In leu of the characters that make up these series of performances, particularly when speaking in a forum where a pen name is used, it is important to contextually claim what's written in the name of a name such as 'Jean Veneuse'[i], a pseudonym - taken from Frantz Fanon's Black
Skins, White Masks (1952)). As to who I am, well, that, for the
moment, is irrelevant in contrast to the question of what I am, clarified in part by the very announcement of the Fanonian origin of the pseudonym for it to become Mohamed 'Jean Veneuse', along with, what have you of this very blog’s purpose, my reasons for being here…etc
On Positionality, A Tale of Different Logics,
& The Criticality that Arabs and Muslims Learn from Social Movement
Histories:
I'm a self-identifying Muslim
anarchist (specifically post-anarchist) despite my distaste and despise for the
self-righteousness that comes with embracing essentialist identity politics that
can be associated with the former identities (Muslim and anarchist) & any
for that matter. I am someone who prefers to focus instead on the ethics and
politics that ought be embodied in taking up any identity or symbol and that
should've arrived with taking on that particular name, especially when it comes
to the commitments that should and ought arrive with the categories, 'Muslim'
and 'anarchist', or whatever other; & bearing in mind that morals differ
from ethics; ‘thou shall not kill’ is a moral commandment but if someone walks
into a public space with an AK47, people are ethically obligated, if not have
the right, to self-defend themselves; ethics are provisional-situational, immanent,
dynamic, connecting one’s order of tradition(s) and culture(s) with that of an
others’ and in relation to ‘the other’, whereas morals are static, connecting
one’s self with one’s immediate community and in relation to that which is
transcendental; this is not to say that morals and ethics are unrelated, only
that they’re distinct, the latter being somewhat derivative from the former. I
am writer of the forthcoming book Islam & Anarchism: Relationships
& Resonances (see: - http://www.akpress.org/islam-anarchism.html) due out this November within which I develop an
anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism –
an Islamatismo if you will mirroring Zapatismo[ii]
– using the Quran and Sunnah (the book being based on my MA thesis, available
on this blog, and that can also be found here: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mohamed-jean-veneuse-anarca-islam). I’ve also written on transgender-ism based on a case
study in Egypt in 1981, and that informs my ongoing research and doctoral
dissertation on Islam &
Queer Muslims: Identity and Sexuality in the Contemporary World; the contribution can be found on this blog as well as
here (please see: - http://www.anarchist-
developments.org/index.php/ adcs/article/view/17). Where I was born, my race/ethnicity, the radical
communities and movements I’ve been a part of, my mentors, teachers and
influences can be discerned from my work, besides which it’s defeatist to
flaunt, to ‘name drop’ in this particular forum as if that’s what’s necessary for
me to establish my credentials intellectually and at the grassroots, when
arguments ought suffice to create what engagements and conversations I perceive
are necessary, and aside from the cultish scenes that often enough surround
activist celebrities and personalities; as for the movements and countless
lives I’ve been a part of and shared, well, they already know me, with what
that entails of responsibilities and loyalties.
I have lived a cosmopolitan
upbringing and the class privilege that it comes with, both which afforded and
extended me opportunities to humbly learn and journey across continents, along
with experiencing the cloistered, nomadic, existence, not as lonely, but rather
as alone, that such an existence can bring. All, that, perhaps, caused me to
speak to as many dead writers, as I do people living, in awe of the
blessing of being able to experience joy, but also seeing a world exploited,
lived; the latter (i.e. exploitation) often ushering accompanying melancholic states that subsume the former (joy) --- so much for joyful rebellion
and militancy; and here I mean and emphasize joy, not ‘happiness’ given happiness
implies seeking ‘constant joyfulness’, that can only arrive, as Friedrich
Nietzsche said, at the expense of others i.e. the incessant compulsion to
always be happy, and more than just being content, in the midst of what numbness
is developed in relation to realpolitiks outside oneself in today’s world. Indeed, I’ve spent my
life tasting community but never its permanence. I am who I am, who is
someone who can become, who can change, borrow, and choose, constantly striving
to operate within the realm of the unbound conjunctive and as
opposed to the disjunctive or. I am and, and, and, in relation to that which I know and have
accepted upon reflection, have come to know, found disagreeable and rejected,
and will never know, yet will always remain open to in so far as my finiteness
as a being, ultimately, of limited capacities & capabilities of knowing, even if I’m
willing to humbly learn indefinitely. I am undoubtedly a
composition of the interactions and interplay of the milieus I've been exposed
to since my first cry, and presence within my mother's womb, only appearing as
a voice in so far as I am coalesced to form a voice, in constant motion, in
afterbirth. And finally, as I said/wrote many times before in my work: I am a
fascist till I understand my fascism(s) in relation to privileges I enjoy and then
taking steps to warding off those privileges and which, as far as I'm concerned,
remain with me till death. After all, power, as Michel Foucault, and post-structural
political philosophy, teaches does not operate according to a top down or
bottom up model as classical Marxism and anarchism perceived, but
rather power exists everywhere, and therefore it exists within us and functions
through us in relation to ourselves and all else. In other words, power seduces
and passes through the hands of the masters no less than those oppressed and
therefore no one is ever completely an oppressor and no one is completely
oppressed either.
For example: My struggle with patriarchy (and matriarchy for that
matter) will never end; it is a battle I choose to engage in every day as I
struggle with disentangling the patriarchal networks connected to societal sets
of masculinities and hetero-normativities I’ve been exposed to in relation to
whatever order of laws and culture, nomos/polis, I belong-ascribe to. And that
would subsequently demand my 'becoming womyn' if I'm at all serious about
taking on an anti and non-authoritarian ethics and politics i.e. an anti and non-hetero-patriarchal
stance. This demands that my task in the example cited involves my engagement in
attempting to 'transcend' my patriarchy even if momentarily/temporarily. Be
that, for instance, through listening as opposed to just hearing (and preparing
a response to what's been said, inattentive to the mother tongues expressed
when womyn speak) or even becoming comfortable sharing my insecurities and
emotions publicly, as opposed to embellishing and thriving on my machismo
characteristics, and that a majority of men, across societies and cultures,
often uncritically and without reflection embrace. The same logic, of course,
could be said for embracing anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist positions
and politics whereby embracing these positions doesn't place you outside them
because no one is immune or righteously outside the fold of either capitalism
and authoritarian practices. All which further makes embracing the rhetorical
positions (anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist)
ultimately far less important or at least different than engaging in the
dialectics of non-authoritarian and non-capitalist concepts
and practices that ground such positions and what responsibilities are ushered
with them.
This difference between anti and non is critical given the fact that though the Zapatistas (see: ~ http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx), for instance, engage in anti and non-capitalist and
anti and non-authoritarian practices in the caracoles/or local communities, the
established Zapatista cooperatives rely on the sale of a portion of what is
produced, out of survivalist necessity, to a catered revolutionary tourist
industry and market in Chiapas; one only has to visit Tierra Dentro (see: ~ http://www.tierradentro.mx/tierradentro/inicio.html),
a popular café/restaurant and gathering center, run by Zapatista supporters, in
Chiapas, to realize the impact of the Zapatista merchandise up for sale. Point
being that no movement or individual can be, even with the establishment of
sustainable and autonomous communities, currently, completely outside the fold
of capitalism or capitalist modes of relations. And which teaches that no
individual or movement ought be fetishized; let there be not one Subcomandante
Marcos, Moises, or Comandante Ramona that rise, but rather thousands upon thousands, so
long as they’re not interested in becoming revolutionary vanguards on this
planet likewise! Despite then the radical edge of the Zapatistas, numerous
critiques on this count and others have respectively been launched with respect
to this movement itself (see compa Ramor Ryan’s article titled Critiquing the Trajectory of the Zapatistas
Movement as part of his review of another friend and compa Niels Barmeyer’s
book Developing Zapatista Autonomy
and that can be found here: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2257-critiquing-the-trajectory-of-the-zapatista-movement).
In this sense, the Zapatistas
without a doubt, it can’t be denied, are anti-capitalist but can never
be sufficiently non-capitalist and therein is a critical difference
in terms. The former term (anti) is
concerned with rhetoric and belief and the latter term (non) with practical
alternative economics theories, markets, concepts and practices. Furthermore,
it ought be noted, that over the course of the years the Zapatistas, as a
movement, have developed a somewhat ‘isolated’ position despite their
international call outs and messages. This certainly limited the scope of the
Zapatista movement’s potential to grow further and to affectively reach others,
for example ‘activists/revolutionaries’ in the Middle-East; this is particularly
important given that Arabs and Muslims need and have much to learn, in their
own languages yet through the experiences of others as the Zapatistas, of what
alternative socio-political and economic modes of organizing exist, and what
they entail, especially when oriented towards decolonized, horizontalist and
radical alternatives that can spur their/our collective imagination to new
heights. It’s only recently that more activists, Arab and Muslim, in the
Middle-East have come to know of the existence of the Zapatistas, what their
ethical-political stances are, what they represent and what they’re against.
This is unfortunate given the positive influence autonomous and anti-Statist, anarchic, movements, as the Zapatistas,
can have on the movements of the so-called/dubbed ‘Arab Spring/Islamist Winter’
– particularly given what Orientalizations have camouflaged these movements. It
can’t be denied that since their full fledged appearance in 1994, the
Zapatistas have experienced poor solidarity on the part of ‘revolutionaries’ who
arrived from all over the world with their orientalist agendas and conceptions of
what it is to be revolutionary, as well as what it is to stand in solidarity and
engage in autonomous experiments with them; this certainly contributed
and led to the ‘isolated’ position the Zapatistas took in the years following
1994, though that within itself is changing, with what we, activists, have
learned theoretically and practically since of what it means to stand in
solidary with, or better yet what it means to cultivate friendships with ‘the Other’ inter and cross-continentally.
Therefore, though I disagree with the isolationist logic adopted by the
Zapatistas, I fully respect and understand it given it was necessary. Those of us keen
intellectually and practically have learned much about ‘solidarity’, and
friendships, and yet still there is infinitely more to learn – but that's
always going to be the case. However we must collectively grow, we must together hold each others hands and teach one another, asking what each
individual and community knows, if we’re to move forward; for how else learn if
we don't interact with each other, across superficial and not so superficial
geopolitical and cultural boundaries in order to counter and resist capitalist
nation-States to build instead worlds bound together by non-authoritarian and non-capitalist
relations, subjects, indeed alternative political economies. The Zapatistas do
partake in non-capitalist relations but certainly not enough and that's precisely
the problem; every movement has its limits and the Zapatista’s objective has always
been to act non-hegemonically and therefore they’ve always been keen not impose
themselves or what they think on others, yet at the same time their goal has
been to see other communities burgeon and stand on their own, so that we might
connect with each other and truly collectively create new meanings of what it
is to be human and to connect with this earth. Therefore what the Zapatistas
always expect(ed) is that others, all over the world, build spaces of their own
and for these island spaces to no longer be isolated, but rather interacting,
so that we can collectively engage with one another along the above and
different terms in the creation of worlds that are interested in accepting, and
not just tolerating one another’s existence, on this fine earth. In sum:
it's definitely possible to be anti-capitalist but to be completely
non-capitalist, no, at least not yet.
That's precisely why my work and social
movement focus is on engaging with alternatives to capitalist nation-States, and
more than just on the level of polemics and rhetoric. My trajectory has been
the discursive identification of decolonized Islamic parameters, concepts, and
practices that inform the very core of an Islamic non-capitalist economics and
non-authoritarian politics; indeed the construction of an Islamic
interpretation of anarchism and an anarchic interpretation of Islam. It's
useless to critique a system, as capitalism (its modern prevalent formation and
breed – neoliberalism, diverse as it is) or the nation-State, unless one truly
understands how capitalist nation-States to one degree or another function;
it’s even more useless to critique capitalist nation-States if you're incapable
of then proposing alternatives to them and that's the central problem I have
with just adopting an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian rhetorical stance,
merely built on critique, critique, critique. It’s easy to revolt, more
challenging to provide visions of alternatives. As I stated numerous times,
and will never tire of saying: It’s not about seizing power but knowing
what to do with the power ‘seized’ the moment and day after i.e. how will we,
as indigenous peoples, individuals and communities, organize ourselves and our
lives differently.
And so in a rapidly changing earth,
this fragile position of building 'a tiny little isolated island' is
unsustainable, even if undoubtedly originally attributed to and as cause of
horrible experiments with 'solidarity', as stated, and in-spite of the creative
and singularly resistant world(s) the Zapatistas created, taught and introduced
us to. Nevertheless, in hindsight it implies the pertinent need for us to
build/construct alliances and friendships beyond bleak understandings of 'solidarity'
in our expansion of our networks, our webs, and 'rhizomes', or
otherwise we risk unstable solitary positions. The Zapatistas themselves are
struggling currently in Chiapas & the Lacandon jungle given the
circumstances the Zapatistas now face with exuberant NGO presence in the
surrounding territories and provocation(s) by government supported
paramilitaries let alone the power itself of (neo)liberal capitalism;
circumstances have only worsened with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)
coming to power and Enrique Pena Nieto's election, and yet still, all this is
to say nothing of the fact that this earth itself is responding, whether we
like it or not and whether we are prepared for it or not, with its own speed,
pace, rhythm to the disrespect and indignity it faces i.e. the Tsunamis,
Earthquakes, droughts and all that arrives with climate change, so let’s not be
so arrogant as a species so as to think and assume that the Earth will wait for
us to correct our ways. It's this isolated position then that for communities
that sought to follow the Zapatista's example (as those in San Juan Copala,
Chimalapas, even APPO during Oaxaca's uprising of 2006) that is disappointing.
The Power of Decolonization
The
only way forward is to know what we're specifically talking about and what the
similarities and differences between us (i.e. those of us who identify as Arab
and/or Muslim) and others are; particularly others who share our commitments all
over the world i.e. if we are to build alternative worlds and connect with each
other. This involves knowledge and not polemics. After all, in what reality do
we imagine capitalists and authoritarians allowing us to construct the worlds
we imagine and envision, let alone ceding their power!
Now,
and as to peoples who identify as Arabs and Muslims, let me claim the following
argument in our regard, as it’s an extension of what’s been documented and
written here, and moreover, on this blog: We’re undergoing crises of
thoughts, acts, wills and hearts given our ongoing colonization, not having partaken
in the decolonization of ourselves or our traditions. In 'post-colonial societies’
(an ironic term given we never truly engaged in decolonization and
reindigenization) as Egypts’ we, Arabs and Muslims, have been facing these crises
and are complicit in them, bare minimum since 1798, with the Napoleanic
invasions that remained till 1801, followed by the British conquests, the
carving of the region, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. We, as Arabs and
Muslims, predominantly, have not partaken in projects of decolonization (that
have a beginning but never an end) nor have we truly engaged in re-indigenizing
neither our traditions nor ourselves. We (particularly those of us who consider
ourselves to be among what could be termed the radical anti-colonial and
anti-imperial Left) have not undergone Tajdeed, renewal of
self-being, but rather have been caught somewhere between Islah, reforming the
self-being, in relation to what we perceive ourselves ought be, and Taqleed,
emulating or copying, in this case, at best, ‘White-European revolutionaries of
past’ and their social movement theories and legacies. The holy trinity of Karl
Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky serve as an example of this when one
examines, for instance, the political orientations of current movements as that
of the ‘Revolutionary Socialists’, and what fetishized focus there is on strictly
applying a class analysis in combatting capitalism, without considering the
necessity of applying too an immanent critique of the nation-State, to the say
the least, and learning what social movement theories (from all over the world
since Marx, Trotsky and Lenin) can teach our social movements in the
contemporary.
'Revolutionaries',
particularly revolutionary socialists (who I respect deeply beyond imagination
yet who I vehemently disagree with in terms of order of tactics and strategy,
let alone analyses) mostly believe that as long as independent syndicates are
established and strikes continue (i.e. direct action and the great
heartbreaking martyrs who rise and fall with them despite the fact that our
blood isn’t cheap!), that ‘all will be well'. Revolutionary socialists are predominantly
and solely focused on worker and mass mobilizations without sufficient putting
into question the category 'worker', and envisioning how such a category
intersects with race politics or true quests to integrate gender, age, ability,
sex and sexuality into the picture, not as less or more important/significant than class
but on equal footing with it towards an anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle. After all, we do not lead single issue lives; class issues are only part of the problem, not everything. I say all this while finding myself ill of the approach of harkening back to
'party politics' and a white European classical Marxist/Leninist formula (even
if tweaked ‘just for Egypt’) concerned with taking over the nation-State to establish
workers tribunals, councils and a new vanguard movement by those formerly
oppressed. Indeed, vanguard movements that having already internalized
oppression will undoubtedly pass it on and repeat it because oppression isn't
restricted to class conflicts but rather is concerned with the lesson of
questioning the origins and foundations of what we know or presume to know i.e.
the colonial and imperial legacies we were left with and that demand
decolonizing and reindigenizing of all of us Arabs and Muslims across the
Pacific and the Atlantic. As stated, an immanent critique of the nation-State
is pivotal, given the imagined and superficial uniformation and unification that
the nation-State engages in towards nation-building as it constructs a citizen
psyche that in dissent and imaginaries is constricted through an invented hierarchical
national unity; among the pivotal functions of the nation-State is, after all,
the neutralization and naturalization of a people's passivity in consolidating its
power over a populous in the name of national interests and security; where democracy becomes defined and idenitified strictly by the ballot-box. We’ve
internalized the necessity for nation-States as a mode of socio-political and
economic organizing. We (Egyptians-Arabs-Muslims) need to decolonize ourselves
and our traditions and re-indigenize and renew ourselves through reinvented
concepts and practices to correspond with particular ethical and political
stances not only in relation to ourselves as individuals and communities but
also in relation to 'nonhuman' and 'other than human' life. We need to
re-understand what it is to reconnect our spirits, bodies, hearts to the land,
to live on the land instead of relying on the urban cosmopolitan metropolis and
the industrialized machina of Capital.
In
this sense, our colonial and imperial encounters have left us, Arabs and
Muslims, caught between two foci of loyalty, two mutually exclusive images to
serve: one was the colonially imposed focus of loyalty, the nation-State
(a Eurocentric concept and construct): Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Syria,
Lebanon, etc, and the other is Ummah, and which as an
Islamic/Quranic concept/practice Arabs appropriated for their own purposes to
refer to an Arab Ummah (i.e. an Arab polity) just as Arabs appropriated the Quranic and Islamic
concept of Qawm to refer to Arab Qawmiyyah; to say the least this move by Arabs
racialized an Islamic term, to the point that we’ve internalized this racism as
Muslims and Arabs ourselves and reify it amongst ourselves (First come the
Arabs of the Arabian peninsula, then the North Africans, the Palestinians, the
Jordanians, the Lebanese, the Syrians, then the Sub-Saharans, the South-Asians, White Converts and everyone else, in terms of of who is a 'first class' Muslim, a 'second class' and so on and so forth).
Not only that but as Arabs we’ve internalized an ongoing 'Islamophobia' heightened
post-9/11 buying into the false binaries of secularism/Islamism (without even
calling into question the construction of such Eurocentric categories or their
etymologies, and speaking of them as monoliths), not just in the 'Global North'
but also in the 'Global South'. After all, and briefly, the
charge that political Islam is dead or that it can be killed is ludicrous. For
if what is meant by political is 'Islamism', then it needs to be clear, as will
be demonstrated in my forthcoming book Islam & Anarchism: Relationships & Resonances (2013), that this is not a monolithic category,
is a colonial construct, appearing, early 17th and 18th century, as in
Voltaire's play Fanatisme (1736) as a
synonym – in English, Islamismus in 1696, and Islamism in 1712 – for Islam, in
line with other European constructs as Mohammadanism' (Kramer, 2003: 65-77),
& what followed of Enlightenment rationales, & attempts at forcing this
alienated Other and those colonized to forcibly swallow and accept a 'secular
modernity' at the expense and irrespective of what may follow of their crises
of identity; for instance, as will be discussed in the book, having to choose between their
loyalties to identifying first as Arab or Muslim. This is the same modernity
that operated and marched under the flag and auspices of doctrines of Manifest
Destiny[iii]
and was responsible for the genocide of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas,
giving us civilized modern concepts and institutionalized practices as the
prison and military industrial complexes that we, a yet colonized people, have
built our 'post-colonial' nations on. Aside from ‘Islamism’ then, and which as
stated will be discussed soon enough, if by 'political Islam' what is being
suggested is that Islam is not inherently political and is or becomes
politicized by 'fanatics' then that is also a problematic assumption, as any
faith based movement is, arguably, inherently political through the socially
just pillars it establishes for self-identifying members of its polity and
communities, if not too in ethical relation to other human beings and non-human
life, indeed this earth, as will be proven, at least, in relation to Islam in
the book.
As
such, and as far as I’m concerned, since 1798 both imaginaries, pan-Arab and
pan-Islamic or pan-Muslim, have been caught between harkening for a true(r)
sense of, for example, Egyptian belonging – from which before the ‘Arab
Spring-Islamist Winter’ we were displaced – and choosing between an Arab and
Muslim Ummah in belonging. An ordeal that we've yet to 'reconcile' if that is
at all possible within the framework of capitalist nation-States and the
colonial and imperial logics that we’ve internalized and that guide and inform our
contemporary misunderstood definitions. Of course, none of this should be
surprising if Arabs (re)constructed an Arabic term (Dawla) to correspond to the
European idea/model of nation-States. Again, Arabs did this, with a concept, in
reality derived and appropriated from the Quranic word (D-W-L) & whose
meaning in fact revolves mainly around the notions of temporality, change and
rotation as opposed to a fixed order in which a nation aspires to organize
itself (if the nation predated the state) or a fixed order of things in which
the nation should aspire to organize itself (if the state predated the nation).
The word Dawla, however, does not signify ‘the modern nation-State’ despite its
abuse and molding as such by Arabs, but rather signifies ‘to turn, alternate,
or come around in a cyclical fashion’ i.e. to undergo revolutionary activity
constantly. Dawla stems from the verb ‘dal’ which morphologically, as well as
semantically, falls between the verb dar (to rotate) and the verb zal (to go
away, or fall). Temporality and succession are thus essential connotations for
the meaning of Dawla, with anything that’s circulated from one hand to another
referring to a Dawla, as much as it can also mean the condition of well-being,
for one person or a group of persons, since such condition will sooner or later
end, by the death of the people who are enjoying it, if not by any other means.
Chapter 59 of the Quran, the ‘Chapter of Exile or Banishment’, Verse 7, for
example, speaks of Prophet Muhammad's (SAW) distribution of the spoils of war
to those in need, “so that it may not just make the circuit (dulatan) among the
wealthy of you”. Similarly Chapter 3 of the Quran, the ‘Chapter of the
Family or House of Imran’, Verse 140, speaks of the cyclical nature of human
vicissitudes, so that triumph one day is replaced by defeat another day. To say
all this is to truly say little regarding the complicit acceptance of a
majority of us (Muslims/Arabs/Egyptians), till recently, of the reality of
capitalist nation-States as 'modern', 'enlightened', ways to engage in civic
organizing. We, as Arabs and Muslims, have yet to truly dream, as we confront
the origins of ongoing histories and traumas and whose confrontation is a
necessary component of decolonization if we have any hope of somewhat healing.
It is only with decolonization, with understanding our traditions and histories
that unimaginable horizons beyond the 18 days of Tahrir will appear.
We
need to decolonize concepts and practices as 'nation' that are pivotal given our
internalization of colonial understandings of ‘nation’ that are prevalent
amongst us. In decolonizing the idea of ‘nation’, in my work, I defer to the
Islamic concept and noun Qawm, or ‘people’ (Al-Barghouti, 2008: 178).
For though in Islam our species descends from Adam and Hawa’a, or Eve,
Qawm is utilized in the Quran and Sunnah to distinguish between different
peoples. Qawm, itself, is comprised from Shu’ub, the plural
form of Sha’b, or ‘great tribe’, itself ‘a parent’ formed from
‘smaller tribes’ called Qa’ba’il, the singular form of which
is Qabilah, and to which they refer their origin and comprise them.
What constitutes Qawmiyyah, if one can presume it exist in Islam,
is radically contra distinct from the colonial and racialized Arab understanding
of Qawmiyyah, which since 1798 has focused upon Arab Qawmiyyah or pan-Arab
nationalism. After all, the Gracious, Ar-Rahman, Allah, says in the
Quran “We created…and made you into Shu’ub (big tribes) and Qa’ba’il (smaller
tribes)”, the intent being that these Shu’ub and Qa’ba’il “might come to know
each other” (The Holy Quran, Chapter 49, Chapter of ‘The Apartments’, Verse:
14-16). According to the Quran thus, this creation composed of differing
Qawm, or peoples, and irrespective of how large or small they are in numbers,
are to know one another beyond nationalist sentiments, ethnicity and race (sexuality etc), and
without imposing their wills on one another. Embracing this logic implies that
Arabs and Muslims were wrong and mistaken to accept in the first place the colonial
Machavillian and Manichean delusional construct – the nation-State, and that is
based on the idea of divide and conquer. For Muslims this further implies going
beyond, as stated, an Arabization of Islam, or other racialized forms of
colonial hierarchizations of it. It is Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who uttered in Khutbat
Al’ Wada’a, or 'Farewell Address':
"All humankind is from Adam and
Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any
superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a
black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn
that every Muslim is brother and sister to every Muslim and that the Muslims
constitute one Ummah. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim, which belongs to
a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do
injustice to yourselves” (Muhammed in Turner, 2006: 35-36).
Both God and Muhammad’s anteceding testimonies, visions,
above, not only demonstrate that Muslims are required to believe in different
peoples, irrespective of their size, large or small (through quantitative
qualifiers or groupings as Qawm, Shu’ub and Qa’ba’il) but also that these
people(s), are to strive to know, interact and share with each other and other
worlds beyond their own selves what is of benefit to all; and of course trustingly
doing so in accordance with particular ethical and political principles and
affinities, without compulsion, and with dignity and respect in relation to
human and non-human life. The point being: borders between us, literal and
metaphysical, need to be broken and reimagined along non-patriotic, non-racial/sexual (etc) contours;
and bearing in mind that nationalism is different from patriotism and which
I’ll get to and expound upon shortly; for indeed that there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in where
one was born so long as it doesn’t lead to isolationist, puritanical, essentialist identity/blood politcs and the self-righteous logic that accompanies it, a sentiment that modern States thrive on.
Which
leads me to state this critical point: There are constraints to what can be construed as
Qawmiyyah or ‘peoplehood’ in light of the fact that the emphasis in Islam, the
Quran and Sunnah, is on the non-racialized and non-territorial Islamic concept Ummah,
that is used to refer to the ‘universal community of Muslims irrespective of
borders, cultures, and nationalities’, too racialized by Arab nationalists to
refer solely to Arabs as stated; i.e. an Arab Ummah (Al-Khouli, 1981: 51;
El-Najjar, 2001). I will not delve deeply here into the pivotal question of who
and what is a Muslim and which, to me, briefly, let me claim: has always been
tied to the ethics and politics that would guide a socially just movement, upon
whose establishment, it could be determined who is in and out any vision of
what could constitute a Muslim Ummah; this question will be addressed more
adequately in my book forthcoming via AK Press (see: ~ http://www.akpress.org/islam-anarchism.html).
Nevertheless,
it ought be understood that etymologically Ummah is designated in Lisan
al-Arab, one of the most authoritative Arab dictionaries written by
Mohammad Ibn Makram Ibn Manzhour Al-Ansari (1233-1311 AD), as emanating from
the root “Amm which, as a verb, means to head for, to quest, to
lead, to guide, or to mean and to intend…[while] as a noun means destination,
purpose, pursuit, aim, goal and end”, and which in Islam entails the
preservation of ethical and political principles to earthly existence
(Al-Barghouti, 2008: 37). An “Ummah follows itself, follows an image of itself,
yet it and its image are, at least etymologically one,” writes Al-Barghouti
(2008: 39). That is, “each Muslim follows all Muslims” and the “physical
existence of individuals is called an Ummah” is “when these individuals have an
image of themselves as a collective, and when this image is guiding them to do
things in certain ways distinct from others” (Al-Barghouti, 2008: 39).
Furthermore it is to be understood that “Ummah could be only one person, if
that person had a creed by which they defined themselves and that was expressed
in their actions, even if no one followed them in their quest” (Al-Barghouti,
2008: 39). Prophet Abraheem, upon him be peace, is illuminated in the Quran as
an Ummah onto himself, when the All-Knowing, Al-Alim, Allah, says,
“Surely Ibrahim was an Ummah obedient unto God a man of pure faith and no
idolater” (Chapter 16, Chapter of ‘The Pilgrimage’, Verse 120). No less
critical to comprehending Ummah is the fact that this concept isn’t constrained
or solely applicable to Muslims, when Prophet Muhammad stated that the Jews of Bani’awf and Bani
Najjar “are an Ummah with the believers (Muslims)” (Al-Barghouti,
2008: 61; Ibn Hashim, 2: 109-112). Which can also be understood that they form
an Ummah beside other believers, Muslims, with their own religion(s) and
tradition(s). The issue was not that Bani’awf and Bani Najjar belonged to a
different ethnicity-race for they were Arab-Jews, and in
retrospect they were “to be treated as one community with the Believers”,
as dictated by Muhammad in the Charter of Medina (Al-Barghouti, 2008: 61;
Ibn Hashim, 2: 109-112). Clearly, it can be discerned then that a
decolonized understanding of Ummah implies that it is therefore not exclusively
for Muslims or Arabs for that matter!
It’s in
this sense too that nationalism possess limits, as being Muslim doesn’t
necessitate belonging to ‘the Ummah’, especially if one gives due consideration
to the socially just particulars that give rise and found this Ummah in the
first place, let alone the identity Muslim; the same claim can be applied to
anarchism i.e. just because you identify as an anarchist (like the example of anarcho-capitalists) doesn’t
imply that you necessarily belong to what classically is understood as an anarchist
community (given the anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist commitments that
traditionally ground politically such communities) and not to dismiss too the
different meanings to what identifying as an anarchist is, let alone the
similar and divergent, non-monolithic interpretations that exist of Anarchism.
What will always be more important than a shear name, a label, and category, is
what is believed in thoughts, and followed through in ethical and political
commitments, practices and principles that affirm that identity, and that
subsequently affect the contours of the relationship to anything and anyone one
else.
My work is
therefore doubtlessly predicated on comprehending that though nationalism is
limited in its imaginary the true problem does not reside in ‘nationalism’ per
se (because there’s nothing wrong, as stated, with taking pride in where one was destined
to be born, one’s culture and tradition). Rather, the real problem is in the territorial
concept and post-colonial Arabic notion that plays upon sentimentalist hearts
and that is Wataniyyah, or ‘patriotism’. Like Emma Goldman writes:
Wataniyyah as underlined previously always acknowledges an absent consensus on the legitimacy of modern States; a colonial and imperial construct, and the most active contributor, and agent of hetero-patriarchy and homo-nationalism, not only because modern States thrive on creating false unity but also because they codify and legalize hetero-patriarchy through law in an attempt at delineating fluidity that may and could creatively arrive with alternative imaginations of family, love, compassion, forgiveness and community (Piscatori, 1986: 77; Habeeb, 2011, emphasis added). Therefore, as Al-Barghouti writes, “just as ‘Ummah’ was mistranslated into ‘nation’ by Europeans, Arabs have had problems with translating the term ‘nationalism’ into Arabic” (2008: 178). And thus though presently, the word for ‘nation’, “has two Arabic translations that are sometimes seen as mutually exclusive: ‘Qawmiyyah’ and ‘Wataniyyah’”, my work defers and distinguishes between the two, with Qawmiyyah referring to belonging to “a certain group of people, ‘qawm’” whereas “Wataniyyah, on the other hand, means belonging to the homeland, to a certain territory: ‘watan’” (2008: 178). This is an important distinction given as stated that it’s modern States that manipulate nationalistic sentiments, imprison their imaginings, when it is possible to imagine nations, but more so peoples, no longer obsessively bound by statist imaginaries that facilitate the evocation and morphing of nationalism through the shameless conformist promotion of loyalty and devotion to the State, to create exclusionary territories while producing the commoditized patriotic rhetoric and phantasies that accompany it; a case example of this was the common theme slogan ‘Egyptian worker go back to work for your nation and country’ post-uprising. Hence lies the reason behind which the pivotal question of ‘narratives of the nation’ is central to any liberatory struggle because as Lisa Brooks teaches, there exist “notions radically different from colonial definitions of nationalism, and that are not based on the theoretical and physical models of the nation-state” (Brooks, 2006: 244 in Driskill, Finley, Gilley, & Morgensen, 2011). We need to, indeed must, dismantle colonial notions of 'nation', through engaging in non-conformist decolonized indigenous meanings of it. It’s this concept’s creative imaginings that facilitates the manipulation of its power by modern States, and is behind the propagation of a ‘politics of nationhood’ and that reinforces divisions between us as a species.
“Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and
egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes
that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron
gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot,
consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living
beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living
on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his
superiority upon all the others…The awful waste that patriotism necessitates
ought to be sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence from this
disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be
patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their
“defenders,” but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires
allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father,
mother, brother, sister” (1917).
Wataniyyah as underlined previously always acknowledges an absent consensus on the legitimacy of modern States; a colonial and imperial construct, and the most active contributor, and agent of hetero-patriarchy and homo-nationalism, not only because modern States thrive on creating false unity but also because they codify and legalize hetero-patriarchy through law in an attempt at delineating fluidity that may and could creatively arrive with alternative imaginations of family, love, compassion, forgiveness and community (Piscatori, 1986: 77; Habeeb, 2011, emphasis added). Therefore, as Al-Barghouti writes, “just as ‘Ummah’ was mistranslated into ‘nation’ by Europeans, Arabs have had problems with translating the term ‘nationalism’ into Arabic” (2008: 178). And thus though presently, the word for ‘nation’, “has two Arabic translations that are sometimes seen as mutually exclusive: ‘Qawmiyyah’ and ‘Wataniyyah’”, my work defers and distinguishes between the two, with Qawmiyyah referring to belonging to “a certain group of people, ‘qawm’” whereas “Wataniyyah, on the other hand, means belonging to the homeland, to a certain territory: ‘watan’” (2008: 178). This is an important distinction given as stated that it’s modern States that manipulate nationalistic sentiments, imprison their imaginings, when it is possible to imagine nations, but more so peoples, no longer obsessively bound by statist imaginaries that facilitate the evocation and morphing of nationalism through the shameless conformist promotion of loyalty and devotion to the State, to create exclusionary territories while producing the commoditized patriotic rhetoric and phantasies that accompany it; a case example of this was the common theme slogan ‘Egyptian worker go back to work for your nation and country’ post-uprising. Hence lies the reason behind which the pivotal question of ‘narratives of the nation’ is central to any liberatory struggle because as Lisa Brooks teaches, there exist “notions radically different from colonial definitions of nationalism, and that are not based on the theoretical and physical models of the nation-state” (Brooks, 2006: 244 in Driskill, Finley, Gilley, & Morgensen, 2011). We need to, indeed must, dismantle colonial notions of 'nation', through engaging in non-conformist decolonized indigenous meanings of it. It’s this concept’s creative imaginings that facilitates the manipulation of its power by modern States, and is behind the propagation of a ‘politics of nationhood’ and that reinforces divisions between us as a species.
The conclusion of this section being: Arabs-Egyptians-Muslims need to decolonize and
re-indigenize.
***Note: By pointing to ongoing colonialism I don't mean to
equate/totalize or homogenize ongoing colonial and imperial orders and their
corresponding structures that function on disappearing Indigenous peoples in
settler societies (as Israel, Canada, Australia, the US and other Indigenous
communities across the Pacific) with the 'franchise colonialism' experienced
elsewhere in 'postcolonial' societies or nations in the Middle East. After all,
certainly dynamically, the tactics and orders/structures of institutions at the
level of the locale vary, are dialogic, contingent, provisional/situational. Nevertheless
remains the shared insidious and parasitic affect that informs and underpins
colonialism and imperialism globally, that would allow us to speak of, say,
'Integrated Worldwide Capitalism (IWC)' irrespective of its variant neo-liberal
capillaries and their functioning, or nation-States for that matter. This
underlies, from an intellectual perspective, the importance of always
addressing and situating in context our analyses from a social movement
perspective i.e. both the local and global connections, showing how and where
links exist, are interdependent, and independent of each other.
Reflections on the Uprisings of the so-called ‘Arab
Spring/Islamist Winter’:
Besides the problems associated with
the Eurocentric and colonial term ‘Arab Spring’ – coined by Marc Lynch in the
Journal of American Foreign Policy and critiqued by Joseph Massad in an article
titled The ‘Arab Spring’ and other
American Seasons (see: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282972539153865.html) for its Orientalist connotations – I believe
revolutions require a double movement (internal and external transformations of
individual-communitarian-societal character). Revolutions will always remain
indefinitely incomplete because of the power dynamics, differentials and
relations that will forever undermine/underpin them, and that sustain
oppression while also providing liberatory potentials with them. All one hopes
for in the end is delineating power differentials between us, as individuals
and communities, not getting rid of them. I therefore don't believe Egypt nor
the Middle East has undergone a revolution yet, preferring instead
terms/concepts like 'revolt', or 'uprising', even ‘insurrection’, but
certainly not revolutions. This is because I believe in the need to
differentiate and distinguish between the way revolutions are documented (or
written about historically) and people's revolutionary becomings (i.e. what
ontologically and epistemologically changes/takes place/happens when a people
rise – physically, emotionally, mentally, individually, collectively and that
leads to certain transformations of consciousness individually and collectively).
The two, the way revolutions are documented and people’s revolutionary
becomings, are two different things, because they relate to two different sets
of people in the process of casting off a shame or responding to that which is
intolerable. ’Revolutions’ ought be premised on dealing with practical
questions – how are you going to deal with recycling, garbage, what are you
going to do with a nuclear plant, the army, indeed how are you going to
reconceive your relationship to land through decolonization and
reindigenization & beyond the individualist sense of self and land, indeed
this earth’s utilitarian use.
And
so, to me, the 18 days were 18 days, an instant and moment in time, that ought
not be fetishized, even with the anarchic
character in which millions of Egyptians deterritorialized what ought to have
already been regarded public space; organizing security checks points, necessary
food and shelter, with some neighborhoods arranging their neighborhood
‘cop-watches’, indeed taking control of their own affairs and decision making, before
‘the people’s army’ treacherous intervention. But beyond that, such a spirit
and the spirit that drew many to Tahrir, with their brushes and brooms
following those 18 days, to scrub and clean its pavements 'disappeared'; it was
not Tahrir that need scrubbing per se but rather the streets, our neighborhoods
and communities, indeed ‘our insides’, our hearts and minds. That is, what was
necessary was for us to engage in jihad al-nafs and struggling
w/ourselves as individuals and as communities, indeed the cultivation of new
revolutionary beings. Another way of putting it is that this ‘disappearance’
shouldn’t be surprising because such practices haven't been internalized enough
by ‘revolutionaries’ for them to become a part of the revolutionary character
that then sustains and truly transcends and creates new horizons for itself,
those involved and others beyond; what was and remains necessary is the
creation of sustainable alternative communities. Of course, undoubtedly,
maintaining such a momentum, beyond that experienced in 18 days, is difficult
and challenging but that is precisely the point and necessity in undertaking
such a task, and engaging in the potentials that can come with revolutionary
becomings, with all their intensities, as peoples became in a sense different
peoples – creating all-together radically new differing horizons; the way, for
instance, the first Muslim polities in Mecca and Medina, not to idealize,
underwent transformation to build new societies in character, even if merely
for a time, but certainly that extended beyond 18 days, and based on ethical
and political foundations tied to Islamic concepts and practices of social
justice and which I regard as anarchistic in character then, just as much as I
see the need for such a return to this anarchic character now; Muslims must
realize that Shariah which certainly isn’t a monolith depends on Fiqh, also not
a monolith, and which ultimately is dependent on socially just ethical and
political pillars established before all else. What is required is that we
breed new ways of living and hence my advocacy for a reinvention anew of
decolonized Islamic concepts/principles/practices, and doing so using the Quran,
given that undeniably and ‘rightfully’ any (non)Muslim is bound to ask: show me
where God says I need to be anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-racist-queerphobic-
sexist-ablest etc. Not to mention that decolonization is necessary to counter
the accusation that all that is being stated here (regarding the relationship
and resonances between Islam and Anarchism) is a bida’a, or a Western invented importation that corrupts a
purportedly ‘pure Islam’.
A critical issue that warrants
mention is that I believe too in the value of both culture and religion, and
maintain that while both intersect and interplay, I believe they are both
distinct and relational. Indeed, that there are ethical and political
commitments that undeniably arrive with embracing Islam (and that’s to be
understood as dead, and only alive through the Quran, and perhaps the Sunnah,
to varying degrees, that binds Muslims across their 73 or so odd sects). And so
I’m always concerned with neither drifting into the realm of cultural
relativism nor to cede the theological ground of argumentation as some
‘secularists’ would like me, to neoconservatives and neo-liberal-reformists,
given that I take religion’s space as that which is inherently political,
therefore rejecting the Augustinian and Eurocentric view of the possibility or
need for separating between religion and politics to mark the difference
between savage and civilized. Religions are arguably the first forms of social
movements, and even the faithless have faith (or at least ought to) in
something greater than themselves that ushers forth humility, hope and
affirmation to continue struggles if not for themselves then for the
generations to come. Indigenous communities and movements of Americas which I
have been a part of make no separation – between faith in a Creator and
our/their political and ethical responsibilities as Caretakers with both faith
and politics intertwined as grapevines; again, I’ll refrain here from delving
deeper on this critical point that otherwise would entail a more comprehensive discussion,
once again, of who/what is a Muslim - 'Islamist', let alone the unsustainability
of the category 'secular' in an era of failed state multiculturalism.
Nevertheless, I know this approach
(appreciating culture & religion and neither neglecting one or the other)
is particularly necessary in a situation where God - the pharaoh Mubarak – is
'dead' as most people (least of which is Morsi) become demagogues vying for a
displaced God's space and power (as disappearing God doesn't disappear God's
power-laden vacuum, and that this supposedly murdered God left behind). For
make no mistake Mubarak was never an autocratic ruler and certainly neither is
Morsi – no one ever is in a position of ‘absolute power’ otherwise what
happened on January 25th wouldn't have happened; it had to happen – a people
had to realize & transcend the apathy & fear pent up over decades if
not more, and not just because of their immiseration as Marx and Engels write.
And so yet still, to this moment,
the kettle boils, with most Egyptians/Muslims/Arabs complicit and responsible
for upholding the system they partook in and contributed to for 30 or so odd
years if not for generations; our agency cannot be denied unlike many and
undoubtedly others have orientalized. We are complicit in the end in what
happened before and what continues to happens now. In truth, the overwhelming
‘national and patriotic unity’ exhibited during the 18 days is what bound us
together, when it should have been the politics and ethics that we wanted to
construct this new society upon; a discussion that was predominantly
unaddressed at Tahrir. It is the weak bond of ‘national unity’ that bound us
together initially and that had us tear each other apart after, when the
stronger bond ought to have been our visions of what the next day following ought
look like and that, again, should have been tied to the ethical and political
commitments we share and believe in.
In
the end, of course insurrections, ‘revolutions’ can never be planned, but they
can and must be prepared for. Personally, I don’t find ‘democracy, freedom,
bread, social justice’ to be specific demands whatsoever. What specific
mechanism is to be enacted in relation to the aforementioned slogan is the
question, particularly in a society whose institutions are rotten in their core?
What democracy --- representative, or direct – let’s talk specifics or is it not
the case that even Nazism proclaimed itself democratic; does the corporate
oligarchic United States of America, and its military and prison industrial complexes,
built on Enlightened doctrines of Manifest Destiny, liberty bells, and the enslavement of indigenous peoples, African Americans, Hispanics and minorities
of all kinds, proclaim itself democratic? What democracy are we speaking of, or
are Anarchists, autonomists, and the Zapatistas not striving for a particular
decolonized vision of democracy too? What freedom are we speaking of – the
liberal version that would have us imprisoned by individualist economic woes of
the few in a tyranny of the majority of our fellow species? What do we mean when
we speak these abstract, empty words, that have become nothing more than abused rhetoric, and that we have allowed our tongues to wantonly and impotently utter?
Because
the undoubted crisis in Egypt, in truth, besides over 90 million people who 'all
of a sudden' have discovered the potential of their own agency is that most self-proclaimed
'revolutionaries' all think they've got 'the solution' and that they’re all
capable, astonishingly enough, of speaking politics (through grand slogans and
the rhetoric of 'freedom', 'democracy', and 'social justice' without the
necessity specificities that ought underline/grid and ground these terms in decolonized education
and praxis). Even worse, this speaking happens with the predominant absence of
a desire to listen to each other, let alone knowing how to ethically disagree
amongst one another (see my blog entry titled: On Usul al’Ikhtilaf & Usul
al’Dhiyafa & Epithets on Love for further clarification). This speaking happens, without the 'knowledge' based
background, through reading and ijtihad, necessary, let alone the social
movement experience of experimentation and history (that movements in Latin
America and North America have had for instance) to define and ground in
practice newly found and decolonized ethical and political commitments. Again,
all this is not or shouldn’t be surprising as mentioned earlier given the only
way that the concepts and practices that would ground such politics and ethics
can appear is tied to the project of decolonization and reindigenization, and
which hasn't been embraced as a critical component by most of the movements in
Egypt and the Middle-East that are striving for liberation. What are
Egyptians/Muslims/Arabs learning from the social movement history in North and
Latin America that precedes and exceeds theirs on a multiplicity of levels,
least of which is with respect to notions of autonomy and sovereignty, and that
would have Egyptians/Muslims/Arabs humble themselves?
A Renewal of Knowledge/Education is
desperately needed in the analyses undertaken and it is this absence of
'intellectualism' and literacy that explains the predominant denial amongst most
Egyptians, for the longest time (and arguably still), that the Security Council of the Armed Forces
(SCAF) is a junta and part and parcel of Egypt's military industrial complex
with geopolitical and economic interests and stakes at large (least of which is in relation to Palestine and Israel). This of course is
accompanied, part and parcel, by the overwhelming ambivalence we, Arabs and Muslims, have of the
modern militarization of civilian societies (hospitals/schools/prisons) and
that has been ongoing for at least 600 hundred years dating back to Maurice de
Nassau, and not just beginning with the Napoleanic conscription/
institutionalization of the military following Napolean’s 1793 declaration that
“all Frenchmen are permanently requisitioned for service into the armies. Young
men will go forth to battle; married men will forge weapons and transport
munitions; women will make tents and clothing and serve in hospitals; children
will make lint from old linen; and old men will be brought to the public
squares to arouse the courage of the soldiers, while preaching the unity of the
Republic and hatred against Kings”.
By Way of Conclusion:
Personally,
I am not interested in reforming systems that in truth are not reformatory but
rather purgatory, and whose foundations and logics are built on, tied to and
sustain doctrines of Enlightenment rationales propagated by the US and
colonial and imperial hegemonies before them. And though I could never deny
that making demands, and squabbling over rights from the nation-State can
legislatively and judicially alter minor conditions for some constituent
minorities, in some instances, nevertheless this happens only so that living
becomes more tolerable, not to mention this often occurs at the expense someone
else (i.e. other minorities). In sum, to me playing to a politics of seeking
and demanding recognition, as Charles Taylor, Frantz Fanon and Glenn Coulthard,
argued is ultimately finite and limited in its scope and vision because the
system isn't interested in accepting, but rather, at best, tolerating dissent.
For example, queer marriage in Canada is legalized and yet despite the right to
marry, to this moment LGBTIQ marriages hardly enjoy the rights/privileges
(adoption, inheritance etc) that heterosexual couples do and in fact end up
reasserting the hetero-patriarchal character and reifying the fascistic
nationalist tendencies that Canada, as a settler nation, engages in; through
homo-nationalism, pink-washing, settler-colonialism, and what Joseph Massad's
terms the 'Gay International'.
In
proposing an alternative vision, as far as I’m concerned, there are three
things that need to occur together/simultaneously for change/or a ‘revolution’,
preferably ‘liberation’, to happen and without which we ('the radical Left') won’t realize the
potentials that exist with this epoch: a) the creation, construction and
building of sustainable and alternative autonomous spaces be they permanent or
semi-permanent (from urban social centers to rural/desert communitarian
ethically and politically based projects or how else did the Muslim Brotherhood
succeed post-uprising but by being prepared having built a base composed of their
own communities with their own hospitals, schools, indeed becoming a community
sustaining itself, building roots urbanely and rurally, even developing an
Ethics of Disagreement, Usul lil-Ikhtilaf, and an Ethics of
Hospitality, Usul lil-Dhiyafa, as practices within its communities
etc); b) propaganda/public educative assemblies and the expansion of a civil
disobedient movement through direct action (perhaps one of the few things
somewhat already obsessively re-occurring in Egypt – though not to the level
necessary in quality with respect to decolonized education); c) and, third, the
preparation for armed conflict; given as Frantz Fanon argued that one cannot
engage in decolonization without engaging in violence. This need to
prepare for armed conflict, besides the two tactics of, first, creating
sustainable alternatives, and, second, the expansion of a civil disobedient
movement, are all on par belong to what a bio-diverse strategy of
resistance (Arundhati Roy, 2007) can constitute, and
without which there can never truly be liberation and let that be
what is being proposed as contours of an alternate diverse strategy. After all,
if capitalism were to collapse this instant what economic alternatives exist in
Egypt, in Arab and Muslim communities, that can be used to replace it, except
by those who would find themselves partaking in both direct action and the
construction of alternative worlds, while understanding the ineffable necessity
for martyrs. How else are we to honor and remember our martyrs already 'passed'? Our martyrs are
not dead; they are not bones, flesh decomposed, without spirit, void of soul,
but rather are present in other forms of forces, energies, risings, and crescendos
of dreams yet unfulfilled and entrusted to us living --- they are a reminder to
us alive of the inevitability of death’s advent. There are those who believe
and are ready to die to uphold the nation-State and capitalism; we as radicals
should have no less of a conviction in dying because dying is not the end; and, yes, undoubtedly it must be stated that our ethical and political parameters for
engaging in armed conflict would radically differ from institutionalized forms
of State violence. As for what those parameters are and how
non-institutionalized revolutionary armed conflict would differ and take shape
is another discussion altogether, for another time and place, and subject to a
conversation in my forthcoming book; especially if we’re talking about armed
conflict different from the typical machismo character that such movements
often take. We need to remember that we’re already exposed to epistemic and
structural forms of violence everyday, from racism to classism to sexism to ableism
etc, doubtlessly the list is endless.
But,
yes, discussions and studies of violence, just as love, are necessary, given I
take issue with the construction of violence & non-violence as binaries given
the set of ethical and political commitments that frame their intersecting and divergent understandings, histories, and their shaping of movements and a
future when taken conjunctively instead of disjunctively (again the logic of
AND versus the logic of OR); hence, combined instead of becoming essentialized
and taken as one or the other. Hitherto I’m interested in the possibilities
that could arrive in cases, as with the EZLN (or the military wing of the
Zapatistas) or the Naxilites in India, and for armed conflict to remain as a
tactical option and if carried out to be done in a way that respects and is
observant of a certain dignity towards human and non-human life. As stated in a
former blog entry: I’m sick of non-violent propagators who are permitted the
all too frequent impractical claim ‘that nonviolence works and the principle
examples are Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King in the U.S.’ because that
observation constitutes ‘a great historical whitewashing’ (Gelderloos, 2011).
Such claims moreover are disrespectful to our martyrs in Tahrir, in Maspero,
& every event since, if not in other worlds antecedent and preceding the ‘Arab
Spring/Islamist Winter’. Fact is ‘the resistance in India was incredibly
diverse, and Gandhi was a very important figure within that resistance, but the
resistance was by no means pacifist in its entirety, that there were a number
of armed guerrilla groups, a number of militant struggles, very important riots
and other strong clashes which were a part of the struggle for Indian
independence. So on the one hand Gandhi basically got negotiating power from
the fact that there were other elements in the struggle which were more
threatening to British dominance. So the British specifically chose to dialogue
with Gandhi because he was for them the least threatening of the important
elements of resistance and had those elements not existed they simply could’ve
ignored Gandhi’ (2011).
Above all matters fetishizing nonviolence is a
whitewashing of Malcolm X’s words when Malcolm says “it’s a crime for anyone
being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something
to defend himself” and the “future belongs to those who prepare for it today”
(1964). Fetishizing nonviolence is to ignore George Jackson’s words that “the
concept of nonviolence…[is] a false ideal…when it presupposes the existence of
compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one’s adversary. When this
adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and
compassion, his reaction can only be negative” (1994). Jackson, as Malcolm, of
course, never laid witness to all this but I remain doubtful they would’ve
concluded much different, both assassinated, as of course Gandhi and Martin
Luther King. To adopt a dogmatic stance on nonviolence is to neglect the
involvement of non-Gandhian militants, as the anarchist and Marxist
influenced shaheed/martyr Bhagat Singh born to a Sikh Punjabi
family and hanged at the age of 23 in India’s move towards independence. It’s
to dismiss the incidents of Dharasana Satyagrapha, a protest in which Indians
under the leadership of Sarojini Naidu and Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, were
protesting British salt tax in May 1930. A protest in which protestors were
expected to ‘not use any violence under any circumstances’ but to accept that
they’ll be beaten, that ‘they must not resist’, not even raising ‘a hand to
ward off blows’, leaving by certain estimates 320 injured many ‘insensible with
fractured skulls, others writhing in agony from kicks in the testicles and
stomach’ with scores of the injured receiving no ‘treatment for hours’ and two
dead (Miller, 1936: 193-199). Purportedly a ‘nonviolent’ position in which
Indians marched to meet batons in British hands knowing quite likely they could
die in ‘(non)violent’ protest. To maintain a binary position regarding violence and
nonviolence is to be ambivalent of what the affective use violence became for
the Civil Rights Movement by radicals as the BPP, Black Panther Party, and NOI
(or the Nation of Islam); peoples with arms contributing to the restoration of
a measure of dignity and respect to a people’s history whose dignity and
respect was, and remains stolen; the city of Chicago, Illinois, with its annual
African-Americans dead as a consequence of poverty stricken-gang related
violence in a patronizing patriarchal society ought sufficiently testify, if the disappearance of indigenous peoples
isn’t enough, not to the death but rather the lie that is the ‘American dream’.
In
concluding, I’ll reiterate a certain point again, I long to see what I do not
see – that with now Libya’s debt to the U.S. and NATO, as well as the
situation(s) in Egypt, Syria, Tunis, Yemen, Palestine, and surrounding and
enclosed Arab and predominantly Muslim spaces these movements have yet to show
and prove themselves for what they are and could be. And one hopes that they
will begin to strive towards autonomy oriented, and dare I say decolonized anarchic, modes of organizing, acting,
and thinking, that recognizes the interlocking nature and movements of oppressions
as well as comprehends the Oedipal relationship between the nation-State (Father) and
capitalism (Mother) which I’ve previously written about. Again, there is much
the Arab and Muslim world can learn from histories in resistance the world
over, let alone the Naxilites or the Zapatistas. I pray we don't just strive to
rebuild the pyramid, which by far the vast majorities of our communities are
certainly engaged in. The problem isn't the Muslim Brotherhood because if the
opposition (Liberals, Socialists, Nasserites, whatever) were in power similar
yet different problems would be taking place and other people would be in the
streets of Egypt and the Middle East. The problem IS the pyramid and the fact
that we refuse to move beyond a certain way of thinking and praxis.
To
wrap this entry, there are histories of struggles, individual and collective,
‘minor’ and ‘major’, that antecede or precede and exceed the ‘Arab
Spring-Islamist Winter’, every moment of every day, and that always caused the
‘world to move’ i.e. the world has always been in motion, it didn’t start
moving in 2011 or with Bu’azizi burning to death and that too has
been Orientalized. As I'm not quite sure I understand the sentiments
of either a ‘Bu’azizi international day’ or 'a Happy Bu'azizi day'. And in
stating so, I neither mean to demean Bu'azizi's audacity and courage (for I’m
incapable of such an immolate act myself), nor do I mean to fetishize
the subsequent events European-ly dubbed 'the Arab Spring-Islamist Winter'.
Rather what I mean is that I’m not interested in reductively reducing without
'adequate’ account or analyses other antecedent events that led to the
culminating 'Bu'azizi moment' and that’s come to be taken generally en mass as
‘ the significant spark', no less than the false and ridiculous claim that the ‘Arab
Spring/Islamist Winter’ was a consequence of Facebook/Twitter. To do so would
be similar to focusing on the 3 days of labor strikes prior to the uprising in
Egypt on January the 18th without accounting much for what happened the 7th of
December 2006, with the Mahala strikes; Mahala being the largest textile mill
in the Arab and Muslim world, with a labor force that amounts to 27,000
workers, and by certain accounts the 3rd largest textile mill in the world. In fact, there’s an entire
history of labor strikes, even prior to Mahala, that one can trace or backtrack
to and assign significance in so far as their influence leading up to the
events on January 25th, 2011. In Tunis and before Bu'azizi there was
Zouheir Yahyaoui who died on 13th March 2005 following a heart attack. Zouheir
Yahyaoui died at the age of 36, having formerly spent 18 months in prison,
during which time he was tortured and detained in degrading conditions. As a
result of these conditions, Zouheir Yahyaoui underwent 3 hunger strikes to protest
against his imprisonment. In his capacity as a human rights defender Zouheir
Yahyaoui ran a website known as ‘Tunezine’(www.tunezine.com) which is/was censored in Tunisia as a result of its
reporting of human rights abuses and its provision of forums for open
discussion (see: http://www.frontlinedefenders.
org/node/274). Yet there’s
no Zouheir Yahyaoui international day nor does he, up to my knowledge, have a
statue erected in his name as now Bu’azizi. The point being that surely there
are others before Yahyaoui in Tunis, others before Bu’azizi, others before
Khaled Said in Egypt not to mention after; are their lives or sacrifices less
worthy of 'an international day' or is it the subsequent rapidity of events
(the ends ‘achieved’) that determine the 'value' and 'means' of their
contributions? The very premise of iconic statues of revolutionaries are certainly
not without their problems, even if seemingly warranted, given what they lead
to in terms of en passes of history and what they raise of cultish personalities. In the
end, what does that say though for the innumerable unnamed Bu’azizis out there
then? Don’t they deserve international days in defense of causes now being
rediscovered, once 'lost'?
As
to the purpose of this blog and why all this now? It’s in anticipation of
thoughts and ideas I discuss in Islam
& Anarchism: Relationships & Resonances (for details see: http://www.akpress.org/
islam-anarchism.html). Besides
which I prefer being busy practicing what I preliminary shared above. There’s
someone in me who kills with a burst of laughter whoever appears to find it
necessary, opportune, important to say what someone thinks, feels, lives, or
anything you like, but in light of the much fetishized ‘Arab Spring-Islamist
Winter’, everyone feels entitled to speak and act as they will, irrespective of
experience and thoughtful rigor over twitter or whatever other social forums. I
am therefore not competing or interested in contributing to that type of
demagoguery, in screaming over the voices of others (to see who will yell louder) besides the so many
people whose voices are silenced and particularly with the way
people shop around for solidarity nowadays in what celebrity followings. I say this
without intending to become what I despise – patronizing or self-righteous, not
at all. Because though ultimately, I don’t escape the slaughter, whether in
moments as this or with a book coming out, for myself all this is premised on
positions that anteceded all these relatively recent events, with over a decade’s worth of
practice, thought and reflection as opposed to momentarily uninformed
commentaries, political polemics, meanderings and punditry via amateur
constructed arguments. I’m not interested in becoming a subject of enunciation.
Writing isn’t a narcissistic act or at least it shouldn’t be.
Especially
not when writing involves the fabrication of characters and
characterizations that deflect attention …Especially not, when writing has to
do with stopping with birth, the way one would stop with death, without
interest in the build up – culmination – evolution of characters – their aural
and visual shifting from one scene to another. Rather to me writing’s about
being interested in character amputation and if successful, the character’s
carving out on the operating table - subtracting the elements that make stable
elements of power out of characters. Writing’s to cause disequilibrium – to
free what’s not represented – offering new potentialities – possibility after
possibility without domesticating/neutralizing/ naturalizing the theatre. Writing’s
to fancy gestures where the gestures aren’t repeated, in decimating dialogue to
deafen it till all gestures aren’t an aesthetic thing or a ritual done to
oneself - as if one could ever forget or repeat it…
In
the end, writing involves asking: in the name of what, in the name of who
publish, divulge, and first of all write? For the text to shape itself ?– for
all the signs to form a dove, flower, rainstorm – lost in a desert?– for there
to be ‘restraint’ from any possible reading? Letters as points – sentences –
lines – paragraphs - surfaces – masses – wings – stalks – petals… shapes
dissipating as they’re already read – a drop of rain falling one after an other,
much less a feather or a torn leaf – all withering/evaporating …I write because it’s a
sword I wield, understanding quite well that people live and die on words, the
thoughts and ideas behind them, their implications, horizons, promises…On the
other hand, a proper discussion on love and death and their places with respect to
social movements, given they’re ‘one-off’ experiences, now that would make for
a conversation…
That’s all for now --- and as always
whatever is of benefit here is not of my doing and is owed to inspirations of spirits, souls, seen and unseen; as
for whatever shortcoming they’re my own and I take full responsibility for…
Salam & Salute, better yet,
Adieu & Nos Vemos, or as someone simply taught me:
Grace & Peace…
Selected Bibliography of References/Influences
o
Al-Barghouti, Tamim, The Umma and The Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East (Pluto Press, 2008).
o Deleuze,
Gilles, Negotiations: 1972-1990.
Translated by Martin Joughin. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
--------------------,
Essays Critical and Clinical.
Translated by Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997).
o Deleuze, Gilles, & Guattari, Félix, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by
Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press,
1977).
------------------------------------------, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota Press, 1980).
Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota Press, 1980).
o Driskill,
Qwo-Li; Finley, Chris; Gilley, Brian-Joseph; & Morgensen, Scott Lauria, Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical
Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature (First Peoples)
(University of Arizona Press, 2011).
o Fanon,
Frantz, Toward the African revolution:
political essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967).
------------------,
Black Skins, White Masks (New York:
Grove Press, 1967).
o Foucault,
Michel, Discipline and Punishment: The
birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Press, 1979).
----------------------,
The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage
Books, 1980)
----------------------,
The Essential Foucault: Selections from
Essential Works of Foucault,
1954-
1984 (New York: The New Press, 2003).
o Massad,
Joseph, Desiring Arabs (Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
--------------------, “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay
International and the Arab World in Journal
of Public Culture Volume 14, Number 2, Spring (2002): 361-385
[i] Fanon
describes Jean Veneuse as follows: “Jean Veneuse is a magnificent example that
will allow us to study in depth the attitude of the black man. Jean Veneuse is
a Negro. Of Antillean origin, he has lived in Bordeaux for many years, so he’s
a European. But he’s black, so he’s a Negro” (1952: 46). Veneuse represents the
straw person abandoned-neurotic colonized person of color, of the negative-aggressive type, in need of
decolonization. Veneuse, in Fanon’s words, is “a perpetual dreamer…a real
character. He never takes his nose out of his books except to scribble all over
his notebooks…a sensitive person who can go from singing in Spanish to
translating into English nonstop. Shy but also anxious…somewhat gloomy and
taciturn by nature, but most helpful. You can trust him…a Negro we would like a
lot of white boys to be like…Jean Veneuse would like to be the same as any
other man, but he knows his situation is false…He’s searching for serenity and
permission in the eyes of the white man --- for Jean Veneuse is ‘the Other’”(1952:
46-63). "Andree Marielle, who is white of skin, loves Jean Veneuse, who is very, very dark and adores Andree Marielle" yet, "Jean Veneuse does not or cannot accept this, for he knows" and ponders out loud: "I wonder whether i'm any different from the rest and if I marry you, a European woman, i wonder whether i won't look as though i'm stating that not only do i despise women of my own race, but drawn by the desire for white flesh that has been off limits to us Blacks since the white man rules the world, I am unconsciously endeavoring to take my revenge on the European female for everything her ancestors have inflicted on my people throughout the centuries" (Fanon, 1952: 50-51). Veneuse's beloved writes him: "My dearest Jean, Your letter dated July arrived only today. It is perfectly unreasonable. Why do you torment me so? Do you realize how incredibly cruel you are? You make me happy mixed with anxiety. You are making me at the same time the happiest and the unhappiest of women. How many times must i tell you i love you, i am yours and i am waiting for you. Come" (Fanon, 1952: 58). Veneuse: "Your dealing with an old bear! Be careful, my dear. It's all very well to be brave, but you're going to compromise yourself if you continue attracting attention this way. A Negro. Bah! He doesn't count. Associating with anybody of that race is disgracing yourself....And yet, what fantasies! Does she really loves me? Does she really see me objectively?...Tell me, Andree darling..., despite my color, would you agree to marry me if I asked you?" (Fanon, 1952: 47, 58). Jean Veneuse is "crusader of inner life. When he sees Andree again, when he is face-to-face with the woman he has desired for so many months, he takes refuge in silence...the eloquent silence of those who 'know the artificiality of words and acts'" (Fanon, 1952: 60)...Jean Veneuse is "ugly. He is black. What else does he [and do you] need?" (Fanon, 1952: 61).
[ii] A
recommended reading on ‘What Zapatismo is?’ is John Holloway’s paper titled Zapatismo Urbano and that can be found
here: http://www.squiggyrubio.net/documents/hjsr/HollowayZapatismoUrbano.pdf
[iii] Briefly, the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny is the Christian religious fervor spawning “the Second Great Awakening”, and that led many European settlers to believe that “God himself blessed the growth of the American nation” at the expense of the genocide of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In other words, “Native Americans were considered heathens. By Christianizing the tribes, American missionaries believed they could save souls and they became among the first to cross the Mississippi River” and build their new world. For more details, see: ~ http://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp
[iii] Briefly, the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny is the Christian religious fervor spawning “the Second Great Awakening”, and that led many European settlers to believe that “God himself blessed the growth of the American nation” at the expense of the genocide of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In other words, “Native Americans were considered heathens. By Christianizing the tribes, American missionaries believed they could save souls and they became among the first to cross the Mississippi River” and build their new world. For more details, see: ~ http://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp
