New avatar for old crusades-1

New avatar for old crusades-1

For the Muslim world secularism, rationality, liberalism and democracy are just new avatars of their old Christian foes.

While the West may want to see the global fight against terrorism as a fight between secular and fundamentalist forces, it is perhaps possible that many in the Islamic world see it as a new phase of the old crusades. This only makes sense if one retraces the history of monotheism.

It all began in ancient Mesopotamia, where every city had its own god. The idea of a city-god helped unite people from different tribes. When cities fought each other, victory was declared in the name of the city god, and the god of the subjugated city was either destroyed or simply made part of the victorious god's council. Thus large cities had councils of many gods, each god representing a tribe or a district, with one all-powerful god belonging to the most powerful tribe or city presiding over all of them.

Then, one day, four thousand years ago, in the city of Ur, a young man called Ibrahim (aka Abraham) had a vision. His father Azar made idols of wood and stone and sold them in the city. Ibrahim found it hard to believe that these images could be gods. They who could not drink water could not possibly quench the thirst of humanity. He argued with his father who threatened to stone him to death or burn him alive for his radical ideas. Finally, disgusted by his father's refusal to abandon idolatry, Ibrahim broke all images built by his father and ran away to seek God, the only true divine, Allah, who did not need a form, whose glory could not be contained in an image. Thus was born monotheism.

Ibrahim had a wife called Sarah, but no children. An angel visited them and said she would bear a son. She chuckled, as she was too old to be a mother, and advised Ibrahim to take her handmaiden, Hagar, as his wife. Hagar bore Ibrahim a son Ishmael and shortly after, despite her age, Sarah, became pregnant, and gave birth to Isaac. Thus, she who had little faith in Abraham's God, realised his power, his grace, and his wrath. He made her mother, but ensured her son would be the younger one, obliged to bow to the handmaiden's son. But Sarah chose pride over peace, and forced Ibraham to cast Hagar and her son away. Hagar moved to the desert and would have died of thirst but Allah pointed her to a well of water known as Zam Zam. Later, on Allah's orders, Ibrahim visited Hagar and built with the help of Ismael, not far from the well of Zam Zam, the Kabah to honour Allah, around which would rise the city of Mecca.

From Ishmael descended the Arabs who spread across Arabia. From Isaac descended the Jews who went to Egypt, where the pharaoh eventually enslaved them. Three thousand years ago, a prophet of God called Moses rose amongst the Jews. He led them out of slavery and took them to the Promised Land in Levant. Here, after many years of wandering, the twelve Jewish tribes finally established a kingdom known as Israel with its capital in Jerusalem. After many kings like Saul and David and Solomon, the Jewish kingdom collapsed and the Jewish tribes were scattered across the world.

Two thousand years ago, from amongst the Jews rose a man called Jesus, in the lineage of King David. He rejected the Jewish view that God only cared for the Chosen People and that God was a stern father who demanded absolute obedience. He said God was a loving father who invited every human being to his house, even when they broke his laws. His radical views upset the Jewish clergy who had him arrested and crucified. His followers said that he resurrected himself three days after his death and promised to return at the time of rapture, when the world would come to an end, and lead all the faithful to the Kingdom of his Father, the one true God.

Om Namah Shivay