Must the global khalifah be an Arab?

by azly rahman

 

Reading about the terrorising adventures of the ISIS/ISIL and its proclamation of a global jihad for the establishment of an Islamic state, the self-appointment of ‘Khalifah Ibrahim’ by al-Baghdadi, the emergence of Malay-Muslim jihadists, and of the first Malaysian suicide bomber, I had these notes and questions running in my head since yesterday:

1. I have always asked this question since I was a child: why must all the prophets of Islam be coming from the Middle East? Is it because the land has been plagued with war and struggles for power and created violence through the wars of the warring tribes that these prophets/messengers were sent there to mediate?

Now we have the chief executive officer (or perhaps chief execution officer?), one Mr Al-Baghdadi proclaiming, like Napoleon or Caesar, or Saddam Hussein, himself as a supreme leader; this time for the Ummah or Muslims worldwide in the fashion of a ‘Khalifah’; self-appointed nonetheless demanding one to obey him in the name of his religious doctrine.

Another case of an Arab forcing the 80 percent non-Arab speaking Muslims into buying into his delusion of ‘khalifah-hood’.

Essentially thus, whose war will the Muslims be asked to fight for to be rewarded by whatever number of virgins to be promised, and whose passion are they feeding on and fuelling in a Middle Eastern struggle for historical-geographical-ideological confusion these never-ending-fighters-and usurpers-of the-mantle-of the prophet are trying to sustain globally?


Is this not another tribal war trying to claim as a global religious injunction, intoxicating the mind of even the Malay-Muslims in Malaysia to go for it or “Just Do It”, as the shoe brand Nike would also say, even though their understanding of the interplay between global politics, geo-politics, cult worship, and the problematique of Ummah-ism and Khalifah-ism is still limited?

For this matter, why isn’t there a Malay or Javanese or Bugis man or woman appointed as khalifah? Or even a Boko Haram Nigerian or Costa Rican? Or why not a Chinese? Why must it always be the monopoly of the Arab? Because he speaks better Arabic than the rest of the non-Arab speaking Muslims?

2. Through the ‘struggle between Good and Evil’, a Zoroastrian concept via the teaching of the prophet-priest Zarathustra (who had only one follower in his lifetime), compiled in the Zen Avesta, and whose idea of the ‘battleground in which Force of Light will triumph’ crept into the teachings in the Torah, the Christian Bible and the Quran, the obsession with the idea of the coming of Good to destroy Evil prevails till today.

Other concepts and religious narrational-inventions such as Heaven and Hell, the path to Righteousness (Siratul Mustaqim in Islamic ideology), Israq Mikraj (the travel of Muhammad to the Seven Heavens,) and even the story of the creation of the Adam and the Satanic Jealousy and vow to bring Humanity astray - all these are embalmed in the teachings of Zarathustra, the prophet who started preaching about the One-ness of God (Allah or ‘the God’) after an experience with illumination, perhaps akin to a bodhisattva or the arrival to that plane of existence called ‘moksha’ or in Islamic terms called ‘Makrifat’ in which one ceases to become a ‘thing of being’ and becomes one with the Universe and ready to go down to Earth to lead Humanity to the Path of Righteousness.

Don’t we read the ancient scriptures at all, to discern the genealogy and philology of religious ideas?

3. The drama of the Spiritual-Dromological Narratives of the Fertile Crescent which perhaps in the theme runs parallel to the story of Rama in the Ramayana, and in the story of the great war at Kuruksetra in the Mahabharata (of which the famous text the Bhagavad Gita is the theme of the dialogue on the ‘personal versus ecumenical-non beingness jihad’ emanates,) continues in the collective conscious of the believers of today’s major faith: that we are all, as in Shakespeare’s metaphor, “all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players...”, and one man acts the role of many in his/her lifetime.

- better stop here to chase and capture and slaughter some chickens in this early Brazilian samba morning...

I DON’T KNOW MOTHER... *the World Cup has messed me up... and waiting for a messiah in the avatar of Diego Maradona, perhaps coming from Diego Garcia*

But an Islamic state in Malaysia?

Some ‘Nostradamic notes’

I wrote some ‘Nostradamic notes’ if this agenda materialises...

- The orders will come from chief execution officer Mr Al-Baghdadi, ISIS Khalifah a.k.a Khalifah Ibrahim;

- The Shiites in Malaysia will be hunted down and imprisoned;

- Malaysia will be a theocracy with a sub-khalifah run by a theocratic party;

- There will be systematic radical Islamisation more intense and widespread than that of the 1980s;

- Sharia law will be implemented in all states;

- Talibanism will take root;

- There will be gradual suppression of other religions;

- There will be Revolutionary Guards patrolling the streets;

- There will be gradual gender segregation in all public places;

- The media will be dominated by one voice;

- All Mat and Minah Rempits will be neutered and neutralised and given fundings to study the ideology of al-Baghdadi;

- Because Muslims in Malaysia are a majority this programme will be quite smooth sailing;

- Schooling will be remote or twitter-controlled by ISIS;

- All corrupt politicians be arrested and be hudud-ised;

- There will be a systematic programme of spiritual cleansing;

- All forms of ‘unIslamic art’ will be banned and a new form via ‘cultural re-engineering ala Maoist-China’ will be institutionalised;

- CLASSIC ROCK BANNED (here I will be really angry and start my own revolution and freedom movement...

Again, why are we allowing the total Salafic-Wahabbi-Arabisation of Malaysia when the cultural and philosophical roots of the major and minor races in the country can offer more peaceful and useful avenues for tolerance and nation-building?