Understanding Islam

by Guillaume Faye

  The kinship between Marxism and Islam is obvious: they both represent unifying teachings for all mankind to abide by. On the other hand, Nazi totalitarianism was different since its basis was racial, meaning that it only concerned a certain part of mankind. Marxism-Communism and Islam are devoid of a racist dimension, seeking universality instead. Though practically speaking, Islam does display an obvious anti-white racism, especially in Europe nowadays (we shall return to this very ambiguous question later on). Nevertheless, there truly is a similarity between these three siblings, a similarity that lies in the fusion (or confusion) between the individual sphere and the collective sphere, as well as between the private and public domains, which are encompassed in a single doctrine. This kinship also relates to the fact that Doctrine — or dogma — holds sway over the notion of social contract and free democratic inquiry. In this regard, Islam, Nazism and communist (or socialist) Marxism radically defy the European traditions inherited from ancient Greece and Rome and contradict Slavic and Scandinavian Germanic customs, as well as those of the Enlightenment, which all originate in the principial assumption of the superiority of both public debate and majority opinions over any doctrine whatsoever.

  Marxist-communist totalitarianism collapsed because it had no spiritual or superstitious aspects at all and was limited to an economic and materialistic dimension. Its policies thus failed miserably. Nazi totalitarianism fell apart because it attempted to wage war upon the world and was vanquished. However, Islam and Nazism did collaborate at one point, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem made a pact with Hitler. There were two reasons behind this collaboration: first of all, Islam and Nazism were both anti-Jewish and, secondly, they advocated the same type of totalitarian society and State. This complicity between neo-Nazis and Islamists has endured, as confirmed by the recent controversies surrounding comedian Dieudonné (meaning ‘Godgiven’, a performer with close ties to Islamism and with anti-Semitic stances) and publicist Alain Soral, a man who happens to be a former Marxist and who defines himself nowadays as ‘National Socialist’ (and therefore presumably neo-Nazi), his eyes always aglow with fascination for young Muslims. Soral is thus the perfect embodiment of the Marxist-neo-Nazi-Islamic triangulation.

  Massacres and attacks are said to be committed ‘in the name of Islam’, as if such acts were foreign to the latter and Islam were a mere victim of adverse possession and usurpation. Forget it. These violent acts are committed by Islam, in accordance with its own doctrine, similarly to the mass crimes perpetrated by Stalinist Marxism and Nazism, which were not committed by some irresponsible extremists ‘in the name’ of Communist Marxism and Hitlerian Nazism, but specifically by the two systems themselves.

  These mass crimes are a common feature of Islam, Communism and Nazism, although the three are not, of course, vested with a monopoly on such acts. Throughout history, the exterminations of entire populations have been legion, including the slaughter of whole tribes in Belgic Gaul (Gallia Belgica) who, having broken the truce, were put to the sword by order of Julius Caesar, the extermination of pagan Saxon villagers at the hands of Charlemagne, the atrocities of the Thirty Years’ War, the massacres perpetrated during the inter-Christian religious wars, etc. However, the scope of these actions was limited.

  Suffice to say that genocidal mass murders, meaning those committed in the name of ethnic, religious or social belonging in motu proprio, have been perpetrated by the three totalitarian siblings (Islam, Marxist communism and Nazism) since the beginning of the 20th century. The Stalinist and Cambodian mass crimes, those of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao, the Holocaust of the Jews and the massacres committed by forces declaring their allegiance to Islam (ranging from the Armenian Genocide to the current barbarism of the Islamic State or Daesh that is stretching out its tentacles in all directions) are unmatched among the other religious or ideological systems of the 20th and 21st centuries. Perhaps with one exception: the tribal and ethnic exterminations that regularly drown black Africa in a tide of blood, of which the Rwandan genocide is an illustrative example. It should also be noted that the slaughter of the Vendee during the Revolution (as a result of their ‘Catholic and Royal’ rebellion) was a kind of rehearsal for Marxist communist abuses, albeit on a smaller scale. Marx himself, in fact, acknowledged the most extreme currents of both the French Revolution and the Paris Commune as his ideological predecessors.

  Islam and its Murderous Violence

  For decades on end, Islam has been involved, on a worldwide scale, in the vast majority of all acts of terrorism, persecution and oppression, in addition to being responsible for most civil wars, executions, deportations and massacres, all committed in the name of the religion of Allah and its various tendencies. All these attacks have been conducted against populations deemed ‘infidel’. According to the US State Department, more than 10,000 terrorist attacks perpetrated all over the world in 2014 have been tied to Islam, attacks that left 30,000 fatal casualties and 30,000 wounded victims in their wake. This represents a massive increase of 81% compared to 2013. Over 60% of these attacks took place in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria. In the latter country, the jihadists of Boko Haram (who are affiliated to the Islamic State or IS) have already killed 6,644 Christians. As for the IS, it has already been credited with murdering 6286 civilians. Since 1990 and the bombing of the Saint Michel metro, 100% of all terrorist bombings and shootings in France (whose numbers are always on the rise) have been committed by Muslims in the name of jihad. The same goes for the attacks that have been foiled. The Islamic terrorist threat has become a global menace. Should we then not draw the conclusion that violence and chaos have (once again) become the hallmark of Islam, contradicting its publicly declared desire to establish stability and order? Herein lies, in fact, the common trait of all secular or religious totalitarianisms, one that would have them pretend to establish an unalterable Order in the name of a specific vision of a greater Good and Justice only to end up generating, instead, nothing but disorder, chaos and injustice. Unlike Christianity, Islam’s invasive and conquering power is not based on persuasion and voluntary conversion, but on violence and coercion. Similarly, becoming a member of the Single Party and learning its ideology were both, at the very least, recommended if not required in the communist and Nazi systems. Having said that, one must concede that Christianity has not always been free of such violence (Charlemagne against the Saxons, the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants, etc.), but still much less so than Islam and in blatant contradiction to its own Gospel texts, which advocate conversion through persuasion. In The Black Book of Islam (Tatamis Editions), Jean Robin has put together an impressive list of crimes and abuses committed ‘in the name of Islam’, or rather by Islam itself, which is a tragedy for those peaceful Muslims who somehow remain trapped within their own religion, a religion whose precepts they are unfamiliar with. For just like Marxism and Nazism, Islam, too, has many skeletons in its closet.

  The Metaphysics of Subjectivity Versus Totalitarianism

  The obsessive enemy of all those intellectuals with simultaneous ties to Marxism, Islamism and closet Nazism lies in the ‘metaphysics of subjectivity’ (to use their jargon), meaning in the very essence of the European tradition: individual freedom, one’s adherence to a given nation or a particular city-state and the rejection of homogenisation and massification. Totalitarian lines of thought abhor individualism, i.e. the subjectivity of citizens and small business owners and therefore that of a sovereign homeland and nation. Both Islam and the secular forms of totalitarianism interpret such subjectivity as selfishness or, in a typically puritan reflex, as vulgar consumerism, a sign of the ‘commodification’ of the world, which is but a hollow concept in itself.6 By contrast, they prefer the regimentation of individuals within a homogeneous and binding system where all thoughts abide by the same totalising rule, just like the State itself.

  This metaphysics of subjectivity, a pompous term that bears no relevance to actual ‘metaphysics�
�� and that should simply be replaced with ‘subjectivism’, characterises the worldview of our European civilisation (a civilisation that all totalitarianisms, whether secular or Islamic, are rising up against) and defines individual liberty, freedom of thought and the independence of the city-state as its supreme values. Subjectivism contrasts with collectivism, a common characteristic of Marxism, Islamic fundamentalism and other kinds of totalitarianism. Collectivism has always fascinated secular and religious intellectuals, who always hunger for globalising yet unrealistic thought systems. Their criticism of ‘individualism’ is as abstract as it is observation deficient and devoid of pragmatism, since they claim that individualism is an egotistical attitude that rules out every possible prospect of solidarity, which is an absolute fallacy.

  Collectivism (which, paradoxically, has never led to solidarity but resulted in oppression instead) detests the very notion of free subjects and aims to transform individuals into docile subordinates, all to the great benefit of a tyrannical caste that dictates what is right or wrong, what is lawful or prohibited and who the wicked and the virtuous are. The subjectivism of individuals, city-states and free nations is the cultural and philosophical foundation of our civilisation. Provided that certain conditions are met, it never leads to disorder, anarchy or decadence. Aristotle specified those conditions:

  1) Laws should express the general will of the majority, and never represent a doctrine, ideology or religion, nor even the views of government officials. Simultaneously, the State must guarantee their absolute implementation while assuming all its sovereign functions of justice and order.

  2) Individual freedom ceases as soon as it infringes upon the freedom and rights of other citizens.

  3) The city-state or nation should remain ethnically and culturally homogeneous if civil war is to be avoided.

  Does Islam Have a Civilising Aspect?

  The historic power of Islam is ambiguous in its results. The dreadful devastation wrought upon the treasures of the Persian and Roman Empires by the jihadists of the Islamic State in Iraq and the devastation of the Buddhas of Bamiyan at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan reflect the propensity of Islamic fundamentalism to abolish everything that precedes it (meaning anything ‘pre-Islamic’) and to practice iconoclasm, i.e. the abolition of images. This conquering power of Islam has hardly been synonymous with civilisation and creation. On the contrary, destruction has been its most noticeable trait. Ever since its birth in the 7th century CE, Islam has spread its sphere of influence into different parts of the world and established its dominion, yet produced a remarkably low number of artistic, literary, philosophical, synthetic and scientific creations when compared to other civilisations, a fact that contradicts the rehashed claims of modern propaganda.

  The question thus arises as to whether or not Islam is in fact decivilising in its impact, meaning restricted to its brute force and its purely expansionistic and quantitative power, a power that is both digital (demographic) and belligerent and always imposed through violent jihad and deception. Cunning is an atavistic feature that Islam has inherited from the Bedouin culture and whose living source was clearly identified and clarified by René R. Khawam in The Book of Deceit (Phaébus Editions). The myth of a supposedly civilising and creative ‘Andalusian Islam’ is an unavoidable gimmick used by the dominant ideology and does not correspond to historical reality since, contrary to what is claimed, the Muslim rule in Andalusia was fraught with destruction. The literary, artistic and scientific productivity of Islamised peoples is quite minimal in comparison to that of other nations, perhaps even insignificant. The wealth and power of the Arabian peninsula and of many other Muslim countries is due to their oil and gas revenues, whose technological source is of strictly Western origin. The Muslim sphere has always advanced through what it has borrowed from others, as well as through its practice of raiding, looting, slavery and piracy. Creativity, imagination and mental freedom are all incompatible with the very roots of Islam. This results in a great deal of suffering for many so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims, who have schizophrenic issues with their own identity. Although it smothers any and all mental and intellectual liberty, Islam somehow still manages to seduce some psycho-rigid Europeans, be it those that adhere to Marxist totalitarianism or the ones that identify with extreme-right traditionalism, as they mistakenly believe Islam to be acting in defence of a universal and eternal ‘tradition’, when all its actions are actually intended to further its own expansion, similarly to cancer metastases that only breed misery and pain. This explains why ‘humanistic’ islamophiles are ignorant of both Islam and humanism. As for the Muslims who have genuinely embraced an anti-Islamist stance, they may well have understood humanism, but have failed to grasp their own religion. Islamists, on the other hand, understand humanism and Islam perfectly well and reject the former.

  Is Islam Truly a Religion like Any Other?

  Islam represents a strange mixture of ingredients, where its will to dominate mingles with a desire for submission, while reclusion merges with universality, materialism with superstitious spiritualism, repressed sensuality with asceticism and rigidity with duplicity. Allah’s Paradise, for example, is not equivalent to the mystical contemplation of God in ineffable happiness as in the Christian notion of Paradise or to a cosmic union with the divine principle as in the Jewish or Buddhist afterlife. Nor is it akin to Hindu metempsychosis and its final reincarnation into perfection. It is a place of infinite pleasure and sensuality and a highly materialistic realm. Moreover, it is the exact counterpoint to all that Islam prohibits on earth and represents absolute anti-asceticism. In this post mortem afterlife, Allah will allow his followers to indulge in all that he prohibits in life, as a reward for all believers who practice jihad. This schizophrenic paradox is one that Islam is alone to possess: the truth of this world is not identical to that of the afterlife. Muslim values are changeable and their promises meaningless. In his practice of double standards, Allah is a faithful reflection of those who invented him.

  Such an attitude is out of the question in other religions, of course, including Christianity and Judaism, whose respective values are immutable and do not change to suit the circumstances. It is in this respect that Islam is similar to Marxist Communism in its deep-seated mentality: everything is twofold, and nothing straightforward nor clear. Rigid principles are associated with infringement authorisations and duplicity, just as their pacifistic discourse is combined with acts of violence. Another common trait between Islam and Marxism is their aim, which is exclusively materialistic: it would hardly be a matter of surprise if the paradise of Allah, a realm of boundless pleasure granted to the faithful as a reward, had actually been a source of inspiration for the modelling of the communist ideal of a classless society, one that enjoys absolute abundance and embodies the theoretical objective for all mankind to strive for within the trilateral framework of dialectical materialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat and Socialism.

  Islam is always judged from a Christian perspective and within a Christian mindset, as if it were a spiritual religion associated to merciful salvation, a ‘religion like any other’. Which is certainly not the case. What it is, in fact, is a politico-religious totalitarian doctrine with a superstitious dimension. And it is this fact, this absolute simplicity, which has endowed it with a power greater than that of Communism, since the latter was no more than a socio-economic utopia founded upon a farcical scientific nature, which explains its ephemeral character and failure.

  Save for a few exceptions that can only be qualified as drifts, such as Sufism (whose influence has been very limited), Muslims submit entirely to their dogma, without any discussion: Salvation, meaning the Paradise of Allah, can only be accessed through jihad (i.e. a ‘strife within the path of Allah’), which every believer is expected to participate in to the best of his abilities and skills, but ideally through the self-sacrifice of murderous martyrdom, whenever possible. The major difference that sets the Christian and Muslim concepts
of Salvation apart is that the former is complex, intellectualised and spiritual. It is not founded upon a notion of strife, but pervaded by concepts such as ‘grace’, ‘love’, charity, redemption, etc., all of which are completely foreign to Islam. The Muslim beliefs that relate to Allah’s Paradise, with its young virgins (72) that offer themselves to the resurrected mujahid elites, are not only rooted in very effective superstitions, but also in a deficient mental level. No other religion’s beliefs and dogmas are this appalling.

  A powerful but simple elaboration, the doctrine of Islam was developed by cynics to be used upon the simplest of minds. Naive fanaticism has always been compatible with Islam’s calculating, manipulative and brainwashing purposes. The Bedouin culture, characterised by dogma, cunning and a simultaneous superiority and inferiority complex, has permeated the Muslim religion, whose followers are however not, on a worldwide scale, predominantly Arab. Despite this fact, Islam, whose Sunni wellspring is located in Saudi Arabia, has adopted this original mentality, a mentality endowed with an immense power of acculturation. As for the ethical dimension and worldview that stem from all this, they are both at odds with European, Indian, Chinese and Japanese traditions and mentalities for instance, as well as with those of many other peoples of our planet.

  The concepts of honour, sincerity and face-to face combat are for example absent from the Arab-Islamic culture. Instead, it is cunning behaviour that prevails, double standards and calculating hypocrisy (taqiyya) that are nurtured and lies that are considered a virtue. These facts explain the Muslim fascination for indiscriminate attacks and terrorism. In the long term, the Islamic ambition to conquer humanity is bound to fail, however, because the nature of man differs greatly from the unifying and totalitarian vision of the world that is proper to Islam. Mankind is not uniform in its constitution and even the Arabian mentality itself, which gave rise to Islam, will eventually crack once it realises that what it has begotten is an impracticable ideology.