Islam, we are reminded, is the fastest growing religion in the world. This is mainly, as outlined by Pew Media Research, due to the fact that many young Muslims, in comparison to young Christians, have higher fertility rates, but also due to other social factors such as the threats of death for having renounced or leaving the faith of Islam. We're told that to criticise the world's fastest growing faith is a 'fear', a 'phobia' one might say, and thinking about the doctrines of Islam and the tenants by which it stands on, could even brand you a 'racist' for having opposed it. The trick here is to attempt to distinguish Muslims from Islam, which is not always easy for obvious reasons.
Muslims cannot be disconnected from Islam any more than Jews can be from Judaism or Catholics from Catholicism. They are an integral part of the evolution and development of their faith. In a contemporary sense, apologists for the faith will often tie in Muslims and substitute the word for Islam, rather than consider that Islam, just as any religion, is a series of connected ideas, thoughts and faith. In a sense, it's an ideology, much like liberalism, Marxism or post-modernism. Islam has its own set of standards and rules, which are designed to ensure the natural order of things, and of course, such doctrines are displayed in its own manifesto of sorts: the Qur'an. The Qur'an is easy enough to understand, as Muslims generally learn Arabic from an early age, unlike the Bible which was initially made difficult to understand. When it was written in Hebrew, then translated to Aramaic and later Greek, the Bible was the folly of the Roman Empire. Upon Constantine's conversion to Christianity and mass emancipation of Christians in the Byzantine Empire, the Bible was deliberately translated into Latin so only the most successful and powerful within the remnants of the Roman Empire could understand it. The Qur'an spread as a means of divine fate following the death of the Prophet Muhammad, after the establishment of the Rashidun Caliphate. The spread of Islam, mostly at the threat of a sword, soon reduced the power of the Byzantine Empire and soon areas of the Roman Empire. The fall of Rome in 476 saw many of the lands once ruled become free-for-all grabs, and the establishing Caliphates soon conquered large parts of what they could get their hands on. What followed had been forced conversions, establishment of new schools and a religion that had spread like no other until Constantine.
The Byzantine Empire would still exist for another millennium even after the spread of Islam took over. The Caliphates had one thing that they could use: the Silk Roads to China and the spice trades through India. The spread of Islam had gone from areas such as Medina and Mecca in modern day Saudi Arabia from its most easterly point in Pakistan to the western points of Moorish Spain. The Byzantines had their own diplomatic, religious and economic enemies on their doorstep, and unlike the expanding Islamic empires, the Byzantine Empire was soon seeing its own problems in dealing with different people groups. Rome had the same problem, hence its sacking by Barbarian tribes. The Holy Roman Empire, still the remains of what had been the glorious Roman Empire, had its own tribulations, but that was mostly between the two people in control: the established Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope. The Islamic empires had only the caliphs to answer to. What came to be in the 8th century was the establishment of the Islamic Golden Age: an era of challenge, arts, science, mathematics and literature that can only be rivalled as a great period of intellectual thought by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. What is more is that both these periods had been preceded by this age of glorious thinking, reimagining and redesigning intellectual challenge that helped cement the Islamic world. During the early days of the Caliphates, Islam had to deal with a challenge that had befallen the Roman Empire: the art of dealing with many differing people groups. More specifically, how could the Islamic empires deal with the issue of the Jews of Europe? European Jews had been persecuted heavily in Europe, kicked out of Judea some seven-hundred years earlier by the Romans and the land renamed Syria Palestina to remove any Jewish connection to it. Muslims came in, turning the land as commanded in the Qur'an into a city of their own: contrary to popular belief, a place where Jewish movement was heavily restricted and many temples had been ransacked and new places of worship for them were built on top of important Jewish holy sites. Following the destruction of Solomon and Herod the Great's temples by the Romans and Babylonians by 70AD, the incoming Muslim conquerors established the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the eighth century on top of Temple Mount. Whilst European Jews had initially fled from Christian lands to avoid persecution to the new Islamic Caliphates, particularly in Spain, Jews were guaranteed protection, but were treated as inferior by their new rulers. The 1066 Granada Massacre, expulsion of Jews in Morocco in the twelfth century, and the Fez Massacre of 1465 are perhaps the most famous examples of these and how Islam started to become an authoritarian, almost savage institution.
For the past five centuries, nothing of importance has been written in the Arabic language. Islam itself, whilst growing in numbers, has started to die a long and painful death that did not just simply begin with the insurgence of modern Islamic fundamentalism, but has been an integral part of its survival and its DNA. Why Islam has survived and its leaders have not fallen as quickly as that of the Roman, Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires is that it has simply taken out the competition. Rome couldn't deal with the expansion of its lands, particularly as better fighters were able to conquer and take over. The Byzantine Empire could not defend itself and the Holy Roman Empire fell under its own disorganisation and because of how Napoleon could expose its own weaknesses. Islam has adapted to become more ruthless and tactile in order to survive. In the turn of the twentieth century, political Islam began to take hold. The Ottoman Empire found itself conquering the Byzantine Empire, taking over Constantinople in 1453, forcing the Orthodox Church into submission, defeating the Holy Roman Empire and controlling much of the Balkans. By the Crimean War (1853-56), the Ottoman Empire was in decline and Russian territories were fighting back against it. Women were roundly raped by the Ottoman forces and censorship of the press was regular in order to keep the Islamic ideals of the Empire alive. With Christians overtaking in the Balkan regions, the Ottoman's would eventually come to see what had happened in Rome: dealing with other peoples would see the end of a glorious empire. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Romania pulled away and declared their independence. The Armenian Genocide of 1915 is still widely unrecognised in Turkic spheres of influence, a testament of shame and showing the true nature of totalitarianism within Islamic doctrine and its distain for Christians. In the Middle East, pogroms against Jews were regular before and after the turn of the twentieth century as Islam was facing a new challenge: Zionism. By the mid-nineteenth century, Zionist Jewish organisations cropped up over Europe, with one of its main spokespeople in Theodore Herzl believing that Jews themselves had no place in Europe and the great destiny of the Jewish people was to return to the Holy Land and establish a new Jewish state there. The challenge of Zionism is that it was a challenge to Islam, which believed that in its conquering of North Africa and the Middle East that it was the only religion that had the right to survive and thrive there. In the late nineteenth century alone, there had been riots and pogroms against Jews by Muslims in Aleppo (1850, 1875), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Beirut (1862, 1874), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), Jaffa (1876), Jerusalem (1847, 1870 and 1895), Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901-02), Mansura (1877), Alexandria (1870, 1882, 1901-07), Port Said (1903, 1908) and Damanhur (1971, 1873, 1877, 1891). This all came before the mostly ignored Hebron and Safed pogroms of 1929 and the Farhud of 1941 in Iraq. The latter three came in response to the proposal of a Jewish state in the Middle East: the Jews of the region needed to be punished in the most notorious of ways. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, an influential leader within the Islamic faith, had made a pact with Hitler ensuring that Jews in the region would be handed over to the Nazis or even massacred in their own lands. Bosnian Muslim soldiers were trained by the SS. Islam was in open ideology with the Nazis. Antisemitism, open extremism and censorship skyrocketed under Islamic rule once Israel could not be defeated in 1948 and after the Six Day (1968) and Yom Kippur (1973) Wars. For Islamic leaders, these defeats were an embarrassment and has caused much frustration across the Islamic world, so much so that it has spilt over to Muslims living outside of those lands.
Martyrdom and extremism have never been modern concepts, nor have they been exclusive just to Islam. Take the likes of Joan of Arc and Thomas More, who went with grace and decorum in the name of their faith: as Christian martyrs, they are beatified and celebrated by the Catholic Church. They were described as heretics by their opponents. Christian and even Jewish extremists do exist: take the likes of Meir Kahane, Anders Breivik or the Ku Klux Klan as classic examples of these. Islamic fundamentalism in tactics are much different to that of lone killers. The KKK and the Islamic State are very similar in ideology and in tactics; show a Klansman the doctrines of Islam and read Qur'anic quotes and say their about white people and they would support it. The Islamic State is well organised, working on suing modern technology in order to spread the ideology in a way that they could never do in Medieval Islamic times. The new Caliphate in Iraq and the Levant is ideologically similar to that of the old Caliphates which had been celebrated and are still held up as glorious examples of the successes of Islam in the world. The old Caliphates destroyed monuments of their enemies, and the Islamic State (or ISIS), has done the same. The difference is with social media, we can see the true horrors of Islamic doctrine on camera, through propaganda videos and live executions. The murder of Daniel Pearl (2002) by insurgents in Pakistan, the September 11th attacks and various beheadings carried out by the likes of Al-Qaeda and ISIS have helped shift public opinion on whether Islam is compatible with Western civilisation. The uncomfortable truth is that it is not.
Whilst the West has started to modernise in a world where traditional and even Judeo-Christian values have started to become diluted, Islam has remained in its own fifteenth century values and mindset. It is important for religions to hold onto their values and traditions, but for religions to survive, they must also adapt. The creation of the Church of England by Henry VIII shows this, the reformation by the Catholic Church also shows this. Islam, as controversial as it might hear, has not moved on since the days of the Caliphates. What is worse is that it can never move on from those days. Islam has many enemies, from Zionism to a more liberal 'prostituted' Western system, but its greatest enemy is that of freedom of speech. Islamic apologist Medhi Hassan once described Indonesia as being a good example of a country that is both 'Muslim and a democracy', though according to the Economic Intelligence Unit, it is only that of a 'flawed democracy' at best. The Joko Widodo administration roundly imprisons political opponents, though it has slowed down. Questioning Islam could land one up to five years in prison, and over the internet to spread information could be a further six years. Homosexual intercourse is forbidden and torture is used against LGBT citizens. Apostasy is still a crime in the Indonesian constitution and carries a capital offence. The state supported the issued fatwa on Salman Rushdie. It is a special kind of 'Islamic democracy', on might say, but one that cannot form itself into Western identity. Not that values of the west should be forced upon people as you cannot make people assimilate into values by which they are not used to. That is why Islamic terrorists use tactics that would otherwise make others submit to their understanding. September 11th was the first televised example of this, but this was specifically attack against America and its growing influence in Middle Eastern geopolitics: attacks on freedom of speech specifically would soon form. In Denmark, I had witnessed first hand the tide of Islam changing with the Muhammad cartoon fiasco (the Muhammedkrisen we called it) in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The riots and violence exhibited by Muslims for the depictions of the prophet led to some 250 deaths across the world and violence against Danes and their embassies changed the narrative on the compatibility with Islam and freedom of speech. The Charlie Hebdo massacre of 2015 also exhibited these same traits. People did not share #JeSuisCharlie as an act of 'racism' as some like antisemite George Galloway had suggested, but rather as a solidarity and expression of freedom of speech. Charlie Hebdo, contrary to popular belief, did publish cartoons depicting Jews and Christians in the most vulgar of manner, but it did not lead to the consequences that we saw in 2015 and most recently with the murder of Samuel Paty. Moderate Muslims have also, whilst not glorifying the violence necessarily, come in the defence of censorship and even going so far as to boycott France as the French people are beheaded and slaughtered by radical Islamists, as if to say that they had brought it on themselves. Whilst Emmanuel Macron has been a flawed leader in so many ways, his defence of French values of liberty and fraternity have been reiterated by his strong stance on this, unlike his predecessor Francois Hollande.
So, where do we go from here on this? Should freedom of expression be substituted for a life of pandering and fear? The honest answer is no: so long as you are a Westerner with a working mind and a love for either Judeo-Christian values or liberal ideas, then you are a target for Islamists. It is not what you represent but who you are. Freedom of speech is what has made Europe what it is today, which tried to rid itself of its own shackles of Christian authority for centuries. One must always draw the line as narrowly as possible. Pope Francis even once said that in cases like these, religion has a certain privilege over others, which is nonsense. Even speaking as a religious man myself, it is absurd to believe that just because you believe strongly in something means that nobody must challenge you. That is what Islam has become, and unfortunately is a stain of what it once was and what could have been. Islam needs its own reformation and a glorious renaissance that can take it forward, and it will need it soon, just like Christianity, if it wants to survive, otherwise the life support will soon by removed by something far more powerful than it.
References
https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20150429153811/http://www.pewforum.org/files/2015/03/PF_15.04.02_ProjectionsFullReport.pdf
Ruggerio, Guido. A Companion To The Worlds of the Renaissance.
Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.
Beard, Mary. Rome In The Late Republic.
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1941-pogrom-sends-iraq-s-jews-fleeing-1.5272284
Levin, Iatmar. Locked Doors: The Seizure of Jewish Property in Arab Countries.
Bashkin, Orit. New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbN_ii-I8GY
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