Supersessionism refers
to the belief which sees Islam as superseding all previous divine revelation
but, unlike Christianity, which canonized the Old Testament embedding long
centuries of pre-Christian history into the Christian narrative, Islam freely
erases history itself. Islamic
supersession can be understood in two senses, as replacement and as erasure.
Going forward, Islam will supplant all other faiths. But Islam also controls
the time before the birth of Muhammad; it claims to have pre-existed all other
faiths (see my earlier reference to tawhid)
with the Koran as the final religious authority meaning any religious doctrine
before or after is a false message. Because
Islam has always existed, all children are born Muslim even though their
parents may rear them in another faith. The
claim that Islam has always existed effectively erases all that went before
Muhammad. The notion that Islam is the final, true faith, divinely ordained to
rule everywhere, has driven Islamic imperialism for 1,400 years. Islam owns and at the same time puts an end
to supersessionism by claiming that Muhammad is the last and final prophet.
Supersessionist erasure can also be enacted on the
landscape. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was superseded by the erection of the
Dome of the Rock, bolstered by the myth of Muhammad's "Night Journey"
to Jerusalem. This erased the
pre-Islamic history of the temple and, with it, all Christian and Jewish
claims. The great cathedral of St.
Sophia in Constantinople, originally built in 360, was converted into a mosque
by Sultan Mehmet II in 1453, the same year the thousand-year Christian
Byzantine Empire fell. As Christianity
declines in Europe even now, many churches, even synagogues, are converted into
mosques.
Sometimes the erasure is permanent causing irretrievable loss
to civilisation. Wikipedia’s entry on iconoclasm
shows a significant decline in non-Islamic events since the early 16th
century, with Christian attacks on South Korean Buddhist temples over the last
decade being the only modern religious examples. Islam’s policy of imposing its views on members
and artefacts of other religions has led to incidents throughout the centuries
to the present day with no let-up. The Buddhas
of Bamiyan stood in Afghanistan for 15 centuries before the Taliban destroyed
them in 2001, New York’s Twin Towers spectacularly demolished a few months
later, Ansar Dine’s destruction of Mali’s ancient Sufi shrines and theft of documents
in 2012, and Islamic State’s destruction of the two-millennia-old temples and
statues in the Syrian city of Palmyra this year attest to Islam’s contempt for anything
that does not comply with its acolytes’ rigid and imperialist beliefs. God’s will validates destruction to enable
the creation of the Islamic caliphate.
Once conquered, Islam considers that its lands must forever
remain under Muslim domination, the concept of waqf, Arabic for an inalienable religious endowment. This is the root cause of the Israeli
conflict; it is why Spain and Portugal are a predominant target for reconquest;
and it is why Greece and the Balkan States, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia are
first in line for Islamic State’s plans for 2020. The success of Islam’s conquests is seen as
divine favour; any losses a failure to be rectified with invincible urgency.
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