CHERIF MOHAMED ALY AÏDARA 2009

CHERIF MOHAMED ALY AIDARA

09, TOUNDOUP RYA

DAKAR SENEGAL

POSTAL CODE: BP 24462 Dakar

Tel: (221)77 450 26 55

E MAIL: ma_aidara@yahoo.fr

THE HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE 2009

Conference: spirituality in action

“GRASSROOTS ENLIGHTNMENT, GRASSROOTS

EMPOWERMENT
BY

CHERIF MOHAMED ALY AIDARA

HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE: SPIRITUALITY IN ACTION CONFERENCE

 CHERIF MOHAMED ALY AÏDARA 2009

In the name of Allah The All Merciful, The Most

Merciful Peace and Peace be upon purifies
Mouhammad and his holy Family

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our meeting in this country ( a symbol of material Power and economic development) in this exact
moment (the 21 century marking the apogee of modernity which offers to the human being all the
conceivable conveniences) to speak about “spirituality in action” seems to me to be a consent of the
insufficiency of the efforts carried out up to now. Today the bankruptcy of our modern civilizations is
increasingly apparent. Indeed, this bankruptcy was foreseeable insofar as the three postulates on
which this modernity rests have amputee man two fundamental dimensions: transcendence and
community.

-The Postulate of Liberalism according to Adam Smith who proclaims that “if each one pursue it
egoistic interest, the general interest will be carries out” Today, we note that, on the contrary, after
two centuries of experiment of this “freedom”, which consists in allowing the strongest to crush the
weakest, led to a concentration of wealth within the hands of a parasitic and speculative minority
and to an increasing misery of the underprivileged masses. Only 20% of the world population holds
83% of the planet’s wealth and the remaining 80 % of the population has only 14% of the richesses.

1/6 of the world population is affected by malnutrition and 40 million people dies each year of
famine and diseases easily curable, including 13, 5 million children of less than 5 years old.

HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE: SPIRITUALITY IN ACTION CONFERENCE

 CHERIF MOHAMED ALY AÏDARA 2009

-The second postulate is that of Descartes: “To make us masters and owners of nature” meaning a
design according to which science allows us the domination on nature and men by providing us
increasingly powerful means but without never questioning us on the ends, the goal and the
direction of this domination. The result is that it did not lead to the blooming of man but to its
crushing. We experience then war of all against all with a competition based on false rules, with the
exhaustion of the non renewable natural resources and the destruction of the environment.

- The third postulate is that of Faust: “man must replace God in the management of the world “God,
as said in the holy Quran did not create the world without a goal. Man after taking God away of his
life has created a new religion “the monotheism of the market “ or the idolatry of money in which
the human being when he is not un employed, excluded or colonized in bounded do the role a
producer and a consumer driven by his only interests. It is completely the opposite of the man of
faith who seeks spiritual realization whether he is a Moslem, a Christian, a Jewish, or a Hindu. This
diagnosis of the situation of our planet which is the result of more than one of half-millennium of
materialism market by 500 years of Colonization and years of dictatorship of the international
financial institutions take me to present to you our vision in comparison to this disastrous situation.
But before that I would like to propose a postulate: What should we understand bye the words
“development” and progress? I thing that development is multidimensional and that a civilization can
be developed in one aspect and at the same time underdeveloped in other aspect by regression; And
that the popular belief in automatic indefinite progress is a superstition. The fact of reducing
development to industry and production or should I say materialistic aspects only, is one of the
pernicious idols of our modern civilization. Thus the problem of development is badly posed. The
human being is multidimensional integrating physical, psychological and spiritual aspect each one of
which deserves to be taken into account when one intends to reach an “integral human
development”. This is why I propose a return and a reinforcement of spirituality at all levels. The way
of spirituality realization as indicate by the divine traditions and religions is transformative and allows
spouting out the light within us. Even the ideologies which do not refer to any transcendent divinity
preach self knowledge, the so called “coaching” process. The solution which one could propose to
the disadvantage masses through spiritual realization can be found in the divine teaching of Original
Islam. One should not confuse spiritual realization with terrestrial renouncement because to support
transformative realization there are activities that we need to undertake with our terrestrial bodies.
The Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him and his holy family) recommends us to integrate our

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temporal life into our spiritual one by these sublime words: “work for your earthly life as if you were
to live there eternally, and works for your afterlife as if you were to die tomorrow”.

Thus, spiritual realization is inseparable from the legitimate satisfaction of material needs, individual
and community based. We regard all religions and traditions as different points of the same
circumference giving access to a single center. This center, which is spiritual realization, is beyond
any religion, antagonism, or opposition. It is the light within each one of us. This light enables us to
discover our own sacredness as well as the sacredness of all beings within and beyond nature. This
enables us to love and respect ourselves as well as others.

Unfortunately, the great bulk of people are deprived of theses teachings and it is what explains their
actual position of material poverty and spiritual dryness.

This realization is done by the education of people in the fields which are: body, food, clothing,
housing, works, actions and words. They are the 7 basics where the will of man must reign.

1. It is necessary to have the resolution to keep one’s body pure and clean of all the impurities.
The physical impurities generate disease and the spiritual impurities prevent the worship
from being affective.
2. Food must be healthy, well balanced and licit. Licit for the health of the spiritual heart
3. Clothing is an externalization of interior peace and the love of God.
4. It is necessary for the residence to be in conformity with the needs for of a harmonious
family and social life.
5. The work of a person must be conformed to his true nature in addition to being licit, acquired
and controlled.
6. All actions must be aligned on the tree levels which are the law, the way and the truth. The
law is to do what the creator orders to us and to avoid the interdicts; the way is good
behavior, courtesy and control of the instincts. As to truth, it is the conjunction of the law
and the way which creates harmony and internal peace which are the two wings of true
happiness. Happiness is not a destination as usually thought but it is a trajectory. It is
necessary to be in its trajectory in order to achieve its goal.
7. The tongue is the instrument which deserves more to be controlled, because it generates
more evil than all others joined together. It is a weapon of mass destruction which must be
strictly regulated. Man must avoid impure words and must say only fine words. He must
know when to speak and how to speak.

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 CHERIF MOHAMED ALY AÏDARA 2009

The Prophet said “whoever know his self, knows his Lord”. This Knowledge is not acquired only by
mere instructions but through Purification. One of the sages has said: “One who convinces others is
strong but one who convinces himself is really powerful”. Thus self control allows the junction with
the light of the universal Self which is the divine light.

Our planet is comparable to an ocean of misery with just some islands of prosperity. Humanity is
divided into a rich minority and a majority of poor. Poverty whether materiel or spiritual is the most
shared thing in our world. This is mostly due to the selfishness of affluent people and their refusal to
share with the poor. These are driven in a vicious circle marked by difficult access to healthcare and
education, hunger, clandestine emigration etc.

Does it not astonish that despite the fact that our planet has enough resources to nourish all his
inhabitants, people are dying because of lack of food? This is why the prophet of Islam once said:
“those rich people who forgot God are comparable to the dead”. And the great Sage of Islam Imam
Ali said: “if poverty were a living person I would have killed it”.

Concerning the African people two aspects have to be taken into consideration:

An endogenous or internal aspect

And an exogenous or external aspect.

What I mean is not to say that Africa is separated from the rest of the world, but that this continent
which comprised of multitude of civilizations contrary to an extremely spread idea, has its
specificities like all other continents. If we want to have a clear idea of the African situation it is
necessary to take into account a multitude of factors.

As regards the exogenous factors which contributed negatively to the situation of the continent we
can give the following examples:

The slave trade which has deprived Africa more than one hundred millions of its most
valorous daughters and sons.
A hundred years of colonization in which the continent was confined in its role of provider of
raw material and natural resources for the industrialized countries. This extraversion of the
economies created the mentality of dependence. This is why we think that
underdevelopment is mental and multidimensional

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Neocolonialism with it’s so called “development policies” imposed by the old colonial powers
after the apparent independence of countries.
But these elements alone are not enough to explain the problem. The endogenous elements
are in my opinion even more important and far more significant.
The endogenous elements are what represent the personality of Africa, its culture, its
temperament, its weltanschauung etc. All these elements were never really taken into
account in the development policies which were applied up to now in Africa. Development
is like a seed which germinate and grow into a tree. The orange seed which is sown and
sprinkled is potentially an orange tree because it contains in it the capacity to become an
orange tree .It will never become a banana tree for example. Let’s imagine now that
somebody sews an orange seed with the intention to have banana tree, what will occur? It
is the same process with maladjusted development policies.
I thus think that development is primarily endogenous and accidentally exogenous. If we
want to bring a solution to the problems of Africa we must necessarily go to the roots of evil
and good which are in the soul. I myself have initiated some projects as a modest
contribution to this noble task by creating Mozdahir International Institute which has a vast
program of sustainable development in West Africa with the means available to us.
Mozdahir as an Ngo has a pilot project in integrated development in the south of Senegal
some of our projects are as follow:
1. A project of sustainable villages with a control of energy by community plantations of
Jatropha for the production of biofuel which has the agreement of PNUE(program
of the United Nations for the environment).This project envisages also the creation
of an assembly plant for new generations of solar panels in partnership with French
company AXIO and Senegalese CCBM
2. An agricultural project in the village of Nadjaf with an irrigated perimeter of 50
hectares accommodating more than 50 peasants and their families and producing
bananas, food crops in organic farming. By fixing these population , this project has
a positive incidence on the fight against poverty in all its dimensions as well as
clandestine emigration
3. The promotion of social habitats and green houses with local materials in partnership
with the association for the Nubian Vault(AVN)
4. An educational program with the opening of several school inside the country

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5. The installation of a Mutual of Savings and credit functioning according to the

standards of Islamic finance.

I would like to thank you all for your pleasant attention.

May God cover you all with His all Compassing Mercy and may peace be upon you all!

Cherif Mohamed Aly Aïdara

HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE: SPIRITUALITY IN ACTION CONFERENCE