Shaykh Abdullah Hamid Ali creates a facebook post essentially trying to create a ficticious link between remote aspects of the sunnah and the modern political issue surrounding the boarder debate. Here is a snapshot of his deplorable post
This is utterly ridiculous. The shaykh always makes absurd rationalizations and this is yet another prime example.
1. The reason why they werent as defined is because there was no such thing as a nation-state. Do you even recognize how much of a paradigm shift the world was taken by through the introduction of a nation-state apparatus???
2. Thugra is absolutely a moot point in the context of what the modern “open boarders” debate entails in 21st century geopolitics. This is a typical misdirected conception of reality most of the far right consercative movement in America concieve of when the topic of boarders are concerned. Thugra has absolutely nothing to do with anything relating to anything on this subject matter
3. Ribat EQUALLY has no shred of connection to do with the modern debate of “open boarders” in America!!!
4. The Treaty of hudhaybiyya also has absolutely no connection with the issue of what the debate open boarders discusses!
Now, lets continue to weigh in on what is actually what!!!!
Status quo muslims like these have a false conception of reality. They’ll accept a neo-conservative outlook on “closed borders” falsely linking them to loosely, and mostly inapplicable concepts the shariah speaks of, like the argument for thugra, ribat that Abdullah bin Hamid makes the case for, but fail miserably to understand the current global secular order. Where was their advocacy of “closed boarders” and national sovereignty when the same institutional corporate structures, influenced governments to ERADICATE boarders in the name of “free trade”, like for example NAFTA, or currently the trans-pacific partnership, thus enacting policies that, if any specific country were to impose tarrifs on goods and trade (which would naturally benefit citizens of any region) that those corporations can fine these countries entirely in the world court fining them in the billions for the accusation of “restricting free trade and commerce”! This essentially reroutes national sovereignty altogether and makes entire nations, and the citizenry it is responsible for, to bend over backwards to private corporate interests and to put their national interests on the back burner in order to succumb to corporate profit margins!
FURTHERMORE, people like this, completely ignorant of how the world operates, does not understand WHY open boarders debate exist. Does he not understand imperialism???? Has even read what George Kennan adopted as policy of American imperialism?? Let us review what this “containment policy” is as most muslims are ignorant of it.
In 1948, George Kennan created the doctrine of containment policy. Let us examine what this policy is, because it directly correlates to what Abdullah bin Hamid Ali tries to address!
In 1948, Kennan was heading the Policy Planning Staff (PPS), a bureau he’d created at the request of Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and wrote an important memorandum charting out the future of American foreign policy. In that capacity, he authored PPS 23, an overview of cold war policies.* In Section VII he analyzed America’s future in the Far East, but used words that had meaning far beyond Asia. Kennan began by admitting the U.S. had limited means to influence “Asiatic peoples.” Americans were “deceiving ourselves” if they believed they had answers to the problems that were surfacing in Asia at the moment (rebuilding Japan and evaluating the Chinese Civil War, most importantly).
And, then, the money quote. He says
“Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
Kennan was always respected for his openness, his frank explanations of American goals, power, and ultimately imperium. And this paragraph, while written as an evaluation of the U.S. role in Asia, spelled out in brutal honesty the U.S. goal in the days after World War II—to maintain and expand global hegemony, to “maintain this position of disparity.”
There you have it folks. US imperialism 101. To adopt policies and militaristic procedure that will “MAINTAIN THIS DISPARITY”.
In other words, how does this correlate back to Abdullah bin Hamid Ali’s utter ignorance? The whole issue of the “open boarders” has absolutely nothing to do with militaristic weaknesses that shaykh Abdullah thinks it is what it is about, which is why he correleates it with equally militaristic terms used in the shariah. A complete missing the forest from the trees! The modern issue of “open boarders” has nothing to do with weakening military power, it has everything to do with people IN THOSE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD where that disparity is in their disfavor, to come to a land where they can at least get a piece of the pie. This is WHY people flood to our lands. People naturally want a good life. And if American foreign policy is BUILT ON PREVENTING other countries from attaining such a status, then what do you think is going to happen? If foreign governments are militarily and economically rendered INCAPABLE of creating a first world civil society for their own citizens, then people are naturally going to make plans and do anything and are willing to go through hell, to migrate to lands where such oppurtinities is more realistic!!!!
To add further insult to injury, if we want to speak in a militaristic fashion about boarders and to enclose them, then where on earth were “conservative” minded people like Abdullah bin Hamid when they allowed corporations and their fascists interlink with governments to nullify closed boarders on “trade” deals. This is where TRUE military might and warefare actually take place, in the world of free trade. In geopolitics, this is the soft version of power, which is just the final step before overt hard power!! This is where and how countries are taken over. Has Abdullah bin Hamid Ali even read something so phenomenonal like John Perkins “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”????
To add another flavor of insult to injury, here is Abdullah bin Hamid Ali advocating closed boarders in the context of “militaristic defense” unbeknownst that the open boarders debate is surrounded on everything UNRELATED to militaristic domestic defense of sovereign states. The neoconservative advocacy for “closing the boarder” masked under the sloganeering of “defending national sovereignty” when its essentially about preventing people to migrate to a land of economic opportunity. The primary reason why the Mexican south wants to migrate to America is for expressly and only this purpose. When people of other nations make their decision to migrate here, this is essentially thee express and only reason for doing so, having nothing to do with “weakening America’s defenses” as is the rhetoric of the far right! Where this insult lies at, is we are not just the country of “opportunity”, we are ALSO the source of their plight and predicament. We, our current American foreign policy, is the primary reason why people’s of other lands CANNOT flourish economically. If we truly want to be real, pragmatic, and to provide a solution, and if we truly want to “close boarders” in order to prevent people coming here, we should STOP our imperialist policies to “maintain this disparity” of economic social dominance over other nations where those nations have to acquiesce to our corporations and American interests.
This is why one should understand reality for what it is before embarking to speak on matters that pertain to lives of people in the real world.
The Boriqee Notes 