Qur'anic Psychological Decolonisation | Episode 3

Now, when you have an inferior undeveloped, uncivilized culture and you want to subjugate people who are from a superior developed civilized culture, then you'll need to use at least two main techniques. Obviously, first is violence because that anyway will be the strong point of your civilization, so called. The fewer restraints that you have culturally against violence, meaning if you have not morally civilized, if you have not advanced ethically and morally beyond barbarism, then you'll have an advantage over more morally sophisticated societies that have matured above savagery, and they have placed constraints upon the use of violence. And this is the case with the West. They developed disproportionately in the area of brutality.

And I've talked about this before. Violence is one of, if not the the the most distinctive dimensions of their kufr. They place a great deal of importance and value in violence as a kind of virtue. They think that they can claim the moral high ground basically by throwing someone off of a cliff. That's how their Kufar developed, with them culturally.

So for instance, the Chinese who were also Kufar invented gunpowder, but not guns. They used gunpowder for fireworks, for medicinal purposes, and for religious rituals, and so on. It was centuries between the invention of gunpowder and the invention of guns. But once the Europeans, once they knew about gunpowder, they went to work right away on utilizing gunpowder for maximum efficient violence. So this is just a characteristic that they have.

They're violent. And this again, in my opinion, most likely originates, in their rather squalid harsh conditions. Their so called, civilization emerged from harsh conditions. I mean, for example, cannibalism occurred in Europe all the way from the Neolithic age, through the iron age, through the, medieval Europe, all the way up into early modern Europe. We know that the Crusaders even engaged in cannibalism on occasion.

So we're talking about a very primitive very primitive animalistic cultures that formed under rough rugged conditions in Europe. I mean, is cold. The climate is harsh. There's scarce natural resources. Historically, only about a quarter of the terrain in Europe, was arable land.

So these are people who were struggling to survive. They had to battle for resources. You know, the modern stereotype of westerners as being soft and pampered and prosperous and so on. This is truly a modern concept because that has not at all been their history. So this being the context of their cultural and civilizational development, material resources became intensely important to them.

And whatever means expedited the acquisition of resources by definition that was good and admirable. Now there are two paths that people can take when they're far from Allah They can either seek closeness to Allah or they can try to obtain for themselves what they feel they would gain in this world by being close to Allah. In other words, the good things of this life. The former path can actually achieve closeness with Allah, and thereby they can experience the good in this life and the good in the Akhira. Whereas the other path only takes you farther away from Allah and makes you more attached to this world.

And you feel a continuous sense of discontentment, and ultimately it ends in humiliation. They're interested in the fruits of closeness to Allah, not interested in closeness itself. So they pursue often by any means acquisition of what they regard as the fruits of closeness to Allah, the fruits in this dunya. And as I've talked about, the Europeans did not have in their various pagan belief systems any guidance that could enable them to cope with the relative deprivation of their societies. And therefore, they went this other route.

The route of trying to violently obtain the things of this dunya. Again, led by was wasa and in so doing, just got themselves further and further and further away from Allah, and they became more and more brutal. But of course, as we know, they did start to acquire worldly things and this validated to them their own behavior. This validated their behavior in their minds. You can refer to surat al kath ayah one zero four, one zero five.

Those whose effort in this worldly life is lost, while they think that they're doing well, they think they're doing good in work. Those are the ones who disbelieve in the verses of Allah, in the ayat of Allah in their Lord, and their meeting with him. So ultimately, their deeds are worthless. And in surat al Imran, ayah 14, beautified for people is their love for that which they desire of women and sons and heaped up sums of gold and silver, branded horses, cattle, and tilled land. That's the enjoyment of worldly life.

But Allah has with him the best return, the best reward, Jannah. Notice that Allah said here the love of what people desire is beautified for them. He didn't say that the actual things that they desire are beautified for them, but the love itself of what they desire. In other words, they come to believe that prioritizing their desires is itself a good thing to do, a correct thing to do. They lose all sense of proportion, all perspective, about these things.

And they think that they should embrace the desires that they feel for this or that or the other thing, and dedicate themselves to those pursuits. That they they they think that's a good thing because that the love of that has been beautified for them. You can also look at the the the mentality of Bani Israel, when they were in the desert, literally receiving sustenance from Allah but they were dissatisfied and they wanted more variety. Allah said they were covered in humiliation and poverty as a result and received Allah's anger. So you can see the pattern.

Fixation on getting what Allah can give you in the dunya. This can make people who have no guidance dedicate themselves to those things and to then acquiring those things for themselves. And taking this path just makes matters worse for them when they do that. Now this can play out on an individual level, but in my opinion, it can also play out on a generational level, on a civilizational level. So for ex as example, as I've said, modern Europe, the modern West has experienced a period, of wealth and prosperity by means of brutal violence, colonization, and oppression.

But they have succeeded in in in acquiring material wealth. But the humiliation and the poverty are already setting in. In the broad scale of history, in my opinion, the West will ultimately be characterized by poverty and by humiliation, and the last century or so, will just be a parenthetical anomaly in their in their overall history. So, yes, the first and primary technique for sub, for subjugating a superior civilization is through savage violence, but this can't suffice. Violence alone cannot secure, control and domination.

You need to subjugate the minds of the colonized. And when the colonized are from a a a superior civilization, that's a complicated undertaking. You have to make, the colonized people see your civilization as superior. You have to make them think that it's superior to their, to their own. And the only way to do that when you're not genuinely superior is to pollute their perception of their own civilization.

Make them think that their own civilization is inferior and recalibrate their thinking, so that they come to prioritize and value the same things that your so called civilization prioritizes and values. Because those are the only things that your civilization might exceed theirs in. So for example, when it comes to the West, we know that they prioritize the successful acquisition of material resources, and this is the highest good for them. So it doesn't matter, for them, it doesn't matter to them that this acquisition is achieved by means of savage oppression, if it's if it's achieved by deceit or treachery or theft. If violence or cunning can succeed, then success is all that matters.

If violence and cunning succeed, then it also necessarily means in their minds that peacefulness and honesty are impractical virtues. And an impractical virtue, is the same thing as a vice in their mind. If it interferes with achieving what you regard as the highest possible good, which is acquisition of resources, then an impractical virtue is a vice. In other words, if it prevents you from acquiring resources, then it is categorically inferior and wrong. And that will apply to any real civilized values, whether it's peacefulness or honesty or wisdom or restraint or sacrifice or compassion or honor or what have you.

None of these virtues deserve respect in their eyes. If they hinder you from conquest and pillage, this attitude would be further cemented by the fact that their approach enables you to conquer and pillage genuinely superior cultures and civilizations who adhere to those so called impractical virtues. In other words, the defeat of these civilizations, the the successful conquest of these civilizations validates their mentality, that virtue and moral sophistication could not resist overwhelming savage violence. Therefore, moral sophistication and virtue are inferior and backwards. If you were truly better than us, in other words, we wouldn't have your stuff.

We wouldn't be able to take all your things. We wouldn't be able to take you over. If your civilization was actually superior, then we wouldn't be able to conquer you. That's the thinking. That's the thinking and that's the message.

Their message is your civilization is undeveloped because we were able to conquer you, and because we were able to conquer you, we are superior. But don't worry, we're here to civilize you now. They have an actual disdain for for for for any values, for any morals, for any principles that impede in any way material acquisition. You can translate material acquisition to the in modern parlance to productivity. So anything that impedes so called productivity is belittled or outright despised.

Even if that is, conscience, even if it's upholding trust, even if it's health, even if it's parenthood for that matter. Moral objections to this or that or rules on halal and haram or sola or ibadah or loyalty, any of these things are just pesky liabilities to productivity, and they're indicative of backwardness. They're all signs of backwardness in the Western mindset, and that's the way they want you to think. For example, the fact that in the Muslim world and, in much of the global South, approximately half of the so called, human resources of the population are treated as off limits for the extraction, and exploitation of labor. I'm talking about women.

That's backwards. Every human machine should be utilized for revenue generation, man or woman. Whatever other function she may serve in the society that's crucial to the society, but which is not generating revenue, then it's unproductive. And that means it's oppressive and primitive to prioritize all of the value that she brings to the family and to the society above her potential productivity as a profit generating worker. So you see, they have to try to reset your priorities, the priorities of the actually superior civilization that they're colonizing.

They have to make you think that any other system of prioritization is archaic and obsolete and backwards, that is incompatible with so called modernity. And modernity, when they say it, just means sociopathic materialism which treats moral values and principles as decorative extras that should never interfere with so called productivity. So for example, whereas Allah tells us, oh you who have believed, when the is called for the then proceed to the remembrance of Allah and leave trade. That's better for you, Allah said. That's better for you if you only knew.

That's abhorrent to the western mindset. But when Allah said, oh you who have believed, let not your wealth and your children divert you from the remembrance of Allah. And whoever does that, then they are the losers. This is the exact I mean, it's it's a precise opposite of west of the western way of thinking. Literally, they would be in reverse.

They would reverse the the priorities in that ayah, in those ayat. Don't let the remembrance of Allah divert you from your wealth and your trade. That's their way of thinking, and that's the way they want you to think. And if you don't think that way, then they'll tell you that you're backwards and you're undeveloped and you're uncivilized and you're primitive. And again, I believe that this this all came from their early days.

Because back in their early days, they found that their environment was relatively uninhospitable, and they felt deprived, leading them to seek the illusion of self sufficiency through brute force and violence. And they came to believe that they themselves are their own sustainers and their own providers. And until now, you'll find that this is a point that triggers them the most with regards to religion, especially with Muslims. They cringe bitterly at anyone who attributes provision and sustenance to Allah. Have you noticed that?

How they get they they get triggered when a Muslim says for any help or for any provision that they receive, any good thing that they get, and they say, they'll say no. So and so provided that for you or I provided that for you or whatever. They don't want it to be attributed to Allah. It makes them angry when you attribute it to Allah, any help or any provision that you get. This resentment, in my opinion, has deep deep roots going all the way back to the origins of western so called civilization in terms of what you can call their spiritual beginnings.

Now let me say here that what I've been doing primarily so far in these sessions is to sort of deconstruct the colonizer mindset, the psyche of the West, how it is and why it is. So I'm not really doing psychological decolonization at this point per se, except that deconstructing who and what and how and why the West is as it is, why and how they are the way they are, the reality of what they are, that's part of psychological decolonization. That's part of the process, decolonizing our own psyches and our own mentalities. Demystification of Western, propaganda about themselves, dismantling the myths that they project about themselves onto the world and exposing the reality of Western so called civilization is itself a process of psychological decolonization because a great deal of psychological colonization is the infliction of illusions and myths about the West. So these false narratives, these, phony portraits of what the West is need to be taken down and taken apart.

Their whole so called civilization developed and has been driven by an obsession with material deprivation, which evolved into a sanctification of anyone who successfully acquired abundant material goods and resources, whoever has amassed wealth. Those people are considered to be the most admired, the most respected, the most important, the most, authoritative, the most honorable, the wisest people in society. And thus the whole, system of society that they designed is designed to serve those people and to idolize them and glorify them and pay homage to them. From the time of the European warlords to the time of the European feudal lords to to now and the lords of business and capital. That's why, for instance, their proof that an economy is healthy and successful is that the economy has produced x number of billionaires.

I mean, can see many examples of this type of thinking in the Quran about previous nations who were destroyed. For example, the people of Tammud or say the Bani Israel when Allah appointed a king for them, and they objected to that appointment because Talud was not from their elites. They said, how can he have kingship over us while we are more worthy of kingship than him? And he's not even been given any, significant measure of wealth. He said, indeed, Allah has chosen him over you and has increased him abundantly in knowledge and stature, and Allah gives his sovereignty to whomsoever he wills.

So you see how this this way of thinking actually plays out. Knowledge that does not facilitate acquisition of wealth is not respected. It's not valued. Only wealth. Wealth is the basis of authority.

That's how these people think. That's how those people thought and that's how the West thinks. They can't stand the idea that Allah gives sovereignty to whomsoever he wills. Just as they can't stand the idea that Allah gives sustenance to whomsoever he wills. And if Allah gives anything to anyone who does not fit their criteria of worthiness, then they reject it, and they reject that person, and they think that it's unfair.

So you see how they try to infect our thinking? Our thinking about ourselves and our thinking about our own civilization. They want to ensure that everyone thinks, that moral values and principles are negotiable, and that ultimately they're disposable. Because the only thing that ultimately matters is material success at any cost. It's a marauder mentality.

And they need for the for the colonized to accept this paradigm and this way of thinking. They want us to abandon all of the cultured, mature, sophisticated, and evolved moral values that we have. The more profound understanding of life that we have, the meaning and purpose of life, and they want us to agree with them that acquisition is all that matters, that that's the purpose of life. Because for one thing, if, acquisition is all that matters, and we have been colonized by means of violence and oppression, that mindset can mobilize us as workers, as slaves for them, willing slaves. That mentality can motivate us to participate in their system from a starting point of disadvantage.

That's a a way of consolidating their power and their supremacy over us. And also, again, it's because if we abandon all of the traits and the characteristics of our civilization that make it superior, then we will become actually inferior because we will have joined a game in which they already excel. The game of violence and ruthless materialism is like if an athlete of one sport, agrees to compete with an athlete of another sport in that other athlete's sport. It's like if a golfer or or or a chess champion agrees to compete in a boxing match with a boxer. It's a rigged competition simply due to the incompatibility of the skill sets.

And that's the case of the Muslims and people in the global South generally who have more mature, more evolved cultures and civilizations if they agree to play the barbarian game of the West. This is a case of you accepting that the emperor's clothes are the are actually the most stylish and most luxurious clothes that you can wear. And so you agree to strip away everything that actually makes you elegant and dignified and protected from the elements and you and you wanna look like the emperor. And at the end of that game, it won't be that the emperor has no clothes, it will be that the emperor has your clothes even if they don't fit him. And you'll be left there standing naked like a fool.

At which point, the emperor will tell you, that you're a naked heathen, and he'll teach you how to dress. That's the game that they want us to play.