"POST-HALLAQISM: THE NETWORK STATE"

“Ever since the supposed ‘french revolution’ took place where not only a new western spectrum was introduced by the french, the concept of the nation-state was introduced which was the rejection of the monarchy and christian institutions which were associated with clergy.”

“Nation-states are not very old idea but very recent ideas introduced by western modernists. Yet today people act as if nation-states have been around for a millennia and they are not able to conceive a world without nation-states…unless you mention technology.”

“Technology especially in the modern era has been major disruptor of societies as many things have happened in merely 20 years. Twitter used to be similar to facebook, then it became an online platform which activists used as part of their political activities and now it’s been taken by elon musk who is close to the current american administration.”

“Twitter hasn’t been around for more than 30 years yet people act as if it’s been here for a 1000 years as lots of people view the past 1 year as equivalent to a 1000 years ago. Has technology already pushed forward a new concept of governance?”

“An individual with the name, ‘Balaji’ has suggested his idea of a new form of governance. The network state. The network state is a state which is led by a founder of an online community which crowdfunds territory. This network state has the following features: Integrated cryptocurrency, social smart contract, virtual capital and a digital census.”

“It’s important to understand that ‘Balaji’ emphasises on cryptocurrency as being one of the main features of a network state but more specifically the usage of blockchain technology as part of ‘digital spine’ of this network state where he conceives this form of decentralised technology being used to deal with digital assets, smart contracts and other digital documents that are equivalent to the documents you see being requested by the nation-state.”

“There is iktilaf on the ruling on the permissibility of cryptocurrency. Some say its halal, some say otherwise and you the bitcoiner have already decided where you stand on this topic.”

“The individual named ‘Balaji’ emphasizes on cryptocurrency as a new method of recording history whereby this cryptocurrency or more specifically in this case blockchain is a digital ledger such that it records the transactions which is hard to reverse through the usage of the hash function.”

“An obvious problem does arise though through the usage of advanced modern technology as a method to record historical data, is that technology has rapidly changed, very fast where now people are more skeptical towards photography after the introduction of a.i. and there are questions regarding how effective today’s cryptogrpahy is especially with quantum computing.”

“What if computers have more computing power and if it does what if hackers use it for brute-force attacks? To put it simply, there is still much we don’t know about how rapid technology is which has rendered other forms of technologies as obsolete meanwhile books are still in use and has been preserved for a longer period than websites. In other words, both practically speaking and epistemically speaking, the claim that blockchain is an effective record of historical events is questionable given the rise of rapid technologies which has historically speaking, rendered many forms of technologies and even some of the latest technologies as obsolete.”

“The individual named “Balaji” goes into more detail on the usage of smart contracts which are digital agreements similar to the contracts you sign on paper which relates to the government. But what differentiates this digital agreement from some other digital agreements is that it doesn’t involve a third-party intermediary.”

“Smart contract is used for various things including digital census which “Balaji” emphasises on but he see these smart contracts being used similarly to how passports are used. At the moment, ethrenium is known for smart contracts whilst bitcoin isn’t. So a question does arise is that are there multiple cryptocurrencies in this network state or is there one cryptocurrency in this network state?”

“The topic of a virtual capital is interesting as it changes our understanding of the cyberspace as usually when we refer to a capital city, we are referring to something to a big city on land whilst “balaji” has other ideas where he suggests that the capital of this network state should be in the cyberspace. He suggests a web3 login for citizens and usage of vr technology in exploration of this virtual capital whilst he suggests that digital borders of this network state is ‘invisible’ which he compares with the borders of the nation-state which is ‘visible’. Could the definition of dar-ul-islam incorporate cyberspace? The question does this digital space have some sort of firewall? What prevents hackers from penetrating this digital space? Is it something similar to session?”

“On the topic of policing, the individual named ‘balaji’ who does emphasizes on digital enforcement similar to how accounts are frozen by the government, he does believe that the network state is not likely to deal with physical individuals who act contrary to the network state within the crowd funded territories in the starting phase. He does believe that the network state is probably going to cooperate with the police of the nation-state in dealing with these people. This is quite problematic as it raises the fear of people cooperating with non-muslims against muslims and he implies that it is probable that the network state is unable to carry out hadd punishment in the starting phase of the network state.”

“Is the islamist planning on starting some sort of company that has similar mechanisms to the network state? Who knows?”