The United States of Islam
(a.k.a. "terrorism")

v.

The U$A, et al.?

Don't get excited. This dream of green is the work of a fringe element. Most Muslims, even in nations indicated as majority Islamic, are just ordinary people who want nothing to do with such things. (Islam is no more monolithic than any other religion. Contrast the practices in Indonesia with those in Arabia, for example.) Instead of a global USI, Islam will evolve as Muslims grapple with the spread of Western science, technology and cosmology, among other non-Islamic influcences. Oddly enough, they have their own forebears partly to thank for algebra (from al-jabr, the reunion of broken parts) which spread to Europe and made possible the calculus of Newton and Leibnitz which gave physics a tremendous shot in the arm which eventually led to quantum theory, in the 1920s, which makes possible atom bombs, TV, and computer chips which...

Anyhow, the logic that applies to the Christian god is at work on Allah, too. However, unlike Christianity, Islam has a well-developed tradition of mysticism within the doctrines of the Sufis. There Muslims will find a refuge from authoritarians like the Wahhabis (a.k.a. al-Muwahhidun, the monotheists, or al-Ikhwan, the brethren) who dominate the religious scene in Arabia and from the crassness of modern industrialized society. The Sufis, like all mystics, have little affinity for money grubbing, flag waving, war mongering, and the other habits of empire-building.

So much for the USI.

It is We who give life and We who give death,
And We are the One who will abide.

al-Qur'an¹ 15:23

Do you think We created you for nothing,
and that you will not return to Us?

al-Qur'an 23:115

As for those who deny,
it is all the same if you warn them or not;
they will not believe.
'Allah' has sealed their hearts and ears
and veiled their eyes. For them is great deprivation.

al-Qur'an, 2:6-7

You want to know why you are here?
You are here to find out what is real.

- Sufi aphorism

"Faceless, the flame of reality
stands still in its place;
Round and round the chandelier turns
And creates many a face."

-Asgar, a 20th century Sufi poet.²
(translation by Ali Ansari)

1. Ahmed Ali, al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation - Arabic & English in parallel columns, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
2. Ali Ansari, Sufism and Beyond: Sufi Thought in the Light of Late 20th Century Science, (Ahmedabad, India: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1999, p.78.