II. The Unitive and Interactive

Dimensions of Islam

I think that anybody who casts a cursory glance at the international scene now will see that the world seems to be an arena where there is always contest between pairs of combatants or rivals, or between friend and foe. The overall picture shows confrontation everywhere, with turmoil, always intermitted with drums of war, roars of guns and the sounds of trumpets, and with periods of calm intermingled with the chirps of birds, the sound of sweet music and the laughter of joy. This is only a general view which gives the real aspect of the arena. It is a view where there is only a friend or a foe. One may say that this picture has been the same since the dawn of history and therefore it can’t be applicable especially to the present situation of the world. This may be so, but the difference is that the struggle in the old epochs was motivated by natural instincts which are innocent, whereas the present struggle is caused by nurture, inspired by man-made philosophies and doctrines alien to the need for peace or justice, and any course of action alien to peace and justice is inhuman and therefore evil. The present dominant course comes under this category, and it is evil.

The present human course has a history, and it has been developing for several centuries, fed by strange ideas, derived mainly from various sources, mainly religious. If the sources are religious, we must assume that a religion may be inhuman if it is man-made, in a cyclic way. This may mean also that a religion may be evil. This is a paradox. But a religion, a philosophy or a policy can be inhuman if its principle is divisive, in the sense of discrimination and segregationism, with a concomitant consequence of one section of population ruling another or one nation claiming for itself absolute superiority and the right to be predominant and imperious.

In the pre-Axial age, religion was mostly based on myth, fable or fiction and was concerned with a world of spirits and of gods. A prestige gained by a person was on account of his belonging to a god embodied in an idol. There were many gods, and a tribe had its own idol by which the tribesmen were identified. The age was wild and had no concept of unity. Later on, the number of gods was reduced to two, three or four for each human society. Monotheism came last. Religions were polytheistic or idolatrous.

In the Axial age (700-200 B.C.) the influence of myth and fable in paganism took a downgrade course and people began to be aware of another world, more concrete than the world already familiar to them. Their view about the supernatural as expressed in myths and cults was undergoing a drastic change towards a nascent sort of theism, based upon gods instead of idols and spirits. There came into being a plurality of gods, 4-god, 3-god, 2-god religions. Monotheism came last as the culmination of the process of change in the supernatural human view. Judaism moved from idolatry to anthropomorphism and then to henotheism, but not to monotheism. Hinduism had 4 gods. Christianity had 3. Zoroastrianism had 2 gods, and Islam, much later, had only one god. Perhaps the process of change from paganism in the pre-Axial age and later was tending always towards monotheism.

The pre-Axial period is termed by scholars as the period of mythos and the succeeding period, the Axial, as the logos period. The reader may glimpse the difference between the two terms. However, the mythos period has the distinctive character of being a period during which man was inclined to believe in myths and fables rather than believe in facts and in things compatible with reason. When the Axial age set in, followed immediately by the logos period, the first casualty from the mythos period, was religion. Religions which stuck to their mythical beliefs suffered defeat in the end, despite their struggle to keep their heads above water.

With regard to religion, the process of change during the logos period and after has taken first the course of secularism, away from religion. Apparently, especially in the West, religion has ceased to be of use in organizing society and in providing reasonable rules dependable in framing man’s ideas for the new scientific age. There was an open conflict between religion and science, and many religious assumptions were found to be untenable. Of course, religions differed in their degrees of authenticity, and these which lacked authenticity and adaptability suffered most. In the present trend of modernism, a mainly Western development, it seems that among the so-called monotheistic religions, Islam has stood the test, and secularism cannot affect it, because it is secular, and its genuine monotheism together with its doctrine of unity in nature and in human society, is a guarantee that it will weather the anti-religious movement of modernism, even without the need for fundamentalism which is used by Judaism and Christianity against the new tide of secularism in the West in particular.

For the benefit of those who do not have so far a comprehensive idea about secularism and fundamentalism, I feel that a brief discussion of those tow antithetical movements may not be otiose. It is clear, to start with, that secularism in modernism is against religion, and fundamentalism in religion is against modernism.

The whole issue between secularism and fundamentalism hinges round the question: What is religion? Is it relevant to the social structure or compatible with the modern trend, or based upon logic and upon doctrines valid for all times? For instance, a religion which believes in the story of the creation as given in Genesis, is it worth sticking to? There are religions of old founded on fable and myth, and others rest on hearsay evidence. Are we to hold on to them, in the face of logic, science and technology? Authenticity in this context is essential, and every religious doctrine must have a reliable authority if it is to be believed. If all this is lacking, what will be our attitude to religion vis-à-vis the modern scientific and logical culture? Secularists assert that religion is something of the past, which has proved to be in conflict with modernism, and should be discarded at least for being irrelevant.

Ernest Gellner, in his book on postmodernism, religion and reason, excludes Islam from this irrelevancy, and seems to think that Islam has stood the test because, I think, there is nothing in Islam contrary to science, logic and modernism, particularly in its dogma, creed and doctrines. I think that Islam is a philosophy more than a religion, and in the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, there is not a single statement which contradicts science. Islam does not believe in myths, miracles, fables, astrology magic and witchcraft. It is the only religion that calls for ecumenism, symmetrical recognition among religions, egalitarianism, peaceful coexistence and rejects racism.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish theologian, has a view about religion which is worth mentioning. Kierkegaard holds the view that religion is, in its essences, not persuasion of the truth of a doctrine but commitment to a position which is inherently absurd, and which, as he said, “gives offence”. He also says that we attain our identity by believing something that deeply offends our mind. Therefore, to live, one has to believe something which is hard to believe. (see p. 3 Postmodernism, Reason and Religion, by Ernest Gellnes, (Routledge, London, 1992). Kierkegaard, in this view, echoes what Tertullian (160-230) said before that he believed in religion because it was absurd. This position seems to make religion immune against the rules of logic to prove or disprove its doctrines, but the view that religion is absurd, although from a few leaders of thought, should confirm the findings of logic and science.

This view concerns Christianity, despite the fact that the reference was to the concept of religion. But what about Judaism, for instance, or Islam for that matter? Well, Judaism is the oldest of the three so-called monotheistic religions, and by being the oldest makes it to be considered less authentic than the other two, but not necessarily more mythical than Christianity or any ancient religion. But Judaism does not describe itself as a religion, because there is no word in ancient Hebrew to stand for the word ‘religion’ and apparently the concept ‘religion’ was not known. The absence of this concept may be due to the absence of a concept about God and a concept about dogma. In Judaism, God was first conceived as an idol, and then as a person as in anthropomorphism and finally as a tribal god, but with anthropomorphic and henotheistic attributes. Judaism is not a monotheistic religion at all. Monotheism was solely Islamic, and could not have been borrowed except from Islam. The concept of dogma must also have been borrowed from Islam by Maimonedes (1135-1204). This is through his “thirteen beliefs” (see p. 143, Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought; Collier Macmillan Publishers, London, 1988).

With regard to the concept of God, Judaism seems to have no such concept. They appear to have borrowed it from Islam, although the borrowed cap does not fit. It was borrowed by Maimonides. Maimonides, in his digest of Judaism, says that God is the One Supreme Being, the Prime Being, Creator and Controller of heaven and earth, who has brought all things into existence. It is said that God has hands and eyes and that He is good, compassionate and merciful. These and other statements which describe God seem to be influenced by a source with a much more developed view of God. Even the word ‘god’, when applied to a religion still in the early stages of development should always be written with a small g, and not with a capital g.

There is also the point that anything written by a man about religion, dogma or God should not be regarded as having the same force and sanctity as a revelation. This applies to the Torah, the Old Testament and the New Testament. They are all written by men.

Now, since secularism seems to be operative everywhere in the Western world, one of a deep-seated belief in religion must feel uneasy about the future of faith which faces a certain threat to its existence. One is now wondering what anchorage will one have in the future if religion is swept away. What will replace it if it is gone and man finds himself in a wasteland?

What men of religion should do is to consider the effect which secularism is having, and will have, on religion which is man’s ballast in his wasteland. We will confine ourselves in this consideration to the three so-called monotheistic religions, and we begin with Judaism. Louis Jacobs says in his book, “Jewish Religion” (Oxford University Press, 1995) that secular Judaism is a contradiction in terms, since Judaism is a religion and not a secular philosophy. This makes it impossible for Judaism to resist secularism and the Jews to have an identity of their own must look for something else. The only other source for this identity is peoplehood or nationhood which the Jews lack, and it has to be created. Zionism seems to have abandoned the idea of taking religion as the basis of identity, and adopted peoplehood or nationhood instead. Success in this endeavour remains to be seen because the Jews in Israel are showing symptoms of the same fear and chauvinism as before. Lack of the sought-after identity is the source of fear from the Gentiles inside and outside Israel and that Israel must have an enemy, real or imaginary to contend with. This hostile attitude to the Gentiles gives them a sense of identity and some assurance, and therefore as Begin said, Israel must always live in fear, and consequently it must be at war with its neighbours. Enemies or an enemy to Israel must exist actually or fictionally in order that Jews feel that they are Jews. This psychology is also inherent in existentialism.

This situation also obtains in the Christian West. The loss of anchorage in the West, originally based on religion, under the impact of secularism and modernism, has had the effect of depriving Christians of a stabilizing identity which instilled fear. To feel assured they started wars especially against the Gentiles in the colonies, and systematic campaigns against the natives, especially in America and Australia, with the subconscious expectation that those wars and campaigns would give them a sense of identity and give them assurance against fear. But the expected identity and the assurance against fear remain to be seen. They eventually resorted to the arms race and to wars against those who challenged their claim to superiority, through wealth or through power. The search for superiority and the need for an enemy have been the impetus for rivalry in developing lethal weapons capable of killing the larger number of human beings. This devastating course is subconsciously supposed to be legitimate because it is in self-defence against an enemy who threatens the existence of a superior nation. So long as identity is nowhere to be found, the world should take it for granted that catastrophic wars will continue.

But why should the West be the maker of human history because of a psychosis pecular to it? In point of religion, the West is Christian, Jewish and Judeo-Christian. This religious composition must be regarded as responsible for the behaviour of the West as a whole in the international field. The loss of identity is common to both Jews and Christians, as well as the consequences resulting from this loss. It will be remembered that secularism and modernism hit the two religions alike for their lack of a philosophy capable of withstanding the thrust.

What calls for wonder is the striking similarity between the assumptions underlying the behaviour of Israel towards the Gentiles and those underlying the behaviour of Western Europe and the United States towards the Gentiles or the foreigners. This similarity prompts one to try and find an explanation for it. The first step in this search is to look for the common factor or factors binding the two sides together. First, the two sides are predominantly White, and not Semite. Second, they are Jews and Judeo-Christians, with Judaism as the common factor. Third, both sides are against any political social movement, like intellectualism, socialism, leftism and ecumenism and against Islam. This stance is inspired by the doctrine of superiority which is essentially divisive and far from unitive. Islam, for instance, is unitive, like perhaps socialism and ecumenism, and the principle of egalitariansim in Islam is probably the paramount reason for its being fought against tooth and nail. The world, according to the West, must continue to be divided sharply between friend and foe, with the tragic consequences to the human race. This belief for so long has given the West as a whole a character, based upon fear from an enemy somewhere, which always urges the Westerner to look for this enemy and destroy him, in the hope that this endeavour will bring him security and safety in order to take the next step for hegemony. This is what has been happening in the West against the rest of the world. It is the West as one side and the rest of the world as the other side. Perhaps the leniency of the West towards Israel and the harshness against Muslims in Palestine and recently in Afghanistan may shed some light on the discriminatory behaviour of the West. So long as this spirit of discrimination continues to be in operation unchecked, the world will continue to draw nearer and nearer to the abyss.

And how is it possible to check it? The check can come from inside or from outside; from inside by secularism, and from outside by re-education. The danger of secularism is that its effect will be the suppression of morality and justice, and the removal of any anchorage. Fear from secularism which is a threat to the doctrine of superiority which encourages hegemony has enhanced the need for self-defence as the only bulwark for existence, resulting in existentialism which in its turn is self-interestedness and ego-centrism  which in its turn breeds fear. And so the wheel has gone full circle. Therefore, secularism does not seem to be the remedy or, rather the panacea. Now the attention should be turned to the question of re-education, and what comes for consideration is the idea of fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism, as is well-known, sprouted in the West, principally and originally in the U.S.A. early in the twentieth century in opposition to modernism in the West. It is a Western product. Briefly, it is basically a firm belief in the literal and historical truth of the Bible, and therefore it concerns Judaism and Christianity, and has nothing to do with Islam. The movement is in defence of religion as stated in the Bible against modernism, science and technology in the present age. In short, the movement believes in the virgin birth, physical resurrection, atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and the second coming. But since this fundamentalism covers the Bible, it also believes in Genesis, one of the books of the Jewish Torah. Secularism is opposed to such beliefs and it is against religion, and fundamentalism is pro-religion. I have noticed that Jewish scholars are reluctant to speak about secularism and its roots, and, I think, are also reluctant to speak about Jewish fundamentalism, because, I suppose, a Jew to be a Jew must believe in Judaism which leaves no choice except to be a secularist, and hardly no middle course. The case in Islam is quite different, it is fundamentalist and secularist at once, and there is nothing that contradicts science or rationalism.

However, I intend to say more about fundamentalism and secularism to show their impact on the situation in relation to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

To begin with, I would like to note that there is a misconception in the West about fundamentalism and secularism in relation to Islam. Islam never had any quarrel with science. The intellectual revolution in Europe in the 16th century could not have been opposed by Islam as it was seriously opposed by the Church. The two-fold theory of Averroes (1126-1198) had paved the way for the separation of scientific truth from religious truth, apparently giving precedence to the scientific truth, although, in Islam, both are on the same footing. Therefore Islam is both fundamentalist and secularist. As I have said, there is nothing in the dogma, the creed and the holy book of Islam which is contradictory to science or even to logic. The fundamentalism in Islam to which the Western writers refer is not against religion, but political and against colonialism or neo-colonialism.

Fundamentalism and secularism concern only Judaism and Christianity, because both seem to have tenets or doctrines which are not in keeping with modernism, including science. I think that they don’t concern Islam in sofar as Islam is not essentially against modernism or science. The present age of modernism lacks morality and justice, and it looks that those two requisites for a moral and equitable human society can be supplied by Islam in which those two requisites are built in, on a concrete and practical basis. Now, since Islam is essentially fundamentalist and secularist at the same time it does not conflict with industrialism, based as it is on science and technology. One can see that Islam and Western civilization are complementary and can work together in accord and in peace. Islam understands Western civilization and can go along with it, without fear of being set aside. What Muslims need for this cooperation to be feasible is that the Western civilization should acquiesce in two precepts of Islam, namely morality and justice. Those two precepts in Islam are fundamental, and they, by their essence, rule out injustice, ego-centrism, aggression and terrorism . Jihad in Islam is not aggression or terrorism. It is defensive, and if anybody or any people transgresses against a Muslim or a Muslim people he or it has the mandate to defend himself or itself with the means available. Islam in this respect is pragmatic, and terrorism is justifiable as a last resort to remove injustice or to repel aggression, and injustice and aggression must be real and not imaginary. Therefore, when the Lebanese, the Syrians and the Palestinians stand up for Israel’s aggression and against Israeli occupation of parts of their homeland, western powers and Israel all in one voice accuse them of being violent and, more audaciously, of being terrorists. This is an example of flagrant injustice, and the world will not be a fit place to live in until this injustice is eradicated, and this eradication is one of the calls of Islam. Might is not right, and the poor and the weak have rights, at least like animals.

There is now a vociferous call for dialogues between religions and cultures, the purpose of which is for symmetrical recognition among all. This call is truly Islamic, and it is for peaceful coexistence. In the Qur’an, the Holy Book of Islam, there is a significant verse pertinent to the idea of peaceful coexistence, which says: “We have created you into various peoples and tribes in order that you learn to live together in symmetrical recognition.” The symmetrical recognition here is peaceful coexistence. It is one of the duties required by Islamic law for all nations to live together in peace in symmetrical recognition. On this basis, a dialogue can be useful. In history, Islam lived in peace with all faiths and cultures. In this Islam is unique among the various faiths and cultures. Muslims regard knowledge as a light from God and must be shared in common by all. Teachers used to refuse any remuneration for their work on the grounds that what knowledge they had was a gift from God.

In this context, I should point out a salient truth about Islam, namely that Islam and Islamic civilization are unitive, in contradiction with Judaism, Western Christianity and Western civilization which are divisive. This divisiveness is the hotbed of racism and chosenness. It has been the cause of conflict and the motive for wars, with the urge for the possession of weapons of mass destruction, especially of human life. This urge is becoming more potent with the advance of Western civilization.

Along with the call of Islam for ecumenism among nations, there is a corresponding call for egalitarianism among nations and individuals. This egalitarianism is within a recognition of diversity. Islam is unitarian in the sense that God is one, the universe is one and humanity is one, but in this unity there is diversity. There are people who are poor and others who are rich; there are people who are strong and others who are weak; there are people who are masters and others who are underlings. The principle of diversity in the universe is fundamenantal and predetermined. But there is always interrelation and interdependence, and there is no segregation in human society. This sounds like a paradox, but it is not, so is the human body, which is one, and thought to consist of mind and body. Life can emerge from matter and matter can emerge from life. This is cyclic to which reference is made in the Qur’an. There is a verse which says: ‘He brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the dead from the living.” Another verse says; “From night we strip off daylight.” I think that these two verses refer to the Islamic idea that things are a unity despite their appearance as various, opposite or dichotomous.

In conclusion I feel that I have something more to say about fundamentalism and secularism with reference to Islam. I think I have already said that Islam is both fundamentalist and secularist at the same time. Some Western writers think that Islam is typically fundamentalist and is secularism-resistant. Here one should be clear about the meaning that those writers attach to either fundamentalism or secularism. Islam, I am sure, is fundamentalist because it has no conflict, or perhaps little conflict, with modernism, and therefore it has no need for fundamentalism, in its Western sense to defend its doctrine against secularism. Secondly, Islam is not afraid of secularism. It is secular(*). Ernst Cellner, in his book “Postmodernism, Reason and Religion”, assumes that Islam is secularism-resistant because Islam, as he says, is typically fundamentalist, equating it with Judaism and Christianity. I do not think that there is much in Islam in common with the religious doctrine in both religions. In this connection, we should remember that the two terms, fundamentalism and secularism, came into being in response to the Age of Reason, Enlightenment and modernism which resulted in the negation of the doctrine and the doctrinal assumptions of both religions. It is true that this atmosphere of intellectualism in its full force has not been experienced in the Muslim world, for Islam to be affected by it. But there is basically nothing in Islam conflicting with science or industrialism, judging partly by the accord in Islam with any intellectual movement for investigating the world and discovering secrets of nature. From this angle alone Islam is secularist. Any fundamentalism that appeared in any part of the Muslim world and is thought to be religious fundamentalism is in reality nothing more than a resistance to colonialism and a resistance to Western civilization in so far as it is colonialist and a means for proselytism, and was not a resistance to secular western scientific civilization as such. I think that Islam and the Muslims are ready to cooperate in promoting civilization and the cause of humanity.

Having said all that to prove that Islam is fundamentalist in the true sense and also secular, I would like to make a remark about the present hostility displayed by the West against Islam, for no fault of Islam. Although the West on the whole appears to be secularist, in its attitude to Islam, it appears to be religious-minded, or that there is something in Islam contrary to the Western psychology. But, first of all, we have to think of a reason not so localized but of a reason more radical and more comprehensive. It all hinges on an instinctive and primordial built-in tendency in man to try and redress an imbalance in himself by looking for a counterpoise. There is always a feeling that one is in need of something which one could pit his energy against because this something is an antagonist. Perhaps the first example was the opposition between Adam and Eve, between Cain and Abel or between Satan and God. Then more dualities followed. The Gnostics had the idea of differentiating between what is divine and what is mundane. The Chinese had a philosophy that the world was created by two opposite gods or forces: one constructive and the other destructive. In Hinduism those two gods are represented by Siva and Vishnu. In the old Chinese philosophy there are ying and yang. Later, perhaps the idea emerged in Zoroastrianism and Manicheanism. There were elements of the idea in polytheism and in many cults and magic. The duality appeared in dividing the world into natural and supernatural, into earth and heaven, and in dividing living beings into humans and angels, into visible and invisible worlds, into god and man. In Judaism, human beings are divided into Jews and non-Jews or into Chosen and Gentile. I think this last division into Chosen and Gentile has persisted throughout history in its various forms. The other sorts of division have been worn to a shadow forgotten or discarded under the influence of unity in science or Islam.

The split in the human society has acquired perpetuity in the course of history like an endemic disease. The advance of civilization did not have the effect of ridding the world of the disease. Nay the disease has been aggravated and the conflict has become embittered resulting in more wars with weapons developing into being lethal more and more. Lust for money has become the rule, and the rich have become richer and the poor poorer. In the meantime the gulf between the strong and the weak has been widening with ominous consequences. This rapid change for the worse has created unconcern for the life of millions of human beings who are now exposed to annihilation through devastating wars or through starvation. What is to be done to stave off the impending catastrophe or holocaust?

First of all, one has to admit that an answer to the question should take it for granted that the absence of justice and morality and the lack of agreed principles in international relations, leaving egocentrism and self-interest in control, have become an insuperable obstacle in the way of peace and understanding among nations. With this universal situation in the world it seems that there can be no solution in sight and it seems that any attempt to alter the present inhuman frame of mind is doomed to failure. The world has been plunged into this gloomy and close-ended course for so long that the course has become the only rule in international relations and has struck its roots deep into everybody’s psychology, and therefore the world is heading willy-nilly to its doom.

But how is it that the world has been brought to this plight? The perilous change that has come over the world must be traced to its causes, first if we have at least the desire to account for it before we try to know its symptoms in order to remedy it. It looks, first of all, that the situation bears marks of being selfish and of being segregationist with the claim of one race being superior, perhaps by divine dispensation. This conclusion is forced upon one’s mind by the fact that the situation is the work of the West alone, and this fact is very significant. The West has been in a process of transformation since the beginning of the sixteenth century, both economically and psychologically. Here we must map out how this transformation has come about, and in what ways. The shapes of things in this transformation show signs of definite orientations. I try here to signify some of those trends, but with the proviso that my attempt is tentative and amateurish.

Before the sixteenth century, the West was stable in a general sense, with Christianity as the stabilizer. The only challenge to Christianity was Islam. But Islam failed to be of much influence in changing the West, and its tenets, as proved later, turned out to be unworkable in so far as to whether those tenets were effectively promulgated. The various disturbing and destabilizing factors which came onto the scene can be summed up into a surge for liberty from old norms, religious and secular. There was the desire for freedom from the feudal system, the despotic rule of kings, monarchs and emperors, to be rid of the dictatorial rule of the Papacy and its coercive instrument, the Inquisition, and above all freedom from penalty on thought. Those movements were principally anti-religious, and a drive to get loose from the suffocating atmosphere. There was tension in everything, and the situation was crying out for a release. First came the Protestant rebellion, the intellectual revolution, the conflict between science and religion, and the movement for freedom of conscience, speech and thought and for freedom from despotism. When the Americas were discovered a deluge of emigration to the New World ensued. It was a precipitate rush for freedom, and an urge to see if one can find a target for wreaking one’s spleen on it. Colonization was the way, and the colonial peoples became the victims, and soon they were subjected to an unprecedented cruelty in enslavement, spoliation and extermination. The emigrants from Western Europe, fleeing from bondage, turned out to be the worst inflictors of bondage on the colonial peoples, perhaps similar to what happened in Jewish history during the conquest of Canaan and later, subsequent to their flight from Egypt, a parallel to the flight of the Western Europeans to the colonies to conquer and settle there.

This wholesale emigration to the colonies and the consequent subjugation of the colonial peoples resulted in three things: racial discrimination, lust for money and a prelude to industrial revolution. But the significant result was a drive to be rich, and a feeling that Western peoples were racially superior to others, a short step to the Jewish idea of Chosenness, dividing as it does, mankind into Chosen and Gentile. The two uppermost emerging tendencies in the West were the search for wealth and the search for power to protect wealth and to confirm superiority and Chosenness. Both those two tendencies have given rise to insecurity all round, to arms race, to racialism, to cut-throat rivalry for more wealth, for globalization and hegemony, causing the world to be divided neatly into Master and Slave.

Now, this is exactly the situation obtaining at present in the world. Is it good, and is it what mankind has been searching for all throughout history? As we look at the human panorama, we’ll find that in religious belief and in practice Christianity changed over to something which was a blend of Judaism and Christianity, something which might be called Judeo-Christianity in view of the fact that the West has idolized money and practiced the doctrine of Chosenness in dealing with the rest of the world and in the pursuit of globalization and hegemony. One also will find that the original Christian principle of love and mercy has been watered down together with egalitarianism. Any attempt to bring the nations together in peace and amity amid the emergence of master races and slave ones, the fabulous wealth side by side with destitution and the glut beside starvation is futile. Beside all these misfortunes, the West has done a lot of damage to animal and plant life and above all to the earth environment and to the atmosphere. There has been a plethora of man-made mental and physical diseases. The natural resources have been exhausted or destroyed instead of being developed.

And yet the world seems to be dynamic and getting along, with advancing science and technology in the service of industrialism. But the first casualty was religion under the impact of secularism. There is also the ominous fact that the Western World has lost its bearings and is drifting, bound nowhere. Standards and norms to regulate behaviour and even thinking have been abandoned, replaced by egocentrism. Man alone has become the measure, but without morality or justice. The United Nations, among other things, has lost its raison d’être. Fear of threat, real or imaginary, has impelled nations to improve and develop their offensive weapons, to make them extremely destructive, especially to human life. The human species is in real danger of being wiped out.

This is not to minimize the virtues and the benefits of the brilliant Western civilization. But this civilization has an exceptional peculiarity. It carries within it the germs of its own destruction, and has a double- carriage way; one is progressive and the other regressive, one is beneficial and the other detrimental, and like yin and yang, one is constructive and the other destructive. The two together cancel out each other. I think that there is some way to reconcile the two courses together by reducing the effect of one and enhancing the effect of the other. Of course, after the passage of so many centuries, nobody can deviate the trend of the Western civilization. One can perhaps moderate its deleterious effect on humanity, in the hope that the method employed for this moderation may strike roots and become traditional.

The method is psychological and is intended to create in the hearts a change for the better, perhaps a change based on rationality or a quasi-religious doctrine of, say, egalitarianism and peaceful coexistence, with the paramount aim of inculcating unitiveness against divisiveness. At the end of the first part I gave a sketch of such a method.

Before I close the subject, I would like to speak in brief and frankly about an idea that has been thrusting itself on my mind in connection with the situation in the West described above. Whenever I think of this situation I always feel that the situation did not come about accidentally, as some may think, but in stages, one after another, sequentially, in one chain whose links are interrelated. This picture called for an explanation and the explanation that presented itself was that the stages in their development were seemingly in accordance with a prearranged plan fostered by an ideology or by a religion, preferably by a religion, acting upon the minds of people unobtrusively. The religion that was in the arena was either Judaism, Christianity or Islam. The culprit is one of them.

The word “chosen” has acquired a wider meaning, and has come to mean “special”, “superior”, “elect”, etc., and the word “Gentile” has come to mean “foreigner”, “alien”, “outsider”, “one of them”, etc.