Is this really 1914?

For those historical-minded among us, we recently witnessed the Centennial Anniversary of the commencement of World War 1, which began on 28 July 1914. More than any event in modern history, WW1 was truly epoch-changing in its consequences. Prior to the war, the world was divided into competing empires, each Crown gaining its legitimacy through an appeal to a higher religious claim, be it the Ottomon Muslim Caliphate, the Christian Eastern Orthodox Czar of Russia or the Catholic Church of Western Europe. Post-war, and 9 million deaths later, there was an entirely different landscape: secular nation-states replaced imperial strongholds, and a religious world order was done away altogether. The partitioned Muslim world in particular is still reeling from the effects of what was known as the "The War to End All Wars" (which it clearly was not).

With its 100th anniversary, many Western historians still ponder as to what exactly caused this breakout of war, even if they are agreed that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the trigger. Yet an even more interesting discussion is taking place; are we at the cusp of a new global conflict? With nuclear-armed Russia and NATO at seeming loggerheads over Ukraine and civil war, bloodshed and anarchy spread over much of the Middle East, the situation seems quite precarious. The ingredients seem there. Yet much of the prognostication over whether we may be heading for WW3 or not (for example, here and here) also has at its heart an idea an interesting conception of history, that history is patterned.

In the ancient world, the vision of history was either one of decline (that history has departed from a glorious utopian age to gradually one of increasing ignorance and decadence) or cyclical (history will continuously experience peaks and troughs, rises and falls). Only in the modern West over the last 500 years did we begin to view history as one of progressive incline, with each era being more enlightened and just plain better, be it in the areas of scientific knowledge, material well-being or cultural sensibilities.

As history marches onward, and with each passing century, we can look back and reflect on how far we've trodden. In these moments of reflection, we are struck by the occurrence of seminal events that echo those which have occurred before or after by almost a century.  Major events which occur at around the same time in one century often have a parallel event at approximately the same year in the century that has passed or is to come. Are the parallels mere coincidences, or do they suggest that there are deeper patterns to history that we have yet to uncover?

A classic example is the dual assassinations of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865)  and John. F Kennedy (1963), both with far-reaching implications. The presidents were elected to the House in 1860 and 1960 respectively, and both purportedly assassinated by assassins with three names you are likely to remember (John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald). Both also were known to dabble in some interesting monetary experiments, in Lincoln's case being the Greenbacks, and Kennedy by issuing silver certificates. The more you dig beneath the surface, the more similarities arise.

In the early 1870s, the world powers, headed by the British Empire, at the time colluded to introduce the world's first international gold standard, allowing for convertibility of paper money into gold by a fixed standard ratio. Conversely, this time period is marked by historian as the exact peak point of British power, following which the empire when into imperial decline and steadily experienced a loss of financial capital and dominance. Nearly a 100 years later, in 1971, the super power of the time, the USA, made the decision to do away with the gold standard altogether, now having the dollar alone as the reserve standard for the world with gold no longer functioning as money. Strangely, the exact period is also seen by analysts as the peak of US dominance, with the de-industrialization, deregulation and Reagonomics slowly but surely whittling the might of the super power following that.

Not all parallels have to be exact matches, many are opposites as well. In the same way that 1914 ushered in a time of conflict between competitive nation states, nearly a 100 years earlier in 1815, the Congress of Vienna was held in Europe to settle the Napoleonic Wars, with a diplomatic settlement leading to a century of peace and prosperity in the region between the colonial powers.

There are many, many more example to bring up of history repeating itself in significant ways. Moving to the present moment, there is in the background undeniably a sense of foreboding, that the troubling hotspots in different parts of the world are only a sign of larger conflagration to come, threatening to engulf all of Mankind. Perhaps this may seem a tad fatalistic though. In the end, we also must believe in human agency as being able to set our own destiny, and the destiny need not necessarily be destruction. Nevertheless, what we can expect soon to come in the world stage are events that will likely dictate the course of the next century, assuming human beings survive that long. As the Chinese may have said, "may you live in interesting times."

The Secularization of Money

Paper money was created by the Devil. At least, according to Goethe.

The famous German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) wrote the two part epic of Faust, considered one of the finest works of German literature. In Faust, readers are told the story of a young scholar Faust who wagers his own soul in a deal with Mephistopheles (Shaytan) for the ability to allow him to fulfill his desires on the Earth.

In the second part of the epic, Faust and Mephistopheles attend the court of a ruler whose empire is in financial doldrums and stagnancy due to deflation. Noticing that the medium of currency is gold, the Devil convinces the ruler to adopt the use of paper money (issued as promissory notes in exchange for gold yet to be unearthed from the ground). While at first seeming to restore the kingdom to financial health, in time a paper-printing bonanza leads to excessive spending and further problems.

The scene here in Goethe's Faust was seen to be a commentary on paper money usage during the French Revolution. However, the link between money and the sacred implied during the story hints at something far more profound. What made precious metals like gold and silver so revered, so special that they functioned as money for so long, and why was a shift from them considered such a perversion?

Secular and Sacred

The term 'secular' seems to be vastly misunderstood today. Secularization is a process of demystification and desacralisation, to render something as ordinary and exclusively worldly. It is a process that can take place in politics, economics, and even in normal everyday life. Secularization is not anti-religious but irreligious. It is framed not in opposition to religion and Revelation but in complete ignorance of it altogether.

The sacred is the opposite, it is a worldview that entails that processes and items of this world are suffused with a extra-dimensional aspect of blessedness beyond the mere appearance. The spiritual and the transcendent are aspects of reality that cannot be measured or quantified but nevertheless are vitally important.

From the secular perspective, what we see is what we get, and that is that. Sacredness is sucked out of reality as if through a vacuum cleaner, and whatever is left behind is to be valued in terms of its mere utility and human convenience.

It is erroneous to assume that money has somehow escaped the secularizing process. In my previous article, I briefly explained the transition from commodity-based money to their modern paper and digital counterparts. This transition didn't take place in a vacuum, but as part of a larger secularizing change undergoing mankind where religion ceased to be an active force in public life, and in the larger political and economic spheres, including the monetary. Any analysis on monetary history that doesn't recognize the spiritual value of both gold and silver, and how they were stripped of this quality, is incomplete.

Special Metal

The natural world has always been averse to the presence of metals. A stroll through a forest or woodlands will never reveal metal objects, which tend to remain hidden in mines or underground (the 'womb of the Earth'). Exceptions to this rule were both gold and silver, which on the riverbeds and in sandy deposits would reveal themselves openly to the World, and were hence viewed as "an extra-natural state of metallic existence" in the words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Until modern times, gold and silver were seen as hallowed objects with a connection to the spiritual realm. The ancient Egyptians were renowned for their decorative use of gold on their holy sarcophagus's. According to the Jewish tradition, when God gave Musa (pbuh) the Ten Commandments, He also instructed him to construct a Sanctuary and tabernacle for His worship, saying, "thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold around about" (The Power of Gold, 2000) Silver was also used as a traditional healing element, even to this day.

It is well known that the gold Dinar and silver Dirham were the standard means of currency for most Muslim history. Allah (sbt) in the Quran mentions gold and silver as items of natural value for mankind. "Beautified for people is the love of that which they desire - of women and sons, heaped-up sums of gold and silver, fine branded horses, and cattle and tilled land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, but Allah has with Him the best return." (Surah Al-Imran, 14) Beyond this, gold and silver possess Paradisiacal qualities given the numerous references to the presence of the metals in the Afterlife in the Quran and Hadith. Yet modern Muslims conveniently overlook these references and their deeper implications.

The ancients recognized the coming of an Iron Age when civilization will adopt a ubiquitous use of metal (think bridges, cars, skyscrapers, etc). This was considered as the last age of human history and a time of untold misery and immorality. Yet the predominance of this metallic state of life has led paradoxically to a devaluing of gold and silver as only anachronisms to the modern man.

Current Debate

In the Muslim world, there is a burgeoning movement to bring back the use of Dinar and Dirhams to ensure that the economy conforms to the Shari'ah, and this faces stiff resistance from Muslim defenders of paper money. Much of this debate focuses on whether money should have intrinsic value and how money should be free from the effects of inflation.

These are no doubt important points that should be brought up, but the spiritual element of money is also a dimension that needs to be emphasized to ensure that the dialogue regarding money in Islam it itself not expressed in solely secular terms. The value of gold and silver is not just gained due to scarcity and shininess, but the value is itself a gift from the Divine. To acknowledge this requires us to remove the modernist blinkers put on us by centuries of economic indoctrination.

We must come to accept that using gold and silver in the market is not just a economic transaction, but an act of worship, and paper can no longer be considered an adequate substitute.

Highly Ethical, Deeply Immoral

Do you consider yourself a good person? Is it because you pay your bills on time, don't lie on your tax forms, and avoid crossing a red light? Or do you think there is more to being a good person?

Part of the myth of progress is the assumption that we as moderns have reached the apex of ethical judgement, that we have crossed the path from barbarism to civilization. In other words, we have evolved from a state of crude moral attitudes to one of advanced cultured sensibility. This prejudice towards the past is not as pronounced as it used to be, with the slow-moving collapse of much of modern society giving many a reality check. What lies at the root of this collapse I feel is the confusion over two key concepts of ethics and morality. They are not the same, and a conflation of the two is only a symptom of a larger problem.

What is the difference?

Who is considered 'good' used to be objectively understood. 'Goodness' was a quality that was recognizable based on an individual's character and conduct. Yet today, the universality of goodness no longer seems to be there. Whether you acknowledge someone as good depends heavily on whether you come from a ethical-based mindset or a moral-based mindset.

Ethics (from the Greek 'ethos' meaning custom or habit) relates to the rightness and wrongness regarding the rules of conduct for a person as determined by their society, group or culture. The thrust behind it is that certain types of conduct are either approved or disapproved based on society's understanding of them. Ethics are externally defined by others, and as such are more flexible in the application depending on social, legal and professional perimeters.

Morals relate to the belief of the inherent goodness/badness of our actions and intentions based on higher principles. Morality transcends typical social and cultural boundaries and usually remains less subject to changes or alterations. Morals usually connect to deeply held beliefs of a higher order of existence and the denial of a morally neutral universe.

From the above, it is clear that the most highly ethical person may not necessarily be following any moral code whatsoever, whereas for a deeply moral person choosing to follow an ethical code depends on the degree to which that code corresponds with his or her belief system. Ethics in essence is an externally manifested code while morality is internally driven.

A Bit of History

Ethical theory from Aristotle onwards and throughout the ancient and medieval periods had a strong teleological emphasis, focusing on discovering the best path for life so as to reach a final goal for mankind. Religion provided a deep source of guidance in this effort. The Abrahamic traditions in particular sought their ethical inspiration from the Revealed Texts. Ethical obligations were derived from the moral precepts of Divine Inspiration, and in many cases from their legalistic frameworks as well. Indeed, until the 18th century, "this conviction that there is a divine source of absolute ethical obligation remained almost unchallenged in the history of ethics." (A Brief History of Ethics, 1968)

With the agreed foundation of the Divine as the source of all moral authority and ethics, there was still a wide spectrum of thoughts on how ethics should be formulated, for what intentions and what are the best ways of fulfilling ethical obligations.The range of opinions of philosophers, theologians and scholars from Plato to Al-Ghazzali to Aviccena to Thomas Aquinas is too vast to be covered here in sufficient detail though.

Things began to change with the onset of the secular age. Beginning with William Ockham in the 13th and 14th centuries, the idea was expounded that "moral good or and evil have nothing to do with the internal character of man or his action but rests on the external attribution of a moral quality." (A Brief History of Ethics, 1968) This marked a radical departure from previous theories, in a way externalising the judgement of moral actions rather than looking at morality from what is within.

Gradually, with the emergence of the Deist philosophy in England, ethics was detached from religion as a subject of study, implying that religion may not be the sole source of guidance. Instead of God, "the general will" (or la volonte generale as stated by Rosseau in The Social Contract), which is the collective judgement of the people on moral and social issues, became the criterion for ethical standards. From here emerged a major strand of ethical thought that persists today: utilitarianism (doing something with the intention of the maximizing of social benefit at the least social cost).

The bottom line was that ethical norms were ceasing to be conditioned by moral upbringing, and more by social conventions and pure reasoning.

Where Does that Leave Us?

The modern world concentrates on ethical guidelines with an almost tacit acceptance that long-standing moral norms are no longer publicly relevant. Ethics itself has been reduced to manual of best practices for organized social behaviour rather than a means of moral elevation. There is a difference between being a good worker or a good citizen and being essentially a good human being. You can have individuals who follow all the rules that society puts before them meticulously, but in the end have a vacuum where a soul should be.

The British columnist Peter Hitchen, wrong though he may be on many issues, was correct is stating in his book The Rage Against God that, "to be effectively absolute, a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter." The idea that we are in a morally neutral universe with no objective standard of good or bad is an anathema; yet in much of our day to day functioning, that in practice is how we live our lives. At the very least, knowing the distinction between ethics and morals is important for realising that when it comes to human behaviour, all that glitters is not gold bullion.

The Global Culture of Complaint

One of the supposed comforts of the modern globalized world is the sense of familiarity one feels as one travels from one end of the world to the other. There is a degree of reassurance in entering a new country and encountering a new language, yet still recognizing McDonald's golden arches or Nike's big swish. As a frequent traveler myself, I cannot help but notice the cultural standardization hasn't stopped at brand names, but has crept into personal traits as well. And one cultural denominator that I find particularly irksome is what I call the global culture of complaint.

We moderns complain too much. What was once the preserve of catty grandmothers, how now become an all-too-common feature among even the more reasonable and well-placed folk of today. The complaining I speak of is not the voicing of legitimate concerns, nor the healthy venting of built-up grievances, nor constructive remarks aimed at individual or social betterment. What I am talking about is the knee-jerk cribbing about every perceived mishap or inconvenience, the perpetual whining about affairs that do not directly concern the person, and the endless knit-picking over minor details. In a modern world awash in every sort of technological advantage you can think, with unprecedented access to all manners of comforts and luxuries, we have developed an almost pathological tendency to let the world know when we don't feel all is well.

This is not to say that the modern world doesn't present its own unique set of challenges, from traffic jams to computer hardware issues, that can be taxing on our nerves. But complaining over the smallest matters has become so habitual and so socially acceptable so as to be unnoticed. If people actually had the presence of mind to monitor their conversations, they may be surprised of the size of their complaint quota. Gone are the days of the stiff upper lip, when sabr (patience) was upheld as a virtue and the dictum was, "If you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all." Now displays of patience are conflated with being passive, or worse, being a doormat. So the world suffers from an overdose of this verbal diarrhea as a result.

What I find specifically undesirable about this trait is the inherent negativity behind it. A large portion of the complaints we utter may be things that to a positive mindset would be overlooked, or simply viewed as too insignificant to draw attention to. It takes a special breed of person to constantly look at the glass half empty, to view the world through a lens of imperfection. Similar to the boy who cried wolf, whinging constantly also cheapens actual complaints of merit. When a wise sage voices some complaint, on the other hand, people do take notice.

I have listed below just some common causes for the complaint culture based merely on my empirical observation of people-to-people interaction. It is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully sheds some light on why we blather about this problem or that:

Entitlement Attitude - The modern generations have taken the credo of 'more for less' to mean 'demand more from society for as little achievement as possible'. They have fostered an entitlement attitude whereby receiving treatment lower than a certain standard is viewed as a violation of the social contract. As a rule, expectations from others are given preference to responsibilities towards others.

Inflated Sense of Self-Worth - Connected to the first point, people nowadays have nurtured egos the size of Jupiter. (Just look in the dictionary at all the words listed beginning with 'self'' to give you an idea of how self-obsessed, no pun intended, the modern world can be). Some slight problem arises and the instant reaction is to treat the matter as some manner of personal attack, to take umbrage at the disrespect towards our royal presence. This is quite commonly visible at some fancy restaurant with the waiter on the receiving end.

Too Soft - The average middle class lifestyle now exceeds the more princely lifestyle of perhaps a century ago. The modern world has cushioned us to a large extent and shielded us from tougher realities outside of our bubbles. Once we taste a hint of discomfort, either with the aircon malfunctioning or food blander than we would like, we cannot restrain ourselves in voicing displeasure, we simply haven't been conditioned to do so. No wonder the caliph Omar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be please with him) recommended occasionally walking barefoot.

Ingratitude - A deep sense of gratitude in the Divine Providence grounds a person and lets them encounter many obstacles with resolve. A grateful person will be content even as the ship passes through troubled shores so long as it does not capsize. Lack of gratitude produces the opposite: insecurity causing one to lash out at every occasion. Without counting your blessings, the focus dwells on unmet desires while ignoring the far more important needs God has already taken of.

Boredom - Complaints can be a form of conversational junk food are tasty to indulge in, but ultimately are empty of any beneficial substance. People like to share their complaints with each other in group-talk; once our friend or colleague starts complaining, it can be quite addictive, and frankly, fun. But complaining for the sheer thrill of it is merely a symptom of a bored mentality and a vacuum of constructive thought.

Helplessness - People who feel they are unable to change their circumstances for the better sometimes have no other outlet but to put their frustration to words. This can be useful to vent out unhealthy energies from within, but one should avoid making it a defining characteristic. Turning to God in times of desperation is a far better alternative.

We are all guilty to some extent of indulging in this complaint culture. But exerting a measure of self-restraint and digesting our grievances rather than spitting them out wouldn't kill us. Try it for yourself and see how hard it is to not be a complainer.

The Distance Between Power and the People

In 1989, President Ronald Reagan was on the way out of the White House, and delivered a lofty farewell address in which he famously referred to the USA as the "Shining City on a Hill". In essence, the USA he portrayed was a beacon of good hope and prosperity to all who looked at it with envy from the outside. Of course, in the course of over two decades, with Reagonomics having run its logical course and the economy in tatters, the country no longer projects the same level of awe as it used to.  Still, many cling to the gold-tinted vision of America of old, as the final refuge for democratic and egalitarian values in a world of turmoil.

A recent study should be a wake-up call for those still holding such a view. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page look at public policy decisions on a national level in the US from 1981-2002 and found that public opinion has almost zero effect on decision-making. Instead, the levers of power are firmly in the hands of the elite business section of society who are able to pay off politicians to the extent that the views of a majority of citizens are near negligible. How negligible? Well, this graph shows that regardless of the percentage of support by the public on an issue, from  0% to 100%, the chances that the policy will be enacted stay the same.

In summation, the entire structure of the political system can rightly be described not as a democracy but as an oligarchy, a dirty word usually reserved for the Russian state of the 90s. For any political observer with a modicum of insight, this is hardly a groundbreaking revelation. The fact that special interests dominate the political scene is demonstrably obvious. The effect has only been more acute in the past several decades when campaign finance laws have been relaxed and businesses can fill in the coffers of government. While this study is merely a confirmation of that fact, it is still striking to the extent to which public opinion matters so little.

One wonders when this hard fact will sink into the collective consciousness of the American public. And when that happens, what will be the response? Will there be a call to reform? Or a collective disillusionment?

Just a little bit about Bitcoin

The spectacular rise and fall and rise and fall of Bitcoin seems to have captured the imagination of not just monetary aficionados and finance nerds, but also the man on the street. With Bitcoin ATMs now popping up all over Asia, the online currency has generated spirited debate about what is the nature of money in the 21st century. Is Bitcoin really the money of the future?

I confess that I am not fully aware of how Bitcoin operates, nor how the virtual currency has become such a phenomenon. Online purchases have spiked in the last few years using this peer-to-peer system of money creation which you can store on your hard drive. New Bitcoins are created (mined) by substituting your old hard currency for the electronic medium. The value of Bitcoin follows the demand and supply of the market, leading to rapid fluctuations of a few Bitcoins being able to buy a pizza to suddenly outpricing gold bullion.

On one level, the introduction of Bitcoin hardly seem a paradigmatic event. Contrary to what most people believe, over 95% of all money already in circulation, be it Dollars or Pounds, is not in the form of cash or coins, but as electronic currency in the digital realm, just like Bitcoin. Private banks enjoy tremendous leverage in money creation every time they issue bank credit through a new loan or mortgage.

What makes Bitcoin unique is that, by not being issued by a central bank nor authorized by any state government, it is thus far independent of most government control and outside of the mainstream banking system. This makes it an attraction to freedom-loving libertarian types who are fed up with the state's monopoly over the money supply and are uncertain of their economic future following the bank crash of 2008.

What about Money?

Money is such a basic tool of everyday life that we can take its novelty for granted. Analysts will drone on and on about GDP, the housing market, government spending and growth rates that the most fundamental piece of financial architecture will often get overlooked. What is money and how is it supposed to work?

Conventional descriptions of money will list a few key characteristics. Money should function as a medium of exchange between parties for the purchase of goods or services. Money must be a unit of measurement to judge value of objects. Money should be a store of value to make it reliable for saving. Finally, money can be a unit of account, to measure profits and debits, and divisible into smaller units.

Until the rise of the modern nation states, money was almost exclusively minted coins of gold or silver, or other common commodities of shelf life (among the notable exceptions being the Tang Dynasty of 7th century China). The precious metals always held an allure, being it religious or royal, and their scarcity underlined their sense of intrinsic value. With the nation states of Western Europe in the 18th century came the role of central banks in the printing of paper promissory notes (in exchange for gold) that would become what we now know as fiat money (paper bills) issued by government authority. The gold standard, the tangible link of paper money in exchange for gold, lasted until 1971 when US President Richard Nixon announced that the US dollar would no longer be convertible. As of today, though paper money is used for many transactions, it is largely a sideshow act to digital money which predominates. (This is merely an ultra-condensed view of monetary history, there are plenty of places to research the historical details for yourself).

Money as a Symbol

Most monetary theorists see the above transition from commodity-based money to paper to digital as a natural progression. Gold or silver was suited to simpler and largely agrarian nature of the pre-modern world. As the nations states developed, particularly during the Industrial Revolution, the need for credit became more pronounced, thus calling for governments to be able to print currency on demand as per the market requirements. In our age of transglobal capitalism, restricting ourselves to mere paper, even if its not tied to any physical commodity, can be a hassle; electronic money allows for much more accessibility and flexibility. Thus Bitcoin is only the latest species in this evolutionary lineup, and not likely the last.

Another view is that this progression is rather a devolution from a natural order to an entirely artificial one. Gold and other forms of commodity-based money had their links to Nature, and thus imposed natural limits to growth of economies based on the supply of the commodity, ensuring an inbuilt sustainability to the system. The introduction of paper money altered this balance and created a disconnect between industrial production, spurred on by cheap money, and the natural world. Digital money has taken this a step further; capital itself now reigns supreme and is disconnected from the actual rate of production, while the natural world is left far behind. The limit now is not how much the environment can actually supply, but how many numbers can fit on the ledger. Fiat money then is man's attempt to break himself from the shackles imposed by the Created Order, to elevate himself beyond sustainable boundaries, all leading to a massive Promethean crash back to Earth. At some point then, the fakeness of the monopoly paper we use and digits on the screen will be laid bare.

Bitcoin and the Future

Bitcoin can perhaps be seen as a warning shot to the world of global finance for what is yet to come. In other words, the rise of the cashless economy and complete digitalization. Already there is a heavy media push to portray paper cash as an encumbrance, even for the smallest of purchases. While the banking sectors in Russia and Asia (with the exception of Singapore) have reacted with skepticism to Bitcoin; countries such as the US, Britain and Israel, home for many of the traditional banking elites, appear more receptive.

Rather than join the bandwagon of digital currency users, perhaps it may be preferable to keep our figurative feet on the ground and stick to using cash for most transactions until we can come up with an option with more substance. I personally prefer to use cash rather than plastic, at least cash is something physically tangible you can count and hold (and why should I give any extra profit to Visa or Mastercard?) For further reading, there's a terrific blog in the Guardian on why we should resist this cashless trend.

Let us also not assume that the debate over money is simply about utility and efficiency. There is a spiritual dimension to money as well that does not get enough attention, but that is something I will delve into in future writing.

Fear The Beard! (Or Don't)

'Pogonophobia' is a funny word. No, it's not some random fear of pogo sticks. Rather, its one of the most common phobias that has beset our modern yuppie generation (Generation X, Y or Z, I can't keep track). Pogonophobia relates to the fear of beards. The longer the beard usually corresponds to the higher the degree of anxiety it instills in the onlooker. While not all of us suffer the common symptoms (shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, excessive sweating, nausea), many still do experience varying degrees of discomfort when confronted with a patch of facial follicles.

Yet for those afflicted with said illness, there is hope. Latest news is that beards in the West are all in vogue again, courtesy of a hipster resurgence. As per the theory of trickle down culture, it may take somewhere between six-months to a year (or sooner) before beard fashion crosses the Atlantic and makes its way to the Muslim urban world once again. What a curious way back to the Sunnah that will be. At the very least, it may provide a bit of a mental relief for those touchy-feely Muslims who still squirm when they see their bearded brethren.  Perhaps it is time to make a diagnosis of why so many ostensible Muslims treat such facial hair with such unease.

There was time when sporting a beard was simply the status quo, and the hairless chin would be the outlier. But modernity has reversed this reality. The period of conquest and colonization during the 18^th century by the British and co. coincided with a curious phenomenon, the rise of the clean-shaven gentlemen. No longer was the beard the symbol of wisdom, vigor and manhood, but rather of a caveman-like backwardness. The fresh-face was the look of the Enlightenment, of youth and clarity, with a readiness to lead mankind out of the savage darkness and into the light. Generations of the colonized masses, beginning with their leaders, slowly internalized and externalized this message. This was especially odd given that throughout Muslim history, so self-assured generally was the Muslim community in their identity that copying the appearance of an outsider was an anathema.  Yet now the beard, trimmed or untouched, would no longer be a norm. 

What are you looking at?

Since 9/11, the anxiety has only been heightened to a ridiculous degree. Media portrayals of the Taliban have cemented a stereotype of the poor, uncultured, regressive and aggressive long-bearded Muslim out of step with modern world. In countries with a widening secular-religious divide (Pakistan being a prime example), one is expected to join one of two rival camps, hardcore secularists who conflate any Islamic symbol or beard with encroaching Talibanisation, or an increasingly shrill and reactionary religious establishment. Any middle space there was over a decade ago is fast shrinking. Can’t I just grow a beard and have nothing to do with any of that? Apparently not.

My advice to all those yet unconvinced by my beard rant, please chill out and let your biases take a backseat. Yes, there are plenty of self-righteous bearded folk who like to use their beards as an outward stamp of their own religiosity. But there are plenty more for whom this is not the case, for whom growing a beard is merely a personal attempt to reconnect with their spiritual tradition and to emulate the best of creation, while for some it has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. And of course let us not to forget a minority who grow it due to sheer laziness in having to pick up a razor. So would it be so hard to check your knee-jerk reactions at the door and give the fellow some breathing room before you character assassinate him?

Granted, a beard in itself is no guarantee at all of a sound character or good spiritual health. Nobody should expect or give excessive veneration to beard-growers, which can be a problem as well. But the stigmatization has frankly become tiresome, especially from so-called educated and moderate Muslims who like to bleat on and on about ‘respect’ and ‘tolerance’. I shouldn’t have to remind you that your Prophet (pbuh) had a rather long beard, and yes, 1400+ years on, it is still relevant.