What tears the mask off the face of the past

Monday, March 23rd, 2015

No one who reads Qutb’s Milestones could doubt that the destruction of ancient monuments is perfectly in keeping with Islamist thought, Theodore Dalrymple says:

It was one of the founding texts of modern Islamic fundamentalism (if that is not an oxymoron) and is worth studying not for itself but for the light it sheds on a certain mentality, namely that of Moslems who believe themselves in possession of the highest truth yet find themselves permanently sunk in moral, economic and social squalor.

The book breathes hatred or contempt for all that is not Islamic and is a kind of Islamo-Trotskyist call to permanent revolution until the whole world accepts Islam:

When Islam strives for peace, its objective is not that superficial peace which requires that only that part of the earth where the followers of Islam are residing remains secure. The peace which Islam desires is that the religion (i.e. the Law of the society) be purified for God, that the obedience of all people be for God alone…

And since Islam is the one true religion, it follows that real as against pseudo- peace necessitates the acceptance everywhere of Islam. Just as Trotsky did not believe in socialism in one country, so Qutb did not believe in Islam in one country (and Trotsky was a much better writer that Qutb, of course).

Qutb makes it quite clear that no consideration at all is due the polytheists, against whom a merciless war not only could, but must, be fought. Moreover, in his view, all that existed before Islam was mere jahiliyyah, ignorance. These are not the kind of ideas propitious to the preservation of ancient monuments, to put it mildly.

Dalrymple contrasts this against Lord Curzon’s speech to the Royal Asiatic Society in Bengal in 1900:

If there be any one who says to me that there is no duty devolving upon a Christian Government to preserve the monuments of a pagan art or the sanctuaries of an alien faith, I cannot pause to argue with such a man. Art and beauty, and the reverence that is owing to all that has evoked human genius or has inspired human faith, are independent of creeds, and, in so far as they touch the sphere of religion, are embraced by the common religion of all mankind. Viewed from this standpoint, the rock temple of the Brahmans stands on precisely the same footing as the Buddhist Vihara, and the Mohammedan Musjid as the Christian Cathedral. There is no principle of artistic discrimination between the mausoleum of the despot and he sepulchre of the saint. What is beautiful, what is historic, what tears the mask off the face of the past and helps us to read its riddles and to look it in the eyes — these, and not the dogmas of a combative theology, are the principal criteria to which we must look.

Leave a Reply