Islamic Barbary: is it Irreversible?

In a previous article, we focused on the overwhelmingly prevailing confusion in the so-called Western world; we stressed that the division between West and East is peremptory, and we underscored the impossibility of ‘restoring’ ‘Classical Values’. We highlighted the desperate Modern ‘Western’ search for a new Identity, an ill-fated quest undertaken by Renaissance and Modern Europe.

As the West did not meet a successful exit in the Identity quest, and an imaginative ‘Classical’ world with all its – unreal – values, concepts and elements has been created in the process, it is time to examine the current situation within Dar al Islam, the supposed representative of the ‘East’ – the fallaciously fabricated bogus-adversary, and equally unreal ‘Other’.

Does Islam really exist?

Whereas we first question identity issues while focusing on Europe and America, we should get back to basics when we focus on the Islamic World. Basics signifies existence. Does Islam really exist? Thinking historically, we should rephrase the sentence as following: Did Islam exist?

The inception and explosion of Islam was viewed clearly and was understood plainly during the first decades of Islam; not only by the then rising class of Islamic academia, intellectuals, and the socioeconomic, political and military elites, but also by the main rivals of the Islamic State, the Sassanid Empire of Iran, which ultimately collapsed only to be recomposed within Islam, and the Eastern Roman Empire.

Islam existed as something unique within the theoretical – religious – theological context of the Late Antiquity; it was seen as one more theological dispute of Christological context, let’s say an extreme Nestorianism.

Simply, contrarily to earlier refutations of what turned out to be the Official post-Chalcedonian Christianity, like Arianism, Eutychism, Pelagianism, Monophysitism, and Nestorianism to name but a few, Islam did not come from a province of the Roman Empire or an area that had been part of either the Western or the Eastern Roman Empire.

Historical Realities abhorrent to both, West and modern Muslims

And Islam did not fail, precisely because of this reason – which is something absolutely abhorrent to today’s Western academia, intellectuals, and colonial politicians.

Basic reason for the failure of earlier theoretical systems that refuted Official Christianity was precisely the fact that their initiator and the bulk of the followers lived within the Roman Empire, and were therefore severely persecuted and ultimately eliminated. Even more so, the officially persecuted systems were not always of minor or marginal importance; in some cases, the rivalry’s outcome could not be foreseen, and particularly Arianism was very widely diffused, and only after terribly oppressive measures eradicated. When we say that the formation of Europe is due to Christianity, we are liars for we say only half the truth. The formation encompasses on basis of parity Christianity and Arianism, to say the least.

1. First diffusion of Islam outside Arabia: Peaceful acceptance of Ali’s Sermon in Yemen

In the case of Islam, it is clear that around Prophet Muhammad lived some people who had taken the lesson; although it would be possible for Prophet Muhammad – who could communicate in Syriac Aramaic like almost all the Arab merchants (because Aramaic was the then international language) – to settle within the Roman Empire, let’s say in Jerusalem, Antioch or Urhoy (Urfa, Edessa of Osrhoene), and thence proclaim his divinely inspired teachings, he preferred to first successfully diffuse and impose Islam outside the Roman world, first throughout Hedjaz (i.e. Arabia – only the Western third of Saudi Arabia’s territory) and second in Yemen, where Ali, the first Imam, traveled in the company of some of his fellow country men and preached in Muhammad’s name ion 630 – 2 years before the death of the Prophet.

Contrarily to the erratic Medieval Christian and Modern ‘Western’ belief in ‘Islamic invasions’ and aggressive imposition of the Islamic Faith, the first country that accepted Islam was Yemen, and there was not a single fight for this purpose. Pre-Islamic Yemen had adhered widely – not to ‘Christianity’ as vicious, mendacious and untrustworthy Western academia usually say but – to Nestorianism, which means that the various Yemenite peoples, the Sabaeans, the Himyarites and the Hadramawtis, rejected Rome and Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, and sided with the Great Church of the East.

2. The Yemenites are not Arabs.

Another vicious and malignant attempt of the Western bogus-academia of our times is the effort to portray Yemen as ‘Arabic’ because this would make unspecialized masses easily believe the aforementioned forgery of the supposedly ‘aggressive imposition of the Islamic Faith’. Pre-Islamic Yemen was as different from Arabia as Iran from Greece in the times of Darius and Alexander.

The Ancient Yemenite languages have been deciphered, and we can read Sabaean and Himyarite texts that represent the bulk of pre-Islamic epigraphic evidence from Yemen that dates as back as the 6th c. BCE. The Ancient Yemenite languages were close to Ancient Abyssinian, Gueze, which derived from them as language and scripture; and because Gueze was continuously used down to our days, scholars were able to decipher Ancient Yemenite. Both Gueze and Ancient Yemenite are syllabic writing systems; the sign you write makes an entire syllable when you read.

Markedly different form the Yemenites, the Arabs were and are closer to the Aramaeans; pre-Islamic Arabic was a poor linguistic entity compared to Syriac Aramaic that has been the liturgical language of the Christian Aramaeans. Arabic had been heavily influenced by Aramaic, particularly in the period of rise of the Islamic Civilization. The Coran itself is incomprehensible without Aramaic; if we just collect the pre-Islamic linguistic evidence gathered through epigraphic evidence (Dedanite, Lihyanite, and other Arabic dialects), and try to read and understand the Coran, we will simply fail. Furthermore, Syriac Aramaic –alphabetic – scripture was introduced among Arabs in the 3rd century CE (14 centuries after the adoption of a writing system among the earliest Aramaeans, and 9 centuries after the introduction of writing among the Yemenites).

There was not only ethnic and linguistic difference between Yemenites and Arabs; in addition, there was a colossal cultural difference. Going as back as the second half of the first century CE, i.e. the period in which the famous text ‘Periplus of the Red Sea’ was written, and reading the excerpts of this text – written by an Egyptian Alexandrian captain and merchant in Ancient Greek – that refer to Yemen and Arabia, we easily identify the former with Civilization and the latter with Barbary.

The highly sophisticated and literate kingdoms of Yemen consisted in the focal point of the entire Indian Ocean; the Yemenites’ renowned navigational skills matched the vast Yemenite trade network (covering sea, land and desert routes) and the colonial state expansionism that stretched throughout the Eastern coast of Africa, as all the coastal zone from the Horn of Africa to today’s Daressalam belonged to one of the two Yemenite kings.

Opposed to this, the Arabs had no navigational skills, participated in the trade desert route only, had no state, no civilization, no culture, no laws, no writing. It was highly recommended to sail southwards in the Red Sea keeping distance from the Arabian coast in order to avoid the barbaric attacks and the attrition petty boatmen could cause to big boats transporting valuable merchandise of any origin.

3. Vicious deformation of the Historical Reality by the Colonial Academia of France

Contrarily to all this, the aforementioned realities are hidden in a way to ‘save’ the supposed reputation of the Arabs, whom the murderous and inhuman bogus-Academia of France conspired to highly portray in order to subsequently barbarize the entire Orient.

Far worse than just hiding from the entire world the exemplary excerpt of the Periplus of the Red Sea, and a myriad of Ancient and Medieval texts in many languages that accurately describe the Pre-Islamic Arabic Barbary, the conspiracy of the French Academia devised a ridiculous term in order to utterly deprive the Ancient Yemenites from both
a. a link of historical continuity from the times of the Queen of Sheba down to our times, and
b. a real, national Identity, namely that of the – non-Arabic – Yemen.

By introducing the fallacious and preposterous term ‘South-Arabic’ (Sud-Arabique), the pernicious French colonial scholars attempted to criminally usurp Yemen from its entire Historical – Cultural Heritage and attribute to the Arabic Barbary.

Even worse was the usurpation of the National Yemenite Identity and Culture that the Western scholars carried out, when they dealt with History of the Islamic Ages. During the early and middle Islamic times, the Caliphate became a formidable naval force. The pernicious colonial scholars introduced the spurious term ‘Arab navigators’ in their effort to create elements needed for the so-called Arabic-Islamic Civilization which is the epitome of their forgery.

There was never a single Arab navigator and sailor. In the Mediterranean, the Muslim navigators were Aramaized Phoenicians, Copts, Greeks, Northwestern Africans (Berbers mixed with Carthaginians and Romans) who had accepted Islam, and gradually got linguistically arabized. In the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the entire Indian Ocean, the Muslim navigators were mainly Yemenites and Persians, and eventually Aramaeans, Kushitic Africans, and Indians who had been Islamized.

All this is essential if we want to answer the question pertaining to the nature of Islam itself.

What was Islam?

Islam was the last, best, and provenly most efficient rejection of the Roman – Constantinopolitan Christianity; this statement does not imply at all the formation of another religion, but mainly defines Islam as the most radical Christological dispute that – smartly enough – was formed first ‘safely’ in a marginal territory – real buffer zone between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran – before being diffused throughout the Roman Empire and challenging Constantinople and Rome.

Islam and Christianity are not two different religions, but one!

Islam was identified by Prophet Muhammad as the religion of Jesus, whose preaching had been altered within the texts of the Official Christianity; this immediately implies that Islam would claim – sooner or later – Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome. And we know that this did take place.

Of course, Muhammad did not face the rejection and opposition Arius had faced 300 years earlier. Nobody attempted to burn his writings (or what others wrote down when he uttered the Coranic verses) in his own country, and no one poisoned him.

When Christian chroniclers first mentioned the appearance of Islam and referred to Muhammad, they portrayed him as a Christian Heretic. This consists in the only authentic standpoint that the Official Christianity may have ever taken with regard to Muhammad. Any later stance was due to the rivalry and the ensuing enmities, being therefore intentional and partial.

The Murderous Eastern Roman Emperors could not persecute Muhammad, as they had persecuted Arius, Nestorius, and many others.

Of course, the fact that Muhammad was not exposed to Roman oppression and persecution, and his followers did not face the massacres that applied in the case of the followers of Arius must have displeased the Eastern Roman rulers, monks, and patriarchs, all those who were used to solve Christological disputes through one more bloodshed.

We find their echo in modern Christian historiographers who are impressed by the fact that Muhammad was at the same time leader of a religious system and head of state. No doubt they would prefer him exposed to Eastern Roman tortures and persecution like that applied against Nestorius!

Problems faced by Muhammad

However! The fact that Muhammad was not at the Constantinopolitan emperor’s mercy does not imply for a moment that he did not face problems.

In fact, through the very early days of his preaching, a purely un-Islamic and finally anti-Islamic group was formed portraying themselves as followers of the Prophet. This group attempted a vast operation of siege, obstruction and alteration of the real meaning of Muhammad’s teachings, transforming the entire system into ‘another religion’ that should be accommodated in ‘another state’ under ‘another emperor’. Their technique of simulation was excellent, and they never opposed the prophet in anything, awaiting his death.

The Christianization of Islam will be analyzed in a forthcoming article that will help reveal both what Islam was, and what it turned out to be. Only if we come to know the two Islams, we will be able to accurately determine what can be possibly expected from today’s non extremist Muslims.

Note

On this Islamic Ages miniature we see Sergius Bahira, the Nestorian Mystic and Erudite Monk, who played a cataclysmic role in the formation years of the young merchant from Arabia, Muhammad, in whom Bahira did recognize the Last Prophet.