The Arab, and indeed much else of the Islamic world, with a few exceptions, is one where the nations that comprise it are often ruled by dictators or strongmen. Some of these nations may have the veneer of democracy stuck over them but they are often still oppressive places with few freedoms, especially freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. They are also nations and cultures where death is more respected than life. Much more attention seems to be paid in these Islamic cultures to creating a nation which benefits the lives of its inhabitants, instead, death and martyrdom is celebrated. If many Islamic nations could have a slogan it would be: ‘You love life, but we love death’.
Islam, being a bit of a death cult where reward is not expected in this life but the next, has been ruthlessly exploited by many dictators in the Islamic world in order to hold onto support or to bolster enthusiasm for a particular regime. Dictators have used the inherent death cult nature of Islam in order to promote fanaticism for regimes that say that they are ‘protecting’ or ‘promoting’ one particular brand of Islam or Islam per se against perceived ‘enemies’.
There’s been a very interesting and thought provoking piece published on the MEMRI site that monitors media coming out of the Middle East. The article is a short excerpt from a piece by a Syrian writer, said to be a member of the opposition to the Assad regime, by the name of Enab Baladi. In this piece, he explains how various tyrants in the Arab world have used an inherent ‘culture of death’ that exists in the Arab world, to persuade their citizens to die for the regime.
Mr Baladi said:
……we [Arabs] have a trait that distinguishes us from all the other peoples of the world, which is a love of death. We dream of it, regard it as a source of inspiration and think about it every day. We love death and love the dead. Instead of hoping for longevity, for [a life of] giving and loving, we say, with defeatism… ‘God, [help me] go to battle and reach my grave. This is in addition to the grand slogans we [like to chant], such as: ‘death to America,’ ‘better death than humiliation’ and ‘seek death and you shall be given life [in the next world]’…
“For generations, the Arab leaders have encouraged their people to die, their hidden slogan being ‘die for me.’ To that end, they appropriated the concept of martyrdom from the scriptures, and started to rebuild it, emulate it and beautify it, so as to adapt it to their place and time. For example, Hafez Al-Assad, one [of the greatest] criminals in history, whose religion consisted of [sanctifying] the intelligence [apparatuses], torture, murder, destruction and usurpation, hid behind Islam and appropriated the Islamic concept of martyrdom in order to place it on the top of his regime’s agenda…
Mr Baladi has, if the excerpt is anything to go by, written a very thoughtful and revealing piece about the Arab character. From what I know about the Arab and the wider Islamic world I don’t believe that this ‘love of death’ is confined only to Syria, it’s much more widespread than that. The sheer number of those Muslims who are ready and willing to die in suicide attacks against non-Muslims and those that they consider the ‘wrong’ sort of Muslims across the world, shows that this love of death is less an Arab and more an Islamic thing.
Mr Baladi went on to hope that one day the Arab world would give up its love of death and instead embrace life. I also share that hope, but for this to happen Islam itself would have to change from what it is today which is a death cult, to an ideology that reveres life in a similar manner that advanced cultures already do. Somehow, short of a miracle, I don’t see Islam reforming in this way any time soon.
