ISLAM IS POLITICS

And that was why many Muslim and Christian scholars were put to death over the last 2,000 years. Those who were militant and preached a militant brand of Islam and Christianity were killed. And the state took over the powers of religion so that secularism could be propagated.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

“Stop exploiting hudud for political gains,” said Ian Mcintyre in The Ant Daily today (READ HERE).

I have written about this so many times before but it appears that the message has not sunk in yet. Even Muslims themselves appear confused about the matter. So maybe I need to, yet again, address this issue.

Muslims, just like the Christians, are very vague about the history of the Islamic and Christianity movements before the so-called religious scholars took over and reinterpreted Islam and Christianity. Their understanding of Islam and Christianity is based on what they have been told in the Hadith and the New Testament.

And that is why I equate the Muslim Hadith to the Christian New Testament. Both were written after Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ and both were written to ‘explain’ Islam and Christianity.

The Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs reinterpreted Islam after the time of Muhammad while the Roman Emperor Constantine reinterpreted Christianity after the time of Jesus.

Hence the Islam and Christian teachings we see today are not the original teachings of Muhammad and Jesus. Hence, also, the secular belief of separation of church and state are foreign to both Islam and Christianity.

I said earlier that Islam and Christianity were originally movements. And this was what they were, movements. They were not religions per se. They were a complete way of life and a system.

The Qur’an calls Islam an adeen while the early Christians called theirs the Jesus Movement. The word Christianity was never used and it was about a movement regarding the reformation and restoration of the original Jewish faith.

Muhammad’s mission was to establish an Islamic system while Jesus’ mission was to establish a Jewish system. It was not just about doctrine, prayers and rituals but also about an administrative and political system.

Islam and Christianity were political movements. And that was why Muhammad and Jesus were both considered seditious and a danger to the ruling government of their days.

Mekah already had 360 Gods and religions. So one more made no difference to the Mekah authorities. Mekah also had three religions amongst those 360 that propagated the concept of the One God. Hence there was no problem with Muhammad talking about his One God.

But Muhammad was not just talking about a new religion of the One God. He was talking about changing the system, the administrative and political system. And this was the danger that Muhammad posed.

If Muhammad had just propagated his doctrine and rituals, that would have been quite acceptable to the Mekah authorities. What is one more religion when they already had 360? But to talk about changing the administrative system and the system of government was not something the Mekah authorities could ignore.

Hence Muhammad was forced to go into exile or suffer the consequences of a death sentence.

The same thing happened to Jesus. He was arrested for treason and the punishment for treason is crucifixion. Jesus was not just preaching a new religion. He was proposing a change of system. And that was why they took action against him and punished him according to how those guilty of treason would normally be punished in those days.

Both Muhammad and Jesus propagated war, war against the system. In fact, the Jews had been at war with the Romans for quite some time. But Jesus was not only at war with the Romans. He was at war with those who collaborated with the Romans as well, the lackey of the Romans in the Jewish hierarchy.

Paul, of course, disagreed with this. He was a Roman citizen so he felt that the church must work with the Romans. Others such as Peter, Paul, etc., disagreed. So there was a falling out between Paul and those from the original Jesus movement. Paul then moved to Rome to continue his compromising brand of Christianity, in opposition to Peter, who was also in Rome, who preached his more firebrand form of Christianity.

The same happened to Muhammad. The Mekah authorities negotiated with Muhammad for him to tone down a bit. They can allow a docile brand of a One God religion as long as this does not involve bringing down the government and changing the system.

But Muhammad was uncompromising so they planned to get rid of him and Muhammad had to leave Mekah and escape to Medina, what is known as the Hijrah.

Secularism was not acceptable to both Muhammad and Jesus. If Muhammad and Jesus had accepted the concept of separation of church and state the authorities would have left them alone. But Muhammad and Jesus disagreed that religion must be under the state and instead the state must be under religion.

Those who say that religion and politics should not mix and should be separated go against what Muhammad and Jesus taught. They can quote all sorts of verses from the Hadith and the New Testament to support this argument of separation of church and state but this was not what Muhammad and Jesus taught.

But then the Hadith and the New Testament were created by the powers-that-be of their time. They were created after the time of Muhammad and Jesus. And this was so that the power over religion can be taken away from the anti-authority scholars and placed in the hands of the government of the day.

And that was why many Muslim and Christian scholars were put to death over the last 2,000 years. Those who were militant and preached a militant brand of Islam and Christianity were killed. And the state took over the powers of religion so that secularism could be propagated.

Eventually, over 2,000 years, those who remained were those who agreed that religion and politics should be separated. Those who did not were not allowed to live.

Those who chose to remain in Christendom died. Those who escaped to pagan areas such as the Arabian Peninsula lived. And it was those Christians and Jews who did not accept the government version of their religion and who escaped to pagan areas who were the ones that Muhammad came into contact with.

So, to say that Islam and politics should not mix is wrong. Islam is politics, as is Christianity, although Christians would not admit this.

And this is why you should not just listen to imams and priests. They do not tell you the truth. They tell you what the government wants them to tell you. And was this not why Jesus was anti-priest?