PICTURE 22

The oldest part of the Mezquita, Cordoba, from the 8th century. It was not a mosque but a masjid, a Christian-Arabic place of worship in a Syrian church style.

The mezqita of Cordoba served as an Arabic church for 100 years before gradually transforming into a mosque. Externally there were hardly any differences, with the exception of the addition of a prayer niche (mih rab), which made the difference between churches and early mosques. The building was constantly expanded, but the basic elements remained the same. The building of Abd er-Rahman I (756 - 788) and the extension Abd er-Rahman II (822-852) are large halls with a forest of various ancient columns and red and white double arches above.

The extension of Hakam II (961-976), the first caliph, shows a completely new style and an artistically incomparably higher level. The execution of the prayer niche is particularly impressive, but at the same time it arouses astonishment, because it is covered by a magnificent Byzantine dome, which is known to be based on a cruciform plan. This expansion is a gift from the Byzantine Emperor Nikephorus II Phocas, who sent the artists to Cordoba with their tools and all the material. What could have been the reason? Well cultivated relationships: because Byzantium, which had previously been present in Hispania, repeatedly tried to win over the caliphate as an ally. The final addition of Al Mansur, which soon followed, is a return to the Forest of Columns, but in a much worse execution. Probably due to the lack of alternatives, inferior and damaged ancient columns were often used, the arches were no longer made of stone and brick, but simply painted in a brick look. The styles of the Mezquita, the Syrian arch architecture and the Byzantine extension Hakam II, are not Andalusian. There is absolutely nothing "Islamic" about the origin of the sacred architecture of Islamic Spain, because there were no Islamic models.

The importance of philosophy and science in al-Andalus and their influence on Europe is generally greatly overestimated. As already pointed out in the previous chapter, it is completely incorrect to speak of Islamic sciences in late antiquity at all (see St. 177). There have been numerous scientists of different nationalities and different mentalities in the Arab Empire. They were all united in the Arabic language, which is why one definitely thinks of

“Arab scientists” can speak. Of these, however, Muslims were the absolute exception. What's more, the establishment of Islam ended the heyday of Arabic science in a very short time. This flowering of Arabic intellectual life took place primarily in the Persian Orient. Without wanting to belittle the achievements of the Arab scientists in any way, it was primarily a question of handing down Indian (“Arabic”) numbers or ancient philosophers. This handing down also took place without al-Andalus, the country was never the often rumored center of science. The story of the medical writings of Dioscorides, which Abd er-Rahman III. (912-929) received as a gift from the Byzantine Emperor.

The library of Hakam II (961 - 976) was already set ablaze by al-Mansur (938 - 1002) as a conscious act of the Koran. Almost all authors from the East were destroyed, for al-Andalus had not yet produced a leading figure in the field of science and philosophy except for Ibn Masarra. This was not the case until the 12th century with Ibn Rushd, Ibn Maymun (Maimonides) and a few others. With these names, however, philosophy and science disappeared from al-Andalus after a brief flicker. Al-Ghazali had asserted itself across the board, from then on knowledge and thinking in al-Andalus were limited to what was in the Koran.

Or, as the historian al-Maqqari put it: “Philosophy is a science hated in Spain, which can only be studied in secret.”

In the best Alhambraism, however, Pierre Phillippe Rey120 teaches us that Europe actually got rationalism from “North and West Africa and from al-Andalus”. Unfortunately, there is no justification for this highly interesting thesis, but for the time being one can assume that al-Andalus was neither the mediator nor the cradle of European rationalism.

120 Pierre Phillippe Rey at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001144/114426eo.pdf .

The greatest and universally celebrated achievement of al-Andalus is said to have been tolerance: tolerating other ways of life, other ways of thinking and the respective other religion. This created an unprecedented way of living together, the legendary convivencia.

Mohamed Benchrifa also writes on the UNESCO homepage page 121:

“Throughout Islamic rule, Andalusia was home to forms of tolerance unseen until modern times. It was a land of dialogue, a dialogue that was both cheerful and lively.”

Let us take a brief look at the cheerful and lively dialogue that al-Andalus had with its greatest minds, Ibn Rushd and Maimonides, and which Maimonides summarizes in his own words:

“The Arabs persecuted us very severely and passed banning and discriminatory laws against us. Never has a nation tormented, humiliated, degraded and hated us as they did.”

The merry dialogue that Ibn Rushd had to have before the court in his native city of Cordoba was a matter of life and death. He got away with banishment because of his closeness to the ruler, received a lifelong ban on speaking and writing, his works were banned, he was hushed up in the Islamic world and only experienced his appreciation in Christian Europe as Averroes.

Ibn Rushd was born in Cordoba in 1126 to a distinguished family of Qadis. Qadi, judge, was not just a job title, it was an honorary rank. As a young man, Ruschd witnessed the transition from the Almoravids to the Almohads. His bread and butter was medicine, but his main occupation was physics and philosophy. In 1153 he was ordered to the Almohad court in Marrakesh. For the prince and later caliph Yussef Abu Jakub he undertook

121 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011 /001144/114426eo.pdf.

various physical investigations and prepared an Aristotle translation. He spent most of his time in Spain in the service of the ruler. There, too, disaster loomed. The days of free speech and free writing were over. Al-Ghazali and the ultra-Orthodox were advancing everywhere and they fought Ibn Rushd with all their might. In his theory of causality he opposed Ghazali and his literal observance of the Koran and accused him of destroying not only philosophy but also Islam.

This was not without consequences. A formal trial against Ibn Rushd in 1195 denied his orthodoxy, banning not only his writings but philosophy as a whole. Only the closeness to the ruler, whose personal physician he had advanced to, saved him from the death sentence. Instead, he was banished from Cordoba and later taken to Marrakesh, where he died shortly afterwards, in 1198.

Averroes' life was saved by his medical knowledge. So it was with Maimonides, the second great thinker of al-Andalus. In 1135, nine years after Ibn Rushd, Mosche ben Maymon, as his real name was, was also born in Cordoba, the son of a respected Jewish rabbi. He grew up in an atmosphere of Jewish learning, which, however, came to an abrupt end around 1148. The Almohads ruled in al-Andalus, they forced all non-Muslims to convert or emigrate - if not worse. The wandering life of the ben Maymon family began, which took them all over Spain. Nowhere could they feel safe, eventually they crossed over to North Africa and settled in Fes around 1160.

This move into the lion's den has fueled much speculation. The real reasons are unknown, but Morocco must have been safer than Andalusia.

Or did Maimonides feel safe because he had converted to Islam? It looks like it, although his conversion is undetectable. Strikingly, however, Maimonides advocates conversion in several expert opinions, albeit in the sense of Islamic Taqiyya122.

122 Taqiyya, the disguise sanctioned in the Qur'an to gain an advantage over unbelievers.

Maimonides dealt with metaphysics, astronomy and of course Aristotle, but his main work was texts on Jewish faith and law. In the main profession Maimonides was a doctor.

But the arm of religious persecution also reached the ben Maymon. When the Chief Rabbi of Fez was executed for his refusal to convert to Islam, the family fled to Palestine in 1165 and from there moved on to Egypt.

In Cairo, Moshe became a respected member of the Jewish community and a sought-after doctor at the Sultan's court.

However, the shadows of the past caught up with him at the peak of his work, because a former employee suddenly appeared on the scene who claimed that the current Rabbi Mosche was a Muslim in Fes. Ultimately, Maimonides also escaped this life-threatening situation, his closeness to the Sultan as a doctor may have saved his life. Maimonides died in Cairo in 1204 and his body was taken to Tiberias in Palestine, where it was buried in the earth of his fathers.

Maimonides and Ibn Rushd are celebrated today as the most important thinkers of al-Andalus. Both were pursued and hunted, both lived under death threats, both had to leave the oh so tolerant Andalusia. And that wasn't the exception in al-Andalus, it was the rule. It seems downright grotesque that the very denomination of Muslims that sought Ibn Rushd's life now, after centuries of complete ignorance, included him as one of their own. Ibn Rushd can no longer defend himself against it.

In Spain lived according to population Ibero-Romans, Goths, Jews, "new" Berbers, "old" Berbers, Arabs. Regionally, however, the composition was completely different, and the majority situation could turn into the exact opposite. The reason was the constant conquests, expulsions, deportations, enslavement, and resettlement. The maps with demarcations only represent snapshots.

These ethnic groups spoke standard Arabic, vernacular Arabic, various Berber dialects, various Romance dialects, Hebrew and Latin. Arabic evolved into the common one in the 9th century

colloquial language between the individual groups. In addition to the Christians and Muslims living in their territories, there were always special groups: Christians who had converted to Islam (Muladeri), Christians who lived under Islam (Mozarabs), Muslims who had converted to Christianity (Morisques) and Muslims who lived under Christianity (Mudecharen).

The conversions were never voluntary. They always took place under coercion or pressure, ranging from legal discrimination to physical violence.

At the time of the conquest, land grabbing was in the foreground from an ethnic point of view, there were no significant religious conflicts, because the individual denominations were still much too close in the 8th century - despite violent theological disputes. This began to change under Muhammad I. Eulogius of Cordoba writes to Bishop Wilesindus of Pamplona:

"In that year (851) the frenzy of the tyrant was kindled against the Church of God, overturning all, laying waste to all, scattering all, imprisoning bishops, presbyters, abbots, deacons, and all the clergy."

Those who did not convert were second-class citizens (dhimmi). For them, in al-Andalus, the only options were tribute, exile, or death. Professor Maria Rosa Menocal shows in her book "The Ornament of the World" that one can actually see this actually undeniable alternative differently when she says "Islamic politics not only made it possible for Christians and Jews to survive, but also for them according to the Korani - protected by and large as part of a commission."

In the period of the Taifa patchwork, the situation was completely different. In general, religion did not seem to have been a priority, but the first major slaughter of Jews took place in Cordoba in 1066.

This was preceded by a memorandum by the pious jurist Abu Ishaq: “These Jews, who used to look for a rag of colored cloth on the rubbish heaps to bury their dead, ... have now divided Granada among themselves ... They collect tribute and clothe himself very elegant..., and the monkey Joseph has laid out his house with marble... Hurry to him

to cut the throat; he is a fat mutton, take his money away from him, because you deserve it better than he does!”

The tolerance that is said to have characterized al-Andalus is a fairy tale. Nowhere, not only in Spain, is tolerance to be found in our understanding in medieval Europe. The concept of tolerance dates back to the Renaissance.

This tolerance is based on the concepts of truth and freedom. In the case of revealed religions, each of which claims a truth claim for itself, tolerance is not far off as soon as they are able to implement this truth claim politically. Freedom and tolerance very soon end with religious regulations.

Let alone being a tolerant society, al-Andalus was not even a pluralistic one. Pluralism includes the consensus on the basic equality of all cultures. That was out of the question in al-Andalus. Tolerance and pluralism there were compliance with circumstances that could not be changed at the moment - but they were working on it. This is the "pragmatic tolerance" of the Andalusian tolerance admirers.

Religious tolerance has never been a concept in al-Andalus. The religious groups always pursued a policy of takeover or separation, which only paused when it was not politically enforceable. That was the legendary convivencia, the intimate togetherness of three cultures. It was said to be the hallmark of al-Andalus, but in reality it was the exception. All three cultures overlapped and were closely interlinked, but the will to separate or conquer always dominated.

The convivencia perhaps saw its best time in the short period of the Taifas and in Christian Toledo, when Christians, Muslims and Jews fled in large numbers from the onslaught of the North Africans to the Christian parts of the country and stayed there at least temporarily until the death of Alfonso the Wise (1284), created a common culture undisturbed.

At the same time, the religious zealots in the south destroyed all traces of Christian-Jewish building activity such as churches, synagogues, cemeteries, schools,

community facilities. Therefore, for ruin tourism today, the superiority of the Moorish culture seems to be quite clear. Unfortunately, some historians have lost the archaeological evidence of convivencia under Islamic rule.

Coexistence can only work if the cultures involved are at the same time. They have to come from the same era to be on an equal footing. Until the 10th century, most of the Iberian Peninsula was a fairly homogeneous cultural entity under the main Syrian-Arabic culture. This continued with smears even in the Taifa period.

A first break in simultaneity came with the fundamentalist Almoravids and Almohads. They came to Spain from Africa's past into the modern age, with which they had no connection. They were eventually absorbed by this modernity, but the next wave, with its ominous pull into the past, was already on its way: the new, radical interpretation of the faith that had established itself in the East and was sweeping over al-Andalus.

It wasn't just the North African zealots that cut al-Andalus off from modernity, it was also developments in the east that al-Andalus was always heavily influenced by.

From the Almoravid foreign rule to the end of Granada one can no longer speak of simultaneity. Don't be fooled by the magnificent stucco work in a small part of the Alhambra. The cathedral of Burgos was completed, the Cologne cathedral was under construction, pompous churches and enchanting palazzi had been built in Florence, which Pisano adorned with his incomparable sculptures. What inspires developments is the spirit. But with the elimination of Ibn Rushd, the spiritual petrification in the Islamic world

"sealed time" after Dan Diner '23, occurred.

Nothing could illustrate the change of sides of modernism in Spain more than the coincidence of two events: 1492, the same year that Ferdinand and Isabel surrendered Granada

123 Dan Diner, "The Sealed Time", Berlin 2007.

received and the last Muslim ruler left Spain, they bid farewell to a captain named Christopher Columbus, who went on their behalf on his voyage of discovery into a new world that was supposed to be beyond the horizon of the round globe.

Once upon a time, the Arab (non-Islamic) ruler al-Mamun had the globe measured to within a few kilometers. Now the Europeans sent ships to circumnavigate this sphere, while in the now Islamized Arab world the earth was supposed to be flat, as the Holy Book commanded. By moving into the Alham bra, the royal dominions from the north initially carried out Castilian reasons of state. But they also brought modernity into the past.

"However, the Alhambra can certainly be a symbolic model for a new, united Europe, in which different religions and cultures can and must come together like never before."124

Why the Alhambra? Which cultures and religions should have come together in it in an exemplary manner?

If you really want to name a symbol for the coexistence of the three cultures, it is Toledo. If there is one building that must be identified as emblematic of al-Andalus, it can only be the Mezquita of Cordoba. This Mezquita is a bizarre building. It begins its existence on an exploited temple of Jupiter and a Gothic church. This was followed by a Christian-Arabic place of worship in a Syrian church style, with extensions as a mosque, which finds its artistic climax in an extension drawn entirely from abroad, namely Byzantium. The relapse into an artistically inferior last extension follows immediately. And then a cathedral is placed in the middle of the mosque. It fits like a glove, but: the mosque was not flattened by the victors, as one would actually expect, but "supplemented" by a cathedral in the middle of it. Of course, the cathedral dominates, the minaret is from

124 Lubisch, FAZ, August 12, 2004.

Church tower encased - but what could symbolize the historical zigzag course better than this building, which combines the basic elements of the history of al-Andalus?

Appeals and reminiscences to the so tolerant time of Islam in Spain come mainly from the Islamic side. More caution would be appropriate since non-Islamic citizens were subject to special taxes everywhere and at all times and had to make do with reduced rights. All non-Muslims in al-Andalus were second-class citizens with dhimmi status. Is this what tolerance looks like?

The third group, the Jews, has not yet been spoken of at all. They immigrated to Spain, mainly after the Romans conquered Judea, which they called Sepharad, and were therefore later called Sephardic Jews. In the Alhambra pathos they are the “mediators between cultures”. That's a euphemism for someone caught between the chairs. For most of the time, the Jews were alternately marginalized, disenfranchised, plundered, expelled, or murdered by the two main cultures.

Examples are given of Jews who had risen to high positions, such as Ibn Shaprut from Cordoba or Ibn Negrella from Granada. But those were the big exceptions. Ibn Negrella, builder of the first Alhambra and creator of the lion's fountain, was brutally murdered during the Muslim pogrom of 1066. The fate of Maimonides has already been discussed.

The Spain-wide pogroms of 1391 wiped out two-thirds of the Jewish community. In 1492, shortly after the capture of Granada, all Jews in Spain were asked to be baptized or to leave the country. The majority did the latter, and with that the history of the Jews in Spain was largely over.

Again: the convivencia was the exception and dictated by the political circumstances, not by tolerance or the desire for pluralism.

Finally, let’s take a look at what else the UNESCO homepage has to offer:

“Jews, Christians and Muslims were perfectly free to engage in activities

in theological, even religious activities ... in administration and the judiciary.”

Haim Zafrani And:

“Al-Andalus was a remarkable and outstanding model of tolerance. It began with the conquest when the Muslims began to protect the liberty and property of their subjects and to respect and defend their churches” (Mohamed Benchrifa).

One would like to see the churches that the Muslims defended. But where are they?

These are the tales of al-Andalus. The historical reality looks different. In al-Andalus there was no tolerance. There was slashing and stabbing. And where this paused, apartheid reigned, exercised by whoever was politically in a position to do so. The beautifully sung convivencia only took place when the opponents were in stalemate and could not do otherwise. That's how al-Andalus worked.

"Who did this to us?" Memories of reality

"We're only repaying them a small part of what they did to us!"

Osama bin Laden on his terrorist actions

D

he Islamic world is in bad shape. Especially its core, the Arab countries. In all sociological data, they rank at the end of the world rankings, surpassed only by some

African countries. And that despite the oil income.

Contrary to popular stereotypes, the Arab states as a whole are poor. Together they all generate on average just as much as the much smaller Spain, with the exception of oil. The production, which takes place in their own countries, is essentially based on foreign licences. Almost nothing is created originally. The entire Arab world achieved 370 patents in the period from 1980 to 2000, in comparison Israel had 7,650 and South Korea, which is often used as a comparison country because of parallel developments over time, had 16,300 excluding oil, four times as much as the entire Arab world.

Why do they need the work, one might object, they have the oil. This seems obvious, but it is also part of the problem. Although the oil throws off enormous profits, but the wealth does not arrive. The extravagance and ostentation of Arab billionaires is already a legend. But even a country like Iran, which is not known for its lavish upper class, is not making any headway economically. The only exceptions are the Emirates, a few small Gulf States and exotic countries like Brunei.

All Arab countries are completely defeated in education, a key sector for future development. The high - for women dramatically high - percentage of illiterates is reflected in book production: With a world population of five

In 2005, just one percent of global book production went to Arab countries, and the lion's share of that was religious titles. These figures can be found in the Arab Human Development Report (IAH DR). This is a regular report on the state of the Arab States, written by Arab authors. It is a report of considerable frankness, but it is also not free of clichés. American policy in the Middle East and Israel are given as reasons for the problems in the Arab world. Sure, Israel is a psychological trauma to the region. But was the situation better before the founding of Israel? Not really.

It is obvious that the Arab world, like the entire Islamic world, is in a deep crisis, including for those affected. When something has gone so badly wrong, the obvious questions should be:

"What went wrong ?"

"Why did that go wrong?"

"What did we do wrong?"

Not so in the Islamic world. The key question here is:

"Who did this to us?"

The answers are the same to this day: the Franks, the Crusaders, the Mongols, the French, the English, the missionaries, the Soviets; and currently the US, the Israelis, the West.

You can read about it in any publication of an Islamic country.

At the same time, the glorious time, the “Golden Years of Islam”, is invoked.

How could the fall from the golden past into the dreary present come about? the Muslims ask themselves. Has Allah turned away, and if so, why?

The time of the Arabian empires, starting from the year 622, are the sworn and often quoted "Golden Years of Islam". As we know, the times of the Prophet, with their detailed accounts, are but pious legends, as is the explosive expansion of religion. The real political development of the 7th century

culminated in an Arab empire, by no means an Islamic one, and had absolutely nothing to do with the person of the Prophet and with the legendary ruling dynasties of the early caliphs artificially grafted onto him. The cultural diversity in this Arab empire, with its diverse ethnic groups and religions, led to an impressive cultural and scientific flourishing in the courts of Baghdad, Samarra, Damascus, Tehran and even those in present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.

With the collapse of Rome, not only did ancient culture disappear from Europe, but also its intellectual legacy. The Occident sank into the “Dark Middle Ages”. The Orient is completely different. Here the Arab scientists picked up the Greek philosophers, discussed them and tried to develop them further. New ground was broken in the fields of astronomy, medicine, physics and especially in optics. Antiquity lasted much longer in the East, together with Buddhism it led to a cultural flowering in the Central Asian countries; the "mutacilism" of an al-Mamun was nothing less than an Arab humanism; his time already had the prerequisites for a "renaissance". However, things turned out differently: Al-Ghazali succeeded in outlawing reason and free thought, which succumbed to mutacilism, the ultra-religious prevailed, and Islam became the state religion. Any intellectual activity beyond religious books was punishable - and the Renaissance took place in Europe with a delay. The intellectual blossoming of the Middle Ages in the Orient was Arabic, but not Islamic. What's more, the establishment of Islam ended this Arab heyday in a very short time.

The decline of the Arabian Empire began with intellectual life and continued in all areas. Three centuries later, the Arab Empire was unrecognizable. The cities were in decline, the fertile countryside unproductive, and people had emigrated en masse from the former cultural centres.

How could this happen ?

A popular explanation is the plague. But that was the same in Europe.

Then the Mongol invasion of 1258. Sure, the Mongols did big ones

destruction, but they soon withdrew - as Muslims.

The Crusades? The First Crusade of 1096 was a naïve and rather idealistic movement of a new entry into the Promised Land, where milk and honey would flow. The region was ruled by Arab and especially Turkish tribes, and central authority in Baghdad was in decline. Jerusalem was inhabited mostly by Christians and Jews and also defended by the latter together with Egyptian troops, who by no means must have been Muslims. The Jews were the main victims of the bloodbaths that are reported.

In 1106 a returnee from the Holy Land, the Norman prince Bohemond, met Pope Paschalis II and explained to him who the real enemy was: Byzantium. The Pope immediately issued orders to preach against Byzantium: this was the early turning point in the history of the Crusades.

The Crusades that followed developed into a strange mixture of religion, politics and business with the main aim of destroying Byzantium, the great enemy of the faith. Islam was only marginally noticed. The capture of Byzantium finally succeeded in April 1204 with the help of the Venetian fleet. The annihilation of the Byzantine Empire was the basis for the rise of the Ottomans, and if the Crusades had any effect beyond that, it was a unifying effect for the Muslims who, according to Morozov, found their identity in it in the first place.

The Crusades are also completely useless as an explanation for the decline of the Arab empires. The phenomenon of decline is evident throughout the once prosperous countries from Central Asia to Morocco. Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt and North Africa were once the granaries and bearers of culture in the world of that time. There are no external influences that would offer a reasonable explanation for the Arab crash. The explanation lies within.

Although Islam arose as an offshoot of Christianity in the core Arab countries of today's Iraq and Syria, it dominated

finally, desert Arabian influences the religion. Bedouin traditions soon overtook the Hellenistic world and with them the laws of the desert and Bronze Age traditions that had long been thought to have been overcome came into force.

European travelers repeatedly reported with astonishment the observation that the wheel was not in use in the Orient - a matter of course in ancient Arabia. Hardly any wagons, hardly any carts, almost only beasts of burden. In fact, with the advent of desert culture in the rich agricultural countries between the Tigris and the Nile, the camel also made its entrance and gained central importance125. This remained so until the advent of automobiles and railroads - entirely Western engineering. One can appreciate the slump that this step backwards alone must have caused in the transport sector. The ancient road network decayed, the generous colonnades and wide streets of the ancient cities narrowed so much that, in accordance with Islamic jurisprudence, there was just room for two pack animals next to each other.

With the establishment of the Koran, the suppression of other books followed, a suppression that very soon led to a total ban. While al-Mamun only had the ancient writings destroyed after they had been translated into Arabic, later successors rigorously eradicated everything that was non-Islamic. The rumored tolerance is pure legend. For centuries, the elimination of non-Islamic thought and deviant culture was an essential part of politics, especially in India cultural assets were destroyed on an unimaginable scale. But ultimately only fragments of the works of the Arab authors themselves made it to Europe, which were still sufficient for participation in the European Renaissance.

For a long time, reading non-Islamic books was punishable by death, and at best, owning other books was despised. The Koran is God's direct word and contains answers to all questions

125 For 3000 years the camel was the epitome of wealth for the desert dwellers. For 2 decades it has been the symbol of poverty, replaced by pick-ups from Asia.

in perfection. All further knowledge is therefore harmful and blasphemous. With no new inflow, knowledge died out, and from then on the Islamic world stood intellectually still.

Non-Muslim subjects, the "infidels," became second-class citizens. If they were not forcibly converted, they often had to pay such horrendous special taxes that the only way out was to convert or emigrate, especially as they were denied many jobs that were only open to Muslims.

This desert-specific ideology, with its contempt for different cultures and knowledge, not only found its way into the Qur'anic teachings, but became its essence. It brought knowledge and progress to a complete standstill within a few generations; productive trades and even agriculture were severely affected. The only thing that remained was trade.

Where are the agricultural areas that supplied the world at that time? Where did the flowering of the Roman, Greek and Arabic Orient disappear to? What unimaginable descent did ancient Bactria take to present-day Afghanistan? It wasn't climate change that brought about this complete change - it was the desert mentality of the new religion126. As soon as the existing infrastructure was used up, cultural and economic rigidity set in.

Nothing illustrates the Islamic return more clearly than the reckoning of time. 622, "the year of the Arabs", kata Araba, as the Gadara inscription reads with the cross as an introduction. It was the year when Arab independence began. This year was set as the beginning of an Arabic calendar, which of course followed the usual solar calendar. Suddenly we find this date turned into the year of Hijra, the Prophet's exodus from Mecca! It was the beginning of an Islamic calendar based on legends, a lunar calendar in the Bronze Age tradition of inner Arabia. So the moon goddess Allat came back to her ancestral calendar.

126 There are no rational reasons for tabooing pork, but is more to be seen in the ideological complex of a nomadic culture compared to the despised peasant culture.

A completely useless calendar. For example, someone born in June celebrates their next birthday and the one after that in May, the next in April and so on, the difference ultimately adding up to years. Muhammad's birthday or the month of fasting Ramadan is celebrated at a different time every year. Because recurring appointments cannot be defined with a lunar calendar and it is therefore useless for developed states, it had already been abandoned in Roman times127. The Muslims have now again often demonized it as a "Christian calendar", although they too have no choice but to use the common solar calendar in everyday life.

The largest Islamic empire was that of the Ottomans. Founded in 1299, it expanded steadily, and in 1453 Constantinople was taken. In the further course, the Ottomans conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula, parts of Russia, the Balkans, Romania, Hungary and finally stood twice in front of Vienna. They were defeated there in 1683 and it was all downhill from there. The Habsburgs reconquered almost the entire Balkans, the Russians took back all areas beyond the Black Sea from the Ottomans, Yemen and all of Arabia were lost. In 1918, “the sick man on the Bosporus” had shrunk back to its core area, today's Turkey.

How could such a complete collapse happen? One reason was the overstretching of forces. The real reasons, in turn, have deeper roots. The military and the economy were no longer able to keep up with the technical developments of the Europeans. They bought a lot of cannons, muskets and the watches, which the Orient was crazy about, from the infidels, but their own production only materialized with a time lag, mostly as copies based on the standards of the previous century. This was the case in every field of business, science and technology.

127 Under Julius Caesar the "Julian calendar" was introduced, which was introduced in 1582 under Pope Gregory XIII. slightly modified to this day as the "Gregorian calendar".

At that time, travel always took place from west to east, almost never in the other direction.

Europeans traveled to the Orient, but Muslims hardly ever traveled to Europe. Apart from possible conquests, the Islamic world was not in the least interested in the West, they literally didn't know much more about it than that infidels lived there.

The Renaissance, the new ideas about the state, the scientific advances, the new picture of the earth and the sky went completely unnoticed in the Islamic world. According to the Koran, the earth is like a carpet spread out, with seven layers of heaven above it. Officially, nothing has changed in this image to this day, in the days of Google Earth. The theory of evolution is taboo.

Intermediary trade between Asia and Europe was a fertile source of income for the Islamic countries - and soon the only one. The discovery of America, the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope, the advance to East Asia went almost unnoticed in the years that followed and were not worthy of any comment, except that the newly discovered people may soon find the right faith. The only surviving copy of the Map of Columbus was in Ottoman possession, but nobody knew of its existence until it was discovered in 1920 in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

This centuries-old arrogance and the feeling of superiority, which was no longer justified for a very long time, soon took bitter revenge. Because without it being registered at all in Constantinople and the Islamic world, the Europeans had opened up their own sea trade routes: to the New World, but also to South and East Asia. The trade monopoly of the Islamic world as the interface between Europe and Asia had thus collapsed. With tremendous consequences.

This can be illustrated with a simple cup of coffee. Coffee, originally from Ethiopia, was cultivated in Yemen and found its way to Europe via Arabia and Turkey. Coffee was sweetened with sugar from Mesopotamia or Egypt, which was also exported to Europe. When the Europeans got both cheaper from Latin America, the tables turned. Subsequently

Arabs and Turks drank coffee imported from Europe and sweetened it with imported sugar. Only the water was still hers, and that's only partially the case these days.

It was the same in all areas.

There were warnings from the few Muslims who knew Europe - mostly diplomats - but they went unheeded. A return to the old Ottoman and Islamic values ​​was preached as a remedy for overcoming the well-recognized weaknesses. At that time like today.

Even the few attempts to transplant European technology into the Islamic world, such as those made by the Egyptian Khedive Muhamad Ali at the beginning of the 19th century, failed because then, as now, people limited themselves to consumption and reproduction and produced little or nothing originally.

Despite this, the Islamic world still felt vastly superior and refused even to appraise the knowledge of the despised infidels. The printing press found its way into the Islamic world a whopping 300 years late, and only very hesitantly. And it was a European who installed the first printing press in the Islamic world, almost by force - namely Napoleon. The Muslim countries have still not been able to catch up, as the Arab Human Development Report makes clear.

There is no other reason for this self-destructive educational catastrophe than Islam. His holy book, it is said, encompasses and regulates all aspects of human life, it comes, mediated by the prophet, directly from God, nothing can be added to it, not a word can be changed. The possession of books other than the Koran was mostly forbidden, and at all times the use of non-religious books was disregarded. The timetable of Saudi medical students still has to include 30% religion today, in other branches of study it is even 50%.

This attitude has implications for the Muslim world on a tremendous scale. Because it hinders knowledge and thus development. But the Koran also claims all areas of life such as law,

to regulate government, education - in the way they would ideally have existed during the lifetime of the Prophet. That is why the Islamic thinking and system is normatively fixed on the times of the Prophet and his successors. As if there hadn't been a 1400-year history from then to now.

A serious technical barrier to knowledge transfer is the Arabic language and script. The "Arabic" does not exist. There are colloquial Arabic languages, and there is a generally binding Standard Arabic, the Arabiya, which, however, is only imperfectly understood by the people on the street. It is a formal language which, because it is not used in everyday life, has not adapted to the constantly changing demands of a living language. Modern facts and themes are difficult to express in standard Arabic.

But it is only written in High Arabic - with the catastrophic result that the AHDR complains about. For the Muslims, the standard Arabic language and script are the language and script of their Holy Book. They are therefore nothing colloquial, nothing profane, but always something sacred.

This is a concept that doesn't work in the modern world. Language and writing must be accessible to all citizens and to all areas in order to fulfill their function as knowledge mediators. The AHDR explicitly draws attention to this difficulty, but hesitates to name the consequence, which can only be the limitation of Scripture to religious applications. A utopia for a long time to come (the Latin script is called "English", although like so many cultural assets it actually comes from the ancient Orient) and a step that has so far only been taken by Turkey and, no wonder, the former Islamic Soviet republics have done.

An Islamic state must be a theocracy, otherwise by definition it is not one. Of course, this cannot be a republic, as Iran absurdly calls itself, because there is no separation of powers, one of the most important prerequisites for this. All power emanates from the Koran, from God, that is, it is exercised by the clergy on behalf of them. One

there is therefore no civil society, there is only the community of believers (umma) living in the “House of Islam” (Beit Islam). For unbelievers, there is only room in this house as tolerated domestics (dhimmi), they rank right behind the slaves expressly provided for in the Koran. Only women have even fewer rights than dhimmi or slaves, who could change their fate by converting.

The Koran scholars (Ulema) exercise control and legislation, and the caliph is above all. He is not subject to any control except that of Allah, he can switch and rule as he sees fit, as long as he only moves on the basis of the Koran. The Islamic culture is therefore the perfect breeding ground for all kinds of despots to this day. This is because, based on their traditional self-understanding, they are not owed any accountability to their people, with the exception of following the rules of the Koran (or at least claiming to do so).

Therefore there can be no civil law, only religious law, derived from the Koran. This is Sharia. However, it is by no means a defined legal system as we understand it, but essentially only the command that justice must be done exclusively on the basis of religion and its books. As is the case in most Islamic countries, there is no need to change the existing body of law in order to make Sharia law valid. It is sufficient to add that a legal ruling must not contradict the Koran or the Hadith.

In practice, this means that a legal dispute can probably be judged according to most existing civil laws. However, the losing party can undo the verdict with a reference to the Koran - the mosque is ultimately the final legal authority.

Sharia courts have recently been established in Muslim countries alongside the existing civil chambers, which means there are two parallel instances, which has led to a complete lack of transparency in the legal system. In Malaysia, the Indian and Chinese communities have opposed Sharia treatment. The consequence of this is that there are regionally different jurisdictions depending on the proportion of the population. There is therefore no legal certainty in any Islamic country.

This goes so far that Muslim states only recognize international treaties, such as the UN human rights, with the standard restriction of Sharia compatibility. That means: not at all.

A particular problem of Sharia is its derivation of legal cases from the Hadith, the collected deeds and sayings of the Prophet. One believes to be close to the source of justice, but ignores the completely obscure source situation of the hadiths and the time distance to the conditions at that time.

All of the above is nothing more than the concept of a desert society 1400 years ago - and it is precisely this concept that one wants to use to master the present and create a future. In principle, this is still (or again) the current situation in most Islamic countries. The caliph may call himself president today - whether he's elected, whether he won the elections or whether he hyped himself up hardly matters, as long as he is at least outwardly a believing leader of the state in the sense of the Koran. The word

"Freedom" in the Koranic Arabic does not mean civil liberty, but merely means the opposite of slavery. For this reason, the vast majority of Muslims lack the basic understanding of a free state order, not to speak of democracy at all. Democracy allegedly contradicts the teachings of the Koran, so a democratic attitude is un-Islamic. Even if some are toying with the idea of ​​Islamic democracy, you don't need to be a prophet to predict how attempts to reconcile Islamic law and thought with democracy will end. Democracy can never be denominational.

The hostility to knowledge and the insistence on medieval concepts, both enshrined if not in the Qur'an at least in mainstream doctrine, are the lead weights on Muslims' feet that are dragging them down and have so thoroughly prevented them from moving forward .

Everywhere these days, passages from the Koran that call for the pursuit of knowledge are being propagated. But it is Koran-compliant, i.e. permitted knowledge. Biology, for example, is not included.

Consequently, Muslims in Germany applied for their children to be exempted from biology classes. The Islamic world therefore also rejects evolution in unison, usually with the statement in the media that this has long been scientifically refuted, but no proof of the claim is given later. Whatever the case - dealing with it is outlawed or forbidden depending on the country, again in Turkey in 2009128.

Until the 1920s, Turkey was an Islamic state like any other in the region. Today it ranks far ahead of all other Islamic states in all areas, and that without oil. Already in the middle of

In the 19th century, an opposition movement called the “Young Turks” began to form in the Ottoman Empire, demanding fundamental reforms. The movement culminated in Kemal Pasha. He recognized Islam as the cause of his country's depravity and backwardness. In 1924 he abolished the sultanate, abolished Sharia, revoked all privileges for the Islamic clergy and had the Koran schools closed. He took over the system of state organization, administration, constitution and law from various European states and formed an organizationally modern state. The core of his reforms was the separation of religion and state, that unfortunate unity anchored in all Islamic countries. To make a mark He banned men from wearing the culturally typical turban and gave girls access to schools and universities for the first time - albeit without headscarves and veils. He led his country from the deepest backwardness into the modern age, he rightly bears the nickname Atatürk, "Father of the Turks".

A little noticed but important point of his reforms was the replacement of the Arabic script with the Latin one. Atatürk replaced the Ottoman-Muslim identity with an exaggerated Turkish nationalism. Nevertheless, Turkey made a quantum leap in its development thanks to Atatürk's reforms

128 In March 2009, “Bilim ve Teknik”, Turkey's most well-known scientific magazine, had to remove a story about Darwin and the theory of evolution from the cover under pressure from a government agency.

Softening of civil state principles under the Erdogan government in the process of jeopardizing them again. One should not forget that Turkey's success was its secularization.

In the Islamic world, the question was repeatedly raised as to why, after such a glorious past, the “Golden Age of Islam”, the gap to most parts of the world had become so great. In almost every respect, the Arab-Islamic world occupies a position at the bottom, as the AHDR also stated.

"Who did this to us?"

The answer was and is always the same: "The Franks, the West, the USA..."

But, and this is the second part of the answer: “This could only happen because we have distanced ourselves from the original Islam. Everything will be fine if we just restore the conditions of the 'golden years'.” This is how the salafiyya expresses it, the basic attitude that has become modern again in large parts of the Islamic world: an idealized look back into a non-existent past.

Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian Muslim brother executed under Nasser in 1966. More clearly than any other modern Islamic theorist, he called for a return to salafiyya, observing the Koran to the letter as a panacea for all of the world's problems, and he added one more thing: the content of the Koran should not even be considered, let alone discussed. Muslims live in a timeless world, so a comparison with other cultures is neither possible nor permissible. Timeless because the ideal society existed at the time of the Prophet and the Caliphs and it must be restored. History is a European invention, it doesn't happen for Islam. For Qutb it is "an undisputed fact" that modern civilization is based on traditional Islamic knowledge, which in turn results from following the Koran to the letter. From the fundamental non-understanding of the acquired knowledge in Europe

“result in the cursed separation of religion and civilization

Renaissance".

You have to ask yourself who didn't understand something here and on what level of knowledge the man was actually moving. Qutb, this prototype of the backward-looking radical, did nothing less than abolish, even ban, thought, knowledge, reason. Greetings from Al-Ghazali. Qutb did this because he knew very well that Islam, in its traditional form, has nothing intellectually or philosophically to oppose to the modern world. So comparisons must be presented as inadmissible and historical processes must be described as inventions.

Foreign powers are to blame for the miserable state of affairs in the Islamic world, which he states: Europe, America, the Soviet Union, Israel, as usual. The only remedy is to follow the Koran literally. Mind you, the salafiyya is a modern movement and Qutb is not just anyone. It would be wrong to claim that the majority of Muslims are Qutbists, i.e. radicals. But nothing-

PICTURE 23

Sayyid Qutb (left) and Mahmud Muhammad Taha

the less his ideas represent a significant trend in the Islamic world.

Sayyid Qutb's foster father was the Pakistani al-Maududi (1903 - 1979), who contributed to the chaos in his country like no other through his sermons and publications because he had more influence on the people's soul than any president of the aloof political caste.

Qutb's path leads directly to bin Laden.

Under pressure from the persecution under Nasser, numerous Muslim Brothers emigrated from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, including Mohammed Qutb, Sayyid's brother, after his release in 1972. There they encountered a Saudi-Wahhabi system.

The founder of the sect, Abdel Wahhab (1703-1791), had signed a treaty with the Al Saud clan, according to which the Wahhabi ulema (clergy) would support the Sauds, while the Sauds would accept the Wahhabi interpretation of the Koran as the only valid one.

Over time, the Sauds gained power so completely that the country was even named after the family, and Wahhabism became the dominant current. There was thus a close entanglement between the interests of the royal house and those of the Wahhabi ulema, but also a great deal of dissatisfaction among people who were neither connected to either. These found a new haven with the immigrant Muslim brothers, who propagated an even more radical way of life based on the example of the prophet in the sense of Sayyid Qutb.

In 1979, an event rocked the kingdom: the storming of the mosque in Mecca by an ultra-religious Salafist group that wanted to hit both the royal family and the Wahhabi ulema. The same year saw the Iranian Revolution and the Red Army's invasion of Afghanistan. As a result of these events, a competitive struggle began in Saudi Arabia between the Wahhabis and Qutbists, who outbid each other in radicalism.

Then came the mega shock for the kingdom: on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait. No one expected Saddam to settle for Kuwait and panic broke out in Saudi Arabia. Already on August 7, King Fahd called the USA for help and asked for help

stationing of troops. The plan to station infidel troops on holy ground led to an enormous internal test and could not be carried out without the approval of the Wahhabi ulema. The royal family had no alternative to survive, but the departure of the Saud dynasty would also have ended the state-supporting influence of the Wahhabis. The ulema therefore agreed to the stationing of foreign troops, but this consent was gilded with billions of petrodollars, which flowed into an unprecedented, worldwide proselytizing. The young, radical Salafists were not satisfied with that, but they found another solution: A jihadist scene had developed in Afghanistan, and the radical faith fighters were sworn away there, provided with many millions of dollars as start-up capital. So the Saudis exported their problems to Afghanistan.

One of those exported - who was then promptly stripped of his Saudi citizenship - was bin Laden. He and his Egyptian ideologues understood the situation of the Islamic world very well, which cannot be said of the umma, the community of believers. Bin Laden chose the armed variant because he saw himself in the position of the defender of the religion: the West, especially the USA, is to blame for the Islamic misery.

Again, the right insight, the wrong conclusions.

Who did all this to them?

Herself. The deepest reason is the historical rejection of knowledge. From early on, things were twisted, forbidden, forged, excluded, punished. This fear of knowledge, often criminalizing it, became part of the system. Criticism turned into personal insult, blasphemy and crime. This resulted in a cult of offending and a media anger and conspiracy industry so typical of Islamic and especially Arab countries.

When asked correctly, the initial question can only be: "What has Islam done to us?"

The Islamic world is not doing well at all, appearances are deceptive. But there are bright spots. One is the amalgamation of small emirates on the Persian Gulf, the "United Arab Emirates": Listed as the "Pirate Coast" on maps that are not that old, that's where the world meets today. Completely insignificant, located on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, equipped with comparatively modest oil deposits, Sheikh Maktoum Rashid bin Maktoum (1943 - 2006) started an oriental fairy tale. In 1971, the emirates were created from the merger of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, later other sheikhdoms were added. These mini-countries embarked on a conscious development towards modernity.

For this purpose, foreign specialists were brought in to plan a country on the drawing board. A separate airline was founded specifically to connect to the world, favorable economic conditions soon made the desert town of Dubai a popular shopping paradise and ensured that practically every well-known company in the world founded a branch here. This created jobs, people from all over the world have now settled there, with descendants already in the second generation: a mixture of cultures, colours, languages ​​and religions. Mosques stand alongside churches of all denominations, temples and pagodas.

This is what Baghdad must have looked like in its Arab heyday!

But like old Baghdad, the Emirates are an Arab and not an Islamic success story. Its very secularity is the basis of its blossoming.

The Emirates have tremendous appeal for the Arab world. Saudis stream across the border for their - often little Islamic - activities, the tough and reliable Yemenis make up a large part of the police force, Lebanese are successful in gastronomy, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians in the business world. In addition, there are non-Arabs from almost all nations.

All Arabs envy the Emirates and hold them up to their governments as an example, a yardstick by which to prove themselves.

Qatar has taken the first step in the same direction. It began in 2007 with the inconspicuous announcement that a church was being built there. The country has the ambition to establish itself as an international science center and is making great efforts to do so. This is quite simply a breathtaking development.

All that glitters in the Emirates is by no means gold, it remains to be seen how they will fare in difficult times and how they will cope with the increasing religious pressure from outside. And one should think of Lebanon, which has fallen from a model Arab country into chaos. But one shouldn't constantly stare at the exaggerations produced in exuberance and comment maliciously on them. In reality, these Islamic rulers from the furthest corner of Arabia jumped over their own shadows. A process of truly historic proportions.

The second glimmer of hope for the Muslim world is less spectacular, but possibly even more promising: it is the diaspora.

Almost all Muslims have traditionally lived in a country in which they

constituted the majority and where their laws applied. Today, however, many Muslims live in non-Muslim countries as a minority; such as Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, Pakistanis in England.

Minority life in a non-Islamic country is a relatively new experience for Muslims and not intended. Since the defeat of the Spanish caliphate, there have been discussions among Koran scholars as to whether Muslims are allowed to live in a non-Islamic country at all. The answer derived from the Koran is an unequivocal no. A Muslim is not allowed to live in a non-believing country, and if so, then only to work for Islam there. When asked about the Muslim victims in the collapsed World Trade Center, bin Laden replied that believers had no place there. They would have stayed there contrary to the commandments of the Koran and thus also deserved death.129

129 Interview with the Pakistani newspaper “Dawn”, November 10, 2007.

A special warning is given against so-called tolerant countries, because they represent the greatest danger for believers. Only in Dar al-Islam, the common kingdom of Muslims, could the commandments of the Koran and Sharia be fulfilled. If a Muslim has to live in a non-Islamic country, it is only to work for Islam. This is not just theory, as experience since September 11, 2001 shows.

Sure, the average Muslim worker in Europe or elsewhere shouldn't be particularly bothered by such considerations. But the demands are known, present in the subconscious and secret poison for successful socialization, because they create a latent guilty conscience. In fact, no one finds it harder than Muslims to adapt to their host country.

Islam is closely related to Judaism, it has the same roots and makes similarly radical demands on its devout members. Nevertheless, the Jews have mostly adapted well to their host countries. The reason lies in the Jewish commandment dina demalhuta dina: "The law of the respective country is law."

Jesus put it similarly: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." Basically, this already means the privatization of religion in the sense of the separation of state and religion that emerged much later in Europe. In addition, Judaism had

19th century passed its reformation, the Haskala ("education"), which could well be a model for the inevitable reformation of Islam.

In the Islamic understanding, religion is still public, all areas of life are subordinate to it, the "real" law is religious law, and there is no provision for a separation of religion and state. That is why Islam is political. And that is why it is so difficult for his followers to cope and accept in a non-Islamic world.

Apart from emigration again, the only long-term option for Muslims who live as a minority in a non-Islamic country is integration, in order to be able to lead a peaceful, successful existence. The host country must put all its effort into integration

throb. Because it requires the adoption of the respective laws and norms, which ultimately means the privatization of religion.

If the diaspora is in a Western country, the educational standard of Muslims will increase as a result of the unavoidable need to attend school. One day it will no longer satisfy merely reciting the Qur'an instead of understanding and regurgitating interpretations that are centuries old. The self-developed content will come to the fore in a knowledge-oriented environment, and sooner or later the respective national language must also become the language of religion.

As hopefully has become clear, the historical foundations of Islam have nothing to do with traditional presentation. The Islamic world itself knows little or nothing about its own historical roots, it is still stuck in the dogmatic view of history of the 9th century. But even the Islamic world cannot evade advancing knowledge in the long run. Sooner or later, this makes a re-evaluation of the Koran and other scriptures unavoidable. To continue what appears to be a utopia: the focus of efforts could shift to separating theological content from implementing regulations that were added later and the peripheral oral traditions that only obscure the view of what is essential. That means concentrating on the theologically relevant "Meccan suras", and thus an end to the extremely obstructive fixation on the social conditions of a medieval Bedouin society as a central part of the teaching. It may also turn out that the theology and intention of the Qur'an have been overgrown almost to the point of invisibility by later executive regulations. A coherent theology is missing to this day, in its place is the obedience to the letter of quotations, fed from sometimes incomprehensible sources. These are undeniable in current Muslim practice, but research will not stop at taboos.

The Sudanese theologian Mahmud Muhammad Taha had called for the "Medanic suras" to be postponed because they were only time-related

would be valid for the 7th century. He was executed as an "apostate" in Khartoum in 1985.

Islam is generally held to be incapable of reform. That may be true of its classic distribution countries. In the western diaspora, on the other hand, Islam is under pressure to reform itself or, depending on the case, to degenerate into a sect that is either ridiculed or fought against. The classic, bearded Koran scholars have failed and become obsolete. The theological shock of an inevitable reformation will be tremendous. But who else could solve the problems at hand than educated, knowledge-oriented Muslims in the western diaspora?