The Islamic doctrine of "Kufr bit Taghut" and it's importance to protection against, dealing with, and understanding the Middle East and the "Islamic" World. What to make of this important knowledg?

[Mthomas9s]

..as well as the despicable and deliberate lies and obfuscation of the same by illiberal political elites around the world ?

 

To summarize in brief "Kufr bit Taghut" refers to an Islamic obligation to acknowledge that "Government and Judgement" belong to Allah, and thus, men do not have the "right" to make political affairs for themselves that do contravene Islam or introduce man-made Governance,  specifically that deviates or contravenes Islam. 

Democracy is traditionally seen as "shirk"/idolatry from this stance, because humans are "uniting together" and "making themselves judges" despite Islamic law being revealed as the *sole* way humans s)*should* regulate their behavior  - thus putting themselves in opposition to Allah.

There are arguably deliberate attempts to censor this theology by the Gulf regimes, despite them also believing in this somewhat, as well as by various. The Gulf and Mahgreb regimes censor this because this very theology is used by certain takfiris to declare THEM apostates and threaten their regimes ( and nonmuslim governments) with violence. Many of them ( particularly those adopting window dressing elements of Republicanism ) employ elements to government that contravene this strict requirement to abstain from "manmade and unIslamic government" . Thus , the West  , along with Russia, China, Iran, and other governments, are orced collaborate quite liberally with these "taghut" regimes in the hopes of keeping petrochemicals flowing and dealing with the mutual threat that certain takfiris pose with regards to terrorism...at least until they decided to back them against the West, as Pstan, Turkey, and the Gulf regimes did towards elements of Al Qaeda , The Talivam, ISIL and others (MB) from 2011- present.  And now you start to see the problem with this approach 

Thus the moral issue of dealing with the "Islamic " world....you are dealing with leaders that believe you and your form of government have no right to exist except to be exploited, yet on the other hand freely violate tenets of their religion due to the power of authoritarianism and the support of heteredox and/or statist clergy willing to support them ( and hate nonMuslims) for both political and religious reasons. In even simply ACCOMMODATING such leaders, world leaders commit to the sanction of evil and the subversion of rights by means of the protection of their mischief throughout the West according to Western Law.

Thoughts

[Mthomas9s]

Or rather, "what do you guys think"?

[DavidOdden]

First, I don’t think you’ve paraphrased Al-Kufr Bit-Tāghūt correctly, which is “Disbelief in Idolatry”, which includes “rebellion” as well as disbelief in earthly tyrants. However, it is clear that they believe that judgment and legislation belong to Allah alone, so yes only Allah may write the law, and there is strong parallelism between that and Christian beliefs in God-given laws and rights. You also find sectarian squabbles in Islam that are like the sectarian squabbles of Christianity (Western v. Orthodox; Roman vs. Protestant; innumerable sub-splits within the Protestant strain). Sub-sect hatred in Islam is much stronger that what we observe in Christianity, though not unlike European religious persecution of the 15th-17th centuries.

I do not believe that there is a significantly different theory of rights in fundamental Islam vs. Christianity. Despite right-wing claims to the contrary, you don’t have the rights that we understand to be “individual rights” because of God, that is a later human-created add-on. Such augmentations also exist in Islam, but they are not part of Islamic tradition, that are post hoc attempts to harmonize this medieval religion with modern knowledge.

It is a general rule that world leaders accommodate all sorts of evil dictators thus subverting the concept of “rights”. It is as though Putin has a right to be a dictator, likewise Lukashenko, Xi Jinping, Afwerki, Ortega, Kim Jong-un and zillions of Islamic potentates. Most of the world is run by a dictator. Clearly, rights-respecting government is a minority view of how to run a nation. In that unfree majority, there is a divide between kleptocratic dictatorship, (personal) power-lust dictatorship, and ideological dictatorship (mainly the Islamic dictatorships, since communism is now a dead ideology). However, let us note that hard communist dictatorships are a thing of the past, but soft socialist dictatorships are a thing of the present and future. I consider ideological dictatorships to be the most dangerous, because you can kill a dictator relatively easily, compared to killing an idea which is very hard to eradicate.

So the correct question to be asking is, at what point should the US government (President) refuse to deal with a more-dictatorial world leader. I propose that refusing to deal with Germany’s Olaf Scholz because he does not adhere to the Objectivist view of proper government would simply be wrong-headed. You don’t refuse to buy groceries from a Catholic merchant because that would sanction irrational beliefs, you just bite your tongue and maybe find a nice libertarian atheist vendor, if you can.

[Mthomas9s]

Greetings , @DavidOdden and thanks for your reply to my topic. I greatly appreciate it!

(also, honored to meet you here on OO again. "Who is John Galt?") 

[Boydstun]

@Mthomas9s – I can't see such views in Islam as different from views in Christianity. Certainly as a Christian child, I was taught that God's law (such as loving your neighbor and honoring your parents) was above any secular law. There was no Biblically based conviction of a separation of the two sorts of law. At the time of the American Revolution, it was the secular law in all the American colonies that homosexuality was a capital offense and the execution should be by burning at the stake. The source of that was religious. Likewise, all the secular laws against adultery. I don't have time to look up the passages just now, but there are passages in the New Testament both saying that God requires you to pay your taxes and that the body of a Christian does not belong to themselves, for it was purchased by Christ on the cross. The likes of Aquinas and Luther would not approve of our liberal democracy and enshrinement of individual rights. And if you are atheist, both of those high religious leaders recommended the death penalty. The story of how we got Christians from the time of Luther to our legal framework today with civil peace between Protestants and Catholics, religious toleration even towards atheists, and protection of individual rights might well have lessons on how to settle down the Islamic militants lately in revival.

I should mention, however, that a sense of moral standards held independently of secular statutes and state propaganda can be a good thing.

Edited August 21 by Boydstun

[Mthomas9s]

@DavidOdden Also,  I notice you mentioned quite the rogues gallery of dictators... and would like to add one that matches the topic of the ... Chechen "islamist", criminal, and dictator of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, who is a supporter of Russia's genocide against Ukraine, and known for having Sufi authoritarian beliefs... His government itself has been defamed by takfiris for collaborating his...

the Chinese government, a bunch. Heterdoxy in Islams is quite. But arguabley, tit makes thes enaitonas and peopel MORE dangerous than . So -called moderate Muslim state Turkey tried to warn Saddam of US,Invasion, and later gave Israeli intelligence to hamas, isis,China

[Mthomas9s]

@DavidOddenUhoh. My apologies David....it appears that there are bunch of typos in my reply.... Let me know if i can clarify anything.

@Boydstun Thank you very much for sharing your insights. Unfortunately, there are in fact substantial differences between the concept of Kufr bit Taghut  and the Christian concpets you lists, and are 

 

Edited August 21 by Mthomas9s
Including reply to boydstun, correcting typos