merely indicate a form of political grouping; it has developed into a
cult which arouses in the individual passionate devotion to his
nation and violent antipathy to other nations. It is odd that the West,
which has practically turned its back to religion as not suitable for
rational men, should have espoused the pseudo-religious cult of
nationalism. Aldous Huxley's comment on this is worth noting:
Nationalism leads to moral ruin, because it denies universality, denies
the existence of a single God, denies the value of the human being as a
human being; and because at the same time, it affirms exclusiveness,
encourages vanity, pride and self-satisfaction, stimulates hatred and
proclaims the necessity and rightness of war.(7)
The same writer makes the following remarks at another place:
Twentieth century political thinking is incredibly primitive. The nation
is personified as a living being, with passions, desires, susceptibilities.
The National Person is superhuman in size and energy, but completely
sub-human in morality. Ordinarily, decent behaviour cannot be
expected of the National Person, who is thought of as incapable of
patience, forbearance, forgiveness and even of common sense and
enlightened self-interest. Men, who in private life behave as reasonable
and moral beings, become transformed as soon as they are acting as
representatives of a National Person, into the likeness of their stupid,
hysterical and insanely touchy tribal divinity. This being so, there is little
to be hoped for at the present time, from general international
conference.(8)
A thought-provoking passage by Adam de Hegedus is quoted
below:
At the bottom of these two wars, there was the same anarchic division
of the world into sovereign independent nation states, which by their
very nature, are forced to compete and conflict with each other and are
unable to create a mutually healthy economic organization. The worst
feature of this situation is not so much the recurrence of war as the
absence of peace.(9)
VIII. PatriotismNationalism has implanted in the mind of man the belief that
patriotism is the noblest and highest virtue. The slogan of the
patriots is: "My country, right or wrong" Rumelin, Chancellor of
Tubingen University, wrote (in 1875) that:
The state is autarchic. Self regard is its appointed duty; the
Islam: A Challenge to Religion 219