Several Muslim bloggers (Mujahideen Ryder, Umar Lee) have argued that Malcolm X would have voted for Barack Obama simply because he was a Black man. (Tariq Nelson has argued that Zawahiri’s statements are patently racist, but this is somewhat incoherent since he praised Malcolm X in the same speech. Its kind of hard to accuse him of being racist for bashing Obama while he praises Malcolm X). Regardless, the statement was a cheap political pot shot and I doubt it will garner any support anywhere in the Muslim world. The purpose of this post is not to defend Zawahiri, but to criticize the notion that if Malcolm X was alive today that he would have automatically voted for Barack Obama. I think such analysis is short sighted and misses the very essence of what Malcolm X believed in. Rather than looking at clever soundbytes being spun around on the mainstream media and isolated statements by ash-Shaheed such as how he loved all white people when he came back from Hajj, let us take a moment to let Malcolm speak for himself.

The following are some relevant excerpts from the LAST SPEECH he ever gave which should give some indication in terms of the values he espoused towards the end of his life.

One of the major points of the speech is his justification for the use of violence in self-defense and goes out of his way to reject the non-violent aspect of the Civil Rights movement.

“This was what I saw was missing in the Muslim world. If they said they were white, it was incidental. White, black, brown, red, yellow, doesn’t make any difference what color you are. So this was the religion that I had accepted and had gone there to get a better knowledge of it.

But despite the fact that I saw that Islam was a religion of brotherhood, I also had to face reality. And when I got back into this American society, I’m not in a society that practices brotherhood. I’m in a society that might preach it on Sunday, but they don’t practice it on no day — on any day. And so, since I could see that America itself is a society where there is no brotherhood and that this society is controlled primarily by racists and segregationists — and it is — who are in Washington, D.C., in positions of power. And from Washington, D.C., they exercise the same forms of brutal oppression against dark-skinned people in South and North Vietnam, or in the Congo, or in Cuba, or in any other place on this earth where they’re trying to exploit and oppress. This is a society whose government doesn’t hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression upon dark-skinned people all over the world.

To wit, right now what’s going on in and around Saigon and Hanoi and in the Congo and elsewhere. They are violent when their interests are at stake. But all of that violence that they display at the international level, when you and I want just a little bit of freedom, we’re supposed to be nonviolent. They’re violent. They’re violent in Korea, they’re violent in Germany, they’re violent in the South Pacific, they’re violent in Cuba, they’re violent wherever they go. But when it comes time for you and me to protect ourselves against lynchings, they tell us to be nonviolent.

That’s a shame. Because we get tricked into being nonviolent, and when somebody stands up and talks like I just did, they say, “Why, he’s advocating violence!” Isn’t that what they say? Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see where one of these things has written into it that I’m advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I’ve only said that Black people who are the victims of organized violence perpetrated upon us by the Klan, the Citizens’ Council, and many other forms, we should defend ourselves. And when I say that we should defend ourselves against the violence of others, they use their press skillfully to make the world think that I’m calling on violence, period. I wouldn’t call on anybody to be violent without a cause. But I think the Black man in this country, above and beyond people all over the world, will be more justified when he stands up and starts to protect himself, no matter how many necks he has to break and heads he has to crack.”

. . .

“Brothers and sisters, if you and I would just realize that once we learn to talk the language that they understand, they will then get the point. You can’t ever reach a man if you don’t speak his language. If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can’t come to him with peace. Why, good night! He’ll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. If a man speaks French, you can’t speak to him in German. If he speaks Swahili, you can’t communicate with him in Chinese. You have to find out what does this man speak. And once you know his language, learn how to speak his language, and he’ll get the point. There’ll be some dialogue, some communication, and some understanding will be developed.

You’ve been in this country long enough to know the language the Klan speaks. They only know one language. And what you and I have to start doing in 1965 — I mean that’s what you have to do, because most of us already been doing it — is start learning a new language. Learn the language that they understand. And then when they come up on our doorstep to talk, we can talk. And they will get the point. There’ll be a dialogue, there’ll be some communication, and I’m quite certain there will then be some understanding. Why? Because the Klan is a cowardly outfit. They have perfected the art of making Negroes be afraid. As long as the Negro’s afraid, the Klan is safe. But the Klan itself is cowardly. One of them will never come after one of you. They all come together. Sure, and they’re scared of you.

And you sit there when they’re putting the rope around your neck saying, “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.” As long as they’ve been doing it, they’re experts at it, they know what they’re doing!

No, since they federal government has shown that it isn’t going to do anything about it but talk, it is a duty, it’s your and my duty as men, as human beings, it is our duty to our people, to organize ourselves and let the government know that if they don’t stop that Klan, we’ll stop it ourselves. And then you’ll see the government start doing something about it. But don’t ever think that they’re going to do it just on some kind of morality basis, no. So I don’t believe in violence — that’s why I want to stop it. And you can’t stop it with love, not love of those things down there, no. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense, and that vigorous action we feel we’re justified in initiating by any means necessary.”

There are several important points to made. Firstly, Malcolm X rejected non-violence as a means of resisting violence. Secondly, he only justified violence in resisting oppression. Thirdly, he linked the oppression of African Americans with the oppression of other members of the Third World and pointed out the fundamental hypocrisy that colonizers were authorized by a separate “moral” code than the colonized.

Does Barack Obama recognize the right of oppressed peoples to resist oppression by any means necessary as Malcolm did? Is Obama willing to recognize HAMAS, the duly elected government of Palestine? Is Obama going to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran to protect itself from Israeli hegemony in the region?

“And the United States’ interests are involved in blocking this, yes! Some of these liberals who grin in your face like they’re your best friends, they have money tied up in the Congo. Some of the most powerful political figures in this country, come up and governors over states, [have] got interests in the Congo, and got interests in South Africa, and got interests all over the African continent, and go there! And as the Africans awaken and realize, they — it makes them full of the incentive to never rest until that exploiter is driven out.”

Even though Malcolm X lived during the climax of the Civil Rights movement, he saw no fundamental differences between conservatives and liberals in spite of the values that they espoused. He linked both wings of the American political spectrum to imperialism. More importantly, he divides the world into two general classes: the oppressors and the oppressed, the imperialists and those who resisted imperialism. Incidentally, Malcolm X makes a connection between both political parties and financial interests in the Third World as a means for explaining the exploitation and violence committed by the US government towards them.

Does Barack Obama espouse the revolutionary opposition to imperialism like Malcolm X did or does his foreign policy reflect the same type of imperialism couched in terminology such as the democratic humanitarianism espoused by Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq? Did Barack Obama praise Israel at AIPAC and vowed that Jerusalem would remain its undivided capital because of the power of principles or the power of the purse through the Israeli lobby?

“So, now what effect does this have on us? Why should the Black man in America concern himself — since he’s been away from the African continent for three or four hundred years — why should we concern ourselves? What impact does what happens to them have upon us? Number one, first you have to realize that up until 1959 Africa was dominated by the colonial powers. And by the colonial powers of Europe having complete control over Africa, they projected the image of Africa negatively. They projected Africa always in a negative light: jungles, savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. Why then naturally it was so negative [that] it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn’t want anybody telling us anything about Africa, much less calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. You can’t hate Africa and not hate yourself.

You show me one of these people over here who have been thoroughly brainwashed, who has a negative attitude toward Africa, and I’ll show you one that has a negative attitude toward himself. You can’t have a positive attitude toward yourself and a negative attitude toward Africa at the same time. To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude toward Africa becomes positive, you’ll find that your understanding of and your attitude toward yourself will also become positive. And this is what the white man knows. So they very skillfully made you and me hate our African identity, our African characteristics.

You know yourself — and we have been a people who hated our African characteristics. We hated our hair, we hated the shape of our nose — we wanted one of those long, dog-like noses, you know. Yeah. We hated the color of our skin, hated the blood of Africa that was in our veins. And in hating our features and our skin and our blood, why, we had to end up hating ourselves.

And we hated ourselves. Our color became to us a chain. We felt that it was holding us back. Our color became to us like a prison, which we felt was keeping us confined, not letting us go this way or that way. We felt that all of these restrictions were based solely upon our color. And the psychological reaction to that would have to be that as long as we felt imprisoned or chained or trapped by Black skin, Black features, and Black blood, that skin and those features and that blood that was holding us back automatically had to become hateful to us. And it became hateful to us. It made us feel inferior; it made us feel inadequate; it made us feel helpless.

And when we fell victims to this feeling of inadequacy or inferiority or helplessness, we turned to somebody else to show us the way. We didn’t have confidence in another Black man to show us the way, or Black people to show us the way. In those days we didn’t. We didn’t think a Black man could do anything but play some horn — you know, some sounds and make you happy with some songs and in that way. But in serious things, where our food, clothing, and shelter was concerned and our education was concerned, we turned to the man. We never thought in terms of bringing these things into existence for ourselves, we never thought in terms of doing things for our selves. Because we felt helpless. What made us feel helpless was our hatred for ourselves. And our hatred for ourselves stemmed from our hatred of things African.

Along about 1955 they had the Bandung Conference in Indonesia. And at that time the Africans, the Asians, the Arabs, all of the nonwhite people got together and agreed to de-emphasize their differences and emphasize what they had in common, and form a working unity. And it was the working unity — the spirit of Bandung created a working unity that made it possible for the Asians, who were oppressed, the Africans, who were oppressed, and others who were oppressed to work together toward gaining independence for these other people. And it was the spirit of Bandung that brought into existence this working unity that made it possible for nations that didn’t have a chance to become independent to come into their independence. And most of this began along in 1959.

After 1959 the spirit of African nationalism was fanned to a high flame, and we then began to witness the complete collapse of colonialism. France began to get out of French West Africa; Belgium began to make moves to get out of the Congo; Britain began to make moves to get out of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, Nigeria, and some of these other places. And although it looked like they were getting out, they pulled a trick that was colossal.

In that — when you’re playing basketball and they get you trapped, you don’t throw the ball away, you throw it to one of your teammates who’s in the clear. And this is what the European powers did. They were trapped on the African continent, they couldn’t stay there; they were looked upon as colonial, imperialist. So they had to pass the ball to someone whose image was different, and they passed the ball to Uncle Sam. And he picked it up and has been running it for a touchdown ever since. He was in the clear, he was not looked upon as one who had colonized the African continent. But at that time, the Africans couldn’t see that though the United States hadn’t colonized the African continent, he had colonized twenty-two million Blacks here on this continent. Because we are just as thoroughly colonized as anybody else.

When the ball was passed to the United States, it was passed at the time when John Kennedy came into power. He picked it up and helped to run it. He was one of the shrewdest backfield runners that history has ever recorded. He surrounded himself with intellectuals — highly educated, learned, and well-informed people. And their analysis told him that the government of America was confronted with a new problem. And this new problem stemmed from the fact that Africans were now awakened, they were enlightened, and they were fearless, they would fight. So this meant that the Western powers couldn’t stay there by force. And since their own economies, the European economy and the American economy, was based upon their continued influence over the African continent, they had to find some means of staying there. So they used the “friendly” approach. They switched from the old, open colonial, imperialistic approach to the benevolent approach. They came up with some benevolent colonialism, philanthropic colonialism, humanitarianism, or dollarism. Immediately everything was Peace Corps, Crossroads, “We’ve got to help our African brothers.” Pick up on that. Can’t help us in Mississippi. Can’t help us in Alabama, or Detroit, out here in Dearborn where some real Ku Klux Klan live.”

Here, Malcolm X is referencing the formation of powerful movements in the Third World that aimed at creating greater consensus beyond the bipolar world divided by the expansionist USSR and the imperialist US. He attributed the success of this movement specifically to peoples who sought to empower themselves. Malcolm than refers to the election of John F Kennedy as a “trick that was colossal,” implying that it was done deliberately to subvert the pan-nationalist anti-imperialist struggles that had erupted throughout the third world.  JFK is described as “the shrewdest backfield runners that history ever recorded” since he used humanitarianism as a guise to conduct the old tactics of imperialism in a new light. Rather than the old militant tactics, interventions were justified in Africa in the name of spreading peace, economic development, and the promotion fo democracy. Malcolm X astutely points out the fundamental hypocrisy in such a program since its purported “humanitarianism” was selective - it was important to help Africans, but not African Americans in the inner cities who lived under similar conditions of resource and labor exploitation.

While Obama seeks various degrees of interventions in Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, he has very little to say about any other region of Africa, which was a remarkably similar policy to that of John McCain. (Voice of America) The affects of the Second Congo War are still being felt today - a conflict that has claimed the lives of over 5.4 million people. (Reuters) The civil war in Uganda has created a population of 1.4 million people living in its refugee camps, with over 2,000 women and children forced into being child soldiers or sex slaves. (Child Soldiers Global) What does Obama have to say about them? Why is their only humanitarianism for countries that have strategic or economic value to the United States? Why does Obama vehemently support the right of the state of Israel to engage in ruthless violence against lesser armed and trained Palestinians who are only seeking the right to exist as a nation-state? Why does Obama condemn HAMAS, the elected government of Israel, but not his own Chief of Staff’s father who was a member of Irgun, a terrorist organization that also bread Israel’s sixth Prime Minister, Menachem Begin? Why is it unacceptable for Palestinians to elect a “terrorist” organization, but acceptable for Israel to do so. Not only that, but to appoint the son of the member of a terrorist organization to the second most powerful office? Why is al-Zawahiri condemned, but not Irgun, not Israel, not Jundullah or Mujahideen e Khalq? Malcolm noted this huge discrepancy in words and actions in the 1960s and he would have probably noted it today.

“So, realizing that it was necessary to come up with these new approaches, Kennedy did it. He won — he created an image of him self that was skillfully designed to make the people on the African continent think that he was Jesus, the great white father, come to make things right. I’m telling you, some of these Negroes cried harder when he died than they cried for Jesus when he was crucified.”

This analysis is particularly pertinent. Note how Malcolm attributes John F Kennedy’s victory not to his values, which the latter viewed as nothing but propaganda to hide the true imperialist ambitions of the ruling elite, but to the carefully crafted image he had constructed himself as a person who would bring about the moral rectification of the whole world.

One could make the argument that the clever political campaign conducted can be largely attributed to Barack Obama’s success. Should it come to any surprise that David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist for his presidential campaign, was appointed as Senior Adviser to the President in the upcoming administratino? It was through Axelrod’s political consultancy group, Axelrod and Associates, that he enabled a slew of African Americans tocome into power such as Harold Washington (Chicago’s first black mayor), Dennis Archer (Mayor of Detroit), Michael White (Mayor of Cleveland), Anthony Williams (Mayor of Washington DC), Lee P Brown (Mayor of Houston), and John Street (Mayor in Philadelphia). In fact, Axelrod used a lot of the same techniques he had developed in a previous candidate’s election for Obama’s campaign:

“Given his rhetorical skills, Harvard Law pedigree, up-by-the-bootstraps bio and, well, his race, it is hard not to compare recently elected Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to his friend Barack Obama. Both men entered crowded primaries in which they were definitively not favored. They both inspired a kind of personal pride among supporters that is rare in politics. On the evening of Obama’s convincing primary victory, the crowd and the candidate joined in chanting, “Yes We Can!” and if you listen closely to video of Patrick rallies, you’ll hear the crowd chanting the very same thing. When Patrick looked into the camera in one ad and said the state’s problem wasn’t a “deficit of dollars but a deficit of leadership,” it was hard not to hear echoes of Obama’s oft-used line that the country’s biggest problem isn’t a budget deficit but an “empathy deficit.” And in Patrick’s most effective ad, he stands on a stage delivering an impassioned speech to a crescendo of applause as Obama sits on a stool just behind him, nodding approvingly, his head perfectly framed in the shot.

Which brings us to something else the two men share: David Axelrod, the 51-year-old reporter turned media consultant who was the key media strategist for both men’s campaigns. He’s the one who wrote those ads, framed that shot and came up with the “Yes We Can” tag line. “I don’t bring these messages to candidates,” Axelrod says when I point out the similarities. “I look for candidates who exemplify and reflect those messages.” In the cases of Obama and Patrick, he says, the work is a collaboration. “They take and improve on what you bring them; they deliver it well because they believe in it. It’s like riffing with great musicians.”

(The Nation)

In other words, the campaign slogans and style of speech that Obama had used during his campaign may seem original, but it turns out that they were the concoctions of a sharp PR strategist who used similar strategies to help candidates in other elections come to power. In this context, “Yes we can” may seem to be only slightly more poetic than Nike’s “Just Do It” or Pepsi’s “The Choice of a Generation.”

However, poignant rhetoric and a good public relations expert weren’t the only reasons that Obama was able to establish a strong media presence, money had a lot to do with it. During the closing weeks of the election, Obama out spent McCain on advertising on a four to one ratio. Where did this money come from? It didn’t fall out of the sky, but was directly attributed to “Obama’s decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system to continue to raise private donations,” even though he specifically promised that if John McCain was going to take from the federal campaign finance system, so would he. This promise was skirted over by many individuals, but it reveals that perhaps the true nature of Obama’s motivations is power, not principle. An interesting anecdote is that the advertising conducted during the election season has been described as “. . . the most lopsided since TV advertising entered presidential politics in 1952, according to the Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin.” (Source)

Malcolm X’s criticism of John F Kennedy’s election being attributed to a clever media campaign is just as equally applicable to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. His criticism of JFK’s foreign policy and feigned humanitarianism is equally applicable to Obama and his inconsistent approach to the interests of humanity, selecting some nations for sanctions (Iran but not Israel), others for a troop increase (Afghanistan but not Chad), and looking the other way while minorities are being oppressed in states that he seeks to establish deeper relations with (such as India where Christians are being killed flagrantly in Orissa).

“From 1954 to 1964 was the era in which we witnessed the emerging of Africa. The impact that this had upon the civil rights struggle in America has never been told, fully told.

For one reason — for one thing, one of the primary ingredients in the complete civil rights struggle was the ‘Black Muslim’ movement. The ‘Black Muslim’ movement, though it took no part in things political, civic — it didn’t take too much part in anything other than stopping people from doing this drinking, smoking, and so on. Moral reform it had, but beyond that it did nothing. But it talked such a strong talk until it put the other Negro organizations on the spot. Before the ‘Black Muslim’ movement came along, the NAACP was looked upon as radical; they were getting ready to investigate it. And then along came the ‘Muslim’ movement and frightened the white man so much he began to say, “Thank God for old Uncle Roy and Uncle Whitney and Uncle A. Philip and Uncle… — you’ve got a whole lot of uncles in there. I can’t remember their names, they’re all older than I, so I call them “uncle.” Plus, if you use the word “Uncle Tom” nowadays, I heard they’ll sue you for libel, you know. So I don’t call any of them Uncle Tom anymore. I call them Uncle Roy.”

These statements seem to delve into the heart of the matter. Malcolm X refers to members of the NAACP as being Uncle Toms from the perception of the white establishment while it viewed the Black Muslim movement as radicals. Compare this with today’s description of an alternative to the bipartisan system, such as the Green party or Libertarian party, as being “the looney fringe.” It is interesting to note his use of the term “Uncle Tom” was associated with the phrase “House Negro” in one of his earlier speeches. If Malcolm X were alive today and he viewed the NAACP as being  an “Uncle Tom”, its hard to imagine how he would’ve viewed Barack Obama. Is it that hard to imagine that he, like al-Zawahiri, would refer to him as a “House Negro”? One could argue that this statement is ambiguous, but based on the earlier parts of the speech where he rejects non-violence, its quite possible that Malcolm X would have not supported Obama today, especially given his criticisms of John F Kennedy.

“John F. Kennedy also saw that it was necessary for a new approach among the American Negroes. And during his entire term in office, he specialized in how to psycho the American Negro. Now, a lot of you all don’t like my saying that, but I wouldn’t ever take a stand on that if I didn’t know what I was talking about. And I don’t — by living in this kind of society, pretty much around them — and you know what I mean when I say “them” — I learned to study them. You can think that they mean you some good ofttimes, but if you look at it a little closer you’ll see that they don’t mean you any good. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some of them who mean good. But it does mean that most of them don’t mean good.

Kennedy’s new approach was pretending to go along with us in our struggle for civil rights and different other forms of rights. But I remember the expose that Look magazine did on Meredith’s situation in Mississippi. Look magazine did an expose showing that Robert Kennedy and Governor Wallace — not Governor Wallace, Governor Barnett — had made a deal, wherein the attorney general was going to come down and try and force Meredith into school, and Barnett was going to stand at the door, you know, and say, “No, you can’t come in.” He was going to get in anyway. But it was all arranged in advance. And then Barnett was supposed to keep the support of the white racists, because that’s who he was holding up, and Kennedy would keep the support of the Negroes, because that’s who he’d be holding up. That’s — it was a cut-and-dried deal. And it’s not a secret; it was written, they write about it. But if that’s a deal and that’s a deal, how many other deals do you think go down? What you think is on the level is crookeder, brothers and sisters, than a pretzel, which is most crooked.

So in my conclusion I would like to point out that the approach that was used by the administration right on up until today — see, even the present generation — was designed skillfully to make it appear that they were trying to solve the problem when they actually weren’t. They would deal with the conditions, but never the cause. They only gave us tokenism. Tokenism benefits only a few. It never benefits the masses, and the masses are the ones who have the problem, not the few. That one who benefits from tokenism, he doesn’t want to be around us anyway — that’s why he picks up on the token.

The masses of our people still have bad housing, bad schooling, and inferior jobs, jobs that don’t compensate with sufficient salary for them to carry on their life in this world. So that the problem for the masses has gone absolutely unsolved. The only ones for whom it has been solved are people like Whitney Young, who’s supposed to be placed in the cabinet, so the rumors say. He’ll be one of the first Black cabinet men. And that answers where he’s at. And others who have been given jobs — Carl Rowan, who was put over the USIA, who is very skillfully trying to make Africans think that the problem of Black men in this country is all solved.

And this is the worst thing the white man can do to himself is to take one of these kind of Negroes and ask him, “How do your people feel, boy?” He’s going to tell that man that we are satisfied. That’s what they do, brothers and sisters. They get behind the door and tell the white man we’re satisfied. “Just keep on — keep me up here in front of them, boss, and I’ll keep ‘em behind you.” That’s what they talk when they’re behind closed doors. ‘Cause, see, the white man doesn’t go along with anybody who’s not for him. He doesn’t care whether you’re for right or wrong, he wants to know, are you for him. And if you’re for him, he doesn’t care what else you’re for. As long as you’re for him, then he puts you up over the Negro community. You become the spokesman.”

These words make it clear that Malcolm X wasn’t satisfied with what he called “Tokenism” - outward displays of changes in power that didn’t address the fundamental roots of a division between elites and the masses which was rooted in more than racism, but in class interest and exploitation. He clearly does not praise the appointment of Black leaders to cabinet level positions as something significant so long as the plight of the common man went un-addressed.  He viewed such tactics by JFK as being the highest form of deception. It will be interesting to note how many Black leaders Barack Obama appoints to positions of power. Will these individuals represent the interests of the African American community or corporate and elitist interests?

“In your struggle it’s like standing on a revolving wheel: you’re running, but you’re not going anywhere. You run faster and faster and the wheel just goes faster and faster. You don’t ever leave the spot that you’re standing in. So, it is very important for you and me to see that the only way that our problem is going to be solved, it has to be with a solution that will benefit the masses, not the upper class — so-called “upper class.”

Actually, there’s no such thing as an upper-class Negro, because he catches the same hell as the other class Negro. All of them catch the same hell, which is one of the things that’s good about this racist system — it makes us all one.

Quickly, if you’ll notice in 1963, everyone was talking about the “centennial of progress!” I think that’s what they called it. A hundred years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and everyone is celebrating how much white and Black people have learned to love each other in America. You probably remember how they were talking in January of 1963. Well, if you had stood up in January at the same time that they were talking all this talk about a good year ahead, good things ahead, and told them that by May, Birmingham would have exploded, and Bull Connor would be known as an international thug for the brutality that he heaped upon Black people; if you would tell the people in January of ‘63 that John F. Kennedy would be killed for his role in everything; if you had told them in January that Medgar Evers would be murdered and nobody able to bring his killer to justice; or if you were to have told them in January of 1963 that a church would be bombed in Birmingham, with four little Black girls blown to bits while they were praying and serving Jesus — why, they would say you’re crazy.

In 1964 they started out the same way. That was the year of promise. If you were to have told them while they were talking about this great year of promise ahead, you know, civil rights and all of that, what was coming, that before long three civil rights workers would be brutally murdered and the government unable to do anything about it. A Negro educator in Georgia brutally murdered in broad daylight and the men who did it be known, and the government not able to do anything about it. If you had said this in January of ‘64, they’d say you were nuts. Now they are starting out 1965 the same way. Talking about the “Great Society,” you know, “antipoverty.”"

Again, Malcolm condemns the elitism of the upper class - a class that Obama seems to have been most strongly identified with other than a little voter registration he did as a community organizer. Note the similarities in Malcolm X’s criticism of “promises”  of the “centennial of progress” and Obama’s promises for “change” in spite of the fact that many of the promises he has made during his campaign have already been broken such as his commitment to public finance, energy policies, foreign policies, restrictions on lobbyists in his administration, etc.

“If you tell them right now what is in store for 1965, they’ll think you’re crazy for sure. But 1965 will be the longest and hottest and bloodiest year of them all. It has to be, not because you want it to be, or I want it to be, or we want it to be, but because the conditions that created these explosions in 1963 are still here; the conditions that created explosions in ‘64 are still here. You can’t say that you’re not going to have an explosion and you leave the condition, the ingredients, still here. As long as those ingredients, explosive ingredients, remain, then you’re going to have the potential for explosion on your hands.”

. . .

“When they think that an explosive era is coming up, then they grab their press again and begin to shower the Negro public, to make it appear that all Negroes are satisfied. Because if you know that you’re dissatisfied all by yourself and ten others aren’t, you play it cool; but you know if all ten of you are dissatisfied, you get with it. Well, this is what the man knows. The man knows that if these Negroes find out how dissatisfied they really are — and all of them, even Uncle Tom is dissatisfied, he’s just playing his part for now — this is what makes them frightened. It frightens them in France, it frightens them in England, and it frightens them in the United States.”

. . .

“And it is for this reason that it is so important for you and me to start organizing among ourselves, intelligently, and try to find out: What are we going to do if this happens, that happens, or the next thing happens? Don’t think that you’re going to run to the man and say, “Look, boss, this is me.” Why, when the deal goes down, you’ll look just like me in his eyesight; I’ll make it tough for you. Yes, when the deal goes down, he doesn’t look at you in any better light than he looks at me.”

. . .

“I want to thank you for coming out this afternoon — this evening. I think it’s wonderful that as many of you came out, considering the blackout on the meeting that took place. Also, [Milton Henry] and the brothers who are here in Detroit are very progressive young men, and I would advise all of you to get with them in every way that you can to try and create some kind of united effort toward common goals, common objectives. Don’t let the power structure maneuver you into a time wasting battle with others when you could be involved in something that’s constructive and getting a real job done. Probably, one thing I should’ve pointed out to you, that once we formed our new organization, once we became identified with the orthodox Muslim world, we also formed a group known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which is designed to fight all the negative political, economic, and social conditions that exist in our neighborhood. It’s a nonreligious organization to which anyone can belong who’s interested in direct action.”

Through these statements, Malcolm makes clear that electoral politics alone can never lead to changes in the structure of power in America and the failure to do so will result in an explosive reaction. He advocates a pragmatic approach, after being influenced through his interactions with the Muslim world, through the Organization of Afro-American Unity to deal with specific issues that are being faced in the inner city using direct action. The next statement makes clear that the purpose of this organization is not only to apply pressure domestically in the US, but internationally by transforming the civil rights movement into a human rights and anti-imperialist movement.

“And one of our first programs is to take our problem out of the civil rights context and place it at the international level, of human rights, so that the entire world can have a voice in our struggle. If we keep it at civil rights, then the only place we can turn for allies is within the domestic confines of America. But when you make it a human rights struggle, it becomes international, and then you can open the door for all types of advice and support from our brothers in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. So it’s very, very important — that’s our international aim, that’s our external aim.”

Malcolm identifies the struggle of African Americans not with the upper echelons of American power, but with the nationalistic struggles of people from the Third World. He viewed the establishment in the US as the cause of the suffering of both and proposed a unification of the movements - a movement beyond borders. Compare this with Obama’s proposed use of multilateralism to achieve its strategic interests, the same approach that Malcolm condemned JFK for.

“Our internal aim is to become immediately involved in a mass voter registration drive. But we don’t believe in voter registration without voter education. We believe that our people should be educated into the science of politics, so that they will know what a vote is for, and what a vote is supposed to produce, and also how to utilize this united voting power so that you can control the politics of your own community, and the politicians that represent that community. We’re for that.

And in that line we will work with all others, even civil rights groups, who are dedicated to increase the number of Black registered voters in the South. The only area in which we differ with them is this: we don’t believe that young students should be sent into Mississippi, Alabama, and these other places without some kind of protection. So we will join in with them in their voter registration [Applause] and help to train brothers in the arts that are necessary in this day and age to enable one to continue his existence upon this earth.”

It is here that Malcolm brings up embracing electoral politics as part of the two-pronged strategy he highlighted above, with the bulk of the focus being the international arena. Again, the focus is not the empowerment of African Americans alone, but the upliftment of the third world as a whole to deconstruct the establishment in America. A revolutionary cry that vastly differs from the rhetoric of Obama and is more readily identifiable with the speeches of Mao and Guevara.

“I say again that I’m not a racist, I don’t believe in any form of segregation or anything like that. I’m for the brotherhood of everybody, but I don’t believe in forcing brotherhood upon people who don’t want it. Long as we practice brotherhood among ourselves, and then others who want to practice brotherhood with us, we practice it with them also, we’re for that. But I don’t think that we should run around trying to love somebody who doesn’t love us.”

Malcolm X ends his speech here categorically rejecting racism. It is important to note that throughout his speech he makes a careful distinction between the problems of race on the one hand and money and power on the other hand. He argues for the creation of an international network that may use violence if necessary to achieve its goals (if attacked) domestically and internationally. Does Obama’s slogan “Yes we can!” apply to revolutionary movements seeking to create greater consensus against Western hegemony? Does it apply to the nationalist independent movements in Palestine, Kurdistan, the Western Sahara, Kashmir, Chechnya, Xinjiang, the Philippines, or any other peoples striving for freedom?

If we assumed that Malcom X’s views as stated in his last speech would be the same today, its reasonable to conclude that he most likely would not have supported Barack Obama just because he was African American. Malcolm might have condemned this as meer tokenism. He might look at Obama’s foreign policy objectives and see that Obama was using the same tactics Kennedy did during the 1960s to justify a belligerent foreign policy program guised in humanitarianism or democracy promotion. His advocacy for an international networking of the Third World and criticism of the upper-class elites seems to indicate that he may have advocated an alternative to electoral politics. Even though he supported voter registration drives, it is not necessary that he would have voted in favor of a Democrat or a Republican, especially given his criticism of liberal Democrats and JFK in his own time. Whose to say that he wouldn’t have voted for Cynthia McKinney of the Green party, also a Black candidate whose ancestors actually had to fight through the tragedies of slavery and the challenges of Jim Crow, unlike Barack Obama? Whose to say that he might have chosen to abandon electoral politics altogether and not embraced a more militant methodology?  Would Malcolm have falled for the rhetoric of change or would he have analyzed this election and said that it was nothing more than a desperate attempt to restore people’s hope in the theoretical potential for good in the government because it fell on its face in front of the world?

So what would Malcolm do today? Would he be voting for Barack Obama or fighting against American imperialism in a cave alongside al-Zawahiri?  Are we truly afraid of terrorists invoking the name of a revolutionary Saint for their cause or are we more afraid that the truth spoken by him will expose the pretentiousness of the nature of power in America?

One thing is absolutely clear, if Malcolm was alive today, he would not ask “What would Malcolm do?” He would ask “What would YOU do?” What would you do if Obama’s promises for change fall flat? What would you do if the US engages in another cumbersome war in the name of “democracy”, “freedom”, “human rights” against innocent third world countries or nationalist independence movements? What would you do if the US does not stop flaunting international law? What would you do if it continue to fund Israeli ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians? What would you do if it continues to violate the sovereignty of other nations through covert operations such as in Syria? Malcolm would ask “Do you choose the ballot or the bullet?” 

al-Zawahiri can’t speak for Black Americans, Barack Obama can’t speak for the Muslim world and its aspirations, and I can’t speak for the American Muslim community, but let us let Malcolm X speak for himself 

Allahu alim.

May Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) grant Br. Malcolm Jannat al Firdaus and grant us tawfeeq. Ameen.

 Malcolm X’s Last Speech

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A new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies predicts that American influence in the world will decline over the next two decades as surging powers such as China and India, as well as independent entities including tribes and criminal networks, gain international clout. (LA TIMES)

The report claims that Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia will become regional powers. China and India will become global actors. Japan, Russia, and Brazil will probably be stuck within the tension of two competing spheres of influence: a declining West and a rising East. It is interesting to note that the general US strategy seems to be tryign to create an entente between Japan, India, Afghanistan, and South Korea in Asia and Eastern Europe, the former Yugoslav Republics, and Turkey in the Ural area. The Chinese strategy seems to be developing links with Russia, Iran, African states, and Latin America. This appears to be a resurrection of the great game competition between European colonizers and Americas, Africa, and Asia. Think of this as Colonialism Round Two! The difference is that their is no territory that will give a dramatic windfall to either power to help them escape Malthusian constraints that resulted in state fragmentation of the great world powers that resulted in a vacuum of power that was filled in by a small group of Western merchant-marine-mercenaries backed by monarchs (”M” is the letter of the evening).

So what does this mean for Muslims? I think it reveals the utter idiocy of tying down our state and social orders to Western civilization especially since it is going to decline significantly in the future. Why should the Gulf states continue to peg their currencies to the dollar? Why should Muslim militaries strive to be a part of the Western security blanket, such as NATO? Why should North African Muslim states aspire to form a Mediterranean Union with countries that had raped them through colonialism only a hundred years or so ago? Our naivete will be the doom of us. Rather than switching between submitting to various hegemonic orders, it would make more sense to take advantage of this situation and push for one’s own hegemonic order. The most likely place for such a restoration of power to occur would be in a peripheral region that is essentially a no-man’s land between these emerging powers: Central Asia. Its no surpise that the American hegemonic enterpise since Brzenziski wrote “The Grand Chessboard” has been fixated on Central Asia. Its no surprise that Obama wants to increase massive troop levels in Afghanistan, the location where an Islamic regional power could possibly form that could tip the balance further in favor of Asian supremacy. It is also the center of the vortex of competition between these powers (Russia, Iran, China, India, Turkey).  It should also not come to anyone’s surprise that the US government continues to violate the sovereignty of Pakistan in order to drop bombs on wedding processions and schools, in spite of the fact that it is increasing instability and will most likely result in the fragmentation of the state. But if you’re a power hungry state with greed for global domination and you don’t like uppity colored peoples around the world lining up behind you to take your up your spotlight, it shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise that the US is building a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe to protect against Iranian radicalism, as if Iran has got an existential beef with Lithuania. Its no surprise that the US is building up the African Command to help engage in “humanitarian” causes and fight “piracy”, even though it created the conditions for piracy by providing funding and intelligence to Ethiopia to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government in the name of fighting terrorism, while ignoring atrocities being committed there by said country or of other countries in the region, such as the Congo. Its not any surprise that wherever China’s military and economic networks are attempting to penetrate, countries like Iraq and Sudan, the US pulls out a list of atrocities, but ignores them when its allies like Israel commit similar atrocities against an oppressed people.

If anyone is surprised by US hegemony declining, they need to read the Qur’an:

Whole societies have passed away before your time, so travel about the earth and see the final fate of the deniers.
(Qur’an, 3:137)

The point is not to celebrate the decline of US hegemony or praise the rise of Asian supremacy. The point is to take lessons from these things and plan around them. Strategically, it is stupid to tie your life boat to a sinking ship. Muslims should break away from American hegemony.  Spiritually, one should be reminded to place one’s complete trust in Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) and not make alliances with any power whose ideology or interests clash with the objectives of Islam. Let the powers that be fight for the scraps of the dunya. Let them rule over the whole universe, what is the point when it will be utterly annihilated anyway? It is only by invoking the mercy of Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) that true success can be attained and such success is not by pursuing the temporal, but the eternal. Whoever has vested power in American hegemony will be a loser in this life. Whoever has vested power in Asian supremacy will be a loser in this life. Both systems of power will collapse. Rather, place one’s trust in Allah (subhana wa ta’la), the One in Whose Hands true Power is Supreme.

The Prophet (sallahu alayhi wa sallam) said “A person will be with whom he loves on the day of judgment.” May we have the honor of being in the company of the Prophet (sallahu alayhi wa sallam) and the Sahabah (radhi allahu anhum) and the Siddiqeen and the Shuhadaa. Ameen.

May Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) grant us tawfeeq and hidaya and enable us to learn from the nations of the past and their inevitable declines so that we are not foolish enough to ally with any power that is not aligned to Him. Ameen.

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www.qisas.com/

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muftitaqiusmani.com/

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A hegemonic discourse against Islam exists today. It is present in many nodes of intellectual thought and public discourse. It comprises of both positive and negative stereotypes. An example of the former is that Islam is viewed through the lens of liberal democratic capitalism. Islam is described as being essentially “good”, not necessarily for any value that it itself as a narrative proposes, but because it conforms to a preconceived set of values that emanate from the Western discourse. Islam is “good” as opposed to “bad” because it is fundamentally democratic, capitalist, egalitarian, etc. An example of the latter is that Islam is criticized for the areas where it does not conform to the dominant narrative, that of liberal democratic capitalism. In such instances, Islam is condemned because it is not the hegemonic narrative. It is described as being violent, totalitarian, unjust, demeaning towards women, etc. Both the positive stereotyping and negative stereotyping of Islam serves the dominant narrative and enable it to preserve si hegemony among other narratives in the conglomerate of discourse.

The effect of this approach tends to facilitate divisions within the Muslim mind and reinforces a schizophrenia. Muslims are caught between these two stereotypes and often either try to conform to one or the other. Muslims that reject negative stereotyping of Islam often resort to the positive stereotyping of Islam without realizing that it is a fundamental distortion of Islam itself and fail to criticize the dominant narrative. Since the dominant narrative mystifies itself in such a manner, it continues to propagate itself.

A very popular technique is the use of terrorism as a disabling tool. One of the means by which Muslim colonies resisted colonialism was through the discourse of Islamic resistance, often revolving around the notion of Jihad. Different Western nations categorized the discourse on jihad not as one of national liberation, but an existential threat that had to be eliminated in order to preserve Western civilization, in spite of the fact that no Muslim power was able to sufficiently challenge Europe for several hundreds following the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, when the US needed Muslims to fight against the Soviet Union and communism in places such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Indonesia. Clearly, it was not against “jihad” nor did it view it as a threat. However, in the post-Cold War era, the resistance to American hegemonic planning in the Muslim world has often come precisely from those very elements that America had ideologically supported. The use of the term “terrorism”, while true in some instances, has been used to apply to a hodgepodge collection of groups, not all of whom are associated with terrorism while the US has supported openly terrorist organizations such as Mujahideen e Khalq and Jund-Allah .

Two other techniques are to describe the Shari’ah as being barbaric which is used by the US to justify military interventions in the name of the preservation of democracy and is also used by Zionists to justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.

It is upon Muslims to identify these various tactics and by ignoring them and focus on deconstructing the dominant narrative rather than engaging in an a perpetual dialectical argument which they will never win.

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The only thing that has changed about the nature of power in America is purely a cosmetic one. The ruling class now has a black man as its puppet to lull the masses into sleep and to not question the structure of class and power relationships in America. The danger behind idealizing Obama is that those who participate in a personality cult around him will fail to see his flaws. In fact, his flaws are already apparent now and American Muslims are either denying them or ignoring them. If they continue on the path of giving blind devotion to someone who simply does not care about them, they are setting themselves up for a rude awakening that will result in widespread disillusionment that may foster extremism, just as the election of George Bush did in 2000. If Obama continues business as usual, young American Muslims may find themselves asking “If a liberal progressive such as Obama has the same foreign policy objectives as George Bush, than perhaps there is no hope for real change at all?” This path of blind faith and hope will just as easily transform into one of anger and desperation, perhaps even eventually violence. Their failure lies not in their audacity to hope and dream, but for having unrealistic expectations of how the American political system operates. They have failed to understand how the Constitution is structured with anti-majoritarian constraints setting up an electoral college that sets up a bipartisan system which enables corporations and special interests to funnel wealth in favor of candidates. If one looks at Obama’s nomination for the Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, the power of money, not ideas, becomes apparent. Rahm Emmanuel was behind the victory of Clinton and the Democratic takeover in the 2006 midterm elections. He did so through raising record numbers of funding, the same thing that Obama did in this campaign. Let it not be forgotten that if Obama had opted to go through public campaign financing as he promised, then the amount of money he would have gotten for his campaign would have been significantly less and the outcome of the election may have been radically different. American Muslims fail to realize that their is a price that comes with the campaign contributions from wealthy individuals and organizations and that is ideology. It is strange for Obama to have protested against apartheid in South Africa as a student but not protest against the apartheid committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians. What is the cause of this inconsistency? Is it a failure of vision or ignorance of the situation of the Palestinians? No, it is an intentional denial of the suffering of those people because he received a huge amount of funding from American Zionists.

So to be clear, this election is not historic change for American Muslims, especially for someone. The American hegemonic system continues to operate both within the state and between it and other states. The structure of power and class relations remains unchanged and even if Obama intended to do so, he would not be able to do so without the support of his party in Congress and without the Supreme Court which is presently dominated by conservatives. Any gross deviance from the bipartisan agenda would spell disaster for the Democrats so they are forced to support a more centrist agenda, just as Obama is forced by similar pressures to going along with the party line. Until American Muslims study the structure of power and economics in America as set up by the Constitution, they will continue to give almost fanatical reverence to people who care nothing for them and will continue to trample on their interests. However, this post was not intended to demoralize the American Muslim community. It was intended to give them a realistic portrayal so that they do not end up hurting themselves when their aspirations get dashed. It was intended to remind them that historic change comes in many forms, not just in the form of US Presidential elections.

The first and foremost historic change was not Obama’s victory into the white house, but the birth of our beloved Prophet (salahu alayhi wa sallam), the mercy to all of creation. Nothing is more historic and great as that. Historic change is when a group of backwards Arabs who knew nothing of culture or civilization were able to establish a military power that would dominate world affairs for the rest of history, even until today. Historic change is when the Ottoman Empire sent its forces to every part of the Muslim world to defeat Western expansion even though they got little in return. They sent aid and soldiers to North Africa, Egypt, the Gulf states, India, and even as far off as Indonesia. Such a sign of brotherhood and lover for one’s fellow Muslims only occurred during the era of the Sahabah (radhi allahu anhum). May Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) grant the Ottoman sultans and mujahideen janat al firdaus. Ameen.

Of course, one doesn’t have to look that far back into history to look for historic change, look at this century alone and the collapse of colonialism. To me, the collapse of colonialism is a far more significant event than the election of a Black man as president. Racism is only one facet of the problem of hegemony, the other being the structure of power being transformed between the colonizer and the colonized. When nations across the world rebelled against their occupiers and were granted independence either by sword or pen, that is true historic change. Why don’t Muslims speak about colonialism and the struggles of the many brave people who gave their lives in resisting it? Is the resistance of Omar Mukhtar not historic change? Is not the Mutiny of 1857 in India not historic change? Is not the rebellion year after year after year against the Dutch in Southeast Asia not historic change? Is not Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez canal not historic change? Is not the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979 not historic change? Is not the decision by OPEC to institute an oil embargo not historic change? Is not the defeat of the USSR, a superpower, by a handful of scraggly bearded fundamentalists not historic change? If these things are not historic change, than what is historic change? Are Muslims so enslaved that they interpret a victory for the ruling class in America as a victory of their own while ignoring their rich history of resistance and struggle for sovereignty? Are we that brainwashed that the election of a person who has no connection to our religion and has openly supported the oppression of our people is categorized as a “historic event”?

In my opinion, Ho Chi Minh is a better source of inspiration that Barack Obama. Ho Chi Minh attended the Treaty of Versailles attempting to convince Woodrow Wilson to recognize Vietnamese self-determination, a philosophy that the latter had announced was a right for all nations. Wilson, in contrast to his pronounced idealism, had two weeks earlier authorized a military expedition to invade Haiti and install a puppet of his choosing. During the entirety of Wilson’s campaigning for his fourteen points, American troops occupied Nicaragua. A person who is not fooled by the promises of politicians and high idealism would instantly be able to point out the contradictions of a President supporting the right of self-determination for nations while virtually simultaneously trampling on the rights of such peoples in his own backyard. American Muslims do not see these contradictions with Barack Obama because they are blinded by a dazzling media campaign and cheap slogans. We’ve shifted from cheap slogans like “Quran and Sunnah”, “Islam is the only solution,” and “the importance of Muslim unity” to “change you can believe in.” The only change Muslims should believe in is the change that Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) bestows upon the Ummah after they themselves have changed what is in their hearts.

Instead of looking to Barack Obama, who will probably turn out to be another Woodrow Wilson, perhaps American Muslims should look to Ho Chi Minh. After Minh had left the Treaty of Versailles conference in disappointment, what did he do? Did he try to go to the Republican presidential candidate in the next election and try to influence him? No. Did he try to go to the leader of another Western state and attempt to woo them over? No. He became a communist, went to the USSR to receive training in revolutionary organization, and then went back to his country and fought for its liberation against the Japanese, French, and finally the Americans. The defeat of the world’s greatest superpower by an old pastry chef is historic change. The resolution and willpower of the Vietnamese people to fight for their independence at all costs is historic change.

American Muslims would learn more from the revolutionary movements that resulted in the global demise of colonialism than they would from the US presidential elections. They would learn their own proud history of resistance. They would learn that if you want change, you work for it yourself. They would learn that power does not come from groveling on your knees before powerful people like Firawn, but from standing up boldly on your feet and demanding it. They would learn that the only means to solving the problems of the global Muslim brotherhood, of which the American Muslim community is inextricably connected no matter how much they choose to ignore or deny this, is by organizing ourselves by embracing a revolutionary methodology. It is by pooling our political systems, economic wealth and resources, and military powers will true historic change come. The problem of Palestine was created by Western states such as England, France, and America who have a vested interest in the energy rich region, they will not solve that problem because it would spell suicide for their hegemonic interests. The situation of Palestine can only be solved when the Muslim world adopts the spirit of the Intifada. The suffering of Iraqis, Afghanis, Kashmiris, Uighurs, Chechens, and Somalis would not be happening if the Muslim Ummah was working for real historic change, rather than being duped by cosmetic changes. It is not within the character of the believer to grovel for scraps of power from oppressors and elites. Those who do so will share in their eventual humiliation. The only way to victory for the Muslim world is by banding together, implementing Khilafah and the Shari’ah, and working towards promoting the interests of Islam.

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http://www.anwar-alawlaki.com/2008/10/31/voting-for-the-american-president/

http://www.anwar-alawlaki.com/2008/11/03/part-2-voting-for-the-american-president/

In terms of the permissibility of voting, there are ‘Ulema across the board who have issued fatawa declaring that voting is permissible under a certain set of conditions, the most important of which are that the Muslims realize that (a) the Islamic system of government is superior, (b) one cannot vote in support of someone who is known to be an oppressor, and (c) one cannot vote in favor of haram.

While Imam Awlaki has stated that there are a lot of ‘Ulema who have stated that voting is haram, he fails to name a single scholar who has said so. In fact, his own post is highly rhetorical and contains no use of textual evidence of Islamic legal reasoning what so ever.

Here are a list of ‘Ulema that have declared voting to be permissible:
- Jamiatul Ulema from South Africa: (They are Deobandi and advocate that women stay at home all day, i.e. they are not “liberal” in any use of the term)
http://www.jamiat.co.za/library/pamphlets/voting_in_the_light_of_the_shar%EEah.htm

- Islam Q A: (They are Salafi and also not “liberal”)
http://www.islamqa.com/en/ref/3062

- Sunnipath (Ashari Sufi)
Shaykh Faraz Rabbani said it best:

“As for sitting in London , and saying you are ‘working towards establishing an Islamic state, this is folly. No Islamic state can exist without a state of Islam; otherwise, more harm is done than good.”
http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=10&ID=1833&CATE=144

- Islamonline
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503548286
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503545732
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503547582

Lastly, there’s Dr. Sherman Jackson’s analysis which is by far the most-detailed.
http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?id=2625

All of these ‘Ulema recognize the limitations of voting in a democratic non-Muslim country. Most of these ‘Ulema and academics live in the “West” (South Africa, Canada, the US). None of them has given a blanket fatwa for or against voting, but have stated the specific conditions for voting.

So I think Imam Awlaki’s arguments are not only inaccurate, but extremely disrespectful towards these ‘Ulema. Implying that they “don’t know about the real nature of electoral politics” or don’t care implies they are giving fatwa out of ignorance or deliberately twisting Islamic law to cater to political needs. Such a tactic reveals a sense of desperation and paranoia. While he states that he recognizes their is ikhtilaaf on the issue, he nonetheless proceeds to condemn opinions that he disagrees with.

The second major problem with Imam Awlaki’s argument is his insinuation that America, whom he refers to as the founder of democracy, is at war with Islam. I contest the claim that America is the founder of democracy. Democracy has been present in the world for a fairly long time, starting in Greece. In the middle ages, there were the Italian republics. Various power-sharing agreements among First American tribes can also be categorized as “democratic.” Classifying the current conflict as a war between Islam and Democracy is anachronistic and dangerously misleading.

Firstly, what does America being a democracy have to do with its opposition to Islam? Hitler was the founder of Nazism, an ideology that is clearly and openly against Islam and fundamentally incompatible with the Shari’ah, yet some Muslims attempted to propose an alliance with him against Western states. Merely because one’s ideology is opposed to Islam doesn’t mean that such states will actually oppose Islam. There is a difference between theory and application that the Imam fails to recognize.

Secondly, the US has openly worked with Islamists and Islamic governments and has also worked against democratic movements within the Muslim world. The CIA has facilitated the use of Islamists in Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia to fight against socialists and communists. One of the staunchest US allies in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, a fairly Islamic state compared to the rest of the Muslim world. The US fought against the fairly democratic Mossadeq leadership in Iran. It supported dictators like Musharraf over Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan. It supported Hosni Mubarak over more liberal elements in Egypt. There are plenty of occasions where the US has supported Islamists and opposed democrats within the Muslim. This reveals that the US is less concerned with Islam and more about economics. That is what colonialism was about. Europeans did not necessarily go to the Americas, Africa, and Asia to “democratize” their world, but to find alternative trade routes to avoid powerful Muslim states such as the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India. It was and still is about economics, not about ideology. This is not a “war against Islam” anymore than it is a “war against terrorism”, it is a war for the preservation of American hegemony against challengers. The Muslim world is not being attacked everywhere, but only in areas where other challengers such as Russia, China, and India, are trying to penetrate. If the US was opposed to Islam, it would have invaded Saudi Arabia and destroyed Makkah and Madinah, banned the hijab, forcibly secularized Muslim states. Kemal Attaturk was not a tool of Western imperialism. Yet it was Attaturk and not the US or England that was ultimately responsible for the demise of the Khilafah in Turkey. While it is true that the British opposed the Khilafah being shifted to Arab lands, it was not due to their fear of Islam, but their fear that the energy resources of the Arab world would fall into the hands of a single state. This is why they carved Kuwait out of Iraq, appointed Sharif Husayn’s sons as various monarchs throughout the Middle East, and supported Salafi Saudi Arabia over the Hashemites. This reveals not a war against Islam, but a war against economic development. It was the same reason that the British allied with the Ottoman Empire in invading Egypt under Pasha, not to destroy Islam, but to deindustrialize the country after it became one of the world’s leading cotton producers in the middle of the 1800s. There are many non-Muslim states that allied with Muslims, such as Germany, in WWI and the US with Saudi Arabia. If the war was one between Islam and Democracy, then one would see other democratic states intervening in the affairs of the Muslims. Yet, most democracies in the world have little to no problems with Islam or Muslims. The states that have the most problems with the Muslim world are those that have a vested economic or political interest in seeing the resources of the Muslim world in their control. Also, there are plenty of secular Muslims that opposed Western imperialism, such as Attaturk, Jinnah, Nasser, etc. What this shows is that the ideologies of states are important, but not the sole factor in determining foreign relations.

Thirdly, assuming for the sake of the argument that the “West” is seeking to destroy Islam (really? Iceland wants to turn the Ka’aba into a Church?), what does voting in and of itself have to do with that? If one is voting at the local level, lets say for county council person or a judge, how does that result in the deaths of Muslims in the world? How does voting against amendments to one’s state’s constitutions that promote gay marriage or lottery machines result in the deaths of Palestinians? There is no causal connection between the electoral process and the suffering of Muslims at the local level. So at the very least, its permissible to vote in the “West” at some basic level. There can be no blanket condemnation of voting merely because its not Islamic.

Fourthly, the primary issue is supporting two candidates that are similar enough that they will both result in the suffering of Muslims. Now, there are two points to made here. The first point is that this situation has arisen in Islamic states many times and the ‘Ulema have repeatedly stated that one should support the party that is more just, not the party that is absolutely just. This principle which was used to justify the rule of tyrants is fairly applicable up until this day. Monarchism is also un-Islamic, yet many fuqaha recognized that it was far more dangerous to overthrow a monarch because it was a deviation from the Sunnah since it might result in a perpetual state of civil war. The principle of looking at the greater good and practical necessity is something firmly established in Islamic jurisprudence and does not make a scholar ignorant of either Islamic law or the way Western societies operate. The second point to be made is that one doesn’t need to vote for either candidate, one can vote for a write in candidate or a third party. For example, there is an Islamic party in the US based in North Carolina. One can nominate a Muslim as a leader.

If Imam Awlaki wanted to say it was impermissible to vote for McCain or Obama based on their statements, he might have a stronger argument. However, by condemning the entire electoral process and not recognizing that alternatives exist within the US political system, he makes himself look ignorant and embittered rather than an objective scholar issues a legal verdict. His statements that the “West” is in a war against “Islam” is also troublesome and ignorant of world history.

Lastly, it should be noted that this criticism of the Shaykh is coming from someone who has openly criticized the US democratic system, US imperialism, US racism, and US foreign policy. It has come from someone who has argued against voting as a means to change the situation of the Ummah. This comes from someone who openly supports Khilafah and huddud in the Muslim world. This comes from someone who argues in favor of a series of Islamic revolutions throughout the major Muslim states to then work together to unify themselves. I am not a “liberal” in any sense of the term. Yet, even I have issues with his posts.

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2. Eurocentrism is an epistemological problem

3. Eurocentrism is defined as a distortion in a field of knowledge that results in the separation of Europe from the rest of the world in order to aggrandize the former and deemphasize the contributions of the latter, in spite of evidence to the contrary. This does not mean that Europe has not accomplished great things and all other cultures and civilizations are fundamentally equal to it. What this means is that even though there are clear links between foreign cultures that have contributed directly to the rise of Western civilization or such cultures have their own accomplishments independent of the West, they are denied, ignored, or criticized.

4. Important point: Not all Europeans or Westerners are Eurocentric and there are many Muslims who are Eurocentric

5. Eurocentrism is present in the Muslim world in a variety of ways

6. Eurocentrim is caused by sociological reasons and not necessarily political reasons

7. While it is true that Western states have often used institutions to propagate a pro-Western account (vis a vis educational institutions) there is very little direct evidence that the state itself propagated such views.

8. Such institutions are often supported and populated by members of a ruling class who often influence state power and through it, colonialism

9. This ruling class has a vested interest in prohibiting alternative historical narratives since it undermines the myths that enable them to rule

10. Another possible source for Eurocentrism is merely the remarkable success that Western states have had in a variety of areas, the most obvious being military success. Intellectuals may be astounded by this and view Western civilization to be something fundamentally different from other civilizations.

11. If Ibn Khaldun’s analysis that the conquered often imitate the conqueror when they are defeated, then this explains rather well why many Muslim intellectuals, in spite of being anti-Western are still Eurocentric.

12. Eurocentrism has penetrated the minds of Islamists, the ‘Ulema, intellectuals, and leaders.

13. Case studies:
- Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s views on education
- ‘Abduh’s views on science
- al-Kawakibi’s views on the reformation
- Rashid Rida’s views on the Cailphate
- Muhammad Iqbals views on republicanism
- Hassan al-Banna’s views on the downfall of the Muslim world as being the transferral of power to non-Arabs
- Secular Muslim leaders (Attaturk, Shah Pahlavi, Jinnah)
- Maududi’s views on the state
- Taqiuddin Nabbhani’s construction of Hizb e Tehrir which is uncannily similar to a Marxist organization
- Mufti Taqi Usmani’s views on capitalism
- Shaykh Abdullah bin Bayyah’s views on what caused the rise of Western civilization

14. Among many of those who’ve adopted a Eurocentric understanding of history, their is absolutely no or very little analysis of modern history (from the 1500s to today) and absolutely none on the origins of colonialism that is not itself Eurocentric.

15. In opposing Eurocentrism, one must be cautious not to overstate the accomplishments of Islamic culture. The key focus is academic fairness. Wherever Europeans accomplished something significantly and independently of other cultures, it should be recognized, but this should be applied to other cultures as well: First Americans, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

16. The best to demolish Eurocentrism is engaging in a comparative historical analysis and a study of post-modernism

Edit:

In some ways, Eurocentrism could be attributed to the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. The Tanzimat period lead to the formation of the Young Ottomans which in turn lead to the formation of the Young Turks, all of whom adopted European values in an uncritical fashion.

The Tanzimat period saw the Ottoman state create institutions modeled off of Western ones, such as modern universities which were instrumental in the formation of the Young Ottoman and Young Turk movements.

The Young Ottoman’s movement was highly influenced by European thinkers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the ideals of the French Revolution to the extent that they promoted the equality among the millets. The equalization of the millets would lead to the secularization of the elite bureaucracy which in turn lead to the formation of the Young Turks.

The Young Turks’ promotion of biological materialism, secularism, nationalism, and positivism ended up unleashing reactionary forces that resulted in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The shift from Ottoman to Turkish nationalism contributed to the development of Arab nationalism as a reaction. The formulation of these competing i