Arrow of History or Circle of Reality or Neither

 

There are presumably two versions of the path of human history; one is based on the Arrow of History and the other is Circular Path of History. The former is the idealist who believes that history can be corrected and placed on a path to a more perfect reality where governance is taken from its Hobbesian State on to the targeted perfected society. The latter is the realist camp where history has been and will continue to revolve through the same errors, fixes and other acts and reactions repeated adinfinitum. One can read how this was applied by President Obama as he went from his initial idealist views and eventually matured into a realist view according to Charles Krauthammer.

 

The liberal or idealist versions of history and governance, in theory, result in targeting treaties, trade agreements, interconnectivity, United Nations governance overview and other Universalist actions by which undesirable actions such as aggressive conquests of territories is mediated or prevented by a form of semi-formed morass of soft glue. This version spends little if any capital to adjust individual governance and instead seeks to restrain all governance limiting them to affecting solely within their borders and prevented from any external interaction to channels approved and writ large in treaties and trade pacts. These are the dreamers who view an eventual world governance forming some utopian eventuality without repeating the same mistakes repeatedly.

 

The Conservative or realist versions of history and governance, in theory, aims at improving individual governance in order to prevent the aggressions and other disruptive effects of the cycle of history. Their view has used the observation that democracies seldom go to war with their adversaries and are more likely to mitigate differences through peaceful means. They believe that the path to nirvana must pass through democratization of governances worldwide using nation-building as their main tool. This method has the drawback that it requires a long and possible indefinite involvement of troops, advisors and security personnel who will be required to prevent any challenge outside of elections. Even changes affected through elections may still require intervention by this realist view in order to prevent any drifting into a position where the governance becomes established and uncontested such as would have occurred in Egypt had the Muslim Brotherhood remained the elected power in Egypt as this would have resulted in their taking the position of approving access to the ballot. This was prevented by an almost as dangerous event where the military removed the Muslim Brotherhood governance and the Commander of the Army, General Sisi, came to power as the newly elected President. This government will also require watching to assure that the Presidency does not simply become the highest position of the military always filled by the former Commanding General. When and if President Sisi either is not a candidate or is defeated, the next President and their history will tell us much about if Egypt has become a true democracy and whether it will long remain one, free of either straight and enforced through arms dictatorship or a Muslim Brotherhood theocracy where the democratic voting is but a fig leaf covering the reality beneath.

 

Time’s Strings Eternally Slipping Away
Time’s Springs Clocking Gears Forward
Time Passing Second by Second Forever
Minute by Minute and Hour by Hour
Days Moving Always Onward

 

One unique democracy which was enforced by the military which was quite unique was the governance of Turkey as designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. This democratic governance was assured by the military where they were to guard against a religious takeover of the government. There were a number of military interventions and each resulted in a special election held within a relatively short period and Turkey returned to its democratic constitution, the same constitution which charged the military with the power of preserving the democratic nature of Turkey. Around 2005 the military in Turkey had planned to replace the government as they had decided that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had established himself as a permanent religious ruler over Turkey and that he had rigged future elections to preserve his rule. As Turkey was also seeking entry into the European Union, something which would never come to be no matter what Turkey would do to please the Europeans, and the leadership of the European Union, numerous European governments all advised the Turkish military to stand down and President Bush threatened an end of American aid to Turkey and questioned their continued membership in NATO should the military replace the government even with their holding new special elections within ninety days thus Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remained in power, the military went through a shake-up replacing every general who might stand against Erdogan with a cherry picked general and the courts were restructured and Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have held power even to the point of forcing new elections when after a regular election the AKP did not hold a majority of the Ministerships and between the two elections there were many incidents which were suspicious. Thus dies a democracy.

 

We have a slightly different view of the paths of history and it combines the two varieties, it takes the circular path of the realists and we will add to it the arrow of history of the idealists and makes a spiral of history. Let us try and sort this out and explain. Let us go back in ye old way-back machine to the time of the biblical character of Abraham. Before Abraham there was human sacrifice where the lame, the weak, the unproductive, the young and the old were routinely removed through human sacrifice. Enemies taken prisoner were either worked to death, abused in all manners of degradations including physical, sexual and demeaned eventually being used in human sacrifice. Some societies’ members of the society would compete to become such a sacrifice as it was viewed as an honor to be sacrificed for the good of the rest. With the intervention of the sacrificing of Isaak, humanity took a step away from its violent and abhorrent past towards what is today viewed as civilized behavior. This was the arrow of history moving the circle such that it would continue to spiral until almost no society used human sacrifice as a set practice.

 

Later there was another firing of the arrow and pushing the spiral along with the handing down of the Law at Mount Sinai. What is not often thought about was that the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, came along with the Ten Commandments and the guide to good governance and the first set of laws defining human rights. The concept that any ruler is not to gather great wealth in horses, cattle, gold, currency or possessions as well as tasked to write their own Torah, book for book, chapter by chapter, paragraph for paragraph, sentence for sentence, word for word and letter for letter perfect, free of any mistake even in the form of the individual letter and their formation is written in Torah. Every letter started with the top which was always the letter Yudh and from that the rest of the letter is formed. There were laws of property and ownership, recompense for loss of property. The guidance for judgeship and the application of the law free from influence of wealth or poverty, high position or beggar or any other difference making reference for the application of the law to be blind to all but the law. Further, the society was instructed to treat the stranger with respect, those taken in war were to be granted decent respect and slaves had rights to decent treatment and being well cared for. These and many other laws which we retain today in many Western lands were all found within Torah with many in Deuteronomy.

 

Life continued and governments came to try new forms with the noted advancing by the Greeks with a Republic. This form of government almost died before the Persian Empire but was quite possibly preserved by the Spartans at Thermopylae in a land and sea battle which is still studied by modern armies in their military colleges. The arrow widened the spiral for a period and the spiral turns anew. Religious tyranny would threaten the spiral again with the fall of the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire and the threat of Islamic religious tyranny rolling through Europe destroying Christianity and rule of the people. Charles the Hammer Martel prevented further invasion of Europe from out of the west at the Battle of Tours in 732AD. On the eastern front in Europe the advance of the Ottoman Empire was turned back twice at Vienna. The initial battle was the Siege of Vienna of 1529 where the Ottomans captured Vienna and after rested only to retreat subsequently as this was the Ottoman Empire’s high water mark. This assault was led by Suleiman the Magnificent. The second Siege of Vienna was in 1683 beginning on September 12 by Kara Mustafa leading a force of 150,000. King John III Sobieski of Poland broke the siege after about two months and this marked the end of threats from the Ottoman Empire which collapsed after World War I.

 

Scientific discoveries and philosophical and political progress has slowly over time made for what we consider to be a more civil and peaceful society though the deaths due to war increased century to century or even often decade to decade until the dropping of two bombs, one on Hiroshima and the next on Nagasaki and warfare has become a far more dangerous endeavor and thus became something fought solely in far more limited manner. This will remain a great push forward by the arrow by necessity and fears of complete annihilation. This fear might continue indefinitely or some nation may decide to use nuclear weapons, perhaps even the most damaging and effective city killing thermonuclear device leading to an ever widening nuclear meltdown of societies possibly leading to a new dark age where the spiral of history could go through a devastating recoil very much like the loosing of a stretched coiled spring. Whether such has happened before in history is a question for which we have no definitive answer.

 

The hope is that the spiral will continue to move mankind into a more perfect society where individual liberties and freedoms are protected and even advanced. The threat of an unwinding of the coil taking mankind back to a tribal uncivil set of brutal societies where tribe fights tribe for limited wealth and resources is ever present. The greater the coils spread and stretch separating one modern society compared to another modern society, there is a tension which will always threaten to recompress the spiral forcing the coils to spring backwards undoing much of what has been invested in stretching the spiral straining it as if a coiled spring. This is why we need to employ both versions of changing history for the better, invest in a tangle of treaties, trade deals, international agreements and other entanglements while also seeking to perfect society by aiming to expand democratic rule and human rights. These two forces must be combined with the third force which defines the separation of the individual coils of the spiral, the advancement of the human individual. That is the necessary change, the only true and real advancement, the improvement of the individual and their rights and standing as equals. Making merit, action and accomplishment, resulting from education, intelligence and ability, as the determining of one’s standing and wealth within the society and allowing for every individual to possess the power and ability to advance and achieve position to the best of their abilities and efforts is the basis of modern society and need be spread throughout the world if it is to remain so.

 

The improvement of the individual is the only guarantor of advancement thus one of the most important items which must be achieved is the enlightenment of the individual and the freeing of all people as individuals and given the potential for advancement through actions and abilities. That is where the challenge is situated in the world today. In too many places the people are oppressed and kept all but enslaved by a small number of elitists. Elitism is the enemy of actual progress and must be avoided and defeated and replaced with a society structure which values the individual and desires of the individual to be the engine for advancement of the society and for the greater good of the entirety of society instead of enriching only the few. Humankind since the earliest days of human sacrifice has progressed and if one were to make a comparison then humankind has advanced from the tribal stage similar to baboons who attack other tribes fiercely without mercy to a stage of chimpanzees who stake an area and do not impinge on their neighbor unless in a form of actual warfare and are hopefully to be able to reach the point where our society is more similar to the Bonobo communities which are peace-loving and generally egalitarian. That is a crude comparison but it is also a fairly symbolic view of the potentials of our simian predecessors whose societies resided with very different resources and competition for these resources where they either competed for every morsel, competed to protect their area, their zone or they shared and lived with peace and where any differences are settled without undue violence. The problem is we are at a cringe-worthy point in human history where either great strides are right before us or a great decompression forcing a recoiling of the spiral and a loss of advancements to a more primitive place where the individual has no real rights and the few stand over their perceived lessors. The fall of the society which had progressed from Abraham through Moses, the Greeks, Romans, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Information Age and should we be fortunate, the Biologic Advancement and virtual immortality bringing the “Age of Aquarius,” at any point could destroy almost all progress and reset the entire string.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Turkish Coup Second Guessing Begins

 

We will hear any number of theories about the “failed coup” in Turkey. Due to any number of uninteresting and technical points such as why was internet left running and why were not more of group ‘a’ through ‘z’ not neutralized at the onset and others and the reasons why it failed or if it was an Erdogan run rouse to allow him to remove even more opposition, the realities are the same. Anybody known to be at all important in any Mustafa Kemal Ataturk associated group would do well to become invisible and leave Turkey by any means necessary. Recep Tayyip Erdogan will use this coup as his license to remove all opposition especially from the upper officer class making his position safe for the foreseeable future. How far he might take things will depend on how assured he is that he holds absolute majority. Erdogan made sure of that with a second election after invalidating one where he would have required a coalition and thus not absolute power. Now Erdogan can use this coup in order to cement all power in the President, change the Constitution so as to prevent any further coup attempts such that the sitting President must be voted down by a majority of the people in an election where he runs unopposed and as long as he wins over any negative votes, the election would be Erdogan or full elections, then he would remain and no elections would be required. As Erdogan is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood he would easily win such a vote by such an amount he would appear to be their savior. He could even declare himself Caliph and by doing so challenge al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State as in the end there can be only one Caliph, surprise, surprise.

 

We cannot think of any means by which Erdogan could extend his clearing of the senior and mid-level officer corps and possibly even the non-commissioned officer corps of anybody not known to be somebody he knows is reliable thus permitting him at any future point using the military to enforce his views. Say Erdogan was to lose an election. With his current power he could easily claim it to be another insurrection just like the coup and claim deep seated voter manipulation and other irregularities and then have another election six months later after a similar removal of key opponents and viola, a reelected Erdogan. The real question is what can we expect in the coming days and weeks.

 

The elimination of any and all coup plotters is obvious and even if this was crafted by Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood, there would still be those officers who willingly signed on to the initial plan and who were betrayed. They will pay dearly. Some of the soldiers who may have simply been obeying the orders of higher ranking officers will also be made an example of. The critical question will be how many media types; bloggers and other civilians from within and outside of the government will face punishment. Bear in mind, for most punishment will be execution or life in prison with few getting lesser punishments. Being charged with being on the wrong side of things will be really, really bad as torture for confessions and other names will likely be part of the investigatory methodology. I would not like to be a blogger within Turkey right now as even my small slights against Erdogan would be sufficient and my support of Israel would be sufficient for suspicions, it may be that deep reaching.

 

Turkey was originally steered away from Islam and more to a secular democratic state with equality by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as he saw that as the only path to modernity. Any hope whatsoever of Turkey returning to a true democratic society, with equal rights, what Turkey had been since Ataturk gave her their Constitution, is now lost possibly forever. If there is to be hope for Turkey it now rests with Islam having a reformation, something many Quranic scholars and others who study Islam and the Middle East believe is next to impossible. As the situation now exists, Erdogan will be placing Turkey on the express to Sharia. Once Sharia has been installed in a society elections are meaningless as the old Stalin definition of how to hold elections takes over where it does not matter who votes and for what but matters who counts those votes. Elections in Sharia states, if any hold them; can announce their results three weeks before the people go to the polls to vote. Candidates running against strict Islam will be duly watched and scrutiny in such states almost always leads to prison and death or worse, and there is worse.

 

Anybody who might look to recent events in Egypt and point out that the Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi was overthrown and President Sisi, a brave man who we can only hopes succeeds in his efforts to bring a reformation to Islam allowing it to coexist with other religions and forms of governance, replaced him after a second election in less than a year are hoping against hope. Erdogan has been in power since the early 2000’s and has steadily taken Turkey to the dark side and Sharia. One might ask if I have something against Sharia and the answer is only that it enslaves a population removing all need or ability to question the government as the government is religiously installed by the will of Allah thus questioning the chosen leadership is punishable as is apostasy, death. There is no personal freedom and the Quran becomes the only book to study and the Quran and Hadiths are the beginning and end-all of all knowledge. Any study outside of these requires the approval of an Imam and then can only be pursued so as to serve Allah. Perhaps this is what stirred Winston Churchill to write his scathing commentary on Islam in which he said the following; (The below-quoted passage did appear in The River War when it was first published as a two-volume set in 1899, but the selection was removed when the book was condensed into one volume and republished in 1902.):

 

Churchill gated stride impugning the morning about to tackle the world and all its problems

 

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or.

 

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

 

Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

 

We can only hope and pray that such does not befall Turkey as it has modern cities and a well developed intelligent urban communities. The rural areas of Turkey are less developed and in some locations literally still living as they had hundreds of years past. It is in these rural areas where Islam rules their everyday activities and where Sharia is not an imposition, it is their way. Turkey has a population fairly balanced between these two societies with a slight edge towards the urban communities. The difficulty extends from the strong minority of urban citizens who are first generation and remain firmly attached to their Islamic roots. Had Turkey not had the rise of Erdogan and the regimentation and collective awakening brought on by concerted efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood, within the coming century Turkey would have crossed the threshold never to turn back and easily merged with the developed world. This may still come to fruition as the urban population continues to gain and with time perhaps a majority will find an Islamically acceptable leader who still believes firmly in Islam but, like President Sisi of Egypt, desires not to have Turkey pose a direct threat to the non-Islamic world but rather join and forge a new and more acceptive Islam. As things in Islam now stand there can be only one of three outcomes; Islam is defeated and expunged from the face of the earth, Islam conquers all the nations forming a world Caliphate which becomes Allah only knows, or Islam goes through a reformation and declares the Mecca Quranic writings as superseding the Medina Quranic writings (click for a brief explanation of the differences and reasons with links provided by other readers in the comments). Odd as it may seem, that is all that is required for Islam to become as any other religion preaching acceptance and coexistence. The sticking point is that at some point, many claim stated by Mohammad just before he died while others claim this was added at a later date to cement Islam as a religion of conquest, is one of the final Surah states that the Medina verses, the later verses, supersede the Mecca verses, the earlier verses. As with all too many things, time will tell and we can only hope our prayers are favorably received by Hashem.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Egyptian President al-Sisi the Man in the Middle

 

Egyptian President, back when he was a mere general commanding the Egyptian military, saw the peoples distress was an exceedingly and rapidly worsening situation and understood their protests where they were risking life and limb, against the crushing and oppressive governance of the Muslim Brotherhood and acted replacing the Muslim Brotherhood and returning them to their banned and criminal status so well deserved, contrary to the beliefs and hopes of United States President Barack Obama, which is the greatest verification of walking the correct track as ever existed. The overwhelming election victory was won by the General, where he risked all as he had by removing his uniform and surrendering his privileged rank and status as General of the Armies in order to run for the Presidency, where he has proven the faith placed in him by the people. He has started reforms both economic and political which will further empower the people as things progress, and there exists progress in Egypt, slow but steady progress. Perhaps the even paced progress is best as the Egyptian people have lived under dictatorial rule from the times of the pharaohs which has hopefully ended and President al-Sisi will prove with the ultimate test for any leader of a nation finally stepping out of oppressive rule, that President al-Sisi voluntarily leaves office and does not assume to be President for Life. President al-Sisi has chosen a difficult and challenging target for his life’s work moving forward, and should he succeed it will be a momentous step forward for much of mankind.

 

President al-Sisi has throughout his career shown a propensity to challenge the status quo when and where he has felt was required. His new and apparent life’s challenge, and by far his greatest, is to challenge the very structure of Islam and its supersessionism by which it denigrates all of humanity which does not follow the tenets of Islam, and not just Islam but each substructure in Islam, Sunni/Shiite being the best known but there are others even within these two largest such as al-Qaeda/Islamic State/Muslim Brotherhood subsets of Sunni each against the others. President al-Sisi did not take a shy road creeping forward making a hesitant statement here and another there always leaving himself an exit strategy whereby he would live to fight another day. No timidity from President al-Sisi as his coming out set of statements was punctuated with a bold red and flashing exclamation point as he took his Jihad straight to the heart of the opposition. Al-Sisi made his speech announcing his Jihad to be an inner fight within Islam to soften its outer sharp edges it uses to attack all that is not of Islam and either convert or kill all that they see as the others, those who reside in Dar al-Harb, which literally means ‘territory of war,’ and not within Dar al-Islam, which literally means ‘territory of Islam.’ President al-Sisi initially took his Jihad to al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, on December 28, 2014 where he delivered a speech insisting that Islam was in need of a reformation if not a transformation in which it would be transformed into a more tolerant and accepting of other religions and those who were not Muslims which was an assault on extremist Muslims. He questioned on how it could be that 1.6 billion Muslims should murder 5.4 billion non-Muslims implying it was a ridiculous notion. This while in the first rows before him were the highest ranking Imams who teach and administrate at al-Azhar University where future Imams are instructed in that very notion and that of supremacist Islam and the requirement for Islam to be taken to the world and spread by all means even including by the sword as Muhammad had once done when he took Islamic sword to the Jews of Medina for refusing to accept him as their prophet. This was taking the fight to the heart of Islamism and to the very teachers and university where this view of a receptive form of Islam is a heresy for which al-Sisi could have been murdered on the spot for even questioning the supremacy and requirement that Islam become the one and only pure religion on Earth.

 

 

President al-Sisi initially Took his Jihad to al-Azhar University, Cairo,
Egypt, Where on December 28, 2014 al-Sisi Delivered his Speech
Insisting that Islam Was in Need of a Climactic Reformation if not a
Transformation Redefining Jihad from External Violence To the
Ongoing Internal Purification In the Eternal Search for Perfection

 

 

A crucial excerpt can be seen below which gives three crucial parts in his speech; he questions whether the 1.6 billion Muslims should stand against the 7 billion people of the Earth and be a threat that makes Muslims feared, that the Imams must change before Islam can be reformed, and lastly his direct challenge, which can be witnessed in his body language as he turns to look straight at the man of whom he speaks, challenging the Grand Sheik of al-Azhar University. This is one of the most influential and revered teachers, Imams, in all of Sunni Islam and held in respect for his knowledge of the Quran in its purest form by all Islam and as the one man who sets the framework by which thousands of Imams are trained and millions are influenced. When al-Sisi directly looking at the head of al-Azhar University respectfully addresses him as “Honorable Imam, you bear responsibility before Allah. The world in its entirety awaits your words, because the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition.” The words he chose were a serious accusation stating, “the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition.” President al-Sisi comes from and speaks for those Muslims who are good, obedient, fervent, religious, honorable, and believing Muslims who are members of a ‘religion of peace’ but are being instructed that they are deficient and poor excuses for Muslims because Islam demands violent Jihad, not simply being a good person. They are instead told a good Muslim is more than a respected and caring Muslim because a true follower of Islam goes in the way of Muhammad. They are told that Muslims must not emulate the Muhammad of Mecca as the Muhammad of Medina has destroyed, killed the Muhammad of Mecca and writ a new Muhammad by the acts of Medina which show the true path is one of conquest, of blood and violence. These moderate Muslims who do exist also know that when that 10%, 15% or even just 0.5% demand that they act as they are instructed, that minority has the majority vote of one holding a sword and having the willingness to use it, though today it is a rifle.

 

The same is true of the Muslims who would never on their own take another persons’ life but are threatened by that minority for whom such is no more difficult than praying five times a day and given equal weight in their version of Islam which originated from some Imam likely trained at al-Azhar University directly or indirectly, but through some twisted or direct trail their instruction came from the very Imams addressed by President al-Sisi.

 

 

 

 

Such a transformation had once before been attempted with initially great success but as is all too often the case, which had been done by one man becomes undone by another man. The country where Islam was disconnected from the governance of the nation was Turkey where after the fall of the Ottoman Empire a remnant of their holdings were left to form the nation of Turkey under the guidance and rule of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who formed the Turkish Constitution leaving the military to be the guardians of liberties, freedoms, and a secular society where the State was to be protected from the ravings of religious zealots thus protecting the people from their own proclivities to fall for mesmeric religious zealots and desiring the world they weave as only accessible through transformative means which start with a national religion, this was the point that the military was to put on the brakes, remove the leader, declare new elections and make sure this person was not on the ballot ever, and even preferably, by removing their party from existence thus forcing the religious parties to reconstruct if they were unable to respect the secular nature of the government. The Turkish military had stepped in and performed admirably keeping the restraints on successive Muslim Brotherhood political parties which attempted to instill a national religion with them as the guardians of the purity of Islam and the ensuing application of Sharia as the law of the land. So, what went wrong? In one name, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current successor of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who has carefully since 2003 while holding the office of Prime Minister reaching the end of that position transferred most of its powers and a few more he personally required in order to cement his changes assigned to the Presidency which he then won election as the first President of Turkey, or should we just assign the term which is more applicable, Sultan of Turkey and rightfully the next Caliph. There are so many claiming that title it is becoming difficult to remember which are current and which have left this mortal coil, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and so many more even to include Syrian leader of an ever shrinking area Bashir al-Assad, any more takers, get your name in fast before ballots close.

 

As you can see from the list that there is a conspicuous name missing, other than Mahmoud Abbas who has likely given up his delusions of grandeur and instead turned to concentrate on remaining amongst the living, but Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi who might actually be the exact transformational Caliph the world could use right about now in history if human history is going to continue much further into the future. With the stealth invasion and Civilizational Jihad threatened by Islamic State, Hamas, Hezballah and Iran, and with just as likely some unannounced Jihadists being sent by the Wahabbists and al-Qaeda plus a plethora, a virtual cornucopia, of other possibilities; if we only take the energy to seek out the terrorists with human screening, the problem is too large for such a method of detection. But President Sisi is not to be dismissed as any shrinking violet as he was far from silent on matters as General of the Egyptian Army, though in that position his statements were general comments even some of which inferred his present path but always nonpolitical and never criticizing President Mubarak as he did not shy away from challenging Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt Morsi, the man he replaced. When they held the trial for Morsi the commentaries came from virtually every direction, the Muslim Brotherhood and their fellow travelers such as Hamas, other political groups looking to pile on and get their rational reasons that they did poorly in the initial election was due to the fixing of the election by the Muslim Brotherhood, never mind if they did not do all that much better in the second election. Conspicuous in his absence from piling on Morsi was al-Sisi whose campaign mostly pictured a nation in desperate need of an improved secular education, job training for those unemployed, protection of all Egyptians, equality for all Egyptians, an end to inter-religious criminal acts, an end to terrorism and bringing quiet and lawfulness to the Sinai, the one promise most obvious in its absence though the efforts have been obvious and strong. Will al-Sisi succeed in his efforts to transform Islam? The bets and all of Islam appears to be against him but he has a secret weapon, the common people who if shown a better path, one where they are able to provide a positive and viable future for their children even if it may be too late for themselves, then things could change at least in Egypt. We must remember that as Egypt is the most populous of the Arab Muslim States in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) and if things turn around and Egypt become the Shanghai of the Muslim world and they combine with other more progressive Muslim nations such as Azerbaijan, then perhaps together the nations of Islam which reject the idea of Jihad as the means of conquest but rather on self-improvement in order to perfect the world, an idea which may be familiar to many of our readers, then the Islamic world may have taken the initial steps to a reformation, perhaps a Illumination Showered as Light Ascending to Mecca and Muhammad (ISLAMM), or simply put, Islam as defined in Mecca, a return to the birthplace of Muhammad and his dreams.

 

Beyond the Cusp