The Book The Sorrowful Muslim's Guide in a Changing World

I recently re-read my book The Sorrowful Muslim's Guide in preparation for this edition (more than twenty-three years after the first edition). I did not find a single phrase or paragraph that necessitated deletion or change in the light of the events of the past twenty-three years.

However, some issues have become worthy additions after gaining in significance, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, even being at the centre of their concerns. At the top of these concerns are two issues: terrorism and democratisation.

Terrorism

• 1. In the last chapter of his book about the history of the twentieth century The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm predicted that terrorism would become a major feature of the twentieth century due to fundamental changes in the world order. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialism in Eastern Europe, the United States dominated the world's resources and controlled the economies of recipient countries through aid packages as well as via International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans. This increased US capacity to pressure foreign governments or even overthrow them, and to destabilise them should they pursue policies that did not serve American interests, insisting on their right to independently take decisions. In view of the increasing difficulty for the opponents of US policy to escape, even if it was to distant caves in remote countries, there will be an increase in the number of disillusioned people, rebelling against such policies. They will resort to terrorism and acts of violence rather than pursuing normal channels of opposition and disobedience. They will resort to the dissemination of hostile ideas and attempt all possible scenarios – doomed to fail – to eliminate the injustice.

This situation is reminiscent of al-Nābighah al-Dhubiyānī when he incurred the wrath of al-Nuʿmān b. al-Mundhir and chanted the following verse:

It is also reminiscent of those who rebelled against the Roman emperors during the first and second centuries ad, when the vast Roman Empire was governed by one man.