COME BACK TO GOD AND HIS TRUE GUIDANCE AND SAVE MANKIND!

            I am an ordinary citizen of Malaysia. I am also a Muslim. I make no pretence at having any credentials for writing this open letter except that, being a Muslim, a citizen of this my beloved country where my ancestors were born, lived and died, and a citizen of the world, I am concerned.  It happens that we are leaving behind a most bloody century, and entering a new one. It also happens that we are entering a new third millennium. Added to that, we are in the blessed month of Ramadan when God’s final scripture, the Great Quran, was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him!) fourteen centuries ago for the edification of the whole of mankind. We are also in the Christian blessed season of goodwill. It is a most auspicious occasion, if ever there was one,  to make a statement.

Why should one make a statement at all? Can it change matters? There is a tendency to feel old and tired. This pessimism is only one side of the picture, a minor one, for Man is destined for a great future in the Universe. The world is still very, very young, only six billion years old at most, and has another about a hundred billion more years before it exhausts itself. So there is a real need for us to work for its betterment. Otherwise, the anti-human side to our nature will work for its destruction, and there have been many failed and destroyed societies and cultures in the past. 

We are living in an extraordinarily dangerous time. In spite so many good things that modern science and technology have given us, we are still not beyond the desire for self-destruction. The fruit from the Tree of Freedom has gone sour. The nuclear sword of Damocles hangs, at this very moment, over the entire world. The question every responsible citizen must ask and answer is: how can I stop this self-destruction?

Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was it justified for the Anglo-Americans to bomb them when the Japanese were already ready to surrender? No! They were not justified! The Anglo-American oligarchy had other aims than world peace. It wanted the whole world, terrorized by the bombs, to be at its feet. So they brought into being the United Nations, a façade of humanity’s representation, but, in actual fact, the aim is to control the world through the veto-wielding so-called Big Powers. True enough, fifty-five years later, the Anglo-American-controlled U.N. Security Council, closing all doors to peaceful solutions, declared war on a small Muslim country, Iraq, for refusing to remain under its system, and promising to send it back to the Stone Age! It was unilateralism in action and in characteristic barbarian style, the so-called “New World Order” of the American President George Bush.

There can be no clearer picture of a world sharply divided between the interests of the vast majority of mankind and the interests of a small group of London-New York-centred world financial oligarchy  than now. It is a lesson of major importance for the world’s peoples, including the Americans and the British, to understand that there can be no world peace and security unless this never-satiated monster is put away.

Imagine how much economic development and social progress the entire planet can have if we harness the power of modern science and technology to such purposes! And who is in the way of such development and progress except this evil Anglo-American oligarchy?

Who most suffer from this human monster? Mostly Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran Libya, Sudan, Palestine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Malaysia, Indonesia, Afghanistan; but also other countries: China, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Russia.  Countries suffering under the yoke of this moribund and bankrupt system must unite to put an end to it and substitute it with a better, more just system. That they can do it should be beyond doubt, as they constitute the vast majority, and their countries being store-houses of great human wisdom. That they should do it is also beyond doubt, as otherwise they will perish.

Yet, neither Muslim countries, nor the non-Muslim countries, nor a combination of them, have united to do so. The Soviet-Chinese bloc crumbled; The Soviet Union, the communist superpower itself, crumbled; the hope-bearing Non-Aligned Nations disappeared; the Arab League became a house divided; the Organization of Islamic Countries became petrified. Why? This led to Francis Fukuyama’s hollow boast of triumphant Capitalist Liberalism.

If any group of people can save mankind from destruction today, it must be  believers in God, the  Creator, Administrator and Nourisher of the Universe, believers who believe in Good, who believe that Good shall prevail and who are prepared to sacrifice their property and their lives to make Good prevail. That was what the early Muslims under the leadership of Prophet Muhammad did in seventh century Arabia. The failure of today’s Muslims to repeat this success must, of necessity, be due to their failure to follow the true teachings of Prophet Muhammad. Against his rational and humane teachings and practice, they have turned their religion into empty meaningless rituals, an exclusive club, a hideous legal structure and, for the most part, impractical  . The simple practical religion of God, which is an optimistic philosophy and a dynamic way of life, has become a complicated mystifying mechanism of consolation and escape for the weak and defeated,  exchanging their present misery for an imaginary postponed false Paradise.  They, who should be the modern-day David to kill the modern-day Goliath, have failed mankind and have failed in their true mission in life! 

In 1986 I wrote a book to call the Muslims, broken into countless sects and living in abject fear of this monster, to re-examine the bases of their faith and to call them back to the true teachings of Prophet Muhammad as contained in the Great Quran, the last finished perfect, divinely-guarranteed-and-protected scripture, that God All-Merciful sent to mankind. I firmly believe it is only through such a bold repudation of the false “two-book” faith, the Quran and the Hadith (and by implication other false teachings) and through a principled return to the life-affirming, death-defying, unifying, anti-sectarian, universalistic and humanistic teachings of the Quran that the Muslims and other believers can regain their unity, their strength and their rightful leadership of the world.  It is precisely because, beguiled by the false promises of the materialist paradises Western capitalism and communism and also the fasle promise of the postponed equally materialist paradise of religious theocracy, they have deviated from the Straight Path that God taught them in the Quran, and failed. It is time they seriously consider returning to the Straight Path. Otherwise, universal doom is in store for them. 

I shall not now, thirteen years later, complain that most of my countrymen paid little heed to that book, with, of all people, the ulama, condemning it, with some of the extremist of them calling for my head! But I am prepared to forgive and forget. We have to get on with our lives. We have to face the enemy at our door, conquer him and proceed on our  journey.We cannot do that except with God in our hearts and with His unfailing guidance surely with us.

I call upon all Muslim leaders and intellectuals everywhere to wake up and face this challenge now. The time for talking and theorizing is over. Take immediate steps to unite the Muslims and other believers and draw up a programme of actions to prevent the current drift to World War III, to safeguard the peace and security of the word, to substitute the present fast-collapsing world politico-economic system with a better, more just system on the basis of the universal and humanistic teachings of the Quran.

Forget each of our pet and petty sectarianism! Work for unity and cooperation. Fearlessly face the enemy and defeat him, for he can easily be defeated. Only in this way lies true peace, security and progress.    

Although the United States of America, born out of anti-colonial struggle against imperial Britain and out of a great politico-social revolution against slavery, the American Republic of  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and   F. D. Roosevelt, it has today, unfortunately, linked itself to Great Britain to become the foremost imperial power after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  But such are the ways of God that in spite of this, from the belly of this imperial monster, comes its likely killer. Defamed but yet famed, the American “American-system” economist, political writer and philosopher, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., leader of the 30-year old Christian republican  political-philosophical movement has led an American regenerative movement that is now growing in influence and importance not only in the United States and Europe, but in the world. Brave Muslim leaders such as our Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, has rightly worked with this movement to reform the collapsing world financial system.  Given the United States’ role in world affairs today, if the American people choose him as their new leader in the coming U.S. presidential elections, the world has a bright future. We earnestly hope they do.    

In spite of all the mistakes we have made and of all the crimes we have committed in the name of God’s religion, God is ever accessible to the repentant. Let us repent and invoke the mercy of the All-Merciful God, in this blessed month of Ramadan and in this season of goodwill, to help us in this hour of dire need. True Muslim leaders and true believers in God must call upon their peoples to unite in the coming months and years to stop the drift to World War III, to bring to an end the present unjust world system, to save mankind from utter destruction, and to rebuild the world -- a more just, secure and beautiful world, for our posterity. That is what Islam teaches. That is the Paradise that God promises to the true believers, staunch and fearless fighters in His cause.

Kassim Ahmad, Malaysian citizen and Citizen of the World. 15 December, 1999,Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia.