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Title: Islam and Eugenics Author: Hakim Bey Date: August 16, 1997 Language: en Topics: islam, eugenics Source: Retrieved on 17th May 2021 from https://hermetic.com/bey/islamandeugenics
“Stain your prayer carpet with wine”
-Hafez
In Persian Alchemy the two highest stages of transmutation are called
Black Light (nur-i siyah) and Green/Gold. Some place one higher, some
the other, but the two can also be seen as manifestations of each other.
Black light is the nothingness that is also total luminescence, the dark
side of god, Chaos & Old Night, the Sun at Midnight, presence of absence
as light. Green/Gold (colors of the Prophet, and of the Philosopher’s
Stone as “emerald in Egyptian Hermeticism) represent the other half of
Hesiod’s first theogony, Eros and Gaia — Desire, and the greenness of
the living world. “And the three things of this world are worthy of the
gaze = water, green things and a beautiful face” (hadith). According to
the Sufi, the Black Light is a beauty spot (mole or freckle) on that
very face. Black & beautiful. The banners of revolutionary & esoteric
Islam are black and green — although another possibility is black & red,
as the Prophet said enigmatically, “I come for the black & red”. Oddly
enough black and red are the colors of the goddess — reminding us that
the Byzantines accused the Moslems of worshipping “a head of Aphrodite”.
Also the colors of anarcho-syndicalism. A coincidence, no doubt.
The Huntington/CIA “Clash of Cultures” model of Islam proposes it as a
kind of disease that has to be kept isolated & confined. The neo-liberal
“Global Market” model of the “Orient” views it as a source of raw
material (such as black gold) and cheap labor that must be exploited.
The resources are to be taken away, the labor is to be kept in place.
Obviously Moslem immigration to the “North” does not fit well with
either of these models. If Islam is a “disease, then “refugees” are a
virus, penetrating borders like immune systems. But then disruptions are
also inevitable, given the “logic of the Market”. The old liberal
response to the problem of immigration was to turn the migrants into
Europeans or Americans, to erase their difference into sameness. The new
liberal response however, relies more heavily on overt repression —
isolation in “zones of depletion” — incredible proliferation of border
patrols, immigration police, surveillance.
Instead of bleating a few liberal NGO-style humanitarian platitudes
about the plight of the refugees (perhaps we should give them all PC’s
so they can join the WWW!), I think it would be more interesting to
admit that immigration really is a problem; and that Islam really does
pose a threat to “Global Culture”.
Immigration at the forced/repressed pace of globalism puts unfair
pressure on the hospitality of the hosts, who have their own local
crisis of downsizing and privatization to deal with. Meanwhile the
migrant, weather lured to El Norte by the gleam of Macdisneyfication, or
simply in flight from the economic and political ruin at home (caused
directly by predatory Global Capital), will be bitterly disappointed by
the “freedom” of the “free” world. Any memories of the organic
communitas in their homeland, however eroded by poverty & corruption,
will soon seem utopian compared with the new poverty of the North, its
racism & alienation.
On a crude level, this nostalgia gives a seductive quality to the
rhetoric of fundamentalism. However, its worth considering that Islam
possesses a far deeper & more sophisticated critique of “the modern
world” than that proposed by the “Islamists”. In fact, more than one
critique. To mention a few (without judgement or evaluation): -The
militant anti-colonialist sufism of Emir Abel Kader, or the Sanussi
Order of Libya — The strange “anarcho-sufism” of Col. Qaddafi’s Green
Book (Qaddafi rebelled against a Sufi king, but was himself raised as a
Sufi) — the Shiite socialism of the martyred Ali Shariati -the idea of
the Mahdi or Redeemer as a collectivity — the ideal of Social Justice —
the ban usury (which makes Global Capital impossible, of course) — the
heroic Naqshbandi Order in Chechnya, resisting Russian imperialism for
centuries — going back in time, the Persian $ Syrian Nizaris or
“Assassins”, who went so far as to proclaim the Day of Resurrection, and
to liberate a network of castles in the cause of esoteric enlightenment
— etc. etc. — or even further back in time, the Prophet himself:
professional revolutionary, guerilla leader, returned from his exile to
establish egalitarian iconoclastic mystical/militant regime in Mecca…
and so on.
Khezr, the Green Man, the Hidden Prophet, the trickster, the
dream-master of all those seekers who need no other master. He drank the
Waters of Life in Hyperborea and became immortal. He appears to lost
travelers in the desert with water. He wears green. He might be the
unknown face in any gathering. According to one version he is a water
spirit, like one of the “Believing Djinn”, and wherever he walks flowers
& herbs spring up in his footsteps. He should be considered the patron
saint of Sufi eco-warriors — an Order should be founded in his name the
Khezriyya; more militant than Greenpeace or Earth First!, but in defense
of ecological agriculture as well as sacred wilderness.
The Moorish Orthodox Church is a recognized offshoot of the Moorish
Science Temple, which was founded in 1913 in Newark New Jersey by Noble
Timothy Drew Ali, a black man adopted into the Cherokee Tribe, who
traveled as a circus magician to Egypt and was initiated in the Great
Pyramid. His Circle Seven Koran is based on theosophical Christianity
and genuine folk tradition about Islam in America handed down from times
of slavery. Moorish Science was very successful, especially in Chicago,
where Noble Drew Ali was martyred by police in 1929.
Noble Drew had racial theories but he was anti-racist. The MST believes
that the Celts are an “Asiatic race” (which is certainly true in a
sense), and that Persians are Moslems who are also Indo-European (which
is true); therefore the MST issued passports to white people as Celts or
Persians. This gave rise to various subgroups, including (in 1964) the
Moorish Orthodox Church.
The M.O.C. in the 60’s was inter-racial, inter-faith, and interested in
drugs. Hashish was declared a sacrament, & a branch of the church
existed at Millbrook, on the millionaire’s estate inhabited by Tim
Leary, the Sri Ram Ashram, the Neo-American church & other groups. We
believe in “ceremonial entheogenism”.
The M.O.C. was dormant for a while but revived in 1986 on the centenary
of Noble Drew Ali’s birth. The Church today is largely a communication
web among widespread friends and allies. Issues of the Moorish Science
Monitor are occasionally published, and there is — of course — a web
site (www.geocities.com/Heartland/Woods/4623), the Moorish Observatory,
and related sites.
One view is that difference is a good thing -it allows for the practice
of tolerance, communication, presence, and exchange of gifts. “Love,
Truth, Peace, Freedom, & Justice”.
Among the victims of Eugenics in the 19^(th) — 20^(th) century America
were a number of groups with Islamic antecedents. The archetypal
explanation of these groups proposed a “mongrelization” of run-away
black slaves with Indians and renegade white serfs (usually Irish) —
hence they were called “tri-racial isolates”. Some of these groups had
clearly been “founded” (at least partly) by Moslem maroons (escaped
slaves). The Melungeons descend from Moorish “convertados” brought as
slave-labor to Florida by Spain and abandoned there. The Delaware Moors,
the Louisiana Turks, and the Ben Ishmael Tribe of Ohio, all reveal
Islamic connections.
As for the Celtic part of the mixture, it begins not first with
Cromwellian slavery but even earlier, according to myths and legends of
the N E Coast Indian tribes. Irish monks and settlers reached Turtle
Island even before the Vikings, and much more peacefully (“St. Brendan”
as the prototype). Africans, too, had no doubt reached this hemisphere
before Columbus. The possibility of many “peaceful trading voyages”
before the military arrival of European imperialism, and even
settlements like Vinland, or the “Welsh Indians” (a folktale with
disturbing material evidence) must be considered in tracing the
unwritten story of the “tri-racial isolates”.
In the 1970’s these groups threw off the Eugenic archetype under the
influence of the American Indian Movement (AIM). They realized
themselves as tribes, “nations” with identity and history. The M.O.C.
respects these groups as pure Americans, in the sense that their
cultures unite our real “unwritten history” & excluded heritage — Native
American, African, and “white trash”! — on the basis of tribalism,
racial tolerance, and “empirical freedoms”. It’s inspiring for us to
think that Islamic ideals play an ancient role in this heritage.
All over Eastern Europe one sees traces of the Ottomans, usually in the
form of abandoned, closed, and deteriorating hamams, mosques, kiosks,
etc. — a neglected heritage. It would be perfectly possible to forget
the “old-age hostility” of the “borderland between Christiandom &
Infidelity” simply by invoking an aesthetic judgement on the beauty of
these unseen ruins — why should it disturb us? Why not see and enjoy?
But this romanticism could go on to invoke the whole form of the “good
things” of the Ottoman world — into gardens, tulips, calligraphy, Sufi
orchestras, poetic refinement, sensuality, hashish. In a way this is
mere “orientalism” to be sure — but then, the “Orient” has its own
romanticism. What exactly is “wrong” with any of the items listed here?
The dusty remains of the Ottoman world also inspire some thought about
Ottoman administration. The Osmanli were a single tribe running a vast
empire & trade network from Istanbul. (In fact, come to think of it,
this was the Roman Empire.) The last thing they wanted was “age-old
hatreds” getting in the way of their gold bezants. Under the Millet
system, every religious minority had judicial autonomy (although Islam
retained prerogatives). The Byzantine Patriarch remains in Istanbul to
this day. The Ottoman Empire was about taxes, not ideology or “race”.
The “Young Turks” rebelled against the Ottomans in order to vent
“ancient hatreds” against Greeks & Armenians, long protected under the
Empire. Granted the Ottomans were monsters — but how do they look after
a century of communism and a decade of Global Capital?
Inshallah, some day Sarajevo will rise again as a unique particularly in
which European Moslems and European Christians (I’m speaking loosely
here of communities, not professions of faith) will create in mutual
tolerance & synergy a city-state of precious value, with an Islamic
heritage. That would constitute an imaginal infusion, a flow of energy
from the past, which would now be “our” past. This would mean far more
than an empty apology for the old Ottomans, Caliphs of Islam and
inventors of the fez.
“Islam” in Europe & America? Why not? Why not enjoy it? Autonomous
enclaves in Berlin, Paris, London — linked by anarcho-federalism with
other autonomous zones, squats, social centers, eco-farms & free rural
municipalities, & other anti-Capital entities & non-hegemonic
particularities. Revolutionary difference against the idols of Moloch &
Mammon, & the culture of global sameness. Why not introduce into
“western culture” the virus of a critique of the tyranny of the image —
an iconoclastic breath from the desert? Reactionary fundamentalism has
long since betrayed itself as a revolutionary force. Why not something
else, the “spirit of Sarajevo” perhaps — or the castles of the
Assassins…