Our Canadian correspondent Rembrandt Clancy has volunteered to provide some additional background for the lengthy academic article by Hans-Peter Raddatz, “Islamic Seasons and ‘Democratic’ Global Policy (Part I)” (previously: Part 1, Part 2, and background by Rembrandt Clancy) as translated by JLH.

The final installment of the translation of Dr. Raddatz’ article will be posted later today.

Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy: The Main Themes

by Rembrandt Clancy

The following is an outline of a few of the main themes intended as background for the final sections of Part I of Dr. Raddatz’ paper Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy translated by JLH.

Many Islam-critical analysts consider the Enlightenment to be a harmonious part of Western culture and therefore it requires to be protected along with the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But as we saw in section 3 of this paper

…the dialogue propaganda appears like a friendly addition, which continues the tradition of the Enlightenment by destroying the ancient Judaeo-Christian culture and its tradition of scientific thought, and gradually filling the resultant vacuum with pro-Islamic reflexes, i.e., with the integral identity of Islam (trans. JLH, emphasis mine).

In my previous explanatory background, The Slavery of “Radical Democracy”, I drew attention to Dr. Raddatz’ description of “dialogue” as dressage and pointed to his example of its practice in the person of the French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the “Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue”. The institution of the “dialogue” is also central to these last two sections of this paper where it appears in a more sinister light of a deceptive cover for jihad as strategic, psychological warfare (terrorism). In the following quotation from an earlier paper, Dr. Raddatz first outlines the broadening scope of the dialogue beyond Vatican II and then anticipates its deceptive alliance with Islamic terror in the current paper:

Although the ‘interreligious dialogue’ has become an established institution since the Second Vatican Council, which seeks, and also would like to find, the commonality between the Christian and non-Christian religions, it turned out in the following decades to be a trans-institutional, inter-cultural institution, which made it a mandatory task to turn the mass of divisive factors into aspects of commonality and harmony….

Under the guiding culture of Islam, this process in the meantime has encompassed all institutions of the EU states and the EU itself and is accordingly developing methods which are turning with increasing aggressivity against the Church, her representatives and Christian believers. This process reveals a renaissance of the modern potential for violence, which activates the heritage of the left-right, anti-Christian extremes, and by means of “dialogue” with the traditional violence of the non-Christian religions, it legitimises the above mentioned renaissance by placing it under the protection of freedom of religion. The particular beneficiary of this is Islam, which in the Koran defines itself to be in opposition to Jews and Christians (Sura 9:29) [Raddatz, Macht und Gegenmacht des Christentums: Epochenkampf gegen das trinitarische Gottesbild p. 439].

The essence of the “dialogue” is “turning the mass of divisive factors [between participants] into aspects of commonality”. In this manner the dialogue institution obscures Islam’s practice of terrorism against its dialogue partner’s subject populations. One mode of concealment is the open ended use of language. Dr. Raddatz provides a linguistic analysis of Sura 8:60 as an example. In English the sura begins with “Make ready…”, but the Arabic equivalent means “enmity” or “hostility”. It is a call to violence. However, these initial words can be adjusted to yield varying degrees of emphasis, hence stressing commonalities and minimising differences according to the dialogue principle. Real violence when it occurs can be dismissed as having nothing to do with Islam.

Dr. Raddatz continues in section 4 with a reference to Islam’s “universal formula” which “blends devotion to the One with the divine will against the enemies of Allah”. Hence “devotion” is a ‘turning toward’ (hinwendung) Allah, and therefore it is at the same time a ‘turning away’ from the enemy. The “universal formula” is an expression of Islam’s radical dualism projected onto the social order, rather than onto a metaphysical or cosmic myth-system, as with the Gnosticism of the second century. The dualism sets Islam, the divine world of Allah (din), against the world of idolatry (taghut or shirk). In this connection, “The Peace of Islam” can only prevail when the enemy is overcome and Oneness is restored.

The institution of the “dialogue”, according to Dr. Raddatz, is absorbed in this “turning toward” the One insofar as it minimises differences with Islam and turns against the enemy “Islamophobia” and also against its own culture. Hence the “dialogue”, by its very form of existence (Seinsform), takes on the characteristic of an “ersatz” religion with the potential of taking over Western institutions in every sector (media, army, finance, infrastructure, accounting — acronym MAFIA). This politico-religious dimension is an expression of hybrid totalitarianism discussed below. The all-encompassing ersatz religion corresponds to what Dr. Raddatz refers to as the PREIS principle, an acronym which embraces a list of social and economic sectors similar to MAFIA, but the author does not specify the precise German components of the acronym. But consistent with the principle of universality in Islam (sharia law), the “PREIS principle”, “PREIS-spectrum” or “PREIS-elite” suggests that all areas of existence are embraced — politics, economy, society, psychology, family, morals, spirituality etc. This totalitarianism of the PREIS-principle reminds us also of the Frankfurt School’s “long march through the institutions” and the Muslim Brotherhood’s “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within… by their hands and the hands of the believers”.

Dr. Raddatz introduces the term hybrid totalitarianism in section 5, a term which may have been coined by Dr. Sebastian Gorka, whom Dr. Raddatz introduces later in his discussion of jihad as strategic warfare. In a radio interview linked below, Gorka introduces the figure of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) who studied briefly in the United States before returning to Egypt where he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and became one of the their main ideologues. He wrote the well-known book Milestones wherein the concept of jahiliyya appears, and which is mentioned by Dr. Raddatz, but not defined. Jahiliyya is appears as a concept of the Gnostic type, Qutb defining it as “[t]he state of ignorance of the guidance from God” (Milestones p. 13. Also the relation between ignorance and the “new life” of the Divine Law is described here).

Gorka reports Qutb as referring to Islam as a “revolutionary party” and he “…used language straight out of Karl Marx, out of Lenin, and even Fascist concepts”. The combination of Marxist-Leninism and theocratic Islam constitute hybrid totalitarianism. Here is how Gorka conceives it:

We have a hybrid totalitarianism. People like Qutb have taken concepts out of Fascism and Communism, wrapped them in religious rhetoric, and now we have something that’s potentially more dangerous than Communism. […] Arthur Koestler, the famous former communist said, you know, Communism is a Godless religion. It was absolute, but it denied the Church, it denied God. So what do we have here: we have a hybrid thing. We have, OK; we’re going to be absolutist, we’re going to be global, we’re going to be utopian, but we’re going to have God on our side. Allah will be our ultimate guide. So here we have something that’s potentially even more powerful than the secular dictatorships we’ve seen in the twentieth century” (Cf. Sebastian Gorka in “Domestic Terrorism 101” at about 6.00 min. For the section on Sayyid Qutb, start at 5 min.)

Thus hybrid-totalitarianism is a politico-religious phenomenon, and Dr. Raddatz applies the term as such in the correlation he draws between two aspects of the “dialogue” and two aspects of Islam: hybrid totalitarianism is the combination of “tolerance” and “freedom of religion”; tolerance serves Islamic expansion, and freedom of religion serves the introduction of Islamic legal doctrine.

Dr. Raddatz credits Sebastian Gorka for drawing attention to a book by Pakistani General S. K. Malik entitled The Coranic [Koranic] Concept of Power (1979), which describes jihad as strategic warfare. Malik refers to General Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) whom readers will recognise as the Prussian military strategist who coined the famous aphorism “War is the continuation of Politik [policy or politics] by other means”. But Clausewitz’ importance for Malik is his concept of psychological warfare. Malik quotes the English military strategist, Liddell Hart (1895-1970), as follows:

(Clausewitz’s greatest contribution to war lay in emphasising the psychological factors…. [H]e showed that the human spirit was infinitely more important than operational lines and angles.” (Quoted directly from The Coranic Concept of Power: p. 36-37)

In line with this concept, Malik considered that jihad has nothing to do with tactical advantages, but everything to do with the strategic aim of instilling fear; the target is not the enemy’s military assets, rather it is the soul of the enemy. Dr. Raddatz quotes Malik as encapsulating the psychology of terrorism as follows:

(The single most effective instrument which Allah has designated for the annihilation of the enemy and his beliefs is terror. [Taken directly from The Coranic Concept of Power pp. 57-60].

Considering the strategic role of terror in preparing the enemy for annihilation or subjugation, the dialogue’s commitment to Islam as a “Religion of Peace” identifies it as deceptive, since the peace is only ostensible. It is in the area of deception where the “dialogue” shows its totalitarian similarity to Islam according to Dr. Raddatz.

The dialogue’s use of “threats to nudge consensus”, the use of epithets such as right-wing radicalism, xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia, suggests to Dr. Raddatz that a “fundamental destruction of human reason” underlies “the creeping entry of a new dominant culture” (Part I, section 5), “a mode of being sui generis, which changes into reflexive thinking and acting and cannot be reached by any argument” (Raddatz, Islamic Seasons…, Part II). It leads to radical evil and to the fall and winter phases of cultural atrophy to be discussed in Part II.

Next: The final section of Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy (Part I).

Previous posts by or about Hans-Peter Raddatz: