I can live with this until people realize that God is simply another word for the order/disorder dyad of modern physics, because in both views humans are part of a greater Whole that encompasses other humans, creatures and the planet, which makes them responsible toward that Whole.
Crooke delves deeply into the philosophical foundations of the Iranian religion, whose basis is 'resistance' to Western values that place man at the center of the universe, endowing him with a freedom tempered only by the freedom of others. When writing about the difference between the liberal definition of freedom and that of socialists, I have described the former as situated at the apex of a triangle, with responsibility beneath it together with other obligations embodied in the ten commandments. As Crooke's Hojat says:
"Values are only a means to power and to satiate personal desires and pleasures " Justice and rights in the West no longer represent any meaningful criteria by which to define an individual's 'welfare'. Man's welfare is greater than mere power of enjoyment. It is the individual's 'right' to pursue his own welfare, but (in theWest) its attainment is a purely personal matter; he or she is not expected to consider the welfare of the community.
In the West, such Islamic concepts often have been confused with, and not correctly distinguished from, Christian doctrine. The belief in God in Islam is, before anything, a belief in an invariable order of values and ethics - in the sense that the reality which created the world is also the reality which created the order of values and ethics for the world"..As for what are today called man's personal needs, these are not capable of providing true human happiness."
It is interesting to note that while some Westerners who join the Islamic jihad do so out of a thirst for adventure, others are responding the above spiritual analysis. Beyond these extreme cases, dissatisfaction with the Western way of life, long known as 'the rat race', is rising in places as diverse as Turkey and Brazil. It will come to China when the emptiness of the consumer society hits home.)
The Islamic message regarding the belief in God is about reason:"Reason in Islamic thought is the guide by which man may obtain knowledge of the values of existence, and from which he may build a sound society. The concepts of governance and politics in Islam do not permit of the notion of one man dominating another, or of man's domination over nature. In Qur'anic thought, man is the criterion around which all revolves.
In opposition to a secularism that believes that values are contained within man, and are made by man, Islam believes that values are more sublime than man and are the point of perfection and happiness for man. Therefore acting justly and wanting peace and observing the rights of others as well as the rights of the environment are all duties of man."
It is from this point of view that Crooke examines the devastating repercussions of the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate and the secularization of Turkey by Ataturk, as well as the philosophies of the main Islamic contributors to the concept of resistance. HE takes us from the Sunni Qut'b and his followers, continuing with the Shi'a fathers of the Iranian Revolution: Ali Shariati, Baqir Sadr, and of course Ayatollah Khomeini and crucially for today, the Marxist influence on the Iranian Revolution. Although Russia is no longer ruled by a Soviet system, an understanding of Marxism helps explain the fact that Russia, Iran, Assad's Syria - and the Sunni Baathists - are on the same side of the ideological divide vis a vis the West. As I have written many times, not-withstanding the prominent role played by oligarchs in post-Soviet Russia, the government did not throw the welfare baby out with the Communist bathwater, while Islam's fundamental command is that humans treat each other with justice, equity and respect.
Examining resistance from the perspective of the two leading resistance movements, the Sunni Hamas, and the Shia Hezbollah, Crooke argues that "armed islamic resistance is not, as parodied in the Western press, a reactionary violence directed against a modernity to which Islamists are either resistant or incapable of assimilating".Its purpose is to force the West to change its behavior, not to exterminate Westerners as the crusaders sought to do to Muslims in the Holy Land.
When Islamists dispute the claim that Western secular modernity brings human welfare, 'they are rejecting a particular process of instrumental western thinking - and the abuses of power to which it has given rise'"A part from a small minority of Muslims who see the struggle in eschatological terms or in terms of 'burning the system to rebuild it afresh' as Al Qaeda does' , the revolution is a struggle - a resistance - centered not on killing but on ideas and principles."
In brief: "Islam charges that the West is guilty of distorting the foundational concepts of its own Enlightenment"..It has evolved a different concept of rational human beings, society and the individual, from that of the Enlightenment, one that is separated from the legacy of cumulative human experience." And Cooke adds: "It's because of this fundamental dichotomy that the Iranian cleric is skeptical that dialogue with the West can be meaningful."
Readers who do not have a background in contemporary philosophy will be surprised to learn that the cleric's reservations are echoed by the celebrated Frankfurt School, who's major thinkers, Jurgen Habermas, Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, are, according to Crooke, all widely read in Teheran.
In a final, brilliant note, Crooke contrasts the ideas of the Frankfurt School with those of the Chicago School, embodied by Carl Schmitt, the postwar German refugee whose 'language of instrumentalist diplomacy' helped American Neo-Cons deliver Ukraine to a liberal coalition that relies on Neo-Nazi thugs. And toward the end of the book, an excerpt from J.-M. Coetzee's novel 'Waiting for the Barbarians', illustrates British writer Terry Eagleton's comment that 'reason on its outer edge is demented because it seeks to possess the whole world, and to do so must override the recalcitrance of reality'.
This book is worth sticking with, even if you haven't had Philosophy 101. At a time when the notion of Islamic "resistance" long familiar to Europeans, is becoming current in the United States, it reveals a worldview that confronts the West using the West's own heritage - and whose goal is the opposite of confrontation.
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