The Muslim Vote Project

It is a time of great sorrow, disaster and murder in Gaza and the West Bank, and UK elected officials are quite complicit in it. We need not be. Palestine is anti colonial dhikr. Everyone carrying multigenerational colonial wounds remembers them. It matters because these are matters of life, death and the Zone of Non Being. 

Since falling to the British Empire in 1917, life in Palestine and in wider Sykes-Picotistan has been imperilled by a toxic and deadly entanglements of colonial power, European xenophobia, proxy powerplay and the morally debasing Zionist Movement. Not to mention foolishness, and selfish gits. 

Even before the establishment of the once heretical Zionist movement, Christian fantasists and statesmen like Napoleon had toyed with the idea and benefits (to them) of a Jewish state in the region. Later, Ronald Storrs, a British Mandate era Military Governer in Jerusalam remarked that the state could be "a loyal little ulster in a sea of potentially hostile pan-Arabism", I recently heard a dissident US military commentator remark of the current state as a "US Battleship in the Middle East".

British colonial crimes in Palestine draw in a wider historically subjugated fraternity, from the redeployment of colonial torturers from Occupied India, to Black and Tans militia from Ireland. This underlines our visceral concern. 

Another world is possible with organised effort, pain and creativity. Political Cost-benefit analysis shift with time, events and realisation, sometimes quite nonlinearly. The hegemony of the Zionist position(s) was not always a given, the assassination of the anti Zionist Jewish writer Jacob Israel de Haan by the Hagana militants in 1924 demonstrates how insecure the Early Zionist movement leadership was at the time of articulate community-based opposition. We are witnessing a post Zionist turn in the so-called west, and in the UK the scent of something post Labour for many. 

Immigrants to the UK from the colonial periphery generally came with very few political expectations and are seen to have generally fallen behind the Labour Party, especially when they were allowed in and managed into votebanks. The Corbyn Leadership years were an opportunity, they are over now, but the political movements and energies are very much out there. In fact the post corbyn collapse was a bit of a train wreck and its very much worth looking back down the track at those features of the preceding Student Movement and Anti War Movement that made them possible. 

The establishment response to the war on Gaza has exposed the moral vacuity and racism of the British political class in a fairly obvious way, again. On the other hand I feel that the horror of these past months have reminded many people what they are about and what they are politically for. Countless, well attended, inclusive and regular pro Ceasefire protests characterised the last quarter 2023, as Palestinians bodies have been obliterated, maimed and souls departed at a horrific rate. We hear news of direct actions and organic boycotts every other day responsive, collective and determined. High quality political educational resources are abundant, not least due to the brilliant works and efforts of Palestinians like the late Shaheed Dr Refaat Al Areer.

The purpose of this post is to highlight one initiative from the UK's Muslim millet that seeks to boost political organising is The Muslim Vote project, . It is much more than a simple pivot on census data and that Parliamentary ceasefire vote failure, it is a call for long term, ethical, political action. It raises questions, sober realities and exciting possibilities. Do have a browse, listen and think about it. 

 

The coming year brings with it the responsibility for discussion building, wisdom sharing, bullshit busting and ego managing. Nearly 20 years ago a successful Anti War inspired effort in the taken for granted by East London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bro changed the political dynamics of the area, for the better, with material results benefiting the people of the borough to this day. We can do so much better than we are.

Oh and Algorythmic Preventitude under Starmer and the post Starmer is going to be awful, best prepare.

White Supremacy at the core of British Green Politics

I love Caroline Lucas, especially for her sincere support of detainee and extraditee poet Talha Ahsan during his ordeal through the British and US injustice systems.  Yesterday she announced she would be running for co-leadership of the Green Party with Jonathan Bartley. I feel a bit annoyed that the new green leadership election looks cringey and predetermined from where I'm standing.

Co-Leader? FFS?!?!?

Bartley is an interesting running mate, not least for the nonsecular possibilities he conveys, but also his ahem ... experience working on John Major's conservative party election campaign fresh out of LSE. However, his whiteness is limiting to what the Green Party can achieve over the next 5 years and says what it is on the tin.

Fundamentally, the world's ecological crisis has a lot to do with white supremacy, and so race and decoloniality are more than decorative issues, they are integral to transformation. Clearly many of the people peopling the party don't really get it, from 'The Surge', to the Tower Hamlets group's silence during the coup on Lutfur while the BME group launched its manifesto from Bricklane, to their failure to select a non white person high up in their GLA list.

So why are they not an enwhitled bunch of neoMalthusianites again?

All Power to Decolonial Dawah.

What's in a name? Beyond Political Black

In the UK situation, Politically Black (PB) has come to be known as a term to cover the struggle of non-white racial groups to racial inequality. I used to think it was harmless enough, so long as folks delivered, but Afro Pessimism knows better. Politically Black is a sediment of an earlier consensus. I wish that I had been a closer witness the inception of this error which is propagating through life, art and politics and confusing matters.

Politically Black deletes the blackness of those who actually suffer anti-blackness. It complicates specific articulation and mobilisation against anti-blackness, an elemental form of oppression and grants weird licences to non black people to empower white supremacy's politics of containment.

Like the meeting of West India Dock Road and East India Dock Road, to become Commercial Road and the artery into the City of London, our histories are materially contributory to the white supremacy project. Yet there is a diversity to the nature and location of our colonial wounds,  decolonial brotherhood means assisting with each other's healing, sharpening and blossoming processes, not obstructing.  [The Three Pillars of White Supremacy is a useful way of beginning to thinking about this: Slavery/Capitalism, Genocide/Colonialism and Orientalism/War.]

So, at a moral level, it should be easy to divest political commitment from a term such as political black.

Following the good news of the election of the new president of the NUS (which has got supporters of Israel and white supremacists foaming at the mouth) there is the opportunity to reflect on and recraft our mental and political structure for the future. Just like after the West Indies cricket team of the 70s and 80s, there was actually no need to invest so much effort in cricket.

Political Black was one of those messy tactical compromises for a slightly earlier white supremacy. We are stronger together, but Politically Black is not The End of History, and the wrong binding agent is not durable under both external pressure and internal growth. It is no disrespect to the love and work of the more middle aged, nor the fiery younglings, to replace the term.

Colonially Wounded Communities (CWCs) must resist being white-mailed by acceptability politics and prevented from speaking the name of white supremacy to its prime beneficiaries, nor reminding them of the colonial realities of why we are here.

At the very least, people of decolonial commitment must never be traitor-shamed by Politically Black Enforcers, nor muffled by a Closed Eared Leaderships.

Climate Change, the Protection of Life and the need for Decolonial, not neoliberal, intervention.

This week the Bolivian city of Tiquipaya hosted the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Protection of Life.

A much needed counterpoint to the UN framework, this was the second meeting of its kind, five years after the first in 2010. If the attendance of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and a French Foreign Minister (Chair of the forthcoming Paris talks) is anything to go by, the global power establishment is making  greater efforts to ignore/coopt/defang it.

Here are a few videos about it, one from Telesur, a Pan Latin American news channel, and another by a pretty dismissive White American journalist.

 

An English translation of the declaration coming out of this gathering can be found here, and will act as an important reference point, just like The Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth. It elaborates on issues that the previous Declaration mentioned and develops some new threads; from the social values (not) built into Climate Science, spirituality in Socio-Ecological relations, the commercialisation of nature and the formation of some kind of International Earth Rights Legislature.

Its a great read and learning resource, like the current Pope's Laudato Si. Critique is centred on capitalism, though colonialism does feature to some extent, racism gets a single passing reference but unfortunately white supremacy is unmentioned, yet without it is Climate Change even possible?

***

Back in London, OpenDemocracy, a political blog site, is beginning to host voices articulating the colonial continuities that express themselves through climate change, and a Climate Change-themed Friday prayer service(stunt) by Muslim NGOs in Parliament Square reassured some, and inflames neocon Islamophobia industry ( not going to link to that odious website).

NGO Facility girl

Liberally drawn,
Mediocre pawns,
Of Multicultural Theatre,

Enwhitened noise,
Colonial decoys,
Careers a prominent feature.

To this growing genre,
Of coopted creatures,
I pray alternatives reach you.

The International Islamic Climate Change Symposium: Khidr Shrugs

Climate Change is big trouble. As an Indian Muslim solar engineer from the USA put it to me recently, it will make what is happening in Syria look small in comparison. It is primarily a consequence of the system of fossil fuelled industrial development ushered in by European colonialism. The transformations required for human and non-human societies to address climate change with justice and dignity are pretty mind boggling.

Al Khaliq ( Creator), Al Bari ( Evolver), Al Musawwir (Fashioner)

The Muslim context is weird as ever. Let's think of it as a Qur'anicly ecological cosmology, and a set of growing embodied practices, traditions and texts in living connection to places, environments and peoples bearing a variety of colonial wounds, capabilities and power relations. Like much of the world, for the historical Ummah, the post1492 period has largely been one of political, intellectual and industrial annihilation at the hands and systems of European colonial aggression.

Add to this the reality that the Muslim position (Obese oil sheiks, national elites, NGO developmentees and diasporas aside) is largely still at the negatively impacted, trapped but perhaps unknowing victim level and you might say that, we have 'a lot of work to do'.

It is very important not to serve as the developmentor's developmentee.
Growing numbers of Islamic Society graduates don't seem to get it though.
( Source: The Developmentia Project)

Which is why I am not pouring green algae all over the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium that will take place next week in Istanbul, just a bit. After all, many critical minds within the UK Muslim community are legitimately pissed over a certain organiser's commitment to public relations, anti-politics and neoliberalism over service, depth and cooperation.

Great British Fake Off?

Given that Nabi Khidr (our Green Man) taught us the difference between the apparent and the real through Nabi Musa, I sometimes wonder why 'ecoIslam' is such a PRfest. Then depending on mood, whether eco and green prefixatives are just forms of Preventitude. 


A Summit in Istanbul, the Symbolic Centre of the Muslim Ummah

The International Islamic Climate Change Symposium is being organised predominantly by western NGOs, Muslim and otherwise, including Birmingham-based Islamic Relief Worldwide and IFEES, US-based Greenfaith and Beirut-centred Climate Action Network ( nice bunch of briefings and positions). I wish the gathering receives and delivers justice and wisdom, and will be tuning in.

The proceedings will be live cast here  (below) on Monday and Tuesday, tweeted on #Muslims4Climate and promises to launch a finalised Islamic Declaration on Climate Change. While not the first globally orientated Muslim statement on climate change, I don't expect anything as beautiful as the Pope's recent publication of social doctrine on social, spiritual and ecological justice Laudato Si (Praise Him), in fact I just hope it is a significant improvement on the first draft.



Highlights from the schedule, detailed here, include. (NB. Istanbul time is 3 hours ahead of BST)

• A 5 minute opening remote address by Prod Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the spiritual and intellectual legend who has been writing about Islam, secularism, science, the sacred and the environment since the 60s. Monday 1045-1050 (Careful you dont blink or you will miss it.)
• A session of Climate Solutions and the Power of Faith, featuring IIED and ICCAD's Saleemul Huq and CAN's Mohammed Adow. Monday 1130-1300
• A short series of interventions from 'Muslim Faith Leaders'. Tuesday 1005-1020.

It is what it is, hopefully by the end of it some less familiar voices will be more familiar. Its not like they are going to march through Gezi Park crying 

Labbayk Labbayk Allahuma Labbayk.

What should be, however is another activity, where by the social, scholarly and political movements of Islam and the Muslims sensitise, hone and exercise their eco-politics and their creation-relations. It is not as if there is any lack of interpretive stimulus, whether through the experiences of Kelantan's floods, Karachi's recent heatwave or the coastal erosion and salinisation of Khulna.

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.

[New Word] PUD

Person Undergoing Decolonistation, for those moments and folks for whom the Uncle Tom identity is unwise to labour at this point in their journey.

Flatulent connotations also double welcomed.

The Massacre at Shapla Chottor, the Advancing Walls of Silencing and Peering Through Them

The 5th January 2014 elections in Bangladesh, are intimately tied to the violence that the state unleashed on protesters just 8 months earlier, the Massacre at Shapla Chottor. As a recently found comrade said to me 'democracy died that day'.

Such ultra violence could only be used because the state knew it would not be held to account.

Before censoring itself and descending into ultranationalist and fascistic wankersomeness, the AoD blog led with a post 'An end of an Era', which marked that the sad events made a peaceful change of government impossible.  Deshi censorship is an ongoing battle, but nondeshi and hybrid disinformation can tell us a lot about the lenses, prejudices and interests that have aligned to produce the Liararchy and MOronarchy of Bangladesh.

It is probably par for the coursehow 'reputable' but essentially White Power sources skirt around/ stay silent about/ obfuscate the Awami cadre and government violence on unarmed protesters on May 5th that culminated in massacre in Dhaka in the early hours of the 6th May, not to mention the many follow up killings as protesters tried to return to their homes all over the country.

Just Bricks in the Wall

Silencing in this digital age is easily done through lying, spreading fear and looking after your interests in the status quo. It has gone viral. Here is a short roll call.

Hasina Wajed said 'They wiped red dye on their chests'. The UK's token brownie Sayeeda Warsi mumbled something about 'freedom of belief' buying the lie that the protesters were calling out all atheists, not just those extremely insulting ones. Pola Uddin's mind was blank as always as Baroness "house swap" was friends with the PM and David Bergman offered a despicable 'I wouldn't call it a massacre'. Human Rights Wash took a strategically superficial view with 'Blood on the Streets', and generally regurgitated the Daily Star-think, who themselves pretended to have been there all the time but weren't. Sabir Mustafa at the BBC said 'we were there but found no evidence to suggest massacre' and ethnic mediocrity Shamim Choudhury at Al Jazeera preferred to cover the under resourcing of the fire services.

Meanwhile, too many people were busy worrying about there careers and fanning the flames of Bengali fascism to bear witness to this state crime. Odhikar's Adilur Rahman and Nasruddin Elan, part of the local inbred human rights industry themselves, have not expressed an interest in challenging the government loudly since their preliminary report landed them in hot water.

We can be restlessly assured that countless foreign diplomats are sitting on information, and that several will have been complicit in  the deed, and the clean up afterwards. The US State department's astonishing "special events" training provision for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, the prime executing agency, just days after they massacred their own people evidences this.

After all, who would want to upset their pet development industrialists doing all that 'good' work supporting upper-middle class 'human rights wallahs' turned Shahbagis turned Awami League propagandists like BRAC PR stuntman Asif Saleh (thanks Tacit), or call out Tahmima Anam for lying her pants off (actually RE: Anam somebody actually has). There is too much profit to be made in attacking hindu people and blaming the opposition, attacking Muslim people and blaming terrorism and then writing a proposal to donors to fix their 'backwardsness' afterwards.

As people of Bangladeshi relations, you have to admit that the only thing we market is our poverty of responsibility.

A prayer on a plaque at the graves of the victims
of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia

Many Serbs still live inside the communities they tormented during the Bosnian war, in full knowledge of mass grave sites and information, 20 years on. They locked away their knowledge along with their guilt.  We can expect similar attempts to withhold the truth from the perpetrators and allies of the massacre at Shapla Chottor and look for workarounds. It goes without saying that people with some social status, means and balls should work diligently to collect evidence for greater understanding and strong legal measures when the time is right.

The number who perished and are inshAllah granted Martyr status by The Almighty is likely to be in the hundreds. I wish the number were zero, and struggle with its unknowability. For many however it is a hoax, which I can understand but not accept. After all this is a nation that lies to itself in so many ways its doesnt know what the truth tastes like, it is led by scholars for dollars and BRACademics divorced from their own sacred sources.

This is also a nation whose brains and arms are anesthetised, unable to operate without donor interest of political patronage. The will and the skill to make sense of the multiple worms, meerkat and eagle eye views, BS detect and read the codes needs to be encouraged.


Questions

1. How are the victims and family's of the victims faring? What material and non-material support do they require and how might we deliver it?
2. Fear of recrimination is a key problem.   Remember ATN cameraman Shariful Islam? How can we reduce the costs and risks of qualitatively and quantitatively knowing more about this matter?
3. Who was involved in the planning, and what were the roles of Hasina, Inu, Joy, Ret Gen Tareq Siddiq and Dhaka Metro Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed in it?
4. Evidence is mounting that the government has special killer squads and collaborates with elements of the Indian state to do its very dirty work. Who are these guys and what are their stories?
5. One detailed report, presumably from Shibbir-JI people present at the protest, has the clean up operation at Shapla Chottor starting around 4 am, BGB and Police removing bodies and Dhaka City Corporation cleaners on blood stain duties. Where were the bodies taken? Were they buried, burned,  dissolved or thrown in the river?
6. How have various parts of the Indian deep state penetrated Bangladeshi state apparatus, wittingly, unwittingly, officially and unofficially? What was the involvement of Britain, USA and Russia?
7. How are what extent are editors Matiur Rahman, Zafar Sobhan, Mahfuz Anam and Sabir Mustafa complicit in this state crime, morally blinkered and incapable of handling desh's diversity?
8. The atheist call out made a lot of people in the media, NGOworld and intelligentsia scared. Levels of atheism are high in these communities, which are quite influential and skillful at guiding the white gaze, but about whom we do not know an awful lot. 
9. Human rights organisations, journalism and diplomacy have failed to protect people, or even tell their story. What's next?
10. People who can't eat, and people who are stupid are probably excused from this one, which concerns the Culture of Crapademia that constitutes 'Bangladesh Studies'. How can the 'intellectual and cultural support' for the dehumanisation, killing and cover up be brought to understanding?
11. Can we hope for a few helpful Wikileaks or Snowden snowballs to shed some light on whats obscured here?
12. Although true colour satellite imagery in the dead of night is nearly impossible. what remote sensing data exists around and on the days of the incidents?
13. Is what happened at Shapla Chottor just a raw image, and a reminder of what Bengali Nationalism is and has been from its origins?
14. Spiritually, what are practical pathways for forgiveness and redemption here?

[Documentary] The Coconut Revolution

mashAllah

 

A 2001 documentary film focussing on the resistance of a Bougainville Revolutionary Army, faith, community, ingenuity and tenacity.

Joining the dots in Bangladesh: #eyesonashulia, Development as Deceitfulness and a Muzzled Press

The Internet upload throttle idea has been shelved by the Bangladesh government in favor of a ban on a month-long ban on all forms of meetings, processions and demonstrations. The reasons given by the government range from 'law and order' to smoothing relief and rehabilitation work in the wake of cyclone Mahasen. Bloggers are not a much of a threat, street politics however is.

Whats there to protest about?
Following the Savar garments factory disaster, the brutal government clampdown on religious protesters that ended in a massacre on the 6th May, and a longer term brutality on protest at the unfairness of the War Crimes Tribunal, there certainly is a lot to be angry and organise about in Bangladesh. Not least in the garments factories of Ashulia, where workers are asserting their legitimate rights to a better life and non-exploitation by garments owners who can run up to 40 % profit margins on their backs.

International and national outrage at the garments sector has been Superficiality as Usual, clearing the way for Business as Usual for the government's war on workers rights. Last week a 19 year old sewing machinist operator Parul Akhter was found dead in the factory bathroom, in what the police say was a suicide. Workers were angered by this, and underlying conditions enough to agitate and compel factories owners to declare 'Holiday'.

Beyond Media Monitoring
Note how the Daily Star devotes much coverage to the reasonable factory owner and the factory owners lobby group, and the workers are represented as a baying mob not fit for quoting. The Hameem Group, which owns the factory also runs the pro-government Samakal newspaper.  The need for independent, and socially committed coverage in Ashulia is the demand of the times.  It would be great if some of the crocodile tears over Savar would translate into it.

For those who are interested, let's keep #eyesonashulia with attention to | police | paramilitaries | media coverage | owners | government | workers | families | organisers | international solidarity.

What I have observed  recently is that

• the international human rights infrastructure prefers its victims angelic liberal and without back story 
• media people like to make spectacles, collaborate with their clones and are lazy
• photographers peer at politics over the shoulders of the police, or between their legs
• the development industry talks about the practical, but runs away from the political
• feel-good imagery and storytelling from the Savar disaster is used to bury even badder news.
• between third rate journalism, selfish and complicit activism,  not enough is being done to connect the dots, here are some dots.

Relieving political violence, or cloaking violence with relief?
Government minister Syed Ashraful Islam's attempt to crown the latest strategy with relief is  par for the course in a country where much of the middle and ruling class are part of an intellectually and politically paralysing complex called Developmentshire.

Developmentshire is a series of relationships that is maintained when powerful agendas collude to 'develop' others. It is particularly strong and full of BS in Bangladesh, where selling and (not)solving poverty is a lucrative industry, with minor but increasing mIslamist participation. In recent months and days it has proven deadly, having been complicit in making the mood music and covering up for government brutality on religious protests. It can be quite funny|tragic to see when you encounter it, and should be delegitimised in the public interest.

This way of looking at the development industry, for what it is rather than what it says, helps us to understand networks of power. As the power elites of Bangladesh scramble to cling onto power and prevent us from knowing what they are really doing, is it in the public interest to know about their mutually beneficial arrangements with the development industry. After all, a comfortable job in an air conditioned office is a safe, unassailable place for an apprenticeship in bullshit, and who better than a member of the ruling dynasty to play the role of the Native Informant?


Some media editors finally resist the government's clampdown, but not the Dhaka Tribune
Yesterday, 15 newspaper editors and a web portal editor signed a letter demanding the release of Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman , the restoration of Amar Desh, as well as the reopening of Diganta TV and Islamic TV which were shut down for their live coverage of government brutality at Motijheel.

However, the newly established  (read licensed), Dhaka Tribune's editor, Zafar Sobhan did not sign the document. Maybe he agrees with the Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu, President of the aptly translated National Socialist Party, that such an appeal was 'not in the best interests of the media.'

[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.

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

Ikhwan Mubarak

Following a lot of foreign and military meddling The Ikhwan ul Muslimeen's candidate Mohammed Morsi was declared the victor (by the Army) with a 51% share of the vote, officially  just pipping Mubarak's man Shafiq. His aceptance speech is translated here.

I feel this to be a rigged election, and that the margin was wider. Rigging has been reported all over the place. Anyhoo. By creating this democratic 49% opposition notion, Rais Mursi can be automoderated.

In anycase there are reason to gain hope from this news and we pray for good affects. Much of the commentariat is expressing Islamist-worry, I will try not be be such a patronising w@nker for the rest of the post.

Its been a while since the fraternity of Political Islam had some good news. The Nurons of Iqbal, Bhashani, Shariati and Izetbegovic still move us, whilst Erdogan and those with him continue to blow a little breeze in our sails as we are depoliticised, diasporated, locked up, snitched on, burnt to cinders and fed to the dogs.

Oh Happy Days.

It is great that one section of humanity is mobilising around the political value of fraternity, in fact we are standing at the mihrab of a great brobilisation.

Allahumma protect our brothers from developmentia and assist them with decoloniality. Make them resistant to smugness, hearing, tawhesive and skilled so they might catalyse the best in people.

[New Wor(l)d] Decoloniander

A fragrant, temporal frame of freedom

What dates, in any calender, would you mark?
What would we be embodying with them? 

Two Ummahtic launches: Shariah Bill of Rights and The Meccan Openings

These are significant points in political-legal practice and poetical expression.

The Shariah Bill of Rights was written by Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, a scholar from Pakistan who I find compelling and socially engaged. It is a statement of Islamic political principles arguing for the poor's inalienable Allah given right to,

• A share in Mineral wealth
• Produce of the Land
• Pasturing animals and Commercial assets, amongst other things.

Please do read this piece, think about it critique/whatever and circulate in order that it become part of our space. It was released at the beginning of the year.

The Meccan Openings is a spoken work album released this Eid (mubarak) from Amir Sulaiman, an African American educator from the US, whose 'Danger' on def jam and Rebel Musik electrified us some years ago. It is free to download. There's clearly some kind of Ibn Arabic linkage occuring here.

I wonder what it is.

The Battle of Algiers

Is definitely one to watch, pay attention to and read about. Kindles the political imagination. It, the Algerian War of Liberation it represents and Franz Fanon mark the beginning of something potent and post colonial.

Another World Is Possible

The World Social Forum is in its tenth annual incarnation now. The 2011 meet in Dakar, Senegal is a testamant to the depth of movement epicentring on brazil, but fanning out across humanity. Another world is possible is its slogan, and pluriversal is its application. Following the advancements of social movements in Latin America to the extent that the Washington Consensus amongst national politics there has broken, the naive marxist's acceptance that there are categories other than class and modes of production to be worried about, the rise of decoloniality and the growing exposure of the civilisational cul de sac that is liberal secular capitalism... I think that there is a lot to do.

1200 different organisations, 700+ activities going on over the week


Click below for more

http://fsm2011.org/en/wsf-2011

Follow it in the non-standard electronic press in early february.
inshAllah it won't be an NGO fair.


India 2004