Islamic Expansion and Decline - 1 A Powerful and Dangerous Meme

Chapter 1: A Powerful and Dangerous Meme

Ideas, like pathogens may spread in epidemic fashion. An idea or a linked constellation of ideas are subject to natural selection like genes. Religions, philosophies, ideologies are examples of such memes; those adapted to the conditions or circumstances of the time persist and spread. 

As Howard Bloom remarks:

Memes are ideas, the snatches of nothingness that leap from mind to mind. … A melody wells up in the reveries of a solitary songwriter. It seizes the brain of a singer. Then it infects the consciousness of millions. … But the memes that count the most are the ones that assemble vast arrays of resources in startling new forms. They are the memes that construct social superorganisms.[1]

Islam is one such meme; a particularly formidable one that once besieged much of the world and has now experienced a second birth:

The modern growth of Islam is the coalescence of a superorganism drawn together by the magnetic attraction of a meme. But this meme has an advantage: The social body it is trying to pull together has existed as a unified social beast in the past. The old reflexes of solidarity are still there, waiting to be aroused. The meme of the new Islam is not laboring to generate a small and fragile embryo. It is simply attempting to awaken a sleeping giant.[2]

Islam, like other religious traditions taps into some of the deepest yearnings of the human psyche. It gives a meaningful and comprehensive explanation of the universe and ensures fearful believers that piety and acquiescence to the will of the Creator will be rewarded with blissful immortality. In these respects Islam, like the other successful religions is proving itself more robust than the dry utopian ideologies contrived by various 19th century German philosophers; unlike such transient creeds, Islam is forever. In addition, Islam beckons its more zealous followers with material and sensual rewards both in paradise and on earth. Furthermore, the rewards guaranteed to its devotees, particularly its male devotees, by Islam are more full-blooded than the benefits promised by competing religions and more eternal than the, rather thin, gruel offered by the secular ideologies.

It is true that the carriers of the Islamic meme, in the first century of the Arab conquests were rather ambivalent about purveying it to the non-Arab subject peoples. However, at all times and in all lands subject to the Muslim juggernaut the following was true:

In its early years the religion of Muhammad had a swift and terrible spread, often, where resistance occurred to the terrible accompaniment of fire and sword; and so it made an unforgettable impression upon many peoples both of the East and West. In the 1st century of its existence it must have appeared to those who stood in the path of its advance like a devouring fire enlarging from its center, which rushed upon them with remorseless and inexorable speed; before they knew what to do, it was upon them. … Many, not caring to withstand the New Order, and half convinced already, surrendered themselves and became Moslems. … Some resisted actively and became dead men, incapable of counter argument.[3]

Islam, in addition to promising material rewards on earth and sensual delights in heaven, enticed potential converts with the lure of theological simplicity. According to the scholar of comparative religions John Noss:

But though its severity appalled those who resisted it, its simplicity and clarity appealed to those who bowed to its teaching. … In general, it does not overburden them with a multitude of scriptures and doctrines and a plethora of abstruse doctrines. It has kept to one basic scripture, preserved from the first in a state of textual purity such that comparatively few variant readings have arisen to confuse the commentators.[4]

The straightforwardness of Islam has an especial appeal to members of more primitive cultures:

The basic simplicity of Islam and the thoroughness of its discipline make it an attractive and effective religion for primitive peoples.[5]

Professor Reuben Levy referring to the spread of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa observes:

Ultimately by providing him with a way of life which, though not by any means easy, is yet simple and clearly defined, Islam frees him from the numerous vague terrors inseparable from a primitive state of culture …[6]

The simplicity of its creed when combined with its legitimation of war, plunder and slavery rendered Islam especially alluring to primitive nomadic tribes steeped in a culture that already glorified raiding and warfare. The most important of such nomadic groups, after the early desert Arabs, the Turks, have been described as follows:

These were a people driven instinctively by an inherited impulse as nomads to move outward … in search of pastures new. Since their conversion to Islam, this search was sanctified and further inspired by their religious duty as Ghazis, under the holy law, to seek out and fight the infidel … to raid and occupy his lands, seize his possessions, kill or carry into captivity his people, and subject their communities to Moslem rule.[7]

Islam which “offers no unattainable ideal, few theological complications and perplexities, no mystical sacraments and no priestly hierarchy involving ordination, consecration and ‘apostolic succession’”[8] was a suitable religion for uncultured nomadic peoples of the deserts or steppes, with no cities and often times no permanent habitations or even structures. The Muslim credo “was easily grasped by the nomadic tribes of the desert and, later of the steppe. Especially when the celestial reward was preceded by the tangible loot divinely sanctioned.”[9]

Islam is not alone in its muscular orientation toward religious expansion. Nor is it unique in its claim on a monopoly of truth and its insistence that followers must believe in, or at least not openly question, revealed dogma. Its great monotheistic and proselytizing sister religion, Christianity, shares many of the same characteristics. Indeed, even the religions of East Asia with their history of relative tolerance are not immune to religious warfare and persecution:

Sometimes a sternly Confucian or vigorously Taoist emperor would institute widespread persecution; one such … in 845 A.D. destroyed 45,000 Buddhist buildings, melted down tens of thousands of Buddha images, and sent over 400,000 monks, nuns and temple servitors back into the world.[10]

The religions of Judaism and Hinduism, whose adherents have for the most part avoided proselytizing, have a number of violent episodes recounted in their root sacred books. In the case of early Judaism these tell how the Hebrew tribes had to war against Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines and others in order to establish themselves in the land promised them by God. However the offensive wars described in this quasi-historical account are limited to one territory and a brief historical period. The scriptures do not provide an ongoing justification of these actions for all time and all places. Nor was there any scriptural imperative to conquer and convert other peoples to the Jewish religion. On the contrary, Judaism has usually discouraged even voluntary conversion. In addition, in the case of Judaism the strict interpretation of the law has been long superseded through rabbinical injunction as it was in Christianity through the personal example of Jesus. Adulterers, homosexuals or apostates may be ostracized or excommunicated but are no longer executed unless the adherents of these faiths violate their religious imperative. In the same way the early Hindu texts describe the tribal warfare that supposedly occurred in ancient India. But they do not promote these methods as a duty incumbent on Hindus as a means of forcing their religion on unbelievers. The same might be said of the root mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans as described in Homer. Bloody minded though they were, no Greek or Roman would think of using violence to force their conquered subjects to worship Zeus or Athena. Christians, it is true, suffered sporadic persecution, as their religion was regarded as an innovation, a cult dangerous to the stability of the Roman state; Jews and other long established religious minorities were left alone except in times and places of active rebellion.

The case of the Islamic meme is rather different. There are in its root scriptures a constant injunction to spread the rule of Islam by means of violence and coercion. Non-Muslims are required to either convert to Islam or to submit to being ruled by Muslims under conditions of tribute and degradation. Furthermore, warriors who die in war to extend Islam get a free pass into the rather lush Islamic paradise. These injunctions are in the Koran, the basic Muslim testament. Now some of the early Meccan verses enjoin the believers to do good works, and to be charitable and peaceful. But the peaceful injunctions, at least with respect to infidels, are abrogated by later Medinan verses which were written after Muhammad attained political power. These verses not only require the faithful to take part in war but provide detailed recommendations for strategies, deception when signing treaties or truces and divvying up the booty captured; these also give religious sanction to rape. Now rape occurs in all wars at all times, but Islam is the only world religion that sanctifies it and gives it religious justification as a permanent institution through concubinage and sexual slavery. Furthermore the Hadith (the sayings attributed to Muhammad and his companions) and the Sira (the biography of Muhammad) which are the Muslim equivalents of the Acts and Epistles also give religious sanction to violence, theft, slavery and rape on the part of Muslims when dealing with unbelievers.

It would be useful, at this point, to examine the remarkable career of the founder of the Islamic meme. The next chapter looks closely at the character of the prophet Muhammad.

[1] Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997, p. 98.

[2] Ibid, p. 233.

[3] John B. Noss, Man’s Religions, New York, Macmillan, 1968, p. 713.

[4] Ibid, pp. 713-14.

[5] Herbert J. Muller, The Loom of History, New York, Harper, 1958, p. 298.

[6] Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 52.

[7] J.P. Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, New York, William Morrow and Company, 1977, p. 34.

[8] Philip K. Hitti, The Arabs, A Short History, South Bend IN, Regnery/Gateway, 1970, p.48.

[9] Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, Boston, Regina Orthodox Press, 2002, p.51.

[10] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 212.

The Theory of Islamic Expansion and Decline

Chapter 1: A Powerful and Dangerous Meme

Chapter 2: The Flawed Prophet

Chapter 3: Shadow of the Sword: Patterns of Islamic Conquest

Chapter 4: Limits of Empire: Islam Contained

Chapter 5: Patterns of Treason

Chapter 6: Triumph of the Faith: Conversion of the Vanquished

Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem: Polygamy, Concubinage and the Spread of Islam

Chapter 8: The Slave Society

Chapter 9: Strategies of Cultural Survival

Chapter 10: Phases of Islamic Political Development

Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization

Chapter 12: The Islamic Reformation

Chapter 13: Myth and Reality

Chapter 14: The Fire This Time

Chapter 15: Conclusion


ORIGINAL SOURCE :

The Theory of Islamic Expansion and Decline