To be published in Arabic for Arabi21
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The promise of simple solutions (like toppling an individual regime) can be used to mobilize people to act, because they have been convinced that their action will immediately, decisively, and completely end their oppression. Once their action accomplishes the objective that promised to solve their problems, and their problems remain anyway, as is always the case when action is based on unrealistic hopes of what it can achieve, there is a profound backlash against action itself.
This is a kind of conundrum for opposition and revolutionary movements. It is difficult to motivate people to take action when you have to tell them the truth, because the truth is, their action will need to continue every day, probably for the rest of their lives. And their oppression will not be swept away in a single dramatic wave; rather, it will need to be chipped away little by little over the course of probably decades, possibly generations. Because systematic injustice is complex, and because when power is challenged, it responds.
So, opposition and revolutionary parties and leaders rely on simplification and false promises to mobilize support, knowing (for they surely must know), that the inevitable failure of these promises to deliver the desired results will sink the people into despair and inaction, mistrust of the leaders and parties themselves, and it will be that much harder to mobilize them in the future.
What we are dealing with is a complicated global imperialist system, not merely a corrupt regime.
This system’s methods of control are insidiously comprehensive and interwoven into every aspect of our daily lives, and the structural design of the power system is intricately self-reinforcing; there is simply no single blow that can make it collapse; and there is no single action that can liberate us from it.
Simplification is deception. As Muslims, as Islamists, we have to tell the truth, our strategies have to be based on reality, and we cannot seek support for Allah’s Cause by promoting misunderstanding and by compounding the ignorance of our people.
Seizing power by force, attaining government by elections, minting gold dinars, overthrowing dictators; none of these things will establish an Islamic Utopia, because there are no Utopias. And no honest leader will promise solutions, because there are no solutions; there is only the struggle to make things better. That struggle is ongoing, daily, and endless.
Since at least the time of Ghazwat-Tabuk, the sovereignty of the Muslim world has been continuously challenged; if not by military invasion, then by economic warfare, often by both, as it is now.
We should not call upon the people to resist and fight under the illusion that their resistance and fighting will result in a conclusive resolution, but they should be called to fight because it is a religious duty, a means of improving our conditions, decreasing suffering, restricting the forces of oppression, and most importantly, it is a means of earning Allah’s reward.
We should not call upon people to struggle in the hope that by struggling, they will end the need for struggle; rather, we should instill in them the love for this struggle, and call them with Allah’s Words,
“…وَسَارِعُوا إِلَىٰ مَغْفِرَةٍ مِنْ رَبِّكُمْ وَجَنَّةٍ عَرْضُهَا السَّمَاوَاتُ وَالْأَرْضُ أُعِدَّتْ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ….”