"Shahid Bolsen is an apologist for Arab regimes"

You have had positive things to say about Mohammed bin Salman and The UAE, governments many Muslims regard as illegitimate. What do you say about the fact that some people have called you an agent or an apologist for the Arab regimes?

Well, it would be a little bit difficult for me to be an agent considering the fact that I'm banned for life from the GCC. I wonder if that's true for any of the people that are criticizing me or criticizing my stance or people who are accusing me. I can't go to Dubai. Can't go to the Khaleed. I can't go to The Gulf.

I have a lifetime ban ever since my case, and I haven't done anything since I got out of prison, to make the Gulf rulers like me anymore. In fact, I'm sure that sometimes they wish they would have executed me when they had the chance. I wouldn't be surprised if The US wishes that they had done that as well. This is one of the most amusing accusations that I've ever gotten actually, and I've gotten all the accusations. Whenever someone labels you something, online especially, what they're really doing is just announcing that they are the opposite of what they called you.

You know? They're announcing that they belong to the opposite camp. They're telling you what vantage point, they're seeing you from or the filter through which they're seeing you. So sometimes I've been called a Marxist, a leftist, and sometimes I'm called a capitalist. Sometimes I'm called a Kharaji, and sometimes I'm called a Madhali.

Sometimes I'm called a Wahhabi, sometimes I'm called an Ikhwanee. None of this has anything to do most of the time with what I am or what I'm saying or what my ideas are. It just has more to do really with the ideological box that the person themself is in and their need to make sure that everyone else is also in some kind of easily identifiable box the same way that they are. I mean, are some people who think I'm not even a real person. They think I'm some sort of AI, which would be a stunning revelation for my wife and children.

This is nothing new, by the way. This is something I've been dealing with for years, which I suppose is the same for anyone who's ever opened their mouth in public. But as far as the Arab regimes go, especially in the Gulf States, I doubt that any of the people who are criticizing me for my stance towards The UAE, for example, I doubt that they have more reason than I do to be anti UAE. For most of these critics, the wrongdoing and injustice of the Arab regimes is an abstraction, not for me. I was tortured in The UAE.

I was beaten with clubs and truncheons. I was electrocuted. I was stripped and waterboarded in The UAE. Friends of mine were executed by firing squad in The United Arab Emirates, and they were innocent men. I went through seven years of a farcical court process in which I could not testify.

I could not defend myself. I couldn't meet with an attorney. It was a complete sham. My original appeals court trial, if you can believe it, lasted for exactly two sessions, one in which I pled innocent, and the other in which I was, found guilty and sentenced to death without any testimony of any kind. The UAE published in their state controlled media some of the most horrific, slanderous, lies, and sensationalistic stories about me, and this is something that The UAE authorities told me they were gonna do when they were interrogating me.

Ever since I got out of prison, I have worked with Detained in Dubai and Due Process International, which are the two leading organizations in the world that have supported thousands of people who have been wrongfully detained and falsely accused in The UAE. I know the details of literally thousands of cases of wrongdoing by the UAE government, by the Saudi government, by the Qatari government, and throughout The Gulf. If anyone has a reason, to bear a grudge against these regimes, it's me. But as a Muslim, I have to put my personal feelings aside, and I have to try to be fair. I have to try to be objective.

A Muslim has to tell the truth even if it's bitter, and we have to be honest even, about people whom we may despise. And we have to try to understand situations beyond our own personal experience. And we have to understand how our own personal experience may make us biased. No matter how much you might dislike someone, you never have the right to lie about them. Look, you know, there's a a very prevalent and very counterproductive sentiment, amongst our people, and it is directly opposed, to what the religion teaches us.

And that is this idea, that somehow hating the rulers is a sign of piety, a sign of righteousness. If you don't hate the rulers, you can't be a good person. You can't be a good Muslim, and you can't love Islam. Like, it's a pillar of faith, to delegitimize and hate the rulers. This is incredibly ignorant and unfair.

And like I said, it's counterproductive and it's self destructive. What kind of a default position is that? And who do you think benefits from that being the default position? Whose interests are served by having the Muslims all hate their rulers? It certainly isn't the interest of the Muslims.

The imam, the leader, the ruler, is guiding the affairs of his community, whether you like it or not. He's guiding the affairs of his community, his state, his people. And Rasulullah said that he is a shield for the Muslims. So how are you gonna hate him just because he isn't perfect? Just because he commits sins?

Just because he does wrong sometimes, don't you? Is your default position to hate every Muslim who's just like you and who follows Islam and adheres to the Sharia imperfectly just like you follow Islam and adhere to the Sharia imperfectly? And you know they'll say that they hate the rulers because they don't rule by what Allah revealed. Well, they do it as much as you do it, as much as you do in your own life. You do it as much as they do, which is to the best of your ability.

And you fail and they fail sometimes. You compromise sometimes and they compromise sometimes. You succumb to pressure sometimes and so do they. And you can't imagine the types of pressures that they're under. You can't imagine the stakes that they're grappling with.

I mean heavy is the head that wears the crown. That's a fact. But said that the best of your rulers are those whom you love and they love you, and the worst of your rulers are those whom you hate and they hate you. The order of the wording is important in my opinion. Your love and your hate come first.

They don't love or hate you first. Theirs is a reaction to however you are towards them. Now that doesn't mean being uncritical, but be fair in your criticism. Be balanced. If the rulers do something that you think is wrong, just say this thing is wrong.

Don't say the ruler is evil. The ruler is an apostate. The ruler is a puppet of the West. The ruler is a devil. That's just creating fertile ground for your enemies to sow hostility and chaos in your society and to keep your nation from ever moving forward or unifying behind its leadership.

Because, look, everything that happened to me in The UAE, whatever abuse, whatever wrongdoing that I suffered at the hands of the authorities in The United Arab Emirates, all of those things happen in the West. Police brutality is just as bad in the West as it is anywhere else in the world, if not worse. People are beaten in the West. People are tortured in the West. People are railroaded through sham trials.

Innocent people go to jail. Innocent people get executed. But there's khair in The UAE. There's goodness in The UAE and in the Arab and the Muslim world that they don't have in the West. Thousands of people every year get pardoned from prison in The UAE and in the Arab world throughout the Muslim world.

Their debts get paid off. Yes. There are system failures, but many times the system works. I mean, I'm here today because the system ultimately worked in my case. I have no hard feelings towards The UAE despite being intimately familiar with the flaws in their system.

And from the lowliest, prison guard to the warden, from the police to the prosecutors to the judges, I can tell you that every one of them cares about Islam as much as any other Muslim does. And just like any other Muslim, they fall short sometimes. And that's no reason to hate someone. That's no reason to hate them. That's no reason to hate their system.

That's no reason to hate their governments. Both The UAE and Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well, have governed their states remarkably well. The leaders of those countries are some of the brightest, most strategic and visionary leaders in the world today. And I'm saying that while they won't even let me put one foot inside of their countries. I'm saying it because it's true.

I'll say it even if I have to say it begrudgingly. I can't lie about that. You know, everyone likes to say that these leaders, in The Gulf, in the Arab countries, that they're puppets of the West, puppets of The United States. But again, because of the type of work that I do, I'm thoroughly familiar with the kind of influence that these countries have in the West. It's an outdated, obsolete way of thinking to say that, they're anyone's puppets.

They are tactfully and strategically, navigating the power dynamics in their region, and they're doing it masterfully. And they're building, like I've said before, a sort of soft empire across the Middle East and Africa and beyond. And future generations of Muslims will inherit and benefit from all of that for at least a century or more. Now, yes, in some cases, they are building that soft empire ruthlessly. They're doing it violently in some cases.

It includes subjugation. I think that the Gulf States, for example, have recognized that the International Monetary Fund is a tool for conquest, and they're actually working in conjunction with the IMF in places like Egypt and Indonesia so that instead of western multinationals and investors conquering those countries, they can conquer those countries. Once the IMF reforms make those countries more vulnerable to conquest, they're gonna be the ones to do it. Look. This is the real world.

Like I've said many times, if you are a weaker nation, if you are a vulnerable economy, independence is not an option for you. If the West doesn't take over, someone else will. It will either be China or Russia or else the West will just destabilize your country to the point of catastrophic chaos, and you'll never be able to advance. You'll never be able to develop in any way whatsoever. But the Gulf States are moving in, sometimes acting as brokers or as managers for, the interest of the West, for the interest of China, for the interest of Russia.

But in actuality, in my opinion, they're moving in to lay the groundwork for their own authority, to bring these countries, under their own sphere of influence. And that, whether you realize it or not, holds major predatory powers at bay. It's a brilliant strategy. They're creating something like a buffer zone between the West and the Western oriented owners and controllers of global financialized capital and the Muslim world. They're creating a buffer zone between the OCGFC and the global South to some extent, between the OCGFC and the Muslim world.

And whether you're intelligent enough, and whether you're dispassionate enough, and whether you're objective enough to see it or not, they are even integrating Israel into their sphere of influence, and that is the most historic and monumental strategic victory that you can imagine. Look. Normalization is the beginning of the end of Zionism. There's no two ways about it. Israel was a project that only made strategic sense for the West in the context of the twentieth century global order, and it doesn't make sense anymore.

And Israel knows it. That's why hardline Zionists like Netanyahu are losing their minds today because they know the party's over. The umbilical cord between Tel Aviv and Washington is gonna get cut, and Israel is gonna have to integrate properly into the region, into the Arab region, into the Muslim world, into the Middle East if they wanna survive in any way whatsoever, and they know it, and the Gulf leaders know it. And they know, the Jews know that the only people in history who ever dealt with them fairly were the Muslims. Believe me, it won't be long, before you stop hearing phrases like, Judeo Christian, and you start hearing about how the Jews enjoyed their golden age during the Islamic empire.

Look. You don't survive, as a cohesive community for thousands of years without knowing which side your bread is buttered on. So, no, I'm not an apologist. I'm a realist. I wanna see the Muslims achieve economic sovereignty, political independence, and psychological decolonization.

And I see that these rulers, these governments, are making practical and strategic moves that benefit those objectives. And if they're not personally the most righteous and pious people, okay. Well, neither am I. But what they're building, might yet be inherited by leaders who are more pious and who are more righteous than they are. I mean, Nur ad Din Zengi was better than his father, but it's because of what his father did.

He inherited what his father had built, and that's what made him able to do what he did, and subsequently what Saladin Ayyubi was able to do. That's how power works. That's how empires work. They're a story told across history, and we inhabit just one very small moment in that story. So for me, I see any people who are excessively critical, or who excessively denigrate the rulers in the Muslim world.

I see those people as propagandists for our enemies, And most of the criticism that they offer reeks of propaganda. It's always riddled with, distortions, with half truth, with exaggerations, with hyperbole and emotion. And it sells the cheapest kind, of self righteousness, the kind that relies on, defaming the character of others to try to make yourself, seem better than them by implication. Like, oh, Mohammed bin Salman did such and such, and I'm just aghast at the impiety of it all, which is just a passive way of advertising your implied piety. It's what I would call taqwa signaling, you know, like virtue signaling.

It's like when someone, offers particularly pedantic just to show how righteous they are. It's self serving and unhelpful. So whoever the ruler is, in my opinion, whoever your ruler is, wherever you are in the Muslim world, you should pray for him, and you should hope for the best from him. And don't help Shaitan against him, and don't help the enemies of the Muslims against him. And in fact, this goes for everyone else, for all your brothers and sisters in Islam.

Be balanced in your criticism. Be fair, and limit your criticism to their particular actions that are objectionable and don't attack their character. You know, we all know and believe and we've all seen that people can start good and turn bad. And we're always quick to gossip about those people and condemn them for that. But it's just as possible for people to start bad and turn good.

That's just as possible. Now when someone goes from good to bad, we tend to disregard whatever good they ever did before that. But when a bad person turns good, we won't let them forget how they used to be, and we forever suspect that their goodness is fake. This is wrong. Everyone is struggling between their own goodness and their own evil.

And there's evil in a good person, and there's good in an evil person. None of us, or anyway very few of us, are actually one hundred percent one or the other, and that includes the rulers.