Politicians

[Nur]

From The E-Nuri Archives, an article I wrote during the Arteh Somali political Convention some 3-4 years ago.

 

 

Politicians

 

 

Faarax Gololley, the legendary Political Humorist during the Afweyne Regime was quoted as saying :

 

" Afweyne raac, ama Afgooye aad, ama Afkaaga heyso ," " Either Follow Afweyne, Get Ready For Afgoy Political Prison, or Keep your mouth shut "

 

Today, our country, the former Somali Republic, and the world in general is going through difficult times, in Somalia, we are witnessing a 12 year uncivil war going on with no end in sight, a dilemma that is inhibiting any progress while at the same time exacerbating living conditions . The result is that many Somalis who are stranded overseas as refugees are unable to go back home, worse yet, they are unhappy to live in the Diaspora and are very fearful of melting in the American pot, adopting the McDonald and Levi's culture of consumerism, with no apparent purpose of life beyond that.

 

The solution of this problem lies in understanding politics, the politicians mindset and what drives them to make such horrible decisions as to to tear apart entire nations, seaparate friends who grew up with a tribalist mantra and exploit their fears to keep their pockets full of cash and their mouths full of qaat.

 

Politicians at home mobilize the masses and create an enemy for them to hate, later they use this hate energy to fuel their vehicles to grab power and lead their people to miseries. Likewise, on a wider scope, Internationally, politicians are doing the same thing , the scale of the village and human agony is just much bigger than Somalia, but the pain of innocent civilians in Iraq and Somalis caught across fire , hurts the same, like they say, killing one person is murder, annihilating a village is a policy, stark realities of the the Global Village and the New World Disorder.

 

Politicians usually rise to the top to fill power vacuums created when decent people shun politics due to its close relationship with sleeze and dirty tricks, so most decent people who value their dignity stay away from politics for fear that it would tarnish them, and their loved ones with bad reputation by casting doubts on their character.

 

As a result, the bad apples in society, who care les for their reputation, take the lead and speak for the people and nation. Interest groups, those with material stake in the affairs of the nation, as opposed to moral values, begin supporting those who are seeking power. The interest group gives these power hungry hopefuls financial support in their quest for power, and slowly, they begin controlling them and directing them to serve the interest groups agendas against the interest of the constituency they claim to represent. Welcome the birth of a Politician, a Hero and Great leader of his tribe.

 

The politician has just sold out his people to an interest group behind the scenes with a secret agenda. He sold his conscious and that of his people for a quick personal gain that will haunt his nation for many years to come, and it is partially due to the citizens who allowed him to speak in their name and shunned active participation for fear of smearing and mudslinging. So, if good principles were like our clean bodies, a politician becomes an Intellectual Prostitute ready to trade his people principles and values for his personal gain.

 

A prostitute is therefore a person who allows others to buy time to desecrate her/his body in exchange for a material gain, like money. An Intellectual prostitute on the other hand is a person who allows others to desecrate her/his soul and intellect for a material wealth.

 

Politics was defined as the art of avoiding to tell the truth to those who need it most, but short of defending an outright verifiable lie, the more creative a politician gets in concealing the truth, the savvier that he is valued as a politician by his mentors, the interest group. The highest honor for a politician should win him the coveted Pinocchio Trophy.

 

Politicians are thus people who are interested in their personal interests and who are willing to pursue them even if it conflicts with their constituent's interest. At times, our warlords reason very logically. Everyone is claiming that he is working for what is good for our country and people, they tell us that they are saving Somalia by killing Somalis, no wonder their job is taking 12 years and counting.

 

Prostitutes sell their body for the highest bidder, in contrast, politicians sell their moral convictions to the richest financial donor. Prostitutes do not enjoy selling their bodies, but they are just compelled in doing so ,they reason, since everyone else is on their own, what the heck.. But neither do politicians enjoy telling lies, at the end of the day though, they have to pay their bills to support their special lifestyle, so, a white lie wouldn't hurt, so what the heck.

 

Most people would agree with the above statements that I made, but to date, only the Italians, our past colonial masters have made the link, let us see if our Somali politicians , Presidents, Boqors, Warlords and Anarchists@ El Doret can learn a lesson or two from Reer Benito Mussolini.

 

Just before the last gulf war, a group of Italian voters, mostly young, elected an Italian Porn Star called Miss Cicciolina to Italian Parliament, They wanted to send a message to their politicians about their intimate feelings toward them, so they sent Miss Cicciolina to the Italian Parliament. The only promise the young lady made was that she will bare her top in Parliament. Subsequently, Miss Cicciolina was elected, and to the embarrassment of the Italian lawmakers, she sat topless in their midst, delivering on her promises and scoring a victory for the Italian voters who were displeased with their politicians. Later she confirmed that many politicians in parliament were staring at her with interest.

 

Cicciolina became an embarrassment in Italian Parliament, so she was asked to participate in the Parliament's Defense Committee, a boring committee that she would later breathe some evil excitement into it. As a member of the Defense Committee, she demanded to be sent to the Gulf War to entertain the Italian Soldiers in the Gulf. She was a sellout. After the show, she wondered what was all these troops doing in the gulf ? she was told that Saddam was a crazy and hostile to his neighbors and the troops are amassed here to control his evil intentions. She reasoned that they were doing the wrong thing amassing so many troops and risking so many human lives to handle a stressed out politician, instead, she offered to visit Saddam personally in order to defuse the tense situation, but her defense committee became too defensive about such a "sinister" idea.

 

Politicians also need the media to transmit their lies to their constituents, they need to reassure the public that everything is OK, and that big corporations are doing community work, burying Nuclear waste in Yoontey and cashing the checks in Nairobi Banks. They convince the locals that they can have free chest X ray and a glass of milk every day if they look after the nuclear waste in their backyard. Somali politicians think that Radiation is good for the public, so is disease, poverty, illiteracy , chaos and the ongoing anarchy, if that is not the case, then tell me please, why are they so adamant in prolonging our pain?

 

The News media in turn catches the prostitution disease, Ideally, News media were meant to report truth, and to be objective about what goes on in the our community. If you are as naive as I am, you would ask foolish questions like " Why are the politicians and the News media telling tall tales, why is each periodical, radio or a website supporting a local loser?" But Something tells me: " It is all about money Stoopid! " So as a result, the news media continues to stay in business, attracting more and more sponsors which leads to our present situation in which the news media is so adultered, doctored and altered beyond recognition. To make it even more patriotic, the newspapers become a platform for disorientation of the public, The masses are lied to, manipulated and processed like a slaughter house by the influential few with wealth and who have an interest in continuing to dominate their community, their ultimate goal being Power. Now, can you blame the warlords for clinging to power so tightly?

 

As the public is bottle fed with lies on a daily basis, bull manure begins to smell like Giorgio's of Beverly Hills perfume, a lie needs to be repeated so many times before it is upgraded to reality, and as we the public are busy making ends meet in our daily circus to survive, we learn to adjust to live with such a lie, suddenly, a naive person like me or a child yells " Siyaasiyintu waa Qaawan Yihiin"

 

 

Nur

 

2002 Nurtel Political Observatories

-------------------------------------------------

Nur Post appear regularly at Somaliaonline Islam Pages

[Baashi]

^impressive.

 

Politicians are the ones who ultimately determine who gets what, when, where, and how. They are astute observers and shrewd men with reputation to employ unquesionable techniques to acquire power. They are ambitious and strive to get to the top in order to exact obedience, to command, to determine, or to judge. Informed and educated people understand the importance of justice, authority, law, and freedom. These four important elements are said to fall under political domain. In this vein, one has to keep eye on political development in his neck of the wood. Politics are very important as its consequences effect our lives greatly.

 

That being said, the art of politics as it’s parcticed in our neck of the wood fits well with our SOL’s sage description. Persuing power for powers sake by any means necessary including uprooting millions of fellow Somalis and destroying the infrastructure of the country is beyond the pale. Not to mention the mannet in which the wannabee politicians attain eminence! Even in this undesirable state, one must not let these corrupt “prostitutes†run away with our future without any challenge.

 

Nur by posting this write-up of his is challenging the authority of these “prostitutes†indirectly. He’s making their very existence an issue and if any simpleton among us admired one of the current active leaders in Somalia, I’m sure he will think twice after reading this write-up.

 

Let me urge SOLers to post their take on politicians in general and ours in particular. As you know, we have our playground when it comes practical politics. Nomads are thoughtful enough to update us with latest news from home. Even though they have their own agendas, the net effect is they saved us (those of us who think it’s important to keep in touch with the events as they happen in back home) energy for getting onestop shopping of news articles from dozen of news sites. Share with us how you view the politics section and whether you benefit in any way of what’s posted there.

[Nur]

Basho bro. and

 

Nomads

 

Can anyone think of a good Somali Politician? living or dead?

 

 

Nur

[Muhammad]

bro Baashi Said:

"Politicians are the ones who ultimately determine who gets what, when, where, and how. They are astute observers and shrewd men with reputation to employ unquesionable techniques to acquire power. They are ambitious and strive to get to the top in order to exact obedience, to command, to determine, or to judge. Informed and educated people understand the importance of justice, authority, law, and freedom. These four important elements are said to fall under political domain. In this vein, one has to keep eye on political development in his neck of the wood. Politics are very important as its consequences effect our lives greatly."

 

reading that reminded me of an article i read few years back. here is the article, you'll know what i mean!

 

Seeing with Both Eyes By Abdal-Hakim Murad,

Text of a Lecture given at a Cardiff conference in May 2000

 

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. The Dajjal, as everyone knows, has only one eye. Those ulema who are concerned to understand and apply their intuition rather than simply to act as historical relay stations have sometimes interpreted this attribute as a reference to the characteristic sickness of decadent religious communities; a sickness that will necessarily be at its most prevalent as the end of time approaches. The human creature has been given two eyes for reasons of obvious biological utility: the capacity for focussing so splendidly produced by the ciliary muscles in the eyeball (a superb technology most of us never pause to give thanks for) is nonetheless not a perfect instrument for the gauging of distance. Human beings need perspective: for hunting and for fighting; and for the efficient monitoring of children. And hence we have two eyes, as the Qur’an notes, asking for our faith and our thankfulness: ‘Have We not given him two eyes’?

 

The Dajjal, however, has one eye only; for he is sick. He represents, in human form, a cosmic possibility which occurs throughout history, gathering momentum as Prophetic restorations are forgotten, until, for a time during the last days, he is the one-eyed man who is king. There are several esoteric interpretations of this, but one in particular is perhaps the most satisfying and profound. It points out that the latter days are the time of a loss of perspective. Distances and priorities are miscalculated, or even reversed. The name of Adam’s ancient enemy, Iblis, signals his ability to invert and overturn: yulabbis, he confuses and muddles mankind. And the Dajjal is in this sense a physical materialisation of Iblis: he is the Great Deceiver insofar as he dresses virtue up as vice, and vice-versa. Examples spring all too readily to mind. For instance: once the old were respected and admired more than the young; today, it is the other way around. Once unnatural vice was despised, now it is the only practice that cannot be criticised in the films or in polite society. Once humility was praised, and pride was a sin; today there has been a complete inversion. No longer are we asked to control ourselves, instead we are urged to ‘discover’ ourselves. The nafs is king of the millennium. Those of you who saw the Queen forced to watch the orgy at the Greenwich Dome, a celebration of mindless erotic and athletic display that had nothing to do with the man whom the Millennium supposedly marked, will know this well enough.

 

It is the principle of the Dajjal that brings about this kind of evil. It is an evil that is worse than the traditional sort, which was simply the failure to practice commonly-respected virtues; because the new evil yulabbis: it inverts: it turns virtue into vice. It is, in this sense, one-eyed and without perspective. The sight by which we observe the outward world is composed of information from two separate instruments. When we speak of religious understanding, we speak of basira, perception guided by wisdom. And it is characteristic of Islam that wisdom consists in recognising and establishing the correct balance between the two great principles of existence: the outward, that is, the form, and the inward, that is, the content: Zahir and batin, to use the Qur’anic terms.

 

The Dajjal sees with one eye. In this understanding, we would say that he is therefore a man of zahir, or of batin, but never of both. He is a literalist, or he is free in the spirit. The most glorious achievement of Islam, which is to reveal a pattern of human life which explores and celebrates the physical possibilities of man in a way that does not obstruct but rather enhances and deepens his metaphysical capacities, is hence negated. The miscreant at the end of time is, therefore, the exact inversion of the Islamic ideal.

 

At the beginning of our story, the balance between the zahir and the batin was perfect. The Messenger, upon whom be the best of blessings and peace, was the man of the Mi‘raj, and also the hero of Badr. He loved women, and perfume, and the delight of his eye was in prayer. The transition between moments of intense colloquy with the supreme archangel, and of political or military or family duty, was often little more than momentary; but his balance was impeccable, for he showed that body, mind and spirit are not rivals, but allies in the project of holiness, which means nothing other than wholeness.

 

 

 

The Companions manifested many aspects of this extraordinary wholeness, the traditional Islamic term for which is afiya, and the proof of whose accomplishment is the presence of adab. The luminosity of the Prophetic presence reshaped them, so that where once there had been the crude, materialistic egotism of the pagan nomad, there was now, barely twenty years later, a unified nation led by saints. It seemed that the crudest people in history had suddenly, as though by a miracle, been transmuted into the most refined and balanced. The pagan Arabs seem almost to have served as a preview of the temper of our age, and the man who came among them, unique among prophets in the unique difficulty of his mission, is the alpha amid the omega, the proof that an Adamic restoration is possible even under the worst of conditions, even in times such as ours.

 

The superb human quality of the Companions is one of the most moving and astounding of the Blessed Prophet’s miracles. Receiving alone the burden of revelation, and bearing virtually alone the responsibilities of family and state, he maintained such sanctity, humour, and moral seriousness that his world was transformed around him. Had you spent all that is upon the earth, you would not have reconciled their hearts, the Revelation tells him; but Allah has brought reconciliation between them. The political unification of Arabia, itself an unprecedented achievement, was only made possible by the existence of a spiritual principle at its centre, which melted hearts, and made a new world possible.

 

The Companions, as the most perfect exemplars of the Islamic principle of seeing with both eyes, were, as the saying goes, fursanun bi’l-nahar, ruhbanun bi’l-layl: cavalrymen by day, and monks by night. They united zahir and batin, body and spirit, in a way that was to their pagan and Christian contemporaries extraordinary, and which, in our day, when balance of any sort is rare, is hard even to imagine. Their faces radiated with the inner calm that comes of inner peace: ala bi-dhikriíLlahi tatma’innu’l-qulub: ‘it is by the remembrance of Allah that hearts find peace.’

 

Among the Companions’ own miracles was the creation of an astonishingly new language of beauty. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built while many Companions were still alive, triumphantly announces the divine will to save humanity through a new religious order. Under Islam, the world was made new. The war on the flesh, manifested in the new and strange shape taken by Christian celibacy, was at an end. The Sunna, emerging as a barely imaginable climax of human flourishing, became the ideal for the ancient world; an ideal all the more impressive for having been achieved.

 

When Islamic civilisation was buoyant, everything touched by the hands of believers turned to gold. The Dome of the Rock is probably the world’s most beautiful building, the subject of countless studies by astounded art historians. Through its octagon, the square outline of the ancient Solomonic temple is resolved to a circle, and thus to the infinity of heaven. It announces the supremacy of the Muhammadan moment, the time out of time when the Station of Two Bows’ Length (qaba qawsayn) was achieved. No earlier religion had preserved the memory of so exalted and so purely spiritual a climax to its story, as a mortal man ventured where even the highest angels could not step.

 

And yet he returned to earth; and this is the secret of the Sunna’s majesty. He had been redolent in the splendour and power of the Divine presence, but he nonetheless returned to the lower ranks of the created order, to reform his people. Not because he preferred them, but because he loved them. He had seen with his purified heart, as the Qur’an reveals: The heart did not deny that which it saw. He bore a truth which hitherto they had only dimly intuited: the core of the human creature is the heart, and the heart is the locus of a vision so transcendent that even the Revelation speaks of it only allusively: He saw, of the signs of his Lord, the greatest.

 

When we take on the Sunna, and reject flawed patterns of behaviour which have been shaped and guided by the ego and by fantasies of self-imagining, we declare to our Creator that we accept and revere the profound revelation of human flourishing exampled by the Best of Creation. Every act of the Sunna which we may successfully emulate declares that our role model is the man who had no ego, and to whom Allah had given a definitive victory over the forces of darkness. Modernity holds out lifestyle options centred on the self, and on the lower, agitated possibilities of the human condition. Every word of every magazine now breathes the message of the nafs: explore yourself, free yourself, be yourself. Buy a Porsche to express your identity; dress in a Cacharel suit to make a statement about yourself; be seen in the right places. The result, of course, is a society which pursues happiness with great technical brilliance but which puzzles over spiralling rates of suicide, drug abuse, failed relationships, and ever more aberrant forms of self-mutilation. It is a society in denial, a society in pain.

 

 

 

By taking on the Sunna, a human being accepts a deep and total reorientation. For the Sunna is not one lifestyle option among many, simply an exotic addition to the standard menu. The Sunna tears up the existing menu by defying its assumptions. By living in the Prophetic pattern one pursues a paradigm of excellence that demonstrably brings serenity and fulfillment, and hence silences the babble of the style magazines. Living in credit, knowing one’s neighbours, and holding the event of the Mi‘raj constantly in view, confers membership of Adam’s family of khalifas. Living in debt, chasing mirages, and serving the nafs, renders the human being a definitive failure. We can be higher than the angels, or lower than the animals.

 

The Sunna, as the uniquely efficient vehicle of human improvement and illumination, hence embraces every aspect of man. Outward serenity is impossible without inward peace; and inward peace, conversely, is impossible when the body is behaving abusively.

 

The Muslim, who sees with both eyes, and hence sees the modern world for what it is: a naive victim of the oldest of all illusions, which is the belief that human flourishing occurs when the needs of the outward are met, and that inward excellence is nothing but the vague myth of intangible religion, is hence truly Muslim to the extent that he rejects imbalance. Loyal and loving adherence to the details of the fiqh will change to obsessive and neurotic behaviour when the inward meaning of the sunna is absent. Hence the Dajjal is often an exoterist. But he may be an esoterist also, when he falls prey to the fatal myth that religion is about inward perfection alone, and that this can be achieved even when the outward conduct is deeply flawed by a failure to be shaped by a pattern of courteous human life manifested by the supreme figure of a more contemplative and dignified age.

 

In our times, thanks to a dajjal-type lack of perspective, some Muslims are suspicious of the traditional talk of a zahir and a batin. It seems too esoteric, mysterious and elitist. The word batin itself appears faintly heretical: one thinks of extreme antinomian groups such as the medieval Ismailis, for instance. And yet the concept is purely and entirely Qur’anic, and was never controversial among the classical ulama.

 

In fact, an important part of the healing that the Qur’an offers can be found in its insistence that religion includes, and unites, an outward and an inward dimension. Let me give you some examples, which no-one in his right mind could describe as controversial. For instance, Allah says: Wa-aqimi’s-Salata li-dhikri: ‘and establish the Prayer for My remembrance’. He tells us that the prayer is not an arbitrary command, a set of physical movements which earn us treats in the hereafter. It has a wise purpose, which is to help us to remember Him. The believer at prayer is not just offering his physical form as a token of submission to the divine presence whose symbol is the Ka‘ba. He, or she, is worshipping with the heart. The body of flesh bows towards the Ka‘ba of stone; while the invisible spirit bows to the invisible divine. Only when both of these take place is worship truly present.

 

Another example: Allah says: ‘Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those who came before you.’ Why? ‘La‘allakum tattaqun’ - ‘that you might learn taqwa.’ Fasting has a zahir and a batin, an outward and an inward. And neither is of any use without the other. As a hadith says: ‘Many a fasting persons gains nothing from his fast, apart from hunger and thirst.’ In other words, without a batin fast, an inward fast, the fast is only formally, mechanically correct. It is like a body without a spirit, which is nothing more than a corpse. The one who fasts, or prays, or performs any other religious act, without his spirit being in it, is like a zombie, whose mind and spirit has gone away from the body, to another place. And this is not how Allah wants us to be when we worship Him.

 

Another example. Regarding the sacrifices on the day of Eid al-Adha, Allah says: ‘Their flesh and blood will not reach Allah; but the taqwa that is in you reaches Him.’ Without correct intention, and presence of mind, in other words, without a proper disposition of the batin, the sacrifice is just the killing of an animal. In a sense, it is worse, since a slaughter that did not pretend to be religious would at least be sincere; whereas one that purports to be for God, but in its inner reality is not, is a kind of hypocrisy.

 

In fact we could say that the zahir without the batin leads fatally to nifaq. If we are not enjoying the divine presence during our worship, if our minds are elsewhere, if we have switched on a kind of autopilot, then we are practicing rusum: outward forms, a husk without a kernel. To any visible or invisible onlooker we are proclaiming by the outward form of the act that we are worshipping God; but in our inward reality we are doing nothing of the kind. Riya’ - ostentation - is possible even if we are alone. Even if we know that no-one knows we are praying, or fasting, we can still commit riya’. How? By showing-off to ourselves. By going through the motions of the prayer, we gratify our own self-image as pious, superior people. To the extent that the prayer lacks a batin, that will be a mortal danger. Even if our minds are concentrated on the meaning, our souls may be disengaged. And to the extent that the prayer, or the fast, or the Hajj, or the qurbani, does have an inner reality, we will be less interested in showing-off to ourselves, in taking the nafs as our real qibla. The act will lead us, we will not lead the act.

 

This is what sayyiduna ‘Umar, radiya’Llahu ‘anhu, meant when he said: ‘The thing I fear most for the safety of this Umma is the learned hypocrite.’ When asked how one could be both learned and hypocritical, he said: ‘When his learning does not go beyond verbal knowledge, while his heart remains untouched.’

 

Another example, from the Qur’an - and remember, this teaching of the interdependence of zahir and batin is purely Qur’anic. ‘And they give food, for love of Him, to the poor, the orphan, and to captives. We feed you only for the sake of Allah; we desire for no reward or thanks from you.’ Here the revelation is insisting that charity, too, becomes ibada only when it has an inward reality as well as an outward form. And that inward reality is not primarily mental: as in ‘Fine, it’s zakat time, bismi’Llah, I make the intention to do this for Allah’. That is only the most basic requirement. The passage states that charity is to be done ‘ala hubbihi - out of love for Allah. That requires far more than the simple silent formulation of a niyya. It can only be achieved when one’s heart is in it, since love, hubb, resides in the heart, not the mind. Charity without love is heartless.

 

Hence part of the brilliance of the Qur’an is its insistence that Allah is not worshipped by outward forms; but that He has established certain outward forms as a context within which we can do ibada: since ibada, as an expression of devotion and servitude to our maker, reposes in the heart. A disposition of the heart is always true; a disposition of the body may be true or false.

 

The Qur’an’s message is unmistakeably that the human creature is a composite whose dimensions must be brought into harmony with each other if our Adamic possibility as true worshippers may be realised. So ours is a religion of zahir and batin. Our enemies see only the outward forms, and assume that this is hypocrisy, ‘Pharisaic formalism’. Some use the traditional New Testament language by which St Paul attacked Judaism: ‘the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.’ In fact, this is a common theme of a certain kind of traditional Christian criticism of Islam. As such, it clearly represents the borrowing of an even older theme in Christian theology: that of antisemitism, as a weapon which will serve in the battle against the Saracen. Muslims, inconveniently, are not mentioned in the Bible, but some Christians have instead used the anti-Law polemic of Paul as a stick with which to beat Muslims, by situating us in a Biblical context. It is evident, however, that this will not serve. There are some Muslims, it has to be admitted, whose preoccupations are mainly or even exclusively with outward form - a Pharisaic Islam, we might say - but that is not the way of traditional Muslims. For traditional Islam has always cultivated in a rich and profound way the inner dimensions of faith. Most of our poetry, for instance, is about the batin, not the zahir. If Islam was as they suppose, then most of our poetry would be about wudu, or the rules for inheritance. But it is not.

 

I hope that the Qur’anic insights I have cited are quite enough to explain why the traditional ulema of Islam speak of the religion’s having a zahir and a batin. Shaykh Shahidullah Faridi, the great English saint of the 20th century, put it as follows:

 

‘If it is necessary to observe the outward ordinances of the faith, it is equally necessary to develop within ourselves those qualities which are their soul. These two are complementary and one cannot exist in a sound state without the other.’

 

Shahidullah Faridi himself, like virtually all the educated converts to Islam in this country, was attracted to the religion primarily because of its inner riches. Those Muslims who today spend most of their time talking about shari‘a, and regard the batin as peripheral, are unlikely to make many such converts: there is no reason why sensitive, educated people should be attracted to the husk, if the kernel is so well-hidden that it might as well not exist. They may even, by wild, merciless and hikma-less behaviour, repel thousands.

 

Zahir and batin are the terms I have used. They are concepts clear from the Qur’an. There are other terms which convey roughly the same distinction. For instance, the terms shari‘a and haqiqa. Outward act, and inward state. Again, the distinction is Qur’anic. According to Imam Abu Ali al-Daqqaq, it can even be derived from the Fatiha. Allah asks us to say: iyyaka na‘budu wa-iyyaka nasta‘in: ‘You we worship’: this is shari‘a; and ‘You we seek for help’: the divine response, which is from haqiqa. The pairing of the principles gives us this fundamental distinction: the initiative from man, which is shari‘a, and the generous outpouring from Allah, which is haqiqa.

 

Imam al-Qushayri makes a still more subtle point. He says:

 

‘Know that the Shari‘a is also haqiqa, because He Himself made it obligatory. And haqiqa is also shari‘a, because the means of knowing Him were made obligatory by His command.’

 

In other words, this bifurcation, indicated in the Fatiha, which we repeat every day without pondering its depths, is in reality two sides of one coin. Shari‘a is not Shari‘a without haqiqa; because without an inward reality and an approach to Allah the outward forms are useless; and haqiqa is nothing without shari‘a, because shari‘a is the set of forms by which haqiqa can be known. Each is sound only when it points accurately to the other.

 

Imam Abu Bakr al-‘Aydarus, rahmatullahi ‘alayh, explains it in terms of the Qur’anic verse: ‘Those who strive in Us, We shall surely guide to Our ways.’ He writes: The ‘striving’ is the Shari‘a, and the active response to its injunctions, which will cause one to be led to His ‘ways’, is in turn a reference to the Haqiqa.’

 

Imam al-Qushayri drives home this vital point by saying: ‘Every shari‘a which is unsupported by haqiqa is unaccepted. And every haqiqa which is not controlled by shari‘a is unaccepted.’

 

Imam al-Haddad, in one of his most famous poems, says:

 

Wa-kullun ‘ala nahj al-sabili’s-sawiyyi lam

 

yukhalif li-amrin akhidhan bi’sh-shari‘ati

 

Wa-inna’lladhi la yatba‘u’sh-shar‘a mutlaqan

 

‘ala kulli halin ‘abdu nafsin wa-shahwati

 

‘All of the righteous were on the straight path,

 

never violating any command, holding to shari‘a

 

For truly, the man who does not follow shari‘a,

 

Is in every case the slave of his nafs and his own desires.’

 

Imam al-Ghazali, rahmatullah alayh, spent much of his life making this point, in some very sophisticated ways. Let me read to you his very passionate defence of this Qur’anic principle:

 

‘f you are educating yourself, take up only those branches of knowledge which have been required of you according to your present needs, as well as those which pertain to the outward actions such as learning the elements of prayer, purification, and fasting. More important however, is the science which all have neglected, namely, the science of the attributes of the heart, those which are praiseworthy and those which are blameworthy, because people persist in the latter, such as miserliness, hypocrisy, pride and conceit, all of which are destructive, and from which it is obligatory to desist. Performing these outward deeds is like the external application of an ointment to the body when it is stricken with scabies and boils while neglecting to remove the pus by means of a scalpel or a purge. False ulema recommend outward deeds just as fake physicians prescribe external ointments [for virulent internal diseases]. The ulema who seek the akhira, however, recommend nothing but the purification of the nafs and the removal of the elements of evil by destroying their nursery-beds and uprooting them from the heart.’

 

A key component of the Ghazalian agenda is the restoration of balance between outward and inward. And the Imam himself realised that the balance comes about primarily through cultivating the inward. For a balance, which is the true meaning of al-sirat al-mustaqim, is a subtle thing, and requires wisdom, and wisdom only exists when the soul is illuminated.

 

The crisis of the modern world is a crisis in both zahir and batin. It takes different forms amidst the ruins of different civilisations. In what was once the Christian world, zahir has been lost or even turned on its head: homosexual marriages in church, the approval of the lottery by bishops, and other symptoms of collapse. The symptoms are more advanced in formerly Christian countries than elsewhere, because, as St Paul believed, Christianity has no shari‘a. It is always reinventing itself as something that can be believed, as T.S. Eliot put it, and nowadays this inevitably takes place under pressure from secular ethics. In the Islamic world, there are also deep problems. But these arise not through lack of shari‘a as such, but through a lack of balance between outward and inward. Much Muslim revivalism today focusses on the outward, and appears to regard the inward as of secondary importance. The result is wild behaviour and consistent failure, for Allah proclaims in the Qur’an that the success in the world of religious communities depends on their spiritual condition. He does not change us until we change what is within ourselves. The failure of any Islamic movement is decisive proof that that movement has not gained the required inward harmony, wisdom and spiritual depth.

 

The modern world therefore offers, in mad abundance, both of the Dajjal’s aberrations. There is preoccupation with form, and there are also, in increasing varieties, a preoccupation with ‘spiritualities’ which require no irritating moral code. In the West, New Age spirituality is replacing Christianity as the faith of many young and educated people. It promises a typical Dajjalian deceit: the gifts of the spirit may be had without paying a price, or changing one’s treasured ‘lifestyle’.

 

The Sunna is the Dajjal’s great enemy in the modern world, because it rejects both of his promises. No human being can flourish on the basis of pure Law, or pure physical satisfaction, or of spiritual practices devoid of implications for society and personal conduct. For us, religion is about integrity and completeness. And yet, there are no grounds for complacency. The Sunna itself is today a contested concept. A materialistic world necessarily influences the forms of religion which grow within it; and some Muslims today adopt forms of Islam that define the Sunna in a one-eyed way. Either such advocates are pure esoterists, with a cavalier attitude to the formal duties gifted by revelation; or (and this is among mass-movements more frequent) they mutilate the Sunna by minimising or even negating its inward dimensions. Any following of the externals of religion which is not made profound, compassionate and wise by an active and transformative spiritual life, will be a mere husk without a kernel: abrasive, hostile, self-righteous, lashing out at the innocent, and thriving on schism and controversy.

 

May Allah enable us to open both our eyes, and hence to see things in due proportion, and to respond in a way that brings reconciliation, light, and wisdom among the descendents of Adam.

 

Abdal-Hakim Murad aka Tim Winter is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, England. He studied Arabic at the University of Cambridge and at al-Azhar Academy in Cairo and has translated a number of Islamic works including Imam Qazwini's abridgement of Imam Bayhaqi's "Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith", and several other books selected from al-Ghazali's "Revival of the Religious Sciences".

[Baashi]

Nur,

How about Adam Cadde, the former president? Abdirizaq Hajji Hussein, the former prime minister is another one. These two are as good as they come. Add the dozen or so unknown politicians who make a difference in their neck of the wood day in and day out. They are unknown to national public because they stay below the radar. These folks build schools, wells, and shelter for orphans. Folks who employ traditional means to achieve noble ends.

 

If cyber advocacy groups are taken into account, I’m kind of inclined to include e-Nuri and its Nurtell Social Engineering subsidiary as benevolent cyber think-tank where one=army man takes the torch for change pushing new ideas by bundling them with eye-catching creative posts embedded with subliminal messages .

 

Salax-u-diin, gotta run now, I didn't get time to read ur post but will come back tomorrow and read it.

[Rahima]

My take on politicians (in very simple terms), is that they are either evil to begin with and continue to do so with their political aspirations; were good people to begin with but are tarnished by the evil nature of politics and end up being evil; were good people to begin with, have good intentions, make good actions but because of the evil nature of politics they are ousted and never last because politics is for the dirty and wicked; or they were good people, remain good but play the game wisely and somehow still remain (extremely rare breed if they even exist).

 

Can anyone think of a good Somali Politician? living or dead?

If there are any currently, they aren’t very well known.

 

As for the dead, it all depends on who you ask. Some will say hebel hebel was a good politician, others will disagree (as they say one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist, here we could say one mans good politician is another mans bad politician), but so far looking back in Somali politics it seems like Aden Cadde was a good man and politician who truly cared for his people. I watched him on a documentary of Somalia once, he impressed me and I have yet to see any person say anything negative about him.

[Nur]

Baashi and Rahima

 

Thanks for responding to my question. The problem I have with politicians is not that they are likeable, Aden Cadde was very likeable guy, so was Sharmarke, his successor, but the problem I have with politicians is that they have their personal interests ( perceived) above the national interests.

 

Looking back, we can ask, who is the Somali politician who placed his nations intersts above his personal intersts?

 

I am sure that, this is a tough call, Aden Cadde, presided over Somalia after the Italians handed him the presidency after the ten years of local government by Abdullahi Isse came to an end, 10 years in which the Italians spent grooming the best possible candiddate and found it in Aden Abdullah Cusmaan ( Cadde).

 

When we look back at history, we all know that we were colonized, for economic purposes by the Italians, being a Nomadic people, who lived in our pastures and camels, and survived our droughts and tribal skirmishes, our way of life was pretty much well defined to us.

 

Once the Italians came and taught us how to eat spaghetti, and dress pants , go to the movies, drink alcohol and dance in night clubs, our way of life was changed for ever. The Italian way of life which most of the poiticians at the time emulated to be accepted at the inner core of future candidates had good aspects to it and bad, education was a good aspect, so was transparent government and elections of civil servants and policy makers, but wholesale disregard to our faith and family values suffered under the nascent Somali governments.

 

When Aden Cadde assumed presidency in 1960, he toured several European countries in his augural year, he was well recieved in all of these countries, after all, aden Cadde, was a very handsome African leader, of a new nation, he was the best face to represent Somalia, with a captivating smile, so, in Germany his motorcade was folllowed like that of Kennedy, the sixties were years of the charisma, and Aden Cadde was blessed with it, what he did with it though is the focus of my question( from e-Nuri Documentaries ).

 

The SYL in their formative years were seen as honest, nationalists who saw the evil of the Italian colonialsts, and hoped to one day secure the government of Somalis by competent Somalis. Like a rotten fish, from day one of the declaration of independence, politicians, each with a tribal allegiance and agenda began to secretly meet with his counterparts, bringing bus loads of Nomads to the cities from their tribal enclaves. The nationalist fervor was contiuesly dying and the Tribal agenda kept on rising in stealth, all this present in the literature and poetry of the time. Aden Cadde, his prime minsister, and later the second goevernment were bending under the weight of the tribal influence and no one had the vision among all those politicians that tribalis was gnawing away with our national aspiratiuon as a nation. So while these men were either asleep or a party to the cracks in the wall of the nation, outsiders who were threatened by Somalia potential and the resourcefulness of its people took advantage to weaken them through ideaoligies. I would've loved to believe that we as a nation had at least someone who spoke, let alone walked his talk, like the founders of the USA , like few great syings and words on the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

 

 

Nur

[Baashi]

Nur, politicians are not only those who participate in the government. You seem to hold the view that politicians are folks who are either holding or seeking public office. You’re partly right. However, a better characterization would be anyone involved in politics is a politician. In addition, politics is a practice observed in all group interactions! For instance, activists, interest groups, watchdog groups, civic groups, think tanks, and preachers don’t hold government position. Yet, they all have agenda to advance and causes to champion for.

 

Yes the terms and labels are many and government officials are the ones who bear the name but in reality, they are all players in the political game. One other point is that in the West this distinction is more pronounced than say in Africa. In our case, the existence of clan loyalties and the fact that clans make up the building blocks of the State complicates the whole discussion not to mention that the state and its awesome institutions have completely collapsed. Absent of legitimate and all inclussive government, personalities who are in the ring bounding each other in quest of power and control of the top seat, those wo are involved in community building one tuulo at a time, those who preach to reform and persuade the public in embracing Islamic government, the community elders who always try to extinguish the fires ignited by the incitements coming from the warlords, are all politicians in the true sense of the word!

 

I’m of the opinion that many (unknown to the Diaspora) benevolent agents are in work all over Somalia but the scale and destructive nature of the warlords and their misguided militias are getting all the attention. Moreover, the folks who restrict politics to fighting and “warlording†hold the view that what other activists do for the public good is outside of what they consider political activities.

 

As to the birth of the nation back in the colonial days and how things were, remember the fact that Somalis as a nation never had a centralized system of governence (center-to-periphery) where orders are dictated by men (from clan hebel and hebel). In the eyes of nomads, the president and his men (government bureaucracies) were always viewed as reer hebel and one can imagine how things get distorted when difficult decisions that affect one tribal community are made in a far way city by officials who hail from different clan.

 

The politicians in the sixties were poineers in the frontiers of nomad-based politics! They made many mistakes. Some of the mistakes had far-reaching consequences. It’s said nepotism and corruption had reached all time high in late sixties. Yet, I still consider them good politicians! The reason being that the use of violence and other forms of aggression have been minimum. The mistakes committed (many) in that era had been the natural consequences of intrigues and political calculations; something inherent in human group interactions and in fact expected from the practice.

 

Politics is a necessary and natural consequence of human interactions. Some politicians do have personal stake in the office they occupy and too often exploit it to advance their interest. Some do evil things. Yet, they have sizable following and in most cases, they get away with it. Does that ring complacency? And what does that fact alone say about human nature?

[Muhammad]

people are of 4 types;

 

1 those with Cattle like Nafs

- they live to eat, sleep, and copulate

 

2 those with Preditory like Nafs

- they are like the hyena, they find their pleasure in hunting, competing, killing

 

3 those with Shaytaani like Nafs

- they find pleasure in sceaming, decieving, misleading, corrupting, lying, like the shaytan!

 

4 those with Malaa'iki(Angelic) like Nafs

- those who submit to Allah in worship, and reach an equilibrium state of Nafs, they conquer their other lower 3 naf's so that it serves them.

 

 

Modern Politics is for set up for those who cultivate their Preditory/Shaytaani Nafs

to rule and abuse the majority[ the cattles ].

 

now its true what Baashi said, in the developing countries, such as those in Africa, they have not yet reached the Shaytaani state so they are more Preditory in style, Killing, Civil Wars, Violence, is more dominant.

 

on the other hand in the so called, 'developed world', you'll find they have more of a Shaytaani system of Politics, Intrest groups, Tink Tanks, Parties, all who try to decieve, cheat, lie, do what ever it takes to get in power.

 

This is the era of the Shaytaani/Preditory politics. This system only becomes dominant in the Land, when the majority of the people develople these lower states of the nafs, and neglect the highest state, the Angelic nafs. They become Cattles, and only the few who move up the ladder to Preditory and Shaytaani are in Power!

 

so how can we break this system?

 

purify the souls of the people, it is a long and hard process, but its the only road to real lasting change.

 

A change of behavior is a short-term, but a change in life-syle is a long-tem!

 

so the future of somalia, and of the children of Adam is in purifying their souls, developing their character, and conquering their lower three states.

 

Tawhiid + Tazkiya = 'Imraan (Civilization)

[Nur]

Baashi bro.

 

Some very good points and observations, I agree with you that politics is not confined to those in power, nor to warlords, who use terror as a tool for power. Let us first agree on an all encompassing definition of politics as laypersons understand.

 

It all depends on how you define politics.

 

You can define it as a game, with many players, each with an agenda of their own, and each is using accepted (or unaccepted) methods to reach their goals at the expense of others in the game. So, in the tribal mindset, we are a nation of interest groups (tribes) each tribe is looking for its own, and cares only about its members even if its interests are detrimental to our collective national ineterst. In that world view, you are right that all players of the game to be politicians, good and bad, depending on the effect of their view on the nation as a whole.

 

Another definition of politics would disagree with your obeservation, it will confine politics to an inner core of decision makers, between the elected officials of a government, adminsitrators and law makers of different houses of representatives, be it the house of tribes, house of warlords etc. What goes in that circle is politics and those elected officials are politicians.

 

As an illustration, the term Policy issued by a government official is a decision made by a person or a group vested with authority by a consenting constituents they represent for the well being of that constituency.

 

Those who pass policies on behalf of their constituency are therefore known as Politicians.

 

As for those who disagree with such policies, who in the meantime are NOT vested with such authority, they are referred to as an interest or pressure group who wish to influence a given policy by pressure tactics ( such as signitures, voting block threats etc .) to persuade politicians to adopt their views on issues.

 

In that above sense, the pressure groups are not referred to as politicians, unless they run for a public office in which time they are immediately referred to as political hopefuls. (Like Doctors in internship, or Engineering apprentice )

 

 

You write:

 

The politicians in the sixties were poineers in the frontiers of nomad-based politics! They made many mistakes. Some of the mistakes had far-reaching consequences. It’s said nepotism and corruption had reached all time high in late sixties

 

I whole heartedly agree with this statment!

 

 

Then comes your exception:

 

Yet, I still consider them good politicians! .

 

 

What Good!

 

 

Bashi bro. remember that you have said the following about these politicians:

 

1. They made many mistakes ( Crimes against their public oath they took placing their hands on the holy Quraan )

 

2. Some of their mistakes had far reaching consequences ( such as the civil war that cost Somalia thousands of lives, loss of an entire generation, distruction of fauna and flora )

 

3. Nepotism ( Every Minsister employed his clansmen even if they were not competent for the job, which led to the far reaching consequenses you've mentioned )

 

4. Corruption ( I was told that that the best job in Somalia before the fall was that of a cashier, even Minsiters wished they could be a cashier for a single day, the bililaq looting that followed the collabse of a nation, was trigerred by the looting of the public coffers of these politicians )

 

 

Despite all the above, here comes your justification for their goodness for the nation:

 

The reason being that the use of violence and other forms of aggression have been minimum.

 

Contrary to that premise, it was their corruption and neptism that led to the violence and civil war in the first place, it was a cause and effect.

 

 

Your second justification:

 

The mistakes committed (many) in that era had been the natural consequences of intrigues and political calculations; something inherent in human group interactions and in fact expected from the practice

 

 

Bingo! this is the most truthful of all statments, but few politicians admit to it.

 

Ojinga Odinga, ( the opposition leader to the Kenya African National Union (KANU)Party's presidential candidate, Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya and the nations hero in the Mau Mau movemenet that won the independence from the British) , accused Jomo Kenyatta of being corrupt politician, swindling public funds and the more serious accusation, that Kenyatta was an impotent.

 

Upon hearing these allegations, Kenyatta, still in office and bracing for a win in the next election was furious, in a huge rally in Nairobi, Kenyatta addressed his well wishers with confidence:

 

" Mr. Odinga has accused me with two accusations " said Kenyatta, " well, unfortunately one of them is true, the second is a big lie " quipped Kenyatta, to the publics curiosity and laughter, " which one is true, Mzee? " echoed from all over.

 

" Well, as you know, i used to be a freedom fighter against the British, I risked my life for my country, and in the course, I lost all of my wealth for the sake of Kenya's liberation " narrated Kenyatta. " After the independence, I assumed the presidency, but I was poor, so the first thing I did in my first four year term was to enrich myself and my family, I bought a farm in Nakuru for Mama Ngina, I bought so and so for ... etc. at last after four years in office, I am a rich man, I have enriched myself and my family, if I am elected a second term, I promise to work for the enrichment of Kenya only. But if you elect Ojinga Odinga, another poor politician, he will enrich himself first, and Kenya will suffer 8 years instead of 4 years, so you decide " persuasively suggested Kenyatta to his people.

 

Jomo Kenyatta went on to address the second accusation saying: " As for Odinga's second outrageous claim that, I am impotent, well, I wont even answer that, Mama Ngina ( his wife)is here, ask her " mused the Mzee, to the jubilation of the crowd and the election of Jomo Kenyatta as president for life, to limit the number of Thief Executives.

 

 

Now, that is honest politics, The Kenyatta style!

 

 

Nur