Page 136 - Allah is Known through Reason

BEHIND THE SCENES OF SOCIALISM
An eccentric group was founded in Bavaria in southern Germany in
1776. The founder of this group, which called itself the "Illuminati" (that is,
"the Enlightened Ones") was a professor of law by the name of Adam
Weishaupt. This society is interesting in two respects: it was a very secret
society and it had set a very ambitious political program for itself. In the
program written by Weishaupt, the two fundamental purposes of the soci-
ety were identified:
1. The abolition of all monarchies and systematic governments.
2. The abolition of all theistic (divine) religions.
The attitude of the society towards religion was extremely antagonis-
tic. According to the English historian Michael Howard, Weishaupt had a
"pathological hatred" for divine religion of any sort. 24
The society was in fact a sort of Masonic lodge. Weishaupt was a
senior freemason and he had organised it along the lines of the tradition-
al organisational style of masonic lodges. The Illuminati grew astonishing-
ly fast. In 1780, with the participation of Baron Von Knigge, one of the
greatest masters of the German masonic lodges, the power of the society
greatly increased. Weishaupt and Knigge were laying the groundwork for
a revolution in Germany that was socialist in everything but name. When
the government discovered what they were up to, however, Weishaupt and

Knigge found it prudent to disband the society. Its activities were assimi-
lated into their regular freemason lodges. This union took place in 1782.
In the early 1800s, a new society was established in Germany that
sought to carry on the Illuminati tradition in Germany. The name of the
society was "Society of the Honest Ones". In time, its name was changed
to "Society of Communists". The head of this society wanted to create a
political program for the group and the first two people they called upon
to write the program were two strict communist intellectuals: Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels! These two wrote the Communist Manifesto at the
instruction of the Society of Communists. One widely-known tenet of the
Manifesto was that religion was the "opium of the people" and the tract
argued that the elimination of religious beliefs was one of the prerequisites

136 Allah is Known Through Reason