I. Global Background

A survey of the human history will reveal a real tendency to change and will reveal also that the change takes generally a course opposed to the previous one. It rarely takes a middle course. This change in the opposite direction is in obedience to one of the main categories of the human mind, namely thinking in opposites. For instance, human society has never been able to rid itself of the conflict between these main pairs of opposites: believer and unbeliever, strong and weak, rich and poor, master and slave. Starting from the Middle Ages, the division was for the most part between believer and unbeliever. Later, the division was between master and slave, especially during the period of colonialism. Then followed a period of rich and poor, and finally between strong and weak. In religion, as in Judaism, the division took the form of ‘Chosen’ and ‘Gentile’, and this division continued to dominate human thinking throughout the ages, till now, and those who are ‘Chosen’ are also rich, masters and mighty. This is what is taking place now, in the twentieth and the twenty first centuries. The implication here is that the Jews who are ‘Chosen’ should be also rich, masters and mighty, or divide the world into rich and poor, into masters and slaves, and strong and weak. How this came to happen is a very interesting question. But the reader should look round to see the truth in the present world situation. There are nations which are mighty and others which are weak, nations which are rich and others which are poor, and nations which are masters and others which are slaves, under the modern neo-colonialism.

But a rich nation will always want to be richer and richer and to have beside it nations which will have to be poorer and poorer. Similarly, a powerful nation would want to be stronger and stronger and to have beside it nations which will have to be weaker and weaker. A rich man will not feel that he is rich unless there is poverty, and a strong man cannot feel that he is strong unless there are weak men. Therefore, poverty is essential for wealth, and slavery is essential for dictatorship and imperialism.

In the West, people were not interested in becoming rich all the time up to perhaps the 16th century, after the colonial period. But when money came to be used in the market, especially after World War I, then there were rich nations and of course poor ones. There were already strong nations and weak ones and this development created lust for money first and for power. The two forces joined hands and shaped the course of events as we see it today.

This development must have roots or a root. The first root is money, and this gave rise to capital, and capital needed power to protect it. Therefore, money is the root of the whole trouble and of the arms race. Equality among nations is, in this cutthroat competition for power and wealth, is unthinkable. Wars have become inevitable and more devastating.

If we agree that money is the root of the evil, we must find out how the West came to submit to its influence against the strictures of Christianity. Was it the Jews who taught the Christian nations the use of money? The Jews were the only section of the population in Western Europe which used money in trade, and in moneylending, and it is not strange for the Christians to learn from them the use of money. Colonialism may have been answerable because the colonial peoples were ‘Gentiles’ and, as such, they deserved to be fit for colonisation, according to the doctrine of ‘Chosenness’. The circle is now complete, with colonialism and subsequently money. Imperialism came into being followed by capitalism.

The Christians in worldly matters became Judeo-Christian. The Roman Catholic Church in Rome was established by Peter, a Jew, and in the fifth century at the Council of Tangiers the Old Testament, the Jewish holy book, was added to the New Testament, the Christian holy book, and the two scriptures formed the Bible, which was considered to be the sacred book of Christianity. Thus, when Christians in the 10th century claimed that they were the Chosen people and not the Jews they became Judeo-Christians, and when they imitated the Jews in worldly matters, such as trade, acquisition of money, and colonialism, they confirmed the appellation and since then Christians, in actual fact, ceased to be truly Christians. The Jews, as a result, were freed from the stigma of avarice, or moneymaking. The Jews were emancipated and they entered the race to come out top. They did not indulge in colonialism or industry but concentrated on the business of  moneymaking  which  earned them a special status and they managed to leave the Judeo-Christians well behind. Having attained this prestigious status, they turned their attention to mass media to use it for brainwashing. They controlled the press, radio, television, film industry and publishing. Through money and brainwashing they succeeded in getting what they wanted. In the meantime, they were preparing themselves for a major demand; self-determination in a Jewish home. They got that on a plate. The Balfour promise was made, and a mandate was assigned to Britain for the specific purpose of facilitating the establishment of the Jewish national home and of the Jewish State just as the Jews had demanded.

Now, with the state having been established by force of arms, the state will have to be armed to the teeth to be able to have the prey for itself alone. In consequence, wars were waged against the Arabs for this purpose and for forcing them to acquiesce in the fait accomplit. Everything was done as the Jews had wanted. But what about the United Nations resolutions about the Palestinian refugees, the establishment of a Palestinian state parallel to the Jewish state, the Palestinian land stolen by Israel, and the Arab territory around Israel occupied by Israel? The pertinent resolutions of the Security Council were flouted by Israel with the connivance of the Judeo-Christian powers in Europe and with the actual support militarily and financially of the Judeo-Christian major powers, and the United States, in addition to the use of veto in the Security Council to block the passing of any just resolution favourable to the Palestinian Arabs. The world seemed to be hypnotized and indifferent to the fate of the Palestinians.

This consistency in supporting Israel, the conqueror, and ignoring the injustice done to the Arabs, is not to be surprised at. The Judeo-Christian powers were also conquerors of lands and countries not their own, of downtreading the indigenous peoples, of despoiling them of their possessions, of expelling them or exterminating them. These acts are heinous crimes, and what Israel did and is still doing in Palestine to the Palestinians in the twentieth and twenty first centuries is no less heinous. But in the eyes of the fellow criminals, a crime of this sort is pardonable nay legitimate. But where is justice?

The Israelis take it for granted that what the Palestinians are receiving at their hands is justified because they are Gentiles, and as Gentiles, their portion in life is to be inferior. This is what the doctrine of Choseness implies. The Judeo-Christian powers in the West were aware of that when they supported the Jews to steal Palestine from its owners. The support was deliberate and on the same religious grounds.

The Palestinians on these religious grounds are treated as sub-humans. The Israelis go further than that and try to use the Palestinians and the Arabs as guardians over the pillage and if they refuse, they are punished. The Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese are being punished for that. How could they be asked to stand guard over the goods stolen from them? This also is connived at by the Judeo-Christian powers in the West. A fair-minded fellow would wonder: Is there an implicit unholy alliance among these powers?

The powers have not moved a finger to redress the gross inequity done to the Palestinians. The genocide campaign waged against the Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, and now in Macedonia and India is significant, and the refusal to grant self-determination to the Kosovars, the Kashmiris in India, the Chechens in the Caucasus, the Muslims in the Phillipines, the Turks in Cyprus and the Palestinians tells a relevant story. There is, of course, prejudice basically religious and of old origin. Lately and particularly since the rise of Israel, Muslims are accused of being terrorists, and therefore Arab and Muslim states are attacked from time to time by Israel and also by the U.S.A and Britain, and sanctions are imposed on them. Iraq, for instance, is being subjected to international sanctions and air strikes, after the devastating Gulf War waged in 1991, as a retribution for the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, an Arab neighbouring state, and for the alleged Iraqi possession of mass destruction weapons. One can understand the justice of sanctions against any state without exception for the same reason, but one cannot understand why Iraq should be singled out for this harsh punishment and Israel should get scot-free. This double standard in international behaviour needs a sufficiently convincing explanation(*).

Another serious aspect of the international situation is lack of consideration for the poor and the weak. The Western civilization seems to be founded on wealth and power for domination. Moneymaking is uppermost. Technology is a help in this direction, like nuclear weapons. All are for serving this selfish purpose. If we agree about that, we inevitably come to the conclusion that the world is heading for a course fraught with perils.

I.1 The origin of the present state

of affairs in the world

The world as it is now, appears to be drifting in a rush to nowhere. But in this drift there is a system and there are motives which may be discerned through this turbulence. Let us  take the  last  century  for a field of our investigation. It appears to be more representative of the panorama to be surveyed. I shall take my way through, beginning with the systems. The twentieth century, especially in the West, gives the impression of being an epoch of disintegration and rapid change. Everyone seemed to have been dissatisfied with the situation everywhere. There was also a sense of discrimination, with peoples being looked upon in a discriminatory spirit, along national, racial and religious lines. Everybody  was  superior to everybody else, and everybody tried to profit by being more powerful in arms or in wealth. This rivalry resolved itself into rivalry in money-making and  rivalry in military power to  protect  the  money  gained. Finally, love of money was first, and military power was second, but in time the two were welded together. In consequence, the world was divided into poor and rich and into weak and strong. Egalitarianism, humanism, socialism, the welfare state and intellectualism with morality were thrown overboard. Now what matters is money and power, but money first. Money became the idol and power became the worshipper. On this basis there was discrimination and nations came to be classified into something like ‘Chosen’ and ‘Gentiles’ and a nation to be ‘Chosen’ must be supremely strong militarily and supremely wealthy, like the United States, which is now the cock of the walk. Another major division in the world is looming in the distance, between the United States and its satellites on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand through globalisation, based on amassing wealth and mass destruction weapons.

This world panorama reveals divisiveness and discrimination. But divisiveness is discrimination, and discrimination is enshrined in the doctrine of Choseness which was adopted by the Christians in the West in the 10th century. And if we add to this doctrine lust for money, one may glimpse some influence in both attitudes and may find it plausible that this influence is behind the whole transformation that has taken place in the West, so much so that the Christians in the West are no longer Christian but Judeo-Christian, especially after engaging in colonialism, with the natives as the Lilliputians and the colonisers as the Brobdingnagians.

If this conclusion is valid and if globalisation is a corollary of it, then the doctrine of Choseness in the West may be deemed responsible for the emergence of the current situation in the West or in the World, and in consequence, the Judeo-Christians have no option but to toe the line.

But the cult of money, developed in Europe for defence, became at the end of World War I the order of the day for the West and for the whole world later. Power through money was an innovation. It was not Christian nor was it Islamic. Money became the Eldorado for everyone and the pursuit of money led to the industrial revolution and is now the mainstay of the Western civilization.

The use of the words West and Western is to distinguish West Europe, the birthplace of Western civilization, from East Europe and from the East as a whole. It appears that East and West have each a radical set of characteristics which are different from the other set. For instance, East Europe is ethnically different from West Europe, and has been at variance with the West in the Christian creed, and in having a church of its own. The Jews turned out to be more influential in the West than in the East and had a wider scope for action and for making congenial changes to suit their purpose. The East did not engage in colonialism and slavery. Capitalism grew first in the West. Lust for money was an exclusive distinctive attribute of the West.

These differences and others may shed some light on the opinion mentioned above that lust for money is the mainstay of the present Western civilization. Perhaps, the deviant course taken by the West and the trend by the United States towards globalization may be natural and evolutionary. They may not be condemned or praised and cannot be attributed to the influence of a single people or a single religion. They must be therefore matters of course.

This may be the case. But one should bear in mind that the course in this evolutionary process has side effects which are pernicious to the great majority of the human race and beneficial only to a small minority or to one single power in its aim to rule the world as a dictator. If that is the outcome of the present trend then all that has been written by historians about the goal of human history is fiddlesticks. Also, globalization and lust for money are bound to create a situation in the world, in which there will be masses of human beings dying of starvation and masses of slaves crying for mercy. This will be a cruel type of sadism. What philosophy, and what religion could sanction such a course with such horrendous results! There must be an about-face, and the protagonist of this inhuman trend, whether religious or secular, must be outlawed to make them change course. But the persistent question in this context always comes to mind. Could this trend not be motivated by a certain cruel religious belief lurking in the subconscious mind?!

However, globalization is not after all necessarily bad if its basis is founded on justice, social justice, and a concern for the welfare of the human society as a whole. By the same token, pax Americana, is the same. But unfortunately, the world, particularly the Western World, has gone past the period when there was a real concern for the welfare of humanity as a whole. Christianity, before it became Judeo-Christianity, was a religion of love and mercy. Islam calls for social justice, peaceful coexistance and egalitarianism. Many reformers and philosophers with many socialists and intellectuals worked to remove discrimination and injustice from the world. They failed drastically, and an epoch of conflict and division set in bringing along with it wars, apartheid, racism, slavery, and above all, chosenness. Poverty and misery together with servitude and degradation, became the order of the day. This situation has become endemic, and all efforts to ameliorate its crushing effects have failed. Is the cause lust for money? But who or what is behind this evil? There is a possibility that the world is relapsing into savagery.

What any one can do in trying to answer this question is to cast about to find out where this evil situation is most pronounced, and take it as representative. Obviously in the West, as manifested in the global policy. Lust for money, to start with, is as old as the hills. Money, naturally, is a safeguard against poverty and serves as affording prestige and as a handle to chieftaincy. Later, however, money became an open sesame and a means for any end, especially political ends. It was used for the first time in Western Europe for that purpose. Since then money has acquired a mystique, and has become a major instrument for political influence and subservience. The world eventually came to be divided into rich and poor countries, or perhaps into gnomes and beggars. The system of lending money with interest by the World Bank and other profit-making agencies has worsened the situation for the already poor countries and has added new ones to the list. The split is now complete, with little sympathy for the poor. The poor now are outcasts. They should not be helped because any help will be wasted, and they will not be able to shift for themselves, and they must go under. This is exactly the position.

Now, is not there another philosophy? Yes, there is the system of Zakat in Islam, which if applied will ensure for the poor countries some assistance as their right due from the rich countries. But nobody is interested in abolishing poverty because poverty is indispensable in the present social structure which is constructed on the need for opposition between rich and poor, like the opposition between weak and strong, between master and slave and between the Chosen and the Gentiles.

Let us now look at the United States from another angle. For any investigator, the United States presents a peculiar picture. It is a multi-national state and, because, after all, its population has no unity as a people or a nation. It has a history, a territory of its own and a government. Practically, the United States is a government or administration with a President and a Congress. Authority there resides in the Presidency and the Congress. However, if one looks for authority in the United States one will find a hole, as somebody put it.

Now, it is widely accepted that the Jewish lobby has tremendous influence in shaping the international American policy and in making the United States the strongest defender of the State of Israel. This situation in which the first major power is being used as a means to an end is attracting so much attention and drawing so much wonder. Perhaps there should be no wonder. The United States was created by immigrants who conquered the country and killed the indigenous population. This is exactly what the Jews did in Palestine. The United States tries to forge the multifarious religious and ethnic communities into a unity with a political identity. And so is Israel trying to do. But the equation so far does not seem to involve partnership between the two states in the trend towards globalization. But it does. The Jews are the Chosen people, and the Americans, consciously or unconsciously, are trying to emulate them in practice and become the “chosen” world power. The coincidence of these three factors between the two states may explain partially the hand- in-glove cooperation.

Therefore, one might presume that it is questionable whether the United States will act fairly in trying to solve the longstanding dispute between the Palestine Arabs and the Jews. The Judeo-Christians in Europe are likely to do the same. One proof of that is that both the Americans and the Europeans during the intifada of 2000-2001 never attempted in their statements to distinguish between the Arabs who were rising against injustice with nothing to defend themselves, and the Israeli army with its weapons of all sorts, including tanks, war planes, fighter-planes, helicopters, and warships,  or between the Israelis, the aggressor, and the one aggressed against, the Arabs. The Palestinians were always asked to stop violence, and at the same time were called all the time terrorists with the same audacity as that of President Reagan who used to call the freedom fighters against apartheid in South Africa terrorists. Both can no more change their inherent attitude than a leopard can change its spots. This trend in the present civilization is one of its products. Another one is corruption. Lately a world conference was held to find ways and means to stop the evil. But the evil will continue because it is a by-product of the present civilization. Such evils and many others besides, including wars, spring from the primordial evil of divisiveness.

Let us now consider in brief the effects of this divisiveness on human behaviour, nationally and internationally, and take the doctrine of Choseness for illustration. This doctrine was evolved under certain psychological conditions, but it reflects a natural tendency in man to think in opposites. But to introduce the discriminatory principle into religion, as in Judaism, has had the effect of consolidating discrimination in human society and international policies with disastrous consequences. The idea received a further boost when it was adopted by Christianity, and the Christians from the 10th century onwards claimed to be the Chosen people, and not the Jews. But the acceptance of the doctrine of Choseness by Judaism and Christianity and its rejection by Islam, opened up an unbridgeable rift between Jews and Christians on the one hand and Muslims on the other. It was also a reason among others, why Christians in the West came to be regarded sometimes as Judeo-Christians. It also resulted in a virulent prejudice against Islam and Muslims to the extent that Islam has been considered (till now) as the enemy of Judeo-Christianity and, like communism, should be fought.

This prejudice against Islam because of its egalitarianism has marked, with other causes, the Judeo-Christians in the West as prejudicial in every social and political question, especially in any question pertaining to Muslims and Islam. For Instance, Islam was ignored throughout the Middle Ages and the image held about Islam was unfair on purpose, and the prophet of Islam was venomously maligned. I do not want to go over the campaigns provoked against the Sick Man of Europe in the Eastern Question, the Corsair raids in the Mediterranean and the drive to colonize Muslim countries including parts of the Ottoman Empire. Recently, to put the lid on it, the Judeo-Christians granted the Jews a national home in Palestine and the countries of the West joined hands to make the grant a reality and helped the Jews to establish a state on Arab land and property and force the rightful owners to quit their homes and live in refugee camps. Since then the Palestinians have been struggling to keep body and soul together and make the best out of a bad job, trying hard to cling to the remnants of land still free from Jewish encroachment. They have only to protest and raise their grievances, and sometimes resort to the intifada hoping that their cries of despair would be heard, but in vain.

Simultaneously with this tragic situation, similar troubles are being created in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, the Sudan, and far afield in Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Macedonia,  the Philippines, and in India. Muslims there are denied self-determination, but given to East Timor. Albania, the only Muslim state in Europe, is kept in quarantine all the time like any leprous area.

But why is that? It is not accidental or fortuitous. Why is this prejudice or onslaught? There must be something in Islam, which, while relevant, is opposed to Chosenness, to lust for money, international tyranny and social injustice and discrimination. I cite herebelow a number of the basic tenets in Islam, which are counter to the present state of affairs in the international situation:

1. God is only one

2. The principle of unity in the universe and among men with interrelation

3. Egalitarianism, and no discrimination, apartheid or Chosenness

4. Social justice

5. The middle course

6. Justice, and equality before God

7. Authority is only God’s authority

8. Lust for money should not be idolised

9. Supremacy is not based on wealth or power

10. Reciprocity, and symmetrical recognition.

The present civilization, based as it is on lust for money and power and Choseness is counter to Islam, and therefore, to maintain the prevalent international equation, Islam and also Arabic should be countered in so far as they constitute a threat. This may be the reason, or a reason, for the onslaught on Islam. One may come to this conclusion by noting the constant effort on the part of the Western powers to make Muslims adopt the Latin characters instead of the Arabic ones and by noting the decline of enthusiasm in the Arab countries for the study of Islam and Arabic.

But what principles are there in Islam which are counter to globalization or the present Western civilization? I understand that the United States in its global policy is regarding Islam as dangerous as communism. If that is true, then there should be congruence between Zionism and American globalization in the sense that both believe in Choseness.

One way of strengthening the hold of religion on the minds of people is to preach the idea that all religions have the same mission, namely, the welfare of and peace among nations. Therefore, a dialogue between religions should be on this basis alone, because religions differ from one another in many fundamental aspects, and even in their emphasis on the welfare of man, and peace among nations. In Judaism, for instance, the emphasis is laid on the vast difference between Jew and non-Jew, according to the doctrine of Chosenness. This doctrine negates peaceful coexistence and lays emphasis on the necessity of hostility against non-Jews. The same is true with regard to Judeo-Christianity. Therefore there can be no dialogue between Islam, Judaism and Judeo-Christianity for the purpose of creating an international atmosphere of confidence and understanding among nations. Humanitarianism, free from religion, may be a better basis for a dialogue for understanding and cooperation globally. But why not use Islam as a basis for this dialogue? Previously, I mentioned a verse in the Qur’an about a dialogue between Muslims and other scriptuaries, in which it was said that such a dialogue may be possible on condition that the participants should all believe that there is one only God, without any associate, and that no section of any people should lord it over the others. This second condition is said to refer to the clergy and rabbis who dominate the rest of the people. But this condition is said to refer to a people, a nation or a race claiming superiority over others according to the doctrine of Chosenness.

There is another relevant verse in the Qur’an, which says: “We have made you into peoples and tribes to live together in symmetrical recognition” or, according to another interpretation, “to live together in peace without one being superior to another.” This is also against the doctrine of Chosenness. All this is to illustrate diversity in unity in Islam.

Therefore, one may gather from the foregoing discussion that a dialogue, such as the one in question, will always be at the expense of Islam, in the sense that Islam alone must make concessions in order to meet the other side halfway.

But there is another way of trying to make nations recognise one another and live together in peace. This way was suggested by Prince Hasan of Jordan. Briefly, it is as follows: ‘A parliament of cultures in the world should be established as part of the United Nations to convene regularly and discuss matters relating primarily to peaceful coexistence among nations. The decisions of this parliament will have no force but of recommendation, but “the repeated discussion of injustice in human society may create an awareness of the lack of social injustice, which may serve as an incentive to try and redress it”. The suggestion is worth trying.

I.2 Prejudice, Hegemony and Globalization

In the discussion of these three subjects here, I shall take the twenty first century as the field of study. This century, it is hoped, will give us ample information about the way man is doing to himself and to others, after so many centuries of trial and error under the influence of various motives, religious, philosophical, spiritual and temporal. In the West generally, the situation is changing rapidly, but to nowhere, although within a matrix. Religion is losing ground, and is replaced by doctrines, externally secular but essentially religious. The other trend is the hectic search for power towards Chosenness for globalization or hegemony. In all this, justice is out of count, and prejudice is the measure.

Prejudice is working hand in hand with the doctrine of Chosenness and with the pursuit of hegemony. Lust for money, a domineering factor, is a handmaid, the pivot being the achievement of supremacy. In the present world there is a rush for supremacy in destructive weapons, and money is the handmaid. Many nations cannot compete in this rush and they fall by the roadside, gasping for breath, broken and poor. Many others are on the list and they go the same way. There will be more and more weak and poor nations and fewer and fewer rich and strong nations. It seems a case of the devil take the hindmost, and the pertinent question is: Why should the case be the devil take the hindmost, and what is the motive? The case is somewhat similar to the practice of playing dangerous games in the West. What is the motive? The rush referred to before is the same as the arms race, race for colonies or race for markets. What is the motive? First of all, those who engage in these races have all the aim of winning the race against their competitors. This aim induces everybody to use what means and ways at their disposal to frustrate their competitors, including doping, foul play, tricks and all sorts of deceit. This disposes of honesty and fair play, not only in these races but in every activity, and it has become proverbial that an honest man is a fool, because he does not shift for himself. And the motive is always money.

Politicians, journalists and other writers have written a lot about the American global policy. They seem to agree on a number of elements in that policy. The first one is the thesis held by the Congressmen and the members of the Administration that the United States is chosen by history, or fate, to be the leader among nations. This is another way of saying that God has chosen them to be the leaders, just like the Jews who are chosen by their god to be the chosen people. The second element is that the end justifies the means. This element is old in the American history, and it dates from the early period of emigration to North America initiated especially by the Founding Fathers who proclaimed in their Declaration that their god was the god of Israel and not Jesus Christ. This item in the Declaration is very significant because the emigrants from the beginning had in their heads that they were special and that they had a mission to perform in their new homeland.

These two elements in the global policy of the United States seem to be correlated, and any one of them seems to imply the other. The first must be justified up to a point, with the other remaining open to question. One can perceive the two elements implemented in the global policy of the United States or in the behavior of Israel towards the Palestinians and towards the Arab and Muslim countries in the region. Both policies of the United States and Israel are based upon a mission originally religious and the mission has to be performed by hook or by crook, highhandedly. The mission, to start with, is right and divinely justified and not open to question. The end justifies the means, and the other party is of no account. This is in a nutshell the germ of both the American and the Israeli policies: discrimination and the division of humanity into “special,” and “common,” and there should be those who are poor, weak and slaves. Without those “commons” there will be no “specials” and the poor are indispensable for the existence of the rich, and there must be slaves for the comfort of the masters. Those weak nations which dare to rival the powerful ones should be prevented, and the possession of nuclear weapons by upstart nations should be foiled. It looks now that the world is divided into tow clubs which are warring against each other, with one being the “gangster” club. An exposition of what the gangster club does in the world is given in “What Uncle Sam really wants”, a book by Noam Chomsky.

But how can it be possible to bridge the gulf which is widening between the two clubs? There is a verse in the Qur’an which says: “God does not change the situation that any people may be in until they change what they have in themselves.” The verse speaks about an external situation that a people may find themselves in and an internal one in their psyches. The external existential situation cannot be changed unless the psychical state is changed, or unless the religious, mythical or social beliefs are changed. Under these internal beliefs one may include lust for money and lust for power. How can a people divert from the doctrine of Chosenness or give up lust for money or power? Is there in history a people who practised, under the influence of a myth or a religion, egalitarianism, or who lived a life of peaceful coexistence, as a people who, under the influence of a man-made philosophy, tried to live an egalitarian life or coexist in peace? Reference has already been made to Islam as a religion of egalitarianism and peaceful coexistence, in theory and practice. It is also a religion of unitarianism, universalism and social justice. With these five pillars, Islam may be considered as a model for a global code of law to check, hopefully, the present drift into chaos and lawlessness. Another check may be a reformed United Nations Organization to restore justice in international relations and limit the danger of supremacy on the strength of wealth and power. A third check may be through a world agreement to appoint the United States to be the preserver of peace in the world, by contract.

These three options are only suggestions to be considered. The United Nations option may be combined with the Islamic one, and the contract with the United States may be based, among other things, on the Islamic stipulations. The danger in this combination idea is that the Judeo-Christian powers will certainly reject it out of hand for obvious reasons, and would rather remain as they are.

One of the reasons is the predominant concern for self-interest in the international affairs. This concern in its influence amounts to one of the vital instincts like self-preservation. It is like struggle for existence in which man worries about himself only with entire oblivion of the other man’s fate. This attitude arises in the first place from a belief in one’s heart that one, on religious grounds, is better, and, as such, one is most prominent. In the psychology of the Western powers, the deep-seated belief in Chosenness, as in Judaism and Judeo-Christianity, acts as a bar against any understanding among individuals or groups and precludes any peaceful coexistence or compromise, and every side will insist on its own pound of flesh. A vivid picture of this obstinate spirit is given in “Jewish Fundamentalism”, a book by Shahak and Mezvinsky, (Pluto Press, 1999). The reader of this book will come upon a mode of behaviour, fed by Jewish religious conviction the like of which is nowhere to be found in human history or in any religion, except perhaps in Judeo-Christianity. One who is seized upon by this fever is totally impervious to any logic, however cogent it may be and completely callous to any consideration for others or to fellow-feeling. With such an attitude, one can hardly see any glimmer of hope to come to a peaceful settlement of any conflict through dialogue. The book on the Jewish fundamentalism mentioned above gives two specimen incidents to show to what length Jewish fanaticism can go in crime. The first incident was the assassination of the Israeli prime minister, Yitzak Rabin, by a fanatic Jew, Yigal Amir on 4.11.1995. The second was the shooting down, in cold blood in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in Palestine, of 29 Muslim worshippers by Dr. Baruch Goldstein on 25.2.1994. What were the reasons put forward by the assassins to justify their evil deeds? Yigal Amir was a student at a Jewish religious institution where he imbibed hatred of Zionism. His study of Jewish law had made him convinced that Rabin and his tribe were enemies of the Jewish people and he felt that it was his duty to kill him.

Both acts of Amir and Goldstein were not committed for the reason or reasons alleged by the perpetrators, but rather for dogmatic belief in a religious doctrine. When Amir assassinated Rabin he was impelled by the Jewish law in the first place and by the Jewish religion. Rabin was the enemy of the Jewish people and as such he was a Gentile, and as a Gentile he deserved death. Jews believed that such acts were done in obedience to God’s commands. Jews who were killed were heretics or religious sinners. The Christ, for instance, in Christian belief, was killed at the instigation of Jews, as he was considered to be a heretic. Rabbi Kook is reported to have said that “the difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews – all of them at all different levels – is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.” One of the beliefs current among the Jews from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century was the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body, and that the world was created solely for the sake of the Jews, the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary. Thus, it appears that the Jews believe in their superiority to the non-Jews and that the non-Jews are to be treated with contempt. They also believe that when a Jew is attacked, God’s name is desecrated, and when a Jew retaliates, God’s name is sanctified, as when Baruch Goldenstein killed in cold blood twenty nine Muslim worshippers in a mosque. Goldenstein was a follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane who had organized in New York the Jewish Defence League to avenge attacks on Jews by black youths. Kahane’s doctrine is that their god promised them the Holy Land to be their own with no foreigners to live with them in the land, which means that the Arabs must go.

A similar extremist belief is a political movement in the U.S.A. The purpose of which is to create a nation where once again the Judeo-Christian ethic is the foundation, “for our politics, our judicial system and our public morality; a nation not floating in the uncertain sea of humanism, but a country whose unmoving bedrock is Higher Laws”. Other movements like this one stress the need for always going back to the Bible for guidance and for seeking the plain truth. But in doing that one will find oneself in the old Testament. The Reconstructionists, for instance, in the United States, want that the Bible must be the source of law, think that slavery must be reintroduced, there will be no more birth control; adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers, astrologers or witches. They all must be put to death. Children who are unruly must be stoned, as the Bible enjoins, the capitalist economy must be enforced, socialists and those who incline to the left are to be regarded as sinful, for God is not on the side of the poor, because poverty and wickedness are related. These are the main principles of this Christian movement which appears to be more Jewish than Christian.

But let all that be as it may, and let me turn to Baruch Goldstein for a while. If one wants to assess the opinion of the Israeli society regarding the massacre one will have to consider the reaction among the general public, the army comments in the press and any attitude taken by political parties or government authorities. Generally speaking, the religious parties were outspoken in commending the massacre and praising Goldstein as a hero, in spite of the fact that during his military service as a doctor in the Israeli army he refused to treat any Arab, thus violating the medical oath and contravening the army regulations. For this, he should have been court-martialed by the army according to the rules in practice, but he was not, for fear of infuriating the religious parties. This failure of the Israeli army to take the disciplinary action against Goldstein was an encouragement for him to commit the outrage. There was a sedulous effort to rationalise the massacre and also by proposing that Goldstein was under a temporary mental derangement. But, worst of all, the Arabs were accused of being responsible for what had happened. The massacre was not referred to as “murder” or “killing,” but as “deed,” “occurrence” or “event”. The defenders of the crime invoked in this context the ruling of the Halakha, the code of the Jewish law, according to the Talmud’s interpretation. According to this Halakha, killing by a Jew of a non-Jew under any circumstances is not regarded as murder. Thus, even the Halakha distinguishes, between Jews and non-Jews and between killing a Jew and a non-Jew.

When Goldstein died he was exuberantly lamented by the religious groups in glowing terms. Some even went to the length of regretting that Goldstein did not kill more Arabs. Goldstein was extolled as a hero and a martyr. In an article in one of the Hebrew dailies on 4.3.1994 the writer said that since Goldstein did what he did in God’s name, he is to be regarded as a righteous man. Goldstein’s tomb became a shrine and a pilgrimage site. One of the rabbis, in paying tribute to Goldstein, declared that “the holy martyr, Baruch Goldstein, is from now on our intercessor in heaven. Goldstein did not act as an individual. He heard the cry of the land of Israel, which is being stolen from us day after day by the Muslims.” One may cite many similar and equally virulent vociferations to show the blind fanaticism against non-Jews, especially Muslims.

Let us now turn to consider how much religion is involved in the assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, a Jewish fanatical Zealot on 4.11.1995. I have already said something about his religious background which must be primarily responsible for the crime of assassination. What is significant about this crime is that it was committed for religious reasons, and it was in obedience to God’s commands. I admit in this context that in early Islam leaders of the nascent Muslim community were murdered. The difference, however, is that in Islam the murders were not for religious reasons, and were committed a long way away in the past. The murders committed lately in the Islamic World are for political reasons rather than for religious ones. This may distinguish Muslim fundamentalism from Jewish or Christian fundamentalism. The last two Jewish acts were against secularism and modernism, but Islamic fundamentalists were against the onslaught on Islam. The major difference is that the acts of murder by Amir and Goldstein were committed ultimately under the influence of religion. The massacres of Arabs by Jews before at Deir Yasin (1948), Tantura, Kafr Kasim (1956) and Qibyya, and the massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and at Shatila camps in 1982, and after that at Qana in 1996 were of the same category. All these massacres were criminal and done in the name of god. They were astonishingly passed by unconcernedly by all. The same unconcern is evident vis-à-vis the unarmed Palestinians who were shot down by the Israeli army with machine-guns, helicopters, tanks, fighter-planes and warships during the Intifada of 2000-2002. The man who is responsible for the two massacres of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982 is Ariel Sharon, the present Israeli prime minister, and the man responsible for the Qana massacre in Lebanon is Simon Peres, the then prime minister of Israel and the former foreign minister. In the commission of the murderous acts everybody was acting according to God’s word. Even the Israeli soldiers who shoot down unarmed Palestinians do that in the conviction that the killing is a religious duty.

These facts should be borne in the apathetic minds of all. If the reader keeps all these facts in mind and remembers that the Palestinians were despoiled of their lands, evicted from their homes and robbed of their property by outlandish immigrants, he will most probably realise the enormity of the injustice done to the Palestinians at a time when Europe was revelling in an age of an unprecedented civilization, and in an atmosphere of respect for the Age of Reason. All those brilliant achievements cut no ice when put to the test, putting fiction first and ignoring facts. The tug between hard facts and myth is a hallmark of the present European or Western civilization which sometimes gives precedence to myth or to ambivalence when the question is relating to religion. The Arabs of Palestine have been the victim, with everybody refusing to see the light.

The Palestinians, shorn as they are of any sympathy, have had to protest with all means at their disposal, not with machine guns, tanks, helicopters, fighter-planes. Even this ineffectual protest is called terror, and what the Palestinians are doing is equated with the acts of the ruthless military machine of the enemy.

To put the lid on it, the Israeli government has sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations in which the Arabs are accused of anti-Semitism. In other words, the Arabs as a whole are accused of being hostile to the Jews. It is sinful to be hostile to the Jews, and there is no option for the Arabs but to submit. The Americans in their global policy offer the nations the carrot to submit or the gun to make them submit. The nations are not given the option of being neutral. Neutrality is out of count according to the Gospel rule which states that “he who is not with us is against us.” The Jews may accept neutrality as an idea, but in practice they want it to be favourable to them.

This attitude of the Jews is peculiar. A Jew is always suspicious of every non-Jew, and now in Israel, he is suspicious of every Arab, no matter how innocuous he or she may be. An Arab must always be harmless by keeping him under control. An Arab outside Israel must be pacified or made incapable of being armed for defence, otherwise, he will be attacked. The countries around Israel must sign off their sovereignty and independence, having each the status of a satellite as far as possible and doing nothing anti-Semitic. In short, Israel wants peace on its own terms for the security of every individual Jew, and always under supervision. The balance sheet is always in favour of the Jews. The Jews must be armed to the teeth, but the Arabs must be disarmed. Any legitimate resistance on the part of the Arabs under occupation against injustice is anti-Semitic and any protest even by word of mouth is anti-Jewish and punishable by law. Every Arab inside, and even outside Israel feels that he is handcuffed and in prison, with one of two options either to accept the carrot or to get the gun. The Arabs are therefore helpless.

The restricted option offered to the weak nations proved to be a straight-jacket and they opted for a third course, namely nonalignment. Even this did not give them peace of mind or freedom to live as they liked. They were subjected to concentrated schemes of destabilization from inside and of splitting the population into factions opposed to one another on the basis, true or inspired, of ethnic, linguistic or religious differences. This pattern was the blueprint for the master nations, especially after World War II. The world was split everywhere into tow warring camps and with no compassion from the evil doer. Korea was split into North and South ; China was divided into mainland China and Nationalist China ; Vietnam was separated into Vietnam and Vietcong ; India broke up into India and Pakistan ; Iran was pitted against the Arab states in the Gulf ; the Sudan was divided into North and South ; Lebanon was torn asunder into Muslims and Maronite Christians ; Cyprus fell apart into Greek and Turk ; and Palestine into Arab and Jew. This was in Asia. In Africa, the division was in South Africa in the form of Apartheid, in Angola, in the Congo, in Sierra Leone.

All these divisions were engineered by Western powers. I think this is significant. The reason at the bottom of this consistently divisive policy is the theory that conflict between two parties is an insurance of a maximum benefit to the divider and the best way to render the two parties ineffectual against the divider. From this flows the major situation in the world created by the tendency towards divisiveness and towards conflict and discrimination. This will lead to hatred among nations and to dissentions among groups in every individual country. There will be animosities all round and wars every now and then. Who benefits from this troubled state of affairs in the world? It is the one who started it deliberately in order to reap the harvest. The colonial policy of Great Britain, for instance, was “divide and rule,” that of the United States is the bulldozer policy, perhaps to pave the way for a policy of world domination as a superior power. In the process, the United States policy is based on the assumption that God has given it the divine right to interfere in the internal affairs of every country. The Jews in the same way, have been chosen by god to be the superior people. This is the nucleus of the evil pervading and blighting the whole world, and it is the root of the eternal troubles in the whole of the globe and the miserable life of millions upon millions of human beings, and it is not their fault as alleged by the West. I should like here to make one or two quotations from two sources which made history. One is the book “the International Jew” and the other is the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” (1905), sometimes regarded as a forgery. The author of the “International Jew” thinks that the Jews have a plan or a program which is being put into practice “for the world subjugation.” The program is “to undermine all authority in order that a new authority . . . may be set up.” The plan is “aimed against the peoples of the world who are called Gentiles,” and “it aims at the degeneration of the peoples in order that they may be reduced to confusion of mind and thus manipulated.” The Jews will not do this, but the Gentiles will be made to do it.

The fifteenth protocol says: “A world coalition of Gentiles would cope with us temporarily, but we are assured against this by reason of dissensions among them so deep that they cannot be torn out. We have created antagonism between the personal and national interests of the Gentiles by rousing religious and race hatreds which we have nourished in their hearts for twenty centuries.” Ford, in his book, draws attention to what he calls a Jewish way of dealing with money. They are not money-makers, but they are money-getters. They do not make things, but they get the money from the things made by others. But what is agreed upon by all is that the major success against the Church is that the Christians have become Judeo-Christians and that the Bible is the stranglehold. Since the junction of the Old Testament to the New, the Church along with the Christians have been practically converted to Judaism, consciously or unconsciously.

One thing is certain. There is a problem, and when one tries to trace it back to its origin one will find that it is religious. But the original cause has no foundation in concrete terms. It is fiction made into fact, and the development of this problem has proved that the West can live centuries under an illusion or a myth. In fact, it is feared that the West is still living that way and will lead the world into a devastating catastrophe. What is to be done? I am sure that if the world does not set things to rights in time, the canker will grow through the world fabric and it will eventually collapse.

This problem in its forms is eternal, and it has always emerged every time there is a sizable community of this sort, anywhere. Why is that? History has the proof. One also cannot help noting that the problem when it develops is destructive rather than constructive, in the sense that it is divisive and not unitive. Even the prominent thinkers of this community, like Einstein, Marx, Freud, Henry Bergson and Jean-Paul Sartre, produced theories or philosophies fundamentally divisive: Einstein (1879-1955) by his theory of relativity, Marx by his philosophy of labour and capital, Freud by splitting the mind into conscious and unconscious, Bergson by his denial of discreteness in nature, and Sartre by positing that existence comes before essence and not the other way round. This inherent tendency to divide, to separate, to segregate and to split is thought to be a marked characteristic of that  community. They hardly cooperate with others. They do not mix, and this propensity to keep themselves apart has created a strong aversion to them.

The emphasis here, as elsewhere, is on religion and the chauvinistic solidarity against others has created segregation on religious grounds. This has made the Zionists think of creating another solidarity. Hence, for instance, the attempt of Zionism to create an Israeli nation or people. But the attempt may be considered to be feasible only in the sense that the entity to be created is an artificial or political entity, such as the entity in the African and Asian states created artificially by the colonial powers. Nevertheless, the attempt of Zionists is not working, because in Israel the only bond among the various demographical non-Arab communities is Judaism.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Earl of Beconsfield, prime minister of Britain, was a Jew. He wrote several books including a book called Coningsby, in which he attempted to answer the question: what is a Jew? And he says there: “Yet there is the International Jew, full dress: he is the Protocolist, too wrapped in mystery, a man, whose fingers sweep all the strings of human motive and who controls the chief of the brutal force: Money.” Money, as we know now, is the source of evils. In what Disraeli says there is an acknowledgement that the description of the Jew in the Protocols is correct. There, the Jew is said to be behind every revolution to disrupt the already established social or political order, in certain countries. When the Jews were emancipated in Europe, they enjoyed the freedom given to them for a while, but they refused it when they realized that it involved democratic equality which to the Jew was more hateful than despotism in the past. A Jew is by nature against democracy which is equality. This is an indication that the Jews try always to be different and superior, and they are unwilling to come to terms with anybody on an equal basis.

I tried, as well as others, I suppose, to find a parallel to the Jews in history, among peoples or races on earth. The Jews in this long history of strife, hatred and segregation, must have acquired peculiar characteristics which set them apart from the rest of humanity. They were foreign wherever they happened to be. They kept themselves to themselves, and they were shunned by their neighbours. It is believed that this segregation for a long time must have shaped the character of the Western Jews and made them very vindictive against everybody, especially against the Gentiles. Nowadays, this vindictiveness is turned against the Arabs for no fault of theirs, and the Europeans have succeeded in shifting the blame onto somebody else, and letting others pay the debt.

Now let us see how the Jews behave in their new home in Palestine. Have they changed or are they still true to type?

To answer this question I shall restrict myself to the main points. First, the aim of the Zionists to have a home or a state of their own, whether it is theocratic or secular, is to my mind, legitimate. Where does the problem lie then? When the vote was taken at a Jewish conference the choice fell on Palestine to be the location of the Jewish national home. Palestine was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Theodore Herzel (1860-1904), founder of Zionism, tried to get the approval of Sultan Abdul-Hamid (1876-1909) of Turkey for Jewish immigration into Palestine. Abdul-Hamid refused to give his approval. The Zionists then turned to Europe for help. During world War I, the Jews rendered a sterling service to Great Britain by bringing the United States into the war on the side of Britain in the nick of time, and tipped the balance in favour of the Allies against Germany in the west and Turkey in the east. The reward to the Jews was the Balfour Declaration on 2.11.1917, which was a promise to allow the Jews to have a national home in Palestine, and the Jews got the confirmation of this promise at the peace conference at Versailles.  At the end of World War I, under the auspices of the League of Nations, Britain was assigned a mandate over Palestine under the condition that Britain should take the necessary steps for the establishment of the promised national home for the Jews. This was realized, and culminated in the establishment of the Israeli State in 1948.

 There is no doubt that the Jews worked hard to make their dream come true.

In a nutshell, the whole story of the establishment of the Jewish home is like a tale in the Arabian Nights where the action is done under a whim helped on by demons. The demons were the engineers of the process.

But the demonic part is the mandate which was not assigned to Britain for the benefit of the indigenous Arab population who were called non-Jews by Balfour in his Declaration, but solely to use every means to achieve the establishment of the Jewish national home, with no regard to the interests or the fate of the rightful owners of the country and against their will. The demon did as he had been ordered by the wire-puller in the puppet show. Now who is responsible? The Jews, the British or the West?

When the establishment of the Israeli State took place, the security of the new state, was the main object and worry. This required expansion, and consequently wars against the neighbouring states: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, to conquer parts of their territories and then force them to sign peace treaties and normalize their relations with Israel prior to the major design of penetration and eventual subjugation. Therefore, force had to be used again. And also force, or threat to use force, was the policy of Israel throughout, against those who dared to ask for justice or for the restoration of the territories already under Israeli occupation and virtually part of Israel, as areas used for the settlement of Jewish settlers protected by the Israeli army. The United Nations resolutions 194, 242, 338, 425 have no force because Israel has adamantly refused to abide by them, encouraged in her refusal by some of the Western powers. The Arabs are also asked to take part in protecting Israel against other Arabs. The Arabs, in short, are given no choice but to submit. When the Palestinians in the occupied territory of 1967 rose in the first intifada of 1987 against the Israeli rule they were suppressed severely by the Israeli army, a reminiscence of what used to happen in the colonies under the Western powers. It was the bare hands of the Palestinians against the military machine of the Israeli occupation army. In the second intifada of 2000-2002, the same picture was repeated, and the tactics by the Israeli governments were ruthlessly used to kill, to devastate, to demolish, to starve and quell. The relevant  resolutions of the United Nations and other agreements reached between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and some with the approval of the United States, were never implemented. So was the fate of any understanding about security in this stalemate situation, with no serious effort on the part of the United States, the United Nations, Europe and Russia to save the situation and to help the Palestinians. The Palestinians have come to feel that they have been left in the lurch and that the world as a whole cannot do anything effective against the Israelis who seem to have put a stranglehold on all sources of power, including the United States, and that the hope that justice will be done is a mirage. Why is there a standstill and why is Israel able to paralyse every effort for peace and to defy with impunity all the principles of justice, the international law, the United Nations resolutions and the agreement with the Palestinians? The Israelis, as history has it for a fact, have been always segregationists. This exclusiveness gave the impression that they were curious and mysterious, and eventually they were invested with some awe, like a quaint object. This is not to be wondered at because the Arabs before Islam used to worship any object, like a stone, which excited their wonder. The Jews were regarded with some aversion, but with some awe, and when they claimed to be the Chosen people they were believed. There is also the fact that a man may come to love his enemy by first fearing him, then respecting him and finally loving him.

Having achieved this status of awesomeness, they came to be believed by the Judeo-Christians, and came to be regarded as the oracle and the mentor, willy-nilly. Now they are not only the mentor but also the masters who are obeyed in everything they want.

A European who, in the Age of Reason, criticised, shall we say, the Pope, the Papacy or the Church, was not brought to justice. But now any statement criticising Judaism or the Israelis, is said to be blasphemous or abusive, and the writer or speaker may be subjected to a hostile campaign in papers or to a spate of letters of abuse or telephone messages of vituperation or he may be accused of anti-Semitism and then brought to justice. An English lady of society happened to say something fairly nice about Nasser of Egypt, and a hostile response by the Israelis was in the form of highly abusive letters some of which accused her of having had a sexual affair with Nasser. Recently during the Pope’s visit to Syria, the President of Syria Bashar Al-Asad happened to allude in his speech to some objectionable policies without mentioning the Israelis by name. Soon after, there was a furore of hostile criticism in the papers in Europe. Almost simultaneously with that, the chief rabbi of Shas, a major Orthodox Jewish sect in Israel, came out with a virulently abusive statement against the Arabs as a race. There was some reference to the statement with little comment or criticism. In this month, July 2001, a wave of riots upsurged in England, especially in Bradford, in protest against the presence of Asians there. The Asians are mostly Pakistanis, and the rioters apparently were calling for the deportation, wholesale of those Asians because they were alien, coloured or perhaps Muslim. These foreigners or many of them do menial jobs which Englishmen disdain to do. They are useful and are satisfied with what wages they get. They do not go on strike for higher wages, and what money they get for their work is mainly spent in the country. The Jamaicans are in England because they were needed during World War I. The Indians in England are very useful. The health service cannot function without the Indian doctors. All these and other foreigners are in England by law, but a Jew who comes to live in England is not classified as foreigner or alien, even if he comes from Asia or Africa. The non-Jewish foreigners appear to be legal immigrants and take up jobs in which they do not compete with the local labour force. Illegal immigration from abroad into European countries, and even legal immigration have been creating problems to the host countries for nearly a century. These problems are inevitable owing to the course that the world has been taking. There were migrations from the desert to the sown land. There were migrations because of overpopulation, and also because of natural disasters, or, especially lately, because of dictatorship at home or poverty. The present departure from the home countries is because of tyrannical regimes at home and people flee to safety, or because the home is in a state of stagnation and unemployment. Most of these cases of poverty are brought about by the age of colonization which depleted many countries of their raw materials and by the technological advance in the Western countries, which divided the world into rich and poor, with the concomitant problems. There is a blame for this sad state of affairs, and who is to blame, the poor or the rich? The rich should be blamed first because of their lust for money and for their wish to use money to help them to be of a status superior to that of the poor. The existence of the poor is necessary for those who wish to be rich, just as a super-power finds it vain to have that power if there are no weak nations to frighten or to contrast with. This seems natural, and the world is created to be always based on conflict and on the inevitability of wars. But suppose that people in the world who believe in egalitarianism, like the Levellers, should make a concerted effort to try to get rid of this opposition in thought and deed, would the world be redeemed? Would people refrain from hoarding riches and from striving to be rich? This was not tried in the past, except perhaps during the Islamic rule, when Islam insisted on egalitarianism and social justice. The system of inheritance sees to it that wealth will not be a steppingstone to superiority and hence to power. Islam prohibited lending money with interest, which was practised by Jews. Islam, at a time when nobody cared to think about human society from the money side, poverty, slavery and labour, tried to solve some of those problems taking the human society as the field of action on the principle laid down in the Qur’an that a human society can only change from inside. But this view, although discarded, laid the foundation for a new line of research for finding out whether the new trend towards money making is not motivated by a psychological urge to dispel the complex to secure safety and, through safety, to secure supremacy. This psychological state must have arisen in consequence of a social condition of constant subjugation, oppression, persecution, and living always in danger. In there we must seek an explanation for the present omnipotence of money. The use of money as a means of protection may be deemed legitimate, but unfortunately; money was used later as a means of subjugation, especially when the West learned the lesson  from their compatriots, the Jews. Christianity was against the power of money, but no Christian in the West heeded this stricture, especially as from the end of the fifteenth century onwards. Europe then was completely transformed into a seething cauldron of topsy-turvism. Everything was in conflict with everything else and there was a revolt against every established order. By then the Christians became infected, and to get out of the morass they plunged into everything  worldly, casting away every moral principle that stood in the way, and were bent on a course for becoming rich and superior in the conviction that they were the real “chosen” people, and that every other people was “gentile”. The world was seen as an arena of opposites, locked in constant strife and antagonism. The European nations were in endless warfare among themselves or against the gentiles. Everybody that was not with ‘us’ was against ‘us’. Even nature was an enemy, because it was holding secrets that must be dug out and conquered.

All this turmoil was for money, and the European civilization was founded on the pursuit of money. Even the industrial revolution was for money. Colonisation was of course for money, as the neo-colonialism is. Everything was for money.

This headlong plunge into search for money has split humankind into those who have and those who have not and contributed to the creation of a deep gulf between strong nations and weak ones or between masters and slaves. The repercussion of this division is costing the world dear. It may in the end, if it persists, cause a catastrophe and perhaps the total or partial extinction of the human species. Can we not do something to avert this colossal eventuality? This question is like the question put sometimes to responsible Americans. How can you get rid of the Jewish lobby? Carter, sometime President of the United States, was asked this question. His reply was that nothing could be done to do away with the Jewish Lobby now, but if a disaster befalls the country on account of this lobby the Americans will wake up and do what is necessary. Perhaps the solution lies in the creation of a new society which calls for egalitarianism, peaceful coexistence, social justice and interrelationship among nations, or for a social order based on those principles approved by a world authority such as the General Assembly and introduced in the schools to be taught as part of the curriculum, instead of secularism. The question of God will be treated under the principle of unity which is operative in every thing in the cosmos. But there will be no difficulty in rejecting the idea of God as being material, man-like, or plural. God should be identified with a power immanent in everything and sustaining the whole universe with all its natural laws.

I offer this plan as a suggestion for everybody interested in this world problem to consider.