A choice of worship now, 1st Jumaada al-Ula, 1436 years after the hijra:

To prostrate shoulder to shoulder the duration of the eclipse of the sun to the Lord of the eclipse,
or to merely observe the sun of Queen Saba.

Was not Appolinaire the first rapper

because he knew how to frapper?

And O so dapper

because he was so tapfer

in his courageous aristocloth.

Peace and War

[This was submitted to me some months ago for correction. Despite the garbled text, bizarre grammar, fantastic spelling and questionable logic it contains many interesting points. For this reason I lay it before you aimable lecteur.]

The Choice open to Thinking Men and Women:
The unfettered, total, barbaric, mutilating, torturing, devastating, democratic wars of the 20th and 21st C. or the contained, legal, just and compassionate rules of combat according to the faqih Ibn Juzayy al-Andalusi in his Qawaneen al Fiqhiyya

‘Each time they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it’, Qur’an, The Table: 64
Until it lays down its burdens? War destroys entrenched customs, lets other patterns arise.

Jihad does not refer to war as understood in the media, has nothing to do with the internet war games relayed from the front for the entertainment of a bored world. Jihad is primarily a matter of the establishing of or pursuit of justice and occurs within the rigorous framework of law. It is subject to the general injunction of amr bi’l-maruf, in other words the enemy has to be invited to Islam – and the Islam which is generally available in the media is incomprehensible. War, just as the collection of the zakat can only be legitimately engaged upon by the Amir-Leader who is himself legitimate and not a khaariji from the Khawaarij, not from the ahla’l-takfeer. ISIS is top-end gaming or reality show unbound by irksome constitutional gaming laws. At the end of the Bidaya al-Mujtahid wa nihaaya al-Muqtasid in which Ibn Rushd demonstrates that the various sunnas of the Messenger are not dry abstract laws but rather manifestations of the fitra of man, the natural, balanced state of man, he states that the phenomena of war is to be located within the Qur’anic term ‘adl – justice: ‘for in this is pursued the right of retaliation, wars and punishment’. Neither he nor we then deny the existential reality of war as part of the condition humaine. All media hypocrisy arises from the refusal to accept this: war is to assert hegemony and to take booty. The kuffar maintain nowadays that it is to establish democracy but we know historically that they do not open hostilities in poor insignificant lands but rather ones with wealth or those of strategic importance – the oil of Irak and the geopolitical position of Afghanistan unleashed the latest hostilities in these two territories; unwelcome Governments are constantly being changed through force in the name of democracy or in order to bring inflexible despots to heel by war or to foment internal strife. This is not fantasy or ‘conspiracy theory’ but grisly fact testified to by history and by themselves, openly, by their own statistics. Despotic governments however which are deemed of use – like those of the Arabian Peninsula – are officially tolerated [while simultaneously mildly castigated in the popular press] and often supported. Earlier, as in the case of colonial Britain, Portugal, France, Germany, Russia or Spain, war was waged ‘to bring civilisation to the natives’; in fact it was for land or trade possibilities; and nowadays in order to test military equipment or make geological surveys prior to the commercial exploitation of the mineral resources by the previous aggressors
D’amokcrisy as it is spelt by one West African blogger – and a not unsuitable spelling at that: amok for the ever present disgruntled crowds of the losing party and hypo-crisy of the nation charged with monitoring – their presence there only attributable to the local uranium deposits – is the ideology of tolerance par excellence which however only tolerates what is deemed tolerably tolerable. It is in fact a business, a branch of the market forces of capitalism, like any other enterprise. The cost of an election in one African country equaled the average income for every single average inhabitant over ten working days – and was paid for by donor countries, amounting to millions of pounds. One has to ask whether this sum in such countries would not have been better spent in education or health care. Afghanistan’s on-going election debacle has cost the economy 5 billion dollars so far according to its finance minister. Deadlock, hung parliaments, fraudulent counts, ‘legal’ bribes are not exceptions to the rule but occur with ever increasing regularity in such a system. A less than fifty per cent vote is not uncommen – this means that if this one party is elected on the basis of its winning 50 of this vote – also not uncommon, only 25 per cent of the voters have voted for the governing party
Clausewitz’s has said ‘War is the continuation of politik by other means’. Politik may be variously translated as ‘policy’ or ‘politics’. If the politik of a particular country is trade, for example, then war will be waged to protect that trade or expand that trade. That this is a reality in our time is clear in the language of war used in trade – note ‘aggressive sales tactics’ demanded by all global corporation when seeking out their personel. If the politik of the country is capitalist financial technique, then the war will be to back up currency manipulation, or casino-like stock exchanges and markets. Clausewitz’ work remains curiously untouched by real criticism and highly esteemed all over the world as does, the The Art of War by the high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician, Sun Tzu, while the legal term jihad has so many portmanteau media meanings that its reality as a legal system has been distorted or lost. The rhetoric of the United States of America is – in line with their declared ‘democratic principles’ – that they do not in fact wage war. However existentially the opposite is true for one’s sees a militancy which is unparalleled in history: from the ethnic cleansing of the red Indians, to the use of the atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki [which is not so much ‘war’ in the legal sense we are considering but rather mass impersonal extermination through technology], to the chemical extermination in Vietnam, then on to Afghanistan and Iraq where the ground fighting is reduced to a minimum and robotic killing machines are employed instead; and given the historical precedent it is clear that should ever a functioning Islamic society arise again then it will be eliminated by an atomic bomb – any collateral deaths of non-Muslims will be deemed acceptable. Moreover militancy is not confined to foreign affairs: vicious riot control of the blacks and Hispanics or the annihilation of the Waco community in Texas are modern examples of what awaits any of its citizens if they demonstrate ‘otherness’ in any real way. And if torture is outlawed in a particular democracy, then it is outsourced – as in the policy of ‘rendition’. There has been an ongoing war to ensure the dollar reigns supreme. One must remember that democracy, as one leading historian has said, is demonstrably the service entity of the bankers – responsible for ensuring the continuation, administratively speaking, of the national state, the creation of the national debt, the transfer of the national debt to the next generation – if this generation cannot pay – and the admission of guilt on behalf of the party currently in power if the economy goes haywire. There are as many kinds of democracy as there are so-called democratic nations – from the authoritarian Leninist/Stalinist versions through to the monarchical and then the ‘mature’ liberal -constitutional. One must not forget that Hitler was elected democratically. The ‘wrong’ choice in his election on the part of the voters was the direct cause of countless millions of civilian and military deaths. The People’s Republic of China, a product of Mao’s ‘new democracy’, is a favoured major trading partner of all the other democracies and global corporations. Occasional mouse-like squeaks are heard from them regarding the oppression in Tibet but silence reigns with regard to the ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs and their enforced sinicization. Even if the slaughter of the Muslims on a daily basis receives hardly any media coverage, the official announcement last Ramadan of the ban on fasting must be indication enough of the degree of suppression in all other activities.
Of course, nowadays democracy is only tolerated as long as the people make the ‘right’ choice: if the media are not successful in persuading the people to choose the bankers’ man, then the army moves in and annuls the vote – for this ‘reason’ or that. The idea is not new. The administrative cost of democracy as we have mentioned is very high and many countries, accused of irregularities, are forced to accept outside regulators, which in turn erodes their sovereignty. Already the financiers in Jack London’s Iron Heel over a hundred years ago had this weapon ready to hand, as Mr Wickson comments ‘What if you do get a majority, on election day?’… Suppose we refuse to turn the government over to you after you have captured it at the ballot-box’. Note the case of Algeria, note Egypt, note numerous other cases where the result was annulled by force. Note Palestine where the democratically elected government was refused recognition. This is not to condone such governments but to demonstrate that if democracy doesn’t function ‘as it should’, then it is dispensed with. Democracy is not shy of dirty tactics: note the proven activities of agent provocateurs in numerous ‘mature’ democracies, for example Germany’s V-Leute in the last decade. According to latest government statistics there are now on average three attacks on mosques per month in Germany [http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/brandanschlag-auf-mevlana-moschee-in-berlin-kreuzberg-a-988388.html]. And hew far back is one allowed to go – should one go – with respect to the crimes of a country which is now democratic, but which committed the first holocaust upon the Nama and Herero peoples of Southern Africa?

So called democratic allies are in fact constantly on the verge of war with each other: look at Russia and the Ukraine. Despite the rhetoric they deeply distrust each other, spy on each other: look at the USA and Europe. Divide and rule has always been a tool of war but now democracy is also a weapon used to divide a country: first a seemingly homogenous population is ‘raised’ in awareness such that each ethnic group is taught to claim its rights, and each is given a candidate. Then the target group in any given sector of the society is raised to prominence and instigates civil war: this was done in Iraq where the Shia were raised to prominence resulting in the war waged against the Muslims. In the name of democracy a minority wage war in Syria against the majority Muslim population.
In the face of such hypocrisy, such aggression, such failure to attain even the minimum goals of their rhetoric, it would be specious to argue that the Muslims have no right to apply their laws and regulations regarding war – which are not bureaucratic regulations invented by man but part of the revelation from the Lord of the Worlds.
There are many reasons for war other than those mentioned above: defence of territory, expansion of one’s territory, need to test weapons, need to divert attention from the home front, need for internal wars between the police or army and the people themselves to keep a myth alive that total surveillance in any given country, like ‘the war on terror’ is always the surest policy. ‘But why the fuss, have you got anything to hide?’ On occasion it is the whim of the nafs of a dictator, the need to aggrandize his standing. One is reminded of the words of the Messenger, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him who told his followers returning from a military campaign: “This day we have returned from the minor jihad to the major jihad,” meant returning from armed battle to the great battle – to overcome the fantasies and whims of the self.
Orwell in 1984 cites another reason: ‘In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality… in philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics two and two might make five but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusion….War was a sure safeguard of sanity.’
The USA has regularly gone to war ‘to ensure democracy’, ‘ to stem communism’ or ‘to defend the rights of its citizens’. Democracy claims that we are progressing to a golden age in which wars shall no longer have a place, ideally the global state, with one global bank one global army. But this is pure rhetoric. Wars belong as much to the system as the near ‘sacred’ vote: never have their been more wars than in the ‘democratic age,’never so many killed. There are in the usa almost ninety military schools or academies teaching the art of war – besides of course the training programmes in the army,navy and airforce themselves. The maintaining of democracy and tolerance demands their be the champion of democra and the entity which tolerates. War is inevitable Human rights are not divine immutable natural laws but merely man made laws which suit capatilism and the enslaved proles. For eamplej sexual freedom is the reward for those who prefer slavehood to freedom and discrimination.
We know from the Quran that war is a fact of life: Allah does not declare that the phenomenon will ever end but rather indicates that it must be accepted as part of the condition humaine and that ti must be regulated: in this respect the Quran and the sunna contain detailed instructions. For example Women and children are not to be killed according unless they are fighting . Monks are not killed, nor the inhabitants of monasteries, nor very old men, unless one fears harm from them or that they will scheme against you. The insane or demented are not to be killed nor the blind, the chronically sick, War is like the other bête noir of democracy slavery. Nowhere does Allah and his Messenger command us to abolish it – because like war it is part of the lot of mankin- but rather it must be regulated – and this is a far more human way than the slave ‘refugee’ camps housing tens of millions all over the world, the slave labour camps of the gulf states, the slave sweat shops of Asia or the more benign state of the millions of American and European workers effectively enslaved to the public and their own personal debt. According to the global slavery index of last year there existed almost 30 million slaves.. No one can argue that slavery is not part of modern life According to the UNHCR there were over 50 million regugess globally last year, 36 million according to the latest Global Slavery Index – living in conditions which would not be permitted in the Islamic form of slavery which determines that the slaves live within the community in which they find themselves and eat of the same food as their master. According to a report on human trafficking recently presented by European Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström, there are more than 23,600 victims in the EU, and two-thirds of them are exploited sexually. Here we are only talking of the victims not the actual numbers involved. As one commentator of cool judgement remarked: What you pay for you take care of.
Usury Capitalism in refusing to face up the dual phenomena of war and slavery and ‘they being only temporary hiccups in the march of progress – has never been able to come properly to terms with them, cannot regulate them’. Historically speaking too one can see that war has always been a significant part of every culture and civilization. Man like most of the higher animals has the potential for agression, a sense of territory, an inclination to defend his territory. Although this is not the dominant characteristic of man to ignore this is to deny the reality of man and such animals. It is irrelavent whether one agreey with Lorenz’s On Agression or not – that it scientifically describes how man is and always has been is irrefutable. A positing of an ideal state contrary to it is possible and admissible in discussion but clearly not a very credible ideology. This is not however the dominant characteristic of man. Jihad is not the dominant aspect of the Muslim ethos. It does however exist for the same reasons that have been mentioned above. It exists in order to defend or the Imam sees the necessity of attacking neighbouring country because he is aware of its hostile intentions, its growing alliance, ist oppression of the Muslims, of ist citizens or in specific cases – not unlike non Muslim entities – if the politik of the particular Muslim entity is trade then war will be waged to protect trade routes, war wil be waged to expand and secure commodities . the reasons for going to war will be no more or less than the legitimate reasons of non-Muslims entities. To claim howevet that Muslims are more prone to war than non Muslims is merely a war cry of the latter.
In the quran war itself seven times, peace is mentioned 54 times. Although Islam obviously does not mean peace as some misguided commentators have claimed but rather submission to Allah and His Messenger, peace is the norm and basis of Islamic society and war is recognized as the exception and as such regulated. On greeting each other we say ‘peace be upon you’. Whe someone knocks at the door then we normally respond be opening the door without suspicion – trust is the basis of our social transaction. To greet each other with a smile of one’s face is sunna, the least of sadaqas. War as illustrated by the quran and the Messenger is essentially a fight between men. It is a test from Allah and while courage is required fighting is only carried out if one has a chance to win and no one is to ‘sacrific’ himself as in the case of the suicide bombers. Suicide is anyway illegal

In order to understand the restrictions imposed on the dhimmis and the people of the book when living under our jurisdiction – which of course is no wehre the case in the world at the moment and which are generally perceived in the media to be unfair and an infringement of human rights they must be seen in the light of the millions of slaves being traded in the world today, 30 million refuges incamps living in sub human conditions, 50 ,000 prostitutes – depending on the source statistics – being imported into Europe each year the restrictions imposed on the Muslims living under the hegemony of the kuffar: this is not a complaint but rather a recognition that the dominant order defines quite clearly what the Muslim may or may not do. it must be recognized that there tolerance of us is severely limited and on their terms: islam is defind popuoarly a a religion which it is not according to us or even according to their own academics. As a religion is it deined within a Christian framework in other words reduced to belief and concepts in the head without a relevant connection to real life. Islam as we know as do their acadeics is a way of life and not a brain based ideology with five prayers per day – wich is the only definition allowed. Any connection to power, finance, trade is annulled. Our children are forced – and this is not an exaggeration – to learn the ideology of them, they and we are coerced into accepting the dominant sexual code which is that anything and everything is permitted except – for the moment – sex with children and animals, we are coerced into paying double taxes – ours which is imposed on us by Allah and theirs in the form of income tax, death tax, value added tax etc. instead of our law which recognizes the differences our woman are existentially to remove as much clothing as possible to ensure any acceptance I society or the workplace and the men are if lucky reduced to perfoming the salat in the broom cubboard
War nowadays is not in the realm of military but rather computer and financial, and no one can wage war if their own rivers are polluted, their earth poisoned, pastures and trees almost non-existent, their meat is printed halal while their animals eat plastic bags, waste, rubbish and are fed on steroids and the drinking water smells so much of chlorine that it is not strictly speaking legal to use it for wudu.

The renewal of war and the god Mars.
Feverish imaginings of a world without war
when war brings change in a static world.
Leprosy isolates the victim to be alone with his Lord –
not a poem but the truth no charity shall understand.
The still pure tributaries in the highlands run to polluted mainstreams.

The Two Seas – the sweet and the salty

Al-Bahrain, American-British with a touch of the Arab. The fifth fleet crouches in the harbour and the Brits run the associations.
Stained glass windowed mosques on the increase in the Gulf. And so is the churchy seating: legless backrests the length of the first rows and movable plastic chairs for the old, the sick and not so sick clutter the once simple arena of the salat. Less of the shoulder to shoulder, man to man, and more of the clumsy, system-spacing first implemented by the carpeting with the printed musallas and the strips of tape marking the rows for the worshippers. Of this no need. If sick or weak a man may sit for the duration of the salat in the row on the floor. As for the backrests, the front rows are for the saabiqun, the forerunners, the seekers of Allah during the fard salat behind the imam, not for the weary who may recline at the back of the mosque.
Abdarrahman Anwar the editor in chief of the Akhbar al-Khaleej newspaper declares in majlis that the taqeeya of the shia is in fact lying and lying does not belong to the deen, or any deen. And that the warming of America toward Iran is encouraging the shias of Bahrain to revolt.
The Formula 1 race track, a titanic affair housed in concrete tenting and iron scaffolding. A tiny, non-airconditioned, windowless musalla hides in the heat beneath the screams of the circling racing cars. The qualifying race begins as the sun goes down. The Discover Islam da’wa stall is relegated to the Basta ‘folklore’ market at the end of the course and those calling to Allah are marked ‘vendors’ on the entry tags around their necks. Their energy is inspiring, their dates and coffee alluring, their Quran translations in the pious Victorian words of Marmaduke Pickthall or the university academic terminology of Sahih International. Dozens of Filipinos become Muslim. A Korean woman who became Muslim on the first day of the three day event is brought back to the leading daa’ee – who is sharply berated by her blond girl friend accusing him of leading the Korean astray and threatening to tell his boss. The official line is that they are not converting people but rather informing them about Islam in order that they may understand how Muslims tick.
Bar coding ensures the number of exits equals the number of entries – no hiding here overnight. Security corresponds to the King’s son presence, may Allah protect him – who might or might not be in the vip tower on the pit-stop side of the track. Pricing of the ices, popcorn and burgers in Bahraini dinars and American dollars. The Scorpions lead the masses into party and dance after Rosberg’s preliminary win.
The commentary of al-Qunaazi’i on the Muwatta lies dusty in the mosque of Juffair. Four dinars in gold was the payment of the fire worshippers in Bahrain exacted by Umar al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him. The flares from the oil fields match the redhot brake pads of the final of the F1 which begins minutes after glow down sunset coinciding with the takbiratu al ihram in the Disney cut-out of a mosque on the edges of the folk-lore market. A handful of His slaves beneath the helicopters circling overhead. Islamic champagne and national anthems of UK and Germany on the podium and then fireworks.
The causeway to Saudi Arabia is strung with six computerized gates ensuring the flow of wine and spirits is limited. Often a three hour ride or more for the 25 kilometers or so. The dhows from Furdah to Khubar once covered the same distance in three hours and allowed the passengers time to fish on the way.
The closed, compounded, Pearl of Bahrain resort at the southern end of the island is home to the bankers, ministers, F1 drivers and royalty. Architecturally speaking, white concrete nuclear familied Marbella terracing, mostly empty like the towers of the half-finished Financial Harbour sitting on the reclaimed land in front of the Bab al-Bahrain.

Nusantara

Arrival in Kuala Lumpur’s airport. The acrid smog bound concretium still supports Frangi Pangi trees but it cannot be for long: fires lit by the property developers to clear the land for monoculture palm oil production beyond the Klang Valley are the given reason. Breathing is difficult. Asthma prevalent. Temperatures increasing. Rain decreasing. Riba, usury, is the real cause as it devours the hearts and lands of Nusantara. Agricultural profit must be exponential to offset the land-development loans. Youths in shorts and t-shirts followed by their wives in black bags and eye slits. Crowds of Umra travellers. In Malaysia there is a waiting time of up to 12 years to go on Hajj: deposits are made into the bank, accrue to the desired amount and then hey presto the door opens. There is of course a fast-track version for an exorbitant sum which effectively overcomes the state-bank monopoly.
The Jawi Malay written in the modified Arabic script outlawed by the British colonialists is being cautiously revived.
Then Singapore. Prohibitions rule in this fine-city: the streets are free of litter; the marble floors of the financial institutions and the pavements outside are free of chewing gum; spitting too is taboo. A sandwich board at the corner of the Muslim Heritage Quarter warns in spontaneous chalked writing of the theft of a bicycle in the area; the mega-crimes of the down-town economics hub go largely unnoticed. Enforced racial quotas ensure the housing blocks have an integrated population. Tamils, Indians, Chinese, Malay are bound in harmony by a state-taught English as their first tongue, with the mother tongue a quaint second. By tacit convention no Muslims are permitted in the air-force or navy. The first leader of this very new state saw parallels to the other very new state in the middle east, surrounded as it was by Muslim territories.
The Marina Bay Sands casino is only open to the natives on payment of a hefty supplement. To protect them from throwing themselves of the landscaped rooftop when they lose? The Chinese through trade have long since taken over this city-state, just as they have taken over Indonesia, Malaysia and many other territories of Nusantara. The Chinese Muslims of Singapore were impressed by the BBC report of the sending in of the black-hooded American-led strike force to airlift the 34 tons of Ukranian gold to Fort Knox – no bank notes for them! and hacking the central banks’ computers for computerized would not have yielded anything but electronic impulses.
Nuh Habib, the Wali around whose tomb the central highway was diverted, brought baraka by his words to the people and places he encountered. If he entered the market place, trade increased.
On to Indonesia, to Yogyakarta. During a talk at the Angkatan Madrassa in the village of Kaliurang in the foothills of the Merapi volcano the fitya-tulaab were more attentive than the Muhammadiyah University students at the conference the next day on Trade and Gold. The latter were too sophisticated for simple listening and had their smart phones to deal with in the lecture theatre.
The Malioboro mall owned jointly by the Sultan of Jogjakarta and a Chinese partner houses a darkling wood and concrete shack the width of three car-spaces in the underground car park. A reminder of the Mawlana Muhammad Ali mosque – whose founder had brought Islam to Singapore – which stood in the way of a proposed banking high rise: the land was bought by the bank and the mosque moved underground. Above, the shops and coffee houses peopled by the young credit card generation, the girls with stylishly imposing full head scarves above and tight-fitting crotch-revealing leggings beneath.
The nearby Borobudur buddhist temple complex is an important element in the establishing of Buddhism as the global religion of choice, as an appendage to capitalism which shall not cause it trouble, a passive condemnation of the arms trade without stopping its activity. Unesco is pouring huge funds into it. The prime minister came with hundreds of outriders to inaugurate a new tourist project, the quickest way to ensure the introduction of premium-quality kufr.
The adhan is still to be heard everywhere. The paper money is full of zeros: 100,000 rupiah buy a couple of coffees and a cake. Not so long ago one rupiah bought three kilos of rice. And after Suharto and the introduction of democracy, the Chinese are now close to ruling Indonesia democratically rather than by means of their de facto trading stranglehold.

The concrete barrenness of la Défense to the west of Paris is not alleviated by the symbolism of the massive geometric square with a hole in it facing the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. A fantasy of the ex-Président who attacked the Muslims on account of their multiple marriages but who himself kept a wife and discretely a mistress. It is a monument to usury, the high rise buildings spiraling upwards in tune with the numbers multiplication of the finance houses’ computers. But where are the 150,000 people who are supposed to work here and where even the 20,000 who are supposed to live here? Decreasing rents indicate the malaise of la Défense’s housing market.
Hollande has the same problem, perhaps he will build high rises.
It is almost with relief that we finally find the mosque, which is not marked on any of the detailed maps available from the information centres. A relief from the architectural tyranny, symbolism and abstract artistry of le complexe. A relief issuing from the initial sighting only however, of this construct of human proportions – down there it lay in the shadow of Société Générale’s towers, the ‘mosque’, wedged between the car park and the cemetery, a big, shabby, off-white tented affair with portakabin toilets – a completion of the symbolism. Very indéfense. We were told that the Muslims working in Société Générale had been ‘generously granted’ the space by their employees. They did not seem to be aware of the caste cannibale in whose shadow they were worshipping the Lord of the Worlds.
The Central Mosque in contrast, in the centre of Paris, is a beautiful structure of balanced proportions built in the traditional Algerian style. It is full of people – with many non-Muslim Parisians who are welcomed off the streets to get a glimpse of the Muslim salat, the inner courtyards with their gardens and the wood paneled library. The hizb of the Quran according to the recitation of warsh is recited daily after Asr. In one corner is a tea house, with adjacent garden, in which Muslims and non-Muslims mix freely, and a hammam facility.
Even the mosques of the more ‘ghetto’ like quarters of Paris around Bellevue, Barbès and Asnières are vibrant with life, overflowing at the times of the salat and full of the recitation of the Quran. Are not these Parisians with their black, brown and coffee coloured faces the real French? For beneath their colouring is the French language – often no other spoken by the young ‘immigrants’ – and language is the ultimate definition of nationality. The Algerians with their 130 years as a French Département have had time to get to know the real France, to extract the best from it, and to add the blood, sweat and tears of their experience to the reality of being French. The black Africans of West Africa still have a joie de vivre which many white French have lost to their being systematized.
One solution to the dubious high-risers and les scandales would be to recognize multiple marriages. Hardly an adventurous move for a society which within one generation has gone from a vaguely christian critique of sexuality to an active propogation of the lgbt ideology. But a head-ache surely for the first generation of death-tax officials, the avocats skilled in wills and testaments and the celibate bishops. But it would regenerate les Français, increase the population, strengthen family ties, assure the honouring of women, eliminate the hypocrisy of la maîtresse, cool the ardour of the presse jaune and build bridges between North Africa and the Arab world in general. It might unfortunately lead to an increase in Dassault’s weapons sales in the Gulf and Arabia.

Money is from Moneta and moneta is, according to one etymological web-definition:

mid-13c., “coinage, metal currency,” from Old French monoie “money, coin, currency; change” (Modern Frenchmonnaie), from Latin moneta “place for coining money, mint; coined money, money, coinage,” from Moneta, a title or surname of the Roman goddess Juno, in or near whose temple money was coined; perhaps from monere “advise, warn” (see monitor (n.)), with the sense of “admonishing goddess,” which is sensible, but the etymology is difficult.

in other words money is the mint, is the gold and silver, is the authority over it……for would the Latins have accepted anything less?

Interestingly the etymological web-definition continues:

Extended early 19c. to include paper money.It had been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be entrusted to the hands of mortal man. [John C. Calhoun, speech, U.S. Senate, Dec. 29, 1841]

As for the fiqh:

from the mighty Ibn Mandhur, from his Lisaan al-Arab, his dictionary which draws its linguistic authority primarily from the Quran, the Rasoul, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and the greats among the poets and udabaa’ from the pre-capitalist age:

Entry Meem: MAAL: [money, wealth, …]

“The root meaning of the word MAAL is that which is possessed by someone with respect to gold or silver – and then extended to mean anything of value owned of a tangible reality”.

In other words, it indicates in the first instance possession but also implied gold and silver primarily as this was the possession par excellence.

Lisaan al-Arab, vol 13, from Dar al-Ihraath al-Arab edition, Beirut 1418 AH, p.222.

A Religious Storm

A storm has passed over the German-speaking peoples. A storm is a religious event. A storm however great is an indication of something even greater. It is ‘Allah who sends the winds’ (Qur‘an: The Ramparts: 56) as He reiterates in the Quran. It is He who destroys with ‘a savage howling wind (Qur’an: The Undeniable: 69)’, and Who ‘heaps up the heavy clouds’ (Qur’an: Thunder: 14). ‘Do you not see’, Allah asks us, ‘that Allah propels the clouds then makes them coalesce then heaps them up, and then you see the rain come pouring out of the middle of them?’ (Qur‘an: Light 42). Again it is ‘He Who shows you the lightning, striking fear and bringing hope’. It is He Who ‘discharges the thunderbolts, striking with them anyone He wills’ (Qur‘an: Thunder: 14). It is He Who – speaking of the arrogant – ‘seized each one of them for their wrong actions. Against some We sent a sudden squall of stones; some of them were seized by the Great Blast; some We caused the earth to swallow up; and some We drowned. Allah did not wrong them; rather they wronged themselves (Qur‘an: Spider 40). It is He Who ‘sent down on them floods’ (The Ramparts: 132). The same applies to earthquakes, tornadoes, the eruption of volcanos, drought and every single natural phenomenon: in the Quran all are declared signs of Allah, reminding us of Him, warning us of Him. The Messenger of Allah too, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, saw only Allah in such phenomena, for example, as Aisha, radi allahu anha, relates: ‘The state of the Prophet may Allah bless him and grant him peace, would change when he saw the storm clouds approached ‚he would leave off what he was doing, even if he had been performing (extra rakats of) salat, face the clouds and say: “O Allah! I seek refuge with You from the evil that it contains.” If Allah took it away, he would praise Allah, and if it rained, he would say: “O Allah! Make the rain pour down on us and be of benefit, (Ibn Maja 3889). He saw the fire of this world as the smaller version of the fire of the next saying ‘This fire of yours is a seventieth part of the Fire of Gahannam’. (Muslim, Chapter al-Janna 30).

However it is no longer permitted to see events in this way – that the lightning bolt is from Him and that the person struck may well be struck as a punishment for their wrongdoing (Qur‘an: an-Nisa: 152). Indeed, it is taboo to even talk about any of these matter in such terms, indeed almost forbidden, almost. The reason is clear: we live in an atheist society whose god is science. But that science, although very capable of explaining secondary, tertiary, causes, has missed the point. Just as the stars are in reality there to embellish the sky (Qur‘an: Those in Ranks: 6) and to guide seafarers and travellers during the night (Qur‘an: Livestock: 98) so the force of nature is to remind us of Him, it is a warning of His power. It is a fantasy to think that somehow science, in the future, shall be able to contain earthquakes, stop storms. These ‘natural disasters’ are not only disasters: they also occur for another reason and real knowledge is to recognise this and act accordingly. The church authorities whose Book calls us to see such events in exactly the same manner have become curiously silent.

Storms are a demonstration of tawhid: there is nothing like Him, there is nothing like Allah in creation – but His Oneness encompasses creation and the multiplicity of nature is manifest in His attributes. The storm, for example, is a manifestation of His power. Science, in particular quantum physics, has brought us closer to understanding the molecular interconnectedness of everything; and it has also shown us that everything is not as it seems, that not everything is logical, that not everything is predictable – in short that logic is logos and as such is subject to the meanings transmitted by the language of the logos; or as Ibn Rushd has said in so many words: ‘it depends on what the hearer understands by what he hears’. Goethe looked at the creation with the eye of tawhid; his understanding of the Urpflanze for example was an understanding of the underlying harmony of the plant kingdom – which is today emerging in the global study of the arabidopsis thaliana. This recognition of DNA is after all a recognition of this tawhid.

But storms and the like have ceased to become of religious import, i.e. ceased to point to a higher metaphysic. Instead the religious storm has become a secular, political event. And because political, it has necessarily turned into a media circus. We have just witnessed yet again, how the storm whipped up the waves on the North Sea and brought down trees; the real storm, however, was the hype which brought airports, rail and road services to a halt and demi-paralysed normal life; and of course it afforded people more time for divertissement.

Interestingly the Messenger, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him has indicated that the practice of covering up or denying this truth of the Oneness of everything is itself a single millat or single existential patterning: from religion to politics, to media and inevitably to finance – the real force behind the media event was of course the financial sector and their servants the insurers. Just as war is good for business so is any force majeure. It brings huge profits to television through the increase in advert revenue at peak storm times and to the reinsurers who are consequently given licence to increase the premiums prior to the next storm. This is not a fantasy but rather the accepted credo and practice of the global society in which we live. It is ignorance to ignore such divine signs and insolent to exploit them for material gain. Allah says of them that they are a people ‘who have sold guidance for misguidance. Their trade has brought no profit; they are not guided.’ Then Allah says that their likeness is ‘that of a storm-cloud in the sky, full of darkness, thunder and lightning. They put their fingers in their ears against the thunderclaps, fearful of death.’ The calamities of nature are a foretaste of death. They are a reminder of the transient nature of this world and an invitationto reflect on the Next: ‚Would any of you like to have a garden of dates and grapes, with rivers flowing underneath and containing all kinds of fruits, then to be stricken with old age and have children who are weak, and then for a fierce whirlwind containing fire to come and strike it so that it goes up in flames? In this way Allah makes His Signs clear to you, so that hopefully you will reflect’ (The Cow: 265).

The Quran teaches us using descriptions of what is familiar to us. It instructs us that this world can either be a garden of blessings or one visited upon by calamity and drought just as it warns us that the next World is either the bliss of the Garden or the torment of the Fire. These are not symbols but an exposition of how things are and shall be: the reality of natural phenomena here and the reality of meanings after death. Just as the people in the Garden shall reach out to the fruits there and exclaim that they have already tasted similar in this world before they died, so the events of this world are a mirroring of the earthquakes, winds and terrible noise of the Last Day: we can only really conceive of the ‘Crashing Blow’ (Qur’an: sura 101), the Deafening Blast (Qur’an: He Frowned 33), the ‘Splitting’ (Qur’an: sura 82), the ‘Overwhelming’ (Qur’an: sura 88), the ‘Quaking’ (Qur’an: The Earthquake: 1), the ‘Bursting’ (Qur’an: sura 84)) or this ‘Compacting (of the sun into blackness)’ (Qur’an: sura 81) or the Great Calamity (Quran: The Pluckers: 34) – the names by which the Last Day is known – if we have lived through the force of a tornado or the terror of an earthquake here.

The Salaf as-Salih and the “salafites”

According to the definition of the fuqaha the true Salaf as-Salih are those who act correctly, i.e. who act at the right time and in the right place, and who act in accordance with the first generations of Muslims. They are those referred to by Muslim as recorded in his Sahih from ‘Imran bin Husayn from the Prophet may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: ‘The best of this umma are the generation to whom I was sent, then those people who followed after them’; and in another narration from Ayesha, radi allahu ‘anha, who on asking the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, who were the best of people he replied: ‘The generation of people I am now (living) amongst, then the second generation, then the third . These then include the inhabitants of Madina al-Munawwara who followed the great imams of Madina, Malik, Asad ibn al-Furat, Ibn al-Ashhab, Abu ‘Abd Allah ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibn al-Qasim al-‘Utaqi, Ibn Wahb and those who took from the latter like Sahnun ibn Sa’id ibn Habib at-Tanukhi , may Allah be pleased with them all, as well as those who later confirmed these first generations of Madina like Ibn Abi Zayd, Ibn ‘Ashir and Ibn Rushd al-Jadd – they are the true Salaf as-Salih because they held to the indubitable validity of the transmission of the model of a whole society by tens of thousands of Companions to hundreds of thousands of tabi’un and tabi at-tabi’un; and thus to the mu’amalat: the weights and measures of Madina, its transactions, its markets, its contracts, its caravans, its gold and its silver, its success as a thriving trading centre, its abhorrence of any unlawful increase (riba), in short to the mu’amalat; as well of course to the ibadat. This is the society about whom Allah, may He be exalted, speaks in sura at-Tawba, the society which was born of the meeting of the Muhajirun and the Ansar, the meeting of those who had not been able to establish the deen in all its comprehensiveness in Makka with those who made it possible:
The forerunners – the first of the Muhajirun and the Ansar – and those who have followed them in doing good: Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. He has prepared Gardens for them with rivers flowing under them, remaining in them timelessly for ever and ever. That is the great victory.
The Salaf then are the predecessors of all the Muslims about whom the Rasul, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, has spoken so highly of. No one however is making an exhortation to regression into the Middle Ages as the media would have their audience believe (although of course they are referring to their Middle Ages which was indeed for the most part dark and dank). What the Messenger, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, is indicating is that they were the highest model to be followed. So we turn to them in imitation in order to establish light in the present times of darkness; but we do not hold to the mindless mantra of progression. Rather we live with a technology subordinated to this dominant reality of balanced, healthy men and women who have worship at the centre of their social existence.
What is being considered then is how we are to follow them, for follow them we must, according to all men of knowledge whatever their madhhab, whatever their age. We must follow them with wisdom which means – in this age of casino capitalism and debt enslavement – applying their social and economic model in order to free ourselves and those amongst the non-Muslims who want this quality of freedom – freiheit. This freiheit shall not be obtained by uneducated pawns – bearing Muslims names – of a terror scenario overseen by and at times even devised by a security system that strives to go seamlessly total and global; rather it shall be obtained by addressing and seeking the cure to the illness through a much deeper understanding and a closer following of the practice of the salaf, through the implementation of that half of the deen ignored by the present day salafites.
The true Salaf do not belong to marginal terror organisations. How could they? Suicide is totally forbidden. We are forbidden by Allah to cause even the slightest harm to ourselves and a fortiori to commit suicide also:
Do not cast yourselves into destruction .
Muslim relates that Abu Huraira related that the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said:
He who kills himself with an iron (instrument) shall remain endlessly for ever and ever in the Fire of Gehannam and he shall have that weapon in his hand thrusting it in his stomach for ever and ever; he who drinks poison and kills himself shall sip of this (same poison) in the Fire of Gehannam where he shall remain endlessly for ever and ever; and he who kills himself by falling from (the top of) a mountain shall fall constantly into the Fire of Gehannam and shall remain there endlessly for ever and ever.
in his commentary on the Sahih Muslim Qadi Iyyad points out is that this proof for Imam Malik, may Allah have mercy on him, that the talion for the person who commits suicide applies just as if would apply if the person killed another: in other words the same punishment is inflicted on his self in the Fire as he inflicted on it in the world.
And Jundab narrated that the Prophet may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him said:
A man was wounded and he killed himself and so Allah, may His might and majesty be magnified, said: My slave has rushed upon Me with his self and I have forbidden him the Garden
And Abu Huraira related that the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said:
He who throttles himself shall throttle himself in the Fire and he who stabs himself shall stab himself in the Fire
And Thabit bin ad-Dhahhak related that the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said:
Whoever kills himself with an iron (instrument) shall be tortured with it in the Fire of Gehannam .
All of the actions of the Salaf as-Salih were manifest, open, in company. We only know the deen because nothing the Messenger, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, did he did alone. Dissembling – taqiya – is foreign to Muslims. Secrecy is not the way of the salaf for they have nothing to hide. The multiplication of number-based transactions, passwords, coded information which characterise the society we live in are indicative of the reduction of the zone of freedom to the inner realm of the personal: only an encoded freedom accessible to the individual is tolerated. While true salaf are vibrant social, outgoing, men and women who draw from the source communities as they want a life based on knowledge, who seek to live the whole of the deen of Islam and understand the technological demands of the age, the salafites have reduced Islam to a religion, to a way of narrowness and mere piety. And their deen is mostly in their heads, a concept, an ideal, and like all ideals unrealisable. The mu’amulat, the forgotten chapters of life, are nowhere to be seen in their behaviour. Behaviour is reduced to endless nawafil salat, recitation of Quran and study of non-madhhab based hadith without an understanding of fiqh which might give them an insight into a practical application of the entirety of Allah’s commands and the Messenger’s teachings. They admonish the kuffar but adopt their social and economic modes of behaviour while proclaiming their intensity of iman. A whole generation was educated in the USA under the illusion that they could ‘take the tech know how’ without being deeply programmed by the University system they took it from. After inadequate reflection many, like the shia, have come to see the enemy as embodied in this country despite one respected survey showing that the Muslim population in the USA tripled to 2.6 million in 10 years . They claim to embody the way of the earliest generations but hold more closely to the disjointed model of Shaykh Ibn al-Wahhab who purified Islam into a ‘religion’ when he handed over the social, economic and political realm to the tribe of Al Saud. This is in blatant opposition to his insistence on tawhid – the unified understanding of Allah, his deen and His creation as a whole. They laud Shaykh Ibn Taymiyya but few have read his works – not surprising given their level of education and his use of tortured logic to reject the logicians; but while they rightly reject with him the mutazalite fascination for logic, they completely ignore his high regard for the way of the people of Madina and of the essential truth of tasawwuf, when understood as ihsan; they also have a tendency, like their alleged master, to criticise others, in particular scholars; the least they could learn from his mastery of the logic of his opponents is that their endless championing of the slogan ‘kitab and sunna’ – while they themselves live otherwise – renders this slogan mere rhetoric, not in any way an utterance connected to any known demonstrable proof. Their impatience with the accretions of legal judgements over the centuries should have taken them back to Madina, the home of the Kitab and Sunna par excellence. More importantly they fail to see that Ibn Taymiyya is not in fact their leader, neither intellectually or in person, he having been dead for centuries. They have no leader for a leader must be alive, flesh and blood. Most do not come anywhere close to an understanding of another of their iconic leaders, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawzi, himself a student of Ibn Taymiyya. Their mode of being is often dominated by negation and rejection and, as is evident from the questionnaire submitted to them by Maulana Shaykh ‘Ali Laraki, share many aspects in common with the Ikhwan: they have an uneasy relationship with women and pay lip service to Allah’s prohibition of usury – refusing to undertake any positive measures to establish proper markets, legal gold and silver currency or the taking of zakat. The rampant corruption and clear failure of their only feeble response – Islamic banking – is now clear even to them. This rejectionist stance has its roots in the rebellion of Shaykh Ibn Wahhab against the Osmanli Devlet and continues today with their continued refusal to acknowledge the necessity of bay’a – the oath of allegiance to the person in authority. Here they find common ground with the shia, albeit from a different approach road. It is of little use to anyone if one clings to minor aspects of the prophetic model while ignoring the basics. Pious insistence on the nawafil fasts of Monday and Thursday while ignoring the fard of zakat -collected as tax at the command of the ruler, not given as sadaqa – is a prevalent aspect of their modus vivendi and applies in their respect to all the mu’amalat. It is easy to be tough on their women folk but hard to take active measures to revive true markets or establish the minting of gold and silver coins. This withdrawal from the obligation to establish justice in the world on the part of the salafites has ironically contributed to the growing taste for the propagation of a ‘personal’ Islam by the media who in effect declare ‘this Islam of concepts, in the head, in the home, cut off from real life – we can deal with’. The media, whose bosses are from the ranks of the capitalists, thus sanction a way of being which shall in no way impede the machinations of the casino stock markets. The salafites have become a convenient category of theirs into which they shovel all those Muslims who are not merely passive consumers, distinguished only by a domestic Islam from the non-Muslims.
These characteristics of the salafites serve to engender a kind of pious person who is coming dangerously close to adopting the christian model of personal worship at restricted times of the year – accompanied by a total freedom – read unfettered economic activity – in the world. Historically the salafites have reached the point where the christians abandoned the prohibition of usury, abandoned intrinsic wealth and abandoned justice in the markets in favour of ‘religion’, i.e. a manner of existing severed from the life force itself. It leads inevitably to passivity and then to consumerism and a tacit acceptance of a democracy which then sanctions their domestic religious isolation. But while the non-Muslims are rewarded with total sexual licence in virtually all domains, the christian-like piety of the salafites prevents them from indulging in this licence and in a knee-jerk reaction they even forbid themselves Allah’s licence regarding the permitted number of wives, interpreting away the explicit ayat in modernistic terms could scarcely in tune with the true salaf.
Wherever they are in the world they recognise each other but this is a religious brethren and excludes the Muslims at large who naturally yearn for a deen which includes them and their worldly activities. Disturbing too is the increasing number of mosques on the Arabian Peninsula with stained glass windows, back rests and chairs placed at the disposal of the worshippers. No doubt not legally prohibited but bearing a dangerous resemblance to churches. The salafites – together with their coreligionists the ikhwan – through misplaced piety have cut themselves off from the joy of living which can only be tasted by entering the deen completely and realising that the true, full spirituality of the age is to be found in the mu’amalat, not necessarily in the mosque exclusively.
So while the rhetoric of the salafites is ‘kitab and sunna’, the part of the kitab and sunna acted upon is carefully selected to ensure the maximum pious effect; but this rejection, this turning away from establishing normal activities in the world according to the pattern of the Messenger, sallallahu alayhi was sallam brings frustration to the young who necessarily are still in touch with the fitra, however faintly. They want to act but the path of mu’amalat has been blocked by the dominance of salafite/ikhwani ulama who restrict teachings to iman and pious undertakings. It is not surprising some aspiring salafites, unhappy in the world, blow themselves up in a world they see as non-pious and irrelevant, being for them merely a fitna , not being for them a realm of positive activity. Not even those salafites dubbed as militant by the media – who by their militancy are active in the world – are essentially different for the goal after the fighting seems to be the establishment of a status quo in which an Islam reduced to the domestic within a capitalist world mode purified of wine and pork reigns.
The true Salaf as-Salih knew what a treasure they had and naturally wanted to share it; and they still know. This is the secret to the explosive expansion of the deen to the waters of the Atlantic up to the lands of the Chinese in the first centuries of Islam. The salafites however are marked by their extreme reticence with regard to dawa. As one of them remarked ‘We must rather work, brother, to increase the imam of the Muslims, we have enough Muslims as it is’. What strange aqida is this? And who are they to know of the iman of others when it is basically a hidden matter? Besides, their aspect is often forbidding, hardly conducive to bringing people into the society of Islam. The sadaqa of a smile would offset the length of their beards. A beard is of course a noble thing, the veil of the Muslim, but whenever little of the practice of the Messenger, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, is left but this, then imbalance is the order of the day. A beard is of personal benefit both in this world and the next, the implementation of the mu’amalat is of social benefit.
The salafite movement is a grouping nurtured by the ‘experts’ on Islam with the support of the media many of whose adherents follow with enthusiasm the script supplied to them, not unlike the manner in which those addicted to TV soaps adopt the screen discourse into their own lives. But not even Ibn Taymiyya would have understood.