The Theocrat: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) Read Online Free PDF Page A

someone’s stomach and extracting the intestines to throw to the tame animals wandering around, he replied in a confident, aggressive tone:
    “If you choose to ask me about the reasons for this action and others like it, then ask your God why He has power over everything. What is the wisdom in torturing animals and children, exhausting bereft mothers, or snatching away the souls of mortals in groups and throngs?
    An inability to do evil paralyzes the will of God and the power of the one who rules in His name; without such attributes he will be deprived of absolute, total power.
    Every ruler in God’s name (al-Hakim bi-Amr Illah) who fails to replicate God’s own attributes needs to be removed from his position. His tokens and signs of authority are spurious.”
    Eliminating Drought
    Every time your misgivings beset me or I see death spreading amongst you, I ride barefoot into the desert with a cloth on my head.
    Here in the desert, whose expanses and borders are rid of you, here my anxieties diminish and I can recover my sense of self in the light of” the candles of beginning and destiny. Then I can see clearly the appropriate ways to eliminate the drought in my land and my mind.
    I Am the Expert Rider
    I ride toward you and head for your secrets. Do not run away, do not panic! For all you know, I may have brought release after hardship, or I may have opened my beneficence to all when you were expecting murder!
    Why Have I Come
    The truth is not absolute, it is free.
    Truth is the making of what is most powerful and capable of repudiating immaturity and custom and giving free rein to the will for interpretation and power, There is no harm if the realms and goals of the will break away and contradict each other.
    By Fatima, your destruction rests on equality of sides and the languor of that which has neither color nor followers. So seek and derive your causes from the life of opposites and contradictions.
    Consider how many residents in hell crawled their way there with good intent!
    How often does ease come after hardship?
    How many things do you hate, when they are actually the best thing for you?
    So accept and tolerate me, bitter and unruly though I am! I have come only to teach you the meanings of the hidden opposites, the secret laws of transformation. I have come only to cure you of your maladies and to propagate a fanatical opposition to what you are, what you intend, be it overt or covert; and to declare open war on all those who, in the flame of time, and absence, cannot wait.

Chapter One
On Enticements and Threats from the Ascendants of al-Hakim
    1. From Records of Decrees and Interdictions
    l-Hakim’s behavior was utterly extraordinary. At every moment he used to invent laws which he forced people to implement.
    Ibn Khallikan,
    Book on the Deaths of Important People
    Once al-Hakim had killed off Master Burjuwan—the administrator of the state, al-Husayn ibn ‘Ammar—the leader of the Katama and secretary of the state, and others as well, he had exclusive control over power. From then on, barely a year or two went by without him issuing, among a flood of documents and sealed regulations, some compulsory decrees that were both strange and contradictory. One of the first such decrees, issued in the fourth year of the caliph’s quarter century, namely A.H. 390, concerned “the individual nature of authority in both its overt and covert aspects.” After the initial “in the name of God” and “thanks be to God,” it begins as follows:
    To all you people who hear this proclamation: God, to whom belongs majesty and power, has ordained that leaders be identified by special qualities that are possessed by noone else among the people. After reading this document, anyone who opens a debate or correspondence with anyone other than the divine presence, our Lord and Master, will be subject to execution by the will of the Commander of the Faithful. God willing, those who have witnessed this document should inform