The webcasts of the gathering were quite difficult to make any sense of, but the corporate communications teams have been busy and successful in messaging the symposium into the mainstream media. To be fair, many people just want a good news story about Muslims, and this air conditioned NGO theatre provides that.
Insofar as it is a confusing distraction from reality, the Islamic Climate Change Declaration functions in the same way as a few score people taking a well publicised Climate Change themed Dump on the Ummah, in order to attract Development Dung Beetles.
This is our Inconvenient Truth
Mistakeholding onto the rope of Allah
I have spent some time raising money and investing in one of the organisations (IR), watching it squander its human resources and grow to embody neoliberalistan, even while helping many people at the same time. It is not that I disagree with Islamic Relief's right to exist unharrassed, but it is important not to foul up the waters for others, blag your way through seriously complex issues and assume the role of a misleading gatekeeper. This is basic ummahtic adab.
It must be hard, being an Islamic Muslim NGO in such an Islamophobic, securitising and secularising environment, but it is harder if you are a street kid in Dhaka trying to survive to the next day without a policeman raping you, or a family in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa trying not to get drone bombed or massacred, perplexed that these UK brothers are patronising you with DFIDy climate adaptation hush money.
Pardon the spelling. [Credit: MTA]
Organisational work in the world is fraught with contradictions and it is harder to stand back and peel away when you find yourself in the position of believing that you are helping Muslims as part of your rizq ( Divine worldly provision). I don't think this malaise is particular to the Muslim experience, it just sucks because its mine.
The Story of The Whistling Lion
The turning point came for me regarding IR came when the organisation spazzed out a few years back over Assed Baig's exposure of a betrayal of mission to relieve people in Somalia. It came just after the scandal at the London-based Muslim Youth Helpline, where the leadership used the extremist card to cover its own incompetence, and subjected its victims, who were unpaid volunteers, to lawfare. On the face of it, IR is a less precarious an organisation than MYH, with much more support and understanding from the Muslim community, so one would have hoped they would have responded more wholesomely.
In my generally inconsequential judgement, instead of admitting fault, they went on a character assassination rampage, suggesting that their corporate image was far too important to them, and that they were not to be mistaken for the selfless inspiration of the Edhi Foundation and the urban justice martyr Parween Rehman of the Orangi Pilot Project. Kudos to it IRs founder Dr Hany for all he did, and all the sincere stuff they have got right over the years, but we do need different vehicles now, and for old vehicles to transform.
#LearningFromFailureMatters
The trustees, individual donors, staff and management still need to reflect on Relief-gate and avoid believing their own and their sector's BS. Why do we lionise the Chelsea Manning's and Edward Snowden's and flame our own truth sayers? Because its hard that's why.
Perhaps self-preservation might provide better motivation. There are actually malevolent actors out there collecting evidence to screw Muslim organisations when the time suits them. Can folks learn what the ex Mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman and company failed to?
Another thing that Relief-gate casts doubt on is the competence of airdropped and 'embedded' observers of development(ia) "field" work to understand what is unfolding before their eyes "on the ground". We could say that Nabi Khidr taught Nabi Musa this vital lesson.
This is why it is difficult for some, if not many, people to take IR's climate stuff at face value, despite the many lovely humans, barakah and sincerity that inhabits the place.
Back to the Declaration
Formatting facepalm
The text, when it came, was strewn with crucifix's, as if to convey a mystical sense about its inspiration and audience.
Another alarm bell rings when you search for the word justice and you only get the job title of the Lutheran participant.
1400 years of Islamic scholarship, coloniality, white supremacy and reparations were neither invoked nor addressed, lending the proceedings the odour of the vacuous tokenism that characterises this sector.
Enter The Corporate Nafs
The thing about developmentia, which is an inhibitor of our decolonisation so far, is that its so blatantly expressed in public communications.
On the promotional video reel --> , notice how the actual environmentalist, Fazlun Khalid, is featured hurriedly in order to make way for the IR advert for incorporation into the (white) world of institutional donors.
I couldn't help but dwell on the exclusion of Black voice and the violation of the BDS campaign. And no, its not a petty operational oversight, its actually how this perverted theatre works, through us, to reproduce itself before we even clear our throats.
Its worth bearing in mind that,
A 2 degree average temperature rise across the globe will probably cook Africa by 4.
The body of Black Liberation theology is a critical dialogue partner for the Muslims, 500 years plus downstream from 1492 and worse.
Current levels of global Negrophobia and Islamophobia amongst humanity suggest that Climate Refugee 'Concentration Camps' in the future are a real possibility.
The spiritual reality of the batin and the zahir, the internal and the external plays out here. It is the turmoil inside some very powerful people has created this institutional, racist climate violence.
Reading the Text
The declaration text was a slight improvement on the draft, which was overly focused on Mitigation and European climate agenda. For a start, Adaptation to climate impacts featured (once). Some of the technical terms were defined ( through they were unnecessary) and the diversity of the Muslim Ummah's experience of the impacts and contributions of climate change was acknowledged.
Happily though Islam does really shine through sometimes, despite the clunkiness and slapdash composition of the document which still gets bogged down in bullet points.
That triplet of Allah's name's is always going to be inspiring, Al Khaliq, Al Bari, Al Mussawir - The Creator, The One Who Creates Out Of Nothing, The Bestower Of Forms.
For the intellectually and spiritually underwhelmed
If you are looking for something a bit deeper, and mistook the stunt for something serious, I'd recommend the Ecology and Environment chapter of Tariq Ramadan's 2009 Radical Reform for a coherent, enlivening and practical read, and all of Seyyed Hossain Nasr's writings and lectures on the topic since the 60s. For creative depth and an idea of what could have been and could still be, there is always The Brethren of Purity's spiritual fiction novel The Case of the Aminals Versus Mankind before the King of the Jinnfrom the third Century of Islam.
GMOs and The Rights of Creation
One of my major beefs regarding the Istanbul Declaration is that it does not speak directly about Genetic Modified Organisms, which are and will continue to be foisted upon vulnerable societies as a Climate Solution. Farmers in Bangladesh and other places could do with a hand resisting this stuff, as their governments will kill them if they legitimately protest like UK groups do.
Our critique can be spiritual and jurisprudential as well as based on the malevolent corporate intention and health risk arguments. Other Muslim voices have stressed that our Rights of Creation discourse resonates with the Rights of Nature idea from the 2010 Cochabamba Declaration. Although the rights of ants to undisturbed habitation was affirmed in Istanbul, the Rights of Creation discourse wasn't developed enough. It has fascinating legal and scientific implication that I hear the People's Republic of Duriana have been exploring.
MSM Coverage
The coverage of the event has almost entirely been in 'the west', and its interesting to see how different agencies interpret it. Many are picking up on the total decarbonisation line, which apparently makes it strong. The twitter hashtag(firullah) is #Muslims4Climate
Christian Aid haven't really done any research on Muslim Climate Declarations and point towards the Lambeth Declaration.
Even the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment and the UK Green Building Council have relayed the news. ChaChing!!
Ummahtic Tumbleweed.
Meanwhile I don't think anybody in the Muslim majority countries noticed. But what even if they did?
One question I haven't seen addressed is that often the civil society gangsters in such countries don't really like Islam, so nonsecular work is dismissed and denigrated to the point of hamstringing institutions, scholarship, dehumanising people and massacring them. This is very much the case in Bangladesh at present and gives a sadistic comedy value to Adaptation, Development and Disaster Risk Reduction there.
So What Now?
What I would like to see happening is not a bunch of western Muslim NGOs acting as UN Climate subcontractors, and getting their mates to retweet, but political and epistemic movement. One of the prerequisite of transformative adaptation that Tariq Ramadan points out is "The full and equal integration of all available knowledge".
We cannot really afford for the next generation of Muslim activists, scholars and political movements not to have a decolonial ecopolitics.
I believe that the next climate theatre is taking place in Paris, Oh Allah you have such a rich sense of irony.
Today around lunch time a piece of weird news was circulating the social media, that the maker of the YouTube phenomenon A Dairy of a Bad Man had sold out to Prevent, the UK government's deradicalisation programme. Sure enough, the BBC article, then the Leicester Mercury piece furnished us procrastinators with the sad tidings and a vivid of Muslim cultural degeneration's latest wrong turning.
We learn that PC Rizwaan Chothia, of the East Midlands Special Operations Unit's Prevent team coordinated the project on the same day as a secret trial of a terrorism suspect possibly alludes to an attempt to bring Tony Blair to a belated and worldly account via some kind of Bollywood dance move. Its worth noting that we might have expected better, as PC Rizwaan was subject to Islamophobic humiliation a few years back. I wonder if he 'gets' any of this?
A Dairy of a Bad Man has made me belly laugh at times, especially in its early physicality. Who can forget the classic tribute to the 'Roti or Rice?' dilemma, or Humza's Rap Battle with His Mum? Yet its not hard, even for a comedically challenged miseryguts like me, to notice how he found it hard to grow beyond the slapstick and toilet humour of the facebook/iphone degeneration. Salafis turned on him once they were guilt tripped by their seniors into disapproving of the fellow. His political commitments were admirable, appealing to followers to sign the Babar Ahmad petition, and objecting to Boris Johnson's hair in the run up to his recent reelection.
Think for Yourself is a royal bumwave of epic proportions
His Deradicalisation episode 'Think for Yourself' (above) is very unconvincing. See for yourself, he said, patronisingly. I'm struggling whether to rank it above or below that #HappyMuslims video earlier this year. But its not just appalling cultural product, by any standards, its menacing. Think for Yourself appeals to viewers to snitch on their close ones, which is deeply Stasi-esque.
Perhaps the Muslim Oaf is an important dumbographic, but I think its been a mistake from Humza, who would appear to have sold himself, and his efforts out to the prevent agenda. Perhaps he made it all the more awful as an act of subversion, or was institutionally bullied into it - sixty eight excuses to go. I hope somebody close to him raises these issues and he considers his community with enough respect to dialogue on the issue.
And so it was, a Prime Minister from Bangladesh flew to the United States of America, days after a substantial display of global street protest at the lack of seriousness global leaderships have assigned to Climate Change. At this summit she would press the flesh, enjoy the privileges of the (s)elect and reiterate the "Bangladesh Position" which says it all.
"Continue to fund my government, and your clients that comprise 'civil society'".
Nice little earner.
Its what we call Developmentshire As Usual, and developmentshire is illustrated below. It is a nest of subordinating and privileging relationships that grow whenever the 'd' word is invoked.
Climate Adaptation Hush Money negotiated at the Climate Circus, strengthens the ties of developmentshire,
but also makes them more stark and ridiculous for all to see.
It beggars belief that Sheikh Hasinahas any moral authority, or legitimacy, to speak on behalf of Bangladesh and Bangladeshis. She and her party, the Awami League have spent the last few years annihilating the opposition though use of armed cadres, government machinery and security services, not to mention rigging her re-election last January. For many people for who Bangladesh provides a home, it is the government's massacre of innocent and unarmed protesters in the early hours of 6th May 2013 in central Dhaka, and the subsequent international hush up and purdah of fear that enveloped the state crime, that revealed the true nature of Bangladesh ( See: Ceasefire article).
So how one can in good conscience talk Climate Adaptation without addressing whats really wrong here is beyond me. But hey, (educated) man's gotta eat!
NGO folks might be tempted to applaud the Prime Minister's resilience, a value that is very much part of the neoliberal state repertoire of laughing
'I'm not going anywhere woohoo!'
It is self-evident that the effect of climate adaptation financing in desh is largely to depoliticise the issue, pay off the lifestyles of the upper middle classes and provide a fig leaf of reassurance to polluting developmentors that resistance will indeed not be fertile.
.... In the slipstream we feel alternatively about transformation, imagining and preparing for what could be. We watch them waste resources, not least time and talents, running like hamsters in someones else's wheel, with the wigs of colonised judiciary, the kilts and bagpipes of the Scottish marauders and the gatekeeping greed to dominate and effectively delegitimise the space for public challenge.
The one thing you can rely on from a broad section of deshis, is their vanity.
Below is an exhibit of one of those bits of Facebook ephemera that tell us a story of how sycophancy works among a certain circle of people in Bangladesh. It is a photograph and comment stream from the BBC World Service Bengali Editor Sabir Mustafa with Prime Minister of Bangladesh. It was taken at the London Hilton on Park Lane in the early afternoon of 23rd July 2014, where Hasina is staying with a retinue of 56 people to attend David Cameron's Girl Summit on FGM and early marriage.
FGM, which is what the papers have made a bit deal about, is not an issue in Bangladesh, but I guess she was required as some kind of senior ethnic presence, to pose for the camera like a good moderate Muslim woman awaiting a gallant white man to rescue her. Her car was reportedly pelted with shoes leaving Downing Street.
Its all pretty pathetic really, I would really have liked to have seen a section of decolonial protest register their disapproval of Hasina and her regime in a significant, dignified and more creative way. Hasina's Information Minister Hasanul Huq Inu was egged some months ago, and it was very meaningful but could have been so much more. This Saturday's demonstration for Palestine passes close by the hotel, and the Tarawih prayers at the Qatari-Mayfair mosque are on the doorstep.
It is an indictment of the arabcentric and feebleness of deshward activism amongst our generation in the UK, that this illegitimate regime's officials and securocrats, with blood on their hands, can to and fro from Dhaka to London without any hindrance.
Midnight waaz anybody? Maybe next time.
Both Hasina and Mustafa have been instrumental in the manipulation of the fascistic mood and the production of unfreedom in Bangladesh, where a sham government rules and opposition expression and mobilisation remains suppressed and the fear of poverty still immobilises the middle class.
The monument of this period in Bangladesh's near history is the massacre and cover up of unarmed protesters on 5th-6th May 2013. This unfolded under Hasina's watch, by Dhaka Met Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed's hand and was rendered away by Sabir Mustafa's white privileged pen.
It is interesting that Sabir Mustafa posts a lot about Palestine, but does not see the resemblance between what he and his female selfie partner do and what the Israeli state is up to.
The ideology and kitsch culture of Jionijom, more so than Climate Change, remains the biggest threat to life, love and civilisation in the space we call Bangladesh.
