Master of Islam

When the religion is being oppressed, the question of legality is secondary – such is the rationale of today’s Islamic Nihilism. It exists in the form of al-Qaeda, Usama, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade. Yet when I speak of this nihilism, I see it having dispersed down to the average Mohammed and Zubair – to the street. Its serpentine tongue has grabbed the formerly forgotten and made them a party to its deviousness. The snake slithers. It precipitates the fall of Islam from the toehold of a sheer cliff into the abyss. Nowhere does anyone move to conedmn the devil, the menace who has slipped the cobra inside the clothes of Islam. All appears well as long as the hooded beast poisons the enemy. None realize that in the course of killing others, poison must come to flow in the veins of the faith.

I know not who invented the ideology of the snake, who legitimized the machine of darkness. Perhaps I should make it clear that I am now so concerned with the actual manifestations of this poison (i.e. 9/11 or Bali) as much as what this malaise means for Muslims.

At the level of the street this Islam is identified as an armored organism, a bacteria slipping and falling through the cracks. Its motivation is vengeance; agasint the West, the Other. Unfortunately its mechanism, its means, are repression. Vengence directed towards the West it calls Jihad. Vengeance directed towards the street, which occurs in the forms of extortion, senseless sectarian killing, blackmail, propaganda, it calls "peace." One need only take a visit to Pakistan where the ideology of the cobra gains power and momentum by guaranteing peace and quiet but accomplishes its ends by biting and crushing. The street, however, is very tolerant when it comes to promises of peace; it tolerates paying hefty weekly fines; even the death of their children at the hands of the guarantors of peace is a price paid submissively.

One leader, Usama, one people, Ummah, signifies one master and millions of slaves. Muslims, who take pride in giving allegiance to Allah alone, are not above falling prey to the perceived, quasi-divinity of a man simply because he is as mysterious and difficult to find as Allah. The more often Usama slips away to survive, the more often his minions come carrying cryptic and secretive messages like messengers bearing revelation, the more often we grant him a status not given to other mortals . Thus we make him a force, a legend – as Allah is a legendary force.

Between the mastery by one such leader and unquestioning obedience of millions, there are no organs of mediation, no intermediaries. His vision of guaranteeing freedom comes to be enforced, either through the power of his suggestive legend, or through the boots of his minions. Thus, the streeth either shouts for him at the top of their lungs, or what amounts to the same thing, remains silent. This is the degraded mysticism of many Muslims today. Be proud ye Muslim! – but you are not. You have restored idolatry. The debased deity of nihilism rules us today.

Philadelphia, 12-25-02