Text Box: Text Box: M.A.L.I.Muslim American Logic Institute
Text Box: NEW WORLD ORDER Chess Mastery of the Muslim World? (Part 5 Conclusion) By Mubaashir Uqdah Throughout most of this series of articles on chess mastery, I have derived wisdom that can be found in the chess pieces and I have spoken of the need to acquire certain advantages; namely, Center, Space, Time, and Material advantages. I also talked about the fact that our Middle Game has not gone as well as we would have liked and I stated that I believe one of the major reasons was our inattention to developing, practicing, and implementing tactics (which, in chess, characterize the Middle Game) that lead us to achieving the advantages we need to successfully accomplish our mission. In this final installment, I intend to discuss the subjects of advantages and tactics. One of the most critical factors in becoming a winning chess player is also the most difficult part of the chess game for people to master; i.e., strategic planning and coordinated implementation. Most people can learn what the pieces do, how they move, and know the goal of the game. But, it requires a different level of expertise and perception to understand the forces of the pieces, the strengths and weaknesses on the board and of your opponent, and to coordinate Opening Game recipes with Middle Game tactics to secure and advance the Strategic Plan that ultimately leads to victory in the End Game. In the game of chess, all of the pieces on the board must act in concert to achieve success. It is the leadership’s responsibility to coordinate the forces and orchestrate the concert. If the pieces are left to act by themselves, out of sync with one another, then our concert will be noise and coordination is left to unlikely chance, which foreshadows a hereafter destined for disappointment and loss. Thus, it is not enough to simply point in the right direction. Leadership must establish government with some degree of authority that the people accept and permit to direct them towards the victory. In chess, your task is to coordinate and guide your forces to victory in spite of your opponent’s plans and efforts to create disorganization amongst your forces and scatter them to a state of neutrality, weakness, and ultimately impotence. Our community’s problem has been not only challenges of coordination, but challenges with the development of our forces. If you do not develop your forces, you will not have any forces to coordinate. Many chess players are too cautious and they leave their armies sitting in the starting blocks. The only pieces moved are a couple of pawns, but the stronger forces are left sitting in their original places. If you do not get your forces out of their starting squares and into the center of the board, you have nothing compete with. This is why you hear in masajid across the country the repeated cry, “we have got to get out from behind the four walls of the Masjid and into the neighborhoods where the people are.” The absence of our forces enables the opponent to get his forces out first and almost assures him that he will get control of the advantages that we need for success. The concept of development is two-fold. Not only does it mean get your forces out into the field and into the action, but it also means that you must develop (train) your forces so that they are capable, skilled, and conditioned to use their potential powers effectively. You cannot advance your progress, if you do not develop your forces and then advance them into the field. It is this principle of development that leads us to the prime characteristic of the Middle Game; Tactics. Tactics are what will get us out of the Masjids and into the neighborhoods. Well organized, coordinated, and directed tactics will enable us to affect the game being played in our society and communities. Let me give you an example. Many of you will remember the C.R.A.I.D movement in our community. CRAID was the Committee for the Removal of All Images that attempt to portray the Divine. The way this movement was implemented is a very good example of bringing heavenly wisdom together with earthly application. Let me explain. Imam Mohammed explained the devastating effects of racial imagery on the psychology of people and he formed CRAID with the goal of removing racial images in our society. Next it was decided that the strategy to do this would be to protest throughout the society and bring the problem to the consciousness of the society. Brother Antar Jannah, who led the national CRAID movement, designed the tactics and techniques to implement this protest strategy. Antar then traveled the country and trained each region on how to implement the tactics. A day was chosen when all of the protests would start. Simultaneously across the country, week after week, there were protests against displaying primarily Caucasian images as G-d. We had national, regional, state, and local leadership and teams. We had a system of operations. We followed the plan weekly or bi-weekly. We felt productive and significant. Our forces were organized, coordinated, and systematic and we played a concert that had an impact on the culture. It was so effective that it was scary at times. The Muslim community was continuously cultivating and plowing the culture of our communities regarding the injustice of these images. We were planting seeds, raining water, shining sunlight regularly, systematically like the seasons of Mother Nature. Many churches in the black community removed their images. Others in the society were enlightened about the injustice, even those who disliked our protest. Naturally, there were infiltrators who would act as extremists to give our effort a bad name and blind us to what was effective about that movement. But, CRAID was a good example of a tactic. Let’s briefly consider some other potential examples. The CPC program can be a most powerful tactic, if we could implement the vision. For instance, imagine if our Imams and communities around the country would really organize our purchasing power so that we were able to purchase clothing at such low prices that we could become the clearinghouse supplier for African American clothing stores and boutiques throughout the country. Stores could open up, supplied at low prices and compete with others on equal footing. What a powerful concert this would be. We are in the midst of a cultural war against decadence. Yet, we have no tactics to produce advantages on the chess board of culture. We need an organized, systematic effort like the CRAID movement to establish a distribution network for our artists’ products and a tour route for the cultivation of their performances. This tactic needs to be a nationally coordinated effort. Imagine the symphony we would play if we were synchronously spearheading positive uplift concerts and CDs around the country simultaneously, offering an alternative to our people. However, this cannot be done effectively without government in our national community life. These are just a few examples of the kinds of tactics we can and must deploy if we are going to regain and then expand the advantages that we once had. Implementing these tactics requires development, training, practice, organization and government.. These factors are hard to acquire in our community, but they are needed if we are going to be successful at implementing our tactics. The implementation of development and tactics in harmony with the concepts of our Imam most certainly will lead us to the advantages we need to fulfill our mission. Let me briefly comment upon the advantages of the Center, Time, Space, and Material. What does it mean to gain a strong position in the Center? We are strong in the Center when we are positioned to play an important, critical or key role in some enterprise, activity or situation. When we are at the core of an effort or are the central driving force in a cause or project, we are in a strong position to influence the direction and success of that effort. The following questions dramatize the point. Are we playing a critical or key role in educating our youth and our people? Are we at the center of a cultural movement that is spreading positive, uplifting music and theatre throughout African American communities and America at large? Are we the key engineers or a driving force behind an economic boom in the black community that is redirecting a sizeable portion of those 780 billion dollars per year into intelligent enterprises? Indeed, our learning, spiritual development, and return to our original nature is to lead to the coordination of our forces that result in our ability to play the above roles. To gain an advantage in Space means to spread your power, influence and/or contribution. In what quarters of the society are we making our influence and directions felt? Do we have the greatest number of African American run private schools in the greatest number of cities in America? Are our concepts and their derivatives finding their way into children’s books throughout the libraries of America, on radio stations across the country, in plays and film? Are we spreading our business franchises throughout the country, such as Bilal’s Steak and Takes? Are Fatima’s child care centers spreading across the country? To gain an advantage in Time means to be the first to accomplish something or to get a job done. For example, the first to establish a national African American private school system that is comparable in education with other private schools in the country and has a curriculum that is healthy for our people and others. I was happy to hear that we have four K-12 schools in our association. Of course, to have a Material advantage means to acquire greater wealth, physical strength, or greater numbers than your opponent. For example, if our community were to build the strongest economy amongst African American groups or businesses in the country or even simply the wealth to support our projects and to free our talented ones so that they could produce wondrous works. I would have liked to explain in more depth about the advantages and say something about the End Game, but it is time to bring the conversation about this topic to a close for now. The effort by forces in America and the West to establish a global empire, where they dominate the new world order, involves high science and masterful chess strategy and tactics. They would like to eliminate us from the chess tournament, take us off the board and put us in the box with the captured pieces. Our heritage is one of overcoming the death of slavery and captivity, resurrection from slavery, we have just risen to heaven and are returning to earth from our magnificent night journey (Miraj) with Imam W. Deen Mohammed. We are not going back into the box. A friend asked me to comment upon the meaning of the chess board. For the chess enthusiasts out there, I guess this is a good way to end this series. The board is the field or environment that the battle or competition is taking place upon. Some battles are local and others are global. So we must recognize and identify which board we are playing as well as who our opponent is at any given time. The chess board has light and dark squares. The message is that the battlefield, the environment, the situation, has areas of light and areas of darkness in it. We must be careful how we traverse the terrain. The Light helps us by showing us the way. The Darkness can be dangerous. We can trip in the dark, get lost, be deceived, and incline to sleep. However, we must try and make all of the squares advantageous to us. Darkness can help us by hiding us from the opponent, providing the element of surprise, and serving as the place where new life is conceived and gets an opportunity to grow. The great chess masters say it is the board that tells you the next move. This is because the board represents Fitra, if we understand. It is composed of and only allows horizontal, vertical, and diagonal patterns of movement. All of the chess pieces get their patterns from the Queen and the Queen gets her pattern from the King and the King gets his pattern from the board. All of the pieces move according to the nature and patterns inherent in the board.

M.A.L.I. Magazine:

Applying Teachings of Imam W.D. Mohammed

By Mubaashir Uqdah