What Choice You Have ?

In the “Technique of the Coup de Banque”, Shaykh Abdal Qadir As-Sufi also wrote:

“In the new world model of the Democratic State its citizen, clutching his Lottery ticket and seated before his interactive television set, flicking through two hundred channels in order to participate in life by interrupting the football match he views by re-running some excellent goal, may in the back of his mind have a darkening thought—that his political choice has now been reduced to choosing his Lottery number and his TV channel. It is to this that the great Enlightenment has brought the diminishing world of the Democrat. What will guarantee his inability to turn off his TV and start to ask the vital questions which might begin a liberating train of thought, for he is already far from rushing into the streets to demonstrate like is grandfather, is that he is already beset with deep financial anxiety“

He does not understand the economic and psychological oppression that has been put on him. The only oppression that he knew was coming out from that brand new TV, flashing images of crying women and children of Iraq and Afghanistan.  As long as he gets his monthly pay check, his life and his family is fine. All he needs to do is to transfer a sum of money to the charities on television and he feels he has done a small part to restore his humanity.

“The horror of this modern age is not the annihilation of millions in Nazi Death Camps and Stalin’s Gulags, nor is the obliteration of a whole society in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not the slaughter and torture of the innocents. The horror of this age is the somnambulistic helplessness of the masses to ACT in order to stop the global holocaust. It is this unarguable condition of mankind which permits us to define the technic society as a psychosis.” [Ian Dallas, The Interim Is Mine]

The fact that we do not even want to spend some time to ponder on these events is proof itself that we are suffering from the deepest forms of financial anxiety. To ponder and try to change the circumstances around us will cause us to waste precious time or waste our annual leave or even lose our jobs. Among our own circles of friends we would sigh and complain about the dire state of affairs but that is as far as we can go. Because to ACT is to make a sacrifice we cannot logically comprehend. “They are too powerful so we just have to follow along,” we say. “We must be practical,” we say. “How are we going to sustain our family if we lose our jobs?” Sooner or later this hypocrisy will consume us.

Allah mentions in the Quran in Surah Taha verse 132:

“And bid your family to prayer, and be steadfast in [the maintenance of] it. We do not ask of you, We [do not] charge you with [the procurement of], any provision, [either] for yourself or for anyone else. We [it is Who] provide you, and the [best] sequel, Paradise, will be in favour of God-fearing, for such people.”

To believe that Allah is Ar-Razzaq is a vital part of our iman. We must re-establish this in our hearts if we have fallen short. Only after we have affirmed ourselves, then alone will we see that we are able get up from our couches and begin to ask a series of questions as Shaykh Abdal Qadir As-Sufi mentioned, “start to ask the vital questions which might begin a liberating train of thought.”

And we will not stop there. We will start to act and find ways to change our surroundings from any oppression that is put on us. The establishment of Muamalat is the way to remove the oppression that has befallen mankind. But first and foremost, we must remove this financial anxiety, this psychological oppression that is mentally infiltrated from a young age.

“The moment your rizq (sustenance) stops, is when you die.  So why worry about your rizq?”
- Shaykh Ghazali al-munawar-