O Allah bless our Master Muhammad and his family and companions and greet peace
Because of our ignorance of history and our ‘ulama’s ignorance of of history, certain events have come to assume mythic proportions. One of these is the event of Kerbala. The movement of this event-as-myth to the centre stage of Muslim discourse has resulted in a cynical view of Muslim power, and a defeatism that glorifies useless sacrifice. This myth serves a subordinate role in the global myth of the dominant technique/technology culture that strides the earth. It thus serves a very useful geo-political purpose for the power élite. In that culture of globalised warfare and total spectrum dominance, the technique of the creation of money from nothing is absolutely central. In ignorance of the power politics of the age, active Muslims are locked into a false struggle with local dictators. Primed with the myth of al-Husayn, they are pre-configured to seek defeat. Moreover, as their understanding of power is false, even when they win it is a defeat. As the core community of mankind, it behoves the Muslims rather to turn to the primordial historical model of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions, the people of Madina, both in the telling of his history and the transmission of his practice, the Sunnah. The transmitted practice alone, which is the Qur’anic revelation embodied, deals with the motor, the money nexus, that drives the global frenzy of the age. The sirah represents, contrary to the myth of Kerbala, a life-affirming and positive victory-oriented approach to life and to political power.
