Ernst Jünger and Islam - Ahmad Gross
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The Syndicalist Papers - Authenticity Blog
By Ahmad Gross 1997
Ernst Jünger is one of the greatest German language authors. For a long time now people abroad have been talking about three figures of our century: Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and Ernst Jünger. Together with the thinker Martin Heidegger and the jurist Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger belongs to the outstanding figures of the spiritual life of the century. Heidegger raised the question of being. Schmitt was looking for a law, a nomos for a future just society. Jünger kept undefiled the Adamic, prophetic image of man. Not only his unbreakable creative power, which he retains at the age of 102 [this article was written in 1997, while Ernst Jünger was still alive - note trans.], but also his unique appearance make Ernst Jünger a phenomenon of the spiritual life of the West on the threshold of the coming century.
The author of this text does not set out to highlight the fundamental nature of his restless and long life path, which he traveled from the Wilhelmian empire through all subsequent political eras as a witness and analyst, as a "seismograph". Ernst Jünger has an "unmistakable" sense of the possibilities and dangers of his era, which he actually always diagnoses in advance (Siedler, Focus 13/95). The fact that accurate diagnoses made at a given time could not only result in pleasant but also premature things aroused hostility towards him during all the changes in the political system. Jünger gave his famous answer to this, that the barometer should not be held responsible for the deluge.
Being a poet, naturalist and thinker, he realized the nihilism of our era, the dominance of technology as a "great sign", but despite this he himself did not submit to the titanic forces.
The storm that raged in this century crushed the monarchy as a result of the first world war, and the nation-state as a result of the second world war. Silently and without any democratic vote, as Jünger wrote, we entered into international systems of unions of electricity users, autobahn users, and taxpayers.
In 1932, Ernst Jünger was the first to recognize the classless, mythological image of the “worker” that appeared all over the world, whose “uniform” is “technology”. In 1960, he was already talking about a "world state", which, thirty years ahead of his time, anticipated the end of the confrontation between West and East and, at the same time, the spreading process of globalization. A diary entry from 1983 reads: “The atrocity changes its names; it remains ineradicable and permanent. Also, monetary circulation became dynamic and abstract; it requires confused transactions that are not amenable to legislative regulation. Now they rob not purses, but in purses” (Siebzig verweht III., 242).
Jünger never adheres to the dialectic pro et contra, materialism or idealism; romantic conservatism meant as little to him as did the weak-willed acceptance of the technical unification of life. Jünger recalls the limits of technological progress, the exploitation of the Earth's resources. He distinguishes between the Earth as a titanic, mechanical source of raw materials and an organic body, which is destined for the possession of man. In his lifelong quest for human freedom in the midst of a planetary nihilistic domination of technology and "powerful facts" (world civil war, atomic threat, environmental destruction, manipulation of heredity, etc.), Jünger never allowed himself to give up.
He met various manifestations of nihilism, possessing a fundamentally new way of seeing. The successive images of a soldier, a worker, a forest rebel, an anarch, thanks to their undefiled human freedom and resistance to the blows of fate, do not allow themselves to be confused by any external catastrophes. His most important work for many is The Forest Passage, in which he inspires the reader to fight for freedom. This work is one of the rare examples of a book the relevance of which only increases with time: “The wanderer walking through the forest is a specific individual, he acts in a specific case. He doesn't need theories or laws made up by party lawyers to know what is legal. He falls back on the sources of morality not yet distributed through the channels of institutions." Over the decades of his writing life, Ernst Jünger made a turn from politics, from history to myth. During the fall of the wall between East and West and the end of ideologies, he said, peering into the 21st century:
“My impression is that philosophical thinking will perhaps be covered by a set of theological changes. And for this, strictly speaking, no more ideas are needed, only images. And it would probably be good if a new Moses came and showed new images.
In any case, the twenty-first century will be very significant in this regard. The old values are no longer valid, and the new ones are not yet with us (10/19/1989, speech at a press conference in Bilbao)."
Ernst Jünger sees Islam today in its most modernist, titanic manifestations: “The revival of Islam in our days is amazing. At the same time, it should be noted that it remains dependent on technology as on the "worker's uniform" (Die Schere, 191). At a press conference on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Bilbao on 19 October 1989, Ernst Jünger rejected the "stand-off" between religions and stated: "In any case, Muslims in our time are very deeply religious, and they may have delusions. But I prefer sincere misconceptions to the ubiquitous idle chatter."
The passages in Jünger's work where he touches on the essence of Islam are marked by his intuitive knowledge of the existential unity and simplicity of this religion. A few examples from the texts should be given here. In one of his latest and most mature works, the pearl of German literature, A Dangerous Encounter, he writes of Captain Count Kargan as one of the significant figures in the story: “After his resignation, he considered whether or not he should convert to Islam, and he still today carried the idea. There is no better way to be in harmony with yourself and with the world. But how long will it be possible to remain in this state?"
Being a passionate traveler around the world, Jünger pointed out the deep meaning that a Muslim attaches to a trip as a life parable and stated in his diary entries: “In every passage there must be an element of pilgrimage in the old sense of the word. Otherwise, it remains a collection of images that are harmful to the wanderer because they destroy him. A Muslim does not know travel as we understand it, he knows only trade trips, military campaigns, and pilgrimages. Yet he sees more than the light effects and their beauty when he kneels on his carpet in the desert” (Sämtliche Werke, VI., San Pietro, S.348).
"Why is it that being in Islam, without any telescope, one plunges much deeper into infinity? One gets the impression that only a thin sheet separates the worlds. “La ilaha ilallah” is an equation, an unshakable support on which they rest. And the mind has insight only if it sharpens its teeth on this diamond (Sämtliche Werke, VI., S.378, Serpentara).“In the quarter of Muslim merchants - I don’t know what nationality - silver and silk products were sold. I was already pleased with the names on the signboards: amidu, sansida, sidimed. I went to some of these shops. Pictures of Mecca and pious sayings hung on the walls, something like "Everything changes, God alone is constant", also common commandments, of which I especially liked: 1. If someone does not know, and he does not know that he does not know, then he is a fool, avoid him. 2. If someone does not know, and he knows that he does not know, then he deserves respect and is worthy of becoming a disciple. 3. If someone knows and he does not know that he knows, then he is capable of becoming a teacher. 4. If someone knows and he knows that he knows, then he is a prophet, follow him” (Siebzig verweht II, Monrovia, 1.7.3.1979).
In 1985, he published some of his diary entries on the early Sufis: Early Islamic Mystics. It would be possible to quote almost the entire notebook. Obviously for us this is hardly an ajar treasury. Abu Bakr Shibli, a Baghdad mystic known for his eccentric behavior, died in 945. About him: Once he had a stick in his hand, which burned with a bright flame at both ends. He was asked: What are you thinking? I run to set fire to heaven with one end and hell with the other, so that all people are devoted only to God. His saying "Science states, knowledge hints" (Siebzig verweht III, 489).
In the latest edition of the fifth volume of his diaries, an entry dated February 2, 1991 reads: “I received a letter from Granada by mail dated January 29: “Dear doctor, Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah! Reading your book "The Worker" in Spanish turned me around. You have destroyed the myth of the economic man, a prison of our own creation, which is hidden by the current life process. I am a Basque and a Muslim since 1986. Everything that I have comprehended in Islam confirms the spirit and content of your views. As I told you in Bilbao, I consider you a Muslim, my brother. Thanks to your life and work, you spread the spirit of Europeans beyond the bourgeois norms of behavior, you chose the path of Achilles – to die a hero, but Allah extended your years to pass on your mission to us. And Allah knows best. I would like to tell you that this spirit that you gave us will live on. Our Islam taught us the law: One God, government without a state and trade without usury. We have been taught "iman", which gives us confidence if you do not see Him. And we have taught the ihsan to fear nothing but Allah” (Siebzig verweht V, 14). Generations of Germanists and critics believed that the work of Ernst Jünger, which hardly fits into any framework, should long ago become untimely. But in fact, it became younger and more relevant.
Today, for countless people from all over the world, Ernst Jünger is a reference point in a world that is in the process of a great transition. Botho Strauss wrote on Jünger's centenary: “The era of German post-war literature will end only when it becomes clear to everyone that for forty years it has been surpassed by Jünger's work. For the youth, Jünger became more and more clearly the prototype of the future art: the one who is in connection with it comes to replace the radical subversive, the hero of the time (Zeit-Heros) in the Jacobin Hölderlinian sense. (Botho Strauss. Refrain einer tiefer Aufklaerung, in: Magie Heiterkeit. Ernst Jünger zum Hundertsten).