Telling the whole story

Interesting collective Third Text: Black Umbrella. A previous generation's effort to develop beyond eurocentricity, specifically in the field of art and visual culture. If every you were after something to read...

Dr Zakir Naik: Preacher of hate? You're having a laugh?

So the 'preachers of hate' weapon is now being used on Dr Zakir Naik. He has been banned from visiting the UK and giving lectures.

Theresa May is very badly advised/stupid/plain evil. I', not sure which just yet.

Dying to appear 'tough on terror', they want to be seen to be doing something. So following a well known recipe: add some decontextual 'quotes' together to demonstrate that the man isnt a secular liberal, scream with righteous indignation, stir with power and disrupt a large set of comunity events this summer. Events people have made efforts to put together.

We need to fight back on these things, so that this is not a costless injustice at the very least. I am glad that the good doctor is legally challenging the 'decision'. He is lucky, many others dont have the resources to contest such calculated insults.

Slurring Muslims is everyday business. Immobilising their thought and disrupting their organsiation are policies in evidence.

The 'preachers of hate' weapon is not because of the reasons given by the state, but because Zakir Naik has power. The ability to be listened to and respected by hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the uk.

Viva Palestina!

The ever increasing arsehole footprint of the Israeli State never ceases to amaze me. They kill Arabs daily, now they have killed more of the friends of the Palestinians.

Unless you have spent the whole day gardening, or watching the bbc, you might figure I am talking of the Israeli murder of 10-20 Palestinian solidarity heroes/aid deliverers. There were protests accross the UK today, and I had the opportunity to attend the London one. We were heartened by the good spontaneous turnout, responsibility and mixed origins of protesters.

The Arab League continues to resemble a row of zeroes.

I see leadership from Rais Erdogan of Turkey. Of the national leaders, I see initiative in his hands, and Allah help him and his society helps the situation. We are with you. Duas for Palestine, the convoy and its loved ones, as ever.

A minor demo inventory
Jews for Justice- Its kosher to boycott israeli goods.
College students who surely should have been revising for their exams
Heavily pregnant lady who walked all the way from whitehall to high street kensington.
Slowly driving car with guitarist on top.
And Turks.

Attaturk's face on the flags suggest to me that there are newer allies to the cause.

In international waters, which is where the State Piracy occurred, the law of the ship flag operates. As one of the speakers pointed out today, this suggests that legally the Israeli personel who pulled the triggers/ordered the operation should be extradited and tried under Turkish law.

I am also wondering where the Turkish Navy is at this point. For reference, Zaman is a good way into the Turkish press.

Several actions are being planned, across organisations and communities. See Stop The War for more info. Feet-on-the-ground demonstrations are an important part of any movement, especially this one. I encourage people to make time to participate in activities to support them and take care to implement good demo practices.

That is, to use every available opportunity to forge unity, continuity and trust within the protest ecology. We must weave together with protestors who we dont know, we will develop new tools and watch out for spoilers.

Glad Tidings

Its been ages since I've had the luck to witness an Islamic event of consequence.

Then like buses, two come along in a row. Thankyou Allah.

It is quite tricky to create the space where proceedings aren't framed by hegemonic agendas and where the conversation is indeed internal (on our terms) and inclusive.

The reasons why such events are rare seem to include:

The action of gatekeepers, who control the access of the UK Muslims to Scholars and are more than a little insecure about the sustainability of their intermediariness. Endowed with the advantage of simply being around before such gatekeepers are perhaps best bypassed with nuronic nerves, social technique and Ummahtic mojo. In successfully puling of a bypass manoeuvre, the believer's can taste the fruit and recognise its flavour.

Because sometimes you forget.

Another reason why this space is rare is the action of government, who coopt meanings, figures and narratives with a clumsy kind of arrogance and capital.

Dam Tibet

News story on Chinese hydro electric plans for Tsang Po (China) - Brahmaputra (India) - Jamuna (Bangladesh)

This is setting up a gruesome hegemon hegemon on ganj interation.

The Deshi wonders what the impacts could be. How would flow from upstream be affected over the seasons? Would there be any benefits from reduced sediment transport (like less erosion)? What about the people displaced by construction? and the fish...

Awami Manipulation of Bethnal Green and Bro

The seat of Bethnal Green and Bro interests me more than most others. Never lived there, but it feels close to home.


That 5000 new voters appeared on the election roll before the election is being investigated, might just have been an effective voter drive ey? On top of this, or behind it, the foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Dipu Moni implored her party's youth wing, the Jubo League (including 40 year olds!) to ensure that Labour won at any cost. In Bangladesh we sigh at the shady foreign interests behind each of our elections. This slight reversal causes smiling.


There was no despatches programme on the matter at all. And I thought Gilligan and co actually cared about the Labour Party in East London.


As so many of the candidates were brown, the white working classes were nowhere as worked up by the events than the deshis. Respect and lib dems probably split the non-labour deshis vote. However, a simple vote addition still wouldn't put them in the lead. Ajmal Masroor (L-D) won more votes than Abjol Miah (R). Greens didn't do so well, and Tower Hamlets is due an elected Mayor soon.

Its a pity Respect hasn't unfolded like a row of blossoming cherry trees, its not a surprise either. But there's a Bangladeshi-heritaged female MP in the 'mother of all parliaments' you know.


Long Live The Ganj!

UK Security Minister chats to (UK) Muslims through Islam Channel

There's a very strange youtube video, featuring the new Tory Minister for Security being interviewed by a very posh sounding chap, in what seem like her offices, for the Islam Channel.

click here for the 10 minute video/press release

The choice of channel is remarkable. The station suffered constant vilification during the previous regime. Journalists and politicians used to play Boycott Tennis and RadicaLinkage weaving at their Global Peace and Unity events. Not that I personally cared. Better without them I say. For this reason, I wonder how Islam channel came to carry the Minister's message? Who asked who? Did the channel have other options? What did viewers make of it? How much of it was true?

To get more of a flavour, listen to how she addresses israeli security policy platforms. Complicating isnt it? check out the 'Britain can learn from Israel' headline on the googlewhack and the building resilient communities vision.

With her Islam Channel statement the minister intended to create a new relationship between her work and UK Muslims and exert more than a bit of power. Its been a while since someone of her capability was in government addressing 'Securitising Muslim' issues, anyone remember Hazel Blears? Apparently current policies and their operations are going to be reviewed, and the security function of government community engagement will be separated from other ones. I wonder what that means...

The word 'operations' came up quite a bit, an artefact of the minister's previous roles in the diplomatic and intelligence communities, as well as the hi-tech military industrial complex.

Another baroness, Baroness Warsi came up in the context of a tick box, she's Muslim and she's female you know.

Sorry that should have been the other way around. Feminism first, then Matronisation.

This particular minister has probably come across quite a lot of 'privileged information', so should we trust her expertise? Whenever I've prodded pseudo powerful people about these matters, they always play the 'If you had read what I had read' argument. She certainly wields a great deal of symbolic capital in the establishment. But what about amongst us?

On the face of it there is some cause for optimism. Policies and operationalisation of policy are to be reviewed. Stop and search, pre-trial detentions etc and wait for it .... PREVENT.

PREVENT is interesting, depressing, revealing and inshAllah the worst is over. It is sad to see how cheaply folks will run for the money and be diverted from addressing the Ummahtic. Folks who should know better keep falling into an imposed guilt for some reason, for not aspiring towards liberal secular triumphalism. Scholars keep getting parachuted in on the advice of gatekeepers and meddled with. Lovely brothers and sisters keep going on foreign office jollies to legitimise military occupations. Organisations are created and nurtured for the specific purpose of policing the Ummah here and stifling its enhancement, cutting its relations and suffocating its politics. Its effective name is CO-OPT, filed under Intellectual Corruption along with NGOisation and Developmentia.

To prevent and subvert PREVENT/PVE and RAND type incursions from deforming Islam, rather Muslim subjectivity, again and again we might need...

A Potent Social Potion.

One part Tablighi Jamat - uncooptable

One part Suffragette - Forward

One part A-Team - Active

One part Royal Society - Learned, with Mastery

[New word] Electospasm

And into a bland political field enters a new flavour, Banana. I'm drawn to him because he appears to have calibrated Britains place in the world quite well.

The opinion poll-tipped journalists of this land have lost it completely.

An electospasm is an eruption of flattery and fakery alongside some nested, vested commmenterati farty nonsense, and a thorough waste of ink to boot! It is known to accompany decmocratic rituals.

I wonder if its intention is innoculation and distraction.

Fatima Bhutto and the National Portrait Gallery

So i went for a hear and a see.

I liked 'we need to liberate ourselves from dynastical politics'

Ameen.

Video of land being eaten in Bangladesh

BBC report on riverbank erosion in Bangladesh (labelled climate change for some reason i cant fathom(though yes i know why(its climate/poverty porn))).

In the short report the viewer witnesses a chronic, historic hazard in Bangladesh. Simon Reeves hears how the river in question had eaten up 500 yards into a village over the past fortnight. I imagine that the events are quite recent, because as the rivers fill from their dry season states, erosion resumes. Its impacts are felt deeply by those displaced (often multiply), and for generations. They include: the disintegrating of local society, political marginalisation/exploitation of the populace, insecurity, loss of land, home and livelihood.

The Muhajers are so many and the Ansars are so few.

Social-environmental relations for the people of places like Bangladesh are not a post-materialist lifestyle choice. Switching off your lights does not enable/assist/remediate the conditions and capabilities of the impacted. If the predictions are accurate, Climate Change impacts will further increase the numbers of environmental refugees. The river-erosion scenario gives us a glimpse into continual community displacement prompted by removal of land from the national living room.

So what can we do?

• Articulate well honed dua wishlists.
  
• Visit the Erosion Zones when in desh.
• Give displacees a 'break' when you meet them.
• Distribute sadaqa and zakat that way.
• Invest in local light industry.
  
• Support local educational and religious institutions.
• Help to shift livelihoods away from a land base.
• Rehabilitate the Bangladesh Water Development Board.
• Enable local talents to intellectually and practically range against the problem, with majesty, maths, measurements, models, morals and mojo.
• Disable the useless NGOs and find more gainful employment for affected graduates.
• Discourage 'elite depletion', from erosion zones and national scientific institutions.
• Take measures to restore the dignity of those already impacted.
• Annihilate those politicians who will use the scenario to consolidate their begging bowl features.