The following lecture was delivered by brother Ziyad Tayara (Part 1) and Islam Policy's Ali Harfouch (Part 2).
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Politics of Tribulation
Pragmatic policies and methods can only produce pragmatic responses
and answers to critical questions related to principal and vision.
Engagements with reformist movements are rarely a debate about
principle; rather, they usually end in a common logical fallacy—an
appeal to consequence (argumentum ad consequentiam)
in which an argument’s conclusion or premises are rejected by referring
to its undesirable consequences, which in reality have no bearing on
the truth-value of the argument. Some Islamic
Activists often appeal to this fallacy in referring to the consequences
of adopting a revolutionary methodology—and the trials and tribulations
which would follow—and insist instead on adopting a more reformist
methodology of compromise and concession through the whimsical
parliamentary politics and participation in periodical theatrical plays
dubbed “elections”—an analogy of which is trying to plant a tree, but
digging only a handful deep to do so. The result will indeed be
a tree, but one which will be blown away by the slightest wind and
whose branches will not reach high. A patient and wise gardener,
however, is aware of the fact that strong and deeply rooted trees whose
branches strike high into the sky must be planted, gardened, and
cultivated with patience, and done properly so that the desired end can
be reached. Sayyid Qutb observes:
“…they might be driven to use methods that don’t measure up to the specific scales or firm manhaj of the da’wah. They do this out of a desire to aid and spread the da’wah quickly, and in an effort to fulfill what they call ‘maslahat ad-da’wah’ (the interest of the da’wah)…”
We argue that the politics of activism and liberation are inextricable from the politics of tribulation, and that the clash between the establishment and the movement is an essential phase in the flowering of the principles and concepts which the movement propagates. This comes through the polarization of the movement and the establishment, and not the structural and ideological conformity between the two. This is because political participation in the establishment which the activist seeks to, in theory, antagonize will result in its the legitimization; this in turn dilutes and renders the party, in principle, non-existent as its existence is based on its ideological platform (which is compromised and lost through political participation in the very establishing the party opposes) and not on pragmatic gains (the presence of bearded MP’s is not to be considered a gain). Ones concepts and principles are made apparent through their principled, clear, systematic, and unwavering propagation as articulated by a clear and principled discourse which will result, as stated, in a clash with the state and its hegemonic establishment for the following reasons:
[1] A political platform and methodology which is anti-systemic and is in conflict with the underlying foundations of its opposing political system cannot but be violently opposed and suppressed by the establishment. As a matter of fact, this is only legitimate from the state’s perspective as it alone possesses what Weber called “legitimate violence”, and the intrusion into the political field by such movement was an informal intrusion, meaning it used illegitimate means as well as a radical and counter-hegemonic discourse to that of the state and its normative policies. The politics of “becoming”, as Connolly calls it, is the production of a new identity and subjectivity outside the matrix of power-structures which preserve the status-quo. Becoming necessitates that we are met with violence. And thus, we witness state’s launching propaganda wars and character assassinations on activists—where then would the pragmatic activist stand? Oppose the activist or oppose the state that he is legitimating, and through it, legitimizing the state’s opposition of the activist.
[2] Modern States have suppressed movements working within legitimate means of expression and political participation, although these movements are those which have declared their allegiance to the establishment and whose discourse is both apologetic and overtly reformist. Despite this, the past decades have witnessed severe suppression of these movements. If this is the case with those movements which acknowledge and legitimize the state, what can we expect to be the faith of those revolutionary movements whose methodology is counter-hegemonic, anti-systemic, and a discourse revolving around a denunciation of the state as being fundamentally illegitimate?
[3.1] The Modern (Nation-) State is by nature a conflict-generating state—in that it monopolizes identity, communication, and allegiance by constantly constructing what it means “to be” for its occupants. This monopoly is rested in the hands of the establishment as it not only maintains security, but the existence of the nation-state (as a nation)—as the state’s existence is based on this artificial and monopolizing identity. [3.2] This is a unique feature of the “Modern” and Eurocentric state which bases its legitimacy and authority via the people on identity or the (state-shaped) general will, and (unnatural) natural categories (e.g. the nation) leading to what Dussel calls the fetishization of power by linking subjectivity to institutional power, as opposed to the Islamic system of governance which is purely contractual.
[4] A state’s legitimacy is based on consensus from a political community; however, when this consensus becomes dissensus, then a state will adopt more coercive measures to maintain its hegemony. The initial phases of this coercive phase are formidable both from the political movement which is becoming and for al-Mufasala which is the methodological demarcation of conceptual boundaries and grounds of legitimacy between two parties (in our case, state v. movement). It is at this crucial state—the stage in which a movement is being suppressed—that it fully articulates what it is by the violence of those who they are not. Life is given to one’s political platform which goes from a political agenda to a politics of Liberation and from the abstract to the concrete and from political principles to a praxis-oriented activism which Islam breeds.
[5] Political establishments in the Muslim world are part of a larger colonial power-structure or a world-system at the head of which is U.S and several European powers. It is they who make up the center and whose surplus of wealth flows to their peripheries. Proxy regimes sustain and maintain a structure of inequality which renders much of the worlds resources and power within a neo-Liberal order. A revolutionary movement which would seek independence on the ideological, political, and economic well from the capitalist economic and hegemonic matrix of power-structures would lead, inevitably, to external unconditional support from imperial powers towards the political systems which seek to maintain the status-quo and, in turn, preserve the external powers’ imperial hegemony. Examples of such can be found across the globe from Latin America, the Muslim world, to East Asia. It is only natural then that an anti-systemic movement calling for the destruction and liberation from the tyrannical capitalist order will be met with utmost adversity, and one can only imagine how it would be met if this movement was a global movement such as that of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the nascent Hizb al-Ummah, and Lebanon’s emerging Itihad Organization.
[6.1] Quintessential to Islam is Tawhid—the very nature of which is revolutionary in that its totalizing nature transcendentalizes any form of absolute power, be it under the masquerade of divine kingship, the general will, or the [divine-like] invisible hand of the market. All thrones are to be demolished and rendered illegitimate as power is always relative and contingent with its authority belonging to the Ummah—the people who are responsible for manifesting not their “will”, but the will of Allah on earth through the implementation and preservation of Shariah. A message whose very implications amount to a cosmic revolution is bound to be met with adversity and fierce opposition by those who fetishize power. Hence [6.2] suppression, is not seen by the believer as a problem but rather as an essential stepping block towards not only worldly victory but a prerequisite for the hereafter, and that this suppression represents the flowering of his or her da’wah and the coming to life of a new political order. The Qur’anic pedagogy cultivates within him a consciousness which is at ease for it recognizes that there is no necessary casual relationship between material strength and strategic success, but that Allaah aids his believers so long as they strive and act upon the divinely revealed knowledge. It (the Qur’an) reminds and instructs him in twenty-eight out of thirty of its chapters of the clash between Musa ‘Alaayhee as-Salaam and that of Fir’awn and his Establishment—[6.3] Aware that behind the hegemonic international norms and global power-structures and its laws are the cosmic laws put in place by Allaah ‘azza wa Jal from which no nation, power, or coalition can escape. The Qur’an, having mentioned the fall and destruction of empires, puts little doubt in the mind of the Muslim that the illegitimate establishment will also crumble and fall—he or she has full tawwakul. [6.4] The Qur’anic pedagogy emphasizes and stresses the importance of Sabr (Patience) as being essential to any successful transformation equating it with principles and actions themselves. Hence, the believer knows that no matter how politically articulate, or strategic he or she is, it must be accompanied by Sabr and Tawwakul. In the words of Qutb again, we are reminded:
“…The true maslahat ad-da’wah is that it remain firm on the manhaj without deviating in the least. As for the outcome, this is from the matters of the Unseen that none know except Allah. So, it’s not for the carriers of the da’wah to think about these outcomes. Rather, they are to go forth with this clear, straightforward, specific manhaj, leaving the outcome of this firmness to Allah – and the outcome will be nothing but good at the end of the process…”[1]
Reforming the corrupt political systems in the Muslim world through the removal of its age-old dictators took the sacrifice and death of thousands of believers. A complete transformation of a political establishment will require more intellectual and physical endeavor—more sacrifice. Denying this however will only create a sense of complacency amidst an unfinished revolutionary project. Just as the revolutionary companions—the earliest of activist, at the order of their revolutionary head, the Prophet (Salallahu ‘Alaayhe wa-Salaam)—persevered in their persecution because what they sought was to plant the tree deeply and to reap its fruits long term, so must the true Islamic activists stand in the face of tribulation and persecution firm with ultimate sabr, firm that their persecution and imprisonment is nothing but a sign of their righteousness and a sign that they are in fact with the correct party, a party which is persecuted and attacked, politically and otherwise, for its ideas and its viewpoint on life, as opposed to those who seek to appease the establishment with apologetic rhetoric doing more harm to Islam than the good they delude themselves into thinking they are doing in turn of social safety. The true Islamic activist must reflect on the following ayah: “Indeed Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties (in exchange) for that they will have paradise.” That the purchase of our lives is between us and Allah ‘azza wa Jal, who gives in return for it—Paradise. Thus, our lives are a loan with which we must strive in the cause of Islamic activism, and thus, we cannot allow illegitimate rulers and establishments to purchase our ideology, our steadfastness, our concept of systemic Tawhid in turn of temporary and feeble safety and tranquility in the life of this temporal abode. For surely that would be a foolish and fruitless transaction.
Ali Harfouch is a student of Political Studies at the American University of Beirut working in Islamic activism with al-Itihad Organization and Islam Policy.
Farah Abdul Khaliq is a Graduate from the University of Manchester and an Islamic Activist in the United Kingdom.
“…they might be driven to use methods that don’t measure up to the specific scales or firm manhaj of the da’wah. They do this out of a desire to aid and spread the da’wah quickly, and in an effort to fulfill what they call ‘maslahat ad-da’wah’ (the interest of the da’wah)…”
We argue that the politics of activism and liberation are inextricable from the politics of tribulation, and that the clash between the establishment and the movement is an essential phase in the flowering of the principles and concepts which the movement propagates. This comes through the polarization of the movement and the establishment, and not the structural and ideological conformity between the two. This is because political participation in the establishment which the activist seeks to, in theory, antagonize will result in its the legitimization; this in turn dilutes and renders the party, in principle, non-existent as its existence is based on its ideological platform (which is compromised and lost through political participation in the very establishing the party opposes) and not on pragmatic gains (the presence of bearded MP’s is not to be considered a gain). Ones concepts and principles are made apparent through their principled, clear, systematic, and unwavering propagation as articulated by a clear and principled discourse which will result, as stated, in a clash with the state and its hegemonic establishment for the following reasons:
[1] A political platform and methodology which is anti-systemic and is in conflict with the underlying foundations of its opposing political system cannot but be violently opposed and suppressed by the establishment. As a matter of fact, this is only legitimate from the state’s perspective as it alone possesses what Weber called “legitimate violence”, and the intrusion into the political field by such movement was an informal intrusion, meaning it used illegitimate means as well as a radical and counter-hegemonic discourse to that of the state and its normative policies. The politics of “becoming”, as Connolly calls it, is the production of a new identity and subjectivity outside the matrix of power-structures which preserve the status-quo. Becoming necessitates that we are met with violence. And thus, we witness state’s launching propaganda wars and character assassinations on activists—where then would the pragmatic activist stand? Oppose the activist or oppose the state that he is legitimating, and through it, legitimizing the state’s opposition of the activist.
[2] Modern States have suppressed movements working within legitimate means of expression and political participation, although these movements are those which have declared their allegiance to the establishment and whose discourse is both apologetic and overtly reformist. Despite this, the past decades have witnessed severe suppression of these movements. If this is the case with those movements which acknowledge and legitimize the state, what can we expect to be the faith of those revolutionary movements whose methodology is counter-hegemonic, anti-systemic, and a discourse revolving around a denunciation of the state as being fundamentally illegitimate?
[3.1] The Modern (Nation-) State is by nature a conflict-generating state—in that it monopolizes identity, communication, and allegiance by constantly constructing what it means “to be” for its occupants. This monopoly is rested in the hands of the establishment as it not only maintains security, but the existence of the nation-state (as a nation)—as the state’s existence is based on this artificial and monopolizing identity. [3.2] This is a unique feature of the “Modern” and Eurocentric state which bases its legitimacy and authority via the people on identity or the (state-shaped) general will, and (unnatural) natural categories (e.g. the nation) leading to what Dussel calls the fetishization of power by linking subjectivity to institutional power, as opposed to the Islamic system of governance which is purely contractual.
[4] A state’s legitimacy is based on consensus from a political community; however, when this consensus becomes dissensus, then a state will adopt more coercive measures to maintain its hegemony. The initial phases of this coercive phase are formidable both from the political movement which is becoming and for al-Mufasala which is the methodological demarcation of conceptual boundaries and grounds of legitimacy between two parties (in our case, state v. movement). It is at this crucial state—the stage in which a movement is being suppressed—that it fully articulates what it is by the violence of those who they are not. Life is given to one’s political platform which goes from a political agenda to a politics of Liberation and from the abstract to the concrete and from political principles to a praxis-oriented activism which Islam breeds.
[5] Political establishments in the Muslim world are part of a larger colonial power-structure or a world-system at the head of which is U.S and several European powers. It is they who make up the center and whose surplus of wealth flows to their peripheries. Proxy regimes sustain and maintain a structure of inequality which renders much of the worlds resources and power within a neo-Liberal order. A revolutionary movement which would seek independence on the ideological, political, and economic well from the capitalist economic and hegemonic matrix of power-structures would lead, inevitably, to external unconditional support from imperial powers towards the political systems which seek to maintain the status-quo and, in turn, preserve the external powers’ imperial hegemony. Examples of such can be found across the globe from Latin America, the Muslim world, to East Asia. It is only natural then that an anti-systemic movement calling for the destruction and liberation from the tyrannical capitalist order will be met with utmost adversity, and one can only imagine how it would be met if this movement was a global movement such as that of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the nascent Hizb al-Ummah, and Lebanon’s emerging Itihad Organization.
[6.1] Quintessential to Islam is Tawhid—the very nature of which is revolutionary in that its totalizing nature transcendentalizes any form of absolute power, be it under the masquerade of divine kingship, the general will, or the [divine-like] invisible hand of the market. All thrones are to be demolished and rendered illegitimate as power is always relative and contingent with its authority belonging to the Ummah—the people who are responsible for manifesting not their “will”, but the will of Allah on earth through the implementation and preservation of Shariah. A message whose very implications amount to a cosmic revolution is bound to be met with adversity and fierce opposition by those who fetishize power. Hence [6.2] suppression, is not seen by the believer as a problem but rather as an essential stepping block towards not only worldly victory but a prerequisite for the hereafter, and that this suppression represents the flowering of his or her da’wah and the coming to life of a new political order. The Qur’anic pedagogy cultivates within him a consciousness which is at ease for it recognizes that there is no necessary casual relationship between material strength and strategic success, but that Allaah aids his believers so long as they strive and act upon the divinely revealed knowledge. It (the Qur’an) reminds and instructs him in twenty-eight out of thirty of its chapters of the clash between Musa ‘Alaayhee as-Salaam and that of Fir’awn and his Establishment—[6.3] Aware that behind the hegemonic international norms and global power-structures and its laws are the cosmic laws put in place by Allaah ‘azza wa Jal from which no nation, power, or coalition can escape. The Qur’an, having mentioned the fall and destruction of empires, puts little doubt in the mind of the Muslim that the illegitimate establishment will also crumble and fall—he or she has full tawwakul. [6.4] The Qur’anic pedagogy emphasizes and stresses the importance of Sabr (Patience) as being essential to any successful transformation equating it with principles and actions themselves. Hence, the believer knows that no matter how politically articulate, or strategic he or she is, it must be accompanied by Sabr and Tawwakul. In the words of Qutb again, we are reminded:
“…The true maslahat ad-da’wah is that it remain firm on the manhaj without deviating in the least. As for the outcome, this is from the matters of the Unseen that none know except Allah. So, it’s not for the carriers of the da’wah to think about these outcomes. Rather, they are to go forth with this clear, straightforward, specific manhaj, leaving the outcome of this firmness to Allah – and the outcome will be nothing but good at the end of the process…”[1]
Reforming the corrupt political systems in the Muslim world through the removal of its age-old dictators took the sacrifice and death of thousands of believers. A complete transformation of a political establishment will require more intellectual and physical endeavor—more sacrifice. Denying this however will only create a sense of complacency amidst an unfinished revolutionary project. Just as the revolutionary companions—the earliest of activist, at the order of their revolutionary head, the Prophet (Salallahu ‘Alaayhe wa-Salaam)—persevered in their persecution because what they sought was to plant the tree deeply and to reap its fruits long term, so must the true Islamic activists stand in the face of tribulation and persecution firm with ultimate sabr, firm that their persecution and imprisonment is nothing but a sign of their righteousness and a sign that they are in fact with the correct party, a party which is persecuted and attacked, politically and otherwise, for its ideas and its viewpoint on life, as opposed to those who seek to appease the establishment with apologetic rhetoric doing more harm to Islam than the good they delude themselves into thinking they are doing in turn of social safety. The true Islamic activist must reflect on the following ayah: “Indeed Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties (in exchange) for that they will have paradise.” That the purchase of our lives is between us and Allah ‘azza wa Jal, who gives in return for it—Paradise. Thus, our lives are a loan with which we must strive in the cause of Islamic activism, and thus, we cannot allow illegitimate rulers and establishments to purchase our ideology, our steadfastness, our concept of systemic Tawhid in turn of temporary and feeble safety and tranquility in the life of this temporal abode. For surely that would be a foolish and fruitless transaction.
Ali Harfouch is a student of Political Studies at the American University of Beirut working in Islamic activism with al-Itihad Organization and Islam Policy.
Farah Abdul Khaliq is a Graduate from the University of Manchester and an Islamic Activist in the United Kingdom.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Part II: The Gold Dinar, the Silver Dirham and a
Resurgent Political Islam
By Younus Abdullah Muhammad
Part 2: Accounting the Historical Antecedents of
Today’s Fiat Financial Façade
“I have a silver ounce here, and this ounce of silver
back in 2006 would buy over 4 gallons of gasoline. Today it’ll buy almost 11
gallons of gasoline.” - Congressman Ron Paul confronting Federal Reserve
Chairman Bernanke on March 1st, 2012
“Our biggest worry is interest rates, not default. Under
default the whole financial system would be at risk! (Chuckle, chuckle!).” -
Chairman Bernanke during that same hearing.
In part
1of this series we discussed the Prophet Muhammad’s prophesies dealing with the
prevention of the Muslim World’s use of the Dinar and Dirham and the
petrodollar system that grants the U.S dollar financial control (link here):
Alan Greenspan is a patriarch of today’s international
financial system. As chairman of the U.S Federal Reserve, the ‘Maestro’ as he
was known, oversaw a period of rapid expansion in the 1990’s attributed to a
new, U.S.-led global economy. Then suddenly in late-2007 the entire financial
system and in turn the interconnected world of globalisation, nearly imploded
and stood on the precipice of potential collapse. By 2009, Alan Greenspan was
forced to testify in front of congress and admitted that his free market worldview was “fundamentally flawed”. A year
later he would release his memoirs and make another controversial admission-exclaiming
that the fraudulent invasion of Iraq in 2003 was largely about oil.
Such a statement would have meant little had it come
from someone other than the Fed’s chairman at the time of the invasion of Iraq
in 2003. It is impossible to imagine that Greenspan was not consulted by a Bush
administration determined to go to war. The collapse of the internet bubble and
the attacks of 9/11 produced modest recessions in 2001 and 2002 and war had the
potential to calm both volatile markets and the fear of contagious radicalism
in the Middle East. That the Iraq war was about oil and not WMD’s or links to
Al-Qaeda is not particularly shocking, but the admission confirms the
connection between military intervention, control over the flow of oil in the
Middle East and the U.S. dollar’s preponderance.
In order to prove that the new American economy could
not be derailed by the attacks of 9/11, President Bush encouraged patriotic
consumption and Greenspan kept interest rates low to further bloat public and
private debt. This policy paved the way for the Global Recession of 2007-08.
However one thing conveniently missing from Greenspan’s memoirs is an account
of similar events in 1975-76, when he was an economic advisor to President
Gerald Ford, during a period when the international monetary system also faced
collapse. Understanding the relationship between the historical precedents that
birthed the present monetary system in 1971 and through the grounding of the
petrodollar scheme in 1976 is to highlight a rationale for the West’s present
interest in the New Middle East and the necessity to perpetuate that status quo
in order to preserve the dollar-dominated, fiat financial fraud.
The
current monetary system is an outgrowth of the overwhelming significance of
capitalism in the 20th century, a century dominated by the British
Empire upon which “the sun never set”, but that coalesced with American
ascendancy especially in the wake of World War II. Today’s Anglo-American
Empire represents a conspicuous continuation of imperialist processes common throughout
history. It is consistent with imperial experiences that a monetary order
accompany expansion, so as to facilitate the underlying necessity to subjugate
foreign populations, facilitate natural resource extraction, and force
political consolidation. Before the U.S dollar, it was the British Pound
Sterling. In fact, all empires draw from monetary, as well as military
mechanisms of control.
The U.S
dollar’s role is of enhanced manipulation however. It is a fiat currency that
grants the potential for comprehensive foreign domination while leaving the
veneer of independence in the hands of proxy stakeholders on the periphery.
Such sophistication is conducted through a guise of united sovereign nations,
actually controlled by a global network of independent central banks, complicit
in maintaining elite interests and upholding the dollar’s global reserve
currency role.
International and domestic dollar dominance is an
example of what economists term ‘financial repression’. As a paper (and
increasingly electronic) currency, there is no cost to the issuer. But as a
legal medium of exchange that may be used to purchase goods and services, this
power facilitates a transfer of wealth to elite class of primary benefactors
with initial access to money under the monetarist scheme. It was this power of
money creation granted by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that accessorized a
private banking cartel’s control over the currency followed by the dollar’s
international repressive role.
It is
hardly a coincidence that America’s entrance into transoceanic conflict
coincided with it's adoption of the European model for independent central
banks. Dollar diplomacy was introduced in 1912 when president Howard Taft
commented that a policy of, "Substituting
dollars for bullets... is one that applies alike to idealistic humanitarian
sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and the legitimate
commercial aims.” This shift occurred just as the independent U.S Federal
Reserve transposed the model of the Bank of England in the United States. As
Thomas Jefferson once remarked, “banking establishments are more powerful than standing
armies”, and by 1916, after a massive propaganda campaign, the previously
isolationist U.S. entered World War I on behalf of Britain. Then president Woodrow
Wilson, who had declared in 1912 that “our domestic markets no longer suffice,
we need foreign markets”, clothed the U.S Empire’s first internationalist
endeavor as the “war to end all wars”, and “to make the world safe for
democracy”.
World
War I initiated American ascendancy. President Wilson removed restrictions on
loans to England in 1915 and J.P Morgan and Co. facilitated massive debt that
solidified Wall Street’s function as a financial epicenter while Britain became
a market for American exports. The era was a period of consolidation but by the
time World War II concluded, the dollar had assumed its predominant role and
the financial forces that controlled it sought to consolidize with global gains.
As Professor Carrol Quigley, privy to
the historical documents of the international financiers, described it, “The
Federal Reserve Bank of New York was determined to use the financial power of
Britain and the U.S to force all the major countries of the world to operate
through central banks free from all political control, with all questions of
international finance to be settled by agreements by such central banks without
interference from governments.”
This
system was known as Bretton Woods and pegged every country’s currency to a
fixed exchange for the U.S dollar, while preserving a gold reserve semblance by
pegging the dollar’s value to $35 per ounce of gold. It was the dawn of an
Anglo-American empire facing only the challenge of an impending cold war with
Communism.
The early period of the Bretton Woods era witnessed
Europe's reconstruction, the formulation of the United Nations, World Bank, the
IMF and other transnational institutions and was powered by American
manufacturing prowess, a certain degree of growth and development, and
effective regulation like the the Glass-Steagall Act which separated Wall
Street investment banks from commercial banking institutions and, in turn,
checked the potential for rampant speculation affecting the entire financial system.
Firms like J.P. Morgan, tellingly implicated in a plot during the
Wall-Street-Federal Reserve induced depression for orchestrating a Fascist Coup
against the Presidency of F.D.R, retreated to the City of London which was set
up to operate as a regulation-free tax haven for Financial Capitalism. Slowly
but effectively the City of London and Wall Street firms adulterated any
potential for Bretton Woods to promote decolonization and sovereign
development. Banksters backed F.D.R's successor Harry Truman and pushed a
Foreign Policy Doctrine that merged the U.S Military with big business. What
Charles E. Wilson, President of General Electric applauded in 1952 as the “permanent war economy,” great for business, would be classified by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower as the “military-industrial
complex,” a threat to democracy at large. Cold war policy
portrayed an ideological struggle between capitalism and communism but in
reality offered a bonanza for banks and business that thrust forth a form of
Neocolonialism, the precursor to today's globalization and terror wars.
Vietnam was the hallmark of this rise to power. In
1976 Samuel Huntington issued a report through the Trilateral Commission
entitled, “The Democratic Distemper.” He
foresaw that by the end of the 20th Century, “the United States was the hegemonic power in a system
of World order,” and was candid about high
finance's role. He admitted that “Truman made a
point of bringing a substantial number of non-partisan soldiers, Republican
bankers and Wall Street lawyers into his administration,” and
described the empire formulated then but continuing to today,
“To the extent that
the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II,
it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key
individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, congress,
and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations and media
which constitute the private sector's “Establishment.”
By 1976 that “Establishment” had adulterated almost all of Post-World War II era
reform, and had induced a near monetary catastrophe as a consequence of the
Vietnam War. Today that monetarist empire continues only because the
Establishment developed and maintained its petrodollar scheme.
While
Britain's financial empire consolidated cultural influence in America through
Wall Street and institutionally through the Federal Reserve, a similar shift in
the military and diplomatic realm pushed the U.S towards replacing Britain and
France in the Middle East. This process had always centered around preserving
petroleum interests via exclusive relations with the Saudi State.
America's initial inroads into the Muslim World
occurred in 1933 when Standard Oil of California was granted 60-year oil
expropriation right in Saudi Arabia for only 35,000 British pounds. ARAMCO
(Arabian American Oil Company) was founded, and oil Companies received a 75%
stake. By 1944, FDR announced that, “the
defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States,” and the U.S. described its Mideast policy in a
National Security Council Memorandum exclaiming, "our principale aim
should be to encourage the emergence of competent leaders, relatively well
disposed to the west." In 1953 the CIA organized a coup against the
democratic Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadeqq to impose the Shah and preserve Western Oil
concessions. By the time of the 1956 Suez Crisis in Egypt, where the U.S prevented
British, French and Israeli attacks to hinder Suez Canal nationalization, it
was clear U.S empire would go-it alone in the Middle East (see Nixon's
Memoirs).
Oil interests soon brought military engagement, From
1952-63 the U.S established Saudi Arabia's Dharan Air Base and began to secure
a military presence in the Muslim World.
The 'Establishment' used the dollar-based, Bretton
Woods model to expand Western Corporate “development” while
the Military-industrial complex solidified authoritarian regimes by expanding
the international arms trade. Then suddenly in 1964 the syndicate of
finance-corporate-military imperialism initiated the War in Vietnam. Intervention
inspired a long protracted struggle against a peasant population that lasted until 1972 and debt from war in the
aftermath nearly collapsed the international monetary order.
The Bretton Woods monetary system offered an implicit
maintenance of the gold standard. Technically all dollars were ultimately
redeemable for gold. However, as the U.S print dollars and ran deficits to fund
the War in Vietnam, France under the administration of Charles de Gaulle was
exchanging its accumulating surplus dollars for gold. The affects reduced U.S
economic influence internationally and caused current account deficits to
deepen. As Britain threatened to follow France, a sudden announcement from
President Nixon on August 15, 1971 shocked the world and officially ended all
convertibility of the U.S dollar for gold.
The Nixon shock completely removed any semblance of a
gold standard and nations switched to full fiat money with fluctuating rates of
exchange. The global economy would run on monopoly money minted by the Federal Reserve.
Where the Bretton Woods era established an international central banking
network, the potential for today's Post-Bretton Woods era of central-planned,
neocolonialist casino capitalism was born. On the eve of the occasion, the rest
of the world was solvent and the U.S. faced impending bankruptcy with over
inflated dollars draining its gold. Today almost Every nation is indebted,
holds dollar reserves and so has vested interests in the perpetuation of the
system, thus the halls of high finance, in control of the currency, reign
supreme.
The
conditions that were to eventually stabilize the Post-Bretton Woods paper money
order could not have come about without the complicity of proxy regimes in the
Arab World. In August 1971, as the Nixon administration was establishing the
fiat order, Gulf nations were decolonizing. Bahrain obtained independence from
Britain in that same month and immediately signed an agreement with the U.S for
a maintained naval presence. By December, the six remaining sheikhdoms formed
the United Arab Emirates. These nations along with Saudi Arabia were guided by
the seven major oil companies and encouraged to form the OPEC Cartel. They
originally planned to price oil in their own currencies, however the U.S
intervened through powerful factions of the House of Saud to guarantee pricing
in dollar denominated terms. With the removal of the gold benchmark a form of oil
benchmark was born, where the commodity that powered the global economy would
force net importing economies to retain or acquire dollar reserves. This helped
sustain demand for dollars, quell inflation, prevent alternatives and prevent
economic collapse. However such an alteration did not prevent the global
economy from falling into conditions reminiscent of those the dollar system
faces today.
As the coffers of OPEC nations started accumulating
dollar bills, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, invested
those dollars in ways that could have developed the Muslim nation. He built
infrastructure, schools, hospitals and mosques.
And then he projected his interests outside the county thinking in terms
of the Muslim world generally, expanding from the colonial confines of the nation
state. He initiated a plan called ‘Operation Breadbasket to invest billions to
develop the Sudan’s arable land and make it the home of grain and wheat
sufficient to feed the Muslim world. But he also had identified the
Zionist-Communist conspiracy and its central banking network publically and
openly. By 1973 the global economy was shocked by the Arab- Israel war. King Faisal implemented an oil embargo
against the U.S, eventually raising the price per barrel four-fold. As a consequence Henry Kissinger and Arthur
Schlesinger began to identify Gulf oil as crucial to the “National
interest”. Western economies would slip
into recession from 1973-75 and King Faisal was promptly assassinated in March
of 1975 by a U.S educated Saudi Prince.
Faisal’s
heir King Khalid immediately signed a deal for protection from internal
subversion in exchange for production increases at U.S request. The leaders of
the Arab world followed suit. Khalid
substituted autonomous development plans for projects developed completely by
foreign firms that could serve as an additional subsidy. ' Operation
Breadbasket’ was discontinued, erased from the memory of time. From that point forward dollars were sent to
invest in U.S treasury bonds or back to Wall Street for foreign control, as the
era of petrodollar recycling was born.
The
recession of 1973-75 was truly systemic.
Pan-American Airlines was bankrupted by rising energy costs as European
governments over extended their debt obligations. To satisfy energy demands
they borrowed from Wall Street bankers which created the potential for default
and contagious collapse of the entire Euro zone.Theses condition let to mass
social unrest. Gas stations ran out of
fuel, motorists lined up for blocks to fill their tanks and protesters took to
the streets of European and American cities demanding change. The price increases acted like a tax and
reduced purchasing power across the board.
Inflation was already a concern from the billions spent on Vietnam. However the introduction of petrodollar
recycling ultimately led to major profits for the oil companies and global
finance. Costs to business were passed onto the consumer further dividing the
rich and poor. Years of inflation would
follow, combated by heightened interest rates from the Federal Reserve. High interest rates reduced the incentive for
investment and manufacturing sought to exploit slave labour overseas. The world transitioned towards financialized
globalization and the ‘Establishment’ lifted concern.
There
is absolutely no mention of this potential collapse or the negotiations that
occurred in any memoir of the Ford administration but it is a fact that Alan
Greenspan, then an economic advisor, pleaded with the Shah of Iran to lower oil
prices or face the insolvency of the entire international system. Additionally, the Maestro also sent a memo to
Nelson Rockefeller in 1975 appealing for politicians to discuss the effects of
rising oil prices and for the first time to “confront its dependence on
oil”. The Shah refused but the
assassination of Faisal and deal with Khalid led to Saudi’s flooding of the
market and breaking Iranian resistance.
Social unrest with the West and the Iranian Revolution of 1978 was
largely a consequence of the Shah being unable to fund his entire regime.
35
years later, conditions are similar. The
West faces the prospect of a double-dip recession, rising oil prices and
political and social unrest at home and in the Middle East. There are several strong parallels. In 2007 the average price of gasoline was $4
per gallon which led to a fall in U.S demand, a decrease in automobile sales
and unemployment due to rising costs.
Such a scenario sparked the collapse of the housing bubble which in turn
crashed the banks. Increased demand in
China compensated for the fall in U.S demand and helped keep prices high while
pushing the system to the brink of destruction.
In Europe the recession exposed the pending insolvency of Ireland,
Greece, Spain, Iceland and Portugal and commodity inflation ignited the social
unrest of the Arab Spring. In Europe and
America there is social unrest but corporate profits are high. Saudi Arabia has continuously tried to boost
supply and signed a $60 billion arms deal to maintain the dollar system despite
calls inside of OPEC to diversify the currencies. Still, the global economy falters.
In early 2012 the
U.S. economy is growing but there are new inflammatory concerns as a rise in
gasoline prices generated a great deal of controversy. However all of discussion centred on supply
and demand with virtually no identification that rising gas and oil prices have
much more to do with the dwindling value of the dollar bill. As the events of 1971-76 led to average
levels of inflation at 12-14% throughout the late 70’s and early 80’s, a
similar period of future inflation looms large.
Against a basket of currencies over the last 10 years, Federal Reserve
policy has induced a fall from 1.2 to .80 for the dollar index. It is only because the dollar has a global
reserve role that the U.S. is
unconcerned with deficits. However BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Nations are already trading in
their own currencies and rating agencies have threatened to downgrade the U.S.
currency. Any push to alter the petrodollar
scheme would lead to all-out warfare, but the direction the economies of the
Middle East head will largely shape the future.
The non-oil producing,
fledgling democracies of the Arab world can make or break the present
system. The Middle East and North Africa
are quickly becoming the home of international competition between the West and
China. The U.S seeks to guarantee
participation in the dollar-dominated order which could determine whether the
enormous deficits accrued since 9-11 lead to inflation, increased borrowing
costs, and ultimately the austerity that could force the Anglo-American empire
to retreat from “policing” the world on behalf of U.S led globalisation.
It is now time for citizens of the Muslim world to
determine whether they will accept subservience or whether they want to demand
the economic self sufficiency that is necessary for true sovereignty. Regardless, the world may soon be forced to
recognize it has reached peak globalization.
In 2010 the economy also showed signs of recovery but as soon as growth
ensued the price of oil returned to $90 per barrel, pushing up prices
everywhere and cancelling any recovery.
Still, to discuss the dollar’s role in this reality is to be branded a
conspiracy theorist. Oil is the
lubricant that powers the world and dollar bills offer the liquidity that
facilitates international transactions.
Truth be told both systems are unsustainable. Any breakdown in petroleum or currency exchange
could spur global catastrophe.
The
recession of 1973-75 was followed by a decade of rampant inflation. Any return
to economic growth now would only induce
similar conditions. Yet today the U.S. is $16 trillion in debt, to raise
interest rates to quell inflation could also induce a collapse.
Stability
is therefore contingent on preserving the petrodollar scheme and inserting new
Arab democracies into the fold of neoliberalism. Such an outcome would spur
investment and absorb excess dollars into a new Middle East . It would also
satisfy the system's need for constant imperialist expansion.
The new Islamist regimes seem all too
willing to embrace such haphazard
circumstances. Allah (SWT) sheds light on their condition in the Holy Quran
saying:
مَثَلُ الَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ
أَوْلِيَاء كَمَثَلِ الْعَنكَبُوتِ اتَّخَذَتْ بَيْتًا وَإِنَّ أَوْهَنَ الْبُيُوتِ
لَبَيْتُ الْعَنكَبُوتِ لَوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُون
The likeness of those who takes protectors other than
Allah is the likeness of a spider who builds a house, but verily, the frailest
of the houses is the spider's house - if they but knew (29:41)
It is the
perfect metaphor. The Anglo-American establishment has crafted a web around the
economies of the world. Like the spider, this
web was cautiously woven to
attract its prey, drawing it towards its sphere of influence. As the spider uses its prongs to
suck the guts and soul but leaves behind
an external carcass, the shell of sovereignty is presented by democracy
promotion but the soul of the nation is sacrificed by depending on the
" Establishment". Such is the
nature of the dollar system and the network can only be unspun through a return
of the Islamic alternative .
In 1966
Alan Greenspan was of the persuasion that," Deficit spending is simply a
scheme for confiscation of wealth, gold stands in the way of this insidious
process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one
has no difficulty in understanding the statistics antagonism toward the gold
system." It seems his views weren't always fundamentally flawed. However
his memoirs describe nothing about his conversion. Yet his story may ultimately
be retold for, like Greenspan, the dollar system gives the appearance of stability
yet, like the spider's house, its interconnected nature and fraudulent
composition could suddenly unfold leaving all participants discredited.
There is
a stable alternative in the gold dinar and silver Dirhams but getting there
requires a genuine and comprehensive Islamic transformation.
In part
3 we will Inshallah analyze the present state of the global economy in a bit
more detail before talking about the Islamic solution. Wa Allahu A'alam!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)