"Thus the unique formative power of Islam depends on the unique nature of their God. Allah deserves the name of the Master of Armies far more than Jehovah, far more than the Christian God. He is an autocrat in the sense of a general, not that of a tyrant And thus I appear to have it: the Mohammedan faith signifies, as the only one in the world, essentially military discipline. There is no question of right, no begging, no arguing, no crawling to and before God; here mere intention in prayer is a cardinal sin; man has to obey orders like a soldier. Now no one will deny that the form of consciousness of a well-drilled soldier ensures the greatest efficiency of all everywhere where execution and not thinking out of a problem is concerned. The Islamic world represents a single army with a unified, unbroken spirit. Such a spirit melts down all differences in the long runj it makes every one into a comrade.In Islam it has melted down all racial differences. The ritualism of this faith has a different significance from that of Hinduism and Catholicism. It is a question of making discipline objective. When the faithful perform their prayers at fixed hours in the mosque, kneeling there line upon line, when they all go through the same gesture simultaneously, this is not done, as in the case of Hinduism, as a means to self-realisation, but it is done in the spirit in which a Prussian soldier files past his Emperor. This fundamentally military attitude explains all the intrinsic advantages of a Mussulman. It explains simultaneously his fundamental failings: his lad: of progressiveness, his inadaptability, his lad: of inventive power. The soldier only has to obey his orders; the rest is Allah's business."

Hermann von Keyserling Philosophy See all quotes by Hermann von Keyserling →

React to this quote

More by Hermann von Keyserling

“I have not found in Europe or America, poets, thinkers or popular leaders equal, or even comparable, to those of India today.”

“Benares is holy. Europe, grown superficial, hardly understands such truths anymore.....I feel nearer here than I have ever done to the heart of the world; here I feel everyday as if soon, perhaps even today, I would receive the grace of supreme revelation...The atmosphere of devotion which hangs above the river is improbable in strength; stronger than in any church that I have ever visited. Every would be Christian priest would do well to sacrifice a year of his theological studies in order to spend his time on the Ganges; here he would discover what piety means.”

“The absolute superiority of India over the West in philosophy; poetry from the Mahabharata, containing the Bhagavad-Gita, “perhaps the most beautiful work of the literature of the world.”

““This philosophical nation par excellence” says Count Keyserling, “has more Sanskrit words for philosophical and religious thought than are found in Greek, Latin and German combined.”

“Hinduism has produced the profoundest metaphysics that we know of.”

“Hinduism at its best has spoken the only relevant truth about the way to self-realization in the full sense of the word.”

Resonant Thoughts

"There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every color holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a person who has no art in him, colors are colo…"

— Emil Nolde

Art1867–1956

#justice

"In the most trying hours, through dismal nights and endless interrogations and maltreatment, during days of killing solitude in cells and close confinement, we were always sustained by the hope that a…"

— Josip Broz Tito

Politics1892–1980

#hope

"The ROK Army military school system was patterned exactly after ours, as was their naval training system. The ROKs during the war developed a Korean West Point and a Korean Annapolis. They created the…"

— Mark W. Clark

Military1896–1984

#war

"From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity. It was by affirming the irreducible character of ambiguity that Kierkegaard opposed himself to Hegel, and it is by …"

— Simone de Beauvoir

Philosophy1908–1986

#philosophy