‘It’s a no to NOS.
We will ban nitrous oxide, also called laughing gas, putting an end to the littering of empty canisters and intimidation in local parks.’
This tweet by Downing Street earlier this year tells you everything you need to know about its policies. In an attempt to curb antisocial behaviour and littering, the government wants to ban nitrous oxide, more commonly known as laughing gas.
Seriously.
Ok, is it the worst policy in the world? No. It’s probably one that most people would agree with. The problem is that the government has said that banning it would end the issues described. It’s a plaster on a stab wound.
That’s what the government likes to do. It likes to offer pretty promises that won’t do anything to curb real issues.
Anti-Social Behaviour
Anti-social behaviour is evident in our communities. The elderly may grumble about how ‘kids in my day had more respect’ and to give them credit, they’ve got a point.
Society has a lot to say as to why this is. One reason given is the destruction of the nuclear family, especially fatherlessness. Studies have shown that children who grow up in single-parent families, particularly those without a father present, are more at risk of becoming criminals. Others point to a lack of discipline in the home and school. Scottish teaching unions warn that teachers are at risk of dismissal and unfair treatment when disciplining children.
Banning nitrous oxide will not solve the problem of anti-social behaviour. They will still drink and smoke weed and cause chaos. They will continue because they know that they can get away with it. The government and other authority groups are yet to actually come up with a solution to these problems. If they continue to allow criminals to get away with things, then they will.
Labour often blame the Conservatives for this. The usual line is that the Tories have slashed funding for youth and community centres, which encourages crime and anti-social behaviour. This is an argument many refute. Many live in areas with parks and swimming pools and leisure centres. These are free and accessible activities. Bored kids don’t go out and rob. These are kids with no discipline or regard for other people. It’s easy to find something to do these days. Instead, lack of discipline and glamourising such a lifestyle fuels this epidemic.
Obesity
The Welsh government has unveiled plans to restrict 2-for-1 deals, multibuys and other deals on ‘unhealthy’ foods. They have argued that it will help decrease obesity and diabetes.
The English government did a similar thing in 2022, banning sweets and junk foods from being displayed near tills.
The logic behind them is as follows: it will stop people impulsively buying junk food and will prevent kids from begging their parents for treats at the till. Suddenly, obesity and diabetes will drop.
Sure.
Obesity is more than just junk food. Firstly, perhaps the government should acknowledge that a lot of parents and people in general have a thing called self-control. They can easily avoid sweets or just tell their children ‘no.’ Sure, some may fall into it, but many can resist temptation.
Secondly, people will also still go down the sweet aisle. They will still get treats, even if they’re a little further down.
Thirdly, the government can bog off controlling lives.
In a cost of living crisis, one would think making things more expensive is just a bad idea. If the government was to actually tackle costs, then maybe healthier food would be easier to buy and make. They cannot get rid of convenience, but it would be nice if prices were better. With more and more people feeling the squeeze, the idea of affordable good food is a tempting one indeed.
One must also factor in things like exercise. Eating alone does not solve health problems. Once again, our elders will complain that kids don’t go outside because they’re glued to a screen. I don’t like to give it to them, but again, how often do you see a toddler being pacified by a tablet?
Both indoor and outdoor sports are easily available. It does not even have to be organised- anyone can have a kickabout in the park. Perhaps we could encourage more PE and sports at school. It’s not just kids either- we should all move about a little more.
Heat
Once again, the government wants to ban something. This time, it’s oil boilers that are on the chopping block. The plans would see those not connected to the gas grid be forced to find a new source of heat.
Having new boilers and heat sources installed is not cheap- it can cost up to tens of thousands to replace. That is money not many people have. Add that to high heat and energy bills, mix in the cost of living crisis, and you have a terrible policy.
The plan is a clear attempt to win over environmentalists. Politically, it’s extremely stupid. Most hardcore environmentalists won’t vote Tory anyway. Secondly, rural areas are usually Conservative. Annoying your voters is not a great idea, especially when you’re lagging in the polls.
It’s a policy that is not only politically useless, but it’s actively hurting people’s finances. Once again, the government claims to know best. It’s a pretty soundbite policy, but not a solution.
Once the government decides to find actual solutions- or even just stick their noses out- things could actually improve a bit. Instead, they just focus on nice graphics and soundbites sent out by their press officers. It’s idealism and stupidity in equal measure.
Political spin seems to be the in thing. They tell us what they think we’d like to hear as opposed to using their limitless powers to help. If they are going to get involved in our lives, then let it be for the better.
Soundbites don’t work and the second the government realises that, then progress can be made.
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An Interview with the JFvD
In late September, a few members of the Mallard team were fortunate to get the opportunity to sit down with representatives of the JFvD, the youth wing of the Dutch ‘Forum for Democracy’ (FvD) party. We discussed the incredible success of their political and cultural youth movement; the founding and future of their party; and their views on what the future of the Netherlands and Europe should be.
The Mallard (TM): We want to get a sense of what the FvD is; what it stands for; and what the JFvD does within that.
Massimo Etalle (ME): So the FvD was founded in 2015 as a think tank. Our party leader (Thierry Baudet) was a journalist, and he had a critique on the world around him but did not believe that these problems could be solved through politics. So, he founded this think tank to influence the ideas in our society. Politics is downstream from culture, so to influence politics you have to influence culture. We had a unique opportunity at the time due to the referendum with Ukraine [the 2016 Dutch advisory referendum on the proposed Ukraine – European Union Association Agreement]. The FvD has always been a very Eurosceptic organisation, so when the association agreement was proposed in a referendum, we campaigned against it. When the referendum was held, it was overwhelmingly opposed by 62% of the Dutch people. In response, the government ignored it and signed the agreement anyway. At this moment we realised we needed to do more than just influence ideas. You have to get closer to power to influence society. So we started a political party and we won 2 seats out of 150 in parliament. The energy was unmatched and, as soon as we started, we flew through the polls. The youth movement (JFvD) was founded in March 2017. Due to the lateness of its founding, we had to have 100 members before midnight to secure subsidies and funding. Before midnight we had over 1000 members and by the next day we had 2000 members. We were the fastest growing youth movement ever in the history of the Netherlands.
Iem Al Biyati (IAB): So we (The JFvD) know we are a youth political movement but we don’t see politics as the number one way to change stuff. It’s a part of it but not the most important thing. We believe in transforming peoples mentality and influencing culture from bottom-to-top instead of top-to-bottom. We want to bind them to history and culture; identity and family instead of the modern view of the Dutch people which is to hate themselves and their culture – we want to oppose that. We think a lot of young people are aimless with no sense of identity anymore, and we are trying to make them see this and give them an opportunity to evolve this feeling and better themselves. We have a culture of losers who are afraid of risks and not being part of ‘the group’. We embrace these things, and we are proud of it. We stand totally against the modern degenerate culture.
ME: Exactly. I wouldn’t describe us as a counter-movement. The modern world is the counter-movement. Ugly buildings are the counter-movement. They are anti-European. We embrace who we are, and all we see around us is opposition to who we are. This starts at the first day of school when we are taught things like participation being more important than winning. This is a total inversion of truth. There is no point in human history when this was true. It breeds a country of losers who don’t want to excel, instead they want to be equal. We want to return to this truth and to who we are. We want to go back to what we have always been and to what is our ‘eternal fate’. That is what we do. We want to mentally and physically challenge our members to become who they truly are.
TM: Do you think that young people in the Netherlands are becoming more radical?
IAB: I think that the youth are becoming more radical, but it goes two ways. I see that there are less centrist people and they go towards the ends. We have more communists and left-wingers and more radical right-wingers. Maybe this is a good thing or not, I’m not sure. But it’s because everyone feels that there is something not right. We no longer live in harmony, and I feel that that is the similarity between the radical left and radical right. We both feel something is off but the left have a different solution and cause. They think that lack of equality is a problem and want to form the world to eliminate stress and struggle. We believe in embracing struggle and accepting that life is this way instead of complaining and whining.
TM: Would you say that you prioritise changing the way people think over advocating for certain political policies?
IAB: Yeah. Policy changes aren’t even possible in our party’s current position. Maybe we never will be. We see it more as a metaphysical and philosophical struggle.
ME: Whilst you cannot change a policy, you can change your resilience to a bad policy. You can become more immune to things that the government does to hurt you.
TM: It’s interesting you say that because, in the UK, a lot of right-wing movements focus entirely on policy. Maybe it’s due to the homogenous nature of our politics. We don’t really have a movement that tries to affect culture instead of specific policies.
ME: The failure of Brexit proved the irrelevance of policy. Whilst you left the European Union, your politicians are now proud to say that your immigrants don’t come from Poland any more, instead they come from Pakistan. The problem you had wasn’t just the European Union, it was that your mentality was wrong. If you could change that mentality even a slight amount, the influence would be bigger in every new policy. Whilst if you change one policy, everything that will be built around it will still be rooted in perverse thought.
IAB: The most important thing to do is to implant those ideas in people to make them feel as though they are good and true because they are. That is what the JFvD and FvD is trying to do. We still participate in politics of course and try our best but the ideas are what is important. We had the state opening of parliament a few days ago when all the politicians came and met up. This is quite rare in the Netherlands. Two days of debate and all they talk about are the same boring stories: rising energy prices and cost of living. They are too afraid to tell a different story. We got our opportunity to speak for about 15 minutes, but after about 10 minutes our party leader made a criticism of one of the other members of parliament, and our speaker of the house turned his microphone off after members of the government signalled her to do so. The entire government stood up and walked out to avoid listening to him. After this stunt the Prime Minister came back to act upset about it and, when Thierry came back to speak he was only allowed to do so if he apologised. He refused to apologise and his right to speak was taken away. He had to leave.TM: Yes that happens in this country as well. A lot of politicians have cottoned on to the fact that, if you get kicked out, it makes headlines. So, people will say things that they want in the newspapers and then they will accuse someone of lying which will result in them being kicked out. This gets them in the papers and videos of it go online.
IAB: That’s actually pretty funny but of course it goes to show that it’s a theatre. It’s all a show.
ME: Just to be clear, our youth movement doesn’t focus on policy, but the main party does. We have ideas on how to solve the energy crisis, for example. We have the largest gas reserve in Europe and we give it away to the Belgians. We do propose and fight for policies but, especially as a youth movement, we have a very cultural and ideological task. Everyone is in the process of becoming an adult.
TM: So what do you do to promote cultural things?
ME: So we have a few things that we do. We have a summer camp and some other events which Iem will talk about and then we also have a magazine ‘The Dissident’ which I will talk about.IAB: So we have so many young members, and it’s very uncommon to be a member of a political party as a young person in the Netherlands. So, the first step was to attract the members and then we had to do something with them. We can’t just take 5 Euros from them a year and then not do anything with them. We want to select and train people how to be potential members of the future party as a nurturing role. We have a summer camp which takes about 80 people. It’s a shame because hundreds apply but we don’t have the space to take any more than 80. But we also want to connect with people on an individual level which is hard to do as a massive group. We engage in sport and physical activity and also lectures. We try to attract a different range of people.
ME: We don’t want to do just lectures. We believe in the unity of mind and body. It’s not just who is the smartest or the strongest. It’s the person who is expressing his desire to fight on all fronts.
IAB: Someone who can write stuff should also be able to express things physically in their lifestyle and not just academically. We look for these people and try to give them ideas in the lectures about politics, philosophy, health etc. We even do singing lessons and things. We try to challenge individuals and the group to create the ‘aristocrat’. We scout talents and we invite them to more exclusive academic training weekends. We obviously have other events but those are smaller and more specific. That’s how we try to make our ideas true.
TM: And the magazine?
ME: So, people can have a certain feeling about ideas but struggle to express them. They know the FvD is what they want, but the ideas are a struggle. Everything is so fast and changes all the time and your brain can get completely overloaded with information. To do something about that we started our magazine. It talks about all aspects of who we are. Our ideals, our actions, our history. You name it, we do it. It’s a very open platform which we allow people to pitch to. It’s our testament of who we are as a permanent record. Hopefully it will inspire people for a long time. It declines the chaos of every moment; we have no articles about quick news. Everything we talk about is timeless and we strive to keep it eternal.IAB: We didn’t have this before and we don’t want to lose the ideas that we have. We believe in action. We should try to make these ideas physical and then do things about these ideas. Putting the ideas into a physical record helps this. What I see a lot on the internet are people who have ideas that are similar to ours. They really believe in the traditional idea but they are a bit stuffy and get upset about more modern things. They make things like magazines, but their covers are old school. They are trying to hold on to ash.
TM: Like LARPing?
IAB: Yeah, just like LARPing. It’s not real. It needs to be more real. They like to pretend it’s the 1950’s.
ME: We went to Trafalgar square earlier and it felt a lot like being in a very very big museum. We were surrounded by all this beautiful art, but it felt like being in-between a museum and Pompeii. The volcano is erupting but the guard is still standing on duty. The monuments in Trafalgar square are still being cleaned but they are monuments to an idea, a people, and an empire that aren’t there anymore. That feels a lot like a museum. It was the main impression we got from Trafalgar Square.
TM: To focus more on the Netherlands in particular. How do you feel about the farmers’ strikes? What do you think is going to happen with that?
IAB: They have obviously been angry for a long time now and with the visits to ministers houses it’s getting more radical. I’m not really sure what will come out of it.ME: I think the government has a trick up its sleeve, honestly. Obviously, I fully understand and support the farmers. The big problem that caused this is the nitrogen storage and emissions laws. It’s a rule that they only apply when they want to hurt someone. The land the farmers have is valuable and it’s worth only a tenth as much as a farm when compared to housing. There is a very strong economic impulse to build on it and move the farmers elsewhere. Our land is too valuable. The farmers obviously don’t want to leave but the government is trying to use these economic sanctions to get them to leave. I don’t know what tricks they have up their sleeves. This will escalate and the rules will become more stringent. So, they have our full support and I hope they manage to resist this.
TM: I’ve been reading the FvD’s views on the Netherlands’ future in Europe. What do you think the future will be like for Dutch people and the Dutch nation in Europe at the moment if nothing changes, and what would you like the future to be?
ME: I think at the moment we are on the way to becoming a big metropole. There is a plan called the ‘Three State City’ which seeks to unite most of the big cities in the Netherlands with some cities in the Ruhr in Germany and the port of Antwerp in north Belgium. It would be a massive 50 million population city. That’s why they want to hurt the farmers to take their land.
IAB: I hope that our party will have a leading role in Europe to try and stop this. We have seen what has happened in Sweden and the trends in Italy and France. Maybe soon there will be a topple. Hopefully this will happen in the Netherlands, but our government has always been the leader of liberalism. I think this is the opposite of the Dutch soul. I hope that we can change this and become a leader in Europe in a more traditionalist way.
TM: So earlier you said that you think Brexit has been a failure. Does that imply that you want the Netherlands to stay in the European Union?
ME: I totally oppose the so-called ‘European Union’. It is very anti-European. It is built to castrate Europe and to keep it small and weak. It blocks everything Europe is good at. They promote the idea that participation is worth more than winning. This keeps everyone down and from excelling. Our ideal is a country where the people on every scale from individual to collective can express their fate and the European Union crushed it.
TM: It feels as though your opinion is that the wrong people carried out Brexit. Would you agree with that?
ME: Yes, definitely. After Brexit they built a structure around it that was done by the wrong people.IAB: This is why changing policy doesn’t change anything. Our countries are run by managers, they are not leaders. They are people who were bullied at school and now that they have the taste of power, they use it to bully successful people. They have no idea how to run a country and should be managing a Tesco instead.
ME: The civil servants are the ones who actually tell politicians what to do. The politicians come up with general policy ideas and then the civil servants are the ones who tell them what to do.
TM: There are generally two different schools of thought in the UK about influencing power. Either you infiltrate existing structures, or you set up parallel structures. Obviously, your party isn’t in power but you do sit parallel to it. Do you think there is any use in infiltration into institutions?
IAB: If there is a war, you don’t just use one tactic. You use land, air, and sea. You also use spies and infiltration. It’s a combined offensive. That is how I view politics. This is a sort of war and you have to fight it on all fronts. You have to infiltrate and also set up parallel societies and organisations. We are in the process of setting up schools and apps and other things. Our planned app for example allows people to do commerce and provides alternatives for maps and things. You can also use it to see what businesses are run by FvD supporters. They get discounts at these shops and things. You don’t have to go to a leftist’s or a communist’s pub or shop by accident anymore. You can support people who agree with you and who are like you and stop helping people who hate you.
TM: Yeah, that would probably be illegal in the UK. We have a few acts of parliament that would make that not even an option.
ME: Wouldn’t you say that that actually makes you sort of stateless? I mean, you can say you are fighting for a state which defends your ideals and who you are. Your current state doesn’t just not have a place for you, it actively opposes who you are. It stops you from expressing yourself. I would think that you are stateless and that you should orient your actions as a stateless person.
TM: In the UK we talk a lot about how a fair amount of our problems are caused by older people. They were the recipients of low house prices and a well-funded welfare state. Now that they are in a position of money and power, they have pulled the ladder up and made it harder for young people. We call it the ‘gerontocracy’. Do you agree with that? Do you have something similar?
IAB: That group was very mediocre throughout their lives too.
ME: Are they really that united against you though? It feels sort of like a false dichotomy. Think of a company like Blackrock which buys up huge amounts of land and property to turn it into rental property in Amsterdam and here too. The influence of one such company is vastly superior to one group of Baby Boomers who, to some extent, have taken actions to hold on to their wealth. I don’t think it’s necessarily the Boomers fault, they are a product of the world around them. They were posed different challenges than us. That’s life, I think.
IAB: Being a Boomer is of course an age thing but I think it can be a part of someone’s soul. People can have a Boomer mentality even if they are young. They believed that we are able to become anything we want. My parents said to me that I can just go to school and get a diploma and just do whatever I wanted. They gave us this box with all these things we could achieve and when we opened it, it was actually full of nothing. We had to work with that. Old people will complain about young people but that’s because they just don’t know what the reality is. I agree with Massimo though that a lot of these problems are actually caused by big companies like Blackrock.
ME: The greatest crime of the Boomer is raising a generation of spoiled kids. It’s the reason why people don’t understand that things are hard and that you have to struggle to get things. They didn’t have to fight in wars or do anything. Our greatest challenge is undoing this mindset and bringing struggle back to people’s lives.
TM: Yeah I think a lot of these older people, the Boomers, were raised in a more harsh or ‘Victorian’ way. They reacted to that by raising their children in a very hands-off and spoiled kind of way.
ME: They get their kids spoiled and then they scream when they grow up and find out that life is not as easy as they thought.
IAB: The weakest people are praised for it all the time. They are drained in the face, and they are rewarded for it. The few people who are actually struggling to carry everything and fight for things are seen as dangerous.
ME: Life in the end turns out to be hard and it implodes a lot of people. This is a renunciation of real life and it never had to be like this.
TM: Especially in the short-term things are seemingly getting worse with the war and the strikes and the prices of things rocketing. As things get harder, do you think maybe people will embrace struggle?
ME: It can go one of two ways. People are either going to rely much more on the state for handouts and welfare to make their lives easier. If there is no support offered and people start having to struggle, that may awaken something in people that shifts them.IAB: The whole ‘Build Back Better’ thing implies that something has to be destroyed. Things like social credit may be actually destroyed by this. We may end up going down the communist path of trying to make the world malleable and changeable. Or you can accept life as it is and build back something that’s true. You can’t avoid struggle and I don’t think our current artificial way of life is sustainable. There will be a time maybe in 10, 100, or 200 years where it does collapse and we might not even realise until after it’s happened. We think we probably aren’t going to be the generation that goes through that and turns it all around, but we will be the first people to lay foundations and make way for it so that future generations can continue this project and we can return to who we are.
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Islam as Arabism
‘Here the initiative individual […] regains his place as a formative force in history. […] If he is a prophet like Mohammed, wise in the means of inspiring men, his words may raise a poor and disadvantaged people to unpremeditated ambitions and surprising power.’
– Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of HistoryThat Islam is a sociopolitical ideology as well as a religion hardly requires demonstration. It included a political component from its very inception, since tradition has it that Muhammad was the Muslims’ worldly ruler as well as their spiritual leader. The caliphs succeeded him (‘caliph’ means ‘successor’) in that capacity: they, too, were political and religious rulers in one. If the caliphate had not been abolished in 1924, non-Muslims would likely be much less blind to Islam’s political side.
This political side is too rarely acknowledged. However, even less attention has been paid to the ethnic aspect of Islam’s politics. Hardly any commentators seem to mention the undercurrent of Arabism present in the Mohammedan creed – yet once one has noticed it, it is impossible to ignore. Islam is not just any ideology; it is a vehicle of Arab imperialism.
Some readers may not readily see any such ethnic element, but others will likely find it obvious. In Algeria, for instance, Islam is widely taken to be a facet of ‘Arabdom,’ which is why proud Berbers tend not to be passionate Muslims. It is not just non-Arabs who believe that Islam and Arabdom are intimately linked. Consider that Tunisia’s ‘Arab Muslim’ character is mentioned in the preamble to the country’s constitution. Likewise, Morocco’s constitution states that Moroccan national identity is ‘forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassanic components.’ Such language underscores the essential connection between Arab identity and Islam. What follows is a brief overview of some aspects of this connection.
The Traditions
The traditional accounts of Islam’s early history, including the hadith, contain plenty of naked Arabism. In this context, we can largely set aside the question of whether these accounts are reliable. For the most part, it scarcely matters whether the traditions are true or fabricated; it only matters that they are believed.
Perhaps the most infamous racist hadith is the one in which Muhammad describes black people as seeming to have raisins for heads. The saying in question is Number 256 in Book 89 of volume nine of Bukhari’s anthology: ‘You should listen to and obey[…] your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin.’
Some Muslims try to divert attention from the questionable physical description and onto the statement’s supposed egalitarianism. They claim this passage expresses a progressive sentiment that people of any race could be worthy rulers. However, one should bear in mind the context: the next two hadiths likewise extol obedience to rulers. For example, Number 257 has Muhammad say: ‘A Muslim has to listen to and obey (the order of his ruler) whether he likes it or not, as long as his orders involve not one in disobedience (to Allah).’ The common theme in these stories is the requirement to submit to those in power. Against this backdrop, the hypothetical Ethiopian ruler is clearly mentioned in order to emphasise how absolute this duty is: it applies even if the ruler belongs to an inferior ethnic group. Similar examples of racism in the hadith and other Islamic sources are listed by Isaac Marshall.
As Robert Spencer shows in Did Muhammad Exist?, early Arab politics under the Abbasid dynasty was marked by references to Muhammad’s example to promote various causes, notably including ‘the rapid expansion of the Arab Empire.’ This sometimes included strong ethnic undertones. As Spencer notes, Muhammad was reported to have said that Muslims would conquer ‘the palaces of the pale men in the lands of the Byzantines’ and to have announced: ‘the Greeks will stand before the brown men (the Arabs) in troops in white garments and with shorn heads, being forced to do all that they are ordered.’ Why mention the Byzantines’ lighter complexion? Presumably, this served to underscore their ethnic distinctness (non-Arabness) and, by implication, their inferiority. As for the second quote, it clearly portrays Muhammad as having wished for the Arabs specifically, rather than Muslims of any ethnicity, to dominate the Greeks.
According to tradition, having garnered only a handful of followers in Mecca, Muhammad achieved his first major success in Yathrib (later Medina). This milestone was made possible by an ethnic conflict between Arabs and Jews in which the former deemed him useful for their cause. ‘The Arabs of Yathrib,’ explains Ali Sina in Understanding Muhammad and Muslims, ‘accepted Muhammad readily, not because of the profundity of his teachings, […] but because of their rivalry with the Jews.’ It was in Medina that Islam’s trademark Jew-hatred truly began to burgeon.
Over a millennium later, the resources of Muslims worldwide are still being drained in service to an Arab struggle against Jews in Israel – and Islam is the tool through which those resources are extracted. Of course, not everyone in the Muslim world is content with this arrangement. In Iran, which is now a mostly non-Muslim country, protestors chant: ‘Forget about Palestine, forget about Gaza, think about us.’ Likewise, the Moroccan Amazigh Democrat Party (a Berber organisation now renamed ‘Moroccan Ecologist Party – Greens’) stands for both secularism and ‘normalizing relations with Israel.’ The more a group is free from Islam, it seems, the less need it feels to sacrifice its own interests in order to help Middle Eastern Arabs re-conquer Israel.
The History
Islam’s history shows it to be, from its beginnings, fundamentally intertwined with Arab identity. In Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires, Tim Mackintosh-Smith provides such manifold examples of this pattern that it would be plagiaristic to reproduce them all here. Drawing on Muslim historian al-Baladhuri’s description of the Arab conquests of the seventh century AD, he writes that the Taghlib, despite being Christian, were made exempt from the ‘poll-tax’ which unbelievers must pay under Islamic law. The reason was that the Taghlib were Arabs, and could thus make the case that they were different from the ‘conquered barbarians’ to whom the tax was normally applied. ‘Islam in its expansive period had as much to do with economics and ethnicity as with ethics.’ During the later centuries of Islam, other groups – most notably, the Ottomans – appear to take the lead in the Muslim world. Nevertheless, ‘the centuries of “invisibility” in fact conceal an Arab expansion almost as remarkable for its extent as the first eruption of Islam,’ though this second phase occurred ‘through the Arab world’s back door, into the Indian Ocean.’
For Mackintosh-Smith, Islam should be viewed ‘as a unifying national ideology, and Muhammad as an Arab national hero.’ It may be worthwhile to mention, in this context, the theory that Muhammad never existed and was instead a character popularised decades after his supposed death. Robert Spencer summarises the case for this position in Did Muhammad Exist?. Despite dating Islam’s emergence to the early eighth century, Spencer notes that two inscriptions from Arab-ruled lands during the second half of the seventh century refer to some watershed moment which had occurred in 622. As he states, this is the traditional date of the Hijra, when Muhammad supposedly fled from Mecca to Medina. Interestingly, one of the inscriptions was made 42 years (on the lunar calendar) after 622, yet it purports to have been written in ‘the year 42 following the Arabs.’ Why the odd phrasing? Spencer argues that, in 622, the Byzantines inflicted a heavy defeat on the Persian Empire, sending it into decline. The Arabs were quick to take advantage of the resultant ‘power vacuum’ and soon conquered Persia. Consequently, he speculates: ‘What became the date of the Hijra may have originally marked the beginning of the Arabians as a political force to be reckoned with on the global scene.’ If this idea is correct – and it certainly makes sense of the strange phrase ‘the year 42 following the Arabs’ – then the very year with which the Islamic calendar begins, 622, may originally have been commemorated in celebration of Arab military expansion. This would also make it all the more ironic for anyone conquered by Arabs, and especially Iranians, to be a Muslim.
Still, the conquest of non-Arabs by Arabs is sanctified in Islam even if one utterly rejects the thesis Spencer propounds. Since the expansion of early Islam – and much of later Islam – was inseparable from Arab expansion into surrounding territories, being Muslim practically forces one to look back with approval on the conquests of non-Arabs by Arabs. (The spread of other world religions did not involve a comparable dependence on armed subjugation.) As Raymond Ibrahim has written, ‘the historic Islamic conquests are never referred to as “conquests” in Arabic and other Muslim languages; rather, they are futuhat—literally, “openings” for the light of Islam to enter.’
Throughout Islam’s history, jihadism and Islamic expansionism have gone hand in hand with Arab supremacism. This has perhaps been most apparent in Sudan and Mauritania, where Islamism has long been inextricably linked to racism and genocide against, and enslavement of, non-Arab blacks. Serge Trifkovic makes this point powerfully in The Sword of the Prophet, highlighting the irony of black Muslims in America who consider Islam a natural part of African heritage.
In addition to the racism already found in Islamic scriptures, the slave trade which has flourished under Islamic rule and been legitimised in conjunction with jihad ideology has also spawned racialist justifications. Trifkovic comments: ‘The Muslims’ view on their two main sources of slaves, sub-Saharan Africa and Slavic Eastern Europe, developed into the tradition epitomized by a tenth-century Islamic writer:
“The people of Iraq […] are the ones who are done to a turn in the womb. They do not come out with something between blond, blanched and leprous coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are […] black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with […] deficient minds, […] such as the Ethiopians and other blacks[.]”’
Islam’s Arab Character
Despite claims of divine revelation and the notion that the Qur’an existed from the beginning of time, Islamic doctrine is wholly permeated by mediaeval Arab culture and the paganism of pre-Islamic Arabia. Thus, Samuel Zwemer notes that the belief in jinn reflects a ‘substratum of paganism.’ Nor is this belief peripheral to Islam; numerous verses in the Qur’an discuss these supposed spirits and Muhammad is claimed, writes Zwemer, to have been ‘sent to convert the Jinn to Islam as well as the Arabs.’ It is also a well-known fact that the pilgrimage to Mecca goes back to pre-Islamic paganism.
The creed’s ethical teachings, furthermore, are deeply shaped by its origins among mediaeval Arabs. In many ways, it represents an alien culture imposed on other peoples by Arab conquest. One might object that Europe is Christian and Christianity is likewise an alien influence on it, having come from the Middle East. Yet Christianity’s Middle Eastern origins have been greatly exaggerated. It is a fundamentally European religion, having arisen in the Roman Empire and been shaped by Greek philosophy from its fount. Even pre-Christian Judaism had been heavily shaped by Hellenic thought, as Martin Hengel showed in his classic Judaism and Hellenism. In any event, Christianity is far less intrusive than Islam, which seems intent on micro-managing every aspect of the believer’s life.
An obvious example of how Islam imposes alien values on the societies it conquers is the role it mandates for women. Apostate Prophet, a German-American ex-Muslim of Turkish descent, avers that ‘the Turks […] treated their women much, much better before they converted to Islam.’ Current scholarship appears to bear this notion out. One author concludes that, in pre-Islamic times, ‘Turkish women ha[d] a much more free life than women of other communities and that women within Turkish communities [during that period] can be seen as sexless and they can take part in men’s positions.’ This is obviously far different from women’s role in Islamic societies. The difference was famously demonstrated by Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, founding member of the ruling Islamist group, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). On the occasion of the Islamic holiday Eid al-Fitr, Arınç urged Turks to pay greater heed to the Qur’an and stated that women should ‘not laugh in public.’ If conditions in Turkey are not as bad as in other Islamic countries, where practices like female genital mutilation are common, that is in large part thanks to the secularising revolution of Kemalism.
However, to say that Islam’s ethics fully reflect the norms of pre-Islamic Arabia would be unfair to the Arabs of the time. For instance, Ali Sina argues that, ‘prior to Islam, women in Arabia were more respected and had more rights than at any time since’ (Understanding Muhammad and Muslims). Even within the context of that undeveloped region, it seems that Islamisation represented a step back.
Islam’s Arab character has serious practical consequences which work to Arabs’ relative advantage and other groups’ relative disadvantage – although, naturally, adherence to Islam represents a net disadvantage for all groups. As Hugh Fitzgerald observes, Islam makes people ‘pray five times a day in the direction of Arabia (Mecca), ideally take Arab names, read the Qur’an in Arabic, and sometimes even construct a false Arab ancestry (as the “Sayeeds” of Pakistan).’ The requirement to fast throughout the day during Ramadan appears tailored to the Arabian Peninsula and is ill-suited to life in certain other regions. Moreover, Islam proves highly effective at funneling money from the whole Muslim world into Arabia. The required pilgrimage to Mecca earns Saudi Arabia ten to fifteen billion US dollars per annum; added to this are another four to five billion gained through ‘the umra, a non-obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca.’ ‘Pilgrimage income,’ adds the same source, ‘also accounts for the second largest share of [Saudi] government revenue after hydrocarbon sales.’
Will the Awakening Come?
‘Although Islam presents itself as a universal religion,’ writes Robert Spencer, ‘it has a decidedly Arabic character’ which has consistently aided ‘Arabic supremacists’ in Muslim areas. As stated, Islam is detrimental to all people, but it seems especially absurd that any non-Arab would be a Muslim. Hopefully, the other nations ensnared by this ideology will find the backbone to break free of it sooner rather than later.
Some such stirrings, though faint, can already be seen. As of this writing, Apostate Prophet’s video Islam is for Arabs has garnered nearly 200,000 views in five years. We have noted the distaste for Islam among many Algerian Berbers, and a similar pattern has been recorded in Morocco: ‘for some Berbers, conversion [to Christianity] is a return to their own roots.’ Should this trend continue, it could, in theory, become quite significant. As of 2000, Arabs constituted only 44% of Morocco’s population, just under the combined share of Arabised Berbers (24%) and other Berbers (21%).
Iran is an even more promising case. As mentioned, it appears that most of the country’s population is no longer Muslim. National pride seems to have played a part in this spectacular sea change, as evidenced by the popularity of Zoroastrianism among some Iranians. Perhaps Iran, once liberated, could act as a model for other non-Arab Muslim countries with a sense of dignity.
The national issue may not prove potent enough to de-Islamise societies completely. However, that may not be required. A major tipping point could be achieved simply by reaching a point at which criticism of Islam can no longer be stifled. Islam’s success depends on fear to prevent people from opposing it. Thus, in environments where adherence to it is not socially enforced – for instance, in Western societies –, deconversion rates tend to be high. Anywhere the compulsion to obey Islam is defeated, the main battle will have been won.
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Atatürk: A Legacy Under Threat
The founders of countries occupy a unique position within modern society. They are often viewed either as heroic and mythical figures or deeply problematic by today’s standards – take the obvious examples of George Washington. Long-held up by all Americans as a man unrivalled in his courage and military strategy, he is now a figure of vilification by leftists, who are eager to point out his ownership of slaves.
Whilst many such figures face similar shaming nowadays, none are suffering complete erasure from their own society. That is the fate currently facing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose era-defining liberal reforms and state secularism now pose a threat to Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
To understand the magnitude of Atatürk’s legacy, we must understand his ascent from soldier to president. For that, we must go back to the end of World War One, and Turkey’s founding.
The Ottoman Empire officially ended hostilities with the Allied Powers via the Armistice of Mudros (1918), which amongst other things, completely demobilised the Ottoman army. Following this, British, French, Italian and Greek forces arrived in and occupied Constantinople, the Empire’s capital. Thus began the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire: having existed since 1299, the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) ceded large amounts of territory to the occupying nations, primarily being between France and Great Britain.
Enter Mustafa Kemal, known years later as Atatürk. An Ottoman Major General and fervent anti-monarchist, he and his revolutionary organisation (the Committee of Union and Progress) were greatly angered by Sèvres, which partitioned portions of Anatolia, a peninsula that makes up the majority of modern-day Turkey. In response, they formed a revolutionary government in Ankara, led by Kemal.
Thus, the Turkish National Movement fought a 4-year long war against the invaders, eventually pushing back the Greeks in the West, Armenians in the East and French in the South. Following a threat by Kemal to invade Constantinople, the Allies agreed to peace, with the Treaty of Kars (1921) establishing borders, and Lausanne (1923) officially settling the conflict. Finally free from fighting, Turkey declared itself a republic on 29 October 1923, with Mustafa Kemal as president.
His rule of Turkey began with a radically different set of ideological principles to the Ottoman Empire – life under a Sultan had been overtly religious, socially conservative and multi-ethnic. By contrast, Kemalism was best represented by the Six Arrows: Republicanism, Populism, Nationalism, Laicism, Statism and Reformism. Let’s consider the four most significant.
We’ll begin with Laicism. Believing Islam’s presence in society to have been impeding national progress, Atatürk set about fundamentally changing the role religion played both politically and societally. The Caliph, who was believed to be the spiritual successor to the Prophet Muhammad, was deposed. In their place came the office of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet – through its control of all Turkey’s mosques and religious education, it ensured Islam’s subservience to the State.
Under a new penal code, all religious schools and courts were closed, and the wearing of headscarves was banned for public workers. However, the real nail in the coffin came in 1928: that was when an amendment to the Constitution removed the provision declaring that the “Religion of the State is Islam”.
Moving onto Nationalism. With its roots in the social contract theories of thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Kemalist nationalism defined the social contract as its “highest ideal” following the Empire’s collapse – a key example of the failures of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural state.
The 1930s saw the Kemalist definition of nationality integrated into the Constitution, legally defining every citizen as a Turk, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Despite this however, Atatürk fiercely pursed a policy of forced cultural conformity (Turkification), similar to that of the Russian Tsars in the previous century. Both regimes had the same aim – the creation and survival of a homogenous and unified country. As such, non-Turks were pressured into speaking Turkish publicly, and those with minority surnames had to change, to ‘Turkify’ them.
Now Reformism. A staunch believer in both education and equal opportunity, Atatürk made primary education free and compulsory, for both boys and girls. Alongside this came the opening of thousands of new schools across the country. Their results are undeniable: between 1923 – 38, the number of students attending primary school increased by 224%, and 12.5 times for middle school.
Staying true to his identity as an equal opportunist, Atatürk enacted monumentally progressive reforms in the area of women’s rights. For example, 1926 saw a new civil code, and with it came equal rights for women concerning inheritance and divorce. In many of these gender reforms, Turkey was well-ahead of other Western nations: Turkish women gained the vote in 1930, followed by universal suffrage in 1934. By comparison, France passed universal suffrage in 1945, Canada in 1960 and Australia in 1967. Fundamentally, Atatürk didn’t see Turkey truly modernising whilst Ottoman gender segregation persisted
Lastly, let’s look at Statism. As both president and the leader of the People’s Republican Party, Atatürk was essentially unquestioned in his control of the State. However, despite his dictatorial tendencies (primarily purging political enemies), he was firmly opposed to dynastic rule, like had been the case with the Ottomans.
But under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, all of this could soon be gone.
Having been a high-profile political figure for 20 years, Erdoğan has cultivated a positive image domestically, one focused on his support for public religion and Turkish nationalism, whilst internationally, he’s received far more negative attention focused on his growing authoritarian behaviour. Regarded widely by historians as the very antithesis of Atatürk, Erdoğan’s pushback against state secularism is perhaps the most significant attack on the founder’s legacy.
This has been most clearly displayed within the education system. 2017 saw a radical shift in school curriculums across Turkey, with references to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution being greatly reduced. Meanwhile, the number of religious schools has increased exponentially, promoting Erdoğan’s professed goal of raising a “pious generation of Turks”. Additionally, the Diyanet under Erdoğan has seen a huge increase in its budget, and with the launch of Diyanet TV in 2012, has spread Quranic education to early ages and boarding schools.
The State has roles to play in society but depriving schoolchildren of vital scientific information and funding religious indoctrination is beyond outrageous: Soner Cagaptay, author of The New Sultan: Erdoğan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey, referred to the changes as: “a revolution to alter public education to assure that a conservative, religious view of the world prevails”.
There are other warning signs more broadly, however. The past 20 years have seen the headscarf make a gradual reappearance back into Turkish life, with Erdoğan having first campaigned on the issue back in 2007, during his first run for the presidency. Furthermore, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), with its strong base of support amongst extremely orthodox Muslims, has faced repeated accusations of being an Islamist party – as per the constitution, no party can “claim that it represents a form of religious belief”.
Turkish women, despite being granted legal equality by Atatürk, remain the regular victims of sexual harassment, employment discrimination and honour killings. Seemingly intent on destroying all the positive achievements of the founder, Erdoğan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention (which forces parties to investigate, punish and crackdown on violence against women) in March 2021.
All of these reversals of Atatürk’s policies reflect the larger-scale attempt to delete him from Turkey’s history. His image is now a rarity in school textbooks, at national events, and on statues; his role in Turkey’s founding has been criminally downplayed.
President Erdoğan presents an unambiguous threat to the freedoms of the Turkish people, through both his ultra-Islamic policies and authoritarian manner of governance. Unlike Atatürk, Erdoğan seemingly has no problems with ruling as an immortal dictator, and would undoubtedly love to establish a family dynasty. With no one willing to challenge him, he appears to be dismantling Atatürk’s reforms one law at a time, reducing the once-mythical Six Arrows of Kemalism down to a footnote in textbooks.
A man often absent from the school curriculums of Western history departments, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk proved one of the most consequential leaders in both Turkish history, and the 20th Century. A radical and a revolutionary he may have been, but it was largely down to him that the Turkish people received a recognised nation-state, in which state secularism, high-quality education and equal civil rights were the norm.
In our modern world, so many of our national figures now face open vilification from the public and politicians alike. But for Turkey, future generations may grow up not even knowing the name or face of their George Washington. Whilst several political parties and civil society groups are pushing back against this anti-Atatürk agenda, the sheer determination displayed by Erdoğan shows how far Turks must yet go to preserve the founder’s legacy.
