Islam has evolved within its own hermetic set of assumptions- within a history of its own that in effect ignores and denies the overall sweep of history. This has generated a closed, static society, shut in upon itself.
Democracy lives on movement, change, on contractual agreements, flexible time frames, enduring dynamics, dialectical interplay? It creates itself and thrives at the best of a will that stems from living forces. It relies on the use of reason, on dialogue among the parties concerned, on active use of communication, on diplomacy and negotiation. Theocracy lives by the opposite principle: it is born, lives, and thrives on immobility, death, and the irrational. Theocracy is democracy’s most dangerous enemy, yesterday in Tehran in 1978 and today in every time Al-Qaeda gives violence a voice. Muslims divide the world in two: friends and enemies. On one side, brothers in Islam, on the other the rest. Two separate and incompatible worlds, governed by savage and brutal relations, a predator and a prey, and an eater and an eaten, a dominator and a dominated. As in the jungles, the big cats keep watching while the rest wait to be conquered, enslaved, and possessed. The law of nature that governs relations among animals pulls together.
Nearly two hundred and fifty verses – of the six thousand two hundred and thirty-four of the book–justify and legitimize holy war, jihad. Enough to drown the handful of very inoffensive phrases recommending tolerance, respect for one’s neighbor, magnanimity or nonrecourse to violence in questions of religion (!). In such an ocean of blood, who can still take the trouble to linger over two or three sentences that recommend tolerance over barbarity? Particularly since the Prophet’s biography bears eloquent witness: murder, crime, the sword, and the punitive expedition constantly recur. Too many pages encourage anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews, despoiling and exterminating them, for a Muslim fighter not to feel justified in putting them to the sword.
The Muslim community thought like the children of the Covenant. They too proclaimed themselves the chosen people, singled out by Allah, preferred by him (Sura 9:19 but also 3:110). But two claimants to elite status are one too many! Believing that others are of inferior race, that sub-humans exist, that God establishes a hierarchy among humans by distinguishing the small designated community from the rest of humanity, means that the Other may not claim the same status as ourselves. Yesterday’s hatred of the Hebrews for the Canaanites generates today’s hatred of the Palestinians for the Jews, each side believing itself summoned by God to dominate the other – and thus seeing itself as empowered to exterminate them. The condition calls for the beginning of the end. If you seek injustice you get the morals of injustice. In the end you can’t win. Scholars are faced with an onslaught of truths, refuted by as many counter truths, in a disordered metaphysical laboratory where every assertion is promptly contradicted. Some pick and choose from the Koran, ignoring other passages, in an attempt to reduce the totality of Islam to the small portion of texts that they wish to put into evidence. Some try to justify the logic of their own selection from the texts to show that the totality of Islam is reducible to the small proportion of text they choose i.e. “the best for the Koran is to break it down”.