The anxiousness of Western non-Muslims to establish that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam continues, with ever more farfetched explanations of how they came about. Kevin McDonald, a professor of sociology and head of the department of criminology and sociology at Middlesex University, is not the first to ascribe the evils of the Islamic State to Christianity, as you can see from this cartoon that ran in the Hamilton Spectator and was later taken down, but his attempt may be the most imaginative.
“Isis jihadis aren’t medieval – they are shaped by modern western philosophy,” by Kevin McDonald, the Guardian, September 9, 2014 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Over recent weeks there has been a constant background noise suggesting that Islamic State (Isis) and its ideology are some sort of throwback to a distant past. It is often framed in language such as that used last week by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who said Isis was “medieval”. In fact, the terrorist group’s thinking is very much in a more modern, western tradition.
Clegg’s intervention is not surprising. Given the extreme violence of Isis fighters and the frequent images of decapitated bodies, it is understandable that we attempt to make sense of these acts as somehow radically “other”.
But this does not necessarily help us understand what is at stake. In particular, it tends to accept one of the core assertions of contemporary jihadism, namely that it reaches back to the origins of Islam. As one Isis supporter I follow on Twitter is fond of saying: “The world changes; Islam doesn’t”.
This is not just a question for academic debate. It has real impact. One of the attractions of jihadist ideology to many young people is that it shifts generational power in their communities. Jihadists, and more broadly Islamists, present themselves as true to their religion, while their parents, so they argue, are mired in tradition or “culture”.
But they’re wrong, asserts McDonald:
It needs to be said very clearly: contemporary jihadism is not a return to the past. It is a modern, anti-traditional ideology with a very significant debt to western political history and culture.
When he made his speech in July at Mosul’s Great Mosque declaring the creation of an Islamic state with himself as its caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi quoted at length from the Indian/Pakistani thinker Abul A’la Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in 1941 and originator of the contemporary term Islamic state.
Maududi’s Islamic state is profoundly shaped by western ideas and concepts. He takes a belief shared between Islam and other religious traditions, namely that God alone is the ultimate judge of a person, and transforms this – reframing God’s possession of judgment into possession of, and ultimately monopoly of, “sovereignty”. Maududi also draws upon understandings of the natural world governed by laws that are expressions of the power of God – ideas at the heart of the 17th-century scientific revolution. He combines these in a vision of the sovereignty of God, then goes on to define this sovereignty in political terms, affirming that “God alone is the sovereign” (The Islamic Way of Life). The state and the divine thus fuse together, so that as God becomes political, and politics becomes sacred.
In that paragraph, McDonald betrays his profound ignorance of Islam and the historical caliphates. He seems to think that Maududi invented the idea of the Islamic state, when in fact that concept is as old as the Umayyad caliphate. Another British professor, David Thomas, who shares McDonald’s view that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, was closer to the mark when he noted that in restoring the caliphate, the Islamic State “reverted to a model that has been the reality in parts of the Islamic world for most of its history. For nearly 1,400 years the caliph was head of the entire Islamic state. He often wielded unimaginable power, and always great influence.”
Such sovereignty is completely absent in medieval culture, with its fragmented world and multiple sources of power. Its origins lie instead in the Westphalian system of states and the modern scientific revolution.
Nonsense. Such sovereignty existed in the Middle Ages in the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, and later in the Ottoman caliphate. McDonald shows no sign of knowing that those Islamic states existed, or of how, in them, “the state and the divine” fused together.
But Maududi’s debt to European political history extends beyond his understanding of sovereignty. Central to his thought is his understanding of the French revolution, which he believed offered the promise of a “state founded on a set of principles” as opposed to one based upon a nation or a people. For Maududi this potential withered in France; its achievement would have to await an Islamic state.
Maududi was very canny at using modern Western political thought as a vehicle for dawah. He tried to sell Islam to twentieth-century Westerners by appropriating the language of Communism and other contemporary political movements. McDonald is basing his analysis of Maududi’s thought on this essay, which does indeed say that the French Revolution offered the promise of a “state founded on a set of principles,” but does not say what McDonald assumes — that Maududi thought the French originated that concept. In reality, Maududi wrote about the caliphate as the legitimate form of government for the Islamic umma not in terms of concepts borrowed from the French Revolution, but in terms of traditional Islamic understandings of the nature and source of political sovereignty.
In revolutionary France, it is the state that creates its citizens and nothing should be allowed to stand between the citizen and the state. That is why today French government agencies are still prevented by law from collecting data about ethnicity, considered a potential intermediary community between state and citizen.
This universal citizen, separated from community, nation or history, lies at the heart of Maududi’s vision of “citizenship in Islam”. Just as the revolutionary French state created its citizens, with the citizen unthinkable outside the state, so too the Islamic state creates its citizens. This is at the basis of Maududi’s otherwise unintelligible argument that one can only be a Muslim in an Islamic state.
Maududi didn’t originate the concept of the supranational umma, either. The ideas of the Muslims of the world forming a global community and of the faith as a whole only being fully realized in an Islamic state are as old as Islam itself.
Don’t look to the Qur’an to understand this – look to the French revolution and ultimately to the secularisation of an idea that finds its origins in European Christianity: extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the church there is no salvation), an idea that became transformed with the birth of modern European states into extra stato nulla persona (outside the state there is no legal personhood). This idea still demonstrates extraordinary power today: it is the source of what it means to be a refugee.
Maududi’s “otherwise unintelligible argument that one can only be a Muslim in an Islamic state” is actually based on the idea that Islamic law is Allah’s law, is indispensable to Islam, and therefore one can only live the full Muslim life in an Islamic state in which Sharia is implemented. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Christian concept of extra ecclesiam nulla salus or any other Christian idea.
If Isis’s state is profoundly modern, so too is its violence. Isis fighters do not simply kill; they seek to humiliate, as we saw last week as they herded Syrian reservists wearing only their underpants to their death. And they seek to dishonour the bodies of their victims, in particular through postmortem manipulations.
“For the disbelievers is a humiliating punishment” — Qur’an 2:90
Such manipulations aim at destroying the body as a singularity. The body becomes a manifestation of a collectivity to be obliterated, its manipulation rendering what was once a human person into an “abominable stranger”. Such practices are increasingly evident in war today.
Central to Isis’s programme is its claim to Muslim heritage – witness al-Baghdadi’s dress. Part of countering this requires understanding the contemporary sources of its ideology and its violence. In no way can it be understood as a return to the origins of Islam. This is a core thesis of its supporters, one that should not be given any credence at all.
Why not? Why the anxiety to dissociate the Islamic State from Islam? Ultimately McDonald’s piece here is designed to reassure Britons about the growing number of Muslims in their midst, and to shore up the British establishment’s disastrous policies on immigration and the appeasement of Islamic supremacists. Don’t worry about the Islamic State, folks. The Muslims in the U.K. will never behave like they’re behaving, since the Islamic State fellows aren’t even Islamic, they’re just imitating European Christians. There. Feel better?
Neil Jennison says
Almost everything the Guardian prints is utter drivel designed to make people believe its jaundiced view of the world.
Judi says
My thoughts exactly.
Huck Folder says
Prof. K should go back to flipping burgers.
Michael says
LOL!
Paul Weston says
If Mohammed was alive today, he would be doing just what he did in the 7th century – rampaging across the Middle East conquering, killing, raping and beheading whilst justifying it via Archangel Gabriel.
Denying Islam’s influence on ISIS is akin to denying Hitler’s influence on the SS or Karl Marx’s influence on the Russian Revolution.
Any politician or media type who promotes this total re-writing of reality should be completely and utterly exposed for what they are.
All we need is a non-leftist media in order to do so. Oh wait…..
Jovial Joe says
Hello Paul, good of you to join us. Would you be able to tell us on what grounds the charges levelled against you for ‘inciting racial hatred’ were dropped, assuming you are at liberty to say?
Jaladhi says
Exactly!! And our stupid media will say what Mohammad is doing, raping, looting, invading, murdering, beheading, etc, is against the teachings of Islam!!! LOL… Since when our lying media became the authority on Islam?? The question is are they really that stupid(I won’t call the naive) or they are lying, cunning cheats that they keep on supporting Muslims!!!
Steven says
Jaladhi……Spot on, mate. I was going to say that.
Ice Star says
The Islamic State is what it says it is.
It is based on what they say it is based on.
The Qur’an, Hadith, and Sunnah.
The teachings of the deified ancestor Mohamed, and his deity Allah, who he appropriated from the Pagans of his people.
Anyone with a functioning BRAIN can check their quotes and see the TRUTH.
No apologists necessary.
Soloview says
I think it is clear that if the Universities in the West are awash in Gulf Oil money, the professors will be happy to teach that the Islamic State (or whatever else threatens the Saudi royals and the wealthy sheiks) is an abomination to Islam that rests squarely with the dead kuffar philosophers who ate pork.
EYESOPEN says
Or as I call them: izlamowhores!
mariam rove says
Watch out!! Here come militants Catholics to take over your lives!!!!!!!!!!!! M
Charli Main says
Closely followed by rampaging hoards of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains following the tenents of their religions—-NOT
mariam rove says
you left off the most important ones. The Jews that is!!!!!!!!!m
Beagle says
I am fairly certain centralized power in a king, emir, caliph, khan, or emperor is not a modern invention.
Hard to read past a first whopper.
Terry says
You need to write for the Guardian, Mr. Spencer.
Jaladhi says
Why have the western media and government leaders become brain dead when it comes to finding and telling truth about Islam and Muslims. Are they all so afraid of Muslims???
Jaladhi says
I have a laugh when these non-Muslims go out on the limb and tell what ISIS is doing not Islamic and not taught by Quran. I sure the “moderate” Mulsims also have the laugh at stupidity of dhimmis.
Jay Boo says
Ask a Muslim about the Qur’an and ISIS if you enjoy talking to a deaf wall.
You will hear about Palestinians being attacked by Israel,
— Western motives for being in the Middle East.
Try it and you will see.
wes says
Robert, he said not to look to the Qur’an to make sense of it, and here you go and do just that.
I would think that the head of the department of criminology and sociology would be an expert in Islam.
Wellington says
Well then, I guess Mohammed saying, “I have been made victorious with terror” (Bukhari Hadith 4.52.220) REALLY MEANS, after a deconstructionist, Western academic take on this passage, that Mohammed invited guests over for a fine lamb barbecue with lots of hot sauce. And Sura 9:5, which calls upon Muslims “to slay the idolater wherever you find him,” ACTUALLY MEANS, again courtesy of Western academic insight, that Muslims will just bowl over the non-Muslim with lots of belly-laugh humor, with tons of Muslim jokes galore, and everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike will have a jolly good time of it.
Islam_Macht_Frei says
Kevin McDonald is a 3-2 favorite for “Dhimmi of the Month.”
Angemon says
And that’s why there are so many Western states and cultures whose laws and customs resemble what’s going on in the islamic state.
Oh wait…
tpellow says
Many of the political left, including Guardianistas, endorse in their world historical view, the barbarities of the French Revolution, including the year of the Reign of Terror, 1793-4.
But for the most part, the political left’s historical education in the 1,400 years of historical barbarities of global Islamic jihad has been very limited, or non-existent in the Western education system.
It seems that for the political left, any putative criticism of Islam has to be filtered by Islamic apologists.
tpellow says
“Islam: What the West needs to know”
(1 hour, 38 mins video).
Richie says
is the Guardian a left leaning newspaper?
tpellow says
For the political ‘left’-Islam alliance:-
“The Real History of the Crusades”
By Thomas Madden.
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/madden/03463.html
Bezelel says
Believe it or not this isn’t the first time I’ve heard a close spin to this “explanation” from an otherwise intelligent person. I didn’t buy it then and I wont now. It’s as if all the BS justifies jihad. What difference does any of the smoke and mirrors make when the heads are rolling?
Alice says
Another day, another imbecile.
Zimriel says
Those fine professors are welcome to drop by Amazon’s book reviews for Patricia Crone’s and Martin Hinds’ book, God’s Caliph which was about, astoundingly, how the caliph was commonly accepted as God’s Caliph until the reign of al-Mahdi. That book’s been out since the 1980s. The scholarly community and the book-buying public both would be well-served by an explanation on how Crone and Hinds got it all wrong.
Richard says
Blame the Christians.
Kepha says
O, the deep intellectuality of _The Guardian_! [sarc]
Actually, I have another take on why _The Guardian_ makes the current furor islamicus the artefact of Western Christianity and the French Revolution: it’s the Left’s narrative, supported by Marx and his disciples, that the non-Western peoples are ‘historyless” unless the anointed “we” get involved for either good or bad. Kevin McDonald doesn’t come to grips with the violence intrinsic to Islamic culture and devotion (Jihad, is, after all, a pillar) because it’s too hard for him. If he tried to truly come to grips with such things, he’d have to admit that his professedly EmCee self is actually far more monocultural than lots of people he’d probably attack as “racist”.
pumbar says
The guardian, like the koran, should be printed on soft, pre-perforated paper.
Robert says
The professor suggests that the totalitarian state is a modern, Western invention. But what about the kings of the Ancient Near East who ruled with absolute authority and power? The Persian kings, for one, were renowned for the total power they wielded. Their courts were designed to display the complete control they exerted over all their subjects. They had the freedom to dispose of anyone who stood in their way, including their advisers, prime ministers, and even their favourite wife. By contrast, the history of politics in Europe, especially Protestant Europe, is the story of power limited and contained, channeled and deferred. The absolutism of the Spanish and French monarchs stands in stark contrast to the English king, who depended on the okay from parliament to enact policy. Charles 1 tried to imitate the French kings, establishing Personal Rule (=a weird English version of a Caliphate), and it led to a bloody Civil War and his eventual trial for treason against the English people. On several occasions, English-speaking people have experienced their own versions of a religious state and rejected it with intelligence and, when necessary, armed resistance.
Will says
IF the comments below the article in the Graunard are indicative there is a tsunami of truth rolling towards the west where bull effluent like that article is laughed at and criticised by most of the posters below it.
I just hope that the wave breaks in time to save the west.
katarzyna says
Deconstruction in defence of the text.
Great French thinkers told us that there is no Truth of the text, just truths and to see what rules the text we should look at what is repressed from it. So what is missing? Actually who is not mention? Yes, the founder of the religion. Why then? The answer McDonald’s proffesion. He knows the consequences of french fraze to be born in the full light of the history’. There are no reliable historical evidence of his existence. He is rational thinker.
He says dont look to the koran – why? Again, the rules of evidentiary procedure. Do we have the original koran? No. What we have proves that it was changed and likely written firstly not in arabic. There are the silent premises of the text. From that where we go? Postmodernism is a critique of modern thought. And in political terms what is the source of it? Yes, the french revolution.
Talal says
I say look at previous revolutions, and look inside the Quran as well. Quran in English: http://www.clearquran.com
katarzyna says
if your comment concerns mine
I used deconstruction to analyze his article, mainly to establish the silent premises.
He should say at the beginning: because mohamet did not exist, koran is not word of allah I offer you as an intellectual abstract exercise(pointless in this case) this explanation of isis ideology.