Leyla it happens in every Religion, and every culture, and every society, to degrees. For example. Look at what the Buddhists did to their opposition in Tibet over the centuries...
Hierarchical tendencies are manifest in every social organization.
There is a pecking order among anarchists. I should know, I used to be one.
Nothing in this world is meant to last, Islam's prime was a moment, this is the myth of eternal return every traditional religion, pagan and non pagan, holds dear. The moment in time in which the sacred impregnates the mundane order with a new degree of significance. Return to this is cyclical, the Rites of Spring repeated, Samhain and Beltane, Eid al Adha, Eid al-Fitr, Easter and Christ's annual resurrection. Decay is inevitable and in a sense beautiful and necessary, for we reside in the world of contingent.
Organized religion is no more the problem than, well, disorganized religion. Both are decays from an original impetus. Islam was never intended as an Empire. Once it became one, the best voices within Madina cried out, the Sufis, the Ahl al-Bayt. This is as it should be, for eternity is the only constant and the slide into decadence and decay reminds us of eternity.
The orgasm's twitch we seek to prolong, that brief burst of ecstasy and pleasure. Prolonged too long it would become unbearable. Pain.
The ideas involved are irrelevant, what concerns us, well me anyway, is the tendency towards hierarchical structures that is a reoccurring theme in the history of humanity.
Life today is as brutal now as it was in Muhammad's day, full stop. YOU may not see it, but there are others who have and everyday live in brutality you wouldn't believe. The degree of brutality is masked for those of us in some classes but not to others. "Good part if town" versus "Bad part of town".
Really some people have no idea what takes place 2 miles from their backyards. 2 blocks down from a college student bar, in a small dive, someones face was blown away by a gun in daytime because he laughed at a punchline that wasn't a punchline. The killers ran into the street firing guns in the air, one bullet passed through the bathroom window of a tenant in an Apartment building I manage. Kill for a thrill eh?
I was dating a girl who once lived in Russia, her boyfriend was Mafiosi like, well, most of the guys in his town. The degree of damage his body took in an everyday's work at the office (so to speak) would be ghastly for a weaker man, one supposes. There it seems the guys she knew got knifed, stabbed, ears sliced off, guts sliced open and stitched back in the nick of time, with alarming regularity.
I used to live in a neighborhood in our nations capital in which twice monthly someone got his or her brains blown onto the sidewalk. And I didn't even live in a "bad" neighborhood there
The human experience is perennial, hence my general rejection of the "spirit of the age" same passions, same loves, same lusts, same hates, same hopes, same dreams - any pagan would recognize the cyclical and non linear nature of the seasons and the wheel of life as it spins. For a Muslim like me who sees how little things actually do change, I see certain teachings as having utility irrespective of the age.
What moved the Arab pagans , Christians, and Muslims of Muhammad's day moves us today. Same story, different verse and chorus. War, manipulation, violence towards woman and man alike, sexual, and otherwise, are all equally constants. Just as love, goodness, peace, and the light, healing connections, community bonds.
The same come hither smile and wink that moved me to do certain things on a certain night would have been given by a young girl in the 2nd century and done the same for her man back then.
A campfire and song is a campfire and song in 6th century Mecca, 1st century Gaul, 19th century Vermont, or 21st century Canada. The wine that caused a friend to puke on my shoes a few nights ago would have caused her great-grandmother to have the same reaction. We are the seed of our ancestors. The fire that moved in their veins moves in ours.
There is no progress. The best dreams of a progressive age devolves into the ultraviolence of it's spawn:
"So what, it's your own problem to learn to live with
Destroy us, or make us slaves
We don't care, it's not our fault that we were born too late
A screaming headache on the promised age
Killing time is appropriate...
To make a mess and f--- all the rest, we say, we say
So what?..."
- Ministry, "So What"It's the eternal return. We stand before eternity seeing the symbols and NOT SEEING THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE. We see the signs but don't see them. Every passing moment is eternal and passing at the same time.
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