In Johnny Pitts' Afroeuropean, we see a new multiracial class in formation. This new Europe - Afroeurope, Muslim Europe, World Europe - shows the possibilities of a continental wide solidarity between the oppressed, the dispossessed, the mustadaefeen of Paris, Warsaw and Berlin.
Read MoreIf we are to help the Palestinian struggle we have to resist every attempt to normalise the oppression of Palestinian people - and that means to understand and challenge settler colonialism in all its forms and disguises. Some of the main points of Englert’s Settler Colonialism An Introduction, are summarised below.
Read MoreOne aspect of the huge pro-Palestine demonstrations over the past weeks has been the dominance of Muslims. Whilst often organised by secular organisations, it is Muslims that have provided the social weight behind them. Muslims are getting organised, and are marching. What then, should be the strategy going forward? What should be done to ensure we win the justice we are struggling for?
Read MoreThe Muslim Left Review calls for full, unconditional solidarity with Palestine and an immediate ceasefire.
We call everyone to the streets to support the national and local demonstrations.
All Muslim elected representatives must call for a ceasefire now.
All mosques and community groups must refuse to engage with officials or politicians who are endorsing, excusing or staying silent on war crimes.
We must fly the flag of Palestine from wherever it can be flown.
Pray.
Pray and demonstrate.
Pray and demonstrate until Palestine is free.
Read MoreThe Qur’an talks of a time when 'the sky breaks, when the stars are scattered, when the seas burst forth.' When the 'sun is rolled up, when the stars are dimmed.' When hell is made to blaze. The IPCC recently warned that ongoing climate breakdown - extreme weather, rising sea levels, food insecurity, mass displacement - may be irreversible by the time of their next report in 2030.
Read MoreParis, as a city, has liberated us three times. The first was emancipation from the divine right of Kings, the ancient regimes, and the reactionary priestly caste that supported them. It was the poor, the dispossessed of Paris, the mustadaefeen, who pressed upon the Jacobin Club and had them destroy, not a King, but monarchy itself. The churches and cathedrals, which had become founts of ruling class oppression, became Temples of Reason and Science.
Read MoreThe Bank of England attempts to be honest in its exhibition. However, it is wrong and euphemistic, to talk about the Bank’s ‘links with slavery.’ Slavery built the bank, and the bank perpetuated, financed slavery. Directly, materially, openly. Substantially. Directors of the Bank of England were also slave traders. The Bank financially underwrote Britain’s colonial expansion. The Bank helped invest the gains of slavery. And when the time came to compensate the slave owners upon slavery’s ‘abolition’, it was the Bank that provided the capital.
Read MoreAn argument for community centered educational approaches to create more just futures for everyone. Do we, for example, interleave the teaching of Enslavement, Empire and the Industrial Revolution as Naomi Klein does as a “story that begins with people stolen from Africa and land stolen from indigenous peoples…so dizzying profitable that they generated the excess capital…to launch the fossil fuel-led industrial Revolution?” What efforts have we taken to reassure our communities when a succession of crises - Grenfell, Brexit and the liberal train wreck of Trumpish-Boris politics exposes the flagrant disregard for poor and especially black and brown bodies in favour of fasci-nationalism and corporate greed? Not always even marginally well when I recall a school leader rejecting a call for an assembly addressing even the most benign call for peace and love.
A Muslim is very familiar with this structure. The function of a ritual is to change the self, rather than to change the world. Therefore what emerges from a protest march are hundreds and thousands of slightly more politically conscious and organisationally connected people. The headlines, the media attention, the level of pressure on officials, is a bonus.
Read MoreThe tragedy struck at the heart of our community but also uncovered the collective solidarity within it. Our community was marginalised and abandoned, yet, somehow, we possessed the strength and love to come together and stand up for justice.
Read MoreStumbling across the Karl Marx Hof, one of Vienna’s most ambitious social housing developments was a revelation, a reminder that social housing still existed and was something to believe in. That the right to want more and dream better can be a starting point again for those of us who had given up on dunya dreams.
Read MoreBook Review: The Dead Are Rising by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
Of the many Malcolms eulogised to comfort us in his absence we could add one more: Malcolm X was a Saabiq. One of the foremost in deeds in this life. One of the foremost in the next. To strive, to forsake, to be the first to stand up to oppression is to invite censure, suivallance and death. There is a reason that the Sabiqun are a few in number.
Read MoreThe cause of the workers is the cause of Muslims everywhere - in many cases they are one and the same. It should be recognised that in this age of capitalist oppression, it is a duty to join a trade union, and fight collectively for better pay and conditions, and eventually to join together in establishing a more just, socialist system which aligns better with Islamic values.
Read MoreRamadan is about changing the physical, the material, in order to develop the ideal. It is about cultivating a pious state. All of this reveals the radical potential of Ramadan, and reveals glimpses of the new world we can build.
Read MoreAlone in my flat, reading Vergès’ text one sunny pandemic afternoon, I felt seen. In A Decolonial Feminism Françoise Vergès recenters feminism as justice for the dispossessed, racialised and economically marginalised.
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In Johnny Pitts' Afroeuropean, we see a new multiracial class in formation. This new Europe - Afroeurope, Muslim Europe, World Europe - shows the possibilities of a continental wide solidarity between the oppressed, the dispossessed, the mustadaefeen of Paris, Warsaw and Berlin.