I’VE never been the greatest believer in conspiracy theories. The problem I have is that they’re just too convenient to be true. Zionists, for example, cannot be behind every bush. In conspiracy theory-speak, events slot in seamlessly and everything occurs according to plan.
In this model, the conspirators are given almost divine qualities. It’s like an idolatry of fear. For example, the Bilderbergers – a sinister bankist group which meets behind closed doors every year – might plot and plan world events, but to assign dread power to them would be unwise.
I’m sure that their agenda has had to deal with more failures than successes. There are just too many people on earth right now who don’t want to be enslaved by rapacious bankers promising utopia, but actually delivering interest dependency.
The Occupy Movement is the tip of an ice-berg that is seriously threatening the corporate Titanic. Islamic finance, which offers a much fairer and equitable economic model within the system, has been a threat for years.
There is also just too much public cynicism of authority today. The poor, the majority of us, no longer trust bankers and politicians, whose public identities seem to have merged. Governments, whose primary task is to look after the people, are now solely focused on the fiscus.
As a journalist I’ve seen enough conspiracy theory imploding on itself to realise that actual events can conspire against conspiracy itself. For what the conspirators always forget is that where’s there’s push, there’s pull.
Take the Iranian situation: Iran is seen as a threat because it is pursuing the development of nuclear technology. A map of the region showing US bases in the region and the Gulf, quickly indicates that Iran is under siege – and not Israel, the US or any other Shi’ah paranoid Gulf State.
The push in Iran against the conspiracy script has been going since 1979 when the country kicked the US (bank friendly) Shah out of power. Imagine the gloomy faces at the Bilderberg table that year!
With that failed conspiracy, the conspiratorial masters had to come up with another one. That was when Martin Indyk, former US Israeli ambassador, coined the term “dual containment”. The consequence was the war between Iran and Iraq, a terrible conflict that cost millions of lives.
Of course, the Iran-Iraq scenario is much more complex, but what the bankers ultimately lost was control of Iranian oil reserves, and the sympathy of Iranians. If that wasn’t enough, Iraq’s Saddam Hussain – formerly a willing client dictator – had started to think for himself.
So when he began to talk about sweet Iraqi crude not being pinned to the US dollar and its banking system, his number came up. The proxy colonisation of Iraq now became an actual one when US forces, with its embedded media corps, rumbled into Baghdad.
And whilst the faceless bankers did make a royal mint out of Iraq’s invasion, it did have unintended consequences; collateral costs for which innocent Americans will have to pay for generations to come. Everybody knows that billions of dollars disappeared in a dark vortex of corporate looting in Iraq.
President Barak Obama’s strategic retreat from Baghdad (as with Kabul) is purely a financial one. For after years of occupation, the US hawks (and the bankist conspirators) can no longer afford to face the spiralling costs.
Combine a failed imperialist exercise with the collapse of the developed world’s financial markets, the Federal Reserve frantically printing fresh-air money to save the US economy and the Euro debt crisis, and you get failed conspiracy agenda on a grand scale.
I believe that the complexity of world events is far beyond the reach of even a scheming committee with a low moral IQ such as Bilderberg, or any 33rd Degree Mason. Man may indeed plan, but as all Muslims know, Allah plans best. If we push, Allah can pull. If we pull, Allah can push.
This touches on an absent component of the ethos of the so-called global conspirators. Their morality – if one can even call it that – is based on a vacuous expediency driven by profit, power, self-righteousness and greed. They accord themselves through their inbred arrogance, quasi-divine attributes. Their light is actually darkness.
It’s a Dajjalian metaphor, for sure. The market place becomes heaven. The realms of the human soul and spirituality are denied currency. Strangely, literalist extremists of various bents have bought into this totalitarian model, the ends justifying the means, laundered with selectively quoted scripture.
And lest anyone try to deny this, there are more than enough examples in scripture and history to prove my point that conspiracy – or totalitarian “agenda push” – denuded of spiritual imperative will always be doomed to abject failure. What about communism?
To be fair, “agenda push” can be a profitable exercise, yes, but without sincerity, prophetic value, a sense of social inclusiveness and an eye to human benefit, it loses all grace and profit.
It’s really easy to understand. Imagine if the ancient Babylonians, for instance, had built the Tower of Babel to house homeless people, instead of arrogantly trying to reach Heaven. Surely if Nimrod had not thought of himself as untouchable, a simple gnat would not have brought him down?
Indeed, history has been unkind to conspiracy. And, in the same vein, I believe the future will be equally harsh. Anti-Christs, Messiahs, bankists and secrete societies plotting in dark rooms will all be cruelly exposed on the altar of hard truth.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
New Zealand is world’s most “Islamic” country
HOW “Islamic” are Islamic countries? This was a question asked by two George Washington University researchers, Scheherazade Rahman and Hossain Askari, in the Global Economy Journal of 2010.
And whilst the paper is already two-years old, its pioneering approach and its Islam-West paradigm do make it compulsory reading for anybody interested in world affairs.
This is because the Arab Spring, calling for political rights in the Muslim world, and the Occupy Movements directed against bankism in the West, have thrown into sharp focus the questions asked by the paper.
In their abstract, the authors discuss the post 9/11 era. They observe a developing global curiosity in relations between faith, finance, politics and human rights. Where exactly does faith fit in the picture?
The researchers point out the deficiencies of academics such as Bernard Lewis (who first coined the term “clash of civilisations”) in trying to understand this relationship between religion, economics and society.
The biggest problem, they say, is that Islam tends to be judged by what those labelled as Muslims do, and not by the actual message of Islam.
The central question, then, was whether self-declared Islamic countries – as determined by membership of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) – embraced policies founded on true Islamic teachings.
To measure “Islamicity” the authors had to create their own paradigm. This was done by examining the necessary scaffolding required for an Islamic state, and by developing an index to measure the standards.
Over 208 countries were measured under four categories: economics, legal and government capacities, human and political rights and international relations.
The central assumption was that daily decisions made by individuals in society were governed to some degree by their belief systems, which fed into other values.
However, measuring Islamicity – as the authors soon discovered – was not so easy. Of the 57 member states in the OIC only seven (Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Oman and Yemen) declared that they were Islamic states, with a mere 12 saying that Islam was their state religion.
In the study the 208 countries (Muslim and non-Muslim) were compared to a subset of Islamic ones. Western indices, such as the UN Human Development Index and Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, were related to Islamic principles.
The authors outlined four Islamic constructs that had to underpin the notion of a successful Islamic state: Walayyah (compassion through wisdom and justice), karamah (the acknowledgement of human dignity), meethaq (the recognition of the sovereignty of the Creator) and khilafah (responsible viceregency and trustee-ship).
Although they did not mention it, the above fundamentals would have been further bolstered by Imam al-Ghazali’s six famous social principles: the right of religion, the right to wealth and property, the right of one’s progeny, the right to personal dignity and the right to receive justice.
Implicit in this blueprint are the values of a caring society marked by legislative justice, the fair distribution of wealth and genuine leadership.
Economically, said the authors, Islam’s legal systems called for free markets, but not according to the current Western capitalist model. For example, fiqh demanded risk-sharing and disapproved of taxation of imports and exports. It also prohibited monopolies, hoarding, speculation and price manipulation.
The authors concluded that institutions proposed by Islam relating to governance, social solidarity, cooperation and justice were inherently designed to achieve economic development and growth.
The results of their research, which they do emphasise is “preliminary”, does make for interesting reading, though.
This is because the Islamic states fared badly. New Zealand, said to have more sheep than humans, came out as number one, with the US – slated as the world’s top democracy– rated only 25th.
China, usually seen as a rapacious economic powerhouse, was a surprising 27 and India, with its ramshackle democracy, came in at 89. Israel, the bête noire of the Islamic world at 61, was rated higher than the Islamic states, but the occupied West Bank and Gaza (giant blots in the Israeli copybook) were 207.
The top rated Islamic state was Bahrain at 64, though recent events there would probably have seen its rating plummet. Iran was a lowly 163 (only three slots away from Afghanistan). Of the countries declaring Islam as their state religion, Malaysia was highest at 38.
Of the Arab Spring countries, Tunisia was 83. Egypt was 153 and Libya 196. Perhaps what the ranking here predicts is that Tunisia could make the critical transition from dictatorship to democracy quicker than the others.
Of course, one has to bear in mind that these rankings are pre-Arab Spring, but Syria at 186 and Yemen at 198 are somewhat predictive of crisis as Iraq, Sudan and Somalia languish in this region of the graph.
Africa, the Cinderella of all continents, came out poorly – though there were some exceptions. The highest ranking African country was Mauritius at 42. Mauritius has a significant Muslim minority, and as a small Indian Ocean island punches far above her weight.
Namibia was next at 45, South Africa at 50 and Ghana at 53. Significantly, South Africa ranked higher than the self-declared Islamic states. What is interesting for us is that, apart from China, we are the highest rated of the BRIC countries.
The authors conclude that their “very preliminary” results show that Islamic states are not as Islamic in their practice as one would expect. However, the prominence of developed countries tending to place higher on the Islamicity Index has to be taken into proper context.
The relationship between faith, finance and polity is a complex one. The lack of development in Islamic countries cannot be attributed to religion alone.
The age-old problems of developing countries, such as unskilled government, bad economic policies, aid dependency, systemic corruption, lack of social equity and broken-down health care systems have little to do with Holy Law.
It is, in fact, as the authors say, the shortcomings of the governments and their respective policies – and not religion – that accounts for the litany of dismal failures that bedevil the Middle East and Africa, even those countries blessed with oil and natural resources.
And whilst the paper is already two-years old, its pioneering approach and its Islam-West paradigm do make it compulsory reading for anybody interested in world affairs.
This is because the Arab Spring, calling for political rights in the Muslim world, and the Occupy Movements directed against bankism in the West, have thrown into sharp focus the questions asked by the paper.
In their abstract, the authors discuss the post 9/11 era. They observe a developing global curiosity in relations between faith, finance, politics and human rights. Where exactly does faith fit in the picture?
The researchers point out the deficiencies of academics such as Bernard Lewis (who first coined the term “clash of civilisations”) in trying to understand this relationship between religion, economics and society.
The biggest problem, they say, is that Islam tends to be judged by what those labelled as Muslims do, and not by the actual message of Islam.
The central question, then, was whether self-declared Islamic countries – as determined by membership of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) – embraced policies founded on true Islamic teachings.
To measure “Islamicity” the authors had to create their own paradigm. This was done by examining the necessary scaffolding required for an Islamic state, and by developing an index to measure the standards.
Over 208 countries were measured under four categories: economics, legal and government capacities, human and political rights and international relations.
The central assumption was that daily decisions made by individuals in society were governed to some degree by their belief systems, which fed into other values.
However, measuring Islamicity – as the authors soon discovered – was not so easy. Of the 57 member states in the OIC only seven (Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Oman and Yemen) declared that they were Islamic states, with a mere 12 saying that Islam was their state religion.
In the study the 208 countries (Muslim and non-Muslim) were compared to a subset of Islamic ones. Western indices, such as the UN Human Development Index and Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, were related to Islamic principles.
The authors outlined four Islamic constructs that had to underpin the notion of a successful Islamic state: Walayyah (compassion through wisdom and justice), karamah (the acknowledgement of human dignity), meethaq (the recognition of the sovereignty of the Creator) and khilafah (responsible viceregency and trustee-ship).
Although they did not mention it, the above fundamentals would have been further bolstered by Imam al-Ghazali’s six famous social principles: the right of religion, the right to wealth and property, the right of one’s progeny, the right to personal dignity and the right to receive justice.
Implicit in this blueprint are the values of a caring society marked by legislative justice, the fair distribution of wealth and genuine leadership.
Economically, said the authors, Islam’s legal systems called for free markets, but not according to the current Western capitalist model. For example, fiqh demanded risk-sharing and disapproved of taxation of imports and exports. It also prohibited monopolies, hoarding, speculation and price manipulation.
The authors concluded that institutions proposed by Islam relating to governance, social solidarity, cooperation and justice were inherently designed to achieve economic development and growth.
The results of their research, which they do emphasise is “preliminary”, does make for interesting reading, though.
This is because the Islamic states fared badly. New Zealand, said to have more sheep than humans, came out as number one, with the US – slated as the world’s top democracy– rated only 25th.
China, usually seen as a rapacious economic powerhouse, was a surprising 27 and India, with its ramshackle democracy, came in at 89. Israel, the bête noire of the Islamic world at 61, was rated higher than the Islamic states, but the occupied West Bank and Gaza (giant blots in the Israeli copybook) were 207.
The top rated Islamic state was Bahrain at 64, though recent events there would probably have seen its rating plummet. Iran was a lowly 163 (only three slots away from Afghanistan). Of the countries declaring Islam as their state religion, Malaysia was highest at 38.
Of the Arab Spring countries, Tunisia was 83. Egypt was 153 and Libya 196. Perhaps what the ranking here predicts is that Tunisia could make the critical transition from dictatorship to democracy quicker than the others.
Of course, one has to bear in mind that these rankings are pre-Arab Spring, but Syria at 186 and Yemen at 198 are somewhat predictive of crisis as Iraq, Sudan and Somalia languish in this region of the graph.
Africa, the Cinderella of all continents, came out poorly – though there were some exceptions. The highest ranking African country was Mauritius at 42. Mauritius has a significant Muslim minority, and as a small Indian Ocean island punches far above her weight.
Namibia was next at 45, South Africa at 50 and Ghana at 53. Significantly, South Africa ranked higher than the self-declared Islamic states. What is interesting for us is that, apart from China, we are the highest rated of the BRIC countries.
The authors conclude that their “very preliminary” results show that Islamic states are not as Islamic in their practice as one would expect. However, the prominence of developed countries tending to place higher on the Islamicity Index has to be taken into proper context.
The relationship between faith, finance and polity is a complex one. The lack of development in Islamic countries cannot be attributed to religion alone.
The age-old problems of developing countries, such as unskilled government, bad economic policies, aid dependency, systemic corruption, lack of social equity and broken-down health care systems have little to do with Holy Law.
It is, in fact, as the authors say, the shortcomings of the governments and their respective policies – and not religion – that accounts for the litany of dismal failures that bedevil the Middle East and Africa, even those countries blessed with oil and natural resources.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Orion scandal - a call for traditional values
THE Muslim Judicial Council-Orion story has, without doubt, become something of a community soap opera. Initially hallmarked by the MJC’s ineptitude in dealing with media, it has devolved into a wider question of organisational accountability.
Why the MJC did not nip the Orion scandal in the bud is a pertinent question: for had it responded with alacrity from the get-go, it’s hardly likely that the organisation would have been publicly embarrassed by Debora Patta on e-TV’s 3rd Degree.
At the heart of the Orion saga is its fraudulent re-labelling of non-halal products as halal. This was exposed on YouTube by two former business partners of Orion who have maintained that CEO Patrick Gaertner owes them money.
In the video we are treated to pork hearts, and kangaroo and water buffalo meat being re-labelled halal. Expired chickens are also given a new shelf life, and milk powder unfit for human consumption is relabelled as being fit for human consumption.
The South African National Halal Authority (SANHA), the Red Meat Industry Forum, the South African Meat Industry Company and the MJC made a successful High Court application against Gaertner.
However, the notion that the MJC Halal Trust might have certified pork products does not hold water. Nor did any Muslim retailer buy the re-certified Orion products.
The Cape-based MJC Halal Trust, that has borne the brunt of public anger since Orion’s duplicity was exposed, says it only certified 18 consignments of imported chickens that were shipped into South Africa by Orion.
Since the furore erupted, the MJC has entered the social media domain, issued a public apology, opened its books, gone on a road-show and instituted an official inquiry into the halal process. According to its audited accounts, the Halal Trust turned over about R8 million in the last financial year.
But as the MJC drags itself off the bottom of a trough, there are bigger questions. Other community organisations such as the Muslim Consumer Forum (painfully mindful of the MJC’s chequered past) have gone on active campaigns against the organisation.
Their criticism (and in some cases strident calls for the MJC to be disbanded) have to tempered with the fact that the MJC is the deep well from which the community has drunk for over six decades.
It’s the equivalent of trying to bulldoze the ANC off the road. Well-embedded institutions hold real power, and the influence of their groupthink should never be under-estimated.
What needs to be understood is that it’s not always necessarily the institutions that are at fault per se, but rather the content of their halls and the collective ethos that they may reflect as a result. Who is to deny that the original notion of establishing an Islamic judiciary in 1945 was not a noble one?
But how then, does one explain the sustained indignation against the MJC – an indignation that extends far beyond its latest crisis? Surely the point is that whatever might be questionable within the MJC is as equally questionable within the community?
Both are related. Who, for example, sustained the divide on the admittedly clumsily handled moon issue of the 80's and 90's?
I believe it is only classical tradition that can ultimately address the question, which boils down to the parlous state of most Islamic community institutions that are so riven with conflict, egotism and incompetence today. If anything, the MJC is but a symptom of a far greater social malaise.
With political structures falling short on human ethics everywhere, today it is left to religious ones to pick up the moral slack. In Africa in particular religious leaders enjoy more credibility than the political demagogues.
As a result, its priests and imams enjoy huge responsibilities, sometimes far beyond their capacity. But it is they who have to set the Qur’anic (or Biblical) tone for socio-economic justice, using reasoned discourse and the model of prophetic conduct, whether it be Jesus or Muhammad (SAW).
Very briefly, there are several areas where there needs to be focus, especially in our community, if things are going to improve organisationally in the future.
The first is that organisations have to be motivated by true intentions of sincerity – and that this has to be accompanied with an ethos of inclusivity, an inclusivity that embraces unity in diversity, as opposed to uniformity without diversity.
Or, as one of my teachers has said: “the more you elevate Allah and his Messenger with sincerity, the more you sweeten things around you”.
The second is that the grace of others has to be acknowledged. The hydra of jealousy, or hasad, that customarily surrounds those who are successful in our community, needs to be cast aside for genuine appreciation.
When it comes to the scholars we have to remember it is they who keep us out of the fire by teaching us Qur’an and how to pray, and it is they who marry us and bury us – and at the most elevated level, it is they who should be happy to stand behind when merit actually demands that they should stand in front.
Thirdly, the responsibility of our religious leaders and ourselves to guard our tongues, especially on matters we are ignorant of, is paramount. Belief and Sacred Law is a grave business. All the schools of thought have to be respected, and seriously considered.
Fourthly, it was never the Sunnah – the practice of the Prophet (SAW) – to mention names and to personalise matters on pulpits or public platforms. Rather, the focus should be on issues in the sense that the player must follow the ball, and not the man.
Fifthly, all of us should not be so hasty to assume the mantle of infallible authority through our ignorance. Islam cannot “say” on matters, for to do so is to arrogantly assume divinity itself.
Sixthly, we have completely lost the tradition of transmitted knowledge and the humility that goes with it. With respect: how many of our current ‘ulama, for example, have really sat – or still sit – at the feet of other Shaikhs? This is a learning tradition as old as Islam itself.
Sayyid Habshi, the author of the famous Risalat ul-Jami’ah was an ‘alim in his own right, but he still attended the classes of Imam ‘Abdullah ‘Alawi al-Haddad for forty years. The late Imam Farid Manie was happy to learn from Shaikhs twenty years younger than him; this after having spent several decades at the feet of his mentor, Shaikh Mahdi Hendricks.
Finally, we have to turn to the science of Tasawwuf, not in the sense of sitting on a dreamlike Sufic cloud, but in the practical sense that its primary focus is a reigning in of the nafs, the undesirable human attributes that govern our major senses.
Tasawwuf is all about discipline, and the central question is that if those who lead us – no matter where – can’t discipline themselves, then what hope can the greater community have that it will not be led by the nose?
Why the MJC did not nip the Orion scandal in the bud is a pertinent question: for had it responded with alacrity from the get-go, it’s hardly likely that the organisation would have been publicly embarrassed by Debora Patta on e-TV’s 3rd Degree.
At the heart of the Orion saga is its fraudulent re-labelling of non-halal products as halal. This was exposed on YouTube by two former business partners of Orion who have maintained that CEO Patrick Gaertner owes them money.
In the video we are treated to pork hearts, and kangaroo and water buffalo meat being re-labelled halal. Expired chickens are also given a new shelf life, and milk powder unfit for human consumption is relabelled as being fit for human consumption.
The South African National Halal Authority (SANHA), the Red Meat Industry Forum, the South African Meat Industry Company and the MJC made a successful High Court application against Gaertner.
However, the notion that the MJC Halal Trust might have certified pork products does not hold water. Nor did any Muslim retailer buy the re-certified Orion products.
The Cape-based MJC Halal Trust, that has borne the brunt of public anger since Orion’s duplicity was exposed, says it only certified 18 consignments of imported chickens that were shipped into South Africa by Orion.
Since the furore erupted, the MJC has entered the social media domain, issued a public apology, opened its books, gone on a road-show and instituted an official inquiry into the halal process. According to its audited accounts, the Halal Trust turned over about R8 million in the last financial year.
But as the MJC drags itself off the bottom of a trough, there are bigger questions. Other community organisations such as the Muslim Consumer Forum (painfully mindful of the MJC’s chequered past) have gone on active campaigns against the organisation.
Their criticism (and in some cases strident calls for the MJC to be disbanded) have to tempered with the fact that the MJC is the deep well from which the community has drunk for over six decades.
It’s the equivalent of trying to bulldoze the ANC off the road. Well-embedded institutions hold real power, and the influence of their groupthink should never be under-estimated.
What needs to be understood is that it’s not always necessarily the institutions that are at fault per se, but rather the content of their halls and the collective ethos that they may reflect as a result. Who is to deny that the original notion of establishing an Islamic judiciary in 1945 was not a noble one?
But how then, does one explain the sustained indignation against the MJC – an indignation that extends far beyond its latest crisis? Surely the point is that whatever might be questionable within the MJC is as equally questionable within the community?
Both are related. Who, for example, sustained the divide on the admittedly clumsily handled moon issue of the 80's and 90's?
I believe it is only classical tradition that can ultimately address the question, which boils down to the parlous state of most Islamic community institutions that are so riven with conflict, egotism and incompetence today. If anything, the MJC is but a symptom of a far greater social malaise.
With political structures falling short on human ethics everywhere, today it is left to religious ones to pick up the moral slack. In Africa in particular religious leaders enjoy more credibility than the political demagogues.
As a result, its priests and imams enjoy huge responsibilities, sometimes far beyond their capacity. But it is they who have to set the Qur’anic (or Biblical) tone for socio-economic justice, using reasoned discourse and the model of prophetic conduct, whether it be Jesus or Muhammad (SAW).
Very briefly, there are several areas where there needs to be focus, especially in our community, if things are going to improve organisationally in the future.
The first is that organisations have to be motivated by true intentions of sincerity – and that this has to be accompanied with an ethos of inclusivity, an inclusivity that embraces unity in diversity, as opposed to uniformity without diversity.
Or, as one of my teachers has said: “the more you elevate Allah and his Messenger with sincerity, the more you sweeten things around you”.
The second is that the grace of others has to be acknowledged. The hydra of jealousy, or hasad, that customarily surrounds those who are successful in our community, needs to be cast aside for genuine appreciation.
When it comes to the scholars we have to remember it is they who keep us out of the fire by teaching us Qur’an and how to pray, and it is they who marry us and bury us – and at the most elevated level, it is they who should be happy to stand behind when merit actually demands that they should stand in front.
Thirdly, the responsibility of our religious leaders and ourselves to guard our tongues, especially on matters we are ignorant of, is paramount. Belief and Sacred Law is a grave business. All the schools of thought have to be respected, and seriously considered.
Fourthly, it was never the Sunnah – the practice of the Prophet (SAW) – to mention names and to personalise matters on pulpits or public platforms. Rather, the focus should be on issues in the sense that the player must follow the ball, and not the man.
Fifthly, all of us should not be so hasty to assume the mantle of infallible authority through our ignorance. Islam cannot “say” on matters, for to do so is to arrogantly assume divinity itself.
Sixthly, we have completely lost the tradition of transmitted knowledge and the humility that goes with it. With respect: how many of our current ‘ulama, for example, have really sat – or still sit – at the feet of other Shaikhs? This is a learning tradition as old as Islam itself.
Sayyid Habshi, the author of the famous Risalat ul-Jami’ah was an ‘alim in his own right, but he still attended the classes of Imam ‘Abdullah ‘Alawi al-Haddad for forty years. The late Imam Farid Manie was happy to learn from Shaikhs twenty years younger than him; this after having spent several decades at the feet of his mentor, Shaikh Mahdi Hendricks.
Finally, we have to turn to the science of Tasawwuf, not in the sense of sitting on a dreamlike Sufic cloud, but in the practical sense that its primary focus is a reigning in of the nafs, the undesirable human attributes that govern our major senses.
Tasawwuf is all about discipline, and the central question is that if those who lead us – no matter where – can’t discipline themselves, then what hope can the greater community have that it will not be led by the nose?
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The MJC-Orion fraud halal crisis – “a real disgrace”
THE MJC-Orion fraud halal saga is without doubt, the most emotionally-charged story I’ve had to deal with in over 20 years of covering community issues. I’ve never seen such collective anger directed at an organisation.
The Cape Town-based Muslim Judicial Council, the MJC, has really been feeling the heat. The community is angry because of MJC bungling of PR; this after 3rd Degree journalist Deborah Patta’s questions of its role at Orion with regards to pork products being classified “halal” did not meet adequate response.
At the heart of the matter is a YouTube video portraying Orion workers de-labelling pork products and re-labelling them as halal. The MJC Halal Trust certified some of Orion’s products, and thereby hangs the tale.
Orion is a cold storage facility, not a processing or slaughtering one – and according to the MJC – the Halal Trust’s involvement was no more than the certifying of 18 frozen chicken consignments at a cost of about R16, 000 to Orion.
Orion’s re-labelling of other products (such as kangaroo and buffalo meat) was brought to an end by the High Court. This was when the South African National Halal Authority (SANHA), the Red Meat Industry Forum, the South African Meat Industry Company, and other parties, made a successful application against Patrick Gaertner, Orion’s CEO.
Gaertner, who was evasive in the face of detail and contrite when it was convenient, claimed he’d been set-up. On 3rd Degree, Tobias Lombard – one of the men who filmed the YouTube video and who claimed Gaertner owed him R1 million – accused Orion’s chief of being fully aware of his company’s halal fraud.
That SANHA, a commercial competitor of the Halal Trust, led the litigation is interesting. But given the antagonistic, cut-throat nature of the multi-million rand halal industry, SANHA’s intervention is perhaps not surprising.
The MJC Halal Trust might have certified only pre-packaged chicken consignments, but its lethargic reaction to what was seen as a crisis in the community in terms of certifying pork as halal created suspicion with Patta and her producer, Barbara Friedman. 3rd Degree had originally delayed broadcast hoping for the MJC to respond to its questions.
Struggling to get a commitment for an interview, Patta and her crew arrived at the MJC offices to doorstop deputy-president, Shaikh Achmat Sedick. After being assured by a harried spokesman that the president and deputy-president were off ill, the e-TV crew discovered that their cars were in the parking lot.
With this tableau played out on national television, the Muslim community suffered what Mufti AK Hoosain of Channel Islam in Gauteng has described as a “real disgrace”, a PR disaster in which Muslims were “caught with their pants down” in front of South Africa.
Stunned by the public outrage, the MJC moved swiftly to give itself voice on social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, a refreshing change from its thoroughly moribund website and usually condescending PR.
The organisation did itself absolutely no favours, though, when Voice of the Cape radio station’s jumu’ah broadcast at St Athans’ Rd mosque in Athlone was allegedly commandeered by an MJC official. This caused a ruckus after the prayers, and serious concerns amongst Voice of the Cape stakeholders.
As the Facebook threads grew longer the clamour rose. Some respondents (particularly from PAGAD and the National Consumer Forum) called for the MJC – founded in 1945 as a judiciary – to disband.
A week after the broadcast, the MJC mustered a press conference at its Cashel Avenue headquarters. At the conference, MJC president Maulana Igshan Hendricks finally promised that the MJC would grant Deborah Patta a “one-on-one” interview.
The media was assured that the Halal Trust had never certified pork. Orion’s labels were fraudulent. The Halal Trust’s books were audited, were available for scrutiny and the organisation had “good standing” with SARS. Seventy-five percent of Halal Trust funds were ploughed back into MJC social projects.
During the press conference, a handful of PAGAD and National Consumer Forum members picketing outside the building were involved in a scuffle with MJC security guards. Police arrived but did not make any arrests.
Finally, whether the MJC has managed to rise out of the ashes of its worst-ever PR disaster is the big question.
Farid Esack, head of religious studies at the University of Johannesburg, believes that the MJC will bounce back. He told the Cape Times that it was not unlike the ANC. No matter how many times it blundered it would rise again due to its deeply-rooted history. Social media commentators feel that the MJC will have learnt the futility of arrogance towards the media.
The broader halal issues, of course, have not gone away. The South African halal industry has become a parody of itself for the sake of very big money, or as Mufti AK Hoosain says: “scholars for dollars”.
Indeed, for when items regarded as pure and uncontaminated by their very nature such as coffee and water are accorded Halal certification, then one has to seriously interrogate our scholars’ basic understanding of Sacred Law.
And whilst no-one denies notoriously underpaid imams and officials their financial due, all the Halal bodies will surely have to come up with credible ways to empower the largely impoverished communities that ultimately pay for the Halal process.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Áshura: the right to know the difference
This is because it is a sacred month in which major events occurred, especially on the 10th day: for example, the creation of Adam and Eve and the escape of the Bani Isra’il from the Pharaoh.
However, its wider significance is often eclipsed by the martyrdom of Hussein, the son of Sayyidina ‘Ali, the noble Prophet’s cousin. His passing (in 680 CE) on the 10th of Muharram is lamented for ten days by the Shi’ah sect, and is called “‘Ashura”.
Hussain’s slaying – also lamented by Sunnis, but without the ritualistic dramaturgy of the Shi’ah – is an event hallmarked by the intrigue that characterised the politics of the era.
For instance, this is why Sayyidina ‘Ali – condemned for being too lenient in punishing the assassins of his predecessor, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan – was forced to lead an army against A’isha bint Abu Bakr, one of the Prophet’s (SAW) wives, at Basra.
Historically, the problem has always been that the Prophet (SAW) left no indications as to what political system Muslims should adopt after his demise. It was a “consensus of the elders” that had elected the first Caliph, Abu Bakr.
It was this decision that led to a measure of dissent amongst ‘Ali’s supporters. Their view was that Abu Bakr, and the succeeding Caliphs ‘Umar and ‘Uthman, should not have accepted office ahead of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, a blood relative of the Prophet (SAW).
The Shi’ah quote the Hadith of Khumm, related after the final Hajj, which has the Prophet (SAW) passing the mantle of Commander on to Sayyidina ‘Ali, and Sayyidina ‘Umar pledging allegiance. Sunni scholars do not accept this interpretation of the Hadith.
Nevertheless, ‘Ali became the fourth Righteous Caliph, but he was handed a poisoned chalice: those who had been associated with the assassination of ‘Uthman supported him becoming Caliph.
So when ‘Uthman’s kinsman in Damascus, Mu’awiyyah, refused to accept ‘Ali’s rule, a schism arose in the Islamic realm. In public interest Sayyidina ‘Ali submitted to arbitration. He was assassinated by Ibn Muljam, a Kharijite, who claimed that ‘Ali had committed apostasy by allowing human intervention.
“Kharijite” originates from the Arabic root word “kharaja”, and means “seceder”, or one who “goes out”. Their belief was that jihad was a sixth pillar of Islam; and that if a Muslim sinned he became an infidel or a kafir.
Scholars such as Sayyid ibn Zaini Dahlan consider the offshoot of the Kharijites to be the modern Salafi-Wahhabis, the disciples of Ibn ‘Abd ul-Wahhab, the 18th century Saudi cleric. Kharijite (and Wahhabi) opposition to the Shi’ah spans over 1,300 years. For their ilk the Shi’ah are kafir and their blood halal – a view contrary to Sunni legal thought.
After Sayyidina ‘Ali’s demise, Mu’awiyyah became the Caliph. And as the centuries passed, the Shi’at ul-‘Ali (the party of ‘Ali) grew into a sectarian doctrine. There are historians such as Tabari who say Shi’ism was introduced by Abdullah ibn Sabah, a Yemeni Jew, who embraced Islam and declared ‘Ali divine.
Ibn Kathir also refers to this, but the question of Ibn Sabah is an academic minefield.
Shi’ah culture was definitely strengthened by the slaying of Hussain at Karbala. This was after Mu’awiyyah died and his son, Yazid, took power. Hussain’s elder brother, Hasan, had already retired from public life. Today, the Shi’ah curse Yazid and the Salafi-Wahhabis praise him. The Sunni ‘ulama, seeking balance, say that he had good and bad qualities.
Like his father, Hussain was caught up in events beyond his control. The citizens of Kufa, unhappy at Yazid’s Caliphate, wrote a letter to Hussain, requesting him to come to the city as their leader. But whilst he was en-route, Kufa switched allegiance to the Ummayads.
Hussain encountered Yazid’s forces at Karbala outside Kufa. After a 10-day siege during which time he refused to pledge allegiance to Yazid, his small party was slaughtered – Hussain dying with his infant son in his arms. His head was cut off and delivered to Yazid in Damascus.
The poetic lamentations about Karbala, recited during ‘Ashura, are famous in Shi’ah lore, as are the self-flagellations of Shi’ah devotees.
I’ve already said that calling the Shi’ah kafir has never been the Sunni way. The Shi’ah perform the Hajj. But during the ‘Ashura season, when emotions run high, there has to be a more level-headed community understanding of Shi’ah belief.
Yes, there is divergence, and in the spirit of adab i-ikhtilaf (the ethics of argument) surely it would be better to face these differences than to indulge in pulpit bashing or, worse still, killing the messenger by targeting the media?
Briefly, there are key points where Sunnis differ with the Shi’ah. But surely, the goal of confronting these differences should be comprehension rather than conflict, and critical empathy rather than emotion-soaked enmity?
The primary sticking-point for the Sunni world is that the historical Shi’ah imams, leading up to the end-times Mahdi, are regarded as infallible. Sunni theology only accords perfection and lack of sin to prophets. It does not agree that mere humans can enjoy the same status.
Whilst there are some similarities to the Sunnis in the application of Shi’ah Sacred Law, Sunni theologians do not agree with the rationalistic Shi’ah view that the Qur’an was “created”. In Sunni theology, the Qur’an was inherently “uncreated”.
Shi’ah aversion of Traditions transmitted by A’isha, Sayyidina Abu Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Uthman, is problematic for Sunni Hadith scholars. The edict of temporary marriage, or mut’ah, permitted by Shi’ah fiqh seriously troubles Sunni jurists.
Finally, the fact that taqiyyah, the disguising of one’s true beliefs, is obligatory in Shi’ism is an anathema to the four prominent Sunni schools of legal thought, which only permit such dissembling if one’s life is at stake.
Obviously, space does not permit more than a cursory look at some complex questions, but it has to be said that the paranoia about Shi’ism during Muharram is baffling. Surely the right to know the difference, on an intellectual level, should be the preserve of every Muslim, Shi’ah or Sunni?
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Al-Shabab - Taliban of the Horn
WE never came across Al-Shabab forces in Mogadishu, but reminders of their presence was everywhere – from the bullet-ridden pasta factory to the IDP camps dotted around the city. Fighters had only been forced out by AMISOM forces a month before, and there were still pockets of resistance.
The crump of mortars and volleys of gunfire we heard every night in our compound reminded us just how close the conflict still was, as did the grenade blast around the corner at the Medecins Sans Frontieres offices.
Public spaces were safer, but our armed technicals would get jittery if we stopped to get out of our vehicles. They had good reason. In urban areas, Al-Shabab had become faceless.
Two weeks before our arrival a car loaded with explosives had been defused at Banadir Hospital. Several NGO’s worked there. Foreign fatalities would have been disastrous for the Transitional Federal Government (the TFG).
However, we did locate a group of Al-Shabab fighters in Mogadishu, albeit a group of defectors who were being “rehabilitated”.
We found them at a rudimentary camp near to the “pink house” where Al-Qaeda suspects were held by the Somali National Security Agency (the NSA) under the aegis of a covert US military command.
We arrived unannounced. The rehab camp, in operation for about three months (and its location no secret to anyone in Mogadishu), was a series of nondescript cement buildings amongst the dunes.
The somewhat surprised camp commander, Abdurahman Omar Osman, welcomed us. He made a call to get authorisation for us to visit. Permission was granted, the only condition being that we couldn’t interview the camp inmates, some 213 people.
That was disappointing. I knew that these ex-Al-Shabab fighters would have been processed by the NSA. Their security threat would have been zero, and their personal accounts would have made great human interest stories.
An Associated Press journalist had been briefly allowed to interview some of these Al-Shabab defectors, but – for whatever reason – the instruction was that SA journalists could not.
The defectors gathered around us as we chatted, and I could see that Al-Shabab – which means “the youth” – was an apt moniker. These were all very young men, some hardly old enough to have facial hair.
They were all Somali. Neither did they look like cold-blooded killers guilty of the beheadings, amputations and bombings for which Al-Shabab had become feared. They looked more like the hungry, jobless kind of adolescents you could see on any corner in East Africa.
Their ages ranged from 9 to 45 years, said Osman. The majority of Al-Shabab’s 14,000-strong force was under 25, and conscripting children younger than 15 years – which Al-Shabab actively did – was a war crime.
The 9-year old boy, Liban Mohammed, had been interviewed by AP, saying he’d been conscripted as a “spy”.
We moved out of the hot sun and settled down in Osman’s office, an echoingly empty room with a desk, a computer and a few plastic chairs. We asked him why these young men had defected.
“They are forced into things. They are told that music and TV are forbidden, and that they have to beat women …they also find that the killing is too much…that what they are doing is wrong,” explained Osman in halting English.
In reply as to why Somalis joined Al-Shabab, Osman said that Al-Shabab lured the unemployed and uneducated with promises of opportunity, but that fighters had also been kidnapped from schools and villagers.
He added that the defectors told him they’d been ordered to prevent people in the drought-stricken villages and towns (who paid Al-Shabab taxes) from fleeing the famine, and that the men had sometimes been shot.
The idea of the rehabilitation camp, the brainchild of a former Interior Minister, was to re-integrate Al-Shabab fighters into Somali society. The long term plan was to teach the youth job skills, but a lack of funding was hindering the process.
Back in central Mogadishu I questioned our translator, Abdi Nasser, about Al-Shabab (whose leadership had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda in 2009). He said the organisation was currently divided into three and was not as homogenous as people thought it was.
He told me that originally about 90% of Somalis had supported Al-Shabab after the Ethiopian invasion of 2006 and the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union.
“People initially supported Al-Shabab because they thought they were good Muslims who would create order. But now after the all killings people realise Al-Shabab is extremist, and try to avoid it,” he said.
I asked Abdi Nasser how Al-Shabab rule had affected the citizens of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.
“Under them Mogadishu was a horrible place. Very dangerous. Now we’re sitting together; then it was very hard to sit and chat. They (Al-Shabab) were killing the people, even slaughtering women and using young kids as soldiers.”
He added sombrely that if AMISOM were to leave, Al-Shabab would be back in Mogadishu the next day. Abdi Nasser, a businessman, was understandably cynical about Somali politics, but said that he could only hope for the best from the TFG.
I also spoke to Abdi Harari, a 35-year old TFG soldier who’d been in uniform since 1999, and asked what he thought about fighting his own countrymen.
“They (Al-Shabab) have no mercy. They will kill me if they catch me. But when we capture them, we don’t kill them. One of our troops was captured by Al-Shabab and the leader told the man’s very own cousin to execute him.”
What was so appalling from the above – and so many of my interviews in Somalia – was the constant mention of death, this apart from the horrific attrition of the famine. Al Shabab, once a beacon of hope in a country desperate for solutions, had become yet another grim political reaper.
This underlined the biggest failing of Al-Shabab’s fundamentalist Salafi-Wahhabi ethos – its inherent neo-fascism, something that rushed into the political vacuum created by the meddling of Ethiopia and the US in the name of the “war on terror”.
In the hands of the remaining uneducated and illiterate, their angry black-and-white universe enables the blood of the other, “the infidel”, to become halal – and for the Sacred Law to become an ass.
This is why the Afghan Taliban could ban singing canaries, marginalise women educators, forbid music, amputate at will, justify suicide bombing and indulge in the cultural terrorism of dynamiting the Bamiyan Buddhas.
This is why, in exactly the same vein, Al-Shabab could declare three-cornered samoosas haraam; why women wearing bras could be whipped in public, and why school bells could be banned. This is why Al-Shabab could justify killing fellow Somalis in public suicide bombings.
This is why Al-Shabab could smash Sufi shrines and zawiyyahs – and in a disgusting act of irreverence – dig up the bodies of the Shaikhs. This is why a 13-year old gang-rape victim could be buried up to her head in a football stadium and stoned to death for adultery.
This article ends the series on Somalia.
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