“Say oh Allah! You are the Lord of all dominions; You give dominion to whoever You wish and withdraw dominion from whoever You wish; Your power over everything is unquestionable….” Q. 3: 26-27.
Monologue
This article is a reminder of an article written and published in this column by yours sincerely about four years ago. The precise date was Friday, January 20, 2017. In the article entitled ‘Welcoming a Trump of Sadism’, I predicted what would become of the United States of America (USA) at the instance of that country’s newly elected President, Donald Trump. Two weeks before the publication of that article, an earlier article was written and published, also by yours sincerely, in this same column. It was entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’ (2017). Venerable readers of ‘The Message’ column are hereby given the privilege of reading both articles once again through the excerpts quoted below as follows:
First Excerpt
“Like the hands of a clock, many democratic countries in the world do swear a new President into office every four or five years at the expiration of a previous tenure. Now, it is the turn of the United States of America again to do that. And, the man to take charge as from today, January 20, 2017, for the next four years, all things being equal, is called Donald Trump, a man that most people in the world, including Americans, who voted for him, have seen as a wild bull surging furiously into a china shop.
Second Excerpt
Below is also an excerpt from an earlier article entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’ and published on January 6, 2017, in this same column by yours sincerely. Its contents went thus in part: All eyes, across the world, are on the 20th day of January 2017. That is the day that the newly elected American President, Donald John Trump, will be formally ushered into the ‘White House’ in Washington, with a swearing in ceremony. He will be the 45thAmerican President. That the entire world is waiting for this event is a confirmation of America’s undisputed leadership of the contemporary world. There is no doubt that this event will be historically electric, positively or negatively. A similar wait had taken place in February 1933, in Germany, when Adolf Hitler was sworn into office as the Chancellor of that country. The speech he delivered on that occasion was what eventually altered the destiny of Germany and reshaped the geography of the world in the 20th century.
Incidentally, Donald Trump’s ancestral origin is Germany. Now, will Trump of the 21st century replay the posture of Hitler of the 20th century by dragging the world into another World War? That is a fundamental question that the unfolding events of the days ahead may have to answer fundamentally”.
The meaning of Trump
“The name Trump is a short form of trumpet, a musical instrument with which the decision of a despotic tyrant is often announced in a local cultural setting. Ever since this man was declared the winner of the American Presidential election of November 2016, he has been trumpeting his tyrannical plans to the world arrogantly. And, the jitters rolled out of that trumpet have started gripping the world with an imaginary icy hand. That an American President-elect has begun to overrule his still serving predecessor even before taking an oath of office is a clear indication of what the world should expect from the china shop in which a wild bull will start to operate as from today.
History as a Teacher
History is a well known phenomenal teacher. It teaches the old and the young alike. Its students are always drawn from far and near. It examines those students from time to time and gives them examination results periodically. Its lessons are as much generational as they cut across races and cultures. Yet, it has no peculiar language of communication. But then, it faces a fundamental problem. That problem is not in the repetition that has characteristically become the culture of history but, rather, in getting mankind to understand its repeated teachings as well as in heeding its warnings.
In virtually all celestial religions, history plays such a prominent role that gives it the permanent identity of a teacher. And, from its beneficial teachings, human beings build ladders of experiences with which they mount the pyramids of life”.
Christianity and Islam
“Despite the seeming brutal gangsterismbeing vaingloriously displayed by this goon called Donald Trump, however, the Muslim world should not write him off completely as an agent of the Lucifer.
In the histories of both Christianity and Islam, we are repeatedly told of certain arch antagonists of God’s divine message, who dramatically turned round to become voluntary Ambassadors of the same message to which they had been viciously antagonistic. One of such antagonists was Saul of Tarsus, an avowed anti-Christ who dramatically turned round to accept the message of Jesus after the latter had departed this world. Saul later adopted the name Paul as a symbol of his new apostolic faith. That was from the Christian narration.
Another known antagonist of Allah’s divine Message was Umar Bn Khattab of Makkah who had plotted the murder of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) but dramatically turned round to embrace Islam on the day he was to implement his plot. Eventually, Umar rose to become the second Caliph in Islam and conscientiously spread Allah’s divine religion across continents even more than any other Caliph”.
Jesus’ Wish
“Jesus had wished that Saul, a well- educated person, accept his message while he was around. But that wish did not materialize until after his departure from the prophetic stage.
If Saul had not eventually accepted Christianity when he did, perhaps, the situation of that religion would have been completely different today”.
The case of Umar
“In the case of Umar Bn Khattab, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had prayed to Allah to enable one of the two famous personalities bearing Umar in Makkah, at that time, to accept Islam. Although the Prophet’s mind was on the other Umar, It however turned out that Umar Bn Khattab was the one favoured by Allah. And, his acceptance of Islam became so remarkable that the Prophet was reported to have once said of him as follows: “Were there to be a Prophet after me, Umar Bn Khattab would have been that Prophet”.
Irony of Life
“Today, another thorny bud seems to be wildly growing under the armpit of an American bitter tree in the 21st century. That proverbial human bud is an avowed racist and morbid hater of Islam that will assume office as President in that country on January 20, 2017. His open disposition and filthy utterances alone, have proved to be a vivid reminder of the unbridled atrocities of the originator of Nazism, Adolf Hitler, who brutally terrorised the entire continent of Europe with his tyrannical ambition.
And, for the first time ever, majority of Americans who voted to choose Trump as President started to express fear of uncertainty about their choice even before his assumption of office. Thus, from the very beginning of his first four year presidential tenure, Trump has been perceived as an unpredictable incubated egg waiting to be hatched without a yoke of democracy. This means that the kind of chicken that would come out of that incubated egg is just a matter of guess. Nevertheless, such a perception at the beginning of 2017 may be be too early in the day for the eagerly agitated Americans. After all, the cited cases of Saul and Umar still remain very validly influential on contemporary history”.
Factors of Influence
“Like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump must have been satanically influenced by the weird poems by two European racial poets of the 19th/20th century. One of them was William Butler (WB) Yeats of Ireland, who coined a poem entitled ‘The Second Coming’, which served as the template for Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe’s famous book entitled ‘Things Fall Apart’. Here is the poem: “Turning and turning round in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold….”
Observation
“If the above quoted stanza is seen as an impetus for Trump to behave like a typical restive dragon dancing on the surface of an ominous brook, another poem by Rudyard Kipling may have equally served as an intoxicant that could help to exacerbate the already dangerous situation of today’s world for which the new American President is ready to be the chief agent. Incidentally, both Yeats and Kipling were contemporary literary men of about the same age. They were both born in 1865 but died differently within a gap of about three years apart. Below is Kipling’s own further divisive poem that strengthened the unwarranted enmity between the West and the East of the world:
“Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat…”
Coded Bile
“Today’s the coded bile of history is ordinarily bitter, but whenever it plays its natural role in the body system of an individual or that of a nation, it automatically becomes clear that survival without it is impossible”.
In Retrospect
“Yes, it sounded odd in the centuries of yore, when speculations began to indicate that Greece and Rome could adopt Christianity as State religion. It also sounded unbelievable that the whole of Arabia could adopt Islam as official religion. But reality eventually prevailed and, today, the rest remains a property of history.
In the same vein, far from feigning prophesy, like some Nigerian fraudsters who are claiming to be clerics, I foresee a day in the future, when America will become the foremost home of Islam and give that genuine divine religion the Impeccable reality of life that it deserves. In reaction to this millennial prediction, as it happened in the Greek and Roman Empires of yore, the doubting Thomases of this era may commence their repugnant arguments from here. But those who will engage in any argument on this assertive prediction should remember that the seeds of tomorrow’s gargantuan tree of peace are already being firmly planted in today’s fertile soil as those of today were planted centuries ago.
Personal Comment
Allah’s way of doing things is full of wonders. For Him, nothing is impossible to do. And, if the cause of American transformation is not dramatically realisable with a wild bull like Donald Trump today, it may surprisingly be realisable with a modern day ‘Umar’ of America tomorrow. What matters most is for Islam to fulfill its statutorily ordained mission by wonderfully transforming this wild world into one of serenity and equanimity as promised by Allah.