Taking responsibility is the only empowering position. Any critique that begins with finger-pointing suggests either absolution or victimhood and we should refuse to entertain any positions grounded in arrogance or servility.
An uprising can only gain traction in the presence of unmet needs and in the absence of alternatives to meet those needs. Insofar as Muslims have not identified the unmet needs of our communities and presented a viable agenda to meet those needs, we are responsible for whatever else is created to fill that vacuum.
We are the khulafa, God’s ambassadors on earth. We are the inheritors of the prophets, those men who exhausted themselves in the work of warning their people and offering Islam’s doctrine of resignation to the masses. If we highlight iniquity, we do so only to identify it as such. If we point fingers at all, it is only to appreciate the variables in a manner that will allow us to step more fully into our position as those tasked with guiding humanity.
There is an essential distinction that must be made in discussing what I have termed the “Alphabet Uprising.” We need to separate an individual’s impulse to align with the Alphabet community from the manipulation of that community by political and corporate interests. Our opportunity lies primarily with the individual, and I will focus on this for the remainder of the article, though there is much that must be done to disrupt the usurping machinations of entrenched corporate power.
Pack Animals
We need one another. This is the human condition. We are hard-wired for interdependence. Although apex predators on the food chain, we are a wary species, alert to harm even if only at the most subtle and intuitive levels. We organize ourselves into packs, communities of mutual interest where we work to establish bonds that engender an emotional desire to honor and protect one another. The extent of these bonds, whether deep or superficial, complex or simple, are predictive of the integrity of the group. Weak bonds, however, may be shored up by the introduction of an external threat.
America is a wild experiment, fantastically idealistic in its invitation to all peoples of the world to join in the collective enterprise of building a nation predicated on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As it turns out, these aren’t nearly specific enough to unite the population. They are broad concepts subject to all manner of interpretation and various packs or communities have coalesced around ideologues who offer to clarify the matter. Over time, a civil religion developed around the idea of America being the “Land of Opportunity,” with the American Dream defined in increasingly pointed economic terms:
Success is the accumulation of material wealth.
If you believe in money as the measure of success and the supporting cast of characters in the rags-to-riches mythology that undergirds wealth as the triumphal metric, you’re hanging with the in-crowd.
But there are obvious difficulties in wealth-accumulation as a bonding exercise. Resources are finite and our desires are infinite. Cooperation would rapidly descend into competition for this group if it were not for their uncanny ability to distract one another with the possibility of threats from the outside.
By making up enemies, the moneyed minions enjoy brief moments of solidarity. Russian oligarchs are invading Ukraine! We must seize their yachts! Islamic fundamentalists are denying women their right to bikinis! We must seize their oil! The Chinese are abusing children in their factories! We must increase tariffs!
Every move made by this powerful group is a cash grab. Many of us see through this or were passed over by it and we feel frustrated. We reject and abhor the gross materialism at the center of this pack’s value system. We wonder at the absence of compassion, conservation, love, tolerance, and respect in the core ideology of the powerful.
At this point in our thinking, two things can happen.
We might be fortunate enough to find a community of like-minded people. If so, we will feel at once validated and we can begin to channel our energy into working for a fuller, social realization of these more dignified values.
Alternatively, we find no others with whom we might share our ideals. This is death to the pack animal.
It is my contention that the Alphabet community is comprised largely of people that mainstream society rejected or forgot. This cemented a desire among some of their more charismatic personalities to centralize acceptance and tolerance as core ideals, albeit in their more feminized, unconditional expressions according with a unipolar Jungian “good mother” archetype (more on this in a future post, perhaps, but when we “smash the patriarchy,” we encode revulsion to a masculine ethos wherein acceptance and tolerance are conditioned by a demonstration of respect and and an acknowledgement of authority, without which we can only expect a culture of entitlement).
In order to build a strong and cohesive pack as an alternative to the mainstream, acceptance and tolerance are centered by the Alphabet community not as humble requests for acknowledgement, but as social demands. Strength understands strength, and this is where the notion of “pride” comes in. This community is tired of hiding in the shadows. They are loud and obnoxious and intentional about disrupting the society that shunned them.
It is tempting to suggest that this is a community grounded in deviant sexual practices. While hedonism might be a draw for some, the Alphabet Uprising is not gaining traction for being kinky. Rather, the Alphabet community has become the voice of inclusion. And this is powerful medicine for the loads of people excluded by mainstream materialism.
As Muslims, we are at fault for not recognizing and addressing the plight of the marginalized. We are advised to recognize ourselves as strangers by choice in accordance with the prophetic words:
Be in this world as a stranger.
Bukhari
We patently reject the trappings of power, recognizing that the accumulation of wealth and influence often come at the expense of one’s soul. We do not subscribe to the American Delusion.
We are the medicine and when we speak about tolerance and compassion, we aren’t grounding our ethics in the practice of unconventional sex or frustration with the quirks of our biology or mental health. Rather, we are grounding our ethics in a prophetic legacy that extends all the way back to the time before time when we were asked by God Most High:
Am I not your Lord?
Q7:172
We are here to remind people of who they are. We are not here to be distracted by what they do. We understand that God guides and leads astray and that His Decree is our challenge whereby we might see who among us is best in action (Q67:2).
The mandate here is to be an alternative. We cannot ally ourselves with the mainstream, materialist agenda. We cannot be baited to ally with the Alphabet community through their doctrine of inclusion. We must at all times make plain our identity as Muslims through our behavior and character. We must be modest in our dress, fair in our dealings, scrupulous in our choice of food and company, and quick to perform our ritual prayer wherever we may be.
I have long held that our houses of worship are often loaded spaces, culture clubs and personality cults that have some utility as a gathering place for the initiated, but offer little beyond that. That is an obvious and emotional bias, but it is also the reason Dust and Tribe exists.
Outside is where this work happens.
And there is much work to do. The plague of marginalization is literally killing us. Profound existential resentments are nursed by individuals who struggle with their identity, a construct that is largely informed and reinforced by the company that we keep (and nearly impossible to formulate in the absence of any company at all). Many of us have no idea who we are or what we stand for. Life is bereft of meaning and these are the people that shoot children in schools and worshippers at church. They violate sanctified places because their sanctity has not been acknowledged. This is the psychology of trauma and we cannot legislate a solution.
My brothers and sisters: recognize the enormous blessing in acknowledging one another as brother and sister. There is a tremendous hunger out there for the love and respect we have for each other.
There are so many people out there that don’t fit in and just need a place to call home.
Shame on us for not keeping the door open and the kettle on.
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