A Theist Blogger's Deshi Declaration

Dear Allama Shafi,

I cannot find the words to describe my sorrow and indignation over what has happened and what lies in store should hathazari bounce back and rise again. Maybe we will meet on the planes of Arafat and discuss this eventually.  Allahumma grant those who won't be returning to their families a place in the hearts of green birds near His Throne.

Dear Mir Quasem Ali

Of the party leaders detained and accused it is your diganta infrastructure that points to the future. We pray for you all, and for justice and that we might have the privaledge of knowing what the f@£k happened over those previous years.  69 to 72.

Most bloody expensive hobnobbing ever right?

Dear Mahmudur Rahman.

Our very own Julian Assange minus the rape allegations. May your wounds heal. If you were here in London I would invite you to our reading group and we could work on the non tribal religious language and decoloniality. Still. They would have arrested you regardless as you held the only press to challenge theur crown jewels. 

Dear Delwar Hussein,

I read your party's dossier on you and wish you healing, freedom and guidance. Its a downright shame that you inherit unjust stigma and thus serve as the lightning rod for Awami hate and brutality. I have given up hoping for an answer to the shibbir violence problem.

We're still looking for that higher gear.

***

We need a more open and inclusive ummahstructure to make space for alternatives to the DJ juice degeneration.

The government of Bangladesh holds unbridled power, and its supporting media- industrial-NGO complex has the people in a triple bind.

The brutal events of May 6th are a sign of things to come. As Awami minded denial shifts to just desertification.

If our Islamist brothers were to find themselves in power tomorrow it probably would be a disaster, not for fault of Islam, but people and the lack of Tawhesion. This is not a secular position but a basic form of training and political due diligence.

The secular liberal hegemony over political space, the right to audience and debate is a problem.

The conditions for faith, life, intellect, dignity, lineage and property are what our activism should be about. These higher objectives of Sharia must come to the foreground in what we say and do.

Whatever happened to the religious left?

There needs to be a moratorium on hartals and a rise in explorations of the political street theater of love.

[New Word] Political load-shedding

The troublesome process of contesting power (re)distribution. Although better timetabled these days, the hartal, or strike, causes problems for the public, which in addition to their existing problems is not the politics of mercy.

By mixing metaphors we avoid depoliticizing strikes, their need, and their impacts on people, power structures and pauperisation.

Political load-shedding is a non-solution to the problem of sustainable and just power generation and distribution.

So if you think that you, or your tribe, have what it takes to lead the people. Find another way. Don't (mis)lead dedicated young people to their martyrdom, bring sakina, or tranquility, to the streets and lives of the people.

As The Tailor once said, the prison has escape encoded in its very bars.

[New Word] Trashmob

A long long time ago
I can still remember how
'Good' flashmobs used to make me smile
And I knew if we had our cause
That we might engineer a round of applause
And maybe feed the homeless for a while

But Repetition made me shiver
With every so-called Temporary Autonomous Zone The Man deliver
Commodified action on your doorstep
Ultimately there would not be one more step

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about Gangam contrived
Amongst Dhaka's westoxified
The day the flashmob died

The Trashmob is a spontaneous gathering and action of complete fuckwits who contrive to meet together and perform an action of immense idiocy, window dressing and neoliberalising enchantment.

Imagining the Superposition of Green Wavefronts

The long-time anti-war leader, psychotherapist and mother just quit the Respect Party. Its a bit sad how it came about, but its coming about isnt my focus for now. The thought of the Birmingham-based Salma Yaqoob joining the Green Party does joyous things to me. I like to speculate and project my political demands onto others, so please forgive and understand any commodifying of humans-as-my-pawns here.

The UK Green Party just elected a new leadership, choosing Australian expat Natalie Bennett as their number 1 and Dudley-based Will Duckworth as deputy leader.  On a purely regional level, there are potential synergies in the midlands. It would also contest the scary neomalthusianism that underpins several flavours of environmentalism (thats you Jonathan Porritt), the technocratic aspects of Brighton's Green-led council (allowed an 80 year old pensioner to be jailed for not paying her council tax) and might broaden the political constituency beyond the over-representation of the white middle classes.

Looking  generationally I feel the politics of Decolonisation, Alterity and Life converging. Silly little NGOs and the governmentalisation of Environment and Diversity arent really helpful in realising these political demands. Hence the image below.

Black Power, Verdant Knuckles

The Superposition of Green Wavefronts

For as long as I've been paying attention, Caroline Lucas has been a principled friend to Muslims, whether on hijab protection or the case of our dear Talha Ahsan, and interesting principled deshi candidates have stood for the party in national elections. I'm thinking of Farid Bakht for Bethnal Green and Bow and Dr Shahrar Ali for Brent. I won't forget Shahrar's rendition of If you Tolerate this then your children will be next at Bush house in protest at the BBC's evilness during the Israeli siege on Gaza.

Firm, committed, educated and of-the-future, a lot of current Green people tend to provoke accusations of over-middleclassedness. However this need not necessarily a fatal flaw.  With the Occupy and other assemblages out there, including folks like Bread and Circuses and Space Hijackers, its not like we are in a time of low inspiration and monoculture.

The Green's political values seem to include: Palestinian Freedom, Climate Justice, Civil Liberties, Deconsumerisations, Welfare, Humans as part of Nature, as well as Deimperialisation at home and abroad. It seems to be a space where we might breathe in our own skins.

But there is something still more tantalisingly nonsecular about planting our political seeds in this trough, and this relates to some of the projects you see linked to on the left. Its about realising the nonsecular political selves that we are and honouring and eco-akhlaq (practical ethics) and creative ideology of Qur'anic readings, into a politics of life.

Salma Yaqoob shifting into a green political space might enable the following to unfold more fully,

• Transformation of our diet and food system to something more just, tayeb and nuronic.
• Rejection of fake Muslim environmental NGOisms
• Rejection of greenwash
• Development of khalqi politics of ummah.
• Derudeboyification.
• Decoloniality
• Farming revolution, revalourisation and localisation of food systems.
• More Trees in and around Masjids, more Masjids in and around Trees.
• Establishment of the politics of Tawhesion
• Rememberance of the Garden
• Rights of Nature laws and ethics
• Surah Zalzalian conciousness

Maulana Bhashani's death anniversary today

 Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani. Born 1880, Died 1976. aka The Red Maulana

He returned to his Maker on 17th November 1976, a few months after leading the Long March in protest at the Indian Government's dastardly construction of the Farrakha Barrage on the Ganges River. He was doing this kind of thing in his 90s!!!

This was an immense display of political mojo from a gentleman who demonstrated it quite a lot and didn't get stuck in personality cults and petty bickering.

Those of us who share Sylheti ancestry tend to admire his leadership during the Assam Referendum on 1947 and against the Line System which tyrannised cultivators of the Surma Valley, as it was known then.

He embodied a Left Islamic political practise and hailed from a joint Jatra Movement-Deoband training. Interesting huh?!? Mister Jinnah didn't quite like him as he wasn't British educated and suited enough.

He stood against the Pro-US turn of the Pakistani State, and was feted by Late Chairman Mao.


His involvement in the Bangladesh War is hard to figure. He boycotted the 1970 election. The Indian government basically trapped him for its complete duration, as they couldn't trust him.

All of these facts mentioned above mark him out as someone every deshi could easily relate to, limitations and all. Alas, we the bangali musalmans and musalwomans have become seminarised, selfish, secularised and docile.

Allahummah grant him protection, mercy and high station, since you are the Knower of Subtleties, the Reckoner and the Majestic.


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Remember the Garden, for the sake of Allah

Is the title of a talk delivered by the late Haji Ayman Ahwal last year,



Sadly (for us) he passed on from this world last week and was buried in Birmingham, where he spent the last 7-8 years amongst a community he loved a lot and which clearly loved him greatly.

His upriverproject blog contains a rich presentation of the struggle to protect forest and life in Aceh.





Closer to home, but with exactly the same ethic, the Clean Madina project (below) was an amazing intervention, Jihad on Litter in Brumistan!

Tribute to Prof Syed Hussein Alattas

This post is adapted from a few months back, when i was in less of a bloggy mood. I guess there are people who never knew who he was in the first place, to be able to mourn him.

So here goes.

A mighty Muslim warrior in the intellectual and political battle against evil (corruption, captive minds, parochialism and foolishness) passed away on the 23rd of January 2007 in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, of a heart attack.

Our Ummah, Our World is poorer now.

Please pray for him, for his family, friends, supporters..

I had the good fortune to squeeze his brain at his home one night in mid August 2006, he was hilarious and had a complex sociology of the 'fool' and of flattery ticking over in his brain. Into the silly hours we went. One of the few people i have heard of who was an original thinker (Books on; The myth of the lazy native, Problems facing intellectuals in developing societies, Captive minds, The sociology of corruption:nature, efffect and function, Corruption and the future of asia), and contributed to the progressive political scene.

As a justice seeking individual he suffered at the hands of the malaysian state and the pretty gutless intelligensia there. This was particularly apparent towards the end, where he was character assasinated (6 months press barrage) out of his job as the VC of University Malaya under some trumped up political corruption ruse. This happened at the time when he was tackling intellectual corruption (plaigarism) and economic corruption (catering contracts) on the campus. irony is not dead.

Never a fan of the once fashionable 'Islamisation of knowledge' brigade (a movement to sort out our knowledge culture that started in the 70s'), he reflected that this resulted in the creation of an exclusivist discource for the political benefit of some 'islamists', in muslim students not reading as widely as they should and in 2nd ratedness. He felt it that that alleyway was blind and had done a lot of damage.

He was very keen on the regionalisation of sociology. Given 1000s of sociologists in the third world we have a very strong base, but little collective discussion, the eu has a collective discussion, they have a regional interest. I really hope that his thoughts on south east asian sociology (including desh!!) are heeded.

As a sociologist he understood how knowledge is produced and constrained and struggled hard all his life to free our 'Captive Minds' and point out various 'Manifestations of the fool'. He advised us not be be jargonists, to hide defective reasoning in layers of jargon, that its a battle between valid concepts and jargon.

When we spoke last summer, i really wanted him to come to the UK, we never invite original contrubuters like this. He seemed very game but his health was basically a limit. I also hadnt sorted my life out enough to know where i would be and when i would be where. I was also worried that UK folks are too far gone, salafised, foolish and parochial to appreciate him.

Still i really do hope that his writings and ideas are read more widely in the colonising, decolonising and especially muslim worlds. I hope young undergrads and postgrads find motivation and clues in his work, that its inspired and helps them to 'go for it', as it were. i implore you to go out there and search hard for his books and writings on the web. SOAS library and British library stock his stuff, so probably do the Other India Bookshop.

"I concentrated on the captive mind because the captive mind is most urgent as far as the developing society is concerned. We are not concerned with the slave holders, we are concerned with the enslaved. And a change, as we all know, can only be achieved if there is an awakening of the downtrodden, of the slave community. Without the change in the slave community, the attitude of the slave community, there can never be any change. As far as the slave holders were concerned, they will not give the freedom away. It had to be wrenched from them. The slave must wake up to wrench the freedom the slave holders."
(Multiversity Meeting on 'Redesign of Social Science Curricula', Penang 2004)

Multiversity was a project through which i first met the Prof, http://www.multiversitylibrary.com/index.jsp

Farish Noor's Obituary is here