Editor’s note: Claire Khaw is one of Britain’s most provocatively iconoclastic thinkers. Imagine the reaction she gets, in certain quarters, from statements like: “…my purpose is to restore the patriarchy by means of establishing a one-party theocracy based on the Koranic principles that will replace the immorality of feminism.”
Among the many post-9/11 Western reactions to Islam, hers is certainly one of the most original and thought-provoking.
Those interested in the overlap of Islamic and Enlightenment thought may also want to read “Enlightenment Unitarianism.”
-ABaB
Secular Koranism and Whig History
By Claire Khaw
What is Secular Koranism?
It is a legal system based on the Commandments of Allah found in the Koran interpreted literally but permissively by a legally trained non-Muslim female and former liberal and feminist.
Its adoption would require the cooperation and the members of a Supreme Court who would be asked to identify, list and number the Commandments of Allah in the Koran. This would of course include https://quran.com/2/256 which supports the First Amendment so sacred to Americans and Liberals.
Whig History
Liberalism comes from America and France whose operating motive was to free Europeans from the oppression of absolute monarchy requiring their subjects to follow the religion of their monarch under pain of death.
As we know, the Age of Monarchy ensured that Europeans enjoyed very few rights at all, when heretics would be burned at the stake just for questioning the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus. In a Europe of absolute monarchies, blasphemy was both a mortal sin and a capital offence.
There was once a time when Catholicism was so oppressive that even monarchs rebelled. Henry II threatened to convert to Islam in his communications with the Pope after tiring of his former friend Thomas Becket whom he had appointed Archbishop of Canterbury being more interested in serving the Catholic Church than in being a loyal supporter of his king. However, Henry did not quite dare, suspecting that most of his subjects would not willingly embrace a new religion simply because their king did, and that there would be trouble if he pushed his luck.
The English Reformation
The last straw for an English monarch was when the Pope refused to annul the marriage of Henry VIII when he realised that his then 40 year old wife Katherine of Argon would not be bearing him any more children after giving him a daughter, Mary – the one who later became Bloody Mary of the brief but bloody Marian Restoration and Counter Reformation.
If Henry VIII had already been Muslim, he could easily have taken up to four wives without having to divorce or behead any of them. That would have saved the English the terrible bloodshed of the English Reformation.
Approximately 900 to 1,000 people were executed or died in prison for religious reasons during the religious conflicts of the English Reformation and subsequent Elizabethan persecutions.
Estimates for the total number of deaths resulting directly and indirectly from the European wars of religion and related conflicts sparked by the Protestant Reformation generally range from 4 million to 12 million people, though broader estimates combining famine, disease, and persecutions across the 16th and 17th centuries can be higher.
The Doctrine and Dogma of the Trinity is now a legless tripod for a redundant monarchy
If Europe had already been Muslim, there would have been no need for the terrible Wars of the Reformation only to discover that Christianity is in fact beyond Reformation. How can a religion that actually requires its adherents to practise idolatry and commit blasphemy every time they pray to Jesus be capable of Reformation?
Christian Unitarianism is already in existence but its churches do not have the lineage and prestige of Catholicism, Anglicanism or the Orthodox Church. Attempting to change the liturgy, prayer book or rituals of these churches would actually mean the hollowing out of Trinitarian Christianity itself leaving what was formerly a tripod without any legs. The kindest thing would be for the government to step in and adapt Christian institutions to the new and more efficient system gradually.
While it is true that the Founding Fathers founded the Unitarian Church, the fact that it lacks divine revelation has made Unitarians unable to agree on the Virgin Birth. Interestingly, the Koran accepts the Virgin Birth and even the prophethood of Jesus. It is certainly more respectful of Jesus and Mary than the Talmud of Judaism.
Christians would be better Christians if they became Muslim which would save them from imperiling the repose of their immortal souls by worshiping the Trinity – the unforgivable sin of associating partners with God in 4:48 repeated in 4:118.
Surah An-Nisa 4:48:
“Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills. And he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin.”
Surah An-Nisa 4:116:
“Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills. And he who associates others with Allah has certainly gone far astray.”
The Koran is silent on blasphemy and absolutely logical
What would be more offensive to God if He exists – idolatry or associating partners with God? I imagine God would be more disposed to treat innocent idolatry less harshly than intentional idolatry. Idol worship existed long before the Torah was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. However, associating partners with the Abrahamic God compounds the sin of idolatry with that of blasphemy because those guilty of it already know that the Abrahamic God forbade idolatry in His Commandments, yet claim the absurdity that the Creator of the Universe sired a son who is co-equal, co-eternal and co-substantial with the Father.
As we all know, the son is contingent on the father for the son would not be brought into being but for the father. How then can Jesus be said to be co-eternal, co-substantial and co-equal with his father?
The Mystery of the Trinity solved
The Trinity is but a forlorn piece of fiction created to raise the status of Jesus till it is co-equal to that of the Creator of the Universe for the purpose of winning the theological argument against Jews who would predictably argue that their God of Israel is clearly more powerful than the crucified Christ.
We should spare a thought for the European subjects of Christian absolute monarchs who suffered the cruel punishment of being burned at the stake just for asking the inevitable questions one would ask when told that Jesus is also God, co-equal, co-eternal and co-substantial.
How, why, who said so, why should we worship the Trinity if it is not even mentioned in the New Testament are questions that come naturally bubbling out of our mouths like babbling brooks. I suspect that those who really did believe in God and the afterlife but were told not to ask too many questions to avoid paying the ultimate penalty of being burned at the stake probably felt that they could not bear the absurdity of the Trinity any more. They risked the possibility of there not being the afterlife in their compulsion to sooner discover for themselves – after being burned to death at the stake – the answer to their question of whether Jesus was indeed God.
The indispensable and exceptional nation for spreading Islam globally
I propose calling these unfortunate Europeans proto-Muslim martyrs. Michael Servetus – a Spanish theologian and doctor – was burned at the stake in Geneva at the behest of John Calvin in 1650. I also propose that Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers who identified as non-Trinitarian ethical monotheists should also be honoured by the Ummah as being proto-Muslim. Once this is done, Americans would become more inclined to accept the founding of the Islamic American Republic as a divinely inspired project undertaken by the Founding Fathers who were proto-Muslim Noahides mindful of the Abrahamic God and divine revelation.
The claim that the Founding of America was an Islamic Project all along is more than arguable. If the Creator of the Universe is a Living God all-wise and all-knowing, then America the Evil Empire and global hegemon could turn out to be a Good Thing after all, once Americans see the logic of submitting to the most powerful deity conceivable with the clearest instructions in divine revelation giving them the most legal rights, including the right to freedom of belief and expression. The Koran does not mention blasphemy at all and even says at https://quan.com/17/111 that God does not require a protector protecting Him from blasphemy.
Surah Al-Isra 17:111
And say, “All praise is for Allah, Who has never had ˹any˺ offspring; nor does He have a partner in ˹governing˺ the kingdom; nor is He pathetic, needing a protector. And revere Him immensely.”
The Declaration of Independence has universal and Islamic principles
The Declaration of Independence does after all mention men created equal by their Creator endowed with “certain unalienable rights” such as the right to life not to be arbitrarily terminated by a death warrant signed by their absolute monarch, the right to enjoy liberty within the boundaries of Koranic principles and the right to pursue happiness within the moral safety of sharia.
Are the rest of these unalienable rights in the Bill of Rights? I would argue not since the Bill of Rights originally containing only ten amendments has been added to. There are now 27 Amendments with the 18th during Prohibition added and later abolished.
Nineveh, Henry II and Charles III
If Americans could collectively play the role of Ninevites while getting their living American Presidents to grovel on the ground in sackcloth and ashes as Henry II did after inadvertently calling for the killing of his former friend Thomas Beckett, wouldn’t the world change for the better after being collectively wowed by Americans repenting of their evil foreign policy?
If Christianity itself is incapable of Reformation, isn’t the surprising message that Westerners are in fact capable of acknowledging their mistakes and repenting of them morally and intellectually satisfying?
If this is what the Ummah wants, shouldn’t they ask for it?
For many years, I have been pointing out the omission of Muslim national leaders to obey https://quran.com/18/4 by asking the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury or British monarchy how Christianity is not idolatry and how Jesus is God. If the national leaders of the Ummah are not up to the job of obeying 18:4 of the Koran, there is no reason why Muslims cannot themselves write to King Charles at Buckingham Palace expressing concern for the repose of his immortal soul should it be the case that Jesus is not after all Allah and that worshiping Jesus as the co-equal of Allah is the unforgivable sin of associating partners with God.
Once the Americans assume their role as Ninevites and Muslims embark on their jihad of launching a letter writing campaign to King Charles who is known to have an interest in Islam and comparative religion, why shouldn’t we expect timely repentance and the avoidance of WW3? After all, the Ninevites repented and were saved, led by their king. King Charles doing the same would pave the way for the Western world to adopt sharia or the sharia lite of Secular Koranism after the European Union becomes an Islamic European Union attracting the interest and curiosity of the global community mindful of Islamic principles of peaceable international relations.
There is no reason not to expect the rest of the world to adopt their own kind of Secular Koranism with their unique national characteristics once the benefits of Koranic principles governance begin to be enjoyed in a more low tax, high trust and low crime society enjoyed by the products of responsible married parenting. No nation need fear losing their national identity since adopting Koranic principles of governance would allow them to remove what is unIslamic about their culture while keeping what is.
The whole process of determining what is or is not Islamic and what is or is not the Commandment of Allah would make more people all round the world be better disposed to see the good of Islam and realise what they have been missing by not adopting sharia or the sharia lite of Secular Koranism on their own terms and according to their own legal and cultural traditions.
