Churchill did not write that extensively about Islam. But what he did write was prescient and accurate. He viewed Islam and Arab imperialism as any rational statesman would – in the light of reality, geo-politics and international power. It is highly doubtful that he or any rational analyst, would view Islam and its Koran as something sacred and holy. The Koran is simply an ideological tool – one fashioned over centuries by different writers, each trying to explain and defend Arab and Islamic imperialism by appealing to a divine power and a God-mandated message and framework of living.
Churchill did accept the premises of Judeo-Christianity and the ethical messages of the Bible. Of course he did not accept the Muslim demand that the Koran is sacred and God-given and created. This book is a man made document, infused with Arab paganism, Judeo-Christian ideas, the Abrahamic traditions and many general Near Eastern practices and spiritual concepts. As such it cannot be any more sacred than any other work which tries to explain an ideology, a point of view, or some spiritual dimension.
Every movement needs a 'Koran'. Churchill knew for example that Mein Kampf informed Hitlerism. It provided a template which the Nazis faithfully tried to implement. The same was true of Russian fascism [or communism]: a set of ideals premised on the works and writings of Lenin and Stalin. With the exception of perhaps Bolivar, almost every dictator and military adventurer designing to engineer society and reshape reality has either manufactured or borrowed a 'book' or a set of ideas easily organised into a 'manual'. This framework and set of laws usually hearkens to a higher power – which blesses the enterprise and most importantly, its leadership. In the cases of successful revolutions and imperialist adventures, the 'manual' becomes almost divine - a blueprint sanctioned by higher powers who bless the obvious omnipotence and insights of both the leader and his movement.
The Koran is no different. It is a book which outlines how each believer must be subservient to the sect or cult, and which implores and demands ritualised behavior – not all of it bad necessarily, but certainly communal and not individualist. It also outlines and apologises for Arab imperialism and Muslim expansionism, based of course on the idea that the Koran is sacred, holy and the word of some 'God', destined to envelope mankind and rule the planet. As such divine approval smiles benignly on the Muslim enterprise.
It is a rather odd proposition isn't it, that an Arab created document justifying the organisation of society and its spread beyond Arabia is somehow sacred ? It would be equally absurd to ascribe to Mein Kampf or the various tracts produced by Stalin as 'sacred' and full of divine blessing – or in the case of Stalinism, the blessings of inevitable historical dialecticism.
From this standpoint – that of the rational realist - Churchill's quote on Mein Kampf and comparing it to the Koran, which appears in his Second World War history, IS a valid statement:
“All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”
For anyone who has tried to read the Koran, it IS, illogical, full of nonsense, hypocritical and violently supremacist – or turgid, verbose and shapeless. It is also in Churchill's words 'pregnant' with meaning since the Koran allows Arab and Islamic imperialism the cover of godliness and divine approval. No divine being would of course devise such a 'sacred' text in such an obscure language; nor would a holy work be so poorly written, organised and 'shapeless'. Far from being a work of literary art, the Koran is largely gibberish premised on naked supremacism, racism and temporal power-seeking.
Churchill was one of the few politicians in England who bothered to read Mein Kampf in the early 1930s. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Churchill already understood the Nazi program – it was laid out nicely in Hitler's deranged, ranting fiction he conjured during his short prison term after the 1924 Munich putsch debacle, in which the Nazis tried and failed to foment a Bavarian and German takeover.
Mein Kampf is littered with racism and supremacism. It raves against Jews, Eastern Europeans, homosexuals, deviants, and the weak and sick. It lays out the plans for the German war upon Europe and its takeover of Russia. It is agnostically pagan – a program which shifts the spiritual allegiance of Germany from the Christian churches to a Nordic cult managed by the Nazi party. The same strictures, rituals, rules and the idea of submission we can read in Mein Kampf also appear in the Koran. This chief book and blueprint also gave the Nazi program the same impetus and inevitability as Islamic doctrine – under the cover of scientific Darwininian socialism and rational destiny.
There is also the poignant fact, that Hitler was a great admirer of Islam. Churchill knew this. Hitler's admiration of Islam was quite public. Hitler desired to turn Linz and Berlin into 'Meccas' where the subservient races would pilgrimage and prostrate themselves in front of Nazi power and mastery. Hitler often praised Islam as an ideology of war and manliness. Hitler's ideal state was that exemplified by the Muslim empire - violent, a submissive population and ruled by decrees, strictures and rituals.
One of the most important questions in the general political-economy which exists today is this - Why is the Koran regarded as 'sacred' ? Is it because we are told so ? Do you really believe that an illiterate pagan Meccan political-military adventurer in the early 7th century A.D. had conversations with angels in ancient Arabic, and through this medium, a 'God' ? How rational, intelligent or 'sacred' is such a belief ? If the Bible and Judeo-Christian beliefs and writings can be opened up for rational inquiry why not the Koran and the life of Mohammed ? Why would a divine being pick out an illiterate ambitious war leader, in an unimportant state, in an unimportant tongue ?
Why is the Koran – an extremely opaque, hard to understand, contradictory, and not to mention supremacist and racist tract; deemed 'holy' ? How does one explain the litany of suras, or verses advocating violence, hate, death and imperialism ? Would a 'God' write such a text ? Is 'God' a supremacist who mandates that all humans follow his rituals, rules, man-made 'laws', and man-made injunctions – with one man who is called a 'prophet' the one to decide what these strictures are ?
Churchill's claim that Mein Kampf is like the Koran is accurate. It is apposite in this sense – it is the ideological and spiritual cover for imperialism. Like the Bible the Koran is suffused with human created inaccuracies, fantasies and poorly written statements. Like the Bible the Koran needs to be opened up to historical analysis. Like the Bible, the Koran should be viewed as part of a greater historical whole, as part of man's efforts to reconcile the spiritual world with the temporal. Until Islam is mature enough to allow such an inquiry it must be viewed not as some 'sacred' group under the rubric of a religion, but as an Arabian cult – an intolerant, irrational and quite backwards cult.