Mamdouh Bitar, Ruba Mansour
What distinguished these peoples from others was a set of concepts and practices to which they we addicted, while others rejected them. This is why some peoples advanced and others lagged behind! It seems that the concepts and perceptions of these peoples were not compatible with advanced modern life and its requirements. Freedom was and remains a fundamental aspect of life. Freedom of choice provides opportunities for creativity, while tyranny, by its very nature, requires subservience. Freedom is creation and innovation, while obedience is submission and compliance. Obedience was the loyal guardian of stagnation. The practice of obedience requires tradition, thus eliminating innovation. Tyranny is born from the womb of “compliance,” which relies on obedience, not conviction. Obedience is blind by nature. It nullifies the mind of the obedient and eliminates their will, which is then taken over by the will of tyranny. Consequently, reason is diminished, and under tyranny, its sole function is to exercise instinct and attempt to preserve physical existence, which is ensured by the digestive tract—that is, the creation of the manure-fed creature. The primitive creature is transformed into something resembling a canal, with fodder entering from one end and waste exiting from the other (the anal man). Here, consumer parasites proliferate, and the productive, creative human being diminishes. Those who follow this path will inevitably reach nothingness and extinction. The concept of conviction has no relation to the concept of obedience. Obedience does not express conviction. Conviction, and consequently persuasion, represents the participation of the mind. An active, effective mind remains creative and innovative. A dysfunctional mind knows only the inevitability of its own death after atrophy. The activity and creativity of the mind ensure the humanization and civilization of the human being, and improve the formula for its survival and superiority. Submission and obedience—that is, the duality of obedience and submission—is the primary antagonist to the concept of democracy. It is the primary ally of mystical religious thought, which, from the first moment of its existence, has demanded obedience to the Creator, who has multiplied on earth in the form of earthly deities. Mystical thought is the primary promoter of obedience to authority—that is, obedience to the ruler! Anyone who preaches the authority of the ruler and his sanctity cannot be a free democrat. The cultural trait passed down to new generations in this region is an addiction to ruminating on the past. What happened in the past was the assassination of a sultan, not a revolution against tradition, methodology, or politics. History has repeated itself with regard to the fighting Brotherhood factions. If the factions had won, they would have brought in a ruler or a government whose nature, capabilities, goals, will, and psychology are unimportant to many people. What matters is tradition and its stagnation. After the assassination of the sultan, another sultan comes, and it doesn’t matter if he is worse than the old sultan. Peoples are “personalized,” their savior is one person, their sick person is another, and their hero is another. All of this was a hallmark of the first century AH and the twenty-first century AD, and it will not change easily in the future. These peoples are not ashamed to consider the killers as heroes, nor are they ashamed to emulate them. Killing and slaughter were the essence of the heroes of the nation, who did not care about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people at the hands of Ibn al-Walid and his likes. What matters is that he was a fierce warrior and a speaker of the two testimonies, a machine of killing and subjugation! How ridiculous the concept of heroism is when its symbol and embodiment is Khalid Ibn al-Walid, or al-Qaqa’, or al-Saffah, or their likes! Despite the evil of the past and the corruption of the caliphs and sultans, no revolution occurred, especially in the Ottoman era of the caliphate. Rejection and acceptance were centered on the person of the caliph-sultan, and the matter of change was limited to the “person” of the caliph-sultan, who was killed by a brother, son, wife, or concubine. A caliph who came by the will and desire of God and then was killed by the will of the person. Is it conceivable that God would kill his caliph on earth?? And bring another caliph! Thus, change took place in the form of the coup we know from military coups: a coup against God by God. Even disastrous wars such as the Battle of the Camel, Siffin, Karbala, and the apostasy were caused by and for the person. We do not know of any objective reasons for the killing of a caliph, whether it was Omar, Ali, or others, except for personal reasons, as is the case with military coups, which change the person and what remains remains the same. These peoples glorify the individual hero like Antarah! Despite the fact that heroism is a social phenomenon before it is a private individual phenomenon, peoples have not yet reached the formula of society, i.e. the formula of individuals in society and not the society of individuals. Therefore, heroism remained an individual character, its quantity proportional to the amount of dedication, the annihilation of self and others, and the ability to commit suicide—the martyred hero, the suicide! What distinguished these peoples was the large number of their “heroes,” which was directly proportional to the amount of their misery, the number of their dead and ruins, and the number of their starving. Even heroism was personalized! The heroism of society is manifested in preserving people’s lives, not in spreading death. Society cannot be replaced by the individual, and the heroism of society cannot be replaced by the heroism of the individual. Whoever does that fails