Islam, Islamism: a positivist view

What happened?

 After the  terrorrists attack in Paris in January and November 2015, we need, beyond normal stunning, a reflection on islam. What has happened? (this referring of course to the very useful book of Bernard Lewis, who already pointed  the divorce between Islamic civilization and the mind of modernity, especially of modern science).

Here is a possible positivist analysis. There are laws of evolution of societies (law of the three states from Auguste Comte, etc), as there are physical, chemical, biological laws. In Islamic civilization, these laws, at least in three critical moments, have not been followed.

In the seventh century, the Arab world has  transitioned directly from fetishism (or animism, for example adoration of the Kaaba) to monotheism, without going through the intermediate stages of the Egyptian and Greco-Roman type polytheisms (sacerdotal, then military supremacy). The result is a monotheism imported ( from Jews and Christians) in a society and minds that were not prepared by an endogenous evolution, an incomplete monotheism, which has not set up the separation of spiritual and temporal, and practice more than other religions that have evolved differently, the conversion by conquest.

During the 20th century, Arab-Muslim civilization has tried to transition from the theocratic state to a positive, industrial, secular state, all still under imported influences, without the necessary preparation by what Auguste Comte calls the “critical phase”, i.e. without having assimilated the ideas of freedom of thought, sovereignty of the people and equality to dissolve respectively the religious, political and social theocratic order. This resulted in great disorders and inept or unbearable dictatorships.

Finally, the Arab-Muslim civilization was faced to the results of Western science and its technical powers, without the necessary preparation of the scientific  mind and of the scientific method.

Positivist laws of evolution of societies may thus not be ignored without causing immense chaos and regression. There may not be "democracy building", "civilization building" without an internal sociological development.

What to do? Malala.

Posing the problem, positivism proposes a possible solution. It is through training to the scientific mentality and the understanding of the methods and results of the major sciences, that a  beneficial evolution may occur. More there will be Muslims studying science, more there will be  Muslims engineers, scholars, more  Islamic fanaticism and  theocratic violence will vanish. The West can (and must) help this evolution, it cannot replace it.

Sounds naive? Then listen to the formidable Malala, the  Pakistani girl seriously wounded by Muslim fundamentalists because she braved their ban to go to school, no doubt one of the most deserved Nobel Prize for Peace , and also one of the  more poignant speech :

"Education is one of the blessings of life — and one of its necessities. It has been my experience during the 17-year life expectancy. In my house in the Valley of Swat, in the North of Pakistan, I have always loved school and learning new things. I remember when my friends and I were painting our hands with henna for special occasions. Instead of drawing flowers and other models, we painted our hands with mathematical equations and formulas. »

And Malala to call the US to stop drone attacks in the border regions of Pakistan and clarify: "I want education for the sons and daughters of all the terrorists."

Then, from a spiritual and theoretical point of view, Michel Onfray is right to call to stop military interventions in Muslim countries. You do not build colleges and schools under the bombs, on the contrary; but political temporal power has its own obligations and practical constraints ; it is his honor and his servitude, which remain still separate in part from the spiritual realm ; in certain cases, there is no way than to destroy him who defined himself as  your enemy, before he destroys you.

Any thoughts cannot ignore the pain of the victims and their loved ones. For a positivist, victims join subjective immortality ( all convergent humans, past and to come) and their memory will remain. Newspapers that have begun to publish their portraits do well. The terrorists, they will know neither hell nor paradise; having lived as enemy of humanity, they will be forgotten by humanity. A good measure would be to mention their names the least possible, if not by a generic name - Islamist terrorists. Moreover, it would have the merit of not to stigmatize their families.

"Islam has been the great second attempt after Catholicism, to establish the unity of the human race. Islam was an attempt to build unity of the human race on both religious, political, military and economic grounds.  In this respect, its action must appear  less universal than Catholicism, because islam was more about the reality and not merely a moral improvement plan to win the sky. Thus, there is in islam a whole system of social and moral property organization. Instead of merely, like Catholicism, to engage more or less vaguely to a more or less charitable use of wealth, islam is everywhere where it prevails a property organization which prescribes legal duties as much as moral. But the establishment of a such a system necessarily implies the conquest, because it cannot settle by persuasion only. » Pierre Laffitte, Auguste Comte main disciple, on separation between temporal and spiritual in Islam.