BLACK TERROR WHITE SOLDIER PART 38

Petrodollar Islam Part 1

         While the Taliban have been employed as a reminder of the purported dangers of “theocracy” and the barbarism of “Shariah Law,” they are not an apt representation of Islam, but nor are almost any other mainstream voices in Islam today. The reason is that, for the most part, the Taliban, as with many modern movements within Islam, represent the embarrassing aberrations derived from the nefarious influence of Wahhabism.

        As the Prophet Mohammed foretold, “If the leaders do not govern according to the Book of God, you should realize that this has never happened without God making them into        groups and     making them fight one another.” ¹ In the absence of a traditional Sunni establishment, or the political backing to help it defend its cause, numerous schematics have come forward to make their claims of Sunni legitimacy. Due to their immense wealth, of these many groups it is the Saudi-funded trends collectively referred to as “Islamic fundamentalists” who, though they represent a mere 3% of the Muslim population of the world, and therefore minuscule     in numbers            compared to their disproportional influence, gain the most attention, and have stifled saner voices. Of the fundamentalists, according to a description produced by an international Muslim body, “This is a highly politicized religious ideology popularized in the 20th century through movements within both the Shi‘a and Sunni branches of Islam—characterized by aggressiveness and a reformist attitude toward traditional Islam.” This fundamentalist faction is described as consisting primarily of Wahhabis/Salafisand the Muslim Brotherhood. ²

         The Saudis have been able to propagate this version of Wahhabism and  Salafism through a            large-scale campaign, made possible only through their

access to a seemingly limitless flow of petrodollars. Since 1975, the Saudis have spent as much as seventy billion dollars towards this international project. That ranks the Saudi endeavor, according to Alex Alexiev of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank, as the largest propaganda campaign in history, far larger than Soviet propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War. 3

An authoritative 2008 report by Policy Exchange, the UK’s leading centerright think tank, entitled The Hijacking of British Islam: How extremist literature is subverting Britain’s mosques, concluded that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the majority of literature distributed in British mosques, which is rife with incitements to racism. In American  Islam, Paul Barrett relates that, “if there is one source of       influence that bears special responsibility for exporting the Muslim world’s worst ideas to the West, it is our equivocal ally  Saudi Arabia.” In the US, he says, a “ Saudi underwritten boom has produced scores of  mosques and Islamic centers.” Barrett repeats the claim of a   Saudi charity  official that, as of 2001,  Saudi Arabia had funded half the Islamic schools and  mosques in the US.4 A report by the Center for Religious Freedom, titled  Saudi  Publications on Hate Ideolog y Invade American Mosques, concludes, “ Saudi Arabia is  overwhelmingly the state most responsible for the publications on the ideology  of hate in America.” ⁵

However, despite the appearance of the country’s independence, the Rockefellers, primarily through their stewardship of  ExxonMobil, continue  to effectively control  Saudi Arabia. After   World War II,   Aramco was still owned 70 percent by Rockefeller companies— Exxon, Mobil, and Socal—and 30 percent by Texaco, and produced all of  Saudi oil. Supposedly, the  Saudi government took a 25% stake in  Aramco by 1973, increased it to 60% in 1974, and finally attained full ownership of           the company by 1980. Now knownas Saudi  Aramco, it is the world’s largest, richest and most valuable company of all  time. But as Stephen Schwartz explained in The Two Faces of  Islam:

The conversion of  Aramco into a  Saudi firm  was perhaps the murkiest operation in global business history.  Saudi  Aramco continued its exclusive export contracts with the US corporations that had created it, and American personnel remained in its leading management strata. Saudi-citizen employment by  Saudi  Aramco was slow and was expected to reach 87 per scent in the year 2005. The replacement of  Aramco by  Saudi  Aramco  was  a  remarkable  example of international  financial sleight-of-hand. ⁶

More than half of   Saudi oil production goes to the old  Aramco-Rockefeller consortium, which sells the oil at a profit to whomever they wish, in obedience to  Saudi cartel regulations. ⁷ Moreover, until at least 1988,  Exxon and the other US oil giants operated the company, even though it was owned by the  Saudis.  As of 1990,  Exxon still indirectly owned 28.33% of  Aramco. Board members of  Aramco continue to include the former chairmen of  Exxon and Chevron, both companies descended from  Standard Oil. ⁸ In 1990,  Exxon merged with another Standard Company, Mobil, to form  ExxonMobil, which became the largest of the six oil “Supermajors,” the five largest oil companies who replaced the Seven Sisters. In 2005,  ExxonMobil was ranked the largest corporation in the world, by market capitalization and second largest by market revenue.  Saudi Arabia ranks as the largest exporter of petroleum, accounting for as much as 26% of the world’s proven oil reserves, and produces the largest amount of the world’s oil. The United States is heavily dependent on this industry, as about 40% of the energy consumed by the United States comes from oil. With only 5% of the world’s population, the US is responsible for 25% of the world’s oil consumption. The Americans’ oil expenditures alone constitute a third of their trade deficit.

 In  Saudi Arabia, oil accounts for more than 90% of exports and nearly 75% of government revenues. It should be obvious that as the world’s superpower and the world’s leading producer of oil respectively, America and  Saudi Arabia are entangled in a delicate and mutually inter-dependent relationship. According to an American attaché, “The only ambition of the  Saudis is to remain masters at home. To do that, no matter what happens, they need the United States, while internal         stability is ,  for  the moment, maintained through a flawless ballet between the religious and police authorities.” ⁹ In return for guarantees of its continued sovereignty, the  Saudis promise the Americans access to their formidable oil reserves.   Additionally,  the broader          ramifications  of this  arrangement  are,  as   Richard Lebeviere notes in Dollars for Terror, that “this protection also makes it possible to ensure the security of the state of  Israel.” ¹⁰

Therefore, whichever version of  Islam is promoted by  Saudi Arabia is done, one way or the other, either with the acquiescence of or in the service of the oil industry they depend upon. As a consequence,  Saudi Arabia has had to foster two competing and contradictory interpretations of   Islam. First of all, given the blatant hypocrisy of their arrangement with the US and  Israel, in order to protect themselves from criticism, and in turn, to safeguard foreign oil interests in the country, the   Saudi monarchy have also nurtured a docile version of   Islam maintained internally. Secondly, however, the  Saudis have promoted a type of virulent Islamism abroad to serve American imperialist interests. Explaining the reasoning behind America’s continuing support of this type of Islamic fundamentalism, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former  CIA officer with experience in Iraq and the  Middle East, as well as a neoconservative hardliner with the notorious Rockefeller funded American Enterprise Institute ( AEI), said:

Most American liberals and conservatives will strongly resist the idea  that  Islam’s clergymen and lay fundamentalists, who usually dislike, if not detest, the United States,  Israel, and progressive causes like women’s rights, are the key to liberating the Muslim  Middle East from its age-old reflexive hostility          to the West. These men, not the much admired liberal Muslim secularists who are always praised and sometimes defended by the American government and press, are the United States’ most valuable potential democratic allies. ¹¹

Since the embarrassing revelations that followed  9/11, where the majority of the hijackers purportedly involved were  Saudis, and therefore the increasing attention being paid to the role of Wahhabis in fostering Islamic  terrorism, the  Saudis have tried to distance themselves from the  Muslim Brotherhood , at least publicly. The  Saudis have attempted to suggest that they had given them shelter following  Nasser’s crackdown, but that the Brothers had betrayed their gracious hospitality by fomenting subversion and militancy within the kingdom. However, the  Saudis had            financed the            Muslim Brotherhood almost from the outset. As Robert Dreyfuss described in Devil’s Game: How the United States Unleashed Fundamentalist  Islam, “Throughout its entire existence, too, the Muslim Brotherhood had an ace-in-the-hole, namely, the political support and money it received from the  Saudi royal family and the  Wahhabi establishment.” ¹²

After  Muslim Brotherhood members were shuttled to  Saudi Arabia with the assistance of the  CIA following  Nasser’s crackdown in 1954, Brotherhood militancy  influenced  movements  within  the  Kingdom,        collectively  referred to as al  Sahwa al Islamiyya (the Islamic Awakening), or simply,  Sahwa. Most importantly, Brotherhood adherents helped build much of  Saudi Arabia’s education system and thus shaped the Kingdom’s modern curriculum, which has ensured a steady stream of  Sahwa-influenced        ideologues ever  since. ¹³ As  Gilles Keppel explains in The War for Muslim Minds:

At a time when a wave of nationalist fever was sweeping the Arab World under   the  charismatic influence of Nasser, a Soviet client, the Saudi kingdom had come to depend on the support of reactionary and unsophisticated ulema (doctors of Islamic law), who were very knowledgeable about the balance of tribal power in the Arabian peninsula but ignorant of the changes in the world (which they believed      was flat) and therefore poorly armed to do battle against the socialist propaganda machines of Cairo, Damascus, or Baghdad.  Saudi Arabia welcomed the Muslim Brothers because they bridged the gap between the kingdom’s intellectually weak religious fundamentalists and the pragmatic agenda of the  Saudi dynasty. The government rewarded the Brothers handsomely for their service, and the Brothers jockeyed for better position by making sure never to quarrel with their  Saudi partners. ¹⁴

The  flip-side of militant Wahhabism is the state-sponsored version apologetic of the regime’s obvious excesses. Given their roles as custodians of the sacred precincts of Mecca and Medina, the  Saudis are bound to enforce a semblance of Islamic rule to maintain the pretense of legitimacy. The religious clerics are a key tool in maintaining that charade. State control over the religious establishment began after  Ibn Saud eliminated the Ikhwan movement in 1927, after which he then directly appointed who was permitted to issue Fatwas. ¹⁵ According to Roel Meijer, when  Ibn Saud curtailed the power of the Ikhwan:

He thereby established the present division of labour and laid the  foundation for a return of the main contradiction of  Wahhabism/ Salafism  between its passive presence and activist past. At present the political and bureaucratic elite rule the  Saudi state and determine its economic and foreign policy without regard for the shar i’ain these spheres, while the religious establishment has been given control over society, enforcing strict  Wahhabi morality in exchange for political subservience. Partly this division has been sanctioned by the Wahhabis in the doctrine of wali alamr, the duty of obedience to the ruler, but its inner tensions could not be so easily laid to rest and would be revived by more activist  Salafis  who  could use it to challenge the political legitimacy of the  Saudi rulers. ¹⁶

The leading state-controlled establishment scholars, and the leading authorities of the  Salafi            movement, have   been   Sheikh  Ibn Baz, Mohammed ibn al-Uthaymeen and Nassir ad Deen  al Albani. As explained by Madawi al-Rasheed in Contesting the  Saudi State, “Under their guidance Wahhabiya ceased to be a religious revivalist  Salafi movement and           became an apologetic institutionalized religious discourse intimately tied to political authority.” ¹⁷ These scholars were dependent on the state for their positions and authority, and therefore served the            state.  “The   majority of them confirmed political decisions by providing a religious seal of approval for policy matters,” says al-Rasheed. ¹⁸ Restricted from expressing any criticism against the state, they compensated by creating a façade of piety through exaggerated and overly oppressive interpretations of Islam. As Madawi al-Rasheed explains:

Wahhabiyya sanctioned a regime that claims to rule according to  Islam but in reality in the twentieth century retain only Islamic rhetoric and external trappings. The latter include public beheadings, excluding women from the public sphere, closing shops for prayer as well as other orchestrated and dramatized displays of religiosity. The exclusion and confinement of women have become a symbol for the  piety   of the Saudi state.  Islam is consequently reduced to this dimension. In reality the regime operates according to personalized political gains rather than religious dogma or national interest. ¹⁹

Al Albani began his   career by becoming influenced by articles in al Manar, the mouthpiece of Rashid  Rida, Freemason and successor to Mohammed Abduh, who was responsible for the marriage of  Salafism        and Wahhabism. Most  Salafis  reject the “ Wahhabi” label, claiming that Muhammad ibn  Abdul Wahhab did not found a new school of thought, but restored the  Islam practiced by the earliest generations of Muslims, the Salaf.  Rida thus facilitated the Wahhabis’ adoption of the term  “Salafi,” and thereby played an important role in the formulation of the   modern doctrines of  Wahhabism, contributing to their opposition to  Taqlid, their support of the reformist  Ijtihad and their obsession over eradicating Biddah (corrupting innovations). However, modern Salafis now          acknowledge that  Afghani and   Abduh were  Freemasons, but regard Rida as being “not as misguided,” to justify their inheritance from him.

Al Albani also studied under a student of Qasimi of Damascus, who  was among the chief  Revivalists responsible for reviving Ibn Taymiyyah ’s reputation.           Albani            was first expelled from  Syria, and then accepted a post in Saudi Arabia on the invitation of  Ibn Baz, who would continue to support him throughout his career. Al Albani’s trouble with the  Saudis began when his pronouncements against  Taqlid as “blind following” went so far that he even criticized the  Saudis’ partial adherence to the  Hanbali tradition. He went so far as to declare that the founder of  Wahhabism himself, Ibn  Abdul Wahhab, was not a true  “Salafi”           for following the Hanbali Madhhab . To  al Albani, who claimed to follow, like the neo- Ahlul Hadith of  India, the medieval school of the same name, Hadithalone can provide answers to matters not found in the  Quran , without relying on the Madhhabs. ²⁰ To  al Albani, the mother of all religious sciences therefore becomes the “science of hadith,” through which he  claimed           to have identified over five thousand          among them to be suspect.

Ibn Baz was the Grand Mufti of  Saudi Arabia from 1993 until his death  in 1999.  Ibn Baz had            also come under the influence   of the neo- Ahlul Hadith of  India through his teacher Saafazd ibn Atiq, who spent nine years among  the group starting in 1881. Of  Ibn Baz’s dubious distinction, his obituary in The Independent remarked, “His views and fatwas (religious rulings) were controversial, condemned by militants, liberals and progressives alike.” ²¹ According to his obituary in The Economist,  Ibn Baz “was an easy man to mock.            His pronouncements—that the      earth  was flat, that photography of a living thing was immoral, that women who studied with men were no better than prostitutes—embarrassed the more liberal princes.” ²²

Most importantly, it was  Ibn Baz’s Fatwaduring the  Gulf War of 1990 allowing the Americans to set up bases in  Saudi      Arabia, from            which to fight their war against Iraq, that exploded the delicate façade of religiosity that the Saudi’s had attempted so carefully to maintain. Clearly written in service of the state, and thereby the Americans, the Fatwalaid bare the limits of   Wahhabi propaganda, and created a crisis that split the   Salafi  movement  into      several competing factions. Locally, with its strict call for reviving monotheism and the eradication of  Biddah(unfounded innovation), it should follow that  Wahhabireform would be directed against the obviously debauched  Saudi rulers.  Therefore,            the conflicting imperatives have produced      competing approaches     that have split the  Salafi movement .

Therefore, in response to  Ibn Baz’s Fatwa, the leading  Sahwascholars began to critique the  Saudi regime and call for its overthrow. As a result, the  Sahwa’s

two leading exponents, Salman   al Awda and Safar  al Hawali, were imprisoned in 1994. To a large degree, the  Sahwahad exercised a monopoly on religious activism in the Kingdom. They enjoyed broader popular appeal than the regime clerics because of their greater attention to political realities, such that many in the  Sahwaleadership were seen to rule on issues that were more pressing and more relevant to the general public. ²³ So the  Saudis used the opportunity of this dissention in the ranks to further purge the Ulemaof subversive trends.

Despite their differences with him otherwise, the  Saudi state made use of  al Albani’s criticism of the   Muslim Brotherhood to lend supposed religious authority to their agenda. While the  Wahhabi religious establishment, including Ibn Baz himself, had been in the habit of praising Sayyed  Qutb as a “martyr,” al   Albani            was the first among them to dare to   criticize him as well as Hassan al Banna. Al Albani’s primary complaint against the Brotherhood was that they placed too much emphasis on “politics” instead of knowledge (Ilm) and creed (Aqeedah). Essentially,  al Albani characterized all criticism of the state as futile banter, which disregarded the more pressing issue of reforming society which had fallen away from a “pure” understanding of   Islam, in the perverted  Wahhabi sense.

Thus, exploiting the reputation of  al Albani, the  Saudi state purged the university system of  Muslim Brotherhood  influences. They thereby  have created a collaborationist version of   Salafism, where any sense of social justice is absent, and which has become the primary version now promoted in its worldwide campaign . As noted by Bernard Heykal, in Global  Salafism :  Islam’s New Religious Movement, although  al Albani had been expelled for  his influence over the violent attempt to take over the Grand Mosque in 1979:

On the other hand, it was equally possible for other followers of   al Albani to whole heartedly support the regime, as happened with his neo-Ahl al-Hadith disciples Rabi ibn Hadi  Madkhali and Mohammed Aman alJami, who supported the  Saudi invitation to American troops in 1990.  They were allowed to gain control over such important institutions as the Islamic University of Medina in exchange for purging them of the Sahwistand  Muslim Brotherhood critics of the regime. Whereas the “political” genealogy leads to  Afghanistan and Jihadi- Salafism,  the “apolitical” trend can be traced to Europe, as many foreign students who studied at institutions such as Medina’s Islamic University, or other Islamic universities in  Saudi Arabia, brought the Madhkali trend back to countries like  France and the  Netherlands.²⁴

This was certainly accomplished with the cognizance of their paymasters, the oil Supermajors, whose very livelihood depends on the stability of the  Saudi regime. These collaborationist  Salafis, now      known as Madkhalis andal-Jamiyyah, denounced all  Muslim Brotherhood ideologues as “innovators.” And although they reject the  Salafi          tradition going  back to          the  Muslim Brotherhood and  Afghani, they now regard themselves as true  Salafi s, which they equate with Wahhabism and adherence to Ibn Taymiyyah . Most importantly, they required obedience to the rulers, even unjust ones, as a purported religious obligation, providing the pretense that opposition to the rulers      would            contribute   excessive difficulties (Fitnah). They therefore do not concern themselves with issues of international politics, claiming that Muslims are not “ready” for the larger issues, but instead need to be educated so as to reform them of their “deviant” practices. ²⁵ This  followed upon  al Albani’s excuse, where he said, “All Muslims agree on the need to establish an Islamic state, but differ on the method to be employed to attain that goal. [For me] only by the Muslims’ adhering to Tawheed[monotheism, according  to  Wahhabi prescriptions] can the causes of their dissensions be removed, so that they may march toward their objective in closed ranks.” ²⁶

The  Salafi were made to focus their mission on “reforming” other Muslims on minor ritual details and creedal tenets as departures, called   Biddah, from what they considered “true”  Islam. Thus, deprived of knowledge of the true depths of the state’s corruption or complicity in the conquest of Muslim lands and exploitation of the rest of the world by the Western powers, with the  Salafi  movement, the  Saudi regime created a neutered version of  Islam. Essentially, at the behest of American interests, the Saudis have robbed Islam of any sense of social justice, which is the message that the world is actually waiting to hear, and ensured that a politically amenable version is disseminated to other parts of the world. And, as explained by Joas Wagemakers, this  Salafi  doctrine was then propagated by an international legion of students educated at the Islamic universities in  Saudi Arabia, such that it “was rapidly exported out of Arabia, so that it today constitutes an unavoidable element of  Salafi  Islam in many Muslim  and Western countries.” ²⁷

Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and according to the 2010 German domestic intelligence service annual report,  Salafism is the fastest growing Islamic movement in the world. ²⁸ What has made  Salafism         attractive to some is that, typically, adherence to  Islam among modern Muslims is weak and uninspiring.  Salafis,  on the contrary, exhibit an intensity that can be misread as enthusiastic piety. What  Salafism inculcates,  however, is haughtiness. And,   though the  Salafis    reject the  Madhhabs, they have essentially created their own by following the prescriptions of their three scholars, Bin Baz, Uthaymeen and Al Albani. Much like orthodox  Jews, the  Salafis are easily  recognizable for their insistence on certain modes of dress and behavior, which they deem to derive from “correct”    interpretations of the evidence, and the            fulfillment of which they see as a measure of piety. Their wives normally wear Nikab(Burqa),  they insist on the beard for men, and normally wear white thobes, and keep  their pant hems above their ankles. In prayer they hold their hands on their chests, and abut each others’ toes together. Worse still, they have inherited the anthropomorphism of Ibn Taymiyyah , regarding God as “above” creation in order  to “affirm”   his attributes.          All these minutiae  are considered emblematic of their superior knowledge of  Islam, and all those who do otherwise are condescended upon as “deviants.”

The truth is that the development of the Madhhabstook place as a dialogue involving the entire Muslim community. The conclusions arrived at were collective decisions. Hence the concept of “Ijma.” So while the Wahhabis berate  Taqlid as “blind following,” if they were sincere in their attempts at reform, they would follow that precedent, and present their reformulations for discussion by the whole community. Instead, they cowardly denounce the rest of that community as “alhul biddah” for failing to see things their way. Thus, they ignorantly create new Madhhab, and with every bifurcation resulting from all their incessant bickering and acrimony, they contribute to a multiplicity of Madhhabs. That’s of course not the way they see it, but that’s effectively what they are causing. And that was the reason for the closing of  Ijtihad in the first place, the positive  benefit which in their arrogance they fail utterly to appreciate or comprehend.

What the Wahhabis and  Salafis   tend   to be universally condemned for is their lack of tact. In other words, their fanaticism, which paints a picture of  Islam all too familiar in the West, the most egregious example being the Taliban. Everywhere they make their presence felt, the Wahhabis and  Salafis  have a tendency towards harsh criticism of other Muslims, for what they deem to be “innovations” ( Biddah), and therefore have often been derisively referred to among other Muslims as the “ Biddah Brigade.” However, as the Prophet Mohammed remarked, “the only reason I have been sent is to perfect good manners [Akhlaq],”²⁹ and that “the best amongst you are those  who have the best manners and character.”³⁰ Finally, the Prophet also said,  “make things easy for people, and do  not make them difficult for them, and            give them good tidings and do not make them turn away (from  Islam).” ³¹

Regrettably, for the fundamentalists, theirs is a vengeful, punishing God, who lifts the status of “Believers” and humiliates the “Unbelievers,” in the next world, as well as in this one. The   Prophet Muhammad said in a well-known Hadith: “No one truly believes until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself.” The leading  Hanbali jurist, Ibn Rajab said: “The brotherhood referred to in this Hadith is the brotherhood of humanity.” ³² But this is the message of  Islam that has been forgotten. Like the  Jews and Christians before them, Muslims have lost sight of the “Spirit of the Law.” This also was the essence of  Jesus’ message. When asked by the Jewish priests of his time to explain the meaning of the Law,  Jesus replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” When asked to clarify who one’s “neighbor” was, he responded with the story of the Good Samaritan, to explain that, obviously, one’s neighbor is any other human being. In other words, that our responsibility is towards all men, regardless of race or religion.

Essentially, the various  Salafi factions that have emerged are a consequence of the duplicitous language of the  Saudi state, who encourage the pro-regime Salafis at   home,  and  denounce the Brotherhood publicly,   but continue to finance   them  in coordination with American foreign policy objectives abroad.   But the duplicitous strategy, and the inherent exclusivism it nurtures, seems  to be contributing to the undoing of the  Salafis and Wahhabis.   As Bernard         Haykel, professor of  Middle East studies at Princeton, commented, “For several decades, there has been a dynamic at work in the radical Sunni Islamist community where each new generation becomes less principled, less learned, more radical, and more violent than the one before it.” ³³ In an article in the New York Times, Robert Worth noted, “In fact, recently some Western counterterrorism experts have seized on this trend and hailed it as proof that Al  Qaeda and its  affiliates  are doomed to           destroy          themselves  in  an orgy of violence and in-fighting.” ³⁴

The problem is partly as the  Revivalists claim, that Muslims have to return to the purity of their religion to improve their situation. But the answer is not to be found in reinterpreting  Islam, or in the more accurate performance of prescribed rituals, but in rediscovering the spiritual message articulated in traditional scholarship. As the   Quranadvises: “Verily never will God change a condition of a people until they change what is within their souls.” ³⁵

However, a return to traditional  Islam  alone  is not  sufficient either, unless    Muslims also rediscover the true spirit of the religion. The real problem afflicting the  Muslim world is as the            Prophet Mohammed foretold. Accurately describing the advent of colonialism of Muslim lands, he said:

The People will soon summon one another to attack you as people when eating invite others to share their food.” Someone asked, “Will that be because of our small numbers at that time?” He replied, “No, you will be numerous at that time: but you will be froth and scum like that       the flood waters, and God will take the          fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and cast al Wahninto your hearts.” Someone asked, “O  Messenger of God, what is al Wahn?” He replied, “Love of the world  and dislike of death. ³⁶

In other words, what would plague Muslims in such times would be materialism and cowardice, or an unwillingness to confront the world’s injustices for fear of reprisals. The  Prophet Muhammad also said, “God does not punish the individuals for the sins of the community until they see the evil spreading among themselves, and while they have the power to stop it, do not do so.” ³⁷ in short, Muslims have to rediscover the universality of the message of  Islam, and the futility of violence, and thereby assist the rest of the world in recognizing the same, so that we can all stand up against the injustices that threaten all of us.