Clive Kessler, courtesy of New Mandala, 12 January 2015, where the title runs as follows: “A Rage against History” … while the version in The Weekend Australian has the title “”Islam cannot disown jihadists driven by rage against history“
The Ottawa parliament, Café Lindt, Charlie Hebdo and so many others too: these are all separate incidents. But they are all part of the same global phenomenon. They are all expressions of a rage against history that lurks within modern Islam and animates Muslim militants worldwide today. It is a rage that has its source within the wounded soul of contemporary Islamic civilisation, of the modern Muslim world generally.
The Islamic religion and its social world are an intensely political tradition. It has always been so, going back to Muhammad’s dual role as both prophet and political leader in the original Islamic community in Madinah from 622 to 632 CE. More, within a century of Muhammad’s death his small desert oasis polity had become a vast transcontinental empire. And, in a succession of different forms or political frameworks (“caliphates”), the community of Muhammad’s faithful continued to live in the world on its own founding assumptions. Continue reading
