‘Subtlety of Tawhid can be explained, But what, if your mind is a house of idols.’ (Muhammad Iqbal)
Ramadan is abstinence. In desisting from desires that in excess debase us - food, sexual relations. And acts of disobedience that have distanced us from our creator. We break with the idols that have for a time satiated our nuffs and insecurities. Once emptied, we return to Allah. His book as our companion. And Salah as redemption.
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.
2mins: the max you can wait on the platform before the wait turns into waiting. Unless it’s a Sunday in summer. Strikes mean everyone’s clamouring for the next train. Forgo the interchange - for let’s walk to another station, as Sundays in summer set a different pace, solidarity with strikers struggling to live in this city.
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 MoreWhen you are sat at an event literally giving you life - Bengali Resistance in the East End brought together activists in celebration of the enduring presence of London’s Bengali community.
Read MoreNeed for VitD & something for the soul.
(Whitechapel, Walthamstow & Bow.)
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.