| About 25 years ago a group of Neocons had prepared a plan to fill the vacuum that the collapse of communism and the Soviet empire left. Muslims became the target for three reasons, they stood in the way of Greater Israel, they owned black gold, and they were the obstacle that stood between them and total world domination. They hatched a plan known as the plan for a New World Order. The target was not hard to find: from the time of Salahuddeen they wanted the unchallenged control of Jerusalem and the Middle East. To do that, they had to destroy Muslim resurgence and resilience.
2001 gave them the opportunity to action their plan. Bit by bit, the Muslim world has now reached the bottom of the hate barrel of the world, kicked about by all and sundry. Bit by bit, by design, we have been thrown deep into the pit of degeneration. We see the spin off in our own country every day in the letters to the Editor columns. And we, like fools, proudly support the Crusader cause by egging on the destruction of the Muslim world as we did in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Egypt and other Muslim countries where the Zionists plan to redraw the map of the region.
How rapidly the dynamics have changed. Today Arab countries seal the borders of Palestine and Saudi Arabia finances the wars that the Israelis need to gain total domination. And we hold solemn gatherings to give them ‘our support’.
The Saudis fronting the imperial crusader coalition unashamedly is now obscenely an anti-Muslim entity supporting the power grab of the Middle East by the Israelis.
It’s not the first time the monarchists have sold out the Muslim cause. And for a few pieces of silver and a few freebies from the Saudis our South African political illiterates support their treachery by whipping up support against the last political bulwark against the imperial Crusaders, namely Iran. They even call religious leaders from India to drum support for the Crusader cause on behalf of the Saudis. (Remember the meeting of the ‘most senior of ulema’ of South Africa held in Johannesburg on December 5, 2015, South Africa, and addressed by Sh Sulaiman Alhussaini Alnadwi from India, where “full support was given to the Riyadh Conference which has gathered the various Mujahideen factions in order to unite them under one leadership in Syria”).
Yet in this part of the world where we live, merely to state the facts is to be labelled ‘Shia sympathiser’. There is an old saying in English, where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.
Many a Muslim empire has fallen when the moral custodians sold their souls to the paymasters of their times, by design or just in sheer ignorance.
The resulting reality today: Muslims killing Muslims and laying waste to Muslim cities on behalf of the Crusaders, egged on by fellow Muslims.
How we filled our chatrooms with duas and abhorrence at the goings on in Syria in 2016, yet conveniently remain silent in the face of the same Saudi inflicted holocaust in Yemen. Why are there no free junkets to Yemen which faces a humanitarian disaster worse than in Syria, for our ‘instant experts’, no collection drives for victims of US directed Saudi bombs, no on the spot report backs on our radios and chatrooms. Why the deafeningly silent double standards? Is a Yemeni child disposable whilst a Syrian child is valuable? Why the silence now that we know that the Saudis were primarily behind both carnages and that ISIS is in fact a Saudi-Mossad by-product that has destroyed whatever goodwill was left towards Muslims in the rest of the world. Do we think there will be no accountability for such blatant double standards?
HOW DID THE MUSLIM WORLD TURN UPON ITSELF?
Because Muslim dictators were seduced by the idea of power. Monarchs and dictators were guaranteed power over their subjects and a cut of the wealth under their feet by agents of imperialism in exchange for bringing the Muslim world to its knees.
Netanyahu laughs all the way to the synagogue because the soldiers of the Muslim dictators do the job of the Israeli Defence (Attack) Force, causing the worst destruction of Muslim cities since the time of the Mongol invasion and burning of Baghdad in the 13th century. In the face of a 1000 year catastrophe our so-called Muslim scholar ‘experts’ give religious sanction to such treachery. Which planet do we live in? Why do we believe that there is no accountability for misleading people out of such gross ignorance of political dynamics?
Some actually preach ignorantly under the cloak of religion the lie that the Saudis are the real heroes fighting the west in protecting Jerusalem and Palestine, whilst the Iranians are American stooges bluffing us by taqiyya.
They say so even whilst the Saudis collude with the al Aqsa occupying Israeli Defence Force. Which comic books do our ‘experts’ read, if at all, for their information?
It is time to take hold of our senses again.
We are a small part of the global scene. We have real political experts within the local Muslim community. Let us draw on their research in such matters if we want to delve into them. Let us not indulge in the sin of supporting the killings of Muslims by Muslims out of ignorance.
Better still, let us rather mind the business of settling our sectarian squabbles first before dabbling into global political dynamics. Let us begin to explore ideas on how to climb the peaks of our worth within our own country.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IS AN IDEA, NOT A SLOGAN
I just come back from a trip to a township less than an hour’s drive from Durban, where our indigenous Muslims are battling to keep Islam alive for twelve years and have built a community of over 300, not because of us but in spite of us. A community that does not exist in the world of our high flying internationalist elites. Some of us have provided money to that community for a musallah that is inaccessible, arranged Dubai-sourced funding for a clinic that is not only hard to access but is not far from an existing conveniently located Christian run one. Unprofessionally planned and unprofessionally built in an unsuitable place. Where does the blame lie? On the funders who have no idea of the place or the locals who have big dreams, little vision and are limited by the types of structures for which funding is provided, like musallahs, clinics and boreholes. Never mind that there is municipal water already serving the locality.
PLANT YOUR FEET WHERE YOUR HEART IS
In a flash moment of anger I thought I will tell those that build such out of place institutions without a plan or a vision, or those who itch to travel the world to its foreign hotspots, to move on and attend to foreign needs. This country needs those who will look after its own first. If your loyalty lies elsewhere, then be where your heart is, not in a place in whose very backyards you feel out of place. Places only a stone throw away but you have never even seen. I would say to them leave Africa to those of us whose hearts are African. Don’t make it more difficult for us in competing for scarce resources. It is hurtful for us to traverse our own townships only to come home and read day in and day out the roller coaster of funds being collected for foreign causes, from canned Qurbani to rolling out money for, at last count, 18000 houses overseas. It offends our sense of loyalty to our motherland to see such roll outs to foreign shores when our own people close crèches because they have no funds to pay the teachers or when even uloom graduates trot the country nurtured on a diet of toxic dependency handouts, where reverts leave Islam because they become strangers in their own communities on becoming Muslims.
When, in a country where even 3000 daees in the field are not enough but where our colleagues find it extremely difficult to find funds for just three excellent daees (at a price of about three overseas inspection flights).
I wonder how we have become so numb to the needs of our own people in our own country that we so unashamedly solicit funds for foreign causes, in full knowledge of the hadith that teaches us that charity begins at home.
Before we even get proper news of foreign tragedies, we despatch emergency relief teams across the globe. No problem. But when will we send teams to develop the poverty stricken Muslims of our own townships to enable them to stand proudly as assets in their own communities, and not for the odd photo opportunities?
If I had the liberty of anger I would feel it towards those who piously preach to us that the cause of our problems is our lack of devotion to religious rituals, whose prescriptions are more wazifas and more reading of the kuls but no action. And I think to myself: If more prayer and more meditation was the answer, why did Allah send His Messenger out of the cave of Hira where he was meditating just fine, and send him to roll out 23 years of non-stop action? Islam did not take root in the cave of Hira but in the streets and markets of Mecca and Madina, in the battlefields of Badr and Ohud, in the blood and sweat of the Taifs.
Instead of building villages and cities like Madina in our townships, we build monumental Hira Caves of luxury in marble and granite and do dawah in Bosnia and Brazil, Argentina and Bulgaria, not in our own backyards where thousands were and still are hungry for Allah’s message. We shout to high heaven if a Sunni becomes a Shia but don’t care two hoots at the hundreds of reverts leaving Islam for Christianity. Why? Do we hate the Shias, like the Saudis, more than we love Islam?
Islam is not a religion of hate-mongering!
I don’t know whether to feel pain or anger at this disconnect.
We possess ability, infrastructure and fair resources. We even have people with visions of how to transform our Ummah. We know we have to make our presence felt in our country as forces for good, as assets to the rest. We know we have to re-establish Islam to its rightful role in the affairs of Africa in general and South Africa in particular. We know we have to reclaim our lost ground of integrity, truthfulness, just behaviour and honesty in mainstream society. We know there is no other way to make our presence felt. We also know that as Muslims we are judged by our conduct, and our conduct is the best form of dawah. Are we waiting for a wakeup call to bring us back to our own country, a wakeup call before we plant our feet on our own and not some foreign soil?
THE WAY FORWARD
The sooner we discard our radio station addictions, publicity desks, foreign jaunts and embrace the needs of our African motherland and roll out planned action programmes to achieve our goals to progress Islam and our fellow beings on our very doorstep, the quicker will we reach our transformation. Starting at grassroots, community level. Until bees find a way to produce honey by airwaves and photo stills and foreign junkets, we need to emulate the ethic of their buzzing actions, not their angry suicidal stings. Bees produce their honey in the locality of the pollen they find, they do not collect for foreign hives.
Leadership will better be served in the assembly of purpose driven, quiet collectives, not by individuals with a penchant for publicity, public attention through every opportunity at public relations. Real leaders don’t exert their presence. They just make their influence felt. We have enough of the former. We now need the latter.
Social change will only change our condition for the better if we have a broad Ummah plan, a programme and action.
There is a whole world beyond armchairs and words. Beckoning the doers.
The three ingredients without which there will be no transformation are thus:
- idea
- outcomes sought,
- Actioning the idea.
If we want to change our lot, we have to start training our youth about the real world outside our caves. Not lock them into insulated non-African cocoons. A world others are changing by thinking, planning and action. Leadership is not a distant dream, it lies within us. It means turning visionary goals by action into desired outcomes.
Whilst we persevere and place our faith in Allah, let us understand and teach our young people the ingredients of leadership, and make it possible for a new breath of fresh leadership to grow from amongst them. It is possible. We need the will to find a way.
Salaams, ismail 15 November, 2017
“Indeed, the worst of living creatures in the sight of Allah are the deaf and dumb who do not use reason.” [Surah Al-Anfal.8:22]
Issued by House of Ummah
Email: myummah3@gmail.com |
