, in the case one remembering that he took a bath intending to wash his whole body a subsequent suspicion that he might have not washed his left arm the suspicion should be ignored. In all things the Prophet valued moderation and hated fuss and hardship and perfectionism and advised calm and ease (and fundamentalists are the opposite). Why? Because as a supreme born psychologist he knew that most troubles are caused by neurotic attitudes and behaviours. After him, many extremist sects were founded by narrow-minded, anxiety-ridden neurotics like the Kharijites who were never satisfied with anybody’s piety except theirs and killed many muslims with incredible savagery, including saints like Ali, driven as they were by their quixotic zeal. Only THEY the Kharijites were real believers and real muslims, the good guys and all others professing Islam and practicing it were unmitigated infidels shedding whose blood was a sacred duty. LIKE DON QUIXOTE, who under the spell of his medieval chivalric delusion confused a herd of innocent sheep with a host of demons and speared them to death quixotic believers and ideologues see themselves as knights of God and others as devils and destroying those devils without mercy as top moral duty.