Unknown Afghanistan by Pratap Chatterjee and Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch The signals coming from the Obama administration as a "strategic review" of Afghan policy is nearing completion this week are, to say the least, confusing. While much new thinking on the Afghan War has been promised, early leaks about the review's proposals for the next "three to five years" largely seem to promise more of the same: a heightened CIA-run drone war in the Pakistani borderlands, more U.S. military and economic aid for Pakistan (and more strong-arming of the Pakistanis to support U.S. policy in the region), more training of and an expansion of the Afghan army, and of course more U.S. forces – the president has already ordered 17,000 extra troops into the war. The new policy elements, evidently involving modest invitations to (and threats toward) Iran, a belief that up to 70 percent of Taliban fighters might be won over via the right combination of money and "reconciliation," and a "scaling back" of hopes for Afghan democracy, hardly seem to add up to a brilliant thought exercise in the face of a disaster of a war now into its eighth year. In the meantime, of course, Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis continue to die. Ironically, the real X-factor in how the Afghan War will be pursued in the years to come probably lies nowhere near Afghanistan. Just how severely, and for how long and in what complex ways, the global economic collapse will affect the United States and Washington's revenues may be the true determinative factor in whether the Obama administration slowly makes its way further into, or out of, the war.
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Hamid Karzai: Too nice, too weak - how west's own man fell out of favour |
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Once seen as the only person for the job, President Hamid Karzai has exasperated the US and many Afghans with his inability to tackle corruption and insecurity.
Jon Boone in Kabul
Four years ago Hamid Karzai, the softly spoken, well-dressed president of Afghanistan, was untouchable. In the wake of the US-engineered toppling of the Taliban regime, Karzai was seen by the west as the only man who could make something out of a country wrecked by decades of war.
A Pashtun and a member of the same tribe as the old royal family, Karzai was thought to be cut from the right cloth to lead a famously fissiparous country. He was a man the west could do business with: although he initially backed the Taliban, he had shunned the extreme mujahideen groups that fought the Soviets in the 1980s and which gave rise to some of the militant groups causing havoc today.
With his impeccable English, Karzai wowed the international community, not least Tom Ford, then of Gucci, who famously said the president's get-up of robes and karakul sheepskin hat made him the "chic-est man on the planet".
Today, the Karzai backlash is in full swing, from the US and European leaders threatening to undermine his position to senior Afghan figures in Kabul. "He was never the right choice," Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister, said. "I worked with him and never thought he should have been more than a junior minister."
Opinion is divided on when things started to go so wrong for the 51-year-old leader. Hedayat Amin Arsala, a former vice-president who is still a senior minister, said Karzai's original sin was to co-operate with the reviled warlords when he became leader of Afghanistan's interim government in early 2002. These regional militia leaders were revered as heroes of the jihad against the Soviet Union, but after the Russians left they became hate figures for lawlessness and corruption.
Arsala, a former close ally of Karzai, is one of about a dozen Afghan politicians planning to stand against him in the presidential election in August. Sitting in the magnificent surroundings of his office, where the Afghan cabinet used to meet in the nineteenth century, he said he was standing more in sorrow than anger.
"For the last three years we have had insecurity and corruption. Unless we change this direction substantially and very energetically under a new leader then I think we are going to be in trouble."
Blame
Karzai's defenders say it is unfair to blame all of Afghanistan's current troubles on a single individual who was denied the resources he needed from the start. "In the early days the international community did not have any coherent strategy and the question of governance was never raised," said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan's ambassador to Norway and Karzai's former chief of staff.
"In the beginning Donald Rumsfeld barged in with a purely military strategy. They did nothing to stop drug production and they hired militias who perpetuated a lot of atrocities."
But it is hard to find anyone who can explain Karzai's apparent inability to crack down on the rampant corruption that is eating at the heart of the Afghan state. According to Transparency International's corruption index, Afghanistan slipped from being perceived as the 117th most corrupt government in the world in 2005 to 176th in 2008 - four places from the absolute bottom.
Last year Thomas Schweich, one of George Bush's top counter-narcotics officials, accused Karzai himself of trying to thwart US efforts to crack down on poppy cultivation and "protecting drug lords and narco-farmers" involved in the £2.8bn a year industry.
Rumours have abounded for years about some of Karzai's brothers, most notably Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of the provincial council in Kandahar. Last year the New York Times quoted White House officials saying Ahmed Wali was involved in drug trafficking - an allegation he denies.
More recently, public attention has focused on Mahmoud Karzai, a man who spent most of his life in political exile in the US running restaurants. Despite his relatively limited business experience, in the last seven years he has become one of Afghanistan's leading tycoons, with shares in the country's biggest bank, property developments, and control of one of the country's biggest industrial assets, a cement plant north of Kabul.
Mismanagement
Some close observers say the president is just too nice to get to grips with the cronies that surround him. "The trouble is he doesn't like confronting people or saying things to people that they don't want to hear," said Francesc Vendrell, the former European Union special representative in Kabul, who first met Karzai in 2000.
"It was a constant battle to persuade him to get rid of ministers or governors who were corrupt or incompetent."
In the view of one western diplomat: "He's a poet for Christ's sake - what do you expect?" Karzai was once found by a western diplomat poring over a collection of Philip Larkin poems. Some credit his poetry as the source of ability to hold an audience, whether in English, Dari or Pashtu. But many technocrats who plan to stand against him in August say his pre-2001 career as a junior official in a moderate anti-Soviet resistance group did not give him the management skills necessary to run a modern state.
"Unlike his brothers he couldn't even run a two-room restaurant," said Ashraf Ghani, who once served as Karzai's finance minister and is running against him.
Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, another former finance minister and presidential candidate, said Karzai had "absolutely no capacity for critical thinking".
"He does not prepare for meetings. He does not do background reading, he does not prepare questions. Cabinet meetings are very unproductive. He just takes a position and then expects it to be followed."
One of Karzai's aides, speaking privately, said the presidential office was chaotic, with minutes of meetings rarely kept and copies of presidential speeches lost. Decisions are made "on the hoof" with an inner circle of "yes men".
Mohammad Amin Farhang, who until late last year was commerce minister, said the president often appoints unsuitable provincial governors and government officials to retain the support of warlords.
"Without asking me he appointed a department head in my ministry who was totally incompetent. It was a political deal between [Karzai] and a jihadi leader and it created lots of problems."
Helena Malikyar first met him in the late 1990s at meetings held in Rome by exiled Afghan politicians.
"He never really took the lead and would be very quiet for long periods. Whenever there was a suggestion with which he disagreed he wouldn't say anything to counter it," she recalled.
The president's shortcomings have not been helped by the wall of security surrounding the presidential palace in Kabul, largely shutting him off from the realities of Afghan daily life.
Dr Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and another candidate, said: "With all the ceremonies, protocol and troops marching around, he soon was not walking on the ground. Gradually he came to view that he deserved it, and he was the only person who could run the country."
A common analysis of Karzai's management style is that of a traditional tribal elder who, according to a western diplomat, "wants to satisfy everyone. They don't want to alienate anyone because this is the tradition of tribal jirgas."
But Ahmed Wali Massoud, a former senior member of Karzai's early government and brother of the current vice-president, does not accept the analysis. "Tribal leaders keep promises. They promote the interests of the tribe, but Karzai does it for his own ego."
Massoud believes Karzai is a man who has taken too many lessons in statecraft from the British colonial experience.
"He once said to me, 'The only way to rule this country is divide and rule! Divide and rule!' He repeated it over and over."
Washington
Abdullah said Karzai had used this ploy by warning that if the US failed to provide military aircraft, he would seek assistance from "the other place", which was widely interpreted as meaning Russia.
It is the increasingly negative view from Washington that is most dangerous for Karzai's political survival. "Most Afghans are extremely pragmatic and they equate foreign support with strength," said Ludin, the ambassador to Norway. "If they know the Americans are not with you, you are not a serious candidate."
Karzai's all-important relationship with the Democrat leadership in Washington turned sour long before Barack Obama was elected. In February 2008 Joseph Biden, then a senator, paid a visit to Kabul. Over a meal at the palace, Biden grew increasingly exasperated at Karzai's refusal to accept that his government was mired in corruption. The future US vice-president eventually stalked out early, declaring: "This meeting is over."
Obama did not even bother to phone his opposite number until four weeks after his inauguration, and cancelled the regular video conferences that Bush was fond of having with Karzai.
The two leaders reportedly got on well, partly because they had the same "gutsy, informal way of doing business", according to Ludin, who recalled Karzai's habit of jumping up in meetings to pour cups of tea for even the most junior officials. Bush also "didn't want to admit they had a problem in Afghanistan, when things were going so wrong in Iraq", according to one US diplomat.
Now Karzai has to deal with Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy tasked with turning around the unfolding crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke clearly thinks Karzai is part of the problem. In remarks made before his appointment he said his government was "weak; it is corrupt; it has a very thin leadership veneer; it is internally divided; it has never arrested any major drug lords".
But it is on the issue of civilian casualties that Karzai's relationship with his western backers has hit rock bottom. In September he had a furious row with the normally supportive Bush administration after he accused US forces of massacring more than 90 civilians, including women and children, in Azizabad. According to one of Karzai's close aides, Condoleezza Rice gave Karzai a verbal lashing over the incident during a telephone conversation. She warned the president that if he continued to criticise the US, "we will no longer co-operate with you".
Karzai says he has lost popularity in Washington because of his willingness to talk out on the issue. "I was a lovely man when I was keeping quiet. I'm a nasty man, a no-good leader when I began to speak," he complained recently.
Holding on
Other observers say Karzai is warning the US to back off. One of his top aides warned the recently departed UK ambassador of the dangers of not supporting Karzai, only for him to win anyway.
And that, despite his unpopularity, still looks like the most likely outcome. Karzai enjoys both the advantages of incumbency and a face recognised across the country in an election where most voters are unable to read names on the ballot. And as long as he remains president, he has the power to reward supporters with government positions who can be expected to campaign for him in far-flung parts of the country. The opposition can only cash in on the national ill-will towards the president if most of them agree not to stand so the anti-Karzai vote would not be split.
"There are no other candidates who are obviously better," one western diplomat said. "Some might be better administrators but they probably won't be better communicators."
Haroun Mir, director of the Centre for Research and Policy Studies in Kabul, fears the international community will give up on Afghanistan unless things change. "With President Karzai we cannot hope for change: it will be another five years of nepotism, corruption and mismanagement of funds and dysfunctional government."
Performance issues
The president of Afghanistan is known for making maximum use of his far-reaching executive powers.
To the frustration of western diplomats, Hamid Karzai is in the habit of getting involved in the appointment of junior officials and relatively lowly governors of some of the country's 360 or so districts, rather than spending his time on bigger issues. But while Afghanistan's highly centralised system allows for presidential micro-management it is not very good at delivering services to ordinary Afghans.
Resource-starved ministries in Kabul and a lack of qualified bureaucrats can prevent projects in far-flung parts of the country ever getting off the ground. The president's powers in relation to parliament have never been settled and Karzai has had several battles with the country's elected politicians.
Yunus Qanooni, the speaker of parliament's lower house, has led calls for the constitution to be changed to create a strong prime ministerial role with executive powers.
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An Open Letter, Regarding Israel, Sent to Australia's Politicians and People of Influence |
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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
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Governor General,
Prime Minister,
Ministers,
Federal and State MPs,
Ambassadors,
Journalists,
Australian Citizens,
In the small area of Yad Vashem, at the feet of the Jerusalem Forest
, stands Israel's memorial to the people who lost their lives in the Holocaust. It is a place that perpetuates the tragedy of a life lost for no reason. It has become a place of visitation and contemplation for the world's political leaders and those who walk their path. In that building and complex is a lesson for humanity: that madness often grips the human being and possesses him to the extent he can no longer recognise himself and properly evaluate his deeds.
One such example of madness, ironically, rests just a mile away from Yad Vashem where a buried village, that of Deir Yassine, has been forgotten by all. And though its inhabitants met a tragic death long ago, its cactus trees still bloom, spring after spring, in waiting for the native people to pick its fruits. There is an eerie silence, a feel of unease and a significant hollowness to those who walk upon its unnamed and unrecognised graves. Upon that land, the land of Deir Yassine, something greater than murder, massacre and ethnic cleansing took place; there a certain people became oppressors after having been the oppressed. There, they stepped unto a path of desperation and destruction, tempered by a collective psychological dysfunction, which arrested their ability to look deep within themselves and appreciate the extent of their aroused madness and obsessive lust for innocent blood.
The years of 1947 and 1948 saw their state founded on the forcible expulsion of tens of thousands of Muslims and Palestinians from lands that had been theirs for more than a thousand years. At the license of their latent allies, who were appointed by the British and French, they ripped the Muslims of Palestine and the world of what was theirs. They repeatedly resorted to expulsion and forced relocation of the native people to etch out a nation from what was, just fifty years prior, nothing more a band of scattered communities in the cities, highlands and meadows of the world.
Their pretext to creating and maintaining what exists is that Israel is their historical land and national abode. For that, let me tell you that the lands of Canaan and Judah, and the institutional, social, theological and intellectual legacy of the land, are not theirs or an exclusive right of the Jewish and Israeli people - and never have been. The legacy of the Patriarchs and the Kingdoms of David and Solomon are the right of the faithful believers and humanity, not exclusive to Jews as an ethnicity and race.
The evidence lays in their own history, under the guidance of Moses, where they were deprived of crossing the Jordan River and entering the land of Canaan for fourty years; even though they were Jews, they were forbidden because of their disobedience to God. Therefore, it is in the proper dedication to God that one becomes the legitimate owner of the Holy Land, not in ethnicity and a racial arrangement akin to Apartheid.
Truth is, in maintaining this illegitimate and racial state, Israel has evolved into a genocidal monster which has brought unease to the world as a whole. Yet, they insist on detaching and decontextualising humanity's frustration and resistance – which they conveniently tag anti-Semitism and terrorism – from their stained history of sixty years; additionally, they have come to accept the status-quo inherited from their fathers. For that, the good of humanity are at an endless and open struggle with them, and this state of engagement will not cease until the
pseudo-state of Israel falls, and the land is returned to its rightful owners and the wrongs are righted.
They, as Zionists, are also implicated in the murders executed by the Zionist terrorist gangs which paved the way for the establishment of Israel. And by accepting their deeds as righteous and justified, and upholding the audacity to wage war on free-thinkers and freedom fighters today, the Zionists and their allies have joined the dark rank of the very people they opposed so that they might attain their freedom. They have enslaved man and suppressed his voice; just their recent campaigns against media personnel in the Gaza Offensive are enough an example of their incessant desire to burn the tongue, name and life of the one who doubts them.
Such is and was the extent of their state's wrongs that they even turned against their allies, the British and the Americans, and killed of their men, women and children. Have they conveniently forgotten the premeditated strike on the USS Liberty, which left 34 American soldiers dead, and the King David Hotel Bombing which claimed the lives of 30 British nationals? Of course, their attitude towards those who dare criticise
Israel's actions is nothing new, for they believe past atrocities committed against them grant them a carte blanche to engage in a national security policy of orgiastic proportions in its murder and oppression.
Know that our problem with them is not one of race and never has been. For were we to oppose them simply for the fact they were of the Jewish race, our submission to Islam would be in jeopardy. For our greatest of prophets and Messengers were of the sons of Israel, peace be upon them all. Even when we had power over the Jewish communities, we gave them freedom of belief, conscience and judiciary and willfully shared with them our legacy of civilization and development. When the armies of Europe were burning the Israeli people, the Islamic State took them in and protected them with all it had.
This way of dealing with them was not due to our kindness as people, but rather the teachings of Islam which commands and entrusts us to care for those in need or weakness.Â
So, are their deeds of the last sixty years our recompense? To drive us off our lands of a thousands years, burn our homes, shell our cities and station themselves on our land as if nothing happened? Would you, or any self-respecting person, accept that reality in your own town and street?
There is no middle ground between the Zionist and the historically aware. And they, with all their vulgar propaganda, inflated sense of arrogance and alliances with the elite – at the expense of the honest intellectual and decent commoner – will be corrected; for the truth and justice never die. Amongst the people of Australia we will find our allies in standing up to them and exposing them for who they are: people and institutions that undermine justice and promote the conduct of an illegal, illegitimate, terrorist and debased state established on the graves of the innocent and the lands of the exiled.
I leave you with two statements, one from their former prime minister, and one from the Old Testament:
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If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country"- David Ben Gurion, Former Prime Minister of Israel
'What is stolen or wrongfully acquired should be returned to the owner.' [Leviticus -6:3]
Abdul-Latif Halimi (Al-Firdaus News)
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Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian Tragedy |
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The world of treachery is one unique upon itself in its diversity and manifestations. There is the treachery of silence, where appropriate censure and defence are not invoked in the name of a friend or brother; there is the treachery of power, where people's confidence is violated by their keeper for a personal gain; there is the treachery of ideology, where hypocrites become advocates for a cause they disbelieve in, either to exploit or undermine it; and, there is the treachery of greed over truth, where one knows the line between what is false and true, but sides against truth for a fleeting benefit of this life.
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Often, however, there comes upon the earth men, who are trials in the face of the believers, who combine between all that has ever been known of treachery. Their names are the best of names, their places of birth are amongst the burial sites of the best of men and they are born upon the best of faiths. Yet they come to walk amongst the people like kings, whilst in them are the traits of the blemished and disgraced harlots. They speak of mercy and humanity, while they burn the eyes of their own people with poverty and oppression. They pray amongst the people and invoke the best of names, but Allah is free of them and what they say, what they do and who they are.
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This phenomenon is as present in Egypt as it is in far reaches of the Muslim world.  But due to the significant historical, cultural, geographic and demographic role of Egypt, it is perhaps a good place to begin.
Muhammad Hosni Mubarak
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Mubarak is a man of relative intelligence and capacity; he rose through the ranks of the Egyptian Air Force and took on a civilian role as Vice President in the administration of President Anwar Sadat. President Sadat, who wilfully recognised and made peace with Israel, was assassinated at the hands of Khalid Islambouli (rh) and came to be replaced by his protégé Hosni Mubarak as President.
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Upon inheriting the responsibility of what was then a nation of fourty million people, Mubarak affirmed the peace with Israel - the illegal and illegitimate state founded and standing upon the lands of Islam and the Muslims - and pledged allegiance to the United States on a level and in a way rarely witnessed amongst the pseudo-states of the Arabs.
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In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Mubarak pledged 40,000 troops - attaining $US250,000 for each one - to aide the American effort in the offensive against Iraq and its people. The war however did not end with the military offensive on Baghdad, but rather manifested itself in a campaign which brought about over 350,000 Iraqi deaths through sanctions on Iraq and continued into a U.S military occupation of the Gulf.
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Mubarak, of course, also had his own War on Terror – starting from back in 1981. In fighting Islam and those who uphold its banner, Egypt, for almost thirty years, has been under a law of emergency rule which permits indefinite detention without trial, prohibits unauthorised gatherings of more than five people, limits speech and association to opposition political movements which are seen as a threat or corrective to the current establishment, and where reporters are subject to arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention. Â
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Till this very day, Egypt's reputation precedes it in the matter of torture, for it is the main pit stop of the CIA's extraordinary rendition; for when even the US has too much of a conscience to torture the Islamist mujahideen, it sends them to Cairo where human beings become ghost detainees - out of the way of judicial oversight - and where the Egyptian mukhabaraat al-khabeyacan have their freedom of the flagitious.
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However, this service is not restricted to just the enemies of Egypt and the USA; Israel, Egypt's good friend and ally, has a fundamental interest in the humiliation of the believers on the turf of Amr Ibn Al-Aas (ra), Salaahudeen (rh) and Qutuz (rh). Take an example from early last year: a number of Gazans who happened to be members of Hamas made their way into Egypt, where they were captured and detained without trial and subjected to the most humiliating of exposures: they were stripped naked, beaten, deprived of sleep and their files hand-delivered by the Chief of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services, Omar Suleiman, to the Israelis in Tel Aviv.
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Such is the zeal of Mubarak and his administration to undermine those who carry the flag of Islam, that he went as far as launching a verbal attack against the United Kingdom in November 1997 and criticised their lack of effort in curbing the conservative Islamic movement.
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Even distant nations such as Venezuela had the decency and self-respect to expel the Israeli Ambassador - at the time of the latest Israeli incursion into Gaza. Yet, the Pharaoh of our times and his regime maintained relations with the enemy of Islam and the enemy of humanity. And as our good brothers and sisters of Egypt rose to resist a betrayal even the disbeliever could not accept upon himself, they were subdued by a State of death and treachery unlike any other.
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The Tragedy of Egypt
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However, Mubarak's greatest contribution to the devil is upholding a stale secular Egyptian law at the expense of Islam and the Shari'ah, whereby Egypt – like the rest of the lands of the Muslims – is deprived of God's law and justice. And where a law beside that of Allah (swt) has authority in the land, corruption rises and permeates every home; it is simply a dictate of the universe as created by The Creator.
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Unemployment and corruption persist at the favour of big business and big names and at the expense of people and their qualifications; this being due to a lack of accountability and coherence at the hands of the Shari'ah and the people of Islam. Â
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Palaces and grand halls are erected instead of schools and hospitals, and the people suffer under the burden of a wealth they can see but not feed their starving children with - where 50% of the population cannot even read or find basic services; this being due to a political class which finds its interest in self-service and not in the service of Allah (swt) and the believers.
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Young girls have their legs tied together and are ripped and mutilated of what they were given, while weightless laws and decentralised authority exasperate the problem instead of correcting it; this being due to lack of a system of Islamic corrective and courage on behalf of the religious authorities of the land in conveying the correct Islamic perspective and being able to enforce it.
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Qualified and professional men reach their thirties and fourties without having saved enough to rent a room, marry a woman and protect their chastity, leaving them to a desperation unlike any other; this being due to a failed economic system and culture, established upon a mediocrity of thought, wherein Islam has fallen from the hearts and institutions of man.
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The challenges of young women walking the streets having to deflect stares, obscenities, pinches and random marriage proposals have become case studies for political students the world over and comedy sketches for European midnight shows; this being due to a failed religious class and the chronic inability of young men, financially, to find stability and security.
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The streets of the Arab world are more familiar with Egypt's Zizi and Fifi than they are of Hasan, Sayyid, Abdul-Hamid, Khalid, Ayman or Abu Ishaaq; this being due to a media realm that is left unregulated, and hence closer to whoredom than decency and responsibility. The Arab and Muslim world has become more familiar with the traditional Sa'eedi dances than with the Egyptian Mamelukes and Saif Ad-Din Qutuz to whom they owe their lands.
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Corruption has spread in the land of Egypt, and its reality is a tragic one. But this reality is but a mirror of what has become entrenched in all the lands of the Muslims. Are Albania, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Malaysia, Turkey or Tunisia any better? Islam has fallen from the hands of its adherents and our homelands have become graveyards of what we believe in. And even still, they remain spiritual havens compared to the lands of disbelief and the disbelievers.
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The Role of Politics
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After the authority of Allah (swt) over His creation, there is the authority of the righteous over the lands of the earth. The masses, in their majority, are a flock at the hands of the shepherds who fear and care for them. Otherwise, and in unfortunate circumstances, masses are preys at the hands of the wolves who become 'shepherds' – as we witness today.
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Correct governance is a step of rectifying societies and bringing physical, mental and spiritual security and safety to the people. And both Islam and history affirm that the implementation of the Shari'ah of Allah (swt) is the undoubted and unrivalled source of progress and decency.
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Even prominent figures of the West, such as Hewlett Packard's former CEO, Carly Fiorina, have acknowledged the supremacy of the Islamic state, when she said:
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"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.
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One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known.
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When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.
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While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo."
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So where is Cairo from that today? Has Al-Qaahirah (The Victorious) satisfied itself with what has become of it: a land wherein the defeated governors sell their souls and their people for a pathetic price, where the mosques and lands of Islam are at the vanguard of the war against the Palestinians and the Muslims?
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The Muslim world urgently needs an Islamic alternative to what governs the people today. Yes, there are many reformists and pseudo-reformists amongst us, but most are failing a failure that has little equal.
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Solution
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It seems, on some level, that Islamic political reformists are locked in an enclosed and restricted mindset of political engagement – devoid of historical context or responsibility -- wherein they have convinced themselves that they cannot be effective except by being a part of the very system they seek to 'change'. That, by definition, is a contradiction of logic and terms; for when a political system stands, it does so with all its methodologies, institutions and interest groups embedded within it, leaving no space for a reform that compromises its standing.
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The current Egyptian state is a fruit of the disintegration of the Islamic state and the colonisation at the hand of the Western powers. Therefore, it is imperative that any serious reform bring the authority of the entire so called Egypt nation-state and its history, beginning from 1914 as a British protectorate, into question. But to attempt integration into a system that rejects you to begin with, is the epitome of naivety.
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The example of the political arm of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who are our beloved brothers and have achieved some surface benefit, but also wasted much time, is a good one. For while the organisation began as a serious threat to the Egyptian establishment by attacking the very basis upon which the Egyptian government derived its so called authority, the Brotherhood then drifted inwards – into the very establishment it was fighting – and became a pacified movement bound by the constructs of its new position. When even liberal democratic and Arab-Nasserist political parties have had the audacity to reject the Egyptian establishment altogether, the Muslim Brotherhood has insisted on participation, which is indicative of a misplaced pragmatism that even the most deluded of people came to reject. And with time, the state is establishing its presence further and time is being lost.
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Yes, perhaps many would find it risky to be at the periphery of Egypt's political and social landscape by calling to a true, untainted and uncompromised Islamic political paradigm. But ultimately, only in going for the jugular and offering an undiluted, yet relevant, Islamic perspective to Egypt's social and political problems can there be any sort of tangible change and corrective process. There is simply no other political option and potential solution; and as the mainstream moves to Islam – not the other way around – the task at hand becomes easier.
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Muslims in the West also have a role to play in engaging the Muslims of Africa, Arabia and Asia. Whether it is through establishing contacts and assisting from a distance or using the power of the spoken or written word to debate the status quo, there must be a movement towards joining one of this Ummah's greatest challenges: liberating our lands and establishing our state.
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We cannot continue oppressing ourselves by accepting our status as a disenfranchised people and not re-establishing the home that the Ummah has always had. The Islamic state and the Islamic alternative – an alternative to the quislings and tragedy and treachery amongst us - must be revived. The truth does not change for the world; the world changes for the truth – verily, no state or harmony was established in the world without an extraordinary process and people to nurture it.
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Br. Abdul-Latif
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