People of the Book

Under traditional Islamic rule, Muslims held high status with strong legal protections and privileges, while non-Muslims held lower statuses, with weaker legal protections and privileges. However, not all non-Muslims were equal in the hierarchy. Muslim rulers acknowledged the "People of the Book" - those adhering to similar religions such as Judaism and Christianity - and gave them better treatment than pagans and heathens. I've always wondered why that was so. The Abrahamic religions are all, in some ways, direct competitors with each other. And the boundary between the Islamic world and Christendom also demarcates a highly active fault line between the eastern and western civilizations. It's not just the religion that changes, but cultures, races, languages, etc. There has been great animosity and much bloodshed between both sides for some 1300 years, and yet Muslims are still inclined to treat their conquered Christian foes better than pagans. Why?

One of the few benefits of living in a collapsing society is that, after seeing so many things go wrong, it becomes more obvious how traditional societies got it right. Most long-lived customs provide some sort of benefit, even long after everyone forgets what that benefit was. Often enough, we only re-learn the wisdom the hard way.

There are countless definitions of religion, many of them cynical. Here, we've often defined religion as "a social system where status is gained by making logically improbable declarations of faith." For instance, Christians state that Jesus walked on water, while liberals proclaim that diversity is our strength. That is a cynical take on religion, but certainly useful. Another description would be "a spiritual belief system." That's perhaps the most usual interpretation, and would exclude the secular religions of the modern era. A third description we should consider is "a social order that keeps the nation from making predictable mistakes." Humans are inclined to err, and a social order that mitigates common mistakes is likely to persist. Christians will certainly understand the concept. In the material world are endless temptations of evil, which the enlightened man avoids.

While the best blogs maintain some sort of theme or domain of expertise, this one tends to bounce around on various subjects. One of the insights I've gained from such a haphazard approach has been that so many of society's major breakdowns - whether it's the bunk science, the deranged journalism, the collapse of academic standards - all stem from a single root cause, which is materialism. The reporters have been hypnotized by an ideology whose only real goal is to acquire worldly power. The scientists are busy designing clever hypothetical scenarios for great order to have risen randomly from great chaos... for something to have come from nothing. Materialism is the cause of not all, but probably most of the major problems pushing the modern world to ruin.

In that guise, it makes complete sense for the Muslims to prefer Christians to non-believers. Muslims are quite spiritual, seeing their whole existence as an interaction with God. They prefer to be around people who are as similar to them as possible. A Christian who prays to Jesus every day is not terribly distant from a Muslim who prays five times a day to Allah. They have a system that helps protect them against the pitfalls of materialism, and they give preference to those who are similarly protected. It's why we don't actually hate Muslims or suffer "Islamophobia." It's why this blog has a running series titled Muslims Kill Liberals (which - not to jinx - has been very quiet lately). It's why Iranian clerics refer to America as "the Great Satan." Of course we are the primary exporter of materialism, so their term is very apt. They aren't talking about the America of Jefferson and Adams. No, they mean the America that strongarms other countries into embracing gay marriage and, now, child transexuality; which goes to war with distant countries for reasons that no one can quite figure out; etc.

It's a funny thing, that the liberals enthusiastically support Islamic immigration (although that's cooling off in Europe) and the conservatives object. Because, while Jihadis may not be real sweet on traditional American families, we aren't the ones driving them into homocidal rages. No, that would be the liberals and the neocons. Jihadis attack cosmopolitan hubs, gay night clubs, those kinds of places. In fact, if Muslims ever did manage to set up up sharia law in a western country, they'd likely do what they've always done. People of the Book would get a limited amount of respect and autonomy; radical atheists would be treated like dirt. Similarly, if the alt-right ever succeeded in setting up a white ethnostate, I suspect that brown Muslims would still be afforded more lenience than white leftists. Because one thing that Muslims still know, and Christendom is having to relearn, is that it is preferable to be surrounded by People of the Book - even if your enemy - than by materialists, the purveyors of worldly temptation who act like a friend.