Introduction

Hegelian Dialectic

Due to the influence of Wahhabism, those proffered as “scholars” in Islam today are not classically-trained, and do not conform to the rigorous methodologies of the past. Contrary to the deceptively proposed “reforms” of the Salafis, Islam doesn’t need to be adapted to modern times, it is modern times that need to be adapted to Islam. Instead, what is available is a roster of celebrities, often self-taught, who perform lecture circuits delivering what are mostly just pep-talks. These, typically, rather than translating Islamic teachings into actions to transform their beleaguered societies, focus on subjects designed to cultivate a sentimental attachment to Islam. They include how to pray or perform ablutions “properly,” the benefits of fasting, the necessity of Hijab, the virtues of Heaven, and nurture fatalistic expectations by highlighting the signs of the End Times, in particular the arrival of the Mahdi, the one expected to save them from the current predicament.

Muslims today have become accustomed to living in what they fail to recognize as a state of utter catastrophe. For 1300 years, Muslims had lived under some form of consolidated Muslim rule, first under the Abbasid Empire, from 750 AD to the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, followed by the Ottoman Empire, until its collapse following World War I. The Muslims are entirely to be blame for their own demise, but it was not without some assistance from foreign powers, particularly the expanding British Empire and particularly their devastating strategy of Divide and Conquer. First in Arabia, the British instigated the notorious heretical Wahhabi movement to undermine the Ottoman Empire from within. In India, under the British East India Company, and then the British Raj, Wahhabi influence resulted in a quagmire of internecine strife led by the Deobandis, Barelvis and Ahl-i Hadith. These movements were part of a larger trend cultivated by British agents known as Revivalism, an open attack on the legal foundations of Islam, known as the Madhabs, which had long been protected by the “Closing of the Doors of Ijtihad.” That agenda continues to further distance Muslims from the true basis of Sunni Islam in our time, through the most recent manifestation of the Divide and Conquer strategy, that of Salafis against Sufis, or Traditional Muslims, known as Wasatim, who provide accurate criticism of the other, in order to each recruit dupes to their respective deviations.

The tactic is what is known as the Hegelian Dialectic—from the Latin phrase divide et impera—and attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831), one of the most influential figures of nineteenth-century European philosophy. According to Hegel, as people are driven by self-interest, they must be brought under the “universal will” by making them believe they are working for themselves. However, to be effective, according to Hegel, the “universal will” has to “particularize itself.” Hegel adds:

 

Now the division consists in individuals being assigned a sphere of action in which they have their existence [Existenz] and in which their honor resides, a sphere that is of service to the universal. Patriotism en masse has no inner necessity, and involves no rights. Likewise there are not rights in despotism. The well-known saying divide et impera [means] one must divide in order to have to deal with particulars as particulars and not with everyone bound together; but it is just this principle of “divide and rule” that also first gives rise to the freedom since it sublates the elementary level of volition and action.[1]

 

Taking advantage of the vacuum in orthodox Sunni leadership since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s—as a direct outcome of the boom in oil revenues, particularly following the hike in oil prices by OPEC members in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war—Salafism and Wahhabism, favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, achieved a “preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam.”[2] This mission, according to political scientist Alex Alexiev, was “the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted,”[3] which David A. Kaplan described as “dwarfing the Soviets’ propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War” funded by an abundance of oil money, nicknamed “petro-Islam.”[4] However, as Gilles Keppel explains in The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, Wahhabism is not a true reflection of Islamic tradition:

 

Left to its own devices, Wahhabis probably would not have prospered worldwide in the last quarter of the twentieth century, even with the assistance of oil revenues. Adapted to an arid tribal ecosystem, it lacked the intellectual tools necessary to take on the challenges of the modern world, or even to impose its dogma within established schools of thought, which held it in low regard until the 1960s. Compared with the richness of Muslim civilizations, their renowned dynasties, the mighty empires to which they had given birth, the flowering of arts and science they had nurtured for fourteen centuries, from Cordoba to Samarkand, Fez to Delhi, Istanbul to Damascus and Cairo, Isfahan to Baghdad, the modern-day peninsula where Islam had first been revealed was within the great sweep of Islamic history, forgettable.[5]

 

The enemies working within Islam recognize the ailment but, wanting to finish off the patient, pass themselves off as doctors with the cure so they can administer the lethal injection. According to Basit Koshul:

 

It is the opinion of many scholars that the “Muslim mind” and the Muslim world have been in an acute state of crisis for at least two centuries. This state of crisis has been deepened by the social, political, economic, and military ascendancy of the West vis-a-vis the Muslim world. This ascendancy has only increased with the passage of time. This state of affairs has caused many Muslims to wonder why their societies are so backward and those of the West so advanced. The question becomes even more haunting in light of the historical grandeur of Islamic societies in the not so distant past.[6]

 

Despite the skewed prescriptions of the so-called “reformers,” a precise description of the collapse of the Ummah, particularly the Sykes-Picot agreement of World War I, by which the dismembered limbs of the Ottoman Empire parcelled out to the greedy European powers, was provided in a Hadith, which also pin-pointed in no uncertain terms the root cause of the downfall. The Prophet Mohammed is reported to have said:

 

The people will soon summon one another to attack you as diners inviting each other to share a feast. Someone asked: Will that be because of our small numbers at that time? He replied: No, you will be numerous at that time: but you will be scum and rubbish like that carried down by the torrent of flood waters, and God will take fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and put Wahn into your hearts. Someone asked: What is Wahn, Messenger of God: He replied: Love of the world and fear of death.[7]

 

The ruse used by the Salafis to divide the Muslims has been to point out the real deterioration of their condition, but to claim that it was Islam that needed reforming, rather than the Muslims. But, the Quran clearly warns, “Verily, God will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”[8] Rather, as the Prophet Mohammed warned the Muslims: “You would tread the same path as was trodden by those before you inch by inch and step by step so much so that if they had entered into the hole of the lizard, you would follow them in this also.” He was asked, “God’s Messenger, by those before you do you mean Jews and Christians?” He said: “Who else?”[9] As is typical, religious believers tend to pride themselves as God’s chosen, despising unbelievers as their inferiors. Thus, in the Gospel of Luke chapter 10, when Jesus was asked by a Jewish teacher to explain the Law, quoted Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “All the Law can be summed up in this: to love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” To illustrate the point, Jesus recounts the “Parable of the Good Samaritan,” to teach that compassion is to be extended to any human being, regardless of their religious background or heritage.

As such, when believers lose sight of the true Spirit of the Law—compassion, mercy, charity and justice—they over-compensate by obsessing over outward details of the religion to demonstrate their piety. It is thus that petty rivalries about “correct” religious practice prevent today’s Muslims from recognizing the greater responsibility of not only defending justice among themselves, but throughout the world, and thereby failing to serve as true examples of Islam. A Hadith demonstrates the better understanding of these responsibilities by the early Muslims:

 

When Mustawrid al-Qurashi was sitting with Amr ibn al-As, he said, “I heard the Prophet say, “The Hour will come when the Romans will be in the majority.” Amr asked him, “What are you saying?” He said, “I am repeating that which I heard from the Prophet.” Amr said, “If you say this, it is true, because they have four good characteristics: they are the most able to cope with tribulation, the quickest to recover after disaster and to return to the fight after disaster, and are the best as far as treating the poor, weak and orphans is concerned. They have a fifth characteristic which is very good: they do not allow themselves to be oppressed by their kings.”[10]

 

Separated as such from their heritage, Muslims today have concocted a secularized version of Islam—influenced by America’s idea of religion—where faith is a personal matter, which includes a list of ritual observances that can be practiced regardless of the external political reality. It’s mainly a convenient excuse, rationalized to permit them to follow the yellow brick road to Western societies, seeking to indulge in the advertised prosperity, all the while proffering the ridiculous excuse that they have arrived there, in the millions, to make Da’wah (to proselytize). In this dysfunction, they pursue a deluded version of Islam, where the only salvation they can hope for is eventual acceptance as equal citizens, if only they can convince their hosts of the beauty of their religion, and bring about amendments to their laws once they have succeeded in ridding these societies of their menacing Islamophobic tendencies. And yet, heinous examples of Muslims fanaticism are publicized before world at an accelerated pace, making that endeavor an increasingly dangerous exercise.

 


[1] Hegel. Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science. The State: Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 233.

[2] Gilles Kepel. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (New York City: I.B. Tauris), pp. 61–62.

[3] Frank Gaffney, Jr.. “Waging the ‘War of Ideas’”. Center for Security Policy (December 8, 2003). Retrieved from https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2003/12/08/waging-the-war-of-ideas-2/

[4] Kepel. Jihad, p. 51.

[5] Gilles Kepel. The War for Muslim Minds (Harvard: Belknap, 2004) p. 170.

[6] Basit Koshul. “Fazlur Rahman’s ‘Islam and Modernity’ Revisited.” Islamic Studies, 33: 4 (1994), p. 404.

[7] Sunan Abi Dawud, 4297. Book 39, Hadith 7.

[8] Quran, 13:11.

[9] Sahih Muslim 2669a, Book 47, Hadith 7.

[10] Sahih Muslim 2898a, Book 54, Hadith 45.

Divide & Conquer