Islamic Doctrine - Tawhid and Fitra

In this series of essays I will cover major aspects of Islamic doctrine as they affect the West, and in a rough order of importance.  While these doctrines are part of core Islamic beliefs, not every Muslim adheres to them.  But pious ones do, and it is they who have maintained the spirit of Islam for fourteen centuries and will carry it on into the far distant future.  The less pious are aware of their position in the pecking order of true belief and will respect those who are more pious.  This has far-reaching consequences which I will come to later.

First a couple of definitions.

• Islam means submission to the will of Allah.  It doesn’t mean ‘peace’ even though they share the same root.  Peace is obtained when everyone on earth submits to the will of Allah.  In practical terms the nearest anyone gets to this is in the cemetery.
• A Muslim is one who submits to the will of Allah.

On this occasion I discuss the doctrine of the greatest importance to Islam itself, tawhid and its related concept of fitra.

Loosely translated, tawhid means ‘monotheism’ but this initially related to Islam’s contrast with religions prevalent at the time of Muhammad, which were for the most part polytheistic – still a target of Muslims’ invective in relation to Hinduism.  Conceptually it means the ‘oneness’ of Islam’s absolute and uncompromisingly indivisible monotheism, a single divine authority over man.  This God actively creates, maintains and destroys, existing as a ‘master-truth’ rather than a belief.  It is truth, immanent, universal and inescapable, that transcends the world. 

Because tawhid is universal, everyone, without exception, is born into it in a state of what is known as ‘fitra’, the innate inclination towards the pure state of tawhid. As the former Cat Stevens, quoting Muhammad, says, “Every child is born with an original, pure nature. It is only his parents who make him a Christian or a Jew.”  So when people convert to Islam, they are considered to be ‘reverting’ to their original state of fitra.  The way to Islam is thus depicted as natural, almost obvious, rather than rebellious or exotic.

Apostasy is accordingly regarded as a fundamental attack on reality which must be suppressed at any cost.  That, in itself, is one of Islam’s strengths.  As influential cleric Yusuf Qaradawi says, "If the penalty for apostasy was ignored, there would not be an Islam today; Islam would have ended on the death of the prophet."

Above all, tawhid is what Muslims not so much believe in, as know.  It is what motivates their desire to proselytise and dominate.  Compared with Western culture’s ability to maintain several world views in balance and resolve them by democratic means, Islam’s appears monomaniacal and tyrannical.  

My next essay will cover Islam’s ‘essentialism’ and why, 1400 years later, it hasn’t moved an inch.

 

Entering the Era of Epochal Transition

Entering the Era of Epochal Transition

SUMMARY

Over the past four decades Islam has made great strides in becoming a major religion in the West.  But Islam’s rigid 7^th century rule-bound moral system means that Western nations’ adaptation to it will result in the same endless strife we see currently in the Islamic world.

COMMENTARY

Twenty years ago I became aware that Islam was making a bid to become the dominant controlling force in Europe.  This was partly because of the amount of money Saudi Arabia was pushing into mosques and universities across its western states, and partly because European culture was being actively repudiated by Europeans themselves.  At the beginning of this year I realised that Islam had succeeded in its first goal, the conquest of Europe.  The conquest now enters a new and prolonged stage, converting Europe to the Islamic way of thinking and notwithstanding its abject failure elsewhere, it will succeed.  Indeed, I predict that the current migration process will bring forward the Islamisation of some states, Germany for certain, by one full generation, no later than 2075, and others, France, Britain, Sweden in particular by 2100.

By Islamisation, I mean that governmental, social, educational, financial and legal processes follow rules set down by Islam’s prophet Muhammad in the early 7^th century.  Democratic rule will be subject to a higher authority, that of Allah as determined by a fiqh council - a supra-national body defining how citizens live under sharia, Islam’s legal process.

Mainstream media’s presentation of Islam as a morally and culturally miscible religion like any other has been instrumental in its acceptance in all Western countries.  Coupled with energetic proselytising and its public voices and displays, Islam’s process of normalisation in the West is highly successful.  Yet it fails dismally in its home states on every civilisational indicator, which is causing Muslims’ rush to the West.  But they bring with them the same toxic ideology that is destroying the countries they are fleeing.  It is causing violent fissures across civilisation’s most successful states that will lead to their downfall. 

Islam makes no secret of its goal.  It wants global hegemonic control where all people submit to the will of Allah and follow the law of sharia. 

Not only does mainstream media and those with a public voice not understand this or the danger it presents, it is not possible to get the message across to them.  None carry information about Islam and its differences from the West’s Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman heritage after it sloughed off Christianity’s suffocating strictures during the Enlightenment era.  None give explanations about Muslims’ dress code, their honour and shame culture, their workplace demands, why they produce the world’s most violent terrorists ever, moral asymmetry, why Islam’s critics get death threats or are branded as ‘racists’, and so many more puzzling issues.

In my small way I would like to correct this.  Over the next few weeks I will publish essays on Islamic doctrine as it affects the West.  They will present key elements of belief which form the ‘moderate Muslim’s’ world view.  They will explain what is happening, and what will happen over the next century, to the West’s moral character as it enters the epoch of Islam’s global dominance.  It is a scenario as disturbing as it is predictable.

Then, as befits the beginning of a new era, I will shift my attention from the easily understood causes of Islam’s conquest to the much, much more difficult task of understanding why the West chose to lose to Islam.

Please check back regularly either here or through links on my Facebook page.