Is Islam a Religion?

Humanity has consistently formed religions and developed faith in deities since the dawn of recorded history, transcending cultural and societal barriers. This universal phenomenon suggests that all human societies share an inherent, profound need to connect with something greater than themselves and to imbue their often-chaotic lives with meaning. Moreover, religion and faith have historically played a pivotal role in unifying communities and establishing foundational norms that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Contemporary religious institutions do not strictly adhere to the definition of religion as the relationship between humanity and the divine (God, the Supreme Being). Examining the proportion of religious content within a “religion” is pertinent. For example, a religion that devotes the vast majority of its teachings to the divine and a minuscule part to other, secular aspects closely aligns with “true” religion. Conversely, suppose a religion barely focuses on the divine and primarily addresses other aspects of human life. In that case, it is more accurately described as a pseudo-religion—a social movement with a marginally attached transcendental component that serves a ceremonial, symbolic, or deceptive function.

Any examination of contemporary religions must account for their evident survivorship bias: the religions we recognize today have undergone three distinct phases of development. They first formalize the religion, then commercialize spirituality, and finally institutionalize it. (That is why, by the way, those who study and comprehend modern institutionalized religion either become disillusioned or, in most cases, use religion as their lucrative business.) Organized religion differs from non-institutionalized ones, much like the mafia contrasts with a lone pickpocket. It is possible to identify a religion that has not yet passed through commercialization or institutionalization but is on the verge of decline. Absent these three phases, religion cannot sustain itself.

The victors would likely have shaped the religions we witness today if they had written history. Those who did not were derided as cults, declared heretics, lost competitiveness, and ultimately vanished. Religions with a long history of partnering with states have compromised their relationship with God. Some religions that joined forces with a state eventually got bastardized by the state by imposing state-sanctioned religious rituals. Others bastardized the state by decreeing religious laws and doctrines on all citizens.

Regrettably, the marriages of all institutionalized religions to various states have irreparably damaged them. The longer a religion cohabits with a government, the less religious the population tends to become, particularly if the government proclaims it the state religion. Recall what happened to Jupiter and Zeus and their courts, even if they were part of a governing syndicate in Ancient Greece and Rome for centuries.

It is not uncommon for a particular religion to evolve over the years, transforming its foundational concept of a spiritual relationship with God(s) into a more secular one. That qualifies religion to become part of a governing coalition. Restructuring along these lines enables religion to institutionalize and penetrate government circles. The synergy between political and metaphysical powers advances both but simultaneously stifles human development, as in the Holy Roman Empire.

Note that the enduring conflict between science and faith materializes exclusively when religion becomes a de jure or de facto state religion, and “truth” is enforced doctrine. Truly independent (from the state) religions are exponentially more flexible and open to scientific inquiry and to spiritual adaptation than state-sponsored ones.

In this context, people must differentiate between religions that primarily focus on worshipping God and those that allocate significant attention to venerating other entities, such as the state. Historically, no surviving institutional religion has focused solely on admiring God; many state churches have excessively bowed to the state. Notably, Islam is distinguished by its doctrinal emphasis on obedience to both the omnipotent state and the almighty Allah, with a discernible inclination toward the state.

On the spiritual side, Islam represents an attempt to paganize God by incorporating the minor Moon deity of desert dwellers into the cohort of prominent Supreme Beings. Islam is irrational in its cruelty, but it applies solely to its theological component. The state-affiliated component is well thought out and competently organized. The theological elements of Islam have numerous inconsistencies, but the same could be said about other religions. In contrast, the Islamic structure devoted to the state is a rational, albeit cynical, embodiment of a quest to dominate the world.

Subsequently, some critics argue that the Muslims’ major book, the Quran, was initially nothing more than the Guard Duty Field Manual tailored for desert operations. Obviously, it is not a “manual” in the sense of a modern military handbook. However, the Quran and other foundational Islamic texts, such as Hadith, spend considerably more time with Muhammad, the warlord (about 5/6 of all texts) than with Allah (about 1/6 of all texts). In the Quran, religious motives are present but play a secondary role (compared to the Bible, which dwells significantly more on God than on human beings).

With a high degree of probability, the Founding Fathers were against the “establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” in precisely the manner below. First, the First Amendment prohibits the installation of a religion. Second, a religion must be a religion, not something that masquerades as one or uses religious rituals as a smokescreen for an invasive, parasitic ideology.

It has commonly been assumed that Islamic tradition revolves not around God but the phallus (the minarets are well-known embodiments of that ancient phallic culture, but current Islam’s ritual practices rarely reflect a sexualized cosmology). That is why institutionalized Islam often lionizes sexual insanity. For many commoners, Islam is associated with an army of phallo-imitators, at least toward kafirs (“unbelievers”). Instead, Islam must be viewed as an army of Führer-imitators. Modern institutionalized Islam expertly intertwines politics, theology, and phallic culture.

Islam is an aggressive, imperialistic ideology sloppily dressed up in religious garb. Therefore, the First Amendment only covers its minor, spiritual component.

Nevertheless, for those who insist that modern Islam has several degrees of separation between secular and religious tenets, the proper answer would be “Drink up the sea, Xanthus.” Greek philosopher and fabulist Aesop, a slave, served Xanthus, his master, who was also a philosopher, in the 6th century BC. On one occasion, Xanthus, in a state of intoxication, wagered in the presence of his students and friends on consuming the sea. The terms of the bet stipulated that failure would result in the loss of his estate, possessions, his wife, and his wealth. Regretting his vow the following morning, Xanthus sought counsel from Aesop. Aesop provided a strategic solution, advising Xanthus to clarify that he meant to drink the sea alone, excluding the rivers and streams that flow into it. He would proceed once the crowd separated the seawater from the freshwater.

The separation between secular and theological tenets of Islam is akin to the distinction between seawater and freshwater. The word “Islam” itself means “submission.” Therefore, according to the official Washington, DC, lexicon, if Islam is well-established in America, officials would refer to it as the “Department of Submission Affairs,” or DSA. Pun intended.

[Originally published in Jihad Watch]

Conservatism and Evolution

Charles Darwin’s natural selection, as people commonly understand it, actually includes three separate mechanisms: heredity, variation, and selection. The heredity mechanism involves the reproductive transmission of genotypes from one generation to the next. Variation refers to random fluctuations of common genotypes. Lastly, selection pertains to mechanisms that reward (or penalize) inevitable gene alterations, thereby allowing some permutations to dominate a population.

Experts debate whether social systems can directly apply the Darwinian setup (known as Generalized Darwinism). However, the ideological sphere offers an attractive and direct correspondence to Darwin’s three vehicles of natural selection.

Heredity may be associated with the endurance of an ideology that governs society, as humans successfully transmit it from one generation to the next. Changes in ideology, driven by never-ending challenges, could lead to variation. Selection could be tied to the method society chooses to address those challenges. Therefore, ideological evolution could be explored through the lens of Darwin’s theory.

Traditionally, the dominant sentiment is that people assign the role of the variation instrument primarily to left-wingers, the selection mechanism predominantly to right-wingers, and the role of the heredity (retention) component overwhelmingly to the apolitical (non-ideologically engaged) population. That functional asymmetry is well-acknowledged. All three must be present in society to ensure proper (and competitive) advancement. All three create necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for society’s members to keep going (and succeed) in the face of ever-present, all-encompassing unfairness.

Without Conservatism, social evolution would be as directionless as biological evolution. Nature does not follow a predetermined course; its mutations are pointless random walks. Within this framework, without Conservatism, there would be no progress in society despite numerous mutations. In the sphere of ideology, there would be no natural selection without Conservatism. Finally, without Conservatism, human society would have no purpose because one of the foundations of Darwinism is that biological species have no collective purpose or defined goals.

Conservatism is society’s modus operandi for moving forward, complemented by controllers that prevent slipping backward. Collectivism is a scalar; Conservatism is a vector. Conservatism is the only recorded human tool capable of precisely orienting society’s development axis between the Scylla of chaos from under-governance and the Charybdis of tyranny due to over-governance. Nevertheless, again, Conservatism is not the engine—it is the rudder of society.

Conversely, social evolution is argued and maintained primarily by Conservatives. In the biological evolutionary race, Mother Nature has no idea where the finish line is or even whether there is one. In social evolution, the endpoint is unobservable, but there are many arguments for its existence. Biological evolution is a two-way street; Conservatism makes social evolution a one-way street (with many potholes and bumps, of course).

Conservatism functions like an ideological semiconducting diode, allowing society to move forward and upward. Note that Conservatism—made clear by its spelling—seeks to conserve something. That “something” is the orientation of society’s evolution.

From that consideration, Conservatism long precedes Liberalism. Pre-Enlightenment humans instinctively sought an idea-selection apparatus that could serve as a negative feedback loop in society’s development. After the Enlightenment, that instinct-based selection process received proper recognition as the reason-based force that facilitated (and continues to maintain) the evolution of freedom. Society perpetually de-transitions from omnidirectional Left pursuits into the austere choppers of the Right selection process. The system passes on whatever ideas endure to the next generation, resulting in the visible evolution of freedom.

Biological evolution always operates isotropically, with Mother Nature permitting mutations in all possible directions (though only a small number carry on). Social evolution is inherently anisotropic: Conservatives usually supervise society’s self-administered evolutionary procedure. The fact that human society has not been blown asunder so far suggests that conservative ideas appeared at the same time society came into being.

Moreover, biological evolution is non-teleological (consequential but non-purposive). In contrast, social evolution is teleological: it is incoherent, illogical, and intermittent, but ultimately has a directive principle toward a higher degree of freedom.

The role of information is one of the most overlooked characteristics of evolution, both biological and social. Only an uninterrupted supply of all available information enables the evolutionary selection mechanism to function. Only information exchange between an individual and his/her environment allows the selection formula to decide what is worthwhile. In other words, evolution could be effectively stopped if the information channels were closed.

From that perspective, consider central planning. In such an economic system, prices are commandeered and not established naturally. That implies information about actual prices (normally manifested via free, voluntary exchange) is missing, so producers do not know what customers really want. Central planning prevents prices from performing their evolutionary selection function because it lacks the necessary information.

In another example, review strict Sharia law, where women must cover their bodies from head to toe in public. It shuts down the flow of information between women and men. Men no longer make mating decisions based on a woman’s characteristics; their choices are solely grounded in financial availability or tribal customs. Thus, women in such societies are, for all practical purposes, expunged from evolutionary pressures, and it eventually spills over into men’s evolution (or rather, a lack thereof). Consequently, men customarily treat women like cattle and devolve back into an animalistic state. Under severe Sharia, women, for the most part, have no right or means to contribute to evolutionary selection. As a result of the ensuing devolution, men in such societies lack the cognitive capacity to even recognize this issue.

To summarize, social and biological evolution demand free information exchange. Halt information exchange, and evolution stops or, more often than not, reverses. From that perspective, the “sudden” appearance of miniskirts and bikinis was expected. This phenomenon represents women’s evolutionary response to a male-dominated world. The selection setup was right there; it offered evolutionary advantages to women who could wear miniskirts and, to some degree, prevented women who could not from passing on their genes to future generations. Similarly, the absence of reliable price information in countries that practice central planning forces them to rely on unrealistic, ephemeral prices, leading not to genuine success but to a transient one.

The notion that societies mimic some features of biological evolution does not mean that they obey the same laws as living organisms. Instead, it conveys a shared principle: robust systems require tools to generate variation, preserve what is effective, and explore alternative paths. If a society stifles innovation, it will eventually stagnate. A society that discards beloved inherited institutions risks losing the wisdom needed for long-term stability.

If information is the currency of evolution, freedom is what facilitates that currency to circulate. Free inquiry, open debate, voluntary exchange, scientific critique, artistic expression, and political competition all widen the field of information from which societies learn. Censorship, ideological conformity, concentrated power, and tight social control constrict the landscape and reduce society’s capacity to flourish.

Civilizations survive, whether through Darwinian evolution or political theory, not by doing away with the struggle between old and new ideas. Rather, they safeguard institutions that can transform this clash of ideas into understanding and lasting progress.

[Originally published in American Thinker]

Humanism and Antisemitism

Today, “humanism” usually denotes a secular ethical outlook that stresses human dignity, reason, tolerance, individual rights, and scientific inquiry.  In mid-19th-century Germany, however, the term repeatedly referred to something far more radical: a philosophical movement derived from Ludwig Feuerbach that many contemporaries regarded as a bridge to socialism and communism.  That original meaning has largely vanished from present-day usage.

An intellectual genealogy runs from Hegel through Feuerbach to socialism.  Hegel had already replaced traditional Christianity with a philosophical system centered on Reason.  Feuerbach went farther, declaring that God was simply a projection of human qualities.  As he summarized his own development: “God was my first thought, Reason my second, Man my third and last.”  Human beings, not God, came to be the center of philosophy, and Feuerbach’s circle concluded that every sociopolitical institution should be “humanized.” 

Friedrich Engels observed in 1845 that virtually all German communists were Feuerbach’s followers, while most Feuerbachians turned communists.  Thus, humanism grew principally from German idealism, and socialism crystallized from humanism.  In that perplexing climate, the term did not signify individual liberty in the current sense; it meant subordinating individual interests to humanity conceived collectively.  Humanism was understood as the vehicle for dissolving the individual into the community and converting private property into collective property.

Feuerbachians considered religion, monarchy, and private property as forms of alienation: Human beings projected their powers onto external authorities and then found themselves dominated by them.  From the outset, this humanism was an openly anti-Christian current.

Leading German socialists such as Karl Marx and Wilhelm Marr framed the conflict as one between Christendom and Marxistdom.  To be fair, their formative arguments were equally hostile to every religion, including Judaism.  In the nineteenth century, humanism therefore functioned as both a smokescreen and a trampoline for socialist revolution.  Progressivism played a parallel role, focusing more on demands for progressive taxation than on human progress.  Feuerbachians held a quasi-transhumanist faith that humanity could become God; godlessness was merely the first step toward a worldwide proletarian revolution, supplemented by additional political techniques aimed at their collectivist goal.

Wilhelm Marr was a classic Feuerbachian radical.  He reportedly carried Feuerbach’s opus The Essence of Christianity everywhere and founded a secret society dedicated to spreading “humanist” ideas.  At one point he competed with Marx for leadership of the German left and lost.  The two men shared a common ideology and a personal antagonism; the chief difference was that Marx remained a theoretician, whereas Marr was a practical revolutionary.

Marr insisted that revolutionaries should avoid detailed positive programs, which frequently breed internal disagreement, and should instead unite around pure opposition to the status quo.  His treatise on secret societies in Switzerland captures the nihilistic, negationist phase of this humanism: “The masses can only be gathered under the flag of negation. … We make war against all prevailing ideas, of religion, of the State, of country, of patriotism.  The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted civilization.  It must be destroyed.  The true root of liberty, of equality, of culture, is Atheism.”

That was an extraordinarily radical stance.  Marr’s humanism was not mere secularism; it was an anti-establishment, revolutionary doctrine directed at the destruction of existing society.

John Rae’s 1884 book, Contemporary Socialism, confirms the point: Humanism envisioned the radical Feuerbachian maxim that God is dissolved into Man, monarchy into democracy, private property into collective possession, and the isolated individual into “social man.”  Rae states unequivocally that “humanist and communist became nearly convertible terms” and that “socialism was the humanism of common life.”

Marr emerged directly from this atmosphere.  Before becoming famous as the man who introduced the pre-existing term “antisemitism” into the political lexicon, he was a Feuerbachian humanist, atheist, and revolutionary agitator who preached negation and hostility.

Steeped in that milieu and carrying Feuerbach’s book, he absorbed a worldview of radical negation and human-centered materialism.  His later antisemitism can be read as a distorted continuation or inversion of those same ideas: “Jewishness” was identified with the egoistic, particularist, and alienating forces that Feuerbachian humanism sought to overcome through community, atheism, and social transformation.  In this reading, true humanism required purging the “Jewish” element that supposedly perpetuated older theological or capitalist alienations under new guises.

Marr was not alone.  Many early socialists and radicals — Fourier, Proudhon, numerous Young Hegelians, and substantial strands within leftism — expressed economic, racial, or cultural anti-Jewish prejudices.  They saw Jews as emblems of finance capital, middleman roles, or cosmopolitanism that obstructed national or proletarian solidarity.  Later anti-capitalist and antisemitic activists regularly employed a comparable scholastic structure, portraying finance, money, or “Jewish influence” as alien powers dominating authentic humanity.

When the negation of Jews acquires an explicit political background, it becomes antisemitism: Jews are cast as the obstacle against which non-Jews can bond and form a coherent left-wing political force.  Marr did not “rediscover” antisemitism in his 1879 pamphlet plainly because leftists disliked Jews; he reincarnated it as a means of securing voting blocs, forging alliances, and gaining power.  In short, Marr was one of the earlier “community organizers.”  His contemporaries would have also recognized Adolf Hitler as a fellow practitioner of the same cynical technique — consolidating support among non-Jews by alienating Jews — rather than as a mere primitive Jew-hater.  For certain currents on the left, Jews are expendable in the pursuit of unrestricted power and an unreachable utopia.

Modern humanism, secular or otherwise, claims to have shed these radical left associations.  Both humanism and antisemitism have deep socialist roots, but decades of left-wing polishing have buried those origins.  Marxist currents helped preserve and radicalize the word “humanism,” but modern humanism made up modern precisely by concealing much of its collectivist and revolutionary content.  The coinage of “humanitarianism” further obscured any resemblance to the nineteenth-century term.  Present-day humanitarians remain strikingly selective: Global attention has often focused substantially more intently on “Palestinian needs” while remaining predominantly indifferent to Israeli ones.

In conclusion, the connection between nineteenth-century humanism and antisemitism is both historical and moderately doctrinal.  Humanism did not explicitly list antisemitism among its foundational principles.  Rather, almost all influential European antisemites were formed within the radical humanist coalition and proceeded with its conceptual habits, revolutionary methods, and political techniques into a later, deliberately murkier context.  The journey from Feuerbachian universalism to Marr’s antisemitism remains one of the most paradoxical intellectual trajectories of nineteenth-century Europe.

History’s greatest disguise may not have been the invention of a new ideology, but the survival of an old one under a new and increasingly sanitized name. 

[Originally published in American Thinker]

What the Iran MOU Is Really All About

At this point, everyone is familiar with the 14 points of the Memorandum of Understanding between President Trump and remnants of Iran’s power structure. The document appears to use careful, ambiguous diplomatic language, but it actually serves as a raw political instrument.  To decipher its true meaning, one must strip away the mannerly phrasing and read it in the plain political lexicon — the language of power, elections, and survival.

Article 1 states that midterm elections in America will take place in November 2026.

Article 2 specifies that they will occur on November 3, 2026.

Article 3 notes that these elections are nearly four months away.

Article 4 calculates the remaining time as approximately 20 weeks.

Articles 5 through 14 continue in the same vein: They emphasize the narrowing window and the need for visible results before voters go to the polls.  They manifest the importance of avoiding distractions that could shift media focus.  Finally, they raised the requirement that any international agreements produce measurable domestic benefits in time for Election Day.

The document never says these things directly.  Instead, it speaks of “regional de-escalation,” “energy market stabilization,” and “confidence-building measures.” Translated into the realpolitik domain, however, every clause points to one overriding objective: securing a conservative majority in Congress on November 3, 2026.

Basically, these articles make the metric explicit.  To win those elections, the average price of gasoline across the United States must remain below $4 per gallon — roughly less than $1 per liter.  That single number has become the administration’s key performance indicator for the next four months.

This translation reveals the central truth the Memorandum aimed to obscure: The primary threat to American national security at this moment is not Iran.  On the contrary, it is the possibility that the Democrat party regains control of Congress.

In Israel, reactions to the Memorandum have often veered into panic.  However, the parallel threat for Israel is not Tehran, but the ideological and political allies of American left-wingers who seek to constrain Israeli freedom of action.  Commentators who have followed American and Israeli politics for years have long outlined this dynamic.  Many were shocked by the blunt, almost mechanical way the highest levels executed the calculation.

President Trump remains the strongest supporter of Israel the White House has seen in decades.  He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords.  Yet he is the president of the United States, not of Israel.

Losing the Republicans’ congressional majorities in 20 weeks will weaken, or even turn off, the legislative and oversight tools Trump’s administration has used to pursue the “America First” agenda.  Investigations and impeachments will multiply, and funding for border security and military modernization will face constant resistance.  Most likely, Democrats will pull foreign policy back toward the multilateral frameworks they favored in previous administrations.  Trump’s signature on the Memorandum with Iran is therefore not primarily about Iran at all.  It is about locking in enough momentum and public support so that even a narrowed majority — or the threat of one — cannot easily reverse the structural changes already underway.

The principal perceptible and immediate lever for achieving that momentum is energy prices.  American voters feel gasoline costs at the pump every week.  When prices rise sharply, approval ratings for the party in power tend to decline, regardless of other economic indicators.  Historical patterns (recall 2008, 2012, and particularly 2021–2022) demonstrate how quickly pocketbook pain translates into midterm losses.  The $4-per-gallon threshold has emerged as a coarse psychological and political demarcating line.  Above it, the narrative of economic competence weakens; below it, the administration can credibly claim that its policies are delivering tangible relief.

The day after they signed the Memorandum, the national average gasoline price fell to $3.99.  Oil markets responded with further downward pressure.  This was not a coincidence.  The agreement signaled that the risk of sudden supply disruptions from the Persian Gulf had decreased, at least for the critical pre-election window.  At the same time, the administration accelerated domestic permitting and leasing on federal lands.  The combination created the political dividend Trump required: noticeable, pocketbook-level proof that his approach to the Middle East produces lower costs for American families.

If the oil-price game is relatively easy for attentive pundits to follow, the information arena is more opaque.  Public disagreements between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have generated headlines suggesting a serious rift.  Those who recall last year’s public friction between Trump — the most powerful man on the planet — and Elon Musk — the richest man on the planet — will identify the pattern.  At the time, many interpreted the exchanges as genuine estrangement.  In reality, they served a tactical purpose: allowing each side to speak to different audiences while preserving the underlying alliance.  The same dynamic is now unmistakable between Washington and Jerusalem.

The current posture is a classic “good cop, bad cop” arrangement.  Trump projects reasonableness and restraint to international audiences and to American voters who prefer stability during an election season.  Netanyahu continues to cling to a hard line, conducting operations against Hezb’allah infrastructure in Lebanon and signaling that Israel will not be constrained by external timetables.  Both leaders comprehend that calm on the international stage between present and November benefits their respective domestic positions.  China must not create a crisis over Taiwan.  Gulf Arab states, recently unified by Trump’s pressure on Iran, must avoid provocative moves.  Iran itself must absorb the recent setbacks without launching major retaliation that could spike oil prices or monopolize American news cycles.  Quiet serves everyone’s electoral calendar.

This arrangement has forced a hard realization in parts of the Israeli political establishment: A superpower’s domestic political needs will always take precedence over the preferences of even its closest allies.  The observation is harsh, yet it reflects the structural reality of great-power politics.  No American president can afford to let foreign crises dictate the domestic narrative in the months before a midterm election, especially one that will determine whether his agenda survives the remainder of his term.

The 250th anniversary of American independence on July 4, 2026 adds another layer of calculation.  National milestones of this scale are carefully stage-managed.  The administration does not want global headlines on that date postulating that the United States is “trampling the independence” of another country.  By empowering Israel to handle immediate threats in Lebanon during the spring and summer, the United States creates space for its citizens to celebrate the anniversary without the overlay of fresh Middle East escalation.  Israeli operations that degrade Hezb’allah’s capabilities reduce the chance of a major attack that could force American involvement or dominate the news.  In that narrow but important sense, Israeli soldiers are helping ensure that American families can mark the semi-quincentennial in peace.  Such contributions are rarely acknowledged publicly, but they are remembered in the corridors of power.  Moreover, ordinary Americans will never forget that.

The Memorandum, stripped of diplomatic language, is therefore a timetable and a scorecard.  It establishes a 20-week timeline and defines success in terms that voters can effortlessly grasp: reduced gas prices, the absence of foreign crises, and a political climate stable enough to render the administration’s core reforms difficult to reverse.

Whether one views the Memorandum as cynical or merely realistic depends on how much weight one assigns to the domestic political survival of elected leaders in democratic systems.  In either case, the document makes explicit what experienced spectators have long understood: in the final analysis, the most consequential battles for both America and Israel are still being fought inside the American political system.

[Originally published in American Thinker]