Page
▼
ideological battle and political confrontation are integral to the Prophetic methodology of change
why doesn't Hizb ut Tahrir assemble institutions or participate in Jihad to re-establish Khilafah?
Numerous Muslim ideologues and activists have criticized Hizb ut Tahrir for its receiving of a politico-learned methodology of progress in contradistinction to movements which have embraced a more institutional methodology and/or insurrectionist armed methods. What they neglect to comprehend is:
(1) the nature of the Prophet method
(2) the nature of tughyan i.e. [political] oppression and
(3) the power-mechanisms of the hegemonic world-system. To better comprehend the Party's methodology, it is critical to comprehend that it is taking into account an Islamic anti-systemic to systemic and decolonial methodology, as we will clarify underneath:
The Nature of the Prophetic Methodology
The Prophetic methodology is in light of the development of a critical cognizance which kills every transient entitie (be it men, frameworks, thoughts, and so on.) from dishonestly obtained properties of Absoluteness. It is, as it were, taking into account the first maxim of La ilaha ila Allah: the discriminating methodology of invalidation. It goes without saying, that these Absolute properties are not characteristic for worldly substances but instead they are erroneously obtained through a false cognizance and sedimented practices (the religion of the progenitors, establishments i.e. the systemization of social relations and thoughts, et cetera). To put it plainly, idol-construction is a learned procedure and in this way idol-deconstruction obliges a counter-intelligent methodology. Shots can't deconstruct a "thought" – no one but thoughts can subvert different thoughts.
The Nature of Tughyan
Compulsion and material subordination, if not supplemented with a false awareness which traits god-like credits to the coercer, is not tugyan yet rather one type of mistreatment. Implying that, if the abused perceive that the oppressor is in reality an illegitimate oppressor – that oppressor is not a taghout/false-god. Besides, from a Qur'anic viewpoint, the birthplaces of tughyan and its corresponding manifestations of material and/or ideological subordination is not the result of the taghi's material capacities yet rather it is a result of the taghi's transgression of the Islamic tareeqah, all the more particularly, the points of confinement of rulership in Islam. It starts with epistemic hubris i.e. the taghi's case to be a definitive referent of learning, legitimacy as well as power. It is, by and by, an intellectual process. Power has various structures, the most deceptive of which is epistemic-oppression:
The Nature of the Capitalist World-System
The colonial hegemon – the United States – can't depend singularly on its military and economic systems of power. These manifestations of "hard power" are just disciplinary instruments which are utilized when the colonized inquiry the colonizers "sanity" and the predominant neo-liberal and Westphalian rationale (that of the nation-state). The crucial wellspring of the colonizers power is: character development i.e. consciousness development – a methodology through which the colonized's political skylines are constrained by the predominant philosophy and through which we build our personality entirely in connection to the colonial center (this has often been alluded to as Coloniality instead of just Colonization). How is this type of subordination and expert/slave lingo protected? Bertrand Badie, in his fundamental content 'The Imported State: the Westernization of the World Order' clarifies that colonization is a two-way process: it is both sent out (by the colonial center) and imported by the colonized elites. To put it plainly, our subordination is inseparably connected to the "ideological state apparatus" – i.e. the modernizing secular nation-state. Likewise, we must participate in an ideological battle (as-sira' al-fikri) against the ideology of the "ideological state apparatus" and a political battle (al-kifah as-siyassi) against the importing apparatus. Both ideological battle (as-sira' al-fikri) and political confrontation (al-kifah as-siyassi) are integral to the methodology of Hizb ut Tahrir.
Methodologies which diminish "activity" like those of armed insurgences and institution-building are insufficient in that they don't perceive the need of intellectual liberation and associative institutional change (instead of institutional-building – and consequently not hostile to false system) and institutional change must be gone before by a defeating of the hegemonic arguments which legitimize the Jahili institutions. Moreover, the Party does not derive its methodology from the episteme of the colonizer (similar to the case with reformist "Islamist") nor has it added to its methodology in response to the materiality of the colonizer (just like the case with the Salafi Jihadi method) – yet rather, it draws on an option episteme: revelation. It is hence, that the founder of Hizb ut Tahrir, Imam Taqi ad Din a Nabhani suitably named the Party: the Liberation Party.