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mariacallous · 5 months

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Tommy Robinson has come a long way on the subject of Islam. Born Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, he rose to prominence as the leader of the anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic English Defence League. In a speech in Denmark in 2016, he claimed that there was an ongoing “military invasion” of Europe, referring to the increasing numbers of refugees from Muslim countries. In his self-published book, “Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam,” Robinson instructs any potential Muslim readers to put the book down. “We do not wish you to become a killer because this book leads you to understand the doctrines and history of Islam more thoroughly.”

Yet Robinson’s opposition has since softened. He has observed that “Islam has become an attraction for so many, because people are looking for something strong in principle that can stand its ground.” Lamenting the state of the West, he has noted that there are areas of common ground between his extreme far-right views and certain forms of conservative Islam. Both Robinson and Muslims can be found protesting the pro-LGBTQ curriculum taught in British schools. Realizing that they could be allies in the culture wars, Robinson went so far as to attend a protest condemning the burning of the Quran by a far-right activist in Sweden. Instead of supporting the right to desecrate the Muslim holy book, as he used to, he talked to the Muslim protesters and asked questions, describing himself as an “observer.”

Robinson is far from an isolated example of this previously hard-to-imagine union between the extreme right and conservative Muslims. He is one of many far-right personalities carving out a new form of conservatism, characterized by this new, admiring attitude toward Islam. The most high-profile among them is, of course, Andrew Tate, who took this admiration to its logical conclusion by converting to Islam. But there are many more who have been vocal in their admiration and support for specific forms of conservative, patriarchal Islam, even if they’ve stopped short of adopting the faith. This unlikely alliance is not just built on LGBTQ issues. Feminism, “cultural Marxism,” globalists and “wokeism” are all used as scapegoats. And it’s no longer just on the fringes.

The past year has seen this alliance go mainstream. In competing to become the most anti-woke candidate out there, former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others have put conflicts over gender roles and LGBTQ rights front and center, with the latter presenting himself as the cultural warrior most willing to take the necessary measures to halt wokeness. Former enemies, conservative Muslims and anti-woke Christians, have found common ground over these issues — with electoral implications. Once discouraged from voting Republican by post-9/11 policies, today, Muslims in America are flocking back to the right, finding this new form of conservatism more agreeable. In turn, the right no longer sees Muslims solely through the lens of terrorism but as potential allies in the culture wars. This support, along with new signs of respect for Islam, may fundamentally shift foreign policy. After all, if you see no problem with how the Taliban treat women, then you have less reason to oppose their rule.

We have witnessed this new trend from its early days, over years of observation and interaction, from finding Jordan Peterson trending in the Middle East back in 2018 to witnessing Tate’s star rise among Muslims in the West and the Arab world. (Tate was recently charged in Romania with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.) We have monitored dozens of YouTube channels, read thousands of posts in online chat rooms, followed scores of online influencers and spoken to many followers and fans in multiple countries. At first, this research traced existing divisions between Muslims and the right, but through long-term observation of online communities, we came to realize that political fault lines were being redrawn.

This new trend encompasses both political and social factors that influence and impact one another. Particularly important is the collection of communities, united by misogynistic and conspiratorial theories, known as the “manosphere.” From incel chatrooms to self-help dating sites, fueled by influencers from Peterson to Tate, the manosphere has formed a core demographic of this new conservatism. These figures have not only gained mainstream attention but have also pulled the entire political establishment to the right. This article is the result of observing these trends become increasingly widespread and normalized, most obviously in politics but also throughout Western societies, perhaps epitomized best by the recent protests over, of all things, school curricula.

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confluence-and-drift · 4 months

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Ow. Stomachache. Taken medication for it and waiting for to take effect. It's what I get for eating a large meal and sleeping soon afterwards.

In other news, does anyone know of any established discord servers where people don't swallow the zionists propoganda and excuse genocide? The three that are like, my main ones for news all have plenty of people who make excuses for Israel and to paraphrase someone describing this(hi, if you're reading this) "think that a bunch of guys with aks and homemade bombs can topple an hyper-militaristic rogue state that's being funded by America". The thought of handholding a bunch of ignorant fucks who, consciously or not, don't see brown people as human as the citizens of the zionist entity. I mean what else do you call it when they just belive without question that every man woman and child deserves to die because something something hamas, or that every single person there wants all jews dead. It's such a racist fucking notion, evidence that they've never interacted with Palestinians or even people who see them as... Well, people.

Now you might think I'm being naive to expect people to understand this, but I'm from Glasgow, much of the populace here has pretty much always seen through the bullshit, and I mean the white people. We non-whites have an advantage in that regard, in that we learned the harrowing truth young.

I remember listening to a Palestinian man talk about his mother who was there for the first nakba when I was 12. It was at this bds meeting that my dad took me to though I don't remember details. I learned a lot more that day too but thayh was facts, information. The pzin in the man's eyes cut through like nothing I'd ever encountered before in my young life. I was already an atheist and was going through an anti-Muslim stage in my journey to non-belief(I got over that by my late teens) so I immediately sought out other viewpoints. I learned quickly of the zionist historical revisionism but also of anti-zionist jews and the sheer courage and integrity inherent to their position. I think it was around that age that I solidified that aspect of my personality that has me seek out all sides of an argument and filter it through my essentially humanist principles. Now if you think this is hard to belive, let me remind you

A) 9/11 was that year or the year before (I can't quite remember). I got to see people who I'd known since nursery/kindergarten turn against me viscously for even suggesting that the Americans were milking this tragedy to go to war against an unrelated country. I got the shit kicked out of me by people screaming "they are our ENEMIES " along with the usual stuff about 'pakis' whilst having my face ground into the glass-shard covered aphsalt. There were like 6 of them. Not sure what would have happened to me if a group of my friends hadn't arrived and got them off me for long enough for us to run away (we were nerds not fighters, the act of fighting those guys for me was already something well beyond what I expected)

B) as the above might make obvious, I was undiagnosed autistic, I was easily capable of making those deductions at that age, less capable of knowing who it was safe to express those deductions around though.

Essentially I find it exasperating and kind of depressing having to walk someone through "actually Israel isn't justified at all" tier of discourse. Like, shit, have you not figured that out by yourself?? I don't have the energy to lower the discussion to your level, not do I have any personal desire to enlighten someone who still believes bombing hospitals is a okay if Israel fucking say so. It's a frankly pitiful level of ignorance and I'd rather leave engaging with it to other people.

So essentially I'm looking for political discord servers where people already know this. Needless to say, whilst I refuse on principle to preclude all statements of support for Palestine with 'I'm not antisemitic' as I think that's, intellectually speaking, fucking pathetic, I have no tolerance for antisemitism. It's not about jews or muslims, it's about a colonialist entity subjugating a people they've occupied for 75 years and carrying out a protracted, as as of recently, less protracted genocide against them. At the same time, I'd rather it not be a muslim only server. I've always find things like that to be unhelpful and dividing things by religion is a foolish notion regarding a conflict that people only think is religious in nature because the zionist entity says so. Not to mention portraying it as religious in nature is a great way to make people dismiss it as unsolvable. In summary, I just want a community where "no-one has the right to an ethnostate" isn't a controversial statement lol. It's a rather tiring level of regressive bullshit that I'd rather no deal with.

In any case I'd appreciate people letting me know if there's any nice political communities not full of ignorant fuckwits or racist cretins that are nice and welcoming then let me know. I'm too disabled, essentially, to be very useful in a practical sense so there's not really much I could give to said community bar my words, but I'm hoping to find some place anyway.

On another topic, anyone got any favourites among this seasons anime? (I know I know, tonal whiplash, but this is a blog post, not a fic, it's all good >.>) not had a chance to get stuck in yet.

Anyways, I hope yous are all doing well in your lives of you read this far ^^.

EDIT: a *left wing* political server, I forgot to say. Fuck interacting with people who exist only to justify their own selfishness as an ideology. If I wanted to interact with such troglodytes I'd go to a youtube comment section.

#personal #free palestine

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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What drove this country crazy after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11? Was it how vulnerable we had been shown to be, that a group of 19 men armed with nothing more than box-cutters could bring the entire country to a halt? Was it that the attack was aimed primarily against innocent civilians, with nearly 3,000 killed at the Twin Towers alone? Was it that with the 19 hijackers dead in the suicidal attacks, we didn't seem to have anyone to retaliate against? Was it that we had no grasp whatsoever on understanding why our country, the freest and most democratic ever, was hated so much that they would attack us?

I remember how disconnected things felt for days, even weeks, after the attacks. Travelers outside the country didn't have a way to get home because flights had been canceled. People stranded in cities they were visiting within the country couldn't find cars to rent, there were so many trying to get home. Everyone seemed to feel a need to gather with families and friends and hunker down, as if another attack could come at any moment.

The country's leadership was frozen, stunned. Remember the photos of George W. Bush as an aide leaned over his shoulder and whispered the news into his ear? He was the president of the United States, and he looked scared to death. In fact, he was rushed from the school he was visiting in Florida to Air Force One, and his plane took off on what amounted to a flight to nowhere as his administration tried to pull itself together and decide how they would respond. It wasn't until hours later that Air Force One landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and Bush hurriedly addressed the press in a windowless conference room, vowing to "hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts." Three days would pass before the president was flown to New York to appear atop the rubble of the World Trade Center at what became known as Ground Zero to take a bullhorn and make the pledge that would launch the country on a trajectory that has yet to change: "I can hear you!" he shouted to the workers at the site, "The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

A collective madness ensued. A great scrambling began to protect us against … well, against what? Box-cutters first and foremost, it seemed, as a new regime of inspections began at airports everywhere. The initial panic over the hijacked flights would lead to the establishment of the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, a kind of domestic department of defense which proceeded to put us on what amounted to a wartime footing within our own country that persists even today. How many times have you had to throw a set of fingernail clippers into a bin at airport security because a TSA agent was defending us from terrorism? How about removing your shoes because a lone lunatic made an unsuccessful attempt to blow up an airplane with a "shoe bomb"?

The entire paranoid regimen under which we still live 20 years later grew out of a supposed "war on terror" begun after 9/11 that has never ended. It took a decade to find and kill the actual terrorist who ordered the attacks on 9/11, but in the meantime two shooting wars were launched, only one of which had even the slightest connection to the terrorists who attacked us. There was an elemental problem: The war on terror wasn't against an enemy, it was against an idea, and ideas don't die when you hit them with bombs and bullets.

And so, without a readily definable enemy who could be seen and shot and killed and defeated, which is what wars are usually for, lies were substituted. We were buried with lies, and not just any lies. They had to justify the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops and the expenditure of trillions of dollars in treasure and the loss of thousands more American lives than died on 9/11 and countless more lives — enemies, civilians and, my goodness gracious, even a few real flesh and blood terrorists.

Sept. 11, 2001, was when the Big Lie was born. Or should we say, Big Lies, because they came fast and furious. By now they are known to be so completely without any basis in reality, so wholly bogus, that they hardly bear recounting. Weapons of mass destruction? Connections between Iraq and its government and leaders and the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11? Ha!

And then came new Big Lies to support the earlier Big Lies: that we were "winning" the war on terror. How many times were we reassured that all those lives and all those dollars were not being pissed away for nothing? How many times were we reassured that we were rebuilding the countries that hadn't needed rebuilding until we attacked them? How many times were we told of the miraculous training of the Iraqi and Afghan armies? They even invented a new word that I never learned in the classes I took in military history at West Point, a word to describe the magic bullet that was going to win both wars: the surge. If only we sent 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 or 50,000 more troops, we could win the mythical war on terror.

"Shock and awe" was a lie. "Taking Baghdad was a lie. The army of Iraq just went away. The "surge," each and every one of them, was a lie. "Winning" was a lie, every single time the word was used. Every. Single. Time. The Afghan army was a lie. It didn't even bother surrendering to the Taliban. It just went … poof. The Afghan "government" was a lie. It too went poof. The Iraqi government is a lie. Everything we have done to win the war on terror for two decades, 20 long years, has been a lie. We wasted trillions of dollars that could have been spent to, I don't know, feed hungry children in Arkansas? Pay for health care for poor families? Send kids to college? Reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and save our planet?

We wasted all those lives, American and Afghan and Iraqi and German and Australian and Polish and every other soldier from every other NATO country who died fighting "terror." And we killed hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi people for nothing.

For nothing.

The biggest Big Lie of them all was that it had meaning, that we accomplished something, that we somehow won the war on terror. Terror hasn't gone away. Hell, we're growing it ourselves now, right here at home.

I'll tell you another war we lost, maybe even a bigger and more important war than the war on terror. We lost the war on truth. And we were warned. Oh yes, we were warned. Take Donald Trump's first Big Lie right after 9/11 as just one example. He claimed — I hope you're sitting down for this — that he could see from his office window in Trump Tower crowds of Muslims across the Hudson River, several miles away, on the roofs of buildings in Jersey City, cheering as the World Trade Center fell.

Remember that one? It was such a patently outrageous lie that it zoomed right past without anyone noticing as the rest of the Big Lies hit one after another.

But Trump got away with it, and he learned from it. Oh, yes. He learned how the Big Lie worked. He learned from watching Bush get away with lying about WMDs, and he learned from the Big Lies that we were winning in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he started trying out other Big Lies of his own, like the one about how Barack Obama wasn't a citizen of the United States, that he had a fake birth certificate, that he was a "secret Muslim." Remember when Trump was all over the TV for days and days claiming that he had sent detectives to Hawaii? All we had to do was wait and he was going to reveal the "truth" about Obama.

He got away with his "birther" Big Lie, and he learned something that he has used ever since, something that helped him drive us into the ditch of the pandemic he lied about for a year, something that has helped him transform an entire political party, the Republican Party, from one of two normal political parties in this country into an authoritarian cult.

He learned that if he told Big Lies that were big enough, and if he repeated them enough times, that he could get away with it, just like Bush got away with lying about WMDs to get us into Iraq. And his party, the Republican Party, learned right along with him. Look at what they are doing right this minute about the insurrection he incited against the Congress of the United States in his naked attempt to overturn the election he lost. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are on a campaign to deny that it happened. They are trying to make a case that it wasn't Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol, it was somebody else, and those who were arrested are political prisoners facing false charges … and on and on and on.

The legacy 9/11 has left us is that there is no common set of facts we can agree on about anything: Not about the COVID pandemic and masks and vaccines; not about the climate change that has killed hundreds and left town after town burned to the ground or under water and destroyed by tornadoes and hurricanes. We cannot agree that votes counted amount to elections won or lost. We cannot even agree on the common good of vaccines that will save us, that science is worth studying, that learned experts are worth listening to.

The lies that followed 9/11 have torn us apart as a nation and put our democracy in peril. That's our legacy: Lies are now considered by an entire political party to be legitimate political currency. A man who has told so many lies we have lost count of them is now a legitimate political figure supported for the highest office of the land by one of our two political parties.

Lies began tearing us apart after the attacks on 9/11, and we have not regained our footing as a nation. The question hanging over us now is whether we ever will.

Lucian Truscott

#terrorism #articles #Lucian Truscott #Big Lie #Salon #9/11 #War on Terror

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palestudenttoadbailiff · 3 years

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Muslim Lives Matter TOO

An issue, no it is world crises that never gets mentioned, that does not even cross anyone's mind and it happens on a daily basis it has been happening for years, even before civilization. The violence that is unleashed upon Muslims every single day is unbearable, unacceptable and unprecedented but does anyone speak up against the monsters who tortures, murders and rapes innocent Muslim children and women, the answer is no. NO not a single person does a thing to stop this, why because the rest of the world thinks we deserve it but in reality nobody deserves this kind of treatment it has to come to an end.

As the world defends Asian people for the hate crimes acted upon them which is good people need to defend those who can not do it themselves, but we have also seemed to forget that the same Asians we are protecting are also keeping millions of Muslim people in concentration camps. A sad truth is that the Muslim people of Palestine has been in war since 1948 and it is still ongoing lets face it this is a one way war but if we stand up we might just have the power to stop it. These people have no weapons to defend themselves so many innocent lives being lost and for just some political ploy that the people who are in power oversee, do you not see this is part of a much bigger plan the people in power are trying to everyone against each other. Just like black lives matter campaign and the all lives matter campaign, shouldn't Muslim lives fall under the category of “All lives matter” because we are just as much part of “ all lives” like the rest of the world is. But yet we choose to be silent about this , why? Look at China and how they are trying to ban Islam in their country, authorities are removing crescents from the mosques because according to them Islam is an extremist religion. The Imam and the boy responsible for the call to prayer from a local mosque without any reason at all got arrested. On one occasion the Chinese authorities beat an elderly Muslim lady for wearing hijab, for representing what she believes in she got beat mercilessly. People do not even respect the elderly Muslims. The authorities even went as far as confiscating prayer mats and many copies of the Quran. What is even more sad is that Muslims are not even allowed to wear the clothing that represents our religion, they are not allowed to have long beards and women are not allowed to wear veils or anything that is viewed as “extremist” attire according to the Chinese authorities. Even the children are not even allowed to be educated about Islam even in the comfort of their own homes. These people are having their human rights violated and nothing is done about it.

A variety of repressive tactics are used on an unprecedented scale.Muslims in China are being monitored on a daily basis and their have their privacy invaded without cause. Each and everyday they are questioned about anything that could be seen as “extremism” in the eyes of Chinese laws.Islam is basically outlawed in China.Having a Muslim family member is enough to get you interrogated in an inhumane way. Now for the bigger issue, about the Muslim people who are disappearing in China on a vast scale, where are they you might wonder, oh they are just being held in so called” political education camps” until they are deemed qualified to reside in the country, they have no freedom of movement they have to qualify in order ot moves around from town to town. And proving my point once again there has been little to no international outrage over what may be the world's most draconian and comprehensive control over Muslim life throughout history.

What do you imagine when you hear the word “terrorist” you would imagine a man in a long thobe with a beard right? Preferably a Muslim man but my question is why do we associate Islam with terrorism. First of all you should know the correct meaning of terrorism. According to the United States government Terrorism is: the unlawful forceful violence against persons or property to intermediate for political or social objections. Now listen to this in 2013 a Caucasian Christian male killed three Muslim students known as a hate crime. Did he use an unlawful forceful violence yes he did, was it targeted at against persons or property yes it was, did he want to intermediate for a political or social segments yes he wanted to because it was a hate crime. So i ask this question why was this not considered an act of terrorism it clearly fits the description, was it because he was white i think so. We need to stop associating terrorism with Islam because there is a major difference because anyone could be a terrorist not just Muslims. 9/11 was when the world hated Muslims even more than they did because 15 Arabs hijacked one plane why should the rest of the 1.8 billion Muslims suffer their consequences. Within every religion there exist a spectrum of attitudes and behavior and extremism is not unique to one particular belief system. There are people who view themselves as Muslims who have committed these horrible crimes in the name of Islam but they do not represent the rest of us, they are a minority within Islam and have the wrong interpretation of what Islam is. A vast majority of Muslims around the world reject their violence. Terrorism is not what Islam is check your facts.

Why is it so easy to stand up for every other injustice in the world, but when it comes to Islam everyone goes silent. Its incredibly sad to see that the how war ridden Palestine is and what is the rest of the world?And its a one way war because all those innocent people have no physical weapons to retaliate, lives are being lost as we live our lives and nothing is done to stop it. Yes i agree all lives matter but when are we going to realise that Muslim lives should matter as well. The same Asians that we are protecting is holding our Muslim brother and sisters in concentration camps raping Muslim women, killing our babies , physically and mentally abusing them day in and day out. And yet we are silent standing up for Muslims should not only be on social media platforms for two days, it is something that should never fade and what is more sad is that our own Muslim brothers and sister are afraid to speak up against these wrong doings, because we fear offending the Christian friend we have or the Jewish friends we have and so on. But we forget that Allah has told us” to not take the enemy of Allah as a friend and do not take the friend of Allah as ur enemy”. We want to the live the modern lifestyle and i am not speaking of everyone , i myself have not done my part. So many Muslims are not allowed to walk in the streets because they will be exposed to attacks threats and discrimination and we are mocked for our religion. So i will ask again why, why all of the hate that turns into violence , so many innocent lives lost and for what , what could these people possibly gain. ALL this violence is just wrong we are all human we all have our own beliefs so you tell me what is wrong with Islam its a religion based on peace how can you not see that. Everyone who is not Muslim ask yourselves would you want this to happen to your religion, would you want to be killed like dogs in the streets , no you would not so why is is okay for it to happen to a Muslim, ponder about that. More Muslims will stand up and fight for what is right as they should, and this, this is only the beginning, not all of us can be strong that is why we are an Ummah

Written by: Imraan Hardien With help from Yusriyyah Latief

#muslim lives matter #islam #stop the hate #stop the violence

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questionsonislam · 3 years

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Could you please describe the characteristics of a Muslim According to the Qur’an?

A person who lives in accordance with the Qur’an will devote his/her love for the ones who also live in accordance with the Qur’an; that is to say, for believers. Believers have some characteristics due to their belief in Allah and that make them worthy of being loved. A believer will search these characteristics in other believers and will love them as a result of seeing them. The more these characteristics exist in someone, the more his/her love increases.

We can list the main characteristics of a believer that are informed by Allah in the Qur’an as follows;

• Believers worship only Allah. There is no other being that they accept as god in their minds. (al-Fatiha, 1-7; an-Nisa, 36)

• They fear Allah. They avoid doing something that Allah has forbidden and that is contrary to His consent. (Aal-i-Imran, 102; Ya Seen, 11; at-Taghabun, 15-16; az-Zumar, 23)

• They trust only in Allah. (al-Baqara, 249; at-Tawbah, 25-26)

• They fear none but Allah. (al-Ahzab, 39)

• They thank Allah. Therefore, it does not cause them any sorrow or boasting whether they are in trouble or in welfare economically. (al-Baqara, 172; al-Isra, 3; Ibrahim, 7)

• They have absolute belief in Allah. They never have any feelings like abandoning seeking the consent and pleasure of Allah. They continue to work for Allah with more enthusiasm and excitement every day. (al-Hujurat, 15; al-Baqara, 4)

• They hold fast by the Quran. They arrange all their acts according to the Quran. They immediately abandon an act that they understand to be contrary to the Quran. (al-Araf, 170; al-Maida, 49; al-Baqara, 121)

• They always mention the name of Allah. They know that Allah sees and hears everything; they always remember the endless power of Allah. (Aal-i-Imran, 191; ar-Rad, 28; an-Nur, 37; al-Araf, 205; al-Ankabut, 45)

• They know that they are weak before the presence of Allah. They are modest. (However, this does not mean to seem weak in the presence of people and to present downtrodden attitudes.) (al-Baqara, 286; al-Araf, 188)

• They know that everything comes from Allah. Therefore, they never make a fuss when something happens; they act coolly and trust in Allah. (at-Tawbah, 51; at-Taghabun , 11; Yunus , 49; al-Hadid , 22)

• They tend toward the hereafter; they determine the hereafter as the real target. However, they also make use of the bounties of the world; they try to form an environment that is similar to that of Paradise in the world. (an-Nisa , 74; Sad , 46; al-Araf , 31-32)

• They accept only Allah and believers as friends and confidants. (al-Maida , 55-56; al-Mujadala , 22)

• They are clever. They are always careful and alert since they always have the consciousness of worshipping. They always serve believers and the religion of Islam cleverly. (al-Mumin , 54; az-Zumar , 18)

• They always struggle with their thoughts and ideas against deniers and especially the leaders of deniers with all their strength on behalf of Allah. They continue their struggle without losing heart. (al-Anfal , 39; al-Hajj , 78; al-Hujurat , 15; at-Tawbah , 12)

• They never avoid telling what is right. They never ignore telling the truth due to their fear of people. They never care what the deniers say about them; they do not heed their mockery and attacks; they do not fear those who condemn or blame them. (al-Maid , 54, 67; al-Araf , 2)

• They call people to the religion of Allah in many ways and convey them the religion of Allah. (Nuh , 5-9)

• They are not oppressive. They are merciful and lenient. (an-Nahl , 125; at-Tawbah, 128; Hud , 75)

• They never lose their temper; they are tolerant and forgiving. (Aal-i-Imran , 134; al-Araf , 199; ash-Shura , 40-43)

• They are reliable people. They present strong personalities; they inspire confidence to the people around them. (ad-Duhan , 17-18; at-Takwir , 19-21; al-Maida , 12; an-Nahl , 120)

• They suffer compulsion and oppression. (ash-Shuara, 49, 167; al-Ankabut , 24; Ya Seen , 18; Ibrahim , 6; an-Naml ,49, 56; Hud , 91)

• They put up with difficulties. (al-Ankabut , 2-3; al-Baqara , 156, 214; Aal-i-Imran, 142, 146, 195; al-Ahzab , 48; Muhammad , 31; al-Anam , 34)

• They do not fear oppression and being killed. (at-Tawbah , 111; Aal-i-Imran, 156-158, 169-171, 173; ash-Shuara , 49-50; as-Saffat , 97-99; an-Nisa , 74)

• They suffer the attacks and traps of the deniers and they are made fun of. (al-Baqara, 14, 212)

• They are under the protection of Allah. All of the traps that are set up for them are eliminated by Allah. Allah protects them from all kinds of slander and traps; He makes them superior. (Aal-i-Imran, 110-111, 120; Ibrahim , 46; al-Anfal , 30; an-Nahl , 26; Yusuf , 34; al-Hajj , 38; al-Maida , 42, 105; an-Nisa , 141)

• They are cautious against the deniers. (an-Nisa , 71, 102; Yusuf , 67)

• They take Satan and his followers as enemies. (Fatir , 6; az-Zukhruf , 62; al-Mumtahina, 1; an-Nisa , 101; al-Maida , 82)

• They struggle against munafiqs (hypocrites); they do not sit together with hypocritical people. (at-Tawbah , 83, 95, 123)

• They prevent the oppression of the deniers. (al-Ahzab , 60-62; al-Hashr , 6; at-Tawbah , 14-15, 52)

• They conduct their affairs by mutual consultation. (Shura, 38)

• They do not envy the luxurious lives of unbelievers. (al-Kahf , 28; at-Tawbah , 55; Taha , 131)

• They are not affected by wealth and ranks (posts). (al-Hajj , 41; al-Qasas , 79-80; an-Nahl , 123)

• They pay attention to their worshipping; they perform daily prayers, fasting and similar worshipping carefully. (al-Baqara , 238; al-Anfal , 3; al-Muminun , 1-2)

• They act not in accordance with the majority but with the criteria of Allah. (al-Anam , 116)

• They try hard to be close to Allah and to become a believer to serve as an example. (al-Maida , 35; Fatir , 32; al-Waqia , 10-14; al-Furqan , 74)

• They are not affected by Satan. (al-A'raf , 201; al-Hijr , 39-42; an-Nahl , 98-99)

• They do not imitate their parents blindly. They act in accordance with the Quran. (Ibrahim , 10; Hud , 62, 109)

• They avoid extravagance. (al-Anam , 141; al-Furqan , 67)

• They act chastely and get married in the way as Allah wants. (al-Muminun , 5-6; an-Nur , 3, 26, 30; al-Baqara , 221; al-Maida , 5; al-Mumtahina , 10)

• They do not go to the extremes in the religion. (al-Baqara, 143; an-Nisa , 171)

• They are altruistic. (al-Insan , 8; Aal-i-Imran, 92, 134; at-Tawbah , 92)

• They pay attention to cleanliness. (al-Baqara, 125, 168; al-Muddaththir , 1-5)

• They do not backbite believers and do not search for their mistakes. (al-Hujurat , 12)

• They avoid being jealous. (an-Nisa , 128)

• They ask forgiveness from Allah. (al-Baqara, 286; Aal-i-Imran, 16-17, 147, 193; al-Hashr , 10; Nuh , 28)

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hellyeahheroes · 4 years

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Despite the wealth of superheroes dominating our screens, it can be hard for Gen Z or “Zoomers”—the generation after Millennials, born in the late 1990s—to find any they can relate to. While they can understand many of the problems the superheroes face in The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, none of these ultimately powerful and privileged figures are truly speaking to them.

There is a hero telling their story, though. She just hasn’t hit the screens yet. Kamala Khan, or Ms. Marvel, is the hero that Zoomers needed, and she is the hero that zoomers should be reading and looking up to.

Khan made her first appearance in an August 2013 issue of Captain Marvel, and was later given her own solo series in February 2014. She was part of a wave of diverse superheroes Marvel debuted at the time, including a female Thor and a Black Captain America. Khan was special, though, as she became the first ever Muslim character to star in her own comic series.

The narrative about Kamala upon her introduction focused mainly on her identity as a Pakistani-American Muslim. And while she does prove to be representation for a usually underrepresented group, she truly gives representation to a much bigger group. She is, in short, the voice of a generation.

Though Kamala’s Muslim identity is important to her (and important in the comic), Islam plays a comparatively minor role in her life She is a typical high schooler with (mostly) typical high school problems: she wants to fit in, make friends, impress her crush and get good grades, all while trying to save Jersey City from a zany group of supervillains—villains that may feel familiar for today’s youth.

While I agree with the general sentiment I do kinda feel that the way it is written feels somewhat dismissive of Kamala being a Muslim. Maybe it’s just me. Let’s see what they say further. First they pick up on analyzing Generation Why:

In Generation Why, the second volume of Ms. Marvel, Kamala faces off with a holographic, robot-building supervillain named “The Inventor.” She discovers that The Inventor is powering his robots with energy extracted from the bodies of teenagers. When attempting to rescue the teens, she learns that they voluntarily chose to sacrifice themselves to The Inventor to become human batteries.

The reasoning for this, as the villain explains, is because he convinced the teens they were a scourge on our dying planet. We need renewable energy, and humans are a constant source of it. He convinces young kids that since they spend all their time “on their phones” and are not productive workers, they are the ones hurting the planet and if anything this is their way to give back.

As far-fetched as this story may sound, it has more parallels to our real world than you may think. White supremacists and other dominant groups do use climate change and other potential natural disasters as excuses to carry out their misdeeds. For example, a mass shooter who killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas last August cited impending climate disaster as his main reason for his killing spree. The shooter drove from hours away to El Paso—a city with a large Hispanic population—because he believed that impending climate disaster would create a battle for resources, and killing Hispanic people now would make it easier for white people like himself to dominate the scarce supplies.

While situations like the one in El Paso are violent outliers, eco-fascist rhetoric has been normalized. Notably, Bill Gates, who is often credited as being a “savior” of some sort due to his philanthropy, pushing myths about overpopulation into the mainstream. “Population growth in Africa is a challenge,” Gates says in a WeForum report. In doing this, Gates and others are pushing the fault of climate change from the corporations responsible for potential climate disaster to some of the poorest people in the world—just as The Inventor does with vulnerable teenagers.

The rhetoric The Inventor uses to convince children to join in on his scheme—telling the teens that since they are not “productive” they do not deserve their lives—is familiar to Zoomers as well. This draws parallels to our real life schooling systems, which are not designed to educate, inspire and grow our youngest members, but instead ready them for the dehumanizing life ahead of them as a working-class person in a capitalist society. We teach kids from a young age they are only as valuable as how much capital they produce and how much money they earn, which leaves them even more vulnerable to fascist rhetoric.

Explaining the intricacies of these concepts to a teenager may be a hard task, but stories like Generation Why get the point across in a more palatable fashion. They teach kids that people in power will try to guilt and fear by placing our world’s problems on their shoulders, and then use that to take advantage of them. Intergenerational tension is as strong as ever at the moment, and today’s teens need to learn that they have a voice instead of letting those older than them take advantage of their vulnerability. Ms. Marvel is taking that on.

In just one storyline alone, the comic manages to tackle the issues of eco-fascism, the dehumanization of capitalism, and intergenerational tensions. The other volumes have even more in store for younger readers.

In Super Famous, a development company begins building new luxury housing in Jersey City. This angers the existing residents, as they fear that this new influx of money in the area will slowly shove out the city’s working-class residents. This is an issue many Zoomers may have firsthand experience with, as gentrification begins to slowly change America’s major metropolitan areas, kicking out families who have been there for years and destroying neighborhoods and communities all around the country.

Civil War II, Marvel’s modern sequel to the classic 2006 comic series, sees Kamala tasked by her childhood hero and namesake Captain Marvel with taking the lead on a Minority Report–style taskforce that attempts to arrest criminals before they can commit crimes. Issues quickly arise regarding the idea of police overreach and the surveillance state, and what truly classifies someone as a criminal.

The darkest and most pertinent storyline comes in Mecca, where a group begins to haul off people suspected of having unregistered superpowers and taking them to mysterious prisons. Kamala’s brother gets caught, as he had powers for a brief moment in a previous storyline, and she is at risk of losing him forever. The parallels to the treatment of undocumented immigrants in America, who in their own way are not “registered,” could not be more clear. A group of officers who are not quite police show up at your house and next thing you know parts of your family are being hauled away, put into camps, and sometimes never seen again. The story is also similar to the tribulations of many Muslims who were put into Guantanamo Bay post–9/11, and even the treatment of Jewish and minority populations by the Nazis in the 1930s.

Social commentary is nothing new to comics. If anything, it was the purpose for their existence in the first place. Captain America’s longtime enemy, Hydra, is an obvious stand-in for Nazis. The X-Men series tackles the issues of racism, homophobia, and just general “otherness” and how it affects populations. Watchmen famously criticized the concept of law and order. It’s the way Ms. Marvel does social commentary that makes it truly special. Kamala is a relatable avatar for younger readers, and she is often in situations that Zoomers can easily recognize from their own lives.

I agree with what is being said here, aside of calling original Civil War a “classic” and Hydra merely a “stand-in” for Nazis when they are, well, actual Nazis.

in general, a good article.

- Admin

#Ms. Marvel #Kamala Khan #Marvel

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callunavulgari · 4 years

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TOP 25 FICS OF 2019

1. these roads will take you into your own country by @notbecauseofvictories | American Gods | Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney | WIP | 33k

Here’s a joke for you: a Muslim, a zombie, and a leprechaun walk into a bar in Misery, Indiana. No one stares, because no one in the puckered, shitty asshole of Misery, Indiana gives a fuck. The Colts are playing.

Heather Says: So. It’s funny that another of @notbecauseofvictories‘s stories is at the top of my list again this year. Keep in mind this list is sorted by when the fic was read rather than favorites (because that would get real complicated real quick). Clearly there must be something about January. There’s just something about the writing that is easy to slip into, be it a Star Wars fic or a Labyrinth fic or even a fic about Johnny and the Devil. This was lovely and I can’t wait until it’s finished.

2. eighteen wheels on an uphill climb by @honkforhankcon | Detroit: Become Human | Hank/Connor | 91k

Hank is going to die. He’s going to die right here in Kentucky, 53 years old, halfway to broke, and tragically sober. Survived only by a nine-year-old St. Bernard and the 31-year-old twink who delivered the fatal blow.

Heather Says: I don’t think that this is the first DBH fic that I sought out after beating the game, but it is the first that I loved enough to make it to this list. I didn’t think that I would go for a modern au for this fandom, certainly not a modern au wihere Hank is a truck driver and Connor is a sex worker (albeit briefly?) but here I am.

3. Fuck pride (pride only hurts, it never helps) by ImogenGotDrunk | Detroit: Become Human | RK900/Gavin Reed | 41k

After the android uprising, Connor becomes a permanent fixture in the DPD. That’s fine. Gavin can accept that. The dipshit’s more human than he used to be, and a decent detective to boot. Gavin can deal with him being around. What Gavin cannot deal with is Connor’s replica; two inches taller, blue-eyed, and with a mouth that Gavin doesn’t know whether to punch or take between his teeth. The RK900 model has been assigned as his partner for the foreseeable future.

Heather Says: I also never thought that I’d like a fic with Gavin in it. But I got curious about all the Reed900, and well, this fic really won me over. The writing is fantastic, and it softens Gavin while still keeping him believable. Also, well, I like the enemies to lovers thing.

4. Almost Cool by @blacktofade | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 30k

While filming the Yuma Territorial Prison episode, Shane gets bitten by what he thinks is a bat. Spoiler alert: it's not.

Heather Says: This is actually the first thing that I read for this fandom. In fact, this is the fic that got me into Buzzfeed Unsolved in the first place. I’d seen a lot of art and gifs and fics pass my way, but I was only ever slightly interested in what I saw until this fic came through my inbox and piqued my curiosity.

5. Pride by @astolat | Game of Thrones | Jaime/Brienne/Cersei | 22k

Jaime didn’t understand why Cersei suddenly insisted on trimming his hair and shaving his beard, but he also didn’t care to fight her on it, even though he’d just as soon have kept the beard: it was bitterly cold in the small tower room with its arrow-slits.

Heather Says: Wowza. This fic was intense. I’ve always loved Jaime and Brienne. I’ve loved them since the second book, which was read at least a few years before I started loving them in the show. Adding Cersei to their dynamic would have probably been almost impossible to pull off if it was anyone else, but @astolat lives to surpass my expectations.

6. Skin and Scales by Ernmark | The Penumbra Podcast | Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla | 18k

The man glares, and this time, Damien is certain it isn’t a trick of the light: those eyes are violet as amethyst. He wears disdain like a second skin–- or, perhaps, like the scales that he is missing. “Lord Arum?”

Heather Says: I was one of those people who skipped through all of the Second Citadel episodes during my first listen through of Penumbra. The stories were good, but the pull of Juno was too great. A couple months after I finished, I went back and listened to everything I didn’t. And let me tell you. Lizard monster. Honorable knight. Bookish girlfriend. Poly. It hit every single button I had and then some. This fic really hit the spot when I ran out of story.

7. someone you like by caela | She-Ra | Adora/Catra | 5k

catwithabat u think ur so hipster but u just look like a lesbian 27m she_ra @catwithabat bc… i’m a lesbian. lmao 5m

Heather Says: Noooot usually a big fan of high school fics. Namely because I’m not in high school anymore and well, after you read so many in your teenage years they sort of lose their luster. This one was phenomenal enough to change my mind.

8. Sands of Time by @tirsynni | Legend of Zelda | Ganondorf/Link | WIP | 98k

Link awakens in the desert with no idea how he got there, to encounter his worst enemy...except it was the King of the Gerudo, not the King of Evil, he faced.

Heather Says: I have seen a lot of really good Link/Ganondorf art over the years, but never really stumbled across a fic that didn’t have judicious amount of non-con involved. But the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer happened, and everybody started drawing really pretty art, so I went looking. And lo and behold, @tirsynni saved the day with this gorgeous time travel/fix-it fic.

9. killed with kindness by veterization | Persona 5 | Akechi/Akira | 52k

Goro can't quite figure out why so many people keep acting like they're his friend. (Or: the one where the Phantom Thieves decide to know thy enemy, befriend thy enemy, love thy enemy, crush on thy enemy).

Heather Says: I’ve read a couple of veterization’s fics over the years, and to date they have never disappointed me. They published this in June, and I think I clicked on it mostly because I was bored and hadn’t read any good P5 fic yet. This was basically just what the doctor ordered, and I was really happy to find something where Akechi’s story went ever so slightly different.

10. paper thin by @ebonybow | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane/Sara | 9k

Shane’s new neighbors are a morning-sex kind of couple.

Heather Says: So I went into this one knowing very little about how Sara fit into things. I didn’t know she was Shane’s girlfriend. I’d never even seen her, but I clicked because I like poly and I trust the author. I was 100% not disappointed. There’s also another fic with a very similar dynamic here, which is also aces.

11. damn.nation, now available on itunes by @kaikamahine | Good Omens | Aziraphale/Crowley | 11k

When lowly tempt-pusher Amphora (formerly of Stairwell 7B North, before she Fell,) gets the notice that end times are nigh, she gleefully quits her job and cancels her Netflix subscription and takes her place among the legions of hell. This, it turns out, was a bad plan.

Heather Says: Elizabeth may have only written one fic this year, but she made it a damn good one. I’ve always loved her OCs especially, so I was pretty tickled that this is 10k+ of outsider pov. Also, demons! Demons are great! This demon is great! I want like 9 seasons and a movie about Amphora, just saying.

12. The Dragon and Her Wolves by hapakitsune | Game of Thrones | Jon/Sansa/Daenarys | 60k

When the truth of Jon's birthright is revealed, control of the North and Daenerys's claim to the Iron Throne are both called into question. To preserve their tenuous alliance and secure her rule, Daenerys puts aside her personal feelings to arrange a marriage of political convenience between Jon and Sansa Stark.

Heather Says: What do you mean season 8 didn’t exist and the show totally ended with a three way relationship between the two most powerful women in Westeros and Jon Snow? Never been a big fan of Jon/Sansa before this, but this is another of those writers that I would literally trust if they wrote a fic about a fork and a spoon.

13. never tell me the odds by @wildehacked | Wolf 359 | Eiffel/Hera | 9k

“I tried Star Wars," he says, adjusting the phone under his neck, "and it was way underwhelming.”

A shaky breath from her end. “Well, where did you start?”

Heather Says: I don’t remember which of @wildehacked‘s fandoms I started reading first. Most recently it’s been The Magnus Archives (more on this later). The point is, they’d written Wolf 359 fic and it had Hera and Eiffel and it was literally everything that I’ve been looking for since the series ended.

14. Find Me Somebody by raiining | Good Omens | Warlock/Adam Young | 11k

“You left me,” he said. “You both left me, for him. And I can’t even blame you, because I’d have left me for him too.”

Heather Says: There was an Art. The art was lovely. So I went looking, because that’s what I do when faced with beautiful art depicting a rare pairing. And I found the holy grail. Like, possibly my favorite Good Omens fic? Ever?

15. flirting with fire by @brawlite | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | WIP | 7k

Steve's a cop, Billy's a firefighter. It's not a grudge, it's just a regular old small town rivalry.

Heather Says: Okay so brawlite has written a lot of great stuff this year (more on that later), but I read this in bed at the beach house this August while I was reeling from both a horrible sunburn and like seven hours of mild to moderate day-drinking while everyone else was still throwing back shots right outside my bedroom door. Jaws was playing on the tv and I wasn’t even paying attention to it, because THIS. Long story short, I’ve been thirsty for more ever since.

16. gold, when you find me by mmtion | The Flash | Iris/Barry | 53k

It's not that Iris hates The Flash, per say - more that she hates writing about The Streak in a weekly, pun-heavy comic based on The Flash.

Heather Says: I never would have thought that a canon pairing would make it to my Top 25 list, but here we are. I like Iris/Barry a lot better when they don’t grow up together and spend a lot of time playing the Superman game, apparently. Also, this was really well-written, and sexual tension has never been something I’ve felt from Barry and Iris, but I felt it in this fic. Just. Damn.

17. never gets old by @brawlite & @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger| Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 78k

Falling in love with a cam boy named KingSteve isn't the smartest thing Billy Hargrove has ever done, nor is it the most healthy -- but the good choice is rarely ever the fun choice, and Billy is all about living life fast and loose.

Heather Says: Told you I’d come back to it. brawlite and toastranger are a fantastic team. last year was cherry pie and under the covers, this year it’s camboys and cop/firefighter dynamics. Also, I have a really strange fascination with fics where a character has an instragram. It’s really, incredibly strange. Also also, every time I see this fic title I get that one Discovery Channel song stuck in my head. And no, it probably isn’t the one you’re thinking.

18. ways to save the world by @wildehacked | The Magnus Archives | Martin Blackwood/Jon Sims | 19k

“I left you,” Martin says softly.

Heather Says: And we’re back at wildehacked too! The Magnus Archives was a thing that happened to me. This is I think the first fic I read for it while listening, and it was so very close to what we got in canon. I think when it comes down to it though, I still prefer this fic, even if the ending of this season was pretty fantastic.

19. The Denial Twist by beethechange | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 35k

“This is kind of surreal,” Shane says, taking a sip of his tea. It’s piping hot and delicious, except it tastes like hot chocolate and not like tea at all. “Sort of—Wonka-esque, right? Or Alice in Wonderland.”

Heather Says: While the vampire one is my favorite both because it is excellent and because it was my first, this one was bizarre and sexy and also I read it like only a month or so ago! The dancing was my favorite part, but having dreams to work with made this story fantastically interesting and I loved every second of it.

20. silver in our lungs by taywen | Spinning Silver | Miryem/The Staryk Lord | 4k

The marks had been with Miryem for as long as she could remember. There were a number of them, all the same shade, following one after the other around her left wrist. They were pale as old scars, though they felt no different from the rest of her skin, and her mother claimed that Miryem had been born with them.

Heather Says: I really like soulmate aus. There’s so many different ways to twist them and the way they can sometimes change the dynamic entirely and other times not change them at all is just fascinating. I’ve been hoping there would be more Spinning Silver content on ao3 and running into this while I was trying to decide what I wanted to do for yuletide was a real treat.

21. you got me begging, begging, i'm on my knees by plalligator | The Queen’s Thief | Attolia/Eugenides/Costis | 5k

Costis has a particularly enlightening evening. (or, that struggle when you're a guard who's in love with your rulers and it turns out you would kind of like it if they bossed you around a little)

Heather Says: I accidentally re-read the King of Attolia and it made me consider ships I had perhaps not previously considered. This was really lovely and just steamy enough.

22. something more alive than silence by pageleaf | The Queen’s Thief | Attolia/Eugenides/Costis | 21k

It was a good thing that six months after the king had promised to halve the guard, he still hadn’t done it, because since then, there had been two attempts on the king’s life.

Heather Says: I want to only type the words AGONIZED NOISES to describe this fic because that’s basically my headspace when I get 21k of a shiny new ot3, but I mean. Really. This is super good and maybe my favorite yet? Why didn’t I start reading this fandom when I first read the books?

23. Timing it Right by DragonBandit | The Bright Sessions | Mark/Damien | 14k

The dragon chooses, Mark knows that as well as any boy born in a weyr. He'd never considered what that would mean if the dragon picked someone you hated. He's starting to think that was a mistake.

Damien's gold rises at Whitney. Mark tries to make things right.

Heather Says: This should actually be somewhere back in March, but I apparently closed out of the tab at some point. I never really got into Pern much. I have the first three books, but got most of the way through the first one a long time ago and then never picked it back up. I didn’t think I would like this, mostly because of the fact that I hadn’t gotten into the books, but was surprised to find that I absolutely loved it.

24. Keep It In Your Sights Now by LuckyDiceKirby | Shades of Magic | Lila/Kell/Holland | 9k

Holland travels with Lila and Kell. Somewhere along the way, they reach an equilibrium.

Heather Says: I love the new things I’ve discovered during my yuletide trompings. I don’t think I ever actually considered this pairing when I first read the books, but I am just so enamored with the idea of the three of them together. Like, why did I not realize that potential back then? This was lovely, and I loved it, and I want so much more out of this pairing than what ao3 has to offer me.

25. Charioteer by petrichoral | The Queen’s Thief | Gen & Costis | 13k

Captured in battle and stuck in the Mede capital, Costis has given up all hope of seeing his country again. But Eugenides has a habit of turning up where he's least expected.

Heather Says: Technically this shouldn’t be on here because I only read it today, but it was really wonderful and so canon typical. Gen and Costis were perfect in it, Irene was perfect in it. Everyone was perfect and nothing hurts.

31 notes · View notes

theculturedmarxist · 4 years

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By Anis Shivani, whose recent political books include Why Did Trump Win?, Confronting American Fascism, and A Radical Human Rights Solution to the Immigration Problem. He is the author of many critically-acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, including, most recently, A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less

Forcing the March 17 primaries in Florida, Arizona and Illinois to go forward, despite reports of exceedingly low turnout throughout the day (which miraculously and quite expectedly turned into higher turnouts than 2016 in both Florida and Arizona by the time the final reporting came in), was the last straw. This farce occurred despite the Ohio governor postponing their primary on the same day. This slap in the face of voters was then compounded by the even worse parody of the April 7 Wisconsin primary being allowed to go ahead at the peak of the pandemic, with polling stations vastly reduced (from 180 to just 5 in Milwaukee alone) and absentee ballots often not received or recorded, while maintaining the pretense that somehow all of this constituted a legitimate election.

In the middle of the pandemic, with the entire nation considering a de facto lockdown and many communities already there, the DNC was hell-bent on driving the final nail in the coffin of the youth movement, even though the Sanders campaign had suspended GOTV efforts, for obvious reasons, and even if Biden never really had a presence in any of the latest round of states.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, where many polling stations were shut down, in-person turnout was reportedly higher by 10,000 people than in 2016! And that’s just one representative example from the March 17 primary states. Furthermore, the DNC threatened the remaining primary states against postponing their elections for health reasons, preempting moves similar to those made by Louisiana, Georgia and others. The stage is being set for a virtual convention, followed by the possible resurgence of the illness in the fall to orchestrate a virtual general election. Social distancing has come in handily as the most convenient antidote to political solidarity. Biden has already made it clear that he’s not the least bit interested in making any real overtures toward bereft progressives, just as Hillary wasn’t after her forceful seizure of the nomination in 2016.

When they stopped counting the vote in Iowa, depriving the leading candidate of essential momentum, it was a clear indication that once again the party establishment would do everything to manipulate results in favor of yet another neoliberal avatar bound to lose to Trump in an ignominious landslide—which is actually what the Democratic party establishment wants, four more years of their demonized opponent rather than the tiniest return toward social decency. Nothing about the coronavirus changes this essential dynamic.

That’s how bad the Democratic party has become, blatantly tipping the scales toward their favored outcome in order to maintain oligarchic control, and they expect us to Vote Blue No Matter Who?

We’re asked to believe that the candidate who supported ordinary people at the grassroots level all across the country, by lending crucial support to strikesand direct action, spawning innumerable viable candidacies at the local and state levels, and regularly summoning many thousands of people to populist rallies calling for basic human decency, was easily defeated by a cognitively challenged Wall Street shill who has backed every economic and foreign policy barbarity of the last 50 years, and who cannot be put in a small gym with a few dozen people without descending into furious spittles of verbal aggression.

We’re supposed to trust that the candidate with a pervasive national presence for the last five years was suddenly, in a matter of 72 hours, annihilated by the geezer who had zero volunteers, staff or advertising in any of the states he miraculously turned around by 20, 30 or 40 points.

It’s time to put an end to this sham, because we can’t accede to this level of duplicity without ourselves becoming complicit in the madness. Trump essentially terminated the neoliberal Republican party in one election cycle, but because the Democratic party establishment is more entrenched and dangerous, the prime carrier of the neoliberal virus to which the Republicans are just accessories, it is the more difficult enemy to beat.

To recap some of what we have seen from the great minds trying to herd us all into submission toward Hillary 2.0, the dementia version:

· Herd 29 Trojan horses into the race, all pretending to be some version of or alternative to the clear ideological victor from 2016, and all of them unmasking themselves at appropriate stages of the race (three of them at the last moment before South Carolina) in order to maximize damage to one candidate alone.

· Insist on a series of parodic debates orchestrating various degrees of hostility toward the lone populist, and focusing outlandish attention on marginal candidates rather than giving the front-runner his due.

· Engineer the Iowa vote-counting catastrophe without anyone taking responsibility, and DNC chair Tom Perez not only not resigning but feeling empowered to engender further chaos.

· Repeat all the instances of voter suppression in close simulation of all the 2016 states, as if to thumb their noses at any semblance of voting integrity.

· Be part of closely coordinated media campaigns harping on electability, centrism and moderation, to the point where the liberal media (the Times, CNN, MSNBC) become indistinguishable from campaign opponents and the party apparatus. For the first three months of the year, the New York Times turned into a chorus of single-minded “Never Bernie” propaganda, exceeding even their “Never Trump” loathing of four years ago.

· Recruit Barack Obama to save Biden’s hide when he remained the last one standing, with the same ominous figures from 2016 (Jim “there will be no free education” Clyburn, Harry “get the culinary workers to caucus for Hillary” Reid, and others) reprising to the finest detail the same walk-on bits they played last time.

· Keep changing debate rules, by permitting entry to a last-minute white knight in the form of Michael Bloomberg, and the more recent rule change to prevent Tulsi Gabbard the opportunity of taking down Biden.

· Keep the option of cheating the delegate leader at the convention alive throughout the campaign, rather than stamping it out as a no-go in order to preserve the credibility of primary voting.

· Express no displeasure at clear voter suppression in Texas and California, or curiosity about strange exit poll versus final results in Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine and Minnesota, which showed unprecedented swings toward Biden.

Is this enough manipulation for you?

Sanders more than abided by party decorum for the last four years. Ever since he endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later yielded to Chuck Schumer’s request to join the senate leadership, he has been the most faithful of team players, observing every nicety and going along with the party line to the extent that there is no direct contradiction with his principles. The least he could have expected in return was a token amount of fair play, to let his social welfare philosophy compete on equal grounds with neoliberalism, yet this was vehemently denied.

At this point, is he obligated to play by the rules? Are we, if we are to draw obvious conclusions from the evidence at hand?

The Democratic party would much rather see Trump reelected by nominating a flawed neoliberal candidate with as much baggage and who is as associated with the recent Clinton failure as is Biden. Think about it: the party we’re supposed to get behind actually prefers fascism over the mildest concessions to social democracy, in order that the entire power structure might persist unchanged. For the sake of denying the slightest help to poor, debt-burdened, sick and unemployed people, this party would rather have untrammeled white nationalism, immigrants in concentration camps, and accelerated income inequality, as though we could sustain any more of it than we already have.

To defeat a handful of broadly popular proposals to address economic inequality, the Democratic party facilitated the entry of a former Republican mayor who administered the harassment of Muslims and minorities after 9/11, who gave over his city to unaccountable developers and oligarchs, and who happens to be the world’s ninth-richest person—not just a billionaire, of the kind Sanders is railing against, but one 60 times over.

And when that didn’t fly, because of said plutocrat’s manifest misogyny, racism and class privilege, they went back to their original choice, the freewheeling politico Wall Street loves to love, the senator from MBNA, the secret manipulator behind every bad trade deal and Wall Street giveaway and incarceration mania and war of choice of the last 50 years. The party Sanders has chosen to be loyal to knows that either of those candidates, the Manhattan multi-billionaire or the Delaware political enabler, would handily lose to Trump, but the idea is to keep playing the game, to engage us all in a performance that pretends to be even-handed. We wait patiently for health care and public education and a living wage, while we die in the meantime.

The party of death has demonstrated again and again in this primary campaign that its sole objective is to discredit left populism, even if it means abetting the growing dominance of fascist populism. The party we’re supposed to fall behind is the real facilitator, not the Republican party, because it is actively preventing an electable alternative to Trump, as shown in all the polls of the last five years.

The “woke” wing of the Democratic party—which is identical to the neoliberal wing in acting all high-and-mighty toward working-class folks, otherwise known as deplorables—precisely duplicated its machinations from 2016, when Hillary Clinton was said to be the victim of the angry Bernie Bros, a more ridiculous myth than which was never heard in a presidential campaign.

The woke crowd, who universally refused to support Sanders (whose campaign is a sincere homage to the Poor People’s Campaign run by Martin Luther King, Jr., or FDR’s economic bill of rights, or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program), got behind a series of identity politics-driven candidates, culminating in the last one to leave the race, who immediately got busy gaslighting the Sanders movement for its alleged misogyny. The woke wing was a fraud all along, they never did care to help actual working people with actual debilities. We knew it in 2016 and we know it even better now.

All the fallacies the Democratic party has exploited over five decades reached an extreme form of hypocrisy in the 2020 campaign. The least electable candidates were professionally sold as the most electable ones. Extremism on behalf of inequality and deprivation of basic human rights was packaged as moderate centrism. Sustained media campaigns were run against anyone questioning these straitjackets of thought, labeling us enemies of the people for wanting to help the people.

Emerging from his year-long sloth, Biden made it his mission to trash every element of Sanders’s “political revolution,” even in its most benign demands for a level playing field, which was the sum of the political gangsterism he so adeptly deployed at the March 15 debate, knowing he had the full backing of the party in shunning any move toward the kind of universal programs young voters demand.

Would Sanders supporters not be justified in abandoning this zombie party once and for all, if we do not end up with a fair electoral outcome, as it looks like we’re not going to while this primary fizzles out to an uncertain close? Are we not morally obligated to look for an alternative beyond, past and around this failed shell of a party?

In 2004 and again in 2016 they ran empty, fake, invisible campaigns once the primaries were over, with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton literally disappearing from the campaign trail for weeks at a time. They’d rather have Bush reelected then, and Trump reelected now, than raise the minimum wage to $15, make public college free again, or do something to save the planet from its runaway environmental crisis. While Sanders was responding like FDR II to address the public health emergency, Biden was nowhere to be seen.

We learned during this campaign that the all-time great woke candidate beloved of the wine cave class, namely the president upon whose nostalgic fumes we wish to resurrect a ghostly figure, is more willing than anyone else to stop the first stirrings of social democracy and do everything he can to maintain the chokehold of neoliberalism or neofascism.

The clarion call issued by the “Democratic” president of surveillance, wars, deportation and budget cuts appealed to the lowest instincts of career politicians in South Carolina and across the country as they forcefully jerked us back to where we were supposed to stay. This former president, like the recent troop of candidates, is explicitly against Medicare for All, and every other basic demand this moment of social distress cries out for. Biden and his cronies in the party are willing to go no further than trying to add a public option to the Affordable Care Act; even after the virus escalation, universal programs of the kind Sanders’s movement calls for are nowhere within range of their consideration.

The Democratic party wants to crush the joy and life out of youth, pretending that they don’t come out to vote, and that the entire machinery of politics should be aimed at keeping the country delicately balanced between one half meritocrats and one half deplorables, appealing to a minute number of antiquated voters in Ohio and Florida in order to maintain policy stasis. They gaslight us into thinking that actual social justice aspirants of diverse races and backgrounds, rather than the fake white woke influencers, are the real problem because of our hostility. They impose “party unity” and discipline in the service of continuing the very power structure that has given us unsustainable debt and unaffordability of basic human conveniences. When confronted by enthusiastic participation in Democratic primaries, mainly the responsibility of one Bernard Sanders of Vermont, they counter with the embodiment of the darkest hells of plutocracy, namely Michael Bloomberg. As expected, they have already used the coronavirus crisis to shut down any remaining trace of political idealism, because in this moment of emergency we cannot expect anything better than to bow down to the former president’s faithful old lapdog.

The Democratic party of 2020, after more than 50 years of succumbing to a murderous form of capitalism, is not just a flawed vehicle for any sort of political renaissance. Why should we legitimize them by leaping around their phantom carousel, wearing colorful costumes and clown hats on the fairgrounds, when they won’t give us a ticket, when they tear it up if we do have one, and when there’s always a guard hanging around to bash our skulls in case we utter a cry of joy at some little win?

They are all but compelling us to leave the party. Will we have the imagination to do so at last in a mass exodus?

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weathercaster · 4 years

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Ganesh Chaturthi Whatsapp Status in Marathi Hindi English

is one of the most popular 10-day festivities (ISO: Gaṇeśa Chaturthī), otherwise called Vinayaka Chaturthi (Vināyaka Chaturthī), is a Hindu celebration praising the appearance of Lord Ganesh to earth from Kailash Parvat with his mom Goddess Parvati/Gauri. The celebration is set apart with the establishment of Ganesh dirt icons secretly in homes, or freely on expound pandals (brief stages). Perceptions incorporate reciting of Vedic songs and Hindu messages, for example, petitions and brata (fasting).[3] Offerings and prasadam from the day by day supplications, that are conveyed from the pandal to the network, incorporate desserts, for example, modaka as it is accepted to be a most loved of Lord Ganesh.[4][5] The celebration closes on the tenth day after beginning, when the symbol is conveyed in an open parade with music and gathering reciting, at that point drenched in a close by waterway, for example, a stream or ocean. In Mumbai alone, around 150,000 sculptures are submerged annually.[6] Thereafter the mud icon breaks down and Ganesh is accepted to come back to Mount Kailash to Parvati and Shiva.[3][7] The celebration observes Lord Ganesh as the God of New Beginnings and the Remover of Obstacles just as the divine force of insight and intelligence[8][9] and is watched all through India, particularly in the states, for example, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh,[3][10] and is normally praised secretly at home in Tamil Nadu.[11] Ganesh Chaturthi is likewise seen in Nepal and by the Hindu diaspora somewhere else, for example, in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, different pieces of the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa,[12] United States, and Europe[7][13][14]

At open settings, alongside the perusing of writings and gathering devouring, athletic and hand to hand fighting rivalries are likewise held.[15]

Substance

1 History

1.1 Ganesh

1.2 Festival

2 Celebration in India

2.1 At unmistakable sanctuaries

2.2 At home

3 Celebration Outside India

4 Foods

5 Environmental effect

6 Gallery

7 See moreover

8 Notes

9 References

9.1 Bibliography

History

Ganesha, Basohli small scale, around 1730.

It is obscure when the celebration began. It turned into a significant social and open occasion with sponsorship of Shivaji after Mughal-Maratha wars. It became mainstream again in the nineteenth century after open intrigue by Indian political dissident Lokmanya Tilak,[16] who advocated it as a way to bypass the pioneer British government restriction on Hindu social affairs through its enemy of open get together enactment in 1892.[17][18][11]

Ganesh

Additional data: Ganesh

In spite of the fact that not insinuating the traditional type of Ganapati,the most punctual notice of Ganapati is found in the Rigveda. It shows up twice in the Rigveda, once in song 2.23.1, just as in psalm 10.112.9.[19][20][21] Both of these songs infer a job of Ganapati as "the soothsayer among the diviners, flourishing incalculable in food directing among the older folks and being the ruler of summon", while the psalm in mandala 10 expresses that without Ganapati "nothing close by or a far distance is performed without thee", as per Michael.[19][22] However, it is questionable that the Vedic expression Ganapati which truly signifies "watchman of the hoards", alluded explicitly to later time Ganesh, nor do the Vedic writings notice Ganesh Chaturthi.[23] shows up in post-Vedic messages, for example, the Grhya Sutras and from that point old Sanskrit messages, for example, the Vajasaneyi Samhita, the Yajnavalkya Smriti and the Mahabharata notice Ganapati as Ganesvaras and Vinayak. Ganesh shows up in the medieval Puranas as "lord of progress, impediment remover". The Skanda Purana, Narada Purana and the Brahma Vaivarta Purana, specifically, bountifully acclaim him.[24] Beyond printed translations, archeological and epigraphical proof propose Ganesh had gotten famous, was adored before the eighth century CE and various pictures of him are detectable to the seventh century or prior.

Ganesh symbol in Khairatabad, Hyderabad, India

For instance, carvings at Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sanctuaries, for example, at the Ellora Caves, dated between the fifth and eighth century show Ganesh respectfully situated with significant Hindu goddess (Shakti).[25]

Celebration

In spite of the fact that it is obscure when (or how) Ganesh Chaturthi was first observed,[26] the celebration has been openly celebrated in Pune since the time of Shivaji (1630–1680, author of the Maratha Empire).[26] After the beginning of the British Raj, the Ganesh celebration lost state support and turned into a private family festivity in Maharashtra until its recovery by Indian political dissident and social reformer Lokmanya Tilak.[26]

I followed with the best interest swarms who conveyed in parade an interminable number of icons of the god Ganesh. Every little quarter of the town, every family with its followers, every little city intersection I may nearly say, arranges its very own parade, and the most unfortunate might be seen carrying on a basic board their little icon or of papier mâché... A group, pretty much various, goes with the icon, applauding and raises cries of happiness, while a little ensemble by and large goes before the symbol.

– Angelo de Gubernatis, Bombay Gazette (1886)[27][28]

As per others, for example, Kaur, the celebration turned into an open occasion later, in 1892 when Bhausaheb Laxman Javale (otherwise called Bhau Rangari), introduced the first sarvajanik (open) Ganesh icon in Pune.[29] In 1893, the Indian political dissident Lokmanya Tilak adulated the festival of Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsav in his paper, Kesari, and devoted his endeavors to dispatch the yearly local celebration into a huge, efficient open event.[30] Tilak perceived Ganesh's intrigue as "the god for everybody",[31] and as indicated by Robert Brown, he picked Ganesh as the god that overcame "the issue among Brahmins and non-Brahmins", consequently assembling a grassroots solidarity across them to contradict British frontier rule.[32]

Different researchers express that the British Empire, after 1870 out of dread of subversive congregations, had passed a progression of statutes that restricted open gathering for social and political reasons for in excess of 20 individuals in British India, however excluded strict get together for Friday mosque petitions under tension from the Indian Muslim people group. Tilak accepted this successfully hindered the open get together of Hindus whose religion didn't command every day petitions or week by week social affairs, and he utilized this strict exception to make Ganesh Chaturthi to dodge the British pioneer law on huge open assembly.[16][17][11] He was the first to introduce huge open pictures of Ganesh in structures in Bombay Presidency, and other celebratory occasions at the festival.[33][note 1]

God Ganesh: political impediment remover

Is there any good reason why we shouldn't change over the huge strict celebrations

into mass political assemblies?

— Lokmanya Tilak, Kesari, 8 September 1896[38]

As per Richard Cashman, Tilak enrolled and enthusiastically invested in god Ganesh after the 1893 Hindu-Muslim common brutality in Bombay and the Deccan riots, when he felt that the British India government under Lord Harris had more than once favored one side and not treated Hindus decently on the grounds that Hindus were not well organised.[39] In Tilak's gauge, Ganesh love and parades were at that point mainstream in provincial and urban Hindu populaces, across social stations and classes in Baroda, Gwalior, Pune and the vast majority of the Maratha locale in the eighteenth century.[40] In 1893, Tilak extended Ganesh Chaturthi celebration into a mass network occasion and a concealed methods for political activism, scholarly talk, verse presentations, plays, shows, and people dances.[41]

In Goa, Ganesh Chaturthi originates before the Kadamba time. The Goa Inquisition had prohibited Hindu celebrations, and Hindus who didn't change over to Christianity were seriously confined. Be that as it may, Hindu Goans kept on rehearsing their religion in spite of the limitations. Numerous families love Ganesh as patri (leaves utilized for adoring Ganesh or different divine beings), an image is drawn on paper or little silver icons. In certain families Ganesh icons are covered up, an element extraordinary to Ganesh Chaturthi in Goa because of a prohibition on dirt Ganes symbols and celebrations by the Jesuits as a feature of the Inquisition.[42]

Festivities

Man painting a sculpture of Ganesh

Craftsman setting up Ganesh's picture for the celebration in Margao, Goa

The Laalbaaghcha Raja (the most eminent variant of Ganesh in Mumbai) in parade.

Open arrangements for the merriments start a very long time ahead of time. Nearby Mandapa or Pandal's are typically subsidized either from gifts by neighborhood occupants or facilitated by organizations or network associations. The creation of the Murti in Maharashtra for the most part starts with "Padya pooja" or loving the feet of Lord Ganesh. The Murti's are brought to "pandals" on the day or a day prior to the celebration starts. The pandals have expound embellishment and lighting.

At home, the celebration readiness incorporates buys, for example, puja things or adornments a couple of days ahead of time and booking the Ganesh murti as right on time as a month previously (from nearby craftsmans). The murti is brought home either a day prior or upon the arrival of the Ganesh Chaturthi itself. Families enhance a little, clean part of the house with blossoms and other bright things before introducing the icon. At the point when the Murti is introduced, it and its sanctuary are enlivened with blossoms and different materials. Upon the arrival of the celebration, The stately establishment of the earth murti (icon) is done alongside serenades of blessed mantras and pooja including bhajans during a specific favorable time of the day.

In anticipation of the celebration, craftsmans make earth models of Ganesh available to be purchased. The Murti's range in size from 3⁄4 inch (1.9 cm) for homes to more than 70 ft (21 m) for huge network celebrations.[43]

The date for the celebration is normally chosen by the nearness of Chaturthi Thithi. The celebration is held during "Bhadrapada Madyahanaa Purvabaddha". In the event that the Chaturthi Thiti starts around evening time

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basicsofislam · 4 years

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ISLAM 101: MISFORTUNES AND DISASTERS: Part 4

The Quran and hadiths are a test from beginning to end. From this point of view, it is not appropriate to limit test within certain borders. For, the life itself, its creation and its end with death are all tests:

“He Who created Death and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed: and He is the Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.” (al-Mulk, 67/2)

That is, everything that interests living in the world and the hereafter is a test and trial.

However, there are words used directly in the sense of testing and trying. The most important two words among them are bala and fitnah. We will try to answer based on those two words. We advise you to look at the interpretations of the verses in question and the explanations of the hadiths.

Bala, Ibtila

The word bala is used in the sense of “to wear off, to try, to test, grief, misfortune, hardship and trouble” in the Quran.

The horrible tortures Pharaoh inflicted upon Sons of Israel are described as - “tremendous trial” (balaun azim, al-Baqara 2/49; al-A‘raf 7/141; Ibrahim 14/6) and - “manifest trial” (balaun mubin, ad-Dukhan 44/33).

Hazrat Ibrahim’s attempt to sacrifice his son Ismail is also called “obviously a trial” (al-balaul-mubin) (as-Saaffat 37/106).

The success of the slave in this test in which Allah tried him is described as a “gracious trial” (balaun hasan). In this context, the Battle of Badr and the victory at the end of it is described as “balaun hasan”, that is, a successful test. (see al-Anfal 8/17)

The religious responsibilities are expressed with the word bala (ibtila) in verse 155 of the chapter of al-Baqara and in verse 31 of the chapter of Muhammad

Allah’s giving fear and hunger, decreasing goods, lives or fruits are also expressed as bala. (see al-Baqara 2/155)

In fact, the world is a place of bala (test) where who will do the best deeds will be seen; death and life were created for this according to the Quran. (see al-Mulk 67/2)

The Prophet (pbuh) was sent to be tested and to test. (see Muslim, Jannah, 63)

Allah tests everybody, first and foremost, the prophets. According to a hadith, the sufists lay emphasis on a lot, the people that are tried the hardest are the prophets and then those who resemble them. (see Tirmidhi, Zuhd, 56; Ibn Majah, Fitan, 23; Darimi, Raqaiq, 67; Bukhari, Marḍa, 3)

It is inevitable for man to confront problems and misfortunes. For, the real personality of man is revealed as a result of testing. As leather is tanned so is a man tried; gold is tried by fire and man is tried by misfortunes.

Being hit by misfortunes causes a person to be purified of his sins and to be elevated spiritually. There are some sins that can be forgiven only when a person shows patience in the face of misfortunes. Hz. Aisha states that she has never seen anyone who suffered more severe pains than the Prophet (pbuh). (see Tirmidhi, Zuhd, 56)

The sins of a believer who suffers from an illness are forgiven. (al-Muwattaʾ, ʿAyn, 8; Musnad, VI, 157)

The word bala is also used it the sense of afiyah, which means peace. According to a hadith, when the people who lived in peace in the world see the plenitude of the rewards given to the people who were tried (in the world) on the Day of Judgement, they will say, “We wish our skins had been cut off with scissors in the world”; and they will envy their state in the hereafter. (Tirmidhi, Zuhd, 58)

However, it is necessary to wish afiyah (health) from Allah. (Tirmidhi, Daʿawat, 91; Musnad, V, 231, 235)

Therefore, it is necessary to show mercy to those who are tried by misfortunes and it is necessary for those who are in peace to praise and thank Allah. (Muwattaʾ, Kalam, 8)

The Prophet (pbuh) said, - “Do not be abased by exposing yourself to problems that you cannot cope with.” (Tirmidhi, Fitan, 67; Ibn Majah, Fitan, 31) He always took refuge in Allah from unbearable misfortunes. (Bukhari, Daʿawat, 23)

Fitnah

The word fitnah is derived from fatn (futun), which lexically means “to melt precious metals like gold and silver in the fire to determine their purity”.

The meaning of fitnah is given as follows in classical dictionaries: “testing, trying by material and spiritual problem, sorrow, hardship, and misfortune”

A woman who places love of fire in man’s heart or prevents him from thinking logically is called fattan. The same word is also used for Satan, who confuses man, perverts him and causes him to be punished, and for a thief since he causes harm.

Gold and silver, which stimulate man’s ambition and cause him to commit sins, are called “two fattans”; Munkar and Nakir, who exposes man to a hard test, are called “two fattans of the grave”. (Raghib al-Isfahani, al-Mufradat, “ftn” item; Lisanul-ʿArab, “ftn” item; Tajul-ʿArus, “ftn” item; Musnad, II, 173; III, 346)

The use of the word fitan in the sense of “severe torture inflicted due to one’s faith” is also common. (for instance, see Jahiz, p. 29, 30, 32, 40)

Fitnah might not express a situation that always causes bad results especially when it is used in the last sense. It can be regarded as a way of positive test and trial that contributes to man’s or community’s religious and ethical development since it strengthens the will of believing, provides ethical purification, enables man to prove his resoluteness in his belief and meritorious lifestyle.

The word fitnah is mentioned in thirty-four verses and the words derived from it are mentioned in twenty-six verses in the Quran.

It is seen that the word fitnah is used in the following senses in the Quran when the resources, especially Tabari’s tafsir book called Jami’ul-Bayan, which is known as the most important resource related to determining the meanings of fitnah based on its usage in the Quran and which became the subject of some special research regarding the issue:

- Test (ibtila), trial (ikhtibar) and examination (imtihan) (al-Baqara 2/102; Taha 20/40, 85, 90, 131); - shirk (polytheism), kufr (unbelief), pressures applied by the polytheists aiming to force Muslims to return to polytheism (al-Baqara 2/191, 193, 217; an-Nisa 4/91); - deviate, make deviate, lead into temptation (al-Maida 5/41, 49; as-Saaffat 37/162); - penalty, torture, throwing into the fire (al-Ankabut 29/10; adh-Dhariyat 51/13, 14; Buruj 85/10); - attack of the enemy (an-Nisa 4/101); - Allah’s giving different means to His slaves and revealing their intentions and attitudes toward one another (al-An‘am 6/53; al-Furqan 25/20; see Tabari, VII, 206-207; XVIII, 193-194); - sin (at-Tawba 9/49); - seduction and trap of Satan (al-A‘raf 7/27); - suggestions are thrown in by Satan to those in whose hearts is a disease (al-Hajj 22/53); - temptation (al-Hadid 57/14; see Tabari, XXVII, 226); - madness (al-Qalam 68/6)

Tabari reminds that the real meaning of fitnah in Arabic is “testing and trial” and points out that the other uses are basically related to this meaning.

Trial and testing can be related to the risky things that are regarded as boons like wealth, property, children and health as well as problems like poverty, illness, misfortune, attack of Satan or enemy. (Jamiʿul-Bayan, I, 461-462; XVI, 162, 196-197, 200, 235)

This issue is clearly stated in the following verse in particular: “…and We test you by evil and by good by way of trial…” (al-Anbiya 21/35).

“…If good befalls them, they are, therewith, well content; but if a trial comes to them, they turn on their faces…” (al-Hajj 22/11) It is seen that fitnah is used as the opposite of good in the verse above. According to Tabari, the word fitnah in the verse above expresses hardships like financial difficulty, misfortune, and torture. (ibid, XVII, 122)

Various forms of testing and trial expressed by the concept fitnah are indicated in the Quran.

Fitnah can be a test applied by Allah on His slaves.

- Allah tests people by evil and by good so that they will prove their sincerity in belief and ethics. (al-Anbiya 21/35)

- People are tested through the splendor of the life of this world. (Taha 20/131)

- Possessions and children are a means of trial. (al-Anfal 8/28; at-Taghabun 64/15)

- Ample sustenance or boons, in general, are also a means of trial. (az-Zumar 39/49; al-Jinn 72/17)

- People are also tested through grief (Taha 20/40) and various troubles (at-Tawba 9/126; al-Hajj 22/11).

Fitnah can be in question-related to the relationship between people.

The negative attitudes of deniers toward Muslims are also regarded as fitnah for Muslims because their patience and adherence to Islam are tested therewith. (al-Furqan 25/20)

On the other hand, any trouble to which Muslims are exposed can be a fitnah from which unbelievers will deduce wrong conclusions. As a matter of fact, tafsir scholars explained the verse “Our Lord! Make us not a (test and) trial for the Unbelievers…” (al Mumtahina 60/5) as follows: “Do not make us undergo hardship and trouble through them or in another way; otherwise, unbelievers will say about us, ‘If they were on the right path, they would not undergo such hardships’; thus, they will have wrong thoughts about us.” (Shawkani, V, 246)

According to the Quran, man can be a fitnah for himself due to his wrong beliefs like denial and hypocrisy or due to his bad deeds. (al-Hadid 57/14; see Shawkani, V, 198)

Besides, things like the following are expressed by the word fitnah in the Quran:

- seduction and trap of Satan (al-A‘raf 7/27), - suggestions thrown in by Satan to hearts (al-Hajj 22/53), - Pharaoh’s torturing his nation in order to prevent them from entering the religion of Musa (Yunus 10/83), - enemy’s attacking Muslims, killing or enslaving them (an-Nisa 4/101; see Tabari, V, 243), - Jews Trying to beguile the Prophet from worshipping and making him accept their vain desires (al-Maida 5/49; see ibid, VI, 274).

The aim of those in whose hearts is perversity following the part of the Quran that is allegorical is to cause fitnah (Aal-i Imran 3/7), that is, to form doubts and hesitations in the minds of the believers (ibid, III, 180). The believers called “ashabul-uhdud” were tortured by the deniers by being thrown into the fire and thus were exposed to fitnah. (al-Buruj 85/10)

In some verses, the subversive activities of the polytheists to make the Muslims give up their religion and return to polytheism and the different methods applied by the hypocrites to do the same thing (at-Tawba 9/47-48; see ibid, X, 145-147) are expressed with the concept fitnah. They even tried to expose the Messenger of Allah to a fitnah with the same purpose in Makkah. (al-Isra 17/73; see ibid, XV, 129-130)

Those activities of fitnah, which were applied with intense pressure in Makkah, continued after the Migration against the Muslim tribes outside in Madinah in particular; they caused some of them to return to polytheism. (an-Nisa 4/91; ibid, V, 201-202)

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comradeocean · 5 years

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the most recent episode of Roswell New Mexico was a lot, but I'm mainly stuck on -

Could Roswell New Mexico be the first mainstream depiction of crypto space Muslims onscreen since Children of Dune in 2003 and Pitch Black in 2000??? (are there any others I'm missing?)

An outright declaration still seems unlikely given the way Carina Adly Mackenzie characterizes how the experience of being Muslim in the US inspired the writer’s room - "The alien stuff is a metaphor for Islamophobia, and we cast our aliens as white because they look like the sort of Republican ideal. Like, they look safe, which is how I felt, so it's about passing as this safe thing. People talk about you like you're the enemy when you're sitting right there because they don't know who you really are, and so because of that, we've got three Muslim writers in our writer's room to sort of take everyone's experience and try to convert it to our sort of alien metaphor in the most sensitive way possible." [source]

And the shows uses a hodge-podge of mixed metaphors about assimilation/invasion/refugees/justice so that it can be a leftish blank slate onto which the casual viewer is able to project any number of political messages.

But with this last episode leaning heavily into the moral bankruptcy of the US government (namechecking both Guantanamo and war crimes overseas as comparisons; American-designed weapons of mass destruction; the culpability of people "just following orders") maybe the writers do intend to more explicitly ground the story on the world historical Islamophobia unleashed by the neverending War on Terror after 9/11.

The reveal of Noah (played by Karan Oberoi, Brampton represent!) as the evil fourth alien last week seemed self-defeating for those efforts after all that press about race-as-allegory casting. I mean, on the face of it, it's a basic "evil alien = brown man, good aliens = white" equation. but maybe there's something else there too?

- ok it's just a CW show

- and much of the media landscape these days is "discovered tumblr intersectional feminism last week" because there's a market for it

- I mean holy shit do not underestimate the extent to which entertainment is delivery mechanism for advertising + ideology. the culture industry cannabalizes all!!!

- so writers can throw in a few memes a few phrases and call it a day. no more thought required

assuming all that and nothing counts for anything, really, in our 2019 hellworld --

The way Noah conceptualizes his actions and how that is narrated to us is distinctly unlike how (Islamic) terrorism is usually represented. (I think. I don't watch much tv and definitely not shows like Homeland or Quantico so please correct me if I'm wrong)

In the moral universe of the show, Noah is definitely evil. In fact, with the consistent emphasis on the importance of bodily autonomy and consent (cool post about it), his actions constitute the most evil and fundamental violation imaginable. (so much so that one of the implications of the conversation between Liz and Isobel seemed to be that even Rosa's murder pales next to what Isobel experienced. which is... whatever)

yet this episode also contextualizes his evilness as desperate (evil) actions premised on survival under the duress of violence from the US government and an innately unequal access to opportunity because of differing material circumstances. (shitty peasant pod and all that) (these premises are also positioned to be possibly false, and certainly morally unjustifiable)

to be even more on the nose, the writing is careful to characterize what Noah did to Isobel as a kind of grooming. sound a bit familiar? any real world evil incarnate analogues come to mind?

(not to mention the other plotline of the episode is directly juxtaposing this with a genocidal American government/military operation)

Carina Adly Mackenzie has repeated tweeted about how sick she is of Muslim terrorist characters on tv. however clumsily and I don't know if she can pull it off, she seems to be honestly trying to write an emotionally resonant story that not only allegorizes Islamophobia but also the conditions that give rise to phenomenon like ISIS without relying on the tropes of The Muslim Terrorist.

can she be successful? so far she seems to have gone out of her way to make the "good" aliens intent on assimilation and ignoring their otherness as unsympathetic as possible. Isobel is a 100% love-to-hate character, and at the moment the overwhelming fandom opinion (on tumblr anyway) seems to be on Michael's side of the Michael vs Max showdown, after coming off the high of a devastating Malex/Michael finding his mother knockout combo.

in other words, if Carina Adly Mackenzie is actually intentionally using the catnip of an otherworldly true!love! slash ship to emotionally manipulate viewers into a political/moral stance of opposing the extrajudicial murder of those deemed to be beyond evil enemies of civilization... which our real world politics translate to Muslims...

One (1) Respect

or rather 0.5 Respect because an unintended consequence might be that those who are alienated by the way some Malex fans have made fandom toxic for everyone else are more likely to double down on defending Max, his reasoning, and his actions oops

a lot is riding on how things turn out in the season finale next week. the plot twist I want is for Noah to live another day, and, in an act of restorative justice rarely seen on network tv, redeemed in future seasons. unlikely and laughable but imma hold on to the fantasy that tvland can save us all

#roswell new mexico #noah bracken #alien plain and tall

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vediosexmelayuucvf120-blog · 5 years

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The Ugly Truth About perempuan melayu

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Introduction: The full name of the book is "American Idol after Iraq" which is published by Blackwell - Wiley in 2009. The author of the book Nathan Gardels has been the editor of New Perspectives Quarterly since it began publishing in 1985. He has written widely for the daily papers and journals since mid 1980s and he has been a Media Leader of the World Economic Forum (Davos) as well. Apart, he has given speeches in Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (IESCO). Gardels holds degree on Theory and Comparative Politics from UCLA. His co-author Mike Medavoy has had a very active role in making large number of Hollywood movies. Throughout his career in Hollywood, he has been active in politics as well. In 1992 and 1996 he advocated Bill Clinton and in 2008 he was in favor of Barack H. Obama. He was born in Shanghai, of Russian-Jewish parents; he graduated with honor in History from UCLA.

Summary

In this must-read book the authors explain and mainly discuss the public diplomacy and Hollywood role in shaping it, mainly in the new era after 9/11 terrorist attacks. The foreword is by Joe Nye, Harvard Professor which is mostly well-known with his notion of "soft power". Once again, Nye asserts the importance of the soft power- Weapon of Mass Attraction- and recalls that not missiles and bomb but the American soft power was the key in collapse of Berlin Wall and consequently Soviet Union, the Evil Empire as Reagan called it. Nye believes that in wake of the new century American soft power is not as powerful as the past decades. It is because of the mistreatment of the prisoners in Gitmo and Abu Ghoraib prison by American troops. The world does not believe and trust America as before. Professor Nye puts forward that in the Information age success is not merely the result of whose army (hard power) wins but also whose story (soft power) wins. He recalls the US challenge and problem with Islamists hardliners and extremists in which hard power is needed to defeat them but WMA is needed to win the hearts and minds of the moderate Muslim which are the majority in the Muslim world. He accentuates the fact that democracy and human right could much more easily achieved with soft power with a long lasting effect. Obviously, the most important tool as soft power for America are its giant media-industrial complex and Hollywood which broadly discussed by the authors in their script.

HEARTS, MINDS AND HOLLYWOOD:

Hollywood, as the authors put forward has been the largest machine of dream making and storytelling in human history. Unlike most countries in the world America's image is based not only on who they are and what they do, but on how the Americans present themselves to the world through their global window. The most attractive and glamorous production of this machine has been the image of America as the promise land of infinite possibility and opportunity where individual liberty is in hand and the society is always on the move. In its 100 years it has opened a new window toward the world in which America has been seen through it and Americans has seen the world through it, as well. Some believe it has been truly and largely successful in telling and selling the American (version of) stories in past 100 years. "The dreams of America - individual freedom, middle class, prosperity, social mobility, the rule of law- which were made the dreams of the world, too, were pictured by Hollywood."

Other than that it has been used as a tool by the American Government fighting against "freedom" enemies, Fascism, Communism. Even the author argues that during the tensest day and peak of the Cold War, it was J.F.K who ordered the managers in the Hollywood that the Ian Fleming 007 espionage novels ought to be made into motion pictures. Other than that he mentions that to fight against Fascism and Nazism in the twentieth century Hollywood made the fist celebrity known globally, Charlie Chaplin who diminished and underestimated the power of Hitler in The Great Dictator. It followed the Wilsonian ideal in America's role in bringing democracy and self determination to the other parts of the world. These are samples which shows that Hollywood in its lifetime has used and been used as a tool and actor for America's political purposes. By creating roles known globally, like Rambo and James Bond, Hollywood has beaten its enemies, world foes and made it believable that the US is the ultimate savior of the world. Its values are absolute and universal and needed to save human and humanity. Accordingly, Washington eagerly sought to employ Hollywood's influence and soft power at home to make people in favor of his own foreign policy objectives.

But it could not be generally accepted that America's secret weapon, Hollywood, the biggest soft power tool is playing a positive role all the time. Not only foreigners criticize Hollywood to spreading violence, porn culture through its images in the world but within the US there are who reprimand and knock the film industry as well. To a great extent Fukuyama asserts that "It is perceived as the purveyor of the kind of secular, materialistic, permissive culture that is not very popular in many parts of the world, especially the Muslim world." It is living without any responsibility which is creating the greatest tragedy of our time. It is emptied of a spiritual dimension. Many believe that Hollywood is not doing a great job in elevating spirituality and morality of America in the world to win the hearts and minds of the people, but conversely Hollywood is sowing the seeds of loathing and hatred in the world generally and in the Muslim world particularly. Some, like Bill Bennett, Ronald Reagan's secretary of education openly and famously charged that Hollywood is undermining the America's mainstream values. This is much clearer when we take a look at the PEW foundation Poll in April 2005, which nearly 61% of Americans are concerned what their children see or hear on TV. Accordingly, "Soft power does not necessarily increase the world's love for America. Soft power is still power and still makes enemies". If there is a resistance to military presence and occupation, surely there would be an opposition and resentment to cultural invasion and occupation. For example even in Turkey which is America's NATO Ally, the most popular novel in 2004 which was sold more than 800000 copies envisioned a war between Turkey and the US in which finally Turkey wins. Even American brand of secularism which is pictured in movies has been the source of concern among the religious leaders in the West. Pope Benedict XVI carried forward the worry that aggressive secularism reflected in the media was eroding the religious Foundations of America. He told American bishops that "America's brand of secularism poses a particular problem. It allows for professing belief in God and respects the public role of religion, but at the same time can subtly reduce religious belief to the lowest common denominator. The result is a growing separation of faith from life."

Although the Noble poet Octavio Paz called America "the Republic of Future" which always eyes on future and new horizon in which Hollywood has been successful to create. But now due to democratization of digital media all around the world the future is not a Gospel for American soft power and its culture. For instance, although American soap operas largely viewed and seen from Malaysia to Canada, but in South Korea, for example 92% of TV and video games are domestically produced and are telling and selling their own stories.

In the age of globalization, we may be witnessing the end of "the end of the history"-which Francis Fukuyama stated after the end of the Cold War. Process and era of globalization, accelerated the modernity and post modernity and diversification around the world. The Singaporean diplomat, Kishore Mahbubani, makes this critical point in his book, "The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible shift of Global Power to the East" asserted that the great paradox about the failed Western attempts to export democracy to other societies is that in the broadest sense of the term, the West has actually succeeded in democratizing the world. One key goal of democracy is to empower its citizens to make them believe they are masters of their own destiny. The number of people of in the world who believe this has never been higher. Even in the undemocratic society of China, citizens have seized the opportunities provided by the economic freedom they enjoy to completely change their lives.... In the global term there has been a huge democratization of human spirit." Due to the point that some assert that in a democracy the voting booth and the box office share the same public. So, Hollywood has largely been considered to be the United States of America muscle in public diplomacy to win the hearts and minds of public as well as elites around the world. The trend of globalization and democratization of the media and the increasingly power sharing in many centers - the rise of the rest -as Fareed Zakaria calls it, results in an atmosphere in which Hollywood is not the expected and absolute winner. Apart, by the development of the communication technology mainly Internet and the emergence of Netizen (Network citizen) now everyone is their own story teller and filmmaker which is growing largely in numbers. It leads all people to move to the same neighborhood, more and more people want to see and hear their own stories on the screen, to see that their own ideas and cultures has been projected and reflected on the screen and then to enjoy the latest offerings.

CONCLUSION:

The authors assert that as Harry Warner, one of the founders of Hollywood believed "the movies should educate as well as entertain people". The author puts forward due to the change in challenges that the world and America are facing, the media and Hollywood strategy should be changed to meet the problems of the new era. Some recommendations are given on close cooperation of public diplomacy and mass culture. Some of them include the matter of sensibility which should be considered in media and Hollywood to promote the empathetic understanding of other civilizations and ways of life. It is insane to try to impose the American way of life and the liberal model of "good life" to the world. "To Be able to put oneself in another's shoes without prejudgment is an essential skill" as a Chinese cellist asserts. Among the recommendations is the breaking the American public narrow mindedness by promoting more cultural cooperation with other cultures, promotion of the exposure of the worthy American cultural products, elevating the level of exchange in students and journalists and cultural figures as well and creating a joint committee by Washington and Hollywood on cultural relations. They believe it may work to restore the American dream and stance in the new era again.

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

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Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Part 1/? - A Meeting at the Palace Part 2/? - Curry Talk Part 3/? - Princess Sitamun Part 4/? - Not At Rest Part 5/? - Dead Men Tell no Tales Part 6/? - Sitamun Rises Again Part 7/? - The Curse of Madame Desrosiers Part 8/? - Sabotage at Guedelon Part 9/? - A Miracle Part 10/? - Desrosiers’ Elixir Part 11/? - Athens in October

Paris in the spring, it ain’t.

It had been cold and wet in England, and damp and chilly in France. When the plane landed in Athens, Natasha was prepared for it to be warmer – but walking onto the jetway was like walking into a sauna. It was only about twenty degrees Celcius, but there was not a cloud in the sky and the air was thick with Mediterranean moisture.

“How did you like your first aeroplane flight?” Sharon asked Sir Stephen, as they picked up their luggage. Months earlier, while they’d waited for night to fall in Sherwood Forest, she had pointed out an airplane and suggested that Sir Stephen might get to ride in one someday. Nat suspected it had been on both their minds all day.

“It was a bit of a disappointment,” said Sir Stephen. “The interior is so enclosed and the windows so small, you can barely tell you’re in the air. I liked the train much better. You could see the countryside you were travelling through.”

“It’s not for sightseeing,” Sam agreed. “Just for getting where you’re going.”

“If you’re in a hurry I suppose it’s fine,” Sir Stephen said with a shrug. “You couldn’t do it for a pilgrimage, certainly.”

“Why not?” said Nat. “Thousands of people go by air for pilgrimages every year. It’s the only way Muslims overseas can get to Mecca.”

Sir Stephen was startled. “But the point of a pilgrimage is to make a journey,” he protested. “People who live in Compostela do not walk up the street to see the relics of Saint James and call it a pilgrimage. Pilgrims are demonstrating to God that they are willing to undergo hardship. To simply fly over all obstacles in your way makes it seem so trivial.”

“Next time we’ll let you pay for the tickets,” Clint said. “Then we’ll see if you still call it trivial.”

Outside in the parking lot, they met the bus that would take them to their hotel, and everybody was pleased to find that it was air conditioned. The landscape between airport and city was a wide desert valley, with hazy hills visible all around the border of it. Life hadn’t changed much here in thousands of years – it was still all stony red soil and tiny farms, though in the twenty-first century these were as likely to host rows of solar panels as lines of olive trees. The buildings had white walls and red tile roofs, and sheep and goats grazed on little lots of pasture. It really did look, Nat observed, like something out of another time.

“How are we going to find Madame Desrosiers?” asked Allen.

“By talking to people,” Natasha replied. “Expats in areas like this, warm places where people like to retire, tend to live in close-knit communities. So we’ll have to find where the French people live, and ask around.”

“Oh,” said Allen.

Nat glanced at him. “You sound disappointed,” she observed.

“I am a little,” he admitted. “I was sort of hoping there was some special technique spies use.”

“Sorry!” said Nat with an amused smile. “Sometimes good old-fashioned legwork is best.”

“Absolutely,” Sharon agreed. “Even nowadays, when we have CCTV cameras all over the country and DNA evidence, most of what a detective does is talk to people.”

“But if we’re in Athens,” Nat added, “you guys will probably want to let me do the actual talking. Possibly Allen, too – none of the rest of you.”

Sam, Sharon, and Clint all nodded knowingly, but Sir Stephen was confused. “Why?” he asked.

“Because they’re the Americans, Steve,” said Sharon. “Greeks don’t like British people, and they’ll like us even less now that we’ve at least tried to give Princess Sitamun back to Egypt.”

“Why not?” Sir Stephen wanted to know.

“The Elgin Marbles,” said Natasha. “Once we find Desrosiers, we can go see the reproductions in the Acropolis Museum, and I’ll tell you about it.”

Athens itself was a maze of little roads between somewhat shabby-looking buildings, with tiny European cars and motorcycles zipping along with little regard for pedestrians or each other. The entrance to their hotel, located just a few minutes from the ancient acropolis, was a narrow door in between a pharmacist’s and a camera shop – Sharon and Sir Stephen checked them in at the front desk, while the rest of them took turns hauling their luggage to the fourth floor, in an elevator that claimed to be rated for the weight of nine people but didn’t look big enough to even hold three. Once they had their rooms, they immediately turned on the air conditioning again, and since they’d had a series of very long days, they all went to bed early.

Nat was sharing a room with Allen. As she was getting her nightshirt on, she heard him say around his toothbrush, “I didn’t know Sir Isaac Newton was an alchemist.”

“A lot of people don’t,” said Natasha. “His alchemical writings were only discovered in the 1930’s, but there’s loads of them. He was apparently much more interested in magic and theology than he was in science and math, he just didn’t publish what he wrote.”

“I wonder why not,” said Allen.

Nat knew the answer to that. “Partly because alchemy was illegal in England in the seventeenth century, because the crown was tired of con men who promised to make gold but then took your gold and disappeared. And Newton’s theological writings would have gotten him in trouble with the Church of England. He denied the divinity of Christ, which was a heresy punishable by death.”

Allen spit out his mouthful of toothpaste. “That would explain it,” he said with a chuckle. “How do you possibly remember all this stuff?”

“I was trained to remember everything I read,” Nat explained, “and most of what I hear, if I’m paying attention. Did you know that quail meat can be toxic if eaten at the wrong time of year, because the birds eat poisonous plants? Or that a churango is a musical instrument made out of a dead armadillo?”

“No, I didn’t know any of that,” said Allen, standing in the bathroom doorway with a fond smile on his face. “But I bet I won’t forget it. You know who you sound like?”

“Who?” Nat asked, pulling out her own toiletries.

“My daughter,” he said gently. “In my memories you were always full of stuff you’d learned and wanted to share. You’d learn something new in ballet class and come home and show it to us. Or you’d tell us what you learned in school that day – with your mouth full, when you were little. Your Mom and I used to have to remind you to swallow first.”

Natasha could picture it – herself as a child, sitting there eating spaghetti while excitedly telling her family about… about what? She had brought news home when she was small, but it wasn’t about her ballet classes.

“You’re upset now,” Allen observed.

“No, I’m fine,” Natasha said quickly and automatically.

Allen came and put his hands on her shoulders. “No, I’ve upset you. I can tell.”

She sighed and stepped away, hugging her own shoulders, then forced herself to give him a watery smile. “It’s just that your version sounds way nicer than the real… than the one I remember.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.

Natasha knew he was asking because he cared. He wanted to help her bear the weight of the memories, because that was what families did.

She sat down on the bed. “When I was little, in training, my masters at the Red Room would plant us in groups of schoolchildren who were touring government buildings or newspaper offices… places like that. Our job was to ‘get lost’ and wander around listening to conversations among people who were suspected of political dissent. It was towards the end of the Soviet Union, of course, but there were lengths people weren’t allowed to go to, and the Red Room was much more hardline than the government was. I wonder sometimes, whether anybody ever got executed because of something I told my instructors when I got back. Probably not,” she added quickly. “Considering the times.”

Who was she reassuring, she wondered – Allen, or herself?

He didn’t reply right away, and Natasha wanted to look up at his face but didn’t dare. She couldn’t bear to find out what he was thinking. A moment ago he’d shared that warm memory of his little daughter chatting about what she’d learned at school, and now she’d stained it with eavesdropping and possible murder.

“Even if they were, it wasn’t your fault,” said Allen. He sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “You were a child. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Yes I did,” said Nat. “They told us – they gave us a list of things to listen for, and told us that people who said them were enemies of the State, our enemies, and we’d be making the world a better place by reporting them so that they could be removed. And we knew what removed meant, because we’d seen it ourselves.”

Again, there was a silence. This time, Natasha forced herself to look up and read Allen’s face. Their room had two beds – they were sitting on the one by the window. The window itself was closed to let the air conditioner do its job, but the curtains were open, and it was possible to see traffic moving on the street outside. Allen was staring thoughtfully out the window at the darkening sky, trying to decide what to say. It only took a few seconds before Nat couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Allen?” she asked. It was not a moment to call him Dad.

He looked at her and ran his hand up and down her back. “Archaeology,” he said.

“What?” Nat asked.

“Archaeology,” he said. “You dig up the truth and share it.”

A chill washed over Natasha. She’d done a lot of examination in the past few months of why she’d chosen archaeology as her cover. There was the ostensibly practical reason that she was unlikely to become famous for it – the silly but sentimental one that she’d always enjoyed adventure movies – and the one she’d come up with as potential real reason, that after so long living in the shadows she wanted to be responsible for bringing things into the light. She hadn’t thought of it that way, that it was just another way of doing what she’d always done.

“Natasha?” asked Allen.

She swallowed. “It is, isn’t it?” she asked. “I expose people’s dirty secrets and tell them to the world.”

“But it’s different now,” Allen added, “because the people who kept those secrets died a long time ago, and nobody’s going to get hurt because you told.”

“I guess,” said Natasha.

Allen patted her back again. “Was that so hard, Ginger Snap?”

That was what he’d wanted from her, wasn’t it? That she trust him with her past and let him try to help her with it. She’d done her best and he had too, but now that seed of self-doubt had been planted, and she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t do more harm than good in the long run.

“I don’t know,” she said, and she really didn’t.

#fanfic #natasha romanov #steve rogers #sharon carter #sam wilson #clint barton

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xtruss · 3 years

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People Forget Just How “Woke” Osama bin Laden Was

In the 1990s the CNN and al-Qaeda agreed that West didn't bomb Serbs "quickly enough" because of how racist it was to Muslims

“There often seems to be an interplay between the Western culture of victimhood, which sees being a Muslim as one of the highest forms of victimhood, and the terroristic culture of grievance”

When the politics of victimhood turned violent

9/11 was an act of apocalyptic identitarianism.

— Brendan O’Neill | Anti-Empire | Spiked

Twenty years on from 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still viewed as the ultimate evil outsider. The foreign enemy who brought death and destruction to America. The implacable foe of the West, and of modernity more broadly. The footage of him in modest dress and humble surroundings in some holdout in Afghanistan, belying his Saudi origins and his vast wealth, contrasts with the gleaming opulence and swagger of the city he sent his men so savagely to attack on 11 September 2001. And yet the truth about bin Laden, and about 9/11 itself, has always been more complicated than this. In many ways, bin Laden was as much a product of the West, and in particular of its politics of grievance, as he was its most feared terroristic enemy. His reign of terror can be seen as a violent manifestation of what has since come to be known as wokeness.

Al-Qaeda and bin Laden in particular were keen followers of the fads and thinking of Western opinion-formers, particularly radical and liberal ones. Of course bin Laden’s speeches were peppered with the thoughts of Islamist ideologues and Muslim Brotherhood leaders. But these seemingly religious declarations sat oddly alongside quotations from Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky, a feverish embrace of Western conspiracy theories, concerns about climate change, and a bristling against ‘Big Media’ and ‘bloodsucking’ corporations. Bin Laden was an ideological magpie, always seeking the on-trend woke concern through which his desire to manifest his ‘intensely personal feelings’, to give voice or violence to his movement’s culture of grievance, might be most aptly and impactfully expressed.

At times he sounded indistinguishable from Michael Moore. The war in Iraq is ‘making billions of dollars for the big corporations’, he said. He spoke in a self-consciously therapeutic style, even on manifestly political issues like Palestine. So in 2004 he spoke of the need to ‘raise awareness’ about the ‘justice of our causes, primarily Palestine’. Bizarrely, he implored the ‘scholars, media and businessmen’ of Europe to assist in this raising of awareness. (1) Most notable was his fascination with Western environmentalism. At times he sounded like an ageing hippy. His plea to Americans to ‘save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny’ would not sound out of place at an Extinction Rebellion gathering.

Bin Laden’s eco-commentary was testament to the extent to which his worldview was shaped as much by the Western ideas swirling around in the globalised networks that al-Qaeda also inhabited as it was by classical forms of Islamic fundamentalism. In 2002 he reprimanded the US for having ‘destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases, more than any other nation in history’.

President Bush is interrupted at 9:07 a.m. during a school visit in Sarasota, Florida., by Andrew Card, his chief of staff, and informed that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center. Paul J. Richards / AFP

Hilariously, he upbraided President George W Bush for ‘refus[ing] to sign the Kyoto Agreement’. There is something undeniably surreal about a mass-murderer outlaw lecturing Western leaders for failing to adhere to global treaties drawn up by the UN. In 2007 he said, ‘all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations’. Guardian reader much? Then, in 2009, to mark the election of Barack Obama, he essentially implored us all to join Greenpeace. ‘The world should put its efforts into attempting to reduce the release of gases’, he nagged.

Bin Laden’s XR-style declarations, his imbibing of woke fears for the future of the planet, initially appeared incongruous. He kills thousands of people and then worries about the deaths of thousands of people in a future climate catastrophe? And yet the fact that al-Qaeda was an environmentalist outfit as well as an Islamist one actually makes sense. It revealed much about both the form and the content of this strange and modern movement.

In terms of form, as Devji has controversially argued, what al-Qaeda and other modern movements, including environmentalism, share in common is a post-nation worldview, a self-consciously globalist approach: ‘The issues of concern to them are strictly global. They cannot be dealt with by solutions at [the] national level.’ In common with ‘global movements like environmentalism’, al-Qaeda had ‘no coherent political programme’, says Devji.

And in terms of content, the temptation of the green outlook to bin Laden seems clearly to have lied in what environmentalism fundamentally facilitates: an expression of disdain for contemporary society, especially industrialised society. If bin Laden was anti-Western, which he undoubtedly was, his view appears to have been shaped as much as by the anti-Westernism that is central to woke thinking in the West itself as by traditional Islamist hostility to the West as infidel.

Given its sensitivity to Western thought, especially anti-Western Western thought, it is not surprising that al-Qaeda embraced the culture of complaint too, and even the politics of offence-taking. Alongside bin Laden’s reliance on the therapeutic categories of ‘humiliation’ and ‘degradation’ to explain why al-Qaeda and its violence must exist, his movement also embraced an early version of cancel culture. Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, pursued this theme vigorously in the 2000s. He released numerous statements chastising Western leaders and thinkers for their alleged insults to Islam. In 2007, when it was announced that Salman Rushdie would be knighted, al-Zawahiri denounced ‘malicious Britain’ and directly criticised the Queen for decorating someone who had insulted Islam.

In 2006, al-Zawahiri entered into the Danish cartoons controversy – the fury over the publication of depictions of Muhammad in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten towards the end of 2005. Again, he considered these cartoons to be hurtful, insulting. Strikingly, he adopted the Western identitarian view that insists Muslims are more oppressed than other social or religious groups. ‘[No] one dares to harm Jews or to challenge Jewish claims about the Holocaust nor even to insult homosexuals’, he said. Jews and gays – protected categories. Muslims – permanent victims. He echoed the view of much of the Western intelligentsia at the time, which said that insulting Muhammad could not be described as a freedom-of-speech issue because it was punching down. ‘The insults against Prophet Muhammad are not the result of freedom of opinion [but rather] because what is sacred has changed in this culture’, he complained.

Al-Qaeda militants were early adopters of cancel culture, of raging against that which gives offence. Again, this outlook appeared to come less from the external world of realpolitik, of interests and aims, and more from the internal world of feeling and sentiment. It was not surprising when al-Zawahiri, who appears to have been al-Qaeda’s chief No Platformer, celebrated the assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Indeed, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), of which al-Zawahiri was leader, claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack. Al-Zawahiri made a statement shortly after the attack, describing it as payback for the blasphemers, as a just attack on ‘immoral Westerners who left their Christianity and assaulted the Prophet of Islam’. I have argued before that the two mass murderers who carried out the assault on Charlie Hebdo were essentially ‘the armed wing of political correctness’, seeking to punish, to cancel, those who hurt their feelings. This was a theme developed by al-Zawahiri himself in the years before the Charlie Hebdo massacre – the need to censor, with violence if necessary, those who seek to erase our identity.

That al-Qaeda leaders moved from organising the worst terrorist attack in history to issuing statements about Muslims’ hurt feelings or riding on the coattails of smaller-scale attacks like the one at Charlie Hebdo can of course be seen as a sign of how defeated, how shrivelled, their movement had become in the years after 9/11. The ‘war on terror’ undoubtedly reduced al-Qaeda’s capacity to organise terror events. At the same time, though, there is a logical flow from the apocalypticism of 9/11 to the cheerleading for the Charlie Hebdo attack, from al-Qaeda’s use of unprecedented terroristic violence in New York and Washington, DC to its angry, finger-wagging statements about ‘malicious’ Westerners who insult Islam. In all cases, we were witnessing a therapeutic deployment of violence and threats; a use of terrorism not to effect certain ends or to make gains in the political universe, but rather to express an amorphous, often unnamed sense of grievance against societies that are viewed as uncaring, insulting, hurtful.

Left: On Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers attacked New York City's World Trade Center. Sean Adair / Reuters

Right: Smoke comes out from the Southwest E-ring of the Pentagon building September 11, 2001 in Arlington, Virginia after a plane crashed into the building and set off a huge explosion. Alex Wong / Getty Images

This use of terror as a form of grievance has continued following the sidelining of al-Qaeda. Recent terror attacks, in London, Manchester, Paris and elsewhere, appear to have been motivated as much by the terrorists’ cloying sense of victimhood as by their juvenile desire to establish an Islamic caliphate in Europe. What is striking is that this terroristic cult of the victim sits neatly alongside a more mainstream cult of the victim. Indeed, mainstream figures sometimes unwittingly flatter terrorists’ ridiculous sense of victimhood, their seemingly unlimited capacity for self-pity, by arguing that it is indeed Western society’s mistreatment of Muslims that very often pushes them into the arms of al-Qaeda or ISIS.

For example, following the various terrorist attacks in France in 2015, commentators wondered out loud if ‘discrimination against Arabs’ played a role in tempting so many in France to align with ISIS. A writer for the New York Times argued that ‘a feeling of exclusion and disrespect’ can be ‘fertile soil’ for radicalism to take hold. The Grand Mufti of Australia, though he firmly condemned the 2015 attack in Paris, said we have to look at the ‘causative factors’ to such terrorism, which might include ‘racism and Islamophobia’. One of the most disturbing public debates I have been involved in in recent years was at Trinity College, Dublin in 2015, where I sensed a level of sympathy, or at least of understanding, for the terrorists who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

There often seems to be an interplay between the Western culture of victimhood, which sees being a Muslim as one of the highest forms of victimhood, and the terroristic culture of grievance. Indeed, the Islamophobia industry in the West has thoroughly mainstreamed the idea of Muslim victimhood and inflamed a culture of grievance among those who believe Islam should never be insulted or even criticised.

In the late 1990s, the Runnymede Trust included within its seminal definition of the word ‘Islamophobia’ any view which says that Islam is ‘inferior to the West’. Instead, Islam must be seen as ‘distinctively different but not deficient’ and as being ‘equally worthy of respect’. This fear of ‘Islamophobia’ has generated two decades’ worth of sensitivity and even censorship in public discussion about Islam. It has helped to intensify a culture of separatism and even of injury among some in the Muslim community. If, in these circumstances, some Muslims in the West come to view Western society itself as hostile, as damaging to their identity and their self-esteem, should we really be surprised? Such self-regarding anguish will in part have been cultivated by mainstream thinking around Islam, identitarianism and offence.

Islamist terrorism comes across as a violent manifestation of the culture of victimhood. It looks to me like a function, or at least a product, of the ideology of multiculturalism, of the West’s own cultivation of religious and ethnic separatism and the invitation to anti-Western loathing that multiculturalism implicitly makes to certain communities.

From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo, from 7/7 to the Manchester Arena bombing, what has tied these divergent barbaric attacks together is an absence of interests as they were traditionally understood and their replacement by violent sentiment, militant self-pity, and an urge to punish or erase the disrespecters of Islam. Islamist nihilism is a species of identity politics in this sense. It is identitarianism turned apocalyptically violent. It is the West’s own self-loathing turned against the West, in bloody form.

Twenty years on from that terrible day in September 2001, it is worth reflecting on the true and complicated nature of Islamist violence. Yes, anyone who attacks or plans to attack our societies should be ruthlessly pursued, and stopped by any means necessary. At the same time, let us explore, honestly, how the regressive ideologies of identity, victimhood and censure mix with neo-fundamentalist Islamist dogma to give rise to forms of violence that threaten our lives and our liberties. And we cannot do that without freedom of speech – including on everything to do with Islam.

On the anniversary of 9/11 it is worth reflecting – for the millionth time, no doubt – on just how unusual this act of barbarism was. Despite a rush of commentators in 2001 shamelessly claiming that the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was violent payback for America’s geopolitical crimes – an apocalyptic revolt against its ‘unabashed national egotism and arrogance’, in the words of then Guardian writer Seumas Milne – in reality 9/11 lacked any of the tangible statements or sentiments of traditional forms of anti-Western terrorism. There were no demands, no list of complaints, no requests to release certain prisoners or to remove Western armies from certain countries. Indeed, the only audible statement made by an al-Qaeda operative on 9/11 itself was ‘We have some planes’. Those words were uttered by Mohamed Atta, the chief hijacker, to air-control chiefs, shortly before he crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

We have some planes. That was it. There was no information as to why they had those planes, why they crashed them into certain targets, what it was for. Indeed, bin Laden initially disavowed responsibility for 9/11. Two weeks after the attack, on 28 September 2001, he made statements suggesting that America had attacked itself. This was proof of how keenly he was following the fallout and, in particular, the rise of conspiracy theories claiming that the Bush administration masterminded the 9/11 spectacle as a way of justifying a cranking-up of the American war machine. Maybe this terrorist attack was carried out by ‘persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity’, he said. It wasn’t me, it was ‘a government within the government in the United States’, he claimed. Of course he later spoke more openly about his role in 9/11. But this early performance of non-responsibility, alongside the striking dearth of treatises or explanations, confirmed how new 9/11 was, how distinct it was from the realpolitik era that preceded it. It lacked ownership, it lacked reason.

As Faisal Devji noted in his fine study of al-Qaeda – Landscapes of the Jihad – this strange terror movement tended to speak in the language of feeling rather than politics. When bin Laden did issue further statements in the 2000s, before his execution by American forces in Pakistan in 2011, he spoke in a style that was more therapeutic than political. As Devji says, al-Qaeda inhabited a world of ‘hurt’. Even when its leaders spoke of traditionally ‘Arab concerns’ – such as the subjugation of Palestine, or later the invasion of Iraq – they did so in the language of ‘humiliation’ and ‘degradation’. And such ‘intensely personal feelings’ are ‘not elements in realpolitik’, Devji argued. ‘Rather, they suggest its opposite: the reduction of a politics of needs, interests and ideas to the world of moral sentiments… For Osama bin Laden, violence is meant not merely to defend Muslims or retaliate against their enemies, but to gain self-respect.’ (My emphasis.)

This was something new. It was distinct both from Arab terrorism in the 1970s and 80s, which was tied to Arab interests, and from the various forms of political Islam in the late 20th century. So where the Islamic Revolution in Iran from 1979 onwards represented an Islamicisation of social interests, an Islamic form given to political and civil society, 9/11 and subsequent acts of Islamist nihilism have lacked any kind of social or political component. Al-Qaeda violence was fundamentally ‘symbolic’, in Devji’s words; it was about ‘effects’ rather than ‘political interventions’. And one of those effects appears, clearly, to have been the expression of grievance, the use of violence to state and perform a sense of woundedness, of victimisation. It is tempting to continue viewing al-Qaeda as the supreme alien force, with its execution of one of the worst acts of violence of modern times, but if we are honest with ourselves we will admit that its replacement of the ‘politics of needs’ with the violence of ‘moral sentiments’ does not feel a million miles away from the cultures of complaint and self-regard that have emerged in the West and have come to be globalised in recent decades.

— Source: Spiked

— Brendan O’Neill is Editor of Spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy

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