Islamic Conservatism

The word “conservative” when used to described factions in Islamic (and often other) countries defines a sort of repressive retardation. It is basically a philosophy of fear, one evoked by fear, and one operating outside the awareness of its proponents, sustaining fear. While this is occurring in Turkey only to a moderate degree, many other countries more passionately Islamic than Turkey live completely under such fear.

And among the ways this never gets confronted is the practice of identifying (and blaming) external threats for society’s suffering. Cultures of this type effectively function like people with no immune system – they are forever vulnerable to disease and must build for themselves a sealed world lest an external agent infect them. But a person with no immune system also can get in trouble with cancer – that is, with self-created “invaders” – because an active and healthy immune system monitors and eliminates such wayward tissues when they first appear. If there is no immune system, those malignant cells can proliferate. The Islamic world today suffers from such cancers.

Alternatively, if the immune system is too active or just dysfunctional, it attacks the body itself as an invader, as foreign. In some ways Islamic countries have a dysfunctional immune system. But mostly they have almost no immune system at all. And so they struggle to survive in the world amid a sea of other “cultural organisms”.

The conceit of Islamic countries is thinking their current practices are a solution to their problems, rather than contributors to them. They would benefit from reviewing the maxim: repeating something that doesn’t work and expecting a different result is a sign of mental illness. Islamic countries are mentally ill in this way, and as a result never manage to confront the real issues before them – how to realize a vision of cultural harmony, comfort, and purpose. They do have these ideas, but the first and second are imagined to be achievable only after life has ended – in their heaven – and the third has been hijacked by their misunderstanding that repression is a nourishment.

The fantasy of the global caliphate many Muslims are drawn to, or are encouraged to support – this is the vision offered by Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists – fails to consider the condition of Islamic societies at the time of previous caliphates. If that history were known, few if any Muslims (perhaps those few in the highest positions of power would be exceptions) would view a new caliphate as a worthwhile goal.

Considerations such as these only lie quietly in the hearts of Muslims around the world today. Their whispers give Muslims hope even as the whole of the Muslim world remains drugged on the poisons of belief and repression. Perhaps someday they will find a way besides suicide to be free.