The Tulips of Westerham

The world of the Bangladeshi Awami Moronarchy is not impenetrable to the outsider, because its braggishness knows few bounds.

In this video we can see the Prime Minister of long suffering Bangladesh, her sister Rehana Siddiq and associated sycophants of the Awami-Labour Party rally to celebrate the wedding of a youngling Tulip Siddiq, soon to be crowned Labour candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn.

I trust they were all personally rooting for principles of social justice, egalitarianism and human dignity. Not.

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There is no accounting for tastes amongst the vicious thugs that control Bangladesh, but that is a secondary concern.

I wonder how much blood was in that badly designed banqueting suite in Newham. From the power-wielding family members and spooks to the Chatro League brown shirts and I wonder how much of this skull duggery the youngling Tulip would know about and condone, given her history of lobbying and campaigning for her family's political concern.

The most feared people in Bangladesh are the Awami Leagues brownshirt Chattro League, even the police are scared of them during their joint operations on the Bangladesh publics.

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Which reminds me. Earlier in her famous 'Hefazot Smeared Red Dye On Their Chests' speech to Bangladesh Parliament on 29th(ish) June, the Prime Minister had 'rewritten' Islamic jurisprudence, lashing out at Barrister Kamal Hossein's daughter Barrister Sara Hossein's marriage to the Journalist David Bergman, who has a Jewish background, in order to present her son Joy's marriage in a virtuous light.

Because we care so much.

Mehfil Ali debate on the situation in Syria

Archive news report of Bihari ordeal in new Bangladesh

really sad.

What's next with Jamaat e Islami Bangladesh?

It is a challenging time for political Islam generally these days, with the coup in Egypt, #Occupygezi in Turkey and the continuing annihilation policy against Jamaat e Islamic in Bangladesh. Internal shortcomings and external forcings have contributed to this situation and the levels of hate-mongering seem only to grow with every social media fuelled moment.

In Bangladesh the conduct of the War Crimes Tribunals, the wildness and idiocy of much of the Shahbag, the detention and torture of Amardesh editor Mahmudur Rahman and the slaughter of the non-Jamaati protest group Hefazat e Islam are a pretty depressing state of affairs.

Furthermore, the organisational decapitation of JI seems, to this observer, to have served to lobotomise and entrench defensive thinking and disarray. But its not as if other paths haven't been imagined.

Two years ago, Shah Abdul Halim, a challenging voice within the diverse internal party debate, wrote this piece on the formation of a political party. Its worth reading and highlighting the following points.

• Binning centralised authority
• Making good on commitments to social justice.
• The dead end of the fiqh-as-policy approach.
• Rejecting the control freakery of leadership panels.
• Delinking Shibir from JI control
• Rejection of the cadre system
• Mitigating against the self interests of whole-timers
• Greater honouring of women, ditching of the segregationist fascination and veil fetish.

Times of relentless attack are difficult to transform towards, as conservative survival tendencies have been seen to dominate. I am not a member of the organisation or any of its fronts but wish non secular political subjectivities and values to flourish. Hence the interest in this time being fruitful. Personally I'm more into kamrangas than tetuls, or the corrolla phlegminists that dominate our very uncivil civil society in desh.

Kamranga is a tangy fruit found in Bangladesh and many other places. Often written off as a peasants fruit and therefore inexpensive, it is good for the skin and bones, and when slices reveals a stellar quality

The rise of Hefazot, quite broad admiration/sympathy yet frustration with their disinterest in power is interesting to dwell on. 

My favourite deshi blogger Mukti has gone into purdah these days, I miss his insight and humanity, and Bloggerganj is poorer without it. He shared these observations, a while back.

As for the developments in the rest of the Muslim world, the point is not that Turkish or Arab or Indonesian politicians are going around being Zia-shoinik. Rather, when Islam-based politicians want to seriously contemplate politics beyond Hudood acts and the illegitimacy of anal sex, they arrive at the kind of synthesis that Zia articulated three decades ago.

In Bangladesh, people who talk about Islamic governance do not talk about social justice. Jamaat has spent 40 years trying to regain their 1970 position. Their biggest so-called alim, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, delivers sermons that are little better than soft-porn. All the others — Islami Oikko Jote and Khilafat Andolon and such like — talk about either declaring XYZ kafir or making sure that women stay indoors. Social justice? I don’t think so.

Maqasid orientated policy explorations anybody?

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Its not that there aren't individuals seeking these alternate futures in the organisation, but that they are politically unweighty and effectively gagged by rules, regulations and methods that offer them no leadership or tone-defining scope.

The post Bangladesh Maududian engine does not run on hydrogen cells

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Jamaat e Islam are not the be all and the end all of Islamisms and mIslamisms in Bangladesh, but they constitute a significant Ummahstructure. The self dubbing as the only correct Islamic option confuses us all and sends the wrong signals the millions of awesome people outside their organisation and sympathisers.

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Some ideas that are doing the rounds and some which are not, for the Manifesto:

• Reform and expand the War Crimes Tribunals to include all participants and histories at an International level.
• Campaign against the commodification and inverted practices of dowryism with gusto.
• Consult widely on a moratorium on international 'development' aid.
• Commit to meritocracy.
• Venture beyond Neoliberalistan and Bismillah Capitalism
• Learn to work in partnership with diverse actors without dominating them.
• Take an evidenced approach to make justice for the bereaved of Motijheel and other smaller brutalities.
• Ease off the simpleton model of Nasticness and Cold war attitudes to all forms of socialism.
• Vacate the space and work with the people as they are.
• Do what Shah Abdul Halim said?
• Do what Kamaruzzaman said in his letter?

Qur'an recitation from Tarawih prayers in Sudan

[New Word] Developmint

1) An item of breath freshening confectionery that causes one whiteness and civilisation

2) Wealth accrued through working in the development industry.

3) The key institutions through which the currency of said industry is conceived and pushed out.

Will the Labour Party select Tulip Siddiq for the Hampstead and Kilburn parliamentary seat?

This weekend, the Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party are seeking a replacement to contest the marginal parliamentary seat soon to be vacated by Glenda Jackson. There are some legitimate questions that deserve answers regarding one of the candidates for the ticket.

Cllr Tulip Siddiq of Camden has no doubt many talents which have been exercised in the public interest. These I do not contest. Earlier today I came across an article in the North London Ham & High publication in which she reacts to an e-mail circulated concerning her and her family's dealings with the violent politics of Bangladesh and Vladmir Putin.

Clearly I am not important enough to have been sent the email, but I can imagine the picture attached because I remember being puzzled in January at the sight of Prime Minster Hasina of Bangladesh running off to Moscow with a large family retinue to sign a loan deal for arms worth $1 billion, as well as a controversial nuclear power agreement. The relationship between Sheikh Rehana, Cllr Tulip's mother, and the vile Awami League politics in the UK is common knowledge amongst deshis.

It is relevant and pertinent to ask Cllr Siddiq what her stance is on the issue of the Awami League's violence and nepotism. This is because she comes from a Bangladeshi background, as do a number of other people in Britain. It also shines a light on how she would view the same issue in the context of UK politics.

The Ham & High erroneously makes the following statement,

The email, which features a photograph of her alongside Russian president Vladimir Putin taken during a visit to see her family in Bangladesh, has been reported to Camden Council’s solicitor by councillors.

Kremlin website picture from Moscow Meeting on 15th January 2013

Picture with Cllr Tulip (far left) with PM Hasina and Vladmir Putin in the same attire.

It appears that both of the pictures above were taken at the same time. This photographic supports the view that Cllr Tulip was part of the delegation to Moscow. Putin has not been to Dhaka.

Russian power politics and gangsters are scarey as hell, but from the little I have gleaned, its a lucrative arms deal for merchants of death, who at the Bangladesh tax payer's expense can make money arming security forces to kill Bangladeshi citizens.

Nuclear power for Bangladesh at this moment in time is a stupid and dangerous idea, and an expensive non answer to the electricity shortage. Voice for Justice has articulated this clearly of late.

Readers of this blog will probably be aware that the Bangladesh Government's recent massacre of unarmed protesters on May 6th really ticked me off [Odhikar Fact Finding Report]. The Government of Bangladesh, and its support network are increasingly violent towards those who who oppose them.

It is in the public interest to know Cllr Siddiq's stance on the state brutality perpetrated Hasina's government.

We have no choice as to whom we are related, but we have a choice in whether to endorse and support their actions.

Labour party members should bear this aspect of the candidate in mind when making their final selection.

[New Word] Diasporani

Dedicated to south asians with religion issues and the drama queenery of the spectacle of public confessional.                          

PM of Bangladesh accuses victims of government brutality faking injury and wearing read dye

Neoliberalistan 2053

“This recitation of Surah Fatihah was brought to you by the Halal pencil company. Their pioneering stationary prevents harmful innovations, by administering electric shocks to the user when creativity that might contravene five hundred year old fiqh stances from Madagascar is detected. The HB Bida Blocker recently won a Smart Technology Award at the 50th meeting of the World Islamic Economic Forum in South Korea. The following recitation of Surah Ikhlas was brought to you by Electric Mejdoul, the uk’s first halal genetically modified date company, whose flagship product brings the exact DNA of the dates that our beloved....”

Obama Hasan slapped the side of his head, to get the ridiculousness out of his legal Muslimness implant and out of his consciousness. It was hard to these days, and it seemed to get worse every Ramadan.

In fact the only part of Ramadan which had not been sold of was Salatul Duha, nobody really cared too much for that super-obligatory prayer.

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The adverts for zakat were out too, it was a tradition now, competing in good works they would say. It was Islamic Green Leaf versus Muslim Orangade, and the new kid on the block Muslim thumbs, a charity dedicated to freedom of movement across all sorts of borders.

Way before even the first erroneous moonsighting Obama Hassan had been buttered up for a month of giving no actuay thought to the problems of the world. His all time favourite was...

Reflections as Egypt goes all #shahbag

Patrick Galey puts the happenings in Egypt in a way that renders the foolishnesses rampant in Bangladesh (Re: Shahbag) and Turkey (re: Occupygezi) http://patrickgaley.com/2013/07/01/the-day-the-revolution-died/

The power of the Fascmob, a spontaneous gathering of intolerant mendacity,  to reverse justice and political gains is never to be under estimated.

I remember when the news of Mubarak's stepping aside was announced on Jumma day of February the 11th 2011, the closing day of the World Social Forum in Dakar Senegal. Then, the possibility of another world seemed closer then than it does today.

It was a strange time that I called Threedom, where Islamists, Leftists and Liberals jumped for joy and painted their meanings all over the matter.

The problem of seculib cheating, and the support for this cheating needs to be investigated.