‘To some extent leadership is a disempowering myth’. I did not say that it is invalid to have a leader in a managerial sense of the word; and I am not talking about an anarchistic vision of a decentralized state.
I am referring to the ability of people to organize themselves and mobilize to achieve social and political change in society. It is absolutely false that the population is not capable of this in the absence of some kind of charismatic visionary leader. That is simply a lie which is an insult to the natural ability of people to cooperate and unite for their own welfare.
We know that any effort should have an emir, but it presupposes that an effort has been undertaken, with the most qualified among the people appointed by them to coordinate.
The official narrative of history is that movements do not happen without leaders, but the opposite is the reality. There is no example of successful social change in history that did not depend on the self-organization of people in support of the causes they believed in.
Even the first and second pledges of ‘Aqabah only occurred because the people of Yathrib took the initiative to organize themselves and propose hijrah to Rasulullah.