Root Islamic Education

In Root Islamic Education Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi writes: Islam is not and can never be, by definition, in crisis or need of revisionist change, Islam, Kitab wa Sunna, is immutable in all places until the end of time. It is itself critique and balance-principle against which all human ventures must be measured and themselves revised and changed. The mizan of Islam adheres in every case, personal and social. At no time and in no place do the moral and political limits become altered to suit the latest fantasies and ambitions of men. Limits of human behaviour remain decreed by the revelation until the end of the human situation. This involves the delineation of kufr, shirk, and the hadd punishments, as well as hijra and jihad. The limits set on trading transactions and monetary systems have been decreed. Just as warfare has obligations, so too do commodity trading, coinage, marriage, sexual mores, and the maintenance of the public good. Thus, all ijtihad and all analogical extension of these basic elements must derive from the basic Islamic model of Madinah, during its phase when it functioned as the primary model for the future of mankind. The Madinah of the Salafi community was neither a primitive nor a formative society but a complete and blueprint pattern for Islamic societies from then on. It is clear that in Madinah at the time of the Salafi communities man was at his greatest and the social contract at its healthiest and most balanced. The myth of development and progress, an unscientific extension of victorian biological speculation into the realm of sociology, is not tenable. All the evidence points to social devolution, diminishment of freedom, the increasing inhibition of personal life and travel, invasion of privacy, moral degeneration, sexual deviation, the end of the marriage contract, and so on and so on. Today we find that the Muslims have been polarised into two camps, in a dialectic that backs the establishment of anti-Islamic regimes on the one hand and forces men into antithetical opposition and subversive resistance on the other. It is our contention that the Sirat al-Mustaqim, is between these two alternatives a middle-way, an interface and a sunna. Further we would propose that much of the confusion among the false ‘ulama has been their misreading of the nature of modern ‘technique’ of technological process, due to their having been indoctrinated by the outmoded ‘modernism’ of men who had themselves been seconded to kafir ideas and organisations in egypt and the Middle East. To place the demands of a machine culture over the survival of man, and to prefer systems control over human transactions is against the Kitab wa Sunna in a clear and demonstrable way. The Messenger of Allah, blessings of Allah and peace be on him, did not create machines, but rather he left behind men who were, in their time and ever since have been, lights to inspire, and demand following, by men of heart and intellect. We would indicate, therefore, that the cause itself of this false dialectic above, is the false dialectic which sets the rules of ‘system technique’ over and against ‘basic technique’ or primitive technology, while aligning Salafi Islam with that world of primitive or basic technique. It has been this trick which embarrassed and deceived educated – in this technical sense – Muslims to ‘buy’ the modernist dismantling of Islamic governance. Transposing, in the process, the true pattern of Islamic society, amirate ruling the people and fuqaha ruling the ‘amir (by defining shari’a limits, not by cult of personality), with the myth of an Islamic ‘state’, which is a systems concept deriving from recent and jewish subversion of existing western modes that preceded the industrial revolution. For the industrial revolution was a Christian achievement (of dubious worth) but its political ideology and its monetary system have both been Jewish, while the nuclear and computer revolution has been almost entirely theirs. It is our conviction that the key to an authentic Islam, salafi wa’l madani, lies in a powerful, uncompromising ‘aqida, an activated fiqh (knowledge of sources, judgement, execution of sentence), and an arabic tongue. Equally, we see that the survival from destructivist jewish control-systems and technique-enslaving politics lies simply with the rejection of the credit system on which present monetary theory works, the refusal of promissory notes (paper money), and the end to the banking system completely. It may well collapse before we ourselves destroy it, which would expose certainly, the myth of ‘Islamic’ banking. A return to a bi-metal and commodity exchange economy is probably on its way, and only the greedy and the short-sighted fail to see that, in any event, such was the system in use in Salafi Madinah. Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi entered Islam with the Imam of the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morocco, and studied under Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib of Meknes and Shaykh Muhammad al-Fayturi of Beghazi. Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi has been responsible for the most far-reaching and successful Islamic Da’wa of the 20th century. He has founded mosques in England, Spain and South Africa. His writings encompass well over 20 books and many essays and articles, and he has initiated the translation and publication of numerous classical works of Islam, most notably the Muwatta of Imam Malik and Ash-Shifa of Qadi ‘Iyad. His students, many of whom are world-renowned and respected in their own fields, have been responsible among other things for definitive translations of the Qur’an into English and Spanish.