Patriotism and Nationalism are Infidelity for Muslims
by Talal Al-khoury
It is not easy to be a co-citizen with Muslims because non-Muslims would suffera lot from the Islamic values that are based on the Islamic creed and arestated and recommended by the Islamic Sharia and beliefs. These values such as,protection (taqiya), objection (maaridh), puns (tawriya) and caution (al-hitawa al-hather) and others. All these Islamic idioms mean different techniquesfor lying and misleading non-muslims.
The minorities in Arab and Islamic countries are suffering from these valuesthat are believed and practised by Muslims. Furthermore these values areserious obstacles for building a harmonious and united society, where peoplework hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to create … people and homelands.
In the following lines, I will try to discuss one of these Islamic values,which cause serious problems of hatred between the sons of a single homelandand set them apart from each other.
Islam considers that patriotism and nationalism are a kind of infidelity forMuslims. Islam teaches its followers not to consider the homeland orcitizenship, because the religion of Islam is a religion of the entire world.Besides that, Islam divides the world into the House of Islam (dar al-islam)and the House of War (dar al-harb). The dar al-islam is all those lands inwhich Islamic government rules and the Holy Law of Islam prevails. Non-Muslimsmay live there on only Muslim sufferance. The outside world, which has not yetbeen subjugated, is called the “House of War,” where a holy war(jihad) is imposed by the law. The law thus divides non-Muslims theologicallyinto those who profess what Islam recognizes as a divine religion and those whodo not; politically into “dhemmis” who have accepted the supremacy of the Muslimstate and the primacy of the Muslims and accepted to pay tribute (jizyah) andare utterly subdued, and “harbis” who remain outside the Islamic frontier and whoare considered infidels who should be fought and killed. The principle ofloyalty and disavowal (al-wala wa al-bara ) is a well known and practicedprinciple where a Muslim has to be loyal to Muslims only and to reject anynon-Muslim.
For example, when a Muslim defends his homeland, he is not driven by patriotismor by the love of freedom, but he is fighting in order to be a martyr in defenceof Islam so that he can earn the promised paradise with a number of hisrelatives chosen by him, and the prospect of sexually enjoying 72 untouchedbeautiful virgins (houris) and pre-pubescent boys.
In order to make it clear, I shall give an example from my personal experiencesince I lived a large part of my life in the country of my birth, Syria, as oneof the Christian minority within a Muslim majority. In 1998, there was apossibility of a war between Syriaand Turkey, because Syria was sheltering Abdullah Ocalan, theKurdish opposition leader, who was causing a lot of concern for Turkey; butthis is another topic that can not be detailed here. In those days, I went tothe local barber shop to cut my hair as usual, and the subject of a possiblewar between Syria and Turkey was ahot topic that people discussed openly. The barber, who was a Muslim, knew thatI was a Christian so he told me: “If we go together to the front, whom do Ihave to kill first? Is it you because you are non-Muslim and you might kill theTurkish Muslim, or the Turkish Muslim who is assaulting my country? Of course Iwas stunned to be asked such a question, which I did not expect to hear in thetwentieth century! The barber suspended judgement, saying we should ask the sheikhfor a fatwa on this delicate issue. What can we say to him in such a situation?Mufti Sheikh is the only person authorized to judge this issue.
As we can see, the barber, who represents almost every Muslim, wanted to makesure by the advisory opinion of the Sheikh, because Muslims sexually covet boysand virgins in paradise! Muslims do not care about their country and freedom.Muslims do not want to sacrifice their blood for patriotism or nationalism. Butthey are ready to do so for paradise, virgins and boys.
Another example: I remember when we werein high school, aged 17, we as Christian students used to play in the schoolyardinstead of attending Islamic religion class, which was restricted to our Muslimclassmates. In these classes, theypreached all kinds of hatred against non-Muslims. After finishing the class,our fellows Muslims approached us and looked at us with eyes filled with hatredsaying to us: “Why do you live? Whatis the benefit of your life? There is no meaning for your life. We as Muslimsare willing to die for the sake of Islam and defending Islam and this is the ultimatemeaning of life for us! But ye shall not have what is worth living for!” So weas Christians used to turn our faces aside in a subdued manner, pretending thatwe did not hear anything, because we knew the consequences of debating suchtopics with the Muslims that called themselves “the sons of the best nation”!Of course, after that, the physical education class came and we played together,Muslims and Christians, against the other teams, and they forgot the dos of hatredthat received from their teacher of Islamic education! And we continued to liveon friendly terms until the following week and the following religion classwhere our Muslim classmates would be provided with a new dose of hatred. We donot need to rely solely on our personal experiences. Here is the leader of the Muslim BrotherhoodMahdi Akef, who declared in an interview, his three famous F-words (“toz” inArabic). The first F-word is to the country, the second to the people of thecountry and the third even to the father of the people of the country. This wasa slang Arabic way to state that patriotism and nationalism are a form of infidelityfor Muslims. He continued, saying that he would prefer to be governed by aforeign Muslim president than to be governed by a national non-Muslimpresident. It is known that the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest religiousparty in the world in general and in the Arab world specifically, and they havefollowers and devotees in large numbers in all Arab countries. It is known thatwhat Mahdi Akef said is implicitly adopted by almost every Muslim. We know thatsecularism and the adoption of civil law is the best solution for all theproblems in the Middle East, but unfortunatelythis value is deeply rooted in the soul of our Muslim people and it is one ofthe major obstacles to face modernization and urbanization and the constructionof a homeland.
Patriotism and Nationalism are Infidelity for Muslims
