Twilight of the male gods

my god, your god, anyones god, no god at all

"My God! Your god is not a god at all, but narrow-mindedness and thoughtless delusion” we would like to call out to the terrorists and warmongers who are attacking our western world, which is so enlightened, with their bloodthirsty attacks. Completely stunned and without recognizable success in the cross-state resistance, we are hit, it seems, completely at the mercy of the desired goals of fundamentalist Islam.

Anyone who does not want to react in a gnashing-teeth, stupidly Islamophobic way, or even with mindless arson attacks on asylum homes and who would like to evade further reflection by saying: "I've always known it", is finding it difficult to understand politics, history and culture or even possible to find solution.

Is it helpful to see the Islamic culture of the Maghreb (North Africa and Islamic southern Spain) in the Middle Ages as the really heavenly peaceful coexistence of Islam, Judaism and Christianity under the care of Islam and to see the enormous cultural and scientific achievements of the Arab world in to praise this very Middle Ages?
Wasn't it Islam, with its (then) free thinking, which combined the post-medieval modern age in Europe with the consistent continuation of ancient ideas on medicine, (al)gebra, geography, physics, (al)chemistry with the scientifically remote, narrow-minded narrow-mindedness of the medieval Christianity passed a?
Schooled in Islamic science and the knowledge of Islamic seafarers, people like Columbus succeed in (again?) discovering the new world, despite the Christian dogma of the disc shape of the world and geocentric thinking To wage a holy war against all unknown cultures and to cruelly murder the Indian peoples in search of wealth.
But what use are such pro-Islamic apologies now, when anti-science fighters like Boko Haram (“Western education is a sin”) and “backwoods” like the Taliban are mentally and culturally striving to live life as it was in the Middle Ages?
Unfortunately, it no longer helps to reassure us that the abysmal hostility of one Islam to another, from Sunnis to Shiites and vice versa, could ultimately offer a barrier to the spread of the crisis in our western world, which is peacefully bobbing along in consumerism. As we can see in the theaters of war on the Arabian Peninsula, such as Yemen with support from Iran (Shia) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and the Sunni suicide bombings in Iraq, it is still true that Islam is the most effective and cruel fought itself and will also be hampered in the longer term by a major influence exerted on the world.

Were it not for these terrible individual attacks in the middle of our distant civilization, if it weren't for this influx of fundamentalist fighters from our midst towards the fighters of the Islamic State, we could sleep peacefully on.
As an explanation, it doesn't help us much if we say to ourselves that these fighters with European roots are only very few, who would tumble down in youthful enthusiasm, cultural homelessness and social exclusion.
Are these cultural refugees from Europe not only looking for support in the fundamental, all-encompassing and explanatory unity of a religion, in the connecting community of fellow believers and thus for a real homeland? Is this desired, so-called fundamentalist culture of the Sunnis really fundamentally pure?
How does the longing for a golden, pure, fundamental Islam, for which the word of Mohamed, as with the Sunnis, only has an effect without any further interpretation or even reinterpretation, without illustration, get along with advertising messages and execution videos posted by Isis fighters on the Internet ?
Isn't it to be expected here that such a confusion of faith, this integration of modern Western achievements into a more medieval faith, will not actually already contribute more to the failure of the Islamic state than all the bombings of the war opponents together?
After a very short time, many fighters from Europe have already fallen or, despite all the obstacles, are frustrated trying to return.

For us enlightened, largely religion-weary world population in the West, all this religious fanaticism is so incredibly alien.
Controlled by our interests, wars only take place when greater economic advantages can be expected, oil in Iraq, steel and coal in the Ukraine, short, cheaper trade routes through access to the sea, etc. Even in primarily Islamic Turkey, the legendary master has long since had it Ataturk at the beginning of the 20th century. the reality, the fact of secular and political interests separated from religious belief, i.e. the "thinking it's possible". In the separation of state and faith, even Mr. Erdocan can no longer backtrack significantly.

In politics, several opinions are usually side by side, even if only in the form of blocks, i.e. parties, possible, whereas our three major religious "blocks" of monotheistic world religions are closely related to each other (listed in chronological order of origin): Judaism, Christianity, Islam just from the definition: a single god = actually only determined by a permitted opinion, the word (of the respective only) god.
When the Jewish people immigrated to Palestine in search of the land assigned by their God, i.e. the promised land, other peoples, defeated in battles, had to give way.
Religious wars, persecution of heretics and "apostate" religious communities, destruction of cult rooms and cultural assets of other religions are also well known to us in Christianity in history. Anyone who wants to blame the destruction of UNESCO cultural heritage sites in Iraq, Syria and northern Pakistan must also consider the merciless rampage of early Christianity under popes such as Gregory or the Arian Ostrogoths in the old European and ancient cultural sites (Magna mater, Mithras, Dionysos, Demeter ) or then at the beginning of modern times after Columbus in the Indian cultures.
Just like Sunnis and Shiites, Catholics and Reformed only faced each other on the battlefield because of apparently minimal differences in belief and slaughtered significantly more brothers in the common Christian faith in the Thirty Years' War than had fallen in the religious wars between Islam and Christianity.
Bloody, murderous times to “do justice” to the one God, thought to be the only one. Such narrow-minded delusion cannot have been the whole point of our story! Or?

Of course not!

It all started in the spirit of a large community, when the hunters and gatherers immigrating from East Africa to village and city communities in the region of the Fertile Crescent, in Syria, Palestine and Iraq, worked together and planned for future success together evolved into planter cultures.
Fertility cults such as that of the Magna mater, Astarte and others recognized the importance of the seasons for the success of sowing and reaping and accepted the cycle of life and death as given. Fertility and offspring were the mainspring of life.
It should come as no surprise that the care of developing human life and the cult and culture surrounding this life and the inevitable individual death were in good hands with the experienced older women.
As the heads of the family, it was clear to you that only peaceful coexistence in the community could contribute to the success of the harvest and the survival of the clan. The goddess of agriculture and fertility was commemorated with small clay figures in the form of well-fed, fertile women everywhere in Palestine, Turkey, on the Black Sea and following the course of the Danube to Central Europe.
The men were sent out to hunt, herd cattle and weed in the fields. There they could use their impetuous forces in a meaningful way and were removed from the sensitive center of life. What a paradisiacal vision for you, dear readers!
But every fairy tale, even if it wasn't one like this, has an end.
From the steppes of Asia came other peoples, formed from another strand of African emigrants, in repeated waves of horse and chariot conquest.
Or should one now write: The end of the peaceful farming cultures came through the wild horse peoples and cattle breeders, to which the men, who had remained unsupervised the whole time, had developed. Out of sheer boredom out in the field, they had learned to bully each other unchecked by common sense and to hit each other's heads. Stop!
Nobody believes us anymore!
But maybe the men there, away from the actual communal life in the village, had repeatedly considered how they could assign themselves better cards for their role in world history: Shouldn't
one simply say:
Eve was born only from Adam's rib. Shouldn't a male god have chosen Adam from among all living creatures to be the lord of the family, or better still the proprietor of the garden, or even better the lord of the world who is to subdue the earth?
A supposedly sure proof by the only God personally handed over tablets of the law, in which these laws devised by men for the subjugation of women's culture were forever engraved, would do the rest: First commandment: I am the male master, your only god
. That beats all the other arguments against the women's party! This can then be expanded later:
Eg through a commandment: Women have no right to vote (“Christian” until the 19th century), women should only be veiled, may only go out of the house when accompanied by their husbands (Islamic) and are not allowed to drive a car.
That would finally give the men of the only chosen people the influence they needed. One people, one male god!
"Wow"! Class!! That's the way it has to be!!!
But unfortunately our vain bubble has to burst!

Now hurry back to the now! Seriously,
do you know of a war that Hindu India, which honors many gods and gods side by side, would have fought?
Of course: the war of independence against the British and the defense of Indian culture against Moslem conquerors from the north (the horse breeders again!) in the Mughal period.
In throwing off colonial rule, Gandhi even called for non-violent resistance. So your objection does not apply!
Anyone who can accept the existence of other gods should also be able to accept other opinions and, with a change of perspective, also be able to put themselves in the role of their counterpart.
But there are still these warlike skirmishes between India and Pakistan over spheres of influence in Kashmir and trade routes in the Hindu Kush. There are, of course, armed conflicts over economic benefits: Also in Ethiopia and Sudan, when our cattle-breeding men steal each other's herds of cattle and want to bring them back by force of arms, or Iraq and Iran are at war over a few oil fields.
But often one of the cloaks of the monotheistic religions has been put over it, like in the war between Sunni Iraq and Shiite Iran or the Moslem North Sudan and the Christian-animist South Sudan. Then we might have that damned problem with faith alone!
Thou shalt not kill, really a very plausible commandment, basically just as accepted everywhere and even more so than the so-called "Golden Rule" for peaceful coexistence. This, on the other hand, is just as easily governed by patriarchal clans; Override an eye for an eye when defending.
A postulate: "Don't do anything to other people that you don't want them to do to you (obviously despite the somewhat clumsy German) is called into question by the first opponent's blow, except: If you turn the other cheek in the Christian sense .
Uh! So you can avoid further bloodshed if you are patient and, in the case of the recent terrorist attacks, simply ignore them in courageous solidarity and do not stir up further hatred by bombing Isis positions.
"The smarter ones give in!"
Are de-escalating measures more promising or does deterrence lead to the goal?
"Just a dead Indian, Syrian, Iraqi, Taliban is a good one...! How long has this thinking determined our political actions! But we're the good guys anyway!
So a change of perspective: didn't the mostly non-Christian peoples oppressed by colonial powers have had to build up an uncanny hatred of their rich, educated masters over the years, a hatred that even today cannot simply be cooled with a little "development" aid or a little bit of friendliness.
In particular, the hatred flared up again when the whole other world around the few poorer countries (above all, in addition to the United States and the Soviet Union, above all now also the religion-free China) not only clearly showed elbow-thinking, but also unabashedly in mutual competition over could continue to greedily reach for all remaining sources of raw materials across national territorial borders.
Can I perhaps understand Boko Haram from a different perspective as: Western (and increasingly also Eastern) consumerism, greed is a sin.
When belief in a single God, who has personally chosen one or a people as something very special, gradually turns into belief in the special privileges of an individual or a single people, we are at the end of the road.
Then this attitude gradually develops from fundamentally monotheistic narrow-mindedness into socialist heroism and the feeling of fighting for freedom, human rights and a better world against every form of exploitation.....
......and then, instead of being punished for murder, even being rewarded with making love to 100 probably fairly long-lived virgins, stretched out over eternities.

The conflict between religious beliefs of fundamental monotheism has long since shifted to an economically oriented level, towards a capitalist worldview.
Would there be wars if we could abstain from both dangers: no monotheism and no capitalist goals.
Certainly not, a convinced Marxist would say: the conflicts of interest fueled by Russia and China are ultimately not free from capitalist objectives.

But what about a religion whose goal is neither divine claims nor possessiveness, Buddhism?

Surely you don't know of acts of war sanctioned under the religious order of Buddhism, do you?
If we did not have the terrible crimes of the military junta in Myanmar against the Mohamedans of other faiths, one might think that a religion that calls for understanding for other religions (but did not prevent these massacres in Myanmar) would be without an infallible deity, a male leader, the basis for a life without (religious) wars
For our Western culture, on the other hand, it is usually rather incomprehensible how one can simply live like this without possessiveness, with so much understanding for one another and without so much talking around it, right?

That still gives me hope.