Quilliam's Million's - Slumdogs and Groundhogs

First of all I would like to say that I eagerly await the biography of the actual Shayk William Abdullah Quillam (d.1932), and I hope that the thousands of hard earned pounds that the Muslims of the UK have donated for the restoration of his historic first mosque in Liverpool bear fruit.

The Ex-Islamist industry in the UK is showing exponential growth, especially for those with no dignity or understanding of naffness. The 1 million pound UK government empowerment of the group that calls itself the Quilliam Foundation is nothing surprising. I have written about Quilliam before. Some policy wonks believe this group of spineless, stupid and sold-out, failed SOAS students can achieve their desired policy objectives. If their goals are to divert people and waste their time, they may achieve them. If their goals are to fund Ed and Maajids collection of suits, they may achieve those too.

Historically the ingrowing toenails of cultural invasions have hampered maturation of Islamic thought and practice. Quilliam are just another layer of Islamic flame retardant. An example of a deeper, vivid and long term cultural invasion is what the British colonialists did in Bengal. This was to destroy the waqf system of endowments which nourished our educational institutions and civic life. One third of the land of Bengal was waqf. Now we have NGOs with names that rhyme with CRAP miming 'education' with overseas 'aid', and interest sucked out of the richer poor of Bangladesh. Nice one.

In "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", Paolo Freire (a Brazilian educationalist influenced by Marx and Liberation Theology) was concerned with how schooling and oppressing had become intertwined. Its the kind of book that revives my belief in the power of ideas to change the world. Cultural Invasion, Divide and Rule, Manipulation and Conquest are often used by the Blue Meanies of our world to program how people think and act.

European Colonialists reformed Islamic education, and education for Muslims using these tools. Their proxies continue this desacralising project. Advertisers spend a lot of time pushing our material greed buttons. The media-government complex exercises its power to reorient the channels of our minds. Suffice to say, Colonised and Captive Minds abound, and its quite annoying. But there is always resistance and the resultant vectors are a negotiation.

Being resistant to invasion, yet creative and acquisitive with one's actual trajectory is the challenge before us. It always has been, we already own a large number of blind alleys and potential launchpads. Islamism 1.0 did get a lot wrong, religious nationalism too, don't get me started on westoxified secularism. However not every iteration everywhere has been fruitless. There are some golden threads about the place.

The task of enflowering and animating contemporary Islamic Societies is one to which Muslims must devote themselves. Only they can do it. These things to not happen on their own. The problem is that somewhere along the line a large chunk of the talented and blessed Asian contingent decided to devote their energy to certificates of white social mobility. ACA, MBA, MBBS etc. The mass proliferation of technocrats has been quite spasticating, in the civilisational sense.

That was a previous generation's of distraction. Poverty sucks you see, affects the imagination and the horizons. One of our own generation's distractions is this extremism schizzle, manufactured and framed by hose who seek to beat the living prayerlights out of us. Quilliam is an artifact of this violence. Its employees are highly paid assassins. Whether in Londonistan, Barmigram, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Dhaka or Lahore this carefully designed distraction should be recognised as one, lampooned and a superior, contextual, dignified action plan imagined and translated.

The Distraction Formerly Known As Quilliam is quite comical though, I hope taxpayers appreciate the layers of ironies contained in this organisation's creation. This one will be mentioned in a list-based Channel 4 programme a few years from now called Most Embarrassing and Cringe-worthy Moments of UK Government Meddling.

I hope they do not distract too many good people, or use and abuse vulnerable characters. They have history with this you see. Maybe that is the Whitehall Mandarin's game plan after all. If that is so, I hope they realise this and disband accordingly, lest their children grown to hate and curse them.

Quilliam are not the only ones foolish enough to think they are anything but tools. Young Muslim Advisory Groupies should take note. The only thing worse than having no leader is for a bad 'leader' to inflict their leadership upon you. This last point is probably what Allah is demonstrating to us all with Mahmoud Abbas.