Ahmad al-Mansoor's AI Vision of a Syrian Egypt

Yeah. You know, I saw that AI video that was tweeted out by Ahmed Al Mansour. It's truly pathetic. I mean, this is why it's important to actually understand the world, understand the way things work in the world, understand what happens and why things happen and how they happen in reality. Don't simply believe narratives.

Because look, what happened in Syria was essentially a consensus decision by the Ahl al Haqq. Bashar was not toppled by rebels. He was not overthrown. His regime was not brought to its knees by a revolution. The power players, the the the powers with influence over Syrian affairs, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, they reached an agreement to remove him.

That's how transfers of power are supposed to work in Islam, and that's what happened. And if that had not happened, then the conflict would continue to be in an indefinite stalemate just just as it has been for a decade. It is the case, for better or for worse, that the in many of our countries are not citizens of our countries. They are external powers. That's just the way it is.

Our countries, most of them, are within the spheres of influence of stronger, bigger, richer states. Not all of them, but many of them. Now for most of the twentieth century, that has meant the West. It's meant colonizing powers. It has meant the use the The US, The UK, France for the most part.

Well, that's changing now. Now our countries are coming under the influence of regional powers. Like I said, Turkey, Iran, the GCC, and so on, but also Russia and China, obviously. So for example, the the government in Syria is a governate. Al Julani is a governor, you know.

In many of our countries, the rulers in those countries are actually subordinate to the rulers of more powerful states, and that's the case with Syria. The seat of government in Syria is in Riyadh, it's in Ankara, it's in Moscow and Beijing and not in Damascus. So someone like Ahmed Al Mansour is either pathetically delusional, or else he's a straight up tool of the Washington neocons because he's someone who wants to push the narrative that their catastrophic war in Syria is actually what liberated the country from Bashar al Assad. And so he wants to now pretend that that same scenario should play out in Egypt, meaning he's knowingly or unknowingly serving the interests of those who want to destroy the region, who want to destroy the regional vision of the GCC, of bricks and so forth, and they he wants to plunge the Middle East into chaos and carnage, which basically makes him in my book a Zionist. Again, either he himself does not understand what happened in Syria, which is entirely plausible if he's just a jihadi fantasist, or else he knows perfectly well and he's just an agent of the West who wants to sow discord and violence.

Whatever the case may be, the man is a liability who is out of touch with reality. I mean, video that he made is just pathetic. He's basically broadcasting his own personal mania to the world, creating an AI version of Egypt that reflects his own fantasies. He's literally LARPing in a virtual jihadi universe. It's actually quite appropriate when you think about it with the AI.

Maybe he should join Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse and rally all the avatars of teenage gamers in basements everywhere. But this is not something that's gonna happen in Egypt in real life, nor is it something that should happen in Egypt in real life. I mean, I first got some notoriety back in the mid twenty tens for writing about Egypt and suggesting strategies for the resistance after the coup against Mohammed Morsi. But anyone who actually paid attention to what I was saying knew that nothing I ever suggested involved targeting the government. It never had anything to do with trying to topple the government.

I was concerned primarily and exclusively with the external private sector power players who were attempting a neoliberal conquest of Egypt. And in fact, I was concerned about Egypt not going the way of Syria, not going the way that they had gone because there were plenty of voices at that time who were calling for armed revolution, armed rebellions, civil war and so forth. They wanted it to go the way of Syria, which I knew would be an absolute catastrophe, the same way that Syria was. I have never advocated or approved of any efforts to topple any government in the Muslim world, ever. I have advocated for trying to influence the Al Al Halwal Abd, whether that means the rich and the powerful within a country or whether that means the private sector power or multinational corporations or foreign investors who have power and influence in that country.

But I have never supported any sort of divisive, rebellious uprising against the government, any government. And you should know that that should not be understood as approval for any government itself, but it should be understood as a complete rejection of disunity, of chaos and strife. Because Islam teaches us the sanctity of stability. I mean, the warned us against impatience, warned us against fitnah because fitnah doesn't just tear apart our communities, it opens the door to oppression that's far worse than the worst Muslim ruler could ever impose. Understand me.

This is not complacency. It's not an excuse to justify tyranny or corruption, but it is a reminder that chaos has never served the interests of the Muslim ummah. When we descend into disunity, into conflict and civil war, who who do you think steps into the vacuum? The history of our own colonization answers that question. It will be the Western powers.

It will be the same colonizers who divided our lands and drained our resources and subjected us to humiliation for centuries. That's who you're welcoming when you overthrow your government. Today, an uprising can only ever result in foreign occupation, can only result in puppet governments, puppet regimes, exploitation and colonization. Every time we tear ourselves apart, they swoop in like vultures. Look, a a a a good ruler obviously is better than a bad ruler, but a bad ruler is better than no ruler.

That's the formula that we follow in Islam. A bad ruler is better than chaos because today chaos ensures that the ruler who will replace him will not even be one of us. They won't share our faith, they won't share our values, they won't share our vision. They'll be handpicked by those who see us as nothing more than resources to extract, markets to exploit, pawns to manipulate. And don't think that they're finished with us, oh no, The colonizers may have left through the front door, they're always waiting at the back, ready to return at the first sign of weakness.

Our responsibility is twofold. First, we must, hold our rulers accountable in ways that do not destabilize our nations or fracture our communities. Second, we must strengthen ourselves, build a unified ummah economically, politically and spiritually, so that we can overcome corruption from within, without opening the door to the domination from without. When you feel frustrated, when you feel angry, remember this, unity is our shield, stability is our foundation. Don't let your legitimate grievances be manipulated by those who seek to divide and conquer us.

Work for reform, but with wisdom and with patience, with the understanding that this life is a test. And remember, and this is very important, this is a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow. A lot of people with a western mentality is very difficult for them to accept. If you're not from the Al Harwal Akt, and if you don't have access to the and you don't have a way to reach them and a way to influence the in your society, then these are not matters that you should concern yourself with. Governance, politics, rulers and so forth.

Who the ruler is, what the government's going to be and so on. This is not your affair. Like I said, I know a lot of people will object to this because democracy, because you've had it implanted into your minds that government is supposed to be of for and by the people and anyone and everyone is supposed to involve themselves in politics. Anyone and everyone is supposed to involve themselves in matters of governance. But this is just an illusion that you believe in.

Even your own western societies don't actually run this way. These matters are run by the Al al Harwalach in the West just as much as they are run by the Al al Harwalach in the Muslim world or anywhere else. And we all know why. We all actually know why government can be for the people, but it cannot realistically be of and by the people. We know why because we know people.

And that's why we don't insist on this notion in other areas, we don't insist on this in a company for example. No one in their right mind thinks that an entry level employee in the mailroom is qualified to run a multinational corporation, and we all accept that that mailroom employee has no say whatsoever in executive business decisions. But somehow we like to imagine that states are supposed to operate in that manner. Well, don't, and it would be lunacy if they did. So, like, if that mailroom employee works his or her way up to an executive position and then has a say, well, the same goes for matters of government.

If you're serious about wanting to change things, if you want things to be this way or that way, you think policies policies should be such and such, well, you're supposed to work your way up into having a position of influence. I mean, what happens to an employee who stages a protest in the office, a a break room, because he wants the company to fire the CEO? Who ends up getting fired? I mean, it's quite straightforward logic when you apply it in the business context. Everyone understands it, Because Westerners take business seriously since it's about money.

So when it comes to making money, no one no one bothers talking about democracy. They won't entertain that thought for a second when it comes to making money and when it comes to business. So what do you do in a company when you want, say, example, better conditions for workers? Well, form a union and you negotiate, see? There are ways of doing things, and if you wanna influence things, well then you have to have influence.

And that's what you need to try to build. But people like an Ahmed Al Mansour, they can't be bothered with all that. They don't wanna build, they wanna destroy. If someone is willing to, to drop your society into chaos and instability for the sake of their own power ambitions, you best believe that they won't suddenly start caring about you and caring about your security once they get into power. No.

These types of people are dismissive about the very people who they pretend to care about. They pretend to to to wanna help the poor and pretend that they wanna help the oppressed and so forth, and that's why they wanna topple this or that government, that's what they say. But we all know that the poor and the oppressed actually suffer the most when a society falls into chaos, they're the most victimized because they're the most vulnerable. But people like this, they just cynically use the legitimate grievances of a population to try to push for creating conditions that will make their lives immeasurably worse, which is to topple the government. Like I said, preferring a bad ruler preferring a bad government to chaos and instability is not the same thing as say thinking that the ruler is a good ruler, or that the government is a good government.

It's just called prioritizing the general social welfare and stability. And it's because you know and you understand that we have vicious, violent colonizers right outside our doorstep, and they're ready to pounce the moment anyone breaks ranks. The Muslim world is rising, but it will not rise on the back of chaos. It will rise when we stand together, when we stand firm, and when we refuse, to let outsiders dictate our future. And that's exactly what will happen if we turn on each other and drop our societies into strife and discord.

So yes, I will stand with any Muslim ruler if it means standing against the Kufar. I will stand with any Muslim government if it means standing against colonizing occupiers. And that's exactly what it does mean today. That's what real solidarity means. That's what real unity means.

Everyone talks about that the Muslims should be united, well this is what it means. I mean, don't know. Have people have gotten so used to being in in online echo chambers that they've lost this whole concept of standing with people even when they're not perfect, even when they do things that you dislike or even when they do things that you disapprove of or they have opinions that you don't agree with. But if you only stand together with people like this, people who you agree with completely, then that's not solidarity, that's a friend group. That's not brotherhood.

That's a bubble. So understand that anyone who is trying to incite or to stir rebellion or revolution or revolt or what have you, no matter what they might claim, they are either open enemies or they're useful idiots of our enemies. I mean, may Allah guide them. But unless and until that happens, they should be treated in my opinion the same as a colonizer. Exactly the same as a colonizer, which means that they should be shut up, they should be shut out, and they should be shut down.