Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed

LINK: http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4363

I begin the ascent at 4p.m...

CLICK FOR PDF: In Search of the Missing Commandment

When Prophet Mohammed set out to establish Islam over 1400 years ago, he was not starting a new religion; he was not creating a new doctrine or a novel set of ecclesiastical principles. Mohammed’s message was a return to origins, to the essence of the first monotheist’s – Ibrahim – message of a one and true God, a message that got corrupted along the millennia and which Judaism and Christianity had failed to preserve in pure form. Mohammed sought to purify monotheism both of the outright polytheism that dominated the society he lived in, and the human fabrications that corrupted the Torah and the Bible. The goal was a return to a pure form of monotheism characterised by a total surrender to God and the realisation of His will on Earth through a community of believers now bound not by tribal affiliation but by a shared and uncompromising faith in the One.

Fast forward to 2012 and we have – in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution – a curious phenomena which has existed for a few decades (and in Arabia for centuries) but which had only explicitly appeared on the social and political landscape of Egypt after Hosni Mubarak was pushed aside by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces on 11th February 2011. The ‘salafis’ – as they call themselves – derive legitimacy through affiliating with the Prophet’s companions (salaf); the devout brethren. They call for a return to the ways of the salaf who in virtue of being the first generation of Muslims and contemporaries of the Prophet are prime examples to be followed. Muslims, so they believe, should align their conduct, practices, values and habits with the salaf in order to purify Islam of the accretions that have accumulated over the past few centuries, and which contaminate the message of the Prophet.

There are thus two returns to origins: the first is the Prophet’s return to the Abrahamic message; the second is the ‘salafis’ return to the Prophet’s brethren’s example. These two returns might seem identical but they are not. The Prophet was reclaiming the essence of a call that had first been made many centuries before. He applied this message to the society he found in Arabia at the time, a society that had its own cultural values and social structure. Thus the monotheistic message was wielded upon a tribal, paternalistic society with a strong code of honour and a multitude of gods. Society had to change to allow a true and deep monotheism to flourish, together with the values that accompanied the (historically relative) newly founded equality of all before God.

The ‘salafis’ call to return to origins is not a return to the monotheistic message which the Prophet had espoused, it is a return to the ways of the Prophet and his brethren and therefore by proxy – so the ‘salafis’ think – to the Prophet’s original message. Nothing could be further from the truth. In espousing his message, the Prophet was not returning to the ways of Abraham, but to the essence of the message of Abraham. Imagine that Abraham had sported a decent moustache, would we then expect the Prophet to have grown a moustache in an attempt to return to the ways of Abraham? Of course not. The Prophet’s goal was not a return to purity of appearances, but purity in the conception of and relation to the One. And this is what the ‘salafis’ completely miss. In placing complete emphasis on the ways of people who lived 1400 years ago the ‘salafis’ are in effect worshipping a society and not a God. In donning untrimmed beards and head to toe black wraps they are worshipping a socio-cultural-historical moment and are committing the idolatory that the Prophet had spent the last twenty-three years of his life fighting against. Had the Prophet been born in the 12th century towards the end of the Abbassid Caliphate, the ‘salafis’ would now be wearing turbans and vests. The ‘salafis’ have and continue to commit the basic error of mistaking the sign for the signified, much like a dog that insists on staring at its master’s finger, instead of what this finger is pointing at.

Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed

1. No more political parading in the name of Islam, which means an end to the abuse of Islam for political ends.

2. No more political interference in how people practice religion, e.g. Friday prayer sermons will no longer be ‘directed’ by the government.

3. A much more fair system of inheritance, e.g. there is no longer any reason why the man deserves as much as two women.

4. Eliminate any possibility of someone legislating for issues such as compulsory wearing of the veil/niqab or prohibition of consumption of alcohol on religious grounds.

5. A renewed focus on real scientific research as opposed to pathetic attempts to ‘Islamise’ the knowledge coming from the ‘West’ or finding proof that the Qur’an had already predicted the most recent and ground-breaking scientific discoveries.

6. A real attempt to protect freedom of worship for all: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, etc., etc., including the freedom to worship nothing at all.

7. An end to medieval laws that criminalize any critical assessment of religion, in particular Islam.

8. And perhaps most important of all: it might help move religion back to where it can do the most for people: PRIVATE LIFE

A secular political system will eliminate fundamental injustices and inequalities and set Egypt on the right track. Unfortunately, religious parties have gained a lot of ground in the recent elections, and it might be a few years before people have a sufficiently developed political consciousness to be able to separate their personal identity from how they would like to be governed.

Link to PDF: Egyptian Revolution

In Dakhla, psychotic phenomena are understood as the effects of spirits or problems „in the head‟. Local conceptualisations of spirits render them vulnerable to acts of faith, potentially allowing a positive response to distressing experiences. Organic formulations relegate faith: irreversibility and passive attitudes to illness define suffering. In the process of making sense of distressing psychotic states, the subject‟s narrative is exposed to and influenced by a range of interpretations by various stake-holders. The meanings generated have an impact on the subject‟s experience of distress.

The theoretical basis of the relation between distress and meaning was explored through narrative and semiotic approaches. With narrative, subjects attempt to incorporate distressing experiences into coherent, continuous threads of meaning which restore predictability and control. Semiosis concerns the immediate responses to psychotic states, which – depending on the semiotic object – may be more or less distressing. Semiotic analysis reveals that attributing psychotic states to external agents, rather than sub-personal brain processes, is not „delusional‟ but expected.

It is proposed that distress associated with psychotic phenomena can be intensified or alleviated by the meanings the subject embraces. This suggests that the utility of various representations – spirit possession or schizophrenia – should not be judged against a purported „true‟ explanation of the phenomena, but by subjects‟ abilities to actively respond to their experiences such that distress is alleviated. The relation between distress and meaning developed in this study lends itself to a potentially fruitful clinical approach to psychosis, where meaning is taken as a primary resource to be utilised in the management of distress: the Hermeneutic Clinic. Such an approach may provide one way to reclaim meaning into psychiatric theory and practice.

A while ago I spent some nice hours at the Hampstead mixed pond with my good friend C.K. It was one of those rare, sunny and liberating London days; the view of the pond was complemented by the beautiful bodies basking in the sun, of whom I specifically mark out a certain person C.K. would definitely remember. What struck me the most that day, apart from the sun, was a sign we saw on the way out of West Hampstead Rail station. Never before have I seen a perfectly legible and perfectly constructed sign accompanied by small print indicating that it is a ‘Temporary Sign’. I was curious, and decided to ask one of the guys working at the station the reason behind this unusual signing. Seeing his reaction, I could tell he hasn’t been asked this question before: he paused, delivered a few ummm’s, and gave a non-sensical answer. I assumed he doesn’t know.

I was still baffled. To my Egyptian temperament, used as it is to a certain degree of chaos, and a large dose of unpredictability (you sometimes get signs to the same location pointing in opposite directions), the presence of a sign is itself an event, let alone a sign on the sign telling you the latter is temporary. What in the world could be the reason behind this unusual practice? Maybe, I thought to myself, we could approach the deciphering of this practice in the same manner anthropologists used to approach the unusual rituals of the natives. After all, while the sign is itself familiar to me, the practice, or the logic underlying it, are completely alien.

First things first: Let’s assume, for the sake of our attempt to understand, that the train or station operator have installed this warning because the signs will change soon, whether in message or location. That in itself is not unusual. It’s good to know if things will change soon, but it’s good to know if things that matter will change; why on earth would a sign saying ‘Way Out’ matter to the extent that we must be forewarned about its temporariness? This, it seems to me, is the question we must stay with for a bit. Perhaps this unusual behaviour by the natives is motivated by a desire for completeness; for saying things as they are. This is a temporary sign so we must indicate that it is a temporary sign for all to see. It doesn’t matter if it matters to anyone that this is the case; we must present the truth in all its trivial manifestations. But let’s be generous here. Maybe someone had complained before that a sign was not provided with an indication of its future status even though the lucky sign was relived of its signing duty within two weeks of its life in sign-world. And maybe that person was of the variety that spend their time collecting stamps or modelling trains; in short someone who has a pretty weird idea of fun and an unhealthy dedication to completeness. National rail, so the argument goes, had put up this warning just so they would stave off his sort and have some peace of mind. But, frankly, given all the sympathy, empathy, and all the pathys in the world I couldn’t bring myself to imagine such a person exists. It would be unimaginably sad that someone did find this worthy of complaint. So the problem remains: why on earth did they put up this sign on the sign?

Here I must flex my anthropological muscles and think laterally. Have I ever encountered other instances of pointless signing? Yes! How about a bag of peanuts with a warning, for all nut phobics, indicating that ‘this bag contains nuts’? Surely, as pointless signs, or warnings, go this must win the prize. How did this come about? I can only think of one possibility. In each institution, company, and factory in Britain there are two sets of employees who work in the same location yet never communicate, never ever. The first set of employees gather the nuts and put them in bags that say ‘nuts’. The second set of employees are blind; they feel around for the bags of nuts and assuming they do not indicate their contents push a large button that prints ‘this bag contains nuts’ on each bag they can get hold off. By the time the first set of employees realise the silliness of what the second set have done, it is already too late. And given that they never communicate there is no possibility of remedying this error. Perfect. Q.E.D.

Now the same argument can be applied to the sign I saw at West Hampstead rail station, only changing the employees a bit. The first set are perfectly normal national rail employees who design and print perfectly useful station signs. The second set are elves. Yes, just that, short elves with long-pointed ears, and they all own large stencils saying ‘Temporary Sign’ and cans of black paint. When London is sleeping they cruise around spraying their temporariness all over the station signs. It turns out, after all, that none of the signs are temporary! They are there forever…..

We live in the midst of man-made objects, among tools, in houses, streets, cities. We become used to thinking that all of this exists necessarily and unshakably. Cezanne’s painting suspends these habits of thought. This is why Cezanne’s people are strange, as if viewed by a creature of another species. There is no wind in the landscape, no movement on the Lac d’Annecy; the frozen objects hesitate as at the beginning of the world. It is an unfamiliar world in which one is uncomfortable and which forbids all human effusiveness. If one looks at the work of other painters after seeing Cezanne’s paintings, one feels somehow relaxed, just as conversations resumed after a period of mourning mask the absolute change and give back to the survivors their solidity. (1964:16).