Letter to An African Muslim

[Darqawi]

Letter to An African Muslim

 

By Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi

 

(Read the whole book from http://bewley.virtualave.net/african1.html )

 

TECHNIQUE – THE DOMINANT CULTURE

 

In order to understand the present enslavement of our Islamic nation it is important to recognise the forces involved, their deployment, effect, power and weakness. At present a web of false information has been put out across Africa and, more seriously, working models and methods put forward to 'solve' the 'problems' of the 'underdeveloped' or 'developing' state. In other words, the Muslim intellectual (for a Muslim is by definition an intellectual) has been fed a false dialectic which, if he continues to work within it, will leave him in a power vacuum unable to impinge on the social and personal reality around him. It is vital that we both decode the current myths of 'problem and solution' as well as create a new polarity system of opposites to vitalise our renewed action as Islamic workers.

 

Before examining the current situation of external and kafir control of Africa, let us examine the nature of the enemy's social modes. During this examination it is necessary to stress that everything referred to in the following pages has already been defined in terms of a 'political framework' of evolving democracy over and against tribalism and backward despotisms due to local past history. All this we must put out of our minds as a mythic system devised to allow free access to and intervention in, the local African scene.

 

When we speak of the kafir society we are not accepting the current dialectic of 'northern' media which sees Africa as a killing-ground for the conflict of political democracy western-style and socialism eastern-style. Each of these two materialist camps have a rhetoric of freedom. That rhetoric, if applied to an African situation as a critique, can present the country as either the victim of ruthless imperialist exploitation by multi-national corporations, or it can be seen as a totalitarian 'foreign' control by socialist hegemonists. Each has its horror stories about the other side. Both stories may well be true. It does not follow that the military confrontation between east and west is a genuine one. It must be remembered that there has been virtually no face to face conflict between russia and the west since the end of world war one.

 

What we appear to be witnessing are the inner contradictions of trade forces within imperalist societies working themselves out on carefully staged killing-grounds which permit no loss of life or property to the source group, yet permit a massive convulsion within the source economy by the trying out and usage of high-tech weaponry, followed up by the opening of new markets in the rehabilitation phase following battles. Thus after the vietnam war, russia opens up new markets in vietnam itself and expands new war-theatres in neighbouring countries, while america gets access to Chinese markets in open trading which places the high-tech module of taiwan on the line as ransom.

 

What we are dealing with therefore is a high-technology camp stylistically divided in two with a self-energising force built into the so-called political conflict but which in reality constantly creates new markets and new resource-areas by the continental shift brought about by the plate-movement of each 'side'. So, we are really witnessing the continual impingement of high-tech processes and systems on zero-ground resource-areas, and the occupation of strategic zones for 'protection of interests' to allow change in the market structure.

 

The technocratic state (east/west) is structuralist, and pyramidic. It is vividly described in the Qur'an al-Karim in the encounters between the (Islamic) Allah Musa, peace be upon him, and the (kafir) high-tech leader, Pharaon.

 

Pharaon rules a totalitarian and materialist state which exalts him as a god. The whole state exists to 'fix' leadership in a permanent state and thus tyranny and social stasis. The 'magicians' are his scientists who calculate the necessary computations which will build the pyramids, whose function is the entombment of the embalmed leader, that is, structures which will ensure the ongoing conditions of rigidity and leader-orientation. The building of the pyramid and other gigantic structures are means to that end, but in fact the means are the end, since these ensure the continued slavery of the people in the never-ending building process.

 

It is in the nature of the high-tech state that it is based on slavery. We do not mean it in the deliberately romanticised way in which the term slavery has been presented. That is, it is not slavery in an agrarian sense, as was the case in the u.s.a. two hundred years ago. Nor is it in the sense that it was to the european workers in the mines and factories one hundred years ago. Slavery today is controlled by media and consumer activity. Movement and social group is basically forbidden or rendered undesirable in western models. With mass sport, fantasy-tv, and the arts, it is not necessary to put slaves in a compound. They already are in one, albeit beautifully decorated – the mall, the stadium, the concert-hall.

 

The high-tech society is not 'new'. It is not 'modern' at all. It is medievalist from start to finish. It is ancient. Look at the riot police! Are they not an exact replica of medieval infantry with their shields, helmets, lances, and smoke bombs? Indeed, the best model of modern society is the society of the medieval Aztecs.

 

Read the whole book from http://bewley.virtualave.net/african1.html