Or the reincarnation of the Soviet State.
It’s like trying to reform the works of Das Kapital or Mein Kampf.
…the word ‘fundamentalism’ has taken on new meanings.
As the word suggests, it means going back to the groundings, to the foundations and perhaps to first principles. It is used to characterise the interpretation given to passages of the Koran, to the Hadith, which is a collection of the acts in the life of the Prophet Mohammed and to an interpretation of sharia law.
However, the particular fundamentalist ideology of ‘Islamist’ groups that have dedicated themselves to terror – such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now in its most vicious, barbaric and threatening form the Islamic Caliphate, Isis or the Islamic State (IS) – interprets the foundation and the beginning as dating from the birth of the Prophet Mohammed in the 6th Century.
And they would be right.
A grotesque love of propaganda. Unspeakable barbarity. The loathing of Jews – and a hunger for world domination. In this stunning intervention, literary colossus V.S. NAIPAUL says ISIS is now the Fourth Reich
The Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul has warned that Islamic State are the most potent threat to the world since the Nazis.
In a hard-hitting article in today’s Mail on Sunday, the revered novelist brands the extremist Muslim organisation as the Fourth Reich, saying it is comparable to Adolf Hitler’s regime in its fanaticism and barbarity.
Calling for its ‘military annihilation,’ the Trinidadian-born British writer says IS is ‘dedicated to a contemporary holocaust’, has a belief in its own ‘racial superiority,’ and produces propaganda that Goebbels would be proud of.
A long-term critic of Islam as a global threat, he also challenges those who say the extremists have nothing to do with the real religion of Islam, suggesting that the simplicity of some interpretations of the faith have a strong appeal to a minority.
The author of A House For Mr Biswas, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, is known for his sharp views.
He has likened Tony Blair to a pirate whose socialist revolution had imposed a ‘plebeian culture’ on Britain and found himself embroiled in controversy in 2001 by comparing Islam to colonialism, saying the faith ‘has had a calamitous effect’ as converts must deny their heritage.
Imagine a world in which a young man is locked in a cage, has petrol showered over him and is set alight to be burnt alive.
Imagine the triumphant jeering of an audience that has gathered to witness this. Imagine, also, a 12-year-old child with elated determination on his features shooting at close range a kneeling man with his arms tied behind his back.
Then picture the spectacle of a hundred beheadings of victim after victim in humiliating uniforms, their hands and feet bound, kneeling with their backs to their black-robed executioners who wield knives to cut their throats as though they were sacrificial lambs.
[…]
I travelled through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia attempting to discover the ideas and convictions behind this new ‘fundamentalism’.
My first book was called Among The Believers and the second, perhaps prophetically, Beyond Belief. Since those books were written, the word ‘fundamentalism’ has taken on new meanings.
As the word suggests, it means going back to the groundings, to the foundations and perhaps to first principles. It is used to characterise the interpretation given to passages of the Koran, to the Hadith, which is a collection of the acts in the life of the Prophet Mohammed and to an interpretation of sharia law.
However, the particular fundamentalist ideology of ‘Islamist’ groups that have dedicated themselves to terror – such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now in its most vicious, barbaric and threatening form the Islamic Caliphate, Isis or the Islamic State (IS) – interprets the foundation and the beginning as dating from the birth of the Prophet Mohammed in the 6th Century.
This fundamentalism denies the value and even the existence of civilisations that preceded the revelations of the Koran.
It was an article of 6th and 7th Century Arab faith that everything before it was wrong, heretical. There was no room for the pre-Islamic past.
So an idea of history was born that was fundamentally different from the ideas of history that the rest of the world has evolved.
NOTE: If the birth of Islam exploded on the scene today, it and its members would be stamped out like the vermin they are, but now, due to the size of its numbers, people who know better, engage in mental and verbal gymnastics trying to apply (an amazingly thin) veneer of respectability. Plus, they’re scared for their lives.
