The monotheistic message has produced at least three spiritual/anti-materialistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The fundamental purpose of any spiritual message is to guide human souls on a path to follow in order to attain ascendancy from this mundane world to the higher one of ‘everlasting life’. Here comes the paradox, where material human brains can only deal with worldly selfish thinking that only seeks to take and the spiritual message whose nature is anti-materialistic that can only be comprehended and heeded by noble selfless thinking solely inclined to give.
Therefore, human minds either willingly accept to be transformed from their materialistic nature into a spiritual mode, thereby augmenting the gift of giving, or that the spiritual message is altered by materialistic minds and narrow aims into a self-serving — not God-serving — direction that solely benefits the interests of the group that fabricates it.
Self-concocted creeds are most of the time, if not always, controlled by self-serving fundamentalists who declare themselves “the true guardians” of “the true faith”, while blaspheming all others who differ in their beliefs. Their followers blindly observe the diktats of such self-appointed fundamentalist leaders because they gave up their free will and ability to think independently. Thus, they became imprisoned within a ’herd mentality’. Religious extremism is the very root cause of the takfiri (those who accuse others of apostasy) militant doctrine that seeks to eradicate all other beliefs that stand in its way.
Now and again, Jewish self-created religious fundamentalism is trying to bring into being a material “Jewish state” in Palestine, contrary to the spiritual message of the Torah which defines “the state of Israel” as the spiritual state of the Prophet Israel who used to be known as Jacob. The first four letters, i.e. ‘Isra’, means in Hebrew and Arabic “walking in the night of this world”, while the remaining letters ‘el’ mean ‘the Lord’. In other words, it is a mental migration to a higher spiritual state of mind and definitely not to Palestine. So, are we witnessing a Zionist project trying to repeat the catastrophe of 70 A.D. with a policy to attain the full Judaisation of all historical Palestine?
The first thing Christian fundamentalists did on their way to Jerusalem was the pillage of the “Jewel of Christendom, Constantinople”, robbing and depriving it of its wealth and treasures that were shipped to Europe. During the so-called liberation of Jerusalem, a commander asked a priest what to do to avoid killing Christians whose attire was exactly like that of the Muslims? The priest replied with what became a famous quote: “Kill them all, God will sort His own.” Another similar brand of the fundamentalists established in the past the “Courts of Inquisition”, which sentenced thousands upon thousands of Christians to be burned alive “in the Name of God”.
The holy Quran addressed Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) with the words: “You are not to be a priest”, for no Muslim in Islam has the religious authority to judge the faith of another human being because such a judgement in Islam belongs exclusively to God, the Most High, who alone shall judge all on the “Day of Judgement”. The sole right in Islam to judge whether a person is faithful or a blasphemer belongs to God only and whoever claims religious authority blaspheming others will fall in the trap of Shirk (to associate partners with God).
The first takfiri group in early Islam was known as the outsiders or Al Khawarej. They sowed inner conflicts among Muslims and shed much blood, also, in “the Name of God”. According to Sahih Bukhari’s record of Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) sayings and teachings, in the collection called Prophet of Islam (PBUH), had predicted the advent of takfiris in this quote: “There would arise people, who would recite the Quran, but it would not go beyond their throat, they would kill without any mercy the followers of Islam.”
Using military means only to eradicate the toxic waste of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and its mother group Al Qaida will not do the job. Other means should be employed (that will be tackled in a coming article) to augment the military campaigns, while working to establish political reforms and bringing about cultural and socio-economic changes to eliminate their poisonous threat to Arab societies.
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
