#Wahhabi movement | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eretzyisrael · 5 months

Text

by Sam Westrop

Recent analysis published by Israeli analysts place Hamas’s annual budget in Gaza at between $2 and $3 billion. At least an estimated $500 million of this is provided by the “Hamas Charity Coalition” and various investment entities. New sanctions imposed by U.S. Department of the Treasury are based on similar conclusions, and target a range of charities and companies.

One named entity in the U.S. government document is the “Gaza-based and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]-affiliated Al-Ansar Charity Association (Al-Ansar),” which “provides millions of dollars … for the families of terrorists affiliated with Hamas and PIJ. Al-Ansar claims to provide funds to families affiliated with these terrorist groups as an extension of Iranian support to the Palestinian people, but the funding ultimately serves as a recruiting tool for terrorist activities.”

Indeed, radical movements have long used charitable programs and promises of social welfare to build a base of support and help with recruitment. Crucially, as the U.S. government realizes, charities do not have to fund Hamas’s terrorist operations directly to benefit the terrorist organization financially or ideologically.

Across the Islamist world, in fact, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeinists, Wahhabis, ISIS, and al-Qaeda and, indeed, Islamist groups all around the world, have made use of charitable programs to expand and consolidate control over Muslim communities. Hamas and other terror groups refer to this approach as da’wa. The term is usually employed to mean a proselytizing call to Islam, but in the case of Islamist movements and its terror offshoots such as Hamas, it serves as a call to Islamism – and thus a vehicle to impose Islamist rule. Counter-terrorism experts and an increasing number of governments note that the use of da’wah through charity facilitates an influx of largely-unchecked foreign funds, helps to recruit to new members, frees up money for violent operations, and serves to sanitize the reputation of terror movements.

Much of the charitable work is indeed real, but it still serves to benefit terror. In Gaza, for instance, decades ago, Hamas came to the fore by distinguishing itself, through its charitable work, from the incompetence and corruption of the PLO. While Palestinian nationalists embezzled millions, their Islamist rivals set up medical clinics, orphanages and summer camps for Palestinian youth, winning grassroots support. Decades earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt pioneered a similar approach.

The designation of Al-Ansar is certainly not the first time the link between charity and terror has been officially recognized. After the 9/11 attacks, Western governments quickly came to realize, with horror, the ease with which these foreign terrorist organizations could exploit nonprofit industries. Worse still, Western governments eventually began to notice that extremist networks within Western Muslim communities were willing to set up nonprofits on behalf of these foreign terrorist groups.

In response, a slew of prosecutions, designations and bans across America and Europe during the 2000s shut down significant numbers of these Islamist charities, but political enthusiasm for prosecutions and investigations eventually waned. Since then, a decade of lax oversight and fears over the political fallout from new prosecutions has allowed the Islamist nonprofit industry to grow once again.

Nonetheless, in 2010, the solicitor-general, Elena Kagan, now on the Supreme Court, reiterated that “Hezbollah builds bombs. Hezbollah also builds homes. … When you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs.”

Today, however, the law is still simply not being enforced. The activities of terror-aligned charities are largely ignored by law enforcement and policy-makers. Sometimes, the taxpayer even funds these radical charities through a wide array of obscene government grant programs.

There is a broader problem too. A search by the Middle East Forum of electronically-filed Schedule F forms (part of nonprofits’ 990 tax returns) – which are supposed to disclose foreign spending by 501(c)s – for mentions of “Palestine” or “Palestinian(s)” yielded hundreds of millions of dollars of expenditures in the Palestinian territories in recent years, with hundreds of millions more likely uncountably listed under broader regional terms such as “Middle East.” Actual recipient names are redacted or unprovided, making the true amounts going to Gaza impossible to track properly.

Nonetheless, through open-source investigation, in the wake of the October 7th attacks, Focus on Western Islamism has put together a list of Islamist nonprofits in the United States, along with fellow travelers, which we believe make-up a major Hamas-aligned charitable industry in North America. Through searches of the electronic 990 filings, we have also gathered and summarized these charities’ top funders through the 501(c) system, totaling a worrying $262 million.

(Note: 501(c)s’ 990 Tax Returns occasionally contain inaccurate information. Misspelled names, incorrect EIN numbers, among other problems. Every effort has been made to ensure the funding data is comprehensively accurate and the grantees listed in these 990s are indeed the nonprofits listed in this report, although it remains possible that a negligible number of false positives have made their way into the final data.)

By Hamas-aligned, we mean that our list comprises charities that have previously collaborated with Hamas or related terror groups, funded charitable proxies for Hamas in the Gaza Strip, or employed officials who publicly express support for Hamas with apparent impunity. A second list of additional Islamist charities with extremist histories relevant to their work in Gaza, but whose current involvement with Hamas or Hamas proxies is unknown, is also included. The charities in both lists (see table of comments) deserve close investigation by media, law enforcement and policymakers.

Hamas-Aligned Charities

Rahma Worldwide Aid & Development

Rahma Worldwide, also known as Rahma Relief, is a Michigan charity run by Shadi Zaza.

#hamas #gaza #hamas aligned charities

17 notes · View notes

indizombie · 10 months

Text

Ideologically, Savarkar was entirely a European product. He was the chief Indian heir to the European concept of cultural nationalism which emerged at the end of the 19th century. As a belief system, it later metamorphosed into Fascism and Nazism which eventually destroyed Europe. Thus Savarkar’s thoughts and beliefs were all rooted in 19th century Europe… Savarkar was a fundamentalist. In a word, he was a “Hindu Wahhabi”. His was a nationalist fundamentalism. Borrowing the concept of a Hindu nation from Indian antiquity, he constructed a fundamentalist movement around it. Savarkar’s was the first home-grown fundamentalist thought to emerge on Indian soil. He was the father of Hindu fundamentalism.

B Jeyamohan, ‘Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: Fountainhead of fundamentalism in India’, Frontline

#India #Frontline #B Jeyamohan

4 notes · View notes

rezapci · 2 years

Photo

Al-Baqi cemetery, the oldest and one of the two most important Islamic graveyards located in Medina, in current-day Saudi Arabia, was demolished[2] in 1806 and, following reconstruction in the mid-19th century, was destroyed again in 1925[3]: 55 or 1926.[2][4] An alliance of the House of Saud and the followers of the Wahhabi movement known as the Emirate of Diriyah carried out the first demolition. The Sultanate of Nejd, also ruled by the House of Saud and followers of Wahhabism, carried out the second. In both cases, the actors were motivated by the #Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, which prohibits the building of monuments on graves. (at Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdWI8gGO1sU/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#wahhabi

4 notes · View notes

madianh666 · 7 months

Text

scholar of islamic learning

A scholar of Islamic learning is a person who has studied Islam in depth and has a deep understanding of its teachings. Scholars of Islamic learning are often experts in a particular area of Islamic studies, such as Quranic studies, Hadith studies, Islamic law, or Islamic theology.

Scholars of Islamic learning play an important role in Muslim communities. They teach Islamic studies at universities and seminaries, write books and articles about Islam, and give lectures and sermons. They also provide guidance and advice to Muslims on a variety of topics related to Islam.

Some of the most famous scholars of Islamic learning include:

Imam Abu Hanifa (699-767 CE): A founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islamic law.

Imam Malik (711-795 CE): A founder of the Maliki school of Sunni Islamic law.

Imam al-Shafi'i (767-820 CE): A founder of the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islamic law.

Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855 CE): A founder of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islamic law.

Al-Ghazali (1058-1111 CE): A Muslim theologian and philosopher.

Ibn Rushd (1126-1198 CE): A Muslim philosopher and physician.

Ibn Sina (980-1037 CE): A Muslim philosopher and physician.

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328 CE): A Muslim theologian and jurist.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792 CE): A founder of the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam.

These are just a few of the many scholars of Islamic learning who have made significant contributions to the understanding and practice of Islam. Scholars of Islamic learning continue to play an important role in Muslim communities today.

I hope this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

1 note · View note

therewasabrowncrow · 7 months

Text

'Beating a vat by hand’, a photograph by French surgeon Oscar Mallitte, from The Planting & Manufacture of Indigo in India, 1877. Courtesy Getty Museum

Dudu Miyan and the Bengal Peasant Revolt:

Today I came across Dudu Miyan (1819-62) who led the Faraizi movement ফরায়েজি আন্দোলন set up by his father for the rights of tenants. He was brought up in a paper by sociologist Irfan Ahmed on why Dudu Miyan's rebellion is not included among the many anti imperialist revolts :

*W.W. Hunter’s use of the term ‘Wahhabi’ was part of the imperialist strategy to classify every resistance by Muslims against Western imperialism from Africa to Asia into one enemy, i.e. Muslims/Islam. The Bengal peasants resisting the British did not call themselves Wahhabi, though (Ahmad 2015; Dallal 1993). *Bose’s (1969) debt to colonial-orientalist epistemology was so unwavering that he did not consider the rebellion led by Dudu Mian as ‘revolt’ because those enacting it were mostly Muslims.

*William Wilson Hunter was a Scottish historian and member of Indian civil service

*Nirmal Kumar Bose was director of Anthropological Society of India from 1959 to 1964.

The supporters of the movement were mainly depressed Muslim cultivators, meeting landless labourers oppressed by Hindu landlords or new class of European indigo planters who treated them almost as plantation slaves. Dudu Miyan asserted the equality of man before God and campaigned against the levy of illegal cesses by landlords on the ground that money screwed from Muslim peasants might be spent on Hindu religious rites. He organised violent resistance to the levy of such cesses. Some landlords retaliated by torturing their tenants to discourage them from joining the faraizis. The British administration in Bengal which was responsible for the permanent settlement which had conferred such advantages upon landlords over cultivators, held the balance tilted in favour of the landlords, by trying to enforce the law and order of the status quo.

In 1847 Dudu Miyan and 63 of his followers were convicted by the Sessions Judge of Faridpur of setting fire to an indigo factory at Panch Char belonging to a Mr. Dunlop. The conviction was quashed on appeal to the Calcutta Sadr Nizamat Adalat (Chief Criminal Court) on the ground of the un-trustworthiness of the prosecution's evidence. Before he died Dudu Miyan had turned a missionary brotherhood into a military brotherhood. This is how it was structured in village, township and district level. Dudu Miyan was himself an ustad ( chief).

They (led by Titu Mir) were even hostile to Muslim zamindars . After the death of Titu Mir by government forces this agrarian revolt was snuffed out.

ref: The Muslims of British India P Hardy (1972)

#Bengali history

0 notes

brookstonalmanac · 1 year

Text

Events 4.21

753 BC – Romulus founds Rome (traditional date). 43 BC – Battle of Mutina: Mark Antony is again defeated in battle by Aulus Hirtius, who is killed. Antony fails to capture Mutina and Decimus Brutus is murdered shortly after. 900 – The Laguna Copperplate Inscription (the earliest known written document found in what is now the Philippines): the Commander-in-Chief of the Kingdom of Tondo, as represented by the Honourable Jayadewa, Lord Minister of Pailah, pardons from all debt the Honourable Namwaran and his relations. 1092 – The Diocese of Pisa is elevated to the rank of metropolitan archdiocese by Pope Urban II 1506 – The three-day Lisbon Massacre comes to an end with the slaughter of over 1,900 suspected Jews by Portuguese Catholics. 1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII. 1526 – The last ruler of the Lodi dynasty, Ibrahim Lodi is defeated and killed by Babur in the First Battle of Panipat. 1615 – The Wignacourt Aqueduct is inaugurated in Malta. 1782 – The city of Rattanakosin, now known internationally as Bangkok, is founded on the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya River by King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke. 1789 – John Adams sworn in as 1st US Vice President (nine days before George Washington) 1789 – George Washington's reception at Trenton is hosted by the Ladies of Trenton as he journeys to New York City for his first inauguration. 1792 – Tiradentes, a revolutionary leading a movement for Brazil's independence, is hanged, drawn and quartered. 1802 – Twelve thousand Wahhabis sack Karbala, killing over three thousand inhabitants. 1806 – Action of 21 April 1806: A French frigate escapes British forces off the coast of South Africa. 1809 – Two Austrian army corps are driven from Landshut by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon as two French corps to the north hold off the main Austrian army on the first day of the Battle of Eckmühl. 1821 – Benderli Ali Pasha arrives in Constantinople as the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire; he remains in power for only nine days before being sent into exile. 1836 – Texas Revolution: The Battle of San Jacinto: Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. 1856 – Australian labour movement: Stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne march from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House to achieve an eight-hour day. 1894 – Norway formally adopts the Krag–Jørgensen bolt-action rifle as the main arm of its armed forces, a weapon that would remain in service for almost 50 years. 1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports. When the U.S. Congress issued a declaration of war on April 25, it declared that a state of war had existed from this date. 1914 – Ypiranga incident: A German arms shipment to Mexico is intercepted by the U.S. Navy near Veracruz. 1918 – World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux-sur-Somme in France. 1926 – Al-Baqi cemetery, former site of the mausoleum of four Shi'a Imams, is leveled to the ground by Wahhabis. 1934 – The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1994, it is revealed to be a hoax). 1945 – World War II: Soviet forces south of Berlin at Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters. 1946 – The U.S. Weather Bureau publish a paper which stated the width of a tornado which struck the city of Timber Lake, South Dakota was 4 miles (6.4 km), which would make this the widest tornado ever documented in history. 1948 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 47 relating to Kashmir conflict is adopted. 1952 – Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated. 1958 – United Airlines Flight 736 collides with a United States Air Force fighter jet near Arden, Nevada in what is now Enterprise, Nevada. 1960 – Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 09:30, the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro. 1962 – The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II. 1963 – The first election of the Universal House of Justice is held, marking its establishment as the supreme governing institution of the Baháʼí Faith. 1964 – A Transit-5bn satellite fails to reach orbit after launch; as it re-enters the atmosphere, 2.1 pounds (0.95 kg) of radioactive plutonium in its SNAP RTG power source is widely dispersed. 1965 – The 1964–1965 New York World's Fair opens for its second and final season. 1966 – Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day. 1967 – A few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel George Papadopoulos leads a coup d'état, establishing a military regime that lasts for seven years. 1972 – Astronauts John Young and Charles Duke fly Apollo 16's Apollo Lunar Module to the Moon's surface, the fifth NASA Apollo Program crewed lunar landing. 1975 – Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyễn Văn Thiệu flees Saigon, as Xuân Lộc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls. 1977 – Annie opens on Broadway. 1982 – Baseball: Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers becomes the first pitcher to record 300 saves. 1985 – The compound of the militant group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord surrenders to federal authorities in Arkansas after a two-day government siege. 1987 – The Tamil Tigers are blamed for a car bomb that detonates in the Sri Lankan capital city of Colombo, killing 106 people. 1989 – Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang. 1993 – The Supreme Court in La Paz, Bolivia, sentences former dictator Luis García Meza to 30 years in jail without parole for murder, theft, fraud and violating the constitution. 2004 – Five suicide car bombers target police stations in and around Basra, killing 74 people and wounding 160. 2010 – The controversial Kharkiv Pact (Russian Ukrainian Naval Base for Gas Treaty) is signed in Kharkiv, Ukraine, by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev; it was unilaterally terminated by Russia on March 31, 2014. 2012 – Two trains are involved in a head-on collision near Sloterdijk, Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, injuring 116 people. 2014 – The American city of Flint, Michigan switches its water source to the Flint River, beginning the ongoing Flint water crisis which has caused lead poisoning in up to 12,000 people, and 15 deaths from Legionnaires' disease, ultimately leading to criminal indictments against 15 people, five of whom have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. 2019 – Eight bombs explode at churches, hotels, and other locations in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday; more than 250 people are killed. 2021 – Indonesian Navy submarine KRI Nanggala (402) sinks in the Bali Sea during a military drill, killing all 53 on board.

#Events

0 notes

tellingittash · 1 year

Text

Religious Studies Term Of The Day: Hindutva

Hey everyone. Today I wanted to talk about a movement within the Hindu traditions: Hindutva. Literally translated, it means “Hinduness.” This idea of Hinduness is important politically and religiously in modern India because they are the terms used by fundamentalists to bring about a call to return to tradition.

Let’s think about fundamentalists for a second. In the West, we are more familiar with fundamentalists movements in Abrahamic traditions. Haredi Jews, Wahhabi Muslims, and Fundamentalist Christians come to mind as movements within the faith calling for strict readings of their texts and shunning of modern interpretations and acceptances of modern progress in many different forms, even in opposition against other pretty conservative versions of their own faiths, and especially against the corrupting influences of other forms of religious worldviews.

This is not fully helpful when talking about Hindu nationalism.

The similarities are, in fact, that they do seem to be reactionary in so far as to religious and political influences and seek to reclaim a Hinduness that is pure. This means that they reject forms of western thought and faith that would destroy their Hindu traditions, such as religious ideology that their ways of worship are idolatry and that they should only worship one true god, or political ideology that says that since women and equal to men, then it must follow that they should be allowed to do the exact same things me do in their roles. They want to go back to a Hindu tradition that has women and men equal, but in separate roles, (which is how the movement tends to put it) and gets rid of the powerful religious traditions that undermine their faith’s legitimacy.

What makes them different from fundamentalist movements in Abrahamic faiths is that they are pretty inclusive. They don’t care what kind of god you serve, or even if you worship a god, or what path of liberation you follow or what you even what texts you read or your interpretations of them. As long as you are a Hindu, and they can easily recognize how you express your Hinduness, they don’t really seem to care about much else. Some would even argue that they don’t even care if you aren’t a Hindu, just as long as you adhere to the idea that India should be a Hindu nation you will be fine. You can worship Jesus all you want, just as long as I can worship Shiva next door and you don’t tell me I have to stop doing that and worship Jesus instead.

However, it would be ignorant for me to ignore the critics of Hindutva who point out that while some women are happy to live their life as mothers and wives, others are not, and want to do more and they should still be considered Hindu regardless, and yet the women’s movement in India is seen by many fundamentalists as selfish and contrary to Hinduism. Likewise, while it would be wrong to delegitimize the movement by just saying it is bigoted against other faiths, that inclusiveness it proclaims has had some limits. We cannot ignore criticism of the Hindu nationalists who seek to strip away citizenship from those who are not Hindus, and that Muslims and Sikhs have especially seen intense persecution within India, violently and fatally so, despite these people being as Indian as their fellow Hindus. It’s a lot to take in, and we need to think about this stuff.

But again, I’m an outsider. I’m always happy to be educated by either side of this movement. But for now, I hope that you are all having a great day and they you’re staying safe out there.

0 notes

tamamita · 8 months

Note

hey sal what is wahhabism and how does it differ from the talibans?

Wahhabism is an ultra-orthodox and traditionalist interpretation of Sunni Islam that was initially introduced by the likes of Muhammad ibn abdul Wahab (son of Abdul Wahab). This movement was founded during backed be the house of Saud after ibn Abdul Wahab formed a pact with Muhammad bin Saud, providing the house of Saud with military backing, so that they could oust the Ottoman Turks. While the Saudi states failed during several occassions ever since, the British backed the House of Saud during the first world war for their oil and their mutual opposition to the Turks, leading to the creation of Modern Saudi Arabia with Wahhabism as its official religions.

Wahhabism follows a traditional interpretation of Sunni Islam and rejects the idea of metaphorical and rationalist traditional exegesis, this contrasts with earlier Islamic schools of theology, like the Asherites and Maturidis. Wahhabism is a reactionary/revivalist movement that sought to purify Islam from heresies. This would involve strict monotheistic interpretations, such as iconoclams, rejection of intercession, destruction of shrines, opposition to the idea of religious schools of thought (Madhabs) and the strict abandonment of religious innovations (Bid'ah). Due to this strict form of Sunni Islam, Shi'a Muslims and other Muslim minorities were particularly at odds with their interpretation and massacred as a result. Due to their opposition to Taqlid, the idea that one should conform to the teachings of past juridical opinions, Wahhabists emphasised the concept of Ijtihad, to derive Islamic laws through independent reasoning.

The Talibans are a movement that adhered to the Hanafi school of thought knowns as Deobandi, and ultimately follow the idea of Madhabs and Taqlid. They were originally part of the Mujahideen, a group of fighters during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and were funded by the US. Due to a power struggle within that group, a faction of the Mujahideen became known as the Taliban and imposed an Islamic theocracy. With that said, the Talibans and Wahhabis are in stark contrast with each other due to their interpretation of Islamic law and theology. Due to deriving their laws from the classic scholar, Abu Hanif, Wahhabists often condemn the Talibans for adhering to Taqlid, whereas the Talibans reject the idea of Ijtihad, condemning the Wahhabist for not adhering to one of the four Sunni Islamic schools of thought. The Talibans are known to adhere to Pasthuwali, which is a code of conduct generally practiced in the Pashtun belt (Eastern Afghanistan & Western Pakistan) known for its rather brutal rules.

132 notes · View notes

talkshirt59 · 2 years

Text

10 Kinds Of Spirituality And Non Secular Practices

Feng Shui Environment Abundance Flow Review contemplate themselves as the unique true proponents of this pure authentic form of Islam. They are sturdy adherents to the principal of tolerance, peace and against any type of violence. The Sufi have suffered extreme persecution by extra inflexible and fundamentalist teams such as the Wahhabi and Salafi movement. In 1843 the Senussi Sufi have been pressured to flee Mecca and Medina and head to Sudan and Libya. The best recognized type of Islamic mystic spirituality is the Sufi tradition by which a Sheikh or pir transmits spiritual self-discipline to students. One may describe a spiritual experience as being sacred or transcendent, or plainly a real sense of liveliness and feeling interconnected, or pure gratitude. You can belong to a non secular group and nonetheless be non secular, and vice versa. So, what is the distinction between religion and spirituality? The Spiritual Importance scale (SI; 35), is an instrument developed to evaluate students’ understanding of the significance of spiritual issues associated to the Spirituality and Clinical Care. What's special about crystals is that they can positively work together together with your physique's vitality subject or chakra. Each crystal holds specific fields that assist with a selected quality like destressing or creativity. What does change significantly is interest in an inner journey. Numerous scholars have noticed that middle and later life involve an experience of more and more transcendent aspects of inner life (Alexander et al.; Erikson et al.; Thomas). Achenbaum and Orwoll tied the development of knowledge to an more and more transcendent perspective towards oneself, toward relationships with others, and towards worldly goals. As age increases, many individuals perceive themselves as having increasingly transcendent attitudes. They take more delight in their inside world, are less fearful of death, and really feel a greater connection to the whole universe (Tornstam; Atchley). Some who write about non secular growth emphasize the continuing nature of non secular growth. Examples include the practice of obedience and communal possession, reforming ego-orientedness into other-orientedness. Somatic practices, especially deprivation and diminishment. Diminishment issues the repulsement of ego-oriented impulses. According to Guru Nanak, the goal is to achieve the "attendant steadiness of separation-fusion, self-other, action-inaction, attachment-detachment, in the middle of day by day life", the polar reverse to a self-centered existence. Nanak talks additional about the one God or akal that permeates all life).

#Spirituality for Beginners #Spirituality Explained #What Is Spirituality #Science of Spirituality #Spirituality Vs Religion #Beerbiceps Spirituality #Beginners Guide to Spirituality #Spiritually Gifted #Spirituality 2.0 #Spirituality Cult #Spirituality Books #Spirituality Tiktok #Spirituality Tik Tok #New Age Spirituality #Spirituality Journey #Spirituality Tiktoks #Spirituality Tik Toks #Spirituality Ft Stena #Spirituality Retreat

1 note · View note

antoine-roquentin · 4 years

Note

what actually happened (and is happening) in yemen? who is on what side? why?

i keep trying to write this question and coming up with pages and pages of text, so i hope this keeps it simple enough. part of it stems from the way that yemen was historically very important in the world economy, right up until the industrial revolution made it irrelevant. part of it is due to 2 centuries of colonialism. part of it is due to 3000 years of fractious traditions in which every tribe was willing to switch sides and oppose state development as long as it paid well. if i can describe the most current situation, basically, there’s a long tradition of north and south yemen being separated that’s just as long as the tradition of them being united. their climates are different and that leads to different economic development. since the north is more temperate, it tended to be more urbanized and to have a much greater population. however, since it’s also more mountainous, it also had more nomads who didn’t like adhering to a state. nomads can hide their main source of revenue, whereas farmers tend to be predictable and thus easily taxable. think the turks and the kurds, the chinese and tibetans, the english and scots, etc. the red sea coast, divided between north yemen and the part of saudi arabia around mecca, has more than half of the entire arabian peninsula’s population of 77 million. south yemen has about as many people as oman, 5 million. north yemen likes to control south yemen, and south yemen likes to sometimes trade with the north when it’s valuable and sometimes renegotiate when it’s not. it’s also much closer in religious form to the wahhabi gulf states, whereas north yemen, with its mountainous terrain, didn’t have much contact with the outside world historically and ended up with a majority shi’ite population. in both cases, ideology was more about who was paying which tribe to shoot whoever else, not really about aims.

historically the region was divided, initially cause the brits colonized the south and the ottomans the north, later because it was good to keep what could be the main military threat to saudi oil (28 million people in combined yemen, 33 million in saudi arabia) divided. the brits set up a loyal monarchy in former ottoman territory that would push out any outside influences, like media and industrialization. in the 50s and 60s, you had nationalists, backed by egypt and the soviets, against monarchists, backed by the saudis and the westerners, in the north. a lot of people died, and a lot of guns were poured into the country. in the south, a trade union movement ended up pushing the brits out and starting a marxist government supported by the soviets. by the 70s, egypt had switched sides to the west, and the west had started backing the nationalists because they didn’t want north yemen to be divided against the marxist south. the marxists struck oil, spent it on more guns, then found out the oil and the soviet support was running out in 1990. they made a deal with the north for a united state, in the hopes that the americans would pay everyone. the americans demanded elections, and the north had more votes. the south revolted, and was crushed, but people were still pissed off.

the americans backed the northern president, saleh, as long as he did their bidding. in the 2000s, that meant allowing drone strikes wherever they wanted. officially the saudis supported the government, but unofficially there were lots of rich folks who wanted the region to be ruled by a religious caliphate and not a secular government. cue endless battles between al qaeda and american drones and raids, in which tons of innocent people were slaughtered. confidence in saleh fell, and around 2010 peaceful protests were taken advantage of by his vice president hadi to push him out of power. hadi had backing from the west and the saudi supported party, al-islah, so he held a presidential election against exactly 0 opponents and won. saleh was pissed, and supported an existing group called the houthis, mostly home grown from that previously mentioned group of cloistered shi’ite nomads but with a bit of backing from the iranians, to push hadi out of power. this pissed off a bunch of people with similar objectives. al qaeda, isis, and al-islah didn’t like being ruled by shi’ites, and southerners who did not support those groups but were still shut out after 1990 didn’t like being ruled by a northerner (these guys are backed by the UAE). for the most part, the houthis have kept their ground in the north, again, just like the kurds fighting turkey or whatever. they ended up holding the loyalty of enough of saleh’s supporters in the army that they could dispose of the man himself. meanwhile, in the south, the dudes backed by the UAE, the dudes backed by the Saudis, and the dudes not backed by either have gotten into a deadlock, and have ultimately started fighting amongst themselves. moreover, this intervention has been pretty expensive at a time of low oil prices, so most of the foreign sponsors want to pull out. the saudis and uae used to pay sudanese troops to fight for them, but they got to be too expensive and were pulled out. this still means the ultimate goal of keeping the country divided is still ensured, but the saudis, the gulf states and the west (who have helped the saudis under the table) would prefer a stable puppet to an unstable quagmire.

#Anonymous

73 notes · View notes

menalez · 3 years

Note

Hi, would you mind explaining a bit about Wahhabi Islam and Sunni vs. Shia and where it all fits in? To my knowledge, Shia is more tolerant than Sunni, and Wahhabi is the most extreme form of Sunni and is practiced in countries like Saudi Arabia. It's also the root of movements like Al Qaeda and Isis. Thanks in advance!

i wouldn’t say shia are more tolerant than sunnis. moreso that, sunnis are the majority of muslims (80-ish%) and the rest are shi’a, making shi’a the numerical minority & the minority in every sense in most muslim countries. in bahrain, my country, shi’a are the numerical majority but are a minority in terms of government representation and are, more or less, treated like a minority. because sunnis are the majority, usually they are the oppressors of shi’a. however in shi’i-majority countries like iran, that is not the case. but that doesn’t mean that shi’a are more tolerant. in my opinion, all that tells us is that shi’a have less power in the muslim world (not referring to every single country, as there are exceptions to this like iran).

keep in mind that if you were to ask a wahhabi this, theyd feel very differently and oppose what i have to say, but this is from my experience as someone who lives in the gulf & who grew up in a country neighbouring saudi, where wahhabism is more prominent. wahhabis will hold many similar beliefs to other muslims, namely sunni muslims, but they are more extreme with those beliefs. wahhabis strongly believe women should be covered, with that usually meaning that women must at LEAST wear a niqab. they oppose homosexuality and think homosexuals should be stoned to death. gender non-conformity is also haram. alcohol is out of the question, to them it is also haram. sex outside of marriage, adultery, and a lot of sex acts even between two, married, heterosexual people are considered haram. any religion that isn’t wahhabi islam is wrong and must be punished. “idol worship” (which is used very leniently by them most times, to them shi’a partake in that) is haram. wahhabis tend to be very strict and black & white when it comes to their beliefs. and they tend to harshly punish those who do not follow their beliefs. the origin of wahhabism is saudi arabia, and saudi’s government is based on such ideals. you are right that this is also the form of islam that ISIS and al-qaeda follow. think of saudi arabia as an example of “moderate” wahhabism and those aforementioned groups as wahhabi extremists.

as for the difference between sunnism and shi’ism, its not as massive as its been made. its kinda similar to protestants vs catholics. the sects came about after the death of the prophet muhammad, some believed that the rightful ruler of the caliphate should be his relative imam ali (shi’a) and some believed that the rightful ruler is the friend of muhammad that succeeded him, abu bakr (sunnis). this difference led to a separation between the two groups, with slightly different interpretations of a few quranic verses, and different people regarded as correct on islam in the hadiths (sunnis follow the “sahaba” of the prophet + the prophet + the quran, shi’a follow the family of the prophet + the prophet + the quran). thats the best way i can summarise it,, i hope that helped!

#Anonymous

5 notes · View notes

cyberneticpeoplespolis · 4 years

Text

Covid 19 and the New Era

Initially published on the OA blog here.

Part 1: Goodbye to the end of History

31 years ago, US political writer Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay titled The end of history. In it, he summed up what many were feeling at the conclusion of the Cold War: without a grand historical conflict between world superpowers, what further challenges could there be to the system we live under today: capitalist liberal-democracy? In this essay, and his later books, he wrote that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, most world governments would shift towards a liberal democracy, with an emphasis on transnational government much like the European Union, and with this new epoch would come a period of unparalleled peace. Events might still occur, he said, but the overall trend of civilisation would be towards endless peace, endless profit, and endless technological advancement that would eventually lead to humans having control over their own evolution.

What Fukuyama might not have predicted is that his simple thesis would become one of the most criticised essays of all time. Barely had the ink dried on his paper when scores of writers poked holes in his analysis – something very easy to do, for Fukuyama wasn’t much of a philosopher, but rather a political hack who summed up the dominant view among liberal thinkers at the time. In this, he was wholly successful, but he also ended up being correct in ways his critics couldn’t have predicted.

The next 31 years of history were some of the most uneventful, in terms of real movement, of any decades that had passed before – sure, not all countries became liberal democracies, and sure, history continued to chew up innocent lives and spit them back out, and sure, a few terrorists showed up here and there – but it seemed that no single event could ever truly change things beyond occupying the evening news for a few weeks. We have just emerged from the one of the most viscerally boring periods in human history, at least for the more sheltered populations in the west, and it’s important to recognise this.

Fukuyama’s end of history was not a new thesis: as the postmodernist Jaques Derrida, was quick to point out, Fukuyama had simply regurgitated some of the most turgid liberal philosophies of the early Cold-War era; the idea that liberal-democracy had emerged victorious, and that socialism had been proved wrong once and for all through the many perceived failures of Soviet societies. All that had changed was that Fukuyama said it at the right time: it truly was the end, capitalism had found its perfect justification in neoliberalism, a set of ideologies based in the idea that capitalism was a perfect, trans-historical goal of humanity, that only needed to be sufficiently untethered from regulation and sufficiently protected by a growing military and police forces in order to function properly. In this proper version of capitalism, untethered from the need to legitimise itself in the face of opposing ideologies, there was no need for capitalist societies to change to face new threats, for what can challenge an ideology that is so totalising it can convince people that it’s the only thing that exists? The only thing that has ever existed. A universal default.

In that sense, Fukuyama was perfectly right. History did grind to a halt for three decades. Not just the history of those decades, but all history, for every society throughout history could be painted as nothing but a stepping stone to this universal conclusion. There was no challenge to neoliberalism in that time, no great ideological foe to defeat, no workers’ movement to crush, and the best that the neoliberal states could offer up as some immense civilisational enemy was a pitiful force of Wahhabi terrorists – a by-product of the previous era, and therefore hardly a new historical agent. All that was left for the world to do was to reckon with the leftovers of the Cold-War period (the Wahhabis, remnant socialist societies, and shrinking unions), products of the last true period of historical movement, and wait for whatever technological innovation that would come next and inject some feeling of forward momentum into an otherwise stagnant society.

In time, even technology failed to deliver a feeling of progress. Each new technology of the period wasn’t truly new: all that capitalism could deliver was slightly faster and more powerful versions of technologies based in the previous era of major public scientific investments. Internet, wi-fi, cell phones, miniaturised processors, satellite communications – every single one of these technologies was a product of Cold-War era military or public scientific investment, albeit with a better marketing team. It is almost as if capitalists could produce no new innovation whatsoever, other than a faster, slimmer version of existing tech, that broke more often.

In this sense, one of the two defining features of the past 30 years that gave life a sense of movement and progress, communications technology, proved to be nothing but a latent product of the previous era, that came up against a wall as soon as the legacy technologies it relied upon reached the limits of exploitability. The same would soon be proven true of the other great symbol of neoliberal progress: economic growth.

Since the beginning of the end of history, economic growth has skyrocketed. Only part of this was due to imperialism – the ability for strong states with financial capital to spare to offload their surpluses onto the global south. That would have been a source of actual value were it the primary cause of this continuous economic boom, since it would have meant greater exploitation of labour. Instead capitalism developed along the much easier route – pure speculation in financial markets and tech companies, both of which are largely phantasmal.

Capital was creating a bubble – not of any one market, such as the late 90s tech bubble or the late 2000s housing bubble, but rather it was making a bubble out of capitalism as a whole. Who could have guessed what would pop it?

Part 2: What the fuck is going on?

Sometime around December 1, 2019, a few people got sick in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Many writers have spent thousands of hours speculating about the potential causes of transmission. Was it from a shopper at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market? Did the disease come from the actual produce at this market? Was it a bioweapon? Was it a bat? A Pangolin? Was everyone at the market just too weird and Chinese to not get the disease? What comparatively few news sites have focused on was how on earth a virus could cause an economic crisis so great that we have nothing to truly compare it to.

This is because it could have been anything. It could have been a completely different virus in a completely different country, it could have been a sudden war erupting, it could have been a plane crash, it could have been a Wall Street Executive slipping on a banana peel. The system of global financial markets had been systematically hollowed out and prepared in every possible way to collapse at the drop of a hat sooner or later. To understand how, we need to understand three things: the underlying philosophy of neoliberalism, the way a modern financial market operates, and the general theory of economic crisis put forward by Karl Marx in his unfinished third volume of Capital.

Under neoliberalism, austerity is everything. The existence of everything, often including human life, has to be justified in terms of cost-effectiveness, self-reliance, and interoperability with the rest of the system. This is why social welfare, such as Work & Income New Zealand, operates by giving the absolute bare minimum to beneficiaries, and why all government departments, with the exclusion of Defence, Police, and Corrections, have to operate on paper-thin budgets, constantly needing to justify any expenditure whatsoever in terms of net-benefits to the economy. It is also not a rational ideology, in that in pursuing its goals of profitability and lean government, the means are much more important than the ends. A health system stretched thin (the “ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff model”) might actually be more costly to society than a health system which is budgeted to act preventatively and deal with unexpected crises, but this doesn’t really matter. Likewise, stockpiling, preemptively initiating spending, or even paying for proper maintenance can come to be seen as unnecessary luxuries in a system in which everything must be justified in terms of short-term profitability.

This is why the richest country in the world ended up with a shortage of basic medical supplies. Under ideal circumstances, each hospital should have had just enough masks, gloves and smocks to last a normal week, just in time for a new shipment. The same is true of most systems of logistics and supply under neoliberalism – things enter the warehouse, the shipping container, or the truck, just in time for them to leave. If anything stays in the warehouse, or is stockpiled, then that is an inefficiency in the system. Every minute those hospital gowns spend in the warehouse means a surplus is developing, which means profits lost for the manufacturer and shipping company.

The same logic rings true for financial markets. Each sector of the economy deals in just enough liquid assets (money) to operate under normal circumstances. If too much money circulates in the economy at any one time, then we get inflation – the decline in the value of currency. In a crisis, excess liquidity can be a good thing, which is why the US markets are being flooded with trillions of dollars, but under normal circumstances, these simple laws of financial supply and demand create an incentive for capitalists to invest their cash assets as soon as possible, never leaving anything in reserve in the event of a crisis.

But all of this, supply and demand, surplus and shortage, is somewhat obsolete under late capitalism. Contrary to popular belief, most microeconomic problems are pretty easy to solve using the microeconomic levers most accessible to capitalists such as changing prices, production or wages. Capitalists make them out to be huge, complex issues so that price regulation can be painted as naive meddling in the arcane market, but really, these simple problems like overproduction, underproduction, low demand, and the like, can all be fixed using the tools of the private sector. Larger systemic problems (macroeconomic issues), such as sovereign debt, low competitiveness, trade deficits, and poor consumer buying power, can also be fixed, but through the financial levers available to the state, such as bailouts, stimulus packages, elimination of reserve requirements, and massive liquidity injections. What can’t be fixed, at least not permanently, is the general downward trend in profits relative to investment.

The more serious problems of late capitalist economics – wafer-thin profit margins, constantly slowing rates of growth, and constant fears that consumers are “killing” various industries – are all products of one phenomenon that Karl Marx identified as far back as 1857, the discovery of which he called his “greatest triumph” but which remains a lesser known Marxian theory. This is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, a hypothesis which explains why capitalism is doomed to perpetually swing between boom and bust, until it reaches a crisis from which it can’t recover.

Central to Marx’s theory of crisis is a much more famous theory – the labour theory of value. Put simply this is the idea that all the value that capitalist society places on a commodity comes from the workers who harvested the raw materials, worked in the factory that made it, and built the machines that filled the factory. The work being done by living workers is supplemented by the machines that other workers have made to assist them in their work.

The living people involved in this system are the organic component, while the machines, products, and other lifeless objects are the inorganic component. Taken together, the ratio between these components is the organic composition of capital (OOC). When there are few workers but many machines in a factory, the OOC is lower, and so the productivity of these workers is very high because the machines allow them to multiply their efforts. But high productivity creates a problem – if all of this work can be done by fewer workers, then unemployment will surely rise, wages will go down, and fewer people will be able to pay for the products from the factories. Eventually this leads to a crisis of consumption, which is what we are currently experiencing, and unless you’re over 50 or so, you’ve probably been experiencing one your entire life.

In a consumption crisis, wages are far too low for people to buy commodities or easily reproduce their capacity to work. Since the 1970s, wages have stagnated in most Western countries, but until now capitalists had many ways they could “kick the can down the road,” delaying the crisis for another few years and making higher and higher profits in the meantime. For example, to absorb the huge surpluses generated by an economy undergoing a consumption crisis, Capitalist states could offload their surplus values onto colonies and nations in the global south by creating new markets, or waging wars and thereby investing in weapons and reconstruction. A good example of this was the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, which ended up costing trillions of dollars, allowed for billions to be invested in weapons manufacturers, and opened up a handful of new markets in the bombed out ruins of Baghdad or Fallujah.

This is one way to offset a major crisis, which we might call the “fuck the rest of the world” method. The other method is a bit harder for the capitalists, which is to massively increase consumer buying power through various measures. The most straightforward of these is the one capitalists are most loath to do, since it undermines neoliberal ideology, which is to simply give people money. This was done in Australia in 2008, when each Australian was given $300 and ordered to spend it immediately. Many other countries, even the US, are now rushing to copy this method of stimulus. Another method, which has been growing since mid last century, is by artificially raising a stratum of consumers through employing people in “bullshit jobs,” a term used by economist David Graeber to refer to people engaged in work that doesn’t seem to do anything. This includes a lot of professionals: secretaries of secretaries, managers of managers, supervisors of supervisors and the like. Finally there is another method which is gaining traction among some of the more far-sighted capitalist technocrats, the Universal Basic Income (UBI), which would give people a flat rate of just enough money to fulfil their duty to the economy as consumers. Such a move would represent a last-ditch effort by capital to avoid the looming consumer crisis, which at time of writing appears to be a tsunami whose waters have only reached chest-height.

However, all of these means can only delay the inevitable. A capitalist system undergoing crisis can only offset the real crunch for so long. In 2008, the global capitalist system experienced a major shock when a speculative housing bubble popped in US financial markets. If the crisis continued, the capitalist class would have had to sell off huge amounts of assets, including industrial machinery. This would have solved the underlying productivity crisis for a time by restoring the huge imbalance between the organic and inorganic composition of capital. But this imbalance had been building for decades. Could the capitalist system survive the shock? Mass sell-offs are nothing new – the first response of the US government to the 1929 Wall Street Crash was to encourage these sell-offs, only to find out that doing so would massively increase public unrest from both capital and workers.

In the end, the crisis was instead offset through fiscal policy, as the US federal reserve removed barriers to debt and artificially preserved the value of assets by paying off capitalists with sums that often exceeded the value of their entire business. For this reason, the recovery from the 2008 crisis was slow, but the crisis itself was short-lived. The speculative bubbles weren’t quite popped, but enough air was let out to delay the inevitable, for about 12 years, as it turned out.

Part 3: Infinite new era

It is still entirely possible that the capitalists will be able to kick the can further down the road, and avert the current crisis through arcane fiscal finagling or through truly barbaric methods like forcing US and UK workers back into the workplace well before it is safe to do so.

But it seems equally possible that the world as we know it is over. By this I don’t mean that we’ll soon be living in a Mad Max-style apocalypse, but rather that period of “the end of history” is finally over. Capitalism will probably recover, either through solving the crisis through the above means before it gets worse, or it will allow the crisis to reach its conclusion and engage in massive selloffs of fixed capital, which might extend its rule by several decades by restoring some degree of profitability relative to investments. What that could mean for our people and ecology is anyone’s guess.

But whatever the results of this crisis are, one thing seems very clear. For the first time in our lives, workers have been forced to sit at home and think – not between shifts, or under the endless stress of being a beneficiary expected to look for work that often doesn’t exist, but just thinking, and getting bored. I don’t remember a time when capitalism gave an entire class of people the opportunity to get truly bored, apart from the upper classes, who get to call it ennui.

The politics of idleness are interesting. A few thousand years ago, the backbreaking labour of slaves, poor citizens, and women created the opportunity for the first truly idle class – the Ancient Greek philosophers who are credited with the entire foundation of our moral and political systems. For the next few thousand years, the only people who were allowed to be idle were the sons of rich nobles and merchants, and only with the birth of capitalism did common people find themselves idle – the unemployed newly-displaced rural folk who waited outside the great cities of Europe, waiting for jobs at the new textile factories to open up. Many of these people became the backbone of the first workers’ parties, often millenarian Christian-socialists and underground brotherhoods like the Chartists, Luddites, or League of the Just, which Marx and Engels would later co-opt and rename The Communist League.

Idleness in these times was feared greatly by those in power, and rightly so. Nothing worried them more than huge surplus populations growing restless, organising in their idle time, and realising their position somewhere near the bottom of a great social pyramid. From time to time these surplus populations grew so great that entire nations had to be set up just to get rid of them: the unemployed and wretched masses of the British Isles found themselves criminalised and subject to transportation to the penal colonies of the Caribbean, the Americas, and later New South Wales. Luckier surplus citizens found themselves in the free colonies, such as Perth, or New Zealand.

But are we truly surplus to requirements? Surely after the crash we’ll get our jobs back?

Many economists aren’t so sure. Unemployment modelling already shows rates are going to grow higher than during the great depression, and that’s without a much more pessimistic Marxian analysis of the crisis. To be surplus is a new experience to many of us. Idleness will force us to reckon with our position in the pyramid of society, just as those 19th century oligarchs were afraid of all those years ago.

The ideological backbone of capitalism as it currently exists has been broken. Neoliberalism has shown itself incapable of dealing with Covid-19. But what we make of this realisation is up to us. The ideological backbone might be broken, but the real nuts and bolts of the system: the police and politicians, bosses and workplaces, will still remain. Given enough time, they will use this crisis of legitimacy to forge a new kind of capitalism: maybe a society with a UBI? Or a form of eco-capitalism? Or maybe they’ll go the other direction, and lead us down a road to fascism, or Trumpian nationalistic fervor? If I had to place bets, I’d put it on a mix of all of the above, as usually seems to happen in a crisis of legitimacy. After all, the last great crisis of legitimacy happened during the Great Depression, leading to both the social-democratic compromise of the New Deal and Michael Joseph Savage’s welfare state, as well as the horrors of Nazism.

In truth I don’t think it matters so much what path capitalism chooses to take in order to legitimise itself in this new era, because unless the agency of that choice lies with working people – with beneficiaries, Māori, migrants, the multitude, the proletariat – it will leave us worse off. It might end the crisis, but we’ll live with the knowledge that the next one will be worse, and once again our lives will be utterly beyond our control.

So agency should be our watchword in this new era. So long as we lack agency, we are only a few years from collapse. So long as we lack agency, the response to crises will be arbitrary. New Zealanders got lucky in getting a rational response to the crisis, but next time we might be more like the US or UK – sending thousands more people to die in the name of profits. Taking power, then, is the only way to ensure that this total lack of agency never happens again.

So far in the things I’ve written for this blog, I’ve not actually included a call to join Organise Aotearoa. In a system built on broken promises, who am I to make a promise to readers that things will get better if only we fight for a revolutionary overthrow of the bosses, police and markets that put us in crisis again and again? As an organisation, we are young, and we are emerging from a very beaten-down, hollowed-out, and disparate left-wing movement. Revolution doesn’t seem realistic to many people, but then, neither did capitalism being crushed by a virus a few weeks ago. Socialism will never just happen – it takes work, and a sense of realism. We have a lot of work to do, but only in this period of transition can we see the possible futures laid out before us – apocalyptic misery, or social and economic justice. To fight for this is always worth the effort.

The best summary of the times we’re living in come from this quote I’m quite fond of:

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”

#coronavirus #covid 19 #socialism #fukuyama

17 notes · View notes