The ignorant man is dead even if he is breathing

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Abu Dharr

Dhu al-Qa'dah 25, 1434 2013-10-01

Opinion

by Abu Dharr (Opinion, Crescent International Vol. 42, No. 8, Dhu al-Qa'dah, 1434)

The Khilafah was not abolished in 1924. When Muawiya declared himself king in early Islamic history, he abolished the Khilafah at that time. Muslims must get a better understanding of their history before they can take the steps to rectify the damage.

Mainstream Islamic writers and thinkers tell us that Dawlah al-Khilafah (the Khilafah State) ceased to exist in 1924 when Mustafa Kamal Ataturk — the Masonic-Dunmeh, crypto-Muslim, military general — became the first person to secularize a Muslim country. He did it by overthrowing the Khilafah Devlet and give the world “modern Turkey.” Many otherwise enlightened Muslims, especially those belonging to Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami, assert — in their articles and literature — this as an incontrovertible fact. We beg to differ. And in so doing, we beg them to think.

The Khilafah State was subverted by King Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan. When some thinking Muslims try to state this fact, other unassuming Muslims think that the whole Islamic attempt at governance was a failure! Once again, we beg to differ. The fact that King Mu‘awiyah won a military power struggle with the consensual Islamic imam and khalifah, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, does not mean that Islamic governance came to an end even though it did in that particular position. More precisely, it meant that Islamic governance was to begin a steep historical decline until it eventually culminated in the disappearance of the last vestiges of Islamic rulership, which was the termination of the Ottoman rulers in an official way in 1924.

Some aspects of history are better understood in light of current events. The Muslims in Egypt last year elected a leader in a free and fair election. No one ever contested the election’s freedom and fairness. So far so good. Then that election — representing the will of most of the people — was overturned by a military general in a manner that has gagged most people into silence where they dare not call al-Sisi’s power-grab a military coup. And here we are: Egyptians and non-Egyptians, Muslims and non-Muslims living a tug-of-war between those who are standing for the legitimacy of an elected president and those who are rooting for the fait-accompli ruler and his coterie.

Relying heavily on the readers’ understanding of early Islamic history, and skipping many details, what is happening in Egypt currently is what happened when Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan snatched power from Imam ‘Ali. Every Muslim who has read his history properly knows that Imam ‘Ali was the consensual leader, all the regions from Egypt to Yemen, Iraq to Arabia, and other parts of north Africa and west Asia were in agreement as to the leadership of Imam ‘Ali. The only area contesting it was al-Sham, with its breakaway ruler Mu‘awiyah.

This does not require a “Sunni” or “Shi‘i” education or brainwashing to understand or misunderstand. The raw information is available in the majority of “Sunni” and “Shi‘i” sources and references. The difficulty in both these hardened schools of tradition is that neither wants to take away the word “khalifah” from Mu‘awiyah. And in sticking to their unrefined and chafed positions they are unable to learn from their own common history.

The heartache in this struggle lies between Muslims wanting free and fair elections, and the power elites, classes, and power mongers denying them any opportunity at exercising that human and civil right by the use of brute force.

When Mu‘awiyah seized power in a civil war following a military coup he did not demean the Ummah; he demeaned himself. The struggle of the Muslim peoples continued, and continues to this day. The heartache in this struggle lies between Muslims wanting free and fair elections, and the power elites, classes, and power mongers denying them any opportunity at exercising that human and civil right by the use of brute force.

If Muslims were keenly aware of their own history, a general al-Sisi in Egypt would not have been able to withstand a popular backlash that carries with it the weight of 14 centuries of a conscience-laden political struggle against usurpation of power, which began with Mu‘awiyah and has not yet ended. If we, the committed Muslims, were thinking through our history, turning it page by page, scrutinizing it event by event, focusing on its political and military ups-and-downs, we would have enough intellectual muscle to spare us the void that we find ourselves in today. This whole affair has hit rock bottom in the Arabian mind and in the Arabian environment.
Some Muslim intellectuals who are trying to think their way through this morass would be well advised to make that rational and reasonable leap, defy the traditional odds, and look at their own history and their own contemporary world in an objective and non-sectarian way. This scribe would humbly pose the question to anyone willing to put mind before heritage: why don’t we trace our centenary decline to the British collateral control of Makkah and Madinah via their Saudi political clients, and then trace our millennial decline to the Umayyad strong-arming of the Ummah? In both of these parallel developments the Muslim masses were and are excluded from expressing their political will.

If the two billion Muslims of the world exercised their minds they would not have the most politically unstable countries in the world. The absence of Muslims thinking through their political history and their political present has given us today’s divisive nation-states, cut-throat sectarianism, and an impotent Makkah.

Instead of responding to problems with their minds and intellect, the Muslims of today are responding with mindless violence and anti-intellectual sermons. Fourteen centuries of non-ijtihad and obscurantism is catching up with unfortunate populations here and there. The type and amount of turbulence and aggression building up and breaking out in many regions of the Muslim East are frightening. The salafi contagion is spawning the deadly takfiri types. And these are scooped up by the thousands to fight imperialist and Zionist wars of national interest. Saudi, Emirati, and Kuwaiti establishments pay them to kill other Muslims. The takfiris have equated the “other” with the “kafir.” It is that fast, simple, and deadly. The Muslims in the Arabian realm are living — without any exaggeration — an intellectual crisis at a psychological juncture.

The speed of Zionist and imperialist advances have left them complacently or inanely foolish. They stand out as stage harlequins. Bombs are being dropped on their homes, poison gases are being used in their neighborhoods, millions of them don’t have a place to call home, their holy places are occupied from Makkah to al-Quds, and in all this their leaders — traceable to the Saudi financial empire — are telling them to take refuge in a history that they never thought through and are forbidden to think through. In other words: You Muslims! Dwell in ignorance and be killed in ignorance. All this would have been hard to accomplish without the “Islamic” cover provided by Arabia’s Saudis.

Our Islam today has ceased to be the tried and true Islam of togetherness, inclusiveness, and unity. How, then, would one explain the explosive bursts of takfiris, salafis, and sectarians whose first and foremost enemy is the “other” Muslim?

The way the average Muslim is programmed to reckon and believe (and this has been well thought out in imperialist and Zionist circles via their Saudi couriers) is that the word kufr applies to a toiling Muslim who they disagree with on matters pertaining to Islamic customary observances and practices. This can eventually be “fine-tuned” to killing “others” because while performing wudu’, they wipe rather than wash their feet. This simple and legitimate understanding of Islamic fiqh turns into a takfiri issue! Meanwhile, the disagreement with Zionists and imperialists who steal the land on which Muslims trek with their feet, take away the jobs to which Muslims walk to with their feet, make it impossible for many fathers and mothers to buy shoes for their baby’s feet, and poison the bodies in the millions (think Iraq and Afghanistan) who no longer can use their feet, well the Saudi school of non-thought deems these Zionists and imperialists to be Ahl al-Kitab!! Would these Saudi cretins be generous enough to give other Muslims the honorific of Ahl al-Kitab? Of course not.

It is this Muslim political absentmindedness that cannot see that al-Sisi did a Mu‘awiyah on Mursi. If Muslims were straight and fearless thinkers they would be able to say with one voice from Makkah to begin with: al-Sisi is a Mu‘awiyah… Ataturk is a Mu‘awiyah

We believe if you have got this far in reading this article, you would have gotten the drift. It is this Muslim political absentmindedness that cannot see that al-Sisi did a Mu‘awiyah on Mursi.

If Muslims were straight and fearless thinkers they would be able to say with one voice from Makkah to begin with and from there to reverberate all over Asia and Africa: al-Sisi is a Mu‘awiyah… Ataturk is a Mu‘awiyah… the Islamic movement in Egypt and the Islamic movement in Turkey are on the side of Imam ‘Ali… But how would you know that when our thoughts are fragmented and our history is the victim of our ignorance, “And they will say, ‘O our Sustainer! Behold, we reconciled ourselves to our masters and our paramounts, and it is they who have led us astray from the right path’ ” (33:67).

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