Category: Islam

  • The internet and computers have been a boon to essayists like Edward Curtin (and me!). He/you/we can publish at online sites (DissidentVoice.org is a favorite for us) and then publish our screeds in book form if we are prolific and eloquent enough. Curtin was a philosophy/social theory professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. This collection of Curtin’s articles, At the Lost and Found (2025), is a case in point. There are some fine ones; certainly, his introduction and the opening ones are challenging postmodern forays for the uninitiated, yet still readable. His students were very lucky.

    As Trump-Musk take a hatchet to American higher education, I marvel at the thought that there are hundreds if not thousands of Curtins (maybe not as good) across the vast US, most at small liberal arts colleges, all in love with words and wisdom, all teaching their students lovingly, urging them to THINK. That is surely the beauty of America, the promise to take the world’s poor and reviled and give them the chance to be someone, do something worthwhile.

    Curtin, from his earliest memories, saw that conventional life was a provocation because it hid more than it revealed; that it harbored secrets that could not be exposed or else the make-believe nature of normal life would collapse like a cardboard set. Like everyone, I was ushered onto this Shakespearean stage and have acted out many roles assigned to me, but always with the inner consciousness that something was amiss. Everyone seemed to be playing someone, but who was the player? Is the role playing us? Are we marionettes in some pipe dream, and is there an author behind it? God? The devil? Capitalism?

    Curtin’s postmodern credo comes from Thoreau: We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. There are no neutral observers.

    His goal: to oppose these scoundrels and their ilk who kill and wage endless wars against innocents around the world, in a way that will delight and last a little while.

    Writing as music

    Curtin admits he is obsessed with words. That they play him. He, in turn, uses them to produce both astute political analyses and art in luminescent words and sentences that pulsate. I think of them as intertwined lovers. AI is taking capitalism to its Faustian apotheosis, to mechanize us all, to eliminate passion and will. Reduce thought to dead words. Curtin compares his writing to composing, hoping to leave a fresh song in your heart, something to help you see the pageant of our lives in more than just dead words.

    In The End of the Speed Limit on the Highway to Nowhere, he compares us to Sisyphus but without the illusion of ascent, merely going in a circle, returning to the same grey reality of the freedom-to-choose-what-is-always-the-same, seen as a mediated, rootless reality that is no reality at all. Yes, you can fly anywhere in the world (if you are part of SWIFT), but you will find the same McDonald’s and box stores, more or less the same sandy beaches, and souvenirs made in China. Fake diversity. Fake news, to quote our fake king-of-the-world.

    We are flooded with unneeded techno ‘miracles’, but without roots we are swept away by them, our mediated reality providing no signposts for where we are headed, no warnings of pitfalls that threaten our real Reality and us, allowing us to pause, to take a stand. Root in Latin is radix, i.e., radical, which today means extreme, as if we unconsciously mold our thinking to beware of rootedness in our rootless world, where having roots is suspect, even reactionary. We celebrated rootlessness, the dream of travel, and escape as the best experience. How many of us live/die where we were born?

    How language betrays us! Betray as in reveal and subvert. Curtin calls himself a contrarian and relishes contronyms (e.g., betray, fast, sanction, wear, weather, wind up). I’m big on antonyms that our mediated reality turns into identities, e.g., war = peace, progress = regress, bad = good. We see how language reveals much about our muddled thinking, storing clues from the past, and warning us of our illusions.

    Guy Debord begins The Society of the Spectacle with a tongue-in-cheek parody of Marx’s opening of Kapital: In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Like Marx’s commodities, spectacles are ‘use values’, but even more removed from the consumer than bubble gum or a sports car, as they happen only in your mind, illusion pure and simple, reality so artfully mediated that you pay your money, enjoy, and blissfully forget and move on to the next instalment.

    No Virgil to guide us

    Today’s ‘great reset’ just may succeed because we have lost the most important roots, our spirituality, buried beneath a heap of commodity-spectacles. Walking through the forest to the genuinely spectacular Taughannock Falls, Curtin gloomily ponders the massacre of Iroquois two centuries ago and asks: Is there any place on this blood-soaked earth where a semi-conscious person can rest easy?

    He sees our descent into our current Hell/abyss as starting with Reagan, enshrining illusion in the White House, his assigning communism to the trash heap of history, his attack on social welfare, and his ignorance of the environment. All the presidents since have been variations on his MAGA—even Clinton and Obama credit Reagan as their inspiration. Reagan certainly helped collapse the Soviet Union, but he turned the US into a one-party state, taking his lead from the moribund communists.

    And we accept it, as we are trapped in a simulacrum reality, a closed system, a solipsism.

    We have no Virgil to guide us through Hell and set us on the road to enlightenment. Wait! We have AI to do that for us. Our worship of the machine is such that as the machine ‘matures’, we have let it take our place, to think for us, even to simulate emotions, speaking as if emoting. The Turing test. The machine’s goal is Darwinian, too: survival of the fittest. Unless we rediscover the miracle of life, root ourselves in a genuine experience of Reality, take back control from the machine, and even ban or dismantle it where it is harmful.

    Curtin is a postmodernist, drawing inspiration from the French Debord and Baudrillard. And looks to Joyce for a way forward. In The Contronymal Cage, he quotes Joyce on the language of Joyce’s English-born Jesuit dean of studies, who speaks a different English from that of the Irish rebel. We must take control of our language, be conscious of where it came from, its roots, and how it is used to keep us trapped now in a simulacrum hyperreality, as language constitutes reality as much as it describes it.

    Red pill time

    There is no ‘heppi end’ to the stories we weave (or rather that weave us) in the Matrix. Poetry is an escape route, unashamedly subjective, rebellious, and questioning. Another way is the essay, as Curtin knows well, and Edward Said, who argued that his nation, Palestine, is a narrative; that we must tell our stories of distorted reality and oppression to escape the Matrix and root ourselves in unmediated Reality. Throw off Blake’s ‘mind-forged manacles’. Recognize that life is not a dead mechanism but is conscious, that we are part of a conscious universe, not as Sisyphus repeating his tortured, pointless circle of unreality, but as Dante, guided in his spiritual quest by the great minds of the past, teaching us to distinguish the devil from God.

    What about virtual reality? It sounds ominous, blurring the line between reality and fantasy, but not if we are aware. That goes for all techno miracles. And I for one would much prefer to take a virtual reality trip to visit Mecca in the 7th c than to squash Nature with a huge carbon footprint just to say ‘Kilroy was here’ in a dystopian 21st c Mecca. We can use technology wisely, even reject it if it destroys Nature, undermines society, and kills my soul.

    Though raised a Christian, and admiring Jesus, King, Romero, and all those who have died trying to make peace and justice a reality, Curtin is a secular humanist, not looking to traditional religions for answers to ‘why?’ today. He bemoans our loss of spirituality but doesn’t urge Christians to revive their faith, as I suspect he sees it threadbare. That’s where I point my finger. We need faith! That vacuum in my life led me to Islam as the only faith that is still alive, meaningful in a meaningless late capitalism.

    Islam was supposedly backward compared to the progressive West. But looking back now, I would suggest we would be much better off if the age of technology had arrived much more slowly, with a spiritual quest still the goal. The West lost its ailing Catholic spirituality with the Protestant Reformation, as it embraced capitalism and became a false spirituality, a materialism masquerading as spirituality, a treacherous inversion of our most fundamental, radical truth. Islam is slowly breaking its shackles, inflicted by the ‘progressive’ capitalist imperialist countries, which occupied Muslim lands, did the usual rape-and-pillage, and even attempted to erase millions of Muslims in Palestine, stealing their land, their spiritual heritage, which is rooted in the Real. Islam does not need Debord or Baudrillard to tell us that our reality is an illusion, that the ‘modern’ world has lost its soul, that the truth lies in the ‘backward’ world, the precapitalist, spirit-based civilizations. Islam’s immunity to ‘progress’ is its saving grace, as it answers our need for meaning in life, which is timeless, technologyless.

    Beware the counterinitiations

    René Guénon is the 20th-century thinker who first deconstructed the embrace of modernism in The Crisis of the Modern World (1927). He converted to Islam in the 1930s and embraced a traditional lifestyle, rejecting for the most part the illusory technology of the 20th century for ‘spiritual technologies’, even as our capitalist/ socialist societies pushed ahead to carry out greater and greater monstrosities. We have lost our highest faculty, intellectual intuition, i.e., direct apperception or gnosis. We have lost the very possibility of spiritual realization. The Soviet secular spirituality was the first to collapse, and Russia has returned to its Christian Orthodoxy roots, i.e., there is an exit ramp ‘back to the future’.

    Gueon coined the term ‘counterinitiation’, movements that are spiritual doppelgangers that mimic authentic spirituality. Protestantism’s embrace of capitalism is the greatest such ruse, which explains the thousands of evangelical sects all claiming to be true. Now you can fashion your own spirituality with a dash of tarot, yoga, and mindfulness. No! We must rediscover the wisdom of traditional religions, which have been discarded on our highway to nowhere. We need a great cosmic reset. Curtin sees himself as a contrarian, infatuated with contronyms. Language is a powerful repository of wisdom, embedded in great literature, especially poetry. But he doesn’t go the extra mile.

    Without a love, not just of words, but of spirituality, sacred words, essays like Curtin’s just depress me. In Hindu lore, we are in the declining period of civilization, known as the Kali Yuga (the Age of Darkness). It began with the rise of agriculture in 3000 BC, which unmoored us from our spiritual roots, embracing money, private property, and slavery. Three thousand years is a long nightmare, but it is also the necessary precursor to renewal, the cosmic reset.

    The Arts (I like to use caps for the ‘Real thing’) is our avenue for spiritual truths. Our screeds help us see the world in 4d (virtual reality a gimmicky version of this serious path), connect us with our Real environment, not the phony mediated environment of consumer capitalism. As for sacred vs profane, no, no! Everything is sacred, alive, to be connected with meaningfully, loved/hated. There is no neutral observer. I write with passion, or my writing is dead. And as for mindless rituals. No, no! The ritual of prayer is an active form of knowledge, a path to participate in eternal truths, our metaphysical roadmap, showing us the exit ramp from our highway to know-where. (Don’t you love language?)

    JFK and 9/11 litmus tests

    Curtin includes a long article about JFK. The Life and Public Assassination of John F Kennedy, one on JFK and Dulles, and The Assassination and Mrs. Paine. His great courage in the face of an assassination he expected can inspire us to oppose the systemic forces of evil that control the United States and are leading the world into the abyss. And one on Bob Dylan (‘our Emerson’) and his 2020 song about the assassination Murder Most Foul (thank you, Hamlet), whose lyrics about the conspiracy are ignored or mocked by our doppelganger media. Neither Dylan nor Walberg is going ‘gentle into that good night’, to quote Bob’s model and namesake Dylan Thomas.

    I like Curtin sharing personal experiences. There aren’t any independent, neutral observers or observations. He’s not dogmatic. A 9/11 essay at the Berkshire Edge (not included, a shame as the litmus test these days is where you stand on that elephant-in-the-room) dismisses the official story, assumes a conspiracy of the elite directed by the CIA. As for charges of Israel and Mossad, he’s skeptical both here and on JFK, arguing the CIA is too powerful to let that happen ‘outside the box’. I would point to many instances from the King David Hotel in 1948 to many, many assassinations of Palestinian — any — leaders it doesn’t like (Arafat and hundreds of guerrilla leaders). There is an unspoken hit list always in the creation, much like Ukraine’s Myrotvorets. No group, official or unofficial, comes near to Israel. Bin Laden, eat your heart out.

    Personally (remember, no neutral writers!), I think only Israeli terrorists are cynical and smart enough to do such a thing, using Saudi youth as patsies. Funny, Jews have been the world’s leading terrorists since Israel was created, and are exonerated, pointing the finger at the Muslim victims, defending themselves as the real terrorists. Curtin’s mild dissidence/apostasy went unpunished, except for a few comments ridiculing him as another conspiracy nut. I suspect he would have been treated much more severely if he had labeled Israelis, i.e., secular Jewish fanatics, as the perpetrators of JFK’s murder and/or 9/11.

    My sense is that Americans are too spooked, too afraid to point the finger at Israel as the villain-in-chief in the world today, largely responsible for our descent into Hell. US-Israel is tattooed on American minds. A spiritual mark of Cain in our dystopia, making sure we are ready for the mental gas chamber. Are tattoos removable? It’s very hard, painful, and leaves a scar. But, hey!, purging yourself of society’s inhumanity is worth it. Down with tattoos! They are haram in Islam with good reason. Our only identity needed to live a good life is identifying with God, trying to perfect ourselves, and getting as close to Him (not ‘him’) as possible. The world and our special place in it are the only proof we need of who we are and where we’re going.

    The post Finding the Spectacular in the Society of the Spectacle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025 was passed after an intense debate for nearly 12 hours on April 4, at 2 a.m. This bill, which had been given the approval of the Lok Sabha, the lower house, just a day before, at 1 a.m. on April 3, brings about a sweeping change in the Waqf property laws-charitable trusts under Islamic law. Titled the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act or “UMEED” meaning hope in Hindi, this bill has set off fierce contentions, with its proponents calling it a great transformative reform and critics arguing that it violates the rights of people under a veil of political activism.

    The passage of this historic legislation was celebrated by Prime Minister Modi on X, stating that it would mark a significant milestone for his government together with the abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Ram Temple construction. Very grandly put, but the legislation is highly contentious and complicated in its purpose, consequences, and outlook on Waqf properties spread across 9.4 lakh acres across India, making them the third-largest landholder in the country after Railways and Defence Forces.

    What Is Waqf, and Why Does It Matter?

    In the Islamic system of law, a Waqf is regarded as a charitable trust whereby an individual sets aside property-whether land, buildings, or other assets-for religious or social purposes. In its designation, the property is said to have been transferred to Allah so that it may be administered by a custodian (mutawalli) in fulfilment of specific purposes like the endowment of mosques, graveyards, or welfare activities. In India, this centuries-old practice has, however, been codified and regulated through various enactments starting from the Muslim Wakf Validating Act of 1913 to the Waqf Act of 1995, as amended in 2013. Presently 32 state Waqf Boards and a Central Waqf Council are in charge of these assets.

    The scale of Waqf assets is indeed staggering: millions of properties, mosques, cemeteries, shops, and agricultural land. In theory, their income should be utilised for the education, healthcare, and welfare of the Muslim community. Mismanagement, corruption, and a poor revenue-generating capacity remained the catchwords for the schemes in practice-the last being about ₹163 crore a year as per the Sachar Committee Report in 2006. The report mentioned that if properly managed, Waqf could have made 12,000 crore ($1.4 billion) today, establishing a chasm between what could be and what is the functioning by the government, which now claims to correct.

    The Bill: Key Changes and Controversies

    The Waqf (Amendment) Bill is intended to introduce radical reforms intended to modernise and centralise Waqf administration. Among its most controversial provisions:

    1. Abolition of ‘Waqf by User’ and Section 40: It was often said that “Waqf by user” applies to properties that had been put to religious uses for very long periods, such as ancient mosques or graveyards, making them Waqf even in the absence of formal documentation. According to Section 40 of the 1995 Act, it was also possible for Waqf Boards to determine unilaterally whether a property was under their purview. The new bill does away with both provisions and makes it mandatory for district collectors to undertake surveys and verify claims, a move the government says will stem the tide of arbitrary land grabbing. Critics fear, though, that it could endanger myriad undocumented historical sites to litigation and reclamation.

    2. Centralised Registration and Transparency: The bill obliges all Waqf properties to be listed on the government portal within six months of its enactment, thereby promoting transparency. Disputes, which were previously adjudicated solely by Waqf Tribunals, can now be appealed in high courts, thus subject to the erstwhile arguments of ensuring justice, but critics say centralising control under the state.

    3. Inclusion of Non-Muslims and Women: The bill proposes that in the Central Waqf Council (22 members) and state boards, aside from two Muslim women and representatives of Muslim communities (Pasmanda1), four and three non-Muslim members, respectively, should be included. The government suggests this is a progressive step since Waqf decisions affect non-Muslims as well. On the other hand, opposition leaders, such as AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, argue that the diversity is not required for Hindu temple boards, thereby accusing the BJP of selective interference.

    4. Inheritance Rights: A prohibition against Waqf dedications that disinherit daughters contributes towards gender equity. However, critics have noted the anomaly-the Hindu law on inheritance continues to allow fathers to discriminate in favour of their sons, and no reforms have been made to address this.

    5. Limitation Law: Property disputes will be subject to a limitation period, thereby precluding claims more than “x” years after the event. While this purportedly hastens the wheels of justice, it has evoked opposition, such as by Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who warns that lingering unresolved cases might legitimise illegal encroachments under the evil doctrine of “adverse possession.”

    The Debate: Polarization and Power Plays

    Confusion and Vast Misdirection: The next step is to satisfy the Parliament’s vagaries. In the Lok Sabha, 288 MPs voted for it and 232 against. The Rajya Sabha saw 128 votes for and 95 against. TDP and JD(U) are allies, while BJP got help from the YSRCP and BJD, which allowed free votes among their MPs to ensure the simple majority was achieved.

    Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Minority Affairs, introduced the bill on April 2, citing “97 lakh petitions” from stakeholders as proof of public demand for one that would uplift poor Muslims and modernise the broken system. He charged Waqf Boards with misusing their powers to lay claims to properties such as that of Delhi’s CGO Complex or land of a 1,500-year-old Tiruchendur temple in Tamil Nadu, aided on many occasions by past Congress governments.

    The substantive opposition came from Congress, DMK, and RJD. A. Raja of DMK stated the existing process involving independent survey commissioners and civil procedure codes prevented arbitrary acquisitions and charged that the BJP was exaggerating the ills so that control could be gained via district collectors who lack the independence of earlier officials. Congress member Imran Pratapgarhi disproved all claims that Waqf Tribunals were unaccountable “religious panchayats,” emphasising judicial scrutiny of their operations since the 1995 Act. Manoj Jha from RJD posed the question of how sites centuries old could have modern documentation and predicted a “mountain of litigation.”

    Owaisi and others posed a much graver question: the stripping of “Waqf by user” status and demands for paperwork could put historic properties on shaky ground, making them susceptible to takeovers by the government or corporations. They reminded them that of the 14,500 hectares of Waqf land in Uttar Pradesh, 14,000 hectares were recently declared state land, including old mosques and graveyards, a precedent they fear would become widespread.

    A Watershed Moment—or a Polarising Ploy?

    Crossing the divide, Modi’s term resonates differently. For BJP, the bill is a stroke of genius, falling well into its agenda of uniformity and reform. His supporters contend that it follows in the lines of Waqf modernisation of Muslim countries-transferring lands for public welfare. Rijiju assured that registered Waqf properties would not be touched, letting slide much-elaborated fears of retrospective actions.

    But “Jai Shri Ram” chants resounded through parliament once the passage was done, with critics like Uddhav Thackeray branding it a conspiracy to adopt Waqf lands for crony capitalists. The opposition plans to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court, which cites the guarantee of Article 26 on religious autonomy and warns of increased communal tensions as the result of this bill.

    The best test for the bill lies ahead yet. Will it streamline Waqf management and improve income back to Muslims, as the government claims? Or will it create polarisation, case-laden challenges, and space grabs as its detractors predict? As 99% of Waqf properties have already been digitised (per an affidavit by the government in 2020), whether such upheaval needs elimination is being debated. As India watches on, this UMEED Act, born of hope, may yet find whether it delivers progress or oozes deeper divides.

    The post India’s Parliament Passes Landmark Waqf Amendment Bill After Heated Debate first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The term Pasmanda originates from Urdu, where “Pasmanda” literally refers to “those left behind.” In the South Asian context, especially in India, it is commonly used to describe marginalised Muslim communities who live below the poverty line and face significant social and economic disadvantages.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025 was passed after an intense debate for nearly 12 hours on April 4, at 2 a.m. This bill, which had been given the approval of the Lok Sabha, the lower house, just a day before, at 1 a.m. on April 3, brings about a sweeping change in the Waqf property laws-charitable trusts under Islamic law. Titled the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act or “UMEED” meaning hope in Hindi, this bill has set off fierce contentions, with its proponents calling it a great transformative reform and critics arguing that it violates the rights of people under a veil of political activism.

    The passage of this historic legislation was celebrated by Prime Minister Modi on X, stating that it would mark a significant milestone for his government together with the abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Ram Temple construction. Very grandly put, but the legislation is highly contentious and complicated in its purpose, consequences, and outlook on Waqf properties spread across 9.4 lakh acres across India, making them the third-largest landholder in the country after Railways and Defence Forces.

    What Is Waqf, and Why Does It Matter?

    In the Islamic system of law, a Waqf is regarded as a charitable trust whereby an individual sets aside property-whether land, buildings, or other assets-for religious or social purposes. In its designation, the property is said to have been transferred to Allah so that it may be administered by a custodian (mutawalli) in fulfilment of specific purposes like the endowment of mosques, graveyards, or welfare activities. In India, this centuries-old practice has, however, been codified and regulated through various enactments starting from the Muslim Wakf Validating Act of 1913 to the Waqf Act of 1995, as amended in 2013. Presently 32 state Waqf Boards and a Central Waqf Council are in charge of these assets.

    The scale of Waqf assets is indeed staggering: millions of properties, mosques, cemeteries, shops, and agricultural land. In theory, their income should be utilised for the education, healthcare, and welfare of the Muslim community. Mismanagement, corruption, and a poor revenue-generating capacity remained the catchwords for the schemes in practice-the last being about ₹163 crore a year as per the Sachar Committee Report in 2006. The report mentioned that if properly managed, Waqf could have made 12,000 crore ($1.4 billion) today, establishing a chasm between what could be and what is the functioning by the government, which now claims to correct.

    The Bill: Key Changes and Controversies

    The Waqf (Amendment) Bill is intended to introduce radical reforms intended to modernise and centralise Waqf administration. Among its most controversial provisions:

    1. Abolition of ‘Waqf by User’ and Section 40: It was often said that “Waqf by user” applies to properties that had been put to religious uses for very long periods, such as ancient mosques or graveyards, making them Waqf even in the absence of formal documentation. According to Section 40 of the 1995 Act, it was also possible for Waqf Boards to determine unilaterally whether a property was under their purview. The new bill does away with both provisions and makes it mandatory for district collectors to undertake surveys and verify claims, a move the government says will stem the tide of arbitrary land grabbing. Critics fear, though, that it could endanger myriad undocumented historical sites to litigation and reclamation.

    2. Centralised Registration and Transparency: The bill obliges all Waqf properties to be listed on the government portal within six months of its enactment, thereby promoting transparency. Disputes, which were previously adjudicated solely by Waqf Tribunals, can now be appealed in high courts, thus subject to the erstwhile arguments of ensuring justice, but critics say centralising control under the state.

    3. Inclusion of Non-Muslims and Women: The bill proposes that in the Central Waqf Council (22 members) and state boards, aside from two Muslim women and representatives of Muslim communities (Pasmanda1), four and three non-Muslim members, respectively, should be included. The government suggests this is a progressive step since Waqf decisions affect non-Muslims as well. On the other hand, opposition leaders, such as AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, argue that the diversity is not required for Hindu temple boards, thereby accusing the BJP of selective interference.

    4. Inheritance Rights: A prohibition against Waqf dedications that disinherit daughters contributes towards gender equity. However, critics have noted the anomaly-the Hindu law on inheritance continues to allow fathers to discriminate in favour of their sons, and no reforms have been made to address this.

    5. Limitation Law: Property disputes will be subject to a limitation period, thereby precluding claims more than “x” years after the event. While this purportedly hastens the wheels of justice, it has evoked opposition, such as by Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who warns that lingering unresolved cases might legitimise illegal encroachments under the evil doctrine of “adverse possession.”

    The Debate: Polarization and Power Plays

    Confusion and Vast Misdirection: The next step is to satisfy the Parliament’s vagaries. In the Lok Sabha, 288 MPs voted for it and 232 against. The Rajya Sabha saw 128 votes for and 95 against. TDP and JD(U) are allies, while BJP got help from the YSRCP and BJD, which allowed free votes among their MPs to ensure the simple majority was achieved.

    Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Minority Affairs, introduced the bill on April 2, citing “97 lakh petitions” from stakeholders as proof of public demand for one that would uplift poor Muslims and modernise the broken system. He charged Waqf Boards with misusing their powers to lay claims to properties such as that of Delhi’s CGO Complex or land of a 1,500-year-old Tiruchendur temple in Tamil Nadu, aided on many occasions by past Congress governments.

    The substantive opposition came from Congress, DMK, and RJD. A. Raja of DMK stated the existing process involving independent survey commissioners and civil procedure codes prevented arbitrary acquisitions and charged that the BJP was exaggerating the ills so that control could be gained via district collectors who lack the independence of earlier officials. Congress member Imran Pratapgarhi disproved all claims that Waqf Tribunals were unaccountable “religious panchayats,” emphasising judicial scrutiny of their operations since the 1995 Act. Manoj Jha from RJD posed the question of how sites centuries old could have modern documentation and predicted a “mountain of litigation.”

    Owaisi and others posed a much graver question: the stripping of “Waqf by user” status and demands for paperwork could put historic properties on shaky ground, making them susceptible to takeovers by the government or corporations. They reminded them that of the 14,500 hectares of Waqf land in Uttar Pradesh, 14,000 hectares were recently declared state land, including old mosques and graveyards, a precedent they fear would become widespread.

    A Watershed Moment—or a Polarising Ploy?

    Crossing the divide, Modi’s term resonates differently. For BJP, the bill is a stroke of genius, falling well into its agenda of uniformity and reform. His supporters contend that it follows in the lines of Waqf modernisation of Muslim countries-transferring lands for public welfare. Rijiju assured that registered Waqf properties would not be touched, letting slide much-elaborated fears of retrospective actions.

    But “Jai Shri Ram” chants resounded through parliament once the passage was done, with critics like Uddhav Thackeray branding it a conspiracy to adopt Waqf lands for crony capitalists. The opposition plans to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court, which cites the guarantee of Article 26 on religious autonomy and warns of increased communal tensions as the result of this bill.

    The best test for the bill lies ahead yet. Will it streamline Waqf management and improve income back to Muslims, as the government claims? Or will it create polarisation, case-laden challenges, and space grabs as its detractors predict? As 99% of Waqf properties have already been digitised (per an affidavit by the government in 2020), whether such upheaval needs elimination is being debated. As India watches on, this UMEED Act, born of hope, may yet find whether it delivers progress or oozes deeper divides.

    The post India’s Parliament Passes Landmark Waqf Amendment Bill After Heated Debate first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The term Pasmanda originates from Urdu, where “Pasmanda” literally refers to “those left behind.” In the South Asian context, especially in India, it is commonly used to describe marginalised Muslim communities who live below the poverty line and face significant social and economic disadvantages.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ramzan/Ramadan

    In 610 CE, Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib felt a message from Allah through archangel Gabriel; thus began his mission of spreading Islam and Allah’s message. According to the Quran, Quran was revealed to Muhammad in the month of Ramzan.

    In Islam, one whole month of Ramzan is devoted to fasting. The Islamic calendar is lunar, thus shorter than the solar year by 10 to 11 days; thus Ramadan comes in every season.

    Quran 2:184185;187 (Sahih International):

    “[Fasting for] a limited number of days. So whoever among you is ill or on a journey [during them] – then an equal number of days [are to be made up]. …

    “The month of Ramadhan [is that] in which was revealed the Qur’an, a guidance for the people and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever sights [the new moon of] the month, let him fast it. …”

    “It has been made permissible for you the night preceding fasting to go to your wives [for sexual relations]. … And eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread [of night]. Then complete the fast until the sunset. And do not have relations with them as long as you are staying for worship in the mosques.”

    Religious fasting is an old practice that is observed by believers of various faiths, including Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. Many people also fast for medical, health, or other reasons.

    For Sunni Muslims, fasting from dawn to sunset is one of the five pillars of Islam. The other four are declaration of faith, prayer, alms-giving, and pilgrimage. For Shia Muslims, see Ancillaries of the Faith for Twelvers and for Ismailis, see Seven Pillars of Ismailism.

    Time variance

    Today, Muslims are to be found all over the world. In some places especially the far northern hemisphere, time between a sunrise and sunset can exceed 20 hours, making the fasts very long.

    Longest Fasting Hours:

    1. Sweden (Kiruna): 20 hours 30 minutes
    2. Norway: 20 hours 30 minutes
    3. Finland (Helsinki): 19 hours 9 minutes
    4. Iceland (Reykjavik): 19 hours 59 minutes
    5. Greenland (Nuuk): 20 hours
    6. Canada (Ottawa): 16.5 hours
    7. Algeria: 16 hours 44 minutes
    8. Scotland (Glasgow): 16.5 hours
    9. Switzerland (Zurich): 16.5 hours
    10. Italy (Rome): 16.5 hours
    11. Spain (Madrid): 16 hours
    12. United Kingdom (London): 16 hours
    13. France (Paris): 15.5 hours

    Shortest Fasting Hours:

    1. Brasilia, Brazil: 12-13 hours
    2. Harare, Zimbabwe: 12-13 hours
    3. Islamabad, Pakistan: 12-13 hours
    4. Johannesburg, South Africa: 11-12 hours
    5. Montevideo, Uruguay: 11-12 hours
    6. Buenos Aires, Argentina: 12 hours
    7. Christchurch, New Zealand: 12 hours
    8. Dubai, UAE: 13 hours
    9. New Delhi, India: 12.5 hours
    10. Jakarta, Indonesia: 12.5 hours
    11. Madina, Saudi Arabia: 13 hours
    12. New York, USA: 13 hours (approx)
    13. Istanbul, Turkey: 13 hours (approx)

    White thread of dawn

    There are places where “the white thread of dawn” doesn’t show up for months because the Sun doesn’t set for months: Svalbard, Norway gets no sunset for 1/3rd of the year, from about 19 April to 23 August. Same is the case with Finland’s northernmost point which is without sunset for 72 days in Summer.

    The world’s northernmost mosque is in Tromsø, Norway. Muslims living there had a serious problem as to what time they should offer fajr (dawn) prayers (and begin their fast or sehri) and perform the maghrib (sunset) prayer (and break their fast or iftari) as for two whole months, between May and July, the Sun never sets there.

    Sandra Maryam Moe, deputy director of Alnor Senter in Tromsø, Norway:

    “We finally asked a shaykh in Saudi Arabia, and he gave us a fatwa  [instruction] with three choices: Follow the timetable of Makkah, follow the timetable of the nearest city that does have a sunrise or sunset, or estimate the time and set a fixed schedule. We decided to follow Makkah for the part of Ramadan that falls under the Midnight Sun or Polar Nights, and then, for the other times, we follow our own sun.”

    “Tromsø’s Alnor Senter and Al Rahma mosques have opted to sync their congregations’ prayer schedule to sunrise and sunset in Mecca” IMAGE/Fortunato Salazar/BBC

    But not everyone follows the Mecca time. Two members of Al Rahma mosque, originally from France, follow the Paris time for sehri and iftari.

    For most people, fasting for an entire month is not an easy or practical task, especially those whose daily-survival depends on hard labor. Muslims make a quarter of the world’s population and live in many countries, including those with Muslim majority. In many of these countries, eating or drinking anything during daytime in Ramzan is a crime.

    Actually, it should be a crime to stop people from consuming food or drinking liquid at any time.

    The Case of Mohammed Shami

    On March 4, 2025, during a cricket match between Australia and India, Muslim Indian cricketer Mohammed Shami drank water or a beverage. A fellow Muslim, Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Bareilvi, called him a “criminal” for drinking during Ramzan (watch the above video).

    “The five important pillars of Islam include roza or fasting which is mandatory. If a sensible and healthy adult doesn’t observe the fast than that person would be guilty of great sin and be answerable in God’s court. India’s famous cricketer Mr. Mohammed Shami quenched his thirst during a cricket match. Everyone was watching him. Since he was playing the game, it meant he was healthy and robust. In this fit condition, he not only didn’t fast, but also drank water in front of everyone present. The world watched him drinking water. So, he became a source of conveying the wrong message to the people; and, by not fasting he committed a sin. He shouldn’t have done that. In the eyes of Islamic sharia, he is a criminal and a sinner. He’ll have to answer Khuda [God in Persian language].”

    Translated in English from Hindi/Urdu from the above video.

    If Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Bareilvi thinks Mohammed Shami is “a criminal and a sinner,” and will have to answer Khuda than let Khuda take care of Shami rather than playing Khuda‘s Khuda. Like many people nowadays, he tried to stay in the news by creating news.

    Shami was trolled online, with some supporting him and others criticizing him. Of course, a Hindutva leader from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party did not let this opportunity go to erroneously and overtly display his anti-Muslim rhetoric:

    “We stand against such extremism. This is not a part of our Hindu religion. We say that in Islam, it is written, either you accept Islam, or you will be converted, or you will be killed. Now, even Mohammed Shami is experiencing this himself. This is why we praise our Hindu religion because such extremism does not exist in our faith,”

    Former Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh, a Sikh, defended Shami:

    “I think I just want to say that this is my personal view-I might be wrong or right. Sports should be treated separately. People who feel religion is playing this role or that role, I think it’s fine to kind of do your routine-what you do in your religion. But people expecting Shami to do this or Rohit Sharma to do this or any XYZ to do this or that during a certain period (is not fair).”

    “You might be doing it because you are sitting at home or doing your own routine work. But when you are playing as a sportsman, if you don’t keep yourself hydrated, you might collapse.”

    “And of course, with the kind of heat they are playing in, I think they need to drink water. They can’t go through the game without having a drink or a snack. It’s your body, after all-you need fuel.”

    Former Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar commented indirectly:

    Roza is not an excuse. Its a motivation. Nothing should stop your from training. Use it in your benefit.”

    One wonders what kind of inspiration one gets in 82 °F (27.8 °C) weather with a sweating body, hungry stomach, and dry mouth. Yes, some people have willpower or faith and can fast in extreme weather but not all people can. It would have been better if Akhtar had kept his mouth shut.

    It is people like Akhtar who just don’t want people like Shami to emerge as inspiration for those who don’t want to fast but have to do so or have to pretend under pressure.

    Decades back, I was visiting Karachi, a seaport and the largest city in Pakistan. I asked the driver to stop the vehicle by Rehmat-e-Shereen sweet shop — they make extremely delicious sweets. I bought the sweets and asked the driver to join me. He hesitated: “It’s Ramzan.” I asked: “Are you fasting?” The reply was in the negative. He parked the car in a quiet place and we enjoyed our goodies. This was not an isolated case. Many people have to pretend in public that they’re fasting because the atmosphere has gotten very fanatical.

    Many Muslim countries have laws enforcing eating and drinking abstention.

    Times have changed

    Gods of all religions may have been omnipresent, but their knowledge of geography, technology, science, economy, physical, sexual, emotional needs, dehydration, and so on, was extremely limited. Knowledge of that time was dependent on the information of followers, whose knowledge was in turn restricted to the areas they resided in, or the places they journeyed and from the knowledge they gained from foreigners passing through their towns and cities.

    When Muhammad died in 632, the Muslim territory consisted of a very small portion of present day Saudi Arabia. Check the map below where Mecca and Medina are shown in sky blue color. Yes, that small area was the first Islamic state.

    MAP/ucr.edu

    Below is the map of today’s Saudi Arabia.

    MAP/On The World Map

    Anyone who believes s/he has a mission would want to see their message spread far and wide. But Muhammad may never have thought in his wildest dreams, that one day there would be so many Muslims all over the world. (Same is true of Christianity. It was Roman emperor Constantine the Great’s conversion to Christianity in the 4th century that made it the world religion it is today.)

    1/4th of world’s population today is Muslim. The following map shows countries around the world with estimates of Muslim population.

    MAP/Pew Research Center/Wikipedia

    The Muslims during Muhammad’s time were a small community with a totally different pattern of life than what we find today. Today you visit Muslim majority countries and in most of them (non-Muslim countries too) you would find majority of people hustling trying to make ends meet in extreme heat and polluted environment, amidst:

    1. Corporations are busy looking for ways to cut cost and increase profit.
    2. Governments are busy carrying out demands of corporations and businesses to relax business laws as much as possible who in turn may bribe them for being “business friendly.”
    3. Clergy is busy issuing edicts and making common person’s life more miserable.

    National Public Radio’s Diaa Hadid’s report of May 2018 “Breaking Pakistan’s Ramadan Fasting Laws Has Serious Consequences” depicts the hell common people go through to survive and to take care of their family, but with an added burden of selling and consuming food and drink behind close door.

    Ramzan is a problematic time for Pakistan’s poorest workers, many of whom don’t fast. Hadid was in an industrial city of Faisalabad where she visited a tea stall, near cotton-weaving factories. The owner Javed said people cannot eat outside but can eat inside the stall. Still he gets harassed by the authorities for purposes of extortion.

    “JAVED: (Through interpreter) If I stopped working, I can’t provide for my family. And if I don’t fast, I’m not considered a good Muslim.”

    Then there is 50 year old Farid, who makes $230 a month and has to take care of 4 children.

    FARID ABBAS: (Through interpreter) It’s really tough for us. Anyone who works for 16 hours, how can he fast?

    In Karachi, Hadid met Dr. Sayid Tipu Sultan who supervises 3 hospitals.

    SAYID TIPU SULTAN: It is very dangerous to fast in this terrible heat [around 110 degrees]. Dozens of people there died because of heatstroke.”

    For cleric Saifallah Rabbani workers talking about difficulty in fasting during hot temperature is simply an excuse.

    RABBANI: (Through interpreter) These are lame excuses. This is laziness. According to Islam, if they are Muslim, they should be fasting.

    Hadid found liberal atmosphere at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences) in Lahore where Sher Ali, a Muslim who doesn’t fast, was drinking coffee. Sara, a Christian is also there. She avoids giving her last name for safety reasons.

    SARA: Non-Muslims have been beaten up in the streets for, you know, they’ve been caught eating food in the past. And that’s happened in my hometown. So that’s a very oppressive side of, you know, this month that’s supposed to present piety and everything spiritual and love and what not.

    This was Pakistan in 2018. Things haven’t got any better; but have gotten worse.

    Dr. Sultan is so right but it’s clerics like Saifallah Rabbani who control the mike and the mob to unleash, when it serves their purpose. Neither the government nor the army has any time about these kind of issues.

    Many other Muslim countries are harsh with people eating or drinking in public during Ramadan too. See here and here.

    Progressive Muslims should raise their voices against this menace of clerics and religious authorities who are unjustly and cruelly forcing people to go without food and drink the whole month. Those who could eat or drink do it behind close doors but at the risk of violence and extortion.

    The post Banning Public Eating and Drinking during Ramzan is Cruelty first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Yukon Muslim Society Whitehorse

    Thank you, Trump, for giving Canadians a passionate cause — our survival as a nation. But how to keep the glue fresh holding a rickety, outsized state together? Islam tells us to thank God for our blessings and work hard to keep on the ‘straight path’. We are now everywhere across Canada and eager to stay that way, faced with fearsome Islamophobia from the bully across the border. We may be the ‘mouse that roared’ but strong faith can work miracles. We are a vital key to survival of 21st century Canada.

    Islam: last survivor

    Since the rise of modern imperialism in the 16th century, the world has been at war.

    Christian European empires at war with the world, i.e., with each other and with the indigenous people of the world. This meant enslaving countries where the other great religions – Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam – predominated. Imperialism undermined Christianity in the European societies, now the ‘collective West’, which are now largely secular, the new gods money and technology, but the fall out from all this was to populate the declining empire centers with their African and Asian victims, eager to find a place at the table. Secularism and a world order stacked in favor of the collective West has meant decadence and declining populations there, at the same time, making room at the table for industrious go-getters from the former colonies.

    The infusion of this new blood suddenly puts the great religious on their own path of rivalry for ‘hearts and minds’ in opposition to the secular gods, which failed to provide a healthy moral order. Secularism resulted in ever more destructive world wars, leaving the whole world today on the brink of death not only of humans but of nature, the entire planet. While Christianity claims to have the largest following (after all, it came at gunpoint), Islam remains the main rival, despite the five centuries of war against it, growing faster than any other religion, continuing full-steam-ahead today.

    Warfare waged by empire against indigens is by definition asymmetric, big shiny guns vs spears, rocks, or variations on nonviolent resistance, Gandhi’s Satyagraha, inspired by his own resistance to British empire. Buddhism has come to the West as a universal religion, popular among disaffected youth, but neither it nor Hinduism or nature worship have made any real impact on the world order. While Jews do have a major role in all this, it is not Judaism but rather empire at work so we can discount Judaism as a positive force. Christianity (with the exception of Orthodoxy1) has had influence more due to its political economic role as willing handmaiden of empire.

    Islam is a different matter. It claims to act as a religion in world affairs. While Christianity claims more followers, they are mostly pacified excolonial subjects, and even they are at odds with the current secularized Christianity promoted by ‘collective West’ missionaries.

    • 50% of Canadian Muslims consider themselves very religious,
    • 77% say Islam impacts their daily life,
    • 60% always eat halal meat, and observe Ramadan strictly,
    • 41% pray at least 5x a day.

    Only Islam has both escaped the secular trap which imperialism set to mold subjects to a post-imperial world order ruled by money and technology, and insists on living according to religious intent, with belief central to our lives.

    Dandelions

    Despite Chinese communism/capitalism’s love affair with Israel (Jews are, after all, masters of moneymaking), ordinary Chinese love the Palestinians, nicknaming them ‘dandelions’ on Tiktok, i.e., disdained but undaunted, flying through the air (as on Oct 7), landing to come alive, beautiful, natural – all miracles of God’s creation. This metaphor works in spades for Muslims today.

    Canada has been a testing ground for this, where ‘Mohammetans’ trickled in, starting in the 1880s, as individuals who managed to defy the racist immigration policies intent on expanding the white empire, as if brown, black and Asian weren’t really part of humanity. It is a heartwarming story testifying to human resilience and showing a path out of the dying imperial order.

    At the beginning of the imperial era, there were robust communities of Muslims throughout Eurasia, from Spain to China, and Africa, from Egypt to Ghana. Without five centuries of Christian empire and the war against Islam, most of the world would probably be followers of the Prophet Muhammad. Instead, the Muslim world, the entire world, was subjugated to nominally Christian empires, quickly losing faith to money and technology, and we are living out the consequences. While Christianity purports to be egalitarian, free of racism, its sorry imperial past, condoning slavery in the Americas and culminating to massive bloodbaths in the 20th century, is a legacy Islam does not share. On the contrary, millions of Muslims were kidnapped and sent into slavery and Muslims were victims of both Christian/secular bloodbaths.

    While Islam is criticized for not promoting unrestricted technology and wealth extraction, that was never an inspiration for the faith. Our brief sojourn on Earth is not about accumulating wealth, but rather to worship, to thank God for the miracle of life, and to use our time to try to improve ourselves, to follow the ‘straight path’ of moral and ethical living. That is what all religions are about, so Christianity’s decline came when it lost that vital thread, leaving the other religious traditions less compromised. Islam is seen as the chief rival, so it has suffered the most. But suffering is at the heart of all religion, and the test of health is to turn suffering into tempering, strengthening resistance to evil. The horrors of the open genocide against Palestinians and the incredible resilience of those suffering is testament to this.

    *****

    Murray Hogben’s Minarts on the Horizon: Muslim Pioneers in Canada (2022) is a trip through Canadian history and across Canada’s vast lands, collecting at least a hundred stories of plucky Muslims, men and women, who came to make a life here, starting in the 1880s, invariably men who came, found their feet, then brought over a young bride from home, and raised a new generation of Canadian Muslims. But also a few plucky boys or women who did the same. None came with the idea of riches, but rather escaping persecution or wars, looking for a safe place to raise a family and keep the flame of Islam alive. They brought the spark of the ummah and kept it alive, providing enduring warm in a cold and forbidding continent.

    Hogben is a convert from Presbyterianism, like most converts having fallen in love with a Muslim. His love, Alia, also a student at Carleton University, was the daughter of the Indian High Commissioner in the 1950s. Although there are no statistics on conversion, few Muslims convert to Christianity, the religion of the oppressor, and really just a less coherent version of Islam. Missionaries soon learned that and left them alone. Again, no statistics, but my sense (and personal experience) is that it is easier to convert from Protestantism to Islam, both because of the lack of religious imagery and the simplicity in both. At the same time, Protestants proved to be the most hostile to Islam, with countless anecdotes in Hogben’s history of Catholics being generous, often at life-threatening moments or where no space was available to worship, providing that space. We see how Protestantism collapsed quickly in the 20th century while Catholicism still thrives, so its hostility is understandable.

    The first Muslims officially registered in Canada were James and Agnes Love of Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1851, ethnic Scots, and another family by 1871, the Simons from the US, east Europeans from Ottoman lands. Most of our first Muslims were Syrian Lebanese (Lebanon being part of Syria in Ottoman days) and Albanians, escaping the beleaguered Ottoman army, constantly threatened by Europe. They were disparaged as ‘Turks’ though anti-Turk was more like it. They are ‘white’, so more able to slip past immigration officials. Asians (targeting especially Chinese and Japanese) were kept out with a $200 landing fee from 1908 on. Interestingly, they did not think to hide their faith, calling themselves Mohametans, as was the nickname given to Muslims then. Often the hopeful immigrant depended on a nice official to get through, some turned back at the dock in Europe for ‘bad eyesight’ or illiteracy.

    The early immigrants, like the large influx of Jews at the turn of the century, mostly had to peddle goods by foot to farmers, buying from Jewish wholesalers, often forced to sleep in the snow, sometimes disappearing, either murdered by hostile farmers or frozen/ starved to death. If they survived, they strived to open an ironmongers (hardware store) or haberdashery. Or became candymakers. There are no stories of rags-to-riches millionaires in Hogsen’s history, but many stories of successful entrepreneurs, teachers, bureaucrats, using their modest wealth to fund mosques, to help fellow Muslims immigrate or through crises, building the community, the ummah, examples of nurturing the faith, providing the material conditions for worship and following the ‘straight path’. At the same time, being good citizens and neighbors, welcoming interfaith dialogue, promoting Islam as a healthy way of living.

    As the ethnic variety of Muslims increased, Albanians and Syrians were soon living and worshipping with Asian and African immigrants. The US has a very different history, where millions of Muslim Africans were enslaved and forced to convert to Christianity, only later rediscovering Islam in the civil rights movement post-WWII. Canada prides itself now in welcoming exslaves in the 19th century, though the Christian society was just as racist, and the new arrivals mostly fared badly and returned to the US after the civil war.

    Immigration only changed after WWII, initially in 1947 when refugees from Europe came in large numbers as part of a new world order, a United Nations, promising an end to colonialsim and a new ethic rejecting racism. A Bosnian caught in Italy, not wanting to join the Yugoslav army, managed to get to Ottawa as part of the post-WWII invitation for farmers. In 1961, racial restrictions were abolished for immigrants, giving preference to education and work experience. Numbers increased from 5,800 in 1961 to 33,430 in 1971 – 6x, to 100,000 in 1981 – 3x, then doubling each decade to 2011, with over 1,000,000. Today’s 1,775,715 is 5% of the population, 5x more than Jews. When I go to Friday prayers at University of Toronto’s Koffler2 Multifaith Center, I never cease to marvel at the variety of faces in the crowded prayer hall (there are 4 services), and the fact that 400-500 Muslims are praying collectively on a university of 100,000 students — the only ones! ‘Why else are we here except to worship God and strive to follow the straight path?’ I ask myself.

    British Columbia

    Hogsen interviewed the Fijian president of the BCMA, Muntaz Ali. Yes, indentured Indians came to Fiji as reliable sugar cane workers, and – why not? – moved on to Canada, Ali in 1964. The most infamous attempt to immigrate via Vancouver was the refusal to allow the ship Komagata Maru, carrying 376 prospective Punjabi immigrants (mostly Sikhs but some Muslims), to land in Vancouver in 1914. It was not till 1983 that enough Muslims arrived to build the first mosque in BC, founded by Ali and immigrants from South Africa and Egypt.

    Alberta

    Edmonton boasts the first Canadian mosque, Al Rashid Mosque built in 1938. Peddlers could become store owners in remote fur-trading posts. One of Canada’s great women pioneers was Lebanese Hilwie Hamdon, who came to Canada in 1923 at the age of 16 to marry Ali Hamdon (41) who had established himself in Fort Chipewyan. Ali felt at home with the natives, learning Cree. Eventually they moved to Edmonton and with 22 others, built their mosque. Edmonton grew, attracting many more Muslims to Canada’s only mosque. The mosque was threatened, but Hilwie organized, fundraised, lobbied, and got the city to help move it to the Fort Edmonton Heritage Park, a 1967 Centennial project. All this paid off, producing Canada’s first Muslim (Ismaili) mayor Naheed Nenshi in 2010. Another remarkable Edmontonian who helped save the Al Rashid Mosque was Lila Fahlman (nee Ganem father Lebanese, mother Welsh), who gained her doctorate in educational psychology, and founded the World Council of Muslim Women Foundation, travelling to China to meet Muslim women in 1998.

    Over and over, I read how cultured Muslim immigrants were, even if illiterate when they arrived. Education is at the heart of Islam, the command being to understand and praise God and nature, to move along the straight path, ever closer to God. The quarrels within the community attest to the diversity of traditions, yet never spilling over into violence. The original immigrants were more tolerant of differences, embracing Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, even Ahmadiyya. As the communities grew, different mosques could cater to different traditions, but the core beliefs, Ramadan, prayers, knit the fabric together. Intolerance came more from outside pressure, especially Saudi Wahhabism, and the overzealous Tabhlighi Jamaat from Pakistan, Bangladesh and southeast Asia, but Hogsen shows how the more liberal, tolerant strain endures in each community, less concerned about headscarves and dress, more about the actual beliefs.

    Most immigrants ended up with small stores, barber shops, service stations, not factory workers in mass production, which is alien to Muslim traditions. Their children went/go on to be doctors, lawyers, office workers, scientists, teachers, real estate agents. The few wealthy individuals Hogsen interviewed were proud of using their wealth to help the community. No billionaire Kofflers. The unity of the ummah is not through wealth but through worship. The apartness of Muslims is solely due to refusal to make alcohol central to communication, and the rejection of mass entertainment, which is often morally compromised and eats up precious time from the more important focus on spirituality. Politically, Muslims are conservative but as anti-imperialists, anti-racists, anti-usury, concerned with social justice they often align with the NDP.

    Saskatchewan

    There really is a ‘little mosque on the prairies’, thanks to Muslims in Swift Current, who started a weekend Islamic school in the United Church, where the community also held Friday and Eid prayers. The minister even offered to cover the pictures of Jesus and Mary. Mohammad Afsar, from Pakistan, was moved to tears and told him the use of the facility would be enough. In 1983 they bought an unused church as the Islamic Centre of Swift, Masjid Al-Khair.

    Manitoba

    Ernest Abas, Lebanese, recalled that his parents married and then failed to get passage on the Titanic in 1912. he grew up on their farmstead. His parents were illiterate but taught the children their prayers and stories from the Quran. Trinidadian student Khaleel Baksh arrived in Winnipeg in 1962 and became a founder of the first mosque in 1976. As with many small communities, Muslims used friendly churches for worship, and often held their pray meetings on Sunday if necessary (not Saturday). Another common thread was/is to appeal to rich Saudi Arabia, Ghaddafi’s Libya, Zulfikar Bhutto’s Pakistan for funding.

    Ontario

    Ontario has the most Muslims, 7% of Ontarians, followed by 5% of Quebeckers and 5% of Albertans. Along with Syrians, early immigrants to Ontario were Albanian, though no mosque was established in Toronto till 1961. London became the hub for Muslims and is now the second largest population, with a mosque in a large brick house in 1957, since replaced by the 1964 mosque. Muslims from Toronto and Windsor would come for marriages and to settle, with Detroit providing the imam. There was a constant move back and forth to the US. Like Edmonton, the creation of the mosque was key to attract more Muslims.

    Hamilton started late, with the first Pakistani student at McMaster University in 1966. Like many of the new wave of immigrants, Mohammad Afsar had lived through and survived the tragedy of the partition of India, and was an engineer. This new cohort of Muslims transformed the community, with the smarts and drive to build mosques and interact with the non-Muslim community. A small house served as the mosque in 1969 and a real mosque built in the 1970s. Summer camps and schools began to spring up, important as secular education continued to eat away at moral values.

    Kingston, Windsor also developed communities, starting with a few immigrants post-WWII and growing into a mosque by the 1970s.

    Toronto has the lion’s share of Muslims. 10% of Toronto’s population and 31 mosques. The first mosque was established by Albanians in a storefront in the west end in 1960 and a Presbyterian church built in 1930 was purchased in 1961 on Boustead Ave. Hogsen explains how conflicts with later immigrants often soured older mosque members. The Albanians eventually left this group and founded another mosque for themselves. The new Muslim Students Association (MSA) became a North American organization in various cities and looked to Saudi financing of mosques, which put a Wahhabi slant to worship and greater restrictions on male/ female etiquette, though never enough to prevent a modus vivendi as the ummah expanded over time.

    There were Syrians in Ottawa by the beginning of the 20th century, and Pakistanis arrived starting in the late 1950s. A Pakistani Ottawan engineer managed to convincing visiting Zulfikhar Bhutto to promise him $100,000 for a mosque and he came through, the mosque opening in 1972. As is the case everywhere, a mosque becomes a lighting rod and like Toronto, 10% of Ottawans are Muslim, many Somali refugees from the 1980s.

    Quebec

    The preference for French immigrants to Quebec brought a continuous wave of immigrants from former French colonies Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire and others, giving Quebec a uniquely colorful community. Like Toronto the first mosque came after WWII, in 1958. There are more than 90 now in Montreal alone (vs 11 synagogues). McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies was founded in 1952, the first in Canada. Marriages were only in registered churches till Lesage’s ‘quiet revolution’, and Bill 194 in 1965 gave the Islamic Centre of Quebec civil status and the authority to conduct marriages. Similar conflicts with the new, more orthodox immigrants, the MSA and the Tablighi Jamaat caused new groups to build their own mosques, as elsewhere. There was resistance to allowing a Muslim cemetery in Montreal though it was resolved. This same resistance in Quebec City was what precipitated the worst religious mass murder in Canada in 2017, when a white extremist shot 7 Muslims at the mosque there. London Ontario also suffered this tragedy when 4 Muslims were shot in 2021.

    Nova Scotia

    The first Muslims were Syrian, with a Muslim cemetery founded in Truro in 1944. A Muslim organization was founded in 1966 composed of 6 doctors. A mosque was built in Dartmouth in 1971 which expanded into the Maritime Muslim Academy in 1998, with a school, their first imam Jamal Badawi, a professor at St Mary’s University. Just as few immigrants remain in the Maritimes, so Muslims came and went, mostly to London. A mosque was built in Truro and a Catholic church was refashioned as a mosque in Trenton.

    There are Muslims in every province and territory. There was great excitement in 2019 when a mosque, the Yukon Muslim Society, was opened in Whitehorse, in addition to the Inuvik Masjid (Midnight Sun Mosque) and Yellowknife Shia mosque.

    The organizing efforts to create a real ummah in Canada really started in the 1930s and picked up steam in the 1960s with a national organization Council of Muslim Communities of Canada, now the National Council Canadian Muslims, which is a strong lobby fighting Islamophobia in national security agencies, the CRA, policing, and education. NCCM also advocates on Canadian foreign policy related to Palestine, Afghanistan, the treatment of Uyghurs in China and the treatment of Muslims and other minorities in India. It is the only voice against Quebec’s persecution of headscarves, and sued PM Stephen Harper for calling it terrorist, forcing him to apologize. This capable advocacy in the face of continued bigotry gives Islam a presence that other religions lack. Muslims here and everywhere are the backbone of the struggle against Israel’s genocidal persecution of Palestinians.

    Pakistanis outnumber other Muslim immigrants (13%), with Iranians, Moroccans, Algerians, Bangladeshi, Syrians, Afghanis and Lebanese all in 3-5% range. When and how they arrived follows the vagaries of the past two centuries of upheaval, making each Muslim’s lineage a fascinating tale. I always enjoy hearing these stories, stories of unity in diversity, unique to Islam. There are Canadian Muslims from many other nations, now, more and more Africans. I’ve met Chinese Muslims, even a Boer South African, blond and blue-eyed who ‘saw the light’ and brought along his parents into the faith too. Islam is the most universal of the great religions, cutting through race and class more than any other, and the most welcoming to converts. To be able to tell Archangel Gabriel on Judgment Day that you brought someone to the faith is a hefty weight on the scale of your good actions.

    New weapons

    The century of groundwork laid by our hardy forefathers/mothers spawned a remarkable educational network for the 21st century. Reviving the Islamic Spirit is a yearly conference in Toronto over the Christmas break since 2001, bringing our star thinker-activists from around the world (e.g.,Tariq Ramadan, Imran Khan, Attallah Shabazz, eldest daughter of Malcolm X) and sympathetic others (e.g., Robert Risk, Eric Margolis, Karen Armstrong, even Prime Minister Trudeau). In 1997, the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) was registered as a faith-based charity, focusing on education, community service, and volunteer engagement, with centers and schools in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto (seven schools) and Montreal. In 2024, they opened the Canadian Islamic College in Mississauga providing an accredited Honors Bachelor of Arts. MAC also hosts yearly conferences, supplementing RIS with a more hands-on activist program.

    Canada escaped the scourge of slavery, which killed millions of African Muslims to feed the greed of industrial capitalism, but American Muslims were a lifeline to the fledging Muslim movement here. Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio were important oases for Canadian Muslims in need of an imam or as waystations for future Canadian Muslims. Now, we look to many brilliant American scholars and activists who come to RIS and MAC conferences. Canadian Islamic College is modeled on Hamza Yusuf’s Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California.

    Islam plays the same ‘unity in diversity’ role in the US. We take inspiration from the fact that half of US blacks have converted to Islam. From being lowly slaves to being heralds of the New World Order, not of secular globalism, but of a globalism grounded in faith, bringing all peoples of the world together in defense of peace and love of nature.

    Of course, Zionist spoilers do their best to blacken these efforts, accusing us and our conferences of links with ‘terrorists’ (i.e., supporting resistance movements such as Hamas), although organizers are careful not to give the real terrorists (Israel-lovers) any rope. Islamophobia is always there, as it has been for 1400 years, in overdrive since the rise of imperialism. But history is on our side, as the other religions fail to keep the faith against secular capitalism. As any civilization declines, it is vicious in its death throes. Islam’s enduring flame is still strong in the face of genocide and the destruction of God’s creation. Our daily prayers from Canada blend with millions of others around the world 24-7, all of us facing Mecca, our focus, to beam the message up to God that not all humans are frivolous and disdainful of His majesty.

    Failed gods

    I came to Islam late, after a lifetime under the spell of Marx. Interestingly, Marx, for long nicknamed ‘the Moor’, started to admire Islam and the Arab world in his later years, spending his last winter seeking treatment for pleurisy in Algiers. Of course, he studied local conditions, observing the common ownership among the Arabs which the French were undoing. Colons would seize land then sell back to native for a huge profit. Colonists were more inviolable than handsome William I.

    Even the poorest Moor surpasses the greatest European comedian in the art of wrapping himself in his hood and showing natural, graceful and dignified attitudes. Their social classes are mixed, some dressed pretentiously, even richly, others in rags and tatters, blouses. Such accidents, good or bad luck, do not distinguish Mohamet’s children, their absolute equality in the social intercourse is not affected; on the contrary only when demoralized, they become aware of it; as to the hatred against Christians and hope of victory over these infidels, their politicians have the same feeling of equality, not of wealth or position but of personality, a guarantee of keeping up the one, of not giving up the latter. They will go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement.3

    He marveled at the scant presence of the state: in no town elsewhere is there such laisser faire, laisser passer; police reduced to a bare minimum; unparalleled lack of embarrassment in public. For Muslims there no such thing as subordination; they are neither subjects nor citizens. There is no authority, save in politics, something which Europeans have totally failed to understand. This self-governing and ethic of sharing was alien to the capitalism he so despised. Unlike Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, etc, Marx did not welcome the destruction of this precapitalist world, nor did he promote atheism for what he recognized as a truly devout people. Islam, even at its most stagnant, was not the dead Christianity that he lampooned and dismissed in favor of secular revolution.

    Marx did not live to see the error of his atheism, how his brilliant, radical critique of the social order would spawn a soulless totalitarianism. When I finally woke up to that, like Marx, I was drawn to Islam and precapitalist social formations for a key to the way forward. I’m pretty sure Marx would look at how Islam has survived the war against it by his hated capitalism, and rout for its ability to self-regulate based on a strong faith, a true brotherhood, not the familial sibling brothers, who you don’t choose, but fellow Muslims, with whom you are glad to share whatever little you have, not to exploit and profit from them.

    Islam was founded in the 7th century, when all faiths – Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, nature worship – were alive and meant something, before science became destructive technology and before we were able to turn our greed and envy into weapons that are genocidal not just for us humans, but for Earth itself. Thank God He saw fit to provide the Quran as an antidote to the coming deluge. Noah is hands-down my favorite prophet. My sixth sense for the coming apocalypse, a prophet of nature’s revenge but with an olive branch promising another chance.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Ramadan 2025: Islam in Canada first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Christian Orthodoxy is much less guilty of this. Though Russia was indeed imperialist, it did not aim to wipe out the indigenes, and there were no Russian colonies in Africa and Asia, imposing Orthodoxy instead of local religions. Orthodoxy did not participate in the Crusades of the 11-14th centuries. Orthodoxy is closest to the original teachings of Jesus, and Muslim worship is closest to Orthodoxy. It is a kindred spirit to Islam; however, it has not had a worldwide presence like Catholicism or Islam.
    2    Jewish billionaire philanthropist founder of Consumers Drug Mart.
    3    Marcello Musto, The last years of Karl Marx, 2020.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Papua New Guinea being declared a Christian nation may offer the impression that the country will improve, but it is only “an illusion”, according to a Catholic priest in the country.

    Last week, the PNG Parliament amended the nation’s constitution, introducing a declaration in its preamble: “(We) acknowledge and declare God, the Father; Jesus Christ, the Son; and Holy Spirit, as our Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe and the source of our powers and authorities, delegated to the people and all persons within the geographical jurisdiction of Papua New Guinea.”

    In addition, Christianity will now be reflected in the Fifth Goal of the Constitution, and the Bible will be recognised as a national symbol.

    Father Giorgio Licini of Caritas PNG said that the Catholic Church would have preferred no constitutional change.

    “To create, nowadays, in the 21st century a Christian confessional state seems a little bit anachronistic,” Father Licini said.

    He believes it is a “cosmetic” change that “will not have a real impact” on the lives of the people.

    “PNG society will remain basically what it is,” he said.

    An ‘illusion that things will improve’
    “This manoeuvre may offer the impression or the illusion that things will improve for the country, that the way of behaving, the economic situation, the culture may become more solid. But that is an illusion.”

    He said the preamble of the 1975 Constitution already acknowledged the Christian heritage.

    Father Licini said secular cultures and values were scaring many in PNG, including the recognition and increasing acceptance of the rainbow community.

    “They see themselves as next to Indonesia, which is Muslim, they see themselves next to Australia and New Zealand, which are increasingly secular countries, the Pacific heritage is fading, so the question is, who are we?” he said.

    “It looks like a Christian heritage and tradition and values and the churches, they offer an opportunity to ground on them a cultural identity.”

    Village market near christian church building, Papua New Guinea
    Village market near a Christian church building in Papua New Guinea . . . secular cultures and values scaring many in PNG. Image: 123rf

    Prime Minister James Marape, a vocal advocate for the amendment, is happy about the outcome.

    He said it “reflects, in the highest form” the role Christian churches had played in the development of the country.

    Not an operational law
    RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said that Marape had maintained it was not an operational law.

    “It is something that is rather symbolic and something that will hopefully unite Papua New Guinea under a common goal of sorts. That’s been the narrative that’s come out from the Prime Minister’s Office,” Waide said.

    He said the vast majority of people in the country had identified as Christian, but it was not written into the constitution.

    Waide said the founding fathers were aware of the negative implications of declaring the nation a Christian state during the decolonisation period.

    “I think in their wisdom they chose to very carefully state that Papua New Guineans are spiritual people but stopped short of actually declaring Papua New Guinea a Christian country.”

    He said that, unlike Fiji, which has had a 200-year experience with different religions, the first mosque in PNG opened in the 1980s.

    “It is not as diverse as you would see in other countries. Personally, I have seen instances of religious violence largely based on ignorance.

    “Not because they are politically driven, but because people are not educated enough to understand the differences in religions and the need to coexist.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a self-declared “crusader” who believes the United States is in a “holy war” against the left, China, and Islam.

    In his 2020 book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth vowed that, if Trump could return to the White House and Republicans could take power, “Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”.

    Hegseth declared that the Chinese “are literally the villains of our generation”, and warned, “If we don’t stand up to communist China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem someday”.

    In Hegseth’s conspiratorial worldview, Chinese communists and the international left are conspiring with Islamists against the United States and Israel, which are sacred countries blessed by God.

    The post Defense Secretary Hegseth Wants To Overthrow China’s Government appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Churches in the Cook Islands are pushing for the country to be declared a Christian nation following the discovery of a mosque in Rarotonga.

    The Religious Organisation Special Select Committee has heard submissions on Rarotonga and plan to visit the outer islands.

    It was initiated by the Cook Islands Christian Church, which has proposed a constitutional amendment to recognise the Cook Islands as a Christian nation, “with the protection and promotion of the Christian faith as the basis for the laws and governance of the country”.

    Cook Islands opposition leader Tina Browne said the proposal was in conflict with Article 64 of the Constitution which allows for freedom of religion.

    “At the moment, it’s definitely unconstitutional and I am a lawyer, so I think like one too,” Browne said, who is also part of the select committee.

    Late last year, a mosque was discovered on Rarotonga.

    Select committee chair Tingika Elikana said it was the catalyst for the proposal.

    Signatory to human rights conventions
    He said the country was a signatory to several human rights conventions and declaring the Cook Islands a Christian nation could go against them.

    “Some of the questions by the committee is the impact such an amendment or provision in our constitution [would have] in terms of us being parties to most of these international human rights treaties and conventions.”

    Elikana said the committee had received lots of submissions both in support and against the declaration.

    Cook Islands Christian Movement interim secretary William Framhein is backing it.

    “We believe that the country should be declared a Christian country and if anyone else belongs to another religion they’re free to practise their own religion but it doesn’t give them a right to establish a church in the country,” he said.

    Tatiana Kautai, a Muslim Cook Islander living in Rarotonga said the country was already considered a Christian nation by most.

    However, she was worried that if the proposal became law it could have practical implications on everyone who was not a Christian.

    “People have a right to practise their religion freely, especially people who are just going about their day to day, working, supporting their families, not causing any harm, not trying to make any trouble.

    Marginalising people ‘unfair’
    “To marginalise those people just seems unfair, and not right.”

    Framhein said he also wanted to see the Cook Islands reverse its 2023 decision which legalised same sex relations. He said this was a “Western concept”, acceptable elsewhere in the world but not in the Cook Islands.

    Tatryana Utanga, president of rainbow organisation Te Tiare Association, said it was not clear what the Christian nation submission was trying to achieve.

    However, she is worried that it would sideline minority groups.

    “Should this impeach or encroach on the work that we’ve been doing already, it would be a complete reverse in the wrong direction.

    “We’d be taking steps backwards in our advocacy to achieve love and acceptance and equality in the Cook Islands.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood.

    — Ossie Davis

    Treat me like a man, or kill me.

    — Malcolm X[1]

    February 21, 2025 marked sixty years since Malcolm X was gunned down in a hail of bullets at the Audobon Ballroom in New York City as he was starting to give a speech. The previous week his house had been firebombed, and days before that the French government had refused to allow him into the country to fulfill a speaking engagement, apparently fearing the assassination might take place on French soil.

    Malcolm fully expected these attempts on his life, which grew out of circumstances surrounding his break with the Nation of Islam the previous year. U.S. intelligence had infiltrated his security team, and at the time of his death Malcolm recognized that though the assassination plot originated with the corrupt advisers around Elijah Muhammad in the Nation of Islam, by the end the circle of intrigue had broadened considerably and the U.S. government was certainly involved.

    Malcolm was undergoing rapid transformation in the final year of his life. He renounced the aberrant strand of Islam favored by Elijah Muhammad, shed his view that white people could do nothing to end racism, and apologized for having repeatedly called civil rights leaders “Toms” and other degrading nicknames. He lectured and traveled widely, met and talked with important leaders of national liberation movements abroad, and embraced a broad, internationalist vision focused on delivering freedom and justice to all peoples regardless of race. But he stuck to his view that black unity in the United States was a pre-requisite to any constructive change in American race relations.

    Though often portrayed as a violent extremist (he insisted on self-defense against racist attacks), he was actually quite conservative in his habits (he didn’t drink, smoke, gamble, or swear), and was never known to have laid a hand on anyone. James Baldwin considered him one of the gentlest men he ever met, and when Baldwin was once called on to referee a debate between Malcolm and a young civil rights activist — on the assumption that Malcolm would overpower the youth — Baldwin discovered that he was not at all needed. Like an oldest son protecting a younger brother, Malcolm treated the youngster with tender solicitude, smiling indulgently and gently correcting his view that being born in the U.S. was all it took to be a full U.S. citizen: “Now, brother, if a cat has kittens in the oven, does that make them biscuits?”[2]

    The same gentleness was evident in Malcolm’s home life. In a 1992 interview his daughter Attalah remembered him as a firm father, a mushily romantic husband, and a gentle and funny presence sparking frequent laughter throughout the house. Though work required he be away for long periods, he managed to be present even when he was absent by hiding little surprises around the house for his daughters. Then when he was on the road, he would send letters home telling them to go into a certain room and look in a special place to find a treat he had left for them.[3]

    How did such a man gain a reputation for uncontrolled rage and violence? Easy. He was born in a deeply racist country.

    He grew up broke and hungry in a family of eight. “We were so hungry we were dizzy,” he recalled years later.[4] His father Earl died when Malcolm was six, run over by a rail car, and his mother was slowly driven insane trying to raise eight children alone after her husband’s life insurance company refused to honor the $10,000 policy it had issued him.[5]

    Disciples of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm’s parents were proud and rebellious, living isolated from whites but refusing to reside in officially segregated housing. Malcolm’s father took his son along on trips to secret, private homes to hear the “Back To Africa” gospel. This early public exposure with its heavy emphasis on black racial pride prepared Malcolm for the speaker’s platform and the barricades years later,[6] but he took a very circuitous route before re-connecting with Garvey’s ideas and fashioning them into his life’s work and legacy after years of evasive wandering.[7]

    Born in Omaha, raised in Lansing, the flash of Michigan street life claimed Malcolm by age twelve. Strutting into town with a fistful of reefers, he was soon seen as a rising star on the streets. Bold to the point of recklessness, he openly challenged authority, once telling a notoriously abusive police officer who put a gun to his head to, “Go ahead! Pull the trigger, Whitey.” [8] Kids who knew Malcolm at the time foresaw a future of jail and an early grave for him.[9]

    Malcolm’s fascination for the streets deepened at fifteen, when he spent a summer in Boston, where he was exhilarated by the neon lights, fancy cars, and late-night partying.[10] Though he briefly returned to Michigan, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the fact that blacks from New York and Boston always had a hustle going that gave them money or kept them in clothes, a far better fate than being a ditch-digger or a janitor, which was the limit of realistic black aspirations in the Mid-West. Boston soon proved to be his most natural habitat, a place where he could live out his desire to survive by his wits.[11]

    Living with his half-sister Ella on “Sugar Hill,” Malcolm loathed the status-conscious blacks he encountered there, preferring to hang out with “his people” in the “valley” below:  pool sharks, pimps, hustlers, and hard-working blacks pursuing snatches of weekend escapism. They, and the pawnshops, bars, pool halls, cheap restaurants, walk-up flats, barbershops, beauty salons, and storefront churches that surrounded them, were Malcolm’s entire world.[12]

    Blessed with a steely self-confidence taught him by his Garveyite parents, Malcolm thrived in this environment and quickly developed a commanding presence that belied his age. But he rejected his parents’ proud work ethic, and cared not a whit about morality or religion. A fast-talking con artist who excelled at finessing himself out of dangerous situations, easy money was all he lived for.[13]

    Employed as a shoeshine “boy” at a Boston dance hall, Malcolm was thrilled to see the great bands of the day – Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Gene Krupa, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and the Andrews sisters.[14] No small part of his excitement was making piles of cash as the middleman for sexual hookups of white men wanting black women and white women wanting black men, proclivities that were not at all in line with racial pronouncements in the land of the supposedly free.[15] Malcolm’s knowledge of this reality would prove to be a source of great uneasiness in his future debate opponents.

    Inevitably, Malcolm’s life as a hustler drew him to Harlem, where he attracted broad attention with his wide-brimmed hats, orange shoes, and exuberant, loose-fitting “zoot suits.” A familiar figure at uptown magnets like the Audobon Ballroom, Smalls Paradise, the Theresa Hotel, and the Savoy and Renaissance Ballrooms, Malcolm narrowly escaped death on various occasions working as a quasi-pimp, petty thief, and drug dealer for traveling musicians and curbside junkies. His ambition, he wrote in his autobiography, was “to become one of the most depraved, parasitical hustlers among New York’s eight million people.”[16]

    After eight years of drug-dealing, burglary, numbers-running, and occasionally armed robbery, Malcolm landed in a Massachusetts federal prison at the age of twenty.[17] There he underwent a religious conversion, gave up drugs, dedicated himself to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, and became a voracious reader and skilled debater. Paroled in 1952, within a year he was named assistant minister of Temple No. 1 in Detroit, and the year after that minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem.[18]

    He soon proved himself an extraordinarily adept disciple, gaining a reputation as the most ascetic young zealot for Allah imaginable.[19]A superb organizer and proselytizer, he was adored by Harlem blacks for his courage and wit, and they called out to him to “make it plain” with his blunt and uncompromising declarations and exquisite sense of drama. He was far and away the Nation’s most effective recruiter, provoking envy and resentment among his peers, which would ultimately form the basis for his assassination. In just a few years, he expanded the flock of the faithful from a few thousand members to many tens of thousands, easily surpassing the efforts even of Elijah Muhammad himself. He was especially good at making converts on streets he formerly prowled as a hoodlum.[20]

    In short, he found his calling as a minister, though it was not his first choice. In his final year in school his eighth grade English teacher had urged him to “be realistic about being a nigger” and abandon his goal of becoming a lawyer. In a way, though, Malcolm ended up achieving his goal, becoming the most electrifying “lawyer” in U.S. history by relentlessly advancing the most powerful case ever made against American racism.

    Possessed of a fierce, nationalist critique and a broad international outlook, no one could take Malcolm in debate. A spell-binding speaker with a bitter wit, he spoke in an emotionally charged tone of angry eloquence that blacks considered “good preaching,”[21] always bristling with unimpeachable facts leading directly to heretical conclusions. When unwary adversaries detected what they naively took to be loopholes in his arguments, James Baldwin once observed, they quickly found out they were really hangman’s knots that left their cherished rebuttals dangling lifeless in mid-air.

    Drug dealer, convict, hustler, thief, Malcolm rose to become the greatest black revolutionary of the 20th century, a prophet telling truths few could comprehend and nobody wanted to hear.[22] Deeply religious, he identified the fight for justice as the central act of faith, which made him that rarest of men who practice what they preach.[23]

    Flatly refusing to abide the hypocritical pieties of racist Christianity, he angrily denounced the nerve of its God and his preachers for plaguing American blacks in the name of love. He found temporary solace and self-respect under the paternal guidance of Elijah Muhammad, but ultimately could not accept a theology claiming that whites were a genetically impoverished, degenerate race of “blue-eyed Devils,” however compelling the thesis might appear in a white supremacist society dedicated to slavery, lynching, and segregation.[24]

    Nevertheless, it has to be conceded that the Nation of Islam was a considerable draw in the North, being a religion created by and for blacks, especially those trapped in ghettos and prison, and highly effective at teaching discipline and self-respect as a cure for drug addiction, crime, unemployment, gambling, prostitution, and juvenile delinquency, among other problems routinely found in such environments.[25]

    Seeing clearly the connection between low self-esteem and such vices, Malcolm indignantly rejected civil rights supporters claiming that blacks should love whites, insisting instead that they love themselves, at least enough to rise in self-defense when violently attacked, as they all too frequently were. He recommended that advocates of the “love your enemies” approach teach it to the Klan before expecting it of blacks, and insisted in the meantime on “an eye for an eye” as the only language a racist oppressor could reasonably be expected to understand.[26]

    Appealing to the conscience of the oppressor was simply a fool’s errand, Malcolm thought, as the whole point of racism was to allow whites to subjugate blacks on the pretext that they were sub-human and therefore by definition without rights. There was no point in appealing to a conscience that either didn’t exist or wasn’t allowed to exist, which amounted to the same thing.[27]

    As sit-ins swept the south in the early sixties Malcolm denounced the hypocrisy of nonviolence at an appearance in Alabama. “If the Negro clergy didn’t discourage us from participating in violent action in Germany, Japan, and Korea to defend white America from her enemies,” he announced, “why do these same Negro clergymen become so vocal when our oppressed people want to take the same militant stand against these white brute beasts here in America who are now endangering the lives and welfare of our women and children?”[28]

    Though a committed Muslim, the most influential holy book Malcolm had to appeal to was the Christian Bible, as he had no path to large black audiences until and unless he successfully engaged with the religious tradition they were most familiar with. Elijah Muhammad taught that whites were simply evil, preaching Christianity to blacks to make them hate themselves, with devastating consequences.[29] With more political sophistication than Muhammad, Malcolm developed the most formidable race critique of Euro-American Christianity of anyone in the modern world, condemning the faith as a “perfect slave religion” that preached salvation in the next life to enslaved, colonized, and segregated blacks while white hypocrites had their heaven in this world.[30]

    Malcolm blamed the plight of blacks squarely on their acceptance of this white racist Christianity. “Christianity is the white man’s religion,” he emphasized. “The Holy Bible in the white man’s hands and his interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings. Every country that the white man has conquered with his guns, he has always paved the way, and salved his conscience, by carrying the Bible and interpreting it to call people ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’; then he sends in his guns, then his missionaries behind the guns to mop up.”[31]

    Rejecting focus on the hereafter, Malcolm told his black audiences that their hell was obviously right here on earth. “Hell is when you’re dumb. Hell is when you’re a slave. Hell is when you don’t have freedom and when you don’t have justice. And when you don’t have equality, that’s Hell.”[32]

    One of Malcolm’s greatest strengths was his courage in adopting unpopular stances when conscience and the facts demanded it. Unlike Christian ministers, for example, who reflexively sided with Israel’s Jewish-supremacy in the Middle East, Malcolm’s support for the Arab world was so fervent that he was frequently labeled anti-Semitic.[33] He would not have been at all surprised at Israel’s current wholesale massacre and expulsion campaign in Gaza.

    Unlike civil rights leaders, Malcolm rejected the self-defeating idea that blacks in the United States were a small minority, internationalizing his focus to state that they were in fact part of a world-wide Islamic community of “725 million Muslim brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and in the brotherhood of Islam,” also pointing out that people of color with more than passing familiarity with white racism formed the vast majority of the world’s population.[34]

    Finally, Malcolm’s critical dissection of the March on Washington demonstration in Washington D.C. in August 1963 showed unique insight into the direction black rage was beginning to take due to the persistence of white terrorism after nearly a decade of “non-violent resistance” that was supposedly the cure for it. Acidly dismissing the protest as “the farce on Washington,” Malcolm deftly pointed out this appropriate and necessary anger had been deliberately excluded from the day’s agenda:

    The Negroes were out there in the streets …. They were talking about how they were going to march on Washington … That they were going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt, not let the government proceed. They even said they were going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land. I’m telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was revolution. That was the black revolution.

    No leader had any chance of stopping it:

    It was the grass roots out there in the street. It scared the white man to death, scared the white power structure in Washington D.C. to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they called in …. these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, ‘Call it off.’ Kennedy said, ‘Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.’ And Old Tom said, ‘Boss, I can’t stop it because I didn’t start it.’ I’m telling you what they said. They said, ‘I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.’ They said, ‘These Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.’ And that old shrewd fox, he said, ‘If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.’

    And this co-optation worked like a charm:

    This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it … became part of it, took it over. And as they took it over it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all….

    No dictator could have achieved more thorough control:

    No, it was a sellout, a takeover. They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what time to hit town, where to stop, what signs to carry, what to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn’t make, and then told them to get out of town by sundown.[35]

    So James Baldwin flew all the way from Paris, but was not allowed to speak. John Lewis’s speech wondering why the government could indict civil rights activists for civil disobedience but couldn’t bring white terrorists to justice or even stop appointing racist judges to the bench was censored by John and Robert Kennedy, a decision with which Dr. King went along. Lewis read a watered-down speech absent his pointed inquiry – “I want to know – which side is the federal government on?” – while two JFK aides stood by ready to pull the plug on his microphone should he fail to follow the script.[36]

    Eighteen days later four black girls attending Sunday School in Birmingham were blasted into eternity at the 16th Street Baptist Church.

    Though Malcolm spent the last thirteen years of his life trying to prevent America’s racial powder keg from exploding into irreparable disaster, the capitalist media never ceased to portray him as a violent madman. After his brutal assassination the New York Times heaped scorn on what the editors took to be Malcolm’s “pitifully wasted” life marked by “ruthless and fanatical belief in violence.” The Washington Post bid good riddance to him as “the spokesman of bitter racism.” Newsweek mocked Malcolm for “blazing racist attacks on the ‘white devils’ and his calls for an American Mau Mau.” Walter Winchell dismissed him as a “petty punk,” and the Nation magazine back-handedly complimented him for being the “courageous leader of one segment of the Negro lunatic fringe.”[37]

    One of Martin Luther King’s associates, Alfred Duckett, provided a far more accurate view, calling Malcolm “our sage and our saint,” a prophet who inspired his black brothers and sisters to fight back against racism and persecution. Even Dr. King had to concede that Malcolm’s portrayal of the plight of American blacks was accurate and his rage authentic, once reportedly telling a friend that “I just saw Malcolm on television. I can’t deny it. When he starts talking about all that’s been done to us, I get a twinge of hate, of identification with him.”[38]

    But it may have been Malcolm himself who was the most reliable source on what his work was about, saying in his autobiography that, “sometimes I have dared to dream . . . that one day, history may even say that my voice – which disturbed the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency – that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even fatal catastrophe.”[39]

    SOURCES:

    James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America – A Dream or a Nightmare, (Orbis, 1991)

    Les and Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising – The Life of Malcolm X, (Norton, 2020)

    Alex Haley ed., The Autobiography of Malcolm X, (Grove, 1964)

    Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (Vintage, 2003)

    Taylor Branch, At Caanan’s Edge – America in the King Years, 1965-68, (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

    Barbara Rogers interview with Attalah Shabazz, “Bay Sunday,” November 15, 1992

    Michael K. Smith, Portraits of Empire, (Common Courage, 2003)

    ENDNOTES:

    [1]Cone, p. 251

    [2] Smith, p. 110

    [3] Barbara Rogers, “Bay Sunday,” November 15, 1992

    [4] Payne, p. 94

    [5] Payne, p. 89. Malcolm thought his father had been murdered by the Klan, but this appears not to have been the case.

    [6] Payne, p. 86

    [7] Payne, p. 75

    [8] Payne, p. 122

    [9] Payne, p. 122, 145

    [10] Payne, p. 141

    [11] Payne, p. 146

    [12] Payne, p. 152

    [13] Payne, p. 115

    [14] Payne, p. 152-3

    [15] Payne, p. 155-6

    [16] Payne, p. 168, 170, 174

    [17] Cone, p. 154

    [18] Payne, p. 272, 274

    [19] Payne, p. 278

    [20] Payne, p. 285

    [21] Cone, p. 172

    [22] Cone, p. 152

    [23] Cone, p. 164

    [24]Cone, p. 170. The worst effects and limitations of Elijah Muhammad’s views were altered or eliminated in Malcolm by his frequent interactions with white university students.

    [25] Cone, p. 162

    [26] Cone, p. 160

    [27] Cone, p. 166

    [28] Cone, p. 176

    [29] Cone, p. 162

    [30] Cone, p. 166

    [31] Cone, p. 166, 170

    [32] Cone, p. 174

    [33] Cone, p. 163

    [34] Cone, p. 164

    [35] Zinn, p. 457-8

    [36] Quoted in Cone, p. 181

    [37] Branch, p. 11, 373

    [38] Cone, p. 251, 256

    [39] Cone, p. 181

    The post Malcolm X: Man of Peace first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael K. Smith.

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  • When I told Alaa, before the January 2025 ceasefire, that there would be an Israeli Jew named Noy whose brother was killed by Hamas on October 7 attending her Instagram Live fundraiser, I wasn’t surprised by her response. She couldn’t comprehend that Noy was pro-Palestinain and anti-Zionist.

    “I’m scared,” she said. “Are they a fanatic? I am a peaceful person who doesn’t have political problems.”

    Such is the dilemma of a Gaza refugee. They are not inert objects that are victims of random bombings. They are people caught in a whirlwind of a socio-political milieu of Zionists vs Palestinians. Even Alaa won’t give out the numbered zone she stays in, for fear of being targeted by Israel via quadcopter, missile, or ground troops. Nor do they want problems with Hamas, the traders, moneychangers, or the mafia that control the economy. One false move and they might lose a food package, a new tarp, or their lives. No collaboration or normalization is allowed. The only thing worse than challenging the established order is to be seen as fraternizing with the enemy. A friend of mine reminded me of a couple who had been murdered in the West Bank for doing so. So, I kept it all on the down low, and only Alaa, the Israeli (Noy) and I knew.

    Alaa had already endured enough. Whether through the deaths of her husband, brother, or elder relatives, or the sickness of her children, and lack of food, clothing, or medicine, she had little left. Just the will to live, whatever charity the Israelis allowed to come through and what she could buy on the black market with the donations sent to her GoFundMe. I could feel every wince she made on video chat when the bombs were exploding all around her.

    Noy is cool, calm, and collected regarding their brother’s death. Other families grieved for days, months and some now for over a year and may do so for the rest of their lives, but Noy’s family had a different approach to grief. They were modern Orthodox Jews with a devotion to custom and religious law like any other pious people. Faithful to the end, even when Noy’s brother Hayim was murdered by Hamas, they did not bend. Though Noy is a transgendered MA student, their mother Hannah, a religious feminist, and Hayim, a radical in thought as well as deed, they would not stop living the truth they thought. Everyone who knew Hayim suffered as if they knew Him. Still, pieces of their hearts that could not bear witness to the pain lay strewn about their politics.

    Noy had no problem meeting a Gaza refugee. They were not afraid of the obvious tension that might arise. They had relocated to Germany for a student exchange program just before October 7. Now, they were caught between academics and family trauma. The life and death struggle of their people and their education.

    Together Alaa and Noy endured the most feared thing their respective cultures could imagine—erasure from the Land. Each morning brought another sunrise and hints of genocide, whether real or exaggerated. Noy, looking on from the luxury of a German University. Alaa, from a world of mud, and rain. Noy, childless in that modern Western depopulation kind of way. Alaa, with two small children needing hospital visits and medicine. Noy, middle-class. Alaa, living like an undocumented worker in her own country.

    Yet both families prayed daily. Alaa’s, the five compulsory devotions that Islam demanded of her: There is no God, but God, and Mohammad is His prophet…; and Noy’s, the twice daily Shema: “The Lord is God…the Lord is One. Love Him with all your Heart…Love Him with all your Soul…” Both declarations of their respective faiths. Both descended from Abraham’s piety millennia ago.

    An acquaintance of mine, Robert Sarazin Blake, had written a song about Noy’s declaration of peace following their brother’s death. “Don’t use our death and pain to bring death and pain to families anywhere,” read the lyric Robert heard in Noy’s CNN news appearance that had gone viral on social media. A short plea for sanity after October 7th, before the people of Gaza started getting bombed to death.

    Noy’s life lay halfway to the other side of the known Universe. Three different worlds: Europe, America and Palestine. Noy was watching the death and destruction of their people from Germany, the same place their grandparents fled from inorder to avoid the Holocaust. My life was one of a typical American: war somewhere else, genocide a news story online. No bombing or starvation threatened me. Noy’s family mourned under the wail of air-raid sirens. Alaa’s remaining family lay scattered among the refugee camps.

    Noy agreed to join one of Alaa’s fundraisers on Instagram. An interview gave me the background I needed. Brother Hayim, a former Israeli soldier who saw the light and graduated to the rank of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activist. He loved to play music. Had a band consisting of Jews that only played songs in Arabic, the language of Palestinian Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Hayim lived what the life of a Kibbutz was supposed to be: caring for neighbors and strengthening Israeli belonging and identity through community building. Hamas didn’t understand that many of the people they murdered cared for them. Noy wondered: “Maybe they did know and that’s why they killed them—to kill the hope for peace?” These Israelis wanted peace and had no fear of Palestinians. The innocent on both sides suffer the most during wartime.

    One thin strip of land on the Mediterranean versus another; one religious identity versus another. Mohammad ascended to Heaven atop the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple and its Holy of Holies. Now add Christians, Samaritans, Druze, Sunni, Shia…etc. Only the languages have been simplified to two: Arabic and Hebrew.

    The fundraiser barely started before falling apart. Alaa couldn’t charge her phone. The tightening restrictions on humanitarian aid led to a collapse in places to charge digital devices. We got six minutes and then all went black. I ended up interviewing Noy on Instagram Live, but no one joined us for more than a minute or two. In the end, it didn’t matter. Alaa won’t talk about politics anyway and that’s okay.

    So all I have is Noy’s story. You can read Alaa’s here.

    And, as luck would have it, Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire in the middle of my writing and we pray, Noy, Alaa, and I, that this time it works, and we won’t have to meet under the same circumstances ever again.

    The post An Oct 7 Survivor Meets a Gaza Refugee first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Amid its beautiful and quite vales of Parachinar lying between the two neighbouring countries, Pakistan, the echoing of muffled screams can be heard far too often as families lose their dear ones to sectarian terrorism. Once surrounded by the natural beauty and orderly with friendly neighbours and kin folk, this town can now boast about appearing to be hell on earth—the manifestation of an entrenched conflict that has taken so many lives. It is not a story of just a small town named Parachinar but also a testimony of hatred between two sects of a religion that has not come to its lowest even today in Pakistan and so in the world.

    Hence, Parachinar is perhaps the habitual site of this systematic genocide of the Shia community, which is not just shocking but has become normal in the region. The last act of violence happened on November 21, 2024, when armed men targeted and attacked two convoys of Shia pilgrims in Kurram district; at least 42 people were killed, including women and children. Such attacks, which occurred while under police escort, are proof that insecurity remains a major problem in the region. The violence is however new in the region since July this year, and most recurrent conflicts are due to land issues between the Shia and Sunni militias. The retaliatory violence that followed led to over 80 fatalities within days. That is Shane’s argument, and he blamed most of the carnage on the Sunni insurgents: all but 28 of the dead were Shia. This cycle of violence, fanned by ethnic and tribal animosities as well as historical enmities, highlights longstanding social tension in Kurram that makes the region rather sensitive because of the mixed population.

    This incidence of violence is not an isolated event but is part and parcel of a sectarian problem in Pakistan. That such violence cannot be controlled by the Pakistani government shows that the problem is a failure of governance. Conflict and fighting between different Shia and Sunni groups in Kurram has become almost an annual event over the years; in the period between 2007 and 2011, more than 2,000 people died in Kurram. At a governmental and societal level, the recent increase in deaths and tears of families is a clear indication that intervention is required.

    The tragedy in Parachinar occurred in November 2024, in particular on November 21, a brutal attack on Shia pilgrims. Gunmen pumped bullets on two convoys accompanied by the police, in which 42 persons lost their lives, including women and children. What happened is not unique, but it fits into a dark trend—a growing cycle of violence that has only amplified since the summer. This conflict arose basically from land disagreement between the Shia and Sunni; this led to acts of revenge killing over eighty persons, of which sixty-six were from Shia. These occurrences cannot be just viewed as skirmishes but point to the incessant bitter ethnic enmity and past resentments that still exist in Kurram.

    The government response has been quite poor. Although Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also expressed his anger against the violence in the country, this was done very late and with insufficient actions and words of the victims’ families mourning in Pakistan. Demonstrations across Pakistan have protested about inaction against what is regarded as the genocide of Shia Muslims. However, unsurprisingly, the government is yet to suggest clear courses of action. This passivity is symptomatic of a larger social and governmental negligence in shielding its people from sectarian militant aggression.

    This violence in Kurram has deeper seeds, compounded by regional and political factors and perhaps bad governance. More than 2,000 people have died due to sectarian clashes in this region between the periods of 2007 and 2011. The recent steps were provoked by local concerns and the Shia-Sunni strife that emerged during the Syrian civil war, which was used by radicals. This unfortunate phenomenon of sectarian violence in Pakistan, especially against Shai Muslims, has led to several critical questions concerning security and relationships within and between groups in a country that has well-rooted sectarian tension.

    Inability to address these problems continues to perpetrate violence in Pakistan and brings discredit to the government at the international level. It is symptomatic of a broader problem of governance in which policing or security does not suffice. There is another important factor of the situation: violence against women, which during the conflict intensified due to the constant impunity of the actions of those who use violence and general disregard for the rights of minorities.

    Opposition parties in Pakistan have joined people in the streets to make their condemnation of the attack in Parachinar very loud and clear. The protesters have demanded that the government provide security for its people against cultists’ aggression. Such attacks need to be condemned by the government, and such condemnation, as laudable as it is, falls short of what is required. Increased security measures, identification, arrest, and prosecution of those persons responsible for such attacks, and sustainable solutions to looking into the grievances of these sects are called for.

    While the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has rightly condemned the violence, it is extremely necessary to move towards practical politics and take strong actions against the culprits. The establishment should define the type of security it has in store for everyone, including non-Muslims. Thus, international pressure is important in compelling the government to implement mechanisms that would ensure such incidences are not repeated. It is high time global society stood up and demanded that Pakistan should do something to address the unenviable situation of vulnerable groups in the country.

    For this reason, it is now the responsibility of the international community to bring the plight of Parachinar to the limelight so as to apply pressure to Pakistan to perform its primary function of protecting its citizens. Various stakeholders should continue putting pressure on governments to enhance law enforcement, implement security measures, and promote entities that vigorously respect religious and ethnic diversity. Fatima and other victims’ voices must be escalated to create empathy towards the terrible acts witnessed happening in Parachinar and areas like this.

    It is important to support organisations that are actively combating extremism and building healing and unity as a result. These organisations are at the centre of the problem, helping the victims, fighting for their rights, and seeking reconciliation. In this respect, NGOs are of immense help to women because, through providing assistance of various kinds, increasing the public’s visibility towards such issues, as well as initiating and supporting changes in the law, they help to halt the violence. It is not only for the reason to save lives of Shia Muslims under attack in Parachinar but to enhance the status of any minority across Pakistan and other countries as well.

    This pain of Parachinar needs to go to remind the world how much it requires the values of empathy and togetherness. This is evidenced by the constant fear experienced or persecution, suffering that pervades the lives of its people, therefore the need to pay attention and act. Let us not forget the lives lost, and let us try to make the valleys of Parachinar do not ring with pains instead with the animation of tomorrow’s smile. Parachinar catastrophe is a test for humanity; it is the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil—violation of human rights. It becomes possible only when we recognise these conflicts and work to eradicate them in order to have a society where sectarian violence has no room.

    The post Parachinar: A Forgotten Tragedy in the Shadow of Sectarian Violence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On a family visit to Pakistan in 2000, Bursha Munifasa, then 23, discovered she was pregnant. She sat with her husband in their parked car after an ultrasound, staring at her medical report, unable to decipher what “pregnancy positive” meant. No one had said a word about pregnancy during her appointment. “I was so naive,” she recalls, sitting in her home in the Chicago suburbs where she’s…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Last week I returned from a short holiday to Albania. It was my first trip to the country, and my first taste of the Balkans. But it wasn’t an accidental choice of holiday.

    Why? Well, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with Albania for many years now (almost 20 to be precise).

    My interest peaked during my second year of university when I met my then Albanian boyfriend. I was Anglican at the time and he was Greek Orthodox.

    A country I knew little of, I was soon hooked. Albania had everything – mountains, beaches and a very diverse people and history.

    Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox – it was particularly noteworthy for its religious diversity.

    This is a diversity that the iron-fisted Communist dictator Enver Hoxha tried to squash during his rule when he announced Albania as the first “Atheist State”.

    Hoxha feared that religion would drive people apart and so he banned it – along with freedom of expression as a whole.

    Mosques and churches were closed or used for other purposes such as cinemas or dance halls. People would hide in the woods to pray and the population lived under immense surveillance and fear of being thrown into a prison/forced labour camp.

    The country was isolated from the rest of the world as security guarded the country’s barbed wire trawled borders. When Communist rule eventually collapsed in 1991, the country began to look to the future.

    Many Albanians (had already) fled abroad – something I was also discovering through my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Italian and Translation Studies.

    I fell in love with the Albanian author Anila Ibrahimi and dedicated myself to translating her work from Italian into English.

    I discovered the experiences of three generations of women amid great political, social and cultural change in her first book “Rosso Come Una Sposa”. I later glided through the tragic love story between a Kosovan and Serbian in her second book “L’Amore e Gli Stracci del Tempo”.

    I learnt about the discrimination faced by Albanian refugees in Italy and I explored Arbëreshë language and culture through the medium of poetry.

    I was particularly interested in the Arbëreshë– having first learning about their unique history during a family visit to Italy in my late teens.

    Hearing my cousin’s wife on the phone one evening, I realised she wasn’t speaking Italian and was rather confused. It turned out she was speaking Arbërisht – a medieval pre-Ottoman form of Albanian (of the Tosk variety).

    Celebrating Independence Day in Skanderbeg Square (Tirana) (left: Kosovan dress, centre: Northern Albanian music and dancing, right: with an Arbëreshë lady from Calabria, southern Italy) (November 2024).

    Fleeing Ottoman invasion, groups of Albanians (Catholic) fled to nearby Italy where they’ve resided ever since. With their language given historical minority status, they’ve upheld their language, literature and traditions for centuries.

    Now able to indulge in Albanian-Italian culture through my studies, my love of Albania was growing.

    Add the later discovery of how Albanians saved a number of Jewish individuals during WWII from persecution during my recent years as an interfaith activist, and my love of Albania has been cemented for life.

    As it stands, Albania is the only country in Europe to have a larger Jewish popular post-WII than before the war. And I couldn’t be prouder. I’ve written and spoken about this on many occasions.

    However, I still hadn’t visited the land I loved so much. Until a few days ago.

    In need of a holiday, and with my plans to visit Algeria paused, I speedily booked a return cheap flight in a “flash sale”, along with accommodation for four nights in Tirana, Albania’s capital.

    And it was everything I’d hoped for. But, beyond the joys of a holiday and a chance to take a break from work and daily life, my trip was something I knew I had to write about.

    For Albania stands as a lesson for us all: a reminder of how to approach faith and religious pluralism.

    Faith across Tirana (left to right): Sacred Heart (Catholic) church, Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral (image credit: Karelji, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Et’hem Bey Mosque.

    As a Muslim, I’ve had quite a mixed background when it comes to different faiths. And I’ve had quite a conservative experience across the board in regards to Islam.

    Growing up, Anglicanism was central to my childhood, which was also scattered with Catholic tradition from my Italian side and from attending a Catholic school till I was 12 years old.

    Later converting to Islam in my early 20s, I remained a liberal British-Italian.

    However, I quickly turned rather conservative, losing my liberal self and immersing myself in a mixture of British Muslim Orthodoxy and Algerian conservatism.

    So, it’s been quite a split yet mixed bag overall!

    Now a very progressive Muslim, I can honestly say that visiting Albania was healing, refreshing and incredibly insightful.

    As an interfaith activist and big believer in religious pluralism – and a progressive Muslim who’d never really visited any Muslim countries other than in conservative areas of North Africa – it was like a big warm hug.

    A warm hug to the person – and Muslim – I am today.

    Of course, it’s worth noting that Albania isn’t actually a Muslim country – it’s secular. And the population is very much secular too.

    It’s also a very diverse country too when it comes to faith.

    The latest census figures show that, for the first time in 200 years, Albania no longer has a Muslim majority population.

    Figures from 2023 revealed that:

    • 45.7% identity as Muslim
    • 19.4% are non-denominational believers
    • 7.2% are Orthodox Christian
    • 8.4% are Catholic
    • 4.8% are Bektashi
    • 4% are atheist

    It’s certainly refreshing to see people freely identifying as atheists and non-denominational, as well as Bektashi. I’ve very much aware of countries where apostasy is taboo and even punishable under death in the Muslim world.

    Likewise, I’ve also been a Muslim for over a decade and had never heard of the term Bektashi until I met my friend and fellow Albania-enthusiast Matt. He also later explained that the Bektashi world headquarters are located just outside Tirana.

    So, who are the Bektashi? Well, they’re a Sufi-Shia sect originating from 13th century Anatolia who spread during the Ottoman era.

    The mosque at the Bektashi headquarters (Tirana, Albania).

    Rejected as “non-Muslim” by the majority of the Muslim world, they are decidedly more progressive in their faith.

    The Bektashi do not believe in head coverings for women, they approve of the use of alcohol (in moderation and in worship) and follow spiritual guides called baba.

    The centre was my going to be my first port of call of my first full day in Albania. And it offered a beautiful source of peace and tranquillity as a tourist, Muslim and interfaith activist.  

    It was a rather eventful but worthwhile mission to get to the headquarters just outside the centre of Tirana.

    Attempting to catch buses along two different bus routes, I eventually ordering a taxi, only to then be forced to ignore Google Maps’ route after finding myself on an industrial estate!).

    Eventually however, I arrived!

    So, what did it involve? Well, the site hosts the main office, mosque (which was unfortunately closed) and shrines to several important Baba.

    With the shrines open to visit, and my head uncovered (as per usual), I took off my boots and entered. There lay two beautiful cocoons adored with Islamic calligraphy and flowers placed before the tombs.

    I was one of very few visitors (women) and despite the language barrier was greeted with kindness by all.

    Sat before one of the tombs, I prayed and released. I released with utter thankfulness another wave of the conservative trauma that has weighed me down for many years (and am gradually releasing).

    A beautiful site, it was refreshing to not have to cover my head (obliging the rules of others) or to worry about segregation. I spent the afternoon in gratitude, peace and cat cuddles (having been befriended by a local cat who was more than happy to oblige for pictures).

    At the shrines to the baba at the Beqtashi World Centre, Tirana.

    With my main aim of the day accomplished, I headed back to central Tirana (via two buses – having first caught the wrong one!). It was time to eat!

    I visited a local restaurant for some traditional food and very much tired after a long day, I gobbled down several dishes of soup and various pies to line my stomach before the somewhat large portion of grappa (liquor) I’d been served awaited me.

    There was just one problem… I wanted to go to the mosque. It was going to be my interfaith day after all.

    So, I caught the attention of the waiter to ask him what time the Great Mosque closed. With not an ounce of judgement he explained that the mosque was open 24 hours.

    With no take away cups in sight, we came up with a plan: to drop the grappa off at my room (in the plastic water bottle I had) and head straight to the mosque.

    The conversation was refreshing, human and quite typical of my experience in Albania: do what you like. Muslims drink, Muslims don’t (all) cover. There’s no shameful contradiction there. Just be you.

    This is not an attitude I have encountered much (at least openly) in the Muslim world – either inside or outside the UK.

    As so, after dropping off my beverage, I headed to some religious sites for the rest of the evening.

    First, the Sacred Heart (Catholic) Church – the oldest of its kind in Tirana. Next was the Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral. This is one of the largest Orthodox churches in the Balkans.

    Lastly, I headed to the Great Mosque – the largest mosque in the Balkans.

    They all had one thing in common – other than being very beautiful. They were all closed (a theme I would encounter throughout my trip!).

    Nonetheless, I was pleased to get a glimpse from the outside and chat with a lovely Albanian mother and daughter duo outside the mosque (both in jeans/trousers without a headscarf).

    And it was this friendliness, non-judgement and acceptance of others that followed throughout my trip.

    Take the next day: coffee with a museum guide who was happily married to a non-Albanian who’d been living in Tirana for many years.   

    We joked and laughed as we picked apart my experiences (for better or for worse) – with no offence taken.

    Here in Albania, talking religion isn’t taboo. You’re free to question, to criticise, to laugh, to tease.

    This was something later confirmed by Beji – my guide across the lakes and mountains outside Tirana later that afternoon.

    That afternoon, the trauma of my misogyny-infused trek across Mount Toubkal in Morocco was soothed by a mini hike up Gamti Mountain. It was the highlight of the trip.

    Grabbing a coffee before the drive back to Tirana, the afternoon was fun, insightful and refreshing.

    Neither of these men believed in any faith and they came from diverse traditions (Catholic and Bektashi). We talked faith, culture and diversity.

    Once again, I’d see that as a country, Albania is diverse and free. Here, you’re free to believe or not to believe and safe to express your beliefs.

    Travelling as a single woman in Albania for several days, I felt safe, at ease and at peace throughout the entire holiday. This was vacation that I very much enjoyed but was sadly too short.

    Nonetheless I made the most of my time and was sure to not return home before a trip to Berat to see the castle/citadel (a world-famous UNSECO site).

    Visiting Berat (left to right): St. Mary’s Orthodox Church and overlooking Holy Trinity Orthodox Church from the ruins of the White Mosque in the citadel of Berat castle, Xhamia Mbret in the centre of Berat.

    Strangely, it was in Berat that the beauty of Albanian’s pluralism was challenged – not by an Albanian, but by an anti-Muslim tourist from the Netherlands.

    Surprised to discover that around half of the Albanian population are Muslim, the lady in question was rather shocked to find out I was a Muslim (understandably).

    However, the tip of the iceberg was her admission that she “wouldn’t be Muslim” and that it was all rather “difficult”.

    Her abruptness shocked me. I politely explained that if she wanted to be a Muslim she’d already be one and that any faith is what you make of it. I do me – and I’m just as valid as a Muslim.

    I remained calm but inside I was hurt, disappointed and angry. The diversity – including the Muslim present – of Albania was lost on this woman. As was the tolerance of varied beliefs, pride in diversity and the progressive approach to faith and groups such as the Bektashi.

    I couldn’t help but foam at the mouth at the woman that seemed to both deny and despise the Muslim and pluralistic present of Albania – the country she had willingly chose to visit.

    Towards the end of our tour, we listened to our tour guide Niku explain about the diverse religious landscape of the Albanian population in a country that prides itself on tolerance and religious pluralism (without conflict).  

    In fact, Niku literally pointed out the proximity of a church and mosque only a few metres apart in the overlooking landscape.

    This was a somewhat ironic message since our earlier discussions and having witnessed a beautiful Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity from the view of the ruins of the Ottoman White Mosque (one of two on the site) and two other churches at the beginning of our tour (I myself later visiting St. Mary’s Orthodox church but sadly unable to take photos).

    Niku’s message summed up Albania perfectly: Albania is a country that prides itself on mutual citizenship, whatever one’s faith.

    And it’s on that note that after arriving in the centre of Berat for some free time, I headed to the local mosque Xhamia Mbret hoping to finally be able to pray.

    As a non-Muslim, I’d found it difficult to visit local mosques. In fact, I’d only been able to enter one in the Maghreb due to my interest in the religion. Later visits were as a Muslim (as a very obvious hijabi).

    Questioning across Egypt, Tunisia, Spain and Morocco, I’d heard diverse stories. But the conclusion was: it’s wasn’t free access. Mosques weren’t open to non-Muslims.

    This however was off the record and not a unanimous or even official decision (my non-Muslim father attending Jummah in Algeria for one). Fellow travellers have also certainly confirmed that this is not the case across the whole of the Muslim world.

    Nonetheless, I was understandably a little anxious on that day in Berat about having to possibly “prove my faith” as a European non-hijabi. But: my (Albanian) luck was in.

    I made wudhu (ablution), put on my scarf and said salam to the men in the entrance. Directed to the English speaker, I was informed that I could pray in the (empty) main hall – unless I wanted to pray upstairs (I declined).

    And so, on that afternoon, I prayed in the almost empty beautiful main prayer hall with a Muslim brother to my far right. I prayed, I took photos and I left.

    Taking off my headscarf on the way out, I headed for lunch: peppers with stuffed rice, a sour cherry juice and an Albanian beer.

    It was markedly different to my experience across North Africa (a region I continue to love and hold close to my heart). And I was thankful for Albania: for the experience, for accepting me, for showing me for me.

    This was the Islam that I believed in, embraced as my true self and could feel at home with.

    I had never felt more at peace with my faith. Something highlighted by a Facebook memory that popped up that day of me several years earlier in very conservative hijab.

    It had been a long time coming my trip to Albania – but I realised that I appreciated it so much more now than I would have as a twenty-something cultural Anglican. It was part of my journey of healing, of embracing Liz the British-Italian Muslim and I can’t thank Albania enough for that.

    Timing is everything and indeed Allah is The Best of Planners.

    And so, with the day after marking Independence Day, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend last day in Tirana. I stood in Skanderbeg square, commemorating Albania’s hero for freedom and the freedom that Albanian’s had worked so hard to preserve.

    At Et’hem Bey Mosque by Skanderbeg Square (Tirana).

    I entered Et’hem Bey Mosque. I donned a Turkish style scarf – with the help of the lovely local manning the mosque, I made my visit taking lots of photos and then went to the adjacent ladies’ area (with a small curtain) and prayed.

    I then headed out to join the celebrations in the main square – the stage sat between the view of a mosque and an Orthodox church and the newly erected Christmas tree in the middle of the square.

    Beer on sale, dancing and music abound, I watched the joy of a proud, pluralistic people who warmed my heart.

    With groups in traditional dress from all over – including northern Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and three buses of Arbëreshe groups from Calabria (Italy) – I photographed away, swayed to the music and smiled.

    Several hours later, I was at the airport and I was rather sad to leave. Shedding a tear as the plane took off, I know I will be back soon (I’m already mentally planning the next trip!).

    This trip was more than a holiday. It was the continuation of my journey. And to that I am thankful for Albania and to everyone I met for their warm welcome, their kindness – and their honesty.

    Both the Muslim and non-Muslim world can learn a lot from Albania – a very special country, with a very special people and a very special history.

    The lesson Albania teaches the world is that we’re all one. Let’s do it the Albanian way.

    Conservatism is one form but not all forms of living faith. Embrace diversity within and amongst faiths (liberal, Orthodox, reform) and non- faith groups. Live and let live, without judgement.

    Say yes to pluralism, yes to freedom and no to exclusivism, sectarianism and extremism.

    Until the next time Albania. Te dua!

    Big thanks go to Artur (Spiranca Apartments), Berji (Hey Albania), Niku (Smart Tour Albania), Matt and to everyone I met along the way.

    Thank you for your hospitality, kindness, honesty and good humour.

    Elizabeth Arif-Fear © – Flickr: Albania (2024).

    Featured image: Celebrating Independence Day in Skanderbeg Square with a group from North Macedonia (Tirana, 28 November, 2024).

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • This blog forms part of a series examining how different faith traditions embrace or reject the Divine Feminine in their teachings and representation of The Divine.

    In part one, I reflect upon my own very masculine spiritual journey across Abrahamic traditions.

    I look back at my childhood as a Christian and my conversion to Islam in my early 20s. I also discuss my interfaith exploration of the Jewish and Christian world as a post-Orthodox Liberal Muslim.

    In part two, I explore how the Divine Feminine is viewed across the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

    In part three, I look at the representation of God and the Divine Feminine amongst the Dharmic faiths (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism).

    In this blog, I highlight why the inclusion of the Divine Feminine is critically important, not simply in promoting spiritual inclusion, but embracing wider gender equality in sacred and secular spaces.


    Examining how and if the Divine Feminine is represented or excluded across the Abrahamic and Dharmic faiths has been an interesting journey.

    From across the Abrahamic faiths to the Dharmic sacred traditions, representations of the Divine Feminine are varied.

    With my spiritual journey firmly rooted in Abrahamic tradition, I already knew of the shared struggle across Jewish and Muslim communities.

    Some women chose to embrace more feminine language, others did not.

    Likewise in Christianity, more varied practices outside of my childhood view in my own Anglican tradition do in fact allow believers to embrace the Divine Feminine (e.g. through the Virgin Mary) to counteract more prevalent male-centric portrayals of the Divine.

    There’s a strong patriarchal thread, but more nuance and a feminist revival for those who wish to embrace a more feminine lens.

    However, when looking at the Dharmic traditions, I found a different reality.

    Without a doubt patriarchy exists in all of these communities (Dharmic or Abrahamic) in the socio-cultural context outside of religious expressions of the Divine.

    However, theologically, I discovered a more gender fluid world where an apparent male-female binary allowed for a more balanced view of the Divine – especially in Hinduism and Buddhism.

    Firstly, my experience of the Dharmic world has been one of much more fluidity and exchange overall amongst different faith traditions – which affects the presence of gender.

    An example is how Sikhism adopts goddesses from Hinduism.  

    In the Abrahamic world, whilst worshippers are free to explore and adopt other practices, the overarching theological tradition is much less pluralistic – demarcating lines of belief and non-belief.

    Secondly, in Dharmic tradition, theologically, the patriarchy is not so explicit.

    It appears to focus more on negative rather than non-existent portrayals of the Feminine Divine – as discussed regarding Buddhist tradition.

    Thirdly, there’s the relationship between theology and gender rights outside of religious spaces.  

    In the case of Hinduism for example, positive representations of the Divine Feminine are abound. Representation in quantity and quality (positive associations) isn’t an issue.

    Yet, as with all of the faith traditions, the way the patriarchy manifests instead lies outside of the theology, where the socio-cultural reality of women’s lives may differ vastly from the embraced Goddesses of the faith.

    Fighting patriarchy and the fight for women’s rights is indeed a universal struggle outside of the mosque, church, gurdwara – wherever it may be.

    But here’s the interesting discovery: inside these sacred sites, theology and spaces, it’s not a universal like-for-like struggle.

    What’s more, in terms of specific representation of the Divine Feminine and Masculine in the Abrahamic and Dharmic world, we also see a difference between linguistic and visual imagery.

    In the Western world and Abrahamic traditions (originally Middle Eastern), language is critical. It’s fundamentally a representation of our views and beliefs.

    In this context, language is very gendered and therefore requires a linguistic solution.

    This is especially true in faiths where imagery is typically not used to portray the Divine (for example in Islam and Judaism).

    However, in the Dharmic world – where imagery is very much prevalent – the feminine is typically more included. Perhaps language is less important in this context?

    And here, we’re led to the case of Sikhism where we encounter an interesting mix.

    Sikhism appears to sit between the two worlds – embracing the Feminine Divine of Hinduism, yet mirroring Islamic practice of masculine language in scripture (and all-male gurus).

    Judaism and Islam talk of a genderless God, often through masculine language. And so, there is a growing movement to embrace the Divine Feminine.

    Christianity, whilst embracing both male and female figures, is explicitly masculine in language. The fact is that: Jesus is of course undoubtedly masculine.

    Journeying across the faiths, I more than ever still strongly affirm my own reality: in the Abrahamic context (despite disagreements from Jewish and Muslim women alike), as a linguist I firmly believe that in this context language is critical.

    For this, we need to actively embrace the Feminine Divine.

    Genderless or not, male-centric interpretations leave their mark on the practice of faith and additionally in the community outside of theology (where Dharmic traditions meet the universal problem of patriarchy).

    In a world where language (not imagery) is foundational to our expression of the Divine, in a binary-led world, excluding the Divine Feminism is an expression of religious patriarchy which leaves its mark.

    Religious patriarchy doesn’t just exclude the divine feminine in its worship – it also excludes women through their teachings and practices.

    And it doesn’t stop there. This inequality also relates to a wider problem of social, economic, cultural, financial and political gender inequality worldwide.

    Why? Because inclusion matters.

    Representation speaks. Positive portrayals share, value and celebrate. Whilst exclusionary or negative portrayals devalue, deny and ignore.

    Including the Divine Feminine matters. Because it’s about more than words or images.

    And it’s refreshing to see voices across different faith traditions sharing the same message:

    “Our God language matters because it is how we conceptualize that which we hold as ideal. And in Western culture, which is deeply tied to Empire types of Christianity, Christian metaphors for God have been mired for centuries in tradition, sexism, and power.

    The pervasive idea that God equals male turned into male equals God. It has damaged us all at every level from personal to societal, and it needs to change.”

    (Daneen Akers)

    As humans (for better or for worse), we’ve been taught to view the world through the lens of gender. This is how we connect to reality and make sense of the world.

    This is therefore how many people make choices and make sense of God’s Creation (the world and humans).

    How we view and express (and receive views of) God is therefore critical to how we view ourselves and others – even if you believe God is genderless and divine, as opposed to mortal.

    For, where patriarchal views of God prevail, so do patriarchal practices.

    Male-centric perceptions of God do not only reject the (positive) “feminine aspects” of human behaviour (even if arguably stereotypical qualities).

    Crucially, they also impose a solely masculine view of the world and humanity which values stereotypical “male traits”.

    And it’s no mistake – it’s deliberate, in particular in the Abrahamic traditions and the Western context.

    It’s exactly because male scholars, male theologians and male faith leaders reject the spiritual, social and cultural equality, value and rights of women, that they exclude the Divine Feminine, whilst actively presenting a masculine view of the Divine.

    Whether conscious or unconscious in today’s world (patriarchy still exists but we’ve come a long way!), these systems fail to celebrate our strengths and our qualities as women.

    They simply exist to allow men to dominate and masculinity alone to be celebrated.

    Given the impact of faith on society and socio-cultural norms, the masculine view of God (or negative presence/portrayal of the divine feminine) therefore translates to perpetuating/imposing norms of “worth”. And crucially, how men and women should behave.

    We’re now starting to embrace views of gender beyond the male-female binary.

    And so, this leaves scope to consider as a society: how do we embrace a more genderless/genderfluid perception of the Divine? How do we refer and relate to God?

    It needs careful balancing and consideration for two reasons.

    Firstly, we need to ensure equal representation, inclusion and perspectives.

    Secondly – and what I’ve most recently come to realise by increasingly embracing the Feminine Divine (for example during a spiritual pilgrimage in Glastonbury): to enable us to embrace the healing love of the Divine Feminine.

    This something that I believe is both positive and inf act necessary to ensure balance and to truly benefit from the power and love of the Divine in our spiritual experience, growth and wellbeing.

    Firstly, we’re a long way from a gender-neutral spiritual reality.

    Most of the world still views society through the binary lens of gender. And in this binary: patriarchy comes out top.

    For as long as we live in a gendered society, which includes imagining God through a human lens of gender: we must also include women.

    This means embracing the Divine Feminine – the representation of inclusive, positive portrayals of the feminine.

    However, as humans, both in particularly for myself as a woman of faith but also for likeminded individuals (all our fellow humans) this isn’t about simply “balancing a binary”.

    It’s about celebrating who we are as women, as people and as humans (whatever our gender). About recognising the power, love and place of the feminine in our spiritual lives.

    We need that balance. The Divine Feminine links us to nature, life, to our origins as humans.  Women and the feminine makes up half of God’s Creation after all.

    As women, we have our own sacred relationship with God too. Likewise, men, non-binary folks, anyone who wants to connect spiritually would benefit from this balance.

    We all come from one source – physically from our mothers, spiritually from God, “Mother Nature”, our Creator. The two are linked.

    Take myself. I feel innately blessed knowing that the womb God blessed me with draws me closer to him (even if I never have children). Just like the womb that held me as my mother was pregnant – the womb that God blessed her with.

    It’s the circle of life – and it’s wrapped up in feminine energy, wisdom and love. 

    The very womb I hold (and that of our mothers) has been designed by God to nurture and comfort children of our own. To create life out of love (yes, I’m traditional – each to their own! – but it’s natural).

    It’s a blessed opportunity to have children if we can/choose to (as not having children makes us no less “feminine”).

    However, the intense love that I’ll feel for my children will be but a drop in the ocean of the love our Heavenly Father has for us. An intense bond, a link, a chain.

    Yes, whilst we can nurture and bear new life, God gave life to a whole world!

    The womb I carry is therefore a mini symbol of the care, mercy and love that God holds for me and Her Creation. She is our Creator and she blesses us with the power to “create”.

    This is incredibly, powerful, beautiful and sacred.

    So, it begs the question: how can one shy away from the Divine Feminine? It’s our physical link between God and humanity!

    A First Nation (Native American) statue.

    This reoccurring symbolism of mothers-birth and God-Creation is a fundamental human expression of rationalising the unimageable: God (a very non-human force).

    And it’s not just an expression of the Feminine Divine in theological contexts, but one that has crossed into secular contexts.

    Think of the words “Mother Nature”. Here’s a term which is deeply embedded in Western culture, and yet presents an innately feminine way of looking at the Creator.

    Women give life – and we were blessed with that gift from God, the Giver of Life. And the irony is, this is exactly why patriarchy exists: because such men want to control women’s bodies.

    In the West, this concept of Mother Nature/Earth is usually presented as a secular reference to the natural world. However, that’s not where it started!

    Native American tradition, Greek mythology and now even Neo-Paganism (among many beliefs and philosophies), fully embrace the concept of Mother Nature as the Divine Feminine.

    In the pagan world for example, there’s variance of male and female representation – but it’s there. Just like the growing numbers of pagans in the UK, USA and Europe.

    Take the reclaiming of the word “witch” for example, and the experience of many in places such as Glastonbury.

    Here, pilgrims (pagans and non-pagans alike) nestle in the warmth of the Goddess Temple to pray, to bathe in the White Spring and to walk in remembrance of persecuted witches and unite and pray as modern witches (healers).

    The Wiccan tradition for example is a growing movement in the Western world, referring specifically to a dualistic Divine with masculine and feminine Gods/Goddesses.

    Likewise (borrowing from Eastern tradition), we’re all familiar with the concept of yin and yang.

    Stemming from Taoist religious philosophy, this too refers to a binary balance of masculine (yang) and feminine (yin) energy. And this too has seeped into the Western secular world.

    In both the secular and sacred world, we’re fighting to include women.

    We’re adopting spiritual/religious expressions of the Feminine Divine, creating shared spaces and calling for shared leadership.

    Likewise, we’re also striving for women’s rights outside of theological spaces and teachings – to change the social, cultural and political realities of women’s rights. It’s all part of the wider egalitarian, feminist struggle.

    And so, it’s time for religious traditions to step up. This, of course, includes examining how theological traditions view and represent God/The Divine.  

    For many of us, God has no literal gender. But that’s not the point: it’s how we portray God that’s important.

    It’s a reflection of how we view the world, society and the people in it:

    “God is male, yes, but also female, for God is everything.” (Matt Pointon)

    So, whether that means a linguistic shift in an Abrahamic tradition (Judaism and Islam), embracing the Feminine qualities of Jesus and Mary in Christianity, re-discovering Mother Earth in Sikhism or praying to Mother Earth in the pagan world, let’s embrace the Divine Feminine inside our theology.

    Just as we must embrace the struggle for women’s rights across the board – on our streets, in our workplaces and globally as one society.

    As a Sikh sister, Ravneet Kaur Tiwana, so eloquently expressed:

    “… my spiritual goal is to be the lotus flower. But only if I allow her divine femininity to shine within me.

    The lotus flower is not completely understood by science, although entirely embraced by the divine… the mind alone cannot understand divine power. It must connect with the heart and soul. 

    Lay humble to these gateways to bliss… Only then can we (men and women) become like the lotus flower.”

    To embrace God, we need to embrace the Divine Feminine.

    And so, while God already embraces us as his “Children”, are we ready to fully embrace God?

    With thanks to Matt Pointon, Roni Roseberg, Haroun Arif, Hossam ed-Deen Allam, Thao Nguyen, Rabbi Jackie Tabick, Doreen Samuels, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, Rachel Rose Reid, Ketzirah Lesser, Dr Swati Chakraborty, Janani Chaitanya, Charanjit Kaur, the Goddess Temple and White Spring (Glastonbury) for their advice, input and assistance with this series and along my spiritual journey.

    This series is dedicated to my late mother for her love, guidance and inspiration. May she rest in peace.

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • Sacred Womb

    Inside your sacred womb,
    Your warmth,
    Love,
    And peace embraced me
    Clinging to my bare skin
    White, weary and weak,
    As I shed the cloak of invisibility
    Doctrine and patriarchy.

    Inside your sacred womb,
    Your words,
    Your light,
    Your shadow
    Soothed my soul,
    My fears,
    My worries
    From ages old and new,

    As the layers of cloth, life and trauma
    Fell swiftly from my naked skin,
    To the wet cold floor,
    Fading into the cracks we call home,
    Drenched in your love
    Wrapped in your mercy
    Born of your embrace.

    Inside your sacred womb,
    Of water pure, fresh and new,
    I took those steps
    With you,
    Nestled in your embrace
    Poised in peace
    And ready for truth
    As I held your hand
    Of love, light and reassurance
    Washing away my longing for love,
    As you held me in gratitude.

    Inside your sacred womb,
    I stood whole,
    In spirit, life and truth.
    Ready for renewal
    Re-imagining
    And re-awakening,
    I lightly sunk deep into your waters,
    A journey made
    Step by step,
    Foot by foot,
    Half a torso deep,
    Yet com
    Whole, and content.

    Inside your sacred womb,
    I found your life
    Love
    And radiance
    Saturated deep inside my heart
    With each sacred drop refreshing my mind, body and soul,
    As I bathed not in water wet, cold and deep
    But in your blessing,
    Your wisdom,
    Your welcoming.

    Inside your sacred womb,
    I released the shackles of shame, sin and oppression,
    To rise again,
    Whole and complete,
    Immersed before your altar,
    Standing before your cradle,
    Flame to flame,
    Head to toe in your shadowy glow of embrace,
    Refreshed,
    Invigorated,
    Reborn.

    For inside your sacred womb
    Of wisdom,
    Love
    And truth,
    I found anew,
    Peace,
    Love,
    Gratitude,
    And
    Light.

    God is Great.

    (Elizabeth Arif-Fear, November 2024 ©)

    If ten years ago (during the peak of my era as an Orthodox Muslim), someone had told me that one of the best weekends of my life would be spent at Glastonbury on a spiritual pilgrimage, immersed in the power of the Divine Feminine and English paganism, I’d never have believed it.

    Two days of meditating in the Goddess Temple embraced by the warm energy of the Divine Feminine, taking me from gratitude, to grief and finally to peace.  

    Two days of bathing in a sacred White Spring devoted to the Goddess, surrounded by candles, crystals and murals.

    And two days of walking alongside witches, pagans and people of various views alike in memory of persecuted witches.

    Nope, I’m not sure I’d have believed them – or wanted to.

    Disbelief, fear, disgust, distain. This is possibly how I’d have quite possibly responded.

    Around Glastonbury (top left to bottom right): at the top of the Tor looking out from St. Michael’s Tower, one of many crystals for sale, outside the “My Pleasure Tantric Shop”. Images: Elizabeth Arif-Fear ©. 

    Disbelief that I’d have “gone astray” off the “right path”.

    Fear of “shirk” (blasphemy away from tawheed – pure monotheism) – the only unforgiveable sin after death (shirk being forgiven if we sincerely ask for it during our time on Earth).

    Disgust at my future misguided self. And disdain for the polytheistic practices that I knew nothing about but disliked fervently.

    Paganism. It was a dirty word. A sinful word. A word of lust, greed and recklessness.

    Yet during those two days, I felt alive. I felt replenished. I felt at peace.

    Outside the Goddess Temple, Glastonbury (November, 2024). Image: Elizabeth Arif-Fear (c).

    I was revitalised. Alive, angst-free and literally glowing.

    Spending the weekend with fellow writer Matt, his goddaughter and one of our best friends, Matt later recalled how he’d never seen me so calm, happy and at peace.

    Later recalling the weekend at home, my father and step-mother didn’t quite share my passion for the Divine Feminine and the sacred bathing.

    But, what they did remark was how refreshed, happy and well I looked.

    It was quite remarkable.

    Of course, I’d enjoyed a great weekend with some of my closest friends.

    Yes, I’d taken a break away from the humdrum of daily life.

    And, I’d visited a new place in the green countryside of Somerset (only a few miles from where my paternal grandfather grew up I discovered prior to visiting).

    But, it was more than that. Much more.

    I’d let go. I’d shed years of anxiety, religious trauma, fear and body shaming.

    I’d embraced the now, the good that was my life and made a vow: no more anxiety.

    For as soon as I entered the White Spring that Friday evening after we arrived, I felt the most glowing sense of warmth and peace. It was nothing short of magical.

    Filter and make-up free, the glow of Glastonbury was clear to see.

    Sat in one of the womb-like corners, surrounded by statues of “The Goddess”, candles, ribbons and fellow pilgrims, I cried.

    Cried of gratitude. Complete and utter gratitude.

    Alhamdulillah. Allahu Akbar.

    I sat, I embraced God and I told myself that I was ok and that everything would indeed be ok.

    The Divine Goddess was there. Her energy.  Her love. Her warmth. And I could feel it.

    Held, embraced and thankful. I was thankful to Allah for everything that I’d been blessed with and everything that wasn’t real – the doubts, fears, worries and anxieties.

    It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever felt.

    Prior to arriving in Glastonbury, I’d of course expected it to be an emotional weekend.

    A weekend of feeling, thinking and reflecting. Of confronting my fears, my tears, of reaching out to God through each drop (as was usually the case).

    Matt had briefed me on what to expect before we left the Midlands.

    Yet, from that moment in the spring temple, I spent the weekend beaming, smiling, glowing.

    Peaceful, happy, radiant, calm.

    Mural outside the Goddess Temple, Glastronbury (November 2024). Image: Elizabeth Arif-Fear ©.

    Calm. That’s quite a special state for someone with ADHD (with an emphasis on the hyperactivity).

    Happy Liz would be loud, noisy, laughing and fun.

    Calm, serene, glowing with peace Liz: now that was something else. Something rare.

    Well, what can I say?

    It’s the magic of Glastonbury. A place where God belongs to no one.

    A place where God isn’t the patriarchy of men, but the beauty of Her Creation.

    A place everyone is welcome (I was particularly delighted to see a Sikh pilgrim throughout the weekend).

    This is a place where spirituality is normal, embraced and treasured.

    Where no one judges and where, as so bluntly Matt put it: “where you have permission to be weird… It’s the ‘normal’ ones who seem strange.”

    I’ve always said: there is no such thing as normal.

    The point on the spectrum where society chose to fix the world is subjective. And if that’s “normal”, I’m happy to be “weird”.

    Yet, here’s the thing: spirituality isn’t weird. It’s healthy. It’s real.

    And at Glastonbury it was real as sitting and eating lunch, going for a walk or taking a shower.

    What isn’t healthy is religious trauma, religiously sanctified body shaming, and patriarchal religious institutions.

    Inside Well’s Cathedral (November 2024). Image: Elizabeth Arif-Fear (c).

    For as much as I enjoyed evening service at Well’s Cathedral (a stunning building with a beautiful choir), it wasn’t Glastonbury.

    It was seeped in religious masculinity, of institutional faith and structural tradition.

    The people were lovely, the music was soothing and the architecture is stunning.

    But: it’s also very masculine (even with a woman priest leading the service).

    I of course was incredibly glad to (as always) relive my childhood faith. To once again recall the Lord’s Prayer. And to light a candle per my usual tradition.

    I was also particularly delighted to “rewrite” my childhood as an Anglican who had always been told “you can’t have the communion – you’ve not been confirmed.”

    This time, I wanted to embrace God, to share the service in every way possible.

    And so that evening, I stood before the vicar. And I took communion.

    I ate the thin bread wafer. I drank the wine. And I felt one chapter closing, and another opening.

    I was happy. I was glad. I was grateful.

    An hour and a half later, I was however also delighted to head back to Glastonbury.

    The place where less than a few hours before, I’d stripped away years of religious doctrine around the female body (hijab) and lowered my bikini-clad self into the cold water of the White Spring.

    Immersing myself under the water before the Goddess’ altar, I made a promise to myself: no more anxiety. To the future.

    A baptism? A mikvah? A rebirth.

    A rebirth of shedding away the masculine “God” that I’d been taught from childhood. Of taking back my body.

    And of moving past my conversion into one of the most patriarchal cultural and religious communities to currently exist.

    Alhamdulillah. God is Great.

    I’m not going backwards.

    Next time, there’ll be no bikini.

    Allahu Akbar. Our Creator, Our Goddess: She is Great.

    “THE GODDESS is alive in Glastonbury, visible for all to see in the shapes of the sacred landscape. She is soft as the rounded hills of Her body and sweet as the apple blossom that grows in Her orchards.

    Here Her love enfolds us every day and Her voice is always near, carried on the wind, whispering through the mists of Avalon.

    Her Mysteries are as deep as the Cauldron She stirs, taking us down into Her depths and lifting us up to Her heights.

    She is our Source, our Inspiration and our Love.”

    (Kathy Jones)

    This blog is dedicated to my late mother. Big thanks also go to Matt for arranging the trip and for everyone who joined us.

    Thanks also go to those managing the White Spring and the Goddess Temple, and to everyone who makes Glastonbury what it is. Thank you!

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • Down at my grocer’s for half a dozen eggs and some melon, I answered the usual question about my well being openly as accustomed. My neighbour is a friend and his query is sincere. After recounting local concerns he expresses his frustration, one more people certainly share, that they can witness audio-visual depictions of the rampage in the Gaza concentration camp of occupied Palestine on television and hear the words of the ostensible leaders of the great states in the United Nations assembled say little and do less to stop the carnage. Of course neither of us is in a position to raise more than private outrage. I add, however, that this performance of mass murder has been escalating since the end of the Great War when the great states of British Empire, the French Republic and the United States agreed to the European colonization of a strategic prize from the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

    Neither of us was alive at the time. Nor were we contemporary with the declaration of statehood by those colonizers on 14 May 1948. The stories we were told to explain and justify European colonization at the same time when those states had proclaimed in San Francisco the universal rights to self-government even for brown people, were that the Europeans concerned had been so punished by the Great Powers through the centuries, especially most recently by the two-time loser among the Great Powers—Germany, that as an act of contrition the population of Palestine had been chosen for collective retribution. That is to say, the brown inhabitants of Palestine in the British Mandate were chosen as a people to be punished, deprived of life, liberty and property, as a penalty for the evils inflicted upon a mass of Europeans whose most important characteristic was that they had been identified as Jews. In the case of Germany under the NSDAP many of the Europeans in question had been deprived of their citizenship as Germans and defined as Jewish by nationality. Thus, under the NSDAP tyranny they were deprived of all their rights as citizens of the state in which they had been born and to whom they had owed allegiance, by operation of law and administrative procedure. One of the principles formalized in the conventions adopted with the United Nations Charter stipulated that no one could be deprived of their nationality against their will. Thus, it would seem the acts of the German regime were declared retroactively violations of human rights. Unfortunately, this principle, like so many others adopted by the Great Powers, was not taken very seriously when skin complexions or geographical locations differed from those of the charter members of the League of Nations successor club. Very little in the stories we were told addressed the obvious inconsistencies between the expressed prohibitions, e.g. collective punishment and deprivation of nationality, when applied to skin colours.

    Moreover the stories we were told conflated the victims of the NSDAP regime, a tyranny that enjoyed massive financial and covert political support from the commanding heights of Western industry and finance, with an established settler-colonial movement about which so little was said as possible. While we were entertained by Hollywood productions—beginning with the show trials in Nuremberg and their later film adaptation cast with famous stars of American stage and screen— and continuing with the Leon Uris’s pulp fiction, also adapted for propaganda cinema—the settler-colonial movement was busy practicing what they had no doubt learned from seminars with experts like Adolf Eichmann behind a screen of genuine NSDAP victims and displaced persons manipulated to lend legitimacy to the crimes it continues to perpetrate, live on TV as this is being written. All of this was known to representatives, high and low, of the Great Powers that gave license to this invasion. Where reports of the crimes were not suppressed, the amazing control over mass media and brutal assassinations silenced them quickly.

    It has often been said that those methodical Germans were so disciplined that they kept careful records, which could be used to incriminate them later. Thomas Suárez (State of Terror, 2016) found he could reconstruct enough of the criminal history of Zionist occupation of Palestine from the perpetrators records to suggest that not only the NSDAP regime was proud of its attention to detail. As we have seen over the past four years, one of the principal functions of mass media is to inoculate the population at large so as to make them resistant to facts. The details Suárez relates based on research in the National Archives (Kew, UK) cover the period until the declaration of statehood by the settler-colonial regime in Tel Aviv: in other words the behaviour of the founders before we were told that Tel Aviv was the only “democracy” in the Middle East with “the most moral army” on the planet. The book is worth reading if only as a corrective to the amnesiac shock suffered by millions who only discovered that there was “savage and relentless killing in Gaza” a year ago.

    Suárez’s story is full of aid workers and UN officials being abused, attacked and murdered. The archives showed that meticulous account was taken of how many Palestinians the invaders were able to rape, torture, kill or otherwise violate and eliminate from the country in which they had been born. Deep intelligence operations throughout the West combined with well-funded and effective mass media campaigns in the US and Britain were as prevalent then as they are today. Innovations in lethality and terror accompanied every effort leading to statehood—and as can be seen beyond. Nobel Peace laureate Menachem Begin, a proud veteran of that era, could justifiably claim—as he indeed once did (in a January 1974 television interview when Russell Warren Howe asked Begin: “How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of terrorism in the Middle East? “In the Middle East”, Begin bellowed, “in all the world”)—that they (Irgun et al.) had invented terrorism. Striking is the account of youth cadres, some as young as 13, who had been trained as terrorists within the trinity of Zionist paramilitary organisations (Hagana, Irgun and Lehi). Innumerable operations were performed by these highly indoctrinated cadres disguised in the attire typical of the natives (dressed as Arabs). Chronologically it becomes obvious that the methods of terrorism attributed in the West to Muslims were in fact all standard operating procedures for Zionist paramilitary death squads—long before there was any armed resistance to the Zionist invasion and occupation of Palestine.

    None of this historical context was part of our history lessons. Nor is it part of the ranting that counts for reporting now. I have heard enough said about my compatriots and their supposed affinity for fascism or natural racism—all based on the interminable repetition of increasingly bizarre films about the NSDAP era in Germany. That all ended in 1945. The insinuations have not stopped, although their application in the past four years defies coherent explanation. However the same regime has been in power in Palestine, de facto since the establishment of the Jewish Agency and de jure since statehood was declared.

    It is worth noting that settler-colonialism was still high fashion in 1948 since the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia (also under British rule with a close relationship to Cecil Rhodes’ principal financial advisor) also proclaimed their nationalist version of white supremacy, apartheid. Despite many predictions to the contrary, they have not survived as long as the regime in Tel Aviv. The Afrikaner nationalist attempt to establish a racial-ethnic state with its own language (Afrikaans) and culture also failed. (see also Church Clothes: Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid, 2024) Decades of National Party rule were predicated on the potential onslaught awaiting whites on the continent if a strong white government did not defend them. There was no onslaught. In 1991, the feared horror of Bantu/ Black/ African communism had disappeared. Even the Afrikaner nationalist attempt to support its racial-ethnic state with a “white African” language and culture failed. Although Afrikaans remains one of South Africa’s nine official languages, there is no longer a single Afrikaans-medium university in the country since the apartheid constitution was abolished. The “Cape Dutch” had been established in South Africa since the 1600s and within a mere decade the whole edifice was gone.

    That leaves us with the question; especially if one dares to take the absurd woke ideology currently propagated in the West at its word, why settler-colonialism can prevail in Palestine in forms that even heads of state are now likening to those of the NSDAP tyranny? While all manner of institutions, monuments, and artefacts are being renamed, removed or vandalized because of their imputed relationship to racism, colonialism, slavery or some other grave injustice (mainly in Britain and the US), the uninterrupted century of settler-colonial terror in Palestine barely caused a ripple. Is it ignorance, hypocrisy, or plain stupidity? What seems long ago now, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (The Manufacturing of Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, 1988) nearly popularized the distinction between “worthy and unworthy victims”. In their propaganda model the mass media—and those who own it—decide which victims are worthy and hence treated as victims whose suffering is acknowledged and which victims are unworthy and whose suffering can be and is dismissed. This distinction is certainly helpful in calling attention to the silence and invisibility of a century of mass murder and terrorism, after 1948 state terrorism. In order to understand the source of silence, obfuscation, and mendacity, it is necessary to ask the questions how the “worthy victims” are chosen and also by whom?

    What we say we know about the past is a construct. Even in the course of a conversation develops as a construct by which the exchange continues on the assumptions of two speakers as to the appropriate way to respond to what was just uttered. Each of us is unwittingly a small scale amateur historian when confronted with utterances, like “what did you mean?” or “what I meant to say was.” There is no way to know definitively what someone was thinking in the past. One can only judge the utterance, either as memory (covertly) or as recording (written or audio), to have some chronological significance and respond to it as one deems appropriate. We have all heard people respond with statements like, “when I said that I did not mean what you think” or “the situation was different then” or “I can change my mind, can’t I? (When someone refuses or denies the interpretation of an utterance assigned to the past). We all know people whom we say are unreliable because in our judgement statements “in the past” do not permit predictions of future behaviour. “Oh he never comes on time” or “he always says one thing and does another”. In all these cases the purpose of our assessment is to control our own behaviour, our reaction to others. We can call it prediction if it means that it controls what we will do (it cannot control what we already have done.) At the same time we have certainly all heard “Oh you are being unfair. He is not always like that” or “He is never like that with me”. In other words the judgement that “he never does what he says he is going to do” is judged by someone else to be an inappropriate explanation and prediction for that person’s behaviour. At the same time it is certainly reasonable to reply, “maybe he does not behave that way with you but he does with me. I cannot rely on him.” At this point, one is acknowledging that although it may be inappropriate to claim that “he is universally unreliable”, it is reasonable to say that “he is unreliable for me”—and it is my interest in reliability that is important here. My interest is another way of saying, reliability is a category of personal conduct which I value and which controls my interaction with others.

    Explanations are unavoidable. Whether they are good explanations or bad explanations depends on the judgement of someone and on the interests controlling that judgement. Those interests may also include rendering no judgement that deviates from those others consider appropriate. So in more explicitly historical research, reflection and debate, the interests of the investigator may be controlled by the desire to be treated as a “serious historian” or “serious scholar”, another way of saying that investigation will be governed not only by one’s personal judgement but by what one perceives as the judgement of others as to the appropriateness of one’s work. Academic institutions and other venues where history (often conflated with the past) are the focus of human activity are not only repositories of data but organizations for structuring the use of that data. Structuring the use is another way of saying controlling the way those who are engaged in historical research or study respond to the artefacts and the utterances of other investigators or members of the research institution. There is data, e.g. documents, and utterances and redundancies in response to the data. In that sense historical research is no different from the activity in a chemistry laboratory. It is impossible to separate the utterances and redundancies of response that form an institution from the research product. There is no pure objective fact in the test tube or the archive that is self-evident. Explanations arise from attempts to respond to data in meaningful ways, for instance to control or predict our responses to other data. Even the most abstract forms of research constitute controls on the researcher, what he sees; what he may discover; what he discards or ignores.

    A historical explanation, regardless of the volume and nature of the data available (whether known or unknown in scope), will always be a selection of data and its organization. It will always be governed by interests of the researcher or of other researchers or those on whose behalf the research is selected and performed or even of those to whom the researcher addresses his work, e.g. readership, students, public policy, etc.

    The armistice of 1918 ended the open hostilities between the regular forces of the alliance (the British Empire, the French Republic and the United States) against those of Austria-Hungary, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire, the so-called Central Powers. However, it by no means ended the organized military operations on the Continent or the non-military warfare, as might have been expected by anyone who took the Wilsonian rhetoric at face value. War continued in Eastern Europe. The United States fought with Czech legions, Japanese troops and White Russians against the new Bolshevik government in the Soviet Union until 1922. Economic warfare continued throughout the interwar period despite negotiations and the conclusion of a plethora of treaties known under the rubric of Versailles. The Allies fought overtly or covertly to capture and allocate the extinguished empires among themselves while reinforcing their hold on the empires with which they began the war.

    If war aims are not defined by what is announced in declarations but are ascertained by examining forensically the results, then such imputed war aims can be said to constitute a pattern. In other words, a sequence of distinguishable outcomes can form the basis for interpretation of belligerent conduct, specifying general aims or attitudes to explain present and future wars. Such patterns may be classified as instructions by which belligerents chose to wage war or analysis can identify the latent or implicit culture that drives the behaviour. The forensic examination serves to identify redundancies that must be practiced in order to sustain the institutional behaviour underlying the belligerence.

    None of the foregoing would have been practically relevant in the 19th century. However, the adoption and ratification of the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy aka Kellogg – Briand Pact (1928) which declared war illegal as a means of resolving international disputes; a violation of international law also known as the law of nations. This pact has yet to be renounced by any of its principal signatories. Thus the prohibition stands. Therefore the determination of war aims and the causes attributed to such wars by those who wage them becomes highly relevant.

    If the aims of a given war are not clearly understood, neither the appropriate defence nor a realistic negotiating position to end hostilities can be found, let alone pursued.

    In battle, the assailing force seeks to magnify its impact by concealing the actual targets or objectives from the defender. In waging war itself the aggressor is obliged to justify the use of force within the rhetorical framework of the law of nations as commonly understood. Rhetorical legitimacy is no trivial weapon in the aggressor’s arsenal, especially under the League of Nations/ United Nations framework. The more intensely the claims are asserted, the more difficult it becomes to ascertain the effective aims. This is a peculiar aspect of modern ideological warfare. Silencing the defender in public opinion and international fora relies on domination of the totality of communications channels.

    The history of modern warfare actually begins with the Crusades. These centuries of assaults against the declared enemies of Christendom always comprised both psychological and physical orders of battle. The papal-rabbinical infrastructure under the command of the Roman pontiff “preached” the Crusades. The military force unleashed through the vassals of the Latin Church wielded the swords and other instruments of death. The pulpit and ecclesiastical apparatus mustered the support needed to drain manpower and other resources for the campaigns of slaughter, demolition and plunder. Prospects of plunder and intangible wealth (salvation) have been essential to convince all those who sacrifice that they will be rewarded on Earth as it is in Heaven, or at least compensated for the material and bodily losses they have to bear.

    This is no less true in the 21st century than it was in the 11th.

    It is really quite remarkable that while the NSDAP era has been an almost obsessive target of historical research for as long as I can remember, the era in which the settler-colony in Palestine was established receives so little attention although its ostensible legitimation is derived from (retroactively) and enhanced by the very existence of the German fascist regime from 1936 until 1945. Although the ideological roots of Afrikaner nationalism and its close relationship to the doctrinal authors of German National Socialism have been investigated and publicly debated. The relationship between Zionism and Nazism has been given more muted attention. When Zionism and Nazism are discussed generally then there is a tendentious context, which fosters the conflation of Herzl’s ambitions with the campaign to funnel all displaced Jews from Europe into Mandatory Palestine under administration of the Jewish Agency. The implication is that Zionism anticipated the Nuremberg laws, the deprivation of Germans once classified as Jewish of their German nationality and their relocation – disposal, including enslavement and murder. However, any attempt to examine the practices of the Tel Aviv regime over the past century in historical context, including comparison of those practices with practices under other regimes, has been vigorously discouraged.

    While it is understandable that the practitioners in the “only democracy” with the “most moral army” may be reluctant to discuss their conduct and utterances in comparative context, it ought to be asked why this reluctance is so widespread beyond the 1967 borders? The most obvious, if somewhat superficial, reason is that the regime in Tel Aviv is the state incarnation of “worthy victims” whose every suffering, real or imagined, must be smothered in sympathy and adoration. Whatever its misdeeds, these are the understandable errors of a distraught, somewhat paranoiac victim for whom at least pity but not punishment is appropriate. The traumatized maiden amidst the bearded, brown-skinned hordes must be forgiven for every act taken in defence of her purity. The mythological, cinematic clichés that can be applied are innumerable. Like cinema, they also distract from serious observation and assessment of the utterances current and past, i.e. the documentary evidence.

     (Americans do not realize) the extent to which partition was refused acceptance as a final settlement by the Zionists in Palestine, (nor the conviction among Zionists that) they cannot be satisfied with Palestine alone, that they must have not only all of Palestine but Trans-Jordan, parts of Syria and Lebanon, parts of Iraq and Egypt as well…” Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., CIA officer who led Operation Ajax (TPAJAX) to overthrow Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953. He was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. From a lecture to the US National War College in 1948.

    Comparison of practices across countries and periods presents theoretical and methodological problems. These are in part due to the aforementioned institutional constraints. For example, there are material incentives and penalties within academic as well as general research that reward or punish investigation and publication according to the degree of conformity with official, i.e. establishment opinion. A scholar who is successful at promoting established views on any subject would be rewarded with grants, promotions, publication, lecture fees and other favourable attention to his works. The reverse applies. A well-rewarded scholar serves as a model for correct scholarship and indirectly a monitor against deviance. The capacity to reward, also known as patronage, is also the ability to propagate views, defined questions and types of research product desired. It implies the capacity to suppress other views, if only by the stampede for patronage, which a generous investor triggers. This is often called “soft power” in contrast to exile, imprisonment or assassination of dissidents—hard power.

    Caroll Quigley argued forcefully (The Anglo-American Establishment From Rhodes to Cliveden, 1981) that one of the principal accomplishments of the Round Table/ Milner Group was to dominate the institutions that wrote and disseminated the history of the British Empire. From fellowships at All Souls and other Oxford colleges in their gift to ownership or control of the newspapers of record and the major publishing houses, members of what would become the Royal Institute for International Affairs (and its imperial franchises in the US — the Council on Foreign Relations — and Commonwealth), “legitimate” history could be propagated and alternative histories excluded. The revolving doors between government and academia also gave the mouthpieces of the Empire the additional credibility lent by access to decision-makers and the official record, both public and confidential. Herbert Hoover, in his capacity as head of the private-public partnership Commission for Relief in Belgium and later the US Food Administration, contributed to this effort after the Great War by confiscating untold volumes of government archives wherever he dispensed “aid” to the distressed countries after the war had ended. The Hoover Institution at Stanford received his loot by bequest thus assuring that this data remained in private hands. After World War II the occupation forces repeated the procedure by capturing the archives of the Axis wherever they went. Access to this treasure has remained subject to the control of friendly agents to this day. Hence the evidence of what conquered nations actually intended or did can be selectively disclosed in ways that are consistent with the established history. Alternative research is largely derived from either accidental discovery or inference. Such alternatives can always be attacked because they necessarily rely on interpretive methodologies at odds with the published record where no “smoking guns” are available. Moreover, the sheer volume of redundant accounts of the official history propagated by those same leading publishing houses and academic institutions effectively buries the alternative publication landscape.

    No later than with the inception of the Manhattan Project, the leading sciences were captured by the national security state. The largesse expended to produce atomic weapons and other vile instruments of death created a scholarly and scientific cartel of enviable wealth. Those who did not benefit directly by participation in death and destruction science were induced to shape their work so that it would qualify for funding at the various troughs the national security state had built. The comprehensive focus of all scholarship and scientific research on classified development projects included the imposition of an extensive security system including loyalty tests and secrecy oaths. In short, participation in funded research required membership or at least submission to the rules of the national security cult, not unlike the induction practices for the infamous NSDAP paramilitary organisations.

    Britain, as a monarchy, constitutionalism notwithstanding, retained a long tradition of regulated scholarship and research inherited from the Latin Church where the Crown assumed the authority of the Papacy and Episcopate. The extension of this system and practice to North America was a logical consequence of the Round Table project. Cecil Rhodes, and presumably his executor Lord Rothschild, was determined to modernize and thus preserve the British Empire, especially by “recovering” the United States as a member of the English-speaking commonwealth. The intention behind Winston Churchill’s propaganda, A History of English-speaking Peoples (started in 1937 and published in 1956-58 in four volumes), aside from earning money to redeem his chronic indebtedness, was to popularize the idea that America and the Empire (to be renamed more innocuously the Commonwealth) were one race destined to rule the world for the usual benefits its acolytes ascribed to it—democracy, free trade, etc. The meanwhile infamous CIA “Mockingbird” operation emerged from established British intelligence (covert action) practice.

    The ability to wage psychological warfare or promote criminal enterprise was centralized in the US very early, despite the republican and federal structure of the State, because its ruling elite had the benefit of treating the country as terra nulla, exterminating the indigenous culture and brainwashing those it selectively admitted to its shores. Despite all claims to diversity today, the “melting pot” myth was a 20th century invention by its propagandists, i.e., the advertising and public relations industry. That machine grew from the massive economic concentration that accelerated after the 1893 depression. Although the Standard Oil trust was dissolved by enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), cartels continued to be formed. Rothschild agent JP Morgan negotiated the merger that resulted in US Steel. General Electric, General Motors and American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and other conglomerates gained control over the US economy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 gave control over the country’s fiscal and economic policy to an Anglo-American banking cartel functioning through a parastatal “system” which preserved the illusion of a de-centralized economy while consolidating the foundations for the permanent war economy that the US became. The necessity to sell the output of these massive industrial enterprises promoted warmongering and consumerism. The advertising and public relations industry became the American version of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

    After the Great War, the Volstead Act (1919) that enforced the 18th Amendment that introduced prohibition also made crime ripe for national organization. Prohibition of alcoholic beverages was depicted as an anti-drug measure when in fact it was part of a variety of anti-immigrant political legislation. Wine and beer consumption was common in the social venues of Germans (socialists) and Italians (anarchists) and other politically threatening working class elements. Their meeting places could be closed and social events circumscribed on the pretext that illegal alcoholic beverages were consumed, thus disrupting unwanted political activism. “Organized crime has traditionally made its profit from providing goods and services people are not supposed to want… Prohibition was responsible for the organization of crime on a national scale and it was the genius of Al Capone to realize that the way to proceed was to organize crime on the model of national business organizations or corporations.” Thus organized crime as “counter-business” is primarily concerned with control over people. (Peckham, 1995). In fact, contrary to the Hollywood history, organized crime owes its effectiveness not to Sicilians but to the crime cartel led discretely by Meyer Lansky. It was far more dramatic and politically advantageous to put Italians in the limelight, initiating a standing tradition by which the term “Mafia” is applied almost exclusively to undesirable immigrants. At no time was there a serious decrease in alcohol consumption. However the federal and state police forces together with their counter-enforcers could protect the development of the legal and illegal drug cartels.

    This natural and incestuous relationship was instrumentalized for the establishment of the US national security apparatus. (Douglas Valentine, The Strength of the Wolf, 2004; The Strength of the Pack, 2010)  National crime meant national law enforcement and international crime meant international (extra-territorial) policing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics were the precursors to what is called euphemistically today the “Intelligence Community”.

    National drug cartels needed national control over venues, points of sale as well as marketing vehicles. The wealth generated also had to be laundered. The most natural downstream extension of organized counter-business was the entertainment industry. Not only racetracks, gambling casinos where permitted, bars and houses of prostitution (with the attendant human trafficking) were used. Drug money (alcohol and narcotics profits) created the studio system in the film industry, i.e. Hollywood. The “lifestyle” of the famous and temporarily rich appearing on the silver screen was rightly criticised by the residues of Puritan America—if somewhat hypocritically—as a major source of corruption, both overt and covert. The social managers in Washington and more discrete locations recognized the magnificent power in the Hollywood cartel for instilling whatever tastes or opinions were needed among the entertained public. War Department money enriched Du Pont and other weapons manufacturers. It also filled the coffers of those who produced the thousands of films promoting war against whomever the ruling elite had designated as enemy. As Malcolm X once pointed out the American propaganda machine was able to turn Germans from friends to enemies and back to friends again in a space of time in which no effort was made to alter the perception of Blacks as inferior.

    Just as in Britain, the Anglo-American Establishment controlled most of the print media directly. The entertainment industry and the drug system were managed at arm’s length. The cartel was assisted in its international mission by discriminatory legislation that placed Hollywood product in a highly competitive advantage capable of overwhelming the film industries of all other countries. Winning the Second World War meant that with the exception of France, American movie conglomerates were able to flood the world with the “American Way of Life” as defined by the moguls of Southern California and their financial backers, both licit and illicit.

    The business corporation had evolved into the single most effective means of power projection. Its single-mindedness, reduced rhetorically to the pursuit of profit, made it efficient in regulating the “market” whether for goods, services or ideas. The legality of the business was irrelevant for the organizational form. Legality is merely a criterion for public appearances, not underlying purposes or methods.

    It has been one of the singular deficiencies of common education that attention is devoted to formal rules and government that have little to do with the actual processes of rule. Even those who study the ecclesiastical tradition of business education from the late 19th century are only taught computation. Altogether the strict compartmentalization of what counts as socially relevant knowledge prevents all but a tiny few from ever recognizing how any significant decision is made or executed. Even those who devote their energy to exposing conspiracies, real or imagined, neglect the published and advertised rules and procedures by which Business, that is to say the business corporations, trusts and similar entities are constituted and governed. They do not analyse the principal-agent conflicts that comprise an important part of business litigation. The intricacies and complexities are indeed daunting. Yet even a rudimentary grasp of the allocation of power and authority and its operation would reveal more than a thousand books on political science.

    In the US, millions of people occupy single-family dwellings, which they call their homes while they pay over their lifetimes two to three times the ostensible purchase price to a bank to redeem a mortgage bond before they die. This is called in the vernacular “home ownership”. Peter Drucker, a liberal among the Austro-fascists who came to rationalize modern economic exploitation, argued years ago that Americans were all shareholders since their deductions from their pay, essentially deferred compensation, was invested through pension funds in the nation’s economy. Hence, according to Drucker the mere voter had been elevated to the status of mass capitalist. What he did not say was that these pension funds would be held by cartels of asset managers. The most infamous of those hedge funds, better called plantation funds perhaps, are the big three, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. These corporations, owned and managed by a miniscule clique of financial magnates, control virtually all the economic assets of Drucker’s popular capitalists. John D Rockefeller did not control much of the world’s oil industry by prospecting for oil but by rendering it impossible to pump oil from the ground without paying him for the privilege. His Standard Oil controlled everything, directly or indirectly, before the well and after the well, upstream and downstream. This gave Standard Oil what the US Defense Department calls “full spectrum dominance”, which he shared with what were once six other “sisters”. Although as mentioned above, the trust was dissolved by court order, more than a century later the Standard Oil successors, Exxon and Mobil, are still in the top four worldwide. Most of the world’s media is owned by six corporations, National Amusements, Disney, TimeWarner, Comcast, News Corp, and Sony. Whatever one believes the purpose of “media” to be, it is not free and certainly not democratically organized.

    Whatever one believes about the nature of the “market”, “democracy” or even something as banal as consumer choice, we live in a world in which three financial entities, six media corporations and four energy companies exercise effective control over fundamental instruments of power: money, information and fuel. Needless to say they control a lot more. So when the 0.1 or more accurately the 0.01% are mentioned there is no need to be abstract. We can talk about an almost microscopic portion of the human population that decides what is good for themselves and how they get it from us. They may be what Larry Fink and his friends like to call “passive investors”. However they own the State and therefore have the capabilities at their disposal to be exceptionally active to increase the value and power of their investments—value and power that can only come at our expense.

    What we are told we know about the world (what constitutes accepted “knowledge”) and what is deemed important are matters decided under the foregoing conditions. If we do not understand the extent and depth of control we cannot imagine the full meaning of what Stuart Ewen called Captains of Consciousness (1976). He explored the invention of public relations (propaganda or public diplomacy) in his 1986 book PR! A Social History of Spin, which formed the basis of an Adam Curtis film, Century of the Self (2002). The economic concentration that began in the late 19th century continued unabated by war, war against the body, against populations and against the mind.

    Consciousness became an industrial product first by training humans to identify with the consumer goods they did not need but were expected to buy with money they did not have. Thus like the home mortgage, the individual or family invested a lifetime of earnings in constant replacement of things designed to be obsolete or worn out almost as soon as the purchase price had been paid. Thus opportunities for long-term security were compulsively squandered. Excess wages paid to workers in an expanding empire were recovered through artificially high rates of consumption. Once this kind of extraction was exhausted—or in the case of the West rendered ideologically superfluous—the individual himself was converted into a self-consuming product.

    The defeats inflicted upon the post-WWII independence movements, by primarily US wars, were also suffered by those in the industrialized West who had struggled to end historical racial oppression at home. This process was highly selective but no less brutal. The most influential leaders among Black Americans fighting to end racial discrimination and oppression were assassinated, imprisoned or driven into exile. This wave of murders occurred within a relatively short space of time at the end of the 1960s in the US and continued beyond its borders far longer, e.g. Guyana scholar and activist, Walter Rodney was murdered in 1980. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968.

    Norman Finkelstein (The Holocaust Industry, 2000) who is possibly the first American scholar to openly criticize the American Jewish establishment and what has become the central consciousness myth in America and hence in the world of consciousness the US makes and shapes. In order to explain his position, he addresses the relationship of Jews to other groups in US society. The Holocaust is first and foremost an event portrayed as exemplary of Jewish victimhood. Hence Finkelstein asked how Jewish Americans stand as victims along with other victims in the US, in particular the “founding victims”, the African slaves who as James Baldwin said to the Cambridge Union (1965)—built America. The history books and Hollywood films portray American Jews as the allies of Black Americans in their struggle for human rights. (They do not talk about Jewish slave traders or plantation owners.) He observed (that) “the end of Jewish ‘solidarity’ in the US began in the 1960s when Blacks in the North began to challenge the class position of Jews rather than the racial status as in the South… American Jewish elites turned to the Right to defend their class interests—this coincided with increased support for the occupation and colonization of Israel.” Whitney Webb, in her One Nation under Blackmail (2022) documents the intimate personal and political links of organized crime, Jewish “philanthropy” and the espionage business that operates behind and in addition to the “Holocaust Industry”, with many of the same managers.

    Is it a coincidence that between the murder of Malcolm X in 1965 and King’s 1968 assassination lay the Six Day War in 1967? During that war Israel attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding another 171 of the crew in an attempt to sink the vessel. Malcolm X was vilified but only executed after returning from the Hajj, when he declared that Black Americans must abandon their “victim” status and join with the rest of the world’s oppressed in facing the class war. King was not murdered after his Riverside Church sermon against the war in Vietnam but while in Memphis to support striking workers.

    If, as Finkelstein argues, organized Jewry saw reasons to support the civil rights movement in the 1950s because they comprehended them as “race” issues, was this a way of asserting the underlying Zionist argument that Jews constitute a race and also a victim race in a country where race was the most fundamental discriminatory category, e.g., the old “one drop” rule. Calling attention to Jewish race directly would have been counter-productive. However, magnifying the factor race as a trans-historical category for oppression, while ostensibly working to eliminate Blacks from the race of the oppressed could be seen as an intuitive strategy for reserving the race card as a positive political instrument. As explained above, there is no way to know how sincere or pure individual motives for supporting the civil rights movement were among American Jews. However, it is possible to observe the trajectory between 1965 and 1980 when Ronald Reagan was appointed POTUS.

    There are those who assert that the key shift in US policy toward the settler-colonial regime was the assassination of John F. Kennedy, replaced by a POTUS notoriously pro-Israel. Laurent Guyénot and others argue that Kennedy’s determination to prevent the Tel Aviv regime from acquiring atomic weapons capability was a strong incentive for Mossad intervention. Johnson turned a blind eye to the Liberty attack and Dimona.  Taken as a whole one could argue that the wave of political murders that followed Kennedy’s assassination exemplifies the alignment of the ruling elite, which had been fighting decolonization tooth and nail, with the settler-colonial state in Palestine as a vehicle for de-centring the counter-revolution. The category of race oppression would have been cultivated, only to be hijacked by elites who needed a cast for their legitimation through victimhood.

    Finkelstein shows that the great magnification of the Holocaust in American life, and hence in all the means by which it is psychologically and economically managed, coincided with the victory of the IDF in 1967. An event, which had been insignificant in mass American consciousness, along with all but the American participation in the Second World War, was rapidly transformed into something more average Americans could identify than landmarks in its own history. Like “recovered memory” Americans have been taught (as well as all those taught by American mass media) that they were culpable for crimes committed in places even US soldiers had never been during that war. At the same time the crimes actually committed by their own forefathers on American soil were barely mentioned. Thus it seems this magnification not only served the interests of the Jewish elite in concealing class conflict.

    While there is no doubt that some twenty million or more people were killed in Eastern Europe and especially the Soviet Union by the Nazi regime’s war against the Soviet Union, it strains logic and plausibility to assert that the only mass murder was committed only against European Jews. Yet the story of the Holocaust that is taught and force fed everywhere in the West with the round number of six million, conspicuously omitting the elderly and disabled, communists, socialists, Roma and Sinti, and Slavs of every description. As details recorded not only by Finkelstein but also by many other historians show, the consciousness product Holocaust begins to corrode once one examines the claims for the numbers of survivors of the war and the camps. The 1961 film, Judgement at Nuremberg, dramatizes the discrepancy when the defence argument that no other war crimes were tried except the ones committed by the NSDAP regime is belittled rather than answered. Even Justice Jackson, for the prosecution, insinuated that the trials were problematic by warning that the manner in which they were held could be applied to others. The Soviet Union had insisted that war criminals be tried against the resistance of the British and Americans. As in many cases before and since, the Soviet Union was forced to accept the limitations of the trials in order to have any trials at all. Throughout the occupation, the Western allies conspired to prevent favoured persons from being arrested, let alone charged, hiding them or aiding their escape from jurisdiction. In the Asia-Pacific theatre they effectively prevented Soviet participation in war crimes trials against Japan. In other words, even the official proceedings against those accused of seeking to annihilate all Jews were tainted by serious irregularities. Yet this thoroughly corrupted official record has been used to support the claim that Jews were the paramount victims of World War II.

    Though too many people were worked to death, murdered individually and through mass actions by so-called Einsatzkommandos of the regular and Waffen-SS in Eastern Europe. The rescue of whole Waffen-SS divisions from war crimes prosecutions, e.g. the Waffen-SS Division Galizia composed of Ukrainians, further demonstrates the insincerity of the Western Allies in their condemnations. The story, the foundational myth of unique Jewish victimhood, is so riddled with inconsistencies and corruption that its integrity ought to be questioned by any serious historian—not to mention all those in the world who had nothing to do with World War II. Is it possible that the reason is the same as that for the peculiar change in the policy/ attitude of organized Jewish elites with regard to race in the US (and elsewhere)? Could it be that when the US regime defended its leniency and clemency for whole divisions, without even the pretence of criminal investigation in the interest of opposing alleged Soviet communist expansionism, it was expressing the crucial priority of class over any other interest?

    Suárez, Finkelstein, and Brenner (Zionism in the Age of Dictators, 1983 and 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, 2002) supply evidence from the Zionist leadership from the very beginning of the movement’s ascendancy to support such a hypothesis. When today’s regime in Kiev, supported by Zionists too, not only disregards the war crimes committed by Ukrainian Waffen-SS units, but has integrated military and paramilitary formations whose insignia are the same as those notorious divisions, e.g. SS-Leibstandart Adolf Hitler and Waffen-SS division Das Reich (the Azov Battalion) in its regular army in the continued war against Russia, it is hard to ignore the true war aims of the West—then and now. It was the foremost objective of Paul Hausser, one of the last commanders of these Waffen-SS forces (Das Reich, II SS Panzer Corps) after 1945 until his death to rehabilitate the Waffen-SS (which had been declared a criminal organization per se) as a brave, multi-national force defending European values, just like any other Western army. From the high official pronouncements throughout the EU, the Ukrainian Armed Forces with its Waffen-SS legacy fights Russia for everything the West holds dear. Just as do the armed forces of the settler-colonial state in occupied Palestine. Ukraine is a victim, as are those who invaded Palestine and declared their conquest to be the Jewish state of Israel in 1948.

    The campaigns waged to generate the “victims’ immunity” claimed by these regimes are atrocious. They both rely on a patent of racial superiority but unlike that of classical “white supremacy”, this racial superiority is based on alleged victimhood. They are not superior because of their virtue. Instead their superiority derives from the blanket assertion that all others are perpetrators, latent or active, against whom any measure can be justified as pre-emptive and therefore defensive. Every high official must and does use all the power at his or her disposal to defend the aggression by these self-identified victims.

    Self-identification has become a primary instrument of psychological manipulation and warfare. The self-identified not only asserts a whim or personal predilection. He also demands that he is the sole judge of what evidence may be used to support or refute his claims. As a strategy however it must have a mass component. One person alone cannot maintain self-identification against a crowd or against a group with a genuinely recognizable set of features that can be generally classified. Therefore, it is necessary to spread the dogma of self-identification. This is a corollary to the conversion of the individual consumer into a consumed individual, the emergent consciousness strategy of what for want of a better term can be called finance capitalism. That finance capitalism it has been argued above is the contemporary formation of the ruling class, the 0.01%.

    If we are experiencing the climax of a massive reaction in the West, one that has intensified since the French Revolution, then the process by which the latest manifestation of feudal empire, presents us with a kind of global feudalism. The doctrines promulgated for this restoration are studied and preached from such altitudes as the Swiss Alps. However, we can understand them better if we examine the history of the West’s paramount merger of power and consciousness, the Latin Church.

    Before the Holocaust, the spectre of anti-Semitism (a misnomer if one is talking about European Jews) was first raised by the Latin Church. It is the Latin Church that created the legal and ecclesiastical regime by which Jews in Europe were subjected to special laws of all sorts. Practically speaking however the most intense application of these laws and the persecution they entailed coincided with the wars of Aragon (Spain) to conquer then entire Iberian peninsula and Christianize it. That meant expelling Muslims and Jews who together inhabited the southern half of the peninsula. These wars were called the “Reconquista” so as to imply that Christian Aragon was recovering for the Faith what had been lost to the infidels. Missing from that story is the fact that North Africa — from Egypt to Morocco and Iberia had indeed been “Christian” to the extent that the great landowners who ruled the region self-identified as Christians. It was the systematic oppression of the masses in these “Christian” territories that led them to join the armies of Islam to drive this Christian elite out of the country and restore decent living conditions for them. Islam was an organized force for liberation that would scarcely have taken root had the region’s Christians been civilized people with a sense of justice and equity. When Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa) went to Rome it was as a leader of a putsch driven by this Christian landowning class. Rome was established as the capital of a schismatic church, one that fundamentally contradicted the ecclesiastical plurality that had been characteristic of Christianity with its several centres, e.g. in Antioch and Constantinople. Augustine’s Roman Catholicism claimed to be the sole centre of Christianity. Moreover, it usurped the de-centralized episcopate and installed an absolutist monarchy. The papacy with its cardinalate rejected the Greek elements of Christianity and adopted a form of government that more closely resembled the Talmudic rabbinate. It was therefore hardly surprising that the Pentateuch would be merged with the New Testament and that later the idea of “Judeo-Christian” culture would emerge. If one examines closely the economic policies and political enforcement measures that evolved as pontifical power grew, the papal persecution of Christians who maintained belief in the real poverty preached by Jesus in the New Testament since this was entirely at odds with the class that had established the Latin rite. It was entirely at odds with the beliefs of the great landowners that Islam had driven from North Africa and Iberia. (Islam once extended all the way to the southern provinces of France.) Just as Christianity had grown out of opposition to the Jewish elite’s abuse of the masses, Islam gained its foothold in the most Christian part of the world because the Christian elite so viciously oppressed the common people (Deschner, Die Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums). The Roman support for Aragon was not for the restoration of Christianity of the common man. Those Christians continued to live along with Muslims and ordinary Jews throughout the two caliphates. The House of Aragon was fighting holy class war as the Latin Church has from its inception. The peoples who have traditionally inhabited North Africa were mainly nomadic except in those areas like the Nile Valley where intensive agriculture was established or in the cities from which crafts and trade were practiced. To call a group of people a diaspora—in some elevated, sacrificial form—is another incomplete depiction of population movements in the African continent. Christians and Muslims practicing their religion in other parts of the world are not considered a diaspora, although both religions originate in the same place as the religion of Jews. The myth of the Reconquista and the suppression of Judaism in Spain are facets of political expansion and territorial conquest, not serial universal anti-Semitism. The myth of the unique diaspora is ahistorical since it actually negates any other genuinely diasporic population, e.g., Africans transported throughout the world by slave traders.

    Henry Lea, in his multi-volume studies of the Inquisition, made it very clear that the driving force behind the Holy and Universal Inquisition was economic enrichment and not matters of faith or heresy. Alexander Herculano, in his history of the Inquisition in Portugal, supplies ample evidence that the question of whether one was considered a “Jew” in the meaning of the act depended on how much one was able and willing to pay to the Portuguese crown or the Roman pontiff for protection. Certainly poor people were persecuted too. However, exile of Jews or heretics also provided the Portuguese crown with bonded labour for its colonial enterprises while selectively manipulating the domestic labour market, as well as for political ends. The historical monochrome by which the history of Europe is reduced to the persecution of Jews, creating an original sin for all Christians for which they must atone, is a serious distortion of a far more complex fabric of class conflict and struggles for power among the ruling elite.

    This supposed blind and irrational persecution of Jews in Europe—there is no evidence to prove it occurred anywhere else—cannot be sustained once the political-economic conditions are seriously examined. What can be said is that ecclesiastical operations and canon law were applied in the same way that anti-communist legislation and repression have been applied—and for the same reasons. At the same time, the realities of political-economic confrontation between merchants, landowners, clergy and military require a sober appraisal of the intra-class conflicts waged just as perniciously and dishonestly then as today. During the US war against Vietnam, the unwritten rule was “if you do not do what you are told (by the Saigon government or any of its officers and beneficiaries), then you are VC (a communist). If you were declared VC, you were an outlaw. (Valentine, The Phoenix Program, 1990) So if someone unaware of this or disregarding this were to examine the National Police records of the era they would no doubt find innumerable “communists”, with no way of knowing if those in the files were communists in fact. Communists have not been able to attain universal victim status, even though the Nazis killed communists before they even thought of killing Jews.

    Yet we still have to consider the question: how did this universal Jewish victimhood become established as a dogma in the West? Naturally it is helpful to consider who is served by it. Clearly it is not only Jews who profit from this status. It has been a source of unending contention whether the benefits that accrue to the settler-colonial state are primary or incidental to the institution of Jewish victimhood. I would argue that Jewish victimhood is not even primarily a benefit enjoyed by the regime in Tel Aviv. Finkelstein has shown how it benefits the organized Jewish elite as a running extortion racket. However, as I have tried to show above, that extortion racket is just one operation in a web of activity driven by the 0.01%, those nameable and unnamed who presently own and operate the world’s drug, weapons, money-laundering, and primary resource cartels. However, more than that the concept of Jewish victimhood stands really for class victimhood. The ruling class itself, from the moment it adopted the Latin rite, has endeavoured to present itself as the victims for whom salvation is intended. Jesus did not die to save the poor. He died to save the rich. That is the literal reading of the Passion and it is the only one that makes sense. Given that the Vulgate is largely a forgery over the ages, it is no wonder that the central document upon which Christianity is supposedly based was prohibited to the masses of the faithful upon pain of death until the Reformation. (Another interpretation of the Reformation is beyond the scope of this discussion.) The Roman Church has devoted centuries of effort proving that poverty and damnation are the wages of sin and that the poor deserve their lot. Every attempt, including the last major effort in Latin American liberation theology, to change this dogma and practice has been viciously suppressed by the hierarchy. The first pontiff to retire rather than die in office (Joseph Ratzinger, a child of the Hitler Youth and the close cooperation between the Vatican and the NSDAP) was the leader of that most recent wave of purges.

    The portion of the world’s population with the most relative wealth to plunder is still concentrated in North America and Western Europe. They have long ceased to pay their tithes or even go to mass or prayers. The Latin Church and its semi-autonomous Protestant sisters are sustained mainly by the unaccounted wealth accumulated in the past or state subsidies. Although the current pontiff still enjoys the professional media attention and due respect among the faithful in all the poor and populous nations, there is no growth potential where there is still cash to be had. The short-lived Soviet Union and with it the Red threat also lost its salvific attraction. Only the professional killers and sadists were willing to drive through desert sands in search of Muslims for the sake of their souls. A return to the 11th century requires the kind of crusades that enriched the Church then. Quo vadis?

    The ruling elite has always been cutthroat and vicious. A major function of their charity is to pay for a better image or assuage opposition when it is impossible or inopportune to exterminate it. So we are constantly served performances that suggest that either there is no ruling elite with shared interests and purposes or that that elite is incapable of overcoming its internal conflicts, thus depriving it of the vast plenitude of power needed to rule us. In fact, the ruling elite constitutes a critical mass of individuals who are born and die but who also reproduce. They reproduce organically like other mammals. However, they also create structures capable of cultivating future members and preserving the class cohesion needed to dominate the rest of us who have no class cohesion, despite regular efforts to instil it. While tyrannicide has its obvious attractions, the hydra-like character of class power means that no sooner is a Rockefeller, Gates or Soros gone, either naturally or assisted, someone else grows into his place. Like the birth and death cycle to which we are all subject, the struggle to deal with the ruling class never ends. There is no salvific moment in which the heavens open to deliver a shower of love, happiness and justice. What class cohesion offers the members of the ruling class are simplifications. With few exceptions if they have to choose between us or one of their own, we will lose. And yet they are also biological individuals whose personal tastes and styles need to be satisfied. The stronger eat the weaker in their homes too.

    That means there are different goals for different members of the ruling class. They harmonize to the extent that class interests prevail. However, the impact of their actions is rarely uniform. The problem is generally solved by betting on both sides of any risk. Thus, the hedge fund is the most natural form for the retrograde process of neo-feudalism. When someone like Klaus Schwab repeats the dogma, “you will own nothing and be happy”, he is as ambiguous as a true oracle can be. The hedge fund “owns” nothing and therefore has no risks of loss, but controls all the essential cash flow and therefore can be happy. The rest of us own nothing because all forms of material title are to be converted to various types of lease or rental agreements where possession is merely a transitional status but payment a permanent obligation. Feudalism in the 11th century was not a popularly chosen societal form. It was the sanctification of theft and extortion, which the Roman pontiff tried to monopolize. It was sustained by the active policing of the feudal gangs led by barons and princes. It was justified by the ideological propaganda operations of the clergy in the Latin Church. Sometimes the priest/ missionary came first and then the armed brigands, sometimes the brigands came first. In the end the indigenous culture was absorbed or destroyed and the people subjugated. Taking their land and whatever religions they may have had were both necessary if the theft was to remain permanent.

    Since the defeat of the Soviet Union, after the decolonization process had been stopped dead in its tracks, the crusade to steal back everything that had been accumulated by ordinary people over the past two centuries began in earnest. There is no longer a cohesive ecclesiastical instrument and sufficient blind faith in traditional modes of belief. Ironically the traditional modes of belief have become a threat to those charged with organizing the restoration. Whether in the Orthodox Church or the conservative Latin congregations, the ruling class finds resistance built around preservation of family and old-fashioned morality. It is no wonder then that these traditional religious communities are under attack from the armed propaganda gangs of Wokism and transhumanism. These ideologies were developed from what could be called cultural reverse engineering.

    When the real social movements were decapitated, they were only partially destroyed. Instead, academically trained cadres were promoted to replace the dead or neutralized activists. They brought with them synthetic ideologies that were made by a kind of recombinant intellectual process, like gene editing. The basic liberation language was dismantled and the dangerous parts replaced with narcissistic code. Self-identification became an individual choice not the recognition of one’s consciousness in a community of real human beings sharing the same material and spiritual conditions. The identity itself becomes the consumable product. In order for this identity to be fully commodified it also had to “perform” like a commodity, i.e. subject to unlimited power of the market. Previously the dissatisfaction or fear induced by the propaganda apparatus was to be satisfied through purchase and consumption of goods and services. Since the body itself—the consumer—is that which is to be consumed a contradiction arises. This contradiction has to be expressed in some material threat or fear. Thus, Wokism achieves its insidious purpose by turning the “woke” person into an individual victim. The model for this chimeric victimhood is the universal Jewish victimhood fuelled by the Holocaust story machine. The total victim is threatened and persecuted by everything and by everyone who does not actively nurture the narcissism upon which this permanent immanent victimhood is based. That is the meaning of all this rhetoric about “safe environments”, “affirming care” and the hysterical chanting of whatever political slogans have been conceived to fuel the internal threat machine. One wears senseless face masks, accepts toxic injections, applauds the injuries to female athletes by male pugilists in skirts, and cheers institutional child abuse and medical mutilation as “affirming care”, while engaged in constant panic reactions to the latest bogus CO2 or pandemic scare. The woke person has established the right to be protected from unpleasant or dissenting utterances or experiences, especially if they could erode the carefully engineered edifice of narcissism. Liberty has been replaced by libertinism. Unwittingly – for most—they are adopting the archaic entertainments of the ruling class, offered as a sensuous reward for all the material well being they will surrender as a result of toxic substances or poisonous propaganda. The traditionalists are attacked for rejecting those poisons and because they support everything these new narcissists have been taught to despise. The woke are constantly threatened by the traditionalists who deprive them of their “safe environment”. On the other hand this gives them another opportunity to exercise victimhood.

    By now the social management strategy ought to be clear. Whereas the medieval crusades offered the poor salvation if they would take the cross and die to conquer the Holy Land, the Woke faith is based on salvation offered to those who take the cross and crucify themselves, surrendering everything to those who not only have taken the Holy Land but are taking everyone else’s land too.

    In order to place the present conflict, most visible in the radical expansion of the mass murder perpetrated by the settler-colonial regime in Palestine as I write, in cultural historical context, I have argued that it is entirely legitimate to deduce the aims of an action, like a war, from the consequences of that action. In fact, such a studied conclusion is the only type of assessment we can ever make since the past is irretrievable. The character of any conclusion is inseparable from the kind of questions that are asked and the actions contemplated depending on the response to those questions. There is a significant relationship between the organized, sustained mass murder by the Tel Aviv regime and wider social-political-economic aims. Naturally there are inconsistencies and deficits in the information, which, were, they resolved, might permit more precise prediction of what can be found in the near or long-term future.  Yet there is a preponderance of consistency between the war waged in Palestine and the aims of those supporting the war in Ukraine against Russia. This consistency can be found on the one hand by examining the facts. On the other hand it can be found by recognising the “overlapping directorates” at work.

    Were the war waged to create Greater Israel the project of a fanatical sect in Tel Aviv, it would be apparent that such mild measures as removing the offending persons to another place, dead or alive, might suffice at least to diffuse the situation. But there is more at stake. Even though Arthur Koestler, who was no enemy of the settler-colonial regime, has been challenged on many points, his The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), draws conclusions from the historical conversion of the Khazars (a people who inhabited the much of the area of today’s Eastern Ukraine) to Judaism. The Soviet era, Russian historian, geographer and ethnologist, Lev Gumilev called it “chimeric”.  By that he meant that a parasitical relationship. He argued that a fanatical Jewish sect, the Radhanites, essentially infiltrated the Khazar ruling class and converted them by decree to Rabbinical Judaism. This turned Khazaria into a “merchant octopus” which extended its commercial power both to the East and West. The power they enjoyed straddled the East-West land routes of international trade at the time. This empire collapsed in 965 after wars with Kieven Rus. If there was any diaspora it was not dispersal from the grounds of a mythical Solomon’s temple but the real dispersal of an empire in Central Eurasia (Guyénot, 2022, From Yahweh to Zion, 2018).

    When Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly that his regime was going to join with its partners to create some channel parallel to China’s new Silk Road and BRI, for which Iran had to be neutralized, could he have meant a restoration of the Khazar Empire and not just the expansion of the settler-colonial regime to the territories Kermit Roosevelt identified as the regime’s ambitions in 1948? In A Jewish State (1904), Theodor Herzl emphasized that Zionism aimed to create what in essence was a commercial empire not unlike Rhodes British South Africa Company (originally seeking to conquer from the Cape to Cairo), religion was the pretext but not the aim. (In fact, contrary to mass media depictions, the pious Jew has traditionally been viewed as a threat to the Zionist colonial project.) Could the man in Kiev who said once that he saw the Tel Aviv regime as a model for Ukraine have been uttering a vision intuitively or instructively underlying the verbosity between bomb explosions in occupied Palestine? Did he mean that Russians in the Donbass were “his Palestinians”? Tel Aviv officials were once routinely cited as telling Americans that the Palestinians are “our Indian problem”.

    If we imagine that the war aims are not those declared but quite different ones, then a cultural historical examination might offer another comprehensive interpretation. Namely, the class of people who really own important stuff, like the mass media, the oil channels, the money supply, are closely connected in every way. In a world that has seen the return of manufacturing and much of the world’s productive economy return to Asia, while the West has been de-industrialized and its population reduced to varying degrees of indebtedness and penury, why would not those owners, the great captains of finance capital, see their future power as the foot on the hoses that China and Russia would want between their productive economies and those countries where there is a demand for that output? Wouldn’t it be practical to be the troll at the bridge charging everyone to go across? Isn’t this kind of business something for specialists, like the one banks control? It should not be forgotten that while the outcome of the war with Russia remains uncertain, for many in the West forced to take one of the COVID injections it is their personal future that is uncertain.

    Whether this mass murder eliminates enough or all of the Palestinians the Tel Aviv regime has been trying to destroy for the past century, the flow of refugees of all sorts from this region has been uninterrupted since the US launched its first assault on Iraq in 1991. The secret recruitment of mercenary terrorists under cover of religious radicalism has also continued unchecked since Zbigniew Brzezinski conceived the terrorist war in Afghanistan at the end of the 1970s.  Thus, the IMO will be assured of a continuous flow of displaced persons. These displaced persons are the true “human shields” behind which organized crime and state terrorism are waged. The war against Russia or China, just as Orwell’s 1984 described is first and foremost a war against the civilian populations of the world. These they will transfer to wherever labour is needed at the expense of the indigenous populations where these refugees are injected. As the indigenous of the Ukraine, Middle East and other attractive zones for exploitation are evacuated or eliminated, the underlying land and resources are confiscated by those who have been funding the wars and the migration in the first place. As I have argued elsewhere, global cash flow is to be matched by globally managed human trafficking. These are realities. This business is being conducted in just this manner. Does it mean that the intent of the actions is to create this system of extraction flows? That is the wrong question. We cannot change intent. What we can change is action and the kinds of consequences agreed by the righteous to be inimical to the welfare of real human beings. It helps if we have a grasp of the enormous cultural historical context in which the assessments must be made and courses of response found.

    The same organized criminality that formed the financial and managerial base of the world’s biggest propaganda industry shares power with those who build the weapons of mass depopulation, i.e., the guns and pharmaceuticals sectors. Needless to say interlocking directorates and socialization through exclusive institutions from birth until bodily demise instill the shared values that lead Schwab to preach without the least embarrassment that the World (as property of the elite for whom he speaks) is threatened by the rest of us. When the prelates of the World Economic Forum preach that the “Planet” must be saved, what they really mean is that their world is a victim of popular persecution. By calling this feigned victimhood the threat to the Planet, the mass of ordinary inhabitants is implicated, in fact, vociferously accused, of destroying their world. Their answer to this threat is to destroy us. However, it is more efficient if we can be persuaded to destroy ourselves. So we are commanded to self-identify as threats to “the Planet”. Those who see the Planet as their property also take George Carlin seriously. “The Planet is not going anywhere, we are…” The Zionist war against Palestinians is the ostentatious crucifixion that exemplifies unambiguously the depth of viciousness with which the universal victims represented on Swiss ski slopes and spas wage class war. The evil of communism was used to deny genuine independence and self-government to millions in Africa, East Asia and Latin America. Now the evil of carbon dioxide, a gas essential for human life as well as plant life on Earth as a pretext for continuing to deny and obstruct human development in all those same countries. Their populations are excessive and can only be supplied with energy and food at the expense of “the Planet”—i.e. those victims represented by the annual councils in Davos (and the less publicized or secret meetings). Morse Peckham wrote, “Man does not live by bread alone, but mainly by platitudes.” Victimhood is a part of the rhetoric of power. It has to be repeated in every conceivable form as a means of controlling the range of mass behaviour. The ideology of victimhood does not veil the terrorism and mass murder in Palestine perpetrated by the Tel Aviv regime. Instead it sanctifies it, converts it into a holy sacrifice. It is the logical extension of the pectoral cross worn by the Roman pontiff and other prelates who preached the original crusades against the inhabitants of the critical interface between the centre of the world economy and population and the real victims of Western tyranny in Africa.

    The Portuguese and Spanish were the first of the barbarian kingdoms that went to sea to circumvent the bottleneck of the Middle East and the land routes linking a sparsely populated peninsula of the Eurasian continent, impoverished and oppressed by its feudal lords, temporal and spiritual. The recovery of China and the core of human population have meant that the seas are no longer the only channels of communications among the peoples of the world. Captain Mahan’s (The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1890) doctrine is now seriously challenged by the BRI, which could easily link China to Africa as it once was before the Portuguese pirate fleets disrupted the Indian Ocean trade five centuries ago (Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, 1998). This strategic transformation cannot be blocked by direct confrontation; only by annihilation (atomic war) or perpetual war waged by the masters of espionage, covert action, and psychological warfare, in the service of the oligarchic cult of finance capital in the West and their vassals throughout the world. Armed propaganda is the tradition of the Church militant and its descendants in London, Brussels, and New York. The success of the COVID campaign in paralysing the world’s commerce demonstrates the power still held by that 0.01%. This war has only really begun.

    The post Economical Explanations: Reflection on the Aims of Past Wars and Wars to Come first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Salah El Din – Salah El Din El Ayoubi – Saladin and Richard the Lionheart

    Jerusalem’s hard-fought liberation, now in process, is a recapitulation of the Christian Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries, this time, not by the knight on a white horse of legend, but through the long march of guerilla warfare by the much maligned Shia. This follows on the liberation of Iran from its Judeo-Christian yoke in 1979 and Iraq 25 years later, ironically by the US, forming the second Shia majority state. But it is the Shia minority of Lebanon that holds the keys to Jerusalem. Their 40% of the Lebanese population punches well above their weight in a fractious country split among Christians, and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

    Hezbollah was forged in the heat of Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s. The then-rag-tag militia killed over 600 Israeli soldiers, forcing Israel to retreat in humiliation, its first such defeat ever, and by a nonstate actor, a very bad omen, which Israel’s almost daily murder of Palestinians every since cannot erase, and which culminated in 10/7, Israel’s own private 9/11, bringing us to Israel’s carpeting bombing of Lebanon.

    It is the Shia of Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen we have to thank for preventing Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians from proceeding smoothly. Sunnis will have to wake up if they don’t want to be left behind by their Shia brothers, their self-satisfied Sunni hegemony cracked open, exposed as the ‘sick man’ of the Middle East, i.e., undermined by imperialism, the same compromised role that destroyed the Ottomans, created post-Ottoman puppet Sunni states, and planted in Palestine a cursed tree, the Quran’s poisonous zaqqum, rooted in the center of Hell, aka the Jewish state.

    The Saudis long ago were compromised through a voluntary pact with first British then US imperialism but, until the rise of Muhammed Bin Salman (MBS), were at least keeping up the trappings of Islamic ritual, jealously guarding the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The quietist Saudis effectively blackmailed the Palestinians into accepting an interminable Israeli murderous occupation and creeping (now galloping) theft of their lands, financing Palestinian refugees, but with no promise of liberation, effectively working with not against the enemy.

    Now MBS has let the westernizers loose in his kingdom, discarding the hijab, promoting concerts of trashy western rock music, buying British football teams (Newcastle United in 2021). Trump’s Abraham Accords were supposed to lead to a new Middle East with Israel and Saudi Arabia as the kingpins. With October 7 (10/7), the bottom fell out of MBS’s fantasy of a Saudi-Isreali hegemony over the Middle East, leaving the Palestinians in permanent limbo or exile. It didn’t seem to matter to the Saudis and Gulf sheikhs, who long ago lost interest in Palestine. In thie face of this complete betrayal of the Palestinians, of Islam itself, the Shia are the only Muslims to resist the sacrilege of permanent Jewish rule over Palestine and the destruction Islam’s holy sites to build a Third Temple.

    Orthodox Sunni Muslims have always feared the moral purity which Shiism was founded on, in opposition to the more worldly, pragmatic Sunni majority. This very productive, though at times deadly, stand-off between the two strands of Islam began with Muhammad’s young cousin Ali being the first convert to Islam after the Prophet’s wife Hadija, Ali’s heroic military career defending the religion during the early, perilous battles immortalized in the Quran, through to the murder of him and his family by power-hungry rivals. The draw of idealism and justice has kept Shiism alive, and from what we see today, it is the saving grace of Islam, pushing back today against deadly secularism. Ultimately, the Sunni will have to admit that the Shia are not just an inconvenient footnote (like MBS et al would have liked to make of the Palestinians).

    20th century ummah challenges

    All Muslims will agree that the unity of the ummah is the first, most urgent, priority. The Shia, though outliers, strive for this even more, as they face hardline Sunnis who consider them apostates and would be happy to cut them loose or wipe them out. The official Sunni position has wavered over the centuries, but generally grudgingly accepts them. The imperialists of course were happy to use ‘divide and rule’, and they quickly turned a peaceful ummah into quarreling sectarians in India, Pakistan, Iraq, wherever they had the chance.1 This only really worked for post-Ottoman Iraq and Lebanon, both with large Shia communities mixed (peacefully) with Sunni. But the 20th century was one of increasing division, chaos, everywhere in the ummah. It is still on life support, held together now by the Shia thread, the ‘Shia crescent’, the only link the ummah has to Jerusalem and the Palestinians as they face annihilation, their Sunni brothers helpless or unwilling to save them.

    The British official who fashioned the new Iraq in the 1920s, Gertrude Bell, had no time for Shia, who were the majority then as now, but Gertrude had no time for democracy for the dark-skinned. I don’t for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil. She knew how the ulama in Iran had defeated the Shah on his westernizing mission, the famous tobacco fatwa of 1890 that forced the shah to cancel the British concession, and supported the constitution movement for democracy in 1905. The British had no interest in creating a radical Shia majority state and put in place a Sunni puppet king.

    Iraq’s long and violent history since then finally undid Gertrude’s machiavellian scheming in 2003, bringing to an end a truly disgusting Sunni dictatorship, and the advent of the first Shia-majority state, the positive effects of which are still being discovered. We can thank the US imperialists (even a broken clock is right twice a day) for stumbling on a winning formula for Islam (and for themselves, for the world). By genuinely promoting electoral democracy (along with opening Iraq to foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil), it started the ball rolling on Sunni-Shia relations everywhere, including US client number one, the Saudi dictator-king, with his truly downtrodden Shia, who sit on Saudi oil and get only repression, disenfranchisement and lots of beheadings as thanks.

    The 20th century path that brought us to our present apocalyptic scenario was long and tragic. The Ottoman ‘sick man of Europe’ collapse at the end of WWI, invaded by the British and French (their Russian allies had already collapsed leaving more spoils for the victors). The end of the caliphate? For atheist Turkish dictator Mustafa Kemal that would have been fine. The Muslim ummah, both Sunni and Shia, anticipated this and had already rallied in its defense with the Khilafa Movement in 1919-1920, supported by other anti-imperialists, including Gandhi and India’s Hindus, who saw the British divide-and-rule as the poison that kept Indians subjugated.

    Kemal got his way in 1924, accusing Indian Muslim leaders, who came all the way to Ankara to beg the Turkish strongman to maintain the caliphate, of foreign election interference. As if the caliphate was a Turkish plaything The shock wave reverberated around the world culminating in the World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931 at the behest of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, bringing together Muslim leaders from around the world. A truly historic moment in the history of the ummah. But the caliphate was already a pipe dream, with growing Jewish immigration to British Palestine, the intent being to create a Jewish state, an imperial outpost to control the Middle East.

    Everywhere, the Muslim world was occupied now by nominally Christian world empires, British, American, French, Dutch, the House of War (vs the ummah, the House of Peace), the the financial strings predominantly in Jewish hands, accounting for the plum Palestine being selected as a future Jewish state, purchased by the elite Jews who financed the British empire. Except for Shia Iran, which was never fully occupied and given an imperial make-over. But Iran also had its atheist modernizer, Reza Shah, who, having tricked the ulama into giving him their blessing initially, left them alone though marginalized. Though he weakened the religious establishment, outlawed the veil, and built industry and infrastructure, he was not so fanatically anti-Muslim He was anti-imperialist, and when WWII broke out, he was deposed by the British to prevent the shah from sending oil to the Germans. That occupation wrankled, and all the foreign devils, British, Russia, American were given the boot when the war ended.

    It was the Shia ulama of Iran who were the only ulama to resist imperialism,2 supporting the first genuinely independent prime minister, Mossadeq, in 1951 in his effort to kick the British out and take control of the economy. The normally quietist, conservative religious elite had been radicalized despite themselves. When the US moved in to foment a coup in 1953, the invaders were able to get a few religious leaders to bless their scheming, but this blatant imperialist act galvanized all Iranians, and eventually led to the overthrow of the second and last Pahlavi shah in 1979. Newly religious Iran was joined by newly religious Turkey with the coming to power of Recep Erdogan in 2000, who refers to his followers as ‘grandchildren of the Ottomans’. Traditional Sunni-Shia rivals, Turkey and Iran are far from bosom buddies, but the current crisis of the ummah means that differences are put aside.

    The second stumbling block for Muslims was the secular reaction to imperialism, Arab nationalism, now competing with Turkish and Persian nationalisms, fashioned as secular identities, undermining a united Islamic identity, central to the ummah. Egypt’s Nasser and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein are the two most notorious nationalist leaders, who led their countries in a death spiral of violent repression of Islam, corruption and failed military ventures.

    Nationalism was foreign to Muslims, never the defining ideology, and these nationalist movements failed, with chauvinistic Sunni radicals morphing into violent pseudo-Islamic movements – al-Qaeda, ISIS and Islamic State–Khorasan Province.

    With the current US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians, the ummah is coming together again, realizing this is the make-or-break moment for Islam, and that these nationalisms are evaporating in the heat of crisis. Even the perfidious MBS casually announced that there would be no Israeli-Saudi new order until the Palestinians have a real state. The ice is cracking, moving, as Palestine’s spring takes shape out of the Israelis’ ashes and rubble.

    Turkey and Iran had secular capitalism imposed from the top to keep the imperialists at bay. Egypt had a brutal British occupation until the 1950s, creating the same secular capitalism as Turkey and Iran, but then came socialistic dictator Nasser in 1951, injecting a new political element. Sadly, he too refused to acknowledge Islam as the bedrock of society, a more genuinely socialistic way of life, his secular vision collapsing with Israeli invasion, leaving Egypt, the largest Middle East country, far weaker now than either of its two Middle East rivals. The Arab states have all remained puppets of imperialism and remain cool to, even resentful of the new Shia vitality and presence. But the Arab masses support the Shia defiance of US-Israel, despising their Quisling leaders.

    Puppets and fledging actors

    Iran’s revolution in 1979 was bad news for the Saudis, leading to even greater repression of its Shia. Saudi suspicions and fear of Shia have been a terrible ordeal for the 10% of Saudis who are Shia, and a powerful Shia state would naturally push for justice. So instead of making peace with their Shia (and thus, with the new Iran), in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia (and Kuwait) spent $25b (i.e., gave US weapons producers $25b) in support of the brutal, mad thug, Saddam Hussein in the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). When Saddam invaded Kuwait, cashing his US-Saudi IOU for sacrificing half million Iraqi Sunnis-Shia to kill a half million Shia Iranians, Saudi Arabia was unhappy. Not only had Saddam failed to crush Shia Iran, his defeat would mean an angry Shia state next door, which could easily invade and overthrow him.

    So King Fahd invited the US forces into the kingdom to invade Iraq and keep the Saudi kingdom as head honcho of the Muslim world. I repeat: King Fahd allowed American and coalition troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian forces were involved both in bombing raids on Iraq and in the land invasion that helped to ‘liberate’ Kuwait, the so-called Gulf War (1990-1991). The ummah, the House of Peace, invaded and occupied by the House of War. MBS’s current free and easy secularism makes sense after all, but not for the ummah.

    Why would the US have gone to all the trouble to invade Iraq as part of ‘liberating’ Kuwait, and then leave the (truly odious) dictator Saddam in power? Ask weakling King Fahd, whose fear of a Shia-majority Iraq next door was even greater than his fear of a cowed, murderous Saddam. Pan-Arab nationalism – RIP.

    This enduring Sunni-Shia stand-off is the imperialists’ trump card. All the Arab countries are in varying degrees still US puppets, and persecute their Shia because they, the so-called rulers, are weak and fear the implicit critique of their weakness that the morally uncompromised Shia represent. Nigeria, Bahrain, Indonesia, Malaysia have all driven wedges between Sunnis and Shias when it was politically useful. The Sunni masses, looking for a way out of the imperialist straitjacket but educated to despise Shia, looked not to solidarity with all Muslims to fight the looming imperial enemy, but inward to past Sunni experience, the early four Rightly Guided Caliphs, for their inspiration. They downplay the fact that the finally one was Ali, the inspiration of the Shia as sole legitimate caliph of the whole lot. In the 1980s-1990s, frustrated Sunnis coalesced around radical Saudi Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda, various ISIS caliphate dreamers in central Asia, the Caucasus, Africa, internationally, with an unIslamic jihad condoning mass civilian deaths as a key tactic.

    This element continues to plague the Sunni world, the whole world. It has undermined the efforts to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The Ba’thists were outlawed, leaving the minority Sunni with nothing, so they preferred chaos and road bombs, but Shia long-suffering patience grudgingly brought together ‘good’ Sunni and all the Shia to fight the latest (Sunni) terrorists, ISIS et al.

    10/7 was an earthquake, not just for Israel but for Islam, the Sunni-Shia tremors finally syncing on that explosive day, pushing the Sunni establishment into Shia arms. All people of goodwill now rout for the Shia Hezbollah in their battle with Israel to protect the heart and soul of Islam. Paradoxically, this challenge was anticipated by the renewal of relations between the Saudis and Iran in March 2023, anticipating 10/7, an admission that Shia power could not be ignored in the new world order taking shape under China and Russia, quite apart from the central role Iran was now playing in protecting the Palestinians from total annihilation, with the Saudis watching with alarm from the sidelines as their position at the head of the Muslim world was being usurped by events on the ground, including from its own despised 10% Shia, now demanding the same rights as citizens that the Sunnis have.

    Democracy really is the answer

    It’s finally clear: Arab nationalism has been a flop, as has been Pakistan nationalism, where the 20% Shia must constantly fight Sunni chauvinists. Indian nationalism is worse, following the path of Israel, a racist Zionized Hindutva ideology that exclused all Muslims, Sunni or Shia. Sunni chauvinism under imperialism, taking refuge in nationalism, always undermines the ummah, unless the Shia are a sizable minority or majority, and the government is sufficiently representative. I.e., democratic.

    In hindsight, I would argue the road to the liberation of Jerusalem began with Iran’s revoluton in 1979, which put Palestine liberation at the top of its international agenda. The war launched by Iraq was supposed to steamroll through a weakened Iran, as ordered by Saddam’s backers Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, the US and Europe. (What a cynical, bizarre coalition!) Ayatollah Khomeini was brilliant and charismatic, but a poor politician, refusing to end the war when Saddam offered, hoping to liberate Iraq, leading to 100,000s more deaths and seriously weakening and tarnishing the revolution. His hubris was immortalized in telling anecdotes. My favorite: Pakistani dictator Zia had urged the shah in 1977 to crack down even harder on the rebels. When Zia met Khomeini as the shah’s successor a few years later, Khomeini merely asked politely for Zulfikar Bhutto’s life (Zia was Bhutto’s successor) to be spared. No dice. On the contrary, Zia advised Khomeini not to tangle with a superpower. Khomeini retorted he would never do such a thing and in fact always relied in the superpower. Ouch! That only made Zia persecute his Shia even more.

    Arab secular states can’t unite when they are headed by dictators like Assad, Nasser, the Jordanian and Saudi king-dictators. Corrupt dictatorships don’t make good allies. The need for democracy is obvious. Iraq hopefully can be the model for Sunni and Shia learning to work together again under a robust electoral democracy. Sunni and Shia lived more or less till Saddam and sons really began their madness.3

    The end of Saddam moved the Shia-Sunni ‘battle lines’ 200 miles west, now running through Baghdad, which was precisely what Gertrude Bell, Saddam and the imperialists had all tried to prevent. History takes its revenge. The chauvinistic Sunni hegemony of the Muslim world is finished. The Sunni hegemons tried to overthrow Khomeini and failed. The same battle took place 12 years later in Iraq and failed again due to Shia patience in the face of Sunni-inspired terror. Thousands of Saudi and Jordanian youth went to Iraq after 2003 to fight the occupation (and looming Shia hegemony) and die, just like they did in their misguided jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their violent self-sacrifice only digging the Sunni world deeper into a state of humiliation. 85% of ISIS in Syria working alongside the US imperialists are Saudi. They are there solely to fight the ‘sons of al-Alqami’, referring to the Shia vizier when the Mongols razed Baghdad in 1258.

    Now the Sunni are exposed as helpless in the face of Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, are actually helping ‘protect’ US-Israel from Iranian bombs intended for Israel. The Sunni world is humiliated, betraying Islam, kowtowing to not just the US but US-Israel. To defeat (Sunni-inspired) ISIS, the ‘good’ Iraqi Sunnis even had to welcome help from not just Iraq Shias (the army) but also Iran. It is high time to bury the hatchet of envy and suspicion, and join the Shia, if only because they hold the fate of the ummah in their hands.

    The ‘bad’ Sunnis (regime elites) are still supporting the US-led war on terror. Their goal is still to wreck the new, Shia-led Iraqi state and keeping the lid on their own pressure-cookers, looking over their shoulders at the (failed) Arab Spring of 2011. The Sunni elites do US-Israel’s work for it. At the same time, they are angry with the US for complicity in Shia revival, undermining House of Saud, contributing to the decline in its religious legitimacy. MBS’s secular turn is more a parody of soft power, which only undermines (Sunni) Islam. The Saudi treatment of its own Shia mirrors Israeli treatment of Palestinians.4 Sadly, it is only because Palestinians have some shred of legal independence as part of the post-WWII internationally agreed policy of decolonization that this instance of apartheid is being fought openly. Anti-Muslim apartheid is actually alive and well but hidden behind national borders (China, Myanmar).

    What remains of the insurgency in Iraq today is an alliance of Jordanians, Saudis and Iraqi Ba’thists. Syria and Saudi are both ripe for change, with Iraq and Iran as their models, but especially Iraq, with its more open, competitive elections and its large Shia population. The main legacy of the Iraq invasion was to make the Shia case, which means fighting Sunni extremism and terrorism, exposing the US Global War on Terror (GWOT) as a fraud (produced more (Sunni) terror), cementing Shiism as the adult in the room, holding the Islamic faith secure by a string, open to democracy.

    21st century the Shia century?

    This is already happening. Islamic Iran from the start allied with all anti-imperialist countries. Its revolution echoes the idealism of the Russia revolution of 1917, both of which were met by invasions by western powers and/or proxies, and both succeeding against all odds, based very much on ideological zeal for the good of mankind. Both also became authoritarian states, with elections but with limited choice. Iran’s elections are much more credible, and the election of reformers like Khatami and now Pezeshkian show there is room for real public debate. As with all countries victim to US ire, survival trumps all finer nuances, which are put on hold. Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. Iran’s allies are the anti-imperialist good guys.

    In contrast to the Arab states, with their muddled Islamo-nationalisms, which have failed to fashion a Sunni identity independent of imperialism, and which still exclude Shia. A shame that Shia find better allies on the secular left, with largely common political, economic and cultural goals, above all peace. Like the Jews at the heart of Bolshevism, Iraq’s Communist Party was full of Shia intellectuals (e.g., poet Muzaffar al-Nawwab). The Iraqi town Shatra in the Shia south was nicknamed Little Moscow. The Shia have a natural affinity for the secular left, supporting the underdog. The Iraqi Communist Party was reorganized after the Iraq war and its leader Hamid Majid Musa was part of the governing body the US set up. The communists wanted peace as do all communists, Islamic Iran and Iraq want peace (salam) more than anything. Neither the communists nor the ummah were/are aggressive, expansionist. Both offer(ed) a way of life that doesn’t have war built in as its engine. The communist alternative was social/state ownership and planning. The Islamic alternative is a mix of state direction/ownership and limited capitalism. There are no billionaires who aren’t emigres already. That kind of money lust is alien to a devout society or a communist one.

    Iran and Hezbollah are suffering Israel’s truly Satanic war crimes alongside their Palestinian brothers. Meanwhile the Gulf and Saudi sheikh-dictators, the Egyptian no-pretense-dictator, the Jordanian British-installed-king sit on the sidelines cursing the Palestinians for disturbing their sleep. They actually come to Israel’s aid – Egypt and Jordan are official allies of Israel – when Iran tries to hurt poor little Israel, as they already did in April 2024. The US is well aware that the Jordanian and Egyptian masses are very unhappy, but it relies on its local puppet dictators to keep the lid on the pressure-cooker, and is very cautious about exporting one-man-one-vote after its painful and expensive experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the former once again Taliban, the latter in league with Iran against the Great Satan, which just happens to include itself, US-Israel. So don’t hold your breath for US pressure to make its dictators relinquish power. 2011 was a close call, not to be repeated.

    As for the Palestinians, they were completely left out of the negotiations about their future following the 1973 Egypt-Israel war. Sold out by (atheist, Sunni) Sadat with an empty promise. The past half century has been unremitting hell for the Palestinians, who were kicked out of Jordan in the 1970s, many ending up in southern Lebanon, living with the Shia there. This is the origins of Musa al-Sadr’s Amal and after his assassination, Hezbollah. This happened during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, forging of a new force to confront Israel, which was given a huge boost with the Islamic revolution in Iran. Suddenly there was a ‘Shia crescent’, a genuine quasi-state opposition to Israel that functioned outside the imperial constraints.

    Musa al-Sadr represented the best of the Shia tradition, an activist cleric engaged in the life of his community, unafraid to speak truth to power. He earned a law degree from (shah-era) Tehran university. His Amal militia ran social services and acted as a political organization, a challenge to the fiction of pan-Arab unity and the unyielding reality of Sunni hegemony. Iran’s IRGC was organized by veterans of Amal training camps. Amal represented a political threat to the Arab and Palestinian establishment, and his assassination by Gaddafi was clearly a Sunni move to quash a Shia upstart.5 But he (and Israel’s brutal occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s) inspired the formation Hezbollah, which killed 654 Israeli soldiers in a few years and pushed a humiliated Israel out of Lebanon in 1985.

    ‘Good’ Sunnism is reviving but more in the emigre communities, largely in the US/Canada, Europe, Australia/ New Zealand, where there are now communities of mainstream Sunni and Shia as well as sects (Ismaili, Yazidi, Ahmadiya, Bahai’s). This young, well educated, assertive diaspora radically challenges the Sunnia world, as a new generation of Muslims takes electoral democracy for granted, and were able to gain equal rights as citizens in the ‘House of War’, which meant fight for Palestine against Israel. Effectively the need for young, educated workers to fuel its capitalist machine ended up importing the ‘enemy’ to the heart of imperialism. As these mostly Sunni Muslims spread their message of ‘goodwill to all men’, colonized, persecuted Palestine has gradually gained the edge over colonizer, persecutor Israel. They are joined by a growing community of converts, as people find out about Islam from friendly, law-abiding neighbors. Islam is the fastest growing religion everywhere.

    The Shia are Islam’s ‘wandering Jews’ but without the usury, so they have a presence on all continents, mostly persecuted (or just ignored) by Sunni majorities (but not everywhere). The Sunni too are like the Jews with their world network, a persecuted minority (but not everywhere). In fact, Sunni emigres are free to criticize Israel and their own native Muslim-majority countries in the West, where, say, in Egypt or Pakistan that could land them in jail or worse. As with the Jews, the spread of both Sunni and Shia presence virtually everywhere creates a powerful network for mutual support, to ensure both Shia and Sunni, emigre and domestic, are vital parts of the ummah, all devoted to defending Palestine and liberating Jerusalem. A kind of benign Judaism.6 Democracy brings power to Shia majorities and give voice to minorities, resisting Sunni terrorists. The goal remains the liberation of Jerusalem, but the center of gravity has shifted from Saudi Arabia, Egypt to Iran and Iraq, now stretching from Lebanon and Syria along the Shia axis of resistance.

    The US allies with the pragmatic Sunni dictators, hates, targets Shia, but they are the best defense against real terrorists (Saudi/ Jordanian ‘jihadists’, ISIS, US-Israel). Standing up to tyranny is never popular with tyrants. By overthrowing Saddam, the US unwittingly paved the way for the Shia revival. Ayatollah Sistani brilliantly used the opening to guarantee democratic Shia hegemony in Iraq as a model for a renewed Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, in short, the Muslim ummah. The Iraqi Shia proved that it is possible to work with the US and not compromise. Sistani refused to meet with US officials: Mr Bremer, you are American I am Iranian. Leave it up to the Iraqis to devise their constitution. He challenged US plans to hand power to Allawi, Chalabi. Insisted on one-person, one-vote. When the US refused, he called for large demos over five consecutive days until the US relented.7

    Iraqi Shia abandoned the Iraqi nationalism of Saddam. The renewed nationalism is firmly nonsectarian, uniting the ummah. This is a powerful message to the other Arab states. It is fitting that Palestine has brought the Sunni to the Shia-led defense of Jerusalem. Israel can be defeated only by a united ummah which acts wisely, with restraint, indefatigable. It is also a message to Israel and the Palestinians about inventing a new nationalism based on peace and reconciliation.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Inconvenient Truths: The Shia Salah al-Din and 10/7 first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    To give the US occupiers of Afghanistan 2001–2022, they made sure Afghan Shia, the Hazars, were given full rights in the new constitution, where the state was carefully dubbed Islamic, reflecting the new identity-politics imperialism.
    2    Sunni Sufis resisted imperialism (Algeria, Caucasus) but never the Sunni establishment. Grand Mufti of Egypt Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was a westernizing reformer. His legendary friend (Shia) Jamal al-Afghani was anti-imperialist but didn’t manage to do much.
    3    Democracies are not immune from this as Biden’s pathetic defense of his son shows how family concerns can seriously undermine any legacy of good the leader accomplishes.
    4    They have no public voice, all 300 Shia girls’ schools have Sunni headmistresses, they sit on the oil wealth and get only low paid jobs, scholars get their heads chopped off, etc.
    5    Probably out of jealousy, as he saw himself as the savior of Palestine. See Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival, 2006, p 113.
    6    This could be why Israel so detests Iran. Initially, Israel was admired by Iranian intellectuals. Jalāl Āl-e-Ahmad visited Israel in 1962 and recorded his experiences in The Israeli republic (1962). But when he observed the treatment of Palestinians, he soured and Iranians broadly criticized ‘westoxification’, anticipating the revolution’s clear anti-imperialism. Only Iran really ‘gets’ imperialism.
    7    Vali Nasr, op.cit., p175.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In a previous blog I shed light on a book that has quite possibly changed my life.

    The book in question? “No Encounter Is by Chance” by Hakan Menguc.

    This gem examines how the people we meet are fundamental to our life journey. It highlights how each person brings a lesson and shapes our path.

    Delving into the wisdom of Rumi and Shams, I shared 35 lessons on life for navigating the world, embracing all kinds of relationships and interactions, and creating positive change.

    In short: don’t judge others, live in the moment, be flexible, learn from each other.

    And so, with that in mind, I’d like to share the stories of four people who’ve led me to deep reflections, blessings and lessons in life.

    Lessons relatable across faith and cultural traditions, they embody the spirit of Rumi, Shams and Menguc alike (as detailed in the last blog).

    Before we dive in though, I’d like to note two things:

    1. Of course, each person in this blog has taught me many things
    2. So too have many more beautiful (and no less important) individuals

    However, for the sake of keeping this blog as short and sweet as possible, I’ve decided to focus on four people, with one key lesson each.

    I hope they inspire you as much as they continue to do so in my life.

    Chilling in Jemaa el-Fnna square, Marrakesh (Morocco, July 2010).

    “Once you label me you negate me.”

    (Soren Kierkegaard)

    Jade and I have been friends for almost twenty years. And whilst we’re not related by blood, I consider her my sister. In short: she’s family.

    We met during our university days, back when we were both pursuing our undergraduate degrees in (various) foreign languages at the University of Birmingham.

    We had a lot in common – but we didn’t know it at first.

    Apart from a bashful “hello” in the corridor during our second year, we never really spoke.

    Most of our classes were separate (although we both studied French) and we never really got the time to get to know each other.

    But, that was all about to change. Drastically.

    Fast forward to our third year of university: our year abroad. This was our ERASMUS year (pre-Brexit!).

    I’d spent the academic year in Siena (Italy), whilst Jade had split her time between Germany and Spain.

    We were both sent by our university to complete a compulsory month-long course at a French language school.

    And so, in Summer 2009, we were both headed to France. Tours to be exact.

    It was a memorable experience with four weeks at a language school.

    We visited lots of chateaux, went kayaking in the Loire Valley, and… discovered that we got on like a house on fire!

    Yep, we instantly bonded. Lovers of foreign languages and cultures, we were both explorers.

    And that’s where it all started.

    Over nearly two decades, we’ve travelled, explored and studied together in many a country (including Morocco, Germany and Austria).

    They’ve been years full of fun, learning and laughter. Lots of it.

    But, it’s always been deeper than that. We haven’t just visited tourist sites, eaten “foreign food” and practiced the lingo.

    No, we’ve talked with neighbours, made local friends and embraced the humanity of everyone.

    As the years have gone by, we’ve both experienced and cherished intercultural relationships and friendships, multiple moves abroad. We’ve also laughed, smiled and cried through the journey of life with many a different language on our tongues.

    Through thick and thin, together and apart: we’ve been there for each other.

    I know Jade has. Through religious conversions, veiling and de-veiling, and many significant changes in my life for starters.

    And whether by my physical side or via video call, she’s never ever judged me. Or others.

    In Jade’s world, no culture, no religion – nothing – is a defining element of the beauty or goodness of a person. Of compatibility, incompatibility, romance or friendship. Of humanity.

    Since once particularly poignant moment of my life in particular, I’ve remembered Jade’s words.

    Following a series of traumatic events/periods, I’d declared “never again” to certain experiences (that was the trauma talking).

    I began to worry about “what would so-and-so think” when making decisions about my lifestyle and my beliefs (anxiety again…).

    And, I over-thought the labels as I was navigating my identity – both who or “what” I was, and who or what I needed in my life.

    This was necessary, very normal reflection at the time, but it also very much wrapped in anxiety.

    And it’s in this period of my life in particular that Jade reminded me to not assume, judge or stereotype others based on areas of their (apparent) identity where I’d had previously traumatic, negative and other complex experiences.

    At the same time, Jade reminded me that I had to live for myself, according to my beliefs.

    This included also not overthinking labels, going with the flow and just following my path as it appeared.

    Of course, Jade and I have always believed in the beauty of diversity and the importance of rejecting nonsensical stereotypes. We’ve always valued treating everyone as unique, and being true to ourselves – including breaking the mould.

    But when I’ve needed a friendly ear to listen, an empathetic heart to understand and an open mind to share both my excitement and anxiety during periods of great change in my life, Jade’s been there.

    She’s reminded me of the critical shared values that we hold dear which inspire us to respect both ourselves and each and every person as individuals.

    Throughout our decade-and-a-half-long friendship, growing from university students to young professionals, Jade’s always reminded me that you can’t judge a person based on a supposed collective.

    You can’t let the trauma you may have experienced with one person, or a group, negatively stereotype (or even close off opportunities with) others (particularly on name / “label” basis only).

    What’s more, she’s also emphasised this crucial message: you can’t live your life based on the opinions of others.

    You respect others. You of course adapt, you compromise, and you remain flexible. And, you always remain authentic and true to yourself.

    No one likes to be judged. We’ve all got our own stories, characteristics and mixed identities. And each and every person is an individual.

    We know this. We believe in this. But how many of us live by this?

    Food for thought.

    Stuff stereotypes. We are all unique. We are all individuals. Don’t let labels or experiences blind – or bind – you to others, or yourself.

    Matt on an interfaith trip around India (2023) (Image: Matthew Pointon).  

    “The journey towards enlightenment is not about arrival, but about the path we take to get there.”

    (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

    You’re my Mary”. Three words. One phrase.

    Quite possibly one of the most beautiful things anyone has ever said to me, Matt uttered this after a night out in London, not long after we’d met on Twitter via a mutual friend.

    A fellow traveller, Albania enthusiast and writer, Matt and I quickly became good friends after our first Twitter exchange.

    I was living in London at the time and Matt in Stoke (only 30 minutes from my family home).

    Every now again Matt would pop down to London for work and we’d meet up. And so followed the length conversations about life, travel and… spirituality.

    We had a lot in common. Matt had married outside of his culture and remained friends with his ex-wife. Just like me. And, he’d taught English abroad – just had I.

    What’s more, whilst I was a born-Christian (Anglican with Catholic family) who’d converted to Islam and had a great affection for the Jewish world, Matt knew a lot about Islam.

    As a spiritual seeker, traveller and pilgrim, Matt has explored Sufism in Bulgaria, India and Pakistan.

    He’s attended church and explored the Christian world across many branches of Christianity, including Orthodox and Catholic.

    And, he’s visited many a synagogue and Jewish sites across the globe.

    To this day, we’ve never run out of stuff to talk about. To share, ponder and reflect – in particular when it comes to faith and spirituality.

    We’ve shared road trips to churches across Wales, visits to local Orthodox churches, Sikh gurdwaras and synagogues, and we’ve explored the Divine Feminine together. All fascinating, enriching and meaningful.

    Discussing faith in many a meet-up, it was during one evening in central London in particular that Matt shared something incredibly significant with me which has shaped my life ever since. 

    Following chatter over Japanese food and a drink or two, Matt recalled the story of Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha:

    “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.

    She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

    She came to him and asked: ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’

    ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’”

    (Luke 10:38 – 42)

    I’d never heard this passage before. And I loved it.

    Discussing the meaning, Matt explained how Martha represents the dogmatic little details – the believer who “does” without questioning and the one whose focus is to “follow the rules”.

    Mary, on the other hand, represents the spirit – the deeper meaning behind faith and how this is reflected in our actions, deeds and decisions.

    In this story, Mary symbolises being in the moment, stopping to contemplate, to reflect and not simply “do”.

    Driven by values, faith and spirituality first, her faith isn’t about rules, doctrine or dogma.

    Matt then declared: “You’re my Mary”.

    I was shocked. Shocked, stunned and honoured. Honoured to be a Mary. Honoured to be seen as such a spiritual soul, not a devotee of dogma. And honoured to not be a Martha.

    I didn’t want to be Martha. I wanted to be more than that. Much more.

    As someone in particular who’s stepped away from ritualistic tradition and been on a long journey to get where I am now, these three words warmed my heart.

    They soothed my heart, soul and mind. They proudly reassured me: Liz, you are on the right path. You inspire me.

    This was a path I’d fought long, hard and alone to step on. And it was a long ongoing path – not a one stop destination.

    Time and time following that night, over hours and hours of chatter and reflection, Matt would declare:

    “You’ve got on the train. Great. But you mustn’t get off at the first stop. It’s too easy.

    Life, spirituality, faith: it’s a journey. You must never stop learning, discovering, searching.

    It’s all about the journey – not the destination.”

    Quite rightly, so, these words have stuck with me, becoming clearer and clearer with each step I take. For time and time again, I’m reminded how right Matt is.

    Today, I don’t yearn for a single answer, for a singular truth, for the answers to a “final exam”.

    Instead, I aim for to discover, share and learn from others, and to grow in wisdom.

    I aim to weave across traditions, cultures and time, up and down – knowing that this journey is full of ebbs and flows, dips and peaks. It’s not linear.

    No, I don’t want to be Martha. Mary I shall be.

    Focus on the spirit not the dogma, the journey not the destination, the spirit not the label.

    Catching up together in Oxford (Summer 2024).

    “If your wish comes true, be grateful. If it does not come true, be grateful nevertheless.”

    (Rumi)

    A sister in faith, where names, labels or community associations create no barriers… Meet Deborah.

    Deborah and I first met back in our university days. I was in my final year of my undergraduate studies and Deb was starting her second year in her degree.

    We were sharing the same university flat (halls). What we didn’t know at the time though was that, not only would we share a house for the following academic year, but also become lifelong friends.

    Roll back to September 2010.

    I’d just returned from my year abroad and a summer in North Africa (Tunisia and Morocco). I’d learnt about Arab culture, Islam and had long been reflecting on faith and going back to church.

    Deborah was back in Birmingham for her studies in politics and economics, and was very much into fashion and blogging.

    Arriving in our new flat, she’d first opened the cupboards and having seen the contents, expected an Italian gal. Well… she got me, so, it’s half true!

    From new flatmates from different cities and studying in different years and departments, here then started a very long friendship across cities, churches and faiths, and girly brunches, lunches and dinners amid a myriad of cultures.

    And this diversity has been beautiful. But diversity has not necessarily been something that’s shaped our friendship (well, not in any negative sense at least). How?

    Well, Deborah met me as a semi-practicing Christian of British-Italian heritage. I met her as a second generation British-Nigerian Christian.

    Still exploring my faith at the time, I started attending church with Deborah. I was also continuing Arabic language classes.

    And well, the rest is history… (well, for another blog).

    In short, a big change happened: I later became Muslim and part of the Maghrebi cultural community.

    A whopping 13 years since we first met, our cultures haven’t changed but a lot of other things have. I’m Muslim and in fact, our friendship is stronger than ever.

    Deb’s been there throughout many changes in my life: my spiritual journey and many more (including my mother’s death, a young marriage and divorce to name a few). 

    We’ve shared so many ups and downs and what I love the most is that, on the surface, to some people our journeys may look so different. Yet in reality, they’ve been often almost identical, mirroring and parallel to each other.

    Career progression, dating, we’ve shared it all – including theology.

    To this day, faith has never been a cause of division. In fact, the reality is rather the opposite.

    As I’ve navigated from liberal semi-practicing Christian to Orthodox Muslim, to progressive Muslim, Deborah has always remained true to her values over the years, and never judged me for mine.

    Sharing songs, verses and reflections, we’ve always been able to share our feelings and give each other a spiritual pick-me-up – without judgement.

    It doesn’t matter what name we give out faith communities, we’re actually closer together in our faith.

    Over the years, we’ve continuously grown closer and more similar in outlook and faith. Of course, this has also included how we’ve deepened our bond though the appreciation of the mutual support we share across faiths.

    As a woman of faith, Deborah has critically not only never judged me, but she’s also never stopped inspiring, motivating and supporting me.

    Deborah has taught me so much about life, faith and spirituality.

    Most of all, what she’s taught me is the importance of humility, patience and Divine timing.

    She’s helped me understand the importance of the lessons we learn. These are lessons that I’ve found make us stronger, help us appreciate what’s to come and teach us that God’s got our back.

    As we’re shared our mirroring journeys, we’ve been grateful for the lessons, the sweet taste of hard-earned success and challenges which have shaped us, changed us and made us.

    Deborah has been, and (I hope) will always be my sister in faith.

    She’s the gal pal who I can call after a Church service, who I can daydream about marriage and kids with, and who I know will always remind me of the importance of patience, persistence and self-preservation.

    As the contrast of light and dark and night and day exemplify, life teaches us that without struggle, where is the beauty in a blessing?

    Thank you, Deborah.

    Everything comes at its time – embrace the lessons, for they are an even sweeter blessing!

    Dinner at an Indian restaurant with Abee Makhlouf and my ex-husband Haroun (London, 2022).

    “Some people have gone to the Kaaba a thousand times, and still have not found their own essence; some people have never stepped out of their village but have a Kaaba in their heart.”

    (Hakan Menguc)

    Where do I start? Two continents, two countries, two families, two cultures: one faith.

    It’s incredibly hard to summarise such a story, but I shall try!

    I first met Abee (Dad) Makhlouf (in person) in 2012, in a small conservative village in eastern Algeria.

    Arriving at his home to the sound of celebratory “yoyoyoyoyo” (zaghareet), I didn’t really understand at the time (or know) that my life was never going to be the same again (in a good way!).

    It was the start of an incredible journey and my first step into my third home: Algeria.

    Many hours before, I’d landed in Algiers. Dad and I had been on a flight from London Gatwick.

    Having spent the night before at a hotel close to the airport, I was excited to finally meet the man I loved. And to potentially become his fiancée.

    The next day, I was thousands of miles from Gatwick and the nerves began to kick in.

    Walking through the arrival door with my luggage in hand, this 24-year-old British hijabi didn’t know what was to come.

    There he was: a bunch of flowers in hand, smiling and shy, standing next to his little sister and older cousin.

    Haroun: the man who would later become my husband for almost a decade and who welcomed me into his life, his home, his family, his world and his culture. We’d finally met in person.

    With no time to stop in Algiers (cultural decorum dictated that we meet his parents first), Haroun, his sister, cousin, my father and I headed to the car park.

    A few road stops and many hours later, we arrived.

    Here, I was to meet Haroun’s father Makhlouf, his mother, siblings and in time, almost his entire family.

    I could write a book on this (perhaps a few future blogs will follow), but for this blog, I’ll focus on Abee Makhlouf.

    Abee Makhlouf (Dad Makhlouf): a man who became my father-in-law and who I can only describe as my “Muslim father”. My guide, my support, my belonging, my blessing.

    The love and respect that this man has shown me over more than a decade is indescribable. He accepted me as his own from day one and still does to this very day.

    Still calling me “binti” (my daughter), I have many a cherished memory with Abee Makhlouf.

    Yet it was something that he said on British soil that cements what I love most about this man.

    Islam fil qalb

    (Islam is in the heart)

    This was Abee Makhlouf’s confirmation that the woman in skinny jeans and a tight jumper standing next to him (me!) had never ceased to be a Muslim.

    She’d never changed in his eyes. And she had always been (and would never stopped being) worthy as a woman, Muslim and an adopted daughter.

    For when Abee Makhlouf first met me, I was a conservative veiled Muslim woman (a hijabi).

    I was covered head to toe in loose baggy clothing. I didn’t drink. I didn’t wear make up. And I followed all the “rules”.

    Today, much has changed. Yet Abee Makhlouf still knows me as a Muslim woman.

    Never judging, never criticising, he’s always taught patience, humility and moderation.

    And from 2012 in eastern Algeria, to an evening in London in 2022 (and to this very day), his ethos stands firm.

    On this particular evening in London, we were at a tube station. Haroun, Abee Makhlouf and I had eaten at an Indian restaurant – a new experience for Abee Makhlouf.

    It was quite an unexpected evening all round.

    After many a year, Abee Makhlouf had come to the UK for the first time to visit his son and the UK – a country he’d heard so much about.

    It was like a dream come true – yet also very surreal – to see him here (I of course will never stop visiting Algeria).

    Not only was this the first time that we’d met on British (rather than Algerian) soil, but this was also the first time that we’d seen each other off-camera (in person) since I’d taken off my headscarf, got divorced and well, gone through quite a few changes in my life (cultural and spiritual in particular).

    Yet nothing had changed. Not to Abee Makhlouf anyway.

    Of course, I knew he still loved me. We’ve always been in touch and considered each other family both during my marriage and since my divorce.

    Yet, I shall forever hold that evening dear. For when I jokingly pointed to my jeans and jumper before I got the tube home, none of it mattered:

    “Islam fii qalb”  he replied. Islam fii qalb. Islam is in the heart.

    A declaration of hope, love and belonging, I shall forever cherish those four words.

    These four words are not only a symbol of what I personally believe in.

    They also a declaration of love and unity from a man who’s grown up in far more conservative culture than myself, in a Muslim country, and in a place where he’d met me at a totally different stage of my religious journey.

    The humility, acceptance and love that this man has shown is something that I have sadly often struggled to find in Muslim circles in the UK. Yet to Abee Makhlouf, it’s as natural as breathing.

    This is the Islam that I fell in love with before my conversion – the faith that I’d discovered in Tunisia through beautiful intercultural friendships.

    And it’s this warmth and love, from a people I’d never previously met, from a country who’s soil I’d never stepped on before 2012, and from a place I’d only learnt about in the context of French Studies (colonial history), that stole my heart.

    This was Algeria: Maghrebi, Amazigh, Arab culture. And this culture has cemented itself in my heart, soul and mind.

    Culture, faith, spirituality, identity – they’re fluid, changing, complex and diverse expressions of ourselves and our varied lived experiences.

    Yet however I’ve chosen to live and embrace these key elements, moments and parts of my life, to Abee Makhlouf, I was and will always be Liz – whatever my faith, whatever my beliefs, and whatever my practice as a Muslim woman – with or without a piece of cloth, and with or without his son as my husband.

    I know I’ll always be Abee Makhlouf’s adopted little British-Italian Chaoui (Amazigh-Algerian) daughter.

    And if that’s not Divine love, I don’t know what is.

    Faith is about what we do – not what we wear, not what we “portray” to others and not what we merely speak of – for it’s what’s on the inside that counts and makes us who we are.


    So, there we are. These are the stories of four people I’m blessed to have in my life: Jade, Matt, Deborah and Abee Makhlouf.

    Each and every one of these people continue to inspire me, and I hope these stories and the lessons within them inspire you too!

    Which encounters have shaped your lives? Drop us a comment and share!

    If you’ve been inspired by this blog post (and Menguc’s book):

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • Several Right-wing X (formerly Twitter) handles have shared a 2.15-minute video claiming that it shows the harassment and physical assault of a Hindu teacher in Bangladesh.

    Numerous incidents of targeted attacks on Hindus have been reported from the neighbouring country in the wake of the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government on August 5. The video is being circulated in that context.

    The video shows several men heckling an older man. They first staple what appears to be cigarette packets to his shirt collar, then force him to drink from a glass and finally pour something from a bottle on him. A commentator then appears in the video and states that the man being heckled is Gautam Pal, a popular teacher of mathematics from Azimpur Girls’ College, who was forced to resign. The video ends abruptly with the commentator claiming Hindu teachers were being targeted.

    Vice-president of ISKCON Kolkata Radharaman Das, who shares communal misinformation on a regular basis, amplified the video with the same claim.

    The clip was also shared along with the Hindu-teacher-being-targeted claim by users such as Keh Ke Peheno (@coolfunnytshirt), Baba Banaras™ (@RealBababanaras), Bloody Media (@bloody_media), Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) and others.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Author and economist Sanjeev Sanyal quote-tweeted Radharaman Das and wrote, “Of course channels like
    @dwnews and @BBCWorld think that that this perfectly reasonable behaviour from “students” in Bangladesh. How is this different from Nazi Germany?? Or perhaps this treatment of Hindus is thought justified in the same way that the ancestors of @dwnews journalists treated the Jews.”

    Fact Check

    We notice the words ‘Chapai Express’ written on the frame of the viral video. Chapai Nawabganj is a district in northwestern Bangladesh under Rajsahi division. We performed a relevant keyword search in Bengali and found several reports on an incident that transpired at the office of Chapai Nawabganj civiv body. These reports carried images which showed the same incident of harassment.

    According to a report by bdnews24.com, a group of youths forced a government official at Chapainawabganj municipality to resign after finding two packs of cigarettes in his office drawer on Monday, August 19, 2024. The official was identified as Taufiq Islam, an executive engineer with the civic body. The action against him was spearheaded by Ismail Hossain Sirazi, a local leader of the students’ movement.

    Quoting municipal executive officer Mamun Aur Rashid, the bdnews24.com report adds that Islam fell ‘unconscious’ after the incident and was taken him to a hospital. The student activists had also forced two other municipal officials to wirte resignation letters on white papers, the report says.

    Another report, by banglatribune.com narrated the same events and added that the executive engineer, Taufiq Islam, had stopped going to office after returning home from hospital.

    We also found a video report on the incident by media outlet Swadesh Pratidin, where the man leading the youth, Ismail Hossain Sirazi, claims that civic body officials had voluntarily resigned. Below is a screenshot from the video report which captures the incident.

    Hence, it is clear that the incident is being falsely given a communal colour by Indian social media users. It is not a case of an attack on a Hindu in Bangladesh. The video shows a municipal engineer named Taufiq Islam being heckled by student protesters in Chapai Nawabganj of Rajsahi division in Bangladesh.

     

    The post Bangladesh: Harassment of Rajsahi civic official Taufiq Islam falsely shared by Indian RW as attack on Hindus appeared first on Alt News.


    This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A while back my friend Matt told me about a book that changed his life: “No Encounter Is by Chance” by Turkish Sufi author and musician Hakan Menguc.

    Written around the mantra: “Fate does not give up people. It is constantly being written and rewritten”, for Matt, it was transformative.

    So, of course I had to read it for myself. And well… it didn’t disappoint!

    Before meeting Matt, I’d never personally heard of Hakan Menguc (I’m sad to say). But now, I can safely say I’m a fan.

    Weaving Sufi teachings of Rumi, his teacher and companion Shams Tabrizi, and Hakan himself and his own Sufi master, this book is insightful, refreshing and engaging.

    Menguc takes the reader on a journey through both his own annual pilgrimage In Turkey (with unexpected changes), and more: how to navigate life.

    Part narrative story of a specific mini chapter of his life, part self-help book delving into Islamic mysticism, this book inspires, motivates and teaches.

    And here’s the best bit: it’s not a book (just) for Muslims. Or even fans of Sufism.

    No, not at all.

    It’s not a sermon, it’s not a Qur’anic lesson for experts, it’s not an in-depth historical overview of Islamic mysticism for Muslims and history fans alike.

    No, the wisdom in this book perfectly encapsulates self-discovery and self-development. All whilst sharing the words and lessons of Sufism’s greatest: Rumi and his master Shams (with a few other names included).

    Delving further, the more I read (and sped through this book), the more I through: “I have to write about it”.

    Why? Well, I could see just how applicable its teachings are for engaging in intercultural dialogue, interfaith relations and peacekeeping.

    They encapsulate the principles of dialogue and the spirit of changemaking,

    So here we are. Here’s what this little gem of a book can teach us all.

    Read on!


    “Everyone can look in the same direction as you, but not everyone can see what you can see.

    Everyone can fall in love, but no one can love like you do. You are what makes it special. And what makes you special is not the person you love, but your love itself.”

    (Shams of Tabriz)

    “There is an appropriate time for everything. Everything happens when the time is right.

    Neither the rose blooms prematurely, nor the sunrise before the night is over…

    We cannot expect ourselves to predict the future. We can pray for the maturity to understand more, to be more sensitive; and most importantly, to be a good observer of life.”

    “No encounter is by chance… Everyone we meet teaches us something.”

    “If you start with a pure intent to understand and learn; if you put down your arrogance, you will surely be ready when you encounter wise people who will teach you what you need to know.”

    “Each journey has its own challenges. However, the difficulties and obstacles waiting ahead are not designed to weaken you.

    Their purpose is to educate and mature you.”

    “Every living thing, every human being comes to this world with a purpose.

    Everyone discovers their purpose as they live through each day. Therefore, when one learns to read and follow the signs, it will lead them to their goal.”

    “Some people have gone to the Kaaba a thousand times, and still have not found their own essence; some people have never stepped out of their village but have a Kaaba in their heart.”

    “Do not resist the changes that life brings you. Accept them.”

    “No matter who accompanies you along the way, you should be able to see that there is no one else you can count on other than yourself…

    The journey is all about you.”

    “Some people proceed with wise words and knowledge. Some have to walk the path in person…

    Some people learn their lessons along the way.”

    “If it is your destiny, you will even learn from an ant.

    If it is not your destiny, even if you’ve got the whole world in front of you, it will not teach you anything.”

    (Rumi)

    “There are no shortcuts to beautiful paths.”

    “It is useless to think about what will be waiting for you at the end of the road.”

    (Shams)

    “Trying to describe love in words will not do it justice. Some things cannot be described with words.”

    “…it is not about luck. More precisely, it is about meeting with intentions and a purpose.

    When you focus on what you need, you will definitely find it.”

    “If I had the chance to live my life again, I would be more relaxed. I would live the journey of my life with a child’s playfulness, not with the seriousness of an adult.

    I would focus on more real problems and less on imaginary problems… My only goal would be collecting beautiful memories.”

    “They captured us
    they put us in jail.
    I’m behind the bars,
    with you on the other side.

    It is our simple affair.
    The worst thing would be
    unable to notice,
    the prison one carries in themselves.”

    (Nazim Hikmet)

    “Of course, everyone knows their own struggles better than anyone…

    Although our intentions are good, we cannot interfere with other people’s pain…

    I will… work on understanding my child better instead of forcing them to do what I say. And I will never make him feel alone again.”

    “Anger is like a strong wind, it calms down after a while, but lots of branches are already broken.”

    (Rumi)

    “Society puts meaningless, irrelevant patterns in our minds. Prejudice is a disease that is strong enough to blind humanity. It is a stubborn germ.

    The only way to defeat this germ is through wisdom in our hearts.”

    “Acts of kindness heal. This is why wounded people try to heal themselves by helping others…

    They forget to be as kind to themselves as they are to others. They forget that they also need to help themselves…

    Loving yourself is acceptance.”

    “Human beings are the product of the environment they live in.

    Whatever those in your environment believe in, after a while, you will be influenced and think them and share the same beliefs of them.

    We can become chained by those beliefs without even noticing it.

    We all have invisible walls surrounding us that limit our imagination.”

    “Flowing water does not hold up algae. Water is adaptable; it has no definite shape.

    When you put water into a container, it turns into the shape of whatever it occupies.

    Even though it constantly adapts, its nature never changes.

    Those who are in harmony with nature always survive because they go with the flow which enhances their potential to grow…

    ‘Be like the water…’”

    “People are like books. You can only understand its true value by starting to read the pages.

    Don’t be fooled by the cover.”

    (Rumi)

    “You cannot interfere in anyone’s fate…

    When a person is ready to learn, he will not come back empty-handed.

    And the ones who are not ready to learn will now be able to take in the knowledge.”

    “If your wish comes true, be grateful. If it does not come true, be grateful nevertheless.”

    (Rumi)

    “Like the parched lips searching for water to quench the thirst; the water also searches for the parched lips to fulfil its purpose.”

    (Rumi)

    “The reputation and authority you brag about is just an empty dream. Their respect for you is not permanent. It waivers.

    Those who glorify you, believed in an illusion.”

    (Shams)

    “Let your relationship with people be like your relationship with fire.

    Do not stay too far away or you will freeze, but do not get too close or you will get burned.”

    “A smart man learns from his own mistakes. The wise man is the one who can learn from the mistakes of others.

    Do not be afraid to make mistakes; be afraid to make the same mistake twice.”

    “You cannot find why you are looking for by reading. You will only find it with your heart…

    All these words do not replace love. You may learn by reading, but you can only understand the wisdom of life through love…

    Love cannot be written by a pen so you cannot find it in books.”

    (Shams)

    “If you agree to change for someone you love, at the very end your love will not survive.”

    “Shams and Rumi saw God in each other’s presence. The friendship they had came from within – a spiritual kind of intimacy.

    No earthy explanation would be adequate to express what they shared with each other.

    Those who look at this friendship through the eyes of God see love, and those who look through the eyes of man see exaggeration.”

    “Endings are new beginnings. The end of something always leads to the beginning of something better.

    As long as you know how to discover it.”

    “Rumi searched everywhere for Shams… There was no sign… Rumi was grieving inside.

    Little did he know that this pain was also a gift that would lead him to maturity.

    He began writing poems and…letters… to Shams…

    Shams eventually returned…”


    If you’ve been inspired by this blog post (and the book):

    Thank you Hakan for your work and for inspiring readers across the world.

    Who knows the impact they’ve had and continue to…

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • This blog forms part of a series examining how different faith traditions embrace or reject the Divine Feminine in their teachings and representation of The Divine.

    In part one, I reflect upon my own very masculine spiritual journey across Abrahamic traditions.

    I look back at my childhood as a Christian and my conversion to Islam in my early 20s. I also discuss my interfaith exploration of the Jewish and Christian world as a post-Orthodox Liberal Muslim.

    In this blog, I explore how the Divine Feminine is viewed across the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

    In part three, I look at the representation of God and the Divine Feminine amongst the Dharmic faiths (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism).

    In part four, I highlight why the inclusion of the Divine Feminine is critically important, not simply in promoting spiritual inclusion, but embracing wider gender equality in sacred and secular spaces.


    My trip to St. Melangell (Pennant Melangell) had been a meaningful one.

    It had given me the time and space to reflect, pray and seek comfort in solitude during a major period of change in my life. But it also stirred much more.

    It allowed me to reflect of who/what exactly God is, how we can seek and critically, embrace Him/Her.

    God is our Creator, our Nurturer, the All Loving (Al Wadud). Just like St. Melangell, God too offers a womb of solace.

    As a Muslim woman, I’ve also been on a long journey to feel confident and free in a progressive worldview. Yet this was still rather masculine up until my trip to Wales and before writing this blog.

    For almost a decade, I typically found that the masculine narrative in my faith tradition dominates. For quite simple, there is often no mention of the Divine Feminine (least not in the circles I was in).

    And so, as a Muslim woman, it was time to shake off old habits and re-embrace God for a more balanced, natural and beneficial experience of faith!

    The Qur’an – the last holy text in Islamic tradition.

    In Islamic tradition, we learn that God is closest source of comfort to us:

    “Indeed, it is We Who created humankind and fully know what their souls whisper to them, and We are closer to them than their jugular vein” (Qur’an, 50: 16)

    Even in Orthodox spaces, this love and sense of closeness is compared to the relationship between a chid and one’s mother.

    There’s actually a hadith that states:

    Verily, Allah created, on the same very day when He created the heavens and the earth, one hundred parts of mercy.

    … and He out of this mercy endowed one part to the earth and it is because of this that the mother shows affection to her child…”

    (Sahih Muslim)

    Yet, how often are we met with a masculine, patriarchal representation of God?

    A God who judges, a God who punishes and a God that (apparently) creates as patriarchal set of rules for humanity – to the detriment of women?

    Well, the Divine Feminine is not new in Islam – it’s just not voiced, taught or celebrated (as explained in part one of this series).

    In Islamic history and Sufi tradition, the divine feminine has in fact always been present. But, not always embraced by Muslims.

    Whilst the Sufi practice of sema (whirling) is a genderless ritual of becoming “at one with God”, God is generally very much represented as masculine across the Muslim world.

    Today, whilst the Muslim community globally continues to refer to God as “He” in English (and the masculine “Huwa” in Arabic), change is however thankfully being called for!

    Islamic feminists and scholars such as Amina Wadud (see part 1) and Professor Sa’diyya Shaikh are now actively incorporating the feminine pronoun “She” into the mix.

    In her research, Professor Sa’diyya for example highlights explicit references to the Divine Feminine in Islamic history.

    This includes those of thirteenth-century Muslim thinker Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabia key figure in Sufi teachings:

    “… one finds a distinctive and powerful poetics of creation, nurture, power, and spirituality that weaves together the earth, maternity, femininity, women, and the Divine Feminine. He states:

    ‘[The earth] gives all of the benefits from her essence [dhāt] and is the location [maḥall] of all good. Thus she is the most powerful [aʾazz] of the bodies… she is the patient [ṣabūr], the receptive one [qābila], the immutable one, the firm one… Whenever she moves from fearful awe of God, God secures her by means of (mountains as) anchors.

    … it is the mother from whom we come and to whom we return. And from her we will come forth once again. To her we are submitted and entrusted. She is the most subtle of foundations [arkān] in meaning. She accepts density, darkness, and hardness only in order to conceal the treasures that God has entrusted to it.’

    … Ibn Arabi unambiguously and explicitly links the earth to the divine… as the creative, benevolent, maternal source of the good…. He also brings into focus women’s procreative capacities and the Divine Feminine.

    …by interweaving maternal, earthy, and generative qualities with the majestic attributes of strength, power, and immutability, Ibn Arabi urges… an integration and balance of what might be traditionally categorized as “masculine” and “feminine” attributes within the divine.”

    These are not only very feminine descriptions but also a clear reference to the Qur’anic verse: “To God we belong, and to God we return” (2:156).

    This is a fundamental source of reference to Muslims and to “the circle of life” itself.

    And as Professor Sa’diyya also highlights, Ibn Arabi also uses traditionally feminine metaphors of pregnancy, childbirth to describe the origin of Creation.

    This is in fact very much similar to my own personal journey of discovery of the Feminine Divine.

    It was in my (male) friend Haroun (a native Arabic speaker) that first introduced me to the Divine Feminine in Islamic terms.

    And it was exactly this reference that later rang true after visiting St. Melangell’s shrine.

    The Mosque of Umm Haram in Lanarca, Cyprus dedicated to Umm Haram (the wife of Ubada bin al-Samit, a companion of Prophet Muhammad and foster sister of his mother Amina bint Wahb). Image: Dickelbers, CC BY-SA 3.0).

    In Islamic tradition, the most important chapter (surah) of the Qur’an is Surah al-Fatihah (The Opening). It’s the first chapter and is frequently repeated in daily ritual prayers.

    One could perhaps compare it to the Lord’s Prayer in Christianity in terms of significance and meaning.

    As Muslims, the wording in this prayer critically forms our understanding of God. Here, the first ayah (verse) declares:

    “In the Name of Allah—the Most Compassionate (Al Rahman), the Most Merciful (Al Raheem)” (1:1)

    The names Al-Rahman (The Most Compassionate) and Al-Raheem (The Most Merciful) in fact form two of the 99 Names of Allah.

    And this fundamentally shapes how Muslims imagine and remember Allah: God (the Divine) is merciful and compassionate (above all others – e.g. humans).

    However, as a non-native Arabic speaker myself, my friend explained how these two worlds hold an even deeper significance. For they share the same root “r-h-m” (“caring”/”mercy”) as the word “rahm” – meaning “womb”.

    The womb – a gift from God for women to nurture life – is a beautiful description of a feminine divine that loves, nurtures and cares for us. This is in total contrast to perpetuating “masculine” traits of a judging, punishing, powerful “God”.

    And it was in St. Melangell that I learnt of a woman who spent her life nurturing and loving for others in pursuit of God. I felt that energy in her shrine – a cubby, a mini womb: a sanctuary.

    It was a wake-up moment: God is so much more than man-made masculine narratives.

    As one male scholar so clearly expresses:

    “…there is an ample space for Divine Feminine in Islam or Sufism, if not in the mainstream Sunni or Shia Islam’s conventional schools of thought. Not just the feminine descriptions but also clear Qur’anic references…”

    (Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi)

    And for that the work of Muslims, both male and critically also female scholars such as Dr Amina Wadud and Professor Sa’diyya Shaikh, is critical.

    We need to embrace the Divine Feminine for a far more balanced approach to faith – and consequently, life.

    Since exploring this blog series, I’ve taken to writing “She” more when referencing the Divine – in particular when thinking of Islamic tradition and imagining Allah’s qualities.

    So, there’s room in Islam. But what does this mean for my childhood faith which introduced me to a male lens of divinity?

    Well, there’s more of the Divine Feminine than I expected!  

    Catholic iconography of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

    Whilst my childhood experience as an Anglican was (on the surface) very masculine in reference to God, there is in fact a space for the Divine Feminine in the Christian world.

    As my friend Matt (an Anglican familiar with the wide range of Christian denominations) pointed out: Jesus does appear as a male figure.

    However, he presents a very feminine energy.

    He’s a representation of love, forgiveness, and mercy. And those around him at the very end are all women.

    It’s true! The New Testament is full of feminine representations of Jesus.

    His comforting nature, compassion, determination (labouring), nurturing and perhaps “mother hen” all provide a very female image of God through Jesus.

    And it was this sense of love in faith that I felt in Taizé  – a Catholic community in France with both Catholic and Protestant roots.

    The repeated chants reminded me of my school days and felt warm, inclusive and all-embracing (as well as nostalgic)!

    In the Catholic world in fact, there is a reverence for a Divine Feminine – albeit being known as a patriarchal tradition.

    The figure of the Virgin Mary for example is revered by Catholics all over the world.

    Far more significant in Catholicism than in my own Anglican heritage, Mary is the ultimate symbol of the feminine: the “mother” of Jesus.

    It’s something that fellow blogger Matt has embraced, for “whilst Christ demonstrates man of God’s male attributes, surely Mary reminds us of His female ones”.

    To some, Her Lady is indeed a representation of the Divine Feminine, which has formed part of Matt’s journey of embracing the Divine Feminine as an (Anglican) Christian:

    “[Catholicism] … was a religion often derided as being overly masculine (for example with an only male priesthood) that introduced me to female divinity.

    And as the years have passed, I have grown to love that all the more…

    Perhaps the most lasting impact though of my Catholic journey, has been the introduction of Mary into my spiritual life.

    I wrote before that I found Marian devotion strange at first, but as the years have progressed, I have grown more comfortable with her presence and seeing God in female form.

    The world is male and female, yin and yang and one half needs the other.”

    The concept of Mary as the “feminine face of God” – as opposed to the very masculine “King”, “Lord” and “Father” – has however been denounced in certain Catholic spaces.

    On a personal level too, until recently, I still perceived the portrayal of the Virgin Mary as one typical of a patriarchal society (e.g. as the ultimate symbol of “purity” and non-sexuality) – regardless of her endearing (feminine) qualities.

    However, whilst Mary is typical of a gender role, my view has changed quite drastically. 

    Both my trip to Wales and writing this series of blogs has allowed me to reflect on the Divine Feminine in many ways – across time and traditions.

    Growing up as a Christian, I have been increasingly reconnecting to my Christian heritage, which in my more conservative days I grew distant from.

    On both a cultural and spiritual level, I now find solace in the statues of Mary I find in churches. I tap into the Feminine and I find solace in embracing a more balanced view of the Divine.

    In such moments, spaces and practices, I’m taken back to my childhood (a tradition not far from my own as a Muslim) – a place of belonging, comfort and love.

    I’m also and comforted by the reminder that, whilst my own mother has passed, God is with me.

    And whilst God is not human (and neither a He or She), God’s Love for me is All Encompassing – for He/She blessed my parents with my birth, and likewise my life with a loving mother and father.

    Yes, in Christian tradition the Divine Feminine exists – it’s not a new concept!

    It can also be found in the Trinity, with some Catholic sects acknowledging the Holy Spirit as feminine.

    The Haghia Sophia – the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in historic Constantinople, which was later turned into a mosque (Istanbul, Turkey).

    Biblical scholar Marianne Widmalm in fact talks extensively about “Lady Wisdom” – a “personified heavenly female power” and it’s relation the Holy Spirit.

    Holy Wisdom  – “Sofia” – known as the “mother of Hope, Faith and Love (or Charity)” in early Christian tradition, is embraced in both Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

    Traditions dating back to the 16th century even believed that Mary is the “earthly incarnation of Sophia”.

    Marianne today argues that the Divine Feminine is ignored in Christianity, expressing how Lady Wisdom and the Holy Spirit are in fact one divine feminine force.

    Whilst the Trinity is typically presented as a masculine concept, Marianne explains how the original Hebrew is in fact feminine

    And when it comes to Hebrew, we’re met with another Abrahamic tradition: Judaism.

    So, how does the Jewish world represent God in its theology? Well, read on!

    Excerpt from the Tankah (Jewish Bible).

    Spending time with female Rabbis and learning about important female figures (such as Esther in the Purim story), I’ve seen the celebration and role of women in Jewish tradition.

    Likewise, I’ve also learnt of a similar spiritual struggle for space, leadership and acceptance in more Orthodox spaces.

    But what about the feminine divine in the Jewish world? How is God portrayed in Jewish teachings?

    Well, very much like Islam, God in Judaism is genderless and not presented in a visual human form. Here, both faiths share a love of calligraphy – and very beautiful it is!

    Yet, what about the text itself?

    Well, again, there is a traditional “masculine” sense of God, as a divine “King”. The Hebrew Bible and Siddurim (prayer books) both traditionally refer to God as “He”.

    So where does this leave Jewish women? Well, there’s not one answer!

    Speaking for example to Rabbi Jackie Tabick of Reform Judaism here in the UK – whom I’ve enjoyed learning about Judaism for many years now – the Divine Feminine simply isn’t an issue:

    “…to me God is wholly other so The Divine Feminine and gender issues are irrelevant. They just don’t concern me.”

    Similar to the Muslim world, where a close friend of mine didn’t see the need to replace “He” with “She”, it’s quite a personal preference.

    Likewise, another Jewish friend of mine, Doreen Samuels (Orthodox) also expressed how for her: “equality for us is much more about participation than language….”

    And it’s true. This spiritual struggle is ultimately about value, inclusion about participation of women, not just changing texts.

    And that’s exactly why for women like myself and Jewish feminists, the language DOES need to change. For it forms part of the wider egalitarian picture – not just the only piece.

    Just like myself and likeminded thinkers in the Muslim world, there are also Jewish feminists who would also like to see a more balanced set of attributes to describe the divine.

    Now, for traditionalists, changing language would alter dynamics. Why?

    Well, in their view, they see the relationship between God and the Believer as akin to (the journey of) marriage.

    The Song of Songs for example embodies this relationship. They are read on major festivals, and whilst usually chanted during Passover, some Sephardic and Chasidic Jews following the mystical tradition recite this each week on the night of Shabbat “as Shabbat serves as a renewal of loving vows between God and the Jewish People.”

    In this journey of marriage, the festival of Sukkot as the consummation of said marriage.

    Here, God is masculine and the Jewish people are the feminine, whilst also acknowledging a feminine aspect of divine:  

    “…all souls of Israel together is the Shabbat Queen, who is also the Shekhinah (feminine aspect of the Divine), who unites with her husband, G-d, on Shabbat.”

    (Dr Tamar Frankiel)

    Whilst marriage should embrace a clear sense of love, nurturing and belonging (stereotypically “feminine” traits), it still presents a very male-to-female dynamic.

    Marriage itself is often seen a patriarchal model and therefore some feminist writers reject this sense of Divine/human marriage.

    Modern theologians have therefore instead interpreted texts to include a more divine feminine experience. The Kabbalistic concept of “Shekinah” has also been embraced by Jewish feminists.

    Hamsas For the Divine Feminine” by Kohenet Bekah Starr © – courtesy of Yelala (2023). 

    Tracing its roots back to Jewish mysticism, Shekinah refers to the “divine feminine, or to the feminine aspect of God — God as mother, nurturer, protector and compassionate one”.

    The term derives from the root r-h-m in Hebrew meaning “dwell” and “compassion”. And it shares the same link of compassion and mercy with the concept of “womb” as the Arabic in Islam!

    In Judaism, the term is found throughout early rabbinic literature, referring to: “God’s presence among the people”, with no association to gender.

    Fast forward to the modern day, Jewish feminists have since embraced this concept to counteract “prevailing masculine notions of God as king, father and judge”.

    This includes people such as Kohenet (Priestess) Rachel Rose Reid, whom I’ve had the pleasure of listening to at storytelling events on several occasions.

    Rachel, who co-founded the organisation Yelala with fellow Priestess Kohenet Yael Tischler, is promoting the Divine Feminine in Judaism to step away from masculine traditions:

    “I like to think of the Divine as encompassing all genders, as well as being capable of surpassing all of them.

    In Jewish sacred text and liturgy, there has been a dominant use of “He”, which can make some Jewish people feel like that is the ‘correct’ pronoun for God.

    The use of multiple pronouns can feel for some like some form of polytheism, but that’s only if you think the Divine is somehow finite and confined on the matter of gender.

    In our sacred texts there are a plethora of beautiful poetic descriptions of the Divine not just as mother, and as womb, but also as apple orchard, silkworm, gazelle, shadow, rock, a nursing child, and a rose.

    The poets have tried so hard to reach for the Infinite with our limited language.

    It is important for us all to feel that we are in the image of the Divine, since our sacred texts tell us this is the case.

    Our sense of self should be buoyed by the knowledge that we, too, are a reflection of the One.”

    (Rachel Rose Reid)

    Through Yelala, Rachel and Yael are both creating and running a constellation of projects designed to help people connect with their women/femme/folk Jewish ancestors, as well as the Earth and the Divine Feminine in Jewish tradition.

    Likewise, Kohenet Ketzirah Lesser (ordained from the same organization as Rachel and Yael from Yelala) has dedicated her work to embracing the Feminine Divine.

    This critically includes the linguistic shift required to step away from male-dominated views of God:

    “Even in traditional Judaism, if you ask, people will tell you that G!d/dess is neither male nor female. They will explain that Hebrew is a gendered language and so it’s just a grammatical thing.

    But if you try to pray in feminine G!d/dess language (in Hebrew or English) reactions range from pleasant surprise to shock to horror and anger.

    I was taught once, I wish I could remember by who, that the first five of the ten utterances (aka the Ten Commandments) relate to humanity’s relationship with the Divine and the other half humanity’s relationship to each other.

    That means that ‘honour your father and mother’ is on the side of humanity’s relationship to the Divine. So I intentionally pray in feminine G!d/dess language in Hebrew and English to help bring balance and honour all aspects of G!d/dess.”

    (Kohenet Ketzirah Lesser)

    Language matters and that’s why Ketzirah hasn’t just been adopting feminine language in her personal worship, but also producing artwork to raise awareness and celebrate the Divine Feminine in the Jewish world.

    It’s a critical linguistic (and visual shift) – just as we’ve seen in the Islamic and Christian traditions. Yes, feminism does indeed unite us all!

    There is much needed room for the Divine Feminine in the Abrahamic world, as we’re witnessing from religious leaders and scholars alike.

    But what about the Dharmic faiths? How do they present God? And how does this reflect upon the lived experiences of women?

    Well, find out in part three, where I look at Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • This blog forms part of a series examining how different faith traditions embrace or reject the Divine Feminine in their teachings and representation of The Divine.

    In this blog, I reflect upon my own very masculine spiritual journey across Abrahamic traditions.

    I look back at my childhood as a Christian and my conversion to Islam in my early 20s. I also discuss my interfaith exploration of the Jewish and Christian world as a post-Orthodox Liberal Muslim.

    In part two, I explore how the Divine Feminine is viewed across the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

    In part three, I look at the representation of God and the Divine Feminine amongst the Dharmic faiths (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism).

    In part four, I highlight why the inclusion of the Divine Feminine is critically important, not simply in promoting spiritual inclusion, but embracing wider gender equality in sacred and secular spaces.


    As a British-Italian, born and raised in the UK, my life has been marked by Abrahamic tradition. And this has come with stark similarities (and a few differences) across faiths.

    Growing up as an Anglican Christian (with Catholic family on both sides to varying degrees), I wasn’t particularly aware of religious patriarchy. Although: it definitely did exist!

    From early childhood, my idea of God was however definitely viewed through a very masculine lens. And this continued with me throughout my spiritual journey as an adult.

    Jesus on the cross – an image central to the multi-denominational Christian world.

    Going to church most Sundays and attending a Catholic school (for non-religious reasons), God/Jesus was/were somewhat present in my life.

    As a child, I accepted the Trinity – or thought I did. Unsure of what I really believed; I can safely say that my childhood did include female figures.

    My mother (brought up Catholic and later becoming Anglican) was my first female role model in faith.

    She taught me the importance of spirituality over ritual observance – how turning up to church every Sunday didn’t simply make you a fantastic person/Christian.

    During school time, I then observed more reverence to the Virgin Mary in Catholic tradition, which was part of, but definitely distinct, from my own Anglican faith.

    I was of course aware of the importance of the Virgin Mary – undoubtedly a very female presence. And I enjoyed putting flowers on the grotto at school – whilst confused as to why I wasn’t in a pretty white (First Communion) dress!

    Yet, as a child, I didn’t understand/much see the differences between Catholic and Anglican traditions. And as an Anglican, the Virgin Mary didn’t play a big part in my life.

    Now an adult, I believe that the Virgin Mary (in both Christian and Islamic tradition) is presented in a way very typical of a male-led society. Of course…

    On the other hand, when it came to God and Jesus, I was clearly presented with a very obviously masculine sense of divinity.

    In my early 20s re-exploring Christianity as an adult, before my conversion to Islam soon after.

    God The Father was not human in origin. Yet, he was taught through a masculine narrative: always referred to as Him/He and Our Father.

    Presented as a powerful, mighty Creator in the Old Testament, in Western Christian culture this is a stereotypically masculine portrayal of divinity.

    Jesus, in a similarly male (yet very different) fashion was a form of a living breathing human male – the Son of God walking the Earth. In words and imagery/iconography.

    Again, he was very masculine – just like his (all male) disciples.

    Unbeknown to me as a child, it was this very idea of masculinity and mortality that led me to later convert to another religion. One which was definitely outwardly more patriarchal!

    Visiting Athens during my Orthodox Muslim days (Greece, 2091).  

    As a semi-practising Christian and now in my early twenties, I began to explore faith and look for my own path. And a key reason for this shift was Jesus.

    Believing that Jesus was a very important human being [male], yet totally separate to God (the genderless Divine), I knew I didn’t want to step away from his teachings.

    And so, it was this (amongst other things), that eventually led me to Islam.

    Following a quite intense spiritual journey across Tunisia and Birmingham (the latter much closer to home!), I converted to Islam whilst at university.

    I’d found the sense of monotheism that I was looking for.

    Visiting the Great Mosque of Kairouan (Tunisia) before my conversion to Islam (2010). Image: Elizabeth Arif-Fear ©.

    In Islamic teachings, God is One. A superior force. The Creator of the Universe, who never presents in human form – and is never depicted through imagery.

    Jesus, on the other hand, is presented as a human Prophet (and male), who cannot be divine and must not be worshipped.

    These teachings gelled with me. And so, this liberal young woman, who hadn’t much practised Anglicism, quickly darted towards Orthodox Islam.

    And in this tradition, there was no room for discussion of the “gender” of God.

    Allah was genderless and to ascribe human qualities to God is seen as akin to blasphemy. Just as is any form of perceived idol worship. 

    We were fervently taught to separate the divine and the mortal.

    And so, while Prophet Muhammad (and all the other Prophets – including Jesus) were all male, God is very distinct.

    In terms of women, there are some very important female figures in Islamic tradition. Certain classical scholars do also view Mary (mother of Jesus) as a Prophet.  

    In terms of Allah however, if we needed guidance as to “who” or “what God/Allah is”, we could look to his 99 Names – compiled through verses in the Qur’an.

    And so, I took solace and meaning from these (and still do!).

    Islamic artwork (including the inscription “God” in Arabic) at Jameh Mosque in Yazd, Iran.

    These names are critical to the Muslim world, as God is also never depicted in human (male/female) form in Islamic tradition.

    And so, it is both these 99 Names and the Qur’anic verses that form the basis of Islamic artistic representations of God.

    Decorative calligraphy presents the Arabic script (in which God is genderless), accompanied with ornate floral and geometric designs.

    Now, this may appear seemingly feminine in theory but not within the wider male-dominated narrative.

    Yes, in this world, Allah/God was typically referred to as “He” (never “She”) – despite being genderless.

    At the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco – a mosque founded by Fatima al-Fihri which became a leading spiritual and educational centre (November, 2022). Images: Elizabeth Arif-Fear ©.

    Now, fast forward over a decade since my conversion. Today, I’m a very vocal Liberal Muslim.

    I certainly do not shy away from acknowledging that Islam is interpreted and lived as a very patriarchal faith (practised in often very patriarchal societies).

    I stand against religious patriarchy in its teachings and practices and hope for reform. And that’s exactly why I support a growing movement of Islamic feminists, such as Dr. Amina Wadud and Sherin Khankhan.

    These women are re-interpreting Islam through a more egalitarian lens and advocating for gender equality in the Muslim world.

    They’re addressing key issues such as female scholarship, female led-prayer and interfaith marriage.

    As a Muslim woman though, it’s taken me time to fully embrace a more feminine Islam – and the great work of these women.

    Why? Because of the patriarchy of Orthodox Islam

    Back in the day when I was exploring faith and had just converted to Islam, I was undertaking a Master’s degree in Human Rights.

    And as part of my studies, I was fortunate enough to be able to take the module “Feminism in the Muslim World”.

    This explored the wide range of secular and Islamic (theologically-based) feminist movements in the Muslim world – both in the diaspora and across North Africa and the Middle East.

    It was here that I first encountered Dr Wadud and her book: “Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam”.

    Visiting Lisbon Central Mosque, Portugal as part of the KAICIID Fellowship programme in interreligious and intercultural dialogue (December 2022). Image: KAICIID 2022 Fellowship programme.

    I very much enjoyed the book and embraced the idea of using varied pronouns to refer to God.

    In theological terms, there’s no neutral pronoun in English to describe Allah. And so, Amina doesn’t shy away from equally referring to Allah as both “He” and “She”.

    And I thought that was great!

    Of course, this still triggers traditionalists who fervently believe that God has no gender. Patriarchal habits die hard…. 

    However, over the years, whilst I remained a fan of Dr Wadud, I became gradually more embedded in Orthodox Islam.

    And it wasn’t till later along in my journey as a Muslim – when I left Orthodoxy and embraced being a truly progressive/Liberal Muslim – that I truly understood the deep, dire need for her work.

    Later interviewing Dr Wadud for Voice of Salam, learning more about other female imams and fully embracing the reality of my spiritual equality, it’s definitely been a journey!

    Yet even still, whilst now a proud Muslim Liberal Feminist (akin to the pre-Muslim me!), it was only until recently that I realised just how much I’d still clung unto patriarchal norms.

    Firstly, whilst stepping away from common teachings in the Muslim world (usually male-led and misogynistic), including removing my headscarf after seven years, I’d still carried the image of God as more masculine.

    This reflection on God still fundamentally included little/no reference to the Divine Feminine.

    Secondly, whilst exploring other faith traditions and interfaith spaces (usually also Abrahamic), I also failed to encounter (or look for) the Divine Feminine.

    Although: I was crucially inspired by more egalitarian, feminist and progressive teachings

    Visiting Regent’s Park Mosque (London) with my former (Jewish) local Co-Chair Karen as part of a Nisa-Nashim Co-Chair Retreat weekend (January 2023). Image credit: Yakir Zur ©.

    Over the years for example, I’ve particularly loved connecting with the Jewish world – on a theological and socio-cultural level.

    I’ve started attending services at liberal and reform synagogues (very much inclusive of female Rabbis!) and marking Jewish festivals.

    I’ve also been a very active member of Nisa-Nashim (the Jewish-Muslim women’s network).

    Nisa-Nashim itself is not a theological project – it’s about interfaith unity and dialogue. However, this wonderful movement has taught me a lot about Judaism, the Jewish world and embracing women’s leadership in faith communities.

    For example, attending the René Cassin women’s seder was a fantastic experience. Just as the countless conferences and seminars bringing up to 200 Jewish and Muslim women together.

    One thing’s for certain: we’ve been standing together against two shared struggles.

    We’ve not just united against religiously-motivated hate (anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism) but also recognised our shared struggle against religious patriarchy.

    Learning about the diversity of the Jewish world, I’ve been particularly inspired by Jewish teachings and Jewish feminists across the spectrum of the community (Liberal, Reform and Orthodox for example) who’ve carved/are carving out egalitarian spaces.

    Spaces which I think are sadly lacking in the Muslim world…

    However, as feminist in ideology and practice this journey has been, I’ve never really explored the concept of the Divine Feminine here either.

    I felt quite familiar with the shared concept of a genderless God being referred to as “He” in Jewish prayer books and services. After all, it’s something that I’ve been used to since a child!

    Likewise, going back to my childhood, I’ve also been embracing my Christian heritage and reflecting on my identity as a British-Italian woman of faith.

    Attending diverse churches with friends, I’ve recently started to take comfort in the Christian concept of God as a “Divine Father” who loves and protects me.

    Rejecting more Salafi interpretations who see this is blasphemous (it’s literally a metaphor!), I found that this concept gives me comfort and understanding.

    It shows a loving God and links me to my Christian heritage – part of my upbringing, my culture and my life. This therefore helps ground me and give me a sense of continuity in my identity and faith.

    Visiting the Church of St. Dominic in Lisbon, Portugal with KAICIID (December, 2022). Images: Elizabeth Arif-Fear ©.

    As I’ve started to re-explore my Christian heritage, I’ve also embraced The Lord’s Prayer.

    A beautiful remnant of my childhood, it’s a means to communicate with God. Yet this too is a presentation of a very masculine divine, with the opening declaring “Our Father”.  

    My experience of God was therefore still very masculine. Theological norms meant that I still “saw” The Divine through a masculine prism.

    However, this was about to change!

    On a recent trip to Wales to visit a series of churches, my journey took a new turn – to the more feminine. Grounded in a masculine sense of divinity, I began to reflect on the need to embrace the Divine Feminine.

    And it’s Saint Melangell of Pennant Melangell whom I thank.

    St Winefride’s Well, Hollywell (May 2023).

    Keen to get a bit of fresh air on a bank holiday, I recently headed off with Matt (fellow Voice of Salam blogger) for a tour of Christian sites in Wales. And what a great trip it was!

    Our first visit was to St Winefride’s Well in Holywell.

    This historical site just off the English/Welsh border remains a point of pilgrimage for Catholics today and is definitely worth a visit.

    The site is devoted to St. Winefride – a nun (virgin martyr) from the 7th century who was fortunate to escape sexual assault.

    So, from the offset, there’s an obviously central female figure to this visit.

    The tradition recalls how St. Winefride was decapitated by her violent suitor Caradog, before her head was rejoined to her body. Cardog then fell dead and the site of the decapitation listed as a healing site of miracles.

    Believers now visit the site to pray and bathe in the waters.

    Familiar with Catholicism (seeing myself as a sort of “cousin” to Catholicism and part Welsh myself), I enjoyed the visit and service.

    However, whilst the site had an obviously central female figure, I didn’t connect to any sense of divine feminine energy. It was a trip like most other.

    And so, next stop: St. Trillo’s Chapel at Rhos-on-Sea!

    At St. Trillo’s Chapel at Rhos-on-Sea (May 2023).

    Just 11 feet by 8 feet, this beautiful tiny chapel is quite possibly the smallest Church in Britain!

    Very small and intimate, it had a very comforting presence.

    Likewise, stepping next into St. Celynin’s Church in Llangelynin in the remote foothills of Snowdonia’s Carneddau mountains, I felt a beautiful sense of solitude and peace.

    St. Celynin’s (Llangelynin) (May 2023).

    And the best bit: we were going to somewhere even more remote next!

    Nestled in the Berwyn mountains, I entered St. Melangell’s in Pennant Melangell.

    I was visiting the earliest surviving Romanesque shrine in Northern Europe.

    Serene, intimate, and warm – it was beautiful. Sitting in the shrine of St. Melangell at the back, I took refuge for a moment of solitude and prayer.

    Peaceful, emotional and comforting, I soaked up the energy in her home. And on reflection, it was a very feminine energy.

    Artwork depicting Saint Melangell inside the church at Pennant Melangell (May 2023).

    For Melangell’s presence was all around – her teachings, her values and her love.

    Escaping forced marriage from Ireland (again: gender-based violence), St. Melangell took refuge in the Snowdon hills, where she lived as a hermit.

    One day she encountered Brochwel (the Prince of Powys) who was out hunting with his hounds. A frightened hare then took refuge under Melangell’s cloak, where she kept the creature safe.

    Touched by her sense of courage and empathy for God’s Creation, Brochwel gifted Melangell the valley as a place of sanctuary.

    Becoming abbess of a small community, the site became a place of pilgrimage, with Melangell remaining the patron saint of hares. 

    A figure of nurturing and refuge, it was this church that had touched me the most during that day. And it definitely showed.

    “I knew you’d love it!” exclaimed Matt. And he was right.

    It was comforting, uplifting and full of hope and positive energy. The little shrine felt like a holy welcoming, comforting womb – something which I deeply needed and appreciated.

    The Shrine of St. Melangell (Pennant Melangell) (May 2023).

    Later when chatting about the day, Matt explained how he’d found this church more feminine, as opposed to the rather nice but more masculine St. Celynin’s.

    And he was right again – they were two very different places.

    Whilst I enjoyed both, it was the history and very feminine energy of St. Melangell that I found so special (the vicar was even a woman!).

    And this got me thinking: I need to re-imagine the Divine. To embrace the feminine.

    Find out more about embracing the Divine Feminine in the Abrahamic faiths in part 2!


    Wales photos: Elizabeth Arif-Fear © and Matthew Pointon ©

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • Report finds that religious, historical and cultural references have been removed in crackdown by Beijing

    Hundreds of Uyghur villages and towns have been renamed by Chinese authorities to remove religious or cultural references, with many replaced by names reflecting Communist party ideology, a report has found.

    Research published on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and the Norway-based organisation Uyghur Hjelp documents about 630 communities that have been renamed in this way by the government, mostly during the height of a crackdown on Uyghurs that several governments and human rights bodies have called a genocide.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Video evidence shows multiple arrests after regime launched new draconian campaign against women and girls

    Harrowing first-hand accounts of women being dragged from the streets of Iran and detained by security services have emerged as human rights groups say country’s hijab rules have been brutally enforced since the country’s drone strikes on Israel on 13 April.

    A new campaign, called Noor (“light” in Persian), was announced the same day the Iranian regime launched drone attacks against Israel, to crack down on “violations” of the country’s draconian hijab rules, which dictate that all women must cover their heads in public.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Israel that many admired through a myopic lens has been brought into improved focus, a ruthless state that has similar characteristics to the Nazi state — virulent nationalist, irredentist, militarist, racist, repressive in occupied territories, ethnic superiority, thought control, and genocidal. One major difference between the Nazi Germany and apartheid Israel is that Nazi Germany had no religious attachment; Israel is emerging as a theocracy. This difference solicits a comparison between Israel as a Jewish theocratic state and the now defunct Islamic Caliphate, known as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL).

    The need to compare Israel with ISIS comes from Israel’s attempt to associate Hamas with ISIS. Israel’s worldwide propaganda machine (Hasbara) previously ordered that references to Hamas be preceded by the word terrorist, as if the two words were one word. After decades, the Pavlovian response to the characterization assured that when hearing the word Hamas the adjective terrorist naturally flows to the brain. The terrorism that Israel and its Mossad have inflicted on the Palestinian Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian people, as well as hundreds of innocents from several nations throughout the world, are never discussed. After the October 6 Hamas attack on southern Israel, which incorporated unnecessary excesses, Hasbara issued a new link for attachment to Hamas, “Hamas is ISIS,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When uttering those words, Netanyahu should have looked in the mirror. A comparison determines that the founding of the Israeli and short-lived ISIS state and securing themselves as unique and dominant authorities have similarities.

    Foreigners created the lands

    Foreign fighters entered Syria and Iraq and allied with domestic populations to gain territory and incorporate the territory into the Islamic State (IS). Many of the fighters were from the Caucasus and Europe, were not Arab nationals, and sympathized with the ISIL cause.

    In 1948, the Israeli forces contained few fighters who were born in the British Mandate; most were immigrants from previous decades and volunteers from Western nations. Foreigners to Palestine engaged in the capture of Palestinian land that enabled the creation of the enlarged Israel and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians.

    Uniting the people

    The Islamists spoke of uniting the Arab Muslim people and inaugurating another Golden Age of Arab civilization in the Levant. Out of what? Just as the elements that produced the great Hellenist civilizations no longer exist for the Greek people, the elements for reviving an Arab civilization no longer exist for the Arab people. The Mongol onslaught broke the ties that bound the Arab peoples — devotion to the same religion, a House of Wisdom that contained the first university, which translated Greek and Indian texts and became a center for advancements in humanities, sciences, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, and governance of Muslim Arabs for Muslim Arabs. The modern Muslim Arabs have more in conflict than in solidarity and no longer pursue the uniquely creative efforts of their ancestors. Go through the numbers and we find that ISIL appeals to a small disaffected group who define for others what is Muslim and who is Arab.

    The Zionists spoke of uniting world Jewry and recreating a homeland for all Jews in a land they claim was once a home and empire for Jews. Because Judaism is not a religion that governs or attracts those who need strong devotion, religion originally did not play a role in their mission. Nor were the Zionists uniting a people — Jews around the globe did not share a common language, history, or culture and could not be classified as a nation any more than the Mennonites and Jehovah Witnesses can be considered peoples. The Zionists’ thrust was one of narrow disaffection, of belief that Jews would never be accepted in any nation. Its appeal, minuscule to Jews at the time of its beginnings, tended to unify Jews by sharing woe, harm, and victimization, a process of uniting psyches by trauma. Present-day Israel still clings to the traumas and uses the Old Testament to give it legitimacy and a focus for all Jews.

    Recreating the ancient empire

    The previous Golden Age of the Arab world lasted for 600 from 622 AD to 1258 AD, and, as happened to other civilizations, capitulated to superior military forces. The use of the term Caliphate and its designation as an incorporation of the Arab people into a unified body is an exaggeration. Competing dynasties — Umayyad in Damascus and later Iberia, Abbasid in Baghdad, Fatamid in Egypt, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Muslim but not Arab — can claim the term Caliphate, but all have disappeared from history and so has the Caliphate. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Mongols, and a host of other civilizations had several dynasties, but neither the Italians, Greeks, Egyptians, nor other communities of today are considered heirs or recreations of these previous civilizations. The Golden Age of Arab domination of the Levant is not myth; the modern Caliphate is myth, has no definition in the present, and no return to the past.

    History, archaeology, and anthropology dispute the assertion that the Jews of today have a unique relation to the wandering Hebrew tribes and that these tribes secured a foundation as a civilization or an empire. There might be some slight genetic connection but the dispersal of the original tribes and Jews throughout the world, together with conversions, have modified the DNA and a new genetic pool has arisen. There are no significant traces — administration, monuments, buildings, weapons, accepted history, independent writings, tools, implements, or structures — to substantiate that the ancient Hebrews were other than wandering and hilltop tribes, with some communities having periods of urban concentration. No history or records by other civilizations during the time of the Israelites mention the supposed accomplishments of David and Solomon.

    History of the ancient Hebrew people rests on the acceptance of the Old Testament as a historical narrative. The Bible resembles literature by a people and not an authentic history of a people — a saga with historical occurrences. Its tone, language and stories are mainly derived from Ugaritic literature of the 12th century B.C. Canaanite city-state of Ugarit and from previous Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, and other ancient texts, stories, and legends. Listen to these other voices and we find echoes of the Old Testament. Several of the Psalms were adapted from Ugaritic sources; the story of the flood has a near mirror image in Ugaritic literature.

    Recognized archaeologists (Israel Finkelstein, the director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, William Dever, professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona, Ze’ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, and Margreet Steiner, University of Leiden) have shown that the biblical history of an ancient Israel is mostly myth until the era of Omri in the 9th century B.C., and any attempt to refer to the myth has no definition in the present and no relation to the past.

    Descendants of those who owned the land

    ISIL claimed they were descendants of those who had close attachment to the lands and cultivated and possessed the soil. For centuries, mainly Arabs occupied the Levant, including historical Palestine, and, except for Israel, they now firmly control all of the Middle East and North Africa. The problem in the Arab nations is that the land and resources are controlled by few and are not properly distributed. Resolving that situation did not need an Islamic state; it needs more democratic states.

    Can Jews correctly claim they are descendants of those who had close attachment to the lands, cultivated the soils, and owned them? The biblical twelve tribes of Israel retreat from history is presented as a mystery; described as the “Lost tribes of Israel.” Did they fall into a crack? How does this ridiculous description survive normal thought?

    By 500 BC, the agrarian and pastoral Hebrew tribes had been absorbed into other empires — Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and later Greek and Roman. They formed a new group of Jews, who pursued urban trades throughout Mesopotamia and the Roman Empire. In the Persian Parthian and Sasanian Empires (248 B.C. to 641 A.D.), which housed the three great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita, and Nehardea, the legacy and heritage of modern Jews and Judaism are best expressed. These academies codified the oral and written laws and produced the Babylonian Talmud, which became the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the basis for all Jewish law.

    Although Jews lived in the Levant and controlled a small portion of the area during the short reigns of the Hasmonean kings, Jewish prominence and physical attachments to the ancient land of Israel and Jerusalem were not great and were mostly spiritual. Some remains of Jewish dwellings, burial grounds, and ritual baths can be found, but few, if any, major Jewish monuments, buildings, or institutions from the Biblical era exist within the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem. The oft-cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod’s platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. No remains of that Temple have been located. This portion of the Western Wall lacks absolute proof of its being close to the “holiest of the holies,” and therefore has religious significance by default ─ there is no other apparent religious construction from ancient Hebrew’s Jerusalem.

    In an attempt to connect ancient Israel to present-day Jerusalem, Israeli authorities apply spurious labels to Holy Basin landmarks.

    Neither King David’s Tower nor King David’s Citadel relate to the time of King David.

    Neither the Pools of Solomon nor the Stables of Solomon relate to the time or life of King Solomon.

    Absalom’s Tomb is an obvious Greek sculptured edifice and therefore cannot be the tomb of David’s son.

    Securing themselves as the unique and dominant authority

    Troubling reports had the Islamic State destroying Christian churches and relics, most prominently those of the Assyrian Church of the East. Other destruction included the Temple of Baalshamin, one of the best-preserved ruins at the Syrian site of Palmyra, Mar Elian Christian Monastery, and The Imam Dur Mausoleum, an example of medieval Islamic architecture and decoration, and ancient sites, museums and libraries in Nineveh, Mosul, Hatra, Mari, and Nimrud.

    Israel also consolidated its ethnic appearance.

    Meron Rapaport, History Erased, Haaretz, July 5, 2007 reports that “during the 1950s, the nascent state and IDF set about destroying historical sites left behind by other cultures, particularly Muslims. This policy was so indiscriminate that even synagogues were destroyed.” Rappaport continues with information from Dr. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, The Buried History of the Holy Land. since 1948 that said, “of the 160 mosques in the Palestinian villages incorporated into Israel under the armistice agreements, fewer than 40 remained standing. New Hebrew nomenclature replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, and ruins.”

    Conclusion

    Equating Hamas, an organization that together with Iran has fought ISIS in its territory, has not been well received and is deliberately false. The Financial Times, John Reed in Gaza City JUNE 1 2015, “Hamas seeks to stamp out Isis in Gaza,” reports,

    Night-time security checkpoints have gone up around Gaza City over the past month — the most visible sign of a crackdown by the ruling Islamist movement Hamas on local followers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (or ISIS). In recent weeks, supporters of Isis have claimed credit for several bombings and Hamas has rounded up and imprisoned dozens of people, officials and analysts in Gaza say.

    The Associated Press, as well as other news sources and institutions, explain why Hamas is not ISIS.

    In contrast, Hamas is an exclusively Palestinian movement. Its members are Palestinian and its ideology, albeit violent, is focused on liberating what it says is occupied land through the destruction of Israel. While branded a terrorist group by Israel and its Western allies, its deadly attacks have been focused on Israeli targets.

    During its 16 years of rule, Hamas built up a system of government that includes not only its military wing, but also tens of thousands of teachers, civil servants and police. The group also has significant support inside the West Bank and an exiled leadership spread out across the Arab world.

    The Islamic State is no longer a caliphate and has little possibility of ever becoming a big “C again!” Examine carefully and focus intensely and soon the apparition becomes clear — if Israel is known as the Jewish state, then ISIL was unknowingly patterning its development (not its behavior) with similar principles to those of the Zionists. The rise of the nation-state under monarchs, which began in the 1500s and developed into nations guided by native people, has entered a new phase ─ get a group together, invade a weak foreign land, provide a false history to authenticate claims, and establish a new nation. The crushing similarity that seals the issue ─ ISIL had no defined borders and neither does Israel.

    The post Israel Faces Its Detractors first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Haroon Siddiqui’s 2023 memoir, My Name is Not Harry, is a dazzling journey through Indian Sufism, pre-partition Muslim-Hindu harmony, the horrors of partition, a leap across the ocean to the middle of nowhere (sorry, Brandon Manitoba), finally finding his home at the Toronto Star, from whence, back to central Asia (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India during the tumultuous 1979+), hobnobbing with media and political stars, stopping for heart surgery, all the time building and defending his new multicultural faith, adding his own distinct, Muslim flavour to what it means to be a Canadian. A whirlwind tour of the 20th-21st centuries, as if by a latter day Muslim Christopher Columbus, one meant to try to undo the five centuries of imperialist horror that Columbus unleashed.

    He relishes slaying the dragons of bigotry he encounters, starting with

    *Winston Churchill, the racist. He who had labelled Indians ‘a barbarous people’, ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion’, ‘the beastliest people in the world next to Germans’. Who exacerbated the 1943 Bengal famine that had killed millions by insisting that Indian rice exports for the allied war effort not be interrupted. He who had called Gandhi ‘a naked fakir’ whom he wanted ‘bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and then trampled by an enormous elephant with a new viceroy seated on its back.’

    *Even the Toronto Star‘s iconic Gordon Sinclair, who won fame in the 1930s with his dispatches form India – ‘the pagan peninsula’ with its ‘wild and woolly Hindus’, Brahmins, the supreme high hooper-doopers of this impossible land’, ‘scrawny, underfed untouchables’, impossible-looking beggars’ and ‘yowling idiots’. In tune with those times, [the Star] still going ga-ga over Sinclair well into my own time.

    *On Iran, the only Muslim ‘experts’ and commentators on TV and in print were anti-revolution or anti-Khomeini, authenticating the worst of western prejudices. Anything different, such as mine, must have been a welcome novelty, brought to them by Canada’s largest newspaper.

    *On 9//11, Rushdie see below.

    One of those should-haves of his life as dragonslayer was at the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa, where he hosted Solicitor General Robert Kaplan. When they were walking to dinner, Kaplan started waxing eloquently about his love for India and yoga but his dislike of Muslims! He assumed that being from India I could only be a Hindu. What a testament to power the Zionist Jewish mindset had/has over even a proud Muslim like Siddiqui. But bravo, Harry (sorry, Haroon) for owning up. That’s the great thing about him. He lives his multiculturalism, which means meeting the other on his/her grounds, looking for the middle ground, not stoking enmity.

    Iranian Ayatollahs, Afghan communists

    He shines on the thorniest issue, one of which confronted him soon after arriving at the Star, when he was sent off to Iran in 1979. Speaking Urdu (close to Persian) and fully versed in Sunni and Shia Islam, he was able to make sense of the chaos, making his way to Qom to visit Ayatollah Madari, Khomeini’s rival, who lived just down the maze of alleys from Khomeini, who was already commanding the revolution from his modest home there, rather than Tehran.

    He was told it was impossible to meet with Madari, even for a Canadian Muslim, but when he revealed that he’d just come from Tabriz, where Madari’s People’s Republican Party followers had risen up against Khomeini, rejecting the Islamic state constitution, Madari relented. Madari wanted a secular state and ‘the sovereignty of the people’ not a person. He answered every question patiently for nearly two hours. That was his only interview in the wake of the revolt. It would be his last. He was placed under house arrest until his death six years later.

    He also met with Morteza Pasandideh, 82, Khomeini’s older brother, who was quite jovial. Siddiqui admired them all for their stress-free lives, their inner peace all, living productive lives into their 80s or 90s. Qom is famous for sohan halwa (sweet sweet) made with pistachios, almonds and butter. Back in Toronto, he asked John Ralston Saul to taste and guess which enemy country it was from. Whatever it is, it could only have been made by a great civilization.

    He toured the now-occupied US embassy and chatted amiably (sympathetically?) with the students about how they had pulled off the siege, overpowering the bulky Marines. They said their resolve got strengthened after seeing a large-size picture of Khomeini on a dartboard and several crude cartoons of Khomeini from American and British newspapers in the embassy. At Christmas they made cookies for their captives. An American priest who had come to perform the Christmas Mass said: We should be grateful that we are in a Muslim country and there are not drunk guards. Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor told him: There are no anti-Canadian feelings here. No one has indicated any inclination to leave Tehran. There’s no panic. When he met Taylor later, he said: Mr Taylor, you’re a great liar. Taylor: That’s what I got paid for.

    After an exhausting year in Tehran, the Soviets invaded (came to the assistance of) secular revolutionary Kabul and he was ordered to get there asap. But first he flew to the Iranian border and crossed into Afghanistan to meet a local tribal chieftain, who told him, ‘We’ll kick the bastards out.’ How to get there legitimately? Pakistan? Better India, which had good relations with the communists in Moscow and Kabul, so off to New Delhi and the Afghan embassy. Indira Gandhi never condemned the Soviet invasion. (How wise in retrospect.) In Kabul he was told not to go anywhere and only communicate through an official guide. Ha, ha! He snuck out the back door of his hotel, spoke to a soldier in Urdu, said ‘Canada’ and quickly found a local driver.

    He credits Canada’s reputation for peaceful relations, a well-known eye clinic in Kabul. Off to (Shia) Herat where he heard Long live Islam, Long live Iran! He bought a Russian fur cap but was told never to wear it in public or he might be shot. He left via Pushtunistan to Jalalabad, Pakistan, where he met the legendary 91-year-old frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who like the Siddiquis had protested the division of India. He was ailing but contemptuous of Soviet attempts to appease religious Afghans. Everything in Afghanistan is done in the name of religion. But this is a political religion, not the religion of Islam and Allah and Muhammad. Communism has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the stomach. The Russians knew this and tried to convince the Afghans that they could keep their religion, but it was too little, too late. The Russians refused to try to treat their Gandhi, fearing if he died, they would be accused of killing him.

    He pressed on to the Khyber Pass, the route for a stream of invaders – Cyrus, Darius, Genghis Khan, Alexander, the Mughals. Tribal chief Mohammed Gul told him: if the Iranians can knock off the Shah and the Americans, we certainly can kick out the Russians. He saw that resistance was beginning to jell within weeks of the Soviet occupation. It took a decade for the Soviets to depart, the US and allies, including Canada, taking double the time to conclude that Afghans have both the courage and patience to bleed any occupier dry.

    This being the days before internet, getting copy out required ingenuity. Siddiqui would go to the airport on the days Indian Airlines came to Kabul, meet the crew and cajole/tip them into taking copy and dropping it off at the Reuters news agency in Delhi for forwarding to Toronto. He also went on the day Pakistan International Airlines came just in case. Later he was told everything came, sometimes twice. He met Brzezinski in Peshawar (!) but he wouldn’t give Siddiqui the time of day.

    Following the Iraq-Iran war, he was disgusted that western media ignored the poison gas supplied to Iraq by American, German, French, Dutch, Swiss and Belgian companies. On the Iranian front line he hid from Iraqi snipers and marveled at how soldiers dying from gassing were rushed from the front to Tehran hospitals. He was appalled by Khomeini’s hitman, a sadistic prosecutor Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, the hanging judge. Later in Paris, he met Bani Sadr, the first president, who had been impeached and fled the country disguised as a woman in a chador, in an Iran Air Force jet piloted by a sympathizer. He laments that US hostility prompted Khomeini to restart the nuclear program begun under the Shah, after ending it as unIslamic.

    Siddiqui’s credo

    I must admit, I’ve become jaded about multiculturalism. Toronto is now mostly first or second generation immigrants. Our culture feels shallow and American now. I find the turban-wearing Uber electric scooters grazing me unawares on bike paths frightening, and pointless, as they ferry onion rings to lazy people with too much money. I bemoan the lack of interest in Canadian history, our struggle to define an identity that’s not American. Most immigrants really would prefer big, rich, warm America to Canada and would have no problem if the US decided to invade. What has happened to Canadian culture?

    But then I’ve become equally jaded about our heroic history. We are all immigrants, in the case of the paleface, mostly riff-raff, having decimated our poor brown natives. The post-WWII immigrants from brown countries like Siddiqui’s India/ Pakistan are mostly university-educated, the elites of their countries, so they really are a step up from my Irish-English-Swedish peasant ancestors.

    But then, I find that equally disturbing. We stole the land from the real Canadians. Now we steal the intellectual wealth from poor countries. Sure we’re richer; the imperialist ‘centre’ is always richer. Our Canadianism was and is still a fraud. So, white flag, hello multiculturalism, for better or worse. But one that should give first place to our natives as the real owners, spiritually, of the land. And no more stealing, whether it be minds from ‘over there’, or land here or ‘over there’. That means Israel, our ‘best friend’, according to PM Harper in 2013 and PM Trudeau in 2015.

    Siddiqui is unapologetically for mass immigration and has no time for the ecological problems that mass migration entails. He boasts having visited India 50 times in 40 years, not to mention his other peregrinations. That grates. Yes, brown/black is just as good as white, but what’s holding us together anymore? I don’t know, but I’m happy for Siddiqui, who at least has helped Canada transform from a country of bigotry and chauvinism to … a nice, tame, bland cosmopolis.

    His journey through the swinging ’60s into the terrible ’20s is an upbeat panorama of not only Canada at its peak of popularity and feel-goodness, but, reading between the lines, also the decline of Canada, its loss of feel-good innocence transformation into an unapologetic toady of US empire. He took pride in being Canadian when Ambassador Taylor helped US hostages escape Tehran in 1980, when Chretien refused to go along with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but it’s been downhill since then, with Harper’s disastrous commitment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan, his open Islamo- and Russophobia, his worship of Israel. While Trudeau has welcomed Syrian refugees (and now Afghans, fall out from Harper’s war), he did not fulfill his pledge to renew relations with Iran, despite the Iranian exile community’s pleas. His Russophobia is pathetic. Multiculturalism is looking mighty threadbare.

    Yes, following Trudeau senior, Siddiqui’s credo is that all cultural communities have ‘the right to preserve and develop their own cultures within Canadian society’, which he notes is the ethos of India, best articulated by Indian novelist Shivaram Karanth: There’s no such thing as Indian culture. Indian culture is so varied as to be called cultures. But what has happened to India’s multiculturalism under arch-Hindu nationalist Modi?


    Star Foreign Editor Jimmy Atkins (R) with Star chair John Honderich, South African President Nelson Mandela & first lady Graca Machel, Star editorial board editor Haroon Siddiqui.

    Free trade, Sikhs, Laïcité

    Siddiqui gets along with everyone, doesn’t drink or smoke (anymore), a model Muslim in the House of War.1 He traces his ancestors to the first caliph Abu-bakr Siddiq, and second caliph Umar al-Khattab al-Faruq. A worthy disciple of the Prophet Muhammad, the multiculturalist par excellence.2 The fearsome Bee (Star editor-in-chief Beland Honderich) famously got along with Haroon. Siddiqui started from scratch in Brandon (no halal, no yogurt in 1968), then the Star, rising quickly through the ranks to foreign correspondent, front page editor, editorial page editor, and finally columnist, all the time the only Muslim in mainstream Canadian media.

    He and the Star were against Mulroney’s ‘free’ trade pact with the yankee devil, realizing it was only good for fat cats. He has acted as a public spokesman explaining the problems of all immigrants and BIPOC,3 an acronym he promotes. He highlights the racism which feeds on the changing demographics from white to nonwhite, recountiing a Tanzanian immigrant pushed onto Toronto’s subway tracks, crippling him, and the existence of a KKK chapter operating openly in Toronto.

    The case of Sikhs is thorny. Sikh Canadians were mostly quietist, but when Sikh separatists were ejected from the Golden Temple by Indira Gandhi in 1984, she was assassinated, and Sikh separatists blew up an Indian Airlines plane full of Hindu Canadians in 1985. This still ranks as Canada’s worst such tragedy, but was downplayed by the Canadian government with the investigation bungled by the RCMP, as anti-Sikh/ Hindu racism grew. And it continues, the latest being a hit job on a (Sikh separatist) Canadian, openly, by India’s militant Hindu nationalist government. Multiculturalism is easily abused and hard to defend.

    To their credit, the Sikhs in Canada have bounced back, entering politics (Justin Trudeau boasted more Sikhs in his cabinet than Modi), joining the RCMP, police, army, working hard, being good citizens. The bad apples didn’t spoil the whole barrel, though Sikhs have no use for India, and they really did capture the lackluster leadership convention of the NDP out of nowhere in 2017. The unlikely NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been earnest, if not inspiring.

    How does this multiculturalism pan out? Quebec separatists don’t like immigrants much, as they are not interested in living in a parochial, xenophobic province, and have enough trouble learning passable English, let alone Quebecois. They voted en masse against independence, and the pesky Muslim women want to wear hijab or worse, niqab. Vive la laïcité. Quebec has chosen to copy France’s punitive banning hijab and other restrictions. Still, English and French get along.

    Tribalism, French vs English, Sikhs vs Hindus, Buddhists remains strong. That contrasts with Muslims, who quickly drop their ethnic identity for universal Islam and Canadianism (84% cite being Muslim and 81% cite being Canadian as their primary identity),4 as I’ve noticed at Muslim conferences, where a truly united nations reigns. That brings us to Jewish Canadians vs Muslim Canadians, the most tragic stand-off of the past century. Siddiqui doesn’t go to this forbidding territory. On the contrary, (wisely) he has spoken to Bnai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress gatherings and kept a low profile as a Muslim Canadian. As the sole prominent Muslim journalist here, he was operating in enemy territory, as his encounter with Kaplan confirmed.

    Enlightening Canadians on things Islamic

    More important, he wrote engagingly about Muslims in Toronto, which hosts the largest Iranian emigre community after the US, mostly in ‘Tehronto’, a mix of pro- and anti-Khomeini, but able to live peacefully, all agreeing that the Canadian government nonrecognition of Iran and boycott is bad politics for everyone. His appreciation for this ‘great civilization’ contrasts with the negative press that Iran uniformly gets here.

    Siddiqui realized quickly that Canadian media coverage and commentary ‘smelled of American propaganda’ and the US and allies were inflicting too many horrors on Muslims and Muslims lands. In 1988, the US warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290, prompting Bush I to boast: I will never apologize for the US. I don’t care what the facts are. Instead, Washington awarded medals to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. Did any other mainstream journalist note this then or now? He refused to blacken Islam after 9/11. Now a columnist he wrote his third post-9/11 column ‘It’s the US foreign policy, stupid,’ causing a storm of letters to the editor, a majority ‘thank you for saying it’.

    Ismailis came in 1972, expelled by Idi Amin of Uganda, joined later by Ismailis from Kenya and Tanzania. Self-reliant, educated, entrepreneurial, they inspired the Aga Khan to build a museum of Islamic culture in Toronto in 2014, the only such museum in the West. Ironically it was officially opened by arch-Islamophobe PM Harper. We celebrate today not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul. But then, to Islamophobe Harper, Ismailis are Islam-lite, not considered real Muslims by most.

    There are two chapters dealing with the ummah: Cultural Warfare on Muslims, and Harper and Muslims (In his ugliness, he was well ahead of Trump – and more effective). Some particularly painful episodes he covered:

    *Harper invited (till then terrorist) Modi to Canada in 2014 when first elected, accompanying him to Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver,

    *He established an office of religious freedom, which he unveiled at a Mississauga Coptic church. He announced the position of a new ambassador of religious freedom at the Ahmadiyya mosque in Vaughan, defending Christian and other minorities in Muslim nations, doing nothing for Uighurs, Rohingyas, Shia in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

    I could go on – I haven’t even got to the Rushdie circus – but I urge all Muslim Canadians, no, all Canadians, to read for yourselves. Siddiqui provides an excellent survey of all the post-9/11 Islamophobic nonsense, especially in Euroland.

    The West has discredited democracy by allowing anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse to be one of our last acceptable forms of racism and bigotry. It’s in this milieu that Rushdie and the Rushdie affair have thrived. Has Rushdie been exploiting western prejudices or has the West been using him as a shield for its own prejudices? Or is this a case of mutual convenience?

    Having rid ourselves of Harper, how quickly we forget the pain when it stops. As it has under Trudeau Jr. For all his silliness and US-Israel fawning, Justin Trudeau is true to his father’s legacy, and undid much of Harper’s bigotry, especially relating to Muslims.

    We should be wary of letting the unrepentant Conservatives take back Parliament Hill. However, I don’t think it’s possible to relaunch the Harper take-no-hostages Crusade. 9/11 (whoever did it) is what motivated me and many more to become a Muslim, and October 7 is now rapidly expanding the Muslim ummah, especially in the West, the heart of the beast. The trouble for the Harpers is that the more Islam and Muslims are reviled, the more Muslims (re)turn to their religion. But then that’s the way of imperialism, creating its enemies, stoking them, as Israel did with Hamas, thinking they can then pick off the ‘terrorists’, ‘mow the grass’.

    Siddiqui draws from his experience surviving partition in India, adhering to Shaykh Madani’s view that ‘there is too much diversity within Islam for democracy to work, that an Islamic state would inevitably be authoritarian.’ Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran are the leading examples. The best protection for peoples of faith was a democratic state that stayed neutral between faiths and advanced mutual respect.5

    The Harpers accuse Muslims of being unwilling to integrate. Canada, Britain and the US are shining examples of the opposite.

    *In the 2021 federal election 12 Muslims won seats. Two hold senior Cabinet portfolios: Omar Alghabra and Ahmed Hussen.

    *In Britain, in 2019, 19 were elected. Sadiq Khan has been mayor of London since 2016.

    *Humza Yousaf became first minister in Scotland in 2023, the first Muslim to lead a western nation. When Khan was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council at Bukhingham Palace in 2009, it was discovered there was no Quran in the palace, so he brought his own and left it as a present to the Queen.

    *In the US 57 Muslims were elected in 2020. Keith Ellison, the first member of the House was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by President Jefferson, who had bought an English translation out of the ‘desire to understand Islam on its own terms.’

    *Arab and Muslim entertainers, stand-up comedians, writers, actors, Little Mosque on the Prairie …

    *To welcome Syrian refugees arriving in Canada, Ottawa French public schools joined to sing Talaʽ al-Badru ʽAlaynā,6 which went viral on YouTube.

    Siddiqui’s openmindedness and lack of prejudice are his not-so-secret weapon, able to find common humanity where western propaganda serves up bile. To no small degree, thanks to Haroon and other new (brown) Canadians, Marshall McLuhan’s global village is a reality at home, the most successful heterogeneous experiment in human history.

    ENDNOTES

    The post Haroon Siddiqui’s My Name is NOT Harry first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Dar al-harb vs Dar al-Salam, House of Peace, referring to the Muslim world.
    2    Quran16:13 And all the [beauty of] many hues-which He has created for you on earth: in this, behold, there is a message for people who [are willing to] take it to heart.
    3    Black, indigenous, people of colour.
    4    Half of Muslim Canadians consider their ethnic identity as very important. Statistics Canada, ‘The Canadian Census: A rich portrait of the country’s religious and ethnocultural diversity,’ 2022.
    5    Siddiqui, My name is not Harry: A memoir, 392.
    6    (طلع البدر) nasheed that the Ansar sang for the Islamic prophet Muhammad upon his arrival at Medina from the (non)battle of Tabuk.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ramadan (Arabic: رَمَضَان, Ramaḍān, Ramadhaan) is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and the month in which the Quran is believed to be revealed to the prophet Muhammad

    Quran 20:81 Eat of the good things We have provided for your sustenance, but commit no excess therein.

    Fasting is good for you. Very good. Josh Mittledorf, in Cracking the aging code: The new science of growing old and what it means for staying young, 2016, estimates he’s added a decade, a good, healthy decade, to his life with his regime, which includes a weekly fast from 10pm Wednesday to 8 am Friday, when he only drinks water. He has figured out other ways to trick his mind into operating in its highest metabolic mode, but the main thing is the fast. Fasting has long been a spiritual exercise to quieten the body’s incessant desires for petty satisfactions, real world distractions.

    It is of course the no-brainer way to lose weight, but the marvel, paradox, is that for all living creatures, reducing consumption to just above starvation guarantees better health and longer life.

    Couch potatoes end up flabby, insulin-resistant, chronically sicker as they age, awaiting a pathetic last stage in life where death is arguably an improvement over pain and self-loathing. Which brings me to the other secret, paradox, of longevity. Exercise. And lots of it, every day making sure you’ve pushed yourself to the point of feeling your blood pumping. Forget about antioxidants. If you put your body engine into low gear, it can deal fine with them.

    Exercise produces lots of antioxidants, but top athletes have longer, healthier lives by specialising in manufacturing them! You damage your muscles in hard exercise, but that’s good damage, damage that your body is honed to repair and does so eagerly when you give it the optimal conditions (hot, sweaty), growing back stronger, preparing for the next battle.

    Indian sages do just fine with meditating, no exercise, but lots and lots of fasting. John Oakes, in The fast: the history, science, philosophy, and promise of doing without (2016), argues that fasting acts like a metaphor, withholding, sacrificing, to open you up to compassion, creation, ‘the real work’ or real purpose of our mind-body, allowing room for something else to happen besides the incessant preparing for and indulging in consumption. At his substack, Douglas Rushkoff ponders the sense of emptiness, nonbeing, even death, that fasting suggests. ‘You lose the sense of inside/ outside, of duality, replaced by an existential oneness.’

    Oakes likes to have a partner, a shared community, for his week-long fasts. Which brings to mind the famous hunger strikes by such as Bobby Sands and his fellow IRA prisoners under the cruel hand of Thatcher. And which mostly fail to ‘move the mountain’, but inspire others in the common struggle, and as a bonus, extend your life (as long as you don’t starve to death).

    Mittledorf, Oakes and Rushkoff are secular Jews, dabbling in Buddhism and yoga, and more or less dismiss religion in their fascination with Nature’s paradoxes. Buddhism is a belief based on nonattachment, ‘no preference’, in life, the way to get beyond the world of ‘I’ll eat or be eaten.’ By taking eating out of the equation, you can get beyond the dog-eat-dog mentality. You leave room for ‘food for thought.’

    What’s with the paradoxes? Look at our cliches. Food for thought, no pain – no gain. They are true! Good pain. Bad pain. We are beings of qualia. Good-bad is built into our genes, into our universes. And what’s good for the goose is usually good for the gander. When it comes down to it, there is very little separating one individual from another, except his/her community, and the individuals there are also much the same. Our bodies and minds need stress, good stress, to make the body react to our endeavours as well as possible, to give us ‘good’ individuality.

    Ramadan

    Catholics used to fast moderately in Lent; a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. No meat, but fish Fridays.1 This fasting regime is not much good for revving up the mind-body’s long-life mechanism. Paul VI opened the floodgates in the 1960s, making even this fasting optional.

    The religion best known for its ‘pillar’ of a whole month of dry fasting from sunrise to sunset is of course Islam. It takes its cue from Judaism, the founding monotheism of which Islam considers itself the updated form. Devout Jews do the dry fast for one day, the Day of Atonement. Rushkoff says that Jews mistakenly think that the fasting is a kind of punishment, atonement. But that is a false view. Fasting is hardly a punishment, but rather a time of clearly the mind of material desires, and opening it to spiritual concerns, atoning for your sins.

    Whoever fasts during Ramadan with faith and seeking his reward from Allah will have his past sins forgiven. But if a person does not avoid false talk and false conduct during Siyam [fasting], then Allah does not care if he abstains from food and drink.2 No room for the hypocrite. The only gambling allowed is your wager on which night during the last 10 days is the most holy, the one commemorating the first revelation: When Lailat Al-Qadr comes, Gabriel descends with a company of angels (may Allah bless them all) who ask for blessings on everyone who is remembering Allah, whether they are sitting or standing.3 It’s worth a thousand months’ worth of rewards in a singular eve.

    But many Muslims, like many Jews, mistake the means for an end. You don’t go to heaven just for fasting, but for using the opportunity, one month each year, to clear the mind, to get a glimpse of jannah, where there is no need for material nourishment, where ‘fasting’ has prepared you to nurture your existence on the spiritual level, without the daily grind of consuming.

    Another problem in Ramadan time is that ‘less is more’ is fudged. Yes, you starve a bit each day, but after sunset, watch out for the constant eating, visiting, eating, … to the point that for many, more calories are consumed during the month than at other times of the year. Poor Muslims love Ramadan as they get many more opportunities to gorge, eat meat, than normally. Fair enough, but the better-off Muslims forget about ‘less is more’ too. A shame that for many Muslims, Ramadan lost this precious paradox of Nature.

    When the first night of Ramadan comes, the devils and mischievous jinn are chained up, and the gates of Hell are closed. The gates of Paradise are opened.4 You’re fasting so can’t sin in daytime, and after eating and night prayers you’re exhausted. Ramadan is for spiritual enlightenment, renewal, replacing daily food with daily food for thought. Fasting as a secular has no clear goal other than physical fine tuning, so why not make it a spiritual quest? It’s not only our bodies, but our mind-bodies that are corrupted by consumerism and money-grubbing.

    Ramadan is about cleansing the slate of sins, refusing them for a month (at least in daylight), showing thanks for the blessing of life and the bounty of Nature, showing generosity to the less fortunate (there’s always someone ‘lower on the totem pole’), humility before it all. There isn’t enough backbone in the secular version to attract more than a tiny intellectual elite. Ramadan is for the masses.

    Clashes of civilizations

    I used to pondered why the Muslim world was so ‘backward’, not using the knowledge, inventions it had produced and happily bequeathed the capitalist nations, up to the 16th c—knowledge is respected and considered a gift to all from God. Of course, the Muslim world has been corrupted by industrial capitalism, imperialism. Consumerism in the profane world is now the number one concern of almost everyone.

    The West gladly took/ stole Muslim knowledge and then turned it against not just Muslims but all those outside the West, first occupying the Muslim (the whole) world, setting up West-friendly systems beholden to the West, and bequeathing Muslims a western consumerist lifestyle, which unfortunately includes Ramadan, which is now more about feasting and family than spiritual growth. Muslims spend more during Ramadan on everything from gifts and clothes to food and even cars. In the Middle East alone, last year’s Ramadan spending was worth over $60 billion.

    A positive development from this mixing of cultures has been the new celebration of Ramadan in the secular West. In Austria this week, more than 1,000 people came together for an “open iftar” in the state of Carinthia, where all community members are invited to break the Ramadan fast and eat together — even if they’re not Muslim and haven’t fasted. Last year, thanks to its Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, London became the first large European city to decorate its streets (Piccadilly Circus, Coventry Street to Leicester Square) with Ramadan lights. Frankfurt am Main followed London’s example this year, becoming the first big German city to set up Ramadan lighting.

    Some Muslims are upset about the commercialization of Ramadan. Conservative clerics have argued that non-Muslims shouldn’t partake at all, while far-right Europeans believe the practice will lead to the end of civilization as they define it – the Great Replacement conspiracy.5 And some social media personalities who fasted during Ramadan, treating it as a kind of online health challenge, have been called out for cultural appropriation.

    This year has witnessed a new attraction to Ramadan, to Islam, as Palestinians heroically die under Israeli bombardment and forced starvation. A growing number of young, progressive western women are converting to Islam, citing the Israel-Hamas war as motivation for the conversion – and they’re documenting their journey on social media. They identify the awesome courage of mothers carrying the corpses of their infants, murdered by the Zionist regime, and share their personal journey on Tik Tok, or did until it was abruptly shut down. (I wonder why?) Megan Rice detailed the Palestinians’ “ironclad faith” in wake of the war, now wears a hijab, having founded the virtual World Religion Book Club.

    Despite the sorry state of the ummah now, I still suspect that not taking the western aggressive, exploitative road was the right choice. What has happened to the West in the past three centuries? Two horrendous world wars, with another on the horizon. A constant and recently precipitous decline in morality and religion, not to mention incalculable destruction of Nature. Preserving Islam means rejecting war, materialism, consumerism, which are destroying the world and ourselves, with a mad rush to overproduce, overconsume ’till the cows come home.’

    I’ve been using this Ramadan to ponder a counterfactual history, where the West didn’t succeed in adopting industrial capitalism, where inventions like Chinese gun powder remained for entertainment rather than war, where algebra and astrolabes are used to unite the world peacefully, not through conquest. Inventions would continue, but would be used in a ‘good’ way, unlike, say, the first airplane, which was quickly adapted to fire machine guns, and to carpet bomb Muslims almost as soon as it was invented. Central to Islam is that man should not exploit man. So no usury, no assembly lines. In as much as these principles are more and more sidelined, Islam is weakened.

    Mittledorf, Oakes, Rushkoff are secular in their quest for a longer healthier life, though they admit there is another reality that fasting can help us reach. They are secular Jews, atheists, so they are ‘above’ religion, so well-educated and independent that they don’t need religion, unlike the rest of us. For us, religion is essential to a moral order, to give us backbone, or rather to strengthen that religious backbone that we are endowed with.

    Ramadan is a time of giving, sharing. Not taking, consuming. The best way too feel good is to give. To get a glimpse of a higher reality through channeling, purifying our emotions, our highest evolutionary trait. Cultivating our ‘good’ tertiary emotions: (guilt, shame, selflessness, self-respect), we can even help a pet dog or parakeet feel some of these higher emotions, cultivating their senses.

    As for the Ramadan fast and aging/ health, just remember ‘less is more’. After a day of exhausting emptiness, it doesn’t take a lot to pacify the growling stomach. Keeping the body from satiety lets the body’s higher level maintenance regime kick in, hopefully extending your life for at least another Ramadan or two.

    So why doesn’t the body automatically work at top speed to keep us alive and well as long as physically possible? Well, that appears not to be the be-all-and-end-all in Nature. We have ignored that and worked to create ‘science’ to keep us all alive at all costs. And where is that leading us? We have broken the chain(s) of evolution, where misbehaving populations have collapsed countless times in the past. Quran 29:40 So We seized each people for their sin: against some of them We sent a storm of stones, some were overtaken by a ˹mighty˺ blast, some We caused the earth to swallow, and some We drowned. Allah would not have wronged them, but it was they who wronged themselves. Welcome to 2024.

    It’s as if your body-mind rewards you for being good (to it), for paying attention (to it), taking care (of it), which means you’re probably taking care of others too, as you can’t really love yourself till you love others. The ‘way’ of Islam is to fight the inner shaitan, the lower nafs [self], so you are always in dialogue with your mind-body. So with shaitan locked up for the month of Ramadan, less is more. You are in a noble dialogue with your mind-body and God.

    Catholic fasting is gone, Buddhism lite is the choice of the secular elite, but Ramadan remains the bedrock of Islam. Muslim countries don’t seem to be any better than secular ones when it comes to waste, consumerism, but if we can renew the original meaning of Ramadan, it fits with Nature’s silver bullet, ‘less is more’, where we look to ‘food for thought’ more than a bigger Whopper.

    ENDNOTES

    The post Ramadan Fasting first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Jesus was warm-blooded but fish are cold-blooded.
    2    Hadith al-Bukhari.
    3    Miskhat al-masabih.
    4    Hadith narrated by at-Tirmidhi.
    5    With the complicity of elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New York, March 20, 2024—Bangladesh authorities must immediately drop all charges against journalist Md Shofiuzzaman Rana and investigate the harassment of five journalists in northern Lalmonirhat district, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

    Rana was held in jail for a week after police arrested the journalist on March 5. Rana, who works for the Bangla-language newspaper Desh Rupantor, was arrested at a local government office in the northern Sherpur district after he filed a right to information (RTI) application regarding a government-run development program, according to news reports, the local press freedom group Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and Mustafa Mamun, acting editor of Desh Rupantor.

    Later that day, an assistant land commissioner, who is also an executive magistrate, sentenced the journalist to six months in prison on charges of disobeying an order by a public servant and insulting the modesty of a woman. The action was taken through a mobile court, which is empowered to try offenses instantly.

    Mohammad Ali Arafat, state minister for information and broadcasting, stated that the country’s information commission would investigate the incident and told CPJ that he would receive a copy of the commission’s investigative report on Monday, March 18.

    Arafat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s subsequent requests for comment on the report’s findings. Mamun told CPJ that as of Wednesday, he had not received a copy of the report.

    Separately, at around 12 p.m. on March 14, employees at an assistant land commissioner’s office in Lalmonirhat held Mahfuz Sazu, a correspondent for the broadcaster mytv and the newspaper The Daily Observer, after the journalist filmed a land dispute hearing allegedly conducted by an unauthorized official, according to news reports, Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ.

    Twenty minutes later, four members of the Lalmonirhat Press Club arrived to help Sazu and were also confined within the premises. After a district revenue commissioner arrived at the scene, the five journalists were released around 12:50 p.m.

    “CPJ welcomes a government investigation into the retaliatory jailing of Bangladeshi journalist Md Shofiuzzaman Rana. Journalists should not face reprisal merely for seeking information,,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should launch a transparent probe into the confinement of five correspondents in a  government office in Lalmonirhat and ensure that journalists are not harassed with impunity.”

    Rana’s arrest unfolded after an office assistant refused to provide the journalist with a receipt for his RTI application. Rana then called the Sherpur deputy commissioner, or district magistrate, to resolve the issue, Mamun told CPJ, citing Rana. The chief of the local government office arrived at the scene and shouted at Rana, saying, “You are a broker journalist” (an insult used to refer to a media member who makes money through one-sided stories).

    Police then arrived at the scene, arrested the journalist, and seized his two mobile phones. Rana was held for one week in Sherpur District Jail and released on bail on March 12. A local magistrate court is scheduled to hear Rana’s appeal against the verdict on April 16.

    Separately, Sazu told CPJ that after filming the land dispute hearing, he interviewed three people connected to the case in the corridor of the assistant land commissioner’s office when an official unsuccessfully attempted to confiscate his phone.

    The official then called the assistant land commissioner. At the same time, the office staff escorted the three people he interviewed out of the building and locked the entrance, leaving the journalist confined within the premises, Sazu said.

    Sazu told CPJ that the journalist’s four colleagues later entered the building with the assistance of a local ward councilor but were also locked inside the premises. The journalists were:

    • Mazharul Islam Bipu, a correspondent for the broadcaster Independent Television
    • SK Sahed, a correspondent for the newspaper Daily Kalbela
    • Neon Dulal, a correspondent for the broadcaster Asian TV
    • Liakat Ali, a correspondent for the newspaper Daily Nabochatona

    The assistant land commissioner then arrived at the scene and shouted at the journalists, calling them “brokers” and threatening to send them to jail via a mobile court, Sazu said, adding that the journalists also heard him telling an unidentified individual on the phone that he would file legal cases against them.

    Later that day, the divisional commissioner of Rangpur, which encompasses Lalmonirhat, issued an order transferring the assistant land commissioner to another locality. As of Wednesday, the order had not been executed, and no further legal or administrative action had been taken, Sazu told CPJ.

    Arafat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment on the incident in Lalmonirhat.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza, the intelligence community and the FBI believe that the threat of Islamic terrorist attack inside the United States has increased to its highest point since 9/11, according to testimony of senior officials. “It’s long been the case that the public and the media are quick to declare one threat over and gone, while they obsess over whatever’s shiny and new,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point earlier this month. Wray said that though many “commentators” claimed that the threat from foreign terrorist organizations was over, “a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations [are calling] for attacks against Americans and our allies.”

    Though Wray cites Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and ISIS as making new threats against America, he said that the bureau was actually more focused on “homegrown” terrorists — Americans — as the primary current threat. “Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” he said at West Point.

    Soon after the Gaza war began, Wray appeared before the House Committee on Homeland Security and said that homegrown violent extremists, or HVEs, posed the single greatest immediate foreign terrorist threat to the United States.  

    According to the FBI, while inspired by the actions of foreign terrorist groups, HVEs are lone actors or members of small cells disconnected from material support of the established extremist groups they draw inspiration from. Though Wray isn’t willing to discount the likelihood of a 9/11 magnitude attack — in fact, at West Point he cites the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel as the equivalent of an attack on the United States that would have killed nearly 40,000 people in the single day — he says small-scale and “lone wolf” attacks are more likely. “Over the past five months, our Counterterrorism Division agents have been urgently running down thousands of reported threats stemming from the [Israel-Hamas] conflict,” Wray said on March 4.

    “The FBI assesses HVEs as the greatest, most immediate international terrorism threat to the homeland,” Wray said in his November testimony to Congress, adding that “HVEs are people located and radicalized to violence primarily in the United States, who are not receiving individualized direction from [foreign terrorist organizations] but are inspired by FTOs, including the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (“ISIS”) and al-Qa’ida and their affiliates, to commit violence.” 

    Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for North America, echoed Wray’s concern in his testimony this month before Congress. “The likelihood of a significant terrorist attack in the homeland has almost certainly increased since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Multiple terrorist groups — including ISIS and al-Qa’ida — have leveraged the crisis to generate propaganda designed to inspire followers to conduct attacks, including in North America. The increasingly diffuse nature of the transnational terrorist threat challenges our law enforcement partners’ ability to detect and disrupt attack plotting against the homeland and leaves us vulnerable to surprise.” Guillot’s counterpart in U.S. Southern Command, responsible for the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, Gen. Laura Richardson, did not raise the domestic terror threat during her congressional testimony

    Though the FBI is focused on homegrown threats, Wray does say that after months of chasing down an influx in leads, his counterterrorism division has started “to see those numbers level off,” adding that “we expect that October 7 and the conflict that’s followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come.”

    Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking U.S. intelligence official, agreed with Wray’s view, testifying this week, “The crisis has galvanized violence by a range of actors around the world.” 

    “While it is too early to tell, it is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism,” she warned, setting the stage for a renewed priority of Middle East terrorism at the very time when much of the intelligence apparatus had shifted to a different type of domestic terrorist threat after January 6. In the Director of National Intelligence’s annual threat assessment, praise for the October 7 attack by the Nordic Resistance Movement, a European neo-Nazi group, was cited as evidence of the spread of extremist ideology. No direct neo-Nazi plots, however, were identified. 

    The Intercept also recently wrote of the homeland security agencies’ expanded interest in domestic extremism, specifically targeting anarchists and leftists in the wake of Aaron Bushnell’s death.

    Among the foreign threats raised during his West Point address, Wray mentioned Hezbollah support and praise for Hamas posing “a constant threat to U.S. interests in the region,” Al Qaeda issuing its most specific call to attack the United States in the last five years, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or Yemen, calling on jihadists to attack Americans “and Jewish people,” and ISIS urging its followers to target Jewish communities in both Europe and the United States. 

    To embellish the domestic threat picture, earlier this week, Wray said that immigrant crossings at America’s southern border were extremely concerning, with foreign terrorist organizations infiltrating into the country through drug smuggling networks. “There is a particular network that has — some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have — ISIS ties that we’re very concerned about, and we’ve been spending enormous amounts of effort with our partners investigating,” he said.

    Picking up where Wray left off, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News this week that illegal immigration was one of the greatest catalysts for America’s imperilment. “The terror threat to this country is enormous.” Cruz said. “It is greater than it’s ever been at any time since September 11th.”

    Other members of Congress have similarly seized on Wray’s warnings about the Hamas threat to push for their own policy objectives. As Wired reported this week, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio, met with lawmakers in December in an attempt to dissuade them from initiating reforms that could cripple the FISA 702 authority, a law enshrining the intelligence community’s ability to conduct warrantless surveillance

    According to the report, Turner “presented an image of Americans protesting the war in Gaza while implying possible ties between the protesters and Hamas, an allegation that was used to illustrate why surveillance reforms may prove detrimental to national security.”

    In the past three months, the only Hamas-connected prosecution carried out by the Department of Justice appears to be the arrest of Karrem Nasr, a U.S. citizen who allegedly traveled from Egypt to Kenya in an effort to wage jihad with the Somalia-related terrorist group al-Shabab. “Karrem Nasr, motivated by the heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, devoted himself to waging violent jihad against America and its allies,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in a press release, saying that they had been able to disrupt his plot.

    The post FBI Warns Gaza War Will Stoke Domestic Radicalization “For Years to Come” appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Ramadan, which starts in earnest today, is a beautiful month of fasting and prayer focused on humility and kindness, but in Palestine this holy month has been repeatedly weaponized against us — the Israeli military has shown a pattern of targeting Palestinians, and especially Palestinian Muslims, during this month. This year, the terrifying scale of violence exceeds all that came before.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.