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| "Full sails ahead" By Nadia Yassine
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| We can only truly understand the cause of our current decline if we go further back in our history. We will only find ourselves if we admit that the accursed mark of Pharaoh has inevitably corrupted the entire system. So long as power was in the service of the Message, we made great strides in our history. When the process was reversed -when despots began to use the Message for personal ends, deviations began. |
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| The germs of our deviance were already astir in the days of Moawiya. They were already lived in the sumptuous palaces of Harun Errashid; they were coiling in the folds of his gold-embroidered caftans, and circulating in the magical corridors of his well-supplied harem. There is, alas, not the slightest trace of that in the official accounts of the history set down in the inner circles by hands at worst filled with dinars, at best trembling with fear, naturally in complete support of the regime’s line. |
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| A methodical repositioning that places power at the center of history will enable us to understand our past and present suffering. It will certainly be to our advantage to see again more seriously what our Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him) said in this regard : “The knots of islam will come undone one by one. Each time one comes apart, people will cling to the other: the first knot to be untied will be power; the last will be the prayer.” |
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| This statement has the advantage of being clear as to the decisive role of power in an Islamic system. Power is the major junction. When its nature is changed or usurped, it rends apart the social fabric at all the vital levels. “Rending apart” befits the metaphor used by the Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him), who alludes to the knots that hold the dress. Islam is a dress for the umma, which is compared in another hadith to a body. The Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him) says: “In their affinity, mutual love and solidarity, the faithful may be compared to a body that reacts with fever and insomnia when one of its members is suffering.” |
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| This sacred solidarity is one of the last knots to be severely tested by the domino effect produced by corrupted power. The system of inequalities engendered by despotic regimes eventually lacerates the body of the umma. To our spiritual impoverishment, occasioned by our progressive estrangement from the altruistic and humanistic teachings recommended by islam, is added our material indigence. Both work to compromise the sense of community. |
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| In the state of decline of our history, the elite currently in power aggravate our illnesses by individualism and practice the policy of après moi le déluge ! |
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| If we wish to save the body -let alone its tattered dress- from disappearing, from being dissolved in the corrosive acid of heedlessness to God, of nonsense and blind imitation, indeed, from a final holocaust altogether, it is urgent that we revise, understand, and react ! |
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| Full Sails Ahead (avaible online at www.jspublishing.net) |
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