Paradise Lost & Forgotten: The Manufacture of Neo-Americans

“He would have shown them (hypocrites) to you and you should have known them by their marks;  but surely you will know them by the tone of their speech.” (Qur’an; 47: 30)

Paradise Lost & Forgotten

An excerpt from The Taqwa of Marriage
by Dr. Omar Zaid
All Rights Reserved

Infants learn by experience and most learning is somehow mediated through the sense of touch.  Even sound vibrations and light waves must ‘touch’ the surface of ear and eye.   All of these surface ‘sensory receptors’  are derived from the embryonic ectoderm: a tri-laminar embryonic primitive disc (leech-like clot) of front row pluri-potent cells that line up in ranks (like Muslims in prayer) during the first three weeks of gestation.  But what has this to do with hypocrisy?

Psychiatrists have traditionally observed institutionalized patients who consistently laugh whenever listening to a politician’s speech.  When examined, the mad-persons  confessed they knew the speaker was lying by the sound of his voice.   We know that almost everyone instinctively changes their tone of speech when approaching an infant. Why?  The baby has something in common with madmen in that it simply has no desire to be touched by any sight, sound or movement that is unpleasant and disturbs the ‘Rest of God’ in which it sleeps, eats, and grows.  It has an innate limited ability to discern the unpleasant and that which is neither good nor beneficial.   When ears hear and eyes see more clearly, a baby often rejects the sound, sight and even smell of an unwanted visitor; which embarrasses the abhorred victim unless they earn the status of worthy companion.  The babe instinctively does not trust their sight, smell, sound or touch as God’s representative and  instinctively deems them unworthy of  both the office and affection.

Unlike parents, other humans must earn the baby’s trust and these wages are paid through the currency of ‘touch’.   The phenomena is readily carried over to the marriage bed so that a spouse who is unkempt in body and soul is usually and naturallydisqualified as  too unpleasant to touch.  Hence, they do not deserve the loving touch and attentions of the human sexual response system even though they desire it out of genuine human need.  This reason alone allows that a woman should never be forced into marriage or compelled to remain married to a man she finds unpleasant.  Nor can a virile man sexually respond to a wife who has lost her charms through neglect or gastronomic excess.  Surprisingly, even when a man is perceived as attractive physically and morally, if his words do not persuasively ‘touch’ the woman’s heart, or if his manner is gruff, or if he somehow fails to reflect the image or scent of a beloved father as wali, she will not desire union with the suitor and her body’s sexual response system will not welcome him  out of its own inherent design.  She will reject him just as the babe rejects an unproven stranger.

A tradition tells of a woman who refused a marriage proposal from the Prophet ― she did not want him and sought refuge from him with God!  This episode reveals the end-result of many factors of sexualization discussed in previous chapters.  Many of these factors are void of moral qualities but have much to do with human conditioning in addition to mediating chemicals that modify hormones and end organ responses and even body odor.  It is quite possible the lady refused because the Prophet failed her subconscious ‘sniff test’.

Double Standards

“And if the dying person be of those on the Right Hand,
then there is safety and peace (from the punishment of Allah)
for those on the Right hand.” (Q, 56:91-92)

“Did we not create you from a despised water (semen)?
Then we placed it in a place of safety (womb). (Q, 77: 20-21)

Iman (faith) is implicit in animal behavior.  Animals do not ‘worry’ as do humans. They go about their pre-ordained duties and when trouble comes they seek relief or escape, but if no help or exit arrives they die without too many complaints; knowing they have done their best to avoid the inevitable.  However, this is not generally the case for humans.  If every infant is born a natural Muslim inclined towards Allah, and if the verse of our pre-primordial covenant with Allah is true (being the first of four lives: pre-incarnate, incarnate, existence in the grave followed by the resurrection), then every man is born with an instinctive memory of  God.  This indicates that hypocrisy – that rampant disease of the heart – is a direct result of a metaphysical infection nurtured by conditioning.  This is to say that humans are then taught the art of hypocrisy by caregivers.  The estate of hypocrisy is that of the liar:

“And they think that they have something to stand upon.
Verily, they (hypocrites) are liars.” (Q; 58:18))

All liars are prompted to imposture in order to fulfill some desire as a substitute for the comforts of true faith or as-Sakkinah, which is, by definition, the peace and security or metaphysical ground that sincere believers have striven ‘to stand on’.

As stated previously, the infant emerges from the comfort and safety of the womb and is totally incapable of fulfilling its own needs.  However, as the child grows he or she  learns to do this one way or another by pleasing (i.e., by pleasuring) their parents.  The process involves either mimicry or extortion; i.e.,  the child basically does what the parents do or what they demand he do in exchange for meeting the child’s basic needs for survival.  This is not to say that weak-willed parents cannot be manipulated by budding monsters who’ve been abandoned to Day Care, TV and cyber-spaced mind-melds with Iblis.

The first serious challenge to common-sense development arises during the latent years (ages 7-10) when children awaken to imperfections, which include behaviors and unbecoming physical attributes of his/her superiors.  Until then, in non-dysfunctional households, life is essentially a paradise on earth wherein the child innocently meanders and accepts things at ‘face-value’ with little cognition (judgment) of what is evil, out of order or harmful.  During the inquisitive age of latency however, a veil is removed enabling the child to perceive mysteries,  contradictions and/or imperfections that prompt a seemingly endless quest for answers.  The child is constantly asking: “Why Papa / Why Mama?”

These probing queries are far too too often discouraged or even forbidden and a strict command is given to simply obey without question — the plea of authoritarian bureaucrats and fascists, of sectarian leaders and deviant Sufis or cultish collectives such as the British Crown  (“Into the valley of death rode the six-hundred,” etc.) and Romanists, et alia) — this is to say, groups of the blind following the blind known in Islam as taqlid.  Under such conditions, the child’s common-sense (fitrah) quest for truth and understanding (wisdom) is aborted or ignored.

We should understand that the latent child’s search for truth – especially with regards to sexuality, is crucial to the adab of future self-identity and awareness as God’s servant.  This is a direct result of the liberation of certain creative formative forces  (The Word of Al’Mussawwir).  These subtle etheric designators of ‘form and function’ have just finished sculpting the nervous system; a task that is completed during the seventh year of growth. [1] Hence, ‘Paradise is Lost’ and the descent towards earthly materialism consciously begins for the tender soul.  Up to this stage, the unadulterated child is entirely enveloped in a protective veil of innocence that now begins seven years of gradual dissolution towards complete extinction by the age of puberty.  If the child’s questions regarding imperfections, mystifying or conflicting behaviors of superiors and peers go unheeded, or if deeper queries seeking meaning and purpose are ignored and remain unanswered as if they are insignificant — especially those of a moral nature — a process  begins that is akin to sectarian reforms and  initiates a certain ‘careless’ attitude.  This departure from the directives of the child’s innate common sense (fitrah: a type of innate divine guidance) will then lean towards heedlessness and mischief by default, which then prepares the soul to imbibe double-standards, politically-correct hypocrisy, and the ubiquity of human denial. [2] Everlasting success, along with consideration for the third and fourth human lives are erased by pressing expedienciesand immortality is reduced to cartoon fantasy.

Children learn to suppress their search for truth (i.e., the reaffirmation of the pre-primordial covenant with God), after which they adjust to whichever bias best serves the fulfillment of  needs and desires.   Paradise is lost and forgotten when  truth and understanding (wisdom) are set aside and self-gratification and survival become the child’s paramount pursuit in place of wisdom and egalitarian considerations. Passing pleasures become so addictive they continuously require more  “things” or pre- occupations like sports, music, pop-culture trivia, video game fixes and any knowledge that aids their pursuit of vanity, fame, greed, lust, gluttony, power, money, clique careers, etc., etc.  Instead of cooperation for the community welfare, they fiercely compete and learn how to marginalize ‘the other’.  It is a desensitization process that removes them from realms of empathy in order to justify their ascendancy-in, or at minimum, acceptance-by the clique of choice and the herd that tolerates their abandonment of Allah’s Cause in the earth.

When the oblation of truth does not fill the heart of the wisdom seeking child, a material fixation on worldly pleasures veils the  abandoned quest for understanding and eternal purpose (akhirah).  Without this knowledge,  As-Sakkinah cannot be maintained and sub-conscious conflicts fill the void.  Thus are hypocrites, sociopaths and self-deluded liars conditioned. This also infers they are not created with such characters, which is in keeping with Al’Qur’an’s statement regarding the Islamic fitrah with which each child is born.

If this deviation and shunting aside of fitrah is not corrected by the time of adolescence and guided by truth towards virtue, then non-virtuous pre-occupations become ‘fixed’ (i.e. concretely conditioned) in the soul visavis adolescent peer pressure, wherein the child learns that ‘everybody is doing it’ so to speak.  They also learn that if he/she does not run with the herd, their needs and perceived needs – now entirely emotionally centered on being ‘accepted’ – are simply not met!  If the child’s peers and superiors overwhelmingly adjust to the ‘herd mentality’ of this conformism, truth is subjected to the corruption of public opinion wherein adab (justice) is degraded to  pop-culture standards.  Here we find traditions born of human denial that oppose common sense such as a two party political system wherein politically correct thought is conditioned as the norm — ala G. Kenneth Galbraith’s assessment [3].  Meanwhile, sins such as fornication, ‘divine right’ plunder and white collar thievery become ethically acceptable and tolerated, especially among the ruling elite or so-called “educated” class.  Hence, the manufacture of hypocrisy — the Neo-American Way.

[1] Some children suffer bedwetting for this reason, because the autonomous nerves governing the bladder have not yet completed the process of form and function.

[2] Hypocrisy: The practice of claiming to have higher standards or beliefs than is the case. ORIGIN: Middle English: from Old French ypocrisie, via ecclesiastical Latin, from Greek hupokrisis ‘acting of a theatrical part’, from hupokrinesthai ‘play a part, pretend’, from hupo ‘under’ + krinein ‘decide, judge’. (Oxford Dict).  This latter definition is often referred to in Al-Kitab in references to those who’ set themselves up’ as judges of God’s Word or Law.

[3] The Anatomy of Power (Boston, 1983): Three historical and effective means of wielding power regardless of the polity’s metaphysical orientation, so that injustice is certain to triumph:

a.   Condign: meaning the ability of the khassa to impose sufficiently unpleasant or painful alternatives;
b.   Compensatory: win submission by offering affirmative rewards (something of value to those submitted) i.e. cronyism or apartheid systems of reward (e.g. large numbers of government employees);
c.   Conditioned: exercised by changing beliefs via persuasion, education, and social commitment to what seems natural, proper, or right.‖