The Turanian civilisation 

The Turanian civilisation was created by the Mongols of Genghis Khan. Its primary
feature is a military organisation adapted to a mobile war. It is best described by such words as camp, movement, space. For this reason family ties are very weak in this civilisation.

This civilisation has no public law. There is only private law and it is derived from
the commands of the ruler. The state is the ruler’s farmyard and his will is the law
of the land. The society has no rights at all. It is not allowed to organise itself – it isthe responsibility of the state to do so. Thus all organisations are steered from above and any initiative from below is squelched. The power is absolute and the ideal ruler is a ruthless despot. Everyone is in the position of a slave or servant with respect to his superior. Citizens do not exist at all. In the West a citizen lives also in his state. A Turanian lives exclusively in his state. All matters are state matters and there are no issues he can call entirely his own. All property is that of the ruler and one can only be a lease holder of some property. However the lease may be terminated at any time,at the will of the ruler. He has the right to dispossess anybody he wishes.

The whole organisation of life is military in nature, based on orders from above and 
thus it is maximally centralized. Bureaucracy serves the ruler and not the people. It acts in the name of the ruler and it is to him that it is responsible and never to the people that it deals with. Thus, all life is very mechanical much like in an army. It has no organic elements. 

Since social organisation is geared towards war-making, it develops only when the 
state wins, when it has a military power and successes. When military successes are lacking, when there are no new acquisitions, the state weakens or even disintegrates. Thus the major social effort is directed towards building a military capability. 

In the Turanian civilisation, nations in the European sense do not form. There are 
only conglomerates of peoples, clans and races. They are all bound by the winning star of a successful leader. Temüjin, the first Genghis Khan, organised people of various races, ethnic origin and creeds into a successful army and led it to conquer the world. Wherever he set his foot, he organised life in a military manner leaving his lieutenants as the local rulers. Eventually, many emancipated themselves from the Mongol supremacy and continued as the new absolute rulers acting in the same manner. Frequently, the people organised in this manner pick up their 
name from some military ruler, the Seljuqs, the Nogais, the Osmans and others. 
A significant role is played in this civilisation by romanticism and the legends surrounding the memory of a successful ruler. 

When a strong ruler is lacking, "troubled times" come. There is disorientation and weakening. Nobody knows what to do. The emergence of a new strong dictator 
indicates an end to the "troubled times", a return to normality. 

In the Turanian civilisation, an attitude towards religion is almost non-existent. 
As a rule it is completely immaterial for the ruler what people believe, as long as the clergy do not interfere in the way the ruler rules, as long as the religion does not interfere in the matters of state and there is no criticism of the ruler on any issue. There is no ethic that would be binding on the ruler, so he should not be judged from the point of view of ethics. 

Today, we see the Turanian civilisation most clearly in Russia. There, one-man rule is the norm. It matters not whether this is a khan, a tsar, a first secretary or a president. He is most loved and accepted if his rule is free of any constraints. And he has to be a winner. The Turanian people do not accept a looser as a ruler. So he has to prove that his domain and influence constantly grow. He is never criticised, nor contested. We should not expect Russia suddenly to accept a democratic system, because the people do not expect it. If asked to vote they 
will vote as the ruler will tell them to do. And of course any opposition will be squelched. A good example of the Russian way of thinking is the famous statement by tsar Nicolas II after the Baltic fleet was totally drowned in the famous battle of Cushima in the 1904 war with Japan. When following western press there were outcries that it was a mistake to send the Baltic fleet round 
the globe to Japanese waters, the tsar said: What do these scum want and why do they interfere? It was my fleet!" Thirteen years later the tsar had to abdicate and was later killed by the Bolsheviks – yet today he is considered a saint and martyr in Russia. He is loved in spite of all his inadequacies. The Bolsheviks soon returned to the same despotic mode of rule and even Stalin is remembered with nostalgia by many. The rules of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were "troubled times". State property became private property of the oligarchs. But now we have Putin. A tsar returned. He dispossessed all of the oligarchs and Russia is back to normality - Turanian normality. 

To remain on the throne, the ruler must have successes. Today, they may constitute influence over countries buying Russian oil and gas. There will be growing attempts at regaining dominion over lands that Russia lost under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. 

Poland met with the Turanian civilisation in its Mongolian primary model already 
in the XIII c. This, however, was only a transitional contact. They came, they 
conquered us and they soon left. They only left some folkloristic memories such as the interrupted bugle-call from the Kraków Marian church tower and the Lajkonik (5). Later on however, we met with the Turanian civilisation more seriously and in fact, with four different cultures of it, the Tartar, the Turkish, the Cossack and the Muscovite. Each of these has influenced us in a different manner, in some 
instances quite successfully. Quite apart from the military contacts, which as a rule, protect against such influences, there was a time in Poland when we were very attracted by the Turkish model. Turkey, with its strength was impressive, also with the affluence of the Ottoman court. Particularly in the XIX c. when we did not exist as a state, Turkey did not recognise the partition of Poland and received many of our émigrés. Many Poles found lucrative employment in Turkey reaching quite high positions. It was then that Turkishness was in vogue. It was 
fashionable to dress in a Turkish manner and to blame our political demise on the lack of a strong military organisation in pre-partition Poland. 

The Cossack influence was also once quite strong, especially during the XVII c. The love of the steppes, of constant movement, of freedom from community life, proved interesting to many an adventurer who wanted to organise his own military group, his own mini-statehood sitting constantly on horseback. This was possible in the largely uninhabited eastern plains of what is now Ukraine. There was a lot of romanticism involved in this care free, brigand type of life, yet basically, representing nothing more than banditry. However, the occasional engagement in militarily conflict with similar bands of Tartars, Cossacks, or Turks added a sense of patriotism to this activity. 

Much more serious was the influence of the Muscovite culture. This gave rise 
to what is known in Poland as "sarmatism", an attitude of some magnates on our 
eastern borders that was characterised by absolute self rule over their estates and total irresponsibility towards the state as a whole. These magnates, depending on the size and wealth of their estates, often treated themselves as independent princes. They had their own military forces, their own laws and often even an independent foreign policy, as was the case with several magnates from the Radziwill or Pac families. These magnates, if they wanted, could be a blessing to all around and often they were. However, they could also be their scourge, because they felt and in fact were above any law. That was because of the strength of their estates and the weakness of the state. 

In more recent times, in the first half of the XXth c., the political camp of Marshal 
Pilsudski was very much influenced by the Turanian way of thinking. We speak of his 

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(5) Lajkonik, a figure of an Asiatic warrior with a model of a horse attached to his belly that once a year (Sunday after Corpus Christi) goes through the streets of Kraków hitting children on their heads with a make-believe truncheon. 
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political camp rather than of a party. Other political movements referred to themselves on the basis of the ideology they adopted as socialists, national democrats, Christian democrats etc. The followers of the Marshal referred to themselves as Piłsudskites. They were linked by a military organisation, functioning on the basis of orders given from the Marshal or in his name. Individual thinking was discouraged. The leader knew better.The Pilsudskites considered themselves above the law. They organised a coup d’état in May of 1926 and until 1939 ruled ignoring all laws. They manhandled, killed, or imprisoned political opponents. At the same time, they cherished a kind of military romanticism, great mobility, self-sacrifice, patriotism and demonstrated religious indifference.

During Soviet times (1944-1989), we were very resistant to civilisational 
influences from the East. Almost instinctively, we rejected all that came from 
there. However, the legend of Marshal Pilsudski grew and an admiration for his style of ruling. Many people today dream of a strong arm rule as they are tired of the political uncertainty accompanying democracy, elections and party politics. This is a very great danger to our identity, for several reasons. First of all, this is a political philosophy that discourages thinking. It leaves thinking to the superiors. Such an attitude is necessary in an army, where responsibility is clearly hierarchical and there is no time for philosophising. In everyday life, we need to habitually use our reason to judge. Everything that kills thinking reduces 
us civilisationally. 

Moreover, the fashion for Turanian thinking results in a constant search for a 
strong leader, the pointless anointing of almost anybody as the God given saviour 
and giving him total responsibility for everything. Soon, there is disappointment that he did not rise to the expectations and that he did not know what to do. In our Latin civilisation, the ruler must have the support of thinking, creative citizens and not only disciplined executors of his will. Good leaders are hard to come by. It is much more common that we have to rely on a team and we must be able to work together, the creativity of each member advancing the common cause. 

Finally, Turanian thinking kills all organic effort from below. Many believe that 
something useful can only be done from above, from the central government. And 
thus they fight for the privilege of ruling. However, it is the specificity of our own 
civilisation that it is capable of correcting itself from below. It encourages everyone to do whatever is possible to improve life in the nearest proximity. Good ideas turned into functioning improvements will spread of their own by copying. This never happens in the Turanian civilisation. All improvements need to have approval from above and only then can they be introduced. 

Turanian rulers remembered as great are those who introduced such improvements 
and those who expanded the realm, no matter how ruthless and inhumane they were in executing these successes. 


The Byzantine civilisation 

The Byzantine civilisation developed in contrast to the Roman West. The basic 
difference was in the attitude to religion. In the Latin civilisation, the Catholic Church has achieved a total doctrinal independence from the state. Moreover, it has achieved a right to criticize the state or the ruler for acting in an unethical manner. In Poland, this became most obvious in the 1174 conflict between St. Stanislaw, then the bishop of Krakow and the king, Boleslaw Krzywousty. The bishop criticised the king. The king killed the bishop. As a result of this, the king 
had to loose his crown. Not because he lost an election or a battle but because he lost morally. He had to exile himself. This incident established the norms in the Polish Church-state relations. In Poland, it is improper for the state to criticise the Church. On the other hand, the Church is not only entitled to but is expected to criticise the state when issues of moral significance so require. 

In Byzantium, the situation was decidedly different. The emperor had executive 
powers also over the Church. He treated the Church as one of the elements of his 
power, much like he treated the judiciary or the army. The emperor dictated religion to his subjects. Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion. He decreed so from the throne. He called synods and councils. He decided what the subject for discussion would be. As a consequence, the state became above ethics. Its main purpose was to be efficient and not necessarily ethical. In the Byzantine civilisation, the realm of politics is not limited by ethics. It is free of it and therefore it is often barbaric. As an example, one can mention the blinding, in 1018, of the conquered Bulgarian soldiers by emperor Basil Bulgaroktonos (the Bulgar-Slayer) and sending them home on foot with only one one-eyed soldier per 100 to lead the way. 

The German Holy Roman Empire took up, together with the imperial name, this 
very mode of communal life organisation (6). As a result, when in Poland the king who killed a bishop had to loose his throne, at the same time the German Emperor fought with the pope for supremacy (Caesaropapism). At one time he would go to 
Canossa in repentance and at another would impose his will on the pope. Since that time and until today, there is a civilisational struggle in Germany between the Latin and the Byzantine civilisations. In the East of Germany, Byzantine influences always dominated. In the West, particularly in the Rhineland, there was more Latin influence. The return of the capital from Bonn to Berlin is likely to be civilisationally, an unwelcome development. 

When the Teutonic Knights were Christianising with the sword, our Pawel  Wlodkowic spoke up for the rights of the heathen (see footnote no. 1). When 
religious wars ravaged Germany, in Poland, we had a state without witch-hunts and stakes. When they had the barbaric principle of cuius regio eius religio (whose rule, his religion) and citizens frequently had to change denominations, we had religious tolerance and many exiles from the German religious wars found refuge in Poland. 

Even Catholic Austria was Catholic only by the will of the ruler. The emperor had 
a habit of interfering in Church matters, even on such issues as the liturgy. He would 

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(6) Emperor Otto II (967-983) married Theophanu (972), the niece of Byzantine 
emperor John I Tzimisces (969-976) and the sister of emperor Basil Bulgaroktonos (the Bulgar-Slayer) (976-1025). While his father Otto I was still alive, Otto II was 
crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XIII who also presided at the wedding with Theophanu. This established a link between the Byzantine imperial title and built up the imperial ambitions of the German rulers. At that time, Byzantium was 
very rich and an object of envy by the more primitive western rulers. Theophanu brought with her to Germany a splendid court that established a certain style of 
functioning for the Holy Roman Emperors. This is the origin of the Byzantine influence in Germany that persists until this day. 
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use a veto right to the election of a pope that he did not like (last time in 1903). This habit is often referred to as Josephinism, after the emperor Joseph II who was very much involved in imposing his will on the Church. Catholicism did not prevent Maria Theresa from participating in the obviously unethical partitioning of Poland together with Russia and Prussia in 1772 and 1795. 

Germans have a habit of calling those rulers "great" who were successful, such as 
Friedrich der Grosse and Bismarck in spite of the fact that they were unethical in their political actions. Hitler was considered great while he was winning. However not now, since he lost. His unethical methods did not pay, they proved unsuccessful. Byzantinism does not like variability, inconsistency, or unevenness. While in Rome and now in the Latin civilisation, unity of purpose unites but methods and forms may be very different, in Byzantium and now in Germany, a state imposed uniformity is the norm. 

Henceforth, the generally esteemed cleanliness and functionality in Germany is 
established. This comes from the universal readiness to follow state orders. Befehl ist Befehl! A command is a command! And this is generally accepted by all. On the other hand, within the Latin civilisation, we are individualists. We prefer to do things in our own way. 

Drill and obedience has also a negative side to it. It mechanizes communal life. It stiffes grass root, organic activity and introduces, from above, a centralized and 
bureaucratic uniformity (witness the mode of functioning of the overregulated 
European Union, basically steered by the Germans). This transfers responsibility for actions to those who commanded the orders. It even justifies crimes. 

It is well known that all German war criminals have been defending themselves on 
the ground that they have been only obeying orders and that they were told to act as they did. For them, the responsibility did not fall on them but on the government. In the extreme interpretation, only Hitler was guilty. In postwar Germany, a law came into force that forbids the extradition of Germans. As a 
result, most war crimes were judged in Germany, according to their standards and not in the countries where they were committed. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that even in communist Poland, it was unimaginable for the murderers of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko to defend themselves on the ground that they were only carrying out orders of the secret services they served in. Everyone is personally responsible in front of a court of law. Criminal orders should not be obeyed. It is as simple as that. 

Associated with this issue is the typical for Byzantine thinking superiority of form 
over content. Since it is not the aim that is common but the form in which something is done, it tends to dominate, however, at the same time it becomes empty of content. In the Latin civilisation, the aim is of primary importance and the form is of little significance. We adapt it to our own understanding of what in the given moment would be most proper. As a result, we constantly search for improvements, frequently making mistakes along the way. The Byzantine Germans have perfected the mode of decreeing forms from above. It was plain to see that in Germany, both capitalism (BRD) and communism (DDR) functioned efficiently. 
Fascism also functioned effciently. We tend to be impressed by German effciency. We often envy them. We dream of having such law and order, such functionality and such influence as they have. However, all of this is paid for by the Byzantine readiness to submit to the state in all matters. Our strength lies in diversity, in the readiness to criticize the government and we should defend these values against the German intention of regulating everything from above – today from Brussels, rather than from Berlin. The overregulation so prevalent in the European Union is obviously of Byzantine and not of Latin origin. 

Furthermore, there is a growing tendency in the European Union and also in many 
countries traditionally of Latin civilisation, to accept the Byzantine readiness to conduct politics without ethics. As distinct from the Turanian civilisation, the politician or ruler should himself be ethical in his private life and he is judged from that perspective. However, he is free to conduct policies unlimited by ethical concerns. This concerns not only those who practice politics in an immoral way but also those who believe that politics is an immoral field and therefore, stay away 
from it, concerning themselves exclusively with their own affairs. This attitude amounts to leaving politics only in the hands of those who are unconcerned about ethics. It is also a Byzantine attitude. The attitude proper for the Latin civilisation is to get involved, act ethically and demand from others that they also act ethically, both in internal and in international politics. The fact that opponents 
are not restricting themselves by ethics is of no relevance here. The police must also act ethically while dealing with criminals. 

We all sin but everyone should desire to act ethically, responsibly and in conformity with what one believes to be proper. Abandoning this desire in the field of politics is the main danger that lies for the Latin civilisation in its contact with the Byzantine one. 

The Jewish civilisation 

The Jewish civilisation is one of the oldest on earth. Its durability is not connected with the possession of some state or with the knowledge of any specific language. In some sense, a memory and now solidarity with the Israeli state plays some role, as well as the Hebrew language generally unknown to the majority of the Jewish people (even though they are all literate at least since the 1st century). Until 
quite recently, it was a dead language and only since the establishment of the modern Israel was it resuscitated as a living language in that state. However, neither the language nor the state is of any great importance in defining this 
civilisation. Jews often move from one country to another and at the same time, 
usually very readily, change the language used at home to adapt to the community at large. 

In the Polish language, we speak of the "Jewish nation" – however this is a 
completely different phenomenon than a nation in the Latin civilisation. For us a nation means a common past of a flourishing or downtrodden statehood, a common language and literature in this language, as well as a specified place on earth considered as the fatherland. In other European languages, the phenomenon of Jewish togetherness is referred to by some other name than nation, usually as a 
people (the Jewish people, le peuple juif, Judentum), and this is well justified. They are indeed a people but the cementing element has nothing in common with the national solidarity of European nations. 

The cementing factor lies in a sacral civilisation and in particular, a sacral 
consciousness of having a special mission given to them by God. They are conscious of being the elect, the "chosen people". This mission, of course, was to prepare the world for the coming of the Messiah, Who was to be born among them and to preserve the revealed truth until His coming. They have fulfilled this function. Many of them have recognised Him when He came and brought 
the Good News, the Gospel, to other peoples. What was a mission of one people, 
became the mission of the Church. 

What we consider as the Jewish people today refers to a tragic community, a people that has not recognised the time of its visitation. It is those who did not recognise Jesus Christ as the awaited Messiah. Those Jews who followed Christ merged within the Christian universality. Those who rejected Him became wanderers throughout the world, among believers of other religions, jealously nurturing their chosenness, this messianic consciousness, which gives a 
defining mark to their civilisation. 

It is a civilisation of programmed separateness, of programmed differentiation from the surrounding communities. In Judaism there is no specified theology that one could get to know and accept as a convert. One can only get married into 
Judaism, that is biologically become part of it. Jews do not seek converts. By their own will, they prefer to live a separate life, in apartheid from the surrounding communities. They form their own communes (kahals), they govern themselves by their own rules and they take care to maintain also a spatial separateness. They form the ghettos themselves, as districts in which they live together, comparable to the Chinatowns in the USA. It was only Hitler's Germany that created the concept of forced separation, of a closed ghetto from which Jews were not 
allowed to leave. 

Jews are not pioneers. They do not go conquering the wild world or overpowering 
the hazards of nature. They settle among other civilisations, preferably among the 
rich. They tend to migrate from poorer to richer lands. They do so always as a group, immediately forming their own separate community. 

Jews do not represent any specific race. It is a great misunderstanding to consider anti-Semitism as racism. The Jews of Poland are racially indistinguishable from the Poles. The Jews of North Africa are racially close to the Arabs. Ethiopian Jews are close to the Ethiopians. And so it goes the world over. However, the fact that they stick to their own community, their own civilisation, their own separateness, results in biological differences developing. It is not the race that forms the Jewish civilisation but the civilisation can cause a biological  separateness. This is never a total separateness because intermarriage occurs frequently but where Jewish communities live for several generations it is suffcient to develop some distinction from the surrounding society. All of this is a consequence of the communal consciousness of being the chosen people. 

The memory of being chosen by God, of having a special relationship with God, of 
having a promise directly from God available only to the biological descendants of one people, results in monotheism degenerating into monolatry. The belief in a one and only God changes into a belief in one God, one's own God, a tribal God. The Prophets have successfully eradicated polytheistic tendencies among the Old Testament Jews. However, monolatry was only dealt with by Jesus Christ who addressed His message to all people and not only to the chosen. In reality, monolatry is a form of polytheism because it accepts the possibility that other 
people have other gods. 

Messianism did occur as an idea among other peoples, suddenly reaching the 
conclusion that they have a special God given role to play. But this seldom lasted for many generations. Jews by nurturing their chosenness have created a whole civilisation based on fidelity to the Law revealed to them by God. By Law they mean the Torah, the Pentateuch of Moses, which of course is also for us a Holy book. However, we read it differently. The Jews see in it the Law, which is immutable and which has to be obeyed. Every letter of it is binding at all times. Jesus Christ has taught us that it is not the letter that is important but the will of the Lawgiver. He did not change the Law but gave it substance. He accused the Pharisees that they serve the Lord with their lips but not with their hearts. He called for the saving of a lamb or ox that fell into a well on a Sabbath (Mt 
12:11; Lk 14:5), because the Sabbath is for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mk 2:27). 

We often tend to laugh at Jewish habits and denigrate them. However, when a pious Jew travels on Saturday on a train sitting on a rubber water bottle he is doing so to remain faithful to his religion, because he is not allowed to travel on a Sabbath except when on water. For him, this is showing obedience to the letter of the Law, a moral imperative. For us, this would amount to hypocrisy, a breach of the intent of the Lawgiver. With the growing complexity of life and a development of the understanding of the intent of the Lawgiver, we adapt rules to what we consider as ethical. For us, the law is derived from ethics. For Jews, the opposite is true. Ethics is derived from the Law. 

For them, of course, life also requires changes in their habits. For the sake of convenience, they introduce interpretations of the Law, explanations for various circumstances, so as to maintain the letter of the Law but in fact, to .nd a way of living reasonably. All the learnedness of Judaism (Talmud, Kabala, rabbinic writings) consists of these interpretations of the Law, comments to the interpretations, comments to the comments etc. - a constant casuistry 
multiplying exceptions to immutable rules. This development is driven by convenience. Outside of Judaism, all this learnedness is valueless. However, the mode in which it develops is often copied and constitutes a spiritual threat. We must change rules when we decide that this is demanded by our understanding of what is and what is not ethical and not because we find them diffcult to follow. In the Latin civilisation each generation transfers something from ethics into written laws. The multiplication of laws constantly restricts our freedom. The Jews are restricted only by the Torah and all of the later developed interpretations reduce the obligatory scope of these restrictions. Regrettably also among us, in conflict with our own civilisation, laws appear which make permissible that what is not considered ethical and what was already forbidden by written laws (abortions, 
divorces, homosexual acts, satanic cults, etc.). In this way, the link between ethics and law gets lost. Convenience rather than ethics becomes the source of laws. 

In our civilisation, a righteous person living honestly will not get in conflict with the law, even not knowing it. On the other hand, living in agreement with the letter 
of the law but dishonestly, derives from the pharisaic attachment to rules but not to ethics. The exploitation of rules, of imprecisely written laws, of gaps in them, of their multitude and inconsistencies, activities on the verge of legality, tax evasion techniques, all formally within the law but unethical, derive from the rabbinical casuistry, from the mentality of deriving ethics from the written law.Yet, such a swindler, acting within the law, has in fact no moral respect for any law. 
He cannot be compared to the Sabbath traveller sitting on a water bottle, who is also using a convenient interpretation of the Law, but he is doing this in order to fulfil the Law and therefore in full respect for it. 

Since many rules of the Mosaic Law were untenable in the Diaspora (such as the 
ban on learning the Greek language), interpretations were introduced on the 
strength of which the fullness of Mosaic Law is obligatory only in the Promised Land, but not outside of it. The Diaspora became a form of escape from the Law. Since ethics is derived from the rules, two ethics developed, one for Palestine and one outside of it. Further multiplication of ethics followed, for various occasions, on various days, towards Jews and non-Jews (gentiles). In this way, situation ethics developed, which for us is something completely alien. We recognise only a total ethic, the same ethic for all occasions. But are we always faithful to this understanding? For example, do we not sometimes treat differently the stealing from a neighbour as compared to the stealing of state property or the lies told to friends as opposed to those told to enemies? Such situational ethics derives from the Jewish civilisation and we should avoid it. 

Within the Jewish civilisation, built on the Torah, five different religions developed, 
depending on the recognised books for the interpretation of the Law. Koneczny 
summarises these religions in the following manner (Table 2): 


Table 2. Examples 

with Torah 
with Talmud 
without Kabala (1) Sadducees, Karaites 
with Kabala (2) Sabbatites, Frankites

without Talmud
without Kabala (3) Lithuanian Jews 
with old Kabala (4) Sephardim 
with Kabala + pylpul (5) Hassidim, Ashkenazim 

Five religions, but they lack any theological differences that would lead to divisions. Regardless of the tradition pertaining to books that interpret the Torah, all Jews form a single family united by the Messianic consciousness of being the chosen people. A Jew may become an atheist, he may convert to another religion, even become a cardinal, but he will always be regarded by other Jews as a member of the Jewish community. 

We are often impressed by Jewish solidarity, by the way in which they always 
support each other, by their faithfulness to the Jewish community. We observe that they participate in various battles, being present on both sides. However, after the defeat of one side, the Jews on the winning side make sure that the Jews among the losers do not su.er. After the next conflict, the result may be opposite and the same solidarity will follow. This is a mode of survival they have developed living among the gentiles. We do not have such solidarity. In fact, we accuse ourselves of quarrelsomeness and jealousies. We envy the Jews for their .delity to each other over and above any conflicts. However, this difference has also a second side to it. We believe that we must support truth, goodness, justice and not a fellow countryman, just because he is a fellow countryman. We must combat evil, lies, whatever we consider, even mistakenly, as improper. That is our understanding of righteousness. We should remain ourselves rather than support what does not deserve supporting. 

Both our position and the Jewish position make sense, but only within the context 
of our respective civilisations. This clearly demonstrates that no middle ground is 
possible on issues differentiating civilisations. 

The Arab civilisation 

It is often believed that Arabs are by nature nomads. Many of them were and they appear to have developed from herdsmen rather than from tillers, chasing or following their animals in search of pastures. However, turning to agriculture or establishing towns started millennia ago so the nomadic lifestyle is hardly an identifying feature of this civilisation. 

Treating Islam as the defining feature of the civilisation is also a mistake. The 
mosques are not houses of God, they have no sacrificial altars. These are only prayer halls. There is also no clergy, the imams being only prayer-leaders.Mahomet himself was an imam, as were all the caliphs. An imam is someone who can read and interpret the Koran. And since the Koran cannot be translated, the imam must know Arabic, at least, suffciently to read it if not to understand it. In each mosque near the pulpit, there is an ornamental niche which indicates the direction of Mecca towards which all those praying should face. The sources of belief are the Koran and the tradition called the Sunnah. The Sunnah is composed of comments and notes on the Koran by oldest commentators. The Sunnites are orthodox, while the Shiites reject tradition and do not recognize the first three caliphs. The Shiites live in Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mongolia and in the oases of Algeria. The Arab world is Sunnite as is also Turkey. Both branches preach five basic duties: prayer, alms, pilgrimages, fasts and participation in holy wars. 

There are some customs derived from Judaism such as the ban on pork and sacral 
slaughter of animals. Jesus is considered a Prophet and Mary a Virgin but they believe that treating Jesus as the Son of God is deemed a polytheistic idea. It was Mahomet who imposed the monotheistic idea on the Arabs. He is also responsible for introducing the ban on intoxicating drinks and games of hazard but he gave no restrictions on polygamy or slavery. Islam is a simple religion with little popular understanding. Few Muslims know the Koran. It is full of regulations about 
hygiene and contains an exact family and property law, entering even into minor 
details. It also contains an ethical system. The woman is not man's equal and does not pray with the man in the mosque. Only the husband may divorce his wife. The veil and sack dress are not demanded by the Koran so it is practiced in some Islamic communities but not in others. The attitude to fine arts is assessed precisely but generally only negatively. Since representations of living beings 
are banned, Arab art is directed towards exquisite ornamentations (arabesques). 

The Koran, thus, touches on categories of health, prosperity, beauty and goodness. In the category of truth, it is little concerned with the supernatural (there is practically no theology) and not at all with the natural. Family and property law constitute the whole of jurisprudence. However Koran's shortcomings from the point of view of civilisation go deeper. All its injunctions are concerned with family life alone, at most with the clan and it knows only private law. 
There is no law of government in the Koran, so how could government be based on the Koran? Government is left to the will and pleasure of the authority, so that the arbitrary will of the ruler becomes an indispensable part of the law. This inevitably leads to the arbitrary will of every official. In fact the Koran is stretched to meet the needs of the State. Military service is in the name of holy war. Taxation comes under the duty of alms giving. As a result, care for the needy becomes entirely a state responsibility. Of Moslem government, it is said that it is patched with the Koran and lined with self-will, and accordingly unable to do without terror. Government consists of applying a magnified private law into public a.airs. A separate public law could not develop until a break was made with the principle that Koran is the source of law. Two schools developed, one for which only what is contained in the Koran and the Sunnah is worthy and the other claiming that everything that is not condemned in the Koran is allowed. Based on these two trends various sects developed and stretched even to polytheistic ones (in Pakistan). Some, as for example, the Shiite Assassins were fanatically cruel, functioned in the Turanian world and were eventually dealt with by the Mongols in a very typically Turanian manner – they were physically liquidated together with their families by mass executions performed by an obedient military force. Everywhere, Islam adapted according to the character of the local society. Islam is present in many civilisations. Not everything Arab belongs to the whole of Islam and not all that is Moslem to the Arab civilisation. One must distinguish those who received the Koran from the Arabs and those who received it from the Turanians, Turks, or Iranians. These are completely different worlds as far as civilisation is concerned. Arab scholars consider the Turks as something worse than the giaours (heathen), as barbarians of Islam. There is also Islam in other civilisations, in the Brahmin (with the caste system maintained), in the Chinese (Dzungaria - with polygamy modified to wife + concubines) and others. Islam does not define the Arab civilisation. 

Islam did not create a sacral civilisation in the sense that Judaism and Brahmanism 
did. The Arab civilisation is only semi-sacral. Fully sacral are only the most extreme of the Shiite sects, among the Mozabites of the oases of Algerian Sahara. Ethnically these are not Arabs but Berbers. They are bound to their holy cities, to which they must return, because their women are not permitted to leave them. The women's faces are covered most closely. Not only drinking but also smoking of tobacco is forbidden. The supreme appellate authority is a college of men learned in the Koran which exists in each town. Apart from this exception nowhere did Islam create its own civilisation. 

In Islamic lands, a separate civilisation arose, only where the interpretation that 
everything is permissible that is not forbidden in the Koran was adopted. In those 
areas, Islam quickened civilisation into abundant growth, as it were, over and above, or besides the Koran. This is how the Arabic civilisation arose, called after the Arabic language in which the Koran is written, but not after the ethnic element with which it was in no way linked. It is not Arabs that spread Islam. But their language, thanks to the Koran, became the language of a brilliant civilisation of intellectual splendour extending considerably beyond the frame of the Koran. In this way, already in the 8th c., a separate philosophy of law emerged (Abu-Hanif, d. 772). The whole of Arab civilisation enjoys non-sacral law as well as the authority of the Koran. Law can exist outside the Koran, provided it is not in conflict with it. The source of law is learning. Learning is treasured and schools of superior kind were always part of this civilisation. The scholarliness of the Arab civilisation rescued Aristotle for posterity (later taken over by the Latin philosophers). Arab  mathematics (algebra) is particularly famous, based on the Arab numerals the whole world has now adopted (imagine long divisions or multiplications using Roman numerals!). Public law is derived from the private, with the complication that it must somehow be deduced from the Koran which contains only private law. From the private law, a social system developed. Much of public life is despotic, the state intervening at any time in any social matter. In smaller communities, the sheik decides everything and the same authority served the ruler of the great historic Arab states. Yet, it is always so that the ruler is subject to the supreme authority of the Koran (not so in the Islamic parts of the Turanian civilisation, where the law is derived from the Koran but its interpretation is a prerogative of the ruler alone). In relation to time, the Arab civilisation knows the era, but has no historical awareness. 

The contact with the Latin world following the invasion of Spain and parts of France by the Moors (Mauritanians) led to the development of the most advanced culture of the Arab civilisation (Cordovan). The architectural treasures of Cordoba, Seville and Grenada are witness to the glory of that culture. In the Cordovan culture emerging from its clan organisation, an emancipation of the family was achieved, due to adopting monogamy. As a result, spiritual forces started to organise separately, outside of state organisation. Wherever this occurs, a new opportunity is born for public life, for the development of an opposition, a legal opposition, morally permissible, not constituting anything improper and being a manifestation of the emancipation of spiritual forces from physical ones. The 
Cordovan culture proves that such emancipation is possible in the Arab civilisation. 

Today, in dealing with Islamic terrorism, it is important to distinguish Islamic 
fanaticism born within the Turanian civilisation and akin to that of the Assassins, 
from the religious fidelity to the Koran present within the Arab civilisation. 


Concluding remarks 

The issues that differentiate civilisations are mutually exclusive. Integration, middle ground and the 'melting pot' are not possible. Civilisations will compete with each other and in a single society only one will eventually win. The war between 
civilisations takes place primarily in the schools. Who will have the greatest influence on the mentality of the next generation? Who will educate whose children? 

One might add that the problem with immigrants boils down to answering this 
basic question. 

Who will give a civilisation to the children? Will it be the parents or someone else? 
Since the French Revolution, we have observed a gradual taking over of education 
by the state in Europe. We continually witness the reduction of parental influence on education and at the same time its gradual laicisation. The extent of education grows and the influence of the Church and parents declines. 

This is not an insignificant development. We risk the situation that some civilisationally alien politicians will decide about the education of our children and parents will hardly notice that their children are gradually drifting away from their civilisation. 

We should ask ourselves the following questions: Do we have one or many 
civilisations fed into our educational system? Who decides about the educational 
programs? Who decides about the educational trends promoted in schools, on TV 
and on the internet? Who has the greatest influence on the education of children 
– the parents, the school, the Church, TV or the internet? 

The educational system must be consistent. It must hold onto the principles of one civilisation. In most of Europe, this should be the Latin civilisation. The education in school should be an extension of the education served at home and the two should be complementary and compatible. 

In 1925, my grandfather forbade my mother the reading of a book given as a 
standard text in her school (the Noble prise winning book, Chlopi (Peasants) by 
Wladyslaw Reymont) because he considered that it had immodest content. The 
school respected this decision. The whole class read the book and my mother did 
not. In fact, she never read it even when she was older because her father considered it immodest. Which European school today would respect such a request made by a parent? We should demand that such habits return. 

Authors of educational programs are frequently guided by some ideological option. Unfortunately increasingly frequently it is laic and deliberately demoralising. We constantly hear about the need to serve children "sex-education" in classrooms. 

Children are being indoctrinated in the topic of contraceptives and sexual gymnastics. The choice of readings is often with a preference for socialist and atheistic authors while Catholic ones are being eliminated. In the teaching of history, there is a lot of falsehood, downplaying of the role of Christianity and patriotism in the building of Europe, and a glorification of revolutions and 
internationalism. In teaching biology, the unproven theory of evolution is promoted 
to diminish the role of the Creator. 

It is true, that there are teachers who even in the most diffcult of times put aside 
the offcial textbooks and try and convey to children the truth as best they can. 
The majority of teachers, however, just repeat what is in the textbooks without any additional critical commentary. They do not want to risk reprimands or simply do not notice the laic nature of the served indoctrination. 

An even stronger influence on children is exerted by TV, watched from early 
childhood, several hours a day. And what sort of role models are to be found in the TV programs? Normality is dull, so most of the time, abnormal situations are portrayed. Unfortunately, much of the TV watching takes place when the parents are not home. 

A similar bad influence is exerted by popular music. This is listened to with the help of walkmans and no one knows what the child is listening to. Modern music often contains erotic or satanic content. 

When children have problems, who do they go to with them? Do parents have time to listen to them and advise them in time? 

There is only one solution. For home to be the main educator, the mother must be 
there. I know that I am risking the wrath of many women who might read this. But 
let us not fool ourselves. In the civilisations were a mode of family life is so organised that mothers are at home all the time, the civilisation is perpetuated. In places, where the mother is absent most of the day, the children risk being educated in a set of values alien to the parents. A home without a mother is an empty home. Children run away from such homes and seek advice elsewhere. 

It is absurd that we now have an economic necessity to have two incomes in a 
family. This is not a choice, but a necessity. The social system must be reorganised to make it possible to live on a single income and to have a living home with a mother always ready to control children and be available to them. 

Immigrant families generally are capable of surviving on a single income and the mothers are at home. As a result, the influence of the schools on the children is 
minimal. It is counterbalanced by the influence of the home. Banning of 
headscarves will not solve the problem. Children of various civilisations interact in schools and influence each other. With the influence of the home declining in the western society and with the teaching programs outside parental control, we face the risk of civilisational changes in the next generation. 

Our civilisation has to be actively defended. Even at the risk of poverty, we must 
insist on having control over our children. We must also insist on having control over educational programs. We must demand that TV programs promote noble causes and upright role models. We must also demand that behaviour proper for our civilisation be lauded and improper scorned. We must insist that immoral music be banned. We must insist that the behaviour of the society at large be appropriate and that when it is not proper, it be penalized. We must try and influence the education of those who live amongst us but do not have suffcient support from their families. We must also try and influence those among us who are from other civilisations. We should be educationally on the offensive. 

Otherwise, our civilisation will loose. 

On a different level the situation is more optimistic. Quite apart from all the evils 
colonialism entailed, it is a fact that the European colonialists tried to graft their own civilisation on the subjected peoples. One of the main routes of achieving this was to invite brighter individuals to come and study in the European country. Elites were formed to think in a European manner. When decolonisation came, it was primarily the European educated indigenous people who took over responsibility for running the freshly emancipated countries. Much of this form of influence continues with students from former colonies enjoying the privileges of a European education. The USA is doing the same inviting many students from third world countries to study there. 

Education is one route of promoting one's civilisation. There are others. The colonialists often left some legal system and a form of civil organisation, a 
representative political system, method of organising the police, the army, the medical service, the forest service etc. They also left a Christian ethic and some Christian Church structure, gradually becoming ethnically local. Not everything works as well as it should, but the European standard is usually something to aim for. 

Currently, quite apart from the colonial legacy, in dealing with third world countries, the Europeans (including those from USA, Canada, Australia etc.) demand certain norms of behaviour as a condition for the relations. Usually what is demanded is some level of democracy, of respect for human rights, of combating corruption, of economic responsibility. By formulating these demands we are educating others to our way of thinking. 

Obviously, not everything promoted in the third world by the West is worthy. 
Unfortunately we also tend to export our own evils, such as wars or supplies for wars, socialism and other materialistic ideologies, population control, sexual promiscuity, family instability, hedonistic life-styles. Members of other civilisations wishing to protect themselves from these evils resist also the positive influences of the West. We would be much more effective in promoting the Latin civilisation if we would take care to protect it at home. 

Quelle: Internet