Rev Left Radio - Islam and Anarchism with Mohamed Abdou

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Professor and scholar Mohamed Abdou joins Breht to discuss his book "Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances". Together, they discuss core concepts within Islam, the importance of decolonization, anarchist political theory, the question of violence in revolutionary struggle, Mohamed's construction of Anarcha-Islam, contradictions between capitalism and Islamic teachings, and much more! Check out Mohamed's book here: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341927/islam-and-anarchism/   Find Mohamed's other work, learn more about him, and contact him here: https://www.mabdou.net/     Outro music: "Gather Round" by Brother Ali feat. Amir Sulaiman   Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio    

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have on Mohamed Abdu to talk about his book, Islam and Anarchism, Relationships and Resonances. Those who follow the feed, who subscribe to us on podcast apps, we'll see that earlier this week we released an episode with my co-host of guerrilla history, Adnan Hussein, on Marxism and Islam, trying to find some of the, relationships and resonance is there. And now we're going to release this

longer episode with Muhammad Abdul on Islam and anarchism, which is really interesting. It's wide-ranging. It's interdisciplinary. And I wanted to do sort of both sides of this coin, because when we explore religion on this show, we definitely, you know, we don't just want to

always make it, you know, religion and Marxism in particular, but see the other ways in which, you know, revolutionary left-wing ideologies can intermingle with religious traditions. For example, I recently did that speech at ASU that I released on this podcast called Dialectics and Liberation, where I was really talking about, you know, the dialectical materialist analysis of Marxism and how that dovetails with certain philosophical outlooks

in the traditions of Buddhism. And I have on anarcho-spirituality, David, who runs the page, Anarcho-Spirituality on Instagram, coming on later this month to talk about anarchism in Buddhism. and kind of have a dialogue between a Marxist and an anarchist who are both, you know, deeply rooted in the traditions of Buddhism as our primary spiritual practice and tradition. So I like exploring these from different angles and this is no different. This is a really fascinating text and a really fascinating discussion I had with Mohammed on it. You can tell the way Mohammed talks that he is a broad thinker. He's trying to weave together, you know, various analyses and, you know, bases of knowledge.

in a really compelling way and it's a fascinating listen. So whether you want to learn more about anarchism or probably for more of you want to learn more about Islam and the way that they intersect and some core concepts within Islam that can be utilized by the revolutionary left, broadly speaking, this is the text and conversation for you. And as always, if you like what we do here at Rev Left Radio, you can join us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash rev left radio and in exchange for just five dollars a month you get up to three bonus episodes every single month early releases sometimes i release the outlines of the episodes

that i'm going to do i take questions and as i always tell people um the only place i can really maintain a presence online um is in the comment section of the patreon that's the one place i've marked out as i will do my best every single time to respond to every comment there so it's a great way to interact with me as well. Without further ado, here is my discussion with Muhammad Abdu on his book, Islam and Anarchism, Relationships and Resonances. Enjoy. Sinha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a.

I'm the author of Islamananachism. I'm currently a postdoc fellow in a visiting scholar at the largest lander at the University, Cornell University, arguably not only up to underline, but really the world. I'm also a former assistant professor of sociology at the American University of Cairo. I'm a social movement organizer, really, since or post-the-Chiaple-19 anti-globalization movement, the anti-war protests in Iraq and Afghanistan. I spent time with the Departistas on two different occasions. been involved with the Earp Spring, as well as abolitionist entity colonial land-based organizing, land-back organizing that has been going on for at least or close to two decades, arguably as as well as abolitionist products. So yeah, that's a little bit about myself and what it is that I do.

So in terms of my political affiliation, I identify as anarchistic, perhaps less so as an anarchist, but anarchistic, recognizing that Islam is inherently anarchist. and that's pretty the argument of the book. My religious affiliation is identify as a Muslim, but that within itself is a loaded term, since Islam sees itself is a continuity of other spiritual traditions, if you will. So I very much built off of Christianity,

off of Judaism, tantrumata having a minor in Jewish studies. Many years ago, when I was still doing my undergraduate, I don't identify with particular orientation within Islam or particular interpretation. Within Islam, yeah, I'm a Sunni, who's a Shiite, who's an Ismaili, who's an Ahmadi, who's the Sufi, who's the multiplicous elements, assets with it, Islam arose as a consequence of denominations, excluding one another, also with the impact of colonialism and imperialism that's currently exacerbated the differences between these denominations. But it is out of an appreciation of all these denominations that I managed to call out all these different interpretations of Islam. to unethical political commitments that have been abandoned

because as much as there are many interpretations of Islam as there are Muslims. Arguably all Muslims are tied by one Quran, one text we may differ over the oral tradition and there was a science of oral tradition or what is referred to as Ayme al-Hadis. Me, but nonetheless, all Muslim Shi are the one for Iran, whether you may show the Islam or whether you're a Wahhabi Salafi,

whether you're a liberal Muslim or otherwise, you are somewhat behold into this text. So that is a historical text, that there is an interpretive text. Yeah, that carries with it a lot of social, political, economic, gender, dementia that relate to it. And so on. So I'll stop there for now.

And as for how I got into each of these traditions, look, I grew up within predominantly Muslim societies. I traveled extensively, in North Africa. I was born in Egypt, spent time within the Arabian Peninsula and the global self in general. There was an acute awareness while I was young, I broke with probably a pan-Arab socialist household. And so it's exposed to a lot of literature with our staff and on and Marx, ero-socialists, and so on and so forth, pan-Islamist thinkers, and so on and so forth, whether we're talking back Akbal, Maudjudi,

Saet Kodgadai, and so on and so forth. So being exposed to the wide degree of the specter. I always felt that Islam certainly was founded on social justice and tenets of social justice. The pragomere and the question became, how does that embody itself materially, historically, symbolically, economically, economically, and otherwise within the contemporary. And that means that I had to understand the Quran

and learn the Quran recently quite well in order to discern the different categories ostensibly that the Quran uses and providing its own paradigm and its own view on life as opposed to imposing alternative view to the leftist view on the Quran. I want it to work from the inside upwards. So, yeah, there is an understanding that, you know, one is praying at mosques, one is sleeping prayers, one is thinking about their king in Bosnia, the Ugar, their Honia, Myanmar, and so on and so forth. Palestine, and being connected to all these different discourses, all these elements of injustice that are playing out within Muslim communities across the globe. And so one solicits a certain degree of apathy and sympathy as a part is their own cause and their own plight of their oomah.

And obviously the plight is not constrained to Muslims and the Oomah within itself, which is the global polity of Muslims have not simply constrained to Muslims themselves and who and what is a Muslim becomes a question within itself. one is dealing with horror. So getting it to all these different dimensions, as one of this growing up, became something that's incredibly valuable and given what was one was also witnessing in the world. Schizophrenia of identity politics that were certainly witnessing full pledged in the contemporary a settler society in the case of the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, settler societies in general,

that aren't given to their genocidal past as a future. They're homicidal present, as well as their suicidal futures, to be quite frank. So, yeah, all these different dimensions becoming a migrant at the age of 16, a settler, in the case of Turtle Island, having to leave Egypt to the failure, the dismal failure of the era of spring, as much as it is very much an ongoing project. So all these various different placids, again, to iterate to that, led to this culmination of this which is, you know, life's work about 15 to 20 years in the making, so. Wow. Well, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on. That is a fascinating and extensive background in both worlds, right, in the world of Islam and the world of just, I guess,

broadly conceived revolutionary left-wing politics. The book, of course, is called Islam and anarchism, relationships and resonances, which we're going to talk about today. Also want to give a shout out to our mutual friend, Adnan Hussein, my co-host on guerrilla history, who introduce me to you and to this text. I'm very grateful for that. And an important thing as well as we start to get into this text is, as you said in that opening, you're not starting from anarchism and trying to impose ideas onto Islam. You're starting with the Islamic tradition, concepts within that tradition, and working your way outward from there, which I think is an important thing to keep in mind for the audience going forward. Now that you've told us a bit about yourself,

political, your religious affiliations, your life experience, all the stuff that goes into to creating this text. Just talking about the book itself, why did you want to write this book in particular? And what were you hoping to accomplish with it? Thank you very much, Brett. So there are some of reasons as to, I mean, there are infinitely a number of reasons as to why I wanted to write this book. This book was a journey of self-discovery, not so much in a narcissistic sense, but

the self-discovery of, again, the world. It does a commentary, the stirs of very much so, ethnographic historical archival on the world. And in connecting the various different movements, very different struggles from a political movement perspective, from a revolutionary perspective. I don't know whether I buy into left versus right by the race, politics operates around the continuum just as much as gender and sexuality.

So I find limitations, too, within the discourse and operating that way, and it's part of the reason that I wrote the book. Another reason is because we're living in troubling times. I mean, you know, George R. World's Prophecy of Double Speak in 1984, first they steal the words, then they steal the meanings, right? Empty and liberal hollowed up worlds like access to be evil, war against terror, simulated browning, preventive war. Civilians killed or refer to his collateral damage in CIA kidnappings. They're called their story renditions, right?

So there's a sketch of funny in terms of language, and to me, language is neither informational or communicational. it's not the communication of information, but something quite different, the transmission of, if you will, order words, statements or either from one statement to another or within each statement. And so far is, in a certain sense, statements accomplishes a particular act, material act, and acts that are also accomplished symbolically vis-a-vis statements, a B-a-B rhetoric. Probably a third reason is the consequence of the second that I just did is the liberal imprint on Marxism, on Erickism, on Erickism. on revolutionary politics in general. And what I mean by that are the mentioned, for instance, is anarchism, right, that plays out within

anarchist communities, anti-spirituality, that plays out with it leftist politics. Unfortunately, the absence of an ethics of disagreement amongst the left, the right are always cohesive, even if they are divided within themselves. Nonetheless, they provide a unified front. And unfortunately, leftists in general have disingly failed, putting at the practice what is referred to Islam as Uful in Hellef and whether that's actually applied by Muslims, that's a different story because, of course, it's not. But that's besides the point.

There is no ethics of hospitality that we offer one another. There is no ethics of disagreements by which we disagree. This is why Marxists tear anarchists apart, anarchists apart, and vice versa, right? Even internally within communities. We fail to understand the mass psychology of fascism. So there are a lot of the different reasons. I think mostly this conversation should stay focused on this book and we should all be open-minded and learn what we can from it. So instead of going back and forth, as I have done in the past with other episodes, I've had on many anarchists in the past.

And we've actually had these debates. Instead of doing that, this time, though, I'm just going to kind of focus on the text itself and learn what we can from you because I think there's a lot to learn. And my audience, although definitely tending toward the Marxist side of the coin, as it were, on this one, is familiar with anarchism. We've definitely had anarchist on. We've debated anarchist. We've had anarchist on just to explain their politics, et cetera. But I would say that they're probably less familiar with Islam. And I'm very interested in religious traditions.

I'm mostly focused on and knowledgeable about Christianity and Buddhism, but very interesting. interested in Islam and want to learn more. So as a way into this text, can you kind of give us a 101 breakdown of what Islam is, its major branches, and its basic orientation, just to kind of set the table so we can go a little bit deeper in the following questions? Sure. Absolutely. I do appreciate these fewer comments, Brett, because I am certainly a non-ageological, and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter to me whether somebody calls themselves a Marxist and are anarchists. At the end of the day, we have Marxists that, you know, can be racist. We have anarchists that can be slothobic and so on and so forth. So to me,

that's the limitation and strategic limitation of identity politics. So somebody telling me that there are Marxists or anarchists just to speak very briefly to that point. It tells me absolutely nothing about the ethical political commitments that should have informed ultimately there are Islam, Marxism, their anarchism, whatever it may be. To me, the ethical political commitments are far more relevant and importance. Now, to a one of the one of the three major monotheistic tradition. Probably your audience would be at least familiar with that. It sees itself as a continuation if you will, Christianity or Judaism. I would say that in terms

of its symbolic as well, it's its material and spiritual practices that perhaps resonates more with Judaism and the other way around than perhaps with Christianity. And we can perhaps talk about the reasons or in what ways you know, down the road. But yeah, certainly the central concept within Islam is to a sole authority that one pledges sovereignty to or allegiance to or recognizes the authority of is Allah subhanna-a-a-a-ala.

When does not pledge allegiance to a nation for a thrive to idea, to family, to children, the loyalty is engaged that way. It is simply strictly to Allah's Pahna-a-la. There's no central church, there is no hierarchy, there's no feastshood within Islam. on. So, unfortunately, a lot of people read terms like Imam as being the leader and Alephah were the need for a single singular leader, which I obviously take up in the book and discuss because the Quran will argue opposite to that in a certain sense, because we're all put-a-that, we're all caretakers of one another and of non-human life, which Islam

doesn't anthropomorphize. We don't see non-human life, is if you will, of the object. So we see them as subjects that we are in relationship to. There are many things that I can say about Islam. Their major denominations are the Sunni and Shiite. I mean, those are the two major ones, but within those branches are multiple of the different other branches.

The Medaheb or the different intrepiter formations, again, that within those discourses and within those discourses and what they lead to in various different cultural, as well as

religious interpretive formations. So the Sunni Islam you have, for instance, four different mitha that exist, the Malak, the Hanafi, the Shafi, the Hanbal. So I understand the same thing. You're similar things in Shia. So definitely there are other branches that exist within Islam. I know some of them.

There's Sufizam, Ahmadis, there's Maidis. Muslims were excluded. Other Muslims, depending upon on the interpretations that are playing out, theoretically, politically. Here, I wish to distinguish two, as my work done, that there is an interplay between Islam and culture, absolutely in a geography, space, time, and so on,

while the two intersect and interplay with one another and manifest different, again, Islamic parmations or Islamic interpretations. Nonetheless, I wish to distinguish between the religious discourse and the cultural interplays. So, you know, the hijab manifests itself in many different forms. The chador, the burqa, the regular, hijab, and so on and so forth. Now, whether one even buys into the hijab or not, given it's a woman's choice, and so on and so forth, that's also a different, or a

component of the conversation that needs to be had. But nevertheless, that's just to highlight a different interplay that happens between Islam and culture, between religion, and particularly specifically through the Quran and the oral interpretive forms that I noted before vis-à-vis the Hadith, via the science of kalam, of language, of philosophy,

and so on. So there's an entire focus and, if you will, legalistic methodology that does exist,

albeit in its classical form, and that is part of the goal of this book, is to engage in a resurgents,

reinterpretation, all even these classical ways of interpreting, because the problem with a lot of Muslims is

they fail to understand, I recognize the world that we live in right now, and consequently they failed apply as it exists right now to the world and in response to it. And this is why we see the Orientalist or the reactionary, the Orientalist in the form of the liberal, progressive, and want to be a good citizen Muslim. Yeah, this country is founded on genocide and slavery. But look at me, I'm an example of the American dream sort of type trope. We can change the society from within the American dream of a constant

evolving project to the living itself. And we have the reactionary neoconservative or fundamentalist that represents itself in the form of conservative Islam, al-Qaeda, ISIS, even going back to the Muslim-Rother sense. And again, the secular religious divide, fortunately Muslims have internalized. So, yeah, the basic orientation, and again, it depends on which Muslim you ask, because there are Muslims that believe that Islam is inherently capitalist, that Islam is the Caesar. women at a lower status than men, that queer sexualities are forbidden Islam and so on. So it depends, again, on who you're asking, and you're asking me, and part of this project is, again, re-looking at the trunk of the tree, re-establishing the ethical, political foundations of Islam.

When the prophet came about, it wasn't about do this or do that. None of the prophets were the messengers started off. And if anybody started off with a particular set of dictums, then nobody would believe or nobody would be convinced in particular traditions. Rather, you have to take people gradually along. And the first message was Tao Kiddh. So for the first 10 years, even over a decade, and was it about Muslims should drain or not?

Drain, pray, or fast or not fast, albeit, well, these dimensions came as complementary, if you will, pillars that sustains the ethical, political agenda that Islam laid forth. During that first 10 years, vis-a-vis the concept of Tao Kidd, that again, you pledge not allegiance, not even to the prophet. and and yeah at the founding of that community based on principles of social justice

Muslims were persecuted during the early nascent period by the policies to Arabs they have to engage in migration so what kind of ethical political commitments are they embrace in their migration because I think about that

insofar as diaspora's moving to the context of Turtle Island and becoming a part of the liberal set near loyalty and progressive machine that is there as opposed to engaging in more revolutionary politics. So, yeah, you know, that really is what it comes down to

in terms of basic orientation that I've been trying to re-establish the emphasis on the trunk, and then after that, we can begin to look at the branches and the foliage on the branches. But it is a desire to provide both the forest and a view of the tree through the forest and vice versa. I'd set a desire to link the Arab Spring with no Dakota pipeline

with Black Lives Matter, given the intersections and struggles of third or fifth of the transatlantic slaves or Muslims where they're going to tell the West of Africa. How could I ignore that? I can't ignore what happened insofar as manifest destiny and doctrines of discovering what was going on. And so far as

Muslims and Jewish fiction from Spain, persecution underneath the hand of the sword, Pruddinand and Isabelle, that's a part of an ongoing crusading product. What I've been actually refers to, and I agree with this, as a crusade in society. The crusades have not ended, but they just morphed and transformed insofar is the means by which

that crusade is framed within itself. But we all remember George Bush, And God, we trust on the dollar bill. This isn't affect your society. So it is a desire to break through all these different tropes as they relate to Palestine as they relate to social movements in general. And that's really the basic orientation that I'm trying to revive in a certain sense. Yeah, it's fascinating. And I really like your metaphor of the trunk of the tree and we examine the trunk and then we can examine the branches later.

and I certainly want to do I want to do a full episode at some point just as an introduction on Islam so we can take everything that you said and kind of dive deeper at some point so that's definitely on my on my to-do list for the show and certainly like Judaism and Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism

there is a political spectrum a huge swath of ideas anyone adherent to that religion could have totally different views than any other one and they could both be trying to root their views in their own religion tradition. So that's, you know, certainly not unique to any one religion. And it gives

Islam and Judaism and Christianity kind of its, it's, it's beauty in a sense that there's so many different ways to engage with this tradition, although sometimes, of course, especially in the fundamentalist versions of each of these religions, it can, it can turn quite ugly. No, absolutely. And I was pretty, because you're hit on a point, which is, you know, no particular religious denomination has hegem over meanings of violence. And I know we're going to contention to this question, well, the authority, right? We see what is being done with Buddhism in Benavar. We see what's being, what's being done with it insofar as with the Uga, right?

So nobody can claim that this particular interpretation or this particular tradition, which is non-monolithic in the first place, is this or that? I mean, one sees it with the romanticization of indigenous spirituality that plays out in the coordination of indigenous people, right? As if the Maya and the Aztex and hierarchical forms of indigenous spirituality do not ever best. And that is precisely becomes the point, right? It's what is, that religion has been used as a source of liberation,

but it has also obviously been used as a sorts of oppression. We need to also remember that these traditions or Eastern traditions for the most part, and you're American, so many consensus, particularly with Christianity, appropriated this Eastern tradition, weaponized it, and mobilized it, and underneath constant change towards imperialist ends. So the embedded that people have about, different traditions, misconceptions, vis-a-vis, you know, the manufacturer of consent,

operates vis-a-vis media, the war on terror, all these various different roles, globalization that actually spread us part made our nations into many nations, as opposed to fulfilling its promise of supposedly bringing us together, and so on. For all these different reasons, the stereotypes and so on,

it becomes very important. So I get the fact that a lot of anarchists, a lot of leftists may grow up, oppressive on of souls, particularly in the global north. They're exposed to an oppressive kind of Christianity, Catholicism, and hierarchical, the recurring, and so on and so forth. But then the attitude to just walk away as opposed to decolonize that tradition, which a lot of people, Gilarani anarchists have been really spearheading over the last two decades. We put out several volumes of religious anarchism, Buddhist anarchism, Christian anarchism,

Jewish anarchism, and so on. And it helped break the foray. There's a lot of work that needs to do. be done on the left and so far as that and the reconciliation of against spirituality and just because of the follow-up question which is, you know, decolonization which you have in mind.

And yeah, the role that the colonization plays in this particular text and what decolonization exactly mean because we have also different traditions of decolonization that emerge the 60s and 70s but also very much in the contemporary given what indigenous struggles, peoples, discourses and so on have also contributed to an understanding

of decolonization within itself. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a perfect segue into that question, because it is, as anybody listening can tell, and then anybody that engages with the book can definitely tell that decolonization plays a central role in this text in the way that you think, which, of course, I agree with is utterly important. So can you kind of talk about the ways in which you're American settler colonialism and capitalism have shaped the way that Muslims in general think about themselves and politics in a way that you're critical of in this text? Well, you know, that we need to just clarify, just a moment, I think, or the way I'm using the colonization, because again, there are just different traditions, and I don't mean to lie. There are certainly, you know, the African traditions of decolonization that were brought up by him, really that even extended beyond. I mean, you know, we have symbols obviously as Salcarra and Turi and so on and so forth, the grammar, and so on and so forth. but and the way that they manifested too in terms of, you know, again,

various different struggles in Palestine and George Khabesh and so on. So again, there are different manifestations that occurred in 50s, 60s, and 70s. Well, to me, decolonization, and this was the point behind the state, you know, and again, to present sort of that Marxist critique, if you will, that as I understand, and as I look at indigenous struggles and indigenous discourses, insofar as the colonization addresses spirituality, It distinguishes between organized and hierarchical unions and decentralized, if you will, understandings of spirituality in Islam.

There's a difference between religion and the concept of deem and imam, which is faith, and ruhania, which is spirituality. Those are the closest approximations. The other thing in the Quran that we need to also realize is that there are at least three different categories of individuals. And so that the Quran identified by, says, Muslimin, which are Muslims. there are not meaning believers and of course there is a gufar the mo'eminin are believers that don't necessarily ascribe

to Islam so a lot of verses in the Quran and Allah who does not shy from using whatever expressions who address whoever it is that they are addressing will usually the verse will start of here by a mnemin or moumeth or believers across genders

how does that transform or what are the quality the ethical political commitments that inform the category of the believer and hence the Muslim versus the kaffir, or the infidel, if you will. And one begins to discern certain archaeological or theistemological commitments, right? The believers, the one that does not corrupt in the earth, that does not engage in excess waste, to the minds of the responsibilities and the rights for, towards women, gender dissidents, that upholds justice.

God is just and not those who are just. So, yeah, whereas insofar as the category of the kaffar, there are those who corrupt in the earth, who destroy it, who don't mind the rights of the orphans, the wayfares, travelers, and so on and so forth. The colonization is also inseparable from abolition. There are two sides of the same coin. If you can't have abolition or black liberation without indigenous liberation, given how indigenous people have been conscripted towards in the enslavement of black people and black people have been conscripted towards the enslavement

or towards the genocide of indigenous people. This is how we also have Afro-Indigenous identities, black met by black cherubes. So again, the complexity of how white colonialismity, white modernity had pitted us against one another becomes something that's important

to understand the decolonization. Decononization is also not interested in romanticizing the past. I'm not going back to 1492. There is no going back to 1492. There isn't going going back to 1,444 years ago

when Islam emerged during the time of the prophet. No, what I'm interested in extracting early ethical political commitment that founded that original quality and projecting them into the presence. That's what decolonization is concerned about the landscape, the geography has changed. Again, there is no romanticizing

and a recharge of 1492, and Muslims have committed a lot of errors over 1,444 years of history and we can speak as to why that is. And simple answer is, they had lost touch with the ethical political foundations of that original polity that were all supposed to buy too.

Now, what are the ways in which your American colonialism and colonialism have shaped the way it is in which Muslims generally think about themselves? Unfortunately, there's been a lot of Muslim, and again, I'm not taking away from Islamophobia and the Asian violence. And again, we see that intersection between race and religion

thinks being mistaken for Muslims and so on and so forth, right? And that violence stretches out because of white supremacy that birthed everything from Zionism into crusading politics to Wahhabism. I mean, that is white supremacy for us. But again, to emphasize that interlink between race and religion. So the Asian violence are not just simply about anti-Asia violence. There is a religious couching of that violence, that racial violence, within religion.

at the same time, given, again, the city of 1492, the Enlightenment Project, and so on. So Muslims are bought into those self-victimization narratives, if you will, a lot of Muslims nowadays, and again, Hebrew frankly diatres, because the great measure of Muslim communities, particularly internal island, are African-American communities. They're not actually the diaspora, but within the diaspora, there's a huge problem at it. The boys in identity crisis, right? How do we recognize or Muslim and American identities well you can't because one is constructive upon a colonial identity the other isn't

necessarily so but you're having to then reconcile these contradictory, blatantly contradictory sets of identities in binary or loggers you know the moment that you call yourself a Muslim American or American

Muslim you have justified or at least legitimized the settler colonial state the way that voting is paid in up as a form of harm reduction. What democracy constitutes itself as much as Muslim Americans may sit down and open this at stage, understand that America is not much of a democracy and as much as, yeah, I'm seeing these kinds of critiques online vis-a-vis social media and discursively and so on, there's a failure to center indigenous people and indigenous struggles.

Indigenous people are not an adult in this context. So as much as diasporic Muslims may be addressing anti-blackness, that unfortunately has seen. into Muslim communities, both over here and within, if you will, our motherlands or homelands, Egypt being a prime, if example, look at the Antinogian, Hedishu Danese, disavowal, and the construction of a jurisdiction identity is white, which Coppic Christians had fought for the turn of this century when they were experiencing a great deal of persecution because of the Muslim brothers. But what happens when these diaspora then move towards Fertile Island? They're engaged in a whole different other sets of oppressive logics

that sort of transmits vegan justices upon other communities, and this is why the wheel never ends, if you will, that failure of understanding the level of responsibility that comes with migration towards displaced land, towards a people that are still ongoing genocide, towards afterlife to slavery products, because slavery is not ended, as the study Hartman had noted, the standard around laws, go to prison pipelines, and so forth.

So that affects the trajectory in terms of how do we achieve social change and where is our place within the society, let alone a relationship to the world. Muslim Americans, I know a lot of Egyptians, for instance, that have the dual passports, right? Something about these Egyptians and the three are a whole different word that are canniborms that we can certainly open up. These Egyptians in so many ways got arrested in Egypt, some willingly, some people actually handed themselves over. fission authorities because they wanted to establish a name for themselves and this was kind of a joke 318 days of career that if you wanted to

become a Twitter woke celebrity and so on and so forth, we'll get arrested. That will certainly heighten your claim to fame. And provide you with an audience. I mean, I'm sorry these kinds of people, again, celebrity, everything, did this play. Everybody nowadays labels they did just slam that they're off at how many people actually against

enter indigenous struggles alone indigenous people. The Walden is, again, very different. That alone actually got their hands journey and have been on front lines on indigenous and abolitionist struggles and so on. But the point is, so these folks get a president in Egypt, they managed to get out after a period of time, because they have American passports, they have to be middle-class youths and so on. If they're speaking to the US, and they're talking about human rights in Egypt, prisoner

conditions in Egypt, but have absolutely no attachment to abolitionist projects or address anti-blackness or address the fact that they are Zionists on stolen the land, because unfortunately diasporic Muslims, like Annah, who are walking down the streets and I'm all for direct action and participated in it for years. But they're walking down the streets

and whatever kind of protest for Palestine, and they don't recognize the fact that they are Zionists on solar land. I refuse to do anything about it because they don't want to give up any of the privileges that perhaps they have gained. Now, I'm not saying that the diasporic settler is in the same status as a white settler.

privilege and complexity circulates in different ways, given race, given various dimensions of migration, and so on. But that is all to say that that interrogation has yet to happen. And so that generally leads Muslims to the state of this convobulation, and so far as what they want to achieve, because precisely it's very schizophrenic. It depends on, you know, again, you have the conservative Muslims that are very much gone how about Jordan Peterson, and those kinds of, if you will, white hyper-masculine religious idols that have propped upon on the scene of ladies. And it makes it easy for them because then they can continue on with their queerophobia not interrogate, for instance, in sex literature that is part of

Islamic folklore extends over 1,44 years of history. They don't have to contend with their inner micro-fascisms. They can condemn America while they at the same time maintain themselves in their enclaves, genderified or otherwise, without having to engage in other communities whatsoever. Look, with the beautiful new mosque in this particular city in America, you know, this is going to be a wonderful symbol for the umah, the multicultural diversity and so on. But we all know the sicknesses and the elicists that are replicated across

Victorian lines, across racial lines, across gender lines, across square lines within that mosque that is supposed to be a safe space that is supposed to be a space of organizing, political organization of our community, but it's no longer, as it becomes, it's been very emptied out, if you will hollowed out of, of the politics that nevertheless, that nevertheless, that inform the community, and the less. So, settler colonialism provides that colonial imagination, and that could be a positive thing, that could be adapter. The positive thing is that if one recognizes, again, their complexity now that they have

migrated in particular struggles because they're on dispossessed land. The other opposite horizon, of course, is one that is blinding, is the fact that you see yourself as part of the land of the free, the home of the bridge, that particular narrative. I know a lot of activists that were quite involved in the Arab Spring. They moved to the U.S. because of kerfobia in the global south, because of oppression, repression that they're facing. And once they come over here, they have no interest in being involved in politics. however. They want to live their lives. They want to party. They want to have fun.

They want to just be in safety, which again is an argument that I understand and I empathize with. But if this continues on, then what is precisely liberation mean? People can't even answer simple questions is to where we have it, where you have it nowadays. So there's, again, there's a lot of ways in which it's a settler colonial horizon and manifests the way Muslims in general think through these different dimensions and that relationship to one another and disconnected from one another in a way that is also not coherent. And that's precisely why we don't have much of an organized leftist, let alone Muslim community.

Can you imagine if Muslims were more ethically political situated in the context of Turtle Island, how much that would make them of a dangerous force? Because I shuddered the same thing that indigenous people have lost absolutely everything. The resurgence in so far as their knowledge, there is emphasis on land back, and all of land being back on the assertion of indigenous sovereignty and indigenous nations that tends to be non-status in terms of its orientation and so on and so forth. All these dimensions become quite vital again for us for being fully immersed in each other's struggles as opposed to showing up when the Nodakana Act line protests are going on or we log on

on Twitter, and it's a couple of days, it's a week, it's a month, it's exciting, and it's cathartic, same thing with the anti-war process, but how many people have actually, again, invested in getting to know Muslims, and getting to know all Arabs or swan of people during the anti-war protests and breaking friend with Muslims. This is why these misconceptions continue on, the same thing with independent people. And that's precisely why this discontinuity continues. We'll look to, we're shopping around for solidarity because there are so many causes that are happening at the same time. Yet we're not connecting those causes. given the way

that they're intertwined together. So again, another dimension of this is the fact that Muslims have diasporic Muslims because of the way that they have brought into civilizational attitudes. They can't veer towards the sciences

a great deal when they're pursuing school, right? So they're trying to seek to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, a foreign kind of professionalization as opposed to valuing the arts and the humanities that gave rise to civilisations to homoomats like Ibn Sina,

even Bhattu, and so on and so forth. So, again, there are so many effect here, layers as to why Muslims, if you will, manifest the different kinds of politics that they manifest, the kind of schizophrenic politics that they manifest. If I were to add a Muslim convert, white Muslim convert Muslims,

that's a whole different other dimension of, again, the echoed whiteness, the cultures of whiteness. that are disseminated. The orientalization that happens within mosque spaces, particularly towards converts, and so on. And it's very insidious. It gets to the point that, you know, Muslim families or Muslim women will want to marry their children to white Muslim converts simply because, again, there's a hard to erasure of the color of skin. We've got to create where we resent our own color of skins. We're ready to bleach a white. I've got to learn to humanize the white

man, before I learned to recognize my own humanity, let alone the humanity of my own people, you know, so straining the hair, absolutely everything that echoes out of the cultures of whiteness. But that is what I speak to in terms of the dignity, the sense of shame, and the fact that we need to look more inwards into our own traditions, a spiritual, political, and otherwise, because we do have our own frameworks or references. And again, this is not to take away from revolutionary leftist politics as they emerged within the global north, but it is to say that BIPP people need to look back to their own traditions, and they're simply not doing enough of that.

And that's precisely why we're in the state that we're in. Yeah, incredibly in-depth and insightful analysis of so much there. I mean, I completely agree as well as that last point about looking back at your own traditions as a way of moving forward instead of looking at the tradition. of the, you know, hegemonic, white, global north culture and its sort of consequences and the consequences psychologically and identity-wise just for people that are not from the global north or that are part of the diaspora in the global north, originally from the global south.

And so I think that's a really important thing to point out. And again, like anybody listening to this can see immediately the absolute dedication and depth that you've thought, that you've given these questions. which I think are so essential and really come out in the book in full detail. So while this conversation is only an interview kind of touching the surface level, I mean, as much as we can of this text, I really encourage people that are turned on by this sort of stuff and are really interested in this stuff to get the text and dive even deeper.

But moving forward, a core concept that you use in this text that you introduce me to actually, and I hope I pronounce it correctly, is Ihtahad, and that is an important concept within Islam. So what is Ishtahad in Islam, and can you articulate your use of it in the context of what you call anarchic Ishthahad, as well as how you mobilize it in this text in particular? Thank you for that question.

That is a fundamental concept that exists within Islam, and it is the right of Muslims to engage, and all in Muslims, so let me emphasize, it is that God-given right, all Muslims engage in religious reasoning, the interpretation, and reinterpretation of the Quran and religious texts or Islam in general. All of the people are invivalent to, I mean, as in any,

I said that the Quran is historical text, as religious, as a divine text, it can be the multiplicity of paradoxes of conjunctive ends as opposed to destructive wars. So, with that realization, the Quran has a lot of verses that people don't know the meaning of. For instance, any phlegm being is a verse, it's the second chapter of the Quran, the chapter of the cow, nobody knows the meaning of these three Arabic letters who can join the form an Arabic word. There are more blank spaces on a page in which reign and plaid.

Because Islam operates in the realm of ethics, it does appreciate morals. And here I wish to distinguish between morals and ethics, and Darfono kill is a moral commandment. It's a beautiful commandment. But the ethical situation is one that is contingent on space time. So if somebody is threatening you or me, we reserve, the right and self-defense.

So that's an ethical situation, how that self-defense takes place, and we could sit down and discuss that. But nonetheless, that's an ethical situation and that doesn't take away from the morality that thou shan not kill in general. But that's just to make that distinction. But then, in that particular instance,

if we're talking about H.D.Had. The H.D. Hand is also a collective practice. It's not an individual practice because it is one that relies on other anti-authoritarian or non-authoritarian, more explicitly anti-sortical position in my books, non-means, mean that I've actually instructed the non-exertarian concepts. So it should have this related to Shura,

for instance, mutual consultation and community consensus, it's another one. It's also concerned with the concept of mussel, which is public welfare. It is tied to the idea that we're all caretakers again, money, life, and of one another as hula fe. It understands that the inan, the guide, the spiritual guide, and after the death of the prophet, is the Quran, the ultimate parameter by which we hold each other, particularly as Muslims accountable, if you will, to the word of God or to fulfilling the ethical commitment, so that divine, that creator, which creation is an extension

of, would like us to abide by. We've created you from different nations and tribes so that you may get to know one another, and the best amongst you are those that fight or engage in righteous struggles, particularly insofar as again social justice. So if God had will, that God had created us to be one species, one or if you will, God would have been capable of doing so. It is a matter of, again, us working through our differences and learning and nurturing together. And as part of that practice. Now, how do I mobilize this in the particular text?

Again, what I'm operating from, and just for clarity, sure, I use medieval and classical texts, and I'm dealing with premodering sexualizations and debates that exist within Islam. But again, we did not have capitalism in pre-modernity. We did not have the nation state in modernity. So I'm having to actually provide an interpretation that contends with the reality of the world that we have today, as far as racial capitalism, and so far as nation states, fattener or post-cononial, insofar as ignorant Muslims, using terms as the Slavic state. Because, again, there is no concept of the state within Islam. And that is what H-Dhad allows me to work through. but it allows me to work through

from Islam and from the internal dynamics of Islam within itself. So with regards to capitalism, there is well, property means different things in Islam that it does in capitalism. Because ultimately, everything belongs to Allah, so there's not per se on anything.

So that ontologically, Islamologically, and transforms the economic paradigm by which I am looking at when I look at chapters in the Quran in so far as even a simple observation, as the chapter of the moon, the chapter of the sun, the chapter of the bees, the chapter

of the Tao, the chapter of the thunder. These are all chapters named after non-human life should this not cause Muslims to reflect on their responsibility towards non-human life that we've abdicated. Given overwarming, climate change, given the racialization of climate injustice, as well the gender and so on and so forth that's associated with that. So, unfortunately, Muslims have become very ambivalent insofar as what the role is politically because of the absence of which jihad

and because of the presumption and gain of it, the discourse is complete. Meanwhile, God, creators, saying that in the Quran, do they not, and use it turns as, al-a-etafal-un, do they not reflect, do they not think, and so on and so forth, to instigate and to nurture within Muslims,

the ability to think and reflect on themselves. One of the things that is often mistranslated, perhaps I should denoted this in the beginning, and again, speaks to the absence of which she had. Islam is often mistranslated in English, submission. The word for submission is actually called Ola. It is not the same meaning as Islam, because Islam comes from the word salama, which means to woefully deliver. That means to deliver oneself to create or on choice, an informed choice, and a choice that one makes, consensually, without force.

Léik Ravidim as a person or on there is no compulsion of religion. So it's, again, the desire to reconcile not the contradiction, but the paradoxes that exist, particularly as far as the war on, and allows for that, allows for a need to work through the ontological of this technological,

non-logical commitments inherit to Islam. Now, what are the objections to that from Muslims? Muslims will come about and say, well, this is a formal bit of data, but as innovation. There are good innovations and their bad innovation in the mineral rots was a good or notation parawee, for instance, they prayer that when we're in the months of Ramadan, the Muslims usually pray together in the evening because it's a collective act of spiritual belonging of materially us knowing in our gathering together are current conditions, those that are poor in our communities, were us to hand those face-to-face interactions,

as opposed to shying away and turning away ourselves from panhandlers or poor people when we see them on the street because of an internal license of shame, because we've advocated that kind of responsibility. But there are a way, nonetheless, that is innovation. It's a good innovation. This is a good bit of it. So some Muslims will come and say,

well, what you're doing insofar is queerness in Islam, what you're doing insofar as well, I'd argue they may be arguing that Islam is capitalist, right? that that is the form what you're doing is the form of better. Islam allows for private power. Again, it is based on a misconception and the lack of understanding of capitalism

and lack of understanding of what property is and Islam and the world that we live in. This is why it she had becomes very, very vital and important. It is an interdisciplinary methodology that is attuned to the matrix of oppression, that is based on, if you will, assemblage theories because of the

inter-activity of struggle, because we're not singular issue causes as human beings. We're not just individuals or works of relations of power and so on and so forth. So it is operating respective in order to, again, really a kind of solidarity within a community that isn't solid either that allows for personal autonomy while maintaining a certain sense of collective and communal responsibilities that Muslims have towards each other or really our species

past towards each other in a relationship also to non-human life or other than non-human life. So that is the primary idea goal but HGED is for the living it, it is not from the dead. And I continue to state this simply because, again, a lot of people

would like to see the door to HG had closed. It can't be closed simply because it is a god-given rat. And yeah, you know, a lot of institutions such as a Luzhar, a university, preeminent Islamic institution that I did research at for a trans-case study, actually, that had happened there many years ago,

and that it was writing on insofar as my PhD, my first coming sort of book on Islam and prayer Muslims. Some will try and assert hijamini over religion. Of course, predominantly Muslim states and religious institutions within the states will always quabble with one another. We've seen it between Mubarak and Al-Al-Tar. We've seen it between Fifi and Allah. are right now because each claims to be the moral arbiter and protector of the legitimate

Islam, if you will. And so it becomes an important battlegrounds of conversation that Muslims need to participate in. So what Muslims are excluded are when they excluded themselves from these kinds of conversations, this is my problem with the secularization of leftist politics or particularly, say, with regards to Palestine, right? Is that that is very ignorant. It's a historical. It's also ignorant of what dynamics, the religious tropes, rituals occur on the ground, the themes, the narratives, the language from a religious perspective, that Palestinians are mobilizing or a great deal of Palestinians are mobilizing from a realistic standpoint when we have murders that are assassinated or then are peeled or whatever

it be, let alone how we frame our struggles. So the religious dimension becomes important because you have also Arabian Mintilla countries and justifying the Abraham Accords recruiting by Muslim converts like Tamsai Yusuf, who's very conservative. He actually shamed Egyptian or sorry, Syrian

revolutionaries were even wanted to rise up against Assad and said at a certain point that, you know, the reason that theory is in the state that it is now is precisely because, you know, you're rebelled against your leader, if you will. Another one is Shremaine Jackson, who is an African-American

and a Muslim, conservative, both the scholars, Hans and M have been involved in legitimizing the Abraham Accords, a piece of chords with Israel, have played a role, and they do play a role insofar as even a couple surveillance to the programs, and upholding those.

It's a means of contributing to the targeting, the mining, the harvesting, and the furthering of Islamophobia within, well, the globe, let alone the separate colonies. So, abadvening these kinds of conversations of these stories does us disservice to us, and the only way that that can be,

we can spread that kind of resurges. Revitalization is vis-a-be precisely if we had, regardless of objections from other Muslims, and my goal is not for good if it's all Muslims and not. My goal is, again, to establish that form of the community of Muslims and non-Muslims, indigenous, black, Jewish, honest, whatever it may be that are bound together inethical, political, social justice commitments

that we share with one another as well as an appreciation of spirituality in the role that it applies and us working through that together. Yeah, beautifully stated. So, yeah, so that's, you're basically having laid the foundation of your arguments, in the last several questions talking about core concepts within Islam, fighting back against this idea that, you know, the misinterpretations of these concepts or the idea that Islam is, you know,

inherently authoritarian and capitalistic. You're emphasizing decolonization. So having laid the foundation of your argument, in chapter three, you begin your construction of anarcha Islam by arguing for anti-authoritarian commitments within Islam, as well as for the idea of God to be taken seriously by anarchists, right? that's what this book does. You're talking to both Muslims and you're talking to anarchists as well as people that don't fit inside of those two categories. But can you lay out your

arguments here in Chapter 3 and help us understand what you mean by Anarka Islam and how you're using it in the service of anti-authoritarianism? Thank you. So what is Anarcha Islam? Anarq Islam is an artistic interpretation of Islam vis-a-be the Quran and Islamic interpretation a re-interpretation of the Quran vis-a-vis anarchism. So it's a dual lens that is constantly operating, and particularly I'm operating from our post- anarchistic plans, meaning that this interpretation

is never ended. What I established in this book were the anti-authoritarian, anti-statist, and anti-capulist commitments, and we're, again, the non-capulist, non-authoritarian because I prefer to move from the anti-rateric. To actually extract of the concepts and practices, are non-authoritarian, as opposed to, again, just hovering within a polemical position of I'm anti-something, okay, but what am I providing as an alternative, right? And that question of alternative is a fundamental question. It's the reason, again, to free or fail, that we

constantly see these research at moments and the difference between, say, the Zapatis and BLM, and not to take away from the abolitionist twing of BLM, which has been, in a certain since thylode or quiet fint, not surprising whatsoever. The point being in so far is in chapter 3, beginning to lay down the foundation, I'm speaking about post-arachism because of its insight

insofar is the dynamics of power because it's not averse to religious or spiritual practices at the same way that at least classical anarchism and animated itself, we operate also on the different space and time, and McGulman, and Popkin were of, particularly with Emma and the Conan, were of Jewish, I mean, they came from Jewish backgrounds, right?

And then we have examples that are Stolstoy, Jackie Nulili, and so on and so forth. So we have these various different examples of religious anarchists that exist in history, but nonetheless, they tend to be allied. We also have indigenous anarchisms, black anarchisms, you know, and so on. So my task here is connecting to all these different anarchist formations, if you will, in terms of thoughts and material consequences. The anti-authoritarian concepts

that I begin to lay down are beginning to lay down really the authority of God, if you will, as well as the authority of the Prophet. As I noted at the beginning, there is no compulsion in religion within this law. And the idea is not the force at all. Muslims or non-Muslims are like to

believe in this particular God or that particular God, regardless of what it is that their name is. Again, but to cause them to engage in an imperial act of reflection, on the role of spirituality, how can one love without spirit? How can one die without spirit? How can one fight

for social justice without spirit? So spirit is a constant federation that exists, not only in our struggles, also what we're fighting for in so far as a different world, and so far as not human life. And we're a revolutionary horizon that we can't anticipate the ban, the revolution, the Zacchaeists, that taught me a lot of the goal,

that holding in each other's hands, we ask one another with each of us to know. It's not that we just father that reflussed off crisis black. Now that said that a rule or what we refer to in Islam as elkhine, the unknown, that there are

questions and there will be challenges that we cannot participate or foreground in advance in terms of pre-triggerate of politics. And what we have to have faith in is our ability to deal with these challenges and what non-human lives. The transcendental,

the eminence, the omnipresent, the ethereal, the epameral, has to teach us along the way. So long as, again, we're doing our job in terms of intent, purpose, and action. Again, I'm going to repeat that intent, purpose, and action, intent in terms of our personal responsibilities. This is part of the idiosurian dimension of engaging in the jihad of the greater jihad against the macrofascists or the microfascisms, excuse me, of the self. Because what Kaptur 3 lays down is this logic of microfactisms. We're all authoritarian because

the role of the state and what it plays in our lives. The state acts the role from a psychoanalytic dimension of Gabi, the one that teaches us to discipline, to control, to thyroid space, movement, to walk in when the prophet lights are green, to stop when the rent, that self-discipline, that authoritarianism in terms of the question when we meet somebody else, who are you, what you study, and where you from? Because that allows us, again, a sense of sense of,

safety. Once that person has answered those questions, we know how to box them in, and that's the logic. There is no desire in at least totally invested, actually getting to know this person. So, yeah, the state plays that role of the authoritarian need of father

that we've internalized, right? And on the other hand, Epples and crazed the rule from a psychoanalytic perspective of the mother that is capable of materializing anything and everything, chaid over on a tissue. Nothing is sacred to it. Love celebrated on Valentine's Day, a Pride parade with Enoch in all kinds of pride advertisements

hovering in the back. So working through these logics means that I needed to look at Islam and see what it had to say insofar as authoritarianism insofar as governance in general. Islam did not lay down a macro-political structure of governance. What it did was it laid the concept of the end. That sovereignty lies besides being

and Allah, subhanna-a-a-a-lazhanes being associated with the Ummah. So, Muslims, non-Muslims will offer repeat, for instance, to promote the de-hesterized

to view that the Islamic State existed in primordinary in the point that I brought up before, and hence they will conflate the medieval concept of the dula, with its misinterpretation, mistranslation is the state, the dula does not actually mean state.

Arab-aptists used it, or used that the word dula, as a post-colonial term to refer to each individual Arab and predominantly Muslim state. And Daulat then deployed even by movements such as ISIS as in Daoan Islami, the Islamic state. But the term represents a distortion of Daulah

intended meaning, both linguistically materially, simply because it appears in the Quran. It stems from the word, or the verb dal, which more frequently as well as sematically falls between the verb dar to rotate and the verb zal to go away or to fall. So it revolves

mainly, so far as Daulah, around the notions of temporality, change, rotation. It's not fixed in terms of the order of things or in terms of the geography. So, temporality and succession of essential connotations. So it's working through, again, concepts such as that. So if the dowla, it's not something that resembles either a modest possible state. And if it appears in chapters, as the chapter 59, a sort of heshire in the Koran, where 7, where the prophet is being told to engage in the distribution of the spoils of war, so that it creates a dala

where a rotation amongst the community and so on which dihad becomes useful and this is what chapter three is dealing with we're developing that the authoritarian

macro vision of how would a non-statist world from an Islamic framework of referees look like a dala by definition cannot form

and seeing that the only an idea is the purpose behind the dula not in defining matters worship but in the finding political identity in relation. And traditionally speaking, we had several dowels within one dula. For instance,

we have the Hamdana, the B'uayy, the Ube and Mamuli d'alas within the Abbas-Sinian period, and Ombud al-Ali-Kibir d'alas were in there was many. And the fact that you had an Umeid al-Qalafid that had a seed in the masquist, does not mean that there were serious much of that method. But it did not mean that there was a

state called Iraq. Right? So, again, it is working through, you know, what is the imam, the imam in the absence and the death of the prophet is the Quran, because we don't have, again, a central authority or central priesthood. We also know that whoever leads players that that is not a static position,

but that it's a something that is dynamic. I mentioned some of the, and so it depends on the collectivity in the community and whether the community wants this particular person or that particular person to lead them at any given prayer. I mentioned concepts and the authoritarian concepts of Shura and Jima.

The fact that that term is used in the plural form in the Quran in the sense that we're all caretakers of one another but somehow Muslims have confined that to the need of a singular alif or a single leader despite the fact that they would also consider that were all Khulafat and that's part of the misreading

of what had happened of following the Prophet's death that Muslims perceive that O'u'll Abu Bakr led then it was Omar than it was with men and that it was Ali, but they failed to comprehend that already this community was

operating vis-a-vis collective mode of decision-making, vis-vis the politics of good governance, that they have employed vis-a-vis mauslaha, vis-vis shura, that they had embodied those anti-authoritarian and the fact that even their personalities, their

characters complemented were none of Abu Bakr, I was known as soft and the gentle-hearted, Omar was the more zealot type of Muslim. He gave late into Islam. He was staunch anti-Muslim for a very long time. With the man was known as the Sufi, the very generous. Ali was known as the door to knowledge.

Then Buchan, the wives of the prophet, the women, the Muhammadis Act. It existed and so on and so forth within and that piece of period. They were all apart and central decision making the day-to-day operating of unity. So it wasn't the matter of a singular Helen, per se, leading the decision-making process, not at all. So, again, what I'm laying out is the non-authoritarian law. And so far as God, again, whether people believe in God, that is that personal choice,

I don't care what they call God, be it Allah, be it Buddha, be Jesus, whatever it may be. But what comes out of that is a sensitive, if you will, the humidity, is a sensibility. And so far as again, that radiation arising, what we know, as far as history, what revolutions entail, what they involve on what we cannot yet anticipate. It is ostensibly what spirituality is the teachers is a part of that journey. And the distinction, again, between this organized decolonial readings of it, and the foundations of traditions, religions, and so on and so forth, versus ones that are authoritarian in terms of the readings.

So, again, that is part of what is being laid out in that construction of an archa-islam. Anarcha, Thlom is dealing with anti-status politics, is also dealing with anti-institutional politics because institutions are also, again, dealing with anti-thernering politics of the level of horizontal, because we are not, power is that simply symbolic or structural. Power is asymmetric. The problem becomes when we're trying to organize that power, be at the level of revolutionary organizing or organizing a relationship to the states.

in the states or in parallel to the state as we're trying to build an alternate world, the world that fits many worlds, given how our fires are interrelated and interconnected to one another. So this is part of the goal of that particular chapter. It's working through anti-blackness that exists within Islam, working through the race and religious discussions that I had noted earlier beginning up to open up for a race. And so far as non-racial, non-ethnic conceptualizations of intergenity that also don't play into return to innocence narratives,

and Shereen-Arault points to it or Indian Grandmother's Syndrome where everybody claims a sort of finds of indigenous belonging that takes away from land claims, that takes away from indigenous identities within themselves and where does that stay? Let alone the representation of block quantum politics

and so on and so forth, then also is the other side of that coin. So it is, again, opening up those ferries and that is what that particular chapter is up to do, establishing that woman that is plur reverse for everybody and how everybody would be able to fit in while setting the stage

for how that would look like. Yeah, and I really loved this chapter, I love the whole book, but, you know, this chapter and the next chapter, you're taking concepts that I, as, you know, an American left-wing person are familiar with and you're basically, like, from my perspective, helping me learn about, you know,

Islam and central features within Islam as you're making your broader argument for the purposes of your book. So I'm learning so much listening to you and reading this text about this beautiful Islamic tradition through these concepts like non-authoritarianism and in the Chapter 4 against capitalism.

So if I'm not mistaken, you can correct me if I'm wrong, you're constructing this Anarcha Islam in Chapter 3 by taking up these non-authoritarian commitments within Islam, and then in Chapter 4, you're continuing that construction by arguing against capitalism, again, using concepts already embedded within the Islamic tradition.

So can you summarize your major arguments in this fourth chapter regarding capitalism and kind of outline some of the Islamic concepts you wield in service of this anti-capitalist perspective? Absolutely. So, you know, when I lean down or at least I noted the element of poverty, right? And now, one thing is on everything belongs to that. So ultimately, we will be responsible and are accountable in this world of the maxest of what we do with the supposed belonging, right? it isn't a Protestant ethic that operates vis-a-vis the moniker that when those are essentially the world, the material or non-material, of what it is that they have gained because of what they committed to their life. So it's as anti-Potistant ethic ethos, if you would. There are other dimensions, for instance.

I mean, we're in Ramadan right now, and a lot of people perceive Ramadan is simply an abstaining from intimacy, from food and water during the day, as a mode of self-discipline control and their elements of health that are associated, but it is about the community getting to know one another itself and you. It is the right

Ramadan usually includes with that, with the payment of Zayatil Furtr, which is the right of the poor over the rich. It's not some kind of benevolent charity that is to be given by those that are better off. It's actually the right of the poor over the rich. A lot of Muslims are come about and saying, well, like Pai Maizakaa,

which is whatever sort of percentage of capital or the income that have accumulated in that particular year, that I earned in that particular year, and they will see themselves as well fulfill their historical responsibility, but the problem with that logic is the fact that that is a part of a larger anti-capitalist economic paradigm that exists,

and if you separate it, or if the infrastructure or the structure, the economic structure itself, is not accommodating, if you will, Not only the payment of Zaka, but in principle, it is not built on social justice foundations. The Zaka is not going to attribute because the care is just one component, one small component out of a wider economic framework of social justice that exists.

We have the concept of Vodarabha, of Musharika, which really rests on the idea of cooperative communities that allow room two for professional innovations. If somebody starts a particular project, it checks on balances if somebody begins to abuse, a particular land that was given to that person to begin a particular project by the community within itself. So, yeah, these are some of the decapist concepts of practices

that range from poverty, concepts such as, for instance, Islamic inheritance laws. And we need to sit down and work through that. I mean, that's, again, part of the next look project when I talk about queerness, because in the manifestations of different forms of families, beyond this heteronormative nuclear, family, if you will. But the inheritable thoughts and a slumber is very complicated because their ideas

premised upon the dissemination, if you will, wealth. It's not left to the whim of somebody who is deceased. Rather, a third of the wealth has dedicated towards your immediate family, a third to extend it, family, and a third goes towards a community because of the element

of that being of responsibility. The wealth that is geared towards or money that exists insofar as Baito-Mal, which with house, essentially, mal is just the cause of reclamation to wealth or money that existed in all Muslim communities and all the way that, such that anybody that needed any basic resources

to maintain quality of life. And here the emphasis of the quality of life and not just surviving, actually surviving, had a right to go with that question to Baitl Mal and to get whatever it is that they need, essentially, to live a lot. life of dignity, respect, in relationship to everybody else. So, again, it's, these are just a minor fraction, if you will, of the concepts of practices that have to be also seen conjunction with them one another, because we can't say, well, we're going to apply these etiquette-less concepts and separate them from the anti-authoritarian

principles, because again, they're intertwined with one another because of concepts as Kulafat, because of the fact that we're all careful. caretakers, and that means, again, an element of communal responsibility that is constantly being involved in even decision-making of how things are divided so far as the community amongst itself, and that again entails that the community get to know one another internally. We don't have that nowadays. Usually Muslims will give their Zakaab, detect liberties, as opposed to again meeting those that are published face-to-face to get to know their conditions, to get to know their plights. How else are you supposed to be in solidarity, which is a verb, without actually getting to know the people that you're in solidarity with? And so it is part of the cohesion that is maintained, sustained, at least within that ethical political paradigm,

if one is to put it into practice, that allows for a more just economic framework of reference, while being mindful that again, Muslims should not see human life, natural resources as objects. These are nations and decisions with regard to these nations it needs to value them as subjects

as objects. The decision making with regards to natural resources has to occur vis-a-vis the consensus of the community. So we see all these petro dollar states, these royal families, the way that national resources get contrastated by

if you will, the post-colonial elites is for the one would with no date to be black skin with white mask, redskins with white mask, brownskins with white mask. We all have traitors and sellouts within our own communities. But the way to mitigate that, to cut through

that is through an anti-authoritarian ethic, because it does allow, again, for an alternative paradigm that is an authoritarian that is anterical, and that doesn't give room for somebody to be in that position of power in the first place to be able to confiscate the country's resources or even for

imperial powers to engage in interventionist politics that way. I understand it's a hard mode of organizing because it involves divestment from a lot of the ways that we organize nowadays. At the end of the day, if I'm working with indigenous communities, and this is the land-based component native within Islam or otherwise, if I'm working with indigenous communities, if we're building on the land, on set our colonial lands, we're growing food, age Indian ethics of reciprocity, rationality, and so on and so on, it's over that have removed the necessity that I shall bat when men's in a certain sense. And then it was part of the lesson

that we, ostensibly, in the book, most warringed, mincephs learned from the Zapatistas. They did clear themselves at war with the Mexican state, and very much are so, despite the fact that, you know, we have a leftist parliament there, that takes nothing away from the equation or nothing away from the problems that Mexico still faces, nonetheless. So perhaps opening up the revises of imagination to then movement as this apatist, as that be apisina, that centered anti-authoritarianism

as part of its ethic that way in conjunction to anti-capitalist stands, becomes something that hopefully we can all learn from, because I don't think that this is just an anti-capitalist project that we're fighting. Like I said, it's very much intertwined with

authoritarian politics and the way that we govern, the way that societies are coming, the way that we choose to govern ourselves. So yeah. So we're talking about so much stuff, and I mean the Zapatistas also, of course, as you mentioned in many places, you know, are engaged in a sort of not only revolutionary anti-capitalist, but fundamentally decolonial and is wedded to indigenous movements in Chiapas in southern Mexico, which is obviously essential to any revolution in settler colonial societies. So we're talking about decolonization. We're talking about the possibility of revolution. And whenever I engage in discussions trying to build bridges between major religions and revolutionary left-wing political action, the question of violence always comes up.

I gave a speech recently at ASU where I was arguing for the relationships and residences between Marxism and Buddhism. And I got asked this question in the Q&A segment. Explorations of Christianity in revolutionary politics like liberation theology also prompt such questions. You obviously discussed this in your book as well. So can you give us your thoughts on this, on the question of violence within the context of Islam and anarchism as you outline in the text? Thank you. That's different for a question. You know, we touched upon it before when, you know, I know the fact that no particular tradition has hegemony, if you will, over violence. I mean, we've seen, you know, what, you know, Stalin-Lamanism or Stalinist Leninism is also done. So, again, no particular tradition has jemone or violence as a discourse.

Now, we need to understand what violence is. You know, even the anti-black misogynist, non-the-state of the violence in our hudence, it's better to be violent than the cloak of non-violets to cover very impetus, right? And violence is a tactic. And this is where I sit down, as you know, from the book, and begin to talk about violence is a tactic in a relationship to black power and a relationship to wreck power, as well. But I begin to talk about the taboo concept of jihad.

I very much relates to the concept of each dehad, it's a struggle. And jihad again, I know that the bigger jihad is the jihad against one's inner micro-fascisms, right? The swaller jihad is the actual going to combat, but even jihad is nothing appropriate word to use

in this particular context, because the word for fighting, liberty, for fighting in the Quran, in Qithan, it's not Jihad. Not all forms of Qaeda are Jihad, not all forms of Jihad or Khethan. It's as simple as that. With that sense, is racism, is the sexism, is the queer phobia,

is the classism that any one of us, the abridor, than any one of our experiences every single day, walking down the street, not the form of violence. So that should make a question what violence is in a relationship to, what you call structural and symbolic violence, but then there are also revolutionary violence, as Walter Benjamin, as Rosa Luxembourg, as other, a lot of lustrous had written about historically, right?

there is no revolution without violence. That's the reality. Sorry, I lived that career, and it's very insulting for, you know, a lot of activists perceived that career, and there was a desire to market careers and non-violent operas. And actually, as you know, comrades in Cairo, had to reign a letter back to you because at the time Occupy Wall Street had already started.

To occupy Wall Street, precisely debunking the taboo of violence. How he had over a thousand, two hundred people that were murdered, many much more disappeared, over 60,000 people to be prisoners now. Egypt, you're fighting everybody from prisoner, from prison to military, industrial complexes. You're fighting soldiers, or least that are armed with military-grade equipment. We're not just talking about the global south. We're talking about, you know, both of them.

We're talking about Chicago. We're talking about South Central Chicago. We're talking about, yeah, Ferguson. We're talking about all these different, you know, away things that are faced with repressive brute force. Not only that, but media companies and propaganda companies that try and give shiny veneer image of police forces, let them engage in character assassinations and aspersions with regards to those like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and so on, so forth. I mean, the latency is emptiness.

So as if Black Life Matter don't matter anymore, this is part of, again, the irony. Where are we from how the Panthers were organizing? The Panthers were prepared again and did take over their own neighborhood reading or interested in walking the always in the border of power. I don't remember Malcolm or Martin seeking to become professional politicians.

Malcolm became very disillusioned or starring Martin became very disillusioned with the whole not unbiolate rhetoric, perhaps a reason for his assassination, preparing the poor people's march on Washington and so on and so forth. He became very much vocal and so forth as his anti-imperialism with regards to the Vietnam War

and so on and so forth. So So, yeah, does that put people at risk of assassinations and so on and so forth? Absolutely, when we're talking about a level of horizontal, this is to be connected to their communities that were walking around with bodyguards and so on and so forth. That's the price that you're paying, and that's the reality of revolutions. For new gas to grow, world has to die. Yeah, there were 14-year-olds, you know, youth that I did.

How do we on bear our martyrs? Beyond the remembering, beyond the acts of returning of our stories, we do so by honoring their lives and by creating those alternatives here and now. But the reality is that my life is not worth more than the 14-year-old that died in Bahrir, that were perhaps a few dangers away from myself. So, you know, it's not an easy thing. Revolutions involve, again, asking practical questions. What are you going to do with nuclear power?

What are you going to do with the art? What are you going to do when somebody gets sick? What are you going to do with the garbage? It's not about seizing power. It's about knowing what to do with that supposed power ceased after. And if that is not, there's no plan ever, there are no alternatives that can be shown to masses. Because people are hungry. They're starving.

They're thirsty. They're scared. They're afraid. They're hardening for a different world. And there are all of the different reasons why that different world isn't being achieved. But nonetheless, unless people are willing to take up that responsibility, unless we are engaged in grassroots moralization and organizing, on street corners, within communities, and not just within the upper echelof of the academy, because this is also a creative disconnect and the elitist sort of culture or perception that exists, rightfully, in so many ways, and, you know, problematic and other ways, and so far as really academics as elite. So this is why I identify as an activist scholar, if you will. My goal and my loyalties are towards a community, but violence is unavoidable.

Violence is central to, as Phenon teaches, it's not a violent act when I have to go recurrently and I'm constantly living the reconciliation or the paradox between Islam and anarchism, that I walk into anarchist spaces or that this book that's released and are not perceived as being anarchist enough where I walk into Queensland communities and not being perceived that is Muslim enough. And somebody who's queer, somebody who's queer Islam walks into queer spaces

and is being excluded because where you can't be queer and mother, are they not form of the violence is that we experience every single day? So again, this is part of the liberal effect on language, on communication, on the whitewashing of words. There are rules, of course, and this is what I laid down to Qigel in Islam. And again, it is attacked.

Any revolutionary move, and that this is what I learned from history, but also from examples of the Lapidistas. You need to rethink with all those three things. It's not really much of our revolutionary movement. You need to have the creation of both credits of schools, hospitals, examples by which people can be inspired by. Number two, you need propaganda.

You need knowledge, scenes, documentaries, movies, whatever may be, but of trinative decolonized education. It is interdisciplinary. That is non-filele. And number three, you need to be. for self-defense because of their at least as witness were as any evolutionary movements is witnessed, you won't be

allowed to continue or to thrive in the project there you're out to do, even if you try and go underneath the radar for the most part. I would rather people operate in stealth mode for at least for now, because people aren't prepared. If a revolution were to happen tomorrow, I guarantee people are not prepared because they weren't prepared in career.

Then nobody can anticipate when that moment that will come, but the preparation is, or the ill preparation is quite dismal. Unfortunately, because of the lack of investment in each other's communities that way. And that's a violent encounter to walk into a mosque and have those kinds of debates, let alone on social media, over 140 can't even, right, in which one can completely dismiss or lie, it blocks somebody else, never talk to them again.

I'll stop the way to engage in ethical disagreement. So violence is an inherent part of it. It's an inherent part of our being as we reconcile who and what we honor and as we reconciled the past injustices that were complicit in, let alone the relationship in present, and we found self that

we're becoming in a certain way. Again, it's not a problem that somebody is born white and is born and this or that's not the issue. The issue is the culture's pointless, that even by what people have internalized. As I know that before, we have some of us within our community. We're having to educate our communities

while dealing with traitors while at the same time educating white people while trying to build something. as white people amongst one another, even the oppression Olympics, Della law, building something with white allies. It's very complicated, and of course, against whole literities, it's a hard saying. I can give scenarios in which, you know,

as spreads of color, there is a white anarchist there, and they're the black kin that's there, and a white arrecus behave an act when white lefties behave an act when there's disagreement amongst people of color themselves, this organization of certain color of skin or certain

perspectives or other because they don't force particular white allies or allies in general to think through the baggage that they are bringing into the community within itself. That really takes a lot of a ton of building community as you know is not easy because there's no

implicit reason by which we should trust one another even as by pot people, although maybe we share this in pressure, that because of the injustices that we've internalized a relationship to one another there really isn't a reason for costs And once a building is built and it collapses for whatever reason of mistress, it's very difficult to build that building again.

So the question of egos is the question of violence. The question of mobilization is a question of violence? It's simply unavoidable if we're talking about literal violence. Well, I mean, there are choices. I had to tell my cousin, who was a police officer during the 80 days of her year, that listen, it's either you and you are being called to the career square. I know which side is the front line going to be on. and if at the end of the day,

I'd have to meet you on that battlefield, it's not personal. Again, this is where my loyalty, where this, the element of Tahit comes in. It's about ethical belittle commitments that I'm required to abide by. This isn't about blood. This isn't about family.

This isn't about any of them. There's isn't about being Egyptians. Again, another social client of identity that's not constructed. So there is no way that you can achieve. How are you supposed to, again, re-transform the urban metropolis cultural-politan terrain into the build on the logics of concrete, gray walls, on, you know,

these building science scrapers as if we're going to be thrown God. Next, right? We're going to pierce the sky, the stuff in heaven, they were going to dethrone God. And this is what happens, right? With the whole moniker of God is dead, but Nietzsche was trying to point to something that's far more, I think, nuanced than a lot of people take that statement for.

But violence is an apparent part of our being. That also means the necessity for healing. because a lot of people or the minority that will be required to perhaps fight to actually engage in that sort of physical kind of struggle, predominantly will tend to be men and that patriarchy, whatever, that they bring back, most likely that will be projected upon women, on children within the communities. So there are rules, again, it is a last resort, it is one that we need to be prepared for, because one, again, cannot anticipate the revolutionary our situation. I remember

these debates happening during the career and people being fearful because you're facing that power essentially. But again, it's precisely because there was no, at whether any kind of well thought out or even inspired trajectory taken from histories

that existed before us and that the anteced and preceded the so-called re-implized air friend. We have Wohaka 2006. The uprising there where teacher students took over Oaxaca state and television used it that didn't even really happen in the hair square

for six months for God's sake. Now we could sit down and talk about that scenario why that ended up failing that's a different situation, but nonetheless the level of organization, the level of violence that entails when one is thinking of protests within themselves, their cathartic act, but they're inherently

violent acts too, within themselves given the violence that were exposed to, like I said, every single day. And unless we funnel that violent and productive means, if you will, all we learn from oppression is learning to mimic and repeat it. But yeah,

I understand the danger of perhaps an organized religion, but this has been more prone or more dangerous and insidious that way. But if the religion, the interpretation is inherently disordinated. This is what allows ISIS to prop up on the sea.

When ISIS came on the sea, sure, there were absolutely variances. But there were a reason that hundreds of thousands of Muslims were all ages from different creeds from different nationalities swarmed there and lead to a good knowledge instead of misovined it as awkward or groth and

called in Afghanistan and the army of the British partition and yada yada yada this is all the thought that there is no geography in our lands and so on that imagination spoke now the problem with that idea is that it was grounded in undie problematic ethical political

commitment that were totalitarian and their impetus. But this is also the righteous politics that comes to play. I'll give an example of why. So a lot of liberal Muslims when ISIS came on the scene were just like, well, these are not really

Muslim. Okay, well, you exactly play the same violent thing that they played, because they're accusing you of the exact same thing in a violent way. So instead of you know, and I say this to my students, I see this, the Muslims, I see this to whoever is willing to listen. They probably was in Morocco, whose land had been stolen.

whose mother had been assaulted, whose wife had experienced this, whose daughter experienced that, and so on, I've never had the opportunity to engage or even know what the colonization is. I never went to school. I broke poverty, and so on. Would I not be seduced by the idea, not ISIS? The only way that you put in an idea is by providing

an alternative idea, but all you're going to get. And I've designated ISIS early in the air of spring. I mean, one of the few actually wrote about the fact that Al-Qaeda is going to be a joke in comparison to the iterations that were going to see as a consequence of an absence of, again, a political theological trajectory that accommodates not only Muslim imagination, but Muslim imagination in a relationship to a world that they have become very ambivalent, too. So, yeah, I don't think violence is escapable,

and nonetheless, I do lay the ground rules for the constraints in Islam. You're not allowed to even remove a tree in warfare and lets it offer some strategic, advantage against an enemy that you are fighting in the name of justice and social justice explicitly, right? So it's not just to assert one's own world for you upon an enemy that way, right? No people at houses of worship, no children or elderly or women that are to be armed. Prisoners have rights in terms of treatment, in terms of a lot of different things. So what those rules, Islam had laid down, unlike in Christianity, so far as I get into that, as you know in the book, just add balaam and embalam and that doctrine

as it developed with the papalic legacies to justify the crusade. Islam had laid down that foundation as a last resort. And perhaps when folks read, if they choose to read the book, they'll understand that Muslims were actually forbidden from fighting. For the first good 13, 14, maybe even 15 years, when Islam was first revealed, Muslims had to accept to the fact that they were being persecuted, because the goal was to establish an understanding that whoever is going to embrace this faith, this tradition, that this is about rebuilding the youth, this is by resurgence, this is about community,

and this is about becoming a new other people, if you will, as a humanity, other species, and a relationship to the world that didn't exist. And so arrows were there were parietic people, but there were also people that get very arrogant, and then get into blood fumes, and so on and so forth. And so Islam came to invert that cycle. that listen, the first thing that you don't gravitate towards is the sort. You gravitate towards logic. You gravitate towards debates. You gravitate towards

engaging in these kinds of discussion. And you have to be confident in, again, El Rheid, in the unknown. And so Muslims are being persecuted, they're being tortured, they're being late, and, you know, in the desert, they would have hot rock, laid down on their chests. This is women and men and so on and so forth, heavily, and they engaged, hence, in their first migration from Maca to Medina, then from Medea, Abyssinia, it's only later that they were allowed once they cemented a community, once they provided a predated vision for life, that was now

under imminent tract, that they were allowed to self-defending themselves or self-defendant what they had managed to create as a collectivity. And even in a relationship, if we look at the very early policy in relationship to Jews and Christians were part of that initial polity and whose rights were stipulated and written quite coherently and very transparently in the Medina Charter that the Prophet eventually had devised. So, yeah, I don't think violence,

and I think it's pretty much a fantasy, and it's operating by the colonial set of parameters of what kind of resistance is allowed and what is disallowed, according to civilizational standards that I don't advise by and I'm not interested in abiding by as I see through the liberation

of all our people really collectively together I don't think it's practical at all in the scope of nonviolent terms right so Gene Sharp is highly problematic you know how to conduct and then Peter Gilderose and a lot of other scholars of obviously reign with regards to with regards to this issue of nonviolence

and how nonviolence in a certain sense protect the state especially when you're are being infiltrated so far as Quintel Pro tactics, movement work, trust to that, again, that the state key insofar as our relationship with one another

how far we're willing to go. And I'm not saying that everybody should should go out to war, because as Islam, it's only a few, few shall go out. I do nothing as the matter of and prepare, prepare for the enemy that you're facing.

Prepare for the first. As I noted, it becomes very important because it's not just a matter of just material appropriation, it's physical, it's emotional, it's mental, because of what war entails. And the emphasis on Islam is on treaties. So once we need to give at hand to treaties, but when somebody betrays a treaty once twice, thrice, then one can only take so much. otherwise, as the Quran says, you know, I quote about Qaeda on you, war has been right upon you, and we know that you dislike it. So God is acknowledging the Quran that, of course, war is dislike.

But then God posits this, that, sure, while war is disliked, but would you accept that the people be evicted from their lands? Their women and their children, their wives, raped, pillage, their resources stolen, their men murdered, would that be acceptable? Because that's also a highly problematic extreme. well. So we need an element of moderation, an element of checks and balances that allows room for violence to act, for example, to not be dictated by white supremacy. They don't need to get, I mean, if these are all our streets, and this is the IRB, we're having a woman's march,

and one is being surrounded by drug or happy plops on stolen land as black lives are being herdered and killed and sent a prison and so on, so forth. And yet, people don't want to act in violent ways. Well, you know, that's that's capitulating to white liberal supremacy. And that's a fear of, again, something to lose. But I don't mind expending my life if at the end of the day means that generations will grow up in a different world. And I think some of us are winning and are prepared to make those sacrifices. It's not ever that we should be willing to make those sacrifices, but we need to be able to challenge ourselves and our logics and the limits to which we think of what is dangerously possible and what is not. yeah i could not agree more with your analysis there and honestly that's one of the most robust

and powerful and thoughtful responses to that question that i've ever heard so i deeply appreciate your thoughts on that i am conscious of of your time and i want to be respectful of it so let me ask you one more question before we wrap up with recommendations talk about your new book and where people can find you and the last question i want to ask is ultimately what do you hope readers take away from this book Thank you. Well, it's a fart as, you know, what I hope the readers will take out from the book. And my readership is everybody.

I'm speaking to everybody from Arabis to Marxists to conservatives. They're liberals, they're not progressives, the radicals, they're indigenous to black, or whatever. My hope is people were you saying that people were not sanitized, will not silo, were not sterilized. history that way, that they will be unsettled, and if they feel unsettled, that they will see that there is perhaps a good reason as to why they're being unfettled, and that will cause them perhaps the question, something that they know or presume to know, to think through, to understand that we're not just beings that were constantly the project of becoming, that ideologies have their limits, and I'm not an ideological person, I don't actually believe that ideologies exist because

I'm sorry, Marxism can't answer to all. the questions of the world. Neither can anarchism and neither can slum. It's only, again, as a mutually constitutive relations that these ideas, I can emphasize ideas that are incomplete and how they speak to one another, that we gain a more beautiful, richer, holistic horizon of what a revolution, what tomorrow could look like. The moment that I refuse to put up particular book because it has anarchist or because it has Muslim or because it has whatever it has. The moment that I begin my review of a book like this and I've had at least three anarchists that began the review with this precise statement, we are not experts in Islam,

but we will try and remain as objective as possible. And they basically leave the entire argument of the book and emphasize, well, how can you call Islam feminist when cherry pick them versus the They cherry pick from the Quran, stay, one, two, three, four. A complete aligning of the argument, let alone an introverted reflection on who and what they are in a relationship to their own world, let alone a relationship to the world or world that I am trying to introduce them to. My hope is that readers will read and will read with nuance and will read with attention and will read unreservedly that way and will read and take the heart. Indigenous discourses and what indigenous people are saying on their own terms, not to try and again manipulate so that it suits my agenda. No, no, no, no. Meet indigenous people at where they're. If they are saying that, you know, there's a problem with XYZ movement because it effort promorifies his land, because this is a other state, because indigenous sovereignty is irreconcilable with XYZ, leftist traditions. That needs to be taken to heart. Otherwise, we're simply in politics. opposing, again, your centric logic's

modes of thinking on bipartisan people, which is unacceptable to me. So operating in the realm of complementarity and the realm of conjunctions, don't reify the disjunctive and or logics. Invest in what you're getting to know. And if you're having this reaction, then you need the question as to why that is.

But read, sit with what you're reading, engage the genealogies or citations that I engaged because, again, I'm somebody who try to buy them out of the letter civilizations that takes them very seriously. And I would like to think that people are not going to even read this work, but you're going to go ahead and read the work that Delvonne connects to in so many different ways. So that would be the hope, which turns out of the audience. The hope would be if it's per action that is desperately needed, you know,

particularly for our children. Momiya O Jamal says there comes from immortality and they are the eras which that we should towards infinity. Perhaps I have lived a really blessed life. I would like others to have that same opportunity and if anything I would just simply wish to share what I have

earned over four decades of my own circles around the sun, if you will, with everybody and they can make a bit what they will and not perfect and hardly is this book. Nothing to it is. But hopefully it's one

it's attentive again to as wide as nuanced as struggles as possible. And so far as where people can find my work on not much of a Twitterati. I have yeah, I struggle with torture at social media in general

particularly given its misuse with the Arab Spring, a lot of middle class English-speaking activist unfortunately you know, yeah, if I did a culture which I'm not particularly interested in, although I do have a Twitter account on a Facebook, my Twitter I think is

M-I-N-U-E-T-I-N-G-Mager and yeah it could simply read to be there I have my website listed on there I could often go to my Academia.commodio account and you'll see my work on Islam and queer Muslims with my PhD

that I'm currently working on as far as hopefully the second book as a compliment to this one. And I said this in this book although I did rest, we're in a desk I addressed feminist feminism. And I cited, obviously, literature, Muslim and queer Muslim literature. Nonetheless, that was not the primary objective of this book, because I was trained to establish, again, the anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist framework to what I have to say about gender and queerness based on my PhD work, which hopefully a lot of people will be intrigued by for a lot of years work. And I think, yeah, people will be interested to hear what, you know, per no being. Egyptians to Danish, Egyptian, what gay men and the Egyptian military, let

alone trans-ex workers in Egypt have to say about revolutions and a relationship to queer Muslims over here that are black but not un-black at the same time. So I think in so many ways, although each of my participants' voices are singular in that project, it's inculminating them together that one, again, is able to be inspired by a wider transnational view of liberation that is attuned to, yeah, individual and collective struggles. so I maintain I stay at the same time I do hope though ultimately

that yeah it shifts the narrative that it gets people to think yeah read the book and fan that's burning flames you know welcome its horns and strike a matched up powder you know lay back and witness you know resumed worlds become reed or

but pay watch you know go visit us go transform of the way that you sank or the way that you breathe there's nothing else to do and go do it, and you and the fun in collectivities. That becomes the most important thing. So, yeah, and if you're

to say something, you know, people don't pay attention anymore when you tap them on the shoulder. You have to hit them on the head with a village hammer. That's how you get people with attention. Unfortunately, so anyways, but the point being that, you know, I hope it inspires people. I think people won't thilo it.

That would be a great, you know, shame if that's the case. And that, yeah, they build on it. And it builds on the short comments. Yeah, that's what I essentially would hope for. Yeah. Well, really good books unsettle. They challenge and they teach at the same time.

And this book absolutely unsettles, challenges, and teaches. It challenged me, some of my core ideological commitments. It taught me so much. It unsettled me in certain ways, made me grow by unsettling me. And the book is Islam and anarchism, relationships and residences. I absolutely highly recommend it to anybody. that wants to learn more about Islam, wrestle with these arguments, challenge yourself, unsettle yourself. This is a wonderful, wonderful, and important book, and I am so honored to have had you on, my friend.

And you are welcome back any time when your next book gets released. You want to come back on and talk about it. I would absolutely love to, and I'm looking forward to it. I'll link to all the places people can find you and your work online as well. Thank you very much, Brett, and I'm very very humbled and honored again to be on your show, Luciary Left Radio is one of my favorite thoughts as to be quite an honest and it's certainly one of the regular ones I listen to. So I hope your audience appreciates the episode and I obviously would be humbled to be back sharing time. But nonetheless, thank you very much for your invite

and very humble and honored. Let's go Watch out Hey no stop in the calling I'm a warm in your scholar With the pad and the pen and with the sword and the chopper Look at how far I got it You're lost like a gaugia

In between two extremes like suffer and marwa In the desert like there the winds And social water Said we thirsting from power But in the urban drama Every day our sons and daughters A led to the slaughter Indoctrinated by it complaising social order

Decaptuant They're trying to cut our jugular vein That's a sacred lifeline from the heart to the brain Think us blind to mankind suffering pain Ugliness worldwide is gun in our name So the only thing we see it is what we can gain Precious bloodshed in vain and nothing has changed Drugged up in the days in the comfortable maze

Upscale slaves and luxury cages But the we keep crying and the innocent dying And these are the times when the real freedom fighters gather around Come around Gather round Uh Such a city's catch Fire than the flames broke

Higher than the poor When the fires get inspired And decide to gather around Gather around Would your times get Dyer than the mighty Your liars and the righteous Playing for their life

Get organized And gather around Gather around Come on Gather around Uh Did your bump It's a silence

And the tyrants the giants and David set his sights on Goliath, then we finally gather round. Gather around. Just cost them in bindment, locked in a conflict, wandering lost in an impossible climate, boxed and confinement, democracy hostage, bound for the towers, monsters in the cockpit, following blind, unconscious, a compass, judged by timing, entitled for our silence. A couple years ago, I made a statement. Can't figure single goddamn way to change it

As of late I made adjustments to my language Numbers are the only thing that people gain strength in If we're gonna change we gotta step up our relations Gotta see our own selves in each other's faces Share each other's places give each other voom And give each other's pain bare witness to the truth And the ground gets holy when the ground is stood And the goods may be odd but the odds are good

When the weak keep crying and the innocent, tired and peace are the time When the real freedom fighters gather round Come on Come on Come around Uh Such a city's catch Flyer than the flames grow

Higher than the poor When the fires get inspired And decide to gather around Gather around What your times get Dyer than the mighty Liars and the righteous Flying for their life

Get organized And gather around Gather around Gather round It's a silence and the tyrants and giants And David said his sights on Goli and then we finally gather round That is why I challenge you now We to stand together

Because together we got power And we can make decisions Watch up Justice and someone between readingside clothes And 40 ounces of guys in crack at the windows Justice is between plans and action between writing letters to congressmen and clapping the captain Between raise the legal defense funds and putting a gun on the bailiff And the judge captive it is between prayer and fasting between burning and blasting

Freedom is between the mind and the soul is between the lock and the load Between the seal of the young and the patience of the old freedom is between the finger and the trigger It's between a page and a pen, between the grenade in the pen, between righteous and one keep a one in the chamber. So I say down with Goliath, I say down with Goliath, but we must long, know, write, weed, we must kick, bite, yell, scream, we must pray fast, live, dream, fight, kill, and die free. Thank you.