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8:30

(In »From semiotics via memetics to the collapse of militant atheism«)

Islam originally means precisely submission and every faithful Muslim submits to a strictly circumscribed way of life filled with more or less arduous duties in the form of daily prayers, fasts, pilgrimages, etc. The believer thus becomes a small but significant cog in an infinitely much greater machinery. In key respects, religion is precisely this: a liberation from the petty perspective of one’s own ego and the limited possibilities for asserting oneself in the world, which leads to a merging into a collective organism with everything that this means in terms of the feelings of expansion and ecstasy associated with coordinated behaviour, that is, participation in a socio-cultural emergence process. Singing, dancing, speaking in tongues: through various types of liturgical rites, religion binds the collective together emotionally and creates at least one convincing illusion of access to the transcendental. Personal antipathies and conflicts are lessened or disappear in the rhythmically synchronised intoxication of the community.