A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda.

The document does not hail from Basra or Baghdad, nor was it penned by the Islamists of al-Qaeda or the al-Mahdi Army. It was found in Haifa, about 60 years ago, and it was issued by the underground group led by Menachem Begin – the future Prime Minister of Israel and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But we are told to have short memories.

There is something painfully self-absorbed about Lawrence of Arabia.

(Of course, people in in the far future may not be as fascinated with history and historiography as we are today.)

The post-Reformation doctrine that it was the state’s business to secure religious uniformity within its polity — or at least to exclude Dissenters from important rights — was crucial to the formation of the early modern state. By contrast, the secular Enlightenment theory that the political community consists of an abstract collection of equal citizens was propounded as a criticism of the religious inequality characterizing the absolutist state. The most famous document embodying that theory was the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.” The theory was critized almost from the moment it was first stated — notably by Burke for the license it gave destructive passiosns, and by Marx for disguising bourgeois self-interest. However, the decisive moments that helped to break the alliance of church and state seem to have been religious rather than secular — Tractarianism in England and Ultramontanism in France and Europe generally. The arguments they deployed most effectively were strictly theological and were aimed at securing freedom of Christ’s church from the constraints of an earthly power. An important consequence of abandoning the total union of church and state was the eventual emergence of “minority rights” as a central theme of national politics. Members of minorities became at once equal citizens, members of the body politic (”the people as a whole”), and, as a minor body, unequal to the majority, requiring special protection.

–Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford University Press, 2003.

Continued decay of the Church will lead to rule by a pseudopope who, with the aid of a secular authority, will support a carnal version of Christianity, persecuting those who observe evangelical poverty. These carnal leaders and the carnal church which they represent (Babylon) will eventually be destroyed by a non-Christian (presumably Muslim) army. Thus will end the persecution of the mystical Antichrist, but that of the great Antichrist will then begin. Another king/pseudopope combination will join in a persecution aimed more explicitly at Christianity itself. Here, too, Olivi seems to anticipate an important role for Islam. Finally, with Christ’s aid, this second persecution will end and the seventh period will begin.

All this of course so that the renewal of Christian life initiated by Francis could reach its consummation.

the hanafi position is one reason adduced as to why this school is popular in the turkic and south asian world; it was more practical since non-muslims were thick on the ground. but it is interesting to note that shafis are dominant in southeast asia, where there are large non-muslim pagan minorities (buddhists and hindus).

One of the biggest obstacles to the creation of an antisemitic consensus among both bureaucrats and academics, [Claudia] Koonz found, was that it proved almost impossible in the natural sciences to pin down any verifiable biological differences, to document the racial taxonomy that Nazi ideology insisted must exist. Instead, racial revisionism really took root in the humanities and social sciences. Along with anthropology and ethnology, Koonz notes that “history came into its own as the queen of the racial sciences” (p. 203), generating a flood of bibliographies, archival reports, monographs, and articles to underwrite both ethnic fundamentalism and antisemitism.

Of ethnic fundamentalism, Koonz says:

I use the term “ethnic fundamentalism” to describe deeply anti-liberal collectivism that was the hallmark of public culture in the Third Reich. The term bears an affinity with both religious fundamentalism and ethnic nationalism. Like the former, ethnic fundamenalism claims to defend an ancient spiritual heritage against the corrosive values of industrialized, urban society. Like the latter, ethnic fundamentalism summons its followers to seek vengence for past wrongs and to forge a glorious future cleansed of ethnic aliens. Its leaders, often endowed with charistamtic aura, mobilize followers to participate in a moral universe that is accessible only to those who share a language, religion, culture or homeland.

In both its remote and immediate origins, “Western civ” was a war baby. The first such course was instituted at Columbia immediately after World War I, as a continuation of the “war issues” course offered during hostilities. It defined the traditions of the West as those for which the Allies had fought against the Hun. The course had few imitators between the wars, but after World War II it became the most widely taught history course on American campuses. Courses of this type were strongly urged by the influential report of Havard’s General Education Committee in 1945, whose principal concerns, according to a sympathetic commentator, were “‘why we fight’, the principles of a free society, the need to provide a consistent image of the American experience, the definition of democracy in a world of totalitarianism, the efforts to fortify the heritage of Western civilization, and the need to provide a ‘common learning’ for all Americans as a foundation of national unity.

- Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession

I am sure if someone wanted to, they could draw parallels between Locke’s ‘concern’ over atheists and Catholics to present day ‘concerns’ about Muslims.

Further reading: Razib’s citation below and “Varieties of anti-religious imagination” at the Immanent Frame, Robert Winder’s Bloody Foreigners.

(regarding the kulturkampf)

1) muslims don’t convert to other religions in any appreciable numbers. i won’t refute this with a specific cite, except to note that it seems that if you integrate the # of conversions in a place like spain during the expansive part of the reconquista it seems likely that the majority of those of muslim origin were not expelled in 1600, but were assimilated into the christian population

2) muslims have higher birthrates than non-muslim. in The Turks in World History the author notes that in the balkan provinces of the 19th century ottoman empire christians had higher birthrates than muslims, a demographic problem in light of the push by some to introduce democratic procedures into ottoman governance….

(Via Salman Hameed.)