Zahir
Ebrahim | Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
March
23, 2015
Abstract
This
article without preface jumps right into the uncomfortable and what
is presumed to be a most rude question in certain circles, of whether
or not Divine Rule by the jurist, vilayat-i faqih, is
Determinate in the Holy Qur'an, meaning, is it advocated in
its categorical verses, or is it an interpreted viewpoint of a jurist
based on the Indeterminates of the Holy Qur'an. What does the
Holy Qur'an itself has to say about it? This topic, which is a subset
of the much larger topic of “wilayah” in the Holy Qur'an,
as esoteric as it may first appear, is not a mere theoretical matter
for torturing seminary students and keeping aging scholars in
permanent employment over them. Its import to current affairs and to
the “manufactured” rise of “revolutionary Islam”
is pivotal. Today, the latter is fast becoming part of the tortuous
Hegelian Dialectic trifecta: “militant Islam” vs
“moderate Islam” vs “revolutionary Islam”,
game-theorized to pragmatically manufacture “revolutionary
times” worldwide by drawing upon Muslims' first and second
principals: their precious religion of Islam which is always ripe for
a rich harvest of useful idiots, and their precious Muslim blood,
respectively. Most Muslims are of course just patiently Waiting
for Allah to come save them. Those who refuse to wait out their
blood loss in silence are invited to come under the protection of the
valih-e-faqih, under his presumed divine mandate as the
protector, guardian, vali, of the Muslims. The proposition is being
made increasingly attractive by ratcheting up the existential
pressures on Shia Muslims worldwide. The common herd reaction is
predictable, and consequently harvestable by Machiavelli. It is
Machiavelli behind the existential crisis as part of game-theorized
problem fabrication, and for which the expected solution is the
creation of revolutionary Islam. Before the beleaguered Shias rush
into the open arms of the valih-e-faqih-e-muslimeen in Iran
for pawn sacrifice on the Grand Chessboard, they might look at what
their own Good Book says on Divine rule.
Is
it Determinate in the Holy Qur'an?
Caption
“This day have I perfected your
religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for
you Islam as your religion.” (The Holy Qur'an, verse
fragment from Surah Al-Maeda 5:3) This verse of completion and
perfection implies that there is no room for addition or
subtraction to the religion of Islam after “This day”, or
the verse is falsified. What or when “This day” was, or
what was the significance of events transpiring on “This day”
that caused this verse to be revealed and inserted in what appears to
be a random place, as a verse fragment of 5:3, is not stated in the
Holy Qur'an. Indeed, many verses of great import are similarly
contextless, or both open-ended as well as contextless, and therefore
perennially ripe for self-interpretation. This makes possible a
multiplicity of 'kosher' misinterpretations of the religion of Islam
by the learned scholars imparting any meaning to the open-ended and
contextless verses that suit their mental genius or their
self-interest, interpreting individual verses in isolation to suit their
socialized predisposition, but without altering the syntactic and overt
structural composition of the text of the Holy Qur'an. This book,
Hijacking The Holy Qur'an And Its Religion
Islam, illustrates how much of the plurality of interpretations is in fact enabled by the Holy Qur'an itself – by design! (Click
bookcover to download PDF,
http://tinyurl.com/Book-Hijacking-Islam-2ed-2015
)
A
non hagiographic examination of the conception of vilayat-i faqih
in both Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini's book: “Islam
and Revolution”
(translated by Hamid Algar, 1981), and how it has been enacted in
post Revolutionary Iran, reveals that it is little different in terms
of absolutist governance than what it replaced: both autocratic rules
by those who ascribe to themselves the divine right of kings to rule
and consequently, absolutely intolerant of dissenting ideology and
dissenting politics. Both demonized their respective antagonists at
home (never mind abroad) with the absolute righteousness of divine
authority. Both asserting with unsurpassed oratory, and with the
power of the state backing their oration, that the chosen elite,
respectively themselves, is more entitled to govern the public than
the public itself. And that, like the king's rule, the
valih-e-faqih's rule too is absolute, with no limits, and no
checks and balances, so long as he rules “justly”. The
valih-e-faqih defines what is just and what isn't in all
matters, including political matters of the state, as the imam
(leader), and in theory can only be replaced if he leaves the bounds
of Islamic Sharia. The absolute rule by the valih-e-faqih as
the representative of the “hidden Imam”, is deemed by the
jurist to be an obligatory religious duty as an integral part of the
concept of “wilayah”, Divine Rule, prescribed by the
religion of Islam for ruling the Islamic state.
Meaning,
the Islamic state must be ruled by the jurist, and it is incumbent
upon the jurist to create the Islamic state for Muslims and to rule
it with absolute authority demanding absolute obedience just as the
Prophet of Islam and his designated successor ruled with absolute
authority.
In
a 6
January 1988
letter to Iran's president and Friday prayer leader Sayyed Ali
Khamenei on Determining the limitations of the authority of the
Islamic government under the valih-e-faqih's rule,
Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini addressing the president of Iran as “Hojjat
al-Islam Mr. Khamenei” (and not as “Ayatollah Khamenei”
as he is presently saluted and unquestioningly followed as the “marja
taqlid”), and while paying elegant lip-service to accepting
criticism as a “divine gift” in these pious words:
“And of course we should not assume that whatever we say and
do, no one has the right to criticize. Criticism, even condemnation,
is a divine gift for the growth of humans.”, unequivocally
asserted the principle of boundarylessness of “Absolute
Divine Rule” vested in the ruler of the Islamic state:
“I
must state that governance, which is a branch of the Absolute Rule of
the Prophet (PBUH), is one of the primary laws of Islam; and it takes
precedence over all secondary Laws, even prayer and fasting and the
hajj pilgrimage. The ruler can destroy a mosque or a house that sits
in the route for a road, and avoid the money to the owner. The ruler
can shut down mosques in times of necessity; and destroy a mosque
belonging to pretenders [zerar], if a resolution is not possible
without destruction. The government may unilaterally void
Sharia-based contracts that it itself has made with the people in
situations where that contract is contrary to the good of the nation
and Islam. And it can prevent any action – be it devotional or
not – that is contrary to the interests of Islam - as long as
it continues to be so. The government can temporarily prevent the
hajj pilgrimage – which is one of the most important divine
practices – in situations where it deems it to be contrary to
the interests of the Islamic country.” --- Translation via the
Iran Data Portal at Princeton University,
http://tinyurl.com/khomeini-letter-govlimits-1988
(link to Original
Persian Text)
While
one cannot vouch for the accuracy of this translation as it is the
habit of orientalists to deliberately mistranslate and misrepresent
the Iranian leadership, it is presumed to be accurate enough for the
purpose of this analysis as it is consistent with the ideas put forth
in “Islam and Revolution”.
All
the aforesaid determinations by Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini underline
the principle of Absolute Rule being the purview of the
valih-e-faqih. And evidently, it is made noble and legitimate
because these absolute determinations are in the name of Islam as
“divine guidance”. It begs the obvious question to the
discerning mind of Mr. Spock, that how is that absoluteness
qualitatively any different from the divine king's self-ascribed
right to absolute rule, absolute powers, absolute opinions, absolute
directives, and absolute wisdom as the vicegerent of his gods on
earth? The king does it to preserve his monarchy and makes recourse
to his god as having received a mandate. The valih-e-faqih does
the same thing to preserve his rule by making arguable reference to
mandate given to him by his God. Both employ the same means: absolute
control of the public mind, and absolute control of the state, both
demanding absolute obedience from the people. Absolute Rule is
evidently more endearing to the philosopher jurist of Islam if it is
in his God's name. Why is it philosophically so, even if one ignores
self-interest and conflict of interest – meaning, even if the
valih-e-faqih is obviously making a case for acquiring state
power and authority over the people of which he and his jurist class
are the prima facie beneficiary?
Harken
back to Plato and the “philosopher-king”. It is the
primary axiom upon which valih-e-faqih is principally based –
that the religious philosopher is closer to God than all the rest of
mankind, and hence closest to truth and justice than all the rest of
mankind, and consequently better able to (or more entitled to) govern
the republic and its masses with truth and justice than anyone else
among mankind!
Upon
that priceless axiom which remains conveniently hidden in the
prolific arguments made to dignify vilayat-i faqih, the verses
of “wilayah” in the Holy Qur'an, namely those verses
speaking of “wasilah”, “Imam”, and
“obedience”, are interpreted by the jurist as being
Exemplary of Divine Rule set forth in the leadership of the Prophet
of Islam as the first head of the Islamic state in Medina, and in the
short tenure of Imam Ali, the fourth Caliph, as the only legitimate
Divinely appointed successor head of the Islamic state after the
Prophet's death. Because they are both Exemplars of the Holy Qur'an
and the system of governance espoused in the religion of Islam for
all times, and not just for their own time, so argues the
valih-e-faqih, how is the Divine Rule to continue in other
times?
Specifically,
under the Shia theology, during the absence (ghaibat) of the “hidden
Imam”? The earth cannot be deprived of Divine Rule argues the
brilliant faqih, otherwise tyrants will rule by enslaving the masses,
and God's Guidance to mankind will remain un implemented,
constricted, “mahjoor” (see Surah Al-Furqaan 25:30
quoted above). The core argument is principally laid out by Plato in
The Republic to dignify state rulership by the virtuous
“philosopher-king”. Plato argued 2500 years ago, a
thousand years before the advent of the Holy Qur'an, that if the most
virtuous philosopher is not king, the masses will be ruled by
diabolical controllers who will enslave the public mind in far
constricting invisible chains of perception management than mere
physical chains can ever hold any man captive. These prisoners of the
mind will actually come to love their own enslavement, and resist all
attempts to be freed.
Plato
illustrated that idea most poignantly in his famous allegory titled
The Simile of the Cave. (See
http://tinyurl.com/Plato-Myth-of-the-Cave-Excerpt
) The philosophical etiology of virtually all discourses on
voluntary servitude, behavior control, mind control, virtuous
leadership, virtuous statism, shepherding the public mind, and even
Nietzsche's Übermensch
(see Morality
derived from the Intellect leads to Enslavement!),
ultimately anchor in Plato. As far as Mr. Spock can ascertain, none
have surpassed Plato in their own derivatives. Some scholars
are honest enough to acknowledge their ancient benefactor, while
others merely plagiarize from him. But the audience of these latter
demagogues does not know when Plato is being plagiarized in the garb
of new theory because the public mind is at best only familiar with
the name Plato, often in their own native language. Hardly anyone
among hoi polloi, even among the college educated professional
class, has actually read The Republic, let alone studied it
for the due diligence it deserves to comprehend that foundational
scholar of the Hellenic Civilization that became not just the cradle
of Western civilization, but Muslim scholarship as well. Muslim
scholars in Spain were the first to translate the Greek scholarship
into Arabic, from where the Western Crusaders got their source
material to translate into Latin and subsequently into English.
Today, the neo-cons for instance, are all Plato scholars. All
significant liars and aggressors today advocating military invasion
of Muslim nations under the pretext of defending themselves from the
tyranny of Islam also turn out to be Plato scholars in their
background. (See
http://tinyurl.com/Leo-Strauss-Noble-Lies-Excerpt
)
Plato's
characterization of mental chains through perception management from
birth to death is so powerful that the diabolical superman, the state
intelligence apparatuses, the military covert-ops, the Mighty
Wurlitzer, Machiavelli, all harnesses it for themselves (see
http://tinyurl.com/MightyWurlitzer).
Virtually every Western philosopher of the age of enlightenment and
onwards penning ideas on good and evil has borrowed at least
something from Plato. The famous quotable statement of Goethe, the
German philosopher, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than
those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from
the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They
feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.”,
owes a great deal of inspiration to Plato just on the very face of
it. It is a paraphrase from the Simile of the Cave.
Anything
to do with deception and the control of the public mind, and
conversely, shepherding the public mind to higher enlightenment in a
virtuous state led by its most enlightened stewards, Plato expressed
its philosophy so comprehensively 2500 years ago that it is hard to
add anything new to its principles, or to the perceptive
understanding he displayed of the frailty of the human mind and how
it is harvested by unseen controllers in society. Edward Bernays,
known as the father of modern perception management, also called
advertising when selling soap, public relations when selling agendas,
and propaganda when selling lies, opened his 1928 Book titled
Propaganda, with these
famous words which are again mere corollaries of Platonic
description: “The conscious and intelligent
manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this
unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which
is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds
are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we
have never heard of.”
Muslim
scholarship borrowing fundamental notions and key ideas of
intellectualism for their own intellectual tradition when they were
the dominant superpower in the world for 700 years, not just from
Plato, but from the Hellenic culture of learning, is only to be
expected, and is indeed what happened.
The
entire realm of ilm al-Kalam, the wholly speculative
intellectual discourse on topics of the Holy Qur'an, is fundamentally
Platonic for instance, and is little different from Plato's Shapes
--- entirely immanent, non-falsifiable, without any empirical
reality-check possible. It is as rich as the human mind is fertile,
and is freed from any bounds of reality and verification – an
occupation of idle minds who do not have to strive to earn a living
and can sit around all day in their seminaries (or ivory towers)
eruditely discoursing important matters like how many angels
can dance on a pin-head and whether the Holy Qur'an, as the Word of
God, is created or uncreated! It is the contemporary Muslim
scholarship today which plagiarizes more than just borrow with
acknowledgment. The feeble intellectual mind unfamiliar with the
genesis and etiological significance of ideas presented to him by the
superman, never knows the difference. So forget about the
public mind being any more the wiser just because collectively they
are far greater in number. Plagiarized ideas can easily be ascribed
to anyone, including to oneself as its inventor which is typically
the case, but also to God to achieve some purpose. The latter takes
an exceptionally clever mind to pull it off. In this exclusive club
of the Übermensch, Nietzschean superman, one is
arguably dealing with a most superior mind. To dismiss it as
ignorant, short-sighted, or a stooge, is to not just not give the
devil its due, but to also not recognize the formidable enemy for
what it is. As Mr. Spock well knows, the sword of intellect can cut
both ways. He is undeterred as he systematically unpeels the many
layers of the question down to the very bottom of the Pandora's box.
As that legend goes, opening the Pandora's box initially opens a can
of worms but when you get to its very bottom, the entire mystery is
solved.
With
that overview of philosopher-king and the overarching impact of Plato
on the world of intellectual thought, the responsibility for
implementing Islam's Divine Rule too, it is argued, must consequently
fall to those philosophers and virtuous scholars of Islam who know
and understand Islam the best. Otherwise, the Muslim polity, as
history bears witness, will always be ruled by tyrants and usurpers.
Well, who is best fit for that leadership role of shepherding the
plebeian mind away from the wolves, but the pious jurist!
Thus,
Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini deemed his own clergy class the latter day
“philosopher-king” ruling class since they presume to
know Islam the best. They are closest to the mind of God, closest to
truth and justice, and consequently make the best executors of His
Divine Rule. The most capable jurist among this tiny coterie able to
stand up to tyrants and falsehoods, able to exercise political and
temporal leadership, is the “philosopher-king”. Ahem, the
“wasilah” (already covered in Part-II, see Al-Wasilah):
“O ye who believe! Do your duty to Allah, seek the
means of approach unto Him,”
(Surah Al-Maeda 5:35),
“These are they whom Allah guided, therefore
follow their guidance” (Surah Al An'aam 6:90),
the valih-e-faqih!
Since
the Prophet of Islam and his designated successor implemented that
Divine Rule with Absolute Authority, and since they demanded absolute
obedience from the public as per the verse of obedience, 4:59,
so must the valih-e-faqih who is only the heir to the third
entity in the verse of obedience, ( وَأُولِي
الْأَمْرِ
مِنْكُمْ ),
the “ulul-amr”, also referred to as “valih-e-amr”,
an unnamed third party to whom absolute obedience is also commanded
by the Author of the Holy Qur'an! The valih-e-faqih therefore
is only implementing God's prescription on his side of the elite
fence as his religious duty as the heir to the noble Prophet's
mantle, and the governed must implement its part and obey the noble
valih-e-faqih in absolute terms on its commoner's side of the
elite fence as its religious duty.
Here
is that most dreadfully interpreted Verse of Obedience once
again, from Part-II:
|
“O
ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those
charged with authority among you.
If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.” (Surah an-Nisaa' 4:59) |
يَا
أَيُّهَا
الَّذِينَ
آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا
اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا
الرَّسُولَ
وَأُولِي
الْأَمْرِ
مِنْكُمْ ۖ
فَإِنْ
تَنَازَعْتُمْ
فِي شَيْءٍ
فَرُدُّوهُ
إِلَى اللَّهِ
وَالرَّسُولِ
إِنْ كُنْتُمْ
تُؤْمِنُونَ
بِاللَّهِ
وَالْيَوْمِ
الْآخِرِ ۚ
ذَٰلِكَ خَيْرٌ
وَأَحْسَنُ
تَأْوِيلًا
|
Caption
Verse 4:59 of Surah an-Nisaa', the Verse of Obedience, itself
opening the door to sectarian schism, the source of fundamental
bifurcation between Sunni and Shia sects during the Muslim expansion
into world dominating empires after the demise of the Messenger. The
Verse of Obedience specifically underwrites the Principle of
Inerrancy as a requirement for holding any Apostolic office that
demands obedience from the flock.
Once
the mantle of Absolute Rule is claimed by axiomatic assertion, it
inevitably leads to demanding absolute obedience as a self-evident
matter, which further leads to the inevitable corollary that no one
may even disagree with the valih-e-faqih once he has made up
his mind just as no one may disagree with, or disobey, the Prophet of
Islam once he has made up his mind as per verse 33:36
of Surah Al-Ahzaab “It
is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been
decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their
decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he
is indeed on a clearly wrong Path.”
By extrapolating the proper noun Exemplar which
singularly refers to someone specific, to the common noun exemplar,
the same semantic construct in any language opens itself up to a
group membership of ordinary peoples such that to disagree or to
disobey this new plurality of exemplars of Divine Rule is also to be
“on a clearly wrong Path”. To disobey the
valih-e-faqih is to become a sinner! As a reminder to the
forgetful mind, the hectoring hegemons who hijack the religion of
Islam for waging world wars under the pretext of defending themselves
against the corrupted Islam and its barbarian followers, routinely do
the same resemantification: alias proper nouns into common nouns.
Professor Bernard Lewis extrapolated the word “Islam”, a
proper noun of the Holy Qur'an, into a common noun when he cunningly
resemantified it to mean a kitchen-sink of semantics in his book:
Crisis of Islam – Holy War and Unholy Terror (see Hijacking
the word “Islam” for Mantra Creation).
Here, a concept instead of a word is being aliased.
Indeed,
to not follow and obey some marja-e taqlid from that elite set
who deem themselves “worthy of emulation” – never
mind the pompous title incestuously awarded
among the clan by themselves under some unspecified and entirely
subjective secret calculus of who is more learned in esoterica –
is to be a sinner. To avoid that sin, an absurd set of restrictions
is put upon the believer such that in practice she has little choice
but to accept taqlid of someone from among that new divine set of
exemplars. It does not matter whom she chooses from that elite set
--- for she is now roped in for life into that church of taqlid and
will pay her religiously mandated donations into those unaccountable
coffers that run into sums higher than the GDP of many nations
combined. But more importantly, the voluntary obedience is the
foundational cornerstone of the fatwas
issued by the marja-e-taqlid which define the halal and haram
status not just in spiritual matters, but also in national,
political, and temporal matters that the follower is now obliged to
accept from her marja-e-taqlid.
The
valih-e-faqih who is a grade above that station is like the
Pope central, and his fatwa is binding upon
all over whom he is a guardian, vali. The valih-e-faqih's
canvas is far greater. He imposes upon the public mind of the
far larger audience space what is permissible and what isn't by way
of his own ijtihad at the threat of eternal damnation on the
follower for disobedience and salvation for strict obedience. He
defines and enacts national laws based on predicates of his personal
divine ijtihad and imposes legal entitlements for breaking the
law even in this life! Whereas the lower ranking marja-e-taqlid only
govern the reward and punishment in the Afterlife by exercising
behavior control of their flock in this life, the valih-e-faqih also
controls reward and punishment in this life. While all governments do
that too, define and legislate laws, and police them, none of them
have the chutzpah to draw their mandate from God, unless it is the
Jews in the Jewish state, and the Muslims in the Muslim states.
Christians seem to have overcome that phase of their spirituality
after their dark ages, with the Vatican today more an appendage of a
narrow elite mired in antiquated rituals than for exercising
spiritual or temporal control over its flock in comparison to its
other monotheist brethren.
“God”,
from time immemorial, has always entered the political realm of mass
behavior control through his proxy service providers. It is
irrelevant that these service providers can produce no “certificate”
from God in their own name. The topic of inquiry, as a reminder to
the reader, is not whether God exists, Prophets exist, Divine
Guidance exists, Divine Books exist (or not exist). That may be a
topic of examination for another day and is beyond the scope of the
present work. The topic of inquiry at hand is how is the religion of
Islam hijacked so easily for self-interests by Muslims themselves who
do believe in all the preceding presuppositions as an axiom of faith.
It is demanded in the Holy Qur'an which defines both itself and its
audience: “This is the
Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward
off (evil). Who believe in the Unseen, ...” (Surah
Al-Baqara 2:2-2:3). So how do Muslims fall prey to evil if their Holy
Book is only for those who ward off evil? In this instance, the
inquiry has reached the threshold of logic which begs the question of
where is the jurist's certificate from God as his holy emissary that
he can define halal and haram by his own ijtihad
and impose it upon the public mind not just as a spiritual matter,
but also a legal matter as the state ruler?
Just
making the claim however is evidently sufficient because there are
always followers. Orators and demagogues both attract followers
faster than trash bins attract flies. Human beings evidently find a
compelling need for emotional and psychological security blankets.
That natural need leaves the public mind wide open for any cognitive
infiltration that comes suitably wrapped in relevant security
guarantees by authority figures. The ancient man offered blood
sacrifices to appease his god's anger under dispensation from their
witch doctors. That was improved upon by the abstraction of an
Afterlife in monotheism. Belief in the Day of Judgment is an axiom of
faith required by the Holy Qur'an. Thus a successful jurist
marja-e-taqlid now dispenses the certificates of do's and
don'ts of daily life for essentially the same purpose as ancient
priests but for the Afterlife.
The
modern jurist no longer needs to sell God and its common axioms to
his masses as they already believe in these axioms fervently by way
of socialization and cultural acceptance. All the jurist has to do is
carefully interpose himself in the public's path to Afterlife by
drawing justification for his indispensability from the
Indeterminates of the Holy
Qur'an. With his learned confabulations in arcane subjects, he
gets away with it in front of the modern busy man unfamiliar with
ancient books that the jurist draws upon to impress the public mind.
The truth of this timeless observation of the frailty of human psyche
and how it is abused from time immemorial is without doubt. It is
self-evident. That human frailty to be a follower is open game for
anyone able to harness it. And especially because of the doctrine of
“taqlid” already in place for centuries, the
valih-e-faqih's mandate for Absolute Rule is made a practical
political reality under the banner of “revolutionary Islam”.
Just
as antisemitism has been the Zionist Jews best friend in founding the
Jewish state, and oppression upon the Muslims of India through the
Hindu-Muslim riots was the best friend of the Muslim League for
founding the divine state of Pakistan, oppression upon the Shia
Muslims is its latter day equivalent. Absolutely essential for the
founding of revolutionary Islamic state. These ideologies only thrive
under oppression of their own people and only come to fruition when
the oppression is perceived as reaching cataclysmic proportions –
whence divine help comes galloping on a white horse to end the
tribulation period and all the bloodshed of innocent masses is
justified and dignified as the reason for the new state. The people
rejoice – momentarily, while the diabolical Hegelian
Dialectic is birth-panged in Eurasia as the absolute sworn
enemy of Oceania to carry on
a perpetual war. One can't make this up except in a fable, but one
sees it being enacted on the Grand Chessboard
over and over again! All the revolutions of the twentieth century
started in blood, and ended in blood, of innocent people. And they
all exhibit the same common template – the creation of an enemy
to wage world wars. The bibliography on this subject is vast indeed
and it is not the intent to rehearse what is already been written
elsewhere except to lend the aforesaid brief context. Here, Mr. Spock
is keenly desirous of treading new ground in logical pursuit of the
question at hand, suitably armed by the accumulated wisdom of what he
has seen of man's history of waging wars by way of deception for the
control of the public mind. From this first control, all evil
naturally follows. Conversely, from its liberation, all else
naturally follows too: “Freedom is the freedom to say
that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
The
brilliance of the argument for Absolute Rule by the valih-e-faqih
is without question. The political circumstances leading to it no
more unprecedented and no less conspiratorial than what led to the
creation of the Jewish state from partitioned Palestine and the
Muslim state from partitioned India. The natural arguments posited by
Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini for the raison d'être of an Islamic
state that implements the real religion of Islam, asserted as being
self-evident.
To
Mr. Spock's logical mind always searching for unstated axioms and
implicit presuppositions in supposedly “self-evident”
arguments presented as concentric proofs, the problem is glaring.
Apart from the despotism that absolute rule demanding absolute
obedience can take even the best of ordinary mortals to, the core
problem is also just as straightforward as it is glaring.
While
the Author of the Holy Qur'an both explicitly and unequivocally
vouched for the Prophet of Islam in that categorical verse of
obedience as an obligatory religious command on Muslims, and the
Prophet as the first head of the Islamic state which he founded in
Medina may have veritably vouched for the sole father of the source
of his prolific progeny, Imam Ali, as history books have recorded
thus establishing a chain of explicit vouching that directly connects
to the Author of the Holy Qur'an (even though that fact is not
explicitly recorded in the Holy Qur'an and has thus become a source
of partisan interpretation throughout the short history of Muslim
dominance of the world by its despotic rulers vying to establish
their Islamic legitimacy by employing the same clergy class to serve
their own imperial interests), who vouched for Ayatollah (imam)
Khomeini as the Divinely designated Imam sanctioned for Divine Rule?
On
what Qur'anic Determinates specifically did Ayatollah (imam)
Khomeini apply the verse of obedience to himself to legitimize his
own Absolute Rule as the “valih-e-amr”?
As
a most learned jurist and scholar of Islam, was the revolutionary
imam who so boldly altered the destiny of an entire nation, watered
its cemeteries with the blood of a generation of its finest youth in
the name of God without showing much compunction, unaware of the
logic of verse 4:59 which imparts certain implicit characteristics of
unerringness as already analyzed in Part-II? No jurist worth his salt
can be unaware of it if Mr. Spock can so trivially deduce it.
How
can Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini claim to be the “valih-e-amr”
of verse 4:59 with any more intellectual integrity and moral gravitas
than the autocratic House of Saud, or any of the other past claimants
to absolute rule demanding absolute obedience throughout the imperial
history of despotic Muslim rulers, all of whom having occupied the
seat of the Prophet of Islam with theological sanctions from the
self-serving pulpits drawing upon the same verse?
In
fact, the pulpit did not even shy from applying that verse of
obedience to the British colonial masters of India as the
Qadiani-Ahmadi pontiffs did at the turn of the twentieth-century;
Maulana Muhammad Ali, laying its diabolical foundations in his
seminal English translation of the Holy Qur'an, first in the Preface
under the heading: Reverence for authority, pg. xv wrote: “But
while teaching equality of rights, Islam teaches the highest
reverence for authority. ... By those in authority are meant not only
the actual rulers of a country, but all those who are in any way
entrusted with authority”, then elaborated it further in
his footnote number 593 for his English translation of verse 4:59
“The words ulul-amr, or those in authority, have a wide
significance, ... among those in authority are included the rulers of
a land, though they may belong to an alien religion,”! (see
MMA
1917 PDF).
Just
because someone else does the same gratuitous extrapolation, but
applies it a tad more narrowly to the more holier than thou
philosopher-king-jurist, and nominates himself as the vali-amr, the
valih-e-faqih-e-muslimeen, and does it in the name of the Ahlul-Bayt
because of his own convictions on the matter, and the people of Iran
show their approval with an applause, hardly makes the assertion any
more relevant, let alone applicable.
Is
the concept of Absolute Rule by Valih-e-Faqih demanding absolute
obedience even arguably sanctioned in the Determinates of the
Holy Qur'an? See the examination of taqlid below which is the
cornerstone of the theology of valih-e-faqih.
In
the case of Revolutionary Iran in 1979, the Iranian public evidently
did not think it necessary to ask for such a “certificate”
of divine sanction from Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini as the “ulul-amr”
of 4:59, never mind think of how they might have actually verified it
had he presented one. Just being against the Shah of Iran, against
the absolute tyrant working for the imperialist United States of
America, was sufficient certificate for ushering in everlasting
absolute rule by the valih-e-faqih in God's name; a divine
provenance even gloriously fulfilled with the triumphant return of
Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini to Iran on February 1, 1979, warming the
hearts of the Persian masses to the miraculous divine intervention.
The
Iranian people agreed to accept their new rebel imam's absolute rule
as the “valih-e-amr” designate of verse 4:59 in an
unprecedented public referendum which remains unsurpassed as a
willing choice exercised by a fed-up people to be eagerly ruled by
their clergy class brought to political power on a (Air France?) jet
airliner flying safely through America's NATO controlled French skies
to land in Tehran, instead of continuing to live under the suzerainty
of the most tyrannical and narcissistic King of kings who had
previously been brought to political power in Tehran by America's
CIA.
It
begs the patently obvious question: Why was the airliner carrying the
renegade Grand Ayatollah to power in Iran not shot down by NATO
military forces (and easily blamed on the Shah's military) if
revolutionary Islam was such a great threat to the Western hegemons?
Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini had been most vocal about his revolutionary
ideology and the rule of the faqih throughout his exile years. His
Shia ethos of Karbala was well-known. He had made no secret of the
fact that he hated the Great Satan and all those who sided
with her. It would have certainly nipped the problem in the bud for
the West. The Americans have shown no qualms about shooting down
passenger airliners, as they demonstrated a decade later by shooting
down Iranian passenger Airbus plane, Iran Air Flight 655, over the
Persian Gulf killing all 290 Muslim pilgrims aboard, “by
mistake” of course. They could have made the same “by
mistake” a whole decade sooner and spared the world a great
deal of Muslim on Muslim violence witnessed in the Iran-Iraq war. Not
only did the Western Alliance not do that, but the BBC gave away free
air time to the speeches of Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini broadcast to
Iran, the French government extended great hospitality to the imam,
even hosted the media circus which surrounded the revolutionary imam
for months until the very day he departed for his homeland after the
Shah's ignominious exit, and on and on and on. The list is long and
undeniable of how the West supported the revolutionary imam to power
against the interest of the Shah who had formerly been brought to
power as their own “policeman” of the Gulf.
The
Iranian public was shown their revolutionary savior repeatedly
calling for the overthrow of the despotic monarchy by revolutionary
means by the Western press. Why?
Why
did the West not support their own dictator as part of their
collective antagonism against the revolutionary Islam in their former
police-man's oil rich territory? Why was the Shah not setup in exile
and immediately recognized as the de facto government of Iran to
challenge and contain the threat of revolutionary Islam?
This
fact of reality which anyone can observe by simply back reading and
back watching the news coverage of the era, has put the entire
antagonism of the West against Iran in question as deliberately
manufactured, and Ayatollah (imam) Khomeini's own principled
antagonism to the Shah given great press coverage only for the
Iranian public's consumption to bring their new “enemy”
into power as part of lighting the “arc of crisis”
referenced above.
For
the public mind, enemy of my enemy is my friend indeed, and more so
when he claims an almost believable divine mandate for extracting
absolute obedience from the masses consistent with the shared
religious ethos of the people. The Catholic Pope and clergy draw on
the same quality of shared ethos among the Catholic Christian flock
to be accepted as their anointed spiritual leadership, and in not too
distant a past, before the Reformation period tore their state powers
asunder, also as their anointed political leadership. Shared ethos is
a common denominator and without it, such a voluntary servitude of
absolute obedience to the Popes of any religion cannot be implemented
without brute force. This also means forcing valih-e-faqih
upon non Shia Muslims who do not share that common ethos will only
lead to more “revolutionary times”.
This
is so obvious a political science truth that those who deliberately
wish to create “revolutionary times” going forward in
Sunni majority nations like Pakistan with a substantial Shia
minority, can find great utility in creating the tortuous conditions
of tyranny upon the Shia in which such a construct of “revolutionary
Islam” can find its natural raison d'être for existence
--- just as it transpired in Iran under the Shah with the help of his
American trained secret police SAVAK!
Revealingly,
the public in post Revolutionary Iran, just like in America, comes
out to vote periodically to elect from among its respective ruling
class who will govern them under their pre-established structures of
administrative power. These structures implement the sacred
ideologies and pre-determined state polices crafted by the real power
behind the scenes, the valih-e-faqih, making it quite
irrelevant whom the public elects as president in the much touted
elections no differently than it is in the United States of America
where its oligarchy holds all the key controlling cards.
The
categorical fact remains that irrespective of whether a public makes
their political choice with their ballot, or a “choice”
is foisted upon a public with the bullet, theology, “democracy”,
whatever, neither is “rule by kingdom” specified in the
Holy Qur'an, nor is “rule by clergy” specified in the
Holy Qur'an, and nor is “rule by parliament”, or “rule
by Western power puppets and fabricated enemies of any flavor
specified in the Holy Qur'an. A people are entitled to their choice
of governance, or whether they wish to resist an evil one foisted
upon them inspired by the moral platitudes, but they are not entitled
to call whatever government they choose as exclusively sanctioned in
the Determinates of the Holy Qur'an. Because it isn't.
There
is no method of governance commanded, specified, or even outlined in
the Holy Qur'an, at least not any that Mr. Spock has been able to
discover in its Determinate verses, except the platitudinous
guidance to build a righteous and just society in which no one takes
unfair advantage of another, and where people do not suffer tyrants,
false gods, exploitation, and pay their taxes on time. Mr. Spock
notes that the key characteristics of a noble governance system for a
just Islamic society are outlined as basic principles only, such as
in waging wars of self-defence to not transgress limits, to protect
the weak and the infirm, to manage state treasury for public good
instead of private gain, to abstain from usury, etc., whereas other
matters like its inheritance laws, moral code of conduct, rights and
responsibilities of parents, individuals, social and business
interactions, marriage rules, are spelled out in minute detail.
Corollaries and theorems are easily derived from these basic
principles which form the basis of what's come to be known as Islamic
Sharia. However, the implementation structures of governance, the
form and shape of government, the method of government, who rules, is
left unspecified.
It
is of course self-evident that intellectuals and scholars of Islam
ought to have a leading role in crafting any just society that is
based on the singular scripture of Islam, the Holy Qur'an, just as it
is for any system whose intellectuals and scholars play important
roles in defining their system. Scholars and intellectuals are the
bedrock of any enlightened society that draws its foundation from
intellectual and spiritual capital. Plato would of course have the
philosopher be the rulers. But the Holy Qur'an has left it
unspecified. Unarguably, the matter is left Indeterminate like
many other matters. Ostensibly, one may reasonably surmise, so that
the core principles of Divine Guidance remain timeless and people of
all levels of talent and expertise in every epoch are able to
implement these principles according to their own requirements and
social genius.
To
therefore speciously assert that the religion of Islam has given a
specific Divine mandate to rule solely to a particular class of
people, namely to the faqih, is to mislead the public mind. Yes the
capable faqih is just as much entitled to govern, and to provide
intellectual and spiritual capital, as any other capable person of
his time as a citizen of a state. What he is not entitled to is to
rule, claim to be the beneficiary of the verse of obedience, claim to
have special authority from God, and demand absolute obedience.
The
example of King David, Prophet Daud, an ordinary sheep herder who
came to lead his people as their Imam because of his unmatched
bravery in taking down “Jalut”, illustrates the point.
Daud became the ruler of his nation as vouched in the Holy Qur'an, as
a king no less, but he was hardly a theologian, or even an
intellectual by his profession. He was surely very intelligent to
have hit his enemy at his weakest point, and he ruled justly and with
courage. Those qualities evidently were his qualifications to be
anointed King of the Jews. This is quite contrary to Plato's
philosopher-king and it is the Holy Qur'an that is making that
assertion by retelling the story of Prophet Daud. As in all Qur'anic
stories and parables, there is wisdom that is being conveyed.
The
form of government is immaterial in the religion of Islam which lays
a great deal of emphasis in its many verses on veritable moral
principles as Divine Guidance to mankind. It is silent on what form
the government should take, or who should become the rulers in future
times.
The
Holy Qur'an instead affirms the lovely beatitudinous (from
beatitude: supreme blessedness; exalted happiness) promise:
|
“And
We desired to bestow a favor upon those who were deemed weak in
the land, and to make them the Imams, and to make them the
heirs,” (Surah Al-Qasas 28:5)
|
وَنُرِيدُ
أَن نَّمُنَّ
عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ
ٱسْتُضْعِفُوا۟
فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ
وَنَجْعَلَهُمْ
أَئِمَّةً
وَنَجْعَلَهُمُ
ٱلْوَٰرِثِينَ
|
|
“Allah
has decreed: "It is I and My messengers who must prevail":
For Allah is One full of strength, able to enforce His Will.”
(Surah Al-Mujaadila 58:21)
|
كَتَبَ
ٱللَّهُ لَأَغْلِبَنَّ
أَنَا۠ وَرُسُلِىٓ
ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ
قَوِىٌّ عَزِيزٌ
|
|
Before
this We wrote in the Psalms, after the Message (given to Moses):
"My servants, the righteous, shall inherit the earth."
(Surah Al-Anbiyaa 21:105)
|
وَلَقَدْ
كَتَبْنَا
فِى ٱلزَّبُورِ
مِنۢ بَعْدِ
ٱلذِّكْرِ
أَنَّ ٱلْأَرْضَ
يَرِثُهَا
عِبَادِىَ
ٱلصَّٰلِحُونَ
|
Caption
The Holy Qur'an's equivalent of the Biblical Beatitude: “the
meek shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5 Holy Bible KJV). Is
the Holy Qur'an proclaiming Divine Rule as the natural culmination of
Islam? Or, are these verses proclaiming that the ordinary human
beings among mankind will eventually prevail; they shall eventually
establish justice among mankind and reach the highest station of
creation in accordance with Divine Teachings that have been revealed
to mankind by messengers and prophets throughout the ages? The twain
are not the same propositions semantically – obviously –
despite the pious pulpits insistence upon the former interpretation
of these verses! If Divine Rule is to be implemented by God's own
appointed Imams, it is a tacit admission of failure of Islam to
transform man upon his own volition! Only a foolish human author
would set his own guidance system up for such an abject failure by
predicating that no matter what man will do, mankind will still need
divine intervention to reach Islam's culmination! Then what was the
point of Islam? God could just as well have created the perfect man
with Adam and Eve rather than the imperfect man who is destined to
reach perfection by seeking Divine Guidance revealed in Islam's
sacred scripture.
Straightforward
inspection once again reveals that all these verses often brought up
by the pulpits are prima facie Indeterminates.
Like verse 4:59, verse 28:5 “who were deemed weak in
the land,” is unknown.
Perhaps it can be similarly qualitatively reasoned from other verses
of the Holy Qur'an, but without specific context which is not in the
Holy Qur'an, it would either remain temporal, meaning applicable only
to the time of the Prophet when he was constantly under attack, or
metaphorical and strictly Indeterminate.
It can just as easily be argued by all oppressed to apply to
themselves to encourage themselves with hope to continue in their
perseverance! And it can also be argued by Machiavelli to apply to
the oppressed to foment manufactured revolutions. However, a closer
analytical examination also reveals that for the promise: “to
make them the Imams, and to make them the heirs,”
these heirs must logically also share common characteristics with the
Imams the Holy Qur'an has referenced elsewhere. For instance, in
Surah Al-Baqara verse 2:124
(already quoted above) where the Author proclaims that He alone makes
Imams by Divine appointment: “He said: Surely I will
make you an Imam of men. Ibrahim said: And of my offspring? My
covenant does not include the unjust, said He.”
When
the Author of the Holy Qur'an appoints Imams as per his covenant with
Prophet Ibrahim, the word “Imam” is used in a specific
sense from its common meaning as the proper noun expressing Divine
Appointment. The Arabic-English dictionary of the Holy Qur'an defines
the common meaning of the word “Imam” thusly: “Leader;
President; Any object that is followed, whether a human being or a
book or a highway”. That common meaning of the word “Imam”
for instance is prima facie evident in verse 17:71
of Surah al-Israa' (examined
in Part-II): “One day We shall call together all
human beings with their (respective) Imams”.
One word, two distinct meanings, by the very definitions present in
the Holy Qur'an in the semantics of the verse. The problem arises
when attempt is cunningly or perhaps unwittingly made to alias the
proper noun version as the common noun version.
As
Machiavellian as that aliasing is for successfully marginalizing
Islam, far greater damage is done when the Muslim pulpit and the
plentiful exegesis writers who become sanctified in history as the
source to go to for understanding the meaning of the Holy Qur'an, do
the same aliasing to serve their own narrow interests. And whether
they do it wittingly at the behest of their masters, or unwittingly
due to incompetence or bias becomes irrelevant, for the impact in
either case is resemantification of the verse and distortion of its
meaning. It is the easiest subterfuge – you can't change the
syntax and wording of the Holy Qur'an because that is protected by
systematic oral memorization of the entire Holy Qur'an by plain
ordinary Muslims from generation to generation beginning from the
very time of the Prophet of Islam, so change its meaning! Only the
very learned turbans can accomplish that most successfully.
Especially when the verses are even partly or fully Indeterminate.
But this travesty of the holy pen is plenty observable even for what
is Determinate and what is categorical in verses which does
not suit the ruling genius. The best example of this travesty is the
watering down of the Principle of Inerrancy as applied to the Prophet
of Islam by the holy scribes. Its idiotic resemantification is
visible in countless respected books of exegesis from antiquity to
modernity. These exegeses have misinformed generation upon generation
of Muslims who have reached for the Cliff notes on the Holy
Qur'an.
This
subversion of the Holy Qur'an is exactly identical to how the learned
Jewish rabbis caveated their Ten Commandments from their universal
form to exceptional form in order to claim moral exemptions for
themselves so that actually doing the universal refrains to the goy
was no longer forbidden to them. Thus, Thou Shall Not Kill,
the First Commandment for instance, was changed to Thou Shall Not
Kill (a Jew) in meaning. See Morality
derived from the Intellect leads to Enslavement!
for even more shocking contortions by the rabbis who superseded the
spirit of the Torah with the spirit of the Talmud. The scribes of the
Torah had already visited the same travesty upon the teachings of
Prophet Moses. The Talmuds just took it ten steps further in
perversity which today underwrites the Jewish ethos more than
anything Prophet Moses ever taught. And the world amply sees this in
Zionism which is but an expression of Jewish exceptionalism taught in
the Talmud. The unequivocal condemnation in the
Holy Qur'an of the Jews distorting their Good Book of Divine Guidance
to suit their whim and fancy, is but a clear warning to the believers
of the Holy Qur'an to refrain from doing the same. And yet, the
Muslim turbans have visited the same travesty upon the Holy Qur'an
and its religion Islam such that no two Muslims will necessarily
agree on what something means. Each will bring their respective
socialized understanding from the pens of these holy scribes to
assert its meaning. The truth of these words is empirical, and
without doubt. It is self-evident, except to those who are caught in
its trap.
Therefore,
keeping all that preceding clarity at the forefront of cognitive
thinking, in the specific sense of Imam appointed by the Author in
the context of 2:124, as opposed to just any ordinary leader that has
a following in the context of 17:71, obedience is made obligatory for
those for whom they are Imams, and the entire discussion of
وَأُولِي
الْأَمْرِ
مِنْكُمْ of
verse 4:59 in Part-II also carries over wherever and whenever
obedience is made obligatory to any man by the Author. As already
reasoned out in preceding sections, the Author of the Holy Qur'an
cannot make obedience obligatory towards anyone who can make an error
and not make a mockery of His Own divine Guidance System as the right
path. Imam, obedience to the Imam, and the Principle of Inerrancy
sort of go together as a package – in order for it to make any
logical and rational sense to demand obedience to a man and still
remain on the path of Divine Guidance which is proclaimed to be error
free, infallible. Which is why, in its resemantification to serve
self-interest, “ulul amar” is aliased as a common noun –
and voilà, just about anyone can be it who can get away with
it! That is the history of its corruption from the very day of the
death of the Prophet of Islam until today where anyone has been able
to become emperor, caliph, king, amir-ul-momineen, and today valih-e
faqih, by including himself in that set and insisting on his
entitlement by mere assertion and recourse to texts outside the pages
of the Holy Qur'an. Why do they have to go outside for proof of their
divine sanction? Precisely, because there isn't any in the
Determinate verses of the Holy Qur'an. All one finds in its
pristine pages is the categorical prohibition to being a follower,
without caveat, as one can witness in the deconstruction of Taqlid
below.
So,
if the word “Imam” is used in verse 28:5 in that specific
sense of 2:124, the verse is still only a Beatitude, an uplifting
promise of some future time. The brilliant ability to harvest that
theological concept for self-interest by the superman among
both: the Shia pulpit to orchestrate “Imammate by proxy”
to seed IRAN:
The Crescent of Crisis
as the birth of the uncompromising “Revolutionary Islam”,
and among the hectoring hegemons to orchestrate the fiction of
“Armageddon”, not withstanding. A contorted “doctrinal
motivation” on two opposing sides for synthesizing the fear of
“Clash of Civilizations” in order to continually lend
credence to the threat of “End Times”. It enables
manufacturing a brilliant Hegelian Dialectic which cannot be disputed
by those caught in its web – as it is already written in the
sacred books that more than half the world's population believes in.
It promotes the fiction of the existence of a global existential
threat, putting the entire world on perpetual crisis footing.[a]
And
if the word “Imam” represents the common meaning of 17:71
as an ordinary leader, it is exactly akin to the Biblical Beatitude:
“the meek shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5 Holy
Bible KJV). Once again no reason to obey the meek when they inherit
the earth – for they could become the next tyrants as was amply
witnessed in the French Revolution and in the military dictatorship
and conquests of Napoleon that followed.
Even
whether verse 28:5 is speaking of the Messenger's own contemporary
epoch when Prophet Muhammad finally prevailed over his own oppressors
of twenty three long years and conquered Mecca just before he died,
or of some future time, is Indeterminate. As is verse 58:21
affirming: "It is I and My messengers who must prevail";
and verse 21:105 similarly affirming: "My servants, the
righteous, shall inherit the earth". All remarkably akin to
the aforementioned uplifting promise in the Biblical Beatitude, and
all recipient of the preceding analysis in toto.
When
will such bliss transpire on earth is of course an ageless open
question. It has been the source of speculation and anticipation from
time immemorial, and the principal argument for Divine Rule since the
adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire. As far as the Holy
Qur'an is concerned, it is Indeterminate.
It
is of course also extraordinarily utilitarian for any believer or
their chief to claim that inheritance for oneself in any era –
mostly to survive with hope and dignity through dark periods of
tyranny – for who can challenge that presumption? No
certificates are required!
Especially
if one succeeds in acquiring state powers and engages a thousand
scribes and orators to extol one's divine rights to that inheritance
as the vilayat-i faqih. Since it is an Indeterminate,
it can be posited any which way one wishes to dignify it, limited
only by the fertility of one's imagination and foundation of one's
eruditeness. The beatitude cannot be disproved from the Holy Qur'an
because it is anchored as an Indeterminate! And it can
certainly be proved to one's own audience by drawing upon one's own
historical narratives that are collectively subscribed by the group.
It is the empirical principle which seeds both group-think,
conformity within a group, as well as diversity of thoughts and
beliefs among different groups in mankind each exercising its own
group-think.
|
"That
which is left you by Allah is best for you, if ye (but) believed!
but I am not set over you to keep watch!" (Surah Hud, 11:86)
|
بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ خَيْرٌ
لَّكُمْ إِن
كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ
ۚ وَمَآ أَنَا۠
عَلَيْكُم
بِحَفِيظٍ
|
|
Say:
"Each one (of us) is waiting: wait ye, therefore, and soon
shall ye know who it is that is on the straight and even way, and
who it is that has received Guidance." (Surah Ta-Ha, 20:135)
|
قُلْ
كُلٌّ مُّتَرَبِّصٌ
فَتَرَبَّصُوا۟
ۖ فَسَتَعْلَمُونَ
مَنْ أَصْحَٰبُ
ٱلصِّرَٰطِ
ٱلسَّوِىِّ
وَمَنِ ٱهْتَدَىٰ
|
Caption
Is the Holy Qur'an proclaiming a Savior?
Verses
11:86 and 20:135 of the Holy Qur'an are intriguing examples of
Indeterminates along the same lines of allegorical Beatitudes,
but which directly fall on the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide on how
these are understood by the Muslim mind. One must in fact go to
sources outside the Holy Qur'an to even get an inkling of who or what
(the people in the past believed) is being spoken of by the Author:
بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ خَيْرٌ
لَّكُمْ .
These exemplary verses, and a few more like these, are esoterically
proclaimed by some of these outside sources to be about Imam Mahdi –
the Awaited Savior of humanity who will rule in End Times ---
that entire eschatology itself being only in pages outside of the
Holy Qur'an. Why are these verses not categorical rather than
metaphorical if the knowledge of eschatology is of pertinence to
every people in every epoch? Speculation upon these verses is rife
with absurdities.
Whereas,
the prima facie meaning of verse 11:86 refers to some object (
بَقِيَّتُ
),
a nominative feminine noun, which can mean anything including persons
or thing or guidance, that Allah leaves for “you” (
لَّكُمْ
,
both male and female) as a gift or benefit or mercy that you need for
your divine guidance ( خَيْرٌ
).
Straightforwardly,
to the ordinary non doctrinaire mind, بَقِيَّتُ
can
represent the Holy Qur'an itself, which Allah has left those who
believe ( مُّؤْمِنِينَ
),
as being best for them. Or it could mean the أُولِي
الْأَمْرِ of
verse 4:59. Which one, if either, is not further disambiguated. The
remaining part of the verse indicates Allah is not going to shepherd
the believers beyond what He has already left them – it is
entirely up to the believers to run with the remnant of Allah,
بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ ,
and: “Surely We have shown him the way: he may be thankful
or unthankful.” (see verse 76:3 quoted above)
The
remnant of Allah, بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ ,
in this verse is just a common noun, a symbol, a placeholder variable
waiting to take on the instance of the object, or objects it
represents, and not the object itself. Surely the Messenger of Allah
must have explained what it means – but that explanation is not
contained in the Holy Qur'an itself.
Therefore,
verse 11:86 is prima facie allegorical, metaphorical, and not
categorical; it is آيَاتٌ
مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ
and
therefore Indeterminate. This verse, like all the other
مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ
,
as a cynic would surely surmise, evidently exist only to sow
confusion and discord among the Believers, perhaps to separate those
who think ( أُولُو
الْأَلْبَابِ
)
from those who do not: “and none will grasp the Message
except men of understanding.” In addition, to
stochastically seed diversity of beliefs based on natural
socialization, tribe and nation that one is born into – which
it has also always succeeded in doing, in every era. That observation
is empirical. The veracity of these words is beyond doubt. It is
self-evident.
Notice
that the Sunnis and the Shias each fill in the variable according to
their respective sacred books. Being entitled to one's belief system
whatever it may be as the most basic human right, the Sunni Muslims
are not remiss if they think بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ might
mean the Holy Qur'an, or the Caliphate; and the Shia Muslims are not
remiss if they think it is the أُولِي
الْأَمْرِ of
verse 4:59. Since the latter today is the twelfth Imam, Imam Mahdi,
according to the dogma found in Shia Ithna Ashari books of
history, that's how that variable is fixed by them accordingly.
Whereas the Shia Ismaili Muslim aren't remiss if some among them
might believe بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ represents
their Hazir Imam, the Aga Khan.
Believe
whatever you want. However, unless it can be logically adduced from
the Determinates alone who or what is being referenced by the
Author in Surah Hud 11:86, it is categorically an Indeterminate.
The Determinate verses at times provide an unequivocal
rejection criterion for exclusion of what is willy-nilly fixed in the
Indeterminates even when these Determinates may be
silent on the acceptance criterion for the Indeterminates. The
rejection criterion though powerful when applied logically and
rationally, still leaves the door wide open for the acceptance of
whatever that can be plausibly passed off by the boundless
imagination of man in the Indeterminates! This
is an undeniable problem that the Holy Qur'an has faced at the hands
of the holy man. But it is a problem which it has itself enabled ab
initio by the very presence of the Indeterminates.
It is almost as if the Author of the Holy Qur'an wanted this to
happen – why else would He leave that door wide open for it –
thus laying the foundation of diversity of interpretations right
there in the religion of Islam's singular scripture that the Author
asserts he perfected: “This
day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon
you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion.”
(Surah Al-Maeda verse fragment
5:3)
Well, if the Author perfected and completed the guidance system and
the system itself plays out among its own audience in multiple themes
using its own Indeterminates,
what else to make of it? Tell a child not to do something, and what's
the first thing he will do?
Similarly,
in the case of Surah Ta-Ha 20:135 where the Author commands, Say:
"Each one (of us) is waiting: wait ye,", the object
noun for “wait ye” is noticeably absent, making the verse
also an Indeterminate even on first reading. However, whatever
that “wait ye,” might be for, the verse avers that
it will unequivocally permit clear adjudication when that wait
eventually does expire: “soon shall ye know who it is that
is on the straight and even way, and who it is that has received
Guidance." Once again we are immediately besieged by more
imponderables. What does “soon” mean? How soon is soon?
Is that the final Day of judgment? Or is that the arrival of the day
of fulfillment of the promise made in the Qur'anic Beatitudes quoted
above? Is that perhaps also what بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ خَيْرٌ
لَّكُمْ refers
to, the fulfillment of the divine promise which is the remnant of
Allah: “That which is left you by Allah is best for
you”?
Thus,
whichever way one examines it, بَقِيَّتُ
ٱللَّهِ خَيْرٌ
لَّكُمْ is
at best a metaphor whose semantics, never mind hidden meaning, is
known only to Allah, (and as per the alternate parsing of verse 3:7
of Surah Aal-'Imran already
discussed in Part-II) and to “Ar-Rasikhoon-fil-ilm”
( الرَّاسِخُونَ
فِي الْعِلْمِ
).
All
these inquiry questions are clearly Indeterminate, each one
leading to more questions than answers, and thus entirely speculative
to ponder upon. It is for this reason that these verses have been
speciously speculated upon throughout the ages – an occupation
of idle minds who perhaps never had to pursue a day's honest labor to
earn their keep in their lifetime of paid employment from public
funds as glorified theologians and scribes. The only function they
ended up serving is causing needless differentiation to arise among
Muslims based purely on speculative hearsay and verbal reportage
centuries downstream – the “he said she said” which
became known as the hadith literature – leading the foolish
public mind deeper and deeper into the sectarian quagmire. Integrated
over time and space, this socialized ethos has become a permanent and
virtually unshakable part of religious beliefs of virtually all
Muslims, in all sects.
Today,
the same public mind will comply in voluntary servitude under the
demand of absolute obedience to authority on matters entirely
Indeterminate and drawn from pages outside of the Holy Qur'an.
If its Author wanted the people in future times to know any matter of
religion of Islam not already covered in the Holy Qur'an, He would
have clearly stated it categorically in the foundational verses and
made it clearly Determinate, Mr. Spock sensibly surmises, so
that all peoples in all times would understand it straightforwardly
without juristic misinterpretation and chance of being misled by what
is erringly human, the pen of fallible man. The Holy Qur'an
unequivocally prescribes the accumulating fortunes of such imams in
Surah An-Nahl:
|
Let
them bear, on the Day of Judgment, their own burdens in full, and
also (something) of the burdens of those without knowledge, whom
they misled. Alas, how grievous the burdens they will bear!
(Surah An-Nahl 16:25)
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لِيَحْمِلُوٓا۟
أَوْزَارَهُمْ
كَامِلَةً
يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ
ۙ وَمِنْ أَوْزَارِ
ٱلَّذِينَ
يُضِلُّونَهُم
بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍ
ۗ أَلَا سَآءَ
مَا يَزِرُونَ
|
Examining
the Question of Following the Jurist
Verse
of 16:25 of Surah An-Nahl quoted above is also stupendous in its
overarching import. It straightforwardly exposes core lies which have
become sanctified as “religion” in specious dogmas among
Muslims. For one, it exposes “taqlid”, the practice of
blind emulation and prescribed following of a jurist by the laity –
a practice equally prevalent in both Shiadom and Sunnidom – as
a master fraud for social control. Upon that master fraud is the
edifice of the entire conception of sectarian Sharia laws,
i.e., jurisprudence (religious legalisms that vary for each Muslim
sect based on the opinions of its dominant jurists who have appointed
themselves Interpreter of faith), constructed.
Expose
its very foundation as being based on a core lie – and the
entire sacred totem pole comes crashing down under its own weight!
The
Holy Qur'an which daringly calls itself “Al-Furqaan”
– the Author's Criterion by which to judge the truth or falsity
of any proposition (or understanding) pertaining to His Own Revealed
Guidance System for mankind (
مِّنَ
ٱلْهُدَىٰ
وَٱلْفُرْقَانِ
ۚ );
which He even asserts He “perfected” and “completed”
and named it “Islam” ( الْيَوْمَ
أَكْمَلْتُ
لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ
وَأَتْمَمْتُ
عَلَيْكُمْ
نِعْمَتِي
وَرَضِيتُ
لَكُمُ الْإِسْلَامَ
دِينًا ۚ
),
and therefore there is no further room in its specification for
additions and subtractions – does precisely that.
(Verse
fragments from Surah Al-Baqara 2:185
and Surah
Al-Maeda 5:3
respectively,)
Even
a tiny bit of logical reflection on the concatenation of verses
pertinent to the Qur'anic Principle of Inerrancy already examined
previously with verse of 16:25 of Surah An-Nahl exposes “taqlid”
as a fabrication of the pulpit!
Perhaps
it is necessary to restate for the sake of completeness, that only
“These are they whom Allah guided, therefore follow their
guidance” (Surah Al An'aam verse 6:90 quoted earlier), can
ever be exempt from the damnation of this most electrifying verse
16:25 of Surah An-Nahl! Only the specific inerrant persons whom Allah
is commanding the believers to follow – for indeed these have
to be inerrant if Allah has directly guided them – can also be
the “ulul-amar” of verse 4:59 already discussed earlier.
No one else is permitted to be followed, and obeyed, in the religion
of Islam! With that singular exception of obedience to the inerrant
“imam” who is solely appointed by Allah (by His Own
Declarations in the Holy Qur'an already examined above) and is not
selected, elected, or anointed by the fiat of man, the entire concept
of “following” and “followers” is
unequivocally condemned in the Holy Qur'an. Most emphatically, in
Surah Al-Baqara verses 2:166-2:167 (already quoted above). Due to its
categorical significance, it is reproduced yet one more time to
remind the reader of what the Good Book itself says categorically, in
the clearest of terms, without caveats or exemptions:
|
“(On
the day) when those who were followed disown those who followed
(them), and they behold the doom, and all their aims collapse
with them.
|
إِذْ
تَبَرَّأَ
الَّذِينَ
اتُّبِعُوا
مِنَ الَّذِينَ
اتَّبَعُوا
وَرَأَوُا
الْعَذَابَ
وَتَقَطَّعَتْ
بِهِمُ الْأَسْبَابُ
|
|
وَقَالَ
الَّذِينَ
اتَّبَعُوا
لَوْ أَنَّ
لَنَا كَرَّةً
فَنَتَبَرَّأَ
مِنْهُمْ كَمَا
تَبَرَّءُوا
مِنَّا ۗ كَذَٰلِكَ
يُرِيهِمُ
اللَّهُ أَعْمَالَهُمْ
حَسَرَاتٍ
عَلَيْهِمْ
ۖ وَمَا هُمْ
بِخَارِجِينَ
مِنَ النَّارِ
|
So
how can “taqlid” of the fallible jurist be part of the
religion of Islam when the very concept of following itself, ab
initio, is not only most clearly deprecated, but Surah An-Nahl verse
16:25 also most clearly apportions culpability to those who are
followed?
If
“taqlid” of a fallible jurist was a part of the religion
of Islam, then the Author of the Holy Qur'an created an absurdity, a
foolishness; the Author commanded Muslims to follow an ordinary
mortal who is not infallible, but since the jurist is not inerrant,
and neither does any respectable jurist ever claim to be inerrant,
foolish and sheepish people among the masses, those without knowledge
and understanding, will also follow him. In point of fact and
reality-check, in actual sectarian practice of Muslims, obedience is
extorted from the public mind at the threat of eternal damnation –
otherwise why would the sheepish laity follow the anointed popes
except for that irrational fear which is continually cultivated and
harvested by the church of man?
If
“taqlid” of a fallible jurist was sanctioned by the
religion of Islam, then, as per verse 16:25, these persons whom Allah
is commanding to be followed will be apportioned their measure of
blame if they are followed in their errors and the people are misled!
That is a patent absurdity; a Kafkaesque double jeopardy: follow and
be damned (verses 2:166-2:167), don't follow and be damned
(“taqlid”), and the imam is damned because he is not
inerrant and is followed and obeyed as ordered even in his mistakes,
confabulations, distortions, half-truths, innovations, Indeterminate
fixing, etceteras, which of course no one can adjudicate or catch or
challenge because only the ignorant laity follows him (verse 16:25)!
This is the base reality of Muslim jurists and their blind followers
since the inception of the church of jurisprudence!
The
Author of the Holy Qur'an Who claims to be the most Just and the most
Wise Creator of all creation, cannot command “imams” to
be followed and obeyed, and when they are followed and obeyed as per
ordered, the “imams” are apportioned blame for their
blind following when they venture their fallible opinions dependent
solely on their particular bent of mind, proclivity, psychological
tendencies, socialization bias, natural talent (and un-talent),
ability to think and reason, knowledge, understanding, etceteras, in
their verdict! No two people think the same, never mind agree on any
matter --- and yet they are commanded to be followed!
Indeed,
if this absurd proposition of “taqlid” is true, then the
Author has made a mockery of His own Guidance System! Whereas the
Author is most sensitive about taking His Message lightly. He has
repeatedly Admonished mankind to not mock the Holy Qur'an: “Is
it such a Message that ye would hold in light esteem?”
(Surah Al-Waqia 56:81
quoted in Part-II); that: “Verily this is no less than a
Message to (all) the Worlds” (Surah At-Takwir 81:27 quoted
above); and: 'Then the Messenger will say: “O my Lord! Truly
my people took this Qur'an for just foolish nonsense.”'
(Surah Al-Furqaan 25:30).
After
all these straightforward admonitions to Muslims in the clearest of
terms to take the Scripture seriously, the Author then ventures to
mock His Own Message by mandating to the Muslim masses the “taqlid”
of fallible jurists, and subsequently hanging these jurists for
misleading the people because they are not inerrant and foolish
people have inevitably followed them as commanded?
What
a fickle-minded creator who damns if you do and damns if you don't
--- only in the mind of man!
By
reductio ad absurdum, when a proposition reduces to an
absurdity, the premise it is predicated upon is false.
Since
verses 2:166-2:167 and verse 16:25 are categorical, and presumed to
be true ab initio as an axiom of faith that the Holy Qur'an has not
been tampered with by the hand of man (no “tahreef”),
therefore, Taqlid must be false as presuming it to be true in the
presence of these verses leads to absurdity. If one still insists
Taqlid to be true, then one also has to accept the consequent fact
that the Holy Qur'an contains absurdities. No Muslim mind on planet
earth will accept that outcome. It's easier for it to accept Taqlid
as falsehood.
Checkmate!
Directly
from the Holy Qur'an.
Q.E.D.
Marja-e-taqlid:
right!
Blind
emulation, “taqlid”, of a fallible imam jurist who is
incestuously proclaimed Marja-e-taqlid by his coterie of equally
fallible peers in Shiadom, is an absurdity in the religion of Islam
in no less a measure than blanket obedience demanded to a fallible
imam caliph who is speciously anointed “ulul-amar” by the
shenanigans of political power around him, is in Sunnidom! Both are
weighty fabrications of the respective pious Muslim pulpits; vile
slanders upon the religion of Islam. It is categorically proscribed
in the Holy Qur'an. There is no room for any doubt or interpretation.
The veritable logic of Al-Furqaan, so clear and simple in
adjudication with its Determinate
verses that even a sixth grader can straightforwardly follow its
steps, coldly attests to that statement of fact. The previous
examination of the Principle of Inerrancy which unequivocally
established the singular prerequisite for complete obedience to
“al-Wasilah” from the Determinate
verses, also attests to that fact. “Alas, how
grievous the burdens they will bear!”
Which
is why, failing to find support in the Holy Qur'an, recourse is often
made to pages outside the Holy Qur'an to legitimize this absurdity.
Applying the same logic method of reductio ad absurdum
recursively to every argument and every evidence presented from
outside the Holy Qur'an, trivially demolishes them all. Sometimes
evidence is presented from a recorded act of history, such as the
Prophet or Imams of the Ahlul Bayt having appointed their own
representatives and mandating the people over whom they exercised
authority to obey their representatives on their behalf. Well, even
philosophically, the burden of the acts and decisions of a
representative ultimately still rests upon the one whom he
represents, and who is still ultimately in authority to rectify
matters if the need ever arose, to hear dissatisfaction, and to
adjudicate. This is self-evident by definition of “representative”
in this semantic context. Which is why it is a false argument of the
self-appointed valih-e-faqih (or appointed by a consultative
committee of self-styled holy jurists) for speciously conferring
legitimacy upon himself because one, he can produce no certificate of
such divine appointment, and two, he is now the highest authority
next to God. No one can challenge his authority even legally. A
throwback to the stone age to say the least, and no different than
any vanilla don or king, including the King of kings the
valih-e-faqih replaced with such fanfare in so much Persian blood
tribute. Absolute rule which went away in the Age of Enlightenment in
the West has been brought back with a new vengeance to the backward
Muslims to help shape world order as proxy service providers of the
West.
To
be vigilant of false friends, false guides, false imams making false
claims, is veritably underscored in Surah Al-Furqaan itself:
|
The
Day that the wrong-doer will bite at his hands, he will say, 'Oh!
Would that I had taken a (straight) path with the Messenger!'
25:27
|
وَيَوْمَ
يَعَضُّ الظَّالِمُ
عَلَىٰ يَدَيْهِ
يَقُولُ يَا
لَيْتَنِي
اتَّخَذْتُ
مَعَ الرَّسُولِ
سَبِيلًا
|
|
'Ah!
Woe is me! Would that I had never taken such a one for a friend!'
25:28
|
يَا
وَيْلَتَىٰ
لَيْتَنِي
لَمْ أَتَّخِذْ
فُلَانًا خَلِيلًا
|
|
'He
did lead me astray from the Message (of Allah) after it had come
to me! Ah! the Evil One is but a traitor to man!' 25:29
|
لَقَدْ
أَضَلَّنِي
عَنِ الذِّكْرِ
بَعْدَ إِذْ
جَاءَنِي ۗ
وَكَانَ الشَّيْطَانُ
لِلْإِنْسَانِ
خَذُولًا
|
|
Then
the Messenger will say: 'O my Lord! Truly my people took this
Qur'an for just foolish nonsense.' Holy Qur’an, Surah
Al-Furqaan 25:30
|
وَقَالَ
الرَّسُولُ
يَا رَبِّ إِنَّ
قَوْمِي اتَّخَذُوا
هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنَ
مَهْجُورًا
|
Caption
Surah Al-Furqaan 25:27-30 The ex post facto lament on the Day of
Judgment by believers of having taken someone for a friend and being
led astray by them, in the language of the Holy Qur'an is a
categorical admonishment before the fact, referring to those who come
posing as friends and not overtly as enemies. This is a warning to
all peoples to be wary of their own kind betraying them, for one
usually takes those whom one knows and trusts as one's friends,
guardians, protectors, guides, and imams. Only friends can betray
because the concept of betrayal is tied to trust. In
other words, the Holy Qur'an, Al-Furqaan,
is warning the simpleton mind in every age to be wary of false
friends, false imams, Trojan Horse,
Machiavelli, who win
the public trust with cognitive infiltration,
and all the rest of the techniques of deception used in betrayal
where the ones being betrayed do not realize it then. The purpose of
the warning is obvious – so that the believers can shrewdly
protect themselves from that outcome rather than lament on the Day of
Accountability that they did not know.
If they still don't wakeup today to their false friends and false
imams who often come wearing the garbs and turbans endearing to the
public mind, then the Prophet of Islam's strong lament is also
recorded. Referring to the misled people as “my people”
to show his deep anguish, the Prophet of Islam cries out that they
did not take the Guidance in the Holy Qur'an seriously, shackling its
meaning down to idiocy, down to their own whim and fancy, making the
Deen-e-mubeen
“mahjoor”!
These
verses of Surah Al-Furqaan, 25:27-30, also unequivocally strike down
false notions fed to the masses to legitimize taqlid of the fallible
jurist that the follower may claim exemption from condemnation in
Afterlife if one's own intention is good and one followed an imam who
leads one astray by honest mistake of his ijtihad: “Ah! Woe
is me! Would that I had never taken such a one for a friend! He did
lead me astray from the Message (of Allah) after it had come to me!
Ah! the Evil One is but a traitor to man!”
Sadly,
no Muslim mind ever believes that these admonishments can ever apply
to it. These always only apply to all the other fools over there in
the other sects! The Sunnis believe this of the Shia with as much
divine conviction as the Shias believe this of the Sunni, both
opening the door wide open to Dr. Machiavelli to come rape them both.
This
characteristic of self-righteousness is itself an inherent part of
the religion of man. The fear and discomfort of cognitive
dissonance evidently inhibits its very occurrence. Without
experiencing cognitive dissonance, the psychological state of inner
mental conflict between two contrarian positions, no transformation
can transpire. Which is why, when faced with contrarian facts or
evidence, the degree to which a man violently resists giving up his
prior beliefs is directly proportional to his inner insecurities and
is an index to his desires (as philosopher Bertrand Russell observed
of the frailty of the human mind). Desires of which he may himself be
unconscious of, as its seat is in the subconscious mind. Freud
established this as an empirical fact of the irrational mind at the
turn of the twentieth century. It is what the multi-trillion dollar
global advertising industry is built upon. It is why masses of human
beings fall easy prey to anyone who can cater to their base desires
and insecurities – the sine qua non for the mass success of
both religion and marketing. Advertising professionals and
Machiavelli understand this human frailty better than the common
mind. It is the cornerstone of success for well-designed propaganda
as well as marketing campaigns. It is why the ministry of truth
(as Geroge Orwell termed it in Nineteen Eighty-four) all
around the world have come into existence to more effectively make
the public mind. So who is your imam now?
Which
is why, at the risk of stating the obvious once again, in the matters
of the straight path,
the Author of the Holy Qur'an is categorically making each human
being accountable for his every decision, including the decision to
follow or not to follow others, to have one's mind made or not made
by others. There is no exemption for “oops!” for anyone
as these categorical verses of Surah Al-Baqara 2:166-2:167 and Surah
Al-Furqaan 25:27-30 unequivocally assert. Neither in this life which
becomes hellish not just for oneself but also for others when one
follows false imams. Nor evidently in the Afterlife of Islam where
everyone is called to account in the company of the “imam”
they each followed: “One
day We shall call together all human beings with their (respective)
Imams” (Surah al-Israa',
17:71).
So if one followed a false guide and did not realize it, there is no
“oops!” exemption!
After
this analytical presentation, why should anyone still believe that
the holy marja-e-taqlid is exempt from the condemnation of verse
16:25? That those who follow him are exempt from the condemnation of
verses 2:166-2:167 and 25:27-30? Precisely, because of a socialized
culture of religion rather than of learning that dominates the public
mind.
If
one was born a Hindu instead of a Muslim, one would be shouting the
virtues of Krishna from the mandirs. Today, the Hindu mind is on
safer ground because Machiavelli has found little use for it in
fueling imperial mobilization. If for nothing else, then just for
that reason alone this subject is of grave public concern. The “arc
of crisis” like a spreading fire, as the world is continually
witnessing, spares no one in its path. To put it out effectively
takes getting the core fundamentals that are being harvested for this
purpose in the name of Islam, better scrutinized in the public eye.
Virtually all of these so called axioms of faith are the creation of
Machiavelli, are not supported in the Good Book, and hence are not
part of the religion of Islam expressed in it.
While
much has been stated about both “militant Islam” and
“moderate Islam” being alien to the religion of Islam,
the third part of the trifecta for the recipe of creating perfect
storm for Muslim on Muslim violence, “revolutionary Islam”
and its enabling axiom of “taqlid”, has escaped forensic
scrutiny by the more learned minds who surely have better “ma'rifat”
(deeper understanding) of the subject. The analytical mind that goes
on facts permits no room for absurdities and gratuitous assumptions
of faith. Things have to make logical sense given all the facts, and
all their linkages. Some linkages are directly visible, while others
are made visible by the logic of adding two plus two correctly equal
to four. This analytical deconstruction of “taqlid”
without prejudice by a layman, is the product of that basic
arithematic. A challenge directly to the valih-e-faqih du jour
to respond, explain, and refute if there is any Qur'anic truth on his
side. Silence is the domain of cowards. No one who claims Imam Ali as
his guide has even a passing acquaintance with cowardice.
The
controlling practice of “taqlid” as it has unfolded in
Muslim civilizations, the underpinning of sects that were
manufactured when the largely sheepish masses were encouraged to
follow the anointed imam of their natural socialization by birth thus
dividing into schools of thought, is a man-made divisive construct of
the church of man. Its purpose is predatory social control of man by
fellow man, be it among the Shia, the Sunni, the Ismaili, or any
other group-think composition, in any religion. Like Christianity,
the man of cloth as the interpreter of faith for the Muslims became a
useful tool.
Is
man so feeble minded, so inadequate in his talents, so corrupted in
his heart, that he needs a fierce looking bearded shepherd until
eternity to “Islamize” him? What an insult to God's
creation --- and to God, that He Created such an absurdity in which
imperfect man shall forever remain beholden to another imperfect man
for guidance. Such an absurd God can only exist in the mind of
Mephistopheles to enslave and control fellow man.
Any
place where fallible man is anointed as the interpreter of faith for
another, or obedience is demanded in the name of the divine, is a
place where social control is being practiced in the name of the
divine. Lift the pious robes and underneath one shall find, linked to
the predatory social control, a bountiful and easy harvest of
public's wealth being paid into the coffers of the pulpit, and
empire. Perhaps this is why it is often hard to find clergy who is
familiar with honest toil and labor. The bulging waist-lines alone
testify to the vulgar empirical truth of virtually all priestly class
living off of public donations in the name of religion.
The
superman rulers have
comprehended this vile modus operandi of social control far more
perceptively than the sheepish public they govern! And the clergy
class in every religion has served that ruling interest with an
iron-clad regimentation from time immemorial. (Superman
is reference to Nietzsche's superman
and not to the Marvel comic book hero; the ubermensch,
the uber alles, deems
himself above all the others, is beyond good and evil, tells noble
lies and thinks nothing of it, and strives with his own “will
to power” instead of superstitious religions to achieve
lordship over mankind who refuse to evolve past their sheep state.)
But when the clergy class has itself become the state, the public has
been reduced to intellectual servitude to fellow man in the name of
divine. To have done that damage to the pristine religion
Islam which its Author claims to have “perfected” as the
Divine Guidance System revealed to free man from the clutches of
fellow man, is an immodest and unpardonable travesty for which verse
16:25 of Surah An-Nahl plainly vouches: “Let them bear, on
the Day of Judgment, their own burdens in full, and also (something)
of the burdens of those without knowledge, whom they misled. Alas,
how grievous the burdens they will bear!”
Unsurprisingly,
no Muslim and his pope is going to give up their socialized
interpretation of religion anymore than a socialized Zionist Jew is
going to give up Zionism and a Brahmin priest is going to give up
racism. And it is not because they each don't know or realize that
their respective ideology is misanthropic and leads to the
enslavement of the 'lesser peoples'. Knowing this general fact of
obduracy about His Own Creation which, by His own Admission, “He
fashioned him in due proportion”
(see Surah As-Sajdah verses 32:07-32:09),
is perhaps why the Author of the Holy Qur'an proffered that
straightforward Admonition to people driven by self-interests and
socialization bias even when truth has clearly been made manifest
from error, of scores only being settled on the Day of
Judgment. That, in this life, to
wholeheartedly “strive
as in a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah; it is
He that will show you the truth of the matters in which ye dispute.”
(Surah Al-Maeda 5:48)
Therefore,
as per the noble advocacy of this verse to eliminate conflict among
mankind, one may hastily conclude that if “taqlid”, or
any other harmonious system for that matter, leads to that wonderful
race in all virtues, all power to it. That is the point – that
any principled system can be made as virtuous in theory as it can be
made evil in practice. The choice is evidently left up to man in the
Holy Qur'an. The problem comes in when it is the latter and reduces
an entire nation in willing servitude to the whims and ideas of one
man, the self-anointed philosopher-king, with his subjects
loving their state of bondage in the name of the Divine.
For
those unfamiliar with the principal axiom of the Divine Guidance
System of the religion of Islam, the topic is covered in the tutorial
derived from this study: What
does the Holy Qur'an say about Taqlid - Blind Following the
Non-Infallible?
(http://tinyurl.com/what-quran-says-about-taqlid).
The axiom of inerrancy is also extracted into a tutorial due to its
enormous significance in understanding the exhortation to obey the
Messenger and which cannot be extended to anyone else but the
inerrant “ulul amar”: What
does the Holy Qur'an say about Inerrancy of Prophet Muhammad?
(http://tinyurl.com/what-quran-say-about-inerrancy).
To
resume and reach respectable closure on the earlier thread on the
examination of Qur'anic Beatitudes and the pulpits' appeal to
divinely sanctioned rule in its many different formulations by fixing
the Indeterminates to
suit their socialization bias, we can now appreciate that there are
layers of meaning to these metaphorical verses not resolved by the
Determinates, and
hence are Indeterminate.
And unless these do become resolved by Determinates,
either by acquiring new understanding, or new knowledge that is
discovered over time that makes comprehending the Indeterminates
in the light of the Determinates better,
these categorically remain Indeterminate
and open-ended! Perhaps the Messenger had explained their hidden
meanings to his contemporaries. Those who believe they still retain
these explanations accurately in their socialization context, can of
course believe whatever they like – they are socialized, nay
entirely indoctrinated, into these belief systems anyway with little
real choice exercised by them.
Indeed,
the more honest ones among them openly proclaim their religion as an
inheritance, especially the descendants of the Ahlul Bayt. They
announce it publicly too --- by prepending
“Syed” and similar appellation
before or after their name to advertise to the world that their
lineage descends directly from the Prophet of Islam. The pontiffs
advertise it proudly too, by wearing the black colored turban tied in
a specific way to indicate their special status as the children of
the Prophet and his Ahlul Bayt. And the most open and bold admission
is of course by the Western educated Aga Khan IV, who avers that he
is the 49th continuous hereditary imam of
the Ismaili Nizari Shia Muslims. A global
imam without territory who exercises
complete control as well as full responsibility over his flock from
his one of a kind headquarters in France. He also represents the
best spirit of the pluralism of Islam among all Muslim sects by his
social welfare work worldwide, benefitting all peoples, as
principally advocated in Surah Al-Hujraat 49:13 (see below). No other
Muslim sect or imam can hold a candle to, or lay claims to, such
demonstrated pluralism. However, the proverbial pound of flesh has
equally been extracted from these long running hereditary
imams as well. Witness the Aga Khan's most unusual level of co-option
in working hand in glove with empire in: Ismaili
Muslims and Aga Khan's Doctrine of Neutrality
(http://tinyurl.com/Aga-Khan-Neutrality).
And further witness the exhibition of banal self-righteousness that
is little different from all the other Muslim sects' despite genuine
attempts at pluralism, in: The
Amman Message
(http://tinyurl.com/Amman-Message-Aga-Khan).
A pluralism when it is not in conflict with self-righteousness!
When
religion is an inheritance, and makes one
self-righteous, one can at best acquire mastery and scholarship only
upon one's inheritance.
We
observe that fact in practice. It is foolish to require anyone to
give up their inheritance --- it is what
defines us like our gender, it is who we are, the tribe and nation we
belong to.
|
O
mankind! Lo! We have created you from male and female, and have
made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the
noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct.
Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware. (Surah
Al-Hujraat, 49:13)
|
يا
أيها الناس
إنا خلقناكم
من ذكر وأنثى
وجعلناكم شعوبا
وقبائل لتعارفوا
ۚ إن أكرمكم
عند الله أتقاكم
ۚ إن الله عليم
خبير
|
That
empirical fact of the hard genetic structure which expresses itself
in the plurality of strains that is
mankind, has evidently been extended to its programming, i.e.,
religion, as well. That undeniable fact of empiricism too is
categorically recorded in Surah Al-Maeda, 5:44-48
(See Islam
and Knowledge vs Socialization,
http://tinyurl.com/Islam-Socialization)
However,
the men and woman of understanding among them, ( أُولُو
الْأَلْبَابِ
),
must also force their pulpits to publicly acknowledge to their own
flock that their fixing of an Indeterminate is drawn from
sources outside the pages of the Holy Qur'an, from their respective
holy books and sectarian dogmas. If one is to stay within the pages
of the Holy Qur'an, one is forced to leave these matters as the
Author Himself counsels in verse 3:7,
as metaphorical, and therefore, Indeterminate. Meaning,
as unknowns, without feeling any inner compulsion to fix their
meaning at all.
Observe
that despite the arguable metaphorical allusions to divinely
sanctioned rule in its Indeterminates, the Holy Qur'an does
not categorically prescribe in its Determinate verses any kind
of governance, never mind specify who must rule apart from أُولِي
الْأَمْرِ of
verse 4:59 previously analyzed, and which is itself left as an
Indeterminate. It is arguably to transpire only in some
unknown and unspecified epoch whence all the Qur'anic Beatitudes
quoted above are finally realized: “It is I and My
messengers who must prevail”. Thus far, that allegorical
promise of both the Holy Bible and the Holy Qur'an have not been
realized. We still live in a world of tyranny run by vile Hectoring
Hegemons, now even more sophisticated than ever, employing diabolical
instruments and philosophies to continually corral mankind from one
misery to another under different Hegelian Dialectics. So who governs
in the mean time? Sensibly, the people have to govern themselves! The
Holy Qur'an has categorically prescribed its recipe that man must
willingly stand up to these usurpers and exploiters of mankind among
them (see http://tinyurl.com/Surah-Asr-Tafsir).
However, the Holy Qur'an has not prescribed in its Determinate
verses what such governance must look like that stands up to tyranny,
except for some desirable general characteristics of righteous
collectivism which it categorically prescribes for realizing the good
Islamic society that is the harbinger of justice for all mankind.
In
fact, these Qur'anic platitudes are not that much different in
principle from what Solon, the ancient Athenian law-giver, advocated
for social responsibility. When asked which city he thought was
well-governed, Solon said: “That city where those who have
not been injured take up the cause of one who has, and prosecute the
case as earnestly as if the wrong had been done to themselves.”
For
that matter, even the United States Constitution and its famous
American Bill of Rights are not inconsistent with the Holy Qur'an.
There isn't anything in that manmade republican governance principle
that is intrinsically in conflict with the Good Book. In fact, it can
be cogently argued to be implementing some of the principles of Islam
itself. Unlike others claiming the divine right to rule through 4:59,
the American Constitution however does not claim itself to be divine
– but Declares itself to be self-evident for the spelled out
inalienable rights of the people.
It
is a travesty that all these lofty platitudes on lovely parchment
have been instrumented in society with the same inimical zest for
justice and fairness as any other lovely words in any Sacred text
from time immemorial, including the Ten Commandments, and the Holy
Qur'an. This topic has been examined in depth in Islam
and Knowledge vs. Socialization
(see http://tinyurl.com/Islam-Socialization).
Rule
in the name of divine went away during Christendom's reformation
period. It was replaced by people choosing to govern themselves.
Whereas, it has been the principal raison d'être of governance
of all Muslim empires and Caliphates, including latter day Muslim
oligarchic states. None of which is to be found in the Determinates
of the Holy Qur'an itself; appeal is always made to its
Indeterminates in every era to justify and sanction man's rule
in the name of divine.
There
is surely no name more abused for narrow self-interests than the name
of Divine since the dawn of civilization. In the past it was to verse
4:59 that thirteen centuries of Muslim empires looked to justify
their rule. In the contemporary present, the principle of vilayat-i
faqih in the Islamic Republic of Iran has most imaginatively made
that appeal inter alia to both 4:59 and 28:5, asserting that its
clergy class are representatives of those inheritors of the promise
made in 28:5, and therefore must be obeyed as per 4:59. The
ubiquitous practice of “taqlid” (already examined above)
helped secure that blind obedience to religious authority from the
sheepish masses. While Iran today proudly boasts of being the only
Eastern nation which disobediently stands up to the Western hegemons
as the permanent enemy of the Great Satan, its majority public
meekly bows their head in blind obedience to their popes in full
conviction of eternal salvation.
One
can see that the Indeterminates permit open interpretation –
and that's the premeditated diversity engine of the religion of
Islam. When diversity based on the Indeterminates does not sow
discord, is in the spirit of Islam as categorically outlined by its
Determinates, then it is theologically not deprecated in the
religion of Islam as should be evident from all the preceding
discussions. It is the sowing of discord by interpreting what is
metaphorical and allegorical in the Holy Qur'an that is deprecated.
If interpretation was in fact not expected by the Author despite His
Counsel against it, arguably there'd be no Indeterminates in
the Book which claims itself a Divine Guidance for all mankind. The
ambiguity in its specification is prima facie evidence of its
sophisticated and pragmatic engine to seed diversity because man, by
the very nature of his construction (creation), will argue and
dispute, be socialized and group-think: “If Allah had so
willed, He would have made you a single people, but (His plan is) to
test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all
virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah; it is He that will show
you the truth of the matters in which ye dispute.” (Surah
Al-Maeda 5:48).
The Qur'anic guidance system endeavors to take man from that
disputative warring state of nascent creation, to willingly rising to
a stature in which he will come to excel the angels. Only the journey
on the road of “fuss-tabi-qul-khairaat” ( فَاسْتَبِقُوا
الْخَيْرَاتِ
),
“so strive as in a race in all virtues”, can take
a disputative, ethnocentric, tribalistic, nationalistic, and
fiqhilistic people to the heights of that station. It is
self-evident that part and parcel of striving “as
in a race in all virtues” includes standing up to
tyrants and creating social justice. All people are capable of doing
that. What further Divine intervention or Divine Imammat is needed?
To
even begin the process of transformation of coming together on the
Determinates of the Holy Qur'an, since no Muslim sect is going
to give up their emotional and theological attachments to their
historical legacy any time soon, if ever, the realities of the matter
and the dangers of fratricide facing Muslims, call for immediate
co-existence of sects as they are. Arguably therefore, so long as the
interpretations and fixing of the Indeterminates do not sow
discord among Muslims as per verse 3:7,
why should any particular fixing by one sect be deemed any more
holier than any other sect's? All fixing make recourse to material
outside the Holy Qur'an anyway --- whatever may be deemed to be its
sacredness by the socialization in the respective sect. It
is still not in the Holy Qur'an.
That
is the singular recognition which must finally be truthfully admitted
from every pulpit in order to form any kind of coherence among the
disparate Muslim sects.
The
abstractions Determinate and Indeterminate naturally
permit such realization to first be articulated, and then percolated
inwards, outwards, upwards, and downwards. A bold public admission of
just this reality of the actual sources of their beliefs, driven from
all Muslim pulpits, either voluntarily, or through state power
according religious rights to Muslim sects, is the first step of
coming together as one Muslim nation – without coercing anyone
to change their emotional attachments to their respective heroes of
history or come under the stewardship of any one sect's ideology.
Consequently,
regardless of which Muslim sect or political group defines their
nation's philosophical and national characteristics, if they employ
the Determinate verse
5:48
of Surah Al-Maeda as the cornerstone of their state's constitution ;
if they espouse the fairness expressed in the Biblical Golden Rule:
“Do unto others as you have others do unto you”,
and adopt the powerful corollary that naturally falls out of it as
their force
majeure to preempt exploitation:
“no one shall
take unfair advantage of another”
; and make these worthy first principles of fairness and justice the
very foundation of their governance structures whereby all civil,
political, and religious rights are accorded to its citizens
irrespective of their own theological beliefs with equality and
without prejudice, both in theory and in practice, such a state would
be sufficiently Islamic to legitimately call itself an “Islamic
state” – even if it was entirely a secular state! It
would be irrespective of the rest of its colorful artifacts, whether
theologically drawn from the Indeterminates and
therefore not something to be sown discord over as verse 3:7
clearly avers, or a separation of state and religion in terms of the
philosophical outlook of the state itself! What does it matter to the
ordinary man and woman what type of state it is if the state gives
the public the liberty to better themselves in fairness, justice, is
not exploitive, does not usurp, does not plunder, is not a vassal of
foreign powers, and lends all its denizens the opportunity to believe
and practice as a community what they each commonly hold sacred?
As
one can immediately see, an almost infinite array of diverse
governance systems are possible under that enlightened rubric –
only limited by the creative energies of the people and their
enlightened stewards. The stony silence of the Holy Qur'an on the
governance structure, and its explicit categorical articulation of
the general social principles to enact among Muslims in its
Determinates, yields only this logical deduction, and no
other!
This
isn't a utopia. Many Muslim governments exist today – they can
just as easily adopt the political recommendations noted above to
eliminate fratricide and foster amity among Muslims in their own
nations. That would of course only be possible if these states were
themselves not part of this Machiavellian fratricide, state
sponsored, both nationally and globally, as surrogate vassals of the
hectoring hegemons.
Therefore,
if any presumptuously “Islamic” state sheds the blood of
Muslims in the name of Islam, sows discord, then it is clearly not an
Islamic state by definition of the religion of Islam – but a
tyrannical state no different than any other tyrannical state,
Islam's lofty symbols proudly adorning its national flag
notwithstanding.
What
is perhaps of utmost most significance however, is the recognition
that the Hectoring Hegemons not only perceptively understand these
matters concerning the religion of Islam, they also understand the
cracks, fissures, and lacunas among the Muslim sects, and how to both
tickle these further, and how to harvest the subsequent fruits. They
know how to invent new sects just as well as they know how to create
revolutions by harnessing the indigenous discontent which they ab
initio create in the first place.
As
in recent past, internecine warfare is the unnatural destiny that has
been planned for Muslims in the twenty-first century as well –
and they had better wizen up before it is enacted on the scale which
has been apportioned. To appreciate the urgency, and just how much of
an existential necessity it is to immediately overcome sectarianism
which continues to directly play into the hands of hectoring
hegemons, see the excerpt
from the political novel (or historical fiction) “Memoirs Of
Mr. Hempher, The British Spy To The Middle East”
(http://tinyurl.com/excerpt-memoirs-of-mr-hempher2).
It is sure to distress the naïve and the erudite mind alike to
learn just how accurately the hectoring hegemons understand and
exploit the cracks and lacunas among the two major sects of Islam
comprising nearly 99 percent of the 1.6 to 2 billion Muslims on
planet earth today.
Continue
to the study of the principal axiom of the Divine Guidance System
defined in the Holy Qur'an that categorically states to follow the
“Wasilah”, which in turn
is categorically predicated upon the foundational Principle
of Inerrancy. Without continuing
this study at the two links below, it will remain incomprehensible to
those who do not understand why the Holy Qur'an demands that singular
following of the “Wasilah” on the one hand, and
deprecates all other followings on the other. The Good Book has
evidently provided its own semantic security checksum,
so to speak, to protect itself from the resemantification attempts by
the cunning superman.
They are all eventually caught and unmasked by the very Scripture
that they have tried to usurp:
This
scribe is not a scholar, let alone even remotely resemble an expert
on Islam or the Holy Qur'an. But, just as Socrates might have pleaded
in his own defence in the court room in Athens before its elites whom
he had challenged for spinning mythologies to control its public's
mind, this scribe too, albeit only as a humble student of Socrates,
makes the same plea before the elites whom he has challenged for
doing the same and far worse, furnishing a rich harvest of Muslim
blood as tribute to Oceania along with the rest of the patsy
Muslim client states:
‘Agree
with me if I seem to you to speak the truth; or, if not, withstand me
might and main that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my
desire, and like the bee leave my sting in you before I die. And now
let us proceed.’
(These words were not actually uttered by Socrates, but come from the pen of an American littérateur and dramatist, via the pen of an American dissident who also took on the most taboo subject in America with the same acerbic wit.)
(These words were not actually uttered by Socrates, but come from the pen of an American littérateur and dramatist, via the pen of an American dissident who also took on the most taboo subject in America with the same acerbic wit.)
Minimally,
the profound scholar of Islam who claims a higher station by virtue
of greater learning, the “muballig”, the ayatollah, the
imam, the exponent of the religion of Islam as an authority figure
claiming to be the inheritor of the Prophetic mission and its
authority, is invited to demonstrate what he or she might believe is
in logical error. Silence is not just plain cowardice, but also a
bold admission of the inability of the pretenders who have seated
themselves comfortably on the pulpit of the noble Prophet of Islam to
engage intellectually once the aura of their untouchable robe is
stripped off. Silence of learned scholars is an equal admission that
“iss hammaam mein sub nungay hain” (every one is naked in
the bath hall)!
Thank
you.
About
The Author
Please
be advised that the author is not a scholar of Islam. Only its
student.
The
author, an ordinary justice activist, formerly an ordinary engineer
in Silicon Valley, California (see engineering patents at
http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents
), founded Project Humanbeingsfirst.org in the aftermath of 9/11. He
was, mercifully, most imperfectly educated in the United States of
America despite attending its elite schools on both coasts. This
might perhaps explain how he could escape the fate of
“likkha-parrha-jahils” (educated morons) mass produced in
its technetronic
society with all his neurons still intact and still firing on all
cylinders. He is inspired by plain ordinary people rising to
extraordinary challenges of their time more than by privileged and
gifted people achieving extraordinary things. He chose his byline to
reflect that motivation: The Plebeian Antidote to Hectoring
Hegemons. Bio at
http://zahirebrahim.org.
Email: humanbeingsfirst@gmail.com.
Verbatim reproduction license for all his work at
http://humanbeingsfirst.org/#Copyright.
Footnotes
Article
excerpted from: Why is the Holy Qur'an so easy to hijack?
Part-III. For definition of Determinate and Indeterminate,
see Definitions.
To understand the reference to Mr. Spock, see Logic
Mind.
Citation that says “quoted above” and does not resolve in
this excerpted text is in preceding sections of the full text. See
Source URL:
http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/08/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-pt3.html
[a]
David Ben-Gurion had lucidly explained the utility of crisis creation
during the violent fabrication of the Jewish State in Palestine:
“What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in
revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed
and what is possible at such great hours is not carried out – a
whole world is lost”. This diabolical political science
principle was reiterated some three score years and ten later by Rahm
Emanuel, American President Barack Obama's Jewish White House Chief
of Staff (January 20, 2009 – October 1, 2010), whose father was
part of the terrorist gang “Irgun” that had so
successfully utilized the Ben-Gurion principle for the creation of
Israel in Palestine. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Rahm
Emanuel emphasized: “you never want a serious crisis to go
to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that
you think you could not do before.” Watch the news clip
in: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tM5ZdO-IgEE
(at time 1m 3s)
This
article is based on the author's book: Hijacking The Holy Qur'an
And Its Religion Islam – Muslims and Imperial Mobilization,
abbreviated to Hijacking Holy Qur'an And Islam
Download
Book PDF URL:
http://sites.google.com/site/humanbeingsfirst/download-pdf/book-hijacking-quran-islam-2nd-edition-2015-zahirebrahim.pdf
Book
PDF Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/Islam-Reader-2015
Book
online URL: http://hijacking-quran.blogspot.com/
Caption Pamphlet What does the Holy Qur'an Say: Thus Spake Holy Qur'an – On Schisms, Volume I (Click cover to download PDF,
http://tinyurl.com/thus-spake-quran-on-schisms
)
All
Articles in the series What does the Holy Qur'an Say
Download
What does the Holy Qur'an Say as a printable pamphlet titled:
Thus Spake Holy Qur'an – On Schisms, Volume I, 1st
Edition, August 2013, Second Printing September 18, 2015
Pamphlet
PDF URL:
https://sites.google.com/site/humanbeingsfirst/download-pdf/pamphlet-thus-spake-holy-quran-vol1-on-schisms-by-zahir-ebrahim.pdf
Credits
Arabic
Qur'an recitation by Shaykh Mahmoud Khalil al-Husary, audio courtesy
of Verse By Verse Quran, acquired 8/13/2011 from
http://www.versebyversequran.com
Arabic
verses courtesy of the open source Qur'an Tanzil Project,
acquired 8/13/2011 from http://tanzil.net/download/
Most
(not all) English translation of Qur'an verses are by Yusuf Ali,
Shakir, and Pickthall, acquired 8/13/2011 from
http://tanzil.net/trans/ (archived Yusufali,
Shakir,
Pickthall).
Source URL:
http://islam-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-does-quran-say-about-vilayat-faqih.html
Faith-Politico URL:
http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-does-quran-say-about-vilayat-faqih.html
Print URL:
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-does-quran-say-about-vilayat-faqih.html
First
Published as an Excerpt March 23, 2015 | Links Updated Friday, September 18, 2015
02:00 am
18750
Links fix November 4, 2016
What
does the Holy Qur'an say about Vilayat-i Faqih? 41/41
Zahir Ebrahim