Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Recently, I have been reading Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (2001) by Muslim jurist, Professor of Law and self-styled 'moderate' (sic), Khaled Abou El Fadl. It makes for excellent reading and complements another work, And God Knows The Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses (2001), which is also highly impressive.

In the former work, El Fadl draws out some of the consequences of the impact of colonialism on Muslim societies with particular reference to the destruction of Islamic legal institutions and their supporting infrastructure. This theme is explored further in a later work, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from The Extremists (2005), in which El Fadl draws attention to the undermining of juristic authority through state centralisation.

Read more!

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

The debates will be available for download and viewing from the Bandung2 website.

Peace

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Oswald Spengler's The Decline of The West (1918) is available for download via the following links:

Volume 1: Form and Actuality
Volume 2: Perspectives of World History

Peace

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

I have just been reading Yaqub Zaki's interesting and insightful article, "Factors in the Decline of Islamic Power" which is available at the Global Vision 2000 website.

In the article, Zaki states the following:

Insofar as I could claim to be a historian at all it is to the Spenglerian school that I would recognise myself as belonging.

Later in the same article, Zaki cites the work of (Francis Parker)Yockey, whose contribution has, according to him, been

to bring Spengler up to date .. in that magisterial work Imperium.

Note the use of the adjective 'magisterial' in reference to Imperium, a book published by the White Supremacist (Racist) Noontide Press. (Noontide have also published the important work, Lincoln's Negro Policy.)

According to the Zionist ADL, Yockey's book argues for a race-based, totalitarian path for the preservation of Western culture.

Notwithstanding my opposition to Zionism - itself a hybrid Jewish/White Supremacist ideology - it is possible that the ADL is, in fact, correct in its assessment of Imperium. This would mean that Yockey's work is Racist (White Supremacist) in nature which, in turn, means that Zaki is expressing support for a White Supremacist (Racist). (It is worth noting in passing that Zaki argues for the existence of a number of highly questionable parallels between Spenglerian and Qur'anic thought with respect to the rise and fall of nations.)

It is also interesting to note that the White Supremacist (Racist) journal, The Occidental Quarterly carried an article on Yockey entitled "The Tragic Life of a Spenglerian Visionary", which provides additional, though circumstantial, evidence in support of the thesis that Yockey was a White Supremacist (Racist). (We have to be careful here because appropriation of the thought of an individual by a White Supremacist (Racist) does not entail that the appropriated thought is White Supremacist (Racist) in nature; merely, that it can be utilised for purposes of establishing, maintaining, exapnding, and/or refining the practice of White Supremacy (Racism).)

IMHO, the jury is still out on Yockey - and, more importantly, on Zaki - since I have not yet read Spengler's Decline of The West (although I have critiques of this work by Muslim scholars and intellectuals), nor have I read Yockey's Imperium.

God/Allah (swt) tells us in Surah Al-Hujurat to guard against suspicion because in much suspicion there is crime (49:12). However, as I have argued elsewhere in a commentary on this ayat (sign/message), this does not preclude suspicion per se, which means that some suspicion is acceptable, perhaps even necessary.

Under contemporary conditions of White Supremacy (Racism), it is necessary for every Muslim and person of conscience, whatever their colour or hue (white or non-white), to be suspicious of the 'questionable' affiliations of white Muslims who are, whether they like it or not, de facto carriers of the club-card of whiteness/white privilege.

Peace

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance

In a previous article, I briefly examined the possibility of purification (tazkiyyat) - more precisely, cultivation of the self (nafs) through pruning it of its defects - in relation to a tyrant (taaghoot) and/or a system of tyranny (tughyaan). It was shown that, according to The Qur'an [=the proclamation of God/Allah to the human being], the possibility of self-purification, of self-reform, of self-correction, is indeed open, in principle, to the tyrant; however, rarely does such an individual avail himself or herself of such an opportunity in practice.

It is important to appreciate that purification/cultivation through pruning is something that all selves (nufus) need to be engaged in, and constantly. This is because all human beings are capable of some form of tyranny - to themselves if not to others - even if this tyranny does not take the form nor assume the degree of tyranny associated with an individual such as Fir'awn/Pharoah. In fact, according to (91:8-9), this activity is the basis of self-preservation (taqwa), and, as stated in (5:8), that (action) which is closest for self-preservation is justice/equitable dealing/equal treatment ('adl) of the 'other'. On this basis, it might be argued that the highest form of purification of the 'self' (tazkiyya) is equal treatment of the 'other' and that the degree to which the 'self' is preserved is conditional on the way that it deals with the 'other'. In this sense, the individual and the community, the one and the many are tied together.

In Surah Ash-Shams (The Sun), God/Allah says:

(91:7) Consider the human ‘Self, and how it is capable for being balanced out.
(91:8) And how it is instilled with the capacity to disintegrate or become secure.
(91:9) Successful indeed is he who grows the ‘Self’.
(91:10) And failure is indeed he who keeps it buried (under ignorance and superstition).
(91:11) (Disregarding this principle) Thamud rejected (Saleh) while playing God.
('Tagha' = Being 'Taghut' = Becoming a false god = Playing God = Transgressing = Rebelling = Crossing bounds of decency = Extreme arrogance)

(Taken from The Qur'an as It Explains Itself by Shabbir Ahmed.)

Note that the focus of (91:7-10) is the individual 'self' (nafs) and the possibility of its purification/pruning (tazkiyya), whereas (91:11) refers to the tyranny (taghaa) of a community.

Peace