On being servants of The Guide, The Opener and The Just

Sharif Osman bin Hadi a courageous young poet, activist and educator was fatally shot in the head, riding a rickshaw after Friday Prayers on the twelfth of this twelfth month. He was rushed to hospital with severe brain injuries and passed into the next life on the evening of Thursday in Singapore. He was buried in Dhaka alongside Nazrul Islam whose poetry he loved and whose 1921 Bidrohi ( The Rebel) he performed with a becoming that is really something internally transforming to behold. His funeral prayers also were, with an estimated 1 to 1.5 million moved to attend physically and pray for his onward journey. Many wiser heads than I have concurred that he was the real deal, he bore witness to so many truths that so many tyrants in so many placed worked so hard to bury. Hearts of Green Birds inshAllah

Condolences to those close with him and duas for your ongoing flourishing, uprightness, good guidance and protection through everything.

Overcoming the Firaunic Function

The 2024 Bangladesh Rising that ousted the tyrannical Awami League regime, made space for political thought and organising that had been suffocated for a long time. Suffocated by a public-private Firaunic infrastructure that included the state security, higher education, media and cultural institutional participants. 

In this Opening, Hadi, as he was publicly and affectionately known, had focused his energies on co-developing the Inquilab Moncho, promoting learning of the political and social realities of Bangladesh and a path of Insaaf (Justice). Perhaps just in my imagination, the project resembles Hosseiniyeh Ershad, established  in the 60s Tehran, where Ali Shariati gave epic lectures, an institutional space I have long longed for in Bangladesh. Hadi had recently put his hat in the ring for electoral constituency of Dhaka-8 as an independent candidate and was building momentum in his campaign, there is an outpouring of love and support for the July leaders generally, but this one especially. He was interviewed by the English language Centrist Nation a week before his assassination. You will find many of his discussions and contributions over the years online on a range of subjects, not *just* the topic of Indian Hegemony over Bangladesh. 

Who did it?

The Bangladesh sociopolitical scene is well populated by foolish blunderers, liars and psychopaths. I do not mean any of these categories to be mutually exclusive. For now, many of the more empowered psychopaths are off the pitch yet still have an outsized influence over events, whether by remote control or institutionalised psychopath reproduction. Hadi, along with other leaders of the Movement were constantly under threat and abuse, knew they were on hit lists and had expressed this to authorities. The Yunus leadership has failed miserably on security, with a fresh resignation from the home affairs brief coming in at the time of writing. It was probably designed to.

The fingers on this assassin's trigger are currently believed to have been the Awami League linked IT entrepreneur Faisal Karim Masud, his parents have been arrested following confessions of helping their son dispose of the weapon and evade capture. It would not be unreasonable to extrapolate that there are many bands of cultists trained and ready to make good on their party's threats to disrupt proceedings and Ousted Hasina's explicit commands to 'talk less' and 'do more'.

The question of  participation, signalling and support from elements of different states and the Hasinic fugitive regime harboured in New Delhi remains contested, occluded territory, occluded more by the electoral fog and a media ecosystem primarily motivated by fear and favour.

Why?

Motivations suggested have included creating chaos, provoking backlash and preventing elections slated for February. Perhaps its a warm up for the Awami League's latest delusional comeback tour. The subsequent events, feelings and counter-provocations are all quite manipulable, disgusting and in their playbook. I can't think of a worse security situation for a country like Bangladesh, for so many of its senior security officials to have run off to its large hegemonic neighbor with epic amounts of surveillance data and spycraft. However, if we are to be honest about the India Doctrine, the point is moot.

There is a political, intellectual and emotional resonance, for me at least, to the assassination of Aftab Ahmad,  Professor of Political Science at Dhaka University, in the run up to the 11/01/2007 military coup that ushered Bangladesh into the recently concluded Awami Fascibadi period. He had a discourse on the concept of the Bengal Subaltern that is very pertinent to the assassination of Osman Hadi.

In my reading so far, the work of Inquilab Moncho, threaded a rare Bangladesh-First, religion-inclusive, grassroots and justice-orientated approach to the issues Bangladesh has on its plate. Hadi had traction,  an unsullied adorability and longer term vision. In this assassination operation we see a classic "kill them before they grow" tactic used by powers and their apprentices who have controlled the people of the region for centuries and centuries. 

If this is the case, then the trick would be to keep growing into that Krishnachura Period of Justice, Creativity and Prosperity. The futures of Climate Guantanamo and Bracottabad are humiliating non answers to the challenge that the powers and their apprentices would be quite happy doing business with.

What now?

With the progress of the work of the Commission of Inquiry of Enforced Disappearances and the somewhat reformed International Crimes Tribunal, the Interim Government has moved some way towards establishing the beginnings of Justice, under difficult conditions. We now have firmer knowledge of the architecture of state enforced disappearances and maturing cases of serious crimes of regime leaders. These initiatives and their successors must do much much better at improving the ideas, personnel and institutional arrangements at play within them. How do we build healing and reparation without contrition, and can we invite contrition?

With less that 2 months to go until scheduled elections, a compelling, practical and well telegraphed Justice Agenda would do the world of good.

The traditional yellow media of Bangladesh has already made the Assassination Situation all about itself, its eternal right to bat for the Ousted regime and its Indian Sponsor with impunity and its exclusive access to the megaphone. It will behave according to its colonial nature, incentives and assets around the world. Much to improve on and lampoon there.

What this underlines is the great gap, between the kitsch-compromised farts of Dhaka's donor-driver, gate-keeping, war-on-terror-rentier , green-zone-whispering, uncivil-civil-society, and the Post July 2024 hunger for something better. Yet what we have all recently witnessed, so awfully, about the path to Insaaf is the lesson here. A beautiful thing about the story of Hadi, is the existence and futuristic tradition of people like him, that despite the waves of prejudice, cruelty and sadism that he witnessed at Dhaka University, at Shapla Chottor and all through the Long month of July we, sorry they, have the ingredients to refine and transform the situation, and this present transformation has legs.

[New Word] Tulipsiddiqing

Transnational, Vindictive, Nepobaby self incriminating with Talentless Antics

Dummying Down Bangladesh: Three In a Row

In the history of our political culture, which is longer than the Awami League, there is pattern of abuse of comparative advantage and an ever debasing pursuit of said advantage, whether from political patrons close or far from home. Proximity to power, colonial, before or after has always brought advantages and distortion. We hunger for social mobility with reformative not degenerative quality.

This societal distortion affects education, the ability to learn, make, share and refine knowledge in close quarters to texts, teachers and an accountable reality. It affects access to economic resources, land, employment and finance. And of course political and legal rights, to life, family, organisation, access to publishing platforms and social movements. They are all correlated when you  visualise the demeanour, discourse and social trajectory of Homo Bangladeshi fronting the government, a newspaper, NGO or factory owners lobby group.

Cumulatively speaking the 'People's' Moronarchy of Bangladesh is kept thus by the wrong people in all of these spheres, reproducing each other with little or no social corrective. The redeeming features of the society are the resolve and steadfastness of men and women who resist the selfish, materialist call, who bear witness to truth, do not exploit others or take what does not belong to them. 

2024 is 'election' season in Bangladesh, the wider region and around the colonial cores. We know that the pieces will not fall in a golden place, but we are not without the faculties to prepare. The courage and resilience of those Palestinians under genocidal attack from Zionist forces for over a hundred years, and coming onto 100 days in Gaza are not without instructional and inspirational value. 

I would not bet my life on any of the elections of Bangladesh and preBangladesh being fair, but the Dummy Election that will play out on 7th January 2024 will really take the toast biscuit. 

So....Turquoise Salam, Decolonial Duas and Solidarity to all suffering, surviving and dying under our Firaunic bleadership. From the secret prison of Aynaghar, to the overcrowded official prisons, to the hideouts and hospitals, schools and colleges, dwellings, drains, embankments and chars, in exile and in plain sight. In the grave.

 For those of us who can eat, see, care and speak, even from a distance, the minimum we can do is to make it harder for tyrants, their supporters and beneficiaries to escape the truth. The minimum we can do is to make the conditions for speaking about and acting upon the truth easier. Be present for the deshis. Be present like those Anti Zionist Jews standing up against the political commitments and idols of their parents and grandparents. Our adherence to Islamic teachings and virtues should be a seen as moral and existential commitments, less as flag, team, and decontextualised practices.

Pick up your pebbles and throw them with vigour, direction and wisdom, inshAllah they will transform their targets and ourselves.

All rise the Muslims of Dinia

It is a crying shame that the Muslim Communities of Britain's responses to the outrageous crimes of the Indian Government, its goons and supporters has not been wiser, stronger, more vibrant and courageous. It is really disgusting to see so many ignocratic thank-Jinnah-we-aren't-Indian hot takes from the alleged followers of the best of creation on Mark's Zuckerbook.

This poem about the situation, "All will be Remembered" by Aamir Aziz is quite electric.




bismIlla

The violence being meted out to Muslims in India is historic, systemic and varies in its deadliness across its valleys and plains, from Assam on the Bangladesh border,  to Kashmir in the North West and now very vividly, Delhi once a thriving heart of Islamicate civilisation in the region.

As our brother outside the Indian Consular Office in Birmingham reminded us, Modi is the rule not the exception, Nehru presided over horrid ethnic cleansing in Jammu and Gandhi was as bloody minded and uncreative at times.

So solidarity to the families and communities and heros of the situation. May the vulnerable reach situational and structural safety, and may the martyrs be raised in the hearts of green birds in lanterns by the throne of the All Mighty, All Hearing, All Seeing, Avenging and Protecting Friend.

May every physical, intellectual, communicative and nonsecular act of solidarity be made with utmost success.

With ummahtic disasters like this we see eachother's faults features quite clearly. We see self promoting 'anti colonial' ( yet Congress) warrior intellectuals like Shashi Tharoor objecting to Muslim people affirming their existence as Muslims with public pronouncements of the statements that define them as Muslims. Meanwhile up and coming academic Neha Shah started a really crucial community excavation of the British East African Hindus.

What to do is harder, but switching off from a passive mode and into a serious social learning and organising one is beneficial. [ I will expand on these resources with tie iA]

Listening
Listen to unmediated voices from the front, its easier these days. Folks in India be careful with social media practices lest Sanghis trap you. Yes Arundhati Roy writes very well in English, but she's really not a proxy for sisterhood and brotherhood.

The Documentation Of The Oppressed (DOTO) Database is a startlingly awesome and data rich project hosted online here and on Mark's Zuckerbook here.

Violence against religious minorities in India though not new but over the past few these violence has taken an increasingly political and institutional character in the changed socio-political landscape post-2014. DOTO Database is a non-profit documentation center based in Delhi, documenting incidents of hate-crimes since 2014 against religious minorities(Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Parsi, Buddhists and Zoroastrians) in India. 

Most importantly, we seek to entrench community-based reporting and intervention through a common documentation platform for civil society of marginalized groups: DOTO database. A platform that addresses both immediate and long-term issues related to the systemic violation of fundamental rights, erosion of constitutional values and the organization and deployment of ‘hate’.

Alliances
Study, then affect the alliances (loud, quieter and unspoken) that excuse and empower this tyranny,  divest from them, then build ever growing and deepening circles of solidarity.

Petitioning
Petition all kinds of power-holder over the situation, even white ones. There should be more widely organised evidence gathering, calls for immediate deployment of UN Observer force and a freeze on the UK assets and movements of Delhi Police and identified others. There is plenty for those who stick themselves up the arses of the British Establishment to be busy with

Transformation 
Bros in Bamboo Houses under canon fire sharpen each other. It goes without saying and doesn't detract from the intense suffering and fear people are feeling to recognise there is a pressing need to challenge the reflections of this ultra-nationalist crap ( with caste features) in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

It is always easier to point out another's crime than one's bosses, but moral authority is gained by tackling one's own demons simultaneously. But there's pragmatic reasons too, a lot of the institutions inflict and benefit from violence in the same ways. Chief of Police and in charge of Dhaka Massacre 2013, Benazir Ahmed was promoted shortly after the massacre and cover up. The US government showered the police force with 'Special Events Training' and Muslim of the House Baroness Warsi did bugger all.  As well as the securocrats though, the media and NGO class of Bangladesh and the West were actively involved in the dehumanisation of the traditional Islamic Bangladeshi schooling network, which was unable to challenge the demonisation at the international level.

On the other hand, what we have come to know from the Delhi case is that Shaheenbagh has had different resources, far wider alliances and different strategies to hand. Muslims in Assam and Kashmir have different immediate actions still. Kashmir being cloaked in state enforced silence, Assam in wider societal ignorance. And decolonial duas to all of them.

...and finally
For goodness sake, concerning India don't let unreconstructed Pakistani nationalism do any of the talking.

Isn't it time we talked about Tareque?

Last week we marked International Vote Churi Day. The first anniversary of the most ridiculously rigged election in Bangladesh to date.

Opposition groups remain unable to make a dent in the power of the one party state, while the multitudes of oppressed Rohingya, Bengal Muslims in Assam wider India not to mention Uighurs China languish without security, dignity and opportunity.

It's shit being in a politically poor position however there is no need to be an absolutely useless, no negatively useful sack of shit in such circumstances.

Which is why I wonder why Tarique Rahman, the son of Ex PM of Bangladesh, resident of the UK, and the movement he represents the dregs of remains unchallenged in diaspora.

Bangladesh "Election" 2018 Resource Page

In a few days on the 30th December, Bangladeshis will try and vote in a General Election. Just like in 2014 the government is rigging the contest in many ways, but unlike 2014 some influential internal and external enablers, who helped to create this murderous ultranationalist monster, photographed and curated its dehumanisation, seem to have changed tack and now oppose it publicly.

Maybe there is a bit of love in the air, I certainly get that sense from the BNP head Mirza Fakhrudin Islam Alamgir's trembling outreach video below. But more likely, we are just tired, desperate and need to work across circles of pain, privilege, stupidity and difference - or our people will be doomed to eat each other up and/or run away as things get swampier and saltier and Bracottabad, Climantanomo and Santa's Lapland become our three main endpoints.

Full text of the BNP's Vision 2030 can be found on the cached site, as the Government seem to have taken it down, the BNP are digitally challenged and obviously very battered by 10 years of full throttled repression. Its been a while since I have heard anything thats policy orientated and not "ouch" or " My father.." from them.

• Buckets of inevitable international governese, developmentia and preventitude notwithstanding, I like the socioecological landscape architects of our future vibe of paras 187-199 but wince at the Chairman Rao-ness of "National Water Grid". 
• Allah has 97 other exclusive names which are worth connecting with, but can we be enveloped with Rahman and Rahim before we make efforts to establish it between us? not just on our official documentation.
• Climate Change gets a lot of mentions, coloniality - directly - none.  typical.
• Nice move to reclaim the rainbow whoever that was.
• It is a relief to see political demands/programmes that don't involve a hangman's noose.
• National Health Service?
• Quota System Reform
• Moral Rearmament!
• Vintage Ziaurahman Inclusivity-speak.
• Social Safety Network sounds like someone doesn't want to say welfare state
• Expatriotism

The BNP are the largest opposition party in the National Unity Front, which is fronted by the internationally respectable Kamal Hossain, whose symbolic capital is what the BNP have really lacked for so long. This alliance converges around the demands and goals pasted below which reads better to the international audience. Give-us-a-bloody-free-election-get-your-boots-off-our-throats is the main theme ,with good governance and national speak following closely. Not sure how foreign observers help (except as voluntary human shields for voters and activists under fire) because they have historically been bloody clueless and easy to mislead.

Seven demands: 1.    To ensure a fair election, a non-partisan government must be formed through discussion with all political parties, after the resignation of the incumbent government and dissolution of the parliament. Release of political prisoners, including of Khaleda Zia must be ensured, and false cases filed against opposition activists must be withdrawn 2.    Election Commission must be formed with qualified personnel, and electronic voting machines (EVMs) must not be used in the next election 3.    Level playing field during election time must be ensured 4.    False cases field against students and journalists must be withdrawn, and laws such as Digital Security Act must be scrapped 5.    Army Personnel, with magistracy powers must be deployed ten days before the next general election 6.    Foreign and domestic observers must be present during election time, and media professionals must be allowed to perform their duties without any restrictions 7.     Trial of all ongoing cases filed against political personalities must be postponed from the announcement of the polls schedule, till the declaration of the election results. New cases must not be filed against those political personalities during this time

11 goals: 1.    Establishing good governance by bringing balance of power in parliament, government, president and prime minister with an aim to build a Bangladesh with the spirit of Liberation War to end the authoritarian regime, and decentralizing the administration 2.    Amending the constitution, including Article 70, and forming a constitutional commission to appoint impartial and honest officials to the important positions in constitutional bodies 3.    Ensuring freedom and power of the judiciary 4.    Ensuring necessary initiative for modernizing the Anti-Corruption Commission and bringing the corrupts to book 5.    Ensuring an investment-friendly environment, creating jobs and establishing merit as the only baseline for recruitment in government jobs 6.    Ensuring security of the people, their property and fundamental rights and women empowerment 7.     Implement infrastructural reform for freeing the public administration, police and local government from corruption and grouping 8.    Establishing discipline in the financial institutions, including Bangladesh Bank, and ensuring financial growth focused on proper use of national resources, fair distribution and public welfare 9.    Building a national consensus against militancy, terrorism and communalism, and establishing positive, creative and balanced political environment by ending politics of vengeance and negativity 10.    Adopting a “friendship with all, enmity with none” foreign policy 11.    Ensuring advance training, modern technology and equipment for the armed forces to strengthen and modernize them

Decolonial duas for courage, wisdom, safety and justice.

[Will update this page periodically]

Interview with BNP's Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir

Articles beating the Awami League's drum

Obligatory War on Terror Rentier Advert in New York Times, from Dhaka Tribunista. K. Anis Ahmed whose brother is an Awami League MP and who as a Gencom director,  is a direct beneficiary of the government's power sector policies.

Hasina, you are too kind to your opponents rant from Mad Dog Abdul Ghaffar Choudhury.

False and Tricksey poke at the US interference from exBBC and widely believed RAW asset Soubir Bhoumik


Decent, informative blogs.

Mukti Blog

Bangladesh Politico Blog

Choritrohin

She lay back in her badly engineered chair,
Twiddling her tasbih,
Armed to the teeth,
With Liberalism, Secularism
and Intersectional Feminism
Playing Ludo, Monopoly and Doom
With Dokhol level set to maximum overkill.

She was getting borenoid,
Bored with being paranoid and annoyed.
The Decade of Dumbocracy had taken its toll
and the adoring film the minions had made for her legacy was shit.

There was a roar of hyenalike laughter from the drawing room,
The opposition had just launched another meme,
Via the US Embassy in Dhaka.
Had Agartala come early?
"Think before you act violently, your country depends on it"
Urged the most violent white supremacy settler state we knew of.

Digital Security Act 1 Scene 2
The room is littered with case files and motorcycle helmets,
The data heads have been working on a vote allocation algorithm,
Based on social media surveillance, party records and the holiday calendars of different global players.
It is a state-of-the-art Arab dictator-proof end-to-end solution.

Dua ar Rohingyabad

At three or four locations in Bangladesh, proper, not the margins, there shall be a popular land acquisition initiative, of swaps donations, kard hasanat and what have we. I suspect the Sylhet Division will be most cooperative, inshAllah. Already we have witnessed great Ansaric Muscles from our people, even if they are thwarted by power holders at every turn.

These locations will be ripe for wise urban developments, featuring housing, education, health and work facilities for Rohingyas and the needy of Bangladesh. Plenty will be willing to put up the money, this will eventually pay for itself and set the tone for Bangladesh's Refugeecity, come river erosion, come climate change, come cyclones. Set the tone to Proactive Love.

Other OIC nations will come forward with their own Refugeecity concepts, and the best of our natures will be honed to delivering them, because Allahu Raziq and Malthus was basically a git.

A generation or so in Diaspora, with wider redoubled efforts to learn and combat Buddhist Islamophobias in Asia, may the Rohingya survive, and thrive and be in better conditions to organise and decide what to do about their former homes.

As the rain and winds beat down and kill them in the Bangladesh camps, we reflect on the culpability of our elites, thought bleeders and mental frames, which have put them in harms way. Nationalist excuses. 

An easy reflection from thousands of miles away. 

Angels of the Night of Powerful Enlightenment, hear our prayer.

The Bilad of Tulip and Rupa

Granddaughter of the Nation, 

Kinnockite Kilburn MP,

Blows casket at pregnant producer,

Forgetting to offset human rights hypocrisy,

Any display of compassion for victim and family.

Just a hollow trained technocratic dismissal,

"Who dat? 

He My constituent? 

He British? 

Me Bangladeshi? 

You racist? 

Want some?"

To the sympathy and deferral of The Silver Truth.

And roaring laughter.

Impunity and sycophancy, 

Entangled in two sick establishments,

Female BME Labour MP,

Intersectional invulnerability,

"Awami League is Labour's sister party"

Well May Be,

But THAT Moronarchy?

Business as usual Cornberry?

So lets celebrate our shit Bangladeshi MPs.

Anthem of Participatory Genocide for the Border Guards of Digital Bangladesh

Border Guards Bangladesh,

Pilkhana decapitated, gutted and rebooted you,

and Shapla Chottor completed that reformat,

You protect the borders of the Bengali nationalist mind,

A very small perimeter, I understand,

Bloody, stupid, civilisationaly mutilating.

Not just for yourselves, and your unfortunate progeny.

But for us who share the same air, soil and blood.

The Tulip and the Aunt be Damned.

Run, fight, survive and thrive Rohingya.

Bear witness against your "Bengali" sister and brother

On that day when colonial pretension,

and government pension,

Will count for nought.

Bengal Famines Resource Page

It is hard to imagine the suffering and degradation of famine and how it continues to transform the spiritual, technological and intellectual traditions and futures that we nurture.  When I read about famines of Bengal, at one level I wonder about all the friends and relatives I am missing out on, but also now the learning and teaching value of these disasters and what they demand of the decolonial eco-politics that remains in our dreams. 

It is a peculiar, dizzying and colonial wound and bind. So I'm putting together this work-in-progress resource page to raise awareness, and creative resistance to the criminal individuals and infrastructures of arrogance celebrated by the new five pound note pictured below. 

Progress is wider and higher recognition of the Bengal Famine of 1943 in the story Britain tells itself and the world about World War 2. I do not celebrate indentured foot soldiers of white supremacy as British Asian or British Indian or British Muslim history worth celebrating, though I wish them well in the afterlife.

Petniti: The Practical and Epistemic politics of hunger 

A lot of decision-making still occurs in the mental shadows of famine. From adopting problematic agricultural technologies pushed at us as solutions to famine and climate doom, to acquiescing to tyrannical political relations just to survive/thrive, from falling into overpopulation-thinking, to taking that job that probably messes the world up further. Putting food on the table has a different meaning when political, economic and nutritional stunting is so apparent. Its even in the language.

The term petniti, which we use in Bangla to capture the politics (rajniti) of filling one's own stomach (pet), opens up new horizons of  manipulation, which we can call developmentshire. Developmentshire comes into being not just in the conventional case of a donor, an implementing organisation and their hapless victim, but in the of knowledge itself, religion, war and art. 

Developmentshire is a space configured by three main actors [Source: Developmentia Blog].

The region we call Bengal has hosted famines for millennia. In 3rd century BC Mahastangarh (near Bogra) we have evidence of government relief efforts. The intensity of famines upon the arrival of colonial systems of exploitation, and transition states has been of another order altogether, the three most awful of which are

• The Great Bengal Famine of 1769-70, which unfolded alongside the rise of the British East India Company. 10 million, or a third of the then population is though to have died.
• The Bengal Famine of 1943, which took place alongside British colonial policies of denial. An estimated 3.5 million lost their lives. 
• The Bangladesh Famine of 1974 occurred in the context of the aftermath of the Bangladesh war. Some estimate a million died, though the official number is 26 000 [Beware of number politics in this period]. [Source: Banglapedia]

The Resources

Eventually this section will include videos, podcasts, online books, the odd article and hopefully some primary sources.

The Great Bengal Famine, 1769-70

The East India Company's seizure of Bengal and how this led to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 [online video of lecture] by Roy Moxham (2014)

The Bengal Famine, 1943

Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History [ online text] by G M Polya (2008)

Placing the Great Bengal Famine in the Global Context [online video lecture] by Madhusree Mukherjee (2011)

The Bangladesh Famine, 1974

An Unfashionable Tragedy [online documentary] by John Pilger (1974)



General Famines literature

Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation [online text] by Amartya Sen (1981)

Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Availability and Entitlements [online text] by Amartya Sen ( 1981)

Mir Quasem Ali's execution and the tale of two Bangladeshs

Liberating Nadiya 
I was watching the Chronicles of Nadiya recently and thinking about representations of Bangladesh in the international media, what they are, who they work for and what is actually real about them.

Reading about Bangladesh in most places you might think that the government there was a strong partner in The War on Terror, developing its people and that the only injustice was coming from the direction of deranged Muslims. Give or take a bit of white right left liberal frosting. That's the fiction that the Foreign Minister of the Occupied Turtle Island John Kerry dwelt in on his recent visit to the country. Its the fiction that people like Tahmima Anam write about and that Jeremy Corbynjaan says he reads, Lord guide him.

Begum Nadiya is real, talented, lovely, being commodified, and growing in agency and brilliance. Britain needs a good Muslim story to offset the awful ones and its mutating Islamophobia and she's generating feelings, even tears, of love among many. The Chronicles are well-shot two-parter that in my mind valourises the creative genius of our mothers and aunts and takes us on a trip from the mystical-material shini of the gonj, with kissing otters to the urban dystopias of culinarily challenged elite NGO workers and the North-South University ghetto.

I am all for integration. Therefore I wonder what meal I would cook up for the country's political prisoners in Kashempur and Dhaka Central Jail's, and their families, not to mention those of the assassinated, massacred and disappeared? After all, we usually recognise the vertical and the horizontal when we cook and eat, as well as when we see.

Who are you calling a one party state?
Over the past few months many have been enthusiastic to call Turkey a one party state. More recently we have observed Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, who presided over the 2005 Andijan Massacre, transition towards a state of divine accountability. Karimov was a strong partner in the war on terror, and backed by The War on Terriors all the way, ex-British diplomat Craig Murray has a blog pretty much dedicated to this in all its colonial detail.

Well, desh actually IS a one party state, in which the state gets away with murders most foul, and the stench trail reaches well into these (English) shores: int development, culture and the political establishment . Every year, the British government puts a quarter of a billion into the hands of the country's NGOs. The niece of the Prime Minister is a sitting Labour Party MP.

In 2014, the ruling Awami League ran the fakest general election in the country's history, possibly giving the British Labour party purge a run for its money in the ridiculousness department. It was so fake that they had to ask their coalition ally, The Jatiya Party to form a pretend opposition whilst they blocked political gatherings by their political opponents by blockading their homes with trucks filled with sand [watch here].  This is a regime that massacres people,  most heart-breakingly during the Dhaka Massacre, which claimed the lives of countless unarmed sit-in protesters as they slept and prayed in the early hours of 6th May 2013 [archive here]. This is a regime which has introduced new legislation to enforce a self-serving and rather lobotomising perspective on history as national liberation delivery.

The Judicial Murder of Mir Quasem Ali
This is a regime that just a few hours ago judicially murdered the media pioneer and philanthropist Mir Quasem Ali, in a blood sacrifice to their Islamophobic [Article] political idol of Bengali Nationalism. His son, Arman or Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem, who was also one of his father's defence barristers, was illegally detained by state agencies on August 9 , nobody knows where they've put him and they are denying holding him [HRW Report].  It is a new level of cruelty that he will (probably) not be able to lead his fathers funeral prayer. Altogether, a sorrowful and terrifying time for the family, who have been on the receiving end of state persecution since the tribunals were established in 2010.

We believe that the ongoing impacts of our deeds continue to benefit us in the after life. Shaheed Mir Quasem Ali was an institution builder in health, media and banking and I'm beginning to learn about how generous in spirit and material he was. In so many ways he embodied the brighter practical side of the country's Political Islam tradition and so my guess is that he is deed rich.

I will write about the case specifics in more depth at a later time,  but two points before dropping some resources at your feet. First off, the tribunal that convicted Mir Quasem is a kangaroo court concerned with killing opposition politicians, manipulating the public and the judiciary, consolidating power and extending hegemony over history, bodies and resources. Secondly,  I'm still not sure how to make truths, restorative justice and reconciliation out of the Bangladesh War, but Yasmin Saikia has got an idea [Video]. The family campaign website is here. David Bergman's hole-prone archive of the tribunals is here. The Tribunal's 2014 judgement in here and the 2012 Skype Scandal is here.

Responses
The early responses from Bangladeshis are mixed, as one would expect. I suspect a lot of people are sick to death with them. The prayerfully sympathetic are asking the Almighty to accept Mir Quasem as a martyr, because he was killed in the path of truth and social service. People on Twitter are expressing solidarity on #WeAreMirQuasemAli and are smaller group is reproducing hatred against him with stale Shahbag-era quotes. My guess is that we will learn a lot more about his work and legacy with time.

Meanwhile the local, tightly monitored media compete with each other for horror honours, putting a new gloss on the term Sustainable Lievelihood Framework. Diaspora Awami League institutions are even more surreal, with ATN Bangla UK broadcasting a pro-government report with hindi melodrama music. Small groups of ultra nationalist hangsters celebrate their Independence and Liberation from Pakistan. With no sense of irony.

Arman

Another disappeared brother,
and struggler,
You stood your ground and didn't leave,
Despite years and years and years of grief

We pray you are well and strong,
along with those who for too long
Have been strained and fizzed.
by this Gopalganj Horror Show.
That specialises in making orphans.

Maybe,
God forbid,
They have murdered you already,
Like the garments martyr Aminul Islam
Or worse still the victims of the Motijheel Massacre.
Scores if not hundreds dead, buried and erased.
Do you know what the exchange rate is these days?

Desh's political cul de sac,
never fails to find new ways to suck
It is a killer's market,
Better still if the killer is the state.
Best of all with a War on Terror mandate

Maybe,
And I suppose this is the better case scenario,
They'll charge you with some epic bullshit offence,
Some say conspiracy and cock up theories are mutually exclusive

Oh to have the power,
To break you out of your confines,
Using nothing but the power of our minds.

Undying Benefactor be generous

Lightened up and t shirtified
White supremacist Neoliberalism strikes again with ironic splendour.

A Queer universal chord
Struck across developmentshire
From core to semiperiphery,
Universal exclusivity.
Tormenting the other men and women put in their graves, pyres and asylums
By this regime of epic homocide.

We mourn and mark
With prayer and resolve.
For all souls and hopes
In His way.
Keep those selfies for Benazir.

Shaytan,
Ustad of hypocrisy
Laughs his head off.
"What do you know about justice?"

The death of two shall outweigh that of the hundreds thought massacred in Dhaka just three years ago at Shapla Chottor .
Two human bodies over hundreds invisible subhuman bodies

Monitoring & Evaluation report
Their value
multiplied by white
to the power three.
Upper middle class,
foreign embassy staff,
lgbt.

Shaytan,
Ustad of misdirecting rage
Laughing his head off again,
begins to fill in a very important
Socio-spiritual Impact Self Assessment form.
And abandons his tools to their fate.

Poor Poor Mahfuz what'cha gonna do?

Inequality of knowledge production, publishing and reception being what they are, there is an image being painted of Bangladeshi news baron Mahfuz Anam, father of author Tahmima Anam, as a liberal martyr. It is an image worth exploring.

Both father and daughter are influential media gatekeepers in the international sphere on Bangladesh, the former has edited Dhaka's English Daily Star for a number of years, and the latter written novels on Bangladesh.  In my opinion, they have blood on their fingers regarding the Dhaka Massacre of 2013 and bear some responsibility for the conditions of oppression afflicting the people of the country.

For example, Mahfuz Anam published critical disinformation for the government just days after it committed the worst massacre in Bangladesh's peacetime history, a massacre that people are still too cared to speak about in public in Bangladesh.  Continuing the family business Tahmima Anam's stoking of ultra nationalism and her defence of this Awami League government's rigged 2014 general elections are a matter of record, and UK establishment supported.

The hunter becoming the hunted

The one party state of Bangladesh has kicked up a fuss, and a truck load of cases, concerning a comment Mahfuz Anam made on a chat show admitting to printing a dubious secret service planted story about the present prime minister's corruption.

As my chosen example of the Dhaka Massacre shows, it is standard practice for the Daily Star news organisation. This is something which I say as someone who knows people who have worked there and admired the founding editor, S M Ali. As a powerful voice tuned to the outside ear, disinformation from the Daily Star hurts far more than others.

For calibration's sake, we can observe that Mir Quasem Ali and Mahmudur Rahman too are prominent media figures in Bangladesh, with important audiences in the non-secular liberal political space. They are under death-sentence-upon-kangaroo-court-trial and torture-upon-indefinite-detention-without-trial respectively. J

Just two examples of the inequality of violence and silence in Bangladesh

Remembering Bhashani, Bhola and Political Possibilities

37 solar cycles ago Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani returned to his maker after a long political career struggling for social justice through British Occupied India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

45 years and 5 days ago the south of what is now Bangladesh was struck by a Cyclone which devastated communities and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Allahumma grant them high station and us the collective wisdom and resources to fortify our communities with justice.

The 24 minute UK documentary below centres a team of British Army Engineers as they arrive without much of a clue of what is going on around them.

The film does feature a moving prayer, a rescue story, the long wait for a Pakistani Officer to arrive and some telling banter with East and West Pakistani officials.

The following 13 months is, as they say, history, though that period could have unfolded in any number of ways.

Maulana Bhashani was an elderly and unwell man at the time of the cyclone, receiving treatment in Dhaka. Awaking miraculously the next day he propelled himself to the disaster zone to greet, console and understand what had happened. Returning to Dhaka he delivered a galvanising call and a tremendous bollocking to central government.

His cry of Long Live Independent East Pakistan came from these gatherings and many say this speech act was critical to what happened afterwards even though Bhashani spent most of the Bangladesh War being sat upon by the Indian Government. There will be prayers and conferences in Tangail, provided the ruling party doesn't ban them like they have in the past, the 'secular' left will celebrate him as their totem, unreconstructed Muslim nationalists and (m)islamists will generally dismiss him.

Alternatively, many of believers will smile, sit and marvel at the oath Bhashani's spiritual-political disciples would utter upon and how understanding him unwinds the deceptive secular-religious elite politics of these unpleasant times.

“I give an undertaking that in Allah the Supreme I profess firm belief. 

I will believe with certainty that Rasulullah is the sent messenger. 

I will abide by all the regulations pertaining to the permitted and disallowed, as propagated by the Messenger.   

I will not bow my head to anyone besides Allah.  

I will endeavour tirelessly  to establish socialism, the only way to relieve all forms of human extortion and embezzlement.   

I will join the volunteers corps of the peasantry to eradicate from society all forms of imperialism, capitalism, feudalism,  usury and corruption. 

I will perform litanies, contemplation, meditation,  prayers and fasting… according to the tariqah of Qadria,  Naqshbandiya,  Chistiyyah. 

Every year on the 19/20th January 5 Magh I will attend the large seminar at Santos, Tangail and assist in the advancement and progression of the Islamic University.”

There is a university named after Maulana, primarily dedicated to Science and Technology, but like all institutions in Bangladesh, hardly free to flourish.  Still, it is really important to imagine the possibilities for learning, research and training at such an outfit, unwashed by flags for counter-tyranical, spiritual, social, physical and ecological learning.

Hasina takes a Dutch Trip

The ruler of Bangladesh arrived home in Dhaka from the Netherlands after a three day visit during which she went to vegetable markets, and discussed collaboration over national security and the Delta 2100 Plan.

As far as I can tell, she wasn't greeted with street protests as Egypt's ruler Sisi was in London this Thursday. I hear that European refrain, that she was praised for Bangladesh's development gains.  Which is rather odd, given that her regime has massacred civilians and continues to torture, kill and deny political rights to its opposition.

DELTA, FOXTROT, INDIA, DELTA

The Bangladeshi (Shapla Chottor) and Egypt (Rab'aa) state crime scenarios bear more than just a passing resemblance. They happened just a few months apart, on the back of the mass manipulation movements of Shahbag and Tammarod respectively. They tell the story of Muslims marshalling War on Terror production values, to turn other Muslims into dead meat.

There is crucial difference though. Whereas the Egyptian State massacred protesters in broad daylight, the Bangladesh State could only do it in darkness.

[Incidentally, Egypt and Bangladesh are linked by the 1973 war. Basically, Mujib sent the Arabs some tea and Anwar Sadat decided to send him some tanks in return. These tanks, which didn't have shells in at the time, were instrumental in Col Faruq and Rashid's 1975 coup against Mujib.]

Back in the UK, and I am yet to detect that Corbynistas have been able or willing to join the dots between Sisi, Hasina and trouble. The generally Bangladeshi Labour vote doesn't appear to be in jeopardy, at least now that things have gone post Lutfur Rahman, and we should know by now not to await deliverance from the white left.  In fact, the Bangladesh Awami League has an actual MP in the UK Parliament. Here's an Awami League produced and uploaded video of freshly elected Tulip Siddiq introducing herself and giving a shout out to her aunt, who has left hundreds of widows and mourning mothers in her wake. Didn't she do well?

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is a Begum Rokeya writing a short story about this called Sultana's Nightmare.

WITHOUT OPPOSITION

An important Bangladeshi political truth is the shitness of the opposition.  Last Eid, a visibly ageing Khaleda Zia visited London and clearly radically changed the world with her speech and entourage. Her party has never been so useless, with leaders either jailed, bought off, good for nothing or surrounded by bigger idiots than themselves. Her son is lucky enough to exhibit all of these great qualities.

Meanwhile, the principle local representatives of Islamism 1.0, Jamaat are keeping a low profile. Without a structure to nurture creative leadership/membership or support independent thinking they are pretty much crippled by internal constraints, as well as external oppression and 1971 ishoos

So given the Business As Usual case of depoliticisation, developmentia and determinism, I was wondering what kind of future the people at Delta 2100 were imaging for Bangladesh.

BANGLADESH VISION 2050

The year is 2050, and Bangladesh is a middle income country running on Adaptation Hush Money, Remittances and the back breaking sweat of 200 million brows. In light of the 2040 climate refugee crisis and India giving them the finger, the country was turned into an NGO and the capital renamed to Bracottabad. Monsanto and Syngenta have innovated genetically modified khichuri that glows in the dark, making all Bangladeshi's predisposed to chetona or visible to India's Border Security Force. The universities still churn out studies gloating that religiosity is an impediment to development whilst barring religiously educated people from competitive entry exams. That Dutch land reclamation project is still going slow and nowhere, and all the Bangladeshi engineers finally got those high skilled visas to leave, but don't worry, Bangladesh has finally got that Ministry for Intersectionality Chelsea Clinton was campaigning for.

Londoner Samiun Rahman: Trapped in the Bangladesh Injustice System

This is a resource page which will be updated as the situation develops

One minute you are trying to settle a family land dispute...then
25 year old London cab operator Samiun Rahman's ordeal began last year in late Septamber, when he was arrested in Bangladesh under dubious circumstances and accused of recruiting Bangladeshi fighters for Jabal al Nusrat and ISIS (who were at war with each other at the time). Samiun had been visiting Sylhet to address some kind of family land dispute. Roughly half the cases in the Bangladeshi courts concern land disputes, and its doubley tricky to get what you want done if you aren't there at the best of times.

"Let's Skin the Cat" says Hasina
The arrest was in time to accent the Prime Minister of Bangladesh's "Partners in the War on Terror" song at the 2014 United Nations General Assembly. Unfortunately, until we arrange otherwise, Hasina Wajed and her Awami League rule over Bangladeshis.  An excerpt of her speech to the UNGA on the 27th September 2014 are quoted below. For her, the global agenda against terrorism and extremism is a useful fig leaf to justify annihilating her political opposition.

"Terrorism and extremism remain major impediments to global peace and development. My Government maintains a 'zero-tolerance' policy to all forms of terrorism, violent extremism, radicalization and religion-based politics. We remain firm in our resolve not to allow any terrorist individual or entity to use our territory against any state. 

The anti-liberation forces continue to remain active in destroying the progressive and secular fabric of our nation. They resort to religious militancy and violent extremism in every opportunity. Under the direct patronage of the BNP-Jamaat Alliance Government from 2001 to 2006, they coalesced to form terrorist outfits, that perpetrated bomb and grenade attacks killing secular political leaders and activists."

"We've no idea what he's facing" says family
Samiun has been detained without trial in Bangladesh for a year now, his family forced to pay safety bribes, and prevented from seeing him. He is under mental distress as reported in a recent Observer article,

“We’ve no idea what he’s facing,” said Mrs Rahman, “which makes it doubly hard. Nobody has seen any evidence against him, even at his bail hearings, where bail has been refused.” She only hears news of him after consulate visits. “Physically he is fine, but mentally he is not doing so good. If someone is held like that in prison for over a year, of course it takes its toll on you; anxiety and depression creep in. He was such a laid-back, easygoing man before this. Fun to be around."

“I don’t believe for a minute he will get any kind of fair trial, and I don’t think it is working in his favour that he is a British citizen, as it suits the Bangladesh government to say that terror is coming in from overseas, that it’s foreigners coming in to commit crimes in the country. These people are simply politically motivated. Samiun doesn’t agree with violence or violent people and it’s very strange to hear his name used in connection with these terror groups.”

Analysing the press coverage

Incidentally the Guardian ( the Observer's anti-Corbyn sister paper) is one of the papers that helped to stitch him up and has institutionalised Islamophobia regarding all matters Bangladesh. Quite an accusation, but it is evidenced by the Guardian's cover-up of the 2013 Dhaka Massacre,and its reliance on likeminded misleading gatekeepers.

It was the motley crew of Shiv Malik, Saad Hammadi and company that wrote a stinker of a piece on Samiun last year, which took the official account at face value.  They did not even feel responsible enough to correct their churn when informed.

The Telegraph, whose Dhaka correspondent David Bergman happened to be in the Dhaka court when Samiun was there, was slightly better, reporting words of the accused and his family.

A BBC video report interviewed a member his family in Sylhet and reported there was a police raid on his home in Holborn on the 29th September. Yo its credit they included a contribution from a CAGE spokesman about taking regime pronouncements with a pinch of salt.

Bergman, blogged about Samiun twice in the following days, first with Samiun's full account to his question in court, and then a few days later focussing on the political benefit to the government of the detention and discrepancies between Samiun's and the official account. Samiun reports that the police detained him on the 24th September from his ancestral village home in Habiganj, while police say they arrested him coming off a train from Sylhet terminating in Dhaka late in the evening on the 28th.

News of how Samiun's jailer in Habiganj extorted money from his family, and the stage management of the arrest were reported by the Independent later in November. It seems that other than occasional visits to check he's not dead, that the UK government is doing sod all. I wonder how they would behave if the victim was white?

Forced disappearances, and (if you are very lucky) reappearances are very common in Bangladesh today, from opposition politicians like late Ilyas Ali, garments activists like late Aminul Islam,  and witnesses in the War Crimes Tribunals, to random Londonis, they tell us about the level impunity with which the state and its enforcers behave.

Samiun's case is not even the craziest involving a UK national. Over the summer following the high profile murder of a blogger, the police pinned it 58 year old Tawhidul Rahman from London who has bad mental health, and who they had detained kidnapped three months previously. His sister, Dr Nasera Begum filed the paperwork to prove it.

 
What is to be done?
Samiun is basically a young man who had straightened his life out, who has become a pawn in a cruel game between venal elites. He could be anybody. For what its worth, his case needs a strong, ever widening community campaign behind it. A few threads come to mind that might matter.

Ensure that people and networks are more widely informed about the case. Awareness remains low, both amongst relevant campaign communities and the wider Bangladeshi and Muslim communities. There is a kinda cute Justice for Samiun webpage, and the London-based campaign group CAGE pushed out a bilingual press release with good context in August but there is precious little else out there. I have hyperlinked to most of it in this post but do feel free to post more stuff in the comments.

Reach out to support the families affected by this. The mother of a friend affected by an unjust long and cruel detention and extradition told me with great sadness that 'Our friends are afraid to see even our shadows'.  Fear of institutional/social recrimination is a powerful barrier to dignity and mobilisation.

Enrol the concern and support of justice-orientated politicians. By politicians I don't just mean the elected parliamentary sort, but those people you expect leadership, courage and determination from. Does the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn actually mean anything here, or is the party hobbled by the current autocrat's niece being one of his MPs? UKcentrism aside there are many able people who can eat in Bangladesh who chafe under its injustice system, and yearn for a transformation.

Stress the need for justice for all detainees in Bangladesh, especially those victimised by the Global War on Terror and the Awami League's battle to stay in power. The injustice system and political prisoner situation in Bangladesh cannot be ignored and shouldn't.

Salahudin Quader Chowdhury: No Executable Code is Associated with This Line

Earlier this week prominent Bangladeshi opposition politician Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury lost his appeal at the Bangladesh Supreme Court against the death penalty for convictions by the country's International Crimes Tribunals ( ICT). He has been in government detention since 2011, and the international press has detailed the torture he experienced at the hands and instruments of the British trained Rapid Action Battalion.

Hailing from a political family based in the port city of Chittagong, known as Islamabad in Mughal times, Chowdhury has served as an MP on 7 separate occasions and was a close adviser to the former BNP Prime Minister Khaleda Zia during her last stint in office. He was in his early twenties during the 1971 war year and according to his witnesses who made it through the tribunal's clumsy rigging, had been in West Pakistan for the duration of the period of the crimes for which he was convicted. The problem is that the Tribunal and the Supreme Court, with their characteristically warped view of the world, has refused to acknowledge his absence from the scene, as corroborated by many of his peers.

Given the maddening BS that we have been expected to swallow regarding people in 1971, BS thats resulted in the judicial murders of Abdul Quader Mollah and Muhammad Kamarazzaman, I think its high time to review the horror stories woven around Salahuddin Quader Choudhury in 1971 and unearth greater truths buried in the rubble of the Bangladesh Motanarrative.

A Roundly Criticised Show Trial

For years before the current Awami League regime came into power on the back of a diplomatic coup, I never thought that fair investigations, trials and resolutions would be possible. I felt that it was just an game of political emotional blackmail on account of the national liberation mythology.  It is a real pity that such a lot of lives, reputations and human horsepower have been dissipated to produce such injustice, but it goes with the territory and didn't have to be inevitable, we(pl) made it this way.

Criticisms of the conduct and integrity of the tribunals have been made by many of humble and of privileged backgrounds. For example there is the independent review by Geoffrey Robertson QC , the Economist of London's coverage of the chairing judge's collusion with a partisan activist and Bangladesh's favourite son-in-law David Bergman long archive of the tribunal's proceedings. Just a fortnight after he was given his original death penalty, an Early Day Motion was tabled in the UK Parliament highlighting the lack of due process in his trial and that of the late Abdul Quader Mollah, who was executed a few months later. It was signed by 32 MPs including people like Jeremy Corybn, Peter Bottomley, Diane Abbot and Michael Meacher.

A distinct political lineage to Year Zero 71sterism

SQC, or SaKa as he is alternatively known, is one of Bangladeshi society's intriguing characters. He represents a genealogy of politics that predates the rise of the Awami League and has never really been scared to give them the finger. His symbolic capital and privilege are independent of Liberation 1971 events and the rise of Bengali Nationalism. That is not to say he is an angelic figure, he still commands immense power over his political enemies from behind a cell.

As a London resident with a Bangladesh facing eye or two, I remember his amazing political insults and his unsuccesful bid during the BNP-JI regime for Secretary General of the OIC, which was viscerally resisted by the Awami League, and deludedly promoted by the BNP at the time. In retrospect it is good that Prof Ehsanoglu won that election, as the pro Islam and pro Muslim Ummah social and intellectual currents in Turkey were and still are in a better place than in Bangladesh.

What I am becoming more interested in is the condemned man's father, Fazlul Quader Chowdhury. The political orphans of Bangladesh, need to take as many of these political bypass figures closer to our hearts for the sake of past mistakes and wider possibilities of the future

He was a political stalwart for 3 decades through more interesting times, who didn't switch allegiance to the Bangladesh cause and died in prison in 1973 under dubious circumstances. There is a slightly hagiographic website about him here.

He was elected General Secretary of the All-India Muslim Students Federation in 1939, and was with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, just before he left for that important mission to rid India of it's colonial yolk during (Colonial) World War 2. Netaji was to offer to relieve the Bengal Famine with food aid from Myanmar, an offer which was refused by the British colonial authority, who censored it. A war crime by any standards.

Interestingly, in 1942 when Fazlul Quader was arrested, one Mujibur Rahman, a rising Bengal Muslim Student League leader, organised a student strike in solidarity with him. Decades later it is said that Fazlul Quader, by then an established trade union and political leader, was to reject Mujibur Rahman's offer of his daughter Hasina's hand in marriage to his son Salahuddin.

I would like to invite people to flesh out this proposal story, because it lends extra humour to some of Salahudin's comments over the years, helps us to understand Hasina's insecurity and more importantly, reminds us that the political elite and cosmology that Bengali Nationalism and its kitsch culture machine has inflicted on us is not the End of History.

There were and there are much more expansive and nobler horizons.

What is to be done?

We do not know how this is going to pan out, but we should speak out against the injustice being dealt to SQC on a matter of principle, not to mention support the family and other people in such predicaments.  We know how institutions in desh act with impunity and seek to destroy any who challenge their control and controllers. We also know how their family, NGO business and ideological networks assist them to tell the stories they want people to know about Bangladesh, and to be heard.

In this light, simply pointing out more accurate and reliable histories and principles of justice is where we should start.

Preventitude : A Newham Case Study

What is Prevent?

CAGE analysis of PREVENT's role in the
generation of though crimes in the UK today.

The UK government's Prevent strategy is a sinister method of manipulating and undermining the Muslim community. State mouthpieces like the BBC would disagree, but even they cringe sometimes, albeit in a smug technocratic resource efficiency and Private Eye orientated fashion that never questions the political fundamentals of white privilege. For that level of analysis, Arun Kundnani has studied the government's approach to what it has called radicalisation and extremism over the past decade and formulated a constructive critique.

However, the odious ghetto of the jobsworths and securocrats responsible for Prevent is not in the business of admitting the degree to which their bogeymen are of their own making. After all, it is far easier to repress the weak than risk the truth. These individuals are paid handsomely by the state, often with competitive pensions to recruit vulnerable people to their nefarious schemes of ummahtic suffocation. What motivates them to choose this life of an open air prison warden is unclear and worth pursuing, theories range from structural learning difficulties to sexual impotence to daddy issues.

For Muslims and others with a decolonial analysis of things, Prevent is a neoliberal representation of a long tradition of coloniality stretching back hundreds of years. It surveils, fragments, disciplines and depoliticises the formation and articulation of a Muslim sense of self, place and community,. The strategy has even been reframed as a Cradle to Grave Police State.  Rendered statutory by the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015, it is something we need to understand, resist, survive and recover from.

Rather than be permanently bummed out over the latest bro to sell out, cash in and cause cringing, its high time to respond in the tradition of decolonial Ummahtic Love. To turn the gaze ( and the blade) towards the slow violence of Prevent , Establishment Extremism and the coloniality that makes them possible, is a liberating, positive and politically productive project that I am sure many would like to see operating.

Preventitude and the #NewVic3

Mak Chishti threat upon the bodies, spaces and habits of all Muslim youth was not an isolated incident. There is an entire generation, particularly in the schooling system, being subjected to Preventitude. The term salutes the Francophone African Negritude movement, and articulates a rallying call  to attend to the colonial institution of Prevent. Experience of this unjust set of power relations and weaponry connects not just those trapped beneath it in the UK, but in other locations around the world as powerful governments employ weirder, meaner and more brutal forms of policing souls, minds, bodies and with them the future. After all, the counter extremism kit, of hard and softer varieties is a growing British export to many countries.

A good example is in the country of my immediate ancestry, Bangladesh. Over their the British trained and human rights violating Rapid Action Battalion headed by Benazir Ahmed (who presided over the 2013 Dhaka Massacre ) would not be possible without the UK's  multidisciplinary input into the great War on Terror Scam. Fields of diplomacy, academia, military, education, culture and media operation are integrated into this mutually useful enterprise. Therefore, it stands to reason that calling out and challenging malevolent bullshit in the UK can work towards institutionally, professionally and politically safeguarding vulnerable people and societies all over the world, whether they are in Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, India or Pakistan.

Yesterday, less than a fortnight after the exposure of primary school children to dubious surveillance in Waltham Forest, I heard of the suspension of three upper sixth form students from New Vic College in Newham, another east London borough. Punitive measures had been taken against them for their opposition to college Prevent policies and Islamophobia. Given that it is exam season for A-level students, the college's behaviour is disproportionate and stupid at best, if not outright malicious.

Unreal right? You may have attended a wedding
at the nearby Impressions venue.

Justifying his destructive decision, Principal Playfair (!) cites the student's circulation of a petition to students and staff and IT policy as the grounds for their suspension. He talks about a commitment to fighting Islamophobia yet has contributes to it with his actions and doesn't seem to be fighting with Islamophobia's expression through Prevent. Maybe he is one of those post-racials who thinks that because his local prevent officer is brown, that there cannot be anything wrong with it.

Needless to say, the girls' supporters' and sympathisers' at the college and around the country aren't convinced by his initial pronouncements. If inclined to, you can watch the #NewVic3 hashtag on Twitter to see and connect to outrage at this serious institutional student rights violation.  From what I can tell, their petition is legitimate and interesting. It demands honesty, transparency from the senior management and protection of their student rights from the government's Prevent policy and in particular.

Some more politically-seasoned people might have advised a slightly different course of action, had their invitation by the students not been rescinded by the college. The context of the petition was in the aftermath of the college's banning of an event they had organised to critically discuss the politics and meaning of the government's Prevent policy. NUS Black Officer Malia Bouttia and others including local councillor Unmesh Desai were scheduled to speak, but for some undisclosed reason the college students were denied an audience with them.

The Lie of 'contravening IT policy' is enforceable by white power and 'how dare they demand of us' thinking. In reality it resembles an abusive big brother punching you in the gut, throat and mouth, then branding your face with 'enemy of the state' for picking the teeth out of your mouth. I hope the governor's of New Vic are busy making justice out of this situation. This is a school where a teacher can tell a room full of female students that they are. 

“too lazy to run to Syria, carry machine guns and have sex all day.”

and get away with it

I wish these young sisters a successful political and academic education and support their cause. They have shown more leadership than a lot of the fat brown bearded males. I think they should be nominated for a Muslim News Malcolm X Award for Services against Preventitude.

Recognising and supporting courage is one important, but so are the underlying causes of the Prevent Policy Disaster and our particular situations.

Reading Moby Dick in Newham

Cabinet Meeting at Newham.

Newham is a one party state. An East London borough where every single council ward is controlled by the Labour Party presided over the elected Mayor Robin Whale.  Whale plays an effective divide and rule policy on the boroughs different ethnic minority communities, has quite hard secularist views on multiculturalism and diversity and was a key collaborator in the gentrifying orgy that was Olympic Developmentia.

His whiteness, Labour identity and compliance with corporate interest means that he hasn't been subjected to the same scrutinies, dirty tricks, boycotts and lawfare of Lutfur Rahman next door in Tower Hamlets. The lack of headlines regarding his overrepresentation of 16.7% White British community in Newham is notable.

Whale's contribution to this Case study of institutional insanity is his appointment of the much-hated Quilliam Foundation's Ghaffar Husain as the borough's Prevent Officer. Interestingly, the Foundation's founder, Essex-born Majid Nawaz went to college in Newham, where he manipulated student politics, finances and Islam to violent affect. Following the 2013 Woolwich murder he made political value for himself spinning another self aggrandising yarn about the murder of Ayotunde Obanubi at his college.

What is to be done?

To close, the classroom coloniality unfolding in every educational institution around the country is on the increase and we need to tool up. Data and case studies like this one will be plentiful because of the baseline stupidity of institutions. Looking at the situation optimistically, it is a good opportunity to hold up a mirror of coloniality to government functionaries. Intellectuals focusing on race, Islamophobia, civil liberties and human rights discourses will of course be busy.  Muslims need also to attend to the spiritual impacts and connectivities of the problem, both to safeguard young people and better understand the sicknesses inside those who design, enforce and defend preventitude.

A Decolonial Dua

Owner of Judgement, Everlasting, Protecting Friend

forgive us those foolish decisions,

which enclose noble futures,

as we make our way to the minbar.

Guide us in our knowledge adventures,

beyond the accumulation of certification

to generation, political epistemic emancipation.

Protect us from developmentors on the watchtower,

and their developmentees

Preventing us, from helping us

Selling poverty pornography and non answers.