- SATYAGRAHA AND ALLAH -

On the art of verifaction: the search for truth on both sides of a conflict. On Islam. What if the two matched?

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Le pire imbécile se croit le plus sage- apprentimarcv
Ne traitez personne d'imbécile – Jésus

The greatest fool thinks himself wisest - learnermarkv
Call no man a fool. Jesus

Chapters

• 0:07 celebrate Learning instead of sacrificing the Other
• 2:02 the basis of Gandhian struggle is Satyagraha
• 8:58 we must master elegant new ways to negotiate our differences
• 12:07 my summary of the teachings of the Qran
• 12:07 Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as the “Frontier Gandhi.”
• 14:40 summary of the Koran
• 20:40 The Sayings of Muhammad: kindness

Transcript

WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

- SATYAGRAHA AND ALLAH -

Some bullies assert their privilege at the expense of others and eventually their own, regardless of moral right and wrong. Privileges obtained by violence are more difficult to hold onto in the long run; they are less profitable than those everyone agrees to share peacefully. As conflict worsens in the absence of renewal, communal prosperity dries up and blows away.

Yet Mencius urges us to discount simple profit and rallies us instead to Humanity (compassion) and Duty (Learning) far healthier for us. I am convinced that excessive profit leads to sacrifice of the other. Instead of sacrifice of the other based on profit-taking, humanity and duty call for celebration as the outcome of self-sacrifice. 

Celebrate Learning instead of sacrificing the Other! 

Once these aggressive self-promoters knock off their opponents, the survivors assemble into elites even more vicious. In most cases, the rest of us submit to their brutal demands to restore the peace. Just because the meek turn the other cheek to violence, that does not disqualify their legitimate demands. On the contrary, they benefit a lot more people including the powerful, whereas arbitrary and brutal demands induce more expense, conflict and social contradiction. 

Note this basic paradox. Totalitarian regimes may seem to be mighty but are really rigid and brittle. They could fend off foreign aggression for a while, but the wear and tear of social contradictions erodes them from within. Eventually, they turn into hollow husks only apparently mighty and collapse for no apparent reason. 

On the other hand, the more turbulent a society’s info flow and the more hubbub of dialogue it tolerates, the stronger and more flexible it becomes. Societies that appear to be turbulent and shaky may invite foreign aggression, but they can overcome long-term contradictions more reliably. They could even assimilate their invaders and thrive in the long run, as China succeeded during her long and complex history. The control of tyranny is as untrue as the weakness of cosmopolitan decadence.

Mark Juergensmeyer’s book, Fighting with Gandhi, is a primer of conflict resolution. It, too, is out of print. This chapter and the next are summaries of his book included with his kind permission. 

Please study these pages carefully, then go out and learn everything you can about Satyagraha. Our survival may depend on your effort.

The basis of Gandhian struggle is Satyagraha, (Clutching-at-the-Truth in Hindi): a basic peace management tool. Gandhi coined the term “passive resistance” during his first social experiment in South Africa; he rejected the term thereafter. This weapon-based misnomer of the struggle for peace is typical of Western weapon culture. Likewise, the title “Mahatma” or great soul that displeased him no end.

We could replace “passive resistance” with “verifaction”: the deliberate alliance of those who embrace both sides of the truth. 

Gandhi’s first principles of Satyagraha are: 

·      Satya: truth ;

·      Ahimsa: non-violence ;

·      Tapasya: voluntary suffering for the common good ; and 

·      Sarvodaya: the common good 

You are not only supposed to love your enemy, you must befriend him with your honesty and harmlessness. If you are error-free (a tough requirement) your enemy will eventually become your loyal friend and act accordingly, no matter what he used to think about you. The process is voluntary on both sides. It should be valiant from the onset on your part and fearless in the end by your fear-freed enemy. 

You may judge the acts of your opponent but only pity or respect him for himself, as you would a family member exasperating or inspiring. Trust in your adversary’s good faith. In most cases, his best friends are safe from his attack.

Also noteworthy: this rule may not apply to individual psychopaths (even though Gandhi had amazing success with his prison guard and other brutes), but certainly so for random agglomerations of conscientious humans who could seize control from a small minority of psychopaths. 

Your shield is Tapasya: your willingness to accept self-suffering in order to reduce the suffering of others — but not your own. Suffering for your own sake is not Satyagraha. 

What should honest verifactors fear? That they stumble as they feel their way along this rocky trail, and remain unwilling or unable to amend their errors. Only fear-based failure can hold up this all-powerful process. 

Compared to almighty Satyagraha, panicky brutality and sickly lies are bound to fail. We may not compromise Satyagraha through personal weakness, fear or inertia. We must resist in suffering instead. 

“I must resist in suffering instead.” How easy it is for me to write this down and reread it — how much harder to practice it honestly! I fail all the time. I get angry and drop my principles the moment anger takes hold, when  not ducking responsibility from sloth, fear and inertia. You too, no doubt. Gandhi too, but less often. Satyagraha was his topic of passion he trained for all his life. Me, I’m just another human slug gratifying wormy urges.

Whatever I may turn out to be, I can spot the genius of Satyagraha and recommend it to you. And many of you Learners out there may have the passion for it that I lack, to carry it out honestly. That’s my hope.

Satyagraha is like karate, charity or courage: it only gets done by doing it. Reading and writing about it is easy and superficial. It is just a prelude, the stale shell of an old Twinkie. 

If we were scarred veterans of Satyagraha, we might achieve something useful by reading about it; otherwise, not likely. Learning it over and over again from a peace master; practicing it in the real world; trying and failing; getting thrown, picking ourselves up and dusting off (along with our enemies) then trying again — those are tough but mandatory steps. 

Nowadays, there are no Satyagraha masters to practice with. If we attempt it in the real world, people will take us for cowards; the charitable, for saintly fools. We will suffer for our folly. They will rip off everything we hold dear, hit us where it hurts and walk away laughing at our stupidity.  They will have learned nothing from the transaction. It will be easy to become bitter. You should expect that and take it into account.

The main difference between today’s policies and future ones ruled by Satyagraha, is that psychopaths and sociopaths rule, these days, to advance their special interests; whereas conscience-driven people like us will rule for the common good in a Learner future. It will be as simple as that.

Gandhi’s foremost lesson is that we must not lose heart from delayed results. I am an impatient fool and fantasize that the God of Love will speed up our greatest ambitions by miracle.

In the future, there will be more Satyagraha masters on PeaceWorld than there are karate masters on WeaponWorld (and more of those, too). Satyagraha will be the key practice of courtesy and social grace. Most people will acknowledge and assist it with enthusiasm; those who reject it will be considered insane. Only then will we contemplate Satyagraha in the cool shade of our innermost thoughts and find genuine contentment there. Until then, we fail at our ideals and suffer for our convictions. 

O bodhisattva! Keep trying. This is hard, but you are stubborn. Keep trying.

Some conflicts end by force and guile, others by accommodation and compromise, still more through arbitration and law. None of those outcomes satisfied Gandhi. Win-lose and lose-lose outcomes merely prolong resentment, deceit and violence. There cannot be true victory until both sides agree that they won simultaneously. 

Satyagraha requires that both sides recognize, exchange and embrace each other’s foremost principles. Neither side’s truth is utterly wrong nor wholly correct until it reflects and confirms the other side’s truth. Once both parties expose their differing versions of the truth, alternate outcomes will confirm (and be confirmed by) their most dependable principles. Thus, we should welcome conflict as an opportunity to analyze and embrace both faces of the truth: neither an excuse for coercion nor an evil to be shunned. 

1.    List each side’s foremost values. Each side claims its own truths: some vital and some less so. 

2.    Let each side examine the importance of its claims and pick out the most important ones. 

3.    Merge, in your heart and mind, both sides’ most vital elements. Create a new side and adopt it with your opponent. 

4.    Revise your position as the fight goes on. 

In this context, we should consider Steven Brams’ and Alan Taylor’s book, Fair Division: From Cake Cutting to Dispute Resolution. 

According to their formulation, for any number n of people sharing a cake, equal portions will result if 2(n-2) + 1 pieces are cut and chosen in a certain order. Handing out equal portions of dessert may seem like a trivial exercise, but more important applications suggest themselves. For you number crunchers out there, note that the complexity of conflict resolution increases exponentially as more and more parties assert their interest. 

Nowadays, dispute resolution and other peace practices stumble along by trial and (mostly) error. Our rough and tumble decision-making is based on the rule of terror. Learners will demand much more subtle precision from the sciences of peace. We must master elegant new ways to negotiate our differences. 

I am pretty sure that the French language is better adapted to this task than “zero-sum, winner-take-all” English. Those who learn to write in French are taught to take their time, crosscheck the links between every element of the sentence as written, and thus tell their story more clearly. If they fall short, they will neither attract nor influence anyone with their claims, not even themselves. 

On the other hand, by training, English speakers achieve intellectual dominance as abruptly as possible, regardless of their tone and content. We are taught to argue both sides of a debate equally well, regardless of personal convictions. Only afterwards may the masters of English rhetoric defend their convictions in the public forum — once they’ve certified their amphibious nature.

“At the age of twenty in Rome, Richelieu argued a sermon before the Pope to prove a certain point. The next day, he was once again before the Pope to argue the same sermon proving the opposite point.” John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Vintage Press, A Division of Random House, 1991, p. 53.

French children are probably taught the same arid logic of ancient Greek war tribes; all the children on WeaponWorld are. But I did not pick that up during my fractional French schooling, except incidentally from my adoptive grandfather, Maître Auguste Reynaud. 

I found a truer voice of conviction in French. I may have begun this text in English, but its full truth couldn’t emerge until I had translated it in French and rewritten both versions several times, reweaving new ideas into the old arbor or tearing it down and rescaffolding it with the tougher grammar and syntax of French. Errors and omissions of thought reveal themselves more clearly in French; necessary clarifications become more obvious. Then the English version serves to resimplify. That may just be my upbringing… Gershwin wrote An American in Paris for proud hybrids like me.

Besides, French speakers are not as scared of polysyllabic terms and complex ideas, the way English readers are, hopelessly attracted instead to dead-end thought and Trump/Brexit EZ-listening.

Is that why the French language wound up being that of the diplomatic world? Why the bitterest foes of French domination send their children nowadays to learn it in school? Power grabs and winner-take-all are easier to justify in English; more thoughtful, win-win thought is clearer in French. I’m not sure, but Mandarin Chinese might be even more suitable? See Language.

It may be that my habits of translation force me to triangulate ideas, the same way stereoscopic vision reveals distance and size with greater precision? In that case, everyone should learn to think in at least two languages. The fact that I am dyslexic and yet learned two of them more or less fluently, confirms that almost anyone could learn the trick.

This enhanced social competence will terminate the bloody chaos we have come to expect from weapon mentality. May we banish its applied cowardice forever!

What follows is my summary of the teachings of the Qran, Koran. I hope Mohammed would not have disapproved, even though he condemns those who dare to supplement his text. These are difficult times; they seem to require clarification to staunch the flow of blood that Allah must abominate as much among His Faithful as those others who should be.

In The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland, Public Affairs, The Century Foundation, New York, 2003, pp. 103-4, Karl E. Meyer talks about Mukilika Banerjee’s investigation (The Pathan Unarmed) of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as the “Frontier Gandhi.” He and his Punjabi Red Shirts or Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) fought alongside Gandhi and his Congress Party in the 1920’s for a single, free and secular India.

His followers, clothed in cheap, brickdust dyed cloth, had to pledge: “I shall never use violence. I shall not retaliate or take revenge, and shall forgive anyone who indulges in oppression and excess against me.” Announcing this nonviolent form of Jihad, he recruited 100,000 followers. They submitted to arrest and torture by the Raj, then won elections in Punjab to form a series of provincial governments under Chief Minister Dr. Khan Sahib, the British-educated brother of Abdul Ghaffar.

Both the Muslim League and the British found Ghaffar Khan’s political success alarming, based on his non-violent demand for Pashtun independence. The former because his open-minded Muslim movement denied routine, hysterical claims that Islam is in danger; the latter because it threatened to deprive them of a prime military recruiting ground, Punjab, for their jewel of Empire.

In some sense, the Taliban are the murderously bankrupt ideological descendants of a popular nonviolent movement for political independence among the Pashtu people. Since that peace ideology has been systematically suppressed and infected with weapon brutality, every other one since has proven sterile, divisive and futile. Despite all the blood spilled opposing it, Islam’s non-violent holy war can claim a long and glorious past and a bright outlook in the near future.

Once the Umma (the community of Islam) takes up non-violent Jihad for the greater glory of Allah, all the dead-end terrorism that Mohammed forbids will fall by the wayside, the handiwork of godless human animals on both sides. Terror neither converted non-believers nor helped the Faithful. Islamic non-violence will empower them, powerless otherwise, and convert billions more. 

Irhaab haram: terrorism is forbidden.

Allah just expects to be obeyed. Almighty is His patience and mercy!

First of all, Islam is a religion of personal salvation and social revolution. There are no priests, only gifted interpreters of Allah’s words as recited by the angel Gabriel or Gibril to Mohammed who memorized and recited them to the faithful for later compilation in the Qran.

Nowadays, too many fanatics earn a living by preaching massacre in the name of God or some other revealed Truth. Militant clerics and ideologues of that sort have emerged from almost every belief system in history. From the little of it I understand, classical Islam would rather one had a real paying job rather than preachifying murder and terror for pay.

Everyone is expected to read the Koran and memorize its splendid verses. I am told it contains the finest Arabic poetry, no contest. This is a miracle, since Mohammed could barely read and write. 

I wonder if you realize how revolutionary those notions were, back during the 7th century CE? Every peasant boy could become a Koranic scholar (a Learner). Christians would not reach the same level of Learning until the 19th century. Thank God, we include little girls nowadays.

Nobody can save you. You can save yourself by following five simple rules as long as you are able (Allah is infinitely merciful):

·      Shahada: Once during your lifetime, say with full understanding and absolute conviction: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.”

·      Salat: Pray five times a day (at first it was twice; later, dozens of times; finally, five times): at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, at dusk and once it is dark outside. Clean yourself first. Muslim societies have organized themselves to facilitate the duty.

·      Zakat: Give alms generously — and then more than generously. Again, Muslim societies have converted these alms into official taxes, for better or for worse.

·      Sawm: Sustain a daylight fast during the month of Ramadan (whose date shifts yearly according to the lunar calendar), eat and drink only after dark.

·      Hajj: Make a pilgrimage to Mecca once during your lifetime – if you are able; God is infinitely merciful. During your Hajj, you may witness the family of humanity under Allah’s tutelage.

That’s it. The rest is up to the infinite mercy of Allah, blessed be His Name. Like I said, Islam is a revolutionary religion of personal salvation. Either you choose to submit to God or you don’t. The Koran forbids Muslims from coercing your belief. It must be pure, free of fear and spontaneous.

It is not surprising that Islam is a religion of rugged individualists, since the Mecca/Medina region in Mohammed’s day would have made the American Wild West seem like a lady’s sewing circle — so savage were local customs. I wonder if that is why Muslim and American fanatics hate each other so fervently: because they are the same in spirit? 

The propaganda of Salafi Muslims, ultra Jews and American Christian fundamentalists could have been written by the same psychopath; just switch the name of the protagonists and antagonists.

Desert nomads are among the Earth’s hardiest individualists. I know; I’ve met some and admired them. No one can get them to do what they don’t want to do, and there is no nobler host for a friend or an innocent passer-by. After all, some random visitor might be an angel sent by God to test their honor.

Most of the ground-down, bowed-back peasants (Pagan, Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Buddhist, you name it) Muslim conquerors absorbed, grasped the advantages of Islam soon enough. Islam makes every Muslim man the equal of every other in the eyes of God. Nobility, wealth, the means and motive to hurt people real bad; what are those worth in the eyes of God? Less than nothing. 

Can Euro-Americans claim they taught the same thing to the American Indians they conquered? Can any Christian or non-believing conqueror?

Besides, everyone got five breaks a day from their backbreaking toil, shared with their masters on their knees before Allah, at least in the mosque on Friday afternoons; plus universal literacy and generous alms for the poor. What more benefits could you ask from a religion, in an Age of royal shadists?

Just as Christ’s Sermon of the Mount calls on Christians to accept the equality of each human being; Allah, through Mohammed’s recitation, calls on all Muslims to submit to their equality before God. Direct democracy is obligatory in both cases, since it alone can satisfy the political equality that flows from the existential one of the human condition. There can be no dispute between religionists as to their justification of direct democracy, except from sly psychopaths. 

As to any call for organized brutality in the Koran, I regretfully direct your attention to http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/, an article both bleak and hopeless. I turn my back in disgust on this topic and its psychopathic advocates.

As for the lines of the Qran I invoke, here are those I found for your personal review:

 | SURA-LINE(S) | CONCLUSION
 | 025-063, 028-055, 008-061-064, 043-089, 051-025 | Say “Peace” to those who try to delude you.
 | 004-114, 005-016, 006-052, 010-025, 013-026 | Non-Muslims could be beloved by Allah.
 | 004-90, 94 008-061 041-034 | Be kind to harmless unbelievers, for the greater glory of Islam.
 | 002-224, 256, 010-099, 030-053, 050-045 | Muslim submission must not be coerced.

Sorry if I left out key Surats on these topics, that any bright child raised lovingly in Islam would know. If you catch me missing some, please contact me and I will make humble ammends. 

The Sayings of Muhammad, by Allama Sir-Abdullah al-Mamun al-Suhrawardy, with forward by Mahatma Gandhi, Carol Publishing Group edition, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1999.

Of Kindness (the numbering system below is internal to this edition).

247. To gladden the heart of the weary, to remove the suffering of the afflicted, hath its own reward. In the day of trouble, the memory of the action cometh like a rush of the torrent, and taketh our burden away.

248. He who helpeth his fellow creature in the hour of need, and he who helpeth the oppressed, him will God help in the Day of Travail.

249. What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the wrongs of the injured.

250. Who is the most favored of God? He from whom the greatest good cometh to His creatures.

251. All God’s creatures are His family; and he is the most favored of God who doeth most good to God’s creatures.

252. Whoever is kind to His creatures, God is kind to him; therefor be kind to man on Earth, whether good or bad; and being kind to the bad, is to withhold him from badness, thus in Heaven you will be treated kindly.

253. He who is not kind to God’s creatures, and to his own children, God will not be kind to him.

254. Kindness is a mark of faith; and whoever hath not kindness hath not faith.

          Allah Akhbar! God is Great!

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