2. Inflection Point: The Framework for Permanent Internal Change
A Message From The East Journal & Press | A Curated Journal Exploring The Post-Colonial Literature of Africa, The Indian Subcontinent and The Arabic Speaking World…
“And yet, [O believers,] it was not you who slew the enemy, but it was God who slew them; and it was not thou who cast [terror into them, O Prophet], when thou didst cast it, but it was God who cast it: and [He did all this] in order that He might test the believers by a goodly test of His Own ordaining. Verily, God is all-hearing, all-knowing!
- Quran (8:17)1
In this most remarkable verse, our Lord sets apart the psycho-spiritual attitude of the followers of The Messenger of Allah from all other faith traditions and other attempts to grasp at the true purpose of man’s life on Earth - to act, to strive, to fight against all odds is inextricably bound to the concept of “worship” proper. Indeed in Islam austerity, monkery, hermeticism, heavy handed legalism and ritualism know no home. As Allah states more clearly, “True piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west…” (Quran 2:177)2 referencing clearly the crippling thread subtly apparent in our collective consciousness even as The Prophet walked amongst us, “you will never cease putting question after question, until one of you would even say : ‘It is God Who hath created the creation, but who hath created God?” (Sahifah of Hammam Ibn Munabbih, on the authority of Abu Hurairah, one of the few collections of hadith which can be corroborated with manuscript evidence)3 - clearly demonstrating The Prophet’s unrelenting vitalism and desire to steer the ummah away from speculative matters. As if this was not evidence enough, God most remarkably hammers the final nail in the coffin over speculative hairsplitting with this most weighty of verses, “[And in times to come] some will say, ‘[They were] three, the fourth of them being their dog,’ while others will say, ‘Five, with their dog as the sixth of them’ – idly guessing at something of which they can have no knowledge – and [so on, until] some will say, ‘[They were] seven, the eighth of them being their dog.’ Say: ‘My Sustainer knows best how many they were. None but a few have any [real] knowledge of them. Hence, do not argue about them otherwise than by way of an obvious argument, and do not ask any of those [storytellers] to enlighten thee about them.’” (Quran 18:22)4.
What is often lost in conversation as regard “The Sunnah” is the man from which the concept emanates from, it is not without exaggeration to say that what “The Sunnah” has become is naught but ill-hearted attempt at defensiveness towards an institution which has totally subjugated the creative spirit of the ummah - somehow we have convinced ourselves beyond doubt that the true meaning of taking inheritance from The Prophet (At-Tirmidhi)5 is not a holistic inculcation of his remarkable life example from beginning to end, but rather applying hadith at random in an attempt to endlessly self police and moralize ourselves such to a degree of rank insanity.
The intelligence agencies of the colonizing powers have it easy with us - for they may sit back and concern themselves with other matters as we have sufficiently, and more successfully than they ever would be able to, divided and conquered our own selves. Institution after institution arises doing naught but “preservation”, though this action may indeed be important it seems to be the only action the Muslims have any real interest in pursuing outside of making themselves the most agreeable subjects possible to their imperial overlords. On the matter of research a laughable amount of resources is spent in it’s cause. Though on the matter of capitulation and private enterprise with some half-hearted “Islamic” branding reluctantly tacked on - and on the expansion of “Islamic” centers which do naught but perpetuate cultish attitudes due to the reasons mentioned above - quite literally over $40 million will be raised in the matter of a few short minutes (“State of Texas v. Community Capital Partners” 21)6 as the lizard brained laity are beside themself, drowning in an almost sexual-level of gratification over the prospect of increasing their pocket-book.
You have then attempts from the youth to grasp at something deeper, though none of these amount to anything outside of glorified volunteer projects and masturbatory exercises in aesthetics which do naught but give an heir of intellectualism in the moment but ultimately fail to radically transform it’s attendees. In a laughable display of idiocy I have seen countless self described “Post-Colonialists” honestly attempt to put forward work on anti-imperialism without offering the slightest credence of scientific analysis over how the exploitation of material resources by antagonist civilizations propped up by the economic system of capitalism has subjugated 99% of the Earth’s population as the 1% live lives of gross extravagance thinking nothing of how the wealth landed in their lap (Stiglitz 1)7.
In fact, “Post-Colonialism” has become not much more than a vain, ill conceived brand identity of sorts - it is cool to read, promote and design one’s social media profiles after Allama Iqbal or Mahmoud Darwish, but when one is forced to face the music on what lead to the conditions of the proletariat everyone’s soul suddenly leaves their body. One may pose against me, “then what?” - well, this is indeed the question and this is what our effort aims to attempt to address. There may not be much we can do on the ground to free the people of Gaza or contend against the military industrial complex, but at the very least we can stop insulting God, His Messenger and the souls who have been massacred by doing naught but making fools of ourselves due to the desire to take action with out first gaining an understanding of the science of economics, politics and power and how the thieving of material resources has castrated the psychological and vital force within the people of The Global South.
I have heard over and over again from well intentioned upstarts that “people do not read”, “it is too difficult for people to understand these things”, “most people are too preoccupied to study all of this ” and “how can we make things immediate” - first of all, none of these criticisms are really true. In order to earn college degrees to the graduate level or become medical professionals or the like there is not a Muslim I know who has not extended the most extreme efforts to this end, such that they have become addicted to pharmaceutical nootropics they have not even been properly prescribed in order to induce as much unadulterated focus as possible. I am not trained in the fields many of my peers are in, in fact I can barely perform simple addition in my head without using my fingers to count - the latent intelligence is there, though due to the ill fated attempt at making “knowledge” more “accessible” we have promoted a culture of mediocrity wherein our institutions have become not much more than dick measuring contests of who went were rather than what was worked on.
Rather than material at the intellectual bleeding edge of theology, physics, politics and historical research we opt to hand out Ijazahs after useless graduate #932530583248592523 completes his multi year long seminary course in medieval fiqh where all that the graduate in question will be trained to do is become a youth director, likely to end up in some sort of sexual scandal a few years down the line (Pelletier)8. If excellence is demanded, excellence will be found and nurtured - if mediocrity is accepted than there is no reason for anyone to extend any effort and I am not convinced Islam should be “easy and accessible”. Was it not Allah who said, “Had We sent down this Quran upon a mountain, you would have certainly seen it humbled and torn apart in awe of Allah. We set forth such comparisons for people, ˹so˺ perhaps they may reflect.”? (Quran 59:21).9
If, “such problems are everywhere in every community” than we know for certain we have absolutely abandoned all moral sense and all sense in general and have become comfortable with spitting in the face of Rasool Allah and brushing off God from our shoulders as if He were a mosquito causing minor annoyance. There is no room for pussyfooting in the final revelation from God to man, all morals are eternal and absolute in the most extreme sense and failure to prove the mettle of one’s spine is cause for exile and brutal and crippling humiliation. As Allah said, “The truth hath come and false hath vanished. Indeed, the false is ever a vanisher” (Quran 17:81)10
In terms of immediacy, there is no one in more agreement than me that action is the only measure of a man’s true intelligence - though, mindless action is not the solution. Mindless action is what leads to such displays of humiliation as Dr. Martin Luther King’s “March on Washington” which Malcom X endlessly lambasted and made fun of. Indeed, X, who took more meaningful action than any of us will ever hope to produce in ten separate lifetimes said it best in what can easily be considered the single most important oration in modern American history, “Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude it changes your behavior pattern. And then you go on into some action” ((Malcolm X)11
We then, from this most critical observation are presented with an airtight and tested mathematical formula. A change in philosophy leads to change in one’s thought pattern which leads to change in one’s attitude which leads to change in one’s behavior which leads to meaningful action.
Philosophy > Thought > Attitude > Behavior > Action
And this is our beginning point, the foundation, the connective thread of all of the work which shall be undertaken by “A Message From The East Press” and the grounds of which a curriculum must be laid out. And this is the inflection point, to embark on the creation of a powerful body of work in order to take one from unconsciousness to consciousness and awaken into the realm of meaning.
Personally, upon reflection my understanding of the above formula is the following, though to properly articulate why would take an essay in it of itself :
Philosophy = German Vitalism
Thought = Binary Absolutism (Fanon’s take on “Manicheasim”) (Fanon 70)12
Attitude = Thymos
Behavior = Imitatio Muhammadi
Citations
Asad, Muhammad, translator. The Message of the Qur’an. Andalus, 1984.
Asad, Muhammad, translator. The Message of the Qur’an. Andalus, 1984.
Hammām ibn Munabbih. The Sahifah of Hammam ibn Munabbih. Translated by Muhammad Hamidullah, Kitab Bhavan, 1979.
Asad, Muhammad, translator. The Message of the Qur’an. Andalus, 1984.
Al-Tirmidhi, Muhammad ibn Isa. Jamiʿ at-Tirmidhi. Translated by Abu Khaliyl, Darussalam, 2007.
State of Texas v. Community Capital Partners LP et al. Verified Original Petition and Application for a Temporary Restraining Order, District Court of Collin County, Texas, Dec. 2025.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. The Price of Inequality. W. W. Norton, 2012.
Pelletier, Nick. “Sacred and Civic Trust: Imam Calls Out Suspected Sexual Abuse In Friday Sermon.” Muslim Matters, 29 Oct. 2018, https://muslimmatters.org/2018/10/29/imam-muslim-community-reports-sexual-abuse-mandatory-reporter-state-islamic-law/.
Asad, Muhammad, translator. The Message of the Qur’an. Andalus, 1984.
Asad, Muhammad, translator. The Message of the Qur’an. Andalus, 1984.
Malcolm X. “The Ballot or the Bullet.” Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, edited by George Breitman, Grove Press, 1965, pp. 23–44.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2004.