The Character of Ideology
What do we mean by ideology, and why is it so dangerous to rational thought? The answer is in ideology’s demand for complete and unquestioning acceptance of its tenants without recourse to independent verification of those tenants or validation of the efficacy of its decrees. As is now argued, it goes to objectives: the object of reason is the attainment of truth, scientific or religious, material or spiritual, while the object of ideology is the acquisition of power. If the ideology attains political and temporal power there will obviously be a huge gap between reality as perceived by everyone, and the pronouncements and adducements of the theorizing power elite. But this will not result in defeat of the ideology and victory for reality because the struggle itself will be given as proof of the truth of the false deity of the ideology. Besançon:
But this gap did not stop the Bolsheviks staying in power. On the contrary, they stayed in power because of it. This enormous complex of false analyses, these imaginary struggles between ghostly adversaries, these inconsistent notions of imperialism, this fabulous interpretation of events, none of this did any harm. (p. 281).
The Government [or political elite] could only act on reality [therefore] in a destructive way, since it was that real [reality itself] which had to be destroyed before the reality of which the [communist] party was the repository could manifest itself. . . . The duplication of realities, the yawning gulf between the party and society, between the world as seen by the party and the world which society knows, is a constant threat to the legitimacy of the government’s power which rests on the verification of the theory. (p. 282).
Ideology is a falsehood, therefore, although having elements of truth co-opted to lend credence to its explanations and construction of its worldview. The ideology is therefore intellectually sterile and impotent, and cannot beget anything of itself, and exists only in the minds of its believers. That is why reality represents a continuous threat to its existence, and must be opposed by the combined forces of all available social institutions which can be enlisted into the service of the ideology’s defense. Reality and real analysis must be destroyed as it refutes the ideology in power. This explains the fierceness of the status quo religious structure’s opposition to the new revelation from God. The divine Qur’an explains that falsehood can create nothing; that only truth can create, by permission of God. We accept these words on a superficial level; now we can understand them on a technical-specific level.
And what is more real than the Messenger of Allah? That is the Tree beyond which there is no passing, the Sadratu’l Muntaha, or, in this dispensation, the Sadratu’l Baha. It is reality itself, and all else is but a derivative of it. According to Baha’u’llah, the history of every divinely revealed religion brought down to mankind gives a full accounting of how the Messenger and His followers fell victim to the relentless hatred, the vilification and calumny, abuse and denunciation of the clerics, the wealthy and the powerful of the day. “Fein would they put out Allah’s Light with their mouths, but Allah hath willed to perfect His Light, albeit the infidels abhor it.” (9:32). The falseness is the false idol of the clergy’s imaginations, their belief that they held power over the religion of the Lord, and not Allah, the Lord Himself, their rejection that “Verily, God will do whatsoever pleases Him,” and that “He chooses and none can object to His choice.” The records of all the holy Books bear witness to this.
Follow the deeper meaning of this Verse, “Fein would they put out God’s light with their mouths,” now accessible to us through the revelation of the divine Kitáb-Al-Íqán, and from our understanding of ideology. It is saying that the people would put out Allah’s light with their mouths if they could—in other words, their words of denial, their false speech—darkness vaunting itself before the Light of truth. But false speech cannot create anything, while Allah’s Truth begets all that is, and the truth has the capacity to create. “Allah hath willed to perfect His Light,” that is, perfect the truth, make it perfect, on earth, as it is in the heavens of His knowledge and in His other worlds.
Truth creates. In classical mechanics, F = ma is the truth, and has the capacity to create technologies in service to the peoples of the earth. It also can “defend” itself against falsehood by independent and free investigation and demonstration of its results independent of whatever people may themselves believe. F ≠ ma is false, and can create nothing. Anything based upon it is bound to fail. That “There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the right path has become distinct from the wrong path,” (2:256) is also true, no matter what religious militants may think about it. Or, that patience draws the blessings of Allah; or that He will reduce from its outward boundaries the territory of those who have rejected His teachings, etc. All true. Those who attempt to convert persons to their religion by terrorism and shedding the blood of the innocent, therefore, achieve nothing but to break the hearts of the innocent and to make disturbances in the land after it had been well ordered.
The Messengers return to mankind to restore the primacy of intellectual inquiry and to re-establish the truth that only rational analysis survives and is true, and that divine revelations, in their utilization of irrefutable logic, reason and truth, are the first-best weapon against the false deities of ideology. “Say: the Truth has come and the falsehood can neither create anything nor resurrect.” (34:38). That verse is in itself irrefutable evidence in support of our argument.
Is there any question, then, that the return of a divinely appointed Messenger of Allah would be marked for elimination by the power structures using any means at their disposal? The record of events as recounted in the mighty Qur’an testify to this.
An insight into the thought process of such a power elite prepared to go to any lengths, employ any means to destroy the newly revealed Truth from the Lord, has been suggested by the 19th century novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his unfinished work, The Brothers Karamazov (Modern Library edition Random House 1950 and later, Constance Garnett translation). In the chapter ‘Pro and Contra,’ one of the principals, Ivan, is relating to his younger brother Pyotr, a poem he is working on about the return of Christ and His subsequent arrest and interrogation by the Grand Inquisitor of the land. The polemic of this Grand Inquisitor is so powerful and evocative of modern totalitarian credos that his dialogue has taken on mythical dimensions over the years. These lines capture the thinking of an ideology’s will to power and control, one that is foreign to both science and religion. The quote is long; but more than anything else, it relates the character and identity of ideology, and that its goal to supplant the true reality it cannot fashion and remake, and to replace it with its own vision of reality. As you read this, try to imagine which religious movements today share these goals and this thinking.
Canst Thou [Jesus] have simply come to the elect and for the elect? But if so, it is a mystery, and we too have a right to preach mystery, and to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their conscience. So we have done. We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery, and authority. . . .
. . . Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to a hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions . . . .
. . . Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin can be expiated if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviors who have taken on themselves their sins before God. . . . The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. . . .
. . . What I say to Thee shall come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, tomorrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us, for if anyone has ever deserved our fires it is Thou. Tomorrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi. (pp. 305-9).
The ideas in this extended quote capture the thinking of much of orthodox religious structures, and religious terrorism, as they are presented to us today. When these words were written in the late 19th century, they presaged in their essence the mass movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, fascism and communism, followed by a triumphalist capitalism and consumerism; and the recent emerging radical reactionary religious movements of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and most notably, Islam. These thoughts are offered here to act as a characterizing capstone to our analysis of the ideology, so that its potency to wield power in the political and religious sphere and its goal to completely subvert science and religion to its own ends is not underestimated, and the continuing necessity of sending to mankind a fresh revelation to rub out the ideological gods mankind has come to worship, as retold in the divinely revealed surahs of the holy Qur’an, is established.
Ends and Means
Nothing quite shows the contrast of science and religion on one side and ideology on the other than an analysis of their respective goals, and whether means determine their ends or are justified by them. Both science and religious teachings hold that the means determine the end result. In science this means that good scientific methodology validates research results while a bad scientific methodology will invalidate results. Religion acts identically in that it teaches by example, by rational argument, and not by recourse to extraordinary events such as miracles to convince.
History (and sadly, current events) details many episodes of religiously inspired persons committing acts so atrocious that only if they believe that the end justifies those means could they have countenanced them. Yet, in the revealed verses of the Messengers of Allah no statements can be found which declare that the end justifies the means. Quite to the contrary: divine revelation declares first and foremost that the means determine the end pursued. ‘There is no compulsion in religion . . .’[1]. In fact, the verses of Allah inform us that we become exactly what we do, that the ends we employ determine who we become. It is now clear and evident that the extent to which ideologies root themselves in religion is the extent to which means-justifying acts of inhumanity are carried out, and thereby the extent to which religion is subverted for political ends.
Ideologies also exist in science, of course, in the form of deep-rooted biases, which subvert and nullify its explanatory value. Science generally refuses to analyze the verses of the Qur’án for their rationality and falsifiability or to independently verify the social states under various scenarios predicted by spiritual principles and laws. It has relegated all divinely revealed verses to the position of a special discourse and has followed the religionist doctors in declaring that science stands apart from it and can have little useful to say about it.
At the highest levels scientists may themselves act as priests, enforcing traditions in a guild of dedicants. Observe a commencement of college graduates, their attire, caps and gowns, etc., and see how closely they resemble the medieval attire of scholastic monks. Not only is this evidence of the religious antecedents of modern science in the encyclopaedic scholasticism of the religion in its earliest centuries, but also illustrative of how any paradigm becomes, over time, a kind of received wisdom, accepted dogma, opposing independent examination of its tenants rather than championing such investigations. This is well explained and developed by Kuhn.[2]
At this point the meaning of the deniers’ use of the term “magic” against the holy Verses revealed by the Messengers by permission of God should be clear. Furthermore, that these Verses were enough to demolish 1,000 years of religious ideology and structure under the teachings of which millions of persons were educated and trained, is as staged by Baha’u’llah, greater in significance than the physical cleaving of the skies, or the literal fulfillment of the other symbolic terms and expressions utilized in the divine Qur’an and the other holy Books of God.
Finally, to complete the circle, below is a discussion about religion’s capacity, as God’s Cause, is able to defend itself from manmade ideologies infesting and corroding its fair name by a native process of rebirth, renewal, resurrection and return. This discussion is also taken from the paper cited earlier. We Baha’is are blessed with knowledge of this already, especially those of us blessed to have studied the divine Kitáb-Al-Íqán. However, it is added here for the sake of completeness, and in case it presents an argument some readers might find worthy of use.
While generally acknowledged that science is capable of correction by way of its own processes, the belief exists that religion is not thus capable of endogenous reformation, and can exist only as tautological constructions within the human mind. It must therefore be demonstrated that religion is also revised and updated through an internally generated process that maintains its relevance and verifies its propositions[3].
In order to do this it is first necessary to carefully define the process of religious renewal. We are not talking about how Judaism can be renewed or reformed, or Christianity, or Catholicism or Shi’a or Sunni Islam, can be revised and corrected, which assumes that the world's religions stand independently from one another, a position rejected by the divine Qur'anic verses themselves: “And verily, this your religion is one religion . . .” (Qur’an 23:52); “Then We sent Our Messengers in succession. Every time there came to a nation their messenger, they denied Him; so We made them follow one another, and we made them as ahadith . . .” (Qur’an 23:44).
What is meant by renewal and continuous criticism and validation of religion is how the Cause of Allah itself is revised and renewed from age to age according to the changing needs of a developing humanity by the appearance of a succession of divinely appointed Messengers, Who Themselves, according to the dictates of Allah, renew the divine Purpose for mankind. By means of increasingly investing spiritual power and authority in the new Dispensation, thereby validating it in the eyes of a skeptical population, while causing the opponents of the message to lose spiritual and moral authority, the new Dispensation is securely established in the fullness of time. Refer for verification of this assertion to Surah 21, al-Anbiyaa (The Prophets).
This process of withdrawal and investment of spiritual authority is centered on the actions of the leading exponents of the status quo belief structure—outworn and ideologically burdened—in the face of the growing strength and unassailable moral power of the new Message from Allah, is best understood by examining the nature of the objections to the new Messenger and His Cause by its opponents. It becomes clear that with whatever criticism they level against the new Cause is equally true, if not more so, when applied to the previous one. “Whatever verse do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?" (Qur'an 2:106). "Verily, those who disbelieve in Allah and His Messengers, and wish to make a distinction between Allah and His Messengers, saying, 'We believe in some but reject others, and wish to adopt a way in between,' They are in truth disbelievers. . . ." (Qur'an 4:150-151). The Cause of God is a continuous revelatory process where it is impossible to accept one Messenger but reject others. Whatever proves the validity of one proves the validity of all; and whatever argument can be used to reject any individual divinely appointed Messenger is equally applicable to all the others. The verse, "O Children of Adam! If there come to you Messengers from amongst you reciting to you My verses, then whoever becomes pious and righteous, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve" (Qur'an 7:35), is an evidence of this theme; as is 26:5: “And never comes to them a Reminder as a recent revelation from the Most Gracious but they turn away therefrom.”
For example, according to the Surah Al-A'raf (Qur’an Surah 7), the Prophets of God have appeared successively, each inviting the people to abandon what had become for them a ritual preservation of an ideological creed, without any true spiritual life, which holds that once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a magical period when a Messenger of God appeared, worked many miracles and signs, left us with a Book and departed. Now we all await the destruction of the world, as promised by a literal interpretation of the verses in the Book the Messenger left with us. But instead of the end of the world they expect, a Messenger appears inviting the people to a new faith, confirming the core truths of their current religion, comprehensively explaining the true meaning of the verses of the Divine Book in their possession, providing a new set of laws and ordinances that promotes economic, spiritual, social and material advancement and revitalizing the Cause of God. "And there came to them indeed their Messengers with clear proofs. But they were not such as to believe in that which they had rejected before. Thus, Allah seals up the hearts of the disbelievers." (Qur'an 7:101). Note that this verse also indicates that the denials of the people living during the appearance of the previous Prophet are repeated in subsequent revelations.
Rather than fulfilling what the people expected of them, the Prophets and Messengers propounded new teachings, annulled laws laid down by the previous divine , rejected as invalid many of the current religious practices, and using alliterative speech established the signs and portents that would herald the advent of yet another Reminder from Allah, who would in turn repeat the process; that is, reject existing religious practices that had been perverted by ideologies and condemn their exponents, restate the divine Purpose, establish new ordinances and laws as He saw fit, lay down the requirements of a true seeker after truth, and propound the appearance of signs signaling the advent of yet another dispensation from God to follow.
Thus, the divinely appointed Revealers of religious teachings Themselves act to cleanse the Cause of God of accumulated dogmas, bigotries, ideologies and nonessential and debasing rituals, so that mankind may have at hand a useful tool of critical moral analysis and spiritual enlightenment.
As can be observed, this is exactly the same process as is exercised in science. According to Kuhn (1962) new scientific developments follow a process of initial rejection; followed by serious investigation; followed by becoming the established structure; and finally being set aside as an ever larger body of external evidence shows that the structure is outworn and needs renewal—that rather than fostering intellectual growth it has become an insuperable barrier to its further attainment, and is then overtaken by superior models and explanations.
Just as we observe that new scientific discoveries stimulate further research on older lines that had seemed unpromising before—for example, after a new discovery into cancer cures from the Japanese Yew tree, Amazonian vegetable species being sought to investigate their purported curative properties—the advent of a religious revelation also has the effect of reviving the older, established faiths in its midst. Judaism was spread throughout the world by Christians, who taught the Old and New Testaments together, and claimed that the Christ was the fulfillment of Mosaic prophesies. Islam also spread the word of Jesus and Moses in the process of disseminating the teaching of the Qur’an. Buddhism in the same way comprehended many of the teachings of Hinduism; and Hinduism spread and grew as a direct result of propagating the new teachings of Buddha which claimed to be its direct fulfillment.
These examples provide evidence that religion, like science, is capable of internal revision by a native process, and transformation into an ever more useful analytical tool of reality. While divine revelations are by nature revelatory rather than humanly accretive, it is sequential, comprehensive and progressive, as a comparison of the Pentateuch with the Holy Qur’an will show.
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