A World of Nation States?

A World of Nation States?

OUR BLUEPRINT

For sure the blue-print of the best way to live life, encoded within the immutable revelation of the Qur'an, does not specify in detail the machinery of our Political Institutions.

With this reading, and understanding, the Khilafah was simply the succesorship of Muhammed (saw) the last and final Messenger sent to Mankind, by his most trusted companions. That they put into action the vision of what Islam was meant to be as elucidated by Muhammed (saw), and revealed by God to him.

And that therefore any other who learns, and deliberates on that vision, and then brings it both into action and realisation, becomes a Khlifah of Muhammed (saw) down through successive generations of such Khilafah. Even as Umar bin al-Khatab took the prestigious title Khilafa'tul Khilafa' tul Rasul Allah, in reference to his being the successor of Abu Bakr (as).

For we Muslims have never had a central religious authorithy after the Messenger of God.

And we have never had an undisputed political authority past the three Khilafah Rashidun.

And then that by both desgin, and Divine providence.

That God wants to know the truth of each of us, and that no man can carry the moral responsibility of any other man.

So therefore many a times we find in the Quràn - That if God had wanted then He could have united mankind on one faith, with one singular authority, but that is not His way.

For He charged each of us with freedom of will, gave us intelligent speech and deliberation, and then made clear to us each the upward and the downward paths- so that we might be free to choose the treasures of moral action, or the abasement of indecent behaviour.

For a succint verse of the Qur'an declares that God calls you to forgiveness, and wealth (by asking for you to be generous), wheras the Devil, he calls you to indecency and poverty (by making you miserly).

And so if the machinery of our Political Institutions are not set in stone, but can adapt to fit the state of human affairs as they develop and coagulate along cogent lines, then in this time of ours comes the ideation of an Islamic State.

But what we do have within the body of our knowledge is sure guidance that only a fool would overlook: that our processes must be governed by mutual consultation, that the rich must not take from the poor, that freedom from oppression is everyone's birthright. (*1)

And those truly are the principles that if we hold true to them would make us rich, beyond measure. 

SELF EVIDENT HYPOCRISIES

Then the failure of this World of Nation States, is a failure to be despied. 

And any justification of those failures is tantamont to a betrayal of those, our true values.

A century ago, even as is happening today in Palestine, the excesses of what a Nation State could do rose on the World Stage in the expressions of Fascism and Fascist ideology. However for over two hundred years before that we had European Nations who took from other peoples of lives, loves and land, without a care for a common humanity. 

Then with the World Wars they took land and lives from other Nation States and the hypocrisy of a common humanity became self-evident to them.

And so after these excesses the World instituted a League of Nations, the Geneva Convention on Human Rights, and an International Criminal Court, all to prevent what now rises again at the centre of three faith's Holy Lands. 

And yet none of these three World Institutions can hold in check the Zionist excesses, evils and designs.

Twenty years ago with the construction of Guanatamo Bay, the USA, the World's enforcer flouted with contempt the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. 

The legal view of the US was that the Taliban were not a standing army from a recognised Nation State, and were therefore Stateless. 

That the Human Rights encoded in the Geneva Convention did not apply to all of humanity, but only to those who were members of recognised Nations States.

The US argument compounded a claim that any Taliban fighters were not Prisoners of War as they were not from a standing army of a recognised State. And those that they stole even without proof of being from the Taliban did not afford protection of any sort, as they had not the protection of a recognised Nation State. And so they invented a new terminology for them to hide behind it their excesses and their evils - they called them enemy combatants. 

And it is on this basis that they were legally allowed to torture, incarcerate, rape and murder them, and all with impunity- without a word raised from the other World Institutions that were constructed to safeguard against the rise of Fascism. 

A throwback to the times of Jahilliyah amongst the Arabs, where if you had not the protection of an Arab Chieftain then your honour, wealth and lives were fair game.

And that now, in our age, it is clear to most people that the remit of all three International Institutions is not the safeguarding of Humanity, and all Peoples- but the safeguarding of an International Order based upon the Nation State.

Neither do they safeguard each our own moral wellbeing, but rather when we allow them to represent us,  then we each become culpable in the crimes that they sanction against humanity. 

DEFINING QUESTIONS ABOUT WHO YOU ARE?

If Fascism is the idea of a Nation State taken to extreme, and we choose to overlook the fact that those three International Institutions appear powerless to stop the genocide ennacted by the Zionist regime, then we must ask ourselves what really defines what a Nation State is?

Because the reality is that even though there are self-evident hypocrises in the contruction of those Institutions, those may not seem to matter to most people concerned with their daily bread. 

For those other decimated, and targetted, peoples are not our people and neither are they our neighbours. Nor do they hold the same values as us. (*3)

And yet the conception of a Nation State is nefarious in both that case, and also in the fact that it touches the lives of each one of us, in the worst kind of ways. 

So it does not matter whether you choose to ignore the abiding moral outrage of this age- you are defined by the Powers that be as a citizen of a Nation, in a World of Nation States.

The question then is whether or not you accept the imposition of that definition upon your person?

Are you a citizen of a Nation State, and by virtue of that do you have rights? 

Or are you a human being, and by virtue of that do you have rights, the foremost being the right to freedom from oppression?

And some will say that there is no difference here, and that this is merely word play. And if you are minded to believe that, then by virtue of your intelligence you should at the very least examine the following arguments:

THE SECURITY OF EACH NATION

Each Nation State defines itself with regard to security.

Its security apparatus, their extent, power and reach define what each looks like.

What is clear here is that it is not the mode of Political Organisation, or the affiliation to a particular Political idea that defines Nation Statehood. 

It is simply that it has a security apparatus, affording its citizens protection from both internal and external risks and enemies.

And when you examine all of those apparatuses, you will find that the ones with the greater powers concern those that protect us from external elements- the border force, customs and excise, the military apparatuses.

One word can sum up the extent of the State's power on each of our individual civic lives- CONTRABAND.

It is interesting to note that contraband is not illegal in and of itself, so for example you cannot call illegal drugs contraband as nothing can make that legal.

However contraband is legal stock that has avoided state taxation, being illegally smuggled into countries to avoid that tax.

So for example when you buy something on holiday and bring it into our country so long as it is for your sole use, it is legal. But if you purchase it in order to supply to another then suddenly it becomes contraband, and is illegal not by virtue of itself, but by virtue of the State not being involved in it's procurement, sale and supply.

This simple example provides us insight of what the Modern Nation State is really all about: the protection of power, and vested interests.

And it shows us first hand the scope and breadth of how the Nation State touches each of our lives. But the depth of their reach is far more troubling. 

Just as there are no Universal Human Rights if you are not a citizen of a recognised Nation State, there is also no Freedom from the prying arms and hands of the Nation State when you are- your individual freedom is a figment of their immagination- whether or not you choose to accept their designation that you are free is really up to you?

OUR THREE PRINCIPLES

So of the three principles that form the bedrock of what true Muslim Society should look like, the Nation State fails on the last two-

1- that the rich should not take from the poor, the protection of vested interests, and power puts that ideal to bed.

2- that everyone has the right to freedom from oppression.

This they say is satisfied by their emphasis on our freedom of expression, but are they really the same?

Thirty years ago in the Inaugrial Speech of Kalim Siddiqui on the lauch of the Muslim Manifesto (1990), he laid bare the lies of our protection from oppression even as individual citizens of this country. (*3)

And if he had the guts to say that then, then I who have seen much much more should not be scared to call out the facts.

Kalim stated in no uncertain words that Police fabricate evidence in their want for conviction.

I know for fact, and I am not scared to call it out as fact to their very faces, that the Police investigate only so as to secure conviction, do not secure and protect evidence that does not accord with their wish to convict, edit and erase evidence in subtle ways to implicate those they want to convict, and worse still as Kalim pointed out- even go as far as fabricating evidence or planting it.

Our Judges when appraised of these wantonly choose to turn a blind eye.

We are not free when you become aware of the State apparatus that seeks to destroy people's freedom, and their families, then you would come to belive, as I do, that in excess of 80% of people incarcerated in our prisons are in fact innocent.

Their convictions being manufactured, the process of such never ever being questioned.

We are not free, and are always and forever at the mercy of a Criminal Justice System that oppresses the  people of each our own Nation States.

So then we are left with the first principle, that we should be governed by mutual consultation- but when power elites are allowed to be protected amongst us?

From the begining were we ever really free?

And then we come back full circle to the question of who you are:

Do you accept their designation that you are “free” by virtue of being a member of a Nation State? And what does that freedom mean. 

And furthermore we must ask ourselves: can an Islamic Nation State really live up to our ideals and beliefs?

Of mutual consultation, that the rich must not take from the poor, and that freedom from oppression is everyone’s birthright. 

KNOWLEDGE IS THROUGH CONTEMPLATION AND STUDYING

NOTES

*1 - mutual consultation- Shuraa’

That the rich shall not take from the poor- see the inaugural address of Abu Bakr (as). 

That each person has a right to freedom from oppression is a constant theme throughout the revelation of the Quran. 

*2 That they are not our people, nor are we neighbours of one another. Nor do we hold the same values - so say those that endorse Fascism. 

*3 Kalim Siddiqui (1990) “Generating Power without Politics” 

The Lament on the Loss of Britishness

The lament of the loss of Britishness. Written 4th Feb 2010

The tone of last weeks "Question Time" was telling on our national  

mood. Cameron's "Broken Britain" speech has become a rallying cry for  

a National Pessimism.

It is no surprise to me that a recession can entrench negativity and  cause people to find common ground to view difference as ugly. But,  what is surprising is that the ugly head of racism should raise itself within the framework of a  lament on a loss of a golden age of  

Britishness.

In that program a panel member, whose day job paradoxically involved working for a policy unit devoted to socialcohesion, tapped into that  National Pecimissim and suggested that Britain was no longer Great.  

Among the causes he first listed immigration, and then the loss of  

British Institutions.

He blamed the breaking of, if not broken, society on the dilution of  

values that immigration had brought to England.

However it is crystal clear to me that immigrants themselves tend to hold onto their values. And what is it that many of these immigrants value whether they be from Poland or Africa or the subcontinent, if it is not family, hard work and honesty? Are these not the values that today’s British society so often lacks.

The case of the two boys that were assaulted by two other "in care"  

boys, that was the basis for Cameron speech, had nothing to do with immigration but everything to do with broken families.

What can be the cause of these broken families other than the rampant  acceptability of zero commitment, of the rise of the self and the monetary system of placing a value on all things.

Off course immigrants, just like their neighbouring countrymen, are influenced by the same values that our politicians put to the country.  

So can we blame them for adopting the now British culture of take and not give, of milking it for all you can get.

For even when our politicians hold our social interests paramount, all  

they can do is talk about monetary investment.

Off course they cannot moralise to us whilst their profession is full  

to the rim with sleaze, corruption and fraud. And off course their  

argument is that in order to make the job of running the country  

accessible to all, they need some reasonable monetary remuneration.

But if they themselves cannot sacrifice for service, to the greater  

good of the community, then how can they ever go to the people and ask them to give and not take. 

British society has like the others that surround it become a takers society. "Me first, bugger the rest" is the real cause of these social problems.

England was once a land of gardens and shopkeepers. The gardens remain, but the High Street is doomed by successive policies that put money first and community last.

A Tesco or Sainsburys or even a Shopping Mall cannot compete with the social and communal harmony that comes with a High Street and local bussinesses. 

Immigrants have continually invested their time, effort  

and money in that most British of Institutions. Off course they have  

not done so purely for social or communal reasons, but that they have done it and stemmed the further retardation of British Society should be applauded and not denigrated.