Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst
On October 21, I had the privilege of meeting Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein in Belgrade. As I pointed out in the introductory text, my intention was to interview him, but his busy schedule didn’t allow it. We only had around 10-15 minutes for a friendly, informal conversation that was no less fascinating. Sheikh Hosein agreed to conduct an online interview instead, as he was preparing to visit Albania. However, as Serbia’s southwestern neighbor is effectively a NATO satellite state, he was denied entry under the pretext of a supposed “terrorist threat”. Sheikh Hosein returned to his hotel in Belgrade and is still waiting for his luggage. He contacted me, so we decided to have an interview in person. Here’s his fascinating perspective on the matters of geopolitics, religion, multipolarity, economy, monetary systems, etc.
Drago Bosnic: Sheikh Hussein, thank You for taking the time for an interview with InfoBRICS. You’ve been to Serbia in previous years, because You understand the importance of interfaith dialogue, and having Christians and Muslims working together, as the two largest religions on the planet. So, why do You think it’s so important to maintain dialogue and even build an alliance between these two faiths?
Imran Hosein: Islamic eschatology answers that question. The Lord God promised the Israelite people that, with the Messiah, the golden age will return and Holy Israel will be restored as the ruling state in the world, as it was in the time of David and Solomon, God’s blessing be upon them. The Muslim and the Christian are the only two people who believe, as a matter of religious faith, that Jesus was the Messiah, that the Messiah came and the Messiah left, and that the Messiah will return. There’s nothing more important in political history, in economic history, in religious history, nothing more important waiting to occur than the return of the Messiah. In preparation for the return of the Messiah, it is elementary common sense that the two people who wait on His return, who believe in His return as a matter of religious faith, should come together in friendship and alliance to prepare for His return. It’s elementary common sense. We don’t have to convince any government.
But no part of the world is more critically important for our two people to come together, to prepare the way for His return, than the Balkans. Because this is that part of the world where for the last few hundred years our two people have lived in close proximity with each other. The problem we face, however, is there have been evil forces at work, for hundreds of years trying to prevent the friendly relations between our two people and trying to sabotage any possible end-time reconciliation, friendship and alliance. Those evil forces have also been responsible for a river of blood which has flowed between our two people.
I speak first of all of the Ottoman Empire, which has been a relentless oppressor. In the same way that the West waged their crusades against Muslims to recover Jerusalem, so too did the Ottoman Empire with their own crusade against the Orthodox Christian world to sabotage end-time friendship and alliance between our two people. But despite these obstacles, despite the war and the birth of Bosnia, despite Srebrenica, despite all the obstacles and all the rivers of blood, I hold the view that truth must eventually triumph because the Lord God has created this world as a moral order. And the definition and the explanation of a moral order is a word in which truth will eventually triumph over all rivals and justice will triumph over injustice and oppression.
Drago Bosnic: Of course, this is very important work, but it seems that certain powers in the world are not very keen on reconciliation and interfaith dialogue. So they’ve tried to sabotage Your work and prevent You from speaking in various countries. You were just denied entry into Albania on trumped-up charges, where You’ve never had any issues. So what do You have to say to those who want to sabotage Your work and prevent You from speaking?
Imran Hosein: Number one. The attempt to smear me, to tell lies about me, to paint me as a terrorist or to be connected with acts of terrorism, is so patently false that it will be backfiring against you that people would laugh at you. Because people are not fools. They can recognize that this is the standard way in which you operate.
Number two. The efforts that you’re making to try to block us will not prevent us. And we pursue our efforts for the preparation for the return of the Messiah without fear and with a dedication to our mission. We shall not be deterred by what you do.
Number three. We are not afraid to die. We’re not afraid to die. And so you cannot defeat us. You can kill a man, but you cannot kill the truth. And so I expect that there will be more pain and sorrow, more problems for me. And that what has just happened in Albania might happen elsewhere as well. And of course, at the age of 85, it is very difficult and painful for me to spend a whole night in the departure lounge of an airport with no place to sleep and no capacity, no possibility of sleeping and not knowing what’s going to happen. This is painful. This is sorrowful. But I was not afraid. And I did not panic. I was calm all through the ordeal. And I want to set an example for the young ones who will follow in my footsteps, that you must not panic.
When Moses was fleeing in the direction of the Red Sea, a subject with which every Jew is familiar, so I don’t have to remind the Jews, they are the ones who should be thinking about what I’m saying… When Moses was fleeing to the Red Sea, as today, we are the ones who are fleeing from persecution and oppression, the Israelite people were scared they will be destroyed. Because Pharaoh is so powerful, like Trump today is so powerful. And Moses was not panicking. Moses was calm. And Moses had confidence that the Lord God is watching over him. And then the miracle occurred. And the Lord God said: Take your stick and strike the water!” And Moses and the Israelite people passed safely. And when Pharaoh and his army attempted to pursue them, the waters came down and they were drowned. And so I say to those who are blocking me and persecuting me and harassing me, I ask them to remember this event in history.
Drago Bosnic: We know in what ways the powers that be control the geopolitical situation. We see that a lot of extremism is being pushed on Christianity or, unfortunately, post-Christianity in Western countries, and also on the Muslim world. We see these so-called Islamic terrorists who are actually killing mostly Muslims. And we see Neo-Nazis who claim they’re fighting for the white race, but they’ve killed 15,000 white Russian people in the Donbass. How can we fight this orchestrated extremism that’s designed to divide and destroy us?
Imran Hosein: Well, first of all, you need faith. Secular hearts cannot deal with this monster. Feeble hearts cannot take on this monster. This is a monster who doesn’t have a heart. He’s a beast. He has no sympathy, he has no compassion. And he will kill and kill and kill, and then go home and sleep. It doesn’t bother him. So the only way you can stand up and resist is if you have faith. And that is something that is declining in the modern world. And so the first step on the road to building our defenses and strengthening our capacity to resist the oppressor, the first step is to return to the life of faith. This message has to be conveyed to the Muslims living in the Balkans and also to the Christians living in the Balkans. And I have been at work all my life, particularly these last 25 or 30 years, and have been pioneering Islamic eschatology, meaning explaining the reality of the world today and trying to bring our people back to the life of faith. And I have encountered very strange things – that the more a person is brainwashed, the less it is possible to bring him back to the truth. He’s lost his capacity to think. Someone else thinks for him. He lost his capacity to act independently. Others determine how they act. So how do we remove the brainwashing?
The media, for example, in Albania, paint me as a terrorist. The media has declared that Imran Hussein is Salafi. But the truth is the Salafis are those who are most hostile to me. They don’t want to meet me. They hope I can disappear. The truth is that my teacher was a Sufi sheikh and his teacher was a Sufi sheikh. And I recognize Sufism to be the very heart of the religion. But I do not identify myself as a Sufi anymore, simply because I don’t want to have to spend time defending any Sufi religious practice which is not based on the Quran and the Sunnah or the life of the Prophet. So I am much closer to the Sufi way of life than the Salafi. So how do you respond when they are engaged in what can be called a character assassination, telling lies about you?
Well, the answer is, I am accustomed to it. I have been living with it for the last 20-30 years. I am accustomed to it. And all those who came before me, all those who walked on the path of religion before me, and most of all the prophets of God. We all face the same problem of a smear campaign, telling lies about us. So we respond with patience and we continue to preach the truth, confident the truth must ultimately prevail. It is important that our people, particularly the young ones, build this backbone of steel, that we will not be deterred, that we will continue to proclaim the truth without regard for consequences, and do it with courage and integrity. But at the same time, you do not want to present to the world a picture that is ugly. So the person who is presenting the truth must have not only a persona of calm, but also be someone of compassion and gentleness, kindness. And the one who wants the person proclaim the truth must also be someone who is not conventional in his scholarship.
Which brings us to BRICS. You have to be able to read the world, to read the political world, to read the economic world, to read the monetary world, and to be able to penetrate reality so that events are not occurring in a vacuum, events are not occurring by accident. And the only way you can do that and read the movement of history, politically, economically, monetarily, religiously, socially, is if you see with more than the external sight. The Quran speaks about the most learned of all men in the end time, whose scholarship is not conventional, and that you will find him at the place where the two oceans meet. And when we interpret that, we understand that the Quran is speaking about the ocean of knowledge externally acquired and the ocean of knowledge internally received, and that these two oceans of knowledge must be harmoniously integrated. Then you have the scholar capable of reading the world. So if we are to respond to all the roadblocks which are being built to prevent us from moving forward, this is the kind of people we need, the scholars we need, who have eyes and who can see. The rest of mankind, they have eyes and they can’t see.
Drago Bosnic: You mentioned BRICS, and one of the topics that You cover a lot is the issue of arrogance and the belief of certain power centers that some people are better than other people or that they are superior to other people. So how do you view BRICS? Is it an alternative to the Western idea of superiority and the need to arrange how other societies will look like?
Imran Hosein: The Western world appeared on the stage of history 300 years ago with this arrogant claim that they are a superior people, that they are the chosen people of the Lord God, and that modern Western civilization is the best to ever emerge in history and that it cannot be superseded. This is the end of history. This claim which came from the Torah is false. The Lord God does not discriminate between His servants. Our Prophet responded to this bogus claim that there are a chosen people of the Lord God and Heaven is reserved for you only, while the rest of mankind has a status comparable to cockroaches. The Quran responded to that by declaring it is false. And our Prophet said that all of mankind will stand before the Lord God on Judgment Day as equal in His sight, as are the teeth of a comb.
The modern monetary system has come from those people who claim to be the best that mankind has ever witnessed. And we have to ask our people, who unfortunately are not thinking, is this happening by accident that for thousands of years the world had an economy in which people continued to live where they live? The Africans lived in Africa. And we never ever saw huge rivers of African people leaving Africa, going elsewhere in search of a greener pasture. We never saw it from the subcontinent of India, Pakistan, Bengali, or from the Balkans or anywhere.
The economy around the world was such that, yes, there were rich and there were poor, and there were businessmen who would travel and bring goods from one part of the world to another, and people might move in search of jobs and so on. That is normal. But mass movement of people fleeing slavery is something new. Then we ask the question, what has changed in the economy? Because this is economic migration that we’re witnessing today. They’re not fleeing political oppression as much as they’re fleeing economic slavery. It is not religious warfare so much as economic slavery. So what has changed in the economy from thousands of years to the modern age? When we ask that question, then we see two things.
We see a new monetary system and we see a banking system that is attached to the monetary system. And both of these came from the Western world. So for us, it was not accidental that the modern West removed gold and silver coins as money from the market and replaced it with paper money. I call it fictitious money. They may call it fiat money. I use a better term than fiat. I call a spade a spade, I call it fictitious money. And they use the paper money in a manner that was advantageous to them and disadvantageous to the rest of mankind. So one part of the world is now using a new monetary system, a fictitious money, to its advantage.
The movement from money with intrinsic value to fictitious money, paper money, occurred between the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century and by the time of the Second World War they were ready to create a monetary system where none existed before. And they did this at Bretton Woods. And then from Bretton Woods emerged the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. So it was now an established monetary system and it was functioning in a manner advantageous to them. But it was not just advantageous to the West.
More than that, it was advantageous to one actor in the West and that was the United States. And because there was a historic rivalry between France and Britain, Napoleon referred to Britain as an island of shopkeepers and the United States is a child of Britain. So Charles de Gaulle was not happy with a monetary system that was manifestly advantageous to the United States. And he challenged it. No Muslim challenged it. No Christian challenged it. The Muslims were eating their biryani and the Christians were eating, I don’t know what they eat, and go home and sleep. But Charles de Gaulle challenged it.
And as a consequence of the French challenge of the monetary system, that was what forced Kissinger to move to a different step. And that brought into being the petrodollar. But you are aware of this history. The petrodollar allowed them to rip off the rest of mankind even more easily than the previous monetary system. And the massive flow of wealth, one-way flow of wealth, had been proceeding all these years to such an extent that there is now factual slavery. It’s not legal slavery, but factual slavery in so many parts of the world. And that is responsible for all these huge waves of economic migrants going to Europe and the West. Is this happening by accident? That is the question.
And if it is not happening by accident, why is it happening? Is it simply greed or is there a larger agenda? Our Islamic eschatology tells us it’s not just greed. It is part and parcel of an effort to take control of the world, to establish your dominance over all of mankind. To force all of mankind into a state of submission to you so that you can fulfill an agenda in Jerusalem connected with the return of the Messiah. Because there’s a false Messiah before the Messiah comes back, and that is why this is happening.
One silver lining, and that is Communist China. Communist China is not Muslim. Communist China is not Christian. So how come it’s Communist China which has just taken up the standard of revolt? China is a proud and ancient civilization and China will not bend its knee. Albania will do it, Saudi Arabia will do it, Pakistan will do it, but not China. And that is why BRICS has come into being. To resist an effort to force China to bend her knees. And because China is refusing to bend her knees, China has to pioneer or lead the effort for resisting this monetary system of oppression, monetary oppression. And when Russia joined China in that alliance, it became the first and the most important force to have emerged in the world since the birth of modern Western civilization to resist monetary oppression.
Drago Bosnic: Since You mentioned Russia, could we say that Russia is a prototype of how interfaith dialogue and coexistence should be in the world?
Imran Hosein: Russia today appears to be wiser than Russia yesterday. Russia under the tsars still had some elements of nobility in them, but maybe the Christianity of the tsars was still trying to find a way of how to deal with Islam. But Russia today has matured after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of the atheist state. And Russia is now returning to her Christian heart. Russia has demonstrated amazing maturity in dealing with Islam, which is unprecedented in Russian history.
And it has culminated with this dramatic, dramatic act of the president of Russia in public, picking up the Quran and kissing it. I used that photograph on the cover of my book “The Quran and Russia’s Destiny” to demonstrate to the Christian people who still are behind him that Russia has an advanced view of how to deal with Islam in order to restore friendly relations between the Orthodox Christian world and the world of Islam. Yes, I say Russia has matured and Russia is on the right path.
If Russia had not intervened in Syria at the time when it did, then Syria would have become another Libya. But because Russia intervened and saved the Christian population of Syria from slaughter at great risk, because it could have triggered nuclear war, and then Russia displayed even greater wisdom, political wisdom and insight when the effort was being made last year to topple Assad. And Russia recognized that this was a trap. The ISIS, the warriors of the Antichrist, were actually proxies for the West and the plan was to get Russia and Iran to intervene to try to save Assad, and then NATO would have intervened and you would have had Armageddon.
Russia read, in a mature and correct way, that script. And Russia and Iran informed Assad they are not going to intervene. Assad packed up and left quietly and peacefully. And there was a peaceful transfer with no fighting. And because the transfer of power was peaceful and the new Syrian regime saw and understood the wisdom in which Russia handled the matter, the new Syrian president was in Moscow recently. Not only was he in Moscow, but he also affirmed publicly that his government would respect all previous legal arrangements, which meant that the Russian military bases in Syria are safe. This is good diplomacy, this is good politics. And so Russia is today a more mature country than it was yesterday.
Drago Bosnic: You mentioned something very interesting when You described fiat money as essentially fictitious money. As You said, since the end of the gold standard, money is not really worth anything, because it’s not backed by anything. So, in Your view, what should the future of the global monetary system be to make it fairer than it is today?
Imran Hosein: My answer is that the monetary economist who is secular does not know the end of this road. His scholarship is inadequate. My answer is that the eschatologist who has the truth from religion with him when he studies monetary economics, is better placed to read the road on which we are traveling and to identify the destination. The movement from gold and silver to paper, culminating with Bretton Woods and the IMF, the movement from Bretton Woods to 1974 and the petrodollar, the movement from the petrodollar to cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin and so on, and then to central bank digital currencies, follows a pattern that you must read and recognize, that we are moving towards a destiny which is the future of money.
And we from the world of eschatology, we can read it as plain as daylight. But where they are heading is to one central bank digital currency for all of mankind, most likely after the nuclear war, in the post-nuclear world. And when you have one central bank digital currency for all of mankind, you can now impose universal slavery. Anyone steps out of the line, they close your bank account. There is no paper money, there is no physical money. Everything is in the account, everything is digital. And when you live by buying and selling, there’s a record that they can read. You can’t hide anything. You can’t give a donation secretly. Everything is recorded. And when they see your profile, they can easily put the red light.
And they put the red light on me in Albania. And then you can’t even buy a coffee. You have no money. So people are going to be scared. How will we live? So you better put your foot at the line and toe the line. That is the slavery that’s coming. But Israel will not tolerate anyone resisting Israel. The Palestinians, who have been resisting Israel so courageously all these years, since Israel was born, those Palestinians will now have to face the consequences that you cannot get even bread unless you submit. So what we are facing at the end of the road, the monetary road, is slavery. Slavery. How do we respond? How do we protect ourselves?
And my answer is the Lord God has given us a wide Earth. The Earth is wide. If we remain in the city, in the urban areas, it’s easy for them to control us. But if we leave the urban areas and we disperse into the remote countryside, they can’t digest their dinner because their problems have multiplied so much. The resources they would need to monitor us become so much more difficult for them. So the manner in which you respond to them is to get out of the cities, move to the remote countryside and live in small communities. And these small communities can resort to barter, which is a legitimate system of exchange.
And in addition to that, you can have a micro market in which you can use money with intrinsic value. The money with intrinsic value doesn’t always have to be gold and silver, because they can ban the use of gold and silver. You know there are articles of agreement of the IMF that prohibit the use of gold, you know that. And they have technology now that they could check out and see. Even when you’re traveling, they could check and see if you have any metals. So what are the alternatives to gold and silver as money with intrinsic value?
Our Prophet, Allah’s blessing be upon him, gave us an answer. And he spoke of articles of food consumption which cannot be banned, which are in abundant supply in the market and which have a shelf life. And he says, use this as money. So in Medina, in Makkah, in Arabia, they will use dates as money. When there’s a shortage of supply of gold and silver, they’ll use wheat and barley, dates and salt as money. So if you are in Indonesia, on the island of Java, you would use rice as money. But this is rice with the husk on it, called paddy, not the white rice. And if you’re in Cuba, you’d use sugar as money. So these are answers which I have been giving for 25 years now.
But this is the micro response, for survival. The macro response is, wherever it is possible, you launch a movement seeking to win popular support for legislation which will declare gold and silver to be the legal tender. Israel has gold and silver as legal tender today. There are many states in the United States which use gold and silver as legal tender. And in Africa, Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe minted gold coins and brought it in the market. But Zimbabwe did not want to go in conflict with the IMF, so the government did not recognize it as a medium of exchange, but as a store of value. And the IMF took no action against Zimbabwe. So, as a macro response, we have this possibility of launching a struggle, the Muslims and the Christians joining in the struggle to get legislation recognizing gold and silver as legal tender.
Drago Bosnic: Thank You very much for this fascinating interview!