MCB Soundings: Beyond Race and Multiculturalism?

A recent special issue of Prospect magazine pre-echoed Angela Merkels recent monocultural remarks and raised the flag of multiculturalism is dead and that munira-culturalism is the future.

Some academics, activists and artists have mused on the issues here. It's a growing resource to access some non-scripted reflection in the midst of the ignorance-led, homogenising and emotionally capitalist public discourse of 'post-multicultiralism' that we find ourselves surrounded by in the UK.

Making Land in Bangladesh

The Urir Char land reclamation project has risen in priority and reduced in financial and political costs over recent decades. New Age covers it here.

May we learn from it in social ways
May it herald new ways of becoming
And Nurture national, local technological mojo.
May there be no water logging
May they refrain from calling it something awami like

This Eid you decide...

[New typology for Muslim females] Battery begums and freerange chicks

Now then folks, lets lock up our wives, sisters and daughters!

[New Word] Envirornamentalism

Not so corporate as greenwash, more to do with appropriating honourific airs

Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election Result

Crybabies who squeal 'Islamofascism' to curry favour with allies who mean no good should not be allowed to prosper. You, Native Informant, yes you, you should win a prize. Look at the monster you have fed in the white is right backlash. Accept your loss, move on.

Alleged election game irregularities aside. We need to ensure that stupid schisms in Bangladesh politics do not penetrate our generation of political culture. We have great political traditions, but not of recent generations, lets skip it please. The Secularist-Islamist polarity is a useless one which doesnt need to exist, it empowers the imaginationless and the cynical exploiters of the spoils system that is Bangladeshi Moronarchy. It is redundant for us, yet continues to reproduce itself in us in a small borough of Tower Hamlets, and by extension the Glorious Sylhatians of Britain. I am glad that this incursion seems to have lost the latest electoral negotiation.

In desh, they (political and intellectual classes) havent really gotten very far in developing beyond year jiro jionijom, military nationalism and a motheaten limited islamism 1.0. Its developmentia I think, and our failings.

We've gotten really good at nose counting forms of political mobilisation since the early 2000s, but this needs to be re(de)fined. Rudeboyness fused with conservosocialism is eclectic, but not beautiful.

Transformative islah

It was ummatography in fallible human action. Ex-isocers with longitude, creating a space for intra-community dialogue, with Tariq Ramadan and Haytham Haddad the two discussants and the Greek tortoise trying his best to best them into clarity.

It was generally a light touch grounded sahaba massive type audience, evenly split between the genders with the boys on the hairier side. A very different crowd from the Oxford event where Tariq Ramadan was twinned with Hamza Yusuf.

Will add to this post later when I am not sitting in the dark, but it was an odd experience for me, meeting old acquaintances, remembering thought patterns that possibly predominate in the real community and generally being frustrated with where everyone is at. TR makes more sense in this situation. CRG even more so.

Was proud that these guys are community funded, good for their sustainability and iA the fulfillment of their desired goals.

A Directive to the Diasporas of Dinia from the Dadi land

What happened to you kids?

We have a few matters to relate to you,

for continuity and memory

We notice you becoming a liability

Ethnic minocrity, through white mimicry

And money

Wet those roots,

Cultivate green shoots

Obliterate all ivy

This is not a race to bigger houses and cars

and golf.

a declaration of war against the present age

Fashionista Flood Relief Crap

You know how sometimes you can bump into people that you forgot existed? well I have had one of those moments and it makes me sick to remember.

All hail Fashionista Flood Relief

Brown Shallowness and Developmentia rolled into one. But in a mediocre lame kind of way that is characteristic of the time and place we find ourselves in.

Never mind I tell myself, an irrelevance. Today Rais Erdogan was there REALLY embodying solidarity and people-to-people assistance.

[New Word] Whiteous indignation

The monoculture's vitriolic reaction to folks who aim higher than secular liberal ideology.

Shariati as a rousing whistle

I don't know what will happen when I die;
Of what use will be the ground wherein I lie.
If a potter could make something of this clay,
Then this is what I would sincerely pray -
That my throat become a whistle for a child,
Mischievous, rebellious and wild,
Who would blow it without ceasing, with such zest
That he'd rouse the sleeping people from their rest;
Who would fill my throat again with his own breath,
And end the awful silence of my death.

Dr. Ali Shariati (trans: Bartlett)

The Quran, it is a producer of meaning.

If you have some time, 100 minutes or so, and a hunger for unsheathing the meaning of the Quran, take some time out to listen to these two lectures on The Quran in its Historical Context by the Late Nasr Abu Zayd and Dr. Soroush at Notre Dame (some us university) last Spring.

Its exiled Egyptian rationalist meets post revolutionary Iranian philosopher. Only in the US, not Istanbul.

there is a good Dr Soroush English language resource library online.

Also have been gettign into the thought of Ali Shariati, who at first estimations looks to embody much Ganj Spirit and epitomise cultural J. Very perplexing ideas of Tawhid , Shirk and Hijra though.