Apr 3, 2024
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My Half Century With Islam, Part 2
by Doniphan Blair
A painting of a hippie gathering or Sufi celebration in front of the Bamiyan Buddhas, before 2000. illo: D. Blair and Steven Harvey Continued from My Half Century With Islam, Part 1
Go to My Half Century With Islam, Part 3
Go to My Half Century With Islam, Part 4
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A BIT LIKE THE PURITANS WHO
colonized Massachusetts, the Wahhabis prohibited all rituals not listed in “The Quran”, music, all art except poetry, grave stones, flags, birthdays, and all displays of the primordial symbol of matriarchal power, women's bodies. While “The Quran” directs “believing women to restrain their looks, and to guard their privates” (Surah 24:31), it says nothing about covering hair, let alone faces, only their breasts. Alas, Muhammad’s wives concealed their faces voluntarily, to avoid arousing unnecessary sin among men living nearby (understandable, given Muhammad's sex life), and conservative clerics used that and other obscure doctrinal precedent to force women to veil, starting four centuries after Muhammad. They did this periodically, usually after blaming a war, pestilence or famine on their womenfolk's failure to remain chaste and fully “submit,” the root word expanded into “Islam” and “Muslim” through the linguistic methods of Arabic (building concepts by adding syllables). A fanatic of this theology, Wahhab once killed a woman on the spot after she confessed to him her adultery.
The Wahhabis went on to murder many women accused of adultery, polytheism or witchcraft, but that's a traumatizing tradition practiced only by more macho clans (most families hid or quietly married off accused women), and relieving religious angst is easier through scapegoating minorities. A readily available “other” was the Shi’a, a seventh of all Muslims, who followed additional rituals, worshipped their intellectuals and, for that reason, divided into innumerable subsects, some quite esoteric, and the Sufis, about three percent of today's Muslims but more back then. There were also smaller groups, like the Yazidis, who mixed monotheism with ancient polytheisms. Although the Sufis were mostly Sunni, they liked to invent mind-altering methods, refine them into rituals, and not only pray to Allah but "meet" or "join with" him.
The mystics of Islam were much closer, conceptually and geographically, than their Abrahamic cousins to the ancient Asian theology of “becoming one with god,” but that violates monotheism’s “Thou shalt have no other gods before me," according to conservatives. The Sufi saint al-Hallaj was martyred by the Abbasids, in 922 CE Baghdad, despite being warned repeatedly and placed under house arrest, because he refused to stop saying he was intimate with God. Allah is everywhere and in everything, of course—“As close as your jugular vein,” as the Islamic aphorism goes—and monotheism is a unified field theory, but it became dualistic after “God divided the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4), Eve from Adam's rib, good from evil, etc. Islam tried to integrate politics and religion, which implies a joining with God, but nothing else. Hence, the Wahhabis considered Sufi dedication to their sheikhs and saints, including fetishizing their teachers' cloaks, artifacts and graves, and their use of dance, chanting and other techniques to achieve ecstatic states to be sinful and “shirk,” Arabic for idolatry. They also rejected the Sufi embrace of women and the female side of power.
Cleopatra, 1st century BCE Egyptian queen and great matriarch married Roman emperor Marc Anthony, whom she met riding a purple-sailed boat, dressed as the Goddess Isis. photo: unknown The Third Middle East Secret: Matriarchies
Monotheism is metaphorically masculine and intellectual, hence best contemplated at a distance, to shield supplicants from its infinite conceptual power and macho anger, while goddess worship is more local, intimate and human. Goddesses are cosmic mothers whose grandmothers created the earth and who can birth new gods, imbue idols with spirit, and merge with devotees psycho-sexually. That full-body communion was so revered, it was imitated by Dionysus and Bacchus, the male Greek and Roman fertility gods, during their festivals.
Sufi metaphysics also derived from those fertility cults, according to a few scholars, which suggests why the Wahhabis were so opposed Sufis as well as women. Whether or not those are the actual ancient origins of Sufism, goddess culture is a hard fact, which brings us to a third secret of the Middle East (after “Sufis saved Islam” and “Some Sufis became decadent”): Matriarchies.
Middle Eastern societies were almost entirely patriarchal, according to most academics, European and American as well as Arab, ever since the invention of writing in the Third Millennia BCE, if not long before, but a minority of scholars disagree. They cite ample evidence of goddesses, priestesses and female family heads as well as intellectuals. Given how polytheist gods are born from goddesses, as men are from women, a polytheist heaven headed by a god or a society ruled by men remains somewhat matriarchal. Some women operated and even dressed patriarchally, but the vast majority preferred womanly wiles, wisdom, clothing or private affairs to achieve their objectives, not public intimidation, brute force or other male strategies, which renders their achievements harder to recognize or record and easier to downplay or erase. Nevertheless, there were many female successes, some of which were documented, and the ancient world had a few female rulers and many women oracles and priestesses. At least some (if not many), matriarchal temples featured ceremonial sex, either on the altar or with "sacred prostitutes," who were skilled in soothsaying, music and ritual as well as sex (still exemplified by Japanese "geishas"). Precisely because her beliefs and behavior was so respected, the pagan Egyptian mathematician and astronomer Hypatia was murdered in 415 CE. More average matriarchs, meanwhile, ran religion in the community or home, the so-called "kitchen" gods, and managed village and family life, notably the choosing of the mate—which is the critical but little known second half of evolution identified by Darwin as "sexual selection"—the sex itself, midwifery, childrearing, weaving, singing, dancing, preparing better tasting food and healing/witchcraft.
Indeed, monotheism started with scandalized prophets rebelling against the priestess status quo, notably their performing of public sex and seducing of visiting dignitaries, but also teaching average women how to influence men, using the base psychology of fetish and witchcraft as well as more sophisticated mentation of aesthetics and romance, not to mention the biology of desire. The monotheists were so incensed, they anthropomorphized entire communities as fallen women, as in “Jerusalem… committed her whoredoms with… all them that were the chosen men of Assyria… with all their idols she defiled herself,” (Ezekiel 23:4-7), or Babylon was “the mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth,” (Revelation 17:5). Desperate to grow out of the chaos of matriarchal polytheism, the Jewish patriarchs attempted to deter idol worship and sensuousness by prohibiting the portrayal of human likenesses and the practice of the sexier arts, like dancing, which temple prostitutes excelled at. Although that was understandable in 700 BCE, the complete elimination of figurative art by Sunni Islam, a millennia and a half later, was unprecedented for a civilization, given humanity's reliance on self-consciousness, mirrors and art to help us visualize our bodies and selves in nature and society (which is why the Partisans of the Nude art movement was so important for the 20th century Middle East).
'When God Was a Woman', by Merlin Stone, broke new ground and was highly lauded when it came out in 1976 but wasn't all that accurate. photo: unknown Regardless of patriarchal or feminist critiques, or respected scholars who ridiculed matriarchal history as exaggerated or invented (arguments exacerbated by errors in popular '60s-era books, like "When God Was a Woman" by Merlin Stone, 1976), Islam is only 14 centuries old. Hence, there are plenty of archeological findings, writings from that time and ongoing folk tales, as well as sacred texts, which speak volumes from between their God-dictated lines. For example, it is widely accepted that Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, was an older, wealthy businesswoman, who was actually his boss and suitor in marriage—a great matriarch, in other words! Or that Islam’s holiest building, the Ka’aba in Mecca, is cared for today by a clan called Guardians of the Old Women. That's because, until about 1400 years ago (it will be exactly that long in 2029), the Ka’aba housed dozens of polytheist idols, mostly depicting goddesses, and was surrounded by hundreds more. It was also encircled by brass and leather panels bearing poems by the winners of Mecca's popular poetry contests, some notably ribald. Yes, Muhammad destroyed the Ka’aba's figurines in December, 629 CE, after conquering Mecca peacefully, through negotiation, but he kept one, the Ka’aba Stone, as the central icon of his new, idol-less faith, in keeping with syncretism, the universal human tradition of repurposing of older beliefs, buildings or symbols. Alas, the Ka’aba Stone was engraved with a "yoni" (a "Y" mark signifying vagina), which served to preserve matriarchal memories, especially after being touched by millions of Muslims during their Hajj pilgrimage. Interestingly, the Ka’aba is called “al-Haram,” meaning both “sacred” and “forbidden," which illustrates the story of theological gender switching but also the difficult task of integrating opposites, a popular theme in Arab culture.
"I personally believe all the world is a matriarchy” is a single-sentence revelation from the dedicated American anthropologist Louis Dupree, in his exhaustive book “Afghanistan” (1973). Dupree lived for over a decade in an Afghan village and reports another side of that desert and mountain society, which is notoriously misogynist unless you’re familiar with its Queen Gawhar Shad, from 15th-century Herat, its female fighters, from the fierce Pashtun Tribe (also known for their homosexual practices), or its poetry, see “Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry” (2010), edited by Sayd Majrouh, an Afghan-born, Sorbonne-educated philosopher and folklorist. Afghanistan has a tradition of two-line poems (also found elsewhere in the Middle East) called “landays” and generally used by women—men prefer epics—often to communicate with men they like, surreptitiously in the street or via messages carried by confidents. Inflamed by their society's social suffocation, such liaisons frequently led to marriage, after the lovebirds convinced or outlasted their opposing families (which could take 20 years), or wild sex, as described in the lascivious Landay: “Give me your hand, my love, and let us go into the fields; So we can love each other or fall beneath the blows of knives.” When their relatives come to kill them, according to Majrouh, who was himself murdered in Kabul by extremists in 1988, the men flee, but the women traditionally stand and take it, a la Hashashin, albeit for love, romance and pleasure not hate, politics or money. Dupree also notes extensive secretive extramarital sex, which most villagers ignored but some machos escalated into "honor killings," the euphemism for when offended men murder their own sisters, mothers, wives or daughters (an obviously deleterious practice, psychologically and evolutionarily). This secret, female side of Afghanistan affirms that even generations of arranged marriages, confinement and punishment of women, sometimes severe and brutal, was not enough to erase their longing for matriarchal freedom, romance and sex.
As it happens, the Middle East is home to humanity's first written love poem, by an unknown Babylonian woman who lived around two millennia BCE, which is rather sexy, even by post-internet-porn standards: “In the bedchamber dripping with honey let us enjoy over and over your allure.” The first extant, first-person, written poem, meanwhile, is two centuries older but also Babylonian and on love, albeit for Inana, the goddess of sex and war. It was penned by Enheduana, high priestess of Ur and beloved daughter of Sargon the Great, founder of the Akkadian Empire, the earth’s first multi-nation civilization (nation being a multi-tribe and tribe a multi-clan), which flourished around 2300 BCE. Sargon was the son of a great matriarch, as he announces in his autobiography (which also chronicles the origins of agriculture): “[M]y mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not… in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes… The river bore me up and carried me to Akki [probably Baghdad], the drawer of water [who] took me as his son and reared me [and] appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, [the Goddess] Ishtar granted me her love.”
A statue of Afghanistan's revered tenth century female poet, Rabi’ah Balkhi, probably in Tajikistan. photo: unknown The first great poetess of the Sufis as well as the Persians in general was Rabi’ah Balkhi, of tenth century Balkh, Afghanistan (Middle Easterners often make people's birthplaces their last name). Indeed, she remains highly revered regionally, from poetry classes to girl names or those of institutions, like Kabul's Rabi’ah Balkhi University (which is still called that, in January, 2025, despite the Taliban reconquest of 2021). Rabi’ah fell madly in love with a slave, Bektash, refused to break it off, and was attacked by her relatives. As she bled out, however, she inscribed her romantic musings on the wall in blood, including the lines: "I knew not when I rode the high-blooded stead; The harder I pulled its reins the less it would heed,” and “When you see things hideous, fancy them neat; Eat poison, but taste sugar sweet." Persian, Arab and Jewish women were known for their romanticism, passion and libidos, which is the natural result of a matriarchal society's encouragement of female sexual expression and male sexual selection of those traits. Much of this is detailed in the eyeopening book, “Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women” (1994), by the increasingly respected researcher and novelist Geraldine Brooks.
Rumi’s father, Bahuaddin, was also a resident of Balkh as well as a talented writer and Sufi, three centuries after Rabi'ah. He tells the tale of “the husband of a woman who composes songs and sings them in public. One day he arrives home unexpectedly and finds her with another man. He storms out, vowing divorce. Later he remembers the prepared meals, the clean clothes, the warm bed and the excitement of living with a woman who sings beautiful songs she composes herself,” (“The Drowned Book”, translated by Coleman Barks, John Moyne and Baha Al-Din Valad, 2004). Having so many smart, sensual women starring in so many folk tales helps explain why so many Muslims are so desperate to control their women. They think it will help Islam evolve from “jahiliyyah,” “the time of ignorance and chaos,” code for matriarchal polytheism, into a law-abiding, functional and masculine monotheist civilization.
Bedouin women fetching water, Middle East, early 20th century. photo: unknown Patriarchy: From the Loins of Matriarchs
Muhammad could be a pushy preacher and tough crusader on occasion, but he was also a creative visionary, a responsible merchant, and a dedicated family man—a well-socialized mystic, in other words. He worshipped Khadija, who courted him, may have been his first lover, bore him six children, and taught him the romantic ways of Arab women. When asked by a disciple how to excel at that, Muhammad recommended sending the beloved messages, like short poems, as befits “The Messenger of God,” while implying romantic love itself is a message from God. Head over heels in love with her young husband, Khadija rewarded his backbreaking work, leading her camel trains across the desert, with an annual month off. Muhammad would retire to a cave on a mountain north of Mecca, eat little and pray a lot, one of his three favorite things, along with perfume and women. That mystical practice became Ramadan, Islam’s month of fasting during the daytime.
Khadija and Muhammad’s relationship reflected how empowered women and men could cooperate, which was undoubtedly common as the matriarchal era transitioned to patriarchy. Indeed, the pair bonding and reciprocal altruism of most animals was advanced algebraically by the visionary romanticism of the Middle East. After Muhammad’s first revelation, he ran all the way back to Khadija’s house (some five miles from his mountain hideaway to downtown Mecca), because he feared possession by a spirit. Khadija, however, assured him he was hearing the one, true God, “submitted” to his new faith, and became the first Muslim, as well as Muhammad’s first great ally, along with his cousin Ali. Submission may seem like a strange metaphor for a religion based on unity, equality and justice, but it symbolizes how a strong matriarch would cede dominance to an emerging patriarch to empower male hard work, leadership and romance, or how we mortals must accept the unfolding of an all-powerful Lord or universe.
Women organized our earliest clans, we can assume, since men didn't study birthing or childrearing that much, if at all, and they spent a lot of time away from camp, hunting. Although some research is in dispute, a lot is obvious or accepted, as with goddess culture. For starters, as Homo sapiens developed their massive brains (“sapiens” being Latin for “wise”), it became harder for them to pass their mother's birth canals, and they were born increasingly prematurely. Larger heads caused bleeding or death to mothers and infants, who also needed more calories and time to achieve adulthood. This put evolutionary pressure on women, obliging them to shift some of that cost to men, first and foremost by getting them to bring more meat during estrus ("time of the month"), to replace lost blood, as well as pregnancy and after giving birth.
Given nothing lives forever, beings that live have to master reproduction shortly after simple survival. That women’s wisdom was derived from researching reproduction is implied in “Genesis”, where the Garden of Eden's Snake surely signifies "penis," but it is proven by science, from Darwin’s second theory of evolution, sexual selection, to cutting-edge and gendered behavior and brain studies (despite diminishment of late, due to concerns about, accusations of, or actual sexism). As many biologists have noted, the human race is a hybridizing experiment run by women. To cite easily observable sex differences, female Homo sapiens have language centers in both hemispheres of their brains (unlike the male's left only); they become verbal earlier as toddlers; and they are more talkative as teens and adults. (Gossip, despite its bad rap, provides the intelligence needed by alpha matriarchs to manage their community’s sex life.)
Many anthropologists cite hunting as the probable driver of abstract language, but hunters often use silent signals and don't need as many objects or actions identified as women running households, making "Reproductive Studies 101" the first fruit on the Tree of Knowledge. Not only did seizing the means of reproduction cause "Eve," the first self-aware woman, to be ejected from Eden, a genetically evolved paradise, it triggered the "cultural big bang" of speech, art and early romantic thinking and gestures. Once women could count back the nine months from their baby's birth and identify fathers, they could dispel paternity uncertainty, which is the mandatory first step for any patriarchy. Once they could articulate sentences, they could leverage male desire through logic and truth but also lies and subterfuge (Homo sapiens' monthly estrus is hidden, biologically, unlike most animals). Hence, abstract, grammatical spoken language was probably invented by women between 70 and 140,000 years ago (Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari favors the former date), and soon fostered vast improvements in lifestyle, clan organization and tool use as well as gender relations.
The large breasts of the 34,000 year-old Venus of Willendorf, found near that Austrian town in 1908, were thought to be stylization or from sickness but more likely represent a healthy mother who nursed many children. photo: unknown The great matriarchs must have guided our evolution, genetically and socially, for tens of millennia, at least back to the time of the Paleolithic “Venus figurines,” which are up to 42,000 years old. Those few-inch-long icons, often depicting fat, fantastically-breasted women, were undoubtedly fashioned by tool-using men to honor their community’s most successful mothers (and their own pleasant memories of nursing, boosted by the mnemonic aid of language), who were also their mates, priestesses and leaders. (In addition, the figurines may have been used as trade goods.) After language, women’s reproductive research must have driven the invention of agriculture, which is the usurping of another species' reproduction process, and full-blown romance, the intellectualizing of mating signals, the first step toward reproduction since the unicellulars separated in sexes, two billion years ago. Exploiting their agriculture and romantic discoveries to the hilt, small, wandering clans grew themselves into towns and tribes and, after a mere half-dozen millennia, cities, nations and civilizations. That happened first in the Middle East, with its three great rivers (Tigris, Euphrates and Nile), shortly thereafter along the Indus and Yellow ("Huang He") Rivers, in India and China, respectively, and soon worldwide.
During that eye-popping expansion, however, the great matriarchs must have noticed they were earning diminishing returns on how they organized families with multiple fathers, inspired men to work the fields (requiring a full day's labor, not hunting’s half), or got them to fight invading marauders to the death (hunters instinctively flee overwhelming force). After mastering language, women realized they could negotiate more advantageous exchanges of their services and products (sex and children) for supplies, shelter and safety. After learning the women's new language and what they wanted, men flocked in from the wild bearing food, furs, firewood and more, to join the family-building project, simply because it was an easier avenue to regular sex than brute force. This great socialization of man is mythologized in "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (also circa 2000 BCE) when Enkidu, boon buddy of the eponymous hero, is seduced into city life by a temple prostitute who liked to cook as well as have sex, a strategy undoubtedly devised by one of Uruk's priestesses. To counter Gilgamesh, the first articulate, intelligent male (or symbol of same), who had grown more powerful than the matriarchs and was abusing them, the priestess realized: Find another, equally strong man and set them against each other. Men were always involved in reproduction, of course, if only briefly and peripherally, but rationalizing their reproductive roles, augmenting their participation and responsibility and, finally, making them the leaders of society (patriarchy) and then universe (monotheism) was another stroke of female genius, after organizing the basic trade of sex and children through the mechanism of romance. Perhaps not surprisingly, getting men to renounce their rough folkways, be more responsible fathers, work harder and increase romanticism remain contentious between the sexes today. But back in the Paleolithic, our very evolution depended on the slow male march from adolescent hunters to adult fathers, farmers, fighters, builders and poets, pushed by more articulate and intellectual women.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and bad times eventually beget better ideas. Khadija believed her husband's new theology provided precisely that for her tribal group, the Arabs, who had long pined for a monotheist prophet of their own, and her city, Mecca, which was famous for its poetry contests, religious cults, and oaths to remain peaceful during festivals. Alas that system was millennia old, and Mecca was beset by feuds between its powerful priestesses as well as the now dominant male warriors, merchants and poets. Successful societies keep growing, by definition, but when communities get too big, the efficacy of women’s work, networking and character aggrandizement or reputation assassination is overshadowed by the efficiency and strength of well organized men, male hierarchies, hero worship and non-injurious competition, which is practiced through play. To parse this tricky transition, Khadija ceded to Muhammad authority over her self, family, houses and businesses, not to mention the once-female universe, and together they forged the Arabs’ late but rapid and empowering transformation to patriarchal civilization.
Regendering a society is not easy, as we are realizing. Christian theologians thought monotheism would be improved by making God more forgiving and accessible, marriage sacred, and sex a sin (even within marriage, if it is not to procreate). Alas, that didn’t cure Christian cravings for power or sex, as we well know, and Muhammad must have noticed, among his Christian relatives, Meccan friends or those he met in Jerusalem, where he travelled for trade. Returning to Judaism’s more matriarchal matrimony, he permitted divorce and hailed sexual pleasure as a natural gift from God, even incorporating it into Islamic heaven, which was an interesting rejiggering of monotheist metaphors.
Muhammad famously adored women and, after Khadija died, took a dozen wives and concubines, although he limited his male followers to four wives, who have to be loved equally. This suggests Muslims are better served by monogamy, with which monotheism shares a prefix and inherently supports, due to its "single lord worship paradigm." Islamic polygamy may have been an inheritance from the matriarchal era, where multiple men orbiting a grandmother-mother-daughter run home is extremely efficient, especially when the men are engaged in long-distance trading or herding. Regardless, Muhammad can be considered a feminist for his day. Indeed, “The Quran” refers to men and women as equals and states that “both men and women are guardians of one another” (Surah 9:71); it grants women property rights and half a male's inheritance; and Muhammad supported female sexual satisfaction (primarily to deter their return to polytheism but also to allow natural feelings), all of which he undoubtedly decided in close consultation with Khadija. In Christianity’s more feminized culture, however, women had no real rights to inheritance, property or publicly acknowledged pleasure until the 19th century.
A Baghdad gate, 19th century. illo: Arthur Aletrilly, 1882 By reversing Christianity's separation of church and state and restrictions on sex and marriage, Islam became monotheism's most masculine iteration, a quality increased by its late arrival to civilization building and, therefore, need to rapidly raise male discipline and armies. Although Muhammad adored and favored women, Islam's inherent masculinity gradually pushed it toward ending matriarchal power instead of balancing it, as in Judaism, or transforming its romantic aspects into religious fervor and charity, as in Christianity. Muslim men wield full authority over their female family members as well as children, whom they retain after divorce. While Christianity forbade divorce and Jews required a rabbi’s approval, a Muslim man merely tells his wife three times, before witnesses, “I divorce you” (which can liberate women, when abusive husbands do so in fits of rage, according to the brilliant Moroccan scholar Fatima Mernissi). This parallels Islamic conversion, which is based on the thrice oathtaking of “There is no true god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” While it may seem simplistic, compared to Christian prayer and baptism or Judaism's year of study, it reflects monotheism's cerebral nature, where words are holy acts, a monotheist's word is their bond, and that power increases when words are solidified on stone, metal or paper.
To attract polytheists to their movement, Christians introduced a goddess figure, Mary (considered a virgin, despite Christ’s older siblings), and her literal god child, both of whom are deeply revered by Muslims (save for deifying Christ), earning them 31 and 90 mentions, respectively, in “The Quran”. The Hebrews, for their part, made their Sabbath a goddess holiday: women do the first prayer, don’t do any chores (unlike Christian and Muslim women), and are encouraged to pursue reproduction, religion or relaxation. Powerful Jewesses appear throughout “The Bible”, some of whom reappear in “The Quran”. “The Old Testament” does call for stoning adulterers (Deuteronomy 22:22), to end sexually permissive polytheisms but, in practice, Jews generally tolerated pre- or extra- marital sex. This is due to monotheism's increased individualism and human rights as well as the ongoing esteem for the matriarchs, which is integrated into Judaism. The first Hebrew millennium, chronicled in "The Bible" was largely patriarchal, but as they were conquered and oppressed by the Babylonian, Roman, Christian and Muslim empires, Jews reverted to matriarchy, notably in how Jewish men served as receptive partners to ruling elites and in Judaism's legal descent, which is through the female line. This makes children of of Jewesses inherently Jewish, unlike Christian kids, who are born in sin and require baptizing. Muslims, meanwhile, are born with "fitrah," meaning innate purity but also refering to the charitable donations during Ramadan. “Free women don’t commit adultery” was the belief of Hind, a polytheist priestess as well as wife of the Meccan chief who fought against and surrendered to Muhammad, which translates into legalese as: Free women are entitled to sexually select their mates, copulate at will, and their children have full legal rights.
Christianity tried to control male sexuality by shaming sex and reverting to prelapsarian innocence. The Jews emphasized self-control and symbolized sexual restraint with circumcision, which they enshrined as their central sacrifice to the one, true God. Many scholars say circumcision was adopted to promote cleanliness in a water-scarce environment (which it does), but cutting off the penis tip obviously signifies suppressing sex (just as amputating hands emphasizes, "Thou shalt not steal"). Moreover, removing the penis's protective sheath unveils its inherent beauty, a body modification undoubtedly enjoyed by matriarchs. The Christians rejected circumcision, assuming their "sex is mortal sin" psychology would be an adequate inhibitor, but the Muslims reintroduced it, although it is not in "The Quran". Circumcision is covered in “The Hadith”, the collections of Muhammad’s sayings, and “The Old Testament”, which Muslims also consider sacred (“He sent down the Torah and the Gospel,” Surah 3:3). Most Muslim boys are circumcised in their seventh year, not seventh day as with Jews. Unfortunately, sex was highly enjoyable and seductive, according to many Muslims close to the matriarchal era, and plagued by its colorful memories, hence a second circumcision was needed: that of women. The "mullahs" (Sunni clerics) endorsed female genital mutilation (FGM), even though it's not mentioned in “The Quran” or “The Bible”, can cause severe injury or death, and can decimate or eliminate the pleasure Muhammad considered a gift from God. FGM is still enforced by many Sunnis, largely in Africa, with the highest practice rates being in the Horn of Africa and nearby. To this day, a majority of Egyptian women undergo FGM, despite Cairo's passage of a legal ban and start of a media campaign, around 2005.
Desert travelers stop for the night: perhaps how Muhammad and his disciples looked in the 7th century. illo: unknown, circa 19th century Muhammad was orphaned, when his father died before he was born and his mother passed when he was six, and he was probably skinny, nerdy and perhaps sickly, making him an interesting person to evolve into patriarchal hero. But he assiduously built up his body and character, which was why Khadija sexually selected him, and he worked hard on his theology, meditating and praying on long desert hikes or during his annual month off on the mountain. After ten years of that strenuous mystical practice, he received visions, which he developed in discussions with Khadija and others and then preached, passionately and poetically, in downtown Mecca, directly to the polytheist idols in the Ka’aba. His early revelations abided Judeo-Christian notions that God’s kingdom would be created voluntarily and peacefully, in accord with the Jewish prophet Zechariah (500s BCE), “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit,’ saith the Lord,” (Zechariah 4:6), and Jesus, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God," (Matthew 5:9). Indeed, “The Quran” has: “And if they incline to peace, then you should incline to it; and put your trust in God,” (Surah 8:61). Alas, after being persecuted by his hometown's authorities, fleeing to Medina, and entering into a war with Mecca, which traumatized Khadija and pushed her into an early grave, Muhammad changed his mind. Instead of a slow transition from polytheism to monotheism, he reasoned, Islam could provide more benefit to more people, faster—which is one definition of “good”—by explaining in simple, local terms how monotheism works, by proselytizing aggressively, so everyone can hear the good news, and by defending the Muslim community, which can require going on offense.
Already a charismatic speaker, Muhammad became an adept politician and strategic general and led the outnumbered, ill-equipped Muslims to many heroic victories. As the messenger of God but not son, however, there were defeats and mistakes, notably with his wives and the Jews. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem 500 years earlier, the Jews dispersed across the Middle East, the “Jewish Diaspora,” including a Hebrew kingdom in Yemen and a large, respected community in Medina. In point of fact, Islam’s holy day became Friday simply because that was the Jews' market day (before their work-free Sabbath), and the many Muslims who liked trading with Jews were available to attend mosque. Moreover, Muhammad began adjusting his ideas to attract Jews, as evidenced in the Medina Surahs of “The Quran”, where God often hails the Jews as the first monotheists but adds that they lapsed into sin and should follow the new prophet. A few Jews converted and some sided with the Muslims against Mecca, but many didn’t. Hence, after a one-month siege of the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza, Muhammad ordered the massacre of 800 men and boys and took the chieftain's wife, Safiyya (Sofia), a famous Jewish beauty, for marriage. Safiyya acquiesced to conversion and became one of the prophet's almost-dozen wives, but she continued to assist her people backstage, a common practice among matriarchs who join more powerful patriarchies.
Alas, 7th century Arabian politics were complex, as was the art of receiving revelations, editing sacred books and establishing a new religion. “The Quran” has contradicting dictums, as do the God-given texts of the Jews and Christians, including pronouncements for and against alcohol, gambling, murder, fate, free will, and the Jews. "You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them. But pardon them and bear with them. God loves those who do good” (Surah 5:14), is a typical begrudging but fair comment, attuned to both monotheist morality and the stiff competition of monotheism's marketplace of ideas. Such obvious incongruities oblige rational monotheists to distance themselves from the letter of divine law and embrace its spirit, to decide logically, in any given situation, which scriptural statement better advances their faith's core concepts of justice, cooperation and mercy.
As the birthplace of our oldest cities and civilizations, the Middle East naturally harbors some of our most intractable conflicts and psychological problems. After the stoic, hedonist, intellectual and militaristic Roman Empire gave way to the romantic, chaste, emotive and pacifism-preaching Christians, the Arab intelligentsia was marooned between the Christian Byzantine Empire, the Persian Empire, which was mostly Zoroastrian (a millennium-old monotheism with polytheist proclivities), and the warlords of the polytheist tribes of the mountains and deserts, which were often at war with the civilizations, because their economies depended on robbing its trade routes.
Pharaoh Akhenaten with wife Nefertiti and three daughters under the God Aten. courtesy: Wikipedia, please donate here Regardless of divine origins, theories about God had to be updated periodically, from incremental adjustments and syncretic blendings to full revisions or new religions, usually transpiring at 300 to 500 year intervals. It started with Atenism, the first recorded monotheism, which Pharaoh Akhenaten installed in Egypt around 1350 BCE but lasted only briefly. Then came Moses, or someone like him (or someone telling stories about someone like him), around 1000 BCE; the Jewish prophets of the Hebrew revival after their Babylonian conquest and exile, starting around 550 BCE; Jesus Christ and other Jewish mystics, like the Essenes; Christianity’s First Council of Nicaea (Turkey) in 325 CE (which led to the deletion of dozens of “apocryphal” books from “The New Testament”); and, three centuries later, Islam. In keeping with this chronology, Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to a church door in Germany in 1517, almost exactly a millennium and a half after Christ’s ministry. But Luther was not a prophet, which would have to wait until the 19th century, when Joseph Smith started the Mormons in middle America and Baha’u’llah the Bahá'í faith in Persia, although the former immigrated to Utah and the latter to Israel.
Muhammad revered Judaism and Christianity, and opposed the polytheist tribes and empires, making him a card carrying member of Western Civilization, but he also adjusted monotheism and satisfied a pressing need, given Islam’s extraordinary expansion: twice the size of the Roman Empire in half the time. This was especially true in harsh mountain or desert climes, where the matriarchs and mature men needed a way to enlist, discipline and manage men. Muhammad's masculine tone, a major selling point, was balanced by his benevolence, justice and peace. This is highlighted by the first phrase of each of “The Quran”’s 114 Surahs (chapters), “In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, most merciful,” its many one-line revelations, like “There should be no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:257), its universal greeting, “As-salamu alaykum” (“Peace be upon you”), and many of Muhammad's “Hadith” sayings, from his theory of jihad, where “the greater jihad” is against the ego and “the lesser" political struggle, to his many exhortations to tolerate disagreement and forgive enemies.
Sufism does not derive from ancient fertility cults, as some scholars claim, according to most Sufis, rather Muhammad’s private oral teachings, which are thought to be more metaphysical than his public pronouncements of “The Quran” or “The Hadith”. Although such secret knowledge may be apocryphal, Muhammad surely communicated concepts not written down. Indeed, Sufis were dedicated to his lived example, which integrated a strenuous spiritual practice with work, family and women, who were excluded from most male mystical fraternities. Yes, the vast majority of Sufis were men, devout Muslims and patriarchal, but many accepted women as fellow tariqa members, teachers or saints, notably the first and most famous Rabi’ah. The 8th century Rabi’ah al-Basri (from Basra, south of Baghdad) came from a respectable if poor family, but they were attacked during a journey, leading to her sale into prostitution or slavery. Eventually freed, due to her dedication to prayer and good works, she became a poet and self-actualized Sufi master. "You know of the how, but I know of the how-less," was her explanation to Hasan al-Basri (642–728 CE), the Sufi, scholar and founder of the rational Muʿtazile school, who was trying to win her hand in marriage. Rabi'ah declined and remained chaste but defined a doctrine of divine love, making her the first saint of Sufism’s Religion of Love. In fact, it can be said that Sufis developed more female and romantic values and art than any other religious, social or literary movement in history by basing their beliefs on monotheism and social responsibility but devoting their free time to exploring rapture, art, romance and other alchemies of the material world.
Scholars and pupils st Baghdad's House of Wisdom's, late Abbasid era. illo: Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, 1237, courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale de France & Wikipedia (please donate here)The Inherent Liberalism of Monotheism
Islam’s vast conquests in under a century—west to southern France and east to northern India—was a world record and wonder to behold. Indeed, Islam's armies often featured fearsome warriors riding spectacular Arabian steeds, sometimes wielding swords impaled with copies of “The Quran”. Religious war is often brutal and depraved, but those Arab-lead armies often abided advanced rules of war and negotiated fair surrenders, like when Caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem in 637 CE. He allowed the ruling Christians to resume normal life and the Jews they had expelled to return. Many communities converted to Islam voluntarily, starting with Medina, which invited Muhammad to rule after experiencing extreme Jahiliyyah problems. Jews and Christians were accepted as fellow believers in the one, true God, which the former called “Yahweh” or “Elohim” and the latter "Jesus Christ" or "The Trinity" (a combination of Christ, Yahweh and mystery spirit), and Muslims labelled “Allah.” Nevertheless, Christians and Jews were second-class monotheists, or “dhimmis,” and saddled with special taxes and restrictions, like prohibitions against riding horses or carrying weapons, although both were exempt from military service.
Many Muslim regimes encouraged liberal and economic benefits. Shari’ah Law, Islam's precedent-based legal system, liberated people from oppressive rulers, arcane rituals and racist caste systems, which was why Islam was welcomed by many in India. It often reduced poverty, illness and ignorance by increasing rule of law, opportunity, trade and literacy. It so supported Jewish and Greek thought, the two foundations of Western Civilization, some say Islam saved Western Civilization. Books in its lingua franca, Arabic, became the era’s internet, spreading science, philosophy and poetry faster and further than ever before in history, across the many silk, spice and other trade routes of an already globalized world. Communities devoted to scholarship, like Alexandria or Timbuktu, went so far as to prohibit the transit of books without their being copied.
Despite these successes, tribalism, sectarianism, wealth disparities, slavery, tyranny and war, plus vestigial polytheist practices, remained. Out-of-wedlock sex continued in rural areas, crowded cities (where veiling helped women have affairs), and among merchant families (where men had to travel, sometimes for years). Slavery was pervasive, from the massive slave trade (almost double the European) of both black Africans (which could include castration) and white Eastern Europeans (the word slavery comes from the tribal name Slav) and western European sailors seized by Muslim Barbary pirates, to Islam’s ubiquitous concubines and “slave armies.”
To prevent constant palace coups, boys from tough tribes were kidnapped, educated in Islam, trained in the art of war, and sworn to the sultan as “slave soldiers,” a respected status. For the related reason of scheming family members, sultans often surrounded themselves with Christian, Jewish or Sufi advisors. Muhammad advocated freeing slaves, which many Muslims did, after which they could become full citizens (if they submitted to Islam), intermarry and serve in the regular army. “Slave generals,” meanwhile, sometimes seized power, became the new sultans and mounted their own slave armies.
Protestors at the United Nations' 'Isaiah Wall,' featuring Isaiah’s 'Beat their swords into plowshares' quote, 2015. photo: unknownNevertheless, many monotheist ideals and metaphors are inherently liberal. While each grandmother goddess birthed her own human species physically, a single masculine lord created them mentally and metaphysically, indicating he created all humans simultaneously, equally and in his image. Allowing humans to choose good over evil, instead of programming them to do so animalistically, actually proved God’s greatness. “The Parable of Adam and Eve”, far from depicting “The Fall” inflicted by a woman disobeying God, dramatizes our development from matriarchy to patriarchy, and from genetically-governed natural and sexual selection (living au natural in the Garden of Eden) to “conscious selection” (the identification of facts and building of abstract worldviews that adequately represent reality).
Although monotheism failed to establish the justice suggested by divine law, it symbolized those values beautifully, both on earth and in the afterlife. Polytheist heavens were crowded, incestuous and crime-ridden, much like the ancient towns on which they were modeled, but even more in the Middle East after the passings of the golden ages of Sumer, Egypt and Babylon, which were exacerbated by the mysterious Late Bronze Age Collapse (12th century BCE). After so much rapid culture creation and success, however, the Middle East had too many civilized cultures and citizens with high self-regard but too few men willing to embrace full adult responsibility. Monotheism may smack of misogyny to modern observers, but it was logical after tens of millennia of matriarchal polytheism. Indeed, making the universe masculine and men central to it can be considered one of religion’s most important innovations, and it was orchestrated by women, as Khadija's actions indicate.
Based on books, monotheism fostered literacy and abstract thinking but also personal prayer, meditation and ethics. More intellectually oriented than polytheism, with its colorful rituals, titillating stories and mystery-cult metaphysics, monotheism eventually eschewed the sacrifice of living beings, which was how polytheists placated their deities and divined the future (soothsayers, usually women, often examined the liver of a sheep or goat for signs). Moreover, monotheism emphasized individual souls and equal rights, rather than the ancient, collective spirits of forbears, tribes, castes or priestly hierarchies (although the Catholics and Shi’a did resurrect strong priesthoods). Indeed, the mere concept of one Lord implied justice between tribes, nations and classes; it favored internalized guilt over external tribal shame; and it provided more hope, optimism and romanticism (polytheists are often skeptical, due to the tenuous future). A single, solitary God must know all or have a functional plan for humanity, including finding each of us true love and building our life around that, as emphasized early in “The Bible”: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, therefore shall a man cleave unto his wife,” (Genesis 2:24). Bonding so deeply with the spouse contradicts both the family structure of matriarchies and patriarchies, where the young couple stays in the mother or father's dwelling, respectively, and obeys their orders. Romanticism also reinforces the difficult task of defending the family and community, adding intense emotion to hero tales and folk origins, inspiring extra effort from men defending families or fields. Increasing romanticism was critical because successful communities are eventually threatened by greedy neighbors, hungry marauders or corrupt charlatans.
Monotheism provided an ethical foundation for liberal democracy, in fact, through its overarching system that could organized the prodigious intellectual achievements of the Greeks. The citizens of Hellenist city-states invented or improved almost all of civilization’s major disciplines or endeavors, from democracy, math and science to theatre, architecture, sculpture (the first photo-realist) and the Olympics. But without a coordinating mechanism, most Greek speakers abandoned that culture and became Christian peasants by the 5th century CE. The Jews, meanwhile, preserved their monotheism through terrible travails, tests and rethinking and, in the 19th century, integrated Greek ideas (a second time, given the cross-pollination after Alexander conquered Judah, in 331 BCE). Almost all tribes employ forms of democracy, from weak to strong, and the Norse, Native American and others contributed enormously to the latter, through egalitarian councils, advanced ethics and vibrant friendships. But few tribal federations were able to expand egalitarianism and suffrage before the Enlightenment in Europe, where it emerged in the 18th century largely due to their long study of Judaic theology and Hellenic philosophy and science. Indeed, monotheist Muslim scholars helped preserve and expand Greek and other sciences, which led to the Renaissance, starting in 14th century Italy, the closest Europeans to Islam.
The Judeo-Christian version is well known, but the Golden Rule appears in many cultures. illo: unknownIndeed, Monotheism reveals the fullness of its liberal democratic values in a single sentence, “The Golden Rule”. Based on the reciprocal altruism of animals and how close friends treat each other as equals, “The Golden Rule” figures prominently in all three Abrahamic faiths: Jesus’s "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” delivered during the Sermon on the Mount; the Hebrew’s, "Love your neighbor as yourself," (Leviticus 19:18), and the Muslim, from “Hadith”, “Do unto all men as you would wish to have done unto you.”
We must be adults and take responsibility, Muhammad felt, since each soul will have to answer for their deeds on Judgment Day, even though “The Quran” did take both sides of the ancient argument between predetermined fate and voluntary free will. Desert dwellers and sailors, or those in harsh environments or societies, often prefer an all-controlling fate, to soften God’s will and their own guilt over not solving the suffering, and their more rational neighbors or coreligionists often don’t have the heart to deny them. Nevertheless, they take fate into their own hands crying out as infants or, starting as teenagers, fighting to be treated equally to others in their family or perceived community. Ironically, whether the human condition is dominated by nurture and its end product, culture, or nature and its foundation, biology—the modern version of the fate-versus-free-will argument—remains in dispute, from politics and policing to psychology and biology, with respected thinkers, like the English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, favoring the latter.
Emphasizing the former, however, Muhammad esteemed individual merit and rights and opposed inherited rule and kings. In point of fact, the four “Righteous Caliphs,” who ruled Islam after he died in 632 CE, were chosen democratically, using the tribal system of acclamation (public cheering), by all Muslims present—including women! The vast majority shouted for Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s closest friend and the father of his child bride, Aisha, but a small minority insisted that selection was invalid and power must be passed in the primitive, ancient manner, to a family member, which triggered Islam’s 14-century civil war. Even though Muhammad had no surviving sons, a fairly obvious sign from God, his cousin and son-in-law Ali was considered close enough by “The Party of Ali,” words in Arabic which condense into “Shi’a.”
Ali was a respected warrior and served Muhammad devotedly, including in the killing of Medinan Jews, but he was also a man of peace, who opposed power grabs—a Muhammadian democrat, in other words. Finally elected as the fourth “Righteous Caliph,” he was soon assassinated, at prayer no less, for being too tolerant to Muslims who committed infractions, for not punishing them harshly enough. Considered the first Sufi by some, since he would have heard the supposed secret teachings, Ali was murdered by members of the Kharijites, Islam’s first extremist sect, who were traumatized by Islam’s first civil war (656-61 CE). That sanguineous slaughter started when the majoritarian Sunnis established a dynasty (in contradiction to Muhammad), amassed a massive army, and mercilessly massacred the minority Shi’a, including Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn. Martyr stories oblige intellectuals to parse God’s will creatively, which stimulates sophisticated ideas and art but leaves regular folk confused.
Muhammadian democracy and Sunni egalitarianism were hard to scale up, the further Muslims got from his charismatic leadership, as was integrating mosque and state. Sunnis switched to primogeniture succession and hierarchies headed by sultans and viziers (political leaders and managers), who ran the armies and bureaucracies for the caliph (religious leader). After the Damascus-based Umayyad Dynasty grew too fast and was wracked by divisions and corruption, the Abbasids seized power (749 CE) and reigned for almost exactly a half millennium from Baghdad. Although reforms were attempted, often by Sufis, the Abbasid Caliphate declined into dysfunction and delusion. In 1258, after they decided to murder the diplomats dispatched by the Mongols, they were annihilated, including the flooding and burning as well as butchering of Baghdad. No democratic elections were held until the Sunni Ottomans started experimenting with democracy in 1877, and many Arab nations still have kings today.
Despite its tyrannical tendencies, Islam was idea-based and could be improved by encouraging ethical leadership, everyman activism and moral suasion, as Muhammad did in his day, decent mullahs ever since, and the Sufis throughout their history and especially their renaissance. Islam’s allowance of four wives, to those who could afford it, deprived poor men of families, while dowry requirements favored older men, but such sexo-social imbalances were relieved through the lingering looseness of the matriarchal era, the universal practice of situational homosexuality, and the desert dwellers' need to travel, for trade or grazing herds. Alas, the effectiveness of those workarounds faded after Islam turned a thousand and was confronted by both European conquest and colonialism and the science their forbears had helped transfer to Europe, compounded on top of the standard liberal-conservative cycle. After societies innovate, achieve success and become rich and powerful, they indulge luxuries, fantasies and their children until, after a period of decadence or decline, they are seen as weak and attacked by usurpers from within or without.
A fully outfitted Wahhabi warrior, from the Arabian desert, circa 1800. illo: unknown Honoring But Also Correcting Thy Father
By the late 18th century, both the Ottoman Caliphate and many Sufi tariqas had become corrupt, which made Muhammad Wahhab’s conservative Islam attractive, especially to the desperately poor, of which there are often many in desert regions. After conquering most of Arabia, Wahhab’s fanatical devotees turned north and annihilated Karbala, the main Shi’a city, near Baghdad, which features a shrine to Muhammad’s grandson Husayn. After capturing Mecca in 1803, they became the putative heads of Islam, but only for a few years. En route, they decimated Sufis, Jews, Christians and pagans, enforced mosque attendance and daily prayers, and took control of women, replete with full body covering (sometimes enforced while they worked the fields, a health hazard), public chaperoning, genital mutilation and honor killings, which they hoped would eventually reduce women’s matriarchal power and sex magic.
Although Islam’s political-religious hybrid made its achievements automatic gifts from God, by the same token, its defeats and decadence had to be blamed on sin. Monotheism became so popular so quickly because it solved so many polytheist problems, unfortunately, just not the central concern of many humans: “Why bad things happen to good people?”, which pagans easily answer through polytheism’s central conceit: “You’re praying to the wrong god.” A similar theological crisis challenged Judaism in the 6th century BCE, after the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem, and kidnapped half its inhabitants to exile in Babylon. Although the temple was soon rebuilt, with Persian help, the rabbis still had to answer for Posted on Oct 26, 2024 - 03:58 PM
by Doniphan Blair
A painting of a hippie gathering or Sufi celebration in front of the Bamiyan Buddhas, before 2000. illo: D. Blair and Steven HarveyGo to My Half Century With Islam, Part 3
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A BIT LIKE THE PURITANS WHO
colonized Massachusetts, the Wahhabis prohibited all rituals not listed in “The Quran”, music, all art except poetry, grave stones, flags, birthdays, and all displays of the primordial symbol of matriarchal power, women's bodies. While “The Quran” directs “believing women to restrain their looks, and to guard their privates” (Surah 24:31), it says nothing about covering hair, let alone faces, only their breasts. Alas, Muhammad’s wives concealed their faces voluntarily, to avoid arousing unnecessary sin among men living nearby (understandable, given Muhammad's sex life), and conservative clerics used that and other obscure doctrinal precedent to force women to veil, starting four centuries after Muhammad. They did this periodically, usually after blaming a war, pestilence or famine on their womenfolk's failure to remain chaste and fully “submit,” the root word expanded into “Islam” and “Muslim” through the linguistic methods of Arabic (building concepts by adding syllables). A fanatic of this theology, Wahhab once killed a woman on the spot after she confessed to him her adultery.
The Wahhabis went on to murder many women accused of adultery, polytheism or witchcraft, but that's a traumatizing tradition practiced only by more macho clans (most families hid or quietly married off accused women), and relieving religious angst is easier through scapegoating minorities. A readily available “other” was the Shi’a, a seventh of all Muslims, who followed additional rituals, worshipped their intellectuals and, for that reason, divided into innumerable subsects, some quite esoteric, and the Sufis, about three percent of today's Muslims but more back then. There were also smaller groups, like the Yazidis, who mixed monotheism with ancient polytheisms. Although the Sufis were mostly Sunni, they liked to invent mind-altering methods, refine them into rituals, and not only pray to Allah but "meet" or "join with" him.
The mystics of Islam were much closer, conceptually and geographically, than their Abrahamic cousins to the ancient Asian theology of “becoming one with god,” but that violates monotheism’s “Thou shalt have no other gods before me," according to conservatives. The Sufi saint al-Hallaj was martyred by the Abbasids, in 922 CE Baghdad, despite being warned repeatedly and placed under house arrest, because he refused to stop saying he was intimate with God. Allah is everywhere and in everything, of course—“As close as your jugular vein,” as the Islamic aphorism goes—and monotheism is a unified field theory, but it became dualistic after “God divided the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4), Eve from Adam's rib, good from evil, etc. Islam tried to integrate politics and religion, which implies a joining with God, but nothing else. Hence, the Wahhabis considered Sufi dedication to their sheikhs and saints, including fetishizing their teachers' cloaks, artifacts and graves, and their use of dance, chanting and other techniques to achieve ecstatic states to be sinful and “shirk,” Arabic for idolatry. They also rejected the Sufi embrace of women and the female side of power.
Cleopatra, 1st century BCE Egyptian queen and great matriarch married Roman emperor Marc Anthony, whom she met riding a purple-sailed boat, dressed as the Goddess Isis. photo: unknown Monotheism is metaphorically masculine and intellectual, hence best contemplated at a distance, to shield supplicants from its infinite conceptual power and macho anger, while goddess worship is more local, intimate and human. Goddesses are cosmic mothers whose grandmothers created the earth and who can birth new gods, imbue idols with spirit, and merge with devotees psycho-sexually. That full-body communion was so revered, it was imitated by Dionysus and Bacchus, the male Greek and Roman fertility gods, during their festivals.
Sufi metaphysics also derived from those fertility cults, according to a few scholars, which suggests why the Wahhabis were so opposed Sufis as well as women. Whether or not those are the actual ancient origins of Sufism, goddess culture is a hard fact, which brings us to a third secret of the Middle East (after “Sufis saved Islam” and “Some Sufis became decadent”): Matriarchies.
Middle Eastern societies were almost entirely patriarchal, according to most academics, European and American as well as Arab, ever since the invention of writing in the Third Millennia BCE, if not long before, but a minority of scholars disagree. They cite ample evidence of goddesses, priestesses and female family heads as well as intellectuals. Given how polytheist gods are born from goddesses, as men are from women, a polytheist heaven headed by a god or a society ruled by men remains somewhat matriarchal. Some women operated and even dressed patriarchally, but the vast majority preferred womanly wiles, wisdom, clothing or private affairs to achieve their objectives, not public intimidation, brute force or other male strategies, which renders their achievements harder to recognize or record and easier to downplay or erase. Nevertheless, there were many female successes, some of which were documented, and the ancient world had a few female rulers and many women oracles and priestesses. At least some (if not many), matriarchal temples featured ceremonial sex, either on the altar or with "sacred prostitutes," who were skilled in soothsaying, music and ritual as well as sex (still exemplified by Japanese "geishas"). Precisely because her beliefs and behavior was so respected, the pagan Egyptian mathematician and astronomer Hypatia was murdered in 415 CE. More average matriarchs, meanwhile, ran religion in the community or home, the so-called "kitchen" gods, and managed village and family life, notably the choosing of the mate—which is the critical but little known second half of evolution identified by Darwin as "sexual selection"—the sex itself, midwifery, childrearing, weaving, singing, dancing, preparing better tasting food and healing/witchcraft.
Indeed, monotheism started with scandalized prophets rebelling against the priestess status quo, notably their performing of public sex and seducing of visiting dignitaries, but also teaching average women how to influence men, using the base psychology of fetish and witchcraft as well as more sophisticated mentation of aesthetics and romance, not to mention the biology of desire. The monotheists were so incensed, they anthropomorphized entire communities as fallen women, as in “Jerusalem… committed her whoredoms with… all them that were the chosen men of Assyria… with all their idols she defiled herself,” (Ezekiel 23:4-7), or Babylon was “the mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth,” (Revelation 17:5). Desperate to grow out of the chaos of matriarchal polytheism, the Jewish patriarchs attempted to deter idol worship and sensuousness by prohibiting the portrayal of human likenesses and the practice of the sexier arts, like dancing, which temple prostitutes excelled at. Although that was understandable in 700 BCE, the complete elimination of figurative art by Sunni Islam, a millennia and a half later, was unprecedented for a civilization, given humanity's reliance on self-consciousness, mirrors and art to help us visualize our bodies and selves in nature and society (which is why the Partisans of the Nude art movement was so important for the 20th century Middle East).
'When God Was a Woman', by Merlin Stone, broke new ground and was highly lauded when it came out in 1976 but wasn't all that accurate. photo: unknown "I personally believe all the world is a matriarchy” is a single-sentence revelation from the dedicated American anthropologist Louis Dupree, in his exhaustive book “Afghanistan” (1973). Dupree lived for over a decade in an Afghan village and reports another side of that desert and mountain society, which is notoriously misogynist unless you’re familiar with its Queen Gawhar Shad, from 15th-century Herat, its female fighters, from the fierce Pashtun Tribe (also known for their homosexual practices), or its poetry, see “Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry” (2010), edited by Sayd Majrouh, an Afghan-born, Sorbonne-educated philosopher and folklorist. Afghanistan has a tradition of two-line poems (also found elsewhere in the Middle East) called “landays” and generally used by women—men prefer epics—often to communicate with men they like, surreptitiously in the street or via messages carried by confidents. Inflamed by their society's social suffocation, such liaisons frequently led to marriage, after the lovebirds convinced or outlasted their opposing families (which could take 20 years), or wild sex, as described in the lascivious Landay: “Give me your hand, my love, and let us go into the fields; So we can love each other or fall beneath the blows of knives.” When their relatives come to kill them, according to Majrouh, who was himself murdered in Kabul by extremists in 1988, the men flee, but the women traditionally stand and take it, a la Hashashin, albeit for love, romance and pleasure not hate, politics or money. Dupree also notes extensive secretive extramarital sex, which most villagers ignored but some machos escalated into "honor killings," the euphemism for when offended men murder their own sisters, mothers, wives or daughters (an obviously deleterious practice, psychologically and evolutionarily). This secret, female side of Afghanistan affirms that even generations of arranged marriages, confinement and punishment of women, sometimes severe and brutal, was not enough to erase their longing for matriarchal freedom, romance and sex.
As it happens, the Middle East is home to humanity's first written love poem, by an unknown Babylonian woman who lived around two millennia BCE, which is rather sexy, even by post-internet-porn standards: “In the bedchamber dripping with honey let us enjoy over and over your allure.” The first extant, first-person, written poem, meanwhile, is two centuries older but also Babylonian and on love, albeit for Inana, the goddess of sex and war. It was penned by Enheduana, high priestess of Ur and beloved daughter of Sargon the Great, founder of the Akkadian Empire, the earth’s first multi-nation civilization (nation being a multi-tribe and tribe a multi-clan), which flourished around 2300 BCE. Sargon was the son of a great matriarch, as he announces in his autobiography (which also chronicles the origins of agriculture): “[M]y mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not… in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes… The river bore me up and carried me to Akki [probably Baghdad], the drawer of water [who] took me as his son and reared me [and] appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, [the Goddess] Ishtar granted me her love.”
A statue of Afghanistan's revered tenth century female poet, Rabi’ah Balkhi, probably in Tajikistan. photo: unknown Rumi’s father, Bahuaddin, was also a resident of Balkh as well as a talented writer and Sufi, three centuries after Rabi'ah. He tells the tale of “the husband of a woman who composes songs and sings them in public. One day he arrives home unexpectedly and finds her with another man. He storms out, vowing divorce. Later he remembers the prepared meals, the clean clothes, the warm bed and the excitement of living with a woman who sings beautiful songs she composes herself,” (“The Drowned Book”, translated by Coleman Barks, John Moyne and Baha Al-Din Valad, 2004). Having so many smart, sensual women starring in so many folk tales helps explain why so many Muslims are so desperate to control their women. They think it will help Islam evolve from “jahiliyyah,” “the time of ignorance and chaos,” code for matriarchal polytheism, into a law-abiding, functional and masculine monotheist civilization.
Bedouin women fetching water, Middle East, early 20th century. photo: unknown Muhammad could be a pushy preacher and tough crusader on occasion, but he was also a creative visionary, a responsible merchant, and a dedicated family man—a well-socialized mystic, in other words. He worshipped Khadija, who courted him, may have been his first lover, bore him six children, and taught him the romantic ways of Arab women. When asked by a disciple how to excel at that, Muhammad recommended sending the beloved messages, like short poems, as befits “The Messenger of God,” while implying romantic love itself is a message from God. Head over heels in love with her young husband, Khadija rewarded his backbreaking work, leading her camel trains across the desert, with an annual month off. Muhammad would retire to a cave on a mountain north of Mecca, eat little and pray a lot, one of his three favorite things, along with perfume and women. That mystical practice became Ramadan, Islam’s month of fasting during the daytime.
Khadija and Muhammad’s relationship reflected how empowered women and men could cooperate, which was undoubtedly common as the matriarchal era transitioned to patriarchy. Indeed, the pair bonding and reciprocal altruism of most animals was advanced algebraically by the visionary romanticism of the Middle East. After Muhammad’s first revelation, he ran all the way back to Khadija’s house (some five miles from his mountain hideaway to downtown Mecca), because he feared possession by a spirit. Khadija, however, assured him he was hearing the one, true God, “submitted” to his new faith, and became the first Muslim, as well as Muhammad’s first great ally, along with his cousin Ali. Submission may seem like a strange metaphor for a religion based on unity, equality and justice, but it symbolizes how a strong matriarch would cede dominance to an emerging patriarch to empower male hard work, leadership and romance, or how we mortals must accept the unfolding of an all-powerful Lord or universe.
Women organized our earliest clans, we can assume, since men didn't study birthing or childrearing that much, if at all, and they spent a lot of time away from camp, hunting. Although some research is in dispute, a lot is obvious or accepted, as with goddess culture. For starters, as Homo sapiens developed their massive brains (“sapiens” being Latin for “wise”), it became harder for them to pass their mother's birth canals, and they were born increasingly prematurely. Larger heads caused bleeding or death to mothers and infants, who also needed more calories and time to achieve adulthood. This put evolutionary pressure on women, obliging them to shift some of that cost to men, first and foremost by getting them to bring more meat during estrus ("time of the month"), to replace lost blood, as well as pregnancy and after giving birth.
Given nothing lives forever, beings that live have to master reproduction shortly after simple survival. That women’s wisdom was derived from researching reproduction is implied in “Genesis”, where the Garden of Eden's Snake surely signifies "penis," but it is proven by science, from Darwin’s second theory of evolution, sexual selection, to cutting-edge and gendered behavior and brain studies (despite diminishment of late, due to concerns about, accusations of, or actual sexism). As many biologists have noted, the human race is a hybridizing experiment run by women. To cite easily observable sex differences, female Homo sapiens have language centers in both hemispheres of their brains (unlike the male's left only); they become verbal earlier as toddlers; and they are more talkative as teens and adults. (Gossip, despite its bad rap, provides the intelligence needed by alpha matriarchs to manage their community’s sex life.)
Many anthropologists cite hunting as the probable driver of abstract language, but hunters often use silent signals and don't need as many objects or actions identified as women running households, making "Reproductive Studies 101" the first fruit on the Tree of Knowledge. Not only did seizing the means of reproduction cause "Eve," the first self-aware woman, to be ejected from Eden, a genetically evolved paradise, it triggered the "cultural big bang" of speech, art and early romantic thinking and gestures. Once women could count back the nine months from their baby's birth and identify fathers, they could dispel paternity uncertainty, which is the mandatory first step for any patriarchy. Once they could articulate sentences, they could leverage male desire through logic and truth but also lies and subterfuge (Homo sapiens' monthly estrus is hidden, biologically, unlike most animals). Hence, abstract, grammatical spoken language was probably invented by women between 70 and 140,000 years ago (Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari favors the former date), and soon fostered vast improvements in lifestyle, clan organization and tool use as well as gender relations.
The large breasts of the 34,000 year-old Venus of Willendorf, found near that Austrian town in 1908, were thought to be stylization or from sickness but more likely represent a healthy mother who nursed many children. photo: unknown During that eye-popping expansion, however, the great matriarchs must have noticed they were earning diminishing returns on how they organized families with multiple fathers, inspired men to work the fields (requiring a full day's labor, not hunting’s half), or got them to fight invading marauders to the death (hunters instinctively flee overwhelming force). After mastering language, women realized they could negotiate more advantageous exchanges of their services and products (sex and children) for supplies, shelter and safety. After learning the women's new language and what they wanted, men flocked in from the wild bearing food, furs, firewood and more, to join the family-building project, simply because it was an easier avenue to regular sex than brute force. This great socialization of man is mythologized in "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (also circa 2000 BCE) when Enkidu, boon buddy of the eponymous hero, is seduced into city life by a temple prostitute who liked to cook as well as have sex, a strategy undoubtedly devised by one of Uruk's priestesses. To counter Gilgamesh, the first articulate, intelligent male (or symbol of same), who had grown more powerful than the matriarchs and was abusing them, the priestess realized: Find another, equally strong man and set them against each other. Men were always involved in reproduction, of course, if only briefly and peripherally, but rationalizing their reproductive roles, augmenting their participation and responsibility and, finally, making them the leaders of society (patriarchy) and then universe (monotheism) was another stroke of female genius, after organizing the basic trade of sex and children through the mechanism of romance. Perhaps not surprisingly, getting men to renounce their rough folkways, be more responsible fathers, work harder and increase romanticism remain contentious between the sexes today. But back in the Paleolithic, our very evolution depended on the slow male march from adolescent hunters to adult fathers, farmers, fighters, builders and poets, pushed by more articulate and intellectual women.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and bad times eventually beget better ideas. Khadija believed her husband's new theology provided precisely that for her tribal group, the Arabs, who had long pined for a monotheist prophet of their own, and her city, Mecca, which was famous for its poetry contests, religious cults, and oaths to remain peaceful during festivals. Alas that system was millennia old, and Mecca was beset by feuds between its powerful priestesses as well as the now dominant male warriors, merchants and poets. Successful societies keep growing, by definition, but when communities get too big, the efficacy of women’s work, networking and character aggrandizement or reputation assassination is overshadowed by the efficiency and strength of well organized men, male hierarchies, hero worship and non-injurious competition, which is practiced through play. To parse this tricky transition, Khadija ceded to Muhammad authority over her self, family, houses and businesses, not to mention the once-female universe, and together they forged the Arabs’ late but rapid and empowering transformation to patriarchal civilization.
Regendering a society is not easy, as we are realizing. Christian theologians thought monotheism would be improved by making God more forgiving and accessible, marriage sacred, and sex a sin (even within marriage, if it is not to procreate). Alas, that didn’t cure Christian cravings for power or sex, as we well know, and Muhammad must have noticed, among his Christian relatives, Meccan friends or those he met in Jerusalem, where he travelled for trade. Returning to Judaism’s more matriarchal matrimony, he permitted divorce and hailed sexual pleasure as a natural gift from God, even incorporating it into Islamic heaven, which was an interesting rejiggering of monotheist metaphors.
Muhammad famously adored women and, after Khadija died, took a dozen wives and concubines, although he limited his male followers to four wives, who have to be loved equally. This suggests Muslims are better served by monogamy, with which monotheism shares a prefix and inherently supports, due to its "single lord worship paradigm." Islamic polygamy may have been an inheritance from the matriarchal era, where multiple men orbiting a grandmother-mother-daughter run home is extremely efficient, especially when the men are engaged in long-distance trading or herding. Regardless, Muhammad can be considered a feminist for his day. Indeed, “The Quran” refers to men and women as equals and states that “both men and women are guardians of one another” (Surah 9:71); it grants women property rights and half a male's inheritance; and Muhammad supported female sexual satisfaction (primarily to deter their return to polytheism but also to allow natural feelings), all of which he undoubtedly decided in close consultation with Khadija. In Christianity’s more feminized culture, however, women had no real rights to inheritance, property or publicly acknowledged pleasure until the 19th century.
A Baghdad gate, 19th century. illo: Arthur Aletrilly, 1882 To attract polytheists to their movement, Christians introduced a goddess figure, Mary (considered a virgin, despite Christ’s older siblings), and her literal god child, both of whom are deeply revered by Muslims (save for deifying Christ), earning them 31 and 90 mentions, respectively, in “The Quran”. The Hebrews, for their part, made their Sabbath a goddess holiday: women do the first prayer, don’t do any chores (unlike Christian and Muslim women), and are encouraged to pursue reproduction, religion or relaxation. Powerful Jewesses appear throughout “The Bible”, some of whom reappear in “The Quran”. “The Old Testament” does call for stoning adulterers (Deuteronomy 22:22), to end sexually permissive polytheisms but, in practice, Jews generally tolerated pre- or extra- marital sex. This is due to monotheism's increased individualism and human rights as well as the ongoing esteem for the matriarchs, which is integrated into Judaism. The first Hebrew millennium, chronicled in "The Bible" was largely patriarchal, but as they were conquered and oppressed by the Babylonian, Roman, Christian and Muslim empires, Jews reverted to matriarchy, notably in how Jewish men served as receptive partners to ruling elites and in Judaism's legal descent, which is through the female line. This makes children of of Jewesses inherently Jewish, unlike Christian kids, who are born in sin and require baptizing. Muslims, meanwhile, are born with "fitrah," meaning innate purity but also refering to the charitable donations during Ramadan. “Free women don’t commit adultery” was the belief of Hind, a polytheist priestess as well as wife of the Meccan chief who fought against and surrendered to Muhammad, which translates into legalese as: Free women are entitled to sexually select their mates, copulate at will, and their children have full legal rights.
Christianity tried to control male sexuality by shaming sex and reverting to prelapsarian innocence. The Jews emphasized self-control and symbolized sexual restraint with circumcision, which they enshrined as their central sacrifice to the one, true God. Many scholars say circumcision was adopted to promote cleanliness in a water-scarce environment (which it does), but cutting off the penis tip obviously signifies suppressing sex (just as amputating hands emphasizes, "Thou shalt not steal"). Moreover, removing the penis's protective sheath unveils its inherent beauty, a body modification undoubtedly enjoyed by matriarchs. The Christians rejected circumcision, assuming their "sex is mortal sin" psychology would be an adequate inhibitor, but the Muslims reintroduced it, although it is not in "The Quran". Circumcision is covered in “The Hadith”, the collections of Muhammad’s sayings, and “The Old Testament”, which Muslims also consider sacred (“He sent down the Torah and the Gospel,” Surah 3:3). Most Muslim boys are circumcised in their seventh year, not seventh day as with Jews. Unfortunately, sex was highly enjoyable and seductive, according to many Muslims close to the matriarchal era, and plagued by its colorful memories, hence a second circumcision was needed: that of women. The "mullahs" (Sunni clerics) endorsed female genital mutilation (FGM), even though it's not mentioned in “The Quran” or “The Bible”, can cause severe injury or death, and can decimate or eliminate the pleasure Muhammad considered a gift from God. FGM is still enforced by many Sunnis, largely in Africa, with the highest practice rates being in the Horn of Africa and nearby. To this day, a majority of Egyptian women undergo FGM, despite Cairo's passage of a legal ban and start of a media campaign, around 2005.
Desert travelers stop for the night: perhaps how Muhammad and his disciples looked in the 7th century. illo: unknown, circa 19th century Already a charismatic speaker, Muhammad became an adept politician and strategic general and led the outnumbered, ill-equipped Muslims to many heroic victories. As the messenger of God but not son, however, there were defeats and mistakes, notably with his wives and the Jews. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem 500 years earlier, the Jews dispersed across the Middle East, the “Jewish Diaspora,” including a Hebrew kingdom in Yemen and a large, respected community in Medina. In point of fact, Islam’s holy day became Friday simply because that was the Jews' market day (before their work-free Sabbath), and the many Muslims who liked trading with Jews were available to attend mosque. Moreover, Muhammad began adjusting his ideas to attract Jews, as evidenced in the Medina Surahs of “The Quran”, where God often hails the Jews as the first monotheists but adds that they lapsed into sin and should follow the new prophet. A few Jews converted and some sided with the Muslims against Mecca, but many didn’t. Hence, after a one-month siege of the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza, Muhammad ordered the massacre of 800 men and boys and took the chieftain's wife, Safiyya (Sofia), a famous Jewish beauty, for marriage. Safiyya acquiesced to conversion and became one of the prophet's almost-dozen wives, but she continued to assist her people backstage, a common practice among matriarchs who join more powerful patriarchies.
Alas, 7th century Arabian politics were complex, as was the art of receiving revelations, editing sacred books and establishing a new religion. “The Quran” has contradicting dictums, as do the God-given texts of the Jews and Christians, including pronouncements for and against alcohol, gambling, murder, fate, free will, and the Jews. "You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them. But pardon them and bear with them. God loves those who do good” (Surah 5:14), is a typical begrudging but fair comment, attuned to both monotheist morality and the stiff competition of monotheism's marketplace of ideas. Such obvious incongruities oblige rational monotheists to distance themselves from the letter of divine law and embrace its spirit, to decide logically, in any given situation, which scriptural statement better advances their faith's core concepts of justice, cooperation and mercy.
As the birthplace of our oldest cities and civilizations, the Middle East naturally harbors some of our most intractable conflicts and psychological problems. After the stoic, hedonist, intellectual and militaristic Roman Empire gave way to the romantic, chaste, emotive and pacifism-preaching Christians, the Arab intelligentsia was marooned between the Christian Byzantine Empire, the Persian Empire, which was mostly Zoroastrian (a millennium-old monotheism with polytheist proclivities), and the warlords of the polytheist tribes of the mountains and deserts, which were often at war with the civilizations, because their economies depended on robbing its trade routes.
Pharaoh Akhenaten with wife Nefertiti and three daughters under the God Aten. courtesy: Wikipedia, please donate hereMuhammad revered Judaism and Christianity, and opposed the polytheist tribes and empires, making him a card carrying member of Western Civilization, but he also adjusted monotheism and satisfied a pressing need, given Islam’s extraordinary expansion: twice the size of the Roman Empire in half the time. This was especially true in harsh mountain or desert climes, where the matriarchs and mature men needed a way to enlist, discipline and manage men. Muhammad's masculine tone, a major selling point, was balanced by his benevolence, justice and peace. This is highlighted by the first phrase of each of “The Quran”’s 114 Surahs (chapters), “In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, most merciful,” its many one-line revelations, like “There should be no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:257), its universal greeting, “As-salamu alaykum” (“Peace be upon you”), and many of Muhammad's “Hadith” sayings, from his theory of jihad, where “the greater jihad” is against the ego and “the lesser" political struggle, to his many exhortations to tolerate disagreement and forgive enemies.
Sufism does not derive from ancient fertility cults, as some scholars claim, according to most Sufis, rather Muhammad’s private oral teachings, which are thought to be more metaphysical than his public pronouncements of “The Quran” or “The Hadith”. Although such secret knowledge may be apocryphal, Muhammad surely communicated concepts not written down. Indeed, Sufis were dedicated to his lived example, which integrated a strenuous spiritual practice with work, family and women, who were excluded from most male mystical fraternities. Yes, the vast majority of Sufis were men, devout Muslims and patriarchal, but many accepted women as fellow tariqa members, teachers or saints, notably the first and most famous Rabi’ah. The 8th century Rabi’ah al-Basri (from Basra, south of Baghdad) came from a respectable if poor family, but they were attacked during a journey, leading to her sale into prostitution or slavery. Eventually freed, due to her dedication to prayer and good works, she became a poet and self-actualized Sufi master. "You know of the how, but I know of the how-less," was her explanation to Hasan al-Basri (642–728 CE), the Sufi, scholar and founder of the rational Muʿtazile school, who was trying to win her hand in marriage. Rabi'ah declined and remained chaste but defined a doctrine of divine love, making her the first saint of Sufism’s Religion of Love. In fact, it can be said that Sufis developed more female and romantic values and art than any other religious, social or literary movement in history by basing their beliefs on monotheism and social responsibility but devoting their free time to exploring rapture, art, romance and other alchemies of the material world.
Scholars and pupils st Baghdad's House of Wisdom's, late Abbasid era. illo: Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, 1237, courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale de France & Wikipedia (please donate here)Islam’s vast conquests in under a century—west to southern France and east to northern India—was a world record and wonder to behold. Indeed, Islam's armies often featured fearsome warriors riding spectacular Arabian steeds, sometimes wielding swords impaled with copies of “The Quran”. Religious war is often brutal and depraved, but those Arab-lead armies often abided advanced rules of war and negotiated fair surrenders, like when Caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem in 637 CE. He allowed the ruling Christians to resume normal life and the Jews they had expelled to return. Many communities converted to Islam voluntarily, starting with Medina, which invited Muhammad to rule after experiencing extreme Jahiliyyah problems. Jews and Christians were accepted as fellow believers in the one, true God, which the former called “Yahweh” or “Elohim” and the latter "Jesus Christ" or "The Trinity" (a combination of Christ, Yahweh and mystery spirit), and Muslims labelled “Allah.” Nevertheless, Christians and Jews were second-class monotheists, or “dhimmis,” and saddled with special taxes and restrictions, like prohibitions against riding horses or carrying weapons, although both were exempt from military service.
Many Muslim regimes encouraged liberal and economic benefits. Shari’ah Law, Islam's precedent-based legal system, liberated people from oppressive rulers, arcane rituals and racist caste systems, which was why Islam was welcomed by many in India. It often reduced poverty, illness and ignorance by increasing rule of law, opportunity, trade and literacy. It so supported Jewish and Greek thought, the two foundations of Western Civilization, some say Islam saved Western Civilization. Books in its lingua franca, Arabic, became the era’s internet, spreading science, philosophy and poetry faster and further than ever before in history, across the many silk, spice and other trade routes of an already globalized world. Communities devoted to scholarship, like Alexandria or Timbuktu, went so far as to prohibit the transit of books without their being copied.
Despite these successes, tribalism, sectarianism, wealth disparities, slavery, tyranny and war, plus vestigial polytheist practices, remained. Out-of-wedlock sex continued in rural areas, crowded cities (where veiling helped women have affairs), and among merchant families (where men had to travel, sometimes for years). Slavery was pervasive, from the massive slave trade (almost double the European) of both black Africans (which could include castration) and white Eastern Europeans (the word slavery comes from the tribal name Slav) and western European sailors seized by Muslim Barbary pirates, to Islam’s ubiquitous concubines and “slave armies.”
To prevent constant palace coups, boys from tough tribes were kidnapped, educated in Islam, trained in the art of war, and sworn to the sultan as “slave soldiers,” a respected status. For the related reason of scheming family members, sultans often surrounded themselves with Christian, Jewish or Sufi advisors. Muhammad advocated freeing slaves, which many Muslims did, after which they could become full citizens (if they submitted to Islam), intermarry and serve in the regular army. “Slave generals,” meanwhile, sometimes seized power, became the new sultans and mounted their own slave armies.
Protestors at the United Nations' 'Isaiah Wall,' featuring Isaiah’s 'Beat their swords into plowshares' quote, 2015. photo: unknownAlthough monotheism failed to establish the justice suggested by divine law, it symbolized those values beautifully, both on earth and in the afterlife. Polytheist heavens were crowded, incestuous and crime-ridden, much like the ancient towns on which they were modeled, but even more in the Middle East after the passings of the golden ages of Sumer, Egypt and Babylon, which were exacerbated by the mysterious Late Bronze Age Collapse (12th century BCE). After so much rapid culture creation and success, however, the Middle East had too many civilized cultures and citizens with high self-regard but too few men willing to embrace full adult responsibility. Monotheism may smack of misogyny to modern observers, but it was logical after tens of millennia of matriarchal polytheism. Indeed, making the universe masculine and men central to it can be considered one of religion’s most important innovations, and it was orchestrated by women, as Khadija's actions indicate.
Based on books, monotheism fostered literacy and abstract thinking but also personal prayer, meditation and ethics. More intellectually oriented than polytheism, with its colorful rituals, titillating stories and mystery-cult metaphysics, monotheism eventually eschewed the sacrifice of living beings, which was how polytheists placated their deities and divined the future (soothsayers, usually women, often examined the liver of a sheep or goat for signs). Moreover, monotheism emphasized individual souls and equal rights, rather than the ancient, collective spirits of forbears, tribes, castes or priestly hierarchies (although the Catholics and Shi’a did resurrect strong priesthoods). Indeed, the mere concept of one Lord implied justice between tribes, nations and classes; it favored internalized guilt over external tribal shame; and it provided more hope, optimism and romanticism (polytheists are often skeptical, due to the tenuous future). A single, solitary God must know all or have a functional plan for humanity, including finding each of us true love and building our life around that, as emphasized early in “The Bible”: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, therefore shall a man cleave unto his wife,” (Genesis 2:24). Bonding so deeply with the spouse contradicts both the family structure of matriarchies and patriarchies, where the young couple stays in the mother or father's dwelling, respectively, and obeys their orders. Romanticism also reinforces the difficult task of defending the family and community, adding intense emotion to hero tales and folk origins, inspiring extra effort from men defending families or fields. Increasing romanticism was critical because successful communities are eventually threatened by greedy neighbors, hungry marauders or corrupt charlatans.
Monotheism provided an ethical foundation for liberal democracy, in fact, through its overarching system that could organized the prodigious intellectual achievements of the Greeks. The citizens of Hellenist city-states invented or improved almost all of civilization’s major disciplines or endeavors, from democracy, math and science to theatre, architecture, sculpture (the first photo-realist) and the Olympics. But without a coordinating mechanism, most Greek speakers abandoned that culture and became Christian peasants by the 5th century CE. The Jews, meanwhile, preserved their monotheism through terrible travails, tests and rethinking and, in the 19th century, integrated Greek ideas (a second time, given the cross-pollination after Alexander conquered Judah, in 331 BCE). Almost all tribes employ forms of democracy, from weak to strong, and the Norse, Native American and others contributed enormously to the latter, through egalitarian councils, advanced ethics and vibrant friendships. But few tribal federations were able to expand egalitarianism and suffrage before the Enlightenment in Europe, where it emerged in the 18th century largely due to their long study of Judaic theology and Hellenic philosophy and science. Indeed, monotheist Muslim scholars helped preserve and expand Greek and other sciences, which led to the Renaissance, starting in 14th century Italy, the closest Europeans to Islam.
The Judeo-Christian version is well known, but the Golden Rule appears in many cultures. illo: unknownWe must be adults and take responsibility, Muhammad felt, since each soul will have to answer for their deeds on Judgment Day, even though “The Quran” did take both sides of the ancient argument between predetermined fate and voluntary free will. Desert dwellers and sailors, or those in harsh environments or societies, often prefer an all-controlling fate, to soften God’s will and their own guilt over not solving the suffering, and their more rational neighbors or coreligionists often don’t have the heart to deny them. Nevertheless, they take fate into their own hands crying out as infants or, starting as teenagers, fighting to be treated equally to others in their family or perceived community. Ironically, whether the human condition is dominated by nurture and its end product, culture, or nature and its foundation, biology—the modern version of the fate-versus-free-will argument—remains in dispute, from politics and policing to psychology and biology, with respected thinkers, like the English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, favoring the latter.
Emphasizing the former, however, Muhammad esteemed individual merit and rights and opposed inherited rule and kings. In point of fact, the four “Righteous Caliphs,” who ruled Islam after he died in 632 CE, were chosen democratically, using the tribal system of acclamation (public cheering), by all Muslims present—including women! The vast majority shouted for Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s closest friend and the father of his child bride, Aisha, but a small minority insisted that selection was invalid and power must be passed in the primitive, ancient manner, to a family member, which triggered Islam’s 14-century civil war. Even though Muhammad had no surviving sons, a fairly obvious sign from God, his cousin and son-in-law Ali was considered close enough by “The Party of Ali,” words in Arabic which condense into “Shi’a.”
Ali was a respected warrior and served Muhammad devotedly, including in the killing of Medinan Jews, but he was also a man of peace, who opposed power grabs—a Muhammadian democrat, in other words. Finally elected as the fourth “Righteous Caliph,” he was soon assassinated, at prayer no less, for being too tolerant to Muslims who committed infractions, for not punishing them harshly enough. Considered the first Sufi by some, since he would have heard the supposed secret teachings, Ali was murdered by members of the Kharijites, Islam’s first extremist sect, who were traumatized by Islam’s first civil war (656-61 CE). That sanguineous slaughter started when the majoritarian Sunnis established a dynasty (in contradiction to Muhammad), amassed a massive army, and mercilessly massacred the minority Shi’a, including Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn. Martyr stories oblige intellectuals to parse God’s will creatively, which stimulates sophisticated ideas and art but leaves regular folk confused.
Muhammadian democracy and Sunni egalitarianism were hard to scale up, the further Muslims got from his charismatic leadership, as was integrating mosque and state. Sunnis switched to primogeniture succession and hierarchies headed by sultans and viziers (political leaders and managers), who ran the armies and bureaucracies for the caliph (religious leader). After the Damascus-based Umayyad Dynasty grew too fast and was wracked by divisions and corruption, the Abbasids seized power (749 CE) and reigned for almost exactly a half millennium from Baghdad. Although reforms were attempted, often by Sufis, the Abbasid Caliphate declined into dysfunction and delusion. In 1258, after they decided to murder the diplomats dispatched by the Mongols, they were annihilated, including the flooding and burning as well as butchering of Baghdad. No democratic elections were held until the Sunni Ottomans started experimenting with democracy in 1877, and many Arab nations still have kings today.
Despite its tyrannical tendencies, Islam was idea-based and could be improved by encouraging ethical leadership, everyman activism and moral suasion, as Muhammad did in his day, decent mullahs ever since, and the Sufis throughout their history and especially their renaissance. Islam’s allowance of four wives, to those who could afford it, deprived poor men of families, while dowry requirements favored older men, but such sexo-social imbalances were relieved through the lingering looseness of the matriarchal era, the universal practice of situational homosexuality, and the desert dwellers' need to travel, for trade or grazing herds. Alas, the effectiveness of those workarounds faded after Islam turned a thousand and was confronted by both European conquest and colonialism and the science their forbears had helped transfer to Europe, compounded on top of the standard liberal-conservative cycle. After societies innovate, achieve success and become rich and powerful, they indulge luxuries, fantasies and their children until, after a period of decadence or decline, they are seen as weak and attacked by usurpers from within or without.
A fully outfitted Wahhabi warrior, from the Arabian desert, circa 1800. illo: unknownBy the late 18th century, both the Ottoman Caliphate and many Sufi tariqas had become corrupt, which made Muhammad Wahhab’s conservative Islam attractive, especially to the desperately poor, of which there are often many in desert regions. After conquering most of Arabia, Wahhab’s fanatical devotees turned north and annihilated Karbala, the main Shi’a city, near Baghdad, which features a shrine to Muhammad’s grandson Husayn. After capturing Mecca in 1803, they became the putative heads of Islam, but only for a few years. En route, they decimated Sufis, Jews, Christians and pagans, enforced mosque attendance and daily prayers, and took control of women, replete with full body covering (sometimes enforced while they worked the fields, a health hazard), public chaperoning, genital mutilation and honor killings, which they hoped would eventually reduce women’s matriarchal power and sex magic.
Although Islam’s political-religious hybrid made its achievements automatic gifts from God, by the same token, its defeats and decadence had to be blamed on sin. Monotheism became so popular so quickly because it solved so many polytheist problems, unfortunately, just not the central concern of many humans: “Why bad things happen to good people?”, which pagans easily answer through polytheism’s central conceit: “You’re praying to the wrong god.” A similar theological crisis challenged Judaism in the 6th century BCE, after the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem, and kidnapped half its inhabitants to exile in Babylon. Although the temple was soon rebuilt, with Persian help, the rabbis still had to answer for Posted on Oct 26, 2024 - 03:58 PM
