Speech by Adnen El Ghali at the Multipolarity Forum in Moscow, 26 February 2024

Speech by Adnen El Ghali at the Multipolarity Forum in Moscow, 26 February 2024

In the autumn of 1920, the final act of Russia's civil war took place in Crimea. In an extraordinary effort to save them from the Bolsheviks, General Wrangel had the remnants of the army and all the civilians who had been able to find a place on the imperial fleet evacuated in just a few days. The first port of call was Constantinople. On arrival, the Russians themselves were astonished by the outpouring of sympathy from the people towards the enemy of the previous day. One of the most remarkable figures to emerge in the relationship between the Muslim world and Russia, the mathematician Anastasia von Manstein-Shirinsky, whose memoirs were awarded the Alexander Newski prize and who taught mathematics to several generations of Tunisians, gave moving testimony to this. After the British refused to accept the refugees, Admiral Dumesnil, commander of the French squadron in the Orient, decided with the agreement of his government to evacuate them to a French port. The French authorities in Algeria, dominated by left-wing parties, refused. Bizerte was therefore chosen and, on the 3rd December 1920, the Russian fleet, carrying around 7,000 refugees, left Constantinople for the Regency of Tunis.

At a time when none of the former allied powers wanted to risk the enmity of Bolshevism, Tunisia, France and Turkey, which had been defeated but whose caliphate was still intact, assumed responsibility. A traditional Muslim and Sufi ruler, Sidi Mohamed Nacer, the Bey of Tunis, accepted the Russian refugees. The Imperial fleet was disarmed as it entered the port of Bizerte, but not returned to the Soviet government.

The election of the Cartel des gauches in France in May 1924 unfortunately accelerated the course of events. The new government ordered the Maritime Prefect of Bizerte to allow a Soviet mission to inspect Wrangel's squadron. Rear-Admiral Exelmans, the descendant of a Marshal of the Empire and a man of principle, was outraged and protested in vain to the government. So, when the order arrived on 5 November 1924, he carried it out, had the Russian officers and sailors honored and saw to their temporary installation in Tunisia, but at the same time asked to be relieved of his command. This man, who had preferred to sacrifice his career to his principles, was honoured by the Russian officers on his departure.

How can we explain the behaviour towards the Russians of the Bey of Tunis, sovereign of an Ottoman regency that had fought them in the Crimea? What about the fraternal gestures of the people of Constantinople, capital of the Empire that opposed the Russians for four centuries? What about the behavior of the descendant of a French marshal wounded in the Battle of the Moskova?

All showed sensitivity to the old enemy brought down by misfortune.

The answer is: respect for principles, in the West as in the East.

At the very birth of Islam, two episodes, among many others, should catch our attention[1]. The first Muslims, persecuted in Mecca, found refuge in Ethiopia. The Negus, having heard the recitation of the surah "Maryam", was so moved that he was convinced of the authenticity of the Koranic revelation and refused to hand over the exiles to the polytheists who had come to claim them.

Later, in 632, Mecca was conquered by the Muslims. During the purification of the Kaaba, the interior walls of which were covered with a number of frescoes, the Prophet Muhammad protected the one depicting the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus with his cloak and ordered that all other images be destroyed. These examples are not isolated.2] In 637, when the Caliph Omar entered Jerusalem following the conquest of the Holy City, Patriarch Sophronius invited him to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but the Caliph refused in order to prevent it being later converted into a mosque. He prayed to the east of the church on the site where the mosque called "Masjid Sayyiduna Umar ibn al-Khattab" was then built.

Three years earlier, Damascus had been conquered by the Muslim forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid and a small part of the cathedral had been made available to the Muslims as an oratory. At the first prayer held there, ibn al-Walid demanded that no Christian decoration be moved or even covered with a piece of cloth. It was only through redemption and compensation that the cathedral gradually became the mosque we know today. We should also remember that in Damascus, at this very same place, Jesus will appear in his second coming, preceded by the Mahdi, a descendant of Prophet Muhammad, with whom he will spread peace and justice on earth after defeating the Antichrist. 

In India, during the six centuries of the Moghul Empire, the Hindus and other religious communities maintained both their demographic importance and their cults and traditions, including the rites of the Thaipusam, later banned by the English. Six centuries of Muslim sovereignty were exercised by an aristocratic Muslim minority over a Hindu majority by uniting cultures under its banner, without annihilating or humiliating them or attempting to assimilate them, and even sometimes by exalting common spiritual links through literature, art and architecture. The masterpieces that make India one of the symbols of spiritual multipolarity, such as the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri or the Majma-ul-Bahrain, are the examples of a harmonious coexistence, unfortunately trampled underfoot today by the Hindutva fundamentalism that obliterates everyone else.

As all fundamentalist hordes are managed by the same manipulators of chaos, we see them inflict their horrors in many other places, according to the destabilization project. In Afghanistan, for example, where the giant Buddhas, known to the first Umayyad conquerors, were never touched or even mutilated during centuries of conquest. It was not until the appearance of the Wahhabi modernist heterodox movement that dynamite was used to reduce them to dust. The same violence was unleashed on the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, which remained intact until 2015 and was pulverised by ISIS during the iniquitous war waged against Syria, a Muslim country where ethnic groups and cults dating back thousands of years are still protected and respected.

This same Syria cannot be evoked without mentioning the role played by Emir Abdelkader in protecting the Christians of the city of Damascus.   The illustrious Emir, after 15 years of resistance and a final victory in 1847 against the French colonial designs on Algeria, had given up his arms. Confronted with the failure of French officials to keep their word, he was imprisoned, his books burnt and himself and his family forgotten in their dark prison. Freed by the prince-president, the future emperor Napoleon III, he was able to return to the East and finally settled in Damascus, where he stayed in the house inhabited six centuries earlier by his spiritual master, Sidi Muhy ad-din Ibn Arabi, the author of these verses:

In 1860, religious unrest broke out in Mount Lebanon, pitting Christians against Druze. The unrest spread to Damascus between 9 and 17 July, leading to violent attacks on the city's Christian quarters. As soon as he was informed, the illustrious Emir, descendant of the Prophet, scholar, war leader, "Prince among Saints and Saint among Princes", mobilised his Maghrebis, the inhabitants of North Africa who had joined him during his exile and followed him when he settled in Damascus. He instructed them to protect the city's Christians - men, women, children, the elderly, religious, priests and abbesses - "at the risk of their lives". He also protected the consular offices under attack, even agreeing to fly the French flag over his house to persuade the French consul to leave his residence where his life was in danger. Alone and unarmed, he confronted the leader of the attackers at the entrance to the Algerian emigrant quarter to prevent him from harming the Christians and their property.12,000 lives were saved thanks to an act of bravery that should inspire many heads of State today and that was unanimously praised by the major powers of the time, all visibly astonished.

Here is what one survivor had to say: "We were appalled, we were all convinced that our last hour had come [...]. In this waiting for death, in these moments of indescribable anguish, heaven sent us a saviour! Abd el-Kader appeared, surrounded by his Algerians, about forty of them. He was on horseback and without a coat of arms: his handsome, calm and imposing figure contrasted strangely with the noise and disorder everywhere". Published in Le Siècle, 2 August 1869.

When asked about his actions in favour of Christians, the illustrious descendant of the Prophet replied: "Whatever good we did for Christians, we had to do out of loyalty to Muslim law and to respect the rights of humanity. For all creatures are God's family and God's most beloved are those who are most useful to His family. All the religions brought by the prophets, from Adam to Mohamed, are based on two principles: the exaltation of God Almighty and compassion for His creatures". Already, as Emir al Muminin of Algeria, he and the members of his family had distinguished themselves by their treatment of religious minorities, and under his leadership, the Algerian State included senior Jewish and Christian officials and consuls. The legal and administrative system he instituted was totally inspired by Koranic law and the sunnah of the Prophet, right down to the main unit of currency, which he called the Muhammadiyya. One of his main works, The Book of Halts, begins with the words "You have, in the Envoy of God, an Excellent example".

Following the example of the Prophet, in 1837, at a time when the Algerians were waging a holy war against the invaders, he promulgated a regulation that was strikingly lenient. Allow me to reproduce a few extracts that evoke the treatment of enemy soldiers taken prisoner and of hostages in Islam, which is still practised today:

"It is decreed that any Arab who brings a French soldier or a Christian, safe and sound, will receive a reward of 40 fr for men and 50 fr for a woman. Any Arab who has a Frenchman or Christian in his possession is held responsible for the way in which he is treated. He is also required, on pain of the most severe penalty, to take the prisoner without delay either to the nearest Khalifa or to the Sultan himself".(Bessaih B., De l'Émir Abd el kader à l'Imam Chamyl, Dahlab, Algiers, 1997)

Sayyida Zohra, the Emir's own mother, saw to the feeding and care of the French prisoners who shared the same food as the Emir's family. This treatment touched the heart of the Swiss Henry Dunant to the point of being inspired by the Emir's behaviour in founding the International Committee of the Red Cross. Humanitarian principles dating back to the earliest days of Islam would thus be assimilated by the West twelve centuries later.

The French officer Saint-Hyppolite even described "the Emir as a most remarkable man. He is in a moral situation unknown to civilised Europe. He is a being detached from the things of this world, who believes himself to be inspired and to whom God has given the mission of protecting his co-religionists...His ambition is not to conquer; glory is not the motive for his actions; personal interest does not guide him; love of riches is unknown to him; he is attached to the earth only insofar as it relates to carrying out the will of the Almighty, whose instrument he is" (letter from Saint-Hyppolite to Drouet d'Herlon, Mascara, 14 January 1835).

Emir Abdelkader approached Napoleon III to obtain the release of Imam Shamil, whom he had met on his first pilgrimage to Mecca. Shamil, an imam from Dagestan and a Naqshbandi Sufi, had surrendered to the Russians at the end of the long and terrible war of Russian annexation of the Caucasus. Nevertheless, here is what he wrote to Emir Abdelkader congratulating him on protecting the Christians of Damascus: "I was astonished at the blindness of the officials who plunged into such excesses, oblivious to the words of the Prophet (peace be upon him): Whoever does injustice to a tributary (a Christian) whoever does him wrong... it is I who will be his accuser on the day of judgement... When I was informed that you had sheltered the tributaries under the wings of kindness and compassion... I praised you as God Almighty will praise you... In reality you have practised the words of the great apostle (the Prophet) whom God Almighty sent as a token of compassion to his humble creatures". Boualem Bessaih, de l'Émir Abdelkader à l'Imam Chamyl, Editions Dahlab, 1997, p.218

On the subject of this closeness between Christians and Muslims and this principle of respect for others, based on love rather than tolerance, the Emir declared in 1850: "If Muslims and Christians had wanted to pay attention to me, I would have put an end to their quarrels; they would have become, outwardly and inwardly, brothers".

The exemplary life of the Emir, a man of the modern era who knew how to pour into it the values of Tradition, resonates within us as a call to return to the shared values conferred by our religions, the first of which is Rahma, compassion, pietas. Without this foundation, dogma, doctrine and morality are just empty words, and sometimes even dangerous ones. We have seen how Wahhabism and "Brotherism" - excuse the neologism - have claimed to become Islam, even daring to usurp the term "Salaf", transformed into "Salafist"; how Hindu fundamentalism has betrayed the very essence of this age-old tradition; how Zionism has usurped the identity of Judaism and tainted it with its daily crimes and abominations. Finally, we see how, to quote Emmanuel Todd, post-Protestantism or "zombie Protestantism " is at the heart of "Western narcissism", atheistic, nihilistic, materialistic and suicidal, which is dragging Christianity and the whole of the West into an inescapable collapse.

All this invites us to reflect on the notion of a Holy Empire. How can we restore a traditional Empire in a multipolar world? The hallmark of the Empire is its ability to unite under a single law, in a spirit of equality and respect for diversity, ethnic groups, languages and religions that are as diverse as the territories they inhabit. To answer this question, we must never lose sight of our values and never give in to the call of contingencies. It is this fraternity, defended and illustrated by the Emir in each of his acts, which represents the foundation of the Union from Above, union by the Spirit, union by values, in the diversity of regular religious forms which are recognised, respected and protected. It is in opposition to the Union from below, founded on materialism, mercantilism, radical liberalism, nihilism and the "monotheism of money". This is why union from above cannot be based on the same tools created by the materialistic world, which condemns the theft of a loaf of bread by a pauper, but not usury.

A legitimate Empire cannot use the same tools as the pseudo-empire of chaos that it wants to replace. We need to question its entire institutional arsenal: the question of usury, banks, debt, hyper-productivity, as well as degrowth, eugenics, biotechnology and trans-humanism, all of which are based on the premise that life on earth is here to stay. Hence the famous expression by al-Ghazali, who regretted that "even the gravediggers who buried the corpses did not believe that they would die one day".

Life on earth is a passage, and for traditional man it is a question of fulfilling his duties towards God and Humanity. Only an Intellectual and Spiritual Union will enable this Understanding between Peoples from Above to take place. Neither national nor international, but supra-national, it can only be established by a spiritual elite who are the depositaries of the sacred knowledge transmitted by the legitimate traditions. The populations, thanks to the blessing of Religion conferring the Holy Faith, would once again become the conscious support of this submission to the divine will. What is happening in Russia, with the revival of the Orthodox tradition in all social circles and the official decision of taking up the defence of sacred values, encourages us to hope that once again this great nation is destined to form a Holy Alliance for the safeguard of humanity. This is the call to which we all have to respond by putting aside our pride, our ego and the misinterpretation of identity issues, so as to draw on our religious traditions in order to save the heritage of wisdom on which to base future agreements between peoples and nations.

 A Revolução do Espírito – A Necessidade do Império Sagrado

「精神の革命 I」

 RUHUN DEVRİMİ I

Speech by Adnen El Ghali at the Multipolarity Forum in Moscow, 26 February 2024

In the autumn of 1920, the final act of Russia's civil war took place in Crimea. In an extraordinary effort to save them from the Bolsheviks, General Wrangel had the remnants of the army and all the civilians who had been able to find a place on the imperial fleet evacuated in just a few days. The first port of call was Constantinople. On arrival, the Russians themselves were astonished by the outpouring of sympathy from the people towards the enemy of the previous day. One of the most remarkable figures to emerge in the relationship between the Muslim world and Russia, the mathematician Anastasia von Manstein-Shirinsky, whose memoirs were awarded the Alexander Newski prize and who taught mathematics to several generations of Tunisians, gave moving testimony to this. After the British refused to accept the refugees, Admiral Dumesnil, commander of the French squadron in the Orient, decided with the agreement of his government to evacuate them to a French port. The French authorities in Algeria, dominated by left-wing parties, refused. Bizerte was therefore chosen and, on the 3rd December 1920, the Russian fleet, carrying around 7,000 refugees, left Constantinople for the Regency of Tunis.

At a time when none of the former allied powers wanted to risk the enmity of Bolshevism, Tunisia, France and Turkey, which had been defeated but whose caliphate was still intact, assumed responsibility. A traditional Muslim and Sufi ruler, Sidi Mohamed Nacer, the Bey of Tunis, accepted the Russian refugees. The Imperial fleet was disarmed as it entered the port of Bizerte, but not returned to the Soviet government.

The election of the Cartel des gauches in France in May 1924 unfortunately accelerated the course of events. The new government ordered the Maritime Prefect of Bizerte to allow a Soviet mission to inspect Wrangel's squadron. Rear-Admiral Exelmans, the descendant of a Marshal of the Empire and a man of principle, was outraged and protested in vain to the government. So, when the order arrived on 5 November 1924, he carried it out, had the Russian officers and sailors honored and saw to their temporary installation in Tunisia, but at the same time asked to be relieved of his command. This man, who had preferred to sacrifice his career to his principles, was honoured by the Russian officers on his departure.

How can we explain the behaviour towards the Russians of the Bey of Tunis, sovereign of an Ottoman regency that had fought them in the Crimea? What about the fraternal gestures of the people of Constantinople, capital of the Empire that opposed the Russians for four centuries? What about the behavior of the descendant of a French marshal wounded in the Battle of the Moskova?

All showed sensitivity to the old enemy brought down by misfortune.

The answer is: respect for principles, in the West as in the East.

At the very birth of Islam, two episodes, among many others, should catch our attention[1]. The first Muslims, persecuted in Mecca, found refuge in Ethiopia. The Negus, having heard the recitation of the surah "Maryam", was so moved that he was convinced of the authenticity of the Koranic revelation and refused to hand over the exiles to the polytheists who had come to claim them.

Later, in 632, Mecca was conquered by the Muslims. During the purification of the Kaaba, the interior walls of which were covered with a number of frescoes, the Prophet Muhammad protected the one depicting the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus with his cloak and ordered that all other images be destroyed. These examples are not isolated.2] In 637, when the Caliph Omar entered Jerusalem following the conquest of the Holy City, Patriarch Sophronius invited him to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but the Caliph refused in order to prevent it being later converted into a mosque. He prayed to the east of the church on the site where the mosque called "Masjid Sayyiduna Umar ibn al-Khattab" was then built.

Three years earlier, Damascus had been conquered by the Muslim forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid and a small part of the cathedral had been made available to the Muslims as an oratory. At the first prayer held there, ibn al-Walid demanded that no Christian decoration be moved or even covered with a piece of cloth. It was only through redemption and compensation that the cathedral gradually became the mosque we know today. We should also remember that in Damascus, at this very same place, Jesus will appear in his second coming, preceded by the Mahdi, a descendant of Prophet Muhammad, with whom he will spread peace and justice on earth after defeating the Antichrist. 

In India, during the six centuries of the Moghul Empire, the Hindus and other religious communities maintained both their demographic importance and their cults and traditions, including the rites of the Thaipusam, later banned by the English. Six centuries of Muslim sovereignty were exercised by an aristocratic Muslim minority over a Hindu majority by uniting cultures under its banner, without annihilating or humiliating them or attempting to assimilate them, and even sometimes by exalting common spiritual links through literature, art and architecture. The masterpieces that make India one of the symbols of spiritual multipolarity, such as the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri or the Majma-ul-Bahrain, are the examples of a harmonious coexistence, unfortunately trampled underfoot today by the Hindutva fundamentalism that obliterates everyone else.

As all fundamentalist hordes are managed by the same manipulators of chaos, we see them inflict their horrors in many other places, according to the destabilization project. In Afghanistan, for example, where the giant Buddhas, known to the first Umayyad conquerors, were never touched or even mutilated during centuries of conquest. It was not until the appearance of the Wahhabi modernist heterodox movement that dynamite was used to reduce them to dust. The same violence was unleashed on the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, which remained intact until 2015 and was pulverised by ISIS during the iniquitous war waged against Syria, a Muslim country where ethnic groups and cults dating back thousands of years are still protected and respected.

This same Syria cannot be evoked without mentioning the role played by Emir Abdelkader in protecting the Christians of the city of Damascus.   The illustrious Emir, after 15 years of resistance and a final victory in 1847 against the French colonial designs on Algeria, had given up his arms. Confronted with the failure of French officials to keep their word, he was imprisoned, his books burnt and himself and his family forgotten in their dark prison. Freed by the prince-president, the future emperor Napoleon III, he was able to return to the East and finally settled in Damascus, where he stayed in the house inhabited six centuries earlier by his spiritual master, Sidi Muhy ad-din Ibn Arabi, the author of these verses:

In 1860, religious unrest broke out in Mount Lebanon, pitting Christians against Druze. The unrest spread to Damascus between 9 and 17 July, leading to violent attacks on the city's Christian quarters. As soon as he was informed, the illustrious Emir, descendant of the Prophet, scholar, war leader, "Prince among Saints and Saint among Princes", mobilised his Maghrebis, the inhabitants of North Africa who had joined him during his exile and followed him when he settled in Damascus. He instructed them to protect the city's Christians - men, women, children, the elderly, religious, priests and abbesses - "at the risk of their lives". He also protected the consular offices under attack, even agreeing to fly the French flag over his house to persuade the French consul to leave his residence where his life was in danger. Alone and unarmed, he confronted the leader of the attackers at the entrance to the Algerian emigrant quarter to prevent him from harming the Christians and their property.12,000 lives were saved thanks to an act of bravery that should inspire many heads of State today and that was unanimously praised by the major powers of the time, all visibly astonished.

Here is what one survivor had to say: "We were appalled, we were all convinced that our last hour had come [...]. In this waiting for death, in these moments of indescribable anguish, heaven sent us a saviour! Abd el-Kader appeared, surrounded by his Algerians, about forty of them. He was on horseback and without a coat of arms: his handsome, calm and imposing figure contrasted strangely with the noise and disorder everywhere". Published in Le Siècle, 2 August 1869.

When asked about his actions in favour of Christians, the illustrious descendant of the Prophet replied: "Whatever good we did for Christians, we had to do out of loyalty to Muslim law and to respect the rights of humanity. For all creatures are God's family and God's most beloved are those who are most useful to His family. All the religions brought by the prophets, from Adam to Mohamed, are based on two principles: the exaltation of God Almighty and compassion for His creatures". Already, as Emir al Muminin of Algeria, he and the members of his family had distinguished themselves by their treatment of religious minorities, and under his leadership, the Algerian State included senior Jewish and Christian officials and consuls. The legal and administrative system he instituted was totally inspired by Koranic law and the sunnah of the Prophet, right down to the main unit of currency, which he called the Muhammadiyya. One of his main works, The Book of Halts, begins with the words "You have, in the Envoy of God, an Excellent example".

Following the example of the Prophet, in 1837, at a time when the Algerians were waging a holy war against the invaders, he promulgated a regulation that was strikingly lenient. Allow me to reproduce a few extracts that evoke the treatment of enemy soldiers taken prisoner and of hostages in Islam, which is still practised today:

"It is decreed that any Arab who brings a French soldier or a Christian, safe and sound, will receive a reward of 40 fr for men and 50 fr for a woman. Any Arab who has a Frenchman or Christian in his possession is held responsible for the way in which he is treated. He is also required, on pain of the most severe penalty, to take the prisoner without delay either to the nearest Khalifa or to the Sultan himself".(Bessaih B., De l'Émir Abd el kader à l'Imam Chamyl, Dahlab, Algiers, 1997)

Sayyida Zohra, the Emir's own mother, saw to the feeding and care of the French prisoners who shared the same food as the Emir's family. This treatment touched the heart of the Swiss Henry Dunant to the point of being inspired by the Emir's behaviour in founding the International Committee of the Red Cross. Humanitarian principles dating back to the earliest days of Islam would thus be assimilated by the West twelve centuries later.

The French officer Saint-Hyppolite even described "the Emir as a most remarkable man. He is in a moral situation unknown to civilised Europe. He is a being detached from the things of this world, who believes himself to be inspired and to whom God has given the mission of protecting his co-religionists...His ambition is not to conquer; glory is not the motive for his actions; personal interest does not guide him; love of riches is unknown to him; he is attached to the earth only insofar as it relates to carrying out the will of the Almighty, whose instrument he is" (letter from Saint-Hyppolite to Drouet d'Herlon, Mascara, 14 January 1835).

Emir Abdelkader approached Napoleon III to obtain the release of Imam Shamil, whom he had met on his first pilgrimage to Mecca. Shamil, an imam from Dagestan and a Naqshbandi Sufi, had surrendered to the Russians at the end of the long and terrible war of Russian annexation of the Caucasus. Nevertheless, here is what he wrote to Emir Abdelkader congratulating him on protecting the Christians of Damascus: "I was astonished at the blindness of the officials who plunged into such excesses, oblivious to the words of the Prophet (peace be upon him): Whoever does injustice to a tributary (a Christian) whoever does him wrong... it is I who will be his accuser on the day of judgement... When I was informed that you had sheltered the tributaries under the wings of kindness and compassion... I praised you as God Almighty will praise you... In reality you have practised the words of the great apostle (the Prophet) whom God Almighty sent as a token of compassion to his humble creatures". Boualem Bessaih, de l'Émir Abdelkader à l'Imam Chamyl, Editions Dahlab, 1997, p.218

On the subject of this closeness between Christians and Muslims and this principle of respect for others, based on love rather than tolerance, the Emir declared in 1850: "If Muslims and Christians had wanted to pay attention to me, I would have put an end to their quarrels; they would have become, outwardly and inwardly, brothers".

The exemplary life of the Emir, a man of the modern era who knew how to pour into it the values of Tradition, resonates within us as a call to return to the shared values conferred by our religions, the first of which is Rahma, compassion, pietas. Without this foundation, dogma, doctrine and morality are just empty words, and sometimes even dangerous ones. We have seen how Wahhabism and "Brotherism" - excuse the neologism - have claimed to become Islam, even daring to usurp the term "Salaf", transformed into "Salafist"; how Hindu fundamentalism has betrayed the very essence of this age-old tradition; how Zionism has usurped the identity of Judaism and tainted it with its daily crimes and abominations. Finally, we see how, to quote Emmanuel Todd, post-Protestantism or "zombie Protestantism " is at the heart of "Western narcissism", atheistic, nihilistic, materialistic and suicidal, which is dragging Christianity and the whole of the West into an inescapable collapse.

All this invites us to reflect on the notion of a Holy Empire. How can we restore a traditional Empire in a multipolar world? The hallmark of the Empire is its ability to unite under a single law, in a spirit of equality and respect for diversity, ethnic groups, languages and religions that are as diverse as the territories they inhabit. To answer this question, we must never lose sight of our values and never give in to the call of contingencies. It is this fraternity, defended and illustrated by the Emir in each of his acts, which represents the foundation of the Union from Above, union by the Spirit, union by values, in the diversity of regular religious forms which are recognised, respected and protected. It is in opposition to the Union from below, founded on materialism, mercantilism, radical liberalism, nihilism and the "monotheism of money". This is why union from above cannot be based on the same tools created by the materialistic world, which condemns the theft of a loaf of bread by a pauper, but not usury.

A legitimate Empire cannot use the same tools as the pseudo-empire of chaos that it wants to replace. We need to question its entire institutional arsenal: the question of usury, banks, debt, hyper-productivity, as well as degrowth, eugenics, biotechnology and trans-humanism, all of which are based on the premise that life on earth is here to stay. Hence the famous expression by al-Ghazali, who regretted that "even the gravediggers who buried the corpses did not believe that they would die one day".

Life on earth is a passage, and for traditional man it is a question of fulfilling his duties towards God and Humanity. Only an Intellectual and Spiritual Union will enable this Understanding between Peoples from Above to take place. Neither national nor international, but supra-national, it can only be established by a spiritual elite who are the depositaries of the sacred knowledge transmitted by the legitimate traditions. The populations, thanks to the blessing of Religion conferring the Holy Faith, would once again become the conscious support of this submission to the divine will. What is happening in Russia, with the revival of the Orthodox tradition in all social circles and the official decision of taking up the defence of sacred values, encourages us to hope that once again this great nation is destined to form a Holy Alliance for the safeguard of humanity. This is the call to which we all have to respond by putting aside our pride, our ego and the misinterpretation of identity issues, so as to draw on our religious traditions in order to save the heritage of wisdom on which to base future agreements between peoples and nations.

 A Revolução do Espírito – A Necessidade do Império Sagrado

「精神の革命 I」

 RUHUN DEVRİMİ I