Answering a question about revolution

Okay. Revolutions is the most, most effective method for change. Again, I don't see the evidence of that. I think that, you know, okay. He mentions a couple of revolutions that were this is debatable how successful they were.

And to say that, like, well, you know, there have been some revolutions that worked. Yeah. And also some people win the lottery. It's it's kind of meaningless to sort of point to previous examples of revolutions that succeeded and and use that as a as a as a rationale for why just revolution is a good idea. Because, I mean, you can point to a few, a very small handful of successful revolutions, but you have to did you have to ignore the ocean of unsuccessful revolutions in order to reach the conclusion that revolutions are a good idea and that they work.

It's an emotional position, emotional and mental frustration, and a lack of imagination, and a lack of patience, a lack of creativity, a lack of discipline, in my opinion, to just do the things that you really have to do, practically speaking, to try to change things in your society. Americans today are sort of losing hope in the whole system, the whole democratic system and voting and all of that. Now the reason why that he's that he provided, and this is a good point, it's a valid point, that people are people in The United States and the West generally are kind of losing their faith in them in democracy or losing their faith in the democratic system and losing their faith in government because the 1% controls the political parties, because the 1% controls the government and so on and so on. Okay. That's actually an argument against revolution as well because, there's so much power in the private sector that you don't change anything when you change the government.

When you topple the government, you still don't change any the the real power structure because you don't you you you're you're being very nearsighted about what's the source of your oppression, your perceived oppression, or your actual oppression? And that you think it's just the guy in the presidential palace, not understanding that he is just one of the figures in the power hierarchy that is ruling your country. And he's not even the main one. He's one and there's others above him. There's different power dynamics now.

There's a different power structure now. And you have to you have to analyze the power structure that actually exists in your country, in your day and time today, now. And if the majority of the of the power, the the overwhelming, disproportionate, control and authority is outside of the government, then what's the point of overthrowing your government? Really, what's the point? Because you're not even touching the power structure, the actual power structure.

The rulers in the in the Muslim world are not independent powers. The the the whole economy is tied in with the global economy, with the global power structure, with that global 1%. And when you topple your local government, you you don't even touch the global 1%. And they still will have control over whoever you put in next time. That is going to require a revolution in the private sector.

There has to be a democratization of corporate power, of private sector power. You have to find a way to do that. You have it in your mind. This is what this is what was going on in the minds of people in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya, in Sudan now. It's like, we just have to get rid of the guy in the palace.

Palace. We have to that that's our whole problem. And it's like you are you are not you're you're not understanding that your country, your government is operating within an existing power structure that is external to it that is larger than it and that is largely private sector power. Power. Not even we're not even talking about the American government is, you know, like, for example in Egypt that the CC works for the American government.

Okay. That's part of it because the American government is very powerful. But even the American government is to one degree or another subordinate corporate power as that brother said correctly that the two parties are owned by the 1%. Okay. So how are you gonna have a revolt?

You have to think then again, how are gonna have a revolt against against the 1%? Because revolting against your government isn't gonna isn't isn't going to change the power dynamic. You know? It's it will have no impact whatsoever except that it will make the suffering of the people and the misery of the people worse. And you still don't have power and you still don't get what you want.

And that's why I I don't think it's debatable about why the the Arab, revolutions didn't work. Because it's just it's just rational logical thinking that how else could it go? It can't go another way. If you if you have an accurate picture of the power dynamics that are ruling over your society, there's no other way that it could have gone. Unless you can work out a method for, the democratization of corporate power of, imposing some level of accountability on the 1% through the through private sector, some some mechanism in the private sector, some some something that's outside of government, something that just people do, consumers do, workers do.

Unless you can do that, the only other avenue that you have for trying to impose accountability, for trying to, limit the control and power of the 1% is gonna be through democratic government. That's the only other option that you have. Okay. And then his thing was the Quran orders Muslims to fight, oppression militarily and not accept half measures, and political games. Okay.

You can't really draw your conclusion of what you're supposed to do as a Muslim only from reading ayat that you are you've already reached your conclusion and you're finding a you're finding you're use you're you're taking the ayat to justify your already existing position, which is that we should fight, which is just an understandable position. It's a it's a position, as I said, that's an emotional position. It's fully understandable. But in Islam, we're not we don't just you don't get to just follow your feelings. And the idea of fighting in any scenario, except for a purely defensive scenario, The condition for that is always going to be that you can know with as much certainty as possible that your fighting is not going to lead to a worse situation.

Because if you make things worse, then you are worse than the people that you're fighting. You have made the misery worse for the people. You've increased the suffering for the people, worse than what they had before. In which case, you are a villain and an enemy of the of the population. If if you know that that toppling the government isn't going to change much in terms of the power dynamics, then you can predictably understand that the only outcome is going to be to make things worse.

Because you're creating already a power vacuum. You're creating chaos in the society. The systems are gonna break down. So there's only the the only possibility is a worse outcome. That's the only possibility.

If there isn't going to be positive change, then it's a guarantee that there's gonna be negative change. That that that situation will definitely get worse. Okay. Like in Sudan, you had the you you you believe that you have the power. This is before they even successfully toppled Omar Bashir.

They believed and proved to be correct that they had the power to topple that government. So if you believe that you have the power to topple the government, don't you believe that you have the power to make the government listen to you and change instead of making your demand that the government must go? Make your demand about specific policies that you want to see implemented. You have to tell me this is the problem in the government. This is the problem in the society.

This is the problem in the economy, and this is what I think we should do to make things better. And then if you think that you have the power to overthrow the government, then you have the power to make them implement those policies. So you just take it a step at a time and be specific and be clear on what what you know, identifying the the actual positive changes that you need to accomplish in the society and pursue those positive changes one by one.