One of the mysteries of the modern world, is the fetish that society, and pop culture has for true fascism. Real fascism is of course the destruction of the individual, and the sublimation of the person into a cult be it one run by the state, a party, or an elite professing 'spiritual faith'. Fascism in the industrialized world emanates from Marxism, Socialism and Statism. It is a left-wing construct in which the resources of the state are used to deny the individual, and elevate the communal. In pre-modern theologies such as Islam the state is crude and barely exists, so it is the pagan cult; its liturgy and 'spiritual' writings; and its rituals or 'laws' and pagan-celestial worship, which must be followed. In the pagan world, the person, free-will, free-thinking, independence and rationality are all sacrificed to the 'communal good'.

Islam is not the only non-faith paganism which has called itself a religion. Most Asian political-theocracies throughout history have been named 'religions', though a cult based on pagan beliefs, is not a religion – at least not in the Western sense of that word. Christianity for all its faults, was the only philosophy in man's history in which reason came out of faith:

The mountain of evidence points to the contrary. Compared to other theological and spiritual movements, Christianity is the only framework in the history of man to generate three key insights which encouraged Europe to create the modern world. The first is that the pursuit to understand faith can only be fulfilled through reason and inquiry. The second is that free-will and the right to life, to own property, and to manage one's own 'fate', is central to living. These two cultural insights lead to the third tenet bequeathed by Christianity, namely a belief in progress, a good future, and the optimism that positive change is possible – not only spiritually but materially.

No other system concocted by man ever generated these three key points which was the basis of the European supremacy in culture, spirituality, and ethics.

Pagan constructs do not contain the essentials of what is a true religion. A true religion has to lead to reason, humanism and individualism. If not it is just another collective, another cult, another way to crush the individual.

Most Asian theologies are very similar to Islam. We can see throughout history that Asian cults are veiled in unbridled mysticism and ritualization of life around non-human objects. In Islam believers are prostrating themselves to the moon idol of Mecca, a pagan symbol which pre-dates Mohammed by millenia. We see the same celestial, non-humanized worship in Hinduism, Shintoism, Mongol Sky God worship, and the animisms which abounded in East Asia for thousands of years. Within all of these cults there is the anti-individualism embedded in the worship of fate, appeasing the God's or God through rituals and offerings; and the absolute denial of free-will and humanized aspiration. When you deny free-will you can't possibly create a true religion. By substituting rituals and idol worship and denying an anthropomorphic form of spiritual observance, you have a paganism.

'Pagus' is the Latin word roughly meaning 'country illiterate'. It defined non-urban, and non-Christians in the late Roman empire. It was meant to be a criticism of those who were uneducated, unenlightened and who were outside the Christian church practicing polytheism. The defining characteristic of the pagus was thus someone who did not possess much knowledge and could not reason or rationalize, and who engaged in bizarre rites of superstition in order to keep various 'Gods' happy. They were laughed at by the urbanized and supposedly educated Roman Christians, just as Ivy League educated atheists today jeer at Christians and portray them as mindless robots following a superstition and unable to come to terms with reality and science.

There is something to these criticisms, though the Christian church has literally 1000s of sects including many which join faith to reason. But the criticism is clear. It is not just 'Orientalism's which prey on people and promise to turn 'chaos into order' and reward the great and good who follow the program with benefits in this life, and perhaps in a next incarnation. Early forms of Judaism which birthed Christianity, were akin in some ways to Islamic pagan ritualization. The Jewish church in the time of Christ was hierarchical, corrupt, and more interested in ordering society, than in liberating the person. Expensive and bloody animal sacrifice which had to be done at 'temples' was legion. Christ the Jewish teacher and self-proclaimed 'prophet', railed against the corruption of the Jewish 'church' or temple run by money-hungry Sadducees who demanded sacrifices, offerings and public prayer – all paid for with cash. He also declaimed against the academic and teaching class or Pharisees, who manipulated people for their own purposes, and taught them to simply follow their commands, and their wishes as stipulated, [supposedly], by the 'Bible' from God. He wanted a simple faith, one which was humanist and which elevated the person and one in which the person prayed in private, talked to 'God' directly, and followed the Golden Rule and Ten Commandments or Ten words. Christ in other words, wanted to free the individual from the collective cult.

Today some Christian churches which are in the main left-wing constructs, mimic these Near Eastern and Orientalist systems of command and control. They deny in part the right to question, debate, understand and engage in free-will. Hierarchy and rules replace the Book of Matthew and reality. Entire churches preach Globaloney Warming [Mother Earth worship was the default pagan theology]; anti-Semiticism; the benefices of socialism [Christ knew nothing of either economics or political 'isms']; and supernatural fantasy [heaven, hell, the risen, Revelations]. You will even hear church pulpit preachers praising Islam, supporting the Arab wars against Israel, and demanding blockades against the Jewish state. How is all of this in keeping with the Book of Matthew? Such programs are pre-modern and in many ways quite pagan. Many churches reject the forces which created the modern world, and view 'materialism', capital, and the long legacy of Western development as sinful. Return to Mother Earth. Demonize the Jew, the killers of Christ. Follow the word of the Bible.

The church as an institution is becoming a 'pagus' in the very real sense that the world of the 5 senses is being corrupted by a pagan and quite illiterate set of ideas which do not resonant with people who need to marry spirituality with living in the modern world. Islam is of course much worse in this regard. The Koran is truly the apogee of a pagan – Fascist screed, surpassing Mein Kampf in its racism, violence and supremacism. The moon idol worship of a Meccan celestial cult, is the most destructive paganism yet formed in man's history. Yet for some reason a theology of mysticisms, rituals, and calls to war and racism, is deemed to be a 'religion'. It is quite bizarre.

Pagan and cult constructs are pre-modern fundamentalisms which precluded the development of the modern world and its complicated sets of systems, institutions, markets and ideas. The Western experience is diametrically opposed to such a pagan-Orientalist view of the world, in which all is anarchy and must be controlled by timeless rules and rituals set down by some divine power. Islam, moon worship, sky-worship, thunder-God worship, or the thousands of Shinto-Hindu 'Gods' have nothing in common with either reality, the creation of the modern world, or the rise of Western civilization.

So why again is Islam a 'religion'? Do people who make this claim even know what a religion is? Unlikely.