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Text Box: NEW WORLD ORDER Chess Mastery of the Muslim World? (Part 4) By Mubaashir Uqdah As mentioned in part 3, the Middle Game is characterized by tactics used to gain or increase one’s advantages. What advantages are we talking about? In chess, there are 4 primary advantages: 1) a strong position in the Center of the board, 2) a Time advantage, 3) a Space advantage, and 4) a Material advantage. The goal is to be able to take one advantage and transform it into another advantage. For example, if you succeed at gaining a strong position in the Center, you can use this strong position to advance and obtain a Space advantage. The additional space you get cramps your opponent, restricts his movement, and thus allows you to move more quickly towards your goals than he can move towards his. Thus, the Space advantage is translated into a Time advantage. This advantage in Time puts you in a position to attack your opponent before he is organized enough to defend himself and thus, you can take one of his pieces, or exchange one of your pieces for two of his. In other words, your advantage in Time enables you to acquire an advantage in Material. Now, we must be honest with ourselves and ask a sensitive question, “What happened to us during the Middle Game?” Our Middle Game has not been as brilliant as our Opening Game. It has had many bright moments. There have been times when our Middle Game appeared ready to take shape, but things have not materialized as we desired. As a consequence, we have not been able to transform our wonderful Opening Game advantages into Space, Time, and Material advantages during the Middle Game. If we are willing to listen to our self-accusing spirit, most of us will acknowledge that we are not where we want to be. Most of us do not feel that our progress is acceptable given the quantity and quality of the wisdom we have received from our beloved Imam, W. Deen Mohammed. The Middle Game is about tactics. Tactics are the techniques that are used to achieve strategic goals. For example, if our strategy for resurrecting our people is to create a new culture, then what are the tactics or techniques we will use to create this culture and get them to embrace it? We may need to develop 10 different tactics that must be employed in order to successfully create the new culture. Ten additional tactics might need to be implemented to get our people to embrace it. Let me give an example from football. The goal is to score more points than the opponent. The strategy is to achieve this through the passing game. The tactics are the 15 new passing plays that we are going to learn, practice and use to achieve the strategy. Tactics are used to strengthen your advantages, to use one set of advantages to obtain other advantages and to take away the advantages of your opponent. We see this all the time as we watch the maneuverings of others, but we fail to employ these principles on our own battlefields. I contend that our Middle Game is weak because we have failed to consciously appreciate, DEVELOP, PRACTICE and then use tactics and techniques to expand the movement and directions provided by Imam W. Deen Mohammed. In chess, the King represents the leadership and the Queen represents the society (she is a woman and Imam Mohammed explained that woman represents the society). The King can move in all directions, but only one square at a time. The Queen moves EXACTLY like the King, but she can move many squares at a time, in fact, she can move across the entire board. What this tells us is that the King gives us direction, but he is limited by himself. The power of the King is seen and felt through the movement (effectiveness) of his Queen (his society). It is the Queen who is the most powerful force in the game and she must grow, spread, and expand the reach and influence of the King’s movement and direction. The King can only move one square at a time. What is a square? A square is a block and a block is a cube. A cube is three-dimensional. We build upon a block with three-dimensions; the physical, mental, and spiritual. A block is the basic unit and pattern upon which the construction of a structure is built. You can also square a number in mathematics. In math, a square is the product that results from multiplying a number or term by itself. The King (leadership) forms the block, sets the pattern, sets the direction, gives the commands, and guides the motion (moves) that must be made in order to succeed. However, he can only move one square at a time. So, he must multiply himself; his patterns and directions must be multiplied throughout his society. When the society replicates the patterns, directions, and movements of the King, it becomes a powerful force, a Queen. When the movement of the society is synchronized with the movement of the leadership, the full power of the King’s pattern, direction, and movement will be seen and felt. It is like the beauty of a great orchestra following the conductor, who is following the composition of a great composer. Sweet. However, if the King’s pattern is corrupt, misdirected, or incomplete, then the society may also end up this way. If the block is not its complete shape, the building patterned upon it will not stand right, look right, and may not be able to be completed. It will be crooked, unusable or unappealing and therefore unable to serve the purpose for which it was created. On the other hand, a King can make all the right moves and set down the correct pattern and direction for the movement, but if his society does not follow his patterns or cannot figure out how to expand along the lines of his directions, the King will become vulnerable to checkmate by the opponent. If you study the movement of all the chess pieces, you will discover that their movements are composites of the Queen’s movement and direction. All of these pieces are subsets of the society (Queen) and the society is patterned upon the King. Therefore, if the society and the pieces that comprise it fail to exercise their potential in the field, then the King commands a useless force. By the same token, there is a marriage here. The Queen takes her direction and movement from the King. The Queen’s play may also become a useless force if the direction and movement of the King is unclear to her or beyond her grasp. Let me pause for a moment to apologize to the readers that have found the previous few paragraphs too abstract. You are not in the minority. There are many who say, “All of this talk, theory, wisdom, is nice, but where are the physical proofs of this knowledge?” They say, “I don’t want to hear the speech, I want to know what we are going to do.” It is at this place that our Middle Game has faltered. It is at the junction where sky and earth must meet that we have stumbled. We have not learned how to translate the high concepts we have received into practical tactics or techniques to implement in our new culture, our new education, our new family life, our new politics, etc. We have not defined, designed, and TRAINED to implement the tactics that marry our heavenly wisdom to our material and social applications. Imam Mohammed has given us understanding of the highest wisdom of the highest knowledge (revelation). Revelation was delivered to Moses on a mountaintop, to Jesus in a cradle, and to Muhammad in a hollow cave. In these places, there is no material development at all. Imam Mohammed has told us that we must be able to think in the abstract, to make connections, and be able to follow logic to its natural conclusion. Revelation must be brought down from the mountain, it must grow up from the cradle, and it must come out of the darkness of the cave and take on flesh and dwell amongst the people. Because this knowledge is so broad, so high, and so deep, we have not understood what to do with it other than to parrot it. In chess there are tactics such as the double-attack, the pin, the x-ray, the fork, the sacrifice, and the combination. I recall hearing the pioneers of this community talking about tactics for collecting charity and fishing in the lost-found. Even the dress code; the bow-tie, everyone with the short haircut, the upbeat walk, was a tactic for achieving the strategic goals of the community at that time. We must ask ourselves what are the techniques that we employ that achieve our strategic objectives today? Do we have tactics as a community or are we all just doing our own thing without any consciousness of strategy and tactics? Tactics is the science of organizing and maneuvering forces in battle to achieve a limited or immediate aim. In a chess game, the player uses his vision and maneuvers his forces into positions to utilize tactics to gain advantages in Time, Space and Material. These advantages are what lead to victory. You cannot engage in a struggle without strategy, tactics, and execution. Aren’t we in a struggle against the schemes of Shaitan? Do we not need to organize and maneuver our forces to achieve our noble goals? During our Middle Game, Imam Mohammed has given us some tactics and taught us an abundance of ideas and concepts that can be fashioned into a multitude of tactics that can be used to aid us in acquiring the advantages we need to achieve the promise that Allah has prepared for us. As I explained in Part 3 of this article, we had a strong position in the Center of the Human, American, Islamic, and African American chess boards at the end of the Opening Game of Imam Mohammed’s leadership. The positive and strong position from the Opening Game carried over into the Middle Game for a while, but as the years have rolled on our game has tapered off and does not show signs of changing its course. We have entered into the End Game of Imam Mohammed’s leadership (the man, not the body of knowledge). This End Game may last another 40 years or it may only last 4 years. Allah is the Best Knower. In either event, the fact is that the success of the End Game is strongly correlated, although not conclusive, with the success of the Middle Game. Since Muslims are not gamblers and we are Muslims that follow a sober-minded, right-thinking leader, we need to better understand what happened to our Middle Game advantages and get them back to increase the prospects of victory in the End Game. In the next and final part of this article we are going to discuss the advantages of Space, Time, and Material as it relates to our community and we will briefly describe some examples of the tactics needed to secure and expand our advantages. Continue Part 5

M.A.L.I. Magazine:

Applying Teachings of Imam W.D. Mohammed

By Mubaashir Uqdah