THE COLLABORATIVE COUPLE

by Shaykh Abdal-Qadir al-Murabit

I took the title of "The Collaborative Couple" being moved by where in Qur'an, Allah,
telling of people entering into the "garden" says, "They will come singly and in couples".
I felt this contained a great insight for us, if we were to take benefit from it.

Therefore, I want to share with you a view of how things are, in order to arrive at the
importance of this vision of the couple as a spiritual entity. Given the nature of present
day society and given the intellectual framework and training from which people today
come, it can be said that from wherever they emerged they have been given the same grid
of training. Therefore, they have the same way of thinking.

I want to preface what I want to say by reminding you that we are not living in a time
where everything is business as usual. Anyone who imagines that what has been in place
the last twenty-five years is somehow going to go whirling on is profoundly mistaken.
We are at the end of a large cycle of time. There is no doubt that the whole intellectual
foundation on which this appalling century has existed is already over and swept away.
You have to understand the foundation and the tactical methodology of what emerges at
one level as academic study, has been devalued, smashed, and is over. The last people to
know it are the very people producing the thesis and viewpoints based on the dialectical
methods of western thinking of the last hundred years.

Let us say that the human condition today is on the eve of the world state. We are already
living in a post-literate society. You must understand this and not have any illusions
because you are literate. You are used to what you call a methodological approach. You
are ensconced in a safe society in which you have a role to play. The modern world has
already come to political decisions concerning the future. That is to dethrone literacy for
the masses. The basic element of communication for modern people in the coming
century will be computer communication. By that I mean the most primitive game
system available to the masses, such as videos, mass films without any spiritual or
imaginative content, cartoons, mechanistic music, pop, rock and electronics. The
dominant world of communications in the century ahead will be comic strip books. This
is not some futuristic analysis. This is a given of modern urban society.
...

Do not think for one minute Islam is in this country. It is not here by "shari'ah", by
"tariqa" or "haqiqa". If it were, you would not have idol worshippers in this country, you
would not have women in the condition they are in, and you would not have usury in
downtown Kuala Lumpur.

The non-Oedipal, that is the non-collusive woman, will dwell in the growth of her feeling
life. This is the non-projective being present in her seeing, touching and hearing centres.
Not "nerve feelings" but the deep seeing and touching and hearing whose expression is
ascetic, is beauty (both inwardly and outwardly) and compassion. This is the power, light
and force of woman without which the man cannot reach to his higher aspiration. It is this
that is short-circuited in the bourgeois family. So that all that is left to the woman is
"nerve based" feelings. The reality of the woman touching the petal of the flower; in
seeing the light on the water; in hearing the song of the bird, is itself transcendent
luminous being. And without it man cannot understand life. He will invent an atom bomb
and not have any qualms. He will drop it and not another man will say a word. But if
he was with that woman, she would say, "If you make this bomb, what will happen to the
child in my womb." That compassion that is exchanged cannot take place because she is
busy crying and has locked the door. And he is saying, "What's the matter?"
...
The dialectic of adultery, guilt and growing apart, of misogynistic monogamy will end.
Monogamy in its nature is misogynistic. As Jane Arden, an English writer and feminist
said, 'The definition and nature of adultery is, "It's no fun unless you're cheating on
mom.'" In other words, the nature of adultery is that the wife is transformed into the
mother and the man is the adolescent going off for an adventure. He comes home,
"Where have you been?" "Out!" "What did you do?" "Nothing!" Have no illusion. This
is, of course, as common in the Muslim countries as it is in the Kafir ones.
...

The modern state is a high security prison. The wardens are fellow prisoners in it. The
prison is not locked and yet nobody tries to escape. Why does nobody want to be free?
This is a question I have asked for many, many years. And the unravelling of the puzzle
reaches to the fundamental pieces of the human identity and beyond the myth
of history. It is not difficult to show the way out is through the door. The issue is whether
or not the prisoners can recover the power and wildness to make the leap to freedom.

As Salamu Alaikum.

This was the sunnah of the first community of the Rasul, sullalahu alaihi wa salem, and
was held to wherever the Deen was strong. With the emergence of this kind of man, with
the temerity to speak the truth, whose outward project is justice and whose inner being is
illuminated, who Nietzsche called ‘a bridge to the overman’, will be the woman who
desires him, and they together are what Shaykh Abdalqadir identifies as the
‘collaborative couple.’