Northwest

Source Source

@Haji 2003 You really missed my point. In the above case two masters are exchanging their property (children are equivalent to dependents or serfs). My point is that slavery is not based on free labour. A slave remains a slave and does not have ownership over his body and/or possessions. By contrast, a wage-labourer is free to quit his job and seek better opportunities, as soon as a contract expires. Slavery isn’t exactly “capitalist.” Much of this is coloured by present-day ideological currents. On the one hand we have modern liberals trying to prove that slavery is always immoral, illegal, racist, and/or inefficient. In response to the prevailing PC Muslims have a tendency to whitewash their own historical experience with slavery by protesting that it was “wildly different” from the now-deprecated trans-Atlantic slave-trade. So PC takes precedence over history on both sides.

@Silas I am making more of an argument against the right to absolute ownership. According to conservative sources such as the Hoover Institution, the concept of private property as a natural right only became widespread in the West once religion declined at the end of the Middle Ages. Why did the right to private property in the West only become absolutised as society secularised at the end of the Middle Ages? If that were the case, I would be perfectly entitled to dispose of my body as I see fit, up to and including various destructive behaviours. After all, it’s my own personal property, just like the house or land that I own, and I can sell it to someone else, destroy it, alter it, and so on. Obviously this is not the case, for suicide, among other things, isn’t religiously permissible. I also can’t simply destroy my house and land, for future generations may need them. Well, Islam permits private slavery, and communism is public slavery, so to be consistent one would need to oppose all ownership of man by man, whether under the aegis of a public slaveowner (the state) or a private one. Private slavery is basically small-scale communism, because it denies the right to own property by contract, and is nonconsensual. Soviet-style communism extends private slavery to the collective. By no means am I defending Marxist-style slavery. But I think I am in good company when I describe slavery as communistic. After all, plenty of conservatives point out that communism is a form or expression of slavery, and that slavery is always destructive of the right to private ownership, because it enables the forcible, nonconsensual ownership of one man’s body by another. Either you own yourself or God does. In an ultimate sense it can’t be halfway. I think the issue has to do with private vs. public claims. In the private sphere the patriarchal family arguably does have an absolute claim over children, wives, serfs, and so on, at least in traditional societies. That isn’t a bad thing per se. One could credibly make the argument that collective slavery is far worse than private slavery, though it isn’t consistent in formulating a property-rights-based vision of society.

@Ashvazdanghe Honestly, the following quote of yours sounded a lot like takfir to me, especially the bolded sections (claiming Sufi teachings preclude self-defence): So if a) Sufi teachings precluded self-defence yet b) Sufis took up arms against oppressive governments, then the Sufis would be hypocritical infidels. I’m not saying that they were or became infidels, but merely observing that your logic implies that they were infidels. (I mean that they were traitors to their own faith, not to Islam per se.) Oh, and I’m definitely not influenced by Wahhabi propaganda. After all, Wahhabis and their ilk detest Sufis, and I’m defending the latter vs. the former. Actually the Wahhabis did not play a major role in Chechnya until 1999. Up until that time figures such as the Chechen heads of state Dudayev and Maskhadov consistently opposed Wahhabism. Prior to the second Russian invasion under Putin most Chechens voted for non-Wahhabi, Sufi politicians. In fact the actions of the Wahhabis in 1999 helped the Russians by undermining the authority of the Sufi political leadership. In fact the U.S. criticised Maskhadov for provoking the Russians, and during the Second Chechen War U.K. Foreign Secretary Cook praised Putin’s leadership. At that time the West was largely on the side of Russia vs. Chechnya. In fact the Wahhabis denied Chechnya oil revenue by disrupting existing pipelines, thereby undermining the Sufi Maskhadov’s political leadership. This is the case now, but was not the case prior to 2000. Even after 2000 many Sufi Chechens continued to fight the Russians. The current Chechen leadership under Kadyrov is in fact closer to the Wahhabis than to the Sufis, for the Chechen government has actually banned Iranian publications about Shiism. In fact Kadyrov, who is himself a corrupt playboy, has praised the Saudi royal family for “fighting extremism” (!), and in turn the Saudis have invested billions of dollars in Chechnya. So there is a clear Putin–Wahhabi alliance in Chechnya vis-à-vis Kadyrov. In return Kadyrov’s leadership oppresses the genuine Sufis who continue to fight Russia, while promoting the Wahhabis to kill off the Sufis and help Russia justify its occupation. Kadyrov’s anti-Shia stance also fits the Russian leadership’s pro-Zionist, pro-Turkish policy in Syria, the Caucasus, and elsewhere. Yes, I should have mentioned the Bosnians as well. This is an interesting counter-history, though it is somewhat difficult to verify. It’s certainly plausible, but I need access to good sources about all this. ^ Again, as I mentioned previously, I would like some sources to corroborate this. It could very well be true, but I am interested in seeing the material. Wait, are you saying that some of those “Buddhists and Hindus” were Muslims, and that wars within and between Buddhism and Hinduism were against Islam? As far as “racial supremacy” is concerned: doesn’t the insistence on “Arabic-only” prayer reflect a similar mentality? You know, “Arabic is the heavenly language” and so on. It’s rather strange, given Arabs’ hostility to Shiism, that their language should be accorded supremacy. How is “Arabic-only” distinct from Arab supremacism and superior to Chechen supremacism? Yes, I am referring to the fact that the Sufi adat is being suppressed by the Wahhabis and their allies in the Russian, Western, and Zionist governments. Okay, I will definitely do some research of my own. I too am struggling to “read between the lines” and discover the truth about all this.

@kadhim A professor in the U.K. has faced a similar situation. According to the “woke” liberal Establishment, it is now impolitic for “racist, white, Christian” Westerners to critique Saudi-style, Wahhabi–Salafi sharia. Doing so marks one as a “racist.” The irony is that many Islamists, mainly Sunni, characterise criticism as “racism,” indicating that they view religion through a racial lens, as though religion were determined by one’s DNA. It’s the same mentality as that of the Nazis vis-à-vis the Jews. The aforementioned article illustrates this: Oh, and please don’t respond by saying, “It’s right-wing propaganda from FOX.” It is reflective of the entire “woke” Inquisition in higher education.

@Silas For all intents and purposes, isn’t the ideological synonymous with the philosophical? The philosophical, or metaphysical, is the basis of the ideological. They do not stand in opposition to each other. One cannot know the speculative apart from the practical, for the practical hints at the speculative. If not for the practical order, to which we are indebted and whose rules we abide by, we would know nothing of the speculative. We would thus not know Allah but by the kind of society He desires. The speculative is meant for the here and now, not the here and now for the speculative. It is a guide to living in this world, so that one may thrive in the Next. One’s fate in the Hereafter flows from the collective society one foster in this world. Besides, Islam does not believe in original sin, so there is no hindrance to building an Islamic society. The objection, or excuse, that man is inherently too sinful for a particular mode of life does not apply here. Regardless, by preferring private property and the market-based mode of exchange, you are clearly taking sides here. You clearly side with the capitalist economy vs. the feudal and socialistic/communistic ones. Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but in light of previous statements is disingenuous: for you previously stated that individual morality, not the economic system, holds primacy. So by that criterion just about any economic system is as good as another, provided that moral, religious individuals are in charge. You just did that by contradicting your earlier assertion that a) the type of economic system is irrelevant and b) individual morality is all that matters. By that criterion, what difference does it make if moral, religious people choose one economic system or another? Moral, religious people should be able to run a feudal or socialistic/communistic economy just as well as a market-based one. After all, the medieval Church operated within the confines of a non-capitalist, feudal economy. Virtue is all that matters, right? By this measure no economy should be able to function properly. You are effectively claiming that we should design an economy according to man’s viciousness. Because man is sinful, we should promote an economic model that accommodates rather than suppresses his vice. Besides, the veracity of your assertion is questionable. Feudalism, for instance, worked quite well for millennia and was non-capitalist. The Middle Ages were a period of great chivalry and scholarship, for instance. Your equation of private property with religious morality must also be questioned. For instance, the notion of a “right“ to private property developed as society secularised. It arose at the very end of the Middle Ages, gained traction in the Renaissance, and crystallised in the Enlightenment. During this same timeframe Europe became less religious and more secular. The early stage of the French Revolution proclaimed the right to absolute ownership, that is, private property. As the preceding link states: So as religion lost sway at the end of medievalism in Europe, the concept of a right to private property arose. Coincidence? Is your body your possession? Is land? By what right can you claim absolute ownership of either? Did you create your own body or the land? Are you the Creator, the Master of the universe? After all, the Creator is the original proprietor, so creation is enslaved to its Creator. Man, as a slave of the Creator, is but a tenant on his Creator’s property. Private ownership thus puts man on the same level as his Creator. If you are the absolute owner, then you, as the absolute owner, are entitled to act or to dispose of something as you see fit, owing to the rights conferred by absolute ownership. Private ownership thus ensures that error has rights: for if one owns one’s body or the land, one is free to do whatever one wishes with it. Obviously this is not the case: for man is also a social being and must act according to social obligations. The absolute owner, by proclaiming his supposed right to private property, becomes a god. By contrast, a believing man cannot lay claim to absolute ownership, for absolute ownership excludes fellow believers. Is one believer more equal than another and deserving of exclusive right or access to something?

@Ashvazdanghe So those Sufis who founded Sufi orders to fight imperialism didn’t know the basics of their own, supposedly apolitical and/or “nonviolent” faith? All those Chechen warrior Sufis who defended their land for millennia were somehow ignorant? How would “quietist,” nonviolent Sufis have survived in a violent world to begin with, a world in which there was no separation of religion and politics? Yet they did survive and even founded Sufi orders dedicated to anti-imperialism. By saying that these Sufis were ignorant of their faith, you are effectively pronouncing takfir on them, calling them ignorant unbelievers who were defying their own faith. If they were violating their own faith, why did so many Sufis assume the leadership of and serve as the driving impulse behind violent as well as nonviolent anti-imperialist movements? I’m sorry, but if Sufism were intrinsically a pacifist faith, Sufism wouldn’t even have lasted as long as it has. After all, from its very incipience Sufism has faced armed opposition, given its inherent, ascetic opposition to the lifestyle of the powers that be. Even a nonviolent Sufi’s message would have been subversive to the ruling elite, given Sufism’s ascetic content. Only armed Sufi believers could have lasted for millennia, defying the various political establishments. I think you have come under the influence of Western propaganda about Sufism. The same West also likes to claim that Buddhism is inherently pacifist, yet there are manifold historical records of armed Buddhist sects, many of whom not only defended themselves against non-Buddhist rivals, but also fought among themselves. The same goes for armed Hindu sects. “These participating Sufi groups have gone against original teachings of Sufism...” Try telling that to the Chechens. Just find a time-machine and visit their forefathers. Given the Chechen code of honour you probably would have been lucky to come back alive. Honestly, your mentality sounds like a Wahhabi’s: daring to lecture other Muslims about their supposed “ignorance” and unbelief—Muslims who have actually fought imperialism for centuries, if longer. The irony is that the Wahhabis spent much of their time in Chechnya lecturing Sufi warriors about their supposed “infidelity” and telling them to adopt Wahhabi-style sharia instead of the Sufi adat. You’re a Shia, a member of a persecuted minority: you should be above this mentality. Yet here you’re telling anti-imperialist Sufis that they abandoned Sufism’s nonviolent basis.

@Ashvazdanghe Those two classes, as you yourself conceded, did not arise within Christianity until the advent of the Renaissance. It was not rare at all between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Renaissance.

@Ashvazdanghe This may be true in the West, but is not reflective of Sufism in general. In fact, Sufis were historically just as involved as other Muslims in politics, including violent, anti-imperialist resistance. For example, ‘Abd al-Qadir of the Sufi Qadiriyya was and is famed for leading a massive anti-colonial resistance to the French in Algeria, while the Sufi Sanussi order also spawned aggressive resistance to the Italian colonialists in Libya. The Muridiya Sufi order in West Africa also played an influential role in anti-colonial politics. During the nineteenth century, in fact, Sufis often played one of the leading roles in armed anti-colonial projects. One must also not forget the centuries-old historical resistance of the Sufi-majority Caucasian Muslims, above all the Chechens, to Russian imperialism, among other examples. Your perspective of Sufism only takes into account the “domesticated” varieties that the West has sponsored to shepherd Sufism into quietism, setting the latter up for slaughter by the better-financed-and-armed Wahhabi–Salafi forces.

@Lion of Shia Not only do the Wahhabi–Salafi forces—those of the Muslim Brotherhood inclusive—control Sunni mosques in the West, but they also are supported by the highest political echelons. This truth brings me to a more contentious argument: that the so-called “war on Islam” does not really exist as such. There is no war on Islam-as-Islam. The war is actually a war on Shia Islam, but not Sunni Islam; on the contrary, it is a Zionist-sponsored, Western-fronted, Anglo-Saxon-led war exclusively on Shia Islam and for Sunni Islam, and always has been. In fact, the Zionist elites in the West support Sunni Islam not just against Shias, but also against all other, non-Zionist religious groups, and also against the native people of the West. It is the Sunni masses and their Zionist-controlled Wahhabi–Salafi leaders who enthusiastically live in and endorse the West vs. Shia Islam and non-Sunni, non-Zionist groups in general. The Western elite, which is Zionist-dominated, also actively and passively supports Sunni terrorist attacks on Western peoples, especially Christians, as well as on the aforementioned targeted groups. The Zionists and Sunnis hold particular animus toward Christians, especially Eastern (non-Latin) ones, and “pagans,” while living in mortal fear of an alliance among Christians, Shias, and other minorities such as Sufis, Buddhists, Hindus, and so on. The Eastern, or Orthodox, Christians are especially feared because they never participated in the Latin Crusades and have always been closest to the Shias and the true followers of Jesus, both in religious practice and geographical proximity. These Christians’ historical sponsors, above all the Russians, have been despised by the Latin West and its allies as such. The Zionists and Sunnis have always been the Latin West’s staunchest imperial allies, and continue to be. The Zionist-run British Empire consistently favoured Sunni powers such as the Sunni Ottomans, and later the Wahhabi Saudis, against rivals. In British-ruled India the Raj always favoured the Sunni-majority population over other religious groups. When the imperial project was threatened by anti-colonialism, the Zionist-controlled British elite sought to promote Sunni extremism against Hindu-majority India and employed their puppet Jinnah to create Pakistan. As the preceding article relates: Talking about a supposed “war on Islam” is convenient for the powers that be by obscuring the actual dynamics at work. Virtually all Sunni heads of state since the rise of Europe as a global player have ultimately turned out to be Western and Zionist puppets. Yet their subjects have often followed along enthusiastically, using pan-Islam(-ism) as a tool to lure an unsuspecting Shia Iran into “helping” groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which eventually turn their newfound expertise against their Shia and other foes. Unsurprisingly, the Sunnis also seek to turn Shias against Christians by siding with the liberal, Zionist-controlled Western elite against “racist” white Christians, demanding open borders that allow Wahhabi–Salafi-infected Sunni majorities to take over the Muslim communities in the West. This divide-and-rule policy ends up exterminating both Christians and Shias, along with all non-Sunni, non-Zionist groups in general, and is succeeding tremendously. In practice Shias have much more in common with Christians and other non-Sunni religious minorities than with most Sunnis, who easily tend toward chauvinism, typically mouth Wahhabi–Salafi propaganda, and are too invested in the West and Zionism to be anti-imperialist. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so at ease doing business and dawah in the West...

@Ashvazdanghe This is really a caricature of medieval Christendom. After all, the medieval clergy were not merely idle, but played a vital role in contemporary scholarship, while the nobility fulfilled their feudal dues by protecting the realm, the peasantry worked the lords’ land, and so on. The medieval order would have collapsed if its ascetic ethos were based on idleness. In fact the manorial system was quite productive, even if its products, both material and social, were mostly not exported onto international markets. Your argument applies the same kind of reasoning that elites in developed market economies use to look down upon underdeveloped, “uncivilised” societies, e.g., those of the so-called Third World. I think your view may be inadvertently informed by the anti-Christian propaganda that emanates from Zionist sources. A lot of Zionists look down on anyone who is not involved in white-collar work such as banking, trade, and so on. Today there is a large Muslim, predominantly Sunni, middle class that tends to ally itself with Zionists vs. lower-class Christians and other minorities. Here in the West, for instance, the Sunni elites constantly ally with the Zionists in demonising blue-collar Christians as “racists,” “deplorable,” and so on. There is a lot of reverse discrimination going on on the West, and it largely involves Zionists and Sunni Muslims allying against the native population. I know from experience. Personally, I think society would be better off if nonessential, parasitical, usurious classes such as bankers, merchants, retailers, the white-collar intelligentsia, and so on did not exist. All the ills associated with liberalism would have never arose if these elements did not have a role to play in society, much less amass the money needed to control society. All the people who promote LBGTQ+I, extreme feminism, and so on arose in these idle classes. They never worked an honest day in their lives; they are all wealthy, or allied to or supported by the wealthy; and are ultimately tied to finance. It would be better if only essential, self-sufficient classes such as clergy, warriors (nobility), and farmers existed, providing needed services to society, without parasitism, idleness, or usury.

@Silas To be frank, I think that you may be just as guilty of this as I may be. I shall return to this later. I’m not so sure that this is correct. Ideology is defined as a system of ideas and ideals, and can be further considered a set of beliefs in general. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with underlying first principles (of being). Philosophically, an idea deals with a primordial, eternal pattern of being, and does not arise out of nothingness. So metaphysics seems to be an ideology of being. Metaphysics, like everything else, is fundamentally based on certain ideas. So even though ideology is not everything in Islam, Islam itself is based on an ideology of metaphysics. I can certainly agree with this. But I was not arguing for Marxism in and of itself per se—certainly not its anti-religious aspect or thrust. My argumentation also revolved around economics and the type of economic system that a religious, hence metaphysical, telos (aim) would adopt or accommodate, given that metaphysics is all-encompassing, dealing with the very ground or foundation of being, of a (lived) way of life. Metaphysics deals with the Idea of ideas, the eternal Reality of Being. Ideologies are ultimately based on ideas, the ultimate Ideology on the Idea of ideas. In that sense I think Islam is an ideology of ideologies, a complete system, that deals first and foremost with the Idea of ideas, which is metaphysical, from which all else flows, not excluding the mundane aspects of life and society. If this is the case, then, your bolded statement can certainly be rephrased to apply to a socialistic or anti-market economy: “the absence of a market in socialism or feudalism is not the problem, but the people running the economy.” So if that is the case, if one society chooses the market, another socialism, and a third feudalism, what makes one of these systems superior? After all, if the morality of individual humans is the real problem, and people can be religious under different economic systems, why should one be compelled to choose the market over a non-market economy, or vice versa? Was the medieval Church Godless because it operated within a non-capitalist socioeconomic order, feudalism? Also, I would be very interested in hearing your response to the crux of my argument, which you seemingly avoided: Every activity has an ethos (dispositive spirit or drive) behind it. A spirit or drive is based on something that goes beyond mere reasoning, and in fact precedes the latter. Even the use of reason is ultimately based on emotion, for the latter explains “why” humans apply reasoning. So there is a moral, metaphysical component behind every action, and every action ultimately forms a coherent whole that makes up a system.

@Silas Well, Islam, like religion in general, is fundamentally ideological. It is, among other things, an ideological principle in and of itself. When applied systematically, it is an ideology of ideologies, conditioning all other ideologies. Moreover, Islam, like religion in general, is all-encompassing, so it certainly encompasses the economic sphere, in addition to all other spheres. The problem with your argument is that every system is ultimately based on an ideological premise or foundation. Also, people need an ideology in order to live and thrive. Idealism motivates some of man’s highest spiritual ideals. (Of course, it can also motivate some of his worst, but one still needs idealism to live a good, spiritual life. The fact that idealism has also produced totalitarianism is no excuse to forego it.) This is true, but I don’t see your point. It is simply impossible to become totally anti-ideological. As mentioned previously, religion, being a way of life, is also ideological. I disagree with this. Those “markets and trinkets” have an underlying ethos that conditions human behaviour. A medieval economic system, or feudalism, has different values from those of a modern capitalist economy. The values of the medieval Church took on a distinctive form in practice, owing to the socioeconomic conditions that prevailed at the time. The Church in the age of capitalism also adapted itself to the new conditions, as the historical example of Protestantism illustrates. The medieval ban on usury evaporated as soon as capitalism arose in the Renaissance, for instance. Also, if “markets and trinkets” truly are irrelevant, then I suppose that you would be equally okay with a socialist economy as a market-based one, right, so long as religion is respected as well? This comes dangerously close to legitimising the practices of wealthy groupings such as the Rockefeller dynasty, Klaus Schwab, et al. After all, if these elites are “charitable,” there is no grounds for coercive means to oppose globalist institutions such as the WEF, which of course are backed by the moneyed elite, including the financial. The elites of the WEF probably appreciate this kind of mindset, because a person who discards the role of class probably will not oppose the system that benefits the elites behind the WEF and its ilk. I’m not in favour of a particular economic system per se, but I am opposed to any system that creates a parasitical, idle class of intellectuals, bankers, and merchants who engage in social engineering on behalf of their class’s elitist, globalist self-interest. If Klaus Schwab, for instance, were forced to work as a simple farmer, artisan, or productive labourer, he wouldn’t be engaged in the shenanigans that he is. If there are good bankers and merchants out there, I would certainly like to meet them, because money is power and the global power-structure is certainly opposed to the average man. It isn’t the government that opposes big capital, it is big capital that uses government to oppress the masses. Capital is being used as a means to impose harmful agendas such as depopulation, LBGTQ+I, extreme feminism, outsourcing, neoliberal economics, and so on. It is responsible for everything that the authentic Right and Left justly oppose, both in the social and economic spheres. I am simply opposed to this current system. @Ashvazdanghe Well, that’s precisely my point. They live very simple, austere lifestyles and are not “stingy” about spending their wealth on behalf of others. Probably this kind of mindset would also be opposed to profiteering in general. After all, why not use one’s wealth to provide free religious education and housing on behalf of the Islamic community? Thinking like a businessman tends to make people stingy and reluctant to invest in “unprofitable” activities. Unlike some people here, I am simply objecting to the mindset that implicitly presumes greater virtue on behalf of the banker, merchant, or industrialist than the farmer, artisan, or labourer. This is the same kind of mindset that idle, middle-class, university-educated intellectuals employ to look down upon so-called “deplorable” blue-collar workers such as those who refused to support Soros-backed Democrats. The same kind of mindset also presumes that the wealthy should not be “forced” to do the right thing, but only asked to contribute “voluntarily.” Personally, I am not in favour of taxing the wealthy, because the tax-codes will always favour the wealthy elites, while shifting the burden of taxation onto the lower classes. I am interested in more fundamental changes.

@Haji 2003 This definitely relates to my arguments about concentration of wealth, if not capitalism in general, in this thread. Beyond abolishing usury and other destructive practices, I think that humans need to devise an alternative socioeconomic order, one that precludes the rise of economic elites that can control society through, among other things, groups and/or institutions such as the WEF, well-connected political parties, and so on. Capital is being placed above and beyond the welfare of society. @Dubilex, you might be interested in reading the following: @Ashvazdanghe This definitely seems to go against the asceticism of the Imams and Prophets in general, as well as the sentiments of, among others, Imam Khomeini: Obviously Islam, and religion generally, does not want people to be totally deprived of sustenance, lest they be forced to steal; but at the same time it clearly argues against wantonness and accumulation in general, beyond the basic constituents that help man subsist and procreate, that is, food, shelter/clothing, and marriage. I think that man should strive for the basics, but not necessarily more: he should shun living beyond his needs as well as his means, thereby controlling his desires/lusts. Hence “neither poverty (=absolute destitution) nor riches.” My viewpoint is that man should strive to live a Spartan, self-sufficient, spiritual lifestyle, and outline this kind of vision for society. Societies tend to become morally corrupt and effeminate as soon as they become wealthy and prosperous.

^ Going back to this: it is surreal to see Western governments and institutions publicly pretend that they have no ability to influence the Taliban. This serves as a convenient excuse to whitewash the Taliban’s record and “engage” with them on ostensibly “humanitarian” grounds. Already the West has given the Taliban many billions in aid through “humanitarian” channels since the fall of Kabul in 2021. It is also clear that the Taliban allow groups such as Daesh (ISIS) to operate freely in Afghanistan and only pretend to oppose them. Recently Russia notified that Taliban that thousands of Daesh militants are present near the Afghan–Tajik border, yet the Taliban claimed that those militants supposedly do not exist. Meanwhile the Taliban have allowed Daesh to target Shia Hazara and other minorities in Afghanistan, along with Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Indian interests. Obviously all this serves the West’s Great Game in the region vis-à-vis the Taliban’s regional sponsors, e.g., the GCC (=Pakistan) and Israel. The “new” Taliban are the same as the pre-9/11 Taliban: a terroristic, sectarian, globalist battering-ram on behalf of imperialism. So, again, the West is preferring the religious bigots over the pluralist secularists in the Sunni-majority ummah. The West obviously has the power to install and remove dictatorships on a whim, yet for some reason it is consistently refusing to install secularist dictatorships for the most part, preferring the Sunni-Islamist nexus. Certainly, there have been some notable exceptions to this trend: in North Africa, for instance, the West has been sponsoring secularist strongmen such as Egypt’s Sisi, Tunisia’s Saied, and General Khalifa Haftar in Libya. Elsewhere, however, the West has clearly preferred the Wahhabi–Salafi militants and their allies, be they Turkey’s Erdoğan, Azerbaijan’s pseudo-secularist Aliyev, the petrodollar monarchies (the KSA, Qatar, Bahrain, et al.), and so on. Furthermore, the most fertile demographics are also witnessing the greatest Wahhabi–Salafi propagation. The urban areas have lower fertility rates than the rural to begin with. So the fact that the West is spreading Wahhabi–Salafi ideology in the rural areas makes a bigger long-term difference than short-term secular-liberal PR projects in the cities. Liberalism appears to be cosmetic at best. I see that most respondents—eight out of nine—voted for “liberalism.” Where’s the evidence that liberalism is growing in rural, fertile Sunni areas?

The surreal aspect about all this is that right-wing “Christian”-Zionist figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) have been calling Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, et al. radical Muslims and terrorists, even though the latter are only token “Muslims” at best, if at all, and are mere figureheads for the DNC’s “appeal” to minority-based ID politics. (In this case the DNC is conflating religion with race and/or ethnicity. “Blackness” and “brownness” are believed to count more for votes than piety.) So we have nontraditional “Christian” politicians on the right calling “Muslims”-in-name-only potential or actual subversives who want to install “sharia” in the U.S. Then again, having women openly getting involved in politics isn’t a traditionalist-Christian practice either, yet that doesn’t stop “conservative ‘Christian’” women such as MTG from running for office. Bottom line: if you’re looking for genuinely spiritual values, especially in the West, don’t try politics.

To add to this, I must also say that I respect @Dubilex’s positions on a number of other matters. For instance, I do appreciate his strong stance against liberal “woke” ideology and willingness to engage in self-criticism. A lot of Muslims simply fall into the liberal “woke” ID trap by viewing themselves solely as victims of evil white Westerners, thus becoming prey for the “woke” liberal globalists who sponsor BLM, ANTIFA, LBGTQ+I, etc. Sunni Islamists in particular often succumb to this, but so do some Shia Muslims. This allows bad actors such as globalist Zionists to manipulate Muslims’ consciousness like putty. In a way by focussing more on economic factors such as class I am pushing back against the racial, feminist, sodomite, and related ID nonsense. If there must be an economic “left,” an economic left that is focussed solely on economics is preferable. Despite everything, I still believe that Trump was in some ways a far better president for Muslims than Biden: more honest and largely free of corrosive liberalism. Sadly a lot of pro-Iranian sources, especially in the “reformist” camp, clearly shilled for Biden and the DNC, so that Iran could reenter the JCPOA and then quietly capitulate to the globalist faction. In a perverse way, like a blessing in disguise, Trump actually did Iran a big service by killing General Soleimani, because he weakened the position of the pro-Western reformists, and allowed anti-globalist hardliners to come to power. The liberals in Iran were discredited as a result. In fact I think Trump himself wanted to assassinate General Soleimani simply in order to get rid of his own neocon Zionists (RINOs), who more often than not were allied with liberal Democrats vs. Trump’s nationalist MAGA agenda. More than anyone else Trump helped free both his country and others from total globalist/NWO control, however temporarily. That’s why the neocon Zionists and liberal globalists have united against him.

@Dubilex The following definitely seems to apply to you: ↓ You don’t engage with the argument, just respond with irrelevant comments about “gaslighting” and “mental gymnastics.” You haven’t disproven anything. Anti-capitalism is far more than just Marxism. It is quite possible to be anti-capitalist and religious at the same time. Was the medieval Church capitalist? My argument is not for Marxism per se, but for feudalism, which was similar to many aspects of Marxism except for the fact that it was religious. Also, what about slavery? Islam permits slavery, and slavery is clearly not capitalist, in that slaves do not own property.

@Dubilex The problem with this assertion is that it is yet to define “socialism.” I am referring principally to economics. In general, anti-capitalist, in essence medieval, thought predates Marx, going back to the Bible (cf. Isaiah 23, among other anti-mercantile passages) and its successor, the Qur’ān. One can even find its legacy in the writings of ancient authors such as Aristotle. Anti-capitalism is fundamentally teleological or “pre-Darwinian”: phenomena are said to serve specific, defined purposes. For example, shoes are made to be worn, food to be consumed, etc., not bought and sold for profit. Profit was a form of parasitism because it was not directly linked to purposeful labour. Under feudalism profit and usury were closely linked, so investors such as financiers and their dependents, e.g., merchants, were not recognisable as forming an estate, unlike the nobility, clergy, and peasantry. Wealth was tied to land ownership, e.g., manorialism and self-sufficiency, rather than manufacturing or banking. It is significant that Imam Khomeini’s biggest supporters were among the urban poor and rural landowners, not the wealthy merchants, bankers, and industrialists (bourgeoisie) who supported the Shah. According to Ervand Abrahamian’s Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Imam Khomeini even mentioned that neither Prophet Muhammad nor Imam Ali was wealthy, and that the Shia clergy had historically lived as the commoners did and did not accumulate wealth (pp. 31–32). Islam opposes atheism, but is not opposed to anti-capitalism per se.

@Dubilex It doesn’t help matters that the capitalist West has muddied the waters by spreading distortions and/or outright falsehoods about communist and/or socialist states. If the reality were as horrible as alleged, there would be no reason for the West to add fabrications, rather than let the horrors speak for themselves. For example, to this day the anti-Russian, pro-NATO Ukrainian fascists continue to disseminate 1930s-era propaganda about the so-called Holodomor, in which Stalin supposedly attempted to commit genocide vs. the Ukrainian people by starving them to death, even though works such as Douglas Tottle’s Fraud, Famine and Fascism (Toronto: Progress Books, 1987) have shown that photographic and anecdotal “evidence” was actually fabricated by the West and its fascist allies at the time. @AbdusSibtayn has even mentioned this elsewhere on this forum. Even internal CIA documents acknowledge that many, if not most, of the GULAG prisoners under Stalin were actually petty criminals rather than political prisoners. The phrase “former criminals” is used in the CIA’s documents themselves to refer to 95% of the prisoners. Also, cases in which prisoners were transferred between camps are erroneously counted in Western sources as releases due to near-death status. Also, the release of the Soviet archives since 1989–91 has conclusively demonstrated that Western estimates of prisoners and mortality in the GULAG were significantly inflated. Again, if Stalin’s GULAG were so genocidal, then logically there shouldn’t have existed the need to inflate statistics. Unsurprisingly, pro-Zionist, anti-Muslim fascists such as Jordan Peterson have also acted as anticommunist shills, often recycling the same hackneyed narratives about Muslims in reference to communists. Just replace Stalin or Mao with Hassan Nasrallah and you’ll see the same basic formulations being applied to the designated Enemy, the Other. The underlying premise is the same: it is necessary to turn entire nations into literal wastelands, should they choose the “wrong” option by supporting communists, Islamic fundamentalists, or anyone else who opposes the capitalist-run West’s agenda(s). Even former CIA operatives admit, for instance, that the vast majority of Cubans in 1961 supported Fidel Castro’s efforts to expropriate foreign capitalist assets in Cuba, eliminate the Batista-era comprador system, and secure national sovereignty. Let me cite the words of E. Howard Hunt, who was actually involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion: “I stayed three or four days in Havana...and all I could find was a lot of enthusiasm for Fidel Castro.” This is the assessment of a hardcore anticommunist CIA officer who was actually in Cuba in the early 1960s and was involved in American attempts to overthrow and even assassinate Castro. So in your viewpoint if the majority of Cubans, Vietnamese, Russians, Venezuelans, et al. end up supporting a socialistic economic regime, their nations should be systematically destabilised and ravaged by the capitalist West? Or they are simply ignorant “natives” who need to be taught a lesson in “democracy,” just like the “impudent” revolutionary Iranians who deposed the Shah in 1979? Here’s a quotation from Winston Churchill, who played a major role in the West’s covert—and not-so-covert—attempt to overthrow Soviet Russia in 1917–21: (Translated from the Russian via Google Translate) Bear in mind that the “they” refers to the principal Allied Powers of the First World War—the U.S., U.K., White Russia, France, Italy, and Japan, including their colonial dependencies. All these powers “ardently sought the fall of the Soviet government and made plans for its fall.” Churchill does not mince words. Basically the Reds were facing a full-scale war imposed on virtually all fronts, backed by the enormous resources of the most powerful empires on the planet. This does not even account for the fact that the Central Powers, notably Imperial Germany, were just as hostile to the Reds as the Allies: in March 1918 the Germans forced the Bolsheviks to cede their most valuable industrial and agricultural assets to the Central Powers, in the vital Caucasian and Ukrainian regions. Up until the Armistice of November the Reds also had to face the massive influx of pro-Entente counterrevolutionary forces as well. Yet we are to believe that the Reds were and are tools of the big bankers and industrialists. Well, my advice to you is: take up your claims with Churchill. Prior to World War I the Rothschild dynasty exercised near-total control over Western finance and hence the levers of power. If they or their ilk were behind Bolshevism, Churchill, being an arch-Zionist, would have known. But of course, it was the Reds themselves who provoked the West by overthrowing the Provisional Government of Russia in October 1917! They must be to blame! The fact that the Red Terror was itself a response to Western intervention—that the institution of the Terror in August 1918 was preceded by a massive influx of Western aid to armed counterrevolutionaries—is rarely, if ever, emphasised. The record in fact discloses that the capitalist side provoked the civil war in Russia, that the Reds would have prevailed on their own if not for massive foreign assistance to the Czarist Whites, who had many more officers than men in their ranks. After all, that is why the Whites relied on foreign rather than domestic support. (Incidentally, the exact same scenario has taken place in Syria since 2011: if not for astronomical external support, the anti-Assad forces would have long ceased to exist.) In March the Allied or Entente Powers landed a force at Murmansk, in response to the Bolsheviks’ signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: therefore the intervention was from the outset a hostile act. From this point onward the Allies earnestly bolstered all anti-Soviet forces throughout Russia, using the Bolsheviks’ “peace” with the Central Powers as an excuse—even though Allied interference in Russia continued to accelerate following the Armistice of November 1918. In fact the Whites’ counteroffensives peaked in 1919, culminating in the failed marches on Moscow and Petrograd. You have clichés on your side. I have actual, historical, verifiable, documentary evidence.

@Ashvazdanghe @Activate your inner truth According to this source, both Sputnik and Sinopharm contain graphene oxide and/or other harmful ingredients, just like Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and so on. Iran has ordered and used both Sputnik and Sinopharm, so the Iranian government is complicit, just like those of Russia and China. If Iran’s domestic vaccine contains foreign ingredients it would be the same as the aforementioned. But unfortunately Iran has allowed its citizens access to the Sputnik and Sinopharm Trojan horses. Maybe the Supreme Leader isn’t involved, but certainly the civilian reformists are. @Dubilex, do you know why part of the traditionalist, non-Muslim right gets drawn toward anti-Muslim crusades rather than alliance with Muslims vs. globalists?

@Dubilex Your response is rather curt and doesn’t exactly address any of the sources that I cited. You are the same person who said the following about Iran: “The biggest threat to the stability of the Middle East are the Ayatollahs of Iran” and the Supreme Leader of Iran = NATO puppet Erdoğan And your many posts regurgitating Western propaganda about Uighur camps, sterilisation, and organ harvesting in China, well... Trust me, I’ve read sources on all sides and am familiar with the various arguments. I think I may be able to discern yours, which isn’t in the least unfamiliar: Feudalism, capitalism, and communism are sequential stages in a continuum, part of a singular, long-term, conspiratorial project This project has been run by the Illuminati bloodlines since the days of the Roman Empire and is based on solar-cultic Satanism The main feature of all these ideologies is that they are anti-Islamic and Satanic in nature, communism being the ultimate goal ^ Incidentally, I think that the above scheme is far more plausible than the notion that Iran = Turkey and that China is committing Uighur genocide. Your claim that capitalism is meant to lead to communism does raise a point about the Marxist worldview, though it does also echo the Nazi allegation that a secret group, allegedly Jews and/or Zionists, controls both capitalism and communism. The big difference is that you are pointing out the atheistic and/or Satanic aspect of communism, or at least Marxism, while the Nazis alleged that communism was just a Talmudic (Orthodox-Jewish) project to spread atheism and degeneracy among non-Jews, while allowing Jews to steal the private property and wealth of non-Jews, allowing the Jewish Messiah to return and rule the NWO. To be fair, I could be totally wrong and you correct about Marxism/communism, but I too, like everyone else, have to “read between the lines“ of available sources on all sides, knowing that the elites have always censored and controlled the flow of information, regardless of subject. I know all about the alleged links among Marx, the Rothschilds, and the Zionists, as well as the notion that the Cold War and all the anticommunist coups etc. were/are staged PSYOPs, while communism is the ultimate goal of the NWO elite. All this could be true, but again, I have to weigh the balance of evidence on all sides. And for the record, it should be noted that Iran since the Revolution has generally had far closer ties with the “communist/atheist”-leaning Third World, including countries such as China, Venezuela, Cuba, etc., than it has had with the “capitalist/religious” U.S., Britain, apartheid-era South Africa, and so on. Yes, the Soviets were among Saddam’s biggest supporters, besides the U.S., but even then Imam Khomeini called the U.S. the Great Satan and Israel the lesser Satan. (Sometimes I think he referred to the Soviets as a Satan too, but lesser than that of the Americans.) Neither East nor West, but a bit closer to the East. Of course, none of this means that Iran has seen “eye to eye” with the Third-World socialist/communist/nationalist ideologues—e.g., Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro—on all matters. But I think it is clear that Iran has been generally aligned with the Third World vs. the West on a variety of shared, often tactical, interests. Iran is a big supporter of Venezuela, both diplomatically and economically, and receives benefits such as oil in return. Iran also has favoured Russian and Chinese positions vs. those of NATO on Ukraine, Syria, the Uighur issue, and so on. Anyway, some information about the latest coup: Source

@Abu Nur @علوي @Haji 2003 ^ To follow up on this: Russian nationalists are claiming that the SMO is on the verge of defeat and that Putin needs to quickly retrain and amass large conventional forces in order to stymie the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive. Local officials, along with guests on Russian media, are openly declaring that the SMO is failing to achieve its declared aim(s) and that Ukraine has successfully rearmed. Again, I must reiterate: these are not pro-NATO figures, but Russian patriots. They think that Russia will be defeated in Ukraine and Putin will be removed from power.

@Abu Hadi I greatly appreciate your thoughtful, detailed response. A few points of mine: My response to this: there are plenty of religious people who are productive, contribute to their respective societies, and do their best to follow the Golden Rule, but from a monotheistic perspective their beliefs may not necessarily be true. When I formerly resided in the U.S.—the Southeast, to be exact—or the “Northwestern” quadrant of the globe, I knew my share of Trinitarian Christians who were certainly satisfied and stable people, but their religious rituals and dogmas may or may not have been true. Nevertheless, they felt that their religion addressed their deepest spiritual needs, along with their subjective desires, experiences, upbringing, and so on. In like manner, I too feel an inner, “religious“ need for a spiritual grounding on which to base my life. But an organised religion naturally tends to discourage its adherents from critically examining its tenets. For example, Trinitarian Christianity uses revelation as a pretext to suppress the application of reason, claiming that certain doctrines cannot be rationally understood by limited creatures. To a lesser degree, as far as I can see, the same basic limitation also exists in Islam and Judaism. So I question whether it is reasonable for any of the three Abrahamic faiths to claim that one or the other is deficient or false, or to make a similar claim about non-Abrahamic faiths. For example, plenty of Trinitarian Christians secretly harbour doubts about the Trinity, but their belief-system regards unitarianism as heresy and blasphemy. So the fear of Hellfire prevents the Trinitarians from following their inner doubts and adhering to strict logic. This aspect of organised religion, and how it has been abused throughout history, is more than enough for one to be wary of organised religion. The use of fear to suppress independent inquiry and logic also explains why Trinitarian Christians are discouraged from seeking sources outside their tradition, so they are not allowed to critically examine the Trinity by relying on Islamic or Jewish sources. In relation to this, I must refer to an earlier quote of yours: I have a big problem with this generalisation. It exemplifies Pascal’s wager and relies on fear. My problem with this line of reasoning is that it mirrors the Trinitarians’: if the Trinity is true, then by denying the Trinity you will have mocked God, be damned, etc. You can’t use this same line of reasoning to credibly argue against the Trinitarians. This is where I have trouble with organised religion: the reliance on fear as a mode of argumentation. As mentioned previously, it is also inconsistent, in that the Trinitarians employ the same paradigm. As I mentioned, I identify most closely with a form of Deism that is also unitarian, in that it views the Creator as One rather than a Multiplicity, e.g., Trinity. I am a little confused here. You yourself stated that, based on our surroundings, we can conclude that the Creator established this realm so that we may be successful, not just in a spiritual sense, but also in a material. Obviously, practical success in this world involves activities such as seeking out jobs, internships, relationships, locations, and so on. All this involves movement, even if one does so as a practicing religious believer. But you also mention that all this movement is usually not so good for society, though it helps the economy. As a believing (Shia) Muslim, what kind of economic order or level of movement do you envision, besides obvious solutions such as banning riba, speculation, intoxicants, and so on? I am actually somewhat in agreement here. But as mentioned, the proverbial Devil is in the details, e.g., the interpretation of the Divine Revelation, which varies within and among the three branches of Abrahamic monotheism, to not mention within and among other faiths. (To be clear, I wish to clarify that I am far closer to the first of your two conclusions than the second; otherwise, I would not be here today, for life would have been meaningless from the start.) @Son of Placid This returns me to my original question: why is it so hard for some believers to let go of illogical beliefs such as the Trinity? Even in the face of damnation, can’t the Trinitarians be more willing to follow their individual judgment instead of the preachers’ or scholars’? If not for the fear of Hellfire and/or social ostracism, many Trinitarians would have become unitarians by now, if not much earlier in history. The fact that the religious Establishment in Christendom, until recently, used political power to persecute and even execute unitarians (e.g., Arius) makes me very critical of organised religion and religious establishments in general. Also, if one looks at the history, one cannot blame emperors such as Constantine for enforcing Trinitarianism at the point of a sword. In many cases it was the clerics who held more political power than the emperors and even pressured them to persecute people such as Arius, the Jews, the Muslims, etc. In the Middle Ages, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance, the Church was typically stronger than the secular power, and it enforced Trinitarianism upon the secular arm. Centralised nation-states did not exist during the Middle Ages, given the prevalence of feudalism.

According to Jewish tradition, Gentiles were not obligated to follow the full Torah, but only the Seven Laws of Noah. There was a debate among Jewish Christians as to whether the full Torah should be enjoined on the Gentiles instead of the Seven Laws. Paul seemed to believe that only the Seven Laws were required of Gentiles, and that Jesus’ death, signified by the destruction of the Temple, abolished the need for animal sacrifices at the appointed time(s). I think the “curse” of the Law refers to the punishment that the Law brings upon a sinner, rather than the Law itself. Paul was referring to the fact that the Law in and of itself does not necessarily purify the heart. Jesus’ example spiritually purifies the heart of the sinner by making the Law concrete, by embodying the inner meaning of the Law. In Matthew 23:2–3 Jesus first bids his disciples to observe the Law as mandated by the scribes and Pharisees, but then upbraids the Jewish authorities (v. 23) for neglecting “judgment, mercy, and faith,” the “weightier matters” of the Law. The scribes and Pharisees are said to appear righteous for show (v. 4) while being inwardly impure (v. 28). This also explains why Jesus in Matthew 5:18–20 avers that the disciples must be spiritually purer than the Jewish authorities in order to merit the Kingdom of Heaven, in addition to following the “legalistic” aspects of the Torah. See above. If following the Law purifies the heart, why have the Orthodox Jews, who are much more legalistically observant than Christians, mostly rejected Jesus?