Towards a Sufi Anarch: The Role of Islamic Mysticism Against Modernist Decay

Towards a Sufi Anarch: The Role of Islamic Mysticism Against Modernist Decay
By Sean Jobst
September 6, 2010

Islam is the world’s fastest growing faith, spreading even into regions where it had not been very widespread before. This has become cause of alarm for certain individuals and organizations with a certain political agenda. The foremost mistake they make is to view Islam monolithically, rather than recognizing its inherent diversity. Islam is not one-dimensional, but multi-dimensional.

This spread of Islam is partly due to the arrival of Muslim immigrants into the West, however this immigration is due primarily to economic factors and beyond the scope of this current article. But another factor is that increasing number of Westerners are adopting Islam as their faith, including the current author. What made a former Catholic of Swabian German, Castilian Spanish, and Flemish descent adopt Islam and become a Sufi? The true question is whether Islam is compatible with Indo-European tribal and cultural traditions, and what it means to the struggle against the dominant consumerist debt-ridden social order.

Islam cannot be understood without examining the Qur’an, which Muslims believe to be nothing less than the revealed Word of Allah, an Arabic word for the Creator which is translated as “the God.” All creation was created for a purpose (44:36-39), which is to worship the Creator (56:60). We were created with the same origin, but were made into tribes and nations so we may come to know each other (49:13). Hence, the spiritual foundations of human nature remain the same and the distinct cultures, races, and languages are expressions of the Divine Will.

The various world spiritual traditions are outer manifestations of an inner primordial faith that is actually instinctive to human beings through the din al-fitra, or the way of natural disposition. It is an innate spiritual nature coming from the Creator (32:5-8). This creative process was expressed in a primordial event called the Covenant of Alast, described in the Qur’an (7:172).

Our souls – and it is essential here to recognize we are essentially spiritual beings with a human experience, and Sufis describe their struggle as one to suppress the nafs, the self or the ego, and raise the ruh, or the soul – were assembled before the presence of the Creator. We were asked to testify that He is indeed our Lord, Who is the One deserving of worship. The result of this is a Sacred Trust, or Amana, of natural laws to govern ourselves (33:72).

As time passed human beings became ungrateful and strayed from their primordial origin. So to call them back to this origin, every nation or tribe was sent a prophet (10:47, 14:4, 16:36), some were mentioned by name while others were not (40:77). Their exact number is unknown, but one popular tradition of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) identifies it as 124,000.

The central message of all these prophets was the same (21:91), based as it was on worship of the One Creator. Yet only their specific paths were distinct, each adapted to reflect the distinct cultural traditions of their people. The well-known Sufi Junayd al-Baghdadi explains it as “water takes on the colour of the container.” Any differences were relatively minor ones, as they each shared the reality of the Divine Unity.

“The Islamic doctrine is formal on the point that all the Divine Messengers have brought essentially the same message and that all the traditions are in essence one,” writes the Romanian traditionalist and Sufi Michel Valsan. “As regards the Islamic form of the tradition this is in any case originally and essentially based on the doctrine of Supreme Identity.” (1)

At the core of Islamic doctrine is this distinction between Islam as the final revealed form which is bounded within time and place, and the “islam” as the din al-fitra which is instinctive to us and hence beyond constraints of time and place (22:76, 30:29). Divine Unity has remained constant, even while the different expressions have altered. For this Divine Unity is unique and real, while all else is essentially an illusion except what is known to us via the revelations or intellect – and that is limited to human nature.

“The proper meaning of the word Islam is ‘submission to the Divine Will,’” writes the French traditionalist and Muslim René Guénon, “Hence it is said, in certain esoteric teachings, that every being is Muslim, in the sense that there is clearly none who can elude that Will, and accordingly each necessarily occupies the place allotted to him in the Universe as a whole.”(2)

The great German poet and philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was well-known for his esoteric and Gnostic views. It was exactly these views that brought him close to Islam, in such a manner of awe and reverence that he wrote in 1816: “The poet does not refuse the suspicion that he himself is a Muslim.” (3) Similar statements can be found throughout his works. (4)

For this reason, it would be a monumental deception to dismiss Islam as something “foreign.” It has repeatedly shown itself very capable of adapting itself to various cultures without changing its essential nature. The only guideline is that these cultural traditions do not violate the precepts of Islamic belief or practice, but such incidences are more the exception than the norm.

“In history, Islam showed itself to be culturally friendly and, in that regard, has been likened to a crystal clear river. Its waters (Islam) are pure, sweet, and life-giving but – having no color of their own – reflect the bedrock (indigenous culture) over which they flow. In China, Islam looked Chinese; in Mali, it looked African. Sustained cultural relevance to distinct peoples, diverse places, and different times underlay Islam’s long success as a global civilization.” (5)

The reason for this flexibility is because Islam is a universal message, containing within itself the messages of all the previous prophets. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is regarded as the last of all these prophets and his revelation as the culmination of all the previous messages. In this view Islam is the completion of the sophia perennis, or primordial eternal wisdom. 

Islam is about reviving the best of one’s own traditions and responding to a present urgent need. The river of Islam flows throughout the world, providing sustenance and life and reflecting those cultural distinctions of people on its shore. As the great Scottish Sufi master, Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, said: “Islam is not a culture. Islam is a filter for culture; it keeps the good and leaves out the bad.”

Each form has an inner and outer teaching that are complementary to each other. It is the task of the Gnostics to rediscover the inner meaning of the message. The same process characterized all the previous messages and Islam as the culmination is no exception. Tasawwuf, or Sufism, is the inner mystic essence of Islam. The basis of Sufism is Divine Love and service to the creation for the Sake of the Creator.

Sufism is based on initiation and it is exactly this that any return to Tradition needs. According to the Sufis, there are four stations of spiritual perfection. The first is Shari’a, which is adherence to the Prophetic Way and specifically the outer form of Islam. The emphasis here is on the external meanings and this is where the majority of Muslims stop. However, the Sufi has a much broader spiritual awareness that the Shari’a is only an outer shell for an inner consciousness.

The second station is tariqa, or a spiritual path which has transmitted the inner message of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to seekers through a proven chain of initiation. Most tariqas are transmitted through the Imams from the Prophetic Household, as they were carriers of the spiritual authority. The goal of all tariqas is the same, but the specific practices and methods is unique to the shaykh.

The third station is haqiqa, which is the spiritual gifts that comes from closeness to the Creator. The Sufi is always aware of an ongoing push-and-pull struggle that every effort to get closer to the Beloved is also accompanied with certain internal and external factors keeping the seeker away from this higher consciousness. It is their task to kill the ego to enliven the spirit.

These four enemies are the self or ego, lowly desires, temptations or the devil, and the illusions of this worldly life. The great Sufi mystic Ibn al-Arabi identified the Wali or Friend of Allah, as the one who successfully triumphs over these enemies. The Sufi is also aware that the external enemies have no effect on him or her, without the internal enemies. Defeat the latter and you will inevitably triumph over the former.

The final station is marifa (gnosis). This is the ultimate objective of every mystic and the noble task to which they dedicate their life. Marifa is the deeper knowledge upon which all other forms of knowledge rest. Such knowledge illuminates the knower and for this reason perhaps wisdom is a better description. Achieving such a state is truly a return to our origins, because to know God is to know ourselves. We have to close the bodily eye before the spiritual eyes can awaken.

One of the manifestations of modernism is the perversion of true spirituality. This is based on the tendency to compartmentalize knowledge and place it in a superior position over wisdom. Such anti-Traditional currents lack the necessary chain of initiation. Traditionalists always emphasized orthodoxy and they lived it by their adherence to an outer spiritual form. In the case of the Sufis it can be seen through their following the Shari’a and specifically one of the schools of the Law.

Running through the Western current are remnants of this Primordial Tradition. In our day and age it has become concealed under materialism and various counter-initiatory currents that lack the transmission from an orthodox tradition. “Traditional esotericism is at one and the same time doctrine and practice,” writes French neo-Cathar author Raymond Abellio. “It implies for the whole of the being, body, soul and spirit, a fundamentally different way of existence.” (6)

The tribal nations of Europe had a deep spirituality that connected them to this primordial origin, even if it survived through remnants. The “divine law and human law were still closely joined” and ethics were “a fragment of the universal divine order.” (7) The Celtic, Germanic and Iberian tribes were outwardly pagan, but at their core was a deeply embedded belief in one Creator. They lived in a more holistic way with the natural world, making them feel the presence of the Divine.

Such tribes were often exhibited by a moral code that stressed virtuous and honorable behavior. This contrasted them with the dominant hedonistic and materialist lifestyle of ancient Greece and Rome. For the former were more attuned to the spiritual, whereas the latter had long undergone a process of decline that brought them to the level of “civilisation.”

It should be little wonder then that these tribes adopted the message of Jesus (peace be upon him) quite rapidly. A new outer faith taps deep within the inner spirituality of a people among whom it becomes rooted. Thomas Carlyle said no religion disappears fully until its benefits for people are transferred over to the new faith. In the case of the tribal nations of Europe, their tendency toward the ethereal and otherworldly naturally drew them to a faith that stressed the afterlife and fought against the dominant materialist social order.

The true expression of the message of Jesus (peace be upon him) was that he is a prophet and not the “Son of God” or part of a Trinity, doctrines which came later and actually ran contrary to his teachings. The earliest Christians indeed denied the alleged divinity of Jesus and believed strictly in the Divine Unity.

These earliest expressions of the original Nicene Creed found a receptive audience among the pagan peoples it encountered, for it tapped into the deep primordial spirituality they felt within their hearts. The vibrant Gnostic communities in North Africa that came into contact with Islam took to it and specifically its mystical expressions, “due to the fact that [they were called] to a contemporary version of their old beliefs, now clothed in the form of the newly dominant religion.” (8)

There were various Gnostic groups in Europe who held to the Unitarian creed. “Some Unitarian Christians did make their way up into Europe – where they were known as the Ebionites, the Paulicians, the Goths, the Illumnists, the Cathari – but were finally wiped out by the Mediaeval Inquisition which was instituted specifically for that purpose.” (9) Another of these groups were the Bogumils, who survived to come into contact with Islam and felt so close to it spiritually they became the Bosnian Muslims. (10)

The current author found that among his own tribal ancestors, including the Suebi, Celt-Iberians, and Visigoths, the Unitarian Creed of Arian was particularly prevalent. It was more compatible with their nature, or rather the remnants of the primordial. But the Trinitarian Creed was literally forced upon the tribes upon the combined weight of the Church and State.

The entire process was inherently imperialist, as it meant the imposition of Roman culture and rule upon the tribes. However, it was also leveling and conformist since it meant tying them into the dominant social order and away from their pristine culture. Along with the Trinitarian creed came the seeds of the corruption of Christianity through the Hellenization of its doctrines and the Romanization of its institutions. (11)

The clerical hierarchy of the Catholic Church suppressed other expressions of Christianity as “heretical,” while political leaders such as Charlemagne saw their opportunity to slaughter their opponents, like what he did with the Saxons at Verdun. In fact, at the same time the Church embarked on a Crusade against the Muslims there were simultaneously Crusades against the pagan and Gnostic Christian groups. (12)

Nevertheless, underground Gnostic communities continued to survive in Europe. The French poet and historian Gerard de Nerval, whose translations of Goethe’s works won the lavish approval of the German master himself, believed secret Islamic mystic communities had been responsible for transmitting ancient wisdom to Europe through their influence on Gnostic groups. (13)

This synthesis was especially present through the character of the Hohenstaufen Frederick II, King of the Holy Roman Empire and Sicily, who was called “Stupor mundi” or “wonder of the world.” He was a fierce opponent of the Church due to his friendship with Al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt and nephew of the great mujahid (wager of jihad) Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin). He allowed the Muslims to freely implement their faith in his kingdom and defiantly entered into an agreement with Al-Kamil concerning Jerusalem, during which he made very favorable statements about Islam at the height of the Crusades. (14)

“With Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire unified the space comprising the land between the North Sea and the Mediterranean, the Ebro and the Adriatic. With Frederick II, ‘the genius among the German emperors’ (Nietzsche), the Emperor who spoke Latin and German, Greek and Arabic, and wrote poetry in Italian, the Holy Empire took the first step in the direction of an Eurasian synthesis: after he entered in possession of Jerusalem thanks to a program of ‘peace and friendship with Islam’ (Nietzsche) the great Hohenstaufen re-united in his own person the characters of a Roman Emperor and a Germanic Koenig, a Byzantine Basileus and a Muslim Sultan.” (15)

“‘War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!’: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can’t make out how a German could ever feel Christian.” (16)

Friedrich II was an ally of the Cathars and frequently sent messengers in solidarity with their revolt against the Church and the French kingdom. Because he repeatedly refused to join the Crusade against either the Muslims or the Cathars, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him in 1227. There are even some reports he was initiated into a Sufi order and also met with elements of the Ismaili Assassins. After visiting Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, he was so impressed with its architecture that he was inspired to build Castle del Monte from 1240 to 1250. The castle was a symbol of balance and justice, the meeting of East and West. (17)

This policy of friendship and affinity with Islam remained prevalent within esoteric and Gnostic currents. The German pagan Unitarian author Sigrid Hunke wrote highly of Islam and was even made Honorary Member of the Supreme Court for Islamic Affairs in Cairo. She expressed her view that “the influence exerted by the Arabs on the West was the first step in freeing Europe from Christianity.” (18)

It was the Islamic obligation to seek knowledge that maintained and passed onto the West the Greek and other texts that would have otherwise been lost to history. It was the permeation of Islamic values to all sectors of society – intellectual, social, economic and cultural – that allowed for this great flowering of knowledge and advancements in all fields. These advancements are beyond the scope of the current article, but we shall look at poetry as an example.

Metaphors are a powerful medium of transmitting sacred spiritual knowledge to the seekers of the Beloved. This is often conveyed through love and other symbols meant to touch the heart. Our task is to reconnect with our primordial origin through the esoteric heart that remains untapped, searching for that outer form which best corresponds to our deepest yearnings. “We do not idolize the past,” says Iranian traditionalist Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr. “We idealize a past which was imbued with the presence of the sacred.”

Such is the purpose of these poetic metaphors. One particularly common one was the rose, which was taken as symbolizing the Divine Perfection. The great Sufi Rumi often used it in his poetry and among the Western Gnostics it referred to the chakras, especially the third eye from which one can transcend to the other realms of existence.

Francis Bacon, who is regarded as the real author of many of Shakespeare’s works, inserted many Sufi ideas into the playwright’s works. He took Divine Love as representing the evolution of the human consciousness. The most notable example of Sufi influence in Shakespeare’s works is The Taming of the Shrew. Its main character, Christopher Sly, is taken as possessing the qualities of a Sufi. At first he thinks he is asleep and dreaming, but eventually realizes he is very awake. (19)

Our purpose on earth is to set out on the path from slumber to becoming awake. By transcending our limited self, we strive to a greater awareness. What we believe to be real is so often merely an illusory existence. As Rumi wrote, “The mind sees things inside-out. What it takes to be life is really death, and what it takes to be death is really life.”

To become awake on a spiritual level is also to become awakened on a social and cultural level. The implications of belief in the Divine Unity inevitably affect every sphere of human existence, which is itself a revolutionary notion in our modernist age where religion has become reduced to a personal moralism devoid of any higher meaning. Much of our social problems result from the overturning of the Christian prohibition against usury, leaving the way open for the secular State with its central banks and paper money system.

“In the same way that a living body stays alive only when a soul is present to govern it, so every social organization not rooted in a spiritual reality is outward and transitory, unable to remain healthy and retain its identity in the struggle of the various forces; it is not really an organism, but more aptly something thrown together, an aggregate.

“The true cause for the decline of the political idea in the West today is to be found in the fact that the spiritual values that once permeated the social order have been lost, without any successful efforts to put something better in their place. The problem has been lowered to the plane of economic, industrial, military, governmental, or even more sentimental factors, without considering that all this is nothing more than matter: necessary if you like, but never enough by itself, and unable to create a healthy and reasonable social order.” (20)

Goethe warned about the ills of Newtonian scientific deconstruction, at a time when materialism was first making its presence felt in the West. He was the ultimate well-wisher to the human as compared to the person, who was characterized by material identity. Goethe broke radically from the trend in his time and envisioned a cosmopolitan society beyond such limitations. “The actual, only and most profound theme of world and human history, the theme under which all others are subsumed, remains the conflict between non-belief and belief.” (21)

Our world is characterized by the polarization between the universalism of syncretist globalism and the emerging financial World State, and the self-assertion of exclusivist tribalism with its negative identity factors such as racism, nationalism and fundamentalism or nihilism. Both are extremes that lead to the primacy of the illusory material being over the real spiritual being. It would seek to level all to the lowest common denominator, whether this be their economic worth or materialist biological factors.

It is a mistake made by some who lash out against globalism to propose the other extreme. How can racism possibly allow for human transcendence? For it accepts the fallacy that human beings can achieve the elusive perfection through blood and race, just as globalism proposes people can achieve it through technology. In both extremes the human being is viewed in the same sense as a domesticated animal.

The distinct culture soul of a given people is just that – raising the soul and not the biological. It is expressed in the Qur’an that we were created and made into different tribes and nations so as to know each other (49:13), not to throw ourselves into a downward spiral of self-destruction. Jesus (peace be upon him) recognized the essential difference: “The flesh profits nothing, it is the Spirit that gives, the words I speak unto you are Spirit, and they are Life.” (John 6:63)

We must put at rest once and for all this materialist myth that biological factors are the ultimate measure of human worth or the means towards perfection. We must accept our limitations, for there is profound knowledge itself in this realization. To delude ourselves into thinking we are superior would only magnify those very inferiorities that lead to our current situation. Perfection can be achieved through spiritual activity; each of us has the potential of what the Sufis call the Insan al-Kamil, or the Perfect Man.

There is no problem in recognizing one’s roots and heritage, unless it reaches to the level where it merely becomes a justification to regard oneself as “superior” to others. For to be truly proud of one’s heritage would mean having a healthy and natural respect for that same right in others. That would require recognizing materialism is to be opposed an all levels. To regain the cultural soul, it is first necessary to kill the Western worldview that continues to stifle it. In other words, we must kill the Westerner within ourselves so that our true heritage and identity can be reborn.

A good starting point would be to look back to those models of Islam within Europe, the foremost being Andalusia. Ibn al-‘Arabi, the Spanish Muslim scholar and the great Sufi known as “Shaykh al-Akbar” (the greatest shaykh), regarded culture and language to be the real measure of identity. European philosophers and poets were impressed with this society and saw it as a model for their contemporary society to emulate:

“If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men….Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan [sic] civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (–I do not say by what sort of feet–) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin–because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!…The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have groveled in the dust–a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very ‘senile.’–What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich…. Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more!” (22)

The Andalusian society was a perfect expression of the Muslim’s spiritual and social duties, just as it is an indigenous model for Islam in Europe. Ibn Rushd discussed the social and economic responsibilities, proposing Islamic trade as the perfect solution to usury. He was coming from an Islamic perspective but was also carrying on the tradition of Europeans who had opposed usury, from Aristotle onwards. He perceived in usury outward enslavement, while Ibn al-‘Arabi viewed the inner enslavement to Allah as real freedom. (23)

One of those who instinctively felt this was the German composer Richard Wagner. He believed strongly in the truth of divine illumination, which is the central experience of his dramas. (24) He identified “the Ring” as the mechanism at the heart of the banking system. The new usury born out of paper-money is like a drug, able to blur the senses but eventually destroys those who hold its illusory power. The protagonist Siegmund was able to fight and win against everybody except the one who made the weapon. (25)

The global financial elite has subjugated the masses through four monopolies: money (usury), land (capitalist views of land ownership), tariffs (stifling true competition and replacing it with corporate dominance), and patents (the source of much of the corporations’ power). Benjamin Tucker, the American individualist anarchist, added a postscript to his essay “State Socialism and Anarchism” in 1926:

“Today the way is not so clear. The four monopolies, unhindered, have made possible the modern development of the trust, and the trust is now a monster which I fear, even the freest banking, could it be instituted, would be unable to destroy….If this be true, then monopoly, which can be controlled permanently only for economic forces, has passed for the moment beyond their reach, and must be grappled with for a time solely by forces political or revolutionary.” (26)

In the face of the rampant leveling process of consumerism and social conformity, the task of any intellectual elite is inevitably spiritual in nature. They are called in this struggle to radically assert the primacy of spirit over the material, a recognition that more exists than the material world. To the Muslim, the power that would seek to blind people with these illusions is kufr, for the word itself means to cover up.

The greatest illusion of today is certainly the economic system, with its dogmas such as usury, paper money, and central banks. One of those who recognized the subjugation of the State to the economic order was the French anarchist Joseph Proudhon, who also considered the economists to be a new religious sect and warned about the danger of political movements with no immediate political agenda. (27) As Nietzsche said, “Nihilism means not having any goals.”

Capitalism was condemned by German existentialist Martin Heidegger as an all encompassing structure in which the individual loses their political sovereignty and freedom through economic subjugation. The much praised enlightenment has excluded the deep irrationality of economic institutions from any argument, creating new dogmas. (28) The solution is not contained in any thinking within metaphysical foundations, as metaphysics has ended. (29)

The masses of people are so much enthralled of this myth of “progress” they fail to see the signs of its inevitable collapse. The prevalent consumer-oriented modern civilization is based on a series of illusions and requires keeping people ignorant about their own reality. As Guenon wrote, “If everyone understood what the modern world was, it would immediately cease to exist.”

The modern “civilization” presupposes that material advancement is the goal of the person, but those who can see with the higher spiritual eye recognize the individual actually needs spirituality and not the material for the ultimate balance. Neither can they explain why the ancients had no need for this term “civilization,” for it was once a reality without a name and is replaced now with a name without the reality.

“It is curious to note how promptly and successfully certain ideas come to spread and impose themselves, provided, of course, that they correspond to the general tendencies of the particular environment and epoch; it is so with these ideas of ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’ which so many people willingly believe universal and necessary, whereas in reality they have been quite recently invented and even to-day, at least three-quarters of mankind persist either in being ignorant of them or in considering them quite neglible.” (30)

Neither is the solution to be found in more Statism or central economic planning. For Capitalism itself is nothing but the intervention of the State into the market to benefit corporate interests. It creates various market distortions to uphold the corporate-dominated economic order. (31) The systems of capitalism and communism are instruments to expand the State and perpetuate the Corporate order, albeit in different forms and despite all claims to the contrary. Each are unable to “replace” the other, for they are “metaphysically one and the same” as Heidegger observed. (32)

Islam already provides the perfect means to address the financial problems, replacing it with the goals of the Islamic muamalat, or trade and commercial transactions. Usury is categorically to be opposed and replaced with trade. In the place of the modern capitalistic method of distribution in the form of the corporation, is a return to the guild structure of true freedom. Finally, to protect against the paper money that tends towards deflation and inflation and is the source of strength in the hands of the banking elite, is a return to true commodities which is foremost gold and silver.

“Europe and Islam have in common their principal enemy….the usurocratic Finance. If she wishes to recover her autonomy, Europe ought to look for her inspiration and guide in the Divine Law, that which has been conserved in the book of Allah.” (33)

At the root of the emerging World State is to cover up this inner reality. Jean Baudrillard, the French post-modernist, identified the true purpose of globalism: “The establishment of a global system is the result of an intense jealousy. It is the jealousy of an indifferent and low-definition culture against cultures with higher definition, of a disenchanted and de-intensified system against high intensity cultural environments, and of a de-sacralized society against sacrificial forms. According to this dominant system, any reactionary form is virtually terrorist.” (34)

Our societies, because they have lost a higher purpose, seem to be living but not existing. The entire structural apparatus permeating all realms has both created the illusions governing society and become dependent on these illusions for its own survival. Technology is not limitless, but rather depends on the complacency of the masses.

Ernst Jünger recognized that modern man was under the control of technology, even while he deluded himself into thinking the contrary was true. He envisioned how this Technik forces “the trusts and monopolies of the state in order to prepare for an imperial unity.” He also wrote, “One does not simply transform into the subject of the technical processes, one becomes at the same time their object. Technik is never only a neutral power.”

We have reached a stage where participation in the State is illusory. The entire political process is a charade when the politicians are stewards of the financial interests. Democracy is an illusion. Rather than expressing the will of the masses, it is actually the manufacture of their consent through massive media manipulation and their conformity within the dominant culture. Hence, any solution again cannot be purely political.

The Muslim, whenever encountered with this, will never submit to this power which he or she recognizes as an illusion. The Muslim knows the true strength is within themselves and that the “will to power” is elusive. All power rests with the Creator and He is the one who has given the means with the end. Rumi recognized that whatever is halal or permissible, is possible to achieve. We have been shown the means with the end.

Islam is the middle ground that tends to neither extreme. There is no modernism or puritanism except that they are perversions of Islam. This recognition that Islam is neither “left” nor “right” can possibly explain why numerous revolutionaries from “left” and “right” alike have embraced Islam. (35) Neither cowardice nor nihilism have any place in our metapolitical program.

Metapolitics is a revolutionary struggle against the financial system (in so much as the political is merely an expression of the economic), waged in the cultural realm. It is a struggle to reorient the dominant worldview to a return to our primordial origin. The Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci recognized how the State is not confined to politics, but rather based on a psychological support from the masses. One cannot capture any political power without first gaining cultural power.

We must address this leveling of the masses into mere consumers if we are to live as sovereign individuals. We have to extend what Jünger called “the Anarch” to the social sphere so as to free “the Arbeiter” within ourselves. The way has already been shown to us by Islam. For it is these precepts that are already deeply embedded within Islam.

It was a Muslim, Ibn Khaldun, who first recognized the fact of the decline of civilization in his monumental work Muqaddima. And it continues to be the dedicated vanguard of Westerners who become Sufis and strive in the social, political and economic sphere, who have addressed the roots of our spiritual crisis.

This way is to recognize the Divine Love and to serve the creation through our love for this Creator. We strive to reverse the roots of our decline as a people and society, as the outward manifestation of our inner spiritual struggle of the ego against the soul. Know the Creator and you know yourself – and through this self-awareness you become awake to the means that are right in front of you, ready for the willing to wield in this struggle.

Sean Jobst is an independent writer and aspiring journalist, based in the United States. He has written on such array of issues as cultural decline, political theories, economics, foreign policy, and the rights of Indigenous people. Most of his work has been self-published for the time being. He can be contacted at: SJobst1985@gmail.com .

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Michel Valsan, L’Islam et la Fonction de René Guénon, Paris: Editions de l’Oeuvre, 1984.

(2) René Guénon, Symbolism of the Cross.

(3) Johann von Goethe, Notes and Essays to the West-östlicher Diwan, WA I, 41, 86.

(4) See the article by Shaykh Abdalqadir Al-Murabit, “Goethe Embraced Islam,” Weimar, 19th December 1995, <http://dpyoedha.multiply.com/journal/item/25>.

(5) Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, “Islam and the Cultural Imperative,” Cross Currents (New York: Association for Religion and Intellectual Life), Fall 2006, Vol. 56, No. 3, p. 357.

(6) Raymond Abellio, The End of Esotericism, 1973.

(7) Dr. Johannes von Leers, Blut und Rasse in der Gesetzgebung, 1936, p. 6.

(8) Cyril Glasse, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam.

(9) Ahmad Thomson, The Next World Order, Beirut: Al-Aqsa Press, 1415/1994, pp. 4-5.

(10) See the article by Shaykh Mehmed Handzic al-Bosnawi, “The Primary Cause of the Bogumils’ Conversion to Islam,” 15th May 2006, <http://www.islaam.com/Article.aspx?id=658>.

(11) See the essay by Neal Robinson, “From Marxism to Islam: The Philosophical Itinerary of Roger Garaudy,” <http://rdfi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=370:from-marxism-to-islam-the-philosophical-itinerary-of-roger-garaudy&catid=43:articlescategory&Itemid=63>.

(12) See Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, London: Penguin Books, 1997.

(13) Life Science Fellowship, “Secret Tradition of Islam,” New Dawn Magazine (Melbourne, Australia), No. 48, July-August 1998.

(14) Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, New York: Schocken Books, 1989, pp. 225-230.

(15) “Interview with Claudio Mutti,” Junges Forum, No. 3, January 2005.

(16) Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, 60.

(17) “Friedrich II Von Hohenstauffen: The Bloodless Crusader,” New Dawn Magazine, No. 26, August-September 1994.

(18) Sigrid Hunke, Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland, Stuttgart: Unser arabisches Erbe, 1960.

(19) See the essay by Mather Walker, “The Sufi Basis of The Taming of The Shrew,” <http://www.sirbacon.org/mshrew.htm>.

(20) Julius Evola, Imperialismo Pagano, 1928.

(21) Goethe, op. cit.

(22) Nietzsche, op. cit., 59-60.

(23) See the transcript of the lecture by Abu Bakr Rieger, “Islam in Europe,” Granada, 2003, <http://www.abubakrrieger.de/page.cgi?key=11&nr=57>.

(24) Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, The New Wagnerian, p. 159.

(25) Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, The Esoteric Deviation in Islam, Cape Town: Madinah Press, 2003, pp. 219, 309, 912.

(26) Benjamin Tucker, Individual Liberty, Vanguard Press, 1926.

(27) Vadillo, op. cit., pp. 138, 333, 534.

(28) Rieger, op. cit.

(29) See the essay by Umar Vadillo, “Heidegger for Muslims.”

(30) René Guénon, East and West, 1924, p. 27.

(31) See the essay by Kevin Preston, “Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy,” <http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/econn/econn112.htm>.

(32) Slavoj Žižek, “Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism,” The London Review of Books, Vol. 21, No. 21, 28th October 1999.

(33) Claudio Mutti, Il musulmano, January-February 1994.

(34) Jean Baudrillard, The Violence of the Global, Paris: Galilee, 2002, p. 3.

(35) See the hostile, but useful, article by Alexandre Del Valle, “The Reds, The Browns and the Greens,” <http://www.alexandredelvalle.com/publications.php?id_art=131>.