New religion – new piety

An essential element of the emerging new religion that binds modern people is the new piety: ecological concern. It is not wrong, but it is framed in such a way as to paralyse. For example, the auto manufacturers have produced new cars with drastically smaller carbon footprints, and naturally motorists want to own one, because it will ease his conscience about climate change. But he rarely asks about all the processes that bring that car to us: the sweeping away of inconveniently placed rain-forests, the mining of the minerals, and all the technological and industrial processes that converge to produce that car with a small carbon footprint. All those processes amount to a huge carbon footprint, and yet the private person has been taught to worry about his very own personal and much smaller footprint. 

More alarming is the fact that we cannot distance those corporations as the work of wicked capitalists, for by and large modern man and woman work for those corporations, especially if we realistically count the state as merely another corporation in a corporate world. The state trains people in the institutions laughingly called education to take their place unquestioningly in the corporate world, the garages which claim to dispense something called medicine repair the mis-functioning and return them to the job, and the army dutifully defends corporate interests wherever they are threatened.

So that really significant carbon footprint of what we might call the titans is ours, but we have no control over it. Our voice is not heard, and is not going to be heard. Indeed, so accustomed are we to the idea that we are not going to be heard that we carry out our orders unhesitatingly and keep ecology as a hobby. 

Thus Adolf Eichmann is the symbol for our age. When accused of sending uncountable numbers of Jews to their deaths through his arrangement of the transport to the concentration camps, his defence was that he was only obeying orders; he was simply doing his job. That is the condition of modern man: he is doing his job; the army in Iraq and Afghanistan has a job to do. They need to get on with the job. It is treachery to undermine them in the job they have to do, etc.

But what drives all of this, apart from modern man’s not-inconsiderable passive acquiescence in the crime? State and corporation all are dependent on finance and its mysterious operations. But that is the subject for another day.

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Abdassamad Clarke is from Ulster and was formally educated at Edinburgh University in Mathematics and Physics. He accepted Islam at the hands of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi in 1973, and, at his suggestion, studied Arabic and tajwid and other Islamic sciences in Cairo for a period. In the 80s he was secretary to the imam of the Dublin Mosque, and in the early 90s one of the imams khatib of the Norwich Mosque, and again from 2002-2016. He has translated, edited and typeset a number of classical texts. He currently resides with his wife in Denmark and occasionally teaches there. 14 May, 2023 0:03

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4 Comments

  1. Dear Abdassamad
    Salaamun-salaam!

    New religion – new piety
    while trading in the open

    First Para Nota: funny
    depicting – picturing a big dude of a clean smelling close-tight shaved mammoth
    has just stepped out of the tall grasses in his cool glasses and now
    the big galoot is like a worldly with-it lordly khalifah dude
    pachyderm driving a brand new shiny top of the line hybrid bmw convertible with the hood down and cruising
    down the old M6 with the missus cherie besides smiling the mother of smiles in fashion desinger purdah demure.
    The pachys have got good sun blockers from the uv, it seems, Abdassamad.
    Global warming? Due to the carbon footprint on my head? What contributes to these offsprings of carbon baddies, you tell me!
    My my Paralysis Due To The Air Getting BaddernBadder,
    that’s what he tells me – haah!.
    i am more interested in ioniztion radiation? Gamma-ray, cherie

    still…
    the radio goes on and on
    recieving admitting transmitting
    recieving admitting transmitting
    subhanallahiwalhamdulillahiwalailahaillallahu

    Second Para Nota: Subdue
    as men in blacks
    or private contractors amercaine corporate clienteles
    the state run camps just down the hill and across the river potomac
    trains them to kill innocent men women and child
    they were just doing their job, sir!
    guarding national assets moving targets diplomats

    still…
    the radio goes on and on and on
    recieving admitting transmitting
    recieving admitting transmitting
    subhanallahiwalhamdulillahiwalailahaillallahu

    Third Para Nota: anciently sad
    as promethuis with his back to the walls high
    rock hard and rough – almost and all
    rages in his weeps, cries up to the heavens
    head hanging from thick neck and wrists
    hand muscular with veins pronounced
    in the twilight and yellow light
    in bracelets with chains hands cursed
    the echoes laughing in the darkness thick – this is not fair!!!!!!
    while the sea rages beneath
    torrents of regrets of a love remissed

    still…
    the radio goes on and on and on
    recieving admitting transmitting
    recieving admitting transmitting
    subhanallahiwalhamdulillahiwalailahaillallahu

    Fourth Para Nota: judgemental
    gravelly clinical finger-pointed and steepled old churchillian churlish
    remnants of an English war:
    I – yes I – hate hilter for what he is and what he has done
    – to the core!!!
    A palestinian delight in summers spring by the brook of bethelehem
    cools the eyes with roarthorbun fresh and shuns the lips
    mariam in the shades and colors of the holy of holies
    an ungodly children of god Yaweh and Jehovah new said they
    get on with the job trechery and treason in the hot hills
    marching thru the valley and bare plains
    death stalks every where, my son, my daughter, my child
    trampling on the earth light brown and dust plaint as tongue harsh
    none shall happy and glad be but one bi qalbin salim me

    still…
    the radio goes on and on and on
    recieving admitting transmitting
    recieving admitting transmitting
    subhanallahiwalhamdulillahiwalailahaillallahu

    Fifth and Fina Para Nota: white teeth gleeeee!
    – what was that you said, dear? mysteriously
    there is something for tomorrow? – you and me, cherie?
    aha, say dear hubby as sweet as red green black and blue grape juice
    dreaming and driving is dangerous, no – drunk driving hehee?
    – steaming up the tarmac fresh salmons upstream
    where is the supertramp with crime of the century
    linking up compatibles and sympathetics
    burning greenbacks and stealing away the substitute reserves gold dinars
    wanting to get out of the self-destructive and suicidal mode of our late capitalist society
    to forge alliances with individuals, groups and organisations whose aims are harmonious
    to feed the indigenous the yatims and the travellers and so many others like
    Abdassamad and me

    still…
    the radio goes on and on and on
    recieving admitting transmitting
    recieving admitting transmitting
    subhanallahiwalhamdulillahiwalailahaillallahu

    Sollu ‘alaihi was-sallimu taslimma

    Terma Kasih

    ps For further information:

    “Iqrq1

    Iqrq2

    Iqrq3

    (Note that the addresses will have to be copied into your programme by hand(?). This is in order to prevent spam. :))

  2. Dear Abdassamad
    Salaam

    Do you want to buy a <A HREF=”http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_re_eu/quran_sale” 13th century Qur’an? It is selling it short, don’t you think?

  3. Dear Abdassamad
    Salaam

    Do you want to buy a <A HREF=”http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_re_eu/quran_sale” 13th century Qur’an? It is selling it short, don’t you think?

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