Blood Brothers and the Global Axis of Evil

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  In case anybody ever wondered whether Imam Khomeini and Syed Qutb shared the same triumphalist philosophy and the same strategy for global conquest, the following grotesquely un-Islamic quote is enlightening: “The revolution of the Iranian people is just the start of a bigger revolution in the Islamic world - establishing an Islamic world government.” 

  One of Islam’s greatest Islamic scholars, Ibn Taymiya, many centuries ago died in prison for daring to condemn any and all political pretensions of the Caliphate.  He spent a great part of his life in prison for declaring that the only function of the Caliphate is not even as a symbol of political unity but represents exclusively a vision of the transcendent moral values and principles of justice shared globally by Islam’s great scholars and men of wisdom.

  The proper name for those who follow the worldly pursuit of power is Neo-Conservative, regardless of the religion they pervert.  The NeoCons, whether in the halls of Washington or the caves of Afghanistan, are not conservative at all.  They are secular liberals in the worst sense, which is the opposite of the traditionalist sense of classical liberal thought which welcomes moral community founded on the ultimate sovereignty of the person subject only to the sovereignty of God.  All NeoCons are motivated by existential fear of extinction and obsessed with their own power as the solution to all problems.  In America, they are motivated by existential fear of a coming global chaos, not by faith-based hope or by any vision on how to address the causes of chaos.  In the Muslim world they are motivated by fear of the American NeoCons’ proud strategy of creative destruction, to which the Muslim NeoCons counter with a similar strategy of their own.

  The NeoCons reliance on their own power means that they must pursue power as their ultimate goal, first by gaining control of all levers of power, especially the monopoly of power in government, and then using this power to combat creative destruction.  Caught in a common paradigm of power, with no concern for compassionate justice, self-evaluation, and faith-based reconciliation, they pursue ever greater destruction in a never-ending spiral of demented desperation. 

  Neo-Cons share the paradigm of all violent utopians and therefore are true followers of the French Revolution, Communism, Nazism, and apocalyptic Zionism.  The Great American Experiment was founded to avoid the trends toward such secular extremism that were already surfacing two centuries ago and that threatened to become more dangerous even than the religious extremism that had wracked Europe for so many centuries.  Today, the two most violent forms of extremism, secular NeoConism and religious Binladenism, are mirror images of each other.  They are trying to destroy each other on the global stage like two scorpions in a bottle.

  The greatest danger in the pursuit of compassionate justice is the temptation to become utopian and turn the paradigm of justice into a new secular religion, which ultimately in its frustration at failure may result in resort to the creative destruction that lies at the base of both capitalism and socialism.  Some true revolutionaries propose a just third way to reverse the wealth gap under the slogan “Own or Be Owned,” by expanding capital ownership through reform of the systems of money and credit.  They insist that the human right individually to own the means of production is universal and is recognized by all the world religions.  But, they must beware of the temptation in all revolutionary movements to adopt the mindset of the NeoCons, whereby the end justifies the means. 

  Even those who legitimately pursue justice must guard against the temptations to create a sectarian religion by transforming the means of justice into ultimate ends.  By pursuing justice as a tactical means in the pursuit of power, their totalitarian mentality would pervert the pursuit of justice into a totalitarian evil.  The NeoCons pose the ultimate terrorist threat to humankind because they worship themselves in a vicious circle of ontological solipsism and therefore deny the authority of a transcendent natural law. 

  By creating their own positivist international law, which Kissinger on August 12, 2002, declared was the real purpose for invading Iraq, the NeoCons in every culture deny the sources of transcendent law.  They deny, first, the guidance of divine revelation, known in Islamic law as haqq al yaqin, second, the guidance evident in the diversity and coherent unity of the universe, known as ‘ain al yaqin, and, finally, the guidance of human reason or ijtihad, known as ‘ilm al yaqin, to process the first two.  They deny the “great jihad” or jihad al kabir, which is the intellectual jihad that builds on the primary or greatest jihad, the jihad al akbar, which is self-purification, and the lesser jihad, known as the jihad al saghrir, which is the duty of self-defense through the use of force when all the requirements of the Islamic just war doctrine have been met.

  The false conservatives, whether they are known as Neo or Salafi or Fascist, form the real axis of evil in the world.  They come from the same source and cooperate unwillingly as blood brothers in producing the same result, which is their mutual self-destruction as Beasts of the Anti-Christ.