"go forth, light armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of ALLAH! that is best for you if ye but knew" (ix: 41).
what is the way? lost, i ended up in an island off the coast of aspiration, on the shores of cash rules everything - cream - "through the lights camera, action, glitter and gold, i unfold the scroll, plant seeds to stampede the globe..." nas tells us, in verbal intercourse, and we listened, looking for a connection to Higher, looking to move past the sheepskins and ralph lauren symbols we were branded by.
i fled, as surah ix, suggests you do. suggests you see what happens when you walk away from what appears:
"travel freely in the land four months, and know that ye cannot escape ALLAH and that ALLAH will confound the disbelievers" (ix : 2)
i ended up in domsey's, off of marcy, behind the projects and past the hasidic warehouses. domsey's was a four floor thrift shop under the williamsburgh bridge, before the takeover, when hipsters where foretold in street scriptures of a war that would ensue, one that was so silent, that it would appear as business as usual, and the first casualty would be truth. it always is, the streets said at mid day, in front of the weed spot, which the cops turned a blind eye to.
i left the tribe of queens, i rolled with, in the polo mansion, on madison ave, and snuck into domsey's, getting wardrobes for $20, and rocking the village look, the urban hippy image, as it was classified. my underground and i took pride in this. glorified these threads, found a way to place it on a pedestal and let morrisey and robert smith and eddie veder and diggable planets and the other stars who rocked this look, be our guides, be our light for understanding, for acceptance, for assimilation into the same realm my queens tribe of polo and tommy hill, was part of.
like the idolaters of old, i took in celebrities as my idol. i looked to them for my fashion sense, for a nod. "they have taken as lords beside ALLAH their rabbis and their monks and the messiah son of mary, when they were bidden to worship only One God. there is no god save Him" (ix: 31).
my monks were singers and actors who were guided by mirrors and nihilism, a look of coffee and a newspaper to criticize. an empty that was produced by the hollow. until i was paused by the newer gods, the ones that chicks batted their lashes for - jay and fifty and juel santana, and men who wore earrings worth more than the gdp of their entire hood. i listened attentively to the gucci this, diamond that, and found myself taking heed. reciting their scripture in the chinatown knock-off spots were i copped fake gold chains and sold them when they got a little brown.
"triumphant are those who turn repentant, those who serve, those who praise, those who fast, those who enjoin the right and who forbid the wrong and those who keep the limits of ALLAH" ( ix: 112).
the limits resonate throughout the surahs. the purchase of diamonds and the value of gold and silk and armani, etc, devalue the earth, the precious reserves that these products are stolen from, the exploitative tilling of land that rapes and pillages forests and lakes, makes them into dunes of bangladeshi ash.
"know they not that ALLAH knoweth both their secret and the thought they confide, and that ALLAH is the Knower of things hidden" (ix: 78).
my rebrith is daily, although it began over a decade ago, when the hollow gripped me by the throat at the supper club, held me up against the wall of the v.i.p section my transient crew and i popped bottles we snuck in. after i left again, after, another after. the hollow spoke britannica, spoke ancient volumes from alexandria and i heard and ignored and i heard and pretended not to and i heard and was stirred into fasting six months after ramadhan, six months after another make up to break up.
since i've been treading, like a child moving past a crawl, like an adult on ice for the first time in bryant park, like a hunchback walking a tight rope for the first time. i'm walking like the ekg of a bass head. i'm walking and listening to voices, voices like my own who says one thing and does another. who believes in Truth and dances with the devil. so, it's easy for me to see it in others, the hypocrites, surah ix tells us. they are all around. they are there to confuse you, to restrain you from growth, to have you think you are missing something, to have you hate like them cause they are miserable, cause they haven't dealt with their misery.
"the hypocrites, both men and women, proceed one from another. they enjoin the wrong, and they forbid the right, and they with-hold their hands (from spending for the cause of ALLAH). they forget ALLAH, so hath He forgotten them" (ix: 67)
i see them and they remind me to forget. they have the look of menace, of derision. i see them cause i see myself in them. i know that i'm capable of the same, although i don't believe i am. i know they are me, they are my lower i, the one that produces toxic emotional landfills that can be seen like highlighter colors from pluto.
the hypocrites are all around. it is the default babylon frequency we bop to, we walk in. it is the train we are all in unless we choose to get off, unless we choose to steer away, as the late howard zinn reminded us - you can't be neutral in a moving train.
give peace to all. love to the hypocrites. but stay on your path. stay focused. keep your armour on. the battle has just begun. walk, and seek repentance. "ALLAH is He who is the Relenting, the Merciful" (ix : 102).
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