27.6.14

Film Trailer: Why can't I be Sushi?



Hoda Yayha Elsoudani's forthcoming saunter though the Sunni-Shii interface looks like it's going to be awesome and I hope it does really well. I think it's going to be Tawhesive (definition). Two cute little girl geniuses ask all sorts of people about the most long running bifurcation within the Muslim Ummah. It is an amazing schism really, because none of us were at Kerbala when the irreversible went down, but is solidifies at times and cloggs up the hope pipes.

Powerful centrifugal forces from within and without continue to work hard to scupper Muslim people's enheightenment, perhaps nowhere more-so than in Syraq over which we here in Londonistan have little real purchase.

The Iraq war protests were the first time that I noticed any significant political difference within UK Muslims on geopolitics at street protests and at university. Folks, moved by Saddam's victimisation of the Shii community and their political power, went quite pro-US intervention.

I imagine this often happens when your back is up against the wall and there seems like there is no escape. In the 70s Bengali Nationalists supplicated to India to deliver them from Pakistan before and after the military crackdown. In the 80s, Mojahedin e Khalq marched into Post Revolution Iran from Iraq. One man's opportunism is another man's something else, and this is common and probably systematic, ummahtic complexity problem in times of collective weakness.

Fast forward a decade, with Syria in civil war, obese petrosheikhs playing silly buggers, the Iraqi regime's victimisation of Sunnis and the fearsome ISIS storyline, and its not unusual for misunderstandings and power plays to compound and sour the mental faculties and limit the growth of relations between brothers.

As well as empathy, I think there is a lot that Sunnis can learn from the Shii experience of being in minority, especially the khums (20% gains tax), which we could use to pool resources for a more autonomy, organisational and intellectual capital. Ali Shariati is an inspiring figure too.

Syraq hosts ~55 million souls, Bangladesh ~155  million souls: Upon all be peace

I am prone to situating myself in Bangladesh, which has a cosmopolitan Muslim heritage, and a primary national culture cleavage is pitched around 1971 as Kerbala. In desh, its the secular liberal Muslims who slaughter other Muslims in the street, dehumanise them, and make money out of their despair.

Like Sabir Mustafa Head of the Bengali World Service at the BBC, and the despicable fuck, who covered up the extent, nature and depravity of Bangladesh government's massacre of unarmed civilian protesters last year, then dressed the victims up like terrorists. Reflecting on how the journalistic, political and security forces of Bangladeshi establishment have murdered,  terrorised and mentally stunted the people in Bangladesh, and of hearing of how ISIS summarily executed so many of their former tormentors in the Iraqi security forces, is quite an emotional roller coaster. As a month of nonsecular training and transformation approaches, what counter-sectarian moves might we make to remove the vital threat without becoming it?

The Sushiness of Bengal Muslim heritage is multivalent. Although Mir Jafar, the great traitor who ushered in British corporate-militant ascendancy in South Asia was Shii, so was Sirajudawla, the young ruler that he betrayed. A lot of funds went into the development of  Shii Islamic institutions in Najaf from Sunni tenant farmers via their Shii rulers in the past.  Syed Amir Ali's 'A Short History of the Saracens' and 'The Spirit of Islam' are still key texts for people with a cerebral Muslim self, more than 100 years after their writing. It is fresh too, limited by what Jamaat e Islami has to offer, and unimpressed with quietist vanilla Islams, young, brave and talented people are exploring the Shii traditions.

The resources and traditions of Islamic people are so rich, I hope that people in desh can help each other find the keys to treasury.... before the Boys of Bangladesh find and twist the fiqh they were looking for...

26.6.14

Muhajir from Muhajir

Oh you whose foremothers were moved
To hope another world was possible
Ahl al Muhajirin
From British India's colonial frying pan
Into Bangladesh's funeral pyre.

They say that brahmos abolished sati
Nay, we revive that practice for you
Widows of Our Muslim political past.
How dare you occupy our lebensraum.

We showed you last Shababarat
Courtesy of the finest Awami crazies.
Like we showed you in the 93,
When the BNP sold the land beneath you.

The question on our hips is,
Whether bengalie nationalism is
the stupidest
most euthanistic
ideology of all our time?

If so,
how long will its tenants
and petty landlords
live and die in its gangrenous ghetto?



25.6.14

Bigger better brighter bolder bullshit now

From the bards at Seize The Day



I see they got a bigger bullshit now
I'd better get a better bullshit now
Give me a brighter bolder bullshit now
We've got a greener brand of bullshit

I'm not gullible you won't catch me
Getting had by an adman's fantasy
Of a supermodel in a talking car
With a nicotine nipple and a chocolate bra

As a jingle fingers through my soul
and I'm twitching to a rhythm that I don't control
Itching for a fix down the old arcade
Where I spent all the money that I just got paid

Bigger Better Brighter Bolder bullshit now

Am I an animal, so programmable,
A pavlov dog in a revolving door?
Or a human spirit that has got no limit
And I ain't gonna double for a dunce no more

Say that I won't but I probably will
'Cos they've got my number and they're ringing it still
Singing "Heal the hunger in your soul"
With a brand new filling for a brand new hole

And it's all for my freedom of choice
That a thousand satellites got one voice
For a TV shopper who remotely votes
Channel hopping in the cabin of a sinking boat

Titanic, what's the panic bullshit now?

Slave or citizen, same old shit again
Got a lot of what I never used to need
While all I'm cherishing is perishing
Fed to the fetish of a great white greed

Greed in the boardroom bigger than god
Using the woman as a wink and nod
And a prod to the herd that are driving by
"You can have my body if you buy my lie"

Somebody in this neighbourhood
Ought to take those billboards out for good
Ought to run them dealers out of town
Ought to take back the power and hand it around

Start planning for an insurrection now

I'm not a terrorist, maybe an anarchist,
A nice bloke, doesn't wanna hurt no one,
But if we don't stop it then our kids are gonna cop it
And how we gonna pay 'em for the damage we done?

I say 'we', what do I mean?
Just a lot of little people in a big machine
Just a lot of little links in a global chain
Where we want more pleasure so we make more pain

And it seems like nobody's in control
Just money making money and it's got no soul
And it's got no power but the power we give
When we doubt that without it we could live

Imagine - it's easy if you try

I'm an idealist - also a realist
I know it's difficult to kick that drug
But if we get clever and we give it up together
What a great endeavour when we pull that plug

I'm sick and tired of all the bullshit now
I think we're running out of bullshit now
I've had enough of all the bullshit

23.6.14

ParalISIS

Watch now as every Salafi organisation
Becomes the Quilliam Foundation
As white power demands
Disciplines and threatens
to institutionally disarm.

Saudi, a Labia,
Engourged with black gold
Petroindustrial prostitute
To the colonial present
With an amateur fetish,
For fucking things up even more.

King Faisal's remains
are turning in their grave.

Check your twitter and read,
Some sociopaths wrapped in a flag
To cover their negritude and inadequacy
To provide every securocrat
With a compelling business case
To do as they please.

The Miley Cyrusification of the Mujahideen
Completed, one selfie at a time.
Wrapped up in false governance plan,
A parody of Four Lions.

I don't really believe the govt media ISIS hype.
After all these same people
Covered up the massacre in Dhaka, last year.
Selective human rights industrialism
From people armed to the teeth.

The Mujahid remains an honourific and lofty role,
No matter what you are alleged to have done, or do.
Or how stupid, misled or evil you might be.

Remember Yilmaz?
The Danish trainer,
Is that skilled sweet man still alive?
I remember late President Mashkadov,
And who undermined, sullied and killed that struggle?
The 90s seems so long ago now.

The Euphrates remains constricted,
By Saddam's Dams.
You have your southern chums
By their balls,
What was it that poor Moursi said?
'We will defend the Aswan dam with our blood.'
This is no upgrade,
Not even decolonial lemonade
So what is your plan
'Khalifahman'?


Watch the fucking British State
And its minions on Fleet Street
Ooze rivers of whiteous indignation.
They who completed Syria's murder of Dr Isa Abdur Rahman.
Now demand condemnothon in perpetuity
Compensating with airtime
Proportional to how high you'll jump.

A penny for the Guy?
Take a bow RaDickle Middle Way, QWillyam and company,
You have succeeded in making things worse.


Did your Key Performance Indickators go like this?

  • Number of apparent scholars delegitimised?
  • Coefficient of suffocation?
  • Extent of toolboyhood
  • Coefficient of wardrobe expansion?
  • Miles misled per testicle
  • Mistrust multiplied
  • Humans humiliated
  • Sequins of sufism supplied
  • Litres of liberalism lubricated.
  • Centimetres of salafism supersceded
Or maybe we could use carbon,
You've burned an awful lot of jet fuel.

So the racist, genocidal and terrorist powers,
Who empowered Saddam
Then starved Iraqis to death,
To protect obese Kuwaitis and Saudis,
Buried them in the sand,
raped them (just bad apples of course)
Piled up their bodies, selfied, defingered, burned and pummelled
With uranium till they gave birth to dear disfigured babies
Have the fucking gall
To demand you condemn ISIS
Like performing monkeys.

Shove that banana back up their sphincters.




19.6.14

The Murder of Nahid Al Manea

A 32 year old aspiring scientist Nahid Al Manea arrived in Colchester Essex a few months ago from Saudi Arabia. Yesterday, she was  murdered in what is likely to be an Islamophobic attack.  I do not have any (proxy) funeral prayer details and it looks like they are going to do the autopsy today.

It is impossible right now not to read this event in the context of rising anti-Muslim agenda being normalised by powerful politicians, journalists and interests in Britain. The tip of this iceberg assemblage has become increasingly clear in recent months and includes the Conservative Education Minister Michael Gove, The Telegraph's Andrew Gilligan, The Henry Jackson Society and the Quilliam Foundation.

Colchester is not renowned as a bastion of hearty cosmopolitan dignity, and they and the University of Essex are in for some challenging times right now. Places, communities and institutions get stained in sins like these for decades, thinking of Eltham and the murder of Steven Lawrence, though it depends on the stink that get kicked up. The University's own press release was quite machine-like for starters.

  • Who did this and what were their motivations?
  • How does the misframing of Muslims make them structurally more vulnerable to attacks like this?
  • What was the impact of the recent Trojan Horse reiteration of the Scheming Muslim narrative on the perpetrator?
  • Will politicians, editors and journalists reflect on their role in creating these unsafe conditions and their responsibilities to rectify them and return the Muslims voices to them?


Little investigatory appetite

Talk about the murder yesterday was generally prayerful but also sardonic, that if the victim were white and the act's originator apparently Muslim that this would be all over the news everywhere.

The artists at OOMK were spot on, tweeting,
Wondering why a Brazillian Noodles feature made it onto the homepage while the violent stabbing of a Muslim didn't...
Last year, the 25 year old machine gunner and Afghanistan war veteran Lee Rigby's grisly murder was hugely impactful on the media and the country. As a forces guy, his honour was never disputed and the Muslim apology machine was swift into 'action'. However, that crime was on a very public street, in a metropolitan area and executed with social media narcissism and false pride that brought the edge of the moral sickness straight to our eyes.

This death context is that much harder to know about, and we really need to know. Dear Nahid was attacked at 1040 in the morning on a path by a nature conservation area by someone who doesn't want to be known just yet. As we saw in the recent floods, London news teams rarely venture out of their safety zones. As we have come to know over the years, they are generally peopled by feckless and careerist toerags.

It seems to me like it is easier to know about Mosul than it is Colchester.

Remembering Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez

I remember the hideous double murder and burning of French postgraduate researchers Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez in New Cross, South London in 2008. There were significant French protests at their deaths, families campaigned and twitter raged and their home institutions and students honoured their memory. Eventually, two were sentenced to a total of 75 years over the incident, a senior minister Jack Straw apologised for failings in the probation service and David Scott, London's chief probation officer resigned.

Fast forward to 2014, and the secret services are run by right wing nutters, there have been severe cuts in public services, Islamophobia underpins so much at play here and that the victim was a Saudi lady, not French.

Its hard to have any expectations of how the Saudi state will respond to this and their particular calculus of life. Therefore it is more important to locate the social justice and equality hunt right here in the UK amongst as broad a community as possible.

Decolonial Hopening

Below is a really well thought out 12 speech on the situation facing Muslims in the UK today.



Allahumma grant safety and dignity to all your creatures.

14.6.14

The Shababarat Murders

An auspicious night
We are accustomed to mark
With superogatory prayer
And not a little graveyard care
Dhaka Ensouled, ibadat in throng.

But this year
The second year of Iblis
We burnt our dear abused
Muhajirs
cum 'razakars'
cum 'stranded Pakistanis'

Like tazreen factory workers
Locked in.
Having tortured their forbearers
With envy based nationalism
In tagorean garlands.

Allahumma have mercy on their souls.
and banish the assemblage of harm.
Lest we sink into the oceans.
Make the just strong
The oppressed unified
And the able courageous.