by Fady Noun 


Superstitions, rituals, deportation, rape, summary justice and indoctrination are the foundations upon which the power of terrorists rests. The latter want to create a theocratic and regressive "perfect city". But utopias generate terror and monsters like Communism and Nazism. Christians have a duty to show Muslims the "true face" of their religion as well as its "elements of violence."

Beirut (AsiaNews) - What kind of power is emerging in the territory controlled by the "Islamic State"? From what we know, it includes superstitious ritualism (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi walking up the steps of the minbar starting with the right foot), the deportation or liquidation of apostates and non-Muslim religious minorities, the indoctrination of children, summary justice (crucifixion, stoning, throat slitting), looting, ethnic and cultural cleansing, etc. We are in the presence of a theocratic power in which the temporal is subordinate to the spiritual or its equivalent. This is Utopia.

By and large, this utopia is a longing for a "perfect city" in the future. In this case, this utopia is backward-looking. The ideal society to which it aspires is in the past, and the goal is to go back to its alleged purity. This is a return to a "golden age" in which God's law ruled - or so some believe - all aspects of personal, social and political life.

We know, in view of the lessons provided by dozens of examples in history, particularly the monstrous models of Nazism and Communism that emerged in the 20^th century - that utopias beget terror and that such a system of power, such an embryo, such a civilisational desire is based on an fatal anthropological error, namely the belief in the perfectibility of the citizens of an "ideal city", and the controllability of their impulses, entropy and tendency to disorder. However, this is not feasible except through grace from within or terror from without.

Obviously, political utopia are source of great fear. This is nothing new. John Paul II often spoke of temporal messianism. However, to encourage readers to explore all his writings, we will take out a pearl of the Red Sea of his personal diary, which his secretary did not have the heart to destroy, as its author had expressed in his will. "Temporal messianism, the kingdom of God on earth, has always been a problem," wrote the great pope. Of course, the Vatican has taken clear positions regarding the evangelical needs in the world, which is different from political messianism.

The Church has not given up on making the world a place where it is to good live, or in any case a better place than in a state of barbarism, but it has dropped the utopia of the "perfect city" or the "reign of a thousand years" found in Revelation, which some have used to justify temporal messianism. Such messianism has, at times, marred the evangelical message.

"Man is neither angel nor beast, and unhappily whoever wants to act the angel, acts the beast," said Blaise Pascal. This is the anthropological error par excellence, one that has engulfed so many political systems that sought to "start over", leading in modern times to the concentration camps in Europe, the Gulag in the Soviet Union, and the killing fields in Cambodia. Whoever wants to be an angel and forget that man is also beast falls himself into bestiality. Might is right and the thirst for power, which in Christian terms is called "flesh" and not the "body" as opposed to that which is spiritual and grace, insidiously creep into the best systems in the world, even democracy.

Some believe that the Islamic State is an occult creation that obeys to geopolitical plans to cause upheaval in the East for economic reasons. This explanation notwithstanding, if we accept that the founders of this state are actually motivated by religious zeal, it is clear that they unfortunately yield to the illusion of a non-existent "golden age" to justify their violence in its name.

"We modern civilisations, we too now know that we are mortal like the others," a somewhat gloomy Valéry said. Civilisations, some would say especially those based on religion, are just human constructs, fragile scaffolding, ephemera, which must continually consider man divided between nature and grace, with freedom as the referee. What is more, and this is something the Church certainly knows, given our fallibility, it is with infinite caution that we must work to bring about a more just world. "We do not have a mission to establish the truth, but to bear witness to it," said Henri de Lubac. So much for utopia.

Violence and Islam

The violence of the Islamic State has created a second problem. We said above that we are in the presence of a theocratic power in which the temporal is subordinate to the spiritual. Is the Islam of the Islamic State "the true face" of Islam? This at least is what many Muslim leaders in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are keen to reject. The Mufti of Egypt, Abdel Aziz Allam wants the term "Islamic state" be replaced by "the ISIL terrorist organisation." The mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, spoke in similar terms. "Extremism and violence have nothing to do with Islam," he said. "They are the first enemy, and Muslims are their first victims."

"Naturally, it is comforting to know that many Muslims do not identify with the ideas and the actions of the Islamic State," wrote Michele Brignone, scientific secretary of the online magazine of the Oasis Foundation (Monday, 22 September). But such statements about a general extraneousness to 'true' Islam run the risk of being objectively unsatisfactory, as demonstrated by the Egyptian scholar Sherif Younis, one of the most acute and competent interpreters of modern Arab and Islamic thought (even though he is almost unknown in the West), in two articles published on 18 August and 1 September respectively, in the important Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Ahram.

In the first, entitled 'The Ideology of the Islamic State and the Islamist revival', Younis wrote, without pulling any punches and with a frankness that is rare in the public debate of Arab-Islamic countries, that 'to accuse violent organisations like this one [the Islamic State] simply to ignore Islam is a sort of grave simplification, if not connivance. The reality is that violence is a part of the Islamist revival and is based upon a reactivation of existing traditional elements.

"It is a good thing that Islamic thinkers condemn the traumatic experience of the Islamic State," Younis wrote. "But it is important, above all, for this State to be thought about. Without an adequate judgement, the Islamist projects could be temporarily opposed but never really overcome."

Experts note in fact that there is not one but many Islam, Islamic traditions or schools, regardless of the literalness of the Qur'an, as there were and continue to be different Christian traditions, inspired nevertheless by same body of texts.

Thus, just as the Catholic Church made ​​amends in the Galileo case, and apologised for the slave trade, it is incumbent on Muslims to tell us where to look for the "true face" of their religion and if "elements of violence" found in the Qur'an are constitutive of their faith or not, and how.

• lebanon
• islam
• islamic
• state
• violence