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Modern Living, Psychology, Uncategorized

Predatory Guiltifying and how to deal with it!

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This article is an addendum to a previous one  on this site entitled “The Fabulous Fours” about how to deal with difficult, aggressive and stubborn people. In the previous article we examined several methods including the Toltech Wisdom approach( The Four Agreements), Marshall Rosenberg’s “Non-Violent Communication” and the work of Lindsay Gibson explained in her helpful book called “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”.   Although each of these can be effective in  many similar circumstances, none of them meet the challenge when dealing with a serious,skilled guilitifyer!

For example, in Lindsay Gibson’s work the principal strategy is to remain mindful and curious and not to react.  In that case the guiltifyer just continues to believe they are right! Similarly in Non-Violent Communication, the communication just goes over the head of the intended target who is just more convinced than ever that she or he (I think women are generally more skilled at this art lol) is justified in their reproaches..

Remember the Jewish mother, the ultimate practitioner of the art of guiltifying , a mother by whom I myself was raised!  May her soul rest in peace .No-one knew what to do. T he best my brothers could come up with was :”you’re doing the guilt trip again, Mom” they would say. Absolutely no effect!

An important distinction   The distinction between valid criticism and insidious guiltifying.  Criticism usually has some validity to it. And the he person being criticized is able to see the fault being highlighted . If he or she is humble enough(admittedly a big if lol)  he can work to correct it. One of the great Islamic scholars Imam AshShafi r.a. founder of the Shafii school of jurisprudence was once asked: “Oh. Imam how did you attain such good character?”. And he responded: “Whenever anyone criticized me, friend or foe, I would look sincerely inside myself to see if there was validity to it and if so I would do my best to correct it”! Mashallah. Tell that to Trump lol!

But guiltifying itself  is designed not to correct but rather to make the other person feel bad and the guiltifyer to feel moral superiority. A much more sinister motivation. Guiltifying is not the same as valid criticism. Valid criticism can be beneficial to the person being addressed, especially if  he is able to admit his/her fault and work to correct it. Guiltifying is meant to make the other person feel bad and the guiltifyer to feel right!

 

Clinical Lore:  There is a fairly common observation in clinical practice that when the alcoholic recovers from his addiction, the marriage breaks up. That would, at first, seem counterintuitive as that is exactly what the partner had wanted for years! Now there are several possibilities as to why that would occur. .One of them would be that the husband, without his alcohol, would become more rigid and irritable. Possible…. But I think that there is a more sinister explanation that is also more likely. You see Predatory Guiltifying is not like physical predation( bullying and intimidating).Nor is it like financial predation where one partner is taking advantage of the other economically. No Predatory guiltifying  is about being morally superior! If you are married to an alcoholic, you are always the one in the right!  No matter what he does he is wrong by definition! If he suddenly goes sober for awhile, the partner  loses the moral high ground and the perverse incentive that goes with it. Not a pleasant experience, no doubt!

Possible solutions:

1)  Probably one of the commoner approaches is just to let it be-as in the Gibson approach. Be patient and accepting. But that gets us nowhere!

2) Another  way would be simply to exit the scene or even more radically to leave the relationship. But that is not always doable or even desirable. You’re not going to cut off your mother or your sister or even your wife lol just because she guiltifies you!

3) The most common reaction is to go on the defensive and even to get angry and aggressive. That will just make things worse! Then you are in the wrong!

4) the way I am proposing here is to push back with counterguiltifying.  Now this has to be done in a measured and skilful way. No angry outbursts, no escalation. In as calm a way as the original guilt was delivered( they call that proportional response in  military language lol), one asserts the guilt of the other .I will show you what I mean in the following clinical vignette.

This is about a Moroccan client- one of three sibs-an older sister and a younger brother.. Her older sister had been abusive to her all through childhood-insulting her and hitting her at will all through childhood- and had even been charged criminally for her behaviour outside the family. However, the parents were insisting that my client be present with her sister at regular family events- even though this often triggered PTSD symptoms.. They used the Islamic principle of “rahim wassilah”(keeping up connections to the extended family )to try to pressure her and guiltify her into attending, but each time she did, she would have  more PTSD symptoms.So she was in a dilemma.

The suggested counter-guiltifying involved criticizing the parents in turn.    She would mention (also an Islamically valid reproach ) how they hadn’t raised their older daughter correrctly-hadn’t done the “tarbiya”( training) incumbent on Muslim parents and even that they would be accountable on the other side for their negligence. Now ,of course the parents, not being like Imam AshShafii, would dismiss her charges -unless they were particularly sincere. But at least the client would have defended herself and thus would feel somewhat better and more justified in her reactions!. And she would the dubious pleasure of making the parents squirm,-even if only for a moment lol

Now this is a new idea for me so I am not sure how well it will work.Bu t I dont see any other avenue for now. Do you?! Tell me about your own experiences and experiments in this area in the comments.

Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

 

 

Islam, Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

Islam and the Muslim Community!

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After 50 years of spiritual searching, I can say without equivocation that Islam is the best religion! Its Aqida(theology) is by far the most accurate! No confusing God with man as in Christianity ,no making the nation into a parallel God as in Judaism. It is also the most balanced. No extreme asceticism as in Hinduism and Buddhism. No rejection of worldly life as in Buddhism and most forms of Hinduism. Worldly life and spiritual life are both  given their proper place.

Then come the scholars, the theologians ,the academics to mess it all up lol. Taking inspiration from Greek philosophy, all three religions then go weird on us. The Talmudists, the Christian theologians incarnated in the Council of Nicea and the ulema in Islam-all of them make up their own ideas.-ideas not really found in either the Quran, hadith, Old Testament or New Testament. Ideas found in the minds of intellectuals. Ideas that ultimately end up with Crusades and the Spanish inquisition and Al Qaida and Isis and Jewish settlers on the West Bank.

As to our subject of the moment, we get to the Muslim community. It has its positive side, no doubt. A community that maintains its faith as witnessed by the attendance at Friday jumaa prayers, a community that maintains its moral values as witnessed by its refusal of modern fashions of immodesty and exhibitionism and a community that is polite generally and well-intentioned!

BUT.. the people of the Community are seriously immature. Like children they have to believe that their shuyukh and their Prophets are perfect! The Old Testament AND the Quran itself point out the errors and faults in the actions and emotions of many  the Prophets peace be upon all of them. Instead of acknowledging that they a.s are humans ,the Muslims have to justify everything. By taking an extreme position on the notion of Ismaa( meaning free of disobedience) they use this idea, which btw is neither in the Quran or hadith but is an afterthought of the ulema, to deny reality. So they fall for the trap of idealization.

Now in psychoanalysis, especially the school of  Heinz Kohut, known as Self-psychology. idealization is considered a stage in the narcissistic development of children -a normal stage. Usually this stage breaks down as soon as the child reaches a certain age ( somewhere between 6-11 years ) although the process continues into adulthood. In my case it was around 8 or 9 years old lol. Then I began to see the faults in my parents. But it is as if Muslims can never get beyond that stage especially when it comes to their religion!.

One of the mechanisms of this developmental blockage of psychological development, is the use of denial-perhaps the most primitive form of defense mechanism. I like to call it in Syrian Ammaia the “mu mishkela” principle. “Don’t worry, be happy. No problem” Syria was on the verge of a Civil war when I was there but when you pointed it out, the response was “mu mishkela”. This denial is the source of much of the problems-especially in the Arab world. Personally I couldn’t believe how they could accept leaders like Saddam Hussein and Hafiz Assad. And then you would get the response: “Arabs need tough leadership”?! Tough leadership?! That wasn’t tough leadership! It was tyranny and sadism!

Interesting because in the Arabic language denial and lying come from the same root- “kadhaba” and “takdhib”..So they should know better! And Allah talks frequently in the Quran about the dangers of denial. The Muslims seem to believe that only applies to denying the religion but actually denial has a much broader scope of application than that.

But, worst of all, the Muslims are not really Islamic on the deepest level .i.e. they do not like acknowledging one of the deepest truths of the religion-that everything comes from Allah! Yes, even Jews and Israel! Somehow when it comes to that reality it must all come from the British or the CIA or Mossad .They don’t get it. Israel too comes from Allah. Must be-by first principles of Islam. If they would have gotten it earlier ,they could have saved themselves and the Jews 100 years of strife and accommodated the new reality. And built together a highly prosperous area of the globe! Not so! “My way or the Highway”( “from the River to the sea”)! No, no and no. It is Allah’s way not your way-even if you don’t like. it! The good news is that they are just beginning to get it- in the Arab world! Slow learners I would say lol But the mullahs of Iran are even slower! .Think about it!

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Sufism

Mankind Has it all Wrong!

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Mankind has it all wrong! Allah( God) appointed us as “khalifat” – representative or better still manager of our planet.The manager needs to follow the directives of the boss in any enterprise lol! And we are not the boss! Instead man has decided that he needs to redesign the whole enterprise to his liking! Enter genetic modification of plants and viruses, enter AI, enter space research where we were not made to be, enter transgender ideas and chemical engineering etc,.etc.We are doing it all wrong! Not respecting ” the natural order(“fitrah”) but instead trying to.impose our own order.Big mistake!

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

Empiricism-In Brief

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Why does Empiricism not work?! Those ” facts” which are supposed to provide such a solid foundation on which to judge reality, are preselected and post-interpreted.Those two.processes completely undermine the objectivity.We are better of with subtle feelings like ” seeing” and intuition if we learn how to use them properly.Stated simply “objectivity” is subjective and “subjectivity” is the Royal Road to Reality! Put that in your pipe and smoke it but please don’t add THC to the mix( another distorting substance lol)

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology, Sufism, Uncategorized

“Respect” A much overused and abused term!

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In our “Progressive, Woke” world there are a number of tired ideas that keep getting used and abused. Terms like “Be reasonable”(which usually means “agree with me” lol) ; ‘Take your time”( which usually means I’m not really into it .Let’s procrastinate together” lol) and for our purposes today” Be respectful”(which usually means “do it my way”).Of course there is a lot of hypocrisy involved but most people talking that way don’t realize it. They are unaware, unconscious.

One of the places   like to start these discussions is with scriptural sources. So the Buddhists talk about “compassion”. The Christians say “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.And the Muslims say” honour man because he is a creation of God”.None of these are even remotely related to the modernist notions of respect.

Let us look at them one by one. “Compassion” is definitely part of all religious traditions. But it is not at all the same as “respect’ for others- regardless of their behaviour or ideas. In fact, for Buddhists the cardinal sin is “ignorance”. So putting up with the foolishness of people would be promoting sinfulness! For Christians “Doing unto others” is not equivalent to modernist “respect”. Would you like others to tell you you are right when you are not?! Would like others to tell you that you are right  when you are doing the wrong thing? I don’t think so. I certainly wouldn’t? No. In fact, it is Christian and Buddhist and Islamic to push back and call out each other when we are on the wrong path. For Muslims honoring mankind does not mean not confronting them with their false ideas and bad b behaviour. In Islam we have the principle of “Amr Bil Maruf wa Nehi al Munkar”( Enjoin the good and discourage evil) No political correctness there!

One of the great saints of Islam, founder of the Shafii madhdhab Imam Ash Shafii was once asked how he had attained such good character. He replied : “Every time I was criticized , by friend or foe alike, I looked within to see if the criticism had any validity, and if it was so, I did my best to correct it”  Now, none of this could have occurred if he was only surrounded by adabist students lol

So lets look at how this plays out in various scenarios

  1. The parental role.

Parents are now reluctant to challenge and train their children. Out of “respect”. So the children become disrespectful! No surprises there. You can see it any time you go out in public! I even saw a 3-4 year-old probably Bangladeshi child chewing out his parents in an Indian restaurant! Horror of horrors. And the parents said nothing! One of my clients, in my last years as a psychiatrist, was a school teacher. She was complaining about how disrespectful her high-school students were, In their school the children were allowed to swear at the teachers! Only when it became physically violent were there consequences! I then asked her: “How many times in their 11 years of public school education, have they been told to respect their elders. Crickets The answer is zilch! Respecting the elders is old school. Not the new school of transgender and equality and self(i.e. ego) expression!

2) The respect for authority! If there was any of that left before ,the Covid Pandemic has wiped it out. We were lied to over and over again-about early treatment with Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, about the safety of the vaccines, about the origins of the virus etc.,etc. And every day on the news Trump and his coterie are telling us how good the economy is when people know it aint. The American Academy of Pediatrics are telling us that the vaccine mandate is harmless where there are many credible studies to show us they are harmful. 5G installations are being protected while many people are being made sick and there is evidence that the RFs emitted are carcinogenic. And no one ,but no one, wants to study electrical cars health effects because of the potential economic impacts. So to be respectful of contemporary authorities is simply self-injurious!

3) The Sociology of Respect.

I was raised in an Ashkenazi Jewish family. We were taught to be forthright and honest. Americans and Italians I believe are similar .But during my life’s journey I cam in touch with what I call the “adabist” ( “adab” is the Arabic word for polite behaviour) cultures-the British and ,the Arabs ! (I believe the Japanese are similar).They believe in courtesy, politeness and good behaviour -at least outwardly. I was married to a British woman for a long time and have covorted with the Arabs throughout my long history as a Muslim. Through that experience, I have come to appreciate some of the wisdom in that approach. We shouldn’t go around speaking the Truth to people when it is hurtful and unlikely to change anything meaningful in the other.

On the other hand I have seen the hypocrisy and mischief that lies beneath the surface. Even some of the Sufis have fallen for this distortion of the Truth- making “adab” the center of the path. No,no and no! Truth-seeking is the centre of the path-not courteous behaviour! One of the worst cases of this phenomenon was a muqaddam of our sheikh who would go visit him him and say things like; “I am not even worthy of the dust at my teachers feet” and 5 mins. later I would find him doing exactly the opposite of what his sheikh told him. That is how bad it can get  when you are an adherent to “adabist” culture!

The irony to be noted here is  that the most “adabist” cultures( The British ,the Arabs and the Japanese) have been guilty of some of the most violence to others. A recent posting indicated that the British Empire killed more people than either Hitler or Stalin or Mao. I was surprised myself. Then again it lasted a lot longer than the others! The Arabs have been unfortunately involved in much of the terrorism of modern times and the Japanese were abysmally cruel during the Second World War. So if anyone thinks that politeness is the cure-all think again!

A British example. I had a long-time friend with whom we crossed paths on the Sufi way many times. One time I was in England where he lived .I had written to him a couple of times before coming so he could free up his schedule for a meeting. When he eventually found time in his all-too-busy schedule to meet with me ,at my mother-in-laws house in north London ,he stayed for all of 10 mins. My mother-in-law, surely one of the “adabists” extolled his politeness and courtesy. But I was furious  at his lack of consideration.. I came from 5,000 miles and all he could afford was 10 mins, And especially since we had so much in common, so much to learn actually from each other .But that is the culture of politeness! Rigid, ritualistic, unaware of appropriateness to context.

4) The psychoananlytic angle. The psychoanalysts and Gestalt psychologists were very aware of this issue! They know clearly about the tricks of the nafs ( ego).And one of the tricks is the “yes, but” responses. “Yes, I agree with you but…” The psychoanalysts refer to this as “On the Other Hand”  responses. So Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy and one of the most astute clinicians used to say; “When there is ‘but’ in a response, it erases everything that comes before it.” The response sounds “respectful” ,but actually it is undermining the Truth in the original statement. The Freudians warned us that if we made an interpretation and the client responded with “On the Other Hand” this represented a form of resistance. They were actually trying to disempower the interpretation!

Conclusions: So how do we go forward? People who are aware of my thinking know that I am against “all or none” responses! We can’t throw “respect” overboard completely, nor can we deny truth in the name of not hurting peoples’ feelings. So we need to find a middle way! At  the same time we have to be conscious of priorities! The ultimate respect needs to be not for peoples sensitivities but rather respect for the Truth(which is another name for God. “Haqq” in Arabic. Anything less will lead us down the wrong path-to more misery and suffering. So learn the art of the gentle but firm pushback. That is what I am practicing and likewise teaching my students to do the same .God be with you! Sufi Ibrahim

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

AI vs. Human Intelligence

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AI is already superior to the intelligence of most human beings! Why is that?! It is NOT that AI is programmable. Humans are also programmed! But their programming is MORE rigid!  When you take into account their genetic programming, their ethnic/national programming, their professional programming and the programming by their immediate environment, you can account for at least 95% of their speech and behaviour! AI is more flexible!

So what does this mean for us?! It is incumbent on the human being, for both his human and spiritual development, to become aware of his programming and to begin to correct the negative aspects. This is no quick or easy matter! I have been at it for 50 years myself! From the first time my girlfriend told me I was a “positivist ( my scientific programming).This work is never completely finished. Some of our conditioning always remains but this is the true sense of the Sufi term ‘jihad-a -nafs ‘( the war with the ego). Most people don’t even get started! Time to get going!

Modern Living, Politics, Psychology

Stock Market Speculation-The New Religion

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    Stock Market Speculation-A Modern Religion!

Yes, a religion! Why do I say that? Because whenever you challenge it, people get really upset! Either they block you, stop talking to you or accuse you of arrogance. I  even had one woman call me “crazy” which was , in fact, an honour because that is exactly what they called the Prophets of old, Peace be upon them all, whenever they revealed the Truth.

So all around us we can see the rituals of this religion. Checking the figures at night and at the beginning of the day, all the main news stations covering the ups and downs of the Dow-Jones and the Nasdaq, special TV shows and even whole stations devoted to the financial markets, people with their own 401 k’s (in the U.S.A.) and RRSPs in Canada. Trump going up and down with the waves. People jumping up and down when the figures go up like Evangelicals at a Church meeting and pulling their hair out when it goes into bear market and a crash seems imminent. This is the modern world. Finances rein supreme! .Even wars, like that in Iran, seem to be mostly about fuel prices. This is the modern world-in all its craziness!

In fact this religion is the love of wealth, something all our religious teachers from the Buddha to the Prophet Mohammed saws have warned us about . But who needs religion when greed is the driving force lol?!

Personal experience: Personally, I have not had a lot of experience in this area. The one time I got involved was just before the crash of 2008 where I lost about 20% of my RRSPs. And no, that is NOT why I am writing this article. I am fully aware, as all my investor friend enthusiasts like to remind me,  that the market has done well since! And I am able to separate myself from my personal losses and have been doing that work (we call it “jihad-a-nafs” in Sufism) for a long time.

I also have two brothers  who have been MBA professional portfolio managers, both of them heavily involved in investments for decades for large investment firms! Both have become increasingly disillusioned with this type of activity. One of them left a large Canadian bank and has largely been involved in property development since (definitely a lot more socially productive then betting on the future value of a company share!). He left saying “this is simply sophisticated gambling” I couldn’t agree more! The other brother left a six-figure job in a large investment firm and has downsized considerably since them. Neither of them have an elevated view of their profession! Then again I am not much impressed by doctors these days lol.At least the profession is potentially helpful-if you can stay away from the drug company propaganda which most can’t as it has permeated the entire profession!

The triggering event:

I have had my suspicions for years about this kind of activity but never really looked into it in depth. Then I ran into a blog called “New Polity” And three individuals, young, smart, well-informed and most importantly conscienciously Christian and I found what I was looking for. By contrast when I looked up books on Amazon I could not find a single one that was critical of this kind of speculation. All the books were about how to make more money on the stock market! Surprise , surprise lol!

The three people involved in the discussion were a former Wall Street banker, William Bednarz and two podcasters , Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam. And this podcast contained more truth (all of which I had intuitively felt) than anything I had seen previously. So here are the bullet points of their discussion!

: The first company to sell shares on the market was the Dutch East India Company in 1602! The American Stock exchange was founded in 1792 with the Buttonwood Agreement

: Before that all through the Middle Ages and before, there was no distinction between a shareholder and a partner i.e. every person involved in the company had to participate in it’s management, it’s decision-making and its work . I call that “Real Investment”..

:in the United States 10% of the wealthiest people own 93% of the stock market! The lower 50% own 1%! i.e the stock market is contributing seriously to the disparity in wealth. As say the Marxists and others:  ”The Rich get richer and the poor get poorer”!

Some notable quotes:

Charles Dickens:

Share ownership is perverse and is used to oppress everyone beneath them

:A Papal encyclical( Jean-Paul II

“The ownership of the means of production becomes illegitimate when it is not utilized or when it starts to impede the work of others in an effort to gain a profit which is not the result of the overall expansion of work and the wealth of society (i.e. when it does not increase social productivity”)

P.S. It must be said here that the Catholics are ahead of the game in their concerns. Two popes have written encyclicals about the sub ect and it seems that the current pope is working on one himself.

Meanwhile the Muslims and Jews and other Christians believe that the only important thing is not to invest in companies that are producing sinful material like gambling and pornography and alcohol for Muslims. What a narrow, superficial view of things! :

:In a study done by the National Bureau of Economics, it was found that between 1989-2017 the stock market value increased by 100% while the GDP increased by only 25% and part of that 25% was in financial activity! –by definition non-productive!

So what does that mean!  That the stock market is in no ways a reflection of the actual activity and buying stocks is a speculative adventure that in no way benefits anyone outside of the investor.

: Given that the stock market value increases make more money available, by definition this investment increases inflation with all the negative downsides of that reality!

:Second quote from the Pope! 1986 “Merchants who desire scarcity and rising prices cannot bear to to be the only ones buying and selling so they encourage others to do so, in order to sell more dearly and buy more cheaply”

Christian fundamentalist view: Not to be easily dismissed! Any superfluous wealth we have belongs to the poor.-not to be used to make thr rich richer but to be used to help society  .In Islam we have 2.5% zakat which is a minimalist requirement. The Christians had the “Dime” which was 10% But actually from a moral point of view the entire amount should be put to good use . An example of that may be the philanthropic activities of people like the Rockefellers and the Melons and more recently Bill Gates and Warren Buffet although in many of these cases the philanthropy ended up being self-serving and ideological. At least they started on the right foot lol

: Most insightful thoughtful people( including my brothers lol ) have seen through the justification of these investments as “efficient allocation of resources” as they teach in MBA schools across the country. That ranks up there with vaccines being”safe and effective” i.e more B.S. from the sold-out intellectual class!

The Buddhist Contribution. The Buddha taught the eight-fold path and one of those principles was “Right Vocation”. This is how it is defined: In Buddhism, a “right vocation” or career is known as Right Livelihood (Sammā Ājīva). It is the fifth part of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. It means earning your living in a peaceful and honest way without causing harm, cheating, or bringing suffering to other living beings.

I would add in here, that the activity needs to be socially productive . We could also add the Christian idea that “You shall gain they daily bread through the sweat of thy brow” i.e you should work for your money-not simply buy an investment product and wait for it to grow. That can legitimately be called “profiteering”. So if we are going to do a serious deep dive here, we would have to look for intentionality. No-one should have any doubts here! The intentionality is making profit-not contribuating to the social good,

 

 

What is “Kosher investing then?

Since most people are not willing to simply give all their superfluous wealth to the poor, what remains as ethical investments. I see three avenues

!0 Real investments like in the good olde days! One begins a project or an organization that contribute to the social good. The bloggers called these “societas”-groups of people working together to build something useful! One invests one’s time and effort and money into this project or company. And one participates in the day-to-day management.  Ironically, some may think, this is how Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg got to be billionaires-not by investing in other company’s shares and waiting to reap the rewards but by developing their own products! What they do with their money afterwards is another matter!

 

 

2) Property development– buying land or real estate and using it productively. Both of my last two spiritual teachers Sheikh Nazim and Sheik Abu-Qassim were into that. The former bought olive groves and the latter bought land to develop into date farms!

3) Sheikh Nazim, being an Ottoman at heart, liked the idea of buying gold lol. Gold used to be the standard currency before the American dollar took over.

 

Much, much more to say like about the doubly corrupting effect of bitcoin investment which adds the dubiousness of crypto to its non-productivity socially but let’s leave it there for now!

Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

 

 

 

Metaphysics, Politics, Sufism

The Nexus of Causation

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The Nexus of Causation

I first came upon this question in a second year University Philosophy course. David Hume one of the Triumvirate of Empiricist philosophers in the U.K. which included John Locke and George Berkeley began questioning “the necessary link” between cause and effect. This is not the place to go into the intricacy of his argument on this subject but his logic did seem compelling at the time(before I discovered how pathetic logic itself was lol). What he basically claimed was that the connections we observed between cause and effect were observed habitual connections ,what we might call “association” in modern terminology rather than necessary causation. Got me thinking…

Then there was the physics of Stephen Hawking about the Big Bang Theory. There was an original explosion of some gaseous material that caused the creation of the universe. I questioned that hypothesis well before becoming a believer. ”So who caused the Big Bang in the first place?!” I thought. The scientific answer is usually: ” That question is not in the domain of science”. Really?! So science is not concerned with the deeper causes, I see!

Now some ma y see this question of causation as pure speculation. But it is much more than that! Because the causal analysis will often determine our behaviour-our approach to the solution of the problem. Let’s take a medical example for now. Headaches-the second most common presenting symptom in medicine-after fatigue which presents an even more complex series of possible causation!  So for headaches, if the cause is one virus or another we treat it like the flu. If it is meningitis that is a whole other approach often involving hospitalization and I.V. antibiotics.A  migraine is something else again ( now we have the tryptans to deal with them). And of course a brain tumour is a whole other approach. So knowing the cause is vitally important-possibly a matter of life and death.

Now, this article was probably triggered by the war going on with Iran. For the “progressives” in the U.S., this is an unprovoked, unnecessary war. For the Muslims this is obviously due to the Zionists lobbying-of course. Isn’t everything lol?! For the Quebecois separatists all their problems are “la faute du federale” (i.e. the English) And for the Jews its all because of anti-Semitism. This is where our ethnic echo-chambers take over and the villain is always the same- depending on our allegiances. Very poor causal analysis, no doubt!

Now before we go any further, let us look at the various forms of causation.There is “the proximate cause” as in the fraudulent article about Covid in the Lancet that tried to call out the lab leak theorists as conspiracy theorists .The evidence is suggesting more and more that these conspiracists were right! Dr, Luc Montaignier, the famous French virologist who discovered HIV said it in  Jan.2020 right after the gene sequence of the Covid was released. But who needs to hear from geniuses when we can listen to the mediocrities of bureaucratized scientists. So scientists look for “proximate causes”.

In Islam, on the other hand, we are taught the difference between intermediary (read worldly) causes (“asbab”) and original causers (The Divine will). And that is probably the most relevant distinction for our purposes here.

Before we go further in this exposition, let me go to another form of causation-again a moral one. I have noticed over the years a certain group of people attached to corrupt spiritual teachers. I will not name them for now, but suffice it to say they can be from any tradition! I have seen this amongst Buddhists and Hindus and Sufi Muslims. These people are following a leader who is known to be corrupt and/or have bad character with people. Yet, these disciples refuse to acknowledge it. Even after the teacher dies, they maintain their heart connection. They tell me he is deceased but that makes no difference. Until they cut the attachment they can still suffer the consequences.

During the time I was treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, most of my patients were getting slowly better(a tough disease to doubt to treat, no doubt. One of them seemed to be completely stagnant in his clinical process. When I confronted him with the possible link,he completely denied it:” That was just crazy wisdom” he said. ”No, that was vice” I retorted. To no avail. And his sad, personal saga continued. May Allah protect us from these forms of ignorance!

Let us take some other examples

1-The Tsunami of 2004 in South-East Asia. It caused 227.000 deaths according to the most reliable of statistics! Now the scientists explained that this was due to the movement of tectonic plates in the area (the proximate cause!). A Muslim scholar, may his scholarly head hang in shame, proclaimed on public television that “this was a geological event, not a theological one’?! Where did he study his Islam?! Confronted with a great tragedy, he forgot all the Islamic teachings about God being in charge of the Universe! The tectonic plates trumped the Divine will! Estagfirullah.

Since a couple of decades now, I have made a practice of researching these tragedies to see if there are any other possible explanations. In the case of the tsunami, the two places it hit the worst were in Aceh province of Indonesia and the Tamil part of Sri Lanka. They both had one thing in common! A Civil War between two different ethnic populations was going on! Looks like Allah doesn’t like that! Tectonic plates are His intermediary causes.

2- The Pakistani Earthquake in Belokot 2005. 70,000 people killed and immense destruction1 Anything going on there?! Well research indicates that al Qaida was organizing in the area! You can draw your own conclusions.

A couple of clarifying Sufi quotes:

1-Ali Jemal of Fes “Everything to you is from you and everything from you comes back to you. This is the sunnat of Allah” The second part many people know as “the law of karma’ but the first part is even more subtle. It says that whatever is happening to you is already from you. It t comes from the Divine will. It could be a punishment( more common actually) or a test for you. In either case it is a teaching.

2-Sheikh Hashimi of Damascus “Fi kuli shay hayran”( in everything is goodness) Surprising for most analytic minds lol  There is always a positive side and that positive is not secondary. It is preponderant!

3- Mulay Ad-Darqawi author of the Darqawi Letters said that he never saw a problem that his murids brought to him without there being a defect in their nafs(ego) which accounted for it. H-m-m. Intriguing. So whenever we experience a problem we should look within rather than looking to blame others!

This applies as much to collectivities as to individuals. So when Iran gets attacked, it is easy to say it is the fault of the unbelievers- of America or Israel! Couldn’t possibly be those sweet, pious, loving leaders of Iran, right?! Instead, we need to be accountable-both as individuals and as nations. Otherwise, we are not truly God-fearing. Instead we are defensive, calculating and manipulating! And that is not healthy.

So what am I saying here “Bottom Line”?!

The real causation is not logical /scientific! The real causation is Moral.

That’s why I advise myself and others: ”Do the right thing and the right consequences will follow’!”” Do the calculated, self-interested thing and bad consequences will follow-no matter how precise the calculation”. If you don’t believe me, observe. In both your life and the life of your nation or religious group. May Allah be my witness! Sufi Ibrahim

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Spiritual Practice

The Two-Legged Tripod – Where is the Ikhlas

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The Two-legged Tripod of Current Islamic Practice

 


Umar ibn al-Khattab reported: We were sitting with the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, one day, a man appeared with very white clothes and very black hair. There were no signs of travel on him and we did not recognize him. He sat in front of the Prophet, rested his knees by his knees, and placed his hands on his thighs. The man said, “O Muhammad, tell me about Islam.” The Prophet said, “Islam is to testify there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, to establish prayer, to give charity, to fast the month of Ramadan, and to perform pilgrimage to the House if a way is possible.” The man said, “You have spoken truthfully.” We were surprised that he asked him and said he was truthful. He said, “Tell me about faith.” The Prophet said, “Faith is to believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, the Last Day, and to believe in providence, its good and its harm.” The man said, “You have spoken truthfully. Tell me about excellence.” The Prophet said, “Excellence is to worship Allah as if you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He surely sees you.”

I feel like, without pretension inshallah, I have become the conscience of our religion?! At least to me and a few people near to me. That is NOT because of superior knowledge or piety. Many of my co-religionists have more of both of these! But rather because I am a convert and am able to see things from numerous perspectives. Having been through secular Judaism, left-wing politics and Marxism, Humanistic Psychology, Buddhism, New Age Sufism and finally traditional Islamic Sufism I have experienced the world from numerous perspectives. On the other hand, most Muslims have lived their entire lives in an ethnic echo-chamber. Even when they immigrate to a Western country they resist the local wisdoms in favour of their cultural platitudes! So I can see more than most!

Therefore, when I go to the Muslim venues including the holy sites of Mecca and Madina and the grand mosques of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey, as well as local mosques, I have noticed the following phenomena-relating back to the cited hadith

1-The Iman is good-almost everywhere in the Islamic world and even in the West! The mosques are full for jumaa prayer, overfilled for the Eid and well-attended at Tarawih during Ramadan. This tells me that the faith is there! By contrast, at the churches, including the one where we do our group dhikr(another issue to be explained further on) the pews are empty. Some of the Evangelical Churches may well be better attended but that remains the exception in the Christian world!

2- Islam, i.e the outward practices. Most of the Muslims I meet are trying to keep up the outer practices-doing the obligatory ones and avoiding the prohibited things. Most Muslims do not gamble, do not drink alcohol or eat pork. Most Muslims avoid fornication and adultery even though the modern world prevents them from having second wives and concubines- like in the days of the Prophets. Verdict: Islam, the behavioural component, is  well -respected.

3-Ihsan?! I look around the mosques at jumaa prayer and rarely do I see people of light?! The same was shockingly true in Mecca when I did hajj many years ago. I kept walking around the Kabaa looking for people of light. The site was luminous but the people were not! Finally I ran into a group where it was manifest! They were a group of Bangladeshi Naqshbandi Sufis. I found a similar small group in Madina not far from the Prophet’s mosque! But overall the people were in a pitiful spiritual state. The maqamat (the holy sites) were luminous but the people were not!

Interestingly enough, John Bennett tells the same story about the great Indian saint Shivapuri Baba who visited Mecca in the 1890’s!  He made the following statement which concurs with my own observations” The pilgrims at Mecca are inspired with true religious fervour (strong Iman) but I do not find myself attracted to Islam as it is today”. This was before the end of the Ottoman empire when the Wahhabbis had not yet done the damage that they eventually did to the spirituality of Islam. I guess he did not have the occasion to meet some real Sufis! I believe he would then  have felt their camaraderie(like-mindedness) with his own aspirations!

The Causes: How did we get here?! This is, no doubt, a complex question! Our Prophet saws had warned that each generation after him would be worse than that before. Nevertheless, there have been great Sufis throughout the ages from Abu Bayazid Bistami to Abdul Qadr Jilani, Ibn Arabi and Jellalludin Rumi.and Abu Hassan Ash-Shadhili-all many generations after him saws..I think it is safe to say that they all had a high degree of Ihsan! So what happened?!

Did the corruption of the Ottoman empire have something to do with it? Or the wealth in the Muslim countries that our Prophet saws feared so much? All of that is possible.

1-But the one unavoidable factor is the rising up of Wahhabbism/Salafism that started in earnest after the defeat of the Ottomans in WW1.By 1925 they had taken over the holy sites and began imposing their dry, lifeless, despiritualized version of Islam throughout the Muslim world-via their petrodollars.

Nowadays, even when you go to far away outposts of Islam like Trinidad where I spent some time, you find people who know nothing about Sufism and retain a negative image of it! They have lost the essential tool for developing Ihsan!  I consider Wahhabism as the extension of the Khawarij heresy into the modern world. It appears that the great scholar of Islam- Tahir al Qudri- agrees with me on that one.

2- The second obstacle, a descendant I believe of the Mutazili heresy are the movements like Ikhwan Muslimeen. Like the Mutazilis, even though they are not often recognized as such, they emphasize reason beyond anything else As Joshua Philipp, of Epoch Times,  pointed out in his astute reporting on the Islamic Brotherhood, Sayeed Qutb studied social sciences in the U.S. and then brought Marxist thought into the Islamic paradigm. ( Quite an achievement of understanding for a non-Muslim!) From there, we start hearing more and more about political Islam -the very type of Islam so popular in the modern world that my sheikh-Sheikh Nazim denounced every time he met them!” You do not understand our religion” he would say! “People get the governments they deserve .You cannot impose Islamic governments from above”. What insight that man r.a. had!

3- A third source is the modern world-full of Materialism, Empiricism and Rationalism. The scientific paradigm, economic planning and all other types of over-planning and overthinking. When we consider this “toxic soup” of Wahhabism, Ikhwanism and Scientific Materialism , we should not be surprised that the Islamic world is in such a pitiful state spiritually!

 

The Consequences :  I will make a bold statement here!  I would state that almost all the problems in the contemporary Muslim world and yes that includes Palestine and Iran and Lebanon etc.,etc. come from this loss of Ihsan (P.S. I will be writing a future article on the Causal Nexus as most Muslims have bought into the logical version of causality rather than the moral one.)   What we find is a lack of subtlety, a lack of refinement, a lack of empathy and a lack of the true sense of the sacred. It is like we have a body without blood and without breath. Emptiness and Deadness. Men addicted to porn sites. Hijabi women walking the streets of Western cities looking miserable and bitter. Parents who do not understand their children and marry their daughters to the first rich man they can find( Yes,it’s still happening!) Dissatisfaction everywhere!

 

The Solutions:

So what are the answers?

Bring back the Sufis! They contain the lifeblood of the religion. Bring back the group dhikr and the Samaa and the Hadrat. Bring back the private dhikr with the name of Allah. Push back on the critics of Sufism-whether they be Wahhabbis or Ikhwanis or Orientalists. What we see instead is the glorification of scholarship! Scholarship has its place, no doubt. But it is not the highest nor the deepest part of the religion. We can learn our Shariah from them , how to recite Quran with proper tajweed, how to do wudhu and ghusl. But mostly they are cerebral people with limited hal-for those who can perceive hal in their souls.

The real Sufis, however, are glowing and energetically powerful. The first one I met, in Jerusalem, put me into the hal of fana immediately and the second one had me in a state of ecstasy that made it difficult to find myself in the streets of Philadelphia-the city he was residing in at the time. These are the people of God! These are the carriers of the most intense forms of Ihsan. These are the people we need to align with. Not the people who have memorized the most Islamic ilm. These are the people who can revive the nation. The others are more like University professors and less like true awliya of Allah. May Allah fortify and invigorate our Ihsan.

Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

 

Modern Living, Spiritual Practice, Sufism

The One Body metaphor

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The Metaphor of the Umat as one body!

Narrator: An-Nu’man bin Bashir (RA).

  • Sources: Found in Sahih al-Bukhari (6011) and Sahih Muslim (2586).
  • Arabic Text: مَثَلُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ فِي تَوَادِّهِمْ وَتَرَاحُمِهِمْ وَتَعَاطُفِهِمْ مَثَلُ الْجَسَدِ إِذَا اشْتَكَى مِنْهُ عُضْوٌ تَدَاعَى لَهُ سَائِرُ الْجَسَدِ بِالسَّهَرِ وَالْحُمَّى
  • Translation: “The likeness of the believers in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion is that of a single body; when one limb suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever”.

 

Since the recent events in Gaza this metaphor has come up over and over again. When I would criticize the policies and actions of the Palestinian leadership, as often did my Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim-I would be reproached on numerous occasions: ”Don’t you have any empathy for their pain?” Of course I do- like any normal human being would have. But that was not satisfactory. I would have to display my loyalty by blaming Israel and America and never putting into question what the so-called Muslims in Palestine were doing!

My own Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim- would regularly criticize their behaviour. I recently saw a video of him being asked about it shortly before his death- in a weakened state” What they are doing I am not understanding” he would say. ”This is not the way of our Prophet saws nor is it Islamic war. I don’t know what to call it” Then he hesitated.. ”It must be …..corruption” he said. And he spoke the Truth.

Mohammed, our Prophet saws went, once he got to Madina, from victory to victory. And yet the Arabs in the Middle East have gone from defeat to defeat. Something must be wrong! But they are not reading the signs as we are instructed to do, over and over again in the Quran. The Muslims are acting from pride and vengeance not from wisdom-the true inheritance of the sunnat. Our Prophet saws never took on the Persian or Byzantine Empire in his time. He knew they were too strong. The Quran itself says explicitly not to take on enemies that were more than twice their size (8:66). So the Palestinians and Iranians take on Israel and the U.S.A -How much stronger are the latter-100 times or 1000 times. These wars are pure folly!

Now to expand the analogy from the hadith about feeling the injured limb. What do you do then?! Let’s, for arguments sake, say that you had a broken leg from a car accident. Now you have to use your intelligence to deal with it . Does it serve any purpose to blame the car, or the brake manufacturer or the other driver?! Useless . Get to an E.R. quickly and get the fracture set and a cast put over the injury. Instead, the Muslims are content to blame others and go even further. ”To avenge your broken leg, go kick the other driver’s car. That way you will get your vengeance” That is what is being recommended .Reinjure your leg in the name of Justice! What foolishness?!

2- Simultaneous in timing with the hadith about empathy are the exhortations in the Quran and hadith to unity. I see all kinds of well-meaning Muslims saying: ’We have to be united to gain strength.” United with whom and with what? In this body of the umat I see a cancer of Wahhabbism (see my previous article about Ihsan)  and an autoimmune disease(call it Systemic Lupus if you wish lol) -the Shiism of the Ayatollahs. Are you asking me to unite with my cancer and my autoimmune disease?! No way! I want to detoxify them quickly and extirpate them from my body. Asking me to love them because they claim they are Muslim is anathema to me. My loyalty is to Truth not to tribe.

Let me add in one final but crucial note. Muslims including our scholars have a lot of difficulty with contextualization. Because we believe the Quran is for all time and all places, we forget to take into account what was actually happening at the time of the Revelation(“asbab al nuzul” it is called in Arabic).So when the Quran appeals for Unity, the Muslim nation was weak ,vulnerable, under what we now call “an existential threat”. At this time however, Islam is very strong and robust-no matter how the Muslims feel about it. There is NO actual threat to our religion! The real threat is from within! We are 2 billion strong! So what is needed is not unity-but cleansing! What use is unifying with disease and corruption?!

May Allah make us people of awareness and practicality-not purveyors of tribalism and bigotry. That is NOT what our religion is about!

Salaams , Sufi Ibrahim

 

Understood and applied, any one of the posts on this site could change your life-forever!