Besides the view that Japanese did not belong to the Yellow race, another widespread view at his time was endorsed by O. Spengler - and so was it by J. Evola : the feeling, expressed in ‘The Year of Decision’, that Islam would be a “manly” religion. A scrutiny of the far-reaching, anti-traditional, changes immediately brought about by Islam in the Arabic peninsula shows that it is not the case :
“From the Muslim standpoint, his [Muhammad’s] struggle epitomizes the contrast between heedlessness and submission. For our purposes, five aspects of the civilization in which Muhammad worked stand out: (1) the organization of the Arabs into tribal units—that is, units based on blood and kinship ties; (2) acceptance of the worship of a pantheon of deities; (3) promotion of a notion of virtue centered on muruwwa, “manliness,” or one might say, on the characteristics of the “big man” upon whose patronage others rely; (4) a notion that the supreme telos of a life lay in the performance of deeds that would cause subsequent generations to remember; and (5) a pattern of legitimation based on ancestral tradition.
Muhammad, and thus islam challenged each of those. Taking them in reverse order : (5) the measure of legitimisation would not be "that which has always been done", but "that which god sends down", viz. revelation ; (4) The supreme goal of life lay in the return to God, from whence one came, on the Day of Resurrection or of Judgment; (3) given the goal, the virtue of the “god-fearer” or one who prepares for the great day becomes paramount—thus, not manliness but taqwa (HUMILITY and godly fear) is to be lifted up among human qualities; (2) there is only one God, who is unique, having no partners or equals; (1) the primary unit of human society is not to be the tribe, but the umma, a community based on piety. Here, the measure of value is not ancestral lineage, wealth, or other aspect of worldly existence. Instead, “the foremost among you will be the foremost in taqwa.”” (Encyclopedia of Ethics, p. 890)
Let us now consider the Arabic term ’Murûwa’ (from ‘mar’’, ‘man’), which arose from the Bedouin warrior code, and which is usually translated as ‘manliness’. When examining its various meanings, however, it appears that it does not cover exactly the meaning of ‘manliness’. A first definition of ‘murûwa’ is humanity’ ; a second is the adequacy between one’s behaviour in private and one’s behaviour in public, an adequacy which is indeed part of manliness (and has nothing to do whatsoever with ‘transparency”, as argued by the author of ‘Responsibility and Cultures of the World’) ; instead, the definition given of ‘murûwa’ as “The ideal of manhood, comprising all knightly virtues, esp., manliness, valor, chivalry, generosity, sense of honor” (The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic) somehow diverges from that of ‘manliness’, in that ‘chivalry’, to the Arab Bedouin tribes, as well as, latter, to knighthood in Europe, meant, besides the cult of honour, and of arms, the worship of woman, which is all but a manly state.
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