The Avalanche.

By: Ahmed M. ElNahhas - Pisa, June 21^st 2017

Observing the recent sad event of the Finsbury Park mosque in London, and today’s Regent Park mosque incident together with Trump’s related unusual tweet silence; an array of ‘WHYs’ rushed on me seeking answers, and forcing me to think things over.

One thing is a certainty, in my opinion, and that is the Radical Islamists (even simply Muslims according to Trump, or Fundamentalists, Extremists, Fanatics, Terrorists, Jihadists…Etc.. Anyway by now they are all considered synonyms by almost all Media and scholars) whom were first represented by Bin Laden’s QAEDA, then by Al Zarqawy’s regiments, hence came the turn of Taliban and Shabab, and now it’s Al Baghdady’s ISIL or DAESH; would group in with the West’s Extreme Right, Xenophobe Movements, Neo Nazi and Neo Fascist clans by the same identical Ideology of Supremacy, and by the use of the same homicidal tactics.

“Not only because all those ‘Intolerant’ resemble;” as Mr. Michele Serra once wrote “but because the ‘WE HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU HATE US’ satisfies to the maximum the genocidal rush of ‘EITHER WE OR THEM’ thus preparing for the scheme long-awaited by the Jihadist Movements: the blood bath which the fanatic minority hope to inflict upon the good-mannered pacifist majority”!

But where/how did all that initiated? Why it has been so massively empowered? Whose motivating its escalation on both sides?

I think that it all started few decades over 200 years ago, by the late 18^th century, at the rise of the Wahhabi Movement in the Arabian Peninsula; when its founder Ibn Abdel Wahhab launched the Jihad against those Muslims whom he considered as enemies in and about by the peninsula, whereby the traditional tribal conquest traditions, he accumulated spoils and wealth to finance his 'mission' to spread his ideology.

To establish the Oneness (Tawheed) Nation and purify the Muslim State from ‘Idolatry’ or ‘Polytheism’; which made many Sunni scholars of the time consider the followers of that sect as outcasts (Khawarej), even outlaws, from the Ottoman Caliphate; since the Wahhabi doctrine has denied the 4 major Sunni schools, to rely only upon the Quran and confirmed Sunna texts; it also chose the verses and Hadiths related to the ‘Disbelievers’ and applied them on other Muslims; whom in their turn have reacted reciprocally, even violently.

That bloody conflict ended up by the formation of the First Saudi State, reaching Damascus in the north and Amman in the south; soon after, by 1818, the Egyptian forces under Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mohammad Alì Pasha, besieged the Saudi capital at the time Ad’Deraeya and destroyed it completely, in a war known as the Ottoman Saudi War.. Yet, by early 20^th century, backed by the British Empire, Abdel Aziz Ibn Saoud founded the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia; making the Wahhabi Doctrine the main support of the throne.

Now let me concentrate on how the Saudi/Wahhabi teachings have indoctrinated many Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans, Sudanese, Yemeni and other Muslims from various orgins, as to influence their homecoming behaviour and daily disciplines.

Just consider the fact that hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, mainly from humble social scales, along with their families, have been living and working for decades in the Kingdom and/or its “Satellite Gulf States”; other than those tens of thousands whom are traveling more than once for religious purposes (Hadj or Omra). Such durable ‘Cultural Friction’ is so influential that it drove most of them away from the Moderate Sunni practices into the extremes of the Wahhabi doctrine, only by habit and almost completely unaware of the change.

Take the Niqab for instance, their wives were obliged, by the laws of the land, to wear it then it became a habit, whereby by their homecoming it became contagious.. Then the Beard and the gowns.. Then the thoughts, rituals and practices will automatically change or mutate.

The change and the mutation, as anything else, are relative to the individual characters and capabilities; some are following by conviction, other by fear.. And both are the result of the absence of the active and oriented role of preaching and teaching; meaning Al Azhar, the Mosques and the Public Schools.

None of them has been doing a good job as they both did in the past 8 centuries.. Al Azhar is almost completely isolated from the streets and the schools; the schools are uncontrolled; and both are politicised.

The void is abyssal, and the faith is suffering.. The very same faith that produced the likes of Ibn Al Haytham, Jaber Ibn Hayyan, Al Zahrawi, Al Kindi, Ibn AnNafis, Ibn Zuhr, Al Idrisi, Al Razi, Ibn Khaldoun, Ibn Rushd, Al Khawaresmy, Al Afghany, Al Ghazali, Metwally AsSharawy…etc.. The list is encyclopaedically long!

I believe that lest we revise and refine our thoughts from the extremes and the rough edges that have distorted too many cardinal values of Islam, like tolerance, dialogue, equality, coexistence, acceptance, honesty, solidarity and generosity; we shall that speedy regression towards the Jaheleyyah!

Pass On The Word.

PS: I have carefully considered the choice of this article’s title ‘The Avalanche’, because I see it as the perfect fit to the actual situation by all the meanings of the term:

Ø  As a noun it is: a sudden arrival or occurrence of something in overwhelming quantities; and

Ø  In physics it is: a cumulative process in which a fast-moving ion or electron generates further ions and electrons by collision.