Lessons from Afghanistan

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058 - 1111) was a Muslim philosopher and mystic from Persia. Ghazali wrote The Alchemy of Happiness. It was a rewrite of his The Revival of Religious Sciences. Al-Ghazali emphasized that only a few have supreme happiness, which is a union with the divine. These few were the prophets. The Revival of Religious Sciences is a long book, possibly the most read after the Qur'an in the Muslim world. It explains the doctrines and practices of Islam. It is also an explanation of Sufism, a mystical offshoot of Islam. Sufism, however, does not support the thesis that the overriding moral rule is to help others, not to harm them. A seeker after Sufism must turn away from sins, love of this world, the love of company and renown, of obedience to satanic impulse, and the promptings of the lower self.

But despite these injunctions which portray a religion that is caring and considerate of others, Islam started off by military conquest.

The Muslim conquests brought about the collapse of the Sassanid Empire, Iran and Persia and the loss of the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem fell in April 637 after a prolonged siege, Umar, the second Muslim Caliph and father in law to Mohamed, personally came to receive the key to the city from the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Sophronius, and was invited to offer prayers at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Muslim armies in the space of a hundred years were able to establish one of the largest pre-modern empires. The generous terms that the invading armies usually offered made their faith accessible to the conquered populations. And as it was a new and upstart faith, its administration by simple and honest men was preferable to the corruption and persecution that were the norm in more civilized empires.

There have many examples of Muslim military aggression since. Those instigated by Mohammed himself:

• The conquest of Spain and expansion into France. Their advance was stopped at the Battle of Toulouse in 721, but Muslim armies sporadically raided southern Gaul as far as Avignon, Lyon and Autun. Charles Martel defeated an Umayyad invasion of Aquitaine at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.
• The Barbary pirates were Muslim privateers who operated from North Africa, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and earlier, based primarily in the ports of Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast.
• The battle of Manzikertin 1071 in Turkey was a major loss for Christianity and enabled further territorial gains for Islam in Anatolia. It was the first and only time in history a Byzantine emperor became the prisoner of a Muslim commander.
• The Crusades, and in particular the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187 by Saladin, earlier besieged and sacked by the Crusaders in the First Crusade in 1099

The fifth lesson is a simple one: The human race is extremely confused: and its two major religions, Christianity and Islam, are even more confused. The conflict between the warlike nature of Islam and its principles of justice and fair play are noted above. Even more conflicting is Christian beliefs and practices. The United States, as the most religious of all developed countries, with a widespread belief in the existence of God, treats more of its people, and of the world, in an unchristian like manner that any other country – it kills more of them, in mass murders and individual homicides, it executes more of its own people than any other Christian nation, and it causes more wars. The US has invaded nearly half the world's countries and been militarily involved with nearly all.

According to Jimmy Carter, former US President, the US has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country "the most warlike nation in the history of the world," This is, he said, because of Washington's tendency to force other nations to "adopt our American principles." Carter was not alone in condemning the militaristic nature of US politics

Islam does likewise. The answer? The practice of religion, at least for the world's two majors - Islam and Christianity - is decidedly against our best interests. There have been very few years of peace in either the Muslim or Christian nations of this world. And much of that conflict has been within countries with one of the religions, or between countries with opposing religions. Afghanistan was one such.