This article expresses so many things that've been tearing up my heart lately, but I have not known how to say. I'm grateful for your work & hope you don't mind that I've shared it.
You articulate much like our leaders did in the 90's prior to the Ceasefire 97 and GFA 98. Was a Volunteer, a "runner". My mother was Irish, I was young and powerless to affect here, so I fought were it could count. We learned from each other, the shared cause back then and I had the privilege of learning from PIJ and Hamas who were perhaps the most outstanding experts in their fields. One Struggle. "Technical knowledge" exchanged and we learned sumud. I was the only ind'yan to ever serve in that war; it was war. Today I can't even hold a passport. My children also. The systematic marginalization is real but invisible and just as deadly as bullets. The people need to understand this to understand violence and "why direct violence" emerges.
By Allah, I do feel ashamed. Ashamed that I have no influence on those within my personal circles to rise up and do more, instead of talk and just supplication.
Thank you for your comment which I sincerely appreciate. I do address Arab Supremacy and anti-Blackness in (pre-)modernity in my book Islam & Anarchism (Pluto, 2022) and other works on queer Black and non-Black Muslims globally. Inshallah forthcoming pieces will delve deeper into all these. Not to condone slavery but the majority of slaves in medieval Muslim societies were actually Circassian. This is not to deny or condone the fact that non-black Muslims continue to hide behind the Qu’ran, perpetrating and perpetuating anti-blackness and Afrophobia. One cannot deny the rampant abuse of workers in the Gulf, the thousands of workers in the Gulf dying on construction sites, the South Asian child camel-jockeys imported into the United Arab Emirates to race camels, or the horrific conditions of Black and non-Black prisoners in Muslim societies such as Libya and elsewhere. It is worth noting though that Muslim history does reflect a wide variety of historically specific patterns of enslavement, slaveholding, manumission and abolition. Pre-modern slaves from Europe, Asia and the Caucasus as well as Africa, might be conscript-convert Janissary troops, cooks, nannies, Mamluk military rulers, salt miners, pearl divers, craftsmen who were allowed to keep part of their wages, mothers of Ottoman sultans and the drudges who cleaned the royal harem quarters. In this sense too, I'm not interested in the false orientalist and ahistorical narrative that sword-wielding Arabs spread Islam, and that Arab slavery is indistinguishable from its European plantation counterpart, despite fundamental differences between the former and latter. After all, unlike the market-driven cotton plantations, slavery during the medieval Muslim period was not a central component of the political economy of Muslim societies, and modern identity politics that relied on the supremacy of whiteness and capitalist nation-state paradigms did not exist. Slaves weren't necessarily regarded as owned inferior savages and heathen property either. There were also Black Muslim leaders empires too like Sundiata Keita, Usman Dan Fodio, Mansa Musa and great Islamic civilizations like the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire and the Sokoto Caliphate. Sadly any faith, tradition or people are capable of constructing, assimilating into or becoming a part of the world of the above. For example, Indigenous-Black relations are creased by white settler-colonialism, whose divide and conquer strategies pit native against native and black against black. Whereas historically both entities were mutually engaged through treaty and other forms of cooperative relationships. the impact of white colonialism resulted in fraught conflicts as some Native people enslaved Black people, and some Black people participated in Indigenous extermination, expulsion, and land theft. And yet, in other instances, we see fused identities like the Black Cherokees in Oklahoma and Black Mi’kmaq peoples in Nova Scotia, who are a living embodiment of these two worlds and the intertwining of Indigenous and Black peoples’ fates and futurities.
This is a stunning piece ❤️🔥
"Never say that those martyred in the cause of Allah are dead—in fact, they are alive! But you do not perceive it.” ❤️🩹❤️🔥
MUST read! Long read, and every single word is worth the time to read and comprehend. One of the best/ top articles I've ever read.
This article expresses so many things that've been tearing up my heart lately, but I have not known how to say. I'm grateful for your work & hope you don't mind that I've shared it.
Thank you for engaging & reading.
Grateful for your sharing of the work as it tends to be gate-kept.
I'm humbled & honored.
You articulate much like our leaders did in the 90's prior to the Ceasefire 97 and GFA 98. Was a Volunteer, a "runner". My mother was Irish, I was young and powerless to affect here, so I fought were it could count. We learned from each other, the shared cause back then and I had the privilege of learning from PIJ and Hamas who were perhaps the most outstanding experts in their fields. One Struggle. "Technical knowledge" exchanged and we learned sumud. I was the only ind'yan to ever serve in that war; it was war. Today I can't even hold a passport. My children also. The systematic marginalization is real but invisible and just as deadly as bullets. The people need to understand this to understand violence and "why direct violence" emerges.
I learn so much from your work. I’ve spent a year reading Islam and Anarchism & it is shaping me as a Muslim in new ways. Thank you.
Deeply indebted Samira.
Jazaki Allah alf khayir for your kind words & support of the work.
Jum3a mubarak.
Please keep me in your duaa - I'd be honored.
Absolutely brilliant article, thank you so much for connecting these points in such an elegant & grounded way.
Thank you for reading & engaging.
By Allah, I do feel ashamed. Ashamed that I have no influence on those within my personal circles to rise up and do more, instead of talk and just supplication.
Thank you for your comment which I sincerely appreciate. I do address Arab Supremacy and anti-Blackness in (pre-)modernity in my book Islam & Anarchism (Pluto, 2022) and other works on queer Black and non-Black Muslims globally. Inshallah forthcoming pieces will delve deeper into all these. Not to condone slavery but the majority of slaves in medieval Muslim societies were actually Circassian. This is not to deny or condone the fact that non-black Muslims continue to hide behind the Qu’ran, perpetrating and perpetuating anti-blackness and Afrophobia. One cannot deny the rampant abuse of workers in the Gulf, the thousands of workers in the Gulf dying on construction sites, the South Asian child camel-jockeys imported into the United Arab Emirates to race camels, or the horrific conditions of Black and non-Black prisoners in Muslim societies such as Libya and elsewhere. It is worth noting though that Muslim history does reflect a wide variety of historically specific patterns of enslavement, slaveholding, manumission and abolition. Pre-modern slaves from Europe, Asia and the Caucasus as well as Africa, might be conscript-convert Janissary troops, cooks, nannies, Mamluk military rulers, salt miners, pearl divers, craftsmen who were allowed to keep part of their wages, mothers of Ottoman sultans and the drudges who cleaned the royal harem quarters. In this sense too, I'm not interested in the false orientalist and ahistorical narrative that sword-wielding Arabs spread Islam, and that Arab slavery is indistinguishable from its European plantation counterpart, despite fundamental differences between the former and latter. After all, unlike the market-driven cotton plantations, slavery during the medieval Muslim period was not a central component of the political economy of Muslim societies, and modern identity politics that relied on the supremacy of whiteness and capitalist nation-state paradigms did not exist. Slaves weren't necessarily regarded as owned inferior savages and heathen property either. There were also Black Muslim leaders empires too like Sundiata Keita, Usman Dan Fodio, Mansa Musa and great Islamic civilizations like the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire and the Sokoto Caliphate. Sadly any faith, tradition or people are capable of constructing, assimilating into or becoming a part of the world of the above. For example, Indigenous-Black relations are creased by white settler-colonialism, whose divide and conquer strategies pit native against native and black against black. Whereas historically both entities were mutually engaged through treaty and other forms of cooperative relationships. the impact of white colonialism resulted in fraught conflicts as some Native people enslaved Black people, and some Black people participated in Indigenous extermination, expulsion, and land theft. And yet, in other instances, we see fused identities like the Black Cherokees in Oklahoma and Black Mi’kmaq peoples in Nova Scotia, who are a living embodiment of these two worlds and the intertwining of Indigenous and Black peoples’ fates and futurities.