Humanity in the slaughterhouse of ideas

October 2023 is one of human history’s most ugly and bitter times. The Hamas attack on Israel and the assassination of defenseless people at the music festival and ordinary citizens on the one hand and Israel’s indiscriminate attack on the Gaza Strip, on the other hand, showed that there is still a long way from fulfilling the worthy position of humans. The Second World War and the disaster that fascism and Nazism had brought to humanity caused the production of many critical literature and frameworks. But despite the crimes we see, it seems that modern man’s intellectual and cultural efforts were not enough. We still see humanity in the slaughterhouse.

In this article, I intend to illustrate that the above horrible crimes are affected by the Primacy of ideas over man’s ” existence.” Ideas are created in some people’s minds and dominate the lives of human groups based on circumstances.

The current tragedies in Palestine are caused by fake and reactionary narratives that have imposed themselves on people based on the conditions that have occurred in the modern era and will continue as long as humanity does not find a suitable solution to this problem.

Israel and Hamas are sworn enemies of each other. In many ways, they have fundamental differences, but one stuff is common to both. The identity of both is based on a political narrative of religion. Zionism and Islamism are political narratives of the identity of Israel and Hamas that have been formed in the contemporary period and have imposed themselves on the modern world.

These ideologies’ logic and narrative components are such that committing a crime against humanity is not only not so ugly but also recommended in some cases. And this is humanity in the slaughterhouse of ideas.

In the modern era, political units are known as nation-states. If we consider the origin of the formation of nation-states as the Peace of Westphalia, then it becomes easier to understand and recognize these political units.

The Peace of Westphalia was the end of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, ending the domination of the Church and the Roman Empire over the regions that decided to rule independently of each other. Therefore, the independence of political units with clear boundaries, the separation of religion from politics, and the non-interference of competing powers in each other’s internal affairs are considered to be the main results of the peace of Westphalia.

It seems that there is a possibility of democracy based on these results. These are the blessings and interests that the formation of nation-states as new political units in the world has provided. But that’s not all. The establishment of the nation-state has also faced fundamental challenges that have caused reactions. Two important reactions are Zionism and Islamism.

Humanity in the Slaughterhouse of Zionism

The political narrative of Judaism based on living in the “promised land” and establishing the government of the “chosen people” is called the ideology of Zionism. Several reasons are mentioned regarding the formation of Zionism, but all of them arise from the developments and relations of the modern era.

In the merger of ethnic and religious groups with each other under the banner of nation-building, many tensions were formed. On the one hand, some orthodox fanatics were not ready to take their Jewish identity home and be considered mere citizens in the public realm.

On the other hand, it was not easy for others to accept Jews as citizens. Jews who came out of their ghettos and wanted to integrate into the urban space sometimes faced insulting reactions from others. The continuation of this situation will cause Jewish elites and intellectuals to seek otherization and build their political society.

Zionism is the product of this otherization. The ideology of Zionism is a product of thought that tries to make its desired political society with the narrative components of the religious.

The two main components of Zionism are belief in the chosen people and the promised land.

The doctrine of the chosen people, which is always repeated in Jewish religious books, in the field of religion and the relationship between man and God, is mainly focused on moral results, following the Sharia, conscientiousness in promoting religion. When such a function goes beyond the field of religion in the modern era and includes the field of politics, it can bring unpleasant results. These results can lead to the separation of insiders and non-insiders of people living in a land and may bring racism.

“The Promised Land”, like the belief in “the chosen people”, has meanings and functions in the framework of religion, which cannot be very convincing in the modern era. When God promises Abraham the possession of land and when the Jews have been displaced due to the invasion and wars, “the promised land” is a sign of the divine reward that “the chosen people” think they deserve.

However, the land in the context of the modern age, regardless of its religious function and divine sanctity, with clear borders, is the determination of the geographical scope of the government’s authority, which was established by the will of the inhabitants of that land. If this land is considered a divine deposit to a special group, it means permission to live for that people and expel others from it.

Humanity in the Slaughterhouse of Islamism

In its charter, the Hamas military group emphasizes that it is a faction of Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen (The Muslim Brotherhood) that gave its province to Allah took the way of life from Islam, and strives to raise the flag of Allah all over Palestine. Its goal is Allah, its leader is the Messenger of God, and its law is the Qur’an, as well as Jihad, its method, and dying in the way of God is its highest ideal.

The land of Palestine is the land of Islamic endowment and is dedicated to the generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. Hamas considers the loss of any part of Islamic Palestine as the loss of a part of religion. All these statements indicate that Hamas is an Islamist group and makes decisions and acts based on this political ideology.

Islamism, like Zionism, is a reaction to modernism, with the difference that in Muslim lands, modernization showed itself at once with the destruction of the old discipline and colonial presence. The confrontation of Muslims with modernism had two aspects: First, the benefits brought by new technology and science. Second; The collapse of values and foundations on which the structure of social and political life was formed over many centuries. It was obvious that the first reaction to this confrontation was to raise the question of how to achieve the blessings of the new world and continue the traditional life structure. Islamism was the answer presented to this question. This answer suffers from a fundamental neglect.

Neglecting the fact that the blessings of the modern world are based on knowledge that involves a new mechanism and structure of social and political life. We cannot accept one and reject the other. Modern gifts have been the result of a fundamental shift in the authority of science and knowledge from the hidden world to Human rationality. It is with the authority of human reason that the new world is formed with all its blessings. A human being can achieve such a capability that he is free from predetermined requirements, a self-legislator, and a decision-maker in social and political life. Unfortunately, the response of fanatical Muslim thinkers to the above question, regardless of this inevitable matter, was as follows:

“Although today we witness the flourishing of Western civilization and Muslims experience a miserable life, this situation has not always been like this throughout history. Once upon a time, Muslims were at the peak of civilization and Westerners aspired to live in Muslim societies.

What provided that brilliant civilization for Muslims was the religion of Islam and following the pure commands of the Prophet and his righteous companions. The more Muslims distanced themselves from Islam and its commandments over time, the more calamities and misfortunes came to them. Today’s situation is the result of this forgetfulness and distance from pure Islam. To reach the peak of civility, there is no other choice but to return to the way of the ancestors and the true standards of Islam”.

It can be seen that Islamism is also an attempt to create an idea for the establishment of a political society. Islamism also aims to make people conform to its drawing format. Those who do not fit into this format will be rejected and destroyed.

The land of Palestine has become a place of conflict between two ideologies, Zionism and Islamism. As long as the parties to the conflict have based their meaningful social and political life system on these two ideologies, there is no possibility of resolving the conflict. The solution to the Palestinian issue depends on the displacement and precedence of human “existence” over ideas.

The people living in that land, regardless of every religion, are an existing and inescapable reality that is the basis of any political order. The people living in that land must determine their future together and interact with each other before any ideologies. The difference between the primacy of human existence and ideas is shown in the scheme below:

The future of a nation-state depends on the Primacy of ideas or “the existence of human”

The attack on the music festival and the machine gun fire on the excited youth, the bombing of schools, the attack on the hospital, and the killing of children and unarmed people show that the perpetrators of these crimes are unable to see each other. Ideologies are like the blindfold in front of their eyes.

The ideas of Zionism and Islamism have practically denied the possibility of any interaction between the people living in that land, both Muslim and Jewish, etc. It must be accepted that people living in that land now can agree about their future by talking and interacting with each other regardless of imposed ideologies. The solution to this anti-human situation is to provide a platform that makes this meeting and dialogue possible.

This a conversation between people who until now, are affected by the above ideologies, call each other enemies, and try to kill each other with their eyes closed. There is still Humanity in the Slaughterhouse of ideas.