Genocide, Terrorism & Powerlessness

Welcome back. This is Ahmed, and today I would like to delve into a heavier topic. From the point of view of the zero, of nothingness, we might be tempted to ignore pain as it manifests in human terms on this planet. But I have always been very eager to understand pain and to engage with it. What I am trying to do today is look at the topics I’ve been working on over the past few years from this new perspective, and see what that produces as new insights.

Today I’ll be speaking about powerlessness. The German term for it is quite helpful — Ohnmacht, the opposite of Macht, which is power. What I understood for myself is that powerlessness is a very good gateway to the divine, to the zero, to the singularity. Because the realization of powerlessness is the realization that you as a human are limited, and that forces you to disidentify from the ego to a certain extent — from the human being, the shape that you took on this planet.

What helped me get to this point is that throughout my life, I was in situations where I was exposed to emotional and psychological violence, a lot of gaslighting and moralizing behavior. In these constellations, I had to realize that in order to survive — where it was inconceivable to Ahmed that I could leave them — I had to completely dissociate from myself, from the ego to a certain extent. I had to accept the fragmentation and dissolution of my ego, and any attributes I associated with it.

For example, I don’t want to be yelled at because it feels humiliating, painful, unfair. When you are in constellations where fairness is an impossible outcome, where you realize you will never be treated the way you would like to be treated, you have to let go of these ideas of fairness, justice, even kindness. In order to survive, all you can do is let go of the ego, dissociate from yourself.

At the same time, what I’ve always done is remained committed to giving love. I wrote a lot — things like “I vow to love your essence and not get stuck in shapes and forms.” I said to myself that I want to be a loving person, that I want to stay in love despite what’s happening. It was as if I was soul training with very heavy weights. The situation was one of utter powerlessness. Powerlessness forces you to look inward, because there’s nothing on the outside that will satisfy the need to feel safe, to feel loved. You have to become your own support.

I think that process, at the individual level, was what helped me find the way back to zero, to nothing.

Now I would like to talk about terrorism and genocide. One of Ahmed’s identities is that of a terrorism scholar, a criminologist. I have always tried to delve into the human intricacies, to understand what pushes a human to the brink of desperation to engage in violence. But I have also been interested in how we react to violence as a society, and what is considered violence and what is not.

In very short, what I understood looking at terrorism — and also doing interviews with people around the world who had joined organizations qualified as terrorists — is that in essence it all boils down to terrorist violence being the ultimate expression of powerlessness. It is the attempt to regain power over a situation which feels so unjust, where all other means have been exhausted. “I need to employ extreme violence to re-establish some sort of justice.” That’s what happens in the mind of somebody who engages in mass slaughter, in what is called terrorism.

I was always interested in the fact that the way we react to terrorist attacks is rarely a moment where we look at the tragic nature of such an event — which should lead us to ask ourselves: how could we get here, where we kill each other indiscriminately? Terrorism is the ultimate expression of the desperate ego, one that accepts killing many lives for some ideal of justice. And there you see that even ideas of justice are entangled with the ego.

Because I’ve always been interested in terrorism and because I am from the Arab world, I’ve always been connected to the question of Palestine. The violence that Palestinians have been enduring for decades is central to many groups which consider themselves Islamist or have some Arab identity. Palestine always figures as a narrative element justifying why violence is necessary — “Look at what is being done to Palestinians with the support and complicity of Western powers.”

After the 7th of October, when the attack by Hamas and the Qassam Brigades happened, that was a moment where we had a chance as a collective to look at the tragedy of it and ask ourselves: how could we get here? By realizing the tragedy, on the one hand you have space for the suffering of any human being. If you justify such acts of violence, you have to dissociate from your essence, knowing that it feels wrong to take an innocent life. We know it deep inside.

But at the same time, ego and mind constructions take us away from that, saying, “It is justified because of the violence Palestinians have been enduring.” And so there’s no space for criticizing such forms of violence. That’s far from our essence, because we know deep inside that any innocent life should not be taken.

There was an opportunity to look at the tragedy and let it sink in as such. But very soon afterwards, the genocide started. An immense bombardment of the Gaza Strip — deafening violence. If you had some connection, if you were not blinded by lies and propaganda, you felt that this violence was unbearable. You would see images and videos of children being bombed, thousands of children being killed.

You feel it viscerally. Not only because you’re looking at it as something you’re connected to, but because the justification of that violence, the nonchalance with which this killing is accepted and tolerated, says something about the worth of your life as an Arab, as a non-white person. That was the brutality of it.

In the face of that, you feel helpless. Powerless. What is it that you could do? In the Syrian civil war, that feeling of utter desperation led thousands of individuals to go fight. But Gaza is different — nobody goes to Gaza to fight there. It was actually very impressive to see so little violence outside of Palestine throughout that time, because the desperation was so immense and the complicity of Western powers so blatantly clear.

You have the violence on one hand, and then the gaslighting at the collective level on the other. When you see the violence and say, “Are you guys not seeing it?” — the answer is literally, “It’s not that bad, and they’re mostly terrorists anyway.” That completely distorts your sense of reality. And when you formulate criticism against the State of Israel, it’s dismissed as antisemitism. That is collective gaslighting. It produces a collective sense of powerlessness.

Whatever you do is going to be a drop in the ocean. You can never achieve a sense of justice or fairness in human terms. And so you have to let go of them. If you’re being decimated, exposed to immense violence, what else do you have other than God to turn to? That’s how powerlessness can become a gateway to the divine.

This is in no way an attempt to excuse the violence. It’s just another way of looking at it — perhaps finding some solace, knowing that in human terms, “God has a reason for everything happening.” But there’s also the risk of spiritual bypassing, the idea that if nothing matters, we can just ignore the violence and suffering.

But if we go back to the zero, to the singularity, then what we know is not only that nothing matters — but everything matters at the same time. If we look at extreme violence from the point of zero gravity, on one hand we know it is all fine in a way, it all has its reason. But at the same time, from that point of infinite mercy, we can hold the entire suffering.

It feels like a better place to be looking at the violence. From that space where you absorb it all, where the heart or the divine can swallow it all and everything collapses into it, you can go out there without identifying with the shapes and forms, even the violence, even the concepts of justice or fairness. If you go from a point of infinite mercy and infinite love, you will find a different sort of strength to engage with the world and its suffering. It should in no way lead you to dismiss the suffering. But at the same time, you know it’s all fine already. Because there’s no past, no future. Everything collapses into the zero, the nothingness.

But we’re still on a human planet. We deal with each other, with violence, with conflict. The only thing we can do as humans is to say that we know deep inside that what most resonates with our essence is being kind, being gentle. Violence is always an expression of the ego. Pain and hurt are always expressions of the ego. We can look at them as such — also with mercy, also seeing them as expressions of the divine — but not identifying with them, not getting lost in them. Because getting lost in the shapes and forms is infinite suffering, and there will never be a sense of justice and fairness in human terms that you will be able to achieve.

That was a tougher episode. It helps me think through these very heavy topics that I have been working on, and I am very excited to keep working on them from this new perspective. Sending you a lot of love — abundant, infinite love and peace. Be gentle, be kind. That’s all we can do on this planet. Peace out.