I generally don’t talk about people. And I generally don’t comment on current events. I mostly limit myself to talking about Allah and His Deen. And to making the wonderful teachings and principles of the Qur’ān and Hadith come alive to the new era in which we live. Especially to those whose primary language is English – in the West and in all parts of the world.
So, I have generally no interest in talking about this or that event in some part of the world or about this or that individual who may or may not be up to something good or no good.
Unless, of course, these events and individuals symbolise larger underlying principles or fundamental teachings of Islam, in which case I am left with no option but to address those events and talk about those individuals.
Thus, Pharaoh to me was a model – an idealised representation if you will – of corruption and arrogance, just as Karbala and the killing of Husain by King Yazid and his Muslim soldiers to me was a turning point in the history of the nascent democratic movement that was sweeping the world, starting from Makkah and Madinah.
The brutal killing of Husain at Karbala, today’s Iraq, set back the global movement for the Government of the People by the People, that Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, had set in motion, by a thousand years.
Not till Enlightenment Europe hummed and hawed its way to it, and America actually discovered and embraced it in the late 1800s, was this movement able to reassert itself in the world, even though a brief interlude of a couple of years did occur when Omar bin Abdul Aziz deliberately returned power to the people.
This was nearly 40 years to the killing of Husain by King Yazid and his men – about 100 Hijri or so.
But then when the people, of their own free will elected him ruler and insisted that he accept, Omar bin Abdul Aziz relented and became Khalifah.
But, though the ruler of a mighty state, he lived the life of a saint and worked day and night to establish peace, justice, liberty and equality on earth.
So, the history of Islam really is the history of humanity’s pursuit of the goal of the Government of the People by the People with all the accoutrements of prayers, fasting, pilgrimage, charity and everything else.
Ever since the days of Husain and Omar bin Abdul Aziz, Muslims have been locked in mortal combat with the forces of Evil and Tyranny – both domestic and foreign – that have sought to deny them their God-given right to freedom and democracy.
The bloody events currently unfolding in Egypt are only the latest chapter in this ongoing saga of Muslim struggle for establishing a Government of the People by the People on their land.
It is obvious that while Muslims, in Egypt and elsewhere, want freedom and democracy, there are those in this world who do not wish Muslims that. So, they want to do everything in their power to deny Muslims – everywhere – that right.
And they have some fairly powerful logic on their side – those who would deny Muslims their basic rights.
To begin with, by divine dispensation, Muslims everywhere seem to be sitting on oceans of oil and mountains of all kinds of riches. There are those in this world who covet that.
Even though the Bible teaches “Thou Shalt not Covet!”, these folks covet like there were no tomorrow.
And they do everything in their power to turn that coveting into all manner of intrigue, conspiracy, aggression, exploitation, invasion, domination and occupation of Muslim lands.
Next, Muslim lands in many instances have what is called “Strategic Value.” That means others in this world have a need to control those Muslim lands to fulfill their own social, political, economic and military agendas and goals.
That is why the various European countries conquered and colonised Muslim lands: for land and for the wealth that the land contained.
And that is also why the so-called Middle East was such an obvious Slave Plantation for the past 100 years, run so brutally and barbarically by the British, the French and other colonial masters.
And that is also why many, if not most, if not all, of those in power in Muslim lands over the past 100 years have been tyrants and dictators of one kind or another – military as well as civilian; hereditary as well as otherwise.
They were mostly appointed, supported and controlled by their Colonial Masters who charged them to enslave and brutalize the masses and patriotic leadership of Muslims in ways most normal people in other parts of the world cannot even imagine.
The native Thugs and their foreign Colonial masters crushed Algerian People’s demand for freedom and Democracy in a 10-year bloodbath toward the end of the last millennium.
And they killed, hanged, imprisoned and tortured the finest flowering of Egyptian popular and intellectual leadership over the past nearly 100 years.
And they, under the present dictator’s father Hafez Al-Assad filled the streets of Syria with Muslim corpses whose only sin was to hope and ask for freedom – for a Government of the People by the People.
But then out of nowhere 2011 happened.
The coward Ben Ali, the small-time Thug from Tunis, let it all get out of control by running away at the first sign of trouble in Tunisia and hiding in plain sight in a mansion in Jeddah.
Freedom-loving Muslims everywhere tasted blood. And they wanted more.
There was trouble in Bahrain and in Yemen and in Syria – and elsewhere. Muslim hunger for Government of the People by the People was now insatiable.
But Egypt was still the lynchpin. As Egypt goes, so will go the rest of the Middle East Slave Plantation.
The most brutal and barbaric military dictatorship of Mubarak was toppled and the equally illegitimate and ruthless dictatorship of Tantawi and his crony generals were installed in its place.
Some people thought this was a revolution. And in many ways it was.
But the Generals were not born yesterday. They were groomed by Mubarak and by other Thugs before him. And their foreign Colonial paymasters have centuries of experience behind them.
The game of stalling and obfuscation of the revolution in Egypt began in earnest. The object was to delay and deny Democracy.
The method was the same old dependable mixture of excuses and lies and brute force and torture that always existed – and paid such rich dividends in the past. Elections were held.
Everybody felt they had to happen. The native Thugs were told by their foreign Colonial masters and handlers that elections were a must. And there was no way around them this time.
Everybody realised that the post-Mubarak Egypt of 2011 was not the Algeria of 1990, when elections that the Muslims were set to win were abruptly cancelled by the Algerian military and its foreign Colonial masters plunging Algeria into a bloody and murderous civil war for the next decade. So, scrapping elections did not appear to be an option.
But so far as the Generals were concerned they knew that the elections were not binding. To them and to their foreign Colonial masters, the whole thing was just a game.
But the People were restive. They had gotten a whiff of freedom and they wanted more. And they were ready to die for it – a most lethal combination. And not very good news for native tyrants and dictators – and their foreign Colonial masters. Condition Critical: that is how the Generals read it.
In this critical condition, the last thing the Generals – and their foreign Colonial masters and handlers – wanted was a genuine, authentic local hero.
The worst thing that could happen in this volatile mix of events and circumstances was a Muslim scholar of real solid intellectual worth and unassailable personal integrity emerging out of no less a place than Al-Azhar and setting the situation aflame. And Sheikh Emad Effat, Secretary General of the Fatwa Committee at Al-Azhar, was precisely such a figure.
For decades Al-Azhar had been rubber-stamping the dictators. But now Sheikh Emad Effat acted like true Muslim scholars of yore whom no wealth could buy and no force could intimidate.
Sheikh Emad Effat joined the masses. And he issued Fatwas – meaning he spoke up.
He showed up wherever there was a protest. He told the protesters not to give up and keep on fighting. He told them it was the right thing to do. He told the Muslims not to let their unity fracture.
He told Muslims and Christians both to stand shoulder to shoulder and to fight this new Tyranny and Dictatorship of the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) together as one people. He blasted SCAF as dictators of dubious intentions that were only playing for time.
He told everyone everywhere that Islam meant freedom and that fighting Tyranny and Dictatorship – civilian or military, old or new – was a most important Islamic obligation. It was beyond simple patriotism, he declared.
It was the very core of Islamic teachings, he pronounced. It was as if the Egyptian Revolution was about to produce a true national hero who had what it takes to take a spluttering and stalling popular revolution to its final fruition and decisive victory.
He had to be stopped. By any means necessary. And he was.
Muslims are not very smart about protecting their best people – the one or two or a few they get from time to time. They allowed Sheikh Emad Effat to be shot dead.
It was not a stray bullet that killed Sheikh Emad Effat. Shaikh Emad Effat fell to a carefully targeted and precision-calibrated lethal projectile, as part of a strategy – native-cum-foreign – meticulously devised to get him.
The object was to kill him. The charade surrounding that killing was just that: a charade to camouflage his assassination and fool the naïve and the gullible.
No wonder both Christians and Muslims marched hand in hand in Shaikh Emad’s funeral. May God rest his soul!