Decolonization, Islam, Palestine & Turtle Island

From Muhammad Abdou's facebook
October 11, 2023

...Decolonization is an inherently violent, yes, but it's also a spiritual act in restoring neocolonialism's disfiguring impact on the native's racialized, sexualized, gendered, material, historical, symbolic, political, and spiritual relationship to our mother earth, non-humxn life and land (that are also spiritual subjects not objects). While i understand the many impulses in secularizing Palestine and claiming that it isn't a religious struggle (myself having been involved in diasporic Palestinian organizing for over 22 years in Turtle Island) i never agreed with this approach. Then, was a time in which Hamas under the command of Sheikh Yassin was engaged in bombings and alot of diasporic Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims already contending with their settlerhood & 9/11's impact on Turtle Island had and continue to have mixed feelings about Islam (given that we've been predominantly been exposed to authoritarian-sexist-queerphobic interpretations of it). Hence most abstain(ed) from the necessary spiritual conversations needed and, instead, prefer(red) adopting a neoliberal humxn rights industrial approach to struggles which are problematic within themselves given how they instantiate white 'Enlightened' supremacy.

However, now, especially with all the effort spent over decades by many of us the case is different and continuing to secularize the conversation becomes highly problematic: It simultaneously allows room for a conflation between Judaism and Zionism, while also preserving pinkwashing/Zionist/settlercolonial attacks on Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians in light of Hamas' sexism-queerphobia/authoritarianism, and at the same time blunts more nuanced Fanonian conversations on the psycho-affective violence that neocolonialism/neoimperialism instill in those colonized as well as the right to bear arms not just from a secular perspective but also a Muslim perspective that addresses jihad (struggle) and qital (the actual Quranic term for fighting or to go to war). The roots of the struggle for Palestine didn't begin in 1948, they go back to 1492. If one is genuinely keen on addressing the confluence of white supremacist crusading Euro-American politics that evicted, murdered and persecuted Muslims and Jews who were referred to as savages and heathens prior to Indigenous peoples across Abya Yala and Turtle Island with Columbus' conquistador invasion, we must look to 1492's global religious and spiritual dimension. If one wants to address anti-blackness in Zionist Israel and within predominantly Arab, South Asian and Muslim societies, one has to look to 1492 given, how a 1/3 to a 1/5 of the transatlantic middle passage slaves were Muslims from the Iberian peninsula and the West coast of Africa. If one wants to address diasporic Arab, Muslim, Palestinian settlerhood and complicity in Turtle Island one has to look to 1492, not 1948 that presents its own problems given state-nationalism. If one is keen on not repeating a recurring Tahrir moment in which a secular-leftist vs religious battle unfolds on a movement level, 1492 needs to be addressed. As i always ask: What happens when Palestine is freed tomorrow? Will it be a one-state (a Eurocentric form of governance) as opposed to decolonial conceptualizations of governance and sovereignty from a Muslim and broadly spiritual perspective? Will this state be governed through Hamas and Islamic Jihad's neoconservative idea of Sharia (a non-monolithic discourse) or a PA's secularized constitution founded on protestant ethic-based racial capitalist conceptualizations of individualist common law property and Victorian gender/sexual mores? Where would that leave, leftist Palestinians, queer Muslims, and feminists etc who will be stuck in between? These questions need to be asked now, and yesterday before today and tomorrow.

There's an opportunity here to address all this even in the heat of battle or to at least provoke them. I know i did in my book "Islam and anarchism" and why i wrote it in the first place from a movement and political theological perspective and aimed to developed an egalitarian anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist queer-feminist abolitionist and decolonial etc Quranic interpretation of Islam. We're circling in conversations which we should be transcending and it's deeply frustrating and disingenuous to all our struggles let alone to the discourse playing out in Palestine, amongst Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran and Islamists more generally; Hamas refers to their warriors (which they are) as mujahideen - does that not teach us anything? Christians and Muslims who carried assassinated Palestinian Christian journalist Shereen Abu Akhlah chanted "Allah Akbar". The last 24hrs have been ripe with false reports accusing Arabs and Muslims of decapitating the heads of children and being rapists - what do these centuries old tropes projected unto Muslims since before 1492 and later unto Indigenous and Black folx signal to you all? Yes, I'm with the muqawamah (the resistance) be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad but up to a point - given ultimate differences over our ethical political commitments; that's the difference between a strategy and tactic too. How do we stand in solidarity with womxn in Iran refusing the hijabs, a neoconservative cis-hetero Islam, the Mullahs, while at the same time adopting an anti-imperialist interventionist stance that counters attempt to divide Iran (as Iraq before it) along sectarian and ethnic lines? How do we avoid another Syria still being led by the butcher of Damascus while not giving into an ISIS and an imperialist Euro-American project? How else do we address Russian Islamophobia against Chechens, Chinese Islamophobia against the Uyghur, Buddhist Myanmar Islamophobia against Rohingyas, Indian Hindutava Islamophobia against Dalits and Kashmiris, Zionist Israeli Islamophobia against Palestinians, Euro-American Islamophobia against Muslims etc? Modernity is just an ongoing white supremacist crusade adopting the mask of a secularized-Euro-American Christian Enlightenment; "In God We Trust on the $ Bill" - Capitalism and Nation-States possess to spirituality orientations even when 'secularized': Materialism and Authoritarianism that are not mutually exclusive. Shouldn't we take a queue when Indigenous Land defenders at NoDapl are being referred to as "Jihadi terrorists" by US paramilitaries as TigerSwan or when BLM are referred to by the FBI as "Black Extremist Groups"? It's not that Islam is exceptional, it's that it was made to be so because of 3 crusades, prior to 1492, and how Muslims failed as a frontline of defense since, because we lost sight of our original teachings not too long gradually after the Prophet's death.

Most are focusing on the branches and forgetting the forest.

Wake up.

Stop disingenuously "secularizing" & white-washing our movements and struggles.

-----------------------

Mohamed Abdou is a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist activist-scholar. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo. His twenty years of activist research and experience centers on Palestinian, Indigenous, Black, and people of colour liberation, and draws on the Indigenous Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as his participation in the Egyptian uprisings of 2011. He is the author of 2022 book Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances, a nuanced and highly original anarchistic interpretation of Islam, and Islamic interpretation of anarchism.

There are 43 Comments

Only a prof at an Ivy can put out a sentence like this:

Decolonization is an inherently violent, yes, but it's also a spiritual act in restoring neocolonialism's disfiguring impact on the native's racialized, sexualized, gendered, material, historical, symbolic, political, and spiritual relationship to our mother earth, non-humxn life and land (that are also spiritual subjects not objects).

When Ivory Tower "radical" academics are doing a lot of gymnastics to both justify the brutal, senseless murders of random civilians while asserting a return to religious fundamentlist values... Only in Canada!

"The last 24hrs have been ripe with false reports accusing Arabs and Muslims of decapitating the heads of children and being rapists - what do these centuries old tropes projected unto Muslims since before 1492 and later unto Indigenous and Black folx signal to you all? Yes, I'm with the muqawamah (the resistance) be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad but up to a point - given ultimate differences over our ethical political commitments; that's the difference between a strategy and tactic too."

That's disingenuous of him. Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists. Nobody talks about Arabs and Muslims being rapists or anything like that. He opens this topic, to disingenuously raise support for terrorist groups, that he doesn't name as that. Hezbollah/Hamas is not equal to Palestine. They oppress the people, even if they voted for them with 44% in 2006. Free Palestine means much more, it means free Palestine from Hamas, Free Palestine - from Djihad. And free Lebanon - from Hezbollah.

Easy as that, if you can't think as far, you a radical islamist yourself. Point blank.

Read that:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/a-left-that-refuses-to-condemn-m...

Muhammad Abdou is a radical Muslim! No way!

God this is probably one of the funniest anews comments to laugh at ever. Especially about how u are mad at Abdou for being reasonable and not getting reved up into a moral panic by the mainstream media making stuff up.

Clarification I describe Abdou as a radical Muslim in a very positive way. He has written some very valuable stuff that I find super fascinating and am very glad about his academic work. I use radical in a the way that is a compliment. Bc Abdou's Islam is radical in a very fascinating and interesting way.

Radical for above means: Supporting terrorists and thus murderers. It's nothing positive to be said about radical Islam in its current state.

It is positive to lettuceleafer, as he's a closet-antisemite (self-conscious or not) with a record of trivializing the Holocaust and treating Hamas as the totally-not-militaristic cool guys fighting the good insurgent war against Jewish oppressors. You can check all his posts on the matter at this spook forum Raddle.

But let's make this clear that there's nothing special about his Pro-Palestine views... it's all your usual Western liberal college narrative rampant since the New Left. Palestinian good dispossed, Israeli filthy rich Jew bad... Israeli is an oppressor by default, Palestinian is the Oppressed of the World... All-too-predictable cartoonish crap.

Since when has anarchism been against terrorism and murder? Like anarchists have been fearmongered a ton and labeled as murderers and terrorists. U know anarchy isn't about voting Biden right?

Since when has anarchist been okay with mass murder of random civilians on the basis of resentment-fueled nationalist bullshit?

> anarchy isn't about voting Biden right?

Yes, but it's neither about voting Hamas, or Adolf, you phony.

If you lived in Gaza you would have seen children dying all around you your whole life. For starters. The occupation regime calculates how much food to let in to keep the people just on the edge of starvation. The periodic indiscriminate bombings are known as “mowing the grass” because Palestinians are not human, not even animals, just grass.

That’s random nationalism-driven resentment bullshit to you?

Why you don’t learn a damn thing befor running your mouth?

I’m reminded right now that I think a lot of people choose the “both sides bad, against everything” stance as an expression of their anarchism because they don’t really care. They are selfish cowardly consumer citizens who just want to feel cool, radical and “above it all.” Shame on you all. Learn a god damn fucking thing about Palestine before you fire off your idiot comments.

I’m jewish and I guarantee most of the Jewish anarchists in history would be ashamed of you too. We have ALWAYS stood against Zionism since the 19th century beginnings of both movements. If we aren’t going to let Israeli fascist state hide behind the bodies of our people i sure ain’t gonna fucking let some chickenshit western “anarch” get away with it.

> The occupation regime calculates how much food to let in to keep the people just on the edge of starvation.

Exactly, hence we say:

Am Yisrael chai.

Free Gaza - from Hamas.
Free Palestine - from Djihad.
Free Lebanon - from Hezbollah.

"I’m jewish"

Oooh, you sure are! Coz you said so and we're on the internet.

"Both sides bad", indeed.

First, because massacres of random civilians does not caution for more massacres of random civilians. Only statists and their armies are fine with butchering civilians, to carry their brutal politics.

Second, coz "we anarchists" don't support nationalist agendas and their statist interests, regardless the "side". My only side is the side of those not picking one, an it starts with MY side.

Third, coz "we" know how those not enjoying the safe comfort of bureaucracies and their chains of command are always those falling prey of those that are, and that keep playing with them.

Our anarchist society totally lies elsewhere, if/when it's a thing.

wtf lettuce ... weren't you laying some hippy bullshit on me just a week or two ago?

about how you didn't even like the word "militant" or something like that?

do you even care if you make any sense?

idk, why u interpreted it as hippy. I've allwasy been fine with violence but I think forming some kind of anarcho solider class is a terrible understanding of anarchy. Militant in basically all uses is just synonymous with army soldier. i don't think there can be anarchist army soliders

palestinian resistance is pretty good evidence of this. hamas least ideal case of palestinian resistance has trained soldiers who do horrible stuff like shoot palestinian protestors. While the incredibly positive anti colonial resistance allways has been non soldier palestians fighting back and supporting each other. I don't know any cases where u can have some class of soldiers and non soldiers and have anarchy. Why u chose to think that being anti militant is hippy pacifism idk

oh i see ... you're just setting up arbitrary definitions for words and then going off on tangents about what you think words mean. explains my confusion!

Oh?

Are we here yet... coming full circle with good ol' conspiracy theories on Jewish communist world domination? (a.k.a. "ZIONISM!!!!!")

I think the primarily American elite who are mostly just christian control the mainstream media. Plus it's not a conspiracy theory that the mainstream media makes whatever up to serve US interests. It happens in literally every conflict constantly.

Hi kiddo, err "mostly just christian control the mainstream media." SooOoo you never heard of a dude called Rupert Murdoch huh? Let's stick to the facts and end fake news!

The Jewish left has fought Zionism since day one and we will keep fighting til it’s defeated by the multiethnic working class. Choke on that, genocide apologist!

The thing about this is that there are also a lot of Jews who think about decolonization in the same way, but instead of Shariah Law they want to get rid of the State of Israel because it isn’t Jewish enough, it isn’t Halacha enough or whatever. They think of the State of Israel as an imported European model with mere Jewish decorations. They have been calling themselves “post-Zionists” and they make similar claims about how much better the Other would live under their religious order.

Maybe it’s just about being more authentic or something? If it wasn’t for the intention of reading Shariah through anarchism, the problem just seems to be postponed to a later date.

Let's just say I wanna reach for something;) That term and the people who use it have basically ruined radicalism(occupy being one of many events).

I'm also trying to understand the 1492 thing:

"The roots of the struggle for Palestine didn't begin in 1948, they go back to 1492. If one is genuinely keen on addressing the confluence of white supremacist crusading Euro-American politics that evicted, murdered and persecuted Muslims and Jews who were referred to as savages and heathens prior to Indigenous peoples across Abya Yala and Turtle Island with Columbus' conquistador invasion, we must look to 1492's global religious and spiritual dimension. If one wants to address anti-blackness in Zionist Israel and within predominantly Arab, South Asian and Muslim societies, one has to look to 1492 given, how a 1/3 to a 1/5 of the transatlantic middle passage slaves were Muslims from the Iberian peninsula and the West coast of Africa. If one wants to address diasporic Arab, Muslim, Palestinian settlerhood and complicity in Turtle Island one has to look to 1492, not 1948 that presents its own problems given state-nationalism. If one is keen on not repeating a recurring Tahrir moment in which a secular-leftist vs religious battle unfolds on a movement level, 1492 needs to be addressed. "

Is that about Columbus? Is it about the expulsion of Jews from Spain? Is it this:

"After Christian kingdoms finished their reconquest of Al-Andalus on 2 January 1492, the Muslim population stood between 500,000 and 600,000 people. At this time, Muslims living under Christian rule were given the status of "Mudéjar", legally allowing the open practice of Islam."

This?

"Muslim rule declined after that and ended in 1492 when Granada was conquered."

In Palestine it was the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, but I don't know what significance the date would have during that time?

The Crusades well before 1492...

The Atlantic Slave Trade kind of begins around that time, but that's also not the beginning of slavery in Spain:

"Slavery in Spain can be traced to the Phoenician and Roman eras. In the 9th century the Muslim Moorish rulers and local Jewish merchants traded in Spanish and Eastern European Christian slaves. Spain began to trade slaves in the 15th century and this trade reached its peak in the 16th century."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Spain

As far as nationalism goes, that's mostly a 19th-20th Century thing...

As far as secularization goes, depending on what that means, 1492 doesn't seem very important.

Is the author talking about Arab nationalism vs Islamism?

i'll take a swing!

it's a reference to understanding the entire trajectory of the colonial project, on behalf of the european monarchs of old, all the way through to the present, where you understand the zionist military state as a strategic base for regional dominance by the western powers. these are very broad, materialist strokes that we're painting a history with but i'm sympathetic enough to historical materialism to think it has some weight to it.

many will disagree and even tho I barely care, they can kiss my ass. feudalism was more honest about its aims, therefore, it's probably a better way of understanding why various people wanted the zionist project in the first place.

put another way, ignore the why that zionists offer you and look at good-old-fashioned cui bono, just like 1492

Good call, I'd say the priesthood and their wealthy patrons benefit the most, followed by their minions.

"where you understand the zionist military state as a strategic base for regional dominance by the western powers."

While that's true, and I can't be justifying this shit, you and other Lefties just don't realize how the whole region would be reformatted if Western liberal democracies and their interests would leave the place. Afghanistan since Biden stands as likely outlook of it, with the Taliban serving as regional dogs for China and Russia.

That would also mean Jews being forced to leave the ME, as they'd likely be exposed to whatever Islamist regimes in place would just feel like... and it's likely not a VIP pass to the sex slave parties of their priest class

it's not about lack of realization ... i'm an anarchist. you can't draw us in to lesser-evil fallacies like that because we're opposed to the state itself in the first place. the theory is airtight enough for space travel. state always bad. no exceptions. full stop.

You missed lol, conflating natural migration and the innate tendency to justify the reasons to escape overpopulation. Broaden your perspsctive, start at lemmings, or Watership Down, and move onto Olduvai Gorge and outward expansion. Been going on for 100,000 years brwh ;)

anon up here shit the bed on threading their comment, so for the sake of maintaining the standard design of this site’s minimalist theme I’m taking the unconventional approach of responding to two comments though it may appear to only follow from the one immediately above my own.

So I think the OP was just something rushed and I don’t know the author’s other writings. I’m going to read some of those some time and try to figure out what this is about. I appreciate the assitance in my hermeneutic investigation, but alas I am unsatisfied.

BTW - Just watched the Great Mutato episode of the X-Files and it was dope.

... .. ... thx for reminding me to repeatedly ask myself - why bother?

For whatever reason, the moderators deleted this quoted comment perhaps to not allow us lowly anons to think or retort ourselves. But we DO have things to say to such nonsense that should be read by visitors of anews who think this nonsense. So here it is:

Despite the Israeli state being shit, authoritarian and not defendable by any stretch... they warn if not relocate Palestinians before bombing their places. That was their apparent official policy for years, so while making their lives miserable they can avoid as much casualties of civilians as possible. This too doesn't add up to claims of Israel conducting "genocide" on purpose.

I'd like to see such policy coming from Jihadists like Hamas Mujaheedin, who're really just thirsty for Jew blood.

They are targeting civilians that are following their directive to flee. They are not advising civilians to relocate to safety they are putting them out into the open where it's easier to bomb them and also clear the number of "distractions" or "acceptable civilian casualties" (to appease the slightly less fascistic Western countries and their media who are watching from abroad in complicity with a genocide) before sending in ground troops to kill everything in sight.

There is no way to make an announced genocide more palatable so you should stop before you try.

It should be said often to keep in mind that the majority of Israeli citizens absolutely oppose the genocidal actions of their fascist government.

Anarchs sympathise for the good folk of whatever State, but it is not our prerogative to take sides in Statist wars and begin seething in ressentiment, otherwise we would not be anarchic. Resist thou brit milah or thou Mecca pilgrimage or thou confession and join us in our gleeful abandonment of Status.

"They are targeting civilians that are following their directive to flee. They are not advising civilians to relocate to safety they are putting them out into the open where it's easier to bomb them and also clear the number of "distractions" or "acceptable civilian casualties" (to appease the slightly less fascistic Western countries and their media who are watching from abroad in complicity with a genocide) before sending in ground troops to kill everything in sight."

And where are your sources for these claims? Not saying it's unlikely to be true, but I smell the Hamas shill or tankie here.

Different anon here! Here let me google that for you.

Actually,,,,, you're a capable human adult, why don't you do even the most basic search on Youtube or social media regarding the bombing of convoys fleeing Northern Gaza before crying "terrorist!" and parroting Israeli state rhetoric, you fucking fascist troll OR/AND IDF shill. You can even look at the mainstream media like NBC or CNN's coverage of these matters. Then after you read or watch you should eat a bag of shit.

So I looked at this tragic report from Friday evening...

- details are too vague to make up an opinion thus dar on who did it, but Palestinian media jumped quickly on blaming Israel for it (like you did).

- that was one bombing of a convoy, not the systematic bombings of the thousands of local people being pushed to south Gaza.

- It could be the IDF bombing intentionally or by mistake (they seem to be making a lot); or it could be Hamas having placed a bomb under a bus, in order to scare locals from fleeing the area, cause outrage at Israel and/or give a cause for Iran to intervene. Hamas, not just the IDF, ha history of bombing "their own" population.

- I am not defending the Israeli state. Just like with Putin, they're using the worst way imaginable to deal with fascist fanatics. But one massacre does not justify another, and the Palestinian side of this conflict has committed atrocities for longer than the Israeli state (Hebron massacre was roughly 100 years ago) meaning that they aren't the "good side" here (neither is the state of Israel)... and they're NOT justified to commit atrocities like they did on the Sabbath of last week, that involved mass shootings, rapes, abductions and torture.

- Both authorities are fascist scum with little regard for human life and suffering, as they are regarding the Other as subhumans.

The Palestinian people in Gaza are living in an open air prison. You're reaching to find excuses are are defending an apartheid state that knowingly bombs civilians whom are caged with nowhere to go because the "Hebron massacre was roughly 100 years ago" and other Zionist rhetoric. You are the lowest of the low and I have no idea why you're on an anarchist website. When you watch the genocide unfold in the coming hours, days, weeks during Israel's impending ground invasion I hope your high horse keeps your smug ass warm.

Seems like indoctrination by ISM/BDS authoritarians has worked effectively on your affect. Thankfully you're not the one partaking in massive pogroms against Jews or the sacrifice of civilians in Gaza for political agendas that are far beyond you.

...for now, tho?

I find this kind of discussion important, as this is showing us a pretty clear line between what is anarchy, and what is instrumentalized, coopted militancy.

Where are the pogroms against Jews now? Do you mean the pogroms being carried out by settlers in the occupied West Bank against indigenous Palestinians in the further expansion of the Israeli apartheid state? I think you must.

There is a special place in hell for you who look upon an atrocity that is unfolding before you eyes in real time and instead of feeling any compassion try to find trollish ways to make arguments in favor of a FASCIST, FAR RIGHT, APARTHEID STATE on an anarchist website, you fucking scumbag.

This post and others regarding the current situation have had obvious non anarchists finding them somehow and posting inane shit. Understand it's good to respond but this is almost assuredly not from an anarchist.

Yes, true... because REAL anarchists unconditionally support militarist, authoritarian religious fanatics and their ressentiment-driven nationalist agendas when Jews are the antagonists.

Anarchism is not Jihadism or ITS... Using brutal violence against random people *is not justified* by any assumption surrounding "colonization" or "imperialism". if you want to fight the Zionist state just fucking fight it. Fight its regime, its power structure, its people in charge. But killing and raping civilians is not something anarchy or anarchism ever was about, at any point in history, or will ever be about.

There's more anarchy in peace and sharing across religions and cultures. If you're against understanding and peace with Jewish people, on the ground that they're "evil Zionist Jews", well the problem lies inside your own washed brain's fanaticism.

Who is justifying the vile Hamas attack on this website? Not the article, not the commenters. No anarchist is justifying the Hamas attack.

Get the fuck out of here with your parroting of the Israeli state's rhetoric and your attempted justifications for the collective punishment and coming genocide of an entire people due to the actions of a minority faction of fundamentalist jihadists that hides among them.

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