The New Age Part 2
Both José Argüelles in The Transformative Visionand Terence McKenna, “ethnobotanist” of the Esalen Institute, in The Invisible Landscape,
discussed the significance of the
year 2012 without mentioning a specific day. McKenna was inspired by the concept of Noosphere developed by Teilhard de Chardin. In 1983, Robert J.
Sharer became convinced that 21 December
2012 had significant meaning, and by 1987, the year in
which he organized the Harmonic Convergence,
Argüelles was using the date in The
Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology. Argüelles devised a numerological
system by combining elements taken from the pre-Columbian Maya calendar with
the I Ching and elements of shamanism
and geometry. These were combined with concepts from modern science such as
“genetic codes” and “galactic convergences.” Argüelles reinterpreted the Mayan cycles in a modern context and named it
the Dreamspell Calendar, which was instrumental in encouraging people to
consider the meaning of 2012. It is the
source of his 364-day 13 Moon/28 Day Calendar, which begins on July 26, the
heliacal rising of the star Sirius. Many
of Dreamspell’s influences come from
non-Maya sources, such as Benjamin Franklin’s magic square of 8, the
cosmology of Ibn Arabi, the Major
Arcanumof the Tarot, and mystical and
pseudohistorical works like Erich von
Däniken’s Chariots oft he Gods? Associations of Votan with Palenque had
led Argüelles to identify Pacal the Great as “Pacal Votan,” and to identify himself
as a reincarnation of “Valum Votan,” who will act as a “closer of the cycle”
in 2012.
The timing of the
Harmonic Convergence allegedly correlated with the Maya calendar, with
some consideration also given to European and Asian astrological traditions.
The chosen dates marked a planetary alignment with the Sun, Moon, Mars,
and Venus, astrologically called a
conjunction. According to Argüelles’ interpretation of Mayan cosmology, the selected date marked the
end of twenty-two cycles of 52 years each, or 1,144 years in all. These were
divided into thirteen “heaven” cycles, which began in AD 843 and ended in 1519,
when the nine “hell” cycles began, ending in 1987. The beginning of the nine
“hell” cycles was the day that Cortez landed in Mexico, correlating to the date
“1 Reed” on the Aztec/ Mayan Calendar, a day sacred to Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl.
In 1993, in the second edition of The Invisible Landscape,
McKenna referred to the 21st of December
2012 throughout. According to
McKenna the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time
that increases interconnectedness. He predicted that a singularity of infinite
complexity would be reached in 2012, at which point everything imaginable
would occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea, referred to as the
Eschaton, over several years during the 1970s while using magic mushrooms and DMT. In 2006, author Daniel
Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about the date in his book 2012: The Return ofQuetzalcoatl, linking it to
beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the
use of hallucinogenic drugs and channeling.
As narrated by Leonard Nimoy in a 1978 episode of In Search
Of, the Mayans supposedly believed that on December 24, 2011, “a cataclysmic
earthquake would terminate their cycle of civilization. New men of knowledge
would then appear to fight the forces of evil and lead the people to
create a world government.” Adherents believed that
signs indicated a “major energy shift” was about to occur, a turning point in
Earth’s collective karma and dharma, and that this energy was powerful enough to change the world from conflict to co-operation. Shirley MacLaine called it
a “window of light,” allowing access to higher realms of awareness. According
to Argüelles, the Harmonic Convergence
marked the beginning of a new age of
universal peace and also began the
final 25-year countdown to the end of
the Mayan Long Count in 2012, which would be the so-called end of
history and the beginning of a new 5,125-year cycle. Evils of the world would
end with the birth of the 6th Sun and the 5th Earth on December 21, 2012.
The year 2012 is
supposed to herald the Age of Aquarius
and a one-world government by way of the
United Nations, headed by the
Maitreya, who is said to be awaited also by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, though
he is known by these believers respectively as
Christ, Messiah, the fifth Buddha, Krishna or Imam Mahdi. As Alice Bailey
explained, as part of “the Plan,” prior to the establishment of world government,
and as the need for their personal involvement increases, there will be an
“Externalization of the Hierarchy,” when the Spiritual Hierarchy of the Great
White Brotherhood, who are only known to elect occultists with whom they
communicate telepathically, will take physical form and everyone will know of
their presence on Earth. The deliberate manipulation of the myth of
extra-terrestrial life by agents within the government seems to represent the
attempt to prepare the world for such an event. It is only then, according to
Bailey, when world government and religion are finally realized, that the New Age, or
the Age ofAquar ius, will have dawned.
According to a recent National Geographic Channelstudy,
thirty-six percent of Americans—about 80 million people—are certain UFOs exist and one in 15 believe they’ve
spotted one. Nearly half of those surveyed said they were unsure, while only
seventeen percent said they did not believe in
UFOs.23 Nearly fourfi fths
of respondents of the poll said they believe the government has concealed
information about UFOs from the public.
This of course is a belief that has been popularly reinforced through movies
such as Spielberg’s Close Encounters and E.T., and more recently the X FilesTV
series. However, the government “cover-up”
myth also appears to be one that is deliberately fabricated. Jacques Vallée,
author of Messengers of Deception, shares insights he learned from a man he
refers to anonymously as “Major Murphy,” although his actual rank is much higher
than that of Major. Murphy advised him that all major UFO research organizations were infiltrated
by intelligence agents who regard them as
useful idiots, and supply selected types of disinformation: “In intelligence
circles, people like that are historical necessities. When you’ve worked long
enough for Uncle Sam, you know he is involved in a lot of strange things. The
data these groups get are biased at the source, but they play a useful
role.” 24
The media typically promote the ideas of the popular
mythmakers of extraterrestrial contact, at
the expenseof more qualified opinions.
Rather, it appears the “evidence” of
extra-terrestrial contact is cherry-picked by those who insist on promoting the
mythology. According to Vallée:
The belief in UFO
contact, and the expectation of visitation by beings from space, is promoted by
certain groups of people who are responsible for advertising UFO contacts, for circulating faked
photographs (often in connection with genuine sightings), for interfering with
witnesses and researchers, and for generating systematic “disinformation” about
the phenomenon. We
may find that they belong, or
have access, to military, media, and
government circles. In these games it is not clear exactly which side is infiltrating the other. 25
A well-known false report is one titled “Proposed Studies on
the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs,” often
referred to as “the Brookings Report,”
which was commissioned by NASA. The
report was created by the Tavistock
and CFR-affi liated Brookings
Institution, in collaboration with
NASA’s Committee on Long Range Studies in 1960. It has become known for
a short section titled, “Implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life.”
The section briefly considers possible public reactions to the discovery of extraterrestrial life,
stressing a need for further research in this area. It recommends continuing
studies to determine the potential social impact of such a discovery and its
effects on public attitudes, including study of the question of how leadership
should handle information about such a discovery and under
what circumstances leaders might
or might not find
it advisable to withhold such information from the public.
Another important hoax is the notorious Majestic 12 (or MJ-12) documents. MJ-12 was the supposed code
name of a secret committee of scientists and government officials formed in 1947 by an executive
order of US
President Harry S. Truman. The
purpose of the committee was purportedly to investigate the recovery of a UFO north of Roswell in 1947. As revealed by
Greg Bishop in Project Beta, the earliest mention of the term “ MJ Twelve”
surfaced in a US Air Force Teletype message from 1980. Known as the “Project
Aquarius” Teletype, it was given to Albuquerque physicist and businessman Paul Bennewitz in 1980, by US Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) counterintelligence officer
Richard C. Doty. It was part of a
disinformation campaign to discredit
Bennewitz, who had photographed and recorded electronic data of what he believed
to be UFO activity over and nearby Kirtland
AFB, a sensitive nuclear facility.
Bennewitz reported his
findings to officials at Kirtland,
including Doty. Later it was discovered the Aquarius document was phony and had
been prepared by Doty. 26 As
Greg Bishop writes:
Here, near the bottom of this wordy message in late 1980, was
the very first time anyone had seen a reference to the idea of a suspected government
group called ‘ MJ Twelve’ that controlled
UFO information. Of course, no one suspected at the time the colossal
role that this idea would play in 1980s and ‘90s UFOlogy, and it eventually
spread beyond its confines to become a
cultural mainstay. 27
What came to be known as the “ MJ-12 papers” first appeared
on a roll of film in late 1984 in the mailbox of television documentary
producer Jaime Shandera, who had been
collaborating with Roswell researcher William Moore since 1982. Moore had also
been contacted by Doty in 1980, who described himself as representing a shadowy
group of 10 military intelligence insiders who claimed to be opposed to
the UFO “cover-up.” In January 1981,
Doty provided Moore with a copy of the phony Aquarius document with mention of MJ
Twelve. Moore would later claim in 1989 that he began collaborating with AFOSI
in spying on fellow researchers such as Bennewitz, and dispensing
disinformation ostensibly to gain the trust of the military
officers, but in reality to learn whatever truth he could glean about UFOs, and how the military manipulated UFO researchers. Moore claims that he tried
to push Bennewitz, who had been in a mental health facility on three occasions
after suffering severe delusional paranoia, into a mental breakdown by feeding
him false information about aliens. Later it would turn out that some of
the UFO documents given to Moore were
forged by Doty and compatriots, or were retyped and altered from the originals.
28
Paul Bennewitz was also involved in spreading the belief
of reptilian aliens that had begun to
gain popularity in the 1990s. Bennewitz apparently became convinced he had
located a secret alien facility that he called
Dulce Base, after intercepting what he thought were electronic communications
originating from alien spacecraft located outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
According to his account, a treaty was brokered between the aliens and the US
government, according to which the base was to be operated jointly by the aliens
and the CIA. However, treaty violations on the part of the
aliens led to open conflict. The
aliens are of such power, however, that they cannot be removed. By 1982, Bennewitz
had begun to spread his ideas about the
Dulce base to others in the ufology community. Bennewitz wrote Project
Betain 1988, which was mostly concerned with how the base might be successfully
attacked. In 1988, William F. Hamilton III and Jason Bishop III both visited Dulce and wrote extensively about the base.
Hamilton described the aliens as “small humanoid beings [that] may belong to
the class we know as Reptilia rather than Mammalia.” Bishop called them
“descendent [sic] from a Reptilian
Humanoid Specie.” 29 Thomas Edwin
Costello, who claimed he had been a security guard at Dulce, called the aliens at Dulce “ reptilian humanoids.”
As Barkun noted, the area had already attracted the attention
of people interested in the paranormal. The Colorado-New Mexico border region
had emerged as one of the major sites for the cattle-mutilation stories then
current in the West. Dulce is also not
far from the Baca ranch in the San Luis
Valley of southern Colorado, owned by
Maurice Strong, which is one of the areas of the most intense paranormal
activity in the US. Strong, who has been heralded as the “indispensable man” at
the center of the UN’s global power, is also the Finance Director of the Lindisfarne Center. According to the authors
of Dope Inc, Strong is also a top operative for British Intelligence and
controls the Order of the Golden Dawn,
which is now an international drug ring.30
Strong got his start with the Demarais’ Power Corporation of
Canada, and later became CEO of Petro-Canada, and then under-secretary general
of the United Nations. He has served as director of the World Future Society,
trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation
and Aspen Institute, and is a member of
the Club of Rome. He was a founding
member the Planetary Citizens founded by Donald Keys, a disciple of Alice Bailey. In the early 1970s, he was Secretary
General of the United Nations Conference
on the Human Environment and then became the first
Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Strong was Secretary-General of the UN Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED), held at the June 1992 UN Earth Summit in
Brazil. During his address at the conference, which Time magazine described as
a “New Age carnival,” Edmund de Rothschild quoted Teilhard de Chardin, who said,
“Man can harness the wind, the waves and the tides, but when he can harness the
energy of love, then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” The idea of
an Earth Charter originated in 1987, when the UN World Commission on Environment
and Development called for a new charter to guide the transition to sustainable
development. One of the principle creators of the Earth Charter was Steven
Clark Rockefeller, who is professor emeritus of Religion at Middlebury College
and an advisory trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 1992, the need for
a charter was urged by then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at UNCED,
but the time for such a declaration was not yet considered right, and in 1994,
Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev,
working through organizations they each founded, the Earth Council and Green
Cross International respectively, restarted the Earth Charter as a civil
society initiative.
Joe Montville, an
Esalen figure and career diplomat claimed that Gorbachev’s new
ideological directions were taken from cues developed at Esalen.31
In the 1980s, several
Soviet officials who would rise to high
rank in Gorbachev’s regime had attended Jenny O’Connor’s channeling of The Nine.32 At the time, Michael Murphy and his wife Dulce were
instrumental in organizing Esalen’s Soviet-American
Exchange Program, which was credited with substantial success in fostering peaceful
private exchanges between citizens of the “super powers.” In 1989, Esalen brought Boris Yeltsin on
his first trip to the United States, during which he supposedly converted to
free-market capitalism in a Houston grocery store. Two former presidents of the
exchange program included Jim Garrison
and Jim Hickman. After Mikhail Gorbachev
stepped down, and effectively dissolved the Soviet Union, Garrison helped establish
The State of the World Forum, with
Gorbachev serving as chairman.
The San Luis Valley
and northern New Mexico also happen to be regions where there has been
discovered a tradition of secret Jews,
descended from Spanish Marranos, and
still secretly Catholic.33This may suggest a
Kabbalistic and perhaps Sabbatean
origin of the paranormal phenomena. The modern history of unexplained
occurrences at Baca began in the 1950s when green fireballs were reportedly seen by
thousands, and even before that were rashes of “ UFOs” that sound like what
the Natives called “spirit lights.” So frequent are such reports in the valley
that a UFO “watchtower” was erected.
“From the fall of 1966 through the
spring of 1970 there were hundreds of unidentified flying
object sightings and many
of the first documented cases of unusual animal deaths ever reported,” notes
Christopher Obrien, in The Mysterious Valley, a website dedicated to a study of
the strange occurrences and sightings in the region. “During peak ‘ UFO’
sighting waves in the late 1960s dozens of cars would literally ‘line the
roads’ watching the amazing aerial displays of unknown lights as they cavorted
around the sky above the Great Sand Dunes/ Dry Lakes area.”34
A mystic had informed Maurice and his wife Hanna that the
ranch, which they call “the Baca,” “would become the center for a new planetary
order which would evolve from the economic collapse and environmental
catastrophes that would sweep the globe in the years to come.” The Strongs say
they regard the Baca, which they also refer to as “The Valley Of the Refuge Of
World Truths,” as the paradigm for the entire planet. The first groups to join the Strongs in setting up operations at the site
were the Aspen Institute and the
Lindisfarne Association. The Baca is replete with monasteries, and Ashram,
Vedic temple, Native American shamans, Hindu temple, ziggurat, and subterranean
Zen Buddhist center. Shirley MacLaine’s
astrologer told her to move to the Baca, and she did. She is building a New Age study center there where people can take
short week-long courses on the occult. Another of Strong’s friends, Najeeb Halaby,
a CFR member, former chairman of Pan
American, and father of the Queen of Jordan, wife to Freemason King Hussein,
has built an Islamic ziggurat at the Baca. Apparently, the Kissingers, the Rockefellers,
the McNamaras, the Rothschilds also make their pilgrimage to the Baca.35
In an interview from an article titled “The Wizard Of the
Baca Grande,” in Westmagazine of Alberta, Canada, in 1990, Strong shared details
of his vision, which may provide some insight on how these insiders are
intending to prepare the world for a transition to a new world order. Strong
concluded with a disturbing apocalyptic scenario he would include in a novel he
says he would like to write:
Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos,
Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend
meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead.
What if a small
group of these word leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the
earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to
survive, those rich countries would have
to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment.
Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree
to reduce their impact on the
environment? Will they agree to save the earth?
The group’s conclusion is “no.” The rich countries won’t do
it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides:
Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations
collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about? This group of world
leaders form a secret society to bring about a world collapse. It’s February.
They’re all at Davos. These aren’t
terrorists—they’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the
world’s commodity and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to
stock exchanges, and computers, and gold supplies, a panic. Then they prevent
the markets from closing. They jam the gears. They have mercenaries who hold
the rest of the world leaders at Davos as hostage. The markets can’t close. The rich countries…?” and Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out of the window. 36
Maurice Strong’s apocalyptic scenario is strikingly similar
to Sydney Sheldon’s 1991 bestseller, The
Doomsday Conspiracy, which fed such fears, and for which the MJ Twelve papers served as supportive evidence.
Serving as technical consultant for the book was James
Hurtak of the CIA’s Lab
Nine. In The Doomsday Conspiracy’s cover-up scenario, the
protagonist Robert Bellamy is a man hired by the NSA to locate the witnesses to
the crash of a weather balloon that the American authorities are anxious to swear
to secrecy. When Bellamy reaches Switzerland he soon finds out that the so-calle weather balloon was really a UFO and that the witnesses saw the bodies of
two aliens.
When the passengers Bellamy finally located are mysteriously killed one by one, Bellamy
finds that he himself has been
placed on the hit list by a cabal of top-ranking officials of many different governments. Based on
the experience with the War of the
Worldsbroadcast, they are concerned that the arrival of extraterrestrial
visitors may cause worldwide panic or economic chaos. However, the real reason
is that the aliens, who have the ability to shapeshift and communicate
telepathically, from their mothership hovering above the earth, are observing
humanity in disappointment. They want the world to stop harming the
environment, using fossil fuels, contributing to global warming and causing
wars. Concerned about the potential impact on their industries, the cabal is
conspiring to keep the secret from humanity and working to develop SDI, or Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, to combat the
alien intruders.
Islam & Democracy Part 1
In 2000, the UN organized the Millennium World Peace Summit
consisting of more than a thousand religious leaders from the world’s
religions, funded largely by private foundations such as Ted Turner’s Better
World Fund and the Templeton, Carnegie and Rockefeller Brothers foundations.
The representatives included Francis Cardinal Arinze, president of the
Vatican’s council for interreligious dialogue; Konrad Raiser, secretary-general
of the World Council of Churches; Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the chief rabbi of
Israel; Sheikh Abdullah Salaih Al-Obaid of the Muslim World League of Saudi Arabia;
and Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, the Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic.
The involvement of the supporters of the most fanatical
fringes of Islam in the UN’s interfaith discussions betrays the true nature of
their mission. Like Jamal ud Din al Afghani before them, they merely use the
language of Islamic fundamentalism to assist their co-conspirators in the West
in undermining Islam from within, towards its eventual replacement with a
one-world New Age religion. The historical basis of this nefarious cooperation
dates back to the relationship between the Templars and the Assassins who,
though one being ostensibly Christian and the other outwardly Muslim, both
shared not only an identical doctrine, that of the Kabbalah, but also a
mendacious modus operandiwhich recognized the value of employing the guise of
religion for manipulating the masses.
While the solution to the Muslims’ problems is to be found in
Islam, is not found in the wayward pronouncements of the Wahhabi-supported
factions around the world. No “reform” or return to “pure” Islam is necessary.
The answer is the solution has been there all along. It is to be found in the
classical scholarship of the Madhhabs, and that is of course why there has been
such a concerted effort to distance Muslims from it. Regrettably, the
imposition of Saudi Wahhabism and Salafism has
resulted in a collective amnesia amongst Muslims,
where too many have now forgotten the basics of traditional Sunni Islam, or the
value of resorting to classical scholarship. As such, Sunni Muslims have become susceptible to the influence of the proliferation of fundamentalist sects, including not only
the Wahhabis, Salafis, and the
Muslim Brotherhood, but also Ahlul Hadith, Deobandis, Barelvis, Jamat Tabligh,
Hizb ut Tahrir and others. Enabling controversy is the addition to the melee of
those groups which fundamentalists claim to oppose, particularly the Sufis .
Too often, Takfir(accusations of apostasy) are pronounced by
one against the other. As a consequence, many Muslims ignorant of the true
basis of Sunni Islam have become dismayed and choose to avoid all such
controversy by calling for an end to acrimony, and of accepting all as Muslims.
However, those who reject the Sunni tradition of Taqlidare outside of the fold, falling away
from the majority (Jamah). But this should not contribute to controversies of
Takfir, or pronouncing them
“Unbelievers.” No, that is something that should not be tolerated. Rather, it
is a matter protecting the true faith. Because, by failing to differentiate
themselves from the schismatics, the Muslims have allowed themselves and the
rest of the Sunni community to become polluted with their deviant ideas. And,
the multiplicity of voices and contradictory explanations of what constitutes
“true” Islam, that Western audiences are
therefore accustomed to hear, leads to confusion over “who speaks for Muslims.”
As pointed out by
Daniel Pipes, while otherwise known for his Islamophobia, in a 2008
interview, Muslims can be divided into three categories:
“traditional Islam,” which he sees as pragmatic and
non-violent, “Islamism,” which he sees as dangerous and militant, and “moderate Islam,” which he sees as underground and not yet codified into a popular movement. Interestingly, however, he did
concede that he did not have the “theological background” to determine which
group follows the Quranthe closest and
is truest to its intent. 1
While the media tout the value of “moderate Islam,” the Western world is as yet unaware
of the possibilities of traditional Islam,
a heritage which even the Muslims themselves have forgotten.
As identified by the late historian Marshall Hodgson, Islam’s “great pre-Modern heritage” is
possibly the richest source Muslims possess for creating a coherent vision of
their religion’s place in the world today. Yet, he comments: “One of the problems
of Muslims is that on the level of historical action their ties with relevant
traditions are so tenuous.” 2
However, while the answer is to be found in traditional Islam, Muslims must be careful where they
source this knowledge. As the Prophet
Muhammad advised his followers, “Some people will be standing and calling at
the gates of Hell; whoever responds to their call, they will throw him into the
Fire,” and he described them as, “They will be from our own people, and will
speak our language.” When questioned as to what do in such times, he advised
Muslims to adhere to the majority who were united under a single leader. When
asked what to do if there was no such leader, in other words, as the case is in
our time, he advised: “Isolate yourself from all of these sects, even if you
have to eat the roots of trees until death overcomes you while you are in that
state.” 3 Essentially, Muslims must be on their guard from all
groups, and seek to revive the true
Islamic heritage, free of the filters
of the modern corrupters who, typically, are in the service of a
Western imperialist agenda.
Though the Sufi
ideologues purportedly defend traditional Islam, and also aim to justify Sufism as a legitimate
Islamic science, self-purification is
not attained by bobbing one’s
head back and forth saying “Allah, Allah…” in the Dhikr practices they prescribe. These practices
have no precedent whatsoever in the Mohammed’s manner of worship. Rather, purification is achieved by praying, fasting and by standing up
for justice and coming to the assistance of the poor and oppressed. In Arabic,
the word for purity, Zakat, is the same word used for charity. It is meant to
imply that the spending one’s wealth in charity or for some other good cause
purifies both one’s accumulated wealth as well as one’s soul. 4
The Sufis like to
market themselves as a more “spiritual” alternative to
the fundamentalists, making a distinction between the “lesser Jihad,” or
military Jihad, and the “greater Jihad,” which is the struggle against
temptation. Contrary to the claims of the
Sufis, self-purification is not a goal in itself. It is intended to ensure that one’s actions are pure and
to achieve a degree of clarity to be able to discern one’s right obligation.
Because, more important is action, active participation in the society, or the
true meaning of Jihad, which is not violent terrorism, but which means striving
to improve society through activism.
Influential is Sheikh
Haqqani, who in 1991 made
the first of four nationwide
tours of the US, in a number of venues, including churches, temples,
universities, mosques and New Age centers.
Reportedly, during these speeches and
Dhikrgatherings thousands of individuals entered the fold of Islam
through his efforts. Regrettably, these are not converts to Islam, but are attracted
to a hippie-dippy version that is more about
Sufism’s vague promises of “spirituality.” The key to Haqqani’s success is his openness to Muslims
as well as non-Muslims,
and his flexibility towards
Islamic law. According to
Haqqani, “One is not entitled to refute or object to any of the matters of his sheikh
even if he contradicts the pure rules of Islam.” 5
Haqqani’s liberalism
was exemplified in his visit in 1999 to
Glastonbury in England, where Joseph of Arimathea was to have concealed
the Holy
Grail, and which is now a center of alternative spirituality. Haqqani called on the people to aim for
eternity without regard of their religion, and acknowledged the local legend
that Jesus had visited the site. A Haqqani community subsequently established
itself in the town, engaging in
Dhikrmeetings, which include musical performances, Whirling Dervishes and “Sufi meditation” workshops. Haqqani
believes in the coming of the Mahdi is
immanent, and gives his followers the impression that he is in spiritual
contact with him. 6
Nevertheless, in our time, the only articulate critics of the
Wahhabis and Salafis are the Sufi s, who defend the cause of
traditional Islam and Taqlid, but at the
same time promote the mystical speculations of philosophers like Ibn Arabi. Such devotion to Ibn Arabi can be found in other
important Sufis like Dr. Gibril Haddad
and Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti. Haddad, a well-known scholar and
religious leader of Lebanese-American background who converted to Islam, was listed amongst the
inaugural 500 most influential Muslims in the world. After also exploring Shadhili
Sufism, Haddad became a disciple of Sheikh Nazim Al- Haqqani, leader of
the Naqshbandi- Haqqani Order.
And are vociferous opponents of Wahhabism and Salafism,
publishing extensively on traditional
Islam, but also aiming to justify
Sufism as a legitimate Islamic
science. Haddad was also a former teacher on the traditional onlineIslamic
institute Sunnipath, and is a major contributor to the website ESheikh.com,
which gives traditional teachings on Islamic spirituality. Sheikh Kabbani supervises Sunnah.org, which touts
itself as one of the top Islamic websites in the world. Also associated
with Kabbani’s wing of Shaikh Haqqani’s NaqshbandiHaqqani order is Stephen “Suleyman” Schwartz, Jewish convert
to Islam and author who has been published in a variety of media, including The
Wall Street Journal. Schwartz is also a vocal critic of the “Wahhabi lobby,”
having written The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to
Terror, and a defense of Sufism titled The Other Islam: Sufi sm and the Road to
Global Harmony.
The leading exponent in this camp is Nuh Ha Mim Keller, an American convert
to Islam who resides in Amman, Jordan.
Keller is an initiate of the Shadhili Sufi
order. Keller was initiated by Sheikh Abd al Rahman Al Shaghouri, a
student of Ahmed al-Alawi, who was a
friend of René Guénon and who initiated Schuon into the order. Keller denounces the
universalist teachings of Guénon and
Schuon, but nevertheless defends
Ibn Arabi and Freemason Abdul Qadir
al Jazairi.
In order to corroborate his claim that Sufism
is a legitimate aspect of Islamic study, Keller likes to quote the
eminent historian Ibn Khaldun to the
effect that Sufism is
“dedication to worship,
total dedication to Allah
most High, disregard for the
finery and ornament of the world,
abstinence from the pleasure, wealth, and prestige sought by most men, and
retiring from others to worship alone.” 7 However, the eminent Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun differentiated practices founded
in the Sunnahfrom those that
characterized many of the Sufis of his time, criticizing that, “Among the followers of the Sufis are a
group of simple fellows and idiots who
resemble the insane more than they do rational people…,” and issued a
Fatwathat Ibn Arabi’s books ought to be
burned. 8
Al-Bouti, a highly popular doctor of Islamic Law from the
University of Damascus and a noted critic of
Salafism, is listed among the
Top 50 of the 500 most influential
Muslims in the world. Al-Bouti is also
affiliated to the Naqshbandi branch in
Syria, the only Sufi organization
in the country to be allowed freedom of
action by the Asad regime, with whom it is closely associated. This is despite
the fact that the Asad family are members of the Alawi sect. Sheikh al-Bouti is
the leading Islamic scholar in Syria. An
active opponent of the Salafis, al-Bouti is the author of Abandoning the Maddhabs is the Most
Dangerous Bid’ah Threatering the Islamic Shari’ah.
Under the leadership of Ahmad
Kuftaro (1915-2004), Grand Mufti of
Syria, the Naqshbandi branch
in Syria has been closely associated
with the Muslim Brotherhood. Kuftaro was also on good terms with
Sheikh Haqqani, and in particular his
deputy Kabbani, who sends some of his
key students to him.9 Kuftaro has long been engaged in interfaith dialogue,
and upholds the belief that the three monotheistic religions stem from a common
source, and are all different traditions of the one universal religion. Consequently, Kuftaro has been involved in an “Abrahamic dialogue,” advocated
by many other leading Muslims, Christians and
Jews. He was one of the editorial advisors alongside a collection of
representatives from all kinds of religions of A World Scripture, that “gathers
passages from the scriptures of the various religious traditions around certain topics,” first conceived by Reverend Sun
Myung Moon. He also participated in the Assisi interfaith service for peace led
by pope John Paul II in 1786. He has gone as far as praying the Hail Mary with
the Cardinal of Baltimore, Cardinal Keeler, who was the President of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops.10
Other than the fundamentalists and the Sufis, there is still another fringe in Islam
today known as “modernists,” who
unabashedly call for the whole sale modification of Islam according to Western values. While they
offer good content for the media who enjoy feeding controversy, by presenting
them as genuine reformers of the more stereotypical dislikes about Islam, they are on the margins of the Muslim
community and dismissed as shameless apologists by traditional Muslims and
fundamentalists. However, despite their differences with the fundamentalists,
the modernists share with them a call
for the reopening of the Doors of Ijtihad. Revivalism had evolved in two directions
which both claim their origin with
Afghani and Abduh. The one is the
Salafi fundamentalism of the Muslim Brotherhood. The other are the modernists, who call for a reappraisal of
classical Islam based on an adoption of
certain Western values. This minority fringe has been gaining increasing
traction in our time, due to growing support from US governmental agencies and
think tanks, who are trying to produce
a mollified version of Islam in
response to the growing criticism of the religion since 9/11.
According to the New
York University Center for Dialogues:
Islamic World–US–The West, in a
publication entitled Who Speaks for
Islam, the renewed call for reform is referred to a “ New Ijtihad.” Present-day modernists, the publication explains, differ
from their predecessors in the scope of their intellectual sources. In other
words:
Whereas the early
modernists worked exclusively within an Islamic frame of reference,
today’s thinkers avail themselves of multiple critical and interpretive
frameworks. Most of these thinkers combine knowledge of Islamic learning and
scripture with secular training (often undertaken in the West) in the social
sciences, including anthropology, sociology, philology, philosophy, and
hermeneutics. Their roots in Islamic and Western intellectual processes offer
them a unique critical perspective on Islamic scripture and heritage. 11
Most Muslims, however, see through the attempts of the modernists, who have managed to represent one
of the smallest factions of Islam, at
only 1% of the total. As explained by John Esposito, a professor of
International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University:
Islamic modernism is a
reform movement started by politically-minded urbanites with scant knowledge of
traditional Islam. These people had witnessed
and studied Western technology and socio-political ideas, and realized that the
Islamic world was being left behind technologically by the West and had become
too weak to stand up to it. They blamed this weakness on what they saw as
‘traditional Islam,’ which they thought held
them back and was not ‘progressive’ enough. They thus called for a complete
overhaul of Islam, including—or rather
in particular—Islamic law (sharia) and doctrine (aqida). Islamic modernism remains popularly an object of
derision and ridicule, and is scorned by traditional Muslims and fundamentalists
alike.
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