Revolution of Regression

What kind of revolution would it be? Unlike the anarchists and the Marxists of that century before, these modern day revolutionaries, crying “Thawra! Thawra! Revolution! Revolution!” were not interested in the future.

Once upon the time, the Marxists, having pinned their hopes on the future, made a promise to the time to come, to fulfill the pledge of revolution and failed. But as long as there is man there shall be revolution. New men arise to take the place of the old, “they have failed in their revolution, surely theirs was a failed system”, and they begin once again the work of creatively destroying the world so that they may recreate it into a new image, their own image. So once again, the world became acquainted to it’s revolutionaries, except this time around, these fellows had made a promise to the past; to a time of purity, righteousness, and of course, polygamy. How could Muslims not include women in their revolution?

A scurrying man was seen scratching at a door. He knocked once…twice…no answer. He knocked for a third time to fulfill the Sunnah, the commandment of the Prophet – not one of the mandatory ones Sunnahs, but he figured, why not reap a little extra reward. He was clothed in all white. His was a round ping pong ball head, sticking out from the top of his rather truculent beard which reached to his navel, coming to a V at his nether regions, pointing towards the source of his power. He had avoided women for years due to his religious observations; sadly, when the time came when he thought he’d burst from peaking testosterone levels, he was no longer found appealing by any woman: “long bearded ones are making up for something they lack elsewhere!” he had been told. Thus, the juices that must be released simply ate away inside him, seeking escape in as many expressions of power he could muster.

“Come on there, open this darwaza. Hurry! Jaldi!” he banged on the door with more force, for the fourth time, immediately forgetful of the Sunnah of the Prophet. It made sense, his sense of urgency that is; it was not wise to be out this late at night somewhere near China town in Manhattan, especially not on a Wednesday night. He looked around nervously for any signs of crooks, robbers or thugs who might be trying to besiege him into a dark corner. He saw nothing.

The door swung open with a creak and there stood both Qadir and Shah. Both were men of pale complexion, from Northern Swat, near the tribal areas in Pakistan. “Tashreef!” they bowed before him and gripping his hands tightly they pulled him in, extending to him the universal-in-Pakistan pronouncement of welcome. One after another, hook nosed Qadir and beady eyed Shah took the bearded one’s hand and pressed their lips to the knuckles, inhaling the sweet aroma of the musk imported from Medina. “Shaykh Ji! A cup of tea perhaps?”

“Perhaps?” Shaykh K answered. “No my young students,” he avoided calling them the Urdu word for students (taliban) “Not ‘perhaps’, but ’most definitely’. Make it KARHAKAYDAR! Black like the ghetto!”

Shah shuffled off, his turban unraveling; he continued to try to right it onto his head all the way to the kitchen. The apartment was small: only one bedroom. There were no windows but the ceilings were unusually high. “I always feel like this is a cathedral or something.” He looked around and sat down on the edge of the couch; his arms extended forward, legs spread semi-wide, wrists resting on knees so that his hands flopped down. The beard almost scraped the floor since the couch was so low to the ground. Qadir sat down at his feet, massaging – as is the customary sign of respect in Punjab – Shaykh K’s calves.

“It was a cathedral once…actually…Shaykh Ji.”
He looked at Qadir with the force of a typhoon. “Are you certain?” he stood up suddenly, coming closer to the walls, touching them, sniffing them, pressing his entire body against them. “Allah forgive me! It smells like Christians…and black ones at that!”

Qadir smiled, mostly because he was pleased with himself for being correct. The Shaykh, however, mistook his pride-induced smile for a smile that seemed to be lending support to Christians, and let loose a resounding and thunderous backhand that fell like a daisy cutter bomb on Qadir’s shoulders, reverberating all the way to his testicles. “Glass of water. Now!”

Qadir ran off, pulling his trousers up; the elastic in his shalwar had long worn thin; it required much effort to keep his dirty gray shalwar around his waist. He returned shortly, carrying a glass of water with both hands; left hand underneath the glass, gripping the glass tightly with the right. He was almost certain that this too was a Sunnah of the Prophet. Shaykh K took the glass of water in his hands and began to inspect it as well. Real revolutionaries must be eternally vigilant; one can never be too certain about security breaches. Today’s revolutionaries had to be careful. “Wasn’t it COINTELPRO back in the day that had said that it would neutralize all black nationalists? We could be next.” Shaykh inquired. His question, however, meant very little to Qadir who had been imported – although he preferred ‘called on duty’ – from Swat only last week and his American history did not extend beyond 2001, when the “great American beast had shook in fear.”

“Wait a minute. What is this?” Shaykh held the glass at a distance from him, letting it shimmer in the light. The glass was dirty, unwashed. The top of the water was covered in a thin sheen of grease, allowing light to be reflected. “What is the meaning of this?” Shaykh looked at Shah with awful eyes.

The servant-man shrugged his shoulders. “Arey Shaykh Ji,” an idea came to his mind and tumbled out of him rather accidentally. “It’s protein water! It comes with extra fat, to make you good and healthy jinab.” Fat, in all of the households in Punjab, even in Swat which is not Punjab, is a quality desired in all foods (but not always present). Shah, expecting that Shaykh Ji would regard the presence of fat in water to be a blessing, was quite shocked to receive another bone jarring slap to his back.

Qadir returned carrying a steel cup, “made in Pindi”, steaming with dood-patti (milk-tea), a concoction acquired in the transfer of information that was British colonialism. Shaykh’s astute mind was aware of this fact. Qadir stumbled, spilling half of the tea on his unwashed pants. Burning and quite evidently in pain, he ran with the tea back to the kitchen.

“Shaykh ji, he’s just a chit!” Shah pronounced the swear word with the same ‘ch’ sound as ‘chai.’ Shaykh ji was aware that even swear words were learnt from the Brits and then made Punjabi.

Shaykh K ignored Shah’s comments and sat down at the table having given up all thoughts of the chai and Qadir. He rolled up his sleeves. “Did you get it?” He looked at Shah.

The servant seemed baffled. “What?”
“The cd-rom!” Shaykh ji struggled out of his seat and came hurtling at Shah; he held him by the scruff of the neck and shook him violently. “Did you get my email?”

“No Shaykh Ji,” he said. “I forgot my password.”
“Imbecile!” and so Shaykh ji paced around the room, ruminating on his inability to overthrow the west with such dysfunctional employment. The brain drain from the tribal areas had affected the quality of help he had been able to acquire. Even though himself he was a product of the finest colleges of Arts in Britain, it seemed that only the wretched and the illiterate of the world had been drawn to, what he preferred to call, “religious paradigm shift” he believed to be the next world-historical revolution. There was a political formulation he had constructed in college: "The Second Advent of Regression!”

Progress, after all, was a Hegelian concept, a Christian concoction made by those who had no past and no history. “But we have past, tradition and history. We are a people who must go backwards for success! We are everything the West is not!” And so the project of creating the first anti-nationalistic, anti-humanist, entirely-Muslim state that operated under the auspices of Shariah, Islamic Law, had come to his mind, and gripped his entire being with the demand of fulfillment.

His adventures and successes, however modest, had brought him here to America. Marx, another revolutionary like the Shaykh, had once envisioned that Britain and Germany would be the first to adopt communism, but had been displeased when the savage Russians began turning to his thought. Similarly, even though Shaykh K’s methodology would be readily accepted in Peshawar, he had a much greater goal, a bigger prize: America.

“This shall be where I will impose the Shariah!” and Qadir returned all cleaned up.

New York City, however, had proved to be quite impregnable. With its decadence, prostitutes, unkind taxi-drivers, and immoral hedonism it had withstood the three week onslaught of street corners sermons that Shaykh K had prepared and delivered with a gusto that would have put Bhutto (the first one) and even Muhammad Ali Jinnah to shame. Lacking any pessimism in his bones, and having entire faith in his concoction, Shaykh rented this property and began the project of internet-propagation. After receiving a massive amount of hits on his website, www.RegresstoPast. he felt that he was ready to institute and declare the erection of the First Shariah State since “a long time ago.”

But here they stood, without a CD; world-shaking plans in shambles. “Why? Because my idiotic paid help cannot procure a single copy of Microsoft Word! How marvelous is this! Could you not have borrowed and burnt a copy?”

Qadir came to clarify: “Sarkar! We did not want to pirate; we are not robbers!”

Shaykh looked at them, perplexed. He motioned Qadir over to him. “Idhir Aaja! Come here!” Qadir crept closer. His patchy beard would require many winters to reach fullness. But Shaykh K grabbed the four or five strands of hair that poked out from the chin. “Listen to me good. Taking CD’s from Non-Muslims, especially if they are American is good! It is permissible! American companies are in a state of war with Muslims…what we take is spoils of war. And booty is meant to be kept!”

Qadir was now kneeling in pain in front of him, shaking his head in vigorous agreement.

Despite not having a word-processing program, Shaykh decided to move on with his revolution as scheduled. “Is everything packed? Today we seize what is in our destiny!”

Qadir and Shah packed the remaining equipment: nails, powder, sulfur, various glue-substances, and ball bearings into their bags. “Ready!” Thus the trinity of power and revolution, the harbingers of the time that comes before the harbinging, walked into the streets, headed towards their dreams of becoming the preface (instead of the next chapter) to the project of civilization.

Shaykh motioned to a particular spot in the street. “This is good.” Qadir threw his bag to the floor and began rummaging for a crowbar. Upon producing it, he began to pry open the manhole covering. They looked around suspiciously at the small Chinese men who peered out at three bearded “Arab-I-think-they-are” men uncovering the manhole at 3 am.

Shah whispered Qadir to speed things up. The manhole came off. All three of them began to climb down the ladder into the darkness. Qadir and Shah reached into their bags and produced two sticks coated with sulfur which they lit and began to guide the eminent Shaykh through the winding passageways infested with rats and stench. They came upon a clearing where the flowing waters did not seep onto the concrete. “It seems rather secure.” Shaykh looked around. The area was a raised plateau in the sewer with walls on all three sides. “Get to work,” he ordered his associates meanwhile unpacking his own bag, to produce a folding chair and inflatable beds which he began pumping immediately.

Shah took out a hammer and began to embed nails into the walls. He reached into his bag and produced two small pictures. Apparently they were his mother and fiancée but because images are not permissible in the hadith, the faces were blackened out. Qadir took out a yellow “caution” tape and began to walk all around the plateau, rending the area the air of “being official” and “danger.” He took out red spray paint from his bag and began to spray “No Trespissing” on the walls.

A few hours later the plateau resembled a lived in house, with a computer plugged in (it operated with a generator that also provided light to the lamps). There were various wall coverings and framed blackened out pictures. A plastic shelf was erected which held all of the food-amenities. The area closest to the ‘entrance’ had a simple rug placed. This was the praying area and the place for consultation. “In olden days, the mosque served as bazar, market, palace, and military headquarters.” Three knives sat, shiny and curved, next to the thin blue Turkish rug.

Shaykh Ji looked pleased. He looked all about him. “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the avenging,” there were tears in his eyes. “By the authority vested in me as a believer of God, I declare this place, this country,” he looked at the raised plateau in the sewer, “to be the abode of Allah, the house of Islam, dar-ul-Islam. No law shall be known here except the law of God. As God as our witness, we declare this to be the Islamic Sultanate of…” he looked around him for a name because he had not given any thought to his paradigm shift ever succeeding, “this Kingdom of Walls…Wallistan.”

Qadir leapt in joy, and his voice, booming and elated, let forth the call to prayer. On that night, the first fully Shariah-practicing state, deep under the streets of New York, came into existence. Three weeks later, its faded ruins still provide a reminder regarding the first story of success in the revolution of regression.