Nietzsche and Islam II

“I want to live among Muslims for a good long time, especially where their faith is most devout: in this way I expect to hone my appraisement and my eye for all that is European” (Friedrich Nietzsche, 13 March 1881)

After writing my previous post, Nietzsche and Islam, I came across an academic book with the same title, written by Dr Roy Ahmad Jackson. In it, Jackson sets out to determine why Nietzsche — the ‘great atheist’ — ‘felt inclined to be so generous towards Islam’. His conclusions, which are based on Nietzsche’s own words, are not too dissimilar from that presented in my short post. I argued that Nietzsche aligned himself with Islam as part of his attack on the ‘life-denying’ aspects of Christianity. However, after reading Jackson’s book, I would like to add a little bit of nuance to this.

It is true that Nietzsche was critical of Christianity, and that he used Islam to attack (what he considered to be) the passivity of this ‘woman’s religion’. However, Jackson dispels two myths concerning Nietzsche’s religiosity. Firstly, as I have already emphasized, ‘contrary to many perceptions on the matter, Friedrich Nietzsche is not the standard bearer for atheism. In fact, […] both the man and his philosophy are imbued with a deep religiosity’. Indeed, as the essayist Erich Heller has put it, ‘He is, by the very texture of his soul and mind, one of the most radically religious…