Qutb, Royer, Ideofact: together on one page

Bill Allison of Ideofact has moved to his own domain and switched to MT. I’ve plugged Ideofact before, and it’s time to do it again. Ideofact finished up his review of Syed Qutb on his old site, and it is as timely as ever, since it appears that the new wahhabi strategy to preserve their public image is to blame everything on Qutb. I’ll have more on that shortly inshallah.

Coincidentally, I originally found Ideofact over at the now-defunct weblog of Ismail Royer, where Royer was engaged in some of his peculiar brand of da’wah with Bill and others. Royer, of course, is now charged with, among other things, providing material aid to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extremist militia actively fighting against India in Jammu and Kashmir. The government’s case is weak like usual, but the revelations about the personal character of the muslims charged is damning as usual. Whatever the outcome, it certainly casts Royer’s last published essay in an entirely different light.

Those interested in more on Royer and the Paintball 11 can check out AltMuslim’s coverage and an interesting article at Reason.com.

Reason claims at the end of its article “There are few things in life less innocent than a religious conversion”. I’ve been mulling that over all week. I’d sure like to know what the author was driving at with that one, but to be honest, it resonates pretty deeply. The way the author phrases it is provocative, almost as if converts have a deviousness about them. But I don’t take it that way. I didn’t and still don’t see my own conversion as a political statement; I feel conversion can be politically neutral. But I think it often does imply a pretty serious dissatisfaction with the society around you and certainly a discordance in your own soul. Someone grappling with questions on that order is not an innocent. Any converts out there feel differently?

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You’re currently reading “Qutb, Royer, Ideofact: together on one page,” an entry on Bin Gregory Productions

Published:: 07.13.03 / 11am

Category:: On the Web

Briefly

Anwar Ibrahim and the Opposition: Malaysian Seeks End to Decades of Firm Rule - a pretty decent roundup of political developments in Malaysia, from the New York Times.

The Spiritual Aspirant: Sidi Khalil Moore will be in Singapore conducting a workshop for The Spiritual Aspirant, to be held 27 June to 5 July. I had the pleasure to hear Sidi Khalil speak in Detroit back in 2002 in conjunction with the US tour of Habib Ali Al-Jifri. I regret I won't be able to make the short trip across the South China Sea to attend, but I recommend it to anyone in the area. The workshop is being sponsored by Simply Islam, under the capable hands of some of the fine people who put on the Journey to Ihsan event a couple years ago, which I did attend and enjoyed immensely.

Collapse Preparedness: The transition from the USSR to the republic of Russia was a catastrophic event for the people who lived through it. The eventual (imminent?) collapse of the US will be much much worse, warns Dmitry Orlov. The USA has a Collapse Gap. Orlov realizes

that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.

Valuable lessons on what to expect and how to prepare follow. Read it yourself, but the condensed advice is this: Live on the margins of society. One encouraging sign that Americans are picking up the skills they will need to survive: haggling at the mall.

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Al-Muhajabah 07.21.03 / 1am

In the sense that you interpret it, I think you may have a point, but when I see statements like that made without further explanation, it makes me uneasy. We can spin it however much we want, but a lot of people are going to read it that there is something suspicious about converts.

I’ll be interested to read your thoughts about Qutb and the Wahhabis. I have my own views about this, which I’ve posted to my blog and elsewhere.

Bin Gregory 07.21.03 / 8am

your thoughts about Qutb and the Wahhabis
Working on it, promise.

Moiz 07.22.03 / 7am

I agree to the above post too. Please enlighten us with your thoughts on wahhabis. and as far as i know Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is not a terrorist group but a organized collection of freedom fighters struggling to free their homeland from the tyranical rule of the indian governmant. I wouldn’t disagree to the point that they are supported by Pakistani security forces but their effort in kashmir are indiginous and all within the limits of islamic ruling.

Bill Allison 07.22.03 / 11am

With all due respect to Moiz, the killing of woman and children is sanctioned by no religion, Islam included. I’m not suggesting that the situation in Kashmir is just, but that thugs who rely on the bullet rather than democratic means are hardly struggling against tyranny — they are tyrants. See, for example, here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2127286.stm.

As for my contretemps with Royer, it was not my finest moment. I ended up feeling like an exhibitionist. His dead certainty that Bosnian Muslims were every bit as lunatic Salafi as he got the better of me.

Bin Gregory 07.22.03 / 1pm

“The LET are really decent freedom fighters” is an honest argument on your part, Moiz, and you and Bill could honestly discuss it. But what LET is or isn’t isn’t nearly as interesting as reading stuff like this (from the True Word article) Whether we are to tolerate or criminalize the intellectual or material embroilment in foreign conflicts by those in the US, it should be so regardless of which side of the conflict they come down on which sounds so evenhanded, so dispassionate, but after recent events we can newly decipher that this means “how come they get to back terrorism and I can’t!” It’s a dishonest argument, trying to extract as much privilege as you can from a system that you don’t believe in to begin with. If the US did as he suggests and bans all involvement by any citizen in any foreign conflict, would that satisfy those muslims who view their cause as legitimate? No it wouldn’t. If the causes that we support are publicly defensible, we should publicly defend them, not say “you’re letting them sin, let us sin too.” That kind of tactic is the exact opposite of trying to contribute islamic moral values to the US culture.

mohammad 10.12.03 / 1am

ilpty iliku8