La formidable y duradera herejía mahometana (4) ¿Porqué tuvo un éxito inicial arrollador la herejía?
La persistencia de esta herejía ha sido objeto de atención y debate ente los historiadores. H. Belloc propone esta explicación:
Both in the world of Hither Asia and in the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean, but especially in the latter, society had fallen, much as our society has today, into a tangle wherein the bulk of men were disappointed and angry and seeking for a solution to the whole group of social strains. There was indebtedness everywhere; the power of money and consequent usury. There was slavery everywhere. Society reposed upon it, as ours reposes upon wage slavery today. There was weariness and discontent with theological debate, which, for all its intensity, had grown out of touch with the masses. There lay upon the freemen, already tortured with debt, a heavy burden of imperial taxation; and there was the irritant of existing central government interfering with men’s lives; there was the tyranny of the lawyers and their charges.
To all this Islam came as a vast relief and a solution of strain. The slave who admitted that Mohammed was the prophet of God and that the new teaching had, therefore, divine authority, ceased to be a slave. The slave who adopted Islam was henceforward free. The debtor who “accepted” was rid of his debts. Usury was forbidden. The small farmer was relieved not only of his debts but of his crushing taxation. Above all, justice could be had without buying it from lawyers. . . . All this in theory. The practice was not nearly so complete. Many a convert remained a debtor, many were still slaves. But wherever Islam conquered there was a new spirit of freedom and relaxation.
It was the combination of all these things, the attractive simplicity of the doctrine, the sweeping away of clerical and imperial discipline, the huge immediate practical advantage of freedom for the slave and riddance of anxiety for the debtor, the crowning advantage of free justice under few and simple new laws easily understood – that formed the driving force behind the astonishing Mohammedan social victory. The courts were everywhere accessible to all without payment and giving verdicts which all could understand. The Mohammedan movement was essentially a “Reformation,” and we can discover numerous affinities between Islam and the Protestant Reformers – on Images, on the Mass, on Celibacy, etc. .
Es decir, se parte de una situación de opresión consecuencia de la “hipertrofia superestructural” –dicho en términos marxistas- de la Iglesia e Imperio de Oriente. Para las clases bajas fue un alivio, pues supuso menos impuestos. [Además, Belloc no parece insistir en ello, se habían extendido en la zona herejías unitarias como la arriana, que tenían muchos puntos comunes con la mahometana.] La doctrina teológica era muy simple; también la ley, al alcance del entendimiento de todos. Al menos así era al principio, por eso no necesitaba una pesada superestructura sacerdotal ni judicial. En esto fue también similar a la Reforma protestante.
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Nótense algunos detalles antiliberales en Belloc: There was indebtedness everywhere; the power of money and consequent usury. There was slavery everywhere. Society reposed upon it, as ours reposes upon wage slavery today.
