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The idea that simple believers have to choose where they stand with regards to despotic regimes is just daft. Don’t stand with any of them.

You’re not called to take a side, other than the side of goodness, truth and justice. If that means you have to distance yourself from every state, so be it. Steering clear of the rich, powerful and influential — whoever they may be — is simply common sense.

Amongst us are those that rally against the machinations of one axis of power, whilst simultaneously being in the pay of their political rivals, to the tune of hundreds of thousands a year. A Great Game is being played all around us. I say, “Don’t play.”

These power struggles are above our pay grade. Be your own person, free of political interference, true to yourself. Don’t be slaves to a paycheque, stipend, gift-in-kind, or to some great honour, title or position.

Be content in your relationship with your Lord, literally honest to God. Serve your community. Feed the poor. Aid the homeless. Be good to your family. Look after widows and orphans. Be just in your daily transactions. Speak the truth. Offer the down-and-out a word of kindness.

Let nobody pay your way. Earn an honest wage for honest work. Let what you bring home be the sweat of your own labour. Refuse gifts and lucrative signings. Be content to live a mundane life, unknown, without influence. Delight in the company of the fuqara.

Daily, I see men probing my connections. They wonder if I took money from Prevent. No, sorry, I didn’t even claim benefits when unemployed, relying instead on the meagre income that came from typesetting books and driving an Italian coffee machine.

They wonder whose side I am on, but I’m not on any side, except the side of the just, the true, the virtuous. I did not jump aboard the caravan to play political games; I was searching for the Oneness of God.

Constantly, they scrutinise who my teachers may be. Who dares respond: God and His messenger, and those humble souls that follow the way? It is as if they want to determine in what way I am compromised.

But the answer to that is easy. Just read my blog from start to end, and you will find I am extremely compromised, like every other human that has ever walked the earth. Compromised by my sins. Compromised by inner addictions. Compromised by conceit and pride. Aren’t we all?

“But who do you represent?” they demand. I represent none but myself, accountable to God alone. If I felt compelled to utter a word of truth in the past, it was in response to whatever moved me at that moment. Surely all of us learnt that most foundational tradition in those early days along the road, when we were still sincere and true.

“Whosoever of you sees an evil action, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart; and that is the weakest of faith.”

Hadith recorded in An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith

None of us is called to stand with tyrants. We’re called to stand persistently for justice, even against our families or loved ones, or against the rich, powerful and influential, or against the poor soul that erred, and even against our very own souls, witnesses to truth, conscious that God is witness to all things.

Don’t play these foolish games.