The Magic Act

The Magic Act

Most people are fascinated by illusion. They marvel at the magician’s sleight of hand and are dazzled by cinematic wonders wrought by modern day special effects wizardry. In many cases, the illusionary effects are merely diversionary, just pure entertainment. But when applied to the real world, the realm of illusion can reveal its sinister, dark side, masking a life of evil and doom behind a cloak of pleasure and ease. This is predicated on the distortion of reality.

For a Muslim, his perception of reality is based on the guidance contained in the book of Allah, the Most High, the Qur’an, and the traditions of His Messenger Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). This guidance is the core of his faith. It is his criterion for judgement and sets the parameters for all his actions. With this guidance, a Muslim is firmly rooted, solidly grounded, and clearly defined. Without it, he is ethereal, evanescent, an amorphous mass of aimless fluff.

Aimlessness is the hallmark of a world based on illusionary foundations, a world made prurient and hedonistic by malicious delusion. Transience is embellished and the temporal is bedecked with baubles of bewitchment. In such a rudderless existence, material possessions and the pursuit of homes, fat bank accounts, expensive furnishings, and unrestricted access to intoxicants and sexual gratifications are symbols of having “made it”. Yet human beings were not created by Allah for this purpose. As a result, every conceivable repercussion spawned by this life-style has afflicted humanity at great cost: broken marriages, wars, venereal and degenerative diseases, criminal anarchy, and the disintegration caused by all manner of social pathologies and psychoses.

To any sane person who could clearly see the cause and effect relationship between this unrestrained lifestyle and its destructive consequences, this would have as much appeal as a lifetime of root canals. The social misery is that great. Yet hundreds of millions remain devotees and defenders of this way of life in spite of tremendous human pain and suffering. This is a triumph for the real master illusionists, a grand collusion of big business, the government, the media and morally bankrupt pundits, many with the highest academic credentials, who soothe the masses into compliance with the ideals of hedonism and consumerism. This means, of course, untold wealth for those with a vested interest in profiting from a dissolute public’s relentless urge for gratification.

The master deceivers and their henchmen, modern admen, have convinced people that hedonism, the doctrine that the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good, is in fact an affirmation of life. It is actually the very negation of life. Newport once used the slogan “Alive with Pleasure” in its cigarette ads marketing disease and death. Sex is an important tool for the adman who uses it to sell everything from blue jeans to cars. With the complicity of Hollywood, the advertising industry has helped promote a climate of uninhibited sexuality divorced from the traditional moral underpinnings.

Take the word promiscuous, which has virtually disappeared from the airwaves and print media. It has been replaced in the language of modern doublespeak by the less specific and, therefore, less accurate term “sexually active”, which carries none of the moral overtones of the former word. So now “it has become socially acceptable for sexually active, uninhibited women to be more assertive in establishing intimacy with men.” Translation: “There is no shame in being a slut.”

We as Muslims should ever be on guard against this form of sophisticated deception and should always be eager to point it out to those unfortunately deluded. The objective of this deception is to turn one away from the remembrance of Allah and from the doing the doing of righteousness which leads to the eternal reward of Paradise. The road to hell has been cleverly concealed. Only strict adherence to our sources of guidance can lead us through the labyrinth of trickery relatively unscathed.