Islamologica

This post, authored by James Alexander, is republished with permission from The Daily Sceptic

Islamophobia is an irresponsible word – a political word. Let’s have, instead, some Islamologica.

I have written about Islam twice before, here and here, and I think the points I made there bear repetition and summary.

First, I argued that Islam is: 1. One 2. Unconvertible 3. Power.

• Hegel: “The worship of the One is the only final aim of Monometalism.”
  
  
• Belloc: “It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilisation has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past… [Because] Islam is apparently unconvertible.”
  
  
• Girard: “For Islam, God is essentially power.”

And second, I argued that though Islam is obsessed with Oneness, tawhid, as they call it, this oneness is at least not Chinese. The oneness of Islam does not simply sanction any earthly order, like ‘All-Under-Heaven’, i.e. China – and this is because Islam, like the religion of the Israelites and Christianity, is about the kingship of God.

The second point is an essential correction to the first. Yes, Islam seeks hegemony – but it is not simply an earthly hegemony. It is a hegemony that is sanctioned by, and ultimately ruled by, God. This means it is very strong, no doubt: men have fire in their eyes as they seek hegemony and they feel justified. But it also means that this fire can be turned against the state. And NB, what we in the West think of as Islamic states are, in fact, nervous entities, since Islam is an uncertain sword in the ruler’s hand – it can be used against him.

The next thing to bring into play is a point I made when discussing the West. Our particular problem is not Islam as such. Our particular problem is with Islam in the context of Western states, where Western states are 1. liberal and 2. Christian or post-Christian. And this is not a simple problem because we, in the West, continually argue about whether liberalism is just secular in some absolute sense, or only secular in the Christian sense that we live in the saeculum of the earthly expectation that Jesus will come again and that, until he does, we have to do the best we can with Hobbes’s Leviathan or Schmitt’s katechon. Deep waters.

Let me repeat that point because I do not want it to be lost. It matters that we are unsure about how Christian our liberal order is, and that we are also unsure about what liberalism entails. Let me deal with them one by one – first Christianity, then liberalism.

Christianity resembles Islam in seeking universality, and in doing so by distinguishing believers from unbelievers. But it differs from Islam in accepting that “the powers that be [i.e. even Infidel powers] are ordained of God”. It differs from Islam in tolerating and using Roman Law, or any other system of law, and not insisting on its own Law. And it differs from Islam in having something like a theology, whereby ‘theology’ I mean the entire vexed and wonderful matter of considering the nature of Jesus, the nature of the relation between Father and Son, the nature of the Spirit, and hence meditating on the Trinity, either for or against. Islam says, “Never say three.” And Islam lacks theology, since God forbids consideration of His nature, which is, anyhow, One.

Let me quote some more authorities, as I think the Trinity is more important for our civilisation than most of us seem capable of recognising.

Chesterton: “To us Trinitarians… God Himself is a society.”

Hegel: God “differentiat[es] himself within himself.”

Collingwood: “The technical term in Greek for a self-differentiating entity is logos, and this word was taken over by the Egyptian schools, and later by Christianity itself in the Fourth Gospel… the Johannine doctrine according to which ‘the logos was made flesh’ was a new idea peculiar to Christianity.”

So there are vast differences – theoretical (in relation to the doctrine of God and Christ), but also practical (in relation to Christian willingness and Islamic unwillingness to tolerate Infidel rule).

Then we come to liberalism. Liberalism is itself vexed. Liberalism operates with a very different logic to any religion. The religions operate according to the antique principle that order comes out of eliminating disorder, whereas liberalism operates according to the modern principle that order can come out of disorder, by some dialectical or deliberative process – the reconciliation of opposites, adversarial politics, all that. Religions are exclusive, but liberalism is inclusive.

So liberalism has a tortured, indeed contradictory, attitude to something like Islam (but also Christianity). It wants to include Christianity, Islam, Buddhism – the whole set – within itself: it wants to include, not exclude. But this means it has to include people who are not liberal. This is not a great problem with Christians and Buddhists, who can accept that they will be ruled by Infidels and Samsarans. But it is a problem with Islam, which does not respect the authority of any ungodly and temporal, hence temporary, secular liberal ruler.

Now I am not saying anything about the psychology or hopes of actual Muslims, some of whom may very well, in practice, accept and even exult in the security of Western order. I am saying something about the general logic of the religion.

Liberals say this to religious people: ‘We are not against religion. Be religious. Pray, exult, all that. But it is a private matter. Keep it in your church, or garden. It is not a public matter: our society, formally, is not founded on religion.’ (Set aside the fact that England is originally Christian.) Christians reply: “Alright.” And Muslims reply: “For a time we will accept it. But by Islam, religion is a public matter and our order should be founded on religion. We will wait.”

Warning signals: the hegemonic architecture of the minaret, and the hegemonic words of the prayer call.

Formally, liberals should clearly decide whether 1. they want to suppress Islam as entirely antithetical to the liberal (and ultimately post-Christian) order, or 2. they want to include Islam within the order, even though Islam is committed to conspiring against that order. The second sounds liberal, but might end in the death of liberalism. The first does not sound liberal, but would defend liberalism. This is the paradox of liberalism – a paradox, but also a problem.

But if only things were this simple. Because liberalism does not clearly decide this question. It temporises. It hopes. And, anyhow, it is confused. It is confused because: 1. it remembers that England was originally Christian, and wonders whether Christianity is fundamental to liberalism or not, and cannot finally decide, and listens to a Tom Holland podcast [and sleeps], and 2. it, in practice, says, “Well, anyhow, Christianity is the majority tradition, and Islam is minority, so we, as liberals, should, er, try to restrain Christianity and defend the rights of Islam.” And this last point is where we currently are: a world in which Christians praying in the street are cautioned by the police, while the Islamic prayer call resounding in Trafalgar Square is considered by the Mayor of London to be jolly good for multicultural life.

And then there is the fact that, like Alastair Campbell, we “don’t do God”. We don’t want to talk about religion. But we need to talk about religion, because the word ‘religion’ might be part of the problem. I mean, what is the British religion? Is it:

• What is found in the Church of England – by contrast with other ‘faiths’ or ‘religions’: Islam, in its varieties, Judaism, in its varieties, etc., i.e. our formal religion with identifiable communities and institutions?
  
  
• What the British state, i.e. His Majesty’s Government and the ‘Deep Economy’, want us to avow as our communal beliefs, as imposed on us by NHS, BBC, Ofcom, including HR protocols, DEI, SDG, fictional ‘British values’, etc.?
  
  
• What actually holds the British together – some slight ligatures of language, literature, liturgy and law: perhaps, sometimes, expectation, if not experience?

Problems, problems. All we can say is that we have no way, in contemporary conditions, short of restoring Christendom, of knowing what to do about Islam. There is no way that a liberal order can adjudicate between the rival claims of Christianity and Islam, especially when it has post-colonial or Oedipal reasons for wanting to destroy Christianity, and when it wants to exult in Islamic otherness, difference, diversity. I, in my simplicity, think we need, at least, a renewed historical sense, restored philology, and some sort of emphatic defence of our traditions – and ultimately, perhaps, a restoration of establishment, tests and tithes – but that is a reactionary fantasy. And liberalism would not stand for it – indeed, it celebrates the destruction of this Establishment. But liberalism has opened the doors for a worse Establishment. And this has to be seen for what it is before it happens.

Everyone knows that the problem will be decisively evident when Islam is a majority faith, and when liberals can no longer pretend to be in control of the order. The question is what liberals will do then?

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.

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