{"id":512,"date":"2009-10-29T14:52:43","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T12:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bogvaerker.dk\/wordpress\/?p=512"},"modified":"2025-01-26T18:55:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-26T17:55:16","slug":"nietzsche-on-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bogvaerker.dk\/wordpress\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"Nietzsche on Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The Antichrist<\/a><\/em> translated by: H. L. Mencken<\/span><\/h1>\n

If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men<\/em>….<\/p>\n

60.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization,\u00a0and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan<\/em> civilization.\u00a0The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer\u00a0to us<\/em> and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and\u00a0Greece, was trampled down<\/em> (\u2014I\u00a0do not say by what sort of feet\u2014) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly\u00a0instincts for its origin\u2014because it said yes to life, even to the rare and\u00a0refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!… The crusaders later made war on something\u00a0before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in\u00a0the dust\u2014a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems\u00a0very poor and very \u201csenile.\u201d\u2014What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient\u00a0was rich…. Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form\u00a0of piracy, nothing more! The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking\u00a0nobility, was in its element there: the church knew only too well how the German\u00a0nobility was to be won<\/em>…. The German noble, always the \u201cSwiss guard\u201d\u00a0of the church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church\u2014but\u00a0well paid<\/em>…. Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords\u00a0and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry through its\u00a0war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful\u00a0questions suggest themselves. The German nobility stands outside<\/em> the history\u00a0of the higher civilization: the reason is obvious…. Christianity, alcohol\u2014the\u00a0two great<\/em> means of corruption…. Intrinsically there should be no more\u00a0choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew.\u00a0The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either\u00a0a man is a Chandala or he is not…. \u201cWar to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship\u00a0with Islam!\u201d: this was the feeling, this was the act<\/em>, of that great free\u00a0spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German\u00a0first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently<\/em>? I can\u2019t\u00a0make out how a German could ever feel Christian<\/em>….<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

For some reason, this post of mine on Nietzsche, which is now very old indeed, has recently attracted some comments of the variety “why don’t you towelheads go back to where you came from” laced with expletives and lacking not only refinement but any serious argument. Therefore, it seems only appropriate, because of the age of the post, to try and relocate it in the very different historical moment we live in.<\/p>\n

First, some acknowledgement of the very serious crisis affecting many Muslims, particularly young Muslim men who resort to terrorism, ought to be faced. That is done superlatively well by Abdalhaqq Bewley in \u201cTowards the Greater Integration of Islam in Britain\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Second, although critical comments are more than welcome, particularly if they might lead to some beneficial discussion, the kind of abusive and profane comments I am receiving are immediately dispatched to the spam folder. Those who post them ought to understand their deep betrayal of the very distinctive elements that made the West and contributed to the Renaissance, Reformation, the Enlightenment, and modernity itself, however equivocally informed people regard these matters. These contributors are, in fact, merely symptoms of the utter collapse of our values and educational institutions, which I say not with any sense of Islamic triumphalism but with genuine alarm, because if the ship of the West goes down, for better or worse we are on that ship.<\/p>\n

As to Nietzsche himself, if we can get away from his being tarred quite unjustly as a progenitor of the Nazis, whom Michael Lackey shows very cogently to have embraced a kind of Kantian Christianity, it is nevertheless probably time to re-evaluate his contribution to our age, whatever his kind words for Islam and Muslims. The work that I have found most valuable in that respect is Iain Thomson’s superb Heidegger’s Onto-theology<\/em>, in which he tackles the distinctive contribution of Nietzsche to the metaphysics of an age that threatens to obliterate the human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Antichrist translated by: H. L. Mencken If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men…. 60. Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization,\u00a0and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization.\u00a0The wonderful culture … <\/p>\n

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