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Epigraph
What he wanted was power; in Paul, the priest once more reached out for power; he had use for only such concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the soul – that is to say, the doctrine of ‘judgement’.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist
1 God, ‘The Messenger of Muhammad’?
H: In Violence and Islam, we tried to explain the failure of the Arab Spring.1 We will pursue our thoughts here about an uprising that occurred at the same time as the rise of Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS and Daesh), whose flag proclaims for all the world to see this testimonial of faith: Allāh rasūlu Muhammad (God is the Messenger of Muhammad). That symptomatic inscription reveals a historic truth we’ll try to unpack. How did God become the Messenger of Muhammad? Which is another way of saying: what exactly is Islamic State the name of?
A: It would be prudent to say first off that we’re not criticizing for the sake of criticizing, and that we refuse to adopt Arab and/or Western political and ideological stances. Our work is an attempt to establish an objective understanding of Islam, from a practical and theoretical point of view, in order to make a distinction between those who read the religious corpus, in particular the Qur’an, with their own interests in mind, and those who read it to get closer to God. We’ll begin by summarizing the principles of Qur’anic exegesis and the way the Qur’an and the ḥadīth2 were constituted, so that our readers can understand the status of the prophet in Islam and the connection Muslims have maintained with the person of Muhammad for fifteen centuries. So we’ll be tackling the task of considering Muhammad the man as absolute (ultimate, supreme) authority. This is how we understand the phrase used by IS, ‘God is the Messenger of Muhammad’, which means ‘God wants what Muhammad wants’.
H: The issue of reference is closely connected to the writing of history whereby no distinction was made between historic facts and legends. So we’ll be contributing to the deconstruction of a corpus that has governed us from the moment it was first founded by transforming ‘legend history’, to use Michel de Certeau’s expression, into ‘work history’.
A: As for the title, Violence and Islam, let’s just say that the issue of violence is intrinsically bound up with Islam as an institution: first, Muhammad proclaims that there is no hierarchy between the prophets,3 but at the same time he claims he’s the Seal of the Prophets. Second, proclaiming himself the Seal of the Prophets, he, unlike his predecessors, is the bearer of ultimate truths. Third, and this is the consequence of what I’ve just recalled to mind, Islam, instead of being universal, finds itself split or riven into believers (the faithful) and non-believers (infidels), and, more precisely, into Muslims and non-Muslims.
H: The Seal of the Prophets doesn’t adhere to any kind of continuity, but is all about revisions and excisions. While acknowledging the prophets who preceded him, Muhammad strips other religions of their singularity, if not of their essence, thereby destroying the basis on which those religions rest.
A: Absolutely. And we should examine what the end of prophecy means. Does it stem from a divine decision? And how can we be sure God said those last words to his last prophet? What sense are we to make of a Revelation that was meant to be the closure of prophecy?
H: What sense, indeed, are we to make of a prophecy that announces its own end? We grew up with phrases no one ever questioned. The moment they touched on the prophet of Islam, we internalized them as absolute truths. We never, for instance, looked into the verses that criticized the Jews, the first monotheists: ‘twisting with their tongues and traducing religion’,4 or ‘perverting words from their meanings’.5 In relation to what truth is there twisting? And when it says of Jesus, ‘they did not slay him, neither crucified him’,6 it’s not just the basis of Christianity that is thereby attacked, but the event itself.
A: This points to the huge contradictions that are strewn throughout the Text and that merit a study that’s not just theological but also anthropological and historical. We need to reconsider the relationship between Islam and the other religions of Arabia, to revisit and analyse the conflicts within Islam itself, and also to proceed to a linguistic analysis. That way, we might be able to see how God became a Muslim property. The logic that dominates the Text and the corpus of the sunna7 is this: if God exists, he can only be Muslim. Doesn’t the verse say precisely, ‘The true religion with God is Islam’?8
H: Is that any different from Judaism, which chooses itself a people?
A: It’s very different from Judaism, as the God of Islam has nothing more to say since he’s said his last word to his last prophet, who, towards the end of his life, states: ‘Today, I have perfected my good deeds and chosen [raḍītu],9 for you, Islam as religion.’ And: ‘You are the best nation ever brought forth to men.’10 God thereby becomes part of Islam and not the other way round. This internal contradiction puts Islam in a bind. Because saying that God is a Muslim makes God, and consequently the truth, a possession of Muhammad’s. Where was God for fifteen centuries? How come he didn’t show himself earlier, given that man has been on Earth for millions of years?
H: Adonis! There’s historical time and there’s mythical time. Religion is tied up with the second. And one could retort that God had sent other prophets, well before Islam.
A: It’s good to raise the question because it allows us to clear up a very important point: the verses refer to the Jews, not because of their doctrine, but because they fought Muhammad.
H: In Ṭabarī’s commentary, we read that the Jews perverted their Holy Book,11 but he doesn’t say what the taḥrīf (the perversion of meaning) consists of, or in relation to what. Apart from that, we find ourselves confronting an extremely problematic and very violent act of appropriation in terms of theory because Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, becomes a Muslim.12 The Jewish prophets are given as Muslim and this, even before the advent of Islam.
A: You’re right to talk about violence because Islam, in theory, adopted what came before it but cancelled it out, in practice, at the same time. The religions all became Muslim. Just read the verse we mentioned above: ‘The true religion with God is Islam’.13 As I said a moment ago, God himself became a Muslim. And the world was thus turned into a property of Islam. That goes against the truth, against humankind and against God himself. It’s the height of violence.
H: Yet while cancelling out all that came before it, the Qur’an makes use of Babylonian and Sumerian myths and legends, such as the Flood, which is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It also took up narratives from the Bible, such as the story of Job, the story of Noah, of Moses …
A: Unlike Christianity, which can be considered a revolution, since it transformed the very idea of God, Judaism doesn’t contain anything new, except the idea of the chosen people. Islam is like Judaism, and the shar‘
