Materialist Europe's Religious Practice
So far has the materialist spirit infiltrated civilised peoples that today you will find hardly one European with any aim in life loftier than scratching up a livelihood. Nonetheless many hold religious beliefs, and cling to their inherited Christianity, however adulterated it with heresies, and incapable of meeting anyone's spiritual or moral needs. It may seem odd that such a religion can still exercise any authority in this "progressive" world: yet it has shaped and still shapes the spiritual and ethical mould of Western civilisation. On Sundays shops and secular institutions are closed. Church bells ring out on all sides with their distinctive clanging. Congregations of all social classes gather and attentively listen to sermons. The TV gives special religious broadcasts supervised by the churches. The religious take their babies to church to be christened at the priest's hands, and affirm their faith before him. Religious leaders are respected and called "Father" i.e. spiritual father of the community. During the long centuries of the Church's ascendancy, while all Europe's economy was based on land-ownership, a tithe of all agricultural produce was exacted to support the heavy expenses of religious institutions. During the last 200 years or so, with the increasing secularisation of society and the shift of the economic base to industry and commerce, one land after another has abolished the system of "tithing" and of the parson's "Glebeland". But huge endowments have remained, while the faithful make regular voluntary contributions, often under a system of "stewardship". This is how Christianity's spiritual leaders come to command an adequate budget for their vast undertakings.
A committee on printed matters controls publications, and in this the Church plays the leading role. The Church supervises educational planning for nursery and primary schools. For all nine years of their schooling, pupils are obliged to attend church on Sundays for services specially prepared with religious instruction suited to their age-group. Strangest of all, innocent babes have to go into the confessional and admit their sins to a priest.
Films may not be shown without the permission of a board consisting of church leaders, doctors, sociologists, economists and psychologists; and the angles of religion, psychology, sociology and economics are all taken into account.
An Irani in Europe
The writer had the misfortune to require medical aid in Europe. I was taken into a Catholic hospital in Germany. I was welcomed and accorded the attention they give to religious who come as patients; in my room, as in all rooms, was a statue of Jesus and a painting of the Virgin and Child. Regular prayers were offered in the chapel for the cure of the sick! One day I saw them lighting candles before the statue of Jesus in one of the large halls of the place. Fancy that! Lighting a candle in broad daylight beside a man-made statue — and that in the hub of science and learning! What an outcry there would be if a simple peasant in Iran were to light a candle on a dark night at the shrine of a saint! How our "lessoned" youth would mock him and his "old-fashioned" ways!
I shall never forget one occasion when blood was needed for a transfusion. The head of the hospital asked me: "What sort of blood does Islam allow for transfusions? May Muslims accept non-Muslim blood? We will prepare blood for you according to Islamic principles!"
Developed countries set voluntary limits in the true interests of freedom. For the limits are intended to prevent misuse of the products of civilisation. Thus the TV shows sports matches, holds teaching sessions, pictures the life of distant lands, and, in brief devotes the major part of its screenings to educational programmes.
In the name of freedom it is prohibited for anyone to turn up his radio so loud that it bothers neighbours or passers-by. No-one may give parties that last on into the small hours if they disturb his neighbours. In fact, when you are in the streets you never hear a radio. Though it is true that I did once hear a radio noise that made the welkin ring. I was just leaving my hotel and was astounded; for this was the first time I had ever heard anything like that in Europe. And what type of sound fell on my ears?.
Iranian music! I decided to investigate. Next day I chanced to meet an Iranian who had taken up residence near the hotel. In the course of conversation I casually mentioned the event. Putting his finger to his lips, he confessed with a smile that it was he who had perpetrated the noise on the day before just to see what would happen!
It is truly sad that in Iran we have not mastered the right use of modern amenities. This is because we have deviated from the track traced for us by our ancestral principles, and plunged into disgrace. Everyone knows the undesirable effects of TV's presentation of life. Much of the blame for the decline of the morals of society lies at its door. All that viewers gain from such films and programmes is an increased urge towards moral corruption and mayhem.
Everywhere in Iran radio noises reverberate from every side in nerve-racking volume.
Industrial discoverers and inventors never meant to guarantee the sort of profits now obtainable from the exploitation of their brain-children nor could they have offered any such guarantee, for nothing was further from their thoughts than the idea their products, conceived for a rightful use, might one day fall into the hands of people who would turn them to purposes which are positively harmful and, for the population of a country like ours, threaten mortal peril.
Without exception, all the phenomena of industry, its tools and its products alike, are capable of falling victim to the process by which mercenary profiteers squeeze personal advantage out of public demand. The natural unreason of man, the tendency to mistaken attitudes, rapidly makes selfishness epidemic, so that people compete in technological profiteering to the tragic loss of others. The root of this tragedy must be sought in the fields of learning and wisdom rather of ignorance and folly! For a Muslim to desert the humaneness and courtesy which his religion enjoins is surely a moral blemish of shocking proportions! God forbid that in our country such unbridled self-seeking and wrongdoing should be allowed in the name of "Freedom" to spread its evil disease unchecked.
Reasons for Christianity's Advance
Two sorts of religion exist — "Revealed" and "Natural". Today both suffer from such deformities that nearly all their manifestations not only have ceased to grow but in fact daily dwindle towards extinction. Apart from Islam, Christianity is the only exception, since it makes such enormous efforts on a world-scale that it is expanding all the time, and therefore is coming to confront the almost equally widespread Islam all over the place.
A conjunction of factors favours Christianity's spread. The world-climate is propitious. Popular thinking is easily influenced by skilful propaganda to move in any desired direction. This is due both to mankind's innate suggestibility and also to the subliminal effects of modern advertising techniques. The social renascence of recent centuries has made these techniques a life-and-death matter. In this crisis Christian leaders have launched a global campaign, with the full weight of the various Christian bodies behind it, to put Christianity within reach of everyone everywhere.
While waves of religious propaganda thus flood over these civilised peoples, lust for the brilliance of materialism sets limits to men's thinking and robs them of the ability to go deep into moral and spiritual questions. Men are so fascinated by the manifestations of material prosperity that they are turned aside from the pursuit of truth and from the quest for the treasures of the spirit.
All the factors enumerated above have combined to help Christianity flood the world with the irrational tenets that are so ineradicably rooted in Western minds and spirits.
It cannot be said that our own Islamic efforts at propaganda have been either energetic or effective. We have been so unschooled in the elementary essentials of successful publicity that we have nothing to declare. Yet the shining force of Islam's holy doctrines could be made to meet the crying needs of man, if we changed.
For centuries, Islam has made no noteworthy effort at propaganda. After the first outburst of its revolutionary up rush from the Arab homeland, Islamic landowners and viziers have preferred to maintain the status quo for their own comfort. Meantime schism split Muslim unity. As a consequence Islam lost political supremacy in world affairs, and its various portions fell victims to Western imperialism piecemeal.
Church Resources and Organisation
Christianity was launched without any definitive social principles, laws or system for running affairs. This deficiency long prevented Christian spiritual leadership from interfering in social, political or governmental matters. So it continued until the sixth century of the Christian era. On Christmas Day AD 800 the king of the Franks was crowned "Caesar" and transferred some of his territory to the over lordship of the Pope. With this began the epoch of Christian leadership's supremacy and glory. The Church grew in power and wealth. Conflicts over the control of power arose between political and religious leaders. Europe fell prey to the oppressive wars of Popes and Emperors.
People who regarded the Church as the manifestation of the spirituality of Christ were stubborn partisans of the clergy: and by their help the Church's temporal power and influence increased daily until its unrivalled hegemony was fastened upon the nations of Europe. In early days, before deep rifts split Christianity, each Christian city had its "Bishop" and groups of neighbouring cities were jointly administered by an "Archbishop" or "Patriarch". The Bishop of Rome gradually came to assume supreme authority as Pope (which means "papa" of all Christians). He interfered in all religious matters, including the appointment and dismissal of Bishops and Archbishops. Finally this became too much for the "metropolitan patriarchs" of Constantiyya (i.e. Byzantium, Constantinople, Stambul), and they decided to withdraw from Papal jurisdiction and set up a separate domain of their own, in recognition of the fact that the imperial capital of the Empire had been moved from Rome to Stambul. After a series of violent clashes between the Pope and Stambul Patriarchs, final separation occurred in AD 1052. Christianity split into two camps. Eastern Europe was subject to the Constantiniyya clergy, self-styled "Orthodox". Western Europe from Poland to Spain remained obedient to the Pope as self-styled "Catholics". These two religious bodies followed different rites and hurled charges of heresy at each other.
In the early 16th century a third body formed itself in Europe, initiated by Luther and styled "Protestant". Luther and his followers started by opposing the Pope's habit of selling sites in heaven together with "indulgences" remitting sins: and went on to attempt to reform the whole Church and purge it of errors and corruptions. They only succeeded in creating another split in the unity and simplicity of Christ's religion: the huge number of people who followed Luther in rejecting papal authority
and sacerdotal dogma became a third sect including most of northern Europe.
The Pope's absolute power in Catholic Europe of the 12th and 13th centuries provoked its inevitable reaction. A number of heretical movements arose promoting doctrines condemned by the Papal Office. So great became the anxiety of the Pope and of the Catholic party about these insurrectionary movements that in 1215 AD the Pope set up the "Inquisition" to combat and eradicate such heresies. The Inquisition had branches in every city of France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Spain and other Christian lands. Persons accused of heresy were hauled up before the inquisitors, and, if condemned, suffered severe penalties.
This institution used its excessive powers in such a way as to suppress all freedom of thought. Anyone suspected of ideas and opinions regarded as contrary to those held by the Church was subjected to hellish tortures. These courts even sometimes passed sentence for heresy on the dead, ordering the disinterment of their coffins— a process described by Will Durant in his "History of Civilisation" (vol.18, p.35) thus: "The 'Court for the Inspection of Ideas, Laws and Religion', had a legal procedure all its own. Before a local assizes of the Court was held, the 'Faith-ace (Auto da Fe) was read from all Church pulpits, demanding that information be laid against anyone suspected of atheism, irreligion or heresy: and that such persons be haled before the Court of Inspection. Neighbours, friends and relatives were encouraged to turn informer. Informers were promised complete secrecy and protection. Anyone who harboured an atheist, or failed to denounce him, was himself incarcerated, and threatened with the church's excommunication, curse and ban. Sometimes the dead were charged with atheism and blasphemy. Special ceremonies were employed for their judicial condemnation. Their property was confiscated: their heirs were stripped of their inheritance. From 30 to 50% of the property of a deceased person who was condemned were given to the successful accuser. Trial by ordeal assumed different forms in different times and places. Sometimes the accused man's arms were bound behind his back and he was suspended from them. Sometimes he was so bound that he could make no movements and then water was poured down his throat so that he died of suffocation. Sometimes ropes were tied so tight round arms and legs that they cut through flesh to the bone."
So powerful did the Christian hierarchy become in Europe that no fewer than ten kings and political leaders of Germany and France were excommunicated by Popes. Some great landed proprietors lost all. Some were compelled to do public penance. Thus in AD 1075 Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the Emperor of Germany, Henry IV, for disregarding a Papal Firman, and told him that he must give up his throne. Henry promptly donned penitent's garb and hurried to the Papal Court, where the Pope kept him waiting three days before receiving him, accepting his repentance and granting him absolution.
In 1141 Pope Innocent II excommunicated Louis VII. In 1205 Pope
Innocent II excommunicated King John of England for attacking certain bishops.
Finally John felt compelled to send a message to the Pope saying: "An angelic messenger bade me supplicate Jesus and His Apostle, our benefactor Pope Innocent, and his catholic successors, on behalf of England and Ireland. From henceforth we hold these kingdoms as Viceroy of the Pope and the hierarchy, and have commanded that the sum of £1,000 English be paid to the Roman ecclesiastical coffers annually, in half-yearly installments of £500 each, in silver. Should I or any of my successors on the English throne transgress against the purport of this decree, we forfeit right to the English sovereignty." (Marcel Cache "Social History," Vol.II). The same author (Vol.II, p.123) writes: "During this period 5,000,000 people were punished for offences against orthodox thought, or contravention of a papal decree. They were hanged on the gallows; or left in the pitchy dark of well-like dungeons. In the 18 years, 1481-99, the Inquisition burnt 1,020 people alive, sawed 6,860 asunder, tortured 97,023 to death."
Victor Hugo wrote: "The real history of the Church will be read not on the pages, but between the lines, of the official annals. The Church caused Parnili to be whipped within an inch of his life for declaring that 'stars do not fall from their appointed paths.' The Church cast Campland into prison 27 times for claiming that innumerable other worlds besides earth exist. The Church tortured Harvey for the crime of proving that the blood circulates through the arteries and veins of the body. The Church incarcerated Galileo for claiming that the earth orbits round the sun, in contradiction of theories put forward in the Old and New Testaments. The Church imprisoned Christopher Columbus for discovering a land not mentioned by St. Paul. They claimed that it was sacrilege to discover laws of the heavenly bodies, or the orbit of the earth, or an unforeseen continent not foretold in scripture. The Church excommunicated Pascal and Montey for immorality, and Muller for sacrilege and immorality." ("History of Free Thought", p.147).
The Church also exercised her power against Islam. On the pretext of treeing Jerusalem, she launched campaigns of bloodshed and atrocity in what she called "Wars for the Cross" or "Crusades", during the years 1095 to 1270.
Although the prime cause of these wars was the hatred and jealousy of Islam nursed by the Pope and the hierarchy, they stirred up the common people to enlist by false promises of loot and by ingenious calumny against the Muslims. Pope Urban II called a congress of clergy and religious leaders to decree a war against Muslims: at which the Pope ordered all bishops and clergy to enlist men for the battle against the Muslims, and himself led the recruiting campaign in France.
So vast was the first army that started out for Jerusalem that it seemed as if all Europe were afoot toward Asia. Some say there were as many as a million men on the march. En route these plundered, burned, mutilated and drowned the local citizens. They slew soldiers and civilians alike, women and children included. When they finally took Jerusalem in 1099,
three years after the start, only 20,000 survived out of the original million. Civil wars and pestilence followed this "Christian" sacrifice of myriads of their own and of other nationals.
In the words of Gustave Le Bon ("La Civilisation Islamique et Arabe", p.407): "The atrocities committed by the Crusaders against friends and foes, against soldiers and innocent peasants, against women and children, against old and young, give them top place in the annals of savagery. One of their number, Robert the Monk, wrote: 'Our army raged through alleys and piazzas and over the flat roofs of adjoining houses like a mother lion robbed of her whelps, rampaging, tearing children to shreds in savage delight. We put old and young to the sword. To speed up the work we used one rope's loop to hang many people together. Soldiers stole anything that came to hand, even ripping open the bowels of corpses in their search for jewels or coins. Whatever they found they pocketed. Finally, Bohemond assembled all the survivors—men and women, maimed and helpless, together—in the castle, and butchered them all, saving only the young for sale in the Antioch slave- market.' And Godfrey Hardouinville reported to the Pope: 'In Jerusalem Muslims who fell into our hands were slain by our people in Solomon's porch until the temple precincts flowed knee-high with blood'."
The Inquisition's torture of the learned and thinking class of its day roused an inevitable reaction against the Church. Independent-minded scientists pushed on with their work, despite severe censorship, until Church bigotry was compelled to beat a retreat and leave the road open for enlightened study and investigation. But by now scientists had come to regard all religion as the partisan of superstition, of ignorance, and of the suppression of science and erudition. The atrocities of the Crusades and barbarities of the Inquisition aroused abhorrence and suspicion in the popular mind against every form of religion.
In Russia, too, the Church's neglect of the poor and destitute, and patronage of the rich, roused a reaction which aided the rise of the communist movement, and caused its leaders to declare war on religion, stigmatising the religious as "capitalist lackeys and exploiters of the working class," and declaring that it was only "by obliterating the myth of God from the mind of man" that the revolution of liberty, equality and fraternity could be realised.
Ferdof, in his book "Religion in the U.S.S.R." (p.7), writes: "In Czarist Russia the Church owned vast properties in lands, buildings and furnishings, with millions of roubles in gold in the banks. She drew an income from forests, pastures, fisheries, commerce, industry and much else. In fact, the Church was the biggest capitalist of all, the biggest landowner, the biggest banker of Russia. She mercilessly exploited merchants, small and large. She made no attempt to improve industrial working conditions. So great was the hatred this conduct aroused amongst working and shopkeeping classes that the clergy were called `wolves in priests' clothing'."
Christianity, in its day the preserver of ancient manners and customs, the conservative reactionary, has today learned to strengthen its own
foundations by adding to its brilliant historic past all that science and culture has to offer to modern genius.
The Catholic Church alone wields 4,000 propaganda organs spread all over the globe. Their budget enables them to extend their efforts at conversion to darkest Congo, to remotest Tibet and to the most primitive tribes of Australia.
The annual budget of the Church of England is well over 900,000,000 tomans.
Such figures, when compared with the pittance at Islam's disposal, pain the heart.
The Gospel has been translated into more than 1,000 languages. In 1973 the American "Society for the Publication and Distribution of the Gospel" put out 24 million copies.
The Vatican publishes its own newspaper "L' Osservatore Romano" with a daily circulation of 300,000. It produces some 50 monthly periodicals with a total circulation of several millions per month. It runs 32,000 primary schools, universities and hospitals. Four powerful agencies dispatch missionaries to the other continents.
Christianity employs three methods of propaganda:
1. translation of the books of the New Testament;
2. erection of churches and places of worship;
3. dispatch of missionaries to all parts of the world.
Protestant sects likewise exert remarkable efforts at spreading their faith. "The Reader's Digest" wrote: "The revolutionary foundation of the Protestant Church of America was a revolt against efforts in Europe to renew the exaction of the 'tithe' which has been the Church's ancient right. Yet from 1950 on, the movement of 'stewardship' has been taken up increasingly, so that many congregations have doubled or trebled their contributions, and thus made possible hundreds of new church buildings, and the reinforcement of missions at home and abroad. Most important, congregations and their members have realised the joyful results and unexpected rewards of the revival of this ancient custom."
