Preface: Hijacking The Holy Qur’an And Its Religion Islam – Muslims and Imperial Mobilization
Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
About This Book
This book which you now hold in your hands, Hijacking The Holy Qur’an And Its Religion Islam – Muslims and Imperial Mobilization, 1st Edition 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/islam-reader-zahirebrahim1e), is a broad compendium of topics at the intersection of religion of Islam and political science. It is a case study in social engineering and is not intended as an advocacy of Islam. Volume I is abridged version (http://tinyurl.com/islam-reader-zahirebrahimv1p).
This present compilation is broadly focussed on demonstrating how the religion of Islam has systematically been misused for “imperial mobilization” and narrow self-interests, and how its singular scripture, the Holy Qur’an, has itself contributed to that state of affairs. It is a novel case study in social engineering. That terminology merely means manufacturing of both soft perception management “scholarship” (i.e., propaganda), and hard mobilizing “events” (i.e., real or imagined terrorizing threats and acts whose impact the people can be made to feel and react to), for mass behavior control. Engineering consent is a method of inducing servitude as old as hegemony, as old as empire. But modernity has introduced many twists and turns with sophisticated political theories and direct psychological manipulation of both the irrational mind (the subconscious) and the cognitive mind (the conscious).
The substance of these modern techniques of mind manipulation and behavior control is examined in the companion volume on Modernity (see below).
Other volumes to follow will respectively examine Muslim scholarship, and Muslim history, to demonstrate how the deliberate open-endedness in the specification of the religion of Islam was cleverly subverted and harnessed for social engineering of Muslim civilizations into empires over the past fourteen centuries.
This is a first of its kind study, which, to this scribe’s limited knowledge, and without bearing the often feigned modesty that has become the hallmark of virtually all religion infused authors who slave away for “rewards in heaven” (or from empire), has never before been conducted in the entire fourteen and a half century history of the advent of Islam. It is only the Machiavellian time and space of modernity today, along with its ubiquitous reach of mass communication and instantaneous global perception management of the entire planet which has never before existed in the history of civilizations, that has enabled it.
While Islam may be the faith of its nonconformist, and what might appear to some as unorthodox, author, the activist compulsion to pen this book 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, learned politicians, and the all and sundry opinion makers among the Muslim polity worldwide, had not remained silent, 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 has a companion volume, The Poor-Man’s Guide to Modernity – Oligarchic Primacy for World Government, 7th Edition 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/modernity-reader-zahirebrahim); a much larger compendium which systematically removes many of “truth’s protective layers” that are diabolically shepherding mankind into perpetual servitude under Orwellian covers. As that latter pièce de résistance observes, in the age of Machiavelli and universal deceit, the ultimate revolutionary act trumps both, ferreting out the truth, and telling the truth. It is to act upon the truth. Please read the Legal Disclaimer Notice (http://humanbeingsfirst.org#Legal) before you hasten to do so. That Disclaimer Notice is hereby incorporated into this book by reference. In précis, you are responsible to verify what is presented here. For all you know, it could be all myth.
This means, before you rush to chop the head off that syphilis ridden vile tyrant wearing the virginal bridal robe, or that pontiff wearing the garb of amir-ul-momineen, or that vile House Nigger or Uncle Tom perception-managing and shepherding the Field Niggers on behalf of the Massa, you better make sure that you know your facts, and that you have formed your own opinion to stand up to tyranny and its vassals by your own free will.
This also means that this book is principally for those able to think and adjudicate, rather than for graduate students and laity alike who look towards authority figures as ustaads (anointed teachers with “learned” stamped upon their forehead) to parrot unquestioningly from. The latter, a ubiquitous Muslim tragedy since the very inception of the religion of Islam which inculcated the behavior trait of absolute obedience to authority, continues to dog the Muslim public mind to this very day. See for instance the diabolical hijacking of Surah an-Nisaa’ verse 4:59 by Muslim rulers and pontiffs to extract both psychological and physical obedience from the public. For fourteen centuries, obedience was legally extracted from the Muslim polity by Muslim rulers who reigned absolutely in the name of Islam, beginning with the first Caliph after the death of the Prophet of Islam, all the way to the present rulers of Saudi Arabia and Iran who respectively still continue to rule in the name of God in no less an autocratic measure than the Caliphs throughout Muslim history.
Neither could anyone successfully challenge the first Caliphs, including the noble and cherished daughter of the Prophet of Islam who did rise to question the self-appointment of the first Caliph and his immediate blind acceptance by the Muslim public as their leader, but was rejected outright by the Caliph as well as the Muslim polity none of whom supported her claims. To this day, as per her dejected Last Will to her husband, Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the burial site of the beloved daughter of the Prophet of Islam, known throughout Muslim history among both the Shia and Sunni as the Messenger of Allah having referred to her as the “chief of all women of Heaven”, the singular source of the Prophet of Islam’s never-ending progeny referred to in Surah Al-Kauthar 108:3, remains unknown. Whereas the first Caliphs of Islam are prominently laid to rest right next to the Prophet of Islam in the Prophet’s mosque in Medina. Even that most obvious inquiry question never knocks on the indoctrinated Muslim mind that holds its totems and taboos both equally sacred: how is that situation even possible, that no one knows where the daughter of the Prophet of Islam, the mother of his only grandchildren, the source of his abundant progeny promised in the Holy Qur’an, is buried, especially given the explicit commandment in the Holy Qur’an: ‘Say: “No reward do I ask of you for this except the love of those near of kin.”’ (Surah Ash-Shura 42:23); and why is she not buried next to her illustrious father even though she passed away within less than six months of his demise, whereas the Caliphs who are buried next to the Prophet as heads of state passed away years later? The fact that such inquiry into the political climate of that epoch which culminated in the slaughter of the grandson of the Prophet of Islam by the ruling Muslim state, followed by severe oppression upon successive generations of the progeny of the Messenger of Allah by the Muslim rulers, has become relegated as a sectarian and divisive fracture-point among the Shia and the Sunni Muslims instead of a common intellectual, historical, and spiritual endeavor to acquire an accurate understanding of how Islam, the world religion, unfolded as an unsurpassed world empire for over 700 years, sufficiently demonstrates the taboos that continue to behold the Muslim mind. Its unbecoming legacy of mental servitude continues to plague the nearly two billion Muslims even today without pause for reflection that in the religion of Islam which Allah perfected (Surah Al-Maeda 5:3), there is neither the conception of empire, nor the acceptance of voluntary servitude to tyrants and falsehoods!
Nor can any Muslim successfully challenge the rule of the Saudi Royal Family today and their absolute control and bastardization of the two holiest sites and cities of Islam with Western commercial and ideological interests whereby religious vestiges on all historical sites in Mecca and Medina are being systematically obliterated in the name of development. While the Khazarian Ashkenazi Jews militarily confiscate historical sites in Jerusalem and Palestine to re-enact and re-build their mythologies of three thousand years for which there is no real hard evidence today to lend substance to their being the “god’s chosen people” of the land of Canaan, the Saudi kingdom is destroying the holiest real archeological sites of Islam to enable future doubt. In a thousand years, a people may similarly wonder, just as some do today about the existence of prophets Moses and Jesus, whether prophet Muhammad also really existed! Is there any resistance from the Muslims to the destruction of their real heritage, from any quarter, worldwide? Instead, Muslims religiously line up today to get the coveted visa for their pilgrimage from the same destroyers of Islam in no less a measure than in the early years of Islam when they accepted the usurping by the Caliphs of verse 4:59 who applied it to their own selves as the “ulul-amar”, وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنْكُمْ . The analysis in Chapter-I Part-III conclusively demonstrates that no human being capable of making an error can be commanded to be obeyed by the religion of Islam without making a mockery of the same religion! Verse 16:25 of Surah An-Nahl lends unequivocal confirmation of this conclusion (see below). And yet, the Musalmaan mind has continued to bow before anyone and everyone in authority!
And nor can any Iranian Muslim challenge the vilayat-i faqih conception in Iran today and not be treated as a traitor to the nation. The entire Muslim Shiadom, not just the Iranian public, is plagued by the conception of “taqlid” which requires the Muslim to follow a religious jurist in order to find salvation (stating that with mild exaggeration). A specious dogma which cannot stand any test of analysis from al-Furqaan — and draws upon secondary and tertiary material penned by the hand of man to force the dogma down upon the public mind! The majority Muslim who comprise Sunnidom fare little better, except that they are much worse off in comparison to Shiadom: the Sunni Muslim kings sitting on the caliphate throne canonized exactly four lauded jurists to follow for all times during the Abbasside dynastic reign more than a thousand years ago! The similarity with Emperor Constantine canonizing the four Gospels when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion in 300 A.D., is of course only another one of those bizarre coincidences of history where it tends to repeat itself (sic!). The Sunni Muslim mainstream public is forced to adopt the jurisprudence of these antediluvian dead scholars even today.
Under such absolutist autocratic rule, from time immemorial, free thinking, and going against ruling interests, is an anathema. It garners no sympathies from either the rulers or their sheepish public who invariably follow the wisdom du jour. And it can easily lead to the gallows, or to the judgment of mob rule who will burn anyone at stake at no charge. As the cliché goes, if it succeeds it is a “revolution” (and happily lauded by all and sundry), if it fails it is an “insurrection” (and heavily put down by the rulers)!
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, this book and its companion volume 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 against which neither the Muslim public nor the Western public have any effective response.
The intellectual capital generated by Project Humanbeingsfirst is that missing response. But like any un-invested capital sitting idle or ignored, it only gathers dust and loses in value as the basis for waging an effective and time-critical preemption to the worldwide social engineering of the Hectoring Hegemons.
Despite the creation of the aforementioned intellectual capital by sheer due diligence as evidenced in this book, the author neither is, nor claims to be, among the “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 purification as the “mutaharoon” ( الْمُطَهَّرُونَ ), see verse 56:79, Ibid. Instead, he wears a battle-dress head to toe (imagine Don Quixote of La Mancha if you must), uses cuss-words frequently (as any unpretentious ordinary plebeian), takes no prisoners, suffers no fools, and knows very little about any matter. In fact, let’s just gauge how much he actually knows. 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.x percent ignorant of the already known human knowledge of the world, let alone of what is yet to be discovered. 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”, “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 (see http://tinyurl.com/Plato-Myth-of-the-Cave ) to modern perception management of the Mighty Wurlitzer (see http://tinyurl.com/MightyWurlitzer ), is a continuous endeavor for the control of the public mind by the superman (see Nietzsche in http://tinyurl.com/UbermenschMorality & http://tinyurl.com/Allama-Iqbal-ubermensch ). 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:
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“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:
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“(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. 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, 2:166, 2:167) |
إِذْ تَبَرَّأَ الَّذِينَ اتُّبِعُوا مِنَ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوا وَرَأَوُا الْعَذَابَ وَتَقَطَّعَتْ بِهِمُ الْأَسْبَابُ 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 grindstone of self-awareness, critical analysis, and rational logic. It is not intended to create followers, 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 bloated self-importance, your own state of contentment at your hubris that if you wear a turban, an imama, or a fancy Western gown, that you know it all, let alone know 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 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. 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. 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, but what can you do with the little that you do know.
It is the understanding, the insight, and the intuition, and not the regurgitation, parroting, and even the mastery of immense encyclopedias and arcane data-sets, which enable social transformation and progress. It is quintessentially the understanding and the comprehension, often of forces that remain hidden and beneath the surface with several degrees of separation from their visible effects, more than Ph.D. and MBA degrees, which enable liberating oneself from Plato’s cave of full spectrum behavior control. To be able to separate chaff from wheat in an age of deception and mind control requires immense sha-oor (wherewithal), and not royally anointed pieces of parchment and gold medals that proclaim one’s 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 realization is of such practical as well as existential significance that it bears at least some evidencing from the author’s own life. As the author wrote in the Foreword of his maiden book Prisoners of the Cave, penned in a tearful state during the barbarian American invasion of Iraq Orwellianly termed in Newspeak as Operation Iraqi Freedom:
“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, 2005 Foreword to Prisoners of the Cave, 2003, http://PrisonersoftheCave.org )
The story of this author’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. These experts are the sine qua non of effective perception management of the public mind (see the Mighty Wurlitzer http://tinyurl.com/MightyWurlitzer and http://tinyurl.com/DefendingScience ). The latter has become the cornerstone of the trillion dollar global advertising industry which employs everything from human insecurities of the irrational mind 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, war on terror, to baby diapers and condoms.
However, despite all this cognizance, the author has also 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 is acutely mindful of epistemology, and of his own endeavors in the pursuit of 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:
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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 must surely be 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:
‘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 being your inclination to dismiss this work because it isn’t written by an “expert” who comes suitably anointed with a turban and sajdah 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 has invented to sell books, your next inclination to reject will be due to the substance going against your entrenched worldview. See the Public Mind slide in the beginning pages of this book. And if you are able to transcend even that 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, shaykh, or belief 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:
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“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 |
Socrates had surely summed up his own challenge to his audience thusly (in Edith Hamilton’s rendering):
‘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 exactly in the same words, let us proceed as well.
The Plebeian Antidote to Hectoring Hegemons,
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
1st Edition, Sunday, February 10, 2013
California, United States of America
Revised 1st Edition, Thursday, August 01, 2013
22nd Ramadan in Pakistan, Muslim year 1434
Islamabad, Pakistan
Book Download
PDF Homeprint (8.5×11 Letter) http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/hijacking-quran-islam-1st-edition-2013-zahirebrahim-homeprint.pdf
PDF Abridged Case Study http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/print-casestudy-quran-hijack-vol1-zahirebrahim.pdf
Short URL PDF Full Book http://tinyurl.com/islam-reader-zahirebrahim1e
Short URL PDF Abridged Case Study http://tinyurl.com/islam-reader-zahirebrahimv1p
Supplementary Pamphlet based on the above Book: What does the Holy Qur’an Say , Volume I, 1st Edition, August 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/what-does-quran-say-vol1p).
Source URL Preface: http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2013/02/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-prefac.html
Alternate URL: http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2013/02/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-prefac.html
Preface PDF: http://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-preface-by-zahir-ebrahim.pdf
The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley ( http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents ), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by numerous publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org. Verbatim reproduction license at http://humanbeingsfirst.org#Copyright.
First Published February 10, 2013 | Last Revised 1st Edition, Thursday, August 01, 2013 | Links Updated 08/17/2013 02:00:09 pm 6443
Preface: Hijacking The Holy Qur’an And Its Religion Islam August 2013
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