The Peace FAQ:
Eden, Paradise, Heaven, Edenism
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is Edenism?
- ...Edenism [is] a determined, even if unconscious, attempt to bring about a world in which dreams will coincide with history, plus the optimism required to believe that such a thing is possible.
...Edenism goes naturally with a belief in demons, for Hell is needed to accomodate those unworthy of Heaven, and especially the heretics who doubt the existence of both.
...Edenists are, as it were, nostalgic for the future. They are already licking their lips at the thought of a future which resembles a fine old wine certified by the supreme authority: "Not to be drunk for ... years."
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"
- ...we seem to have stumbled upon an underlying theme; that certain
people, perhaps all people to some degree, are driven by this quest
for Paradise [or Heaven, Eden, Utopia, Euphoria...], such people are
called Edenists. Depending upon the believer's desire or the fragility
of the foundations of that belief, those who, by their philosophy or
very existence, threaten that quest, its goal or its belief, are the
'Enemy'. That 'Enemy' must be stopped by any means necessary, and
there is nothing that this 'Enemy' can do to appease the Edenist short
of becoming one of the Edenists, if it is allowed, or death.
To make matters worse, most Edenists are also motivated by a fear of ending up in 'The Other Place' or Hell. Those who do not have a concept of 'The Other Place' often portray current reality in Hell-ish terms. The two forces, the positive and the negative, are a powerful combination in manipulating the behavior of the believer into learning and satisfying the expectations of the Gatekeeper. The Edenist can never be confident of his standing, however, and especially if he knows he has committed a sin or or fears that he failed to meet expectations, he might tend to overcompensate in order to improve his standing and regain the favour of the Gatekeeper.
The conflict between the Edenist, and the 'Enemy', be they another Edenist group or the rationalist/humanist/skeptic seems to be at the core of every conflict we have examined to date...
How does Edenism motivate Muslims in their relations with non-Muslims?
- Jihad, to struggle for a holy cause. According to
Muslim belief, all healthy men, and occasionally women, must bear
arms in the event of a holy cause that may or may not lead to war.
Death in jihad is martyrdom. A warrior who gives his or her
life for a holy cause will secure a beautiful place in paradise with
special heavenly privileges. This is a good reason for foreign powers
not to provoke the Muslims to wrath. Islam owes much of its
popularity as a major world religion to this tenet.
- from Understanding the Arab World by Louis Bahjat Hamada
- What is most important to understand here is that "to die for the
sake of God" is, above all, not to die at all. By dying in the "divinely
commanded" act of killing Jews (Jews, not Israelis), the Hamas terrorist
actually seeks to conquer death (which he fears with special terror) by
living forever. In this eternal life, Hamas videotapes reveal, there will be
rivers of honey and 72 brides for each hero "martyred" fighting the enemies
of God.
Hence, the "love of death" described by the Hamas nonstate enemy of Israel is the ironic consequent of an all-consuming wish to avoid death. Since the death that this enemy "loves" is merely temporary and temporal, leading in "fact" to a permanent reprieve from death, accepting it as a tactical expedient is an easy matter. If, however, the death of the individual Muslim body in holy war against the Jew were not expected to ensure authentic life ever-after, its immense attractions would surely be reversed.
- Louis Rene Beres
Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science
Purdue University - In a number of verses the command to fight is supported by promise of
rewards. 'Who is he that will loan to God a beautiful loan which God
will double to their credit and multiply many times?' (II.245-246).
'Allah has given those that fight with their goods and their persons
a higher rank than those who stay at home. He has promised all a good
reward, but far richer is the recompense of those who fight for Him;
rank of His own bestowal, forgiveness and mercy' (IV. 97). 'Those who
believe, suffer exile and strive with might and main in God's cause
with their goods and their persons have the highest rank in the sight
of God' (IX.20). 'Those who...fought in the path of God have the hope
of the mercy of God...' (II.215). Those who fall on the battlefield
in the course of holy war become martyrs. 'Those that...fought and
died for My cause shall be forgiven their sins and admitted to
gardens watered by running streams...' (III.194). 'Think not of those
who are slain in God's way as dead; they are alive and well provided
for by their Lord' (III.163 and II.149). 'As for those who are slain
in the cause of Allah, He will not allow their works to perish...He
will admit them to the Paradise He has made known to them'
(XLVII.5).
from A GUIDE TO THE CONTENTS OF THE QUR'AN by Faruq Sherif
-
So when you meet (in fight... Jihad in Allah's Cause) those who
disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded
many of them, then bind a bond firmly (on them, i.e. take them as
captives). Thereafter (is the time) either for generosity (i.e. free
them without ransom) or ransom (according to what benefits Islam),
until the war lays down its burden. Thus [you are ordered by Allah to
continue in carrying out Jihad against the disbelievers till they
embrace Islam (i.e. are saved from the punishment in the Hellfire) or
at least come under your protection] but if it had been Allah's Will,
He Himself could certainly have punished them (without you). But (He
lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who
are killed in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost.
He will guide them and set right their state. And admit them to
Paradise which He has made known to them (i.e. they will know their
places in Paradise more than they used to know their houses in this
world). (V.47:4, 5,6).
Jihad (holy fighting in Allah's Cause) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know. (V.2:216)
"The fighting", even though by its nature is disliked by the human soul because of the liability, of being killed, or being taken as a captive, or being injured, with the wasting of the wealth, the damaging of the industries, the destruction of the country, the spreading of fear and awe in the souls and the (possibility) of being exiled from one's homeland, Allah had made ready an immensely good reward that cannot be imagined by a human soul.
'Ikrima (a religious scholar) said: At first Muslims disliked it (Jihad), but later they loved it and said: "We listen and obey." And that is because the submission to the order to fight means hardship, but if the reward is made known it becomes to compare the hardship involved and its reward.
"Whoever believes in Allah and His Messenger (pbuh), performs Iqamat?as?Salat and observes Saum (fasts in the month of Ramadan), then it will be a promise binding upon Allah to admit him to Paradise no matter whether he fights in Allah's Cause or remains in the lane where he is born." The people said, "O Allah" Messenger! Shall we inform the people of this good news?" He (pbuh) said, "Paradise has one hundred grades which Allah has reserved for the Mujahidin who fight in His Cause, and the distance between each of the two grades is like the distance between the heaven and the earth. So, when you ask Allah (for something), ask for Al?Firdaus which is the middle (best) and highest part of Paradise." [The sub narrator added, "I think the Prophet (pbuh) also said, 'Above it (i.e. Al?Firdaus) is the Throne of the Beneficent (i.e. Allah), and from it originate the rivers of Paradise."'] (Hadlth No. 48, Vol. 4).
Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their properties; for the price that theirs shall be the Paradise. They fight in Allah's Cause, so they kill (others) and are killed. It Is a promise in truth which is binding on Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur'an. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? Then rejoice in the bargain which you have concluded. That is the supreme success. (V.9:111).
So Allah (swt) has put Paradise as the price of the believers and their properties, so if they sacrifice their lives and properties for His Cause, then they deserve the prize (Paradise) and the bargain which they concluded with Him.
from "Jihad in the Qur'an and Sunnah" By SHEIKH ABDULLAH BIN MUHAMMAD BIN HUMAID
-
`Let those (believers) who sell the life of this world
for the Hereafter fight in the cause of Allah., and
whosoever fights in the Cause of Allah, and is killed or
is victorious, We shall bestow on him a great reward.'
(Surat-an-Nisaa' (4), ayah 74)
- On the authority of 'Abdullah bin Abi Awfa, may Allah be pleased with
him,: `The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said:
`Let it be known that Paradise lies in the shadows of the swords.' (reported by the Al Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud)
- "Our blessings to you, you who fight at the
gates of the enemy and knock on heaven's door with his skull in your hands."
- Mufti Abdel-Salam Abu Shukeidem, religious leader of the Palestinian police forces, quoted in Arafat and the Uses of Terror, Commentary Magazine, by Jonathan Torop, a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Po licy.
- They [Palestinian rioters] will fight for Allah, and they will kill and
be killed, and this is a solemn oath. . . . Our blood is cheap
compared with the cause which has brought us together and which at
moments separated us, but shortly we will meet again in
heaven. . . . Palestine is our land and Jerusalem is our capital.
- Yassir Arafat, quoted as above
- America and Russia operated on the principle of MAD (Mutually
Assured Destruction) for 50 years. This will not work for Israel
because its Arabs enemies see victory in DESTROYING Israel in a
JIHAD. Arabs killed would go to paradise while the Jews would be sent
straight to hell. It is this imbalance in attitudes toward human life
that makes the situation so unstable.
- Bernard J. Shapiro
The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies
How is Edenism the driving force of Marxism?
- The religious instinct, being a sub-conscious sentiment, naturally
survives the disappearance of the belief which first maintained
it. The apostles of Socialism, who anathematise or deny the old dogmas
of Christianity, are none the less eminently religious persons. The
nature of their faith has changed, but they are still under the sway
of all the ancestral instincts of their race. The paradisial society
of their dreams is very like the celestial paradise of our fathers. In
these ingenuous minds, entirely at the mercy of atavism, the old deism
is objectified under the earthly form of a providential State,
repairing all injustice, and possessing the illimitable power of the
ancient gods. Man does sometimes change his idols, but how shall he
shatter the hereditary matrices of thought that give them birth ?
- Gustave Le Bon, in The Psychology of Socialism
- Christian and Islamic Edenisms derive their strength from their
promises for the future. Marxism does the same, though careful to
invoke scientific causality; the proletariat, progressively shrinking,
as Marxist principles deteriorate, to the party, then to the
Politburo, and finally to the leader, is the predestined agent of
revolutionary change, the automatic victor is the class struggle, and
finally the force which will create a classless society.
...The history of society, like the lives of men, is subject to ups and downs rendered easier to bear by dreams of a better future, as Marxist critics have vigorously asserted in their criticism of the traditional religions, overlooking the fact that Marxism, too, is open to the same charge.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"
How is Edenism related to antisemitism?
- Edenists believe that they have left Judaism behind, but its very
survival is felt as a kind of affront. Jewish scepticism about
pie-in-the-sky has to be paid for by persecution, attempts at
assimilation, or condescension.
...the survival of the Jews is a refutation of that eschatalogical view of things which history has so obviously condemned, including the high hopes once entertained of the 1917 Revolution. Hence, anti-Semitism is in no sense a feature of the Right alone.
...If, then, the very existence of Israel is felt by some to be an aggression, it is because the affirmation of a Jewish existence is felt to be an aggression by the eschatological faiths deriving from Judaism. For them, Jewish emancipation, as soon as it goes beyond demanding that toleration which is the maximum that can be allowed, represents and intolerable provocation. Any freedom to return to the deeper sources radically challenges (although in a form not very clearly understood) the diluted and composite rivulets which spring therefrom.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"
How is Edenism responsible for internal Jewish divisions?
- It [the moment of the Oslo agreement revelation, or of the
handshake] allowed us to dream great dreams-of Israel as the Hong Kong
of a new Middle East, of Jews and Palestinians joining forces to build
it, to create a united continent of great tolerance and real freedom,
of science, of education and understanding.
- Rabbi Alexander Schindler, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations
- Unrealistic expectations about peace work like a euphoria-inducing
drug. The process [of de-toxifying] would
hardly be easy or pleasant, but it is the only way out of Oslo's
web. Much rides on the ability of Israelis to revive those qualities
of steadiness and determination that sustained them for decades when
the Jewish state did not expect "peace now.
- Douglas J. Feith, , former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, quoted in Commentary Magazine, September, 1997
- RELATED SECTIONS:
Jihad, Islam, The Stockholm Syndrome, Peace, Automorphism, Socialism, Christianity, Antisemitism, Fear, The Frog and the Scorpion, Jews, Intifada
- WWW RESOURCES:
- BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
- The Psychology of Socialism, by Gustave LeBon
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Heaven: An Illustrated History of the Higher Realms, by Timothy Freke
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Quest for Paradise: Visions of Heaven and Eternity in the World's Myths and Religions, by John Ashton, Tom Whyte
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, by Joshua Muravchik
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Last Trumpet: A Comparative Study in Christian-Islamic Eschatology, by Samuel Shahid, Ph.D.
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Death and Afterlife Book: The Encyclopedia of Death, Near Death, and Life After Death, by James R. Lewis, Raymond A. Moody
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Understanding the Arab World, by Louis Bahjat Hamada
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Tea with Terrorists: Who They Are * Why They Kill, by Craig Winn, Ken Power
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, by Paul Hollander
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - A Concise History of the Russian Revolution, by Richard Pipes
[VIEW BOOK HERE]
- The Psychology of Socialism, by Gustave LeBon
© 2002 Copyright Yahoodi Communications
