Tag Archives: Black Democrat

Choosing Evil: The Ideology of Destruction

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There’s this thing where ethics aren’t what they used to be. This idea that people are trying to replace the ideas of good and bad with better or worse… and that is incorrect. You gotta keep your ethics intact because good and bad is a compass that helps you find the way. And a person that only does what’s better or worse is the easiest type of person to control. They are a mouse in a maze that just finds the cheese. But the one who knows about good and bad will realize that he’s in a maze.

Dave Chappelle at Allen University (South Carolina) March 20, 2017

I have paid close attention to every presidential election since the beginning of my adult life. Without fail, the debate ensues around voting for the lesser of two evils in many progressive circles. This is in lieu of any viable progressive rivals, who the American people are told are “unelectable,” a status that is reinforced by state-level interventions to keep them off the ballots. While the decision to vote for a softer, friendlier (usually Democratic) candidate seems to make sense in the moment, this reactionary strategy has only emboldened those candidates to become more evil and take the progressive (especially African American) vote for granted. Yet, the question remains: “at what point will we stop voting for evil?” While comedian Dave Chappelle’s words from 2017 may seem prophetic to some, the ideology of the lesser of two evils has been rejected by Ḥanīfs of ancient times, not the least of which appears in the story of Hārūt and Mārūt.

Hārūt and Mārūt

According to Imam Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī in his book on angelology Al-Ḥabā’ik fī Akhbār al-Malā’ik, Hārūt and Mārūt are first alluded to in the Qur’an in al-Baqarah: 30 where we first encounter a conversation between God and the angels concerning the creation of mankind:

{وَإِذۡ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلۡمَلَـٰٓئِكَةِ إِنِّي جَاعِلٞ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ خَلِيفَةٗۖ قَالُوٓاْ أَتَجۡعَلُ فِيهَا مَن يُفۡسِدُ فِيهَا وَيَسۡفِكُ ٱلدِّمَآءَ وَنَحۡنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمۡدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَۖ قَالَ إِنِّيٓ أَعۡلَمُ مَا لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ}

˹Remember˺ when your Lord said to the angels, “I am going to place a successive ˹human˺ authority on earth.” They asked ˹Allah˺, “Will You place in it someone who will spread corruption there and shed blood while we glorify Your praises and proclaim Your holiness?” Allah responded, “I know what you do not know.”

The Clear Qur’an translation

The second allusion to Hārūt and Mārūt appears later in the sūrah in verse 102 concerning the false accusations of Prophet Solomon practicing magic. Hārūt and Mārūt warned people about practicing magic and taught people how to differentiate between miracles and magic.

18th century Ottoman representation of Hārūt and Mārūt courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

“The Lesser Evil”: An Angelic Refutation

The backstory to these angels offers us some wisdom about the dangers of “the lesser evil” ideology. According to tradition, Hārūt and Mārūt were sent to earth where they ruled during the time of the Prophet Idrīs or Enoch. They were given the appetite and desires of people (shahwah) in order to test if they, who had once lived as angels, would behave differently when faced with the same temptations of normal men. Their story is as follows:

And it was said to them: ‘Choose from amongst you the two best angels and I will give the two of them a task; and I will prohibit the two of them [from doing certain things].’ And they chose Hārūt and Mārūt. So the two of them were sent down to Earth and the desires of the sons of Adam were aroused in them. [God] ordered the two that they should serve Him and not associate anything with Him. He banned them from killing prohibited individuals, from eating prohibited foods and from fornicating, stealing and drinking wine. The two remained on the Earth for a time ruling the people with justice. This was during the time of Enoch. And at that time there was a woman, who was the most beautiful woman, just as the beauty of Venus is amongst the rest of the stars. The two of them came to her, spoke softly to her, and wanted her on her own; but she refused unless the two took her orders and her faith. So the two asked her about her faith and she brought out to them an idol and said: ‘This is what I worship.’ And the two said: ‘There is no need for us to worship this.’ So they went and stayed away for a while. Then the two came to her and they wanted her on her own and she said as she had said before, so they went away. Then they came to her [again] and they wanted her on her own, and when she saw that they refused to worship the idol, she said to the two of them: ‘Choose one of three faults: worshiping this idol, killing this person, or drinking wine.’ And the two said: ‘None of these are right, but the least contemptible of the three is drinking the wine.’ So they drank the wine. [The wine] was taken from them both and they fornicated with the woman. The two then feared that the person would reveal what they had done, so they killed him. When the drunkenness lifted from them and they realised what sin they had done, they wanted to go up to heaven; but they could not, as it had been made inaccessible to them. And the cover that was between the two of them and between the people of heaven was lifted up, and the angels looked down at what had come to pass. They wondered with great wonder and they came to understand that whoever is hidden [from God], is the one with less fear. After that they began to ask for forgiveness for whoever was on the earth.

It was said to the two of them: ‘Choose between the punishment of this world and the punishment of the next.’ The two said: ‘As for the punishment of this world, it will come to an end and it will pass. As for the pain of the Angels and theology next world, it will not come to an end.’ So they chose the punishment of this world. The two stayed in Babylon and they were punished.

(Burge and Suyūṭī, 2012, pp. 94-95)

In this story, Hārūt and Mārūt were tricked into committing greater evil by doing what they perceived as a lesser evil. In reality, the lesser evil was simply a gateway into more evil. It was presented as a thing that would satisfy their immediate desire for drink and sustenance; something that is permissible under normal circumstances. However, compromising their principles by the seemingly innocent act of drinking the wine led to intoxication which led to committing fornication which led to murder. How many a prisoner sits in his cell pondering a similar scenario?

Conclusion

This story was intended to refute the Sabian position that gave favor to angels over men. It demonstrates that humans have favor because in order to avoid sin they must overcome their desires, while angels simply do not sin because they do not have  such desires. However, there is also wisdom in this story for the average American voter who are forced to choose between duplicitous politicians of either the Democratic or Republican party. Politicians from the local to federal levels insist on doing the bidding of narcissistic, unethical, and devilish entities instead of the will of citizens who entrust them with their money and power. In choosing to stick with the status quo of Democratic and Republican party leadership we have taken that intoxicating sip that has put us on the path of destruction.

The 2024 elections have been a dirty game given the Republicans’ assassination shenanigans and the Democrats’ shiesty switcheroo. Both Democrats and Republicans have shown to be abetters of genocide and endless war, with blatant corruption among their ranks as witnessed in cases of Dem. Bob Menendez, Dem. George Norcross, Rep. George Santos, not to mention Trump himself. We at the Maurchives advocate for justice and non-violent, creative, and – dare I say – revolutionary solutions to human problems. Therefore, it is with the revolutionary spirit that we endorse Jill Stein’s presidential bid on the Green Party ticket.

Dr. Jill Stein and Butch Ware (Green Party Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates)

References

Burge, S. R., and Suyūṭī. Angels in Islam: Jalal al-Din al-Suyuṭī’s al-Ḥabāʼik Fī Akhbār al-Malāʼik. Routledge, 2012.

Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn al-. Al-Ḥabā’ik Fī Akhbār al-Malā’ik. Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyyah, 1988.

Renshaw, Jarrett. “How US States Make It Tough for Third Parties in Elections.” Reuters, 18 Jan. 2024. http://www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-us-states-make-it-tough-third-parties-elections-2024-01-18/.

Soul On Ice Cube

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Recently, the rapper and actor Ice Cube has stirred quite a commotion by his association with the Trump campaign, who contacted him to discuss his Contract With Black America. Many African Americans on the left have attacked him or belittled him on grounds that he was attempting to split the Black vote, he was being used by the Trump campaign, that his plan was misogynistic, that he was oblivious to the work of other activists as well as Biden’s Lift Every Voice Plan, not being articulate enough, etc.

While it is possible that these critiques are true, they serve to divert attention to the merits of Ice Cube’s content and strategy. Anyone who has followed him on Twitter since July (or the 1990’s) is aware of his political positions. He has unequivocally expressed his disillusionment with both the Republican and Democratic parties, while maintaining a pragmatic view of political engagement. One that allows him to work with whichever party wins the election.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJQJ4foP8RY
Ice Cube in his own words.

This political pragmatism is not new. In fact, Ice Cube’s strategy is reminiscent of that of Floyd McKissick during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. McKissick was a lawyer from North Carolina and a Civil Rights leader. He was one of the first four African American students to desegregate the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Although he was renown in Civil Rights circles ascending to the head of CORE in 1966, he was part of the contingent who advocated for Black Power. He hosted Malcolm X at UNC after he was rejected to speak at the predominantly Black North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University). He also associated with the likes of Kwame Toure (Stokely Charmichael), Ron Karenga, and Martin Luther King Jr.

In the spirit of African resistance in the Americas, he revised the notion of Maroonage in the post-Civil Rights Era with his establishment of Soul City in rural North Carolina. The city was to be a model of how African-Americans can circumvent the struggles of acquiring political and economic power in existing urban areas where the odds are already stacked against them by establishing their own cities from scratch. In order to achieve this goal, he sought the help of the federal government to pass the Urban Growth and Community Development Act, which would secure funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for this and similar projects. He and those that followed him made a strategic alliance to support the election and re-election of Republican president Nixon.

This was a controversial move even in his time. We know that the Democratic Party, prior to the 1960’s, was the party of the Ku Klux Klan and White segregationists. However, it was the policies of presidents Kennedy and Johnson that caused them to shift to the Republican Party. Yet, this shift was still new and tenuous by the 1970’s and African Americans overall were more politically conscious than ever. Party loyalty rhetoric was at a minimum because many African Americans in the South had just overcome the Democratic and Republican parties’ Jim Crow restrictions to their right to vote.

P-4930/6 , in the Floyd B. McKissick Papers #4930, Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the African American Resources Collection of North Carolina Central University.

The Democratic Party later became known as the party of Civil Rights because they passed a series of Civil Rights bills. Nonetheless, politically conscious Black people knew that the bills were the death knell of the movement or at the very least an amicable diversion from the goals they sought to attain. Integration was not the same as desegregation. Integration allowed for Black people to join the White economic, social, and political establishment – at the bottom of course. However, desegregation was aimed at releasing the yolk of Jim Crow and post-Reconstruction Era measures to suppress Black economic, social, and political power. In other words, they aimed at restoring the Black power that would have naturally existed without racist intervention to suppress it.

Floyd McKissick speaks on Black Power in 1966.

I see the Contract With Black America as a means to revive the spirit of Black Power that has lain dormant since at least the 1990’s. Ice Cube has been vocal that his plan for Black American descendants of enslaved people and not broader categories such as “people of color” or “minorities” that could divert funds from them. He has explicitly criticized the Republican and Democratic parties, while being open to work with whichever party wins the election. Furthermore, he has called for Black people not to depend on campaign promises and lip service, but to put political pressure on the victors well after the elections. I personally do not see anything wrong with this perspective. Rather, it sounds like a plan.

One characteristic of the Trump Years has been the stark polarization that his presidency has forced the American public to take. This has clearly taken place within the Muslim community with the rise of the “Akh-Right” and “Social Justice Warriors.” Likewise, this has taken place within the African American community with more aggressive Black conservatives and more staunch Black liberals. As they mudsling during the election season and attempt to recuperate in its aftermath, I commend those Black Muslims with major platforms like Ice Cube and Dave Chappelle who are still thinking clearly in the mist of hysteria.