What Really Gets Me
About the Ages of Ignorance
or...the Thing in Itself
(and how to convince people that they aren't really seeing what they are seeing)

There are a number of things that really get me. For one, Christopher Hitchens at Slate labels Gaza as "Islamic Gaza". Not only that, with his headline he labels Gaza as a Moral Failure before the vote is even counted! What on earth could that mean? I'll tell you what it means in the context of Mr. Hitchens' vitriolic hate against anything remotely "religious". Mr. Hitchens is a defiant athiest, better than all of us numb-skulls and uses his incredibly contagious ignorance to misguide a significant number of people to follow the norm he perceives to be "reality".

He indicates with his language that there are some parts of the world that are "Islamic"...well...what on earth could that mean afterall? It means that Mr. Hitchens, as a devout athiest...actually thinks Allah has Omnipotence in some parts of the world and basically has no sway in others. Well..there either is or there isn't, Mr. Hitchens.....a Creator. Mr. Hitchens is entitled to his take on things but the rest of us ought to ponder that little bit of information in some depth.

Another thing that really gets me...is the way some folks "weigh in" without really "weighing in".
Ron Silliman at Silliman's Blog a decidedly Pro Israel Poetry Blog who finally took it upon himself to mention something definite about Gaza and the horrendous acts of Israel against a democratically elected albeit "Islamic" government. By the people, for the people and all that jazz, only as long as it isn't for the "Muslim" people.

Silliman blurts out..."I don't know much about it." Then goes on to blame Hamas for trying to defend its legitimacy not only as a governmental body, but as a RACE of people who just so happen to be the victims of the cruelest joke to date in human history. That joke being..that the poor old victims of the Holocaust moved in peacefully, asked the occupants to move aside in a nice tone and even paid them for their lands (which Israel always says it did..haha...oh...big joke that was and is!). All the while, these goody-two-shoe believers make out like they are searching for the Promised Land i.e. Allah created a special ethnically pure place just for them and no one else. So...it is the case that what gets me also used to get Ali ibn Abi Taleb, Chief of the Believers and Lion of Islam, First Imam and all around Prophet's Best Friend and Brother. People like Ron Silliman set out to convince us all of their utter innocence (in misguidance) and end up telling us how we ought to think. In fact, Ron Silliman is complicit. Just look at all the articles he has cited in the past few weeks about Hitler, the Protocols of Zion and even one crummy article about a lavisious Tehranian uncle who groped his Newly American Iranian runaway neice! Old story there you know...like...where are all the stories about Nice Iranian People? Are there none?

Ali ibn Abi Taleb once said and it is truly one of the most useful notes about the Age of Ignorance (Jahaliya):

Among all the people the most detested before Allah are two persons. One is he who is devoted to his self. So he is deviated from the true path and loves speaking about (foul) innovations and inviting towards wrong path. He is therefore a nuisance for those who are enamoured of him, is himself misled from the guidance of those preceding him, misleads those who follow him in his life or after his death, carries the weight of others' sins and is entangled in his own misdeeds.

The other man is he who has picked up ignorance. He moves among the ignorant, is senseless in the thick of mischief and is blind to the advantages of peace. Those resembling like men have named him scholar but he is not so. He goes out early morning to collect things whose deficiency is better than plenty, till when he has quenched his thirst from polluted water and acquired meaningless things.

He sits among the people as a judge responsible for solving whatever is confusing to the others. If an ambiguous problem is presented before him he manages shabby argument about it of his own accord and passes judgement on its basis. In this way he is entangled in the confusion of doubts as in the spider's web, not knowing whether he was right or wrong. If he is right he fears lest he erred, while if he is wrong he hopes he is right. He is ignorant, wandering astray in ignorance and riding on carriages aimlessly moving in darkness. He did not try to find reality of knowledge. He scatters the traditions as the wind scatters the dry leaves.

By Allah, he is not capable of solving the problems that come to him nor is fit for the position assigned to him. Whatever he does not know he does not regard it worth knowing. He does not realise that what is beyond his reach is within the reach of others. If anything is not clear to him he keeps quiet over it because he knows his own ignorance. Lost lives are crying against his unjust verdicts, and properties (that have been wrongly disposed of) are grumbling against him.

I complain to Allah about persons who live ignorant and die misguided. For them nothing is more worthless than Qur'an if it is recited as it should be recited, nor anything more valuable than the Qur'an if its verses are removed from their places, nor anything more vicious than virtue nor more virtuous than vice.

And not just Hitchens and Silliman either. The world is Chock Full of people who speak as if they are authorities on something other than what they are in actuality...and that is people who have been drinking from a polluted pool of knowledge and hence pollute the world with nonsense and illogical conclusions that they hope others will actually not notice, not notice how stoopid it actually is to blame a displaced people for the violence used by an Occupier. Because if it is the case that Israel is the victim here...it would be the first time in human history that an Occupier behaved in a Non Occupying fashion.

I complain to Allah about these kinds of people. I complain that truly...we cannot rectify what was done to the African slaves that we mutilated and imprisoned on our plantations. We cannot rectify what we did to the Native Americans except maybe we ought to give them a heads-up about the Casino Industry.

To try however to convince people that we cannot do anything about this massacre and oppression while it is STILL IN PROGRESS is a flat out lie and myth in the making. Oh sure....one hundred years from now we can all wring our hands and say...oh well! Here's a Casino for you to run.

But this is happening NOW. Not LATER. There is no two ways about that and if you think there is...there is something MOST DEFINITELY WRONG WITH YOU.

The last thing that gets me is the fact that as a muslim...I'm just not entitled to an opinion on this matter. That goes for all the muslims in the world...all billion or so of us (at last count). We just cannot "take sides" on the matter and be given our due.

Oh we are BIASED.

Well....yes. We Muslims are biased but that bias is towards the TRUTH. And anyone who is biased toward the falsehoods and the evil ways of conducting human affairs is NATURALLY going to see us as having a biased opinion.

At the end of the day however (or end of the whole damn story), we know we are right. It isn't a matter of hating anyone but it is a matter of hating evil. Without that under your belt...you are absolutely lost. You'll throw your towel in with all sorts of lost and frustrating causes.

How it is. The "thing" in itself is known as the Truth. It survives all else and falsehood inevitably passes away and the Israeli Occupation follows the definition of falsehood: oppression, forced labor, murder, larceny, spying, deception, treason to everything except itself...everything that all good people know is absolutely in the column labeled Bad Deeds. There are some foolhearty persons in the world that will tell others all sorts of things and like Alice Notley wrestling with Phyllis Schaffly over whose disobedience is better and winning merely because she can talk a better talk....so do Kantian era theosophists with emphasis in there on the Sophist part of the word...try to convince people that the children in Gaza actually deserve a bit of tasty Israeli evil.

The Bound to Happen

I thought I was just pretending
all along, saying well, that's
bound to happen and it does and I say
well, that's bound to happen.
We all know that when we leave
the room, the room disappears.
We've known it since we were born
and sometimes we talk about it
with strangers knowing full well
that once they leave
all secrets follow
into the ether or the dark,
same thing and who can tell
time as it passes
when you are asleep,
the clocks looking you over?
It is a strange statistic
and one I am fond of until
it comes to the war zones.