Zahir
Ebrahim | Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org

This
book which you now hold in your hands, Hijacking The Holy Qur'an
And Its Religion Islam – Muslims and Imperial Mobilization,
2015 Revised Second Edition, abbreviated to Hijacking Holy Qur'an
And Islam, is a mini compendium of topics at the intersection of
religion of Islam and political science. It is a case study in social
engineering, of why the Holy Qur'an is so easy to misinterpret for
self-interests, and consequently, so easy to hijack for “imperial
mobilization”.
It
is important to state up front what this book is not about before
delving into details of what it is about. (1) This book is not about
faith. (2) This book is not about proselytizing Islam. (3) This book
is not intended as an advocacy of Islam even indirectly, a task for
which this scribe is least qualified. That function was performed by
the noble Prophet of Islam by his penetrating the heart of the
believers and is best left to those who claim his mantle. This scribe
does not claim that station. He is merely a student of truth, and not
its master. (4) Lastly, this book is not about this scribe's faith.
What
this book principally does is attempt to teach how to fish with an
honest intellectual hook when one is emotionally too close to a
subject. It does not however catch the reader her fish. Nor does it
make any appeals of faith and non-falsifiable axioms to the heart.
The reader still has to practice catching her own fish to feed
herself. Using the intellectual hook however, as opposed to axioms of
faith, is a tad harder than one might think. In fact, it may be the
hardest way to fill one's intellectual hunger. It is much easier to
pretend to be an intellectual and employ incestuous
self-reinforcement through self-selecting data and confirmation
bias to arrive at conclusions one is already predisposed towards. For
some, like this scribe, actually fishing with an intellectual hook
and not knowing what one might catch with it until one has actually
caught it, makes for a most gratifying meal. It is the only way to
nourish a parched mind. The food for a parched soul is to be found
elsewhere. If one is inspired here, let it be the intellect that
becomes curious. From that first curiosity to discover reality the
way it is, all else will naturally follow.
The
terminology “social engineering” refers to the cunning
discipline of perception management for mass behavior control. That
exercise is ancient and Plato addressed it most poignantly as the
Simile of the Cave in his now 2500 year old book The
Republic. In modernity, that exercise in mass behavior control in
which the public voluntarily offers a measure of their consent for
someone else's agenda, whether being pursued overtly or covertly is
immaterial, whether noble or ignoble is also immaterial, whether it's
in the public interest or against public interest is again
immaterial, has been formalized into two separate components: (1)
“soft” social engineering and (2) “hard”
social engineering. There is often a compartmentalized coordination
between the two with several degrees of cellular separation such that
all interconnections can be plausibly denied and causality turned on
its head. Soft social engineering is rooted in soft “scholarship”,
meaning, learned discourses, academic treatise, ideology, books, news
media, pulpits, education system, religion, self-deception, et. al.,
all better served by the catchall term “propaganda” which
simply means to make the public mind according to someone else's
wishes while letting the public pretend that they made their own
mind. It is a manipulative exercise. It is the irresistible natural
calling of shepherds and turns on the axis of authority figures. At
the end of the day, this exercise is still of mere words however. It
is like the shepherd without his faithful sheep dog, blowing his
whistle to which the sheep respond only by force of habit. It works
well for old sheep, but new untrained sheep can pose a problem. And
after a long absence of the sheep dog, even old sheep become hard to
motivate by merely blowing the whistle.
As
Adolph Hitler had well understood, words alone are often not
sufficient to mobilize a people. Words have to be backed by “events”
or “acts”, real or imagined, that induce public horror in
support of propaganda. Hard social engineering is rooted in hard
mobilizing “events”, the sheep dog equivalent, meaning,
covert-ops, false-flag, warfare, crisis situations, real or imagined
threats and horrors whose impact the public can be made to feel, or
anticipate with fear, and react to as predicted, often
probabilistically by a new mathematical discipline called game theory
which can statistically manipulate several variables simultaneously
to predict behavior. The public mind is collectively maneuvered by
the pied pipers to the point of a significant vocal number actually
demanding the same solutions the controllers want to sell them in the
first place as the panacea for solving the crisis situation. In
advertising and marketing this is easily recognized by the business
student as its bedrock discipline of “demand creation”.
It is the foundation of a trillion dollar global advertising
industry. The herd principle ensures its dispersion among the silent
majority. The same ideas constitute the bedrock of social engineering
for public governance but unfortunately most refuse to recognize it
as such. In fact, as any shrewd observer expects, it is actively
denied by the same pied pipers in order to not dilute its efficacy in
making the public mind. That fiction has to be maintained for
political purposes especially in a democracy where the electorate
supposedly choose their rulers by popular vote of their own free
will. Hitler explained this at great length in Mein Kampf (inter
alia, see Vol. 2, Chapter VI), and created an entire ministry in the
Third Reich under the leadership of Joseph Goebbels, Reichminister of
Propaganda and National Enlightenment, to make the German public's
mind. Today that function is decentralized, and far more
sophisticated than under Nazi socialism which ruled its public mostly
at the point of the bayonet.
Engineering
the public's consent for the narrow agendas of the elite, the
controllers outside the cave in Plato's allegory, is of course a game
as old as hegemony, as old as empire. But today's modernity has
introduced many erudite twists and turns with sophisticated political
theories (such as Machiavelli, Hegelian Dialectic, Big Brother
Statism, Plausible Deniability, Manufacturing Consent, Manufacturing
Dissent), and direct psychological manipulation of both the
irrational mind (the subconscious mind, catering to fears, desires,
anxieties, the harnessing of which is by demand creation) and the
cognitive mind (the conscious mind, cognitive infiltration by
authority figures who sell big lies, half-truths, three-quarter
truths, often wrapped in long-held beliefs and prejudices which make
these appear to be true in group-think and in shared ethos,
especially in moments of crisis when the normal brain functioning is
already in shock and people congregate around those with whom they
have shared beliefs and trust, and these deceit are subsequently
belabored by authority figures and group-think pied pipers to
eventually become the presuppositional facts underlying all popular
narratives). These exercises, run long enough, hard enough, with a
continuous supply of “high degree of doctrinal motivation,
intellectual commitment, and patriotic gratification” as
Zbigniew Brzezinski put it in his American Mein Kampf, The Grand
Chessboard, and a whole new generation grows up believing myths
to be historical fact. This is the empirical foundation upon which
Jews have been sold that they need Zionism and a militarized Jewish
state in Palestine even if it means soiling their Jewish hands in the
blood of its native inhabitants. A need evidently as necessary as the
fish need bicycles (as per a famous Russian Jew turned Christian who
this scribe once heard make this observation known in his talk at
Stanford University).
All
of this is the early stage discipline of social engineering --- mass
behavior control with at least some measure of voluntary consent from
the masses. Time is not far away when bio-chemical tampering of the
brain and genetic manipulation of DNA may obsolete this early stage
of behavior control as was depicted in Aldous Huxley's fable A
brave new world. While fables are eruditely read even in high
schools, this discipline of social engineering is not taught in
universities except in disjoint bits and pieces in disconnected
faculties. But it is practiced as a unified whole almost universally,
with military precision, for making the public mind. Its zenith has
been reached in the United States psychological warfare programs, far
surpassing Europe's former dominance of the field in previous
centuries. The companion volume to this book “The Poor-Man's
Guide to Modernity” (see below) examines this subject of
behavior control in some depth. A separate volume “Undoing the
Theft of Palestine” has examined the Jewish dilemma of living
on myths and earning the world's hatred in recompense. That book has
taken on the impertinence of liberating both the Jews and the
Palestinians from their respective prison states while simultaneously
freeing the world from oligarchic control. All good words on paper
that will remain still-born, for words alone can no more free the
mind of its chains than propaganda alone can shackle the mind. It
takes a good measure of voluntary consent for both. The forces of
social engineering make the latter consent happen. There are no
similar social engineering forces in play for the benefit of the
former. That calling must be unleashed from within without help from
social engineering.
This
book now in your hands is situated in that whole context in its
overarching impertinence of attempting to undo the hijacking of the
religion of Islam as the force majeure for subversive behavior
control. To do so effectively one has to not just understand the
disease by becoming somewhat detached from it as a good doctor is
from her patient, but also get its causality and etiology mapped
accurately in that whole context, being mindful of both deliberate
misdirection as well as self-deception. Linkages and interconnections
can carry more weight than individual elements they link and
identifying them correctly when they prefer to hide, deceive, and
misdirect, takes great forensic acuity. Poor diagnosis by
imperceptive mind is sure guarantee of continued suffering, and
fatality.
That
is the formidable challenge taken up by this book in the aforesaid
overarching context of social engineering. This 2015 Revised Second
Edition cherry picks pertinent essays, detailed case studies, reports
and letters from Project Humanbeingsfirst archive, all original work
of this scribe who is not a scholar, just an ordinary plebe who dared
to make the effort to think for himself, to analyze and deconstruct:
- (1) how the religion of Islam is often incestuously interpreted by self-interest and socialization bias ;
- (2) how the religion of Islam is harnessed for “imperial mobilization” by empire ;
- (3) how the religion of Islam itself contributes to this abuse by being open-ended, ambiguous, comprising algebra-style variables and value-loaded characteristics or puzzles that are open to interpretation instead of known and specific constants for identification, and employing metaphorical or imprecise allusions, in certain key verses in the Holy Qur'an (such as in verse 4:59 where who are the ulul-amr is left unspecified), all opening the door for self-serving and imperial interpretations, as well as unwitting incestuous self-reinforcement through confirmation and socialization bias, generation after generation, leading inevitably to divergent understandings of the same scriptural text.
The
long first chapter in five parts (of which Part-V is still incomplete
and under gestation) is a case study which attempts to disabuse this
dismal state of affairs by opening the door to an unusual idea: to
read and attempt to understand what Islam's singular scripture, the
Holy Qur'an, itself says, and more importantly, does not say, instead
of what the scribes, historians, scholars, pontiffs, pundits,
turbans, and the pious pen of men say it says. Duh!
That's
just how unusual this idea is for the Muslim mind, because, the Holy
Qur'an does not carry context of its verses within its pages which
contain a total of exactly 6236 verses as counted in the standard
Medina Mushaf ( مصحف
المدينة النبوية
).
The Muslim public in virtually every Muslim society have been trained
from generation to generation to seek that context outside the pages
of the Holy Qur'an. Principally, in the plentiful exegesis known as
“tafsirs”, and in other sanctified compilations of
history and the sayings of the Prophet of Islam, known as “hadiths”,
all composed/compiled by the hand of man. Whereas, the Author of the
Holy Qur'an itself, as claimed by the Good Book, is God Himself. If
one accepts that proposition on faith, as the Muslim mind does, then
imagine using the mind of some other fallible man long dead and whom
one never met, to understand the mind of God! That alone is a non
sequitur --- but the Muslim mind, from clergy to laity, persists in
that absurdity. This is an inherent epistemological problem of the
Holy Qur'an. Unfortunately, it has been solved with utmost laziness
through cultural osmosis handed down from generation to generation,
including among the clergy who are well known for incestuous
self-reinforcement of their own sectarian doctrines drawn mostly from
pages outside the pages of the Holy Qur'an and used for interpreting
the verses of the Holy Qur'an!
This
book attempts to change all that by substituting the historical
laziness and clerical comfort zones of antiquity stemming largely
from the culture of religious socialization, with clear analytical
thinking. The logical analysis brings an epistemological perspective
to bear on the matter which is further peppered with ample
commonsense and reasonability tests in lieu of socialized faith-based
axioms handed from generation to generation. By permitting the Holy
Qur'an to Speak in its own explanation on the anvil of one's thinking
capabilities rather than parroting capacity, the result is both
interesting and revealing. The seemingly intractable problems created
by the absence of context within the pages of the Holy Qur'an,
suddenly eviscerate as no longer being pertinent to understanding the
essential message being conveyed to mankind from age to age.
The
first detailed case study in Chapter One introduces the nomenclature
of “Determinate” and “Indeterminate” verses
to categorize the statements of the Holy Qur'an more precisely to
assist in comprehending how much of the various sectarian
understanding of the religion of Islam is from the “Determinate”
verses, and how much is from gratuitously filling in the variables
and interpreting the “Indeterminate” verses. A sensible
model for extracting the core message buried in the verses is
proposed: to treat the verses as a cipher text which is to be decoded
using only the verses of the Holy Qur'an into its plain text. The
exercise is most revealing. In the examples considered, and those
examples are chosen upon which Muslims have become embroiled in
needless sectarian schisms, the method easily and straightforwardly
extricates the religion of Islam from mythology, socialization bias,
idiocy of sectarian world views, and the mind of man. The case study
ends with a gestalt proposal to all Muslim pulpits to adopt this
approach to evaluate their own sectarian epistemology and to just
bring their discoveries to their respective flock. Just that one step
can undo fourteen centuries of dysfunction. Subsequent chapters draw
on current affairs and history to examine the other two aspects,
disabusing the psyche of the intense propaganda warfare inflicted
upon the Muslim and non Muslim public mind.
While
Islam may be the faith of the nonconformist, and what might appear to
some as unorthodox, author of this book, the activist compulsion to
pen it is not religious – the author could not care less what
philosophy, religion, or sect you espouse so long as it does not
interfere with others' rights to exercise the same. Rather, it is to
unravel the vile deception games which underlie the latter day
“imperial mobilization” of which he, his
nation, his people, and mankind everywhere on earth, are victim, or
will soon be. Self-defense against this full spectrum onslaught upon
the public mind, in specific, upon the Muslim public mind, is the
primary purpose of this humble endeavor. If Muslim scholars,
intellectuals, ullemas, imams, ayatollahs, muftis, leaders,
politicians, and the all and sundry opinion makers among the Muslim
polity worldwide, had not remained silent, were not devoid of deep
understanding of how the world really works, were neither being
useful idiots for Western hegemons, nor infected with the
Plague of Occidentosis, meaning, not mentally colonized as
modern day House Niggers and Uncle Toms, this book
would not have been necessary!
This
book does not invite you to an insurrection. But to a revolution. A
revolution of the mind – from which all else will naturally
follow.
Unlike
the fabricated “United We Stand” mantra of the Western
hegemons which has today coercively united the Western public behind
their respective governments in waging their manufactured “war
on terror” upon Muslims and Islam while ostensibly being only
against their own fabrication of “militant Islam”, this
book and its Companion Reader on Modernity are dedicated to fostering
both Muslim unity, and people unity, under accurate truth discovery.
Western “imperial mobilization” primarily succeeds
because of their vast intellectual capital invested in social
engineering through universal deceit against which neither the
Muslim public, nor the Western public, have any effective response.
But as the Good Book says: “Yee shall know the truth and
the truth shall make you free”.
The
intellectual capital generated by Project Humanbeingsfirst is that
missing response to hectoring hegemons, of every era,
including the past dynastic Muslim empires built from hijacking the
religion of Islam and bequeathing to posterity, us, a crippled
epistemology in the form of “Islamic literature” which
legitimized their absolutist rule. The bread and butter of all
empires, all primacy, and all predatory scholarship, is deception.
But its Achilles' Heel is the public able to do simple arithmetic
correctly and using their commonsense when two plus two is proclaimed
to make five. Had this straightforward rational path of truth
discovery been followed in the past fourteen centuries by the Muslim
body politic by suppressing its fear of empire, narrow
self-interests, and overcoming its crippled epistemology, or is done
today, the religion of Islam would surely be spared the lament of the
Prophet of Islam recorded in the Holy Qur'an for the Day of
Accountability, of how the Muslims will have constricted and
adulterated his teachings of the religion of Islam and the Holy
Qur'an:
'Then
the Messenger will say: “O my Lord! Truly my people took
this Qur'an for just foolish nonsense.”' (Surah
Al-Furqaan 25:30)
|
وَقَالَ
الرَّسُولُ
يَا رَبِّ إِنَّ
قَوْمِي اتَّخَذُوا
هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنَ
مَهْجُورًا
|
As
George Orwell argued through the pen of Winston Smith in his famous
fable Nineteen eighty-four, conveying through the mind of the
beleaguered protagonist an important and timeless axiom:
“Freedom
is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
granted, all else follows.”
Unfortunately,
like any un-invested capital sitting idle and ignored, this
straightforward antidote, the ability to do simple addition
correctly, and be able to proclaim the result freely, also only
gathers dust and continually loses in value for waging an effective
and time-critical preemption to the worldwide social engineering
before the public is handed a fait accompli. Afterward, it is only
history and the new reality becomes irreversible due to time
invariance which applies equally to physics and to societies.
Despite
the creation of the aforementioned intellectual capital by Project
Humanbeingsfirst though intellectual rigor and basic arithmetica as
evidenced in this book, its author neither is, nor claims to be among
those who are “firmly grounded in knowledge” as
“Ar-Rasikhoon-fil-ilm” ( الرَّاسِخُونَ
فِي الْعِلْمِ
),
see verse 3:7
of the Holy Qur'an. Nor is he particularly bursting with great piety
and/or self-purification as “al-mutaharoon” (
الْمُطَهَّرُونَ
),
see verse 56:79,
Ibid. Instead, he wears a battle-dress head to toe 24x7 (imagine Don
Quixote of La Mancha if you must), marches to his own little drummer
inside his head, fights hard to liberate his understanding from
“truth's protective layers” (but is forever restrained by
his own natural limits), uses cuss-words frequently (as any
unpretentious ordinary plebeian), takes no prisoners, suffers no
fools, bows before no turbans, holds those who claim for themselves
the titles of “scholar”, “imam”,
“Sheikh-ul-Islam”, etceteras, in considerable contempt,
and really knows very little about any matter!
In
fact, let's just gauge how much he actually knows and what
presumption entitles him to proclaim the material in this book before
the public. If he were to carefully read, just once, 10,000 books
before his time was up, that averages to reading 4 books a week, 200
books a year, over say a 50 year period of productive life. Of those,
if he were to diligently study a mere ten percent, say a 1000 books
of his choice – where “study” entails more than a
careful read, rather, an endeavor to master its contents – that
amounts to studying 20 books a year over a 50 year period of
productive lifetime. Given that there are in excess of 10 million
books in existence in all human languages, he would still be 99.y
percent ignorant of the already known human knowledge of the world,
let alone of what is yet to be discovered in the future. Even if he
were to strive his hardest his entire life to escape the natural
paradigm of “ilm” explosion as man endeavors to discover
its place in the universe, and as the wisdom of civilizations and its
sages continue to accumulate, he would at best be relegated to remain
somewhere between a superficial generalist and narrow-gauged
specialist who is largely ignorant of the breadth and depth of human
knowledge. How can a 99% ignorant fellow make any claims to being
among the ( الرَّاسِخُونَ
فِي الْعِلْمِ
)
as is required to fully comprehend the message of the Holy Qur'an
which is not even the expression of human knowledge (
تَنْزِيلٌ
مِنْ رَبِّ
الْعَالَمِينَ
)?
What
is therefore deemed to be accurate in this humble endeavor that you
now hold in your hands, is only by the quirk of accident that the
neurons in both halves of his brain fired correctly while he was wide
awake. The rest may be entirely gibberish – like the random
noise inherent in all electrical activity. If you can't however tell
the difference between signal and noise, then the fundamental
question of epistemology that you must grapple with is: how do you
know that those claiming to be “scholars”,
“intellectuals”, “ullemas”, “imams”,
“ayatollahs”, “muftis”, “learned
leaders”, bearing lofty titles, princely accolades, and even
knighthood, fare any better?
As
this book trenchantly demonstrates, the world is full of both clever
supermen and useful idiots proudly adorning the mantle
of scholarship, leadership, imammate. This is not just the vile
invention of Machiavellian modernity; it is also the empirical fact
of recorded history. The truth of these words is beyond doubt. It is
in fact self-evident. From Plato's 2500 years old Simile of the
Cave to modern perception management of the Mighty Wurlitzer,
is a continuous endeavor for the control of the public mind by the
superman. If you base your faith upon that pen of man, whether
of notable scribes and wanna-be imams (leaders) of today, or
of lauded scribes and glorified imams of history, you should at least
know what to expect. Here is what the Good Book of the Muslims, the
Holy Qur'an, has to say about it:
“One
day We shall call together all human beings with their
(respective) Imams” (Surah al-Israa' 17:71)
|
يَوْمَ
نَدْعُو كُلَّ
أُنَاسٍ بِإِمَامِهِمْ
|
If
you voluntarily follow others in this world making them your “imam”,
you should know that you will also be held to account in their
company involuntarily on the Day when all accounts are finally
settled. The Arabic-English dictionary of the Holy Qur'an in the
hands of this scribe defines the word “Imam” thusly:
“Leader; President; Any object that is followed, whether a
human being or a book or a highway”. If you followed any of
them here voluntarily, you will have no choice but to also follow
them to wherever is their ultimate destination post Accounting:
“(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. (Surah Al-Baqara, 2:166)
|
إِذْ
تَبَرَّأَ
الَّذِينَ
اتُّبِعُوا
مِنَ الَّذِينَ
اتَّبَعُوا
وَرَأَوُا
الْعَذَابَ
وَتَقَطَّعَتْ
بِهِمُ الْأَسْبَابُ
|
And
those who were but followers will say: If a return were possible
for us, we would disown them even as they have disowned us.
Thus will Allah show them their own deeds as anguish for them,
and they will not emerge from the Fire.” (Surah Al-Baqara,
2:167)
|
وَقَالَ
الَّذِينَ
اتَّبَعُوا
لَوْ أَنَّ
لَنَا كَرَّةً
فَنَتَبَرَّأَ
مِنْهُمْ كَمَا
تَبَرَّءُوا
مِنَّا ۗ كَذَٰلِكَ
يُرِيهِمُ
اللَّهُ أَعْمَالَهُمْ
حَسَرَاتٍ
عَلَيْهِمْ
ۖ وَمَا هُمْ
بِخَارِجِينَ
مِنَ النَّارِ
|
In
the age of universal deceit, it is surely wise to follow one's own
mind as one's imam first, as limited and as fallible as its vision
might be, for one never really knows who is the marde-momin
and who is the superman. Empiricism has shown that regardless
of the merits of their claim, they both lead one to hell on earth
while promising heaven elsewhere. And so does the feeble mind, the
foolish mind, the dull mind that is unable to separate chaff from
wheat, and who lives its socialization bias in absolute self
righteousness. That is traditionally the Public Mind, encouraged to
remain a perpetual follower so that it can be deftly shepherded
wherever the shepherd fancies.
This
book endeavors to sharpen that public mind on the grindstones of
self-awareness, intellectual thought, and logical analysis. It is not
intended to create followers, nor induce faith, nor reinforce faith,
but rather to challenge you to a duel. A duel with yourself. To
induce cognitive dissonance by getting you to challenge your own
preconceptions, your own presuppositions, your own bloated sense of
self-importance, your own state of contentment at your hubris that if
you wear a turban, an imama, a fancy Western gown, are anointed with
“sir”, “alim”, or “ayatollah”,
that you know it all, let alone understand anything of substance
beyond superficial generalist to narrow-gauge specialist and 99
percent ignorant! It is to sow the first seeds of discontentment in
your mind by inducing the realization that one is in fact often at
the mercy of a crippled epistemology bequeathed to every domain by
narratives of power and its holy pens. And that, unless one becomes
cognitively aware of this fact, one remains bounded by incestuously
self-reinforced scholarship both due to socialization bias, as well
as adept perception management by controllers of Plato's cave. It is
impossible to escape this subliminal mind-force without making
deliberate effort in the escape-direction. Like the force of gravity,
it remains unseen, but very much there, and in order to escape its
earthly grip, one has to reach escape velocity in the correct
direction – up!
Meaning,
the counter-force to crippled epistemology is a vector, not a scalar.
Mastery of a 1000 books is still meaningless, and doctoral degrees
and Nobel prizes only caricatures of “ilm”, if the vector
is zero. Or, if wherewithal, insight, understanding, conception of
the whole, are missing:
“Modern
physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each
part by itself, since such a method often implies the loss of
important properties of the system. We must keep our attention fixed
on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. ... The
same is true of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a
clear cut between science, religion and art. The whole is never equal
simply to the sum of its various parts.” (Max Planck, Partly
cited in Critique of Western Philosophy and Social Theory By
David Sprintzen, pg.
76)
This
is why, what is important in the real world is not how much you know,
or how many encyclopedias you can do instant recall from, or how much
energy you can expend in blind perspiration, but how much
you perceptively understand, and what can you actually do with the
little that you do understand!
However,
perceptive understanding principally relies on how effectively you
can think and reason not simplistically, but with some wherewithal
and commonsense. Human beings are not Mr. Spock. Our brain is not all
logic-only brain overflowing with Intelligence Quotient. Human beings
also possess subjectivity, intuition, love, hate, fear, needs,
predilection, bent of mind, and let's just capture all that with the
analogous term: Emotional Quotient, all of which remain beyond the
pale of scientific empiricism and rational logic. While ordinary
people are amply endowed with a physical brain, cognitive thinking is
made subservient to, or is at least cradled in, the subconscious mind
that is beholden to the latter human characteristics. Cognitive
thinking is often colored by the undeniable artifacts of
socialization, perception, prejudice, cultural assimilation, and
other natural psychological tendencies specific to each individual
and to her civilization, but of which she is often unconscious. This
empirical statement of fact and its effect was ably captured by the
British aristocrat philosopher-atheist well known for his antagonism
towards all theistic religions, Lord Bertrand Russell:
“What
a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index to his
desires – desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If
a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will
scrutinize it closely, and unless [and at times even when] the
evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the
other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting
in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the
slenderest evidence.” (Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to
Freedom, 1919, pg. 147)
The
parentheses extending Bertrand Russell's observation are this
scribe's. Re-read that passage by replacing “instincts”
with “worldview” and it will shock you! While the ability
to harbor instincts is arguably innate, worldview is decidedly
socialized and becomes the primary instinctual filter for how we
relate to the world. Meaning, both nature and nurture conspire to
lend intense subjectivity to man of which he himself is often
unconscious. The atheist philosopher's empirical insight into this
human failing underscores the import of Qur'anic verses which harken
to the “cleansing of the heart” as a precondition for
understanding the message of Islam: “That this is
indeed a Qur'an Most Honourable, In a Book well-guarded, Which none
shall touch but those who are clean (purified), A Revelation from the
Lord of the Worlds.” (Surah
Al-Waqia, 56:77-80);
“In their hearts is a disease, and Allah
increaseth their disease. A painful doom is theirs because they lie.”
(Surah Al-Baqara, 2:10);
“Do they not then reflect on the Quran? Nay,
on the hearts there are locks.” (Surah Muhammad 47:24).
What
these admonishments: “In a Book well-guarded”,
“none shall touch but those who are clean”,
and “on the hearts there are locks”
mean in the complete context of the Holy Qur'an, is man endeavoring
to overcome those very artifacts of biases and prejudices which have
become instinctualized and ingrained through socialization,
self-interest, and crippled epistemology, before man can fully
understand the Book's contents. In other words, the Book carries a
Message from its Author to mankind but full access to its
comprehension is restricted to those who approach it without
preconceptions, presuppositions, bias, and prejudice. A cipher text
whose decoding key is self-cleansing!
In
the limit however, this “self-cleansing” is clearly a
self-referential problem in which a mind can no more be wiped clean
of its socialization and perception vestiges than one can perform
brain surgery upon oneself under full anesthesia. In recognition of
this fundamental self-referential limit in human beings to be
completely free of subjectivity, a paradox really, that we find
categorical directives in verses like Surah Al-Maeda, 5:44-48,
teaching the foundational principle of multi-culturalism in Islam
which culminate in the rather incredible advocacy to man in verse
5:48
(reproduced in full below): to compete “as in a race
in all virtues” instead of
in brinkmanship on beliefs. This
principle of multi-culturalism
is further underscored categorically in the verse: “There
is no compulsion in religion.” (Surah Al-Baqara, 2:256),
teaching not to
impose one's beliefs upon another regardless of how self-righteously
held.
Why
does such strange accommodating advice exist in the Holy Qur'an for a
self-righteous religion which categorically claims to be: “A
Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds.”,
if not for the practical understanding of its Author who also claims
to be man's Creator: “Surely
We have created man from a small life-germ uniting (itself): We mean
to try him, so We have made him hearing, seeing.” (Holy
Qur’an, Surah Al-insaan 76:2),
that there is an inherent built-in subjectivity in how man is
constructed in his basic composition. The appeal to the heart, and to
reason, to BOTH (47:24),
is to strive to overcome that inherent subjectivity as best
as one can in order to
objectively comprehend the Message of Islam! One will reach a common
understanding among people on any matter only when one can
objectively comprehend that matter. When subjectivity is the
impediment, or self-interest, it must be removed. That endeavor, and
to what extent, if at all, undertaken for the study of the Message of
Islam in the Holy Qur'an, is left completely as a matter of personal
choice. It is not the concern of any other: “Surely
We have shown him the way: he may be thankful or unthankful.”
(Surah Al-insaan 76:3).
While
the prescription of best effort, as best as one can, to
overcome subjectivity may work well for one man's solo spiritual
journey, and the prescription of competing on good works “as
in a race in all virtues” rather than on beliefs,
underscores the efficacy of that prescription in a multi-cultural,
multi-ethnic, multi-religion society for harmonizing relationships,
it is clearly not good enough when it comes to having two or
more people come to a shared understanding on the journey of
discovery of the physical world. And it is woefully inadequate for
creating a community, a society, and least of all a nation, if none
agree on the fundamentals. A veritable Pandora's box of
dissonance and disharmony in any social setting of any appreciable
size where different beliefs, worldviews, presuppositions, axioms,
are self-righteously held! Which means, the ones with the biggest
stick, the rulers, authority figures, get to impose their own axioms
of faith upon everyone else. This is true of every discipline, every
enterprise.
This
is why science, in its drive to discover nature the way it actually
is, winnows out from acceptable epistemology everything subjective,
including insight and intuition, to reduce it to what is empirical,
measurable, and confirmable by others, in order to lend some degree
of objectivity to the discovery of what exists. What is not empirical
or amenable to science is termed non-falsifiable. Science relies
exclusively on falsifiability and falsifiable theories for its
advancement. Without falsifiability, science stagnates. What
falsifiability means is that a theory or notion or observation can be
shown to be either true or false eventually. Non-falsifiable means
the matter can never be proved either way. Therefore, for the
well-known processes of science, which basically involve four
recursive steps, or stages, any of which may be absent or combined in
a given endeavor: (1) theorizing, hypothesizing, modeling; (2)
testability (of the model), observability, reproducibility (by
others); (3) measurability, quantifiability; and (4) predictability,
anticipatability (based on the model); subjectivity borne of faith,
belief and intuition as means or motivation, belong to the category
of non-falsifiable theory whose reality can neither be proved nor
disproved by the scientific method. But its immediate impact on all
four processes of science also cannot be denied. The labor of love
and persistence that results from faith or belief or special insight,
often leads to advancement in understanding and to empiricism which
is amenable to the scientific method. Science is only a set of
methods, a means, by which to uncover what is, and not an end unto
itself. Some things which are just as real as nature, and a creation
in nature, are not always amenable to the reductionism of science,
such as feelings, emotions, love, hate, spirituality, consciousness,
awareness; domains that cannot always be reduced to material
principles and natural laws (apart from biochemical reductionism)
that wholly circumscribe the purview of science.
Often
times it is the implicit trust factor in respectable authority
figures that one chooses to accept their personal formulations based
on their faith and their special insight, as the axiomatic
presuppositions of truth, without seeking any empirical evidence or
examination for oneself. The late physicist Richard Feynman's famous
out of body experiment was easily accepted by others despite
it being irreproducible (noted in this scribe's letter to biologist
Richard Dawkins cited below). The abuse of such science, the science
of authority figures, also called pseudo science, in making the
public mind is of course among the best practices of Machiavelli.
This is examined in “Disambiguating
Religion, Science and Psychological Warfare Operations”
(tinyurl.com/Religion-Science-Psyops)
and “Reflections
on Science in the Service of Empire”
(tinyurl.com/Science-in-Service-of-Empire).
But we stay for the moment with the innocent concept of initial
non-falsifiability of personal axioms of faith driving reason and
persistence, and eventually expressing themselves in a form that
become amenable to the processes of science for others to reason and
adjudicate as well.
This
highly nuanced semantic difference is crucial to comprehend for the
point at hand. That point being that we can reason about things
despite having faith in them if we can understand how they each have
a role to play in advancing our overall understanding of the matter
such that the whole comes out greater than the sum of its parts. Max
Planck's observation quoted above, “It is impossible to make
a clear cut between science, religion and art. The whole is never
equal simply to the sum of its various parts.” is not
singular. Other stellar minds known for their scientific capacity and
deep penetrating insights have ventured along the same path. Here is
the late Pakistani physicist, Dr. Abdus Salam of Cambridge
University, a Muslim, making the following perceptive observation in
his speech at the Nobel
Prize banquet for the 1979 Nobel prize in theoretical physics
which he shared with two colleagues, a Christian: Sheldon Glashow,
and a Jew: Steven Weinberg, the latter an atheist:
'On
behalf of my colleagues, Professor Glashow and Weinberg, I thank the
Nobel Foundation and the Royal Academy of Sciences for the great
honour and the courtesies extended to us, including the courtesy to
me of being addressed in my language Urdu.
Pakistan
is deeply indebted to you for this.
The
creation of Physics is the shared heritage of all mankind. East and
West, North and South have equally participated in it. In the Holy
Book of Islam, Allah says
“Thou
seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection,
Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure. Then Return thy gaze, again
and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary.” (The
Holy Qur'an, Surah Al-Mulk,
67:3-4)
This
in effect is, the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the
more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze.'
(Dr. Abdus Salam, 1979 Nobel prize banquet speech, Stockholm,
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1979/salam-speech.html
)
It
should be obvious that it is principally the deeper understanding,
penetrating insight, and uncanny intuition, and not the
regurgitation, parroting, and mastery of immense encyclopedias and
arcane data-sets, nor the momentous processes of science alone,
limited as they are to the falsifiable, which are the cornerstone of
wisdom. All wisdom! Including scientific wisdom which, at some deeper
primordial level, is still driven by faith, insight, inspiration, and
intuition. Forces which themselves remain beyond the pale of
scientific measurement and quantification, but whose presence
underwrites the endless perspiration of science.
The
perceptive statement: “This in effect is, the faith of
all physicists” by the Nobel prize winning physicist,
speaks to the reality of a primemover natural force for doing great
science: “faith”, non quantifiable, non measurable, but
which impelled his own über scientific endeavors forward.
Without faith, the belief that something is possible, or out there,
or must be so, the super scientist pursuing Einstein's dream that has
inspired generations of brilliant physicists in search of the grand
unification of all natural forces, may well have given up. In other
words, faith and reason co-habitat and co-construct human wisdom, and
the two interplay with each other in non quantifiable ways most
poorly understood today but also accepted as existential. This is
also true of all great inventors, discoverers, explorers; indeed,
faith is an essential motivating force for any striving that defies
or transcends logic. The age-old banal response to the question: “why
climb the mountain” (because it's there) is perhaps its most
eloquent expression. Without this un measurable and un quantifiable
primemover force which inspires, dunce people perspiring all day in
their ardent labors cannot reach deeper understanding, be they
scientists, or ordinary sons of the soil. The tragedy is that when a
person of religious faith uses that un quantifiable factor for a
spiritual journey as opposed to the scientific journey where it is
evidently more acceptable, he is scoffed at by provincial minds
bearing the lofty banner of secular humanism. They may even
come with “scientist” prominently tattooed on their
forehead (see this scribe's letter to biologist Richard Dawkins
titled: “Error in The First Chapter of: The God Delusion(?)”,
February
18, 2008,
http://tinyurl.com/letter-dawkins-god-delusion
).
This
same un quantifiable factor is especially true of political wisdom. A
wisdom which is essential not just for developing the instincts for
survival in the Darwinian jungle infested with the plague of “will
to power”, but also for safe extraction from its jaws of
deceit. Political wisdom is the primemover force which also
underwrites the first “revolutionary act”: In the age
of universal deceit to discover the truth is a revolutionary act. It
is the first precondition to what the prescient novelist George
Orwell had incompletely proclaimed; “In the age of
universal deceit to tell the truth is a revolutionary act.”
In order to tell the truth one has to discover it first. In the age
of universal deceit, by definition that is not so straightforward.
It
is only the perceptive understanding and intuitive comprehension of
unseen manipulative forces – forces that largely remain hidden
beneath the surface like the iceberg, and often reach several degrees
of separation between their first-cause and visible effects leaving
no direct receipt of their existence – more than academic
degrees, more than titles of “Sir”, “Scholar”,
“Ayatollah” and “Sheikh-ul-Islam”, which
enable liberating oneself from Plato's cave of full spectrum
mind control. The purpose of this mind control is mass behavior
control. And the purpose of mass behavior control is to foster
complete obedience of the public mind to authority. In that respect,
the controllers outside of Plato's cave, the superman,
identify with a characteristic of God: the demand of complete
submission to his will. And the key to their constant success in
every era of human civilization, from time immemorial, is in the
superman's cunning ability to keep the understanding of the
whole away from the public mind. Half-understanding wrapped in
half-truths and outright lies enable the primacy of the superman.
Its first hunting ground: the human mind.
Therefore,
to be able to separate chaff from wheat in such an age of universal
deception by forces unseen, requires immense sha-oor
(wherewithal, deep insight), and not royally anointed pieces of
parchment and medals which proclaim super-learnedness. It is for this
very empirical reality that the Holy Qur'an, in Surah Aal-'Imran in
verse 3:7,
unequivocally commends only the men (and women) of understanding,
أُولُو
الْأَلْبَابِ
:
“and none will grasp the Message except men of
understanding.”
This
commendation in the Holy Qur'an which elevates the stature of “men
of understanding” is as expected, for it is also based on clear
commonsense that without understanding, the human mind is easy
picking for the superman, in every domain. Religion being the
first. In fact, this scribe is unaware of a similar commendation in
the Holy Qur'an for its parroting, memorizing, and endless
recitations without comprehension, a labor of love in which Muslims
today, as yesterday, take great spiritual pride and spend a great
deal of their free time. Whereas, time and again, the verses of the
Holy Qur'an categorically enjoin deep understanding, deep
comprehension, through deep reflection, and show the path to reach it
through the journey of the “cleansed heart” as already
explained. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that
meaning of the Holy Qur'an was cleverly protected from public
understanding by the rulers and their surrogate pulpits through this
(mis)emphasis on spending time in its endless recitation instead of
its diligent study. And the focus of the source of understanding of
the religion of Islam cunningly shifted to what the anointed scribes
have written instead of endeavoring to comprehend what the Good Book
itself conveys.
Even
today, in the most prestigious religious seminaries among all Muslim
sects, the study of the Holy Qur'an is still rather tepid. The
emphasis still remains on regurgitating what the holy scribes have
written, or on jurisprudence (the legislation of Islamic Sharia). The
latter is where all the easy livelihood (without expending a day's
worth of honest toil), power, prestige, social control (legislating
the “do” and the “don't” on behalf of Allah),
are to be found. It is evidently the easiest profession in the world,
second only to the oldest. While it is seen to be a safe haven for
the feeblest minds of society who cannot make a dignified living
elsewhere, it is principally where the most pernicious superman
is often found lurking. Under the turban.
Unfortunately,
the obvious and rather self-evident perspective that understanding
trumps vast quantities of regurgitated knowledge (historians),
voluminous research (scientists), loquacious speech (pulpits), and
that authorship of a hundred books remain infertile if devoid of
insights of the whole, is often sorely absent even in highly
credentialed intellectuals who are intimately invested in their
“American Dream”. This is of such practical as well as
existential significance that it bears at least some evidencing from
this scribe's own life. As this scribe wrote in the Foreword of his
maiden 2003 book Prisoners
of the Cave,
penned in a most tearful state during the barbaric American bombing,
invasion, occupation, subjugation, and total decimation of Iraq and
its advanced society under the false pretext of WMD which was
Orwellianly labeled in the Newspeak
of empire as Operation Iraqi Freedom:
Begin
Quote
“How
did I learn about these plans? I actually only uncovered PNAC,
JV2020, and the Wolfowitz’s chauvinist doctrines of preemption
that he had supposedly been pushing since 1990, after 911, when I
started scratching my head at the inexplicability of it all the
moment some 19 Muslim hijackers’ names were announced, and the
public was informed that they had learnt flying on flight simulators
and had told their instructors that they weren’t interested in
learning how to land! If Bin Laden was so smart at having planned
such an outrageous attack and counted on such brilliant executioners
who did it so flawlessly after only learning to fly on simulators, he
was pretty stupid at having enlisted idiots who would deliberately
leave such a trail of evidence behind, including statements that they
weren’t interested in landing – so that either they would
risk being uncovered before the attack, or their attack foiled while
in progress, or after a successful attack, America would know exactly
whom to go bomb in retaliation!
Only
one of these aspects could be true, either they were brilliant
military tacticians and strategists, or nincompoops from a three
stooges movie who succeeded despite themselves, but the incongruence
could not exist simultaneously on this large scale military style
invasion project, except in a Hollywood spoof.
Having
already read Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard and Huntington’s
Clash of Civilizations several years earlier, I immediately grasped
the new pearl harbor concept the moment America deployed to bomb
Afghanistan without adequately explaining or investigating any of the
events of 911. ...
I
started to reread Brzezinski and Huntington very carefully once
again, then reread the entire voluminous Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich, and the Mein Kampf of Hitler. The similarities between the
rising crescendo of WMDs and the propaganda that William Shirer had
recorded as having transpired in the Third Reich, and the
similarities between ZB’s and Hitler’s descriptions of
their respective imperatives and how to get them, were ominous,
except that ZB’s were more polished and more sophisticatedly
put. I got really paranoid as many more light bulbs went on in my
head which had not gone on when I had originally read them. I had
just taken Brzezinski’s book as theoretical, as being from the
pen of a Cold War warrior now retired and indulging in some arm chair
warrior fantasies. I didn’t understand that hectoring hegemons
never retire until they are six feet under. I had also dismissed
Huntington’s book as an ignoramus's work not to be taken
seriously, as it was replete with obvious disinformation and tortuous
conclusions that were easy to spot by anyone who knew anything about
the subject. Now both were being egregiously put into practice, and
the latter book did not appear so silly anymore, but rather shrewd
and calculated.
The
first time I had read Huntington with the lens of ‘here is an
interestingly titled book from a prominent Harvard professor, let me
see what he has to say’; the second time I read it with the
lens ‘let me understand how deception is created and its seeds
planted in a free society that is not too knowledgeable about the
rest of the world’. The second reading showed that the
obviousness of his distortions, coming from a top branded American
University like Harvard, had some deeper strategic thinking behind
it. Huntington is also involved in national security and other
strategic studies as a prominent professor and intellectual at
Harvard, and couldn’t be just a simple moron like Harvard’s
President, Lawrence Summers, who recently claimed women were
inherently not as smart as men. I was wondering how people like that
become president at prestigious American universities, until once
again I uncovered during my research that the same Harvard President
had also written how the industrialized nations should dump their
waste in developing nations while he was at the World Bank in the
1990s. With Wolfowitz now as the head of the World Bank, it is only
shortsightedness to underestimate the power of the dark side, or the
people who wield it. Huntington’s theme from portions of his
book relevant to the topic at hand is systematically dismantled in
Chapter 9. Based on this new found respect of the doctrinal scholars
for their craft, and realizing that we were entering a phase with the
hastily approved Patriot Act I that could only lead to the Fourth
Reich in America, I started attending antiwar teachins and protest
marches with my family, and began talking to prominent Vietnam war
dissenters about governmental lies.
And
that is when I first heard about the PNAC – from antiwar
teachins. Ordinary people like me, engagingly concerned about what
was happening, had uncovered more material from public sources and
the analysis of history, than the entire mainstream scholarship and
media apparatus in the United States of America.” (Zahir
Ebrahim, Foreword, Prisoners of the Cave, 2003,
http://PrisonersoftheCave.org)
End
Quote
The
story of this scribe's journey since the very day of September 11,
2001, is the systematic standing up to such experts' godly
craftsmanship by a most ordinary plebeian simply doing his own due
diligence. It has often been sufficient to demolish many false gods.
Experts tend to fall to even simple forensic scrutiny just as easily
as they have been propped up, at times by quackery, at other times by
Machiavelli, and most foolishly, often by the childish innocence and
unsophistication of their audiences themselves who naturally
gravitate to “experts” rather than use their own head.
Modernity, like antiquity, has produced many such experts in
virtually every domain who have been imposed upon the public mind as
celebrities and heroes. They are the cornerstone of the trillion
dollar global advertising industry that harnesses everything from
human insecurities to celebrity appeal to make the public mind in
virtually every sphere of human existence – from marketing
political agendas, religion, ideology, wars, peace, global warming,
global war on terror, to baby diapers and condoms.
However,
despite all this cognizance, the scribe has faced the constant
dilemma which falls out of being fallible and all too human –
how does one know that what one has learnt, understood, comprehended,
is fully correct? Truth in virtually every domain, including
religion, and especially religion, comes wrapped in so many layers
upon layers of deceit, half truth, quarter truth, and self-serving
interpretations and confabulations in respectable books, that how
does one know that one has reached the kernel of truth despite all
the unlayerings?
While
the author remains acutely mindful of epistemology, and of his own
fallibility in the pursuit of greater understanding, he cannot
guarantee that he has any more license to arriving at the whole truth
of any matter than any other mortal who endeavors to learn it, just
because he has all the good and righteous intentions of learning it
truthfully. One can also learn false things very truthfully. In fact,
quite often, one dies holding on to many falsehoods most
self-righteously as gospel truth. That is fallibility. A fallible
mind cannot lead another and not be the recipient of the “burdens”
forewarned 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)
|
لِيَحْمِلُوٓا۟
أَوْزَارَهُمْ
كَامِلَةً
يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ
ۙ وَمِنْ أَوْزَارِ
ٱلَّذِينَ
يُضِلُّونَهُم
بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍ
ۗ أَلَا سَآءَ
مَا يَزِرُونَ
|
Only
the inerrant and infallible can be exempt from the “burdens”
of verse 16:25 – for indeed, only the inerrant cannot ever
mislead anyone, including those foolish unthinking people without
knowledge who follow blindly! The straightforward logic of this
Qur'anic semantics suggests that it is only ever safe to follow the
inerrant, which is why, in verse 6:90 of Surah Al An'aam, the Author
of the Holy Qur'an also avers: “These are they whom Allah
guided, therefore follow their guidance.”
This
errant author therefore has always disclaimed followers. The Holy
Qur'an has itself emphatically admonished followers (as already noted
above in Surah Al-Baqara 2:166, 167). But fools of course only follow
– which is why Machiavelli always has such a rich harvest of
fools. Few Muslim scholars, from antiquity to modernity, appear to be
cognizant, never mind fearful, of these considerations as they
self-righteously proclaim to be the heralders of “truth”;
often treated as such by the myths that are carefully cultivated
around their supposed holiness and special privileges.
Perhaps
all these realizations, of humbleness and insignificance of an
individual's endeavors on the one hand that can so easily mislead the
public mind wont to blindly follow experts, and of self-empowerment
by using one's own head and commonsense on the other, can induce an
acute sense of discontentment. That, while most of us can actually
know very little despite our presumptions to the contrary (and that
includes experts), what we do know need not be insignificant for
ourselves. We can still make important existential decisions, both
for sensibly elevating and protecting ourselves in this life, and if
we believe in some theology, for preparing ourselves for what comes
afterward, without following supermen experts who often only
lead us to hell on earth while promising heaven elsewhere. As the
saying goes: “If necessity is the mother of invention
then discontent is the father of progress.”
That
discontentment, rationally induced among those so presumptuously
wearing the multi-styled, multi-colored turbans preaching and sowing
discords of self-righteousness, will surely bear some fruit. While
they may be the presumed “experts” of religion, and they
might well have memorized a 1000 books of antiquity often
regurgitating them in dazzling oratory, they can also easily be
trumped by the commonsense of ordinary people just thinking and
studying for themselves. And their power to command followers
straightforwardly taken away from them by the ordinary person simply
refusing to follow them. As this incisive book is evidence, the
scribe has acquired sufficient disdain of all “experts”,
of both what they say, and what they carefully omit to say by way of
silence, to hold them in strong contempt as propagandists.
Wherever one turns, one sees only scoundrels telling half-truths and
quarter truths at best, by cunningly lying by omission, by cleverly
omitting to disclose facts to their audience that are inconvenient to
their narratives. It makes for the most diabolical form of
propaganda warfare, and Aldous Huxley captured its impact on the
public mind most ably:
‘The
greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing
something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still
greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr.
Churchill calls an “iron curtain” between the masses and
such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as
undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much
more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent
denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals. But silence
is not enough. If persecution, liquidation and the other symptoms of
social friction are to be avoided, the positive sides of propaganda
must be made as effective as the negative.’ (Aldous Huxley,
1946 Preface to Brave New World, 1931, Harper, pg. 11)
If
you don't like these statements of fact and empirical truths, good.
It means you may already be experiencing some cognitive dissonance in
relation to your existing world view and you haven't even opened
chapter one yet! If you are lucky, you will go through several
psychological state transitions that you might like to become aware
of. The first one being your natural inclination to dismiss this work
because it isn't written by an “expert” who comes
suitably anointed with a turban and sajdah (mark of worship)
stamped upon his forehead.
If
you are fortunate enough to have some neurons that still function
independently despite the tranquilizing sleep that the pursuit of
American Dream often induces, and able to examine material
without the customary appeal to “celebrity experts” that
modern marketing and advertising has invented to not just sell
consumer products, but also lifestyles, ideologies and mythologies,
your next inclination to reject will be due to its substance going
against your entrenched worldview. And if you are able to transcend
even that aspect of the public mind, only then will you be in any
position, from the enlightened heights of Mt. Fuji no less, to even
reasonably adjudicate what is written here.
The
upsetness you may feel may also have nothing to do with cognitive
dissonance – and that is a more likely response if your
favorite hero, scholar, leader, imam, shaykh, myth, false belief, or
the kaaba before which you bow has been unmasked in this book.
The contents of this book are too unorthodox to benefit from for the
mind groomed in herds (and that includes mankind's finest scholars')
which, although quite capable of thinking for itself, but either
through sheer mental laziness, or lack of basic reasoning skills that
never got developed despite acquiring a college degree, a Ph.D., or a
turban, always relies on some “authority” to do the
principal thinking for it.
The
rational call of the times is to espouse some humility rather than
self-righteousness in order to come together with others who also
sail in the same boat of humanity on the same turbulent seas ruled by
the same common predators. As counseled by the same common Book whose
scholarship some blithely claim to be divine custodians of:
“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)
|
وَلَوْ
شَاءَ اللَّهُ
لَجَعَلَكُمْ
أُمَّةً وَاحِدَةً
وَلَٰكِنْ
لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ
فِي مَا آتَاكُمْ
ۖ فَاسْتَبِقُوا
الْخَيْرَاتِ
ۚ إِلَى اللَّهِ
مَرْجِعُكُمْ
جَمِيعًا
فَيُنَبِّئُكُمْ
بِمَا كُنْتُمْ
فِيهِ تَخْتَلِفُونَ
|
The
Qur'an speaks to all people in the above verse: “If Allah
had so willed, He would have made you a single people,”.
Never mind the multitude of Muslim sects warring with each other to
serve the interests of those who have perfected the art of divide
and conquer, the Qur'anic prescription to all mankind to compete
on doing good works as if “in a race in all virtues”
instead of theological upmanship and triumphalism, is categorical in
Surah Al-Maeda, 5:44-48. That pious platitude surpasses the Ten
Commandments which are noble prescriptions of refrains, whereas Surah
Al-Maeda, 5:44-48 are positive acts of commission to create amity and
harmony. Understandably, neither system is put into practice by its
respective adherents --- to the great rejoicing of hectoring
hegemons who exploit religions and human nature with the skill of
a surgeon to implant maladies and divides. This book is its humble
antidote: fashioning a perspective from a deeper and accurate
understanding of how Islam is hijacked by both self-interests, and by
way of self-deception. Muslims don't need external enemies to subvert
us. We do a pretty good job ourselves!
This
book has a Companion Reader, The Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity –
Oligarchic Primacy for World Government, 2015, 9th Edition, which
is a much larger compendium of essays, letters, and case studies
focussed on deconstructing the diabolical techniques being employed
in the surreptitious construction of one-world government. The
Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity is the pièce de résistance
of Project Humanbeingsfirst. It cherry picks penetrating analysis of
current affairs from over a decade of written scholarship as the
student of truth, and not its master. The Companion Reader
systematically unpeels “truth's protective layers” in
several different domains of human endeavor to demonstrate that
virtually nothing the public mind is led to believe about any matter
is wholly true. In fact, what the public believes and responds to is
often outright bunk. As The Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity
demonstrates, in the age of Machiavelli and universal deceit, the
ultimate revolutionary act is not just to discover truth in a sea of
lies, nor just to tell it to the deaf and blind who can neither hear
nor see, as morally courageous as both these endeavors are for the
malcontent, but to act upon truth that one is so convinced of with
the courage of one's convictions. In the age of universal deceit
to live truth is a revolutionary act!
This
is the principal teaching not just of the Holy Qur'an, not just of
the Holy Bible, not just of the Vedas and the Gita, but of all noble
human wisdom traditions from time immemorial. The quest for living in
truth is as old as mankind, right alongside hegemony and primacy.
Please read the Project Humanbeingsfirst.org Legal Disclaimer Notice
(http://humanbeingsfirst.org/#Legal)
before you hasten to do so based on what you read here. The Legal
Disclaimer Notice is hereby incorporated into this book by reference.
In précis: (1) you are responsible to verify what is presented
here; for all you know, it could also be all myth like the rest of
what you believe to be true. And (2): Project Humanbeingsfirst and
this author have no affiliation with anyone; reference citation to
sources is for scholarship purpose only.
Remember,
your own mind is your first imam, and that first natural
guide built into each one of us is itself under manipulation from
all sides not just by the external perception managers who
manufacture a synthetic reality for us, but also by self-serving
natural inclinations which often remain rooted deeply in the
unconscious mind and manufacture our own subjective reality of which
we remain unaware of. A self-referential problem every seeker of
objective reality must vigorously confront if honesty of purpose is
their driving intent. Know thy self to know the world, so to
speak. While self-evident, few labor in that prescription. The target
audience of this book, socialized Muslims, especially remain
oblivious to this ingrained socialization bias in their
self-righteous indignation to any invitation to introspection. Shia
Muslims fervently remain Shia, Sunni Muslims fervently remain Sunni,
and each remains violently attached to their respective ethos, each
understands their history somewhat differently, and consequently fall
easy prey to all “us vs. them” emotional and theological
separation schemes conjured up by every conquering hectoring hegemon
throughout the ages.
Today,
that age-old divide and conquer modus operandi has been convoluted
and amplified by political science contortions such as the Hegelian
Dialectic of “militant Islam” vs. “moderate Islam”
vs. “revolutionary Islam”. The former two are derived
from Sunni distortions of Islam, and the latter is derived from Shia
distortions of Islam, all of which are just more attempts at seeding
separation among people to fabricate internecine warfare under
sophisticated political theories of statism to fashion a
one-world global superstate. This book is intended to be the antidote
shock therapy for Muslims. It can surely succeed but only if
cognitively addressing the self-referential problem is made part of
extending our understanding of the world. One has to diligently
compensate for one's own natural subjectivity and perception biases
before one can be analytical about any external matter. Once again,
for emphasis, know thy self to know the world!
Since
you have reached this far in this long Preface, welcome to the
journey of discovering how much we are deceived by the fact that we
are only human. But because we are primarily human, and not animal,
howsoever we may have come about, we can do better than animals who
are stuck in their nature and their habit. The beaver has been
building dams for 5000 years, but in exactly the same way. The honey
bee has been making honey for a lot longer, but also in exactly the
same way. While man still cannot mimic what the natural world does so
easily, man has something the natural world does not. We build a
better dam each time around!
Socrates
had surely summed up his own challenge to his audience thusly*:
‘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.’
Stating
the matter of fact in the same words, for the same purpose, let us
proceed as well.
The
Plebeian Antidote to Hectoring Hegemons,
Zahir
Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
First published for First Edition, February 10, 2013
Updated for Revised First Edition August 01, 2013
Updated for Revised Second Edition, April 17, 2015
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
First published for First Edition, February 10, 2013
Updated for Revised First Edition August 01, 2013
Updated for Revised Second Edition, April 17, 2015
Footnote
*
In classicist Edith Hamilton's rendering, via historian Eustace
Mullins' The World Order, Foreword, 1985
About
The Author
Please
be advised that the author is not a scholar of Islam.
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.
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Preface
First Published February 10, 2013 | Updated for 2nd Edition April 17,
2015
Last
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