Monotheism versus Moneytheism

Monotheism versus Moneytheism
By Shakeel Syed

The claimants of monotheism have become adherents of moneytheism!
The perpetrators of this new paradigm must be held accountable. We define our character when we say a word of justice to an oppressive royal or a ruler. And if we do not we also become accountable.

A recent news magazine reports a headline "Geneva caters to an ailing king". A water-front feast on caviar, kebab and coffee while their maidens are guarded by Swiss soldiers and their toddlers are dandled by Filipino nannies. The 80+ year old wheel-chair confined patriarch with an entourage of 350 is heard to be re-tracking his princely wild days in Geneva & Marbella, Spain, his two most loving cities. This is the self-proclaimed custodian of the two most Holy Mosques, Fahd bin Abdul Aziz!

Across the waters in France was the other 80+ year old octogenarian gulf ruler, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. He is claimed to have been elected as first President of the UAE in 1971 with five successive (re-elected) five year intervals. The year of 1971 must be an auspicious one for the "elected rulers." The Prime Minister of Dubai, Sheikh Maktum ibn Rashid al-Maktum also happens to be serving his prime ministerial terms since 1971 with an interim absence between 1979 & 1990.

While a war of the United States upon Iraq looms over, they are busy on the streets of Geneva and Marbella. The Saudis have clogged the Geneva streets with Mercedeses, delighting the merchants on the elegant Rue du Rhone. The local tourist bureau estimates the royals spending a whopping $10 million a day. And this is just the beginning!

Fahd flew into Geneva with two 747s, a Boeing 757 mobile hospital, a Boeing 777, a Falcon 900 and a couple of Gulfstreams. His entourage took more than 400 rooms in the city's five-star hotels and rented 600 Mercedes limos exhausting Geneva's entire auto rental inventory. An additional 150 Mercedeses were imported from Germany to cater to the wheel-chair bound ailing guest.
One of the royal family's staff member is reported to have said "domestic concerns are for another day, another place. I am more worried about the diabetes from all the rich food, pinching a roll of fat at his waist."

Tensions between royals and the people have grown as they are tired of the financial bloat and moral laxity of the royals. These ailing kings, rulers and presidents must completely be stripped of their titles and completely removed from their ornate palaces. Their hereditary successors must be made to realize that their real inheritance is to resume the life like everyone else and struggle on the streets to make an earnest living.

They mistakenly believe that they are securely unchallenged and supreme. They have falsely made themselves think that it is permanent and invincible. Monotheistic Islam is the very state of nature. Every part of it is capable of regenerating all other parts. It is only a matter of time that it happens. It is only then that there will be the restoration of a just order, where the monotheistic belief is properly valued and practiced.

The claimants of monotheism must question and expose such obnoxious excesses of unprecedented magnitude from the adherents of moneytheism. This discourse is completely missing from our intellectual and political dialog. Voluminous scrolls have documented the ills of others but no one cares to speak, write or debate about our own. There is a clear absence of descriptive and analytical political thought from the massive intellectual industry of the Muslims.

Without a paradigm of political thought that describes and explains the present political situation, we cannot even begin to work towards the regeneration of monotheistic political power. The original model at Madinah had to defeat the power of falsehood, which was then local, or at best regional, and there were no vast disparities in the areas of technology and economy. In the contemporary situation the false and secular civilization is globally organized in a world economy with inter-linking political systems, that includes the corrupt systems of Muslim rulers and regimes. Monotheism, therefore, has to repeat itself in a vastly more complex world than existed 1,400 years ago. This difference between the two historical situations has to be bridged by sincere leadership and profound contemporary thought in absence of Prophethood and Divine Revelation in the original model.

Monotheism has no frontiers and is fervently preached to the entire humanity by all the Prophets from Abraham to Muhammad (peace be upon all of them) and this must now be intensely continued by its' claimants. And, the adherents of Moneytheism has to be sent and sent away quickly in the dustbin of forgotten history.

Shakeel Syed is a freelance writer on socio-political issues and lives in California.