Jon MC
Dedication: For Muncii92, who suggested I write this.
Let me start by saying that I am using the word “stupid” in a very specific way, that defined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
For those not familiar with his definition, which we might also term a form of self-imposed brain-washing, I will give a brief précis below.
Bonhoeffer, writing in the Nazi era, defined stupidity not as an intellectual or congenital defect, but as a human, moral or social one. To be more precise, he defined it as a “sociological-psychological” failing. An important, but apparently oxymoronic, point is that in his theory an intelligent or even intellectually gifted person can be stupid, whereas a mentally dull person can be “anything but stupid”.
Stupidity, he defined, was caused when individuals gave up their faculty of critical reasoning in order to fit in with a group or ideology under the social pressure of “the overwhelming impact of rising power”. Although Boenhoffer was obviously thinking about the rise of the Nazis, he applied the same to any sudden upsurge in a “power”, secular or religious. Today, we might well see this in the rise of “woke” and “trans” ideologies for example, for the proponents of which, no facts, not even those of hard science, are relevant. Interestingly, Boenhoffer says “… people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.” Thus the more sociable or extrovert a person is, the more they are prone to this infectious form of stupidity, by contrast to the more introverted.
Boenhoffer, a theologian, writes:
In conversation with [the stupid person], one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. … Against stupidity we are defenceless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict [the stupid person’s] prejudgement simply need not be believed … and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person … is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
At the root of what I have termed “Islamic stupidity” lies the Muslim attitude to the Koran.
Muslims regard the Koran to be a revelation direct from Allah. According to the “ninety-nine names of Allah” – which are actually attributes, Allah is, amongst many other things, the all-hearer, all-knower, creator of the universe and “Al-Haqq” (the Truth); thus it follows, for Muslims, that the Koran must be perfectly true, given the attributes of its author.
Furthering this view are Koran verses in which it is stated that the Koran is protected, both in the past and in the future, from any falsehood, changes, etc., that the Koran is perfect and Islam is the perfect religion, and so on. Thus the perfection of the Koran as being the literal word of Allah is a belief almost universally held by Muslims.
Anyone who has read the Sahih Ahadith on such topics as the Satanic verses and the history of the compilation of the Koran can see that these claims are false and these claims are further falsified by extant early Koran texts that differ from the modern textus receptus (the 1924, Cairo manuscript) in terms of the actual meanings of verses and not just the substitution of synonyms.
Consequently, the “Muslim mind” must either hold mutually contradictory facts to be equally true (which is an exercise that Orwell called “double-think” in his book “1984”) or else is faced with a choice as to what to reject; the hard evidence of history, including Islamic canon history, or Islamic dogma – and doing the latter would place the person outside the fold of Islam. Thus, you can find books and articles on the compilation of the Koran that are pure fantasy, designed to buttress Islam’s equally fantastical claims about said compilation and many Muslims will simply reject any evidence that contradicts the Koran’s “perfection”, even when the evidence for this comes from within the Islamic Canon of scripture (see footnote 1).This, too, must cause some intellectual pain from cognitive dissonance, in that to accept the basic tenets of Islam, Islamically educated Muslims must reject parts of the Canon they are told to accept as truth – “double-think” indeed.
Further, there are sections in the Koran that are also mutually exclusive and contradictory and which cannot be resolved by the doctrine of abrogation (see footnote 2). As one example, the Koran contains both a flat-earth cosmology and a geocentric cosmology (See footnote 3). The only thing that links these two cosmologies is that both are false and given the attributes ascribed to Allah that makes Allah a liar (see footnote 4). This is but one example of how the Koran actually falsifies itself and thus proves that Allah is a liar (see footnote 5). Hence, to actually believe in Islam, Muslims must accept things as incontrovertible fact that are demonstrably untrue and/or self-contradictory and must do so to fit in with their religion’s beliefs and the expectations of their society.It is worth pointing out that the very words “Islam” and “Muslim” mean “submission” and “one who has submitted” respectively, thus there is an under-tone to the very act of becoming or being Muslim that works against critical thinking. One who has submitted to something is not in a position to challenge it.
I slightly disagree with Bonhoeffer who states that “Stupidity is independent of any other characteristics of that person: whether nationality, ethnicity, sex, economic status, or even education”. In principle this is true, in general there is no linkage between Bonhoefferan stupidity and any other characteristics of a person. However I would argue that Bonhoefferan stupidity is a requisite of (serious) Islamic belief and that, in this specific case, such stupidity is not “independent of any other characteristics of that person” (and for a greater irony, the more well-educated, Islamically speaking, a Muslim is, the greater is this need. Note that I am not, by any means, suggesting that stupidity is the province of Muslims alone, nor am I, in any way, suggesting that Muslims are less intelligent, for example by IQ, than any other).
As was seen in my earlier essay on the Pact of Umar and its links into Sharia law and as further seen in the OIC’s decadal pursuit of the outlawing of any criticism of Islam – as exemplified in the UK by the APPG definition of “Islamophobia” which defined Islamophobia as “as a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness” which uses one undefined word “Muslimness” to ‘define’ another undefined word “Islamophobia” – Muslims seek to shield Islam from any critique precisely because the belief system of Islam would collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions were it universally exposed to such. The methods of textual critique widely used in the west in Bible studies are practically unknown in Islamic studies of the Koran text for this very reason.
This problem is recognised within both the Koran text and Islamic thinking. The Koran tells Muslims to avoid things that will generate “fitnah”. Fitnah means temptation, trial, sedition, civil strife, and conflict. It encompasses a range of concepts, including tests to one’s faith and challenges that can lead to discord or unrest within a community. Thus to engage critically with the Koran would lead to “fitnah” on several levels, both within the person themselves in terms of cognitive dissonance and religious doubt, and if the latter were expressed (at least potentially) between the individual and the community. Indeed Koran 2:191 says that “fitnah is worse than killing” and 2:193 commands that Muslims fight until “there is no more fitnah”, which, combined, may be interpreted as a command to kill those who spread fitnah by challenging Islamic orthodoxy.
Thus Islam and Muslims cannot tolerate any “controversy” around their foundational text, the tenets of Islam, the personage of their prophet or the character of their god (to make a shortlist of it), which is why I wrote earlier that “Muslims must accept things as incontrovertible fact”.
The problems extend beyond those solely relating to the Koran and Allah. For example, Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha is used to permit middle-aged and older Muslim men to marry pre-pubescent girl-children. It is a matter of medical fact that the consummation of such a marriage at the Islamically condoned age of 9 lunar years puts the health and fertility of the child at serious risk; yet many Muslims will insist that such marriages are a perfectly acceptable practice, because Islam says it is (or because Mohammed, the “perfect man” did it).
In addition, Muslim societies have severe strictures (up to the death penalty and so-called “honour-based violence”) for questioning or leaving the faith, which would be the logical result of realising the Islam not only promotes various examples of behaviours actually harmful to the Umma itself, but also falsifies its own beliefs; thus the fear factor of being exposed as a “bad Muslim” also discourages a rationalistic engagement with the faith.
Bonhoeffer also points out that the more sociable people are, the more they are prone to this form of stupidity. Thus the notion (even if honoured more in the breach than in the adherence) that all Muslims are “brothers” and “sisters” and that the worldwide Muslim community is a single “Umma” is another factor that will enhance, if only to a modest extent, orthodoxy within that community. The effect is likely to be more powerful within a particular (local) community however, particularly if there are acknowledged “community leaders” and the like who shape community beliefs and attitudes.Consequently, the only way that most Muslims can engage with their faith is via BonHoefferan stupidity because in order to be seen as “good Muslims” they must conform to the group-think and, because critical thinking about Islam is discouraged, are only be able to regurgitate Islamic nostrums by rote. It follows then, that when confronted with those elements of Islam that are demonstrably false, or wrong, or evil, that their only possible response is anger and aggression. This is partly because most Muslims socially adhere to an honour-shame paradigm, rather than a truth-falsehood one, so when their religion is “shamed”, the natural response is anger and aggression to restore “honour”.
Further, Islam calls the Kaffir “stupid” (amongst many worse things), thus when a Muslim is “out-muscled” intellectually by a non-Muslim, this is also an affront both to him and his religion, with predictable results. A further consequence of this is that when a Muslim or group of Muslims do engage with critical thinking and seek to form a “rational” view of Islam they are invariably attacked, sometimes only verbally, but on other occasions physically as well, by the more orthodox who would regard them as, at best, “hypocrites”, which partly explains why such ideas have never been taken up by mainstream Islam (see footnote 6, 7), though that is to say nothing about the beliefs of individual Muslims.
To quote BonHoeffer again: “facts that contradict [the stupid person’s] prejudgement simply need not be believed … and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental” and thus the stupid person quickly becomes angry, as exemplified by the rapid descent of many Muslims into verbal abuse and insult when challenged. A further point is that most Muslims think of themselves as morally superior to non-Muslims (the Koran calls non-Muslims “the party of Satan”, “the lowest of the low”, “the vilest of all creatures”, etc. whereas Muslims are the “the party of Allah”, “the best community” etc.) and that means that anyone who disagrees with the Islamic/Muslim world-view must be, a priori, immoral, evil, etc. and this inbuilt sense of moral superiority acts as a buttress to their armour of stupidity, making it yet more impenetrable. (Exceptions to this view can be found in fringe groups within Islam.)
I am not actually sure which type of Muslim interlocutor worries me more. It could be argued that, for those who rapidly get angry, this suggests that they are not actually irremediably stupid because their anger could imply that they are aware of their own ridiculousness, whereas I would say that the truly “Bonhoeffer stupid” person is not so aware, being utterly convinced of their own moral (and here religious) righteousness. Thus those that do not get angry might actually be the more stupid and dangerous, simply because whatever is said that contradicts their prejudices is simply ignored as totally irrelevant and/or contemptible.
Afterword
Although not directly relevant here, I cannot pass over the recent phenomenon of the pro-Hamas, Jew-hate marches calling for the world-wide slaughter of Jews for being Jews (“globalise the intifada”, etc.) without comment. These marches obviously include a number of Muslims, but more concerning is the large number of non-Muslims who would think of themselves as being “kind”, “nice”, “progressive”, “inclusive”, “on the right side of history” and so forth, without once considering that calling for the extermination of a specific people, which is literally Nazi thinking, is anything but. Consequently, I think that this phenomenon most accurately and completely exemplifies Bonhoeffer’s theory in the modern world.
These people may recover, their Bonhoefferan stupidity is, at least, not religiously mandated, but the change will have to come from the inside of each individual.
Footnotes
In fairness I should point out that some textual differences make no difference to the actual meaning of a passage. To take an example from the New Testament; when referring to the call of the disciples it makes no real difference to the meaning of the passage whether they left their “boats”, “nets” or “gear” on the beach. The point is clearly that they “dropped everything” to follow the call. However, some discrepancies in the earliest Koran texts do change the meaning of the verse substantially and thus prove that the Koran does not accurately preserve ‘the literal words of Allah’, thus falsifying the claims of the Koran (that it is protected from alteration) and thus Allah as “The Truth”.
The earliest Koran manuscript (99% complete) is the Topkapi manuscript from the early to mid 8th Century A.D., thus ~200 years after the final recitation of Koran. This text also differs in meaning in part from the 1924 Cairo manuscript. The relative paucity of early Koran manuscripts is one reason why it is why the evolution of the text of the Koran is controversial.
In very simple terms, (and suitable for the purposes of this essay) abrogation states that chronologically later verses cancel earlier verses in the case of contradictions. Thus, this doctrine relates to when Allah/Mohammed changes his mind, which – strictly speaking – says nothing about the accuracy of the Koran text itself.
What the Koran does not contain is even a helio-centric, never mind a modern cosmology. Muslims will assert that it does, of course, but this requires the sort of eisegetic gymnastics that are, frankly, ridiculous.
I am choosing my language carefully here. If someone told me that the earth was flat and I knew no better, then if I told you the same I would argue that I am not lying, I am simply telling you what I think is true (“my truth” in modern gibberish). However, Allah cannot have this excuse because, according to the Koran, he is (purportedly) the creator of the universe etc., and must know the correct cosmology. Thus in stating these mutually contradictory and erroneous cosmologies, Allah is proving himself to be a liar and thus no other claims within the Koran should be accept at face value. Further, the “Satanic verses” incident shows: (1) that Mohammed, supposedly the best human ever to live and with a direct conduit to his god, could not tell the difference between Allah’s words and Satan’s, which throws his reliability as a “reciter” in question, (2) Despite Allah claiming that the Koran was protected from any interference in the past, present and future, this claim was (at least temporarily) falsified, which must throw the whole claim into doubt – and that is before we take account of the extant and serious textual discrepancies between manuscripts which fully refute this claim.
Rather amusingly, the Koran also calls Allah the “best of deceivers” (though you won’t find that in translations!) and occasionally Muslims will trumpet this attribute as showing Allah’s ability to “outwit” stupid, but conniving, Kaffirs, not realising that so doing demolishes one of the tenets of their own belief.
Islam has its Philosophical schools, which date back to the early centuries of Islam and were often linked to Greek thought (once Islam had conquered much of the ancient Greek world). The two main general schools are Falsafa (which derives from the Greek load-word “philosophia”) and which is not concerned with religion and Kalam which is (or was) Islamic Theology. Those whose works are of Falsafa are therefore of little concern religiously to the tenets of Islam, whereas those whose writings are of Kalam are. Whilst in earlier centuries Kalam posed rationalistic objections to orthodox interpretations, eventually the orthodox won the (sometimes literal) fight and Kalam was largely reduced to apologia based on extant, orthodox, materials. Examples of “rationalist Muslims” would range from the early Mutazalites who practiced Kalam and who where more or less exterminated as a force within Islamic religious thinking by more orthodox Muslims in the first centuries of Islamic history (though I should note that the Mutazalites, where they were in power, were equally as intolerant of more orthodox thinkers) to modern thinkers such as Muhammed Abdel-Jabri (on whom Jurek has written) and whose writings, I believe, would be deemed falsafa.
One “trick” used by Muslim intellectual thinkers and writers is to cast their ideas in terms of (e.g.) “Arab thought” as distinct from “Islamic thought”. Thus no matter how heretical their ideas are, they can be dismissed an being “nothing to do with Islam” by the various schools of Islamic Theology and Fiqh (jurisprudence on the basis of Sharia).
The structure of Islam, based around its “perfection” and thus the “perfection” of its understanding as well, means that any attempts at “modernisation”, “reform”, “liberalisation”, etc., of the system itself are doomed to failure; after all, how can one improve on the perfect?
In addition, the orthodox Sunni interpretation has far more backing within the Sunni canon of Islamic scripture than any other, which forms a second barrier to any “modernisation”.
A third barrier is formed by Fiqh, which uses the canon as its source for extant Sharia law and, where necessary, argues by analogy in new situations where legal rulings are required. Consequently, schools of Fiqh are generally resistant to any re-interpretation of the Canon because this would undermine existing Sharia law, the doing of which, they being “Allah’s laws” would be regarded as blasphemy and those advocating it probably called apostates.
