Today there is much debate about the ideology of the future Russia. In addition to the traditional opponents – the Westerners and the Slavophiles, the Russian political stage has been joined by Islam, rising throughout the world. Kremlin officials and oligarchs, dubbed ‘democracy representatives’ by Russians, found no model idol on the presidential order and engaged in the creation of an enemy.
They picked as their aim the Caucasians and ‘Islamic terrorists’. This facilitated rallying the frightened Orthodox Russians under the wing of ‘Westerners’. Slavophiles once again had no luck and, having got no intelligible social doctrine from the Orthodox Church, turned from religious utopias to political geography – geopolitics.
A bright representative of this trend, Alexander Dugin, managed to give this American-fostered science an anti-Western direction. His writings happened to become the guidebooks not only for the Orthodox Communists, Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party and the military, who dream of crushing the NATO, but also for the ‘Our Home – Russia’ political movement. However, no one seriously thought about the core issue, the world view, that is the basis of any ideology, including geopolitics.
A world view is a way of life, that sets the scale of moral values and the behavioral guidelines system of the individual in society. Therefore, it incorporates the criteria that form the state political structure, or, more scientifically, the criteria for political legitimacy. Russian ex-Soviet politicians usually dismiss this issue and say: “Well, we're Orthodox. Here is our criticism of Alexander Dugin's foundations of geopolitics. (This refers to Vol.: A. Dugin ‘Geopolitics Does not Involve a Third Force’ / / Muslim Courier, 1999. № 1.28)” Though none of them can explain what it means in practice, besides ceremonial meetings with the Church bishops. Unlike them, Mr. Dugin emphasizes philosophical and religious dualism as his concept fundamentals. On the whole, a world view may be based on two qualitatively different baselines:
• belief in the self-sufficient, unattainable for human will and empirical knowledge Almighty Creator of the universe, One God, Who created the world out of His mercy for the sake of the eternal happiness of His creations, and teaches man about Himself and His Will through prophets. This is Abrahamic monotheism (transcendent monotheism);
• belief in the attainable for human will and empirical knowledge One Supreme Being, that exists either as a rational being in a variety of supernatural forms, gods, deity manifestations, ghosts, or as an impersonal life-bearing substance. This is pantheism.
Abrahamic monotheist confessions are Islam, Judaism (if in line with its own prophets) and Christianity (if in line with the Hebrew prophets). Pantheism can be divided into four main types:
2.1) heathen monism intrinsic to the developed religions. The universe has no personal Creator, it comes from the Supreme Eternal Being. A supreme deity tops the hierarchical pyramid of life. It is completely independent and reigns over the lower deities, only partially independent: inferior deities, angels, demons, spirits of the dead and the living priests. All of these act as intermediaries between the supreme deity and man, and through them the supreme God sends down His grace or anger to all living beings in the world;
2.2) polytheism, (usually called heathenism, folk beliefs). The Supreme Absolute Being is divided into many entities and lives on in a multitude of gods, demons, spirits, etc., relatively independent in their own decisions. The Supreme deity is merely first among equals;
2.3) dualism. The Supreme Absolute Being is divided into two mutually exclusive and antagonistic kinds, fully autonomous. Their varied perpetual dialectic struggle creates evolution;
2.4) non-theistic religion and atheism. The Supreme Absolute Being has no personal manifestation. It is a material substance, deified nature, which gives birth to the human mind. The latter further gets control of the nature and becomes the master of the universe. The five-pointed star, a pentagram, became the official symbol of the American Freemasons and the Soviet Communists as a sign of a superman victorious over nature. This division is conditional, as in life they rarely occur in pure form, but rather in various combinations (religious syncretism).
In our monotheism there is no dualism. God is One, and there is no one equal or opposed to Him. Satan is opposed not to the Almighty God, but to man. The universe as a whole, throughout the history is driven solely by the Will of the Almighty One God. Evil social behavior comes from common people, not from the deities, as the heathen deem. According to the Holy Qur’an, man is created free. He has free choice, which means that a human soul is divided between belief and disbelief, devotion to God and spiritual decadence. God calls a person to freely pick a direct path to the Truth, to choose good and reject evil. Therefore a free man’ soul is a hard struggle between good and evil – the ‘great Jihad’.
However, the inner inclination to good must be manifested. Based on this, Islam calls for equitable society and state structure. You cannot seek only inner perfection, “the kingdom of God within yourself”, turning your “other cheek” to someone who slaps you. You should drastically prevent evil in society and state. This is the effort of people to establish just laws, and steadily abide by them, and not belief in the mystical struggle of the deified light with the deified darkness, long-hour rites for the good gods to defeat evil gods.
For this purpose God created man and gave him free will. What is the dualist world view like? In philosophy, dualists believe, that the dialectical “struggle of opposites” is not in the consciousness of man, but in the whole existence; it defines the historical evolution. This antagonistic struggle can be abstract, as in Hegel's philosophy, or full of “materialistic meaning”, as in Marxism-Leninism. In the latter case, this struggle acquires a religious sense and seeks the final victory over the “reactionary forces”.
Here is a famous Bolshevik song: .
“Whirlwinds of danger are raging around us,| Overwhelming forces of darkness assail.| Still in the fight advancing before us,| Red flag of liberty that yet shall prevail.” This is no abstract dualistic philosophy, but a religious hymn dedicated to the relentless struggle of the ‘sons of light’ against the blind fate. Religious dualism is associated with the moral division between good and evil projected outside by analogy with the inner world, not only onto nature, but even the Divine world, which makes it humanlike.
Images that exist only in one’s mind are mystified, personified and endowed with their own autonomous existence. This is the same as if you believe that Tolkien’s Middle Earth is a real otherworldly country with real elves, orcs and wizards. Man creates his own fictional world with a struggle between the good and evil gods, about equal in strength, i.e. not all-powerful: Horus and Seth in Egyptian mythology, Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman in Zoroastrianism, Christ, ‘King of the Jews’ and the Devil in Christianity, “the sons of light” with “dark reactionary forces” in Communism, etc.
Thus, man excludes himself from the omnipotence of the One God, “Sustainer of the worlds”, “Master of the Day of Judgment.” (see: Quran, Surah “Al-Fatiha”). As heathenism eagerly deifies not only powerful people, fauna and flora, but also abstract concepts, it can easily idolize the government, the state, turn it into an independent heavenly deity incarnated on earth as a king, the tribe chief, Secretary General, etc.
In ancient Egypt, Horus, the son of a deity, defeated evil Seth. Zoroastrianism, six centuries before Christianity taught about the Savior of the world (Saoshyant), who was to be miraculously born by a virgin and defeat the evil at the end of time. Israel also had the teachings about the Savior. The Jews wanted to destroy heathen Rome. Like the Persian Saviour, Moshiyah, who came in the flesh (Christ in Greek) was to fight ‘the prince of this world’, the Devil, and with the heathen emperor, personifying the world’s evil, defeat him, restore the greatness of Israel and David’s descendants on the throne of Jerusalem and establish peace in the world (the Jews refused to worship Jesus as the Messiah due to the lack of apparent signs: in 70 AD the Romans defeated Jerusalem, completely destroyed it, and the Jews scattered around the world). Communists proclaimed the proletariat the “party of truth”, headed by a leader and a savior, all in one, who was later buried in an ‘ancient Egyptian’ tomb, erected in the center of Moscow.
The Spirit of God was the deified Revolution, and the “world imperialism” was assigned the role of satan. Although the dualistic scheme of the world has always been more suitable for the revolutionary restructuring of the world, the conservatives also sometimes resorted to it (as Russia today). Thus, in the II - III centuries AD the emperor of Rome was proclaimed the earthly incarnation of the sun god Mithra, and all his opponents and even the critics became the worshippers of the evil god, opposing him. However, Mithraism did not become the confession of the whole empire. Many people continued to worship their own gods.
They did not view the emperor as a religious savior of their own people and the whole humanity, which led to the disastrous separatist trends within the Empire. During this period Alexandrian Neoplatonic school (especially the heathen philosopher Plotinus, a Christian Church theologist Origen, and the priest Iamblichus) helped the Roman Empire and aligned the Judeo-Christian doctrine of Moshiyah – the Savior of Israel with:
• Zoroastrian doctrine of the Savior of the world (the sixth century B.C.),
• Jewish mysterious teachings, including ‘Zohar’, which became the basis of the Kabbalah (the first century B.C. – the third century A.D.),
• the teachings of the Gnostics and Ascetics and the Sybils’ books (the first – fourth centuries A.D.)
• esoteric writings of Hermes Trismegistus Thoth (the third century A.D.)
• Egyptian, Eleusinian and Mithraic cults (the third-fifth centuries A.D.) The name Joshua (pronounced as ‘Jesus’ in Greek) in Russian means ‘Jehovah saves’. In Gospel Joshua saves only “lost sheep of the house of Israel” because, as we have already mentioned above, “It is not good to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs” (Matt. 15:24, 26). However, thanks to the efforts of Neoplatonic Christians the teachings of a rabbi visiting Palestinian villages were absolutized and offered to the humanity as a model of the universe.
A regional history turned into a myth about the global salvation of the whole mankind in the Hereafter. The entry into Paradise was on the condition of the absolute obedience of individuals and peoples to the will of the Roman dictator, miraculously transformed into the ‘earthly representative of Christ’, and the humble acceptance of all his injustice in this life. The One and Almighty God the Creator, to Whom everyone can address directly and immediately, was replaced by the opposition of ‘Christ-Moshiyah, the King not of this World’ – ‘The Devil, the Prince of this world’, whose struggle has not yet revealed the winner.
Religion was presented as a linear relationship of the opposing sides – no vertical connection between man and the Creator of the universe. The dogma of the consubstantiality of man and God totally left out the Almighty Creator out of the scheme, whose participation in this world was solely through his “only begotten son”. Our Creator, according to these views, was either powerless before the god of evil, or unable to do without the evil for His own plan of the mankind evolution. Thus, even the very notion of the omnipotence of the One God hampered with heathen dualist mythmakers creating a fascinating world-historical series about the struggle of the Superman and his team with the Zionist mafia, plotting global conspiracy. To fill the niche of the Almighty Creator, Jesus Christ was declared “consubstantial with the Creator”, and all the doubters were called heretic, which entailed their torture and execution.
The Roman-Byzantine Christian priests shut down the direct path of man to the Creator. Without a special priest initiation into the mysteries, the direct way to God was impossible, like in heathenism. The symbolic keys to the doors of Heaven, handed by Moshiyah to St. Peter, made people completely dependent on the priestly caste, the exclusive keeper of those keys. Rejecting the authorities of Peter and his successors over the keys of Paradise was interpreted as serving the Devil and entailed the respective punishment.
Thus, Roman Christianity absorbed the dualistic model, heavily spiced with eastern mysticism and esoteric flavour. Only we, Muslims who have revelation through the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), view Jesus (PBUH) not as a second God, or His “incarnation”, or a myth, but as a real righteous man whom Almighty God sent to his countrymen, the Jews with the salvatory prophetic mission of the Gospel. For Muslims, the evil becomes real only after the man himself starts to follow it. As for Alexander Dugin, his philosophic, religious and ideological dualism is clearly close to the later Zoroastrianism. He divides his model of the world into two opposing poles: Land vs Sea, Atlanticism vs Eurasianism, coastal vs continental zones, etc.
In his most comprehensive work “The Foundations of Geopolitics” he writes: “The basic law of geopolitics is the manifest dualism in the planetary geography and historical typology of civilizations. This dualism is expressed in the opposition ‘tellurocracy’ (land power) and <...> ‘thalassocracy’ (sea power). <...> This dualism is initially marked by hostility between its two alternative poles”
(2). The author considers these poles so self-sufficient that they determine the social motivation of people, their actions, and thus the whole history: “Land power "<...> on the civilization level is embodied in the Settlement, conservatism, in the strict legal regulations that govern the major groups of people – family, tribes, peoples, nations, empires. <...> Land nations have no sense of individualism and entrepreneurial spirit. They are characterized by collectivism and hierarchy. <...> ‘Sea power’ is a type of civilization with the opposite basic principles. <...>
Geopolitical vision of history is planetary dualism developed to the max. Land and Sea originally impact the whole world. Human history is nothing but a manifestation of this struggle and its absolutism” (3). Alexander Dugin called himself a Christian Orthodox Old Believer in an interview to the ‘Muslim courier’. His views comply with the fourth century version of Christianity, which established pantheistic dualism. He can definitely identify himself as Orthodox, if he categorizes the ‘Sea zone’, the ‘free trade’, ‘individualism’ and ‘liberal capitalism’ as the devil’s rule (Ahriman, the Antichrist, etc.), and ‘conservative tradition’, ‘collectivism’, moral stability, Marxism to the Savior’s kingdom (Saoshyant, Moshiyah, Christ).
In the dualistic model of the universe changing names affects nothing. In its belief in the struggle between the two driving forces of deified Nature: fire and water, land and sea, light and darkness, and so forth, the religious mind may personify these forces and attribute each of them an iconic image of God (the God-man, the angel), struggling with the demon. Rational mind regards them only as the struggle of the human mind with the shapeless substance. However it can after a bit of hesitation admit some deities in the dark past not yet illuminated by science and invite ‘patriotic’ priests as temporary travel companions. That is why today we see the remarkable ideological bond between the ex-Communist officials and Orthodox ‘patriots’. (2 A. Dugin The Foundations of Geopolitics: the Geopolitical Future of Russia. - M. Arctogeia, 1997.,
However, the pure original Christianity personifies nature forces and gives them Jewish or Greco-Roman names. This is the link between Christianity (according to its followers) and the Jewish ‘sacred history’, with the tradition of the Israeli prophets. Without its reference to the latter, Christianity does not differ from other pantheistic mythologies.
Therefore, Dugin has the moral right to call himself Orthodox Christian only if he publicly swears on the Bible, that his ‘land area’ are also the ‘canonical territory of the Christian Orthodox faith’, strictly subordinated to the respective priest group with its dogmas and saints, and ‘free trade, individualism, and democracy’ is a habitat of Antichrist, Satan and his demons, as well as Catholics, Protestants and other ‘heretics’. We leave, however, the issue to the church mentors of Alexander Dugin. Noteworthily, methodologically his book is closer to the pre-Christian interpretation of the two poles of existence as chthonic (impersonal, natural) forces. His Land and Sea are powerful underground forces that encourage people to various social actions as inevitably, as the full moon lures a lunatic to the roof (and Dugin’s dualist to the water).
‘Holy State’ Idol.
As freedom of choice, granted to man by the Creator, is curtailed by two blind forces, or two deities, hence logically, the state intended by people to secure them, is vulnerable to these forces, or deities. The state depends on destiny, fate, and, as a product of these forces, or deities, it behaves as a ‘living organism’ (4), i.e., as a real (4 ibid, pp. 34. 35) political subject (‘a subject’ is an autonomous entity). This approach is actually no novelty. Ancient Sumeria, Babylonia and Egypt had a similar, heathen-like, concept of the state.
It has been the cornerstone of all the dictatorships. Dualism, based on the belief in the linear relationship between supernatural forces, rejects the vertical relationship between the Almighty God and humans. And without this vertical, without a direct path to God, mortal and imperfect human beings lose all they are worth. Moreover, in their quite earthly world-rule plans (to drive out the ‘Prince of this world’ and become the ‘King of the future world’) the two rival deities need man to achieve their material goal – to defeat the enemy.
Therefore, man involuntarily joins either the army of the Light, or the army of the evil. The followers of the other deity, who are currently in power, can always declare him an enemy of the people, the Church and the ‘holy state’. Therefore, in heathenism, especially in dualism, throughout human history, we see utter inhumanity toward a human life. A man is nothing but a slave of the king, who is a mediator between people and the deity, and leads them to victory with his ‘iron hand’.
There is no personality. In fact, there is only a ‘brick’, or submissive building material for the ‘brighter tomorrow’. That is why the deity and its earthly representative have easily sacrificed the dignity and lives of millions people for their major goal – a heathen paradise, the communist ‘brighter tomorrow’. The main instrument to turn free human beings into eternal slaves has always been the forcibly implanted faith in the ‘holy state’. The deification of the state and its sanctification is through the following myths:
• the earthly state is a reflection of the celestial ‘City of God’ (the ‘heaven’ variant of Egypt, Babylon, Jerusalem, etc.);
• the celestial icon has an earthly manifestation through mediators, delegated ‘holy’ priests and ‘divine-human’ rulers.
Deification of State.
“In Heraclitus’ times ‘Logos’ was a law code, a real, earthly social contract, binding upon all the citizens of the polis. Similarly, in ancient Rome, the term ‘law’ (‘lex’) is derived from ‘lego’ (‘speak’), which, in turn, comes from the Latin word for ‘acorn’: people gathered under a tree and talked about the 36 general rules of life, resulting in a law. Yet Heraclitus mystified the concept and transferred it to the entire space and formulated the concept of ‘the divine Logos’. Plato turned the ‘logos’ into some ideal form, according to which all the world is shaped.
Philo Judaeus and the Christian Neoplatonists personified the ‘logos’ and identified it with Moshiyah – the Savior of Israel. Emperor Constantine, dedicated to Mithra’s cult, identified the Jewish Moshiyah with the Zoroastrian Savior – the defeater of the world evil. Thus, in the Greco-Roman tradition, the concept of the real law code, ‘social contract’ transformed into the concept of personalized representative of the ‘Heavenly will’. <...>The concept of the state as ‘the collective sovereignty of citizens’ was substituted by the notion of autocratic power of the person ‘anointed bin Heaven’ - the monarch, sovereign, who took away the freedom of the people.
And the priests invented these myths and ideology from the ancient mythology of the Middle East” (5). To give the state a God-representing function, image-making priests in ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome created a myth of the heavenly prototype of their capital cities. The city on Earth turned out to be merely a reflection of the heavenly city. As Mircea Eliade noted: “... each church <...> each sacred city or royal palace is the “holy mountain” and becomes the center. As the World Axis, the city or the sacred temple is regarded as the gate to Heaven, Underearth or Hell” (6).
The concepts of Heavenly Babylon, Celestial Egypt, Heavenly Jerusalem, Eternal Rome that were mere images of the human mind, replaced the concept of a real nation over the real land. Indicative names of the temples in Babylon are (Babylon means ‘Heaven's Gate’): ‘House between Heaven and Earth’, ‘Link between Heaven and Earth’, ‘House of the Scepter of Life’ (7). ‘The Holy City with the temple between its battlements (6), also became the center of the world. Its residents magically assumed the status of the divine hosts of the Center, the deities. <...> (5) Polosin V. op.cit. - pp. 286 - 287. 6 M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return / / Eliade, M.
The Asian Alchemy. M.: Ladomir, 1998. p. 25. 7 ibid. p. 88. S)). The Battlements of the Kremlin are consistent with the Chaldean tradition (37). All the languages have retained the popular definition of the Centre – ‘the hub of the universe’ <...> Jewish hub of the universe is Jerusalem and the Holy Land as a whole” (9). The Jews suffering from the Roman rule found consolation in Heavenly Jerusalem. The Old Believers’ City of Kitezh sank under the mirror-like lake surface, as a symbol of the underground Heaven ‘behind the looking glass’.
As in the heathen mythology man is created specifically for the benefit of the deities, his purpose is to serve them. Therefore, no human institution can have the welfare of its members as its primary goal. It must firstly promote the welfare of the deities. <...> City-states are secondary structures within the real State, a stronghold, the estate of one of the great deities. A national state <...> can also be seen as an extension of the executive bodies of the world state, as a police force (10). Who needs the ‘holy state’ idol? – First of all, the ruling elite unwilling to take personal responsibility for their immoral actions and to give up power.
To declare itself in absolute power, legally immune, uncontrollable and non-electable, to prevent the restoration of the people’s political sovereignty, the ruling elite in alliance with the priests creates the idol of a ‘holy state’. It claims the idol represents Heaven and themselves are the exclusive owners of the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. The idol of the state replaces the natural concept of the nation, so that people who believe in this myth, have nothing to do but endure humbly all the injustice until the Judgment Day - as if for ‘the good of the Fatherland’.
Deification of Ruler. For the mystification of the state’s ruler, he should be endowed with special sacred features, priestly rank (or be ‘anointed’ by church). It means a combination of secular and religious functions in the governor’s position. This heathen totalitarian government scheme was used in the late Roman Empire, when the governor was called “the Emperor, the divine Caesar Augustus” (i.e.: commander-in-chief, dictator, divine-human ruler, priest). After the collapse of Rome, the title still remained for 1,000 years in Christian Byzantium and was cultivated in Russia with the help of the Church.
Thus, the Moscow Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1666 set forward the Orthodox understanding (9 M. Eliade, op.cit., p. 90. 10 T. Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian religion. – M. 1995 – pp. 172 - 173. 38), of the Tsar: “The Tsar will be also the Eparch, the way we praise Constantine the Great, devoted to the faith of Christ, at Great Vespers – as a priest and Tsar. The Romans, like the Egyptians, endowed their emperor with the combined power of the priesthood and the kinghood. <...> By this and likewise reasons, the Tsar is named God. And you, God-like Alexis Mikhalovich, have the right to be called God.” This entitled the autocrat to be not just the ruler, but also the Savior of all his people.
The first Christian Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the official document - a letter to Andrew Kurbsky - declared himself infallible in matters of governance, i.e, de facto a divine son, and consistently pursued this ideology in practice: “...we have always been free to bestow grace on our slaves, or execute them.”
Besides, he tells Kurbsky: “Why do you ignore the words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resists the power, resists the ordinance of God”. And it is stated about every power, even procured through blood and war.
Apostle Paul also says: “Slaves, obey your human masters in all things, not only when they are watching you because you want to gain their approval; but do it with a sincere heart because of your reverence for the Lord.” Apostle Peter likewise says: “Be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.”<...> If you are righteous and goodly, why were you unwilling to be punished by me, your cross-grained master, and win the crown of eternal life?”Thus, the Tsar ousted the image of the Almighty God and became the ‘earth god’ whose actions cannot be tried by anyone – he became the ultimate authority.
A human being created by God is nothing against this ‘cross-grained master’. As with the Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, he determines a man’s fate not only in this world, but also Hereafter. So there are no more free citizens, but only slaves or loyal servants. With this religion and ideology Russia sank in royal treason, bloody Bacchanalia, that destroyed and divided people..
It naturally led to several years of chaos, i.e., the complete destruction of the Moscow state. A vivid symbol of the ‘holy state’ is a picture by Ilya Repin, ‘Ivan the Terrible Kills his Son’. Alexander Dugin, too, has no idea of the unreachable for human desire and experience Almighty Creator and the One Master of the universe. He only believes (Correspondence of Ivan the Terrible with Andrew Kurbski. — M.: Nauka, 1993. – pp. 124, 136. 39) in one world and the two deities of this world are part of the same world, even though the most influential and powerful one.
It logically yields that everyone who has mastered the esoteric art or gained the approval of the priests can contact these deities and share their energy, or as Christians say, reach "deification" [Gr. ‘Teosis’), a natural unification with the deity. Whatever the hierarchy of the gods, however many they are, the main thing is they are not omnipotent, because an omnipotent heathen deity, once entered and acting within this world, has to simultaneously realize its omnipotence and set its total rule everywhere. If it does not, then it overcomes the difficulties and undergoes changes, and hence it is not omnipotent.
Two deities are in mortal struggle. They engage the whole world in it. The blood flows like rivers. Life is not worth a penny. The concepts of freedom and dignity cause nothing but resentment. There is no positive ideal, but a victory over arch-enemy. The bloody ideology of Ivan the Terrible is once again revived and imposed upon modern Russia under the name of the Orthodox monarchy, Eurasianism, geopolitics.
Abrahamic Monotheistic Doctrine.
Muslims have a completely different worldview. We believe that the One Self-Sufficient God is above the world and unreachable for His creatures. He needs no earthly means to realize his Omnipotence: no hands, legs, wings, miraculous amulet or a hand-made images of Himself or His saints. He has no personification or incarnations of any sort. His desire is inseparable from the realization. He wanted so, and it became so. He created man as an object of existence, the supreme value of the created world, precious as he is, not as a means to achieve His own plans.
He allowed the man to arrange his life on earth until the Judgment Day and the new age. The man is a warrior of God on this earth, and he has enemies. But these enemies are not deities, and they cannot resist the Almighty God. His struggle with the god of darkness does not determine the history. God tolerates the evil, because He has given man free will. As long as man has not reached the final point in his earthly journey of constant choices, he can act for the evil of himself and others. But the man who has chosen (40) the Truth is no less entitled and even obligated to respond adequately to evil and counteract it.
Islam is a socially active religion. It is about a strong-willed transformation of the world in accordance with the principle of justice, freedom, equality and fraternity. These principles, adopted by Europeans from Islam, due to the medieval Sufism, let them in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries overthrow the rule of the Christian Inquisition and make a giant leap in their spiritual, cultural, scientific and technological development. The heathen worldview, where there is no main protagonist, the Unreachable Creator, fails to give an adequate description of events.
The struggle of the opposing forces is inherent to this world. For us it is only the mechanism of evolution, whereas to Alexander Dugin it is a self-sufficient source of everything. His Land and Sea together are the substitute for God, a certain fate for mankind, curtailers of the freedom of choice. Only elite can alter the fate. It is the mediator between man and inevitable fate.
These elites are also of two origins. One stands at the helm, admires the Statue of Liberty and deifies private property, the other obliges everyone to join the ‘overland’ party and threatens all lovers of sea journeys, such as the free-spirit Sadko, with the deathly realm of ‘sea king’. ‘The third force’, according to Mr. Dugin, does not exist. But in our point of view, both his parties, the kings of the land and sea, are the united heathen party, which always fights for the power over people, whose lives are devoid of any value.
In Islam, the supreme authority on earth belongs to Him Who is absent in Dugin’s scheme – the One God. And it is quite reasonable. People entrust themselves to (41) God and rely on His guidance. Here is another argument. When your superior is slacking at work, how to influence him? – Report to an even higher superior. Who can I complain to about the supreme authority in the state or a senior official, if they do not perform their duties, or misuse them? – Only to God. People voluntarily enter into a contract with God. This agreement sets out the moral values and priorities that neither rulers, nor law-abiding citizens can violate.
There is a hierarchy from God to people. If people deem themselves the only agent of politics and history, they become a nation, the master, the sovereign, who has voluntarily signed a contract with God, and projects it on the society as laws. ‘Sovereign’ is the one who has the right and opportunity to act of his own volition.
The ancient Russian tradition, interrupted in the Middle Ages by the Byzantine-Mongol invasion, was to call the people the lord: ‘Lord Novgorod the Great’, ‘Lord Pskov’. ‘Sovereignty’ is a derivative of the word ‘sovereign’, an abstract concept that exists only in people’s minds, and indicates the mechanism of putting the political will into action – namely, the functional structure of society control. Sovereignty is a social status that gives people the opportunity to use their natural right as a single collective agent of history and politics. It is the tool and means of realizing of the collective will of the people, safeguarding their life and traditions, educating future generations.
We can say that the state is people’s sense of sovereignty. The most representative international organization is not by chance called the United Nations, not states, because the nations have created it. The people set the highest public control over the activities of all earthly institutions of the state according to the commandments of the One God, that is, from a moral point of view.
Theologians are not a substitute for government officials. Yet they have the right to the spiritual judgment in cases where public morality is in question. It protects against clericalism, the substitution of authorities by religious figures, who allude to the supernatural forces in their work. By the way, we see similar cases in some modern countries. In the U.S., for example, senators have the right to reject on moral grounds the Minister candidacy presented by the president for approval. It appears to be the influence of Protestant monotheism.
Thus, in Islam we have two parties described in the Holy Quran (58:19 - 22) asthe party of Allah and the Party of satan. But these are not mystical forces, but purely earthly associations of people, one of whom voluntarily decided to follow the final revelation of God through the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), while others decided to invent their own mythological world model with breath-taking battles of deities, spirits and people between them. We do not see in the usual geography some fatal forces, enslaving a free person and forcing him to follow either the darkness or the light deities.
Man focused on his heart and says to God, himself and others: “I have a free intention to glorify God – the Creator and Master of the Worlds, and I am stating my intention.” And this statement shows the spirit of a free and powerful man, free of the ‘geographical dependence’ and not in need of priests’ support. A Muslim is a person created by God to become superhuman on his own, without the help of magical cults, and souls of the dead, who says: “Behold, Allah, I commit myself solely to You, the Almighty, and obey Your will, and bring to the Earth, created by You, the truth and justice, opened to me by You! Ameen.”
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