Fuad 'Ali' Salah, the leader during the 1980's of a terrorist group
calling itself the 'Comité de soutien avec les prisonniers politiques
et arabes et du Moyen-Orient', planted in Paris in 1985-86 a number of
bombs which killed 15 people and injured 200, with assistance from
both Hizbullah and an Iranian diplomat. During his trial in the early
1990's, he found nothing better to do than to quote 'at length' from
'Revolt against the Modern World'.
In a 1993 issue of 'Eléments, a magazine linked to the 'Nouvelle
Droite', Rachid Benaissa, a sympathiser of the notorious FIS (Islamic
Salvation Front), showed that he too had read 'Revolt against the
Modern World'.
Now that 'Islam in the eyes of Julius Evola' (this is an excellent
title) is available in English, some can realise, provided that they
have a basic knowledge of that religion, that we were not exaggerating
when we said some time ago that Evola's knowledge of Islam was
limited, if not superficial, at least artificial, in short : bookish.
R. Guénon and J. Evola corresponded for almost twenty years, without
the former having ever showed any particular interest in Islam.
Likewise, in the 1960's, J. Evola had a correspondence with T.
Burckhardt, an expert of Islam, during which the issue of Islam was
never addressed, not once. Not more than ten Koranic passages are
quoted in his whole work, most of them being related to the notion of
'inner Jihad', and, as pointed out by Mutti himself, he misquoted one
of the two only Muslim maxims to which he ever referred. According to
J. Evola, "The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of
the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful", when the text says
the opposite : "On the day of Last Judgment, the savants' ink will be
weighed with the blood of martyrs, who gave their lives for the sake
of Allah, and the ink will weigh heavier." By 'savants', what is
meant, in the Muslim context, is the Ulema, the doctors of the faith,
of the religious law, that is, (a part of) the Muslim clergy ; in the
Chinese context, the scribes, to whom the practice of appointing men
to office on the basis of academic qualifications can be traced back
for some two thousand years ; in the Bolshevik context, the 'experts',
with whom, according to various quite insightful studies (see, for
instance, 'Plato and Lenin' :
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm/), the
'philosopher-kings' have some features in common.
At this point, let us bear in mind that 'Revolt against the Modern
World', as previously emphasised, was proofread by R. Guénon, and, as
a result, is bound to feel the effect of the latter's views and of the
'traditionalist' belief in a multi-racial primordial tradition. Those
who are familiar with the work of these authors cannot but be under
the impression that, in 'Revolt against the Modern World', R. Guénon
often put words into J. Evola's mouth. For instance, the assumption
that, in the Kaaba, "we find again the theme of the "stone," or the
symbol of the "center" is directly derived from 'Le Roi du Monde', in
which it is more or less regarded as a solar symbol, when any stone,
especially if black, was considered by the ancients as a symbol of the
Great Mother. Certainly, "the Kaaba, with its symbolism of the center,
is a pre-Islamic location and has even older origins that cannot be
dated accurately." The word Evola was looking for here is Al-lat, the
most important deity in pre-islam's Mecca. She was also called Khubel.
The word 'Kible' (Qiblah) still designates the prayer direction
towards Ka'ba (Kabe) as a continuing symbol of the goddess
(
http://notendur.centrum.is/~snorrigb/fem4.htm), who was one of the
three daughters of Allah, a god which was already prominent in
Pre-Islamic Arabia. Herodotus says of the Arabs : "They deem no other
to be gods save Dionysus and Heavenly Aphrodite ... they call Dionysus
Orotalt and Aphrodite Alilat. In Sumeria Allatu or 'goddess' is an
epithet of Ereshkigal the chthonic goddess of the underworld. Like El
and al-Llah which simply means god, al-Lat 'goddess' could be
identified with many female deities, and indeed Allat is identified
with Aphrodite-Venus. (God/El אל, the patriarchal creator god
(Isra-el/struggle with god)/ Elohim [1]
(אֱלוֹהִים ,
אלהים )/Eloah, "a
god" El lah/Ilah/Allah). In short, the Kaaba's symbolism is that of
the centre. However, it is that of a feminine centre, insofar as what
is feminine can have a centre.
Mutti's article on Islam in the eyes of J. Evola is often supported by
a selective and tendentious reading of 'Revolt of the Modern World'
and of the texts gathered later in 'Metaphysics of War'.
It is selective, in that it never hints at the fact that J.Evola
repeatedly emphasised that the best part of the Koran originates in
pre-Muslim non-Arab Zoroastrian teachings, whose adepts, incidentally,
Muslims plagued, as soon as they invaded Iran, for religious and only
for religious reasons
(
http://www.vohuman.org/Article/Islamic%20era%20histroy%20of%20Zoroastrians%20of\
%20Iran.htm),
whereas, in ancient Rome, the only reason why Christians were
persecuted, no matter how much they have liked to brag about their
so-called 'martyrdom' since then, was strictly due to their sneaky
attempt to instrumentalise alien religious beliefs to undermine Rome
socially, politically, racially, and spiritually.
At times, it is even tendentious. For example, it is stated that
"Islam is independent from both Judaism and Christianity", and it is
so seriously. Given the enormity of this statement, we are looking
forward for it to be justified with rock-solid arguments based on the
most objective examination of the core of this religion and, quite
frankly, of an aspect of it which would have escaped our attention.
Instead, what we have is an excerpt from 'Revolt against the Modern
World', in which it is recalled that Islam "claimed independence from
both Judaism and Christianity" (of course, it did, just as
Christianity has always claimed independence from both Judaism and
Islam). Now, if everything Islam claims to be, it actually was, it
would already be known.
Moreover, the first sentence of this excerpt points out that Islam is
not independent from both Judaism and Christianity : " As in the case
of priestly Judaism, the center in Islam also consisted of the Law and
Tradition."
At other times, Mutti follows in Evola's footsteps indiscriminatingly.
"Finally, he quotes, Islam presents a traditional completeness, since
the shariah and the sunna, that is, the exoteric law and tradition,
have their complement not in a vague mysticism, but in full-fledged
initiatory organisations (turuq) that are characterised by an esoteric
teaching (tawil) and by the metaphysical doctrine of the Supreme
Identity (tawhid)." The problem is not to know whether or not Islam is
a tradition, but to determine the nature of this tradition and to see
whether it is compatible with ours. The problem is not to know whether
or not a given religion is complemented by initiatory organisations,
but to establish the precise nature of this particular initiation -
after all, Papuans still have theirs, and, if you participate in one
of the various Tibetan retreats currently organised throughout Europe
every month, you'll receive tens of initiations a day.
The precise incompatibility between Islam and our tradition is showed,
for instance, in 'Islam and the Question of Race'
(
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/race.htm/), written by an
anti-racist who rightly sees in Islam an effective means to get rid of
races and of race itself once and for all .
One more thing for now : it should be clear that J. Evola never
claimed to be an expert of Islam.
--- In
evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "Toni Ciopa" <hyperborean@...>
wrote:
>
> RE: the English translation of Mutti's article on 'Islam and Evola'
>
>
>
> Claudio Mutti has posted "Islam in the eyes of Julius Evola" (in
English) on
> his web site:
>
>
>
> <
http://www.claudiomutti.com/index.php?url=6&imag=1&id_news=130>
>
http://www.claudiomutti.com/index.php?url=6&imag=1&id_news=130
>
>
>
> Is that the one you are referring to?
>